I have a confession to make.

I am not who I believe I should be.  I am not who I want to be.  I am not who my wife thinks I ought to be.  But most of all, I am not who God made me to be.

I say all that to simply admit that I do make mistakes; mistakes in actions, in reactions, in words and in deeds.  I have to admit that it is even possible that my opinions and conclusions may be wrong sometimes.  But thankfully I usually try to admit that I could be wrong about those.  I am loud, passionate, and overbearing sometimes in my attitude and delivery.  I am human.  For that I apologize.

I have also been challenged more this past year about what it means to be Christlike than ever before.  I in turn have grown uncomfortable in my role in the mission Jesus left with us all.  I have tried to take the lazy way out and tell myself that my job was to discern and instruct, to study and to share.  But I realize that is not enough.  The time I spend trying to herd others onto the path I see, instead of taking the first steps onto that path myself, is wasteful.  And if there is one thing I know, it is that time is running out.

Our goal is to be a disciple and our mission is to go and make disciples.  Discipleship at its simplest is to become like the Master.  A lot of us are already working on the goal, including myself, but not so much on the mission.  It does seem that the vast majority of even steady, faithful, church goers are not ready to take those first steps.  I have been hesitant myself for too long and it grieves me more each day.  I know that the frustration that is building in me is starting to come out in ways that do the vision a disservice.  And it is not very Christlike at the same time.

I know that changes must come if the Kingdom is going to advance.  Changes in the way we have been looking at the mission.  Changes in the way we look at Church, denominational institutions, and leadership.  Changes in the way we present the love of Jesus to the world.  Changes in the way we relate to all of those around us.  Changes in the way we see ourselves as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  Changes in our worldly nationalistic pride.  Changes in our tacit acceptance of our own evil agendas.  Changes in our hate filled grandiloquence towards those that we see as beneath us good Christians.  Changes that have to be realized and actualized if we are to show our Father we really are on board with Him.

I have desperately tried to relay this, just waiting for someone to take those first steps. What I did not see was that maybe I need to take them.  There are about to be changes in my life.  I am going to step up and step out.  I just have to remind myself the first steps are the hardest.

Love you all

I am a gay (defined as: showing or characterized by cheerfulness and lighthearted excitement; merry.) open theist.

There, I have said it.  I have been writing from this frame of mind ever since I started this blog but have been hesitant to label myself.  The open theist label, that is.  The reason for this is mainly that I hate labels.  They never really justify anyone’s beliefs totally.  I constantly hear people refer to themselves as three point Calvinists or four point Calvinists.  What does this really mean?  If you are a Calvinist, then you are, right?  And most Arminians really do not even know who they are or what it means.

Open theism is the same way.  There are many proponents of this view and none of them agree on all the intricacies of this theological worldview.  That is one of the reasons I hate labels; they are never really accurate in describing anyone’s total belief system.   Another, and even more valid reason is, that once you label yourself, most dismiss your views, thoughts, discussions and relevance out of hand.  I have seen many people ostracized and labeled as heretical from the start once they say they are an open theist.  And many times by people that do not even know what it means.

I believe this viewpoint is biblically sound, addresses almost all the problems I ever had as an atheist, and actually reflects the way we all live as Christians already.  We just can’t seem to let go of some of the eisegesis of scripture that has come before us.  We ask questions like: who are we to question the early church fathers, those greats of traditional scriptural thought.  Well, have you ever thought about the fact that not all of those agreed with each other.  If they had I would be one of the first to give what they have said credence.  My own denomination has had loads of changes over the last one hundred years of doctrine but some are still so dogmatic about their own current beliefs to the point that they argue that they cannot be wrong and any who oppose them are therefore, heretical.

Open theism really boils down to an argument about God’s omniscience.  Does God live outside and above time?  Does God know every free will choice we will ever make in the future?  Is the future something that exists already to even be known or is it just something that unfolds as choices are made and therefore becomes the present?

I simply do not see how free will exists if God already knows all the choice in front of me as facts.  I am okay and actually believe He does know all of my future choices as possibilities.  A great book to introduce you to this whole concept is “God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God” by Greg Boyd.  But the discussion has to go deeper than just do I or anyone else have free will, even in this viewpoint.  I keep being bombarded with the question about Peter’s free will and whether God allowed, foresaw or actually made Peter deny Christ.  I believe I have answered this but I do realize that just maybe it was too spread out among the posts and comments to ascertain.

So here is part of what I believe about our free will and I believe it answers any question about Peter’s free will.

For God to truly have loving relationships with His creation He had to make us with free will.  Our choices are our own.  Peter’s choices were His own.  But a major choice he made was to follow Jesus.  I believe part of the whole concept of servant hood to God is that we come to a place where we turn our free will over to Him and allow His will to take over.  Peter was on that path.  He stood and declared that he would never fall in following our Lord but our Lord knew him better than he knew himself.  He knew that there was still a pride issue Peter had to overcome to be the man that God wanted him to be.

So the simple answer is that yes, I believe God possibly, and take note I said possibly, caused Peter to deny Jesus.  This is not a big problem to me because it is actually where we all are supposed to be.  We are supposed to make a free will choice to follow God and part of this, a major part, is giving Him our free will. Is this not what we are doing when we ask Him to direct and lead us as we live for Him?  Peter had already come to this place and God used this opportunity for his growth.

