Christian Reflection and Prayer

Recently our pastor at our Princeton Church wrote an article
about the church. If I may I like to quote a couple of short
paragraphs from his message.

"This vision of connecting with
God comes straight from Scripture. From beginning to end
of God's Word, it is clear that God has always desired to
have a people, who were intimately known by Him and who
would love Him in return. In the beginning, He made us---
male and female---in His image, that is to say, in a unique
relationship with our Creator, capable of knowing Him,
serving Him, and embodying His attributes in the world that
He had made. That special connection was lost through the
entrance of human sin; God's image in us was broken. The
rest of the story of the Bible is about the lengths to which
God has gone to re-connect us with Himself and to restore
us to the image of God.

First, He revealed our sinfulness
and the need to obey Him through His law. Then in the
story of Israel, He showed us how impossible it is for us to
keep His law and obey as we ought. Something more was
needed to free us from the power of sin so that we could
walk in trust and obedience with our Creator again.

This is where the Gospel enters in. The Gospel is the
Good News that in the person of Jesus Christ, God has
entered human history to overcome the power of sin and
death in the world. By Jesus death and resurrection, the
power of God's kingdom has been unleashed into the world.
New creation is possible, including new birth within human
hearts, as we turned back in the direction of our Creator by
His Holy Spirit. We are getting re-connected to God!
Revelation, the last book of the Bible, gives us many
pictures of the successful outcome of God's work. He will
one day gather a great assembly, from every people group
on earth! As it was in the beginning, all of these people will
forever enjoy an intimate connection with our God, who has
gone to such great lengths to save us!"

AMEN!!!

"that the world may believe...that it was You
who sent Me and that I have loved them as
much as You loved Me" (John 17:21,23).

A former agnostic recalls the following
conversation he once had with a prominent
University chaplain:

"If God exists, somebody in all the centuries
would have seen Him."

"Many people have."
"Who?"
"I, for one."
"You've seen God?"
"Yes."
"Then what does He look like?"
"Like everything."
"That means nothing."

"It means a great deal to me. I look at you and
I see God. Wherever my eye falls I see God.
He is as real to me as you are, more real in
fact, for He is the changeless in the changing --
the changeless ever-present spirit that inhabits
all things."

IS HE REAL TO YOU?

Albert Einstein made famous the idea that
“imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Knowledge can tell us what to do and how to
do it, but imagination drives us to acquire more
knowledge and apply it in new and creative ways.
Knowledge without imagination is stagnant,
limited, and eventually, old.

Scripture:

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom;
all who follow his precepts have good understanding.
To him belongs eternal praise."—Psalm 111:10

Fear of God in the spiritual realm is like knowing
how to save yourself in the physical sphere.

How so? When we come into this world, there are
inherent risks involved. We can rise to great spiritual
heights if we pursue a life of godliness, or we can
sink to the lowest levels if we pursue a life of
immorality. We are indeed in great danger from the
very moment we are born – spiritual danger, that is.
And that is the most serious danger of all because
the spiritual world is eternal and whatever happens
to us spiritually lasts forever.

This is why “fear of God” is most important. It must
precede any other kind of wisdom, because without
it, all other knowledge is irrelevant.

There is a story told about a student who approached
his rabbi with a dilemma: He only had a small amount
of time to study so he wanted to know if he should
study the Bible or mussar – the Jewish study of
character traits, including fear of God. The rabbi said,
“Study mussar because then you will realize that you
have more than just a little amount of time to study the
 Word of God.”

Fear of God puts everything else in life into perspective.
Only by making Him the center of your life and judging
your actions by His standards is all other wisdom
worthwhile.

With prayers for shalom, peace,

( Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein