WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO CONVINCE YOU?

Jesus Christ did not stop teaching and relating to people after His Ascension to Heaven 50 days after His Resurrection. God sent His Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus to keep in touch with people, to reveal Jesus to individuals, to gently convict us of our sins so that we will turn toward the Lord and receive the gift of salvation so that while we were still on Earth and throughout eternity we could live in God's love and grace in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The most surprising revelation about what people were seeking was that many of them thought that our framers' references to freedom of religion and separation of church and state meant that faith was garnered in a similar way to the way they got food from a smorgasbord. In the course of the classes for World Religions I tried to teach from the perspective of sociology of religion and anthropology of religion. That meant that the most important tenet I wanted to get across is that human beings are physical incarnations of spiritual entities. Our spirits were spoken into being by the Creator and we were given the gift of life on Earth for God's sake. The Creator wanted to share the beauty and wonder of Creation with sentient beings made in the image of the God's self.

We were created for God's sake. All that is the Fullness of Love in which we live and move and have our being gave human beings free will and yearns for each person to answer His invitation to be in relationship with Him. Nevertheless, spiritual reality is difficult to describe. Jesus taught through action and through parable. He demonstrated the Love of the Creator, God the Father every moment of His life on Earth.

But He did not stop teaching and relating to people after the Ascension of Jesus Christ to Heaven 50 days after His Resurrection. God sent His Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus to keep in touch with people, to reveal Jesus to individuals, to gently convict us of our sins so that we will turn toward the Lord and receive the gift of salvation so that while we were still on Earth and throughout eternity we could live in God's love and grace in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said, "No one can come to the Father except through me." For many people who have not opened their hearts to the Lord, this one sentence is the biggest stumbling block to their ability to believe that God loves them and to receive the gift of Faith from the Lord through Jesus Christ by the power of His Holy Spirit. However, God's desire to be in relationship with each human being on Earth has led Him, continues to lead Him, and will -- up until the time when there is no more human life on Earth -- lead Him to try to help each human being to respond to His offer of salvation in Jesus Christ.

If you do not believe in God the Creator and Father of Jesus Christ, do you know why you don't? What would it take to convince you?

I promise you that God will answer any questions you have; help you give up your doubts, and joyfully welcome you into His heart, NO STRINGS ATTACHED. If you want to know more, please just ask me. I will do my best with God's help to answer you and/or to point you in the right direction.

If you already know the Lord and love Him, the most wonderful part of that loving relationship is that there is always a deeper level of love and trust available.

 Beloved of God, whether you believe or don't believe, the Lord understands and will help you when the time is right. Please give Him a chance.

FAITH AND SPIRITUALITY VS. INSTITUTIONALIZED RELIGION

Here are some follow-on thoughts about what I wrote last night and from a conversation with a friend on Facebook:

What counts is that we allow the Holy Spirit --the Spirit of Truth sent to us by Jesus Himself -- to reveal Jesus to us. No one can tell another person that they will not come to know what is true and what is false. A person from a traditional background on another continent cannot say that the Lord is not working in that person's heart and culture. What counts is loving one another. 

 None of us has to be emptied first. God the Creator loves us and is always calling us to Him by the power of the Holy Spirit. We do not have to be perfect to receive Him. When we come to know God in Jesus Christ as revealed by the Holy Spirit to our Spirits, then we can ask for help in coming to know whether God truly exists and who Jesus is. God is Love, yes . . . and only God has the power to truly help us to receive Him. he does that by bringing people and circumstances into our lives. There are many reasons why people have trouble believing they are loved unconditionally. God makes NO condition. 

God loves each one of us because we are HIS. After the Holy Spirit has revealed Jesus to us, we learn in our hearts who He is and when we are able to, we invite the Father and the Son into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit. After that our lives are filled with chances to be drawn closer to god's heart. 

The Holy Spirit continues to work in our hearts and it is work we do TOGETHER with God in relationship with our Abba/Daddy Father who has given us to His son the Savior of all humankind and Redeemer of Creation by which all that was made and continues to be made. To just scold people and say they need to repent is never ever what Jesus through His Holy Spirit did do or is doing or will do. He doesn't break the bruised reed and neither does he snuff out the smoldering wick. He is gentle and takes care of each one of us the way a shepherd tends his sheep. It is NOT about doctrine and theology alone. 

Those kinds of intellectual understandings are ways of describing God's love and the work of the incarnation, Jesus' life and teachings, His suffering, His death on the Cross and His resurrection. It is only in coming to know the Lord in our hearts that our spirits can truly help our souls to make an eternal commitment to be in relationship with the Fullness of Love, Light, Mercy, Peace, Righteousness and Truth. 

People have a difficult time coming to the Lord and sadly, it is often organized and institutionalized religion that turns them off. The Lord gave us free will to choose because unless love is given and received freely it isn't love.

IN HIS NAME

 While I was on Facebook I forwarded a post with a quote supposedly by Pope Francis I that read:


"It is not necessary to believe in God to be a good person. In a way, the traditional notion of God is outdated. One can be spiritual but not religious. It is not necessary to go to church and give money — for many, nature can be a church. Some of the best people in history do not believe in God, while some of the worst deeds were done in His name."

A friend objected to the quote and said that she didn't agree with what was written for several reasons.  So this is what I wrote back to my friend:
I am sad that you don't understand the perspective that the Pope has -- I think the quote has been taken out of context. The Pope was not talking about salvation. He was talking about how the institutional church can be used and has been used by people who want to do evil. I believe completely that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is Lord of All and everything that has been created was created by, in and through Him. Maybe there is something about the context of the quote that leads you to believe Pope Francis is talking about a "social Gospel," but each person is able to have a personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ -- and anyone who loves knows God, for God is love, as John wrote in one of his epistles [[1 John 4:13-16 (ESV)].
Jesus said, to be his witnesses in action -- not to preach. Being a witness means loving action, not judgment and condemnation. The true sign of God's presence are definitely the signs of liberation from oppression, deliverance from illness, that the hungry are fed and that the naked are closed. The true presence of God's Reign on earth does not come from professions of faith, but from faith in action. Jesus came to open up a closed system with a lot of hoops to jump through that was basically only available in a works' righteousness way depending on being born into a family. The Lord lived, taught, suffered, died and was resurrected for all of creation and for everyone. Whose who became His disciples were told to love one another as he had loved them. The witness of how they loved one another and how they loved others in action made the Gospel evident.
God is always on the side of the poor and oppressed. Those who are witnesses to the fullness of Jesus' incarnation, life, death and resurrection announce and live out the Gospel. If they teach that anyone is condemned and cannot have access to God's mercy, grace, peace and love, they are not telling the truth. Each person has to come to have a relationship in Spirit with God who is Spirit. 

You went off on a tangent that doesn't have anything to do with the quote. God's love, grace and mercy is for all. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal Jesus Christ to people. And salvation is available to everyone on earth. The promise of love and grace will always trump threats of going to hell. The Cross is part of the activity of the life and mission of Jesus. But the Cross is still just a symbol and the worship of it is idolatry. Jesus said, "This is eternal life -- to know God and to know the One He sent." [John 17:3 (NIV)] Getting to know God is only possible when we open our hearts to the Holy Spirit. And we can never know what is between God's heart and the heart of each person.
In the Acts passage (above -- Acts 10:34-43), Peter has had a revelation from the Lord. And no one knew Jesus better than Peter. Over and over people have tried to take over and say that human beings have to be in control of access to God. When speaking to the woman of Sychar at the well, she was asking about just such a thing -- why some people said that God should only be worshiped on one mountain and others said only on a different mountain. In reply, "Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4:21-24 (RSV)
The Gospel is not meant to be restrictive. When a person loves and acts out in love,mercy and righteousness, that person knows God and is acting as God hopes that all human beings would act. Certainly it is important for people to know God loves them and to know who Jesus is, but each person knows God out of the context of his or her culture. We cannot bring Jesus to anyone and we should never try to force Jesus on anyone. The Holy Spirit has come before us and prepares the way.


