The Christian Peace Initiative Conference
November 8 and 9th – The Christian Peace Initiative Conference right here in Salt Lake City. We will gather on Friday Night for a Zoom to hear our keynote speaker, Pastor Larry Norris Senior out of Arizona and then regroup Saturday Morning to spend half the day hearing other presentations and after a lunch we will have a panel discussion.
We welcome an audience but know that many of you are not around. As a means to plan on refreshments and Saturdays lunch we are asking that you RSVP with name and number of attendees.
Always free – including lunch – but we really need to know who and how many will physically attend.
For the rest of you we will both Zoom and Record.
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Thursday Call In Show
We are really enjoying our Thursday call in shows every week and invite you to tune in, call-in or type in your questions, comments or concerns.
All we ask is you be honest with your intentions and strive (we fail at times) but strive to be loving – which does NOT always mean being agreeable, BTW.
Every Thursday, 11am to around 1PM mtn.
We need you to participate because we grow together through the process!!
Speaking of Agape love, many people ask about it and most of you have heard me define it as a love that is “selfless, sacrificial and insufferable.”
I stand by these short definitions but want to take a moment to expand upon them a bit.
“Agape is selfless.”
Selfless means that you do not put your agenda, wants and often even needs first in the action or expression required but the needs of others.
Note I do not say, the wants of others. Selfless love is seeking to improve another’s spiritual needs which may include helping them materially – but may not – as sometimes the most loving thing we can do for some people is to say no.
The aim of our selflessness is always on how to help people grow spiritually in whatever you are selflessly saying, doing or extending on their behalf.
Typically, expressing such selflessness toward others includes our giving – and this means time, insights, and material support in this material life but the goal is always to help bring to them greater opportunity for spiritual development.
We while we may have other things we want to do or say in a given moment, agape love will selflessly do what the other truly needs (again) in order for them to grow spiritually and in order to selflessly support them we have to understand what is truly beneficial for them and what is just a pat on the head.
Agape love is present when we look to WHAT will help them best serve Him, the Living God and His grand purposes and then to do such things – without much care for our well-being, including our reputation.
This is where saying and doing hard things, things people and even the culture do not like, is selfless but often goes unrewarded.
This selflessness, however, is
Merciful when we want to be merciless.
Patient when we want to be impatient.
Kind when we want to be unkind.
Longsuffering when we are short tempered.
Humble when we want to be proud.
Giving when we want to be stingy.
And get this, it can be . . .
Painful when we want to soothe,
Strong when we would rather hide,
Truthful when a lie would better serve our purposes.
This kind of love is therefore “sacrificial” because what is needed is not what we would truly rather do and say!
“Agape is Sacrificial”
This next description falls right in line after selfless, meaning, we SACRIFICE our ways, views, opinions, attitudes, anger, pain and suffering and our very lives FOR the betterment of the other.
Again, the reason this selfless love is sacrificial is because we would rather, in our flesh, approach things differently, but choosing to be living sacrifices, we place our will on the alter and offer it up in place of what His will is.
Agape love is always sacrificial – if our love is not sacrificial, it is another kind of expression, driven by another agenda which is more self-centered than selfless.
This was the mind of Christ who at a moment of great clarity asked His Father if there was any other way than to face His coming torture, but added, “but not my will but thine be done.”
So, it is the submission our fleshly will and ways to His Spirit and its fruit. And this leads us to the last term I attach to describing Agape love – and it’s
“Agape is insufferable!”
Agape is an insufferable form of loved for all the former reasons (because it’s selfless and sacrificial, which always produces personal suffering and anguish to our will and ways) but it is also insufferable because the execution of such is assigned to dealing with imperfect people, people who bite, people who use us, people who take decades to change course and/or people who never change course.
These are insufferable situations because this love is patient, kind and merciful in the face of such conditions. But that does not mean we do and say things that encourage spiritual deficits along the way.
It’s to be insufferably patient and merciful while being selflessly direct. Honest. Real.
Agape love is not a quick fix, it is never easy (unless you have really matured by the Spirit of Christ and have truly learned to let Him lead), and it always creates the demand for a selfless, sacrificial and therefore insufferable response to people around us.
It is not possible by and through our flesh. It will fail somehow and we will all reach the end of our rope and ultimately manage some situations or even all situations, without it.
We do not have the innate power to overcome ourselves – which is why we promote Yeshua as the Way, the Truth, the Life and the vine who feeds and fills His branches with light, love and the power to love as He commanded.
This brings us to tonight’s presentation which must first be addressed in context of what and how before we can understand why and who?
We will not spend too much time on the what and how because that is all we have done for twenty years and all of our are biblically-based findings are there for the taking
But let me offer up a super quick Seven Point summary fully supported by the ancient scripture:
- YAHAVAH made human beings in His Image, male and female made He them.
- Human beings rebelled against YAHAVAH through the freewill given them and humanity was separated from Him in life and in death.
- All people before Yeshua went to a separated place (sheol).
- To bring forth Yeshua the Messiah, YAHAVAH carved out a people from the human race and gave them Laws, statutes and commandments which they broke repeatedly proving humans cannot reach God through their own righteousness.
- But through that line YAHAVAH brought forth His only Human Son who a. fulfilled the Law via obedience,
b. overcame the wages of sin for the world, (which is death)
c. victoriously put sheol (hell), the grave, Satan and all other things under His feet.
d. Then, as the “last Adam,” Christ spiritually reconciled the world to His Father and spiritually returned humanity to the Garden of Eden state, where all of humankind, every individual, has been given new life, just like Adam and Eve had before sinning, are spiritually free from sin, death, Satan and all other things that get in our way to choose how we will live, and choose to live by the reconciled Spirit of Christ in them – or not.
e. Some ignore the Spirit of Christ in them, and choose to eat from the forbidden tree that leads to blindness and the obscuring of YAHAVAH and His will and ways from their lives;
f. others freely choose to eat from the Tree of Life, which brings them into relationship with YAHAVAH their Maker, God and King.
