God
The LORD is Gracious and Merciful, slow to anger and abounding in Steadfast Love. The LORD is Good to all, and His Compassion is over all that He has made. (Psalm 145: 8-9)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being. (John 1: 1-3)
God is Love. There is only one God, in three persons, who created the cosmos and everything that exists in it. He is All-Powerful, Sovereign, and unlimited in His Scope and Power over His creation. Nothing is greater than God because He is the Creator, and yet He Loves His creation so much that He allows those of us in it to make mistakes and grow from them. He Calls each of us into Recognition of our Relationship with Him.
The Lord has Intentions and a Will. He is concerned about and deeply interested in His creatures. God’s Intentions have never changed; He wishes to be in Relationship with all of creation, as the original humans were created for. As Christians, we come to know the Lord’s Will through our Study of and Prayer with His Word, as well as through our interactions with other faithful brothers and sisters. God’s Will is that creation would live in the freedom He has offered and choose to Love Him as He has already loved us.
God is Good and Loving toward His creatures. The fact that I call Him “Father” reminds me of the Intimate Relationship I have formed with God because He Cares for me so deeply. The Lord is Holy, Just, and Righteous. He has made a way for all of humanity to realize their Relationship with God through the Sanctification (being made in Jesus’ likeness) and Justification (being declared pardoned) made available to each person through the Messiah, Jesus. Each faithful servant can boldly approach the Throne of God.
There is a need for God. One needs to know that something bigger is out there, that humans are not the end all, be all which evolved from the microbes in the world. Without God, I have no purpose in life because He has become my life’s primary devotion; all of my relationships with others are interpreted through the relationship I have with the Lord. He holds me tightly in His Grasp to let me know I’m not alone. In the instances when we feel we can no longer go on, the Lord picks us up and carries us the rest of the way. I have known difficult times; financially, physically, and emotionally—through each instance, I knew God’s Presence was with me. Finally, God is totally Whole, totally Complete; therefore, there is no need for Him to change because God’s nature is and has been one of mercy, compassion, and love always.
God has made Himself known to us in the Godhead known as the Trinity. The Lord is expressed in the Trinity to help humanity understand God more clearly. The Trinity is a diverse expression of the Lord, allowing us to see diversity in ourselves and others as well, created in the Image of God. We should see the Light and the Gift of Diversity as God-Given, and respond accordingly. The Trinity also helps us to understand how God relates; God is in a Relationship with God’s own Self, and thus is better able to relate to humans. God exists in Relationship and so should we exist in relationship with one another. The Trinity allows people a choice as to which of the persons of the Godhead we are in Relationship with at any given time. God reveals Himself to us in three different persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
Jesus Christ
Surely He has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the punishment that made us whole, and by His bruises we are healed. (Isaiah 53: 4-5)
And Jesus was transfigured before them, and His Face shone like the sun, and His Clothes became dazzling white…while Peter was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is My Son, the Beloved; with Him I am well pleased; listen to Him!” (Matthew 17: 2 & 5)
Jesus is “God with us;” both my God and my best friend. Jesus is the Incarnation of God Himself, the only way we can claim to truly know God personally. Jesus was fully God and fully human in one person. This personal God is what makes Christianity strike a chord in my soul; God became human in order to bridge the gap between humanity and Himself. In the Gospels we learn that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, lived a morally perfect life, and then died upon a cross to take the place of all humanity’s sins through substitutionary atonement. He was vulnerable to all human needs and emotions, yet lived a Righteous, sinless life.
Jesus’ Blood represents the new covenant between humanity and God, offering complete restoration and forgiveness of sin to all those who accept Jesus’ free gift offered upon the cross. He rose from the dead on a Sunday morning and has given Hope to all that we too will overcome death and be Victorious in Him (our Glorification). Jesus restored the Relationship between God and humanity that was broken by Adam and Eve. Jesus won eternal redemption for all believers by offering Himself, without spot or blemish, to the Lord as payment for all creations’ sins. Jesus’ dying on the cross shows us that He lived what He taught—nonviolent actