Behold the Hand Behold the Nail

I just made this as a going away gift for my neighbors and it turned out quite well considering I had no idea what I was doing in the process required to put this together, all I had was a picture in my head to begin. In my normal fashion I began adding and changing things about this particular little sculpture but it never look quite right until I prayed about it when I got the message that simple and bold is exactly what the message to mankind was so just keep the simple message in picture form and let it do it's own work on behalf of the Gospel.

In the end I still felt it necessary to ad something that would personalize the new conversation piece so the chains at the base represent the family, the black iron chain is the family's Father and the gold and silver chains are interwoven within the links of the iron chain represent the wife and child forever linked to each other and all 3 of their lives are based on and lived for the "Message of the Cross".

The resin molded hand is mounted on an beautiful agate plate of blue and white and the nail is very real and was made in a 2000 year old blacksmith shop in Turkey that actually did make iron hardware, including iron crucifixion nails for the Roman army during the time of Christ. 

Guilty but Still Loved

I wanted to write a small piece about understanding God's love of each one of us as individuals and try to clarify for some out there what was once a major misunderstanding and of great concern I had at one time and it was a very major sticking point in my relationship with God and one that caused great turmoil and slowed my progress in my relationship with God down to a crawl, a wall that almost stopped my progress as a believer completely.  It is a simple and apparently common error on the part of those just coming into a relationship with the Lord.
 
I am talking about His love truly having no bounds, the boundary that we have made in our understanding is ultimately a major road block. God's love is truly exceptional from a human point of view and one that is very hard to conceive of at all.
 
Starting with the fact that if you or I were in a position to save the lives of our neighbors I believe most of us would do so if we saw that no imminent to ourselves or family would be implied by doing so but if there were the chance of danger coming to our family by doing so most probably we would not take the chance and if the chance were 100% that some grievous danger would befall our family then I say almost none would act to save our neighbor. There lies the difference in our understanding of love for one another and the love that God displays by willingly giving His Son to die brutally as He watched knowing He could immediately put an end to the terrible pain, suffering and humiliation Yeshua, in Greek called Jesus, endured but He did not save His only Son because He knew it was the only way to save us from ourselves, and keep the promise He made to us. How much love is that? Immeasurable by human understanding. If that were your son hanging on a cross and left to die in agony and you had the power to stop it all would you have been able to allow it? 
 
Now try to imagine that when we, sinners in every sense, want to have a relationship with God we
think we understand when Yeshua tells us we are forgiven our sins when we accept that He is the promised Christ and believe in Him. We understand that we will be changed from the inside when we accept that Yeshua died and covered us with His blood and will be seen from that time forward as clean of our sins from that point onward but some of us still don't understand that as we continue our slow transformation into the child that wants only to please our Father we sometimes continue to sin, say something like a smoking, drinking, sexual desires, lying etc. and we fall into the trap of saying "How can I be forgiven my sins if I still sin?". God's love and forgiveness is still extended to us and Christ's blood still covers us during this process as long as we know that we are a work in progress and continually pray for the strength to overcome our sinful nature. When we succumb to the notion that we cannot be forgiven because have sinned many times since our acceptance of Yeshua as our Savior and Redeemer we are falling into a trap laid by Satan, a trap of doubt. Simply accept what Yeshua has said and believe Him when He says that you are saved but join the battle with all your heart and all your ability to reclaim your soul by praying and trying every moment of everyday to overcome those sins of addiction and sins of evil thought. For some of us it is a long and hard struggle to fight for our souls and some others it is easier but like chipping the accumulated rust from the surface of a metal implement it takes time and effort but we know that underneath that corroded surface is the child of God we want to be and will be, sometimes it just takes more time than we first thought but holding fast will produce fruit with the help of the transformative power Yeshua promised us, namely the Holy Spirit, we will be changed. God still loves us even when we sin.
 
God's love for you is powerful and unfathomable in our human eyes and sometimes very hard to understand and grasp but Faith in what He says and believing he means it is all that is required to change from the inside out. He loves the sinner but hates the sin, remember this and fight the sin and never presume to put human limits on God's limitless love.

Truth's Foundation Comes From GOD not Men

I want to start by saying that there was a time that I allowed myself to be lead by the teachings of modern men, priests, pastors, preachers, theologians, evangelicals etc. At the time it was simply easier for me to trust in those I thought were actually enlightened from above and teaching the Truth of the Word of God but I found a nagging doubt embedded in my heart about my Salvation. 

In all honesty I was frightened of never being allowed into Heaven. I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I believe in the Holy Spirit, I believe in a Heaven and a Hell, I believe in Satan and I believe that Jesus became a man to show us the way home. I also believe that God does not deal in generalities and that He is always showing us in parables, parabolic imagery, contradictions and mysteries that His Truth and Teaching is black and white, yes or no, up or down with no deviations. Man started to interpret the Bible using his intellect and earthly knowledge, not because he intended to but because he allowed himself to be influenced unknowingly to deviate, in small measures away from the Truth, just enough to be almost imperceptible and sounding so much like the truth that it was accepted and taught again and again until it became the accepted truth. How true was my salvation?, Could I truly be saved?, How could I be absolutely sure that I would be one of those who stayed on the narrow path and rejected the sweet and honeyed way of the world? How could I be sure that I would not be one of those very elect who would be deceived? What must I do to find my way to the Truth as Jesus taught it and the Apostles after him? Where do I go to begin to ensure my first step is truly onto the right path? Well, it took me years to discover that I could search, research, investigate until my hair turned silver and bones began to ache, which by the way is exactly where I am, and I would never find the answer to my question, How can I know the Truth?