This is what Peter learned through a revelation that is recounted in Acts 10:





"And Peter opened his mouth and said: 'Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the word which he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), the word which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses to all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and made him manifest; not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that he is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that every one who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” (Peter's Revelation)

We are to proclaim the Gospel by the way we love and take care of people. The earliest followers of God in Jesus Christ did not try to change their society. They just began to live another way. People were drawn to them because love in action defined them. May that ever be true of anyone who claims to be a follower of Y'eshua . . Jesus . . . Иисус . . . Jesús . . .Ciise . . . and any other way the Name above all names is written or spoken.

 * * * *

After I went on an on like that, I decided to look the quote up on Snopes.com and see it the quote was really from Pope Francis I.  This is what it said --

Origins: On or around 6 December 2014, the above-displayed image of Pope Francis and accompanying quote began to circulate on Facebook. The image is one often used in tandem with circulated quotes (legitimate or spurious) attributed to Pope Francis, but the quote appended to it this time was a new one:
 
It is not necessary to believe in God to be a good person. In a way, the traditional notion of God is outdated. One can be spiritual but not religious. It is not necessary to go to church and give money — for many, nature can be a church. Some of the best people in history do not believe in God, while some of the worst deeds were done in His name.
 
The quote was deemed plausible by many Facebook users (who subsequently shared it) due in part because Pope Francis has been both inclusive and non-judgmental in his commentary thus far regarding faith, morality, and good deeds. The heavily-circulated quote also read to many as a natural extension of what was widely viewed as partial acceptance of atheism by Pope Francis during a May 2013 homily: back then, Pope Francis' words were interpreted by some to mean atheists could achieve redemption through good deeds without belief in God, while others inferred the comments merely referenced corporeal time on Earth and cooperation towards peace:
 
"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! 'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class. We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all. And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: We need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. 'But I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist!' But do good: We will meet one another there."
 
Following Pope Francis' homily, Fr. Thomas Rosica (a Vatican spokesperson who specializes in translating the Pope's remarks for English-speaking Catholics and the media) issued a clarification stating the homily's content was not intended to suggest belief in God was immaterial to salvation:
 
This means that all salvation comes from Christ, the Head, through the Church which is his body. Hence they cannot be saved who, knowing the Church as founded by Christ and necessary for salvation, would refuse to enter her or remain in her. At the same time, thanks to Christ and to his Church, those who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ and his Church but sincerely seek God and, moved by grace, try to do his will as it is known through the dictates of conscience can attain eternal salvation.
Earlier comments notwithstanding, the quote appended to the image that circulated in December 2014 does not match any verifiable comments made by Pope Francis. Although Pope Francis did make statements in 2013 that were widely received as atypically inclusive of nonbelievers, they did not resemble the "not necessary to believe in God to be a good person" quote. It's not clear where the quote originated, but there is no proof (nor is there precedent) for the claim Pope Francis voiced it.
Read more at Snopes.com Answer

   * * * *

And I also looked the quote up on A Roman Catholic website called Crux.com

I found these comments there:

I have never seen the quote that your Facebook friend attributes to Pope Francis and I cannot believe, in particular, he would say that “the traditional notion of God is outdated” or that “it is not necessary to go to church.”

I imagine this Facebook quote is a “gloss,” a fanciful expansion of two things that Pope Francis actually did say. In a homily in May 2013, Pope Francis told morning worshippers at the Vatican that “the Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone.” To which he added: “Even the atheists.” That strikes me as a strange quote to be coming from the pope. Can you confirm for me whether he actually said it? (Philadelphia) ANSWER I have never seen the quote that your Facebook friend attributes to Pope Francis and I cannot believe, in particular, he would say that “the traditional notion of God is outdated” or that “it is not necessary to go to church.”

I imagine this Facebook quote is a “gloss,” a fanciful expansion of two things that Pope Francis actually did say. In a homily in May 2013, Pope Francis told morning worshippers at the Vatican that “the Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone.” To which he added: “Even the atheists.”

JESUS IS THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE

"Jesus told him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.'" [John 14:6 (NLT)]

What does it mean to believe what Jesus said above?

