When you are reading here whether you found me intentionally or accidently, please take time to leave a comment and let me know where you are and what you are thinking. I love feed back. Vondi

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Teaching humans


God knows humans; He know how to deal with humans; He knows how to teach them. We need a lot of examples and demonstrations before we understand things. And we need things explained pretty clearly.

 Most of all most of us need to have our lessons connected to something pretty important to us. So God wanted, and still wants, to make sure we understood how important Christ's sacrifice was going to be.   He set up the system of Laws and sacrifices of the Old Testament to serve as examples of His coming Plan for Salvation.                 

Speaking of us being human: Paul compares our state of being (as humans) to the difference between a child and an adult. The child doesn’t understand or know all that an adult knows.   11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.( I Cor 13.)    We can all relate to both of these examples. Earlier in the same chapter he says: 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when Christ is entered in we will see clearly.

Job expresses our state before God when he says: 14 What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?  

The reason for the Law is stated by Paul when he says  24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.  Gal. 3 24-25

The Law as a school master demonstrated the powerlessness of man in living for God. Romans tells us, 3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Romans 8:2-4

First he gave us the Law--so we would know how difficult it was to live the way He wanted us to live. Men had to WORK hard at doing His Will and they had to find out how impossible it really was to do it in themselves.

Then Men had to understand that there was a way to be forgiven for the wrong they'd done. So He instituted the sacrifices--the lamb, the goat, the cattle, the doves. For "without shedding of blood is no remission." Why did He use the sheep and goats, etc? Because the Israelites were herding people, the made their living by raising livestock. Livestock represented their livelihood. Those perfect sheep and goats that God required of a sacrifice were IMPORTANT AND PRECIOUS to the strength and well being of their herd and thus to them. Just as important as God wanted the sacifice of Christ to be for us.

If He hadn't spent years showing His People the importance of serving Him and showing that they couldn't do it in their self, then when Jesus came with the free gift of Salvation, they wouldn't have recognized how Precious it was.

But after generations of struggling to live righteously, the Jewish people had learned that without some outside source of Power they couldn't do the will of God. They could be forgiven for not doing it through the sacrifices, but they couldn't attain real salvation.

Only through the birth and teaching and death of Christ was that possible. What glory! What blessing! What victory was made possible through Christ.

But men would never have understood it's worth without those first years of struggle and sacrifice of precious lambs and kids.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

I'm back

Well, it’s been a while since I did any blogging.  I don’t remember how long. I got involved in a couple things, then I went to be with Notah and his family and one thing followed another.  Time really gets away from you!
Back in March or April I began writing a book.  Yeah, a book.  Amazing isn’t it.  Over the years I’ve read thousands of books. Those in my library alone number two or three hundred and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Inevitably, although I didn’t seek them out, I got ahold of a few modern romances.  It is appalling to me the pornography that passes for romance in today’s world.  God had a plan for love and marriage and creating families.  And it comes in just that order.  The ‘creating families’ part doesn’t come before marriage.  Nor was it designed to be a social recreation.
Anyway, having read a couple of those ‘modern’ romances and tossed more than a couple, I decided I could do a better job and still present love and courtship in the way God designed it. So that’s where I’ve been—writing a Christian Romance.  It started out as one, but then it evolved into a ‘saga’ (*smile*) of the family of Eli and Ellen Slade.  It just kinda wrote itself.  But I had to keep going until it was finished.. Took me eight months, but now I have a neat story.  And it isn’t just a story, it’s three books—over a thousand standard sized pages:  “Refuge from the Storm,”  “Los Llanos” and “Heritage.”    
I guess I did it for fun and my own gratification in finding I really could.  The story was very compelling for me and once I started I simply had no stopping place. I had to keep going until it was finished in fact I couldn’t focus on anything else.  And now you know what I’ve been doing for the last however many months. 
Any one who is interested in reading them leave me a comment and use the contact me button on the top left of the blog.  Or you can check out the blog: Refuge from the Storm  (http://refugefromstorm.blogspot.com/ )   
                                              (This is the banner piece for "Refuge")  
 
It has the entire text of the book there, but, blogs being designed the way they are, you have to read backwards starting back in June of 2012.  (If there’s a way to reverse the posts, I haven’t been able to find it.)  If you love New Mexico, it will probably make you homesick.
 
I'll be around more now.