I certainly wish I could point to the moment that this great revelation came to me but I cannot, it just developed into an answer after extensive searching. That answer was this, "Start over, begin your search again from the beginning but find out where that beginning is and who is best to guide you from the BEGINNING." As it turned out that beginning is now pretty obvious, the Bible. The next part of that answer is a little more difficult to answer but it boils down to this "You will know the Truth when you shall desire nothing but the Truth.". I can best explain it like this, "My heart cries out when I see and hear the Truth" 

That Truth was found by wiping away all that I thought I knew and had learned at the feet of men and reading the Word of God as an empty vessel asking to be filled with the Truth as taught by Jesus and the Apostles. It was not an easy task to become embryonic and try to wipe clean my perceptions but when I saw that what I thought I knew was quite different than what I was now reading and understanding from a totally different perspective the doors of the Bible opened completely and I began to see the entire Bible for what it truly was. Amazing, enlightening, humbling cannot describe how I felt in my heart but it's a start.        

I want to try to bring some of my own new clarity to any modern Christians who may read this and be searching themselves for answers their hearts tell them do not reside in the modern teachings of most churches. What Jesus taught and what His Apostles taught versus what has today become a new and accepted teaching of the Truth is remarkably different in many ways. The bottom line is that if a current Biblical teaching, philosophy or church doctrine cannot be proven and supported in and by the Scriptures, then it is not truly the Word of God but rather as it foundation in the traditions and minds of men. 

Some of these modern teachings in the Christian church are very palatable as they are coated with honey and go down easily. Some of these modern teachings are a sweet melody that find the hungry ears of those who have never been taught the original Truth of the Word of God and are accepted, by trust in their teachers alone and never supported or proven in Scripture. Sure, you will hear the message of abundance and health and healing being preached by pulling snippets and half sentences from the Scriptures but then expounded upon by the words and ideas of the man or woman presenting this "teaching". Many today depend upon other men to teach them what God has said and has to say about almost any given subject but when those other men (preachers, pastors, theologians, church leaders and councils) who were never really grounded in the Truth of the Gospel and Word of God from the very beginning because they themselves were taught an incorrect doctrine. If you found your art instructor was now going to teach your advanced calculus class also but had no roots, background or real knowledge of mathematics how much calculus are you going to learn? Everyone's foundation must be in the original teaching of Jesus, the Prophets and the Apostles.  

Please don't misunderstand what I am saying here. I am not trying to convert unbelievers here, they have made their choices and have hard hearts and will not hear. I am directing myself to others like myself who have found the Truth of Christ but who have been unknowingly lead to other paths of Salvation when there is but one true way. Modern Christian teachers, who themselves have become mislead into believing unsupported theories, traditions and doctrines of men alone are not teaching from God's Original Word but have allowed traditional interpretation to infiltrate and poison their understanding. 

I think a lot of people today have become somewhat lazy in their spiritual lives as I once did and began to fully trust the men who were teaching them rather than go home and search out the Truth for themselves. In this day and age when almost instant gratification is normal and expected ("men running to and fro") with such tools as cars, planes, TV's, cell phones, microwaves, computers, 15 second news blurbs with very abbreviated news stories, it becomes almost the expectation the modern mind to expect the same sort of abbreviated Bible teachings at abbreviated gatherings. Here is where the honey coated teaching and sweet melodies become accepted by preachers and pastors, this is where they truly fall down and that is to continue teaching the message they are to keep the people showing up. It is easier to keep people coming to a modern, worldly and humanistic acceptable message of prosperity and health today than a message that requires the individual to work hard and search out the Truth by conviction and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Listen to something nice and let someone else do all the thinking for you, very American these days. I am trying to point out that most people today in the modern Christian church have come to accept teachings that are not Scriptural but they won't know that unless the search the Scriptures for support of that teaching and if they cannot find the supporting Scriptures then it cannot be proved through the Word of God as the Truth. Christians today think that if they say they are Christians, go to church regularly, and try to do good works in the name of Jesus that they will automatically be saved, I have news for you, Jesus said;

Matthew 7:21-23
"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."

What could he possibly have been alluding to here? These people were convinced they were saved. Why we're they not?

Hosea 4:6-7
6 "My people are destroyed for lacke of knowledge: because thou hast reiected knowledge,
I will also reiect thee..."
7 "...therefore will I change their glory into shame."

What knowledge was missing in their lives? The knowledge of the Truth? What Truth? We're they listening to men and not to God?

These two Scriptures are not taken out of context for they plainly express a Truth. But again I ask you what Truth?

Mark 7:6-9

6 "This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men...

9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition."

You may say that was then this is now but the Word says it is for all days. What traditions are now kept in the Bible believing church that are of men and not taught in the Bible? There are quite few that might and probably will surprise you.

Most people who believe in the Bible think that they are saved.

Most people who profess to be born again believers think they are saved.

Most people think they are good people, do good things, go to church on Sunday think they are saved.

The vast majority of people who profess to be Christians think they are saved.

Don't assume anything, Don't trust your eternal soul and your Salvation to someone else because it just sounds good and sounds right, investigate all the Biblical Truths you hold so dearly and be sure of your Salvation. 

I will write more soon and share with you some original Truths taught in the Bible that have been overlooked by most today but are needless to say still the Truth of your foundation in Christ.

 Here is a question for you to ponder, Is Jesus' name found in the Old Testament and what is that Name?