The argument against my belief of this issue is pointed toward making me out to say that I do not even believe in free will.  That is not the case.  But the last thing about this is that no matter what, God is God and can and has suspended our free will on many occasions.  Look at Pharaoh, look at Jonah, look at Job, look at all the people destroyed in the Old Testament, look at your own life where God got you to do something you really did not want to do.  All of these examples do not in any way mean that free will does not exist.

If this does not answer the endless questions about my belief concerning Peter and his denial, then I am incapable of answering what I believe.  If that is the case, I am sorry.

I pray we all use our free will choice to turn our free will over to Jesus.

Love you all

And in case you are wondering, the opening statement was not only to get your attention and to generate Google hits, I am cheerful, excited and merry (gay) because open theism truly does answer more of the unanswerable questions that skeptics have.  The mission field is wide open.  Let’s go.

I don’t like animals in my house.  Pets are just not something I care for at all.  It was not always like this though.  For a period of about five years, starting about twenty years ago, I experimented with all kinds of pets.  Like almost everything I do, I went way overboard.  At one time I ended up with a dog, two cats, a rabbit, two snakes, two iguanas, five turtles, a newt, four geckos, and two aquariums.  Oh yeah, my wife and I also had six kids.

I was out of my mind.  I admit to the insanity that I was going through at that time in my life.

The aquariums were the most fun and the remembrance of setting up these miniature landscapes is what led me to write this.  The turtles, snakes, iguanas and fish allowed me to be creative in building and establishing the habitats that I designed.  It wasn’t as much about the animals as it was those mini creations that I found fascinating.

I learned something about fish, especially goldfish.  The aquariums led to outdoor creations called water gardens.  I have built four of those over the years.  We lived without an abundance of financial resources, as you might imagine, so I looked for ways to do things on the cheap.  I found that I could go to Wal-Mart and buy “feeder” goldfish for about a dime in those days.  So I would pick up about twenty and put them in one of my little ten gallon worlds and see what happened.  These goldfish were not very hardy since they were only bred as food, but some would surprise me and live a while.  But they never got very big.

When I constructed my first water garden I did the same thing.  I stocked it with about forty of those little fish.  It was early spring.  By the end of that summer, one of the goldfish that had started out about an inch and a half long had grown to at least eight inches.  The kids and I called it Moby Dick.  Moby froze that winter and I looked in sadness sometimes at him locked in a block of ice.  But the next spring, when he thawed, that fish was still alive and grew another couple of inches before it just disappeared.  Probably eaten by a bird, I guessed.

Jesus implied that we are like fish when He called the disciples to follow Him and become fishers of men.  The thing that has gone through my mind as I have pondered this brings me to another conclusion about our growth as the church, the people of God.  As our focus has become so inward instead of outward we are becoming like those goldfish that are locked in an aquarium.

The reason Moby grew so big was because of his surroundings.  When you put fish, especially goldfish in a small environment they stay small.  By putting them in a larger one like my water garden they are free to grow like they are meant to.  As Christ followers, we are to be fishers of men also.  We are to go out into the great big world and grow large as we are fed by the Spirit of God and our mission.  But a lot of us are locked into our own aquariums, our church buildings, our programs, our ministries to those in the aquarium with us, and we have stunted our growth.

Let’s get out into the wild, deep waters of the world and become really big fish.  We might become big enough to be used by God to even swallow up reluctant men of God and erring prophets like Jonah.  And like that first freeze showed me concerning Moby, nothing can stop us.

And one more thing; let’s pray that our leaders become more than just aquarium keepers.

Love you all

When I first started this blog I wanted to say a few things and hopefully start some discussions about the Kingdom of God and the spiritual warfare that is going on all around us.  There are only two sides in this war.  Gods and Satan’s.  All of us are serving one or the other.  Some might deny this but it is true.  My hopes were that some of the ones serving Satan, whether intentionally or not, would find this site and join in the conversation.

I used to serve Satan even while denying he existed.  A lot of people do.  I was an atheist.  I know how some of them think and the questions and arguments some of them have.  I want them to join in here so a dialogue can be initiated.  So far there have not been any, except possibly one early on, actually post any comments.  But there is a lot of traffic so maybe, some day.

Some of you who  mainly read are wondering why a lot of what is written is so controversial and confrontational.  It is because of something I found out when I became a servant of Jesus.  I found out that we do not all agree and we have many different opinions about a number of theological issues.  Now some of you might think that I should tone this down so that the non-believer will see only unity.  But what are the ramifications of that?

Lets say we all put on some kind of front and someone actually comes to visit one of our churches.  It won’t take long for them to ascertain our subterfuge and feel deceived and betrayed.  We will be exposed as liars.  No, it is better for them to see that we do not agree on all things but we do agree on the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Jesus is Lord and even though some see that a little differently than others, I believe that all the main contributors here, the ones some of you readers may think agree on nothing, do agree on this fact.  And it is the most important fact of all.

When someone like I used to be stumbles onto this site, they will possibly find that there just might be other answers to some of their problems with our doctrine and beliefs.  This will be beneficial for any who dare take the plunge and dive into the discussions.  I wish I could have found a site like this when I was on the other side.

To sum up; this blog exists for the sole purpose of hopefully reaching a lost soul who has problems, who has skepticism, and who has questions.  I hope they find it.

And it is fun also.

Love you all