What does it mean NOT to believe it?

I firmly believe that you can only come to know if what Jesus said is true or not when the Holy Spirit gives you the gift of faith and you receive that gift. There are many, many people who have spent a lot of time denying the most important statement that Jesus made about Himself.

And you cannot come to believe unless you have opened your heart to the Lord. When you do that, the Holy Spirit will reveal Jesus Christ to you.

So much evil has been done in the name of religion. Even today, we hear only a small portion of the way people are suffering and dying, fleeing from their homes and being forced to live in exile. Just in the last twenty years, millions of people have died because of genocide in former Yugoslavia, in Syria, in Iraq, in Iran and in Afghanistan just due to persecution because of their cultural background and confessed beliefs.

But there is a big difference between institutionalized, politicized religion and faith. Faith is necessary to have a spiritual relationship with God. On the other hand, religion is more intellectual and materialistic. Institutionalized, politicized religion is directed by human beings and can be twisted to be a tool of violence, persecution and abuse.

Every moment of every day each one of us has a chance to develop a relationship with the God we can begin to come to know through the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament based on the life and teachings of Jesus and his followers. The Bible in total is full of narrations about the relationship of God the Creator and particular individuals and/or groups of people.

Each one of us also give a narration about our relationship with God the Creator. Maybe it is a very short story that you deny that God exists. Perhaps you call yourself agnostic and have never had a reason to believe in God. You might have been raised in a culture where you were taken to worship and learn the beliefs of your people. Or you could have found your way to a church or to another kind of religious establishment and come to believe what you learned there,

Human beings are spiritual. We live in a material world and our bodies are flesh and blood, but our lives are not bound only by the material. And our bodies, minds, spirits and souls are not separate entities. We cannot be truly complete as human beings unless we allow the spiritual part of ourselves to be a vibrant part of our lives.

There are so many reasons today why people get turned off by Christianity and by the activities of some people who claim to be believers in Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, only people who truly come to know God in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit can have a relationship with God and come to know what Jesus meant when He said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

The Spirit-filled life we come to know in Christ is much different than the existence that is bounded by physical birth, living on earth and death. It sounds silly and doesn't make any sense unless you give God a chance to show you that He exists. And the way you can come to know God first is through people who know Jesus personally by the power of the Holy Spirit. When we study the Bible the Holy Spirit illuminates what is important for us to know.

Once we come to believe and accept God's salvation in Jesus Christ, we begin that relationship where we come to live out what Jesus calls "the Way, the Truth and the Life." Jesus' Father in Heaven is revealed to us as God the Creator and we come to know that He is our Father, too. And the next most important part of our relationship with God in Jesus Christ is that we live out the Gospel -- God's love in action.

Looking back over what I have just written, it seems a bit scattered to me. I think there are about ten parts to all that I am trying to say. Over the next few days I will do my best to elaborate on what I believe the Lord is leading me to write to you, Beloved.

Meanwhile I will keep praying for you. And my main prayer is that you will come to know completely that Jesus is indeed the Way the Truth and the Life. I want you to know personally and absolutely who Jesus is and to be able to come to the Father through Him. The greatest desire that God has for you is that you will open your heart to receive His love and to live in the fullness of love forever in relationship with God the Creator, Our Father in Heaven; with Jesus Christ, His Son, our Savior and the Redeemer of all Creation; and the Holy Spirit who reveals Jesus to us, who accompanies us, who abides in us and who sanctifies us.

If you believe in Jesus, please know that God has good plans for you to come to know Him in even deeper ways.

If you do not believe, won't you give God a chance to show you not only that He exists, but that He loves you and wants to provide for you and bless you?

I pray that you will, Beloved. When you do, you will be so amazed and so happy with how your life will change. Meanwhile, whatever your doubts, whatever your worries, whatever your fears, God will give you everything you need. He will guide you to people and bring circumstances into your life so that you can come to know and trust Him.

All it takes is opening your heart a little bit and giving the Lord a chance. As ever, my prayer is that you will do that today.

May the Lord continue to bless and keep you and everyone you love.