We call this the Great News (made possible by and through what we also see as fulfilled eschatology) which takes all that YAHAVAH has done (all described in scripture) and puts it under our feet – leaving all of to walk and live by the Spirit of Christ.
Because Yeshua’s finished work was for the world – past, present and future, and because He is now known spiritually by those who seek YAHAVAH doctrines, religious practices, church affiliations become far, far, less important than the heart of the worshipper of Him in spirit and truth.
I work in images to help try and explain concepts with less words – so let me introduce you to one now.
As a means to help us better understand faiths that are not Christ affirming lets work through this one – take it for what it’s worth.
Show GRAPHIC 1
Obviously this is like the all seeing eye symbol but in our case it simply represents YAHAVAH looking down and supplying all human beings with an invitation to know Him by and through the finished work of His Son.
[see image in video]
This how YAHAVAH is, has always been, and forever will be – looking to reach all of the Creations that He has not only made in His image BUT whom He has reconciled to Himself through the finished work of His Son.
With me so far?
Now, in response to all of this, individual human beings – everyone of us – have the right AND the ability to seek Him (to look up to Him) OR to freely look everywhere else for truth – like Adam and Eve.
That might look like this
[see images in video]
In fulfillment, all such souls who pass on without looking up will exist outside the Kingdom or New Jerusalem but in our estimation all of them HAVE been reconciled, are loved by YAHAVAH and are invited to freely choose to look to Him forevermore.
But now to our topic at hand – non-Christ affirming people who live by faith in God, in a God, in a form of God and these might include the Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and/or all the rest who?
Who do what? Who . . .
Who look up!
But the fact of the matter is, they are looking up in faith and we might see this as them meeting the first demand that YAHAVAH has on those who live by faith – they are doing so IN SPIRIT. How? Because the victorious Spirit of Christ is working in all people, calling them, by His Spirit, to look up!
Whether they are in Kasikstan, Iran, Peru or Kentucky – those who are His seek Him in Spirit AND Truth. The decision to even look up is a decision of the Spirit – which is the Spirit of Christ, moving and calling to all to first . . . look up.
THESE all go into the Kingdom WHETHER THEY KNOW the SPIRIT that they are following is from Christ or Not. This is where the doctrine does not matter – so long as in their looking up they bear the fruit of all who are His – agape love.
Can you see!
Now, this is not to say that looking up in spirit alone is the end goal. And we can say this because YAHAVAH seeks those who worship Him in Spirit (looking up) and Truth. And this brings us to the goal for all who have looked up, and that might look like this.
Here we see illustrated those who not only look up (in spirit) but who see “eye to eye” with YAHAVAH meaning they look up rightly in Truth. These are those who worship YAHAVAH in spirit AND truth. But we all know, that contrary to standard human Christian opinion, the Truth is owned, operated and understood fully by YAHAVAH alone, so we all “see through a glass darkly” and nobody has the patent on Truth.
What this allows us to say is God Truth unfolds to all who seek Him by the Spirit, and therefore erring in truth is not what disqualifies a person, its erring in spirit and love. It’s failing to look up in faith, and failing to allow His love to prove the faith that moves you to look up.
This introduces us to the views of non-Christ affirming people who look up in faith, and live by His Spirit, but lack correct understanding of His Truth.
These introduce to us the breadth of human understanding and the reason we refuse to make doctrinal understanding supreme in this age of Fulfillment.
In other words, a direct eye to eye understanding of YAHAVAH in Spirit and Truth is the goal and will be the realization for all who look up, in this life and apparently in the beyond, varying perspectives are permitted in YAHAVAH’s acceptance of us because it takes time and all sorts of other factors for some people to rightly understand.
This then, might look like this:
[see images in video]
To better understand this idea, we might allow ourselves to now see how far afield some truth claims are from seeing eye to eye with our Maker but can still admit how those who live by them would readily meet the qualifications YAHAVAH places on those who are His and will enter into both relationship with Him and His Kingdom above. And it might look like this:
[see images in video]
TODAY THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY
2.365 billion “Christian” adherents (includes all Christ affirming expressions) 32% of the population
1.907 billion Muslim adherents 23% of the population
1.152 billion Hindu adherents 15% of the population
14 million Jewish adherents (.02% of the population)
1.193 non-religious people (16% of the population)
500 million to 1 billion Buddhists adherents
So 68% of the world population today is NOT Christ-Affirming but 52 %percent of them at least look up and acknowledge a God of some sort and they do so in faith!!
Traditional Christianity plainly states that all of them are going to burn in a literal hell for eternity for the simple reason of where they were born or how they were raised.
That does NOT sound like a victorious God to me.
TO make matters more sobering, of the 2.365 Billion “Christ-affirming” people, most of their denominational approaches claim to teach and preach the singular truth so even in that hopeful number – most are going to a literal burning hell forever more – even though they maintain that Yeshua paid for the sins of the world (unless you’re a Calvinist and then the election numbers are even less!)
No, we preach a victorious God of Love, who through His Son actually, literally, took the world’s human race, and fixed the problems incurred by our first parents.
And then utterly adoring freedom of choice in the creations He made in His image, He, through His Son, brought us all back to the original state of our first parents, and says –
“live, choose, but I am always here.” This living today, in His victory, might look something like this:
[see images in video]
Remember to call in on Thursdays 11AM to 1PM mtn with your questions or comments – we’d love to hear from you. If not we will see you next week, here on HOTM full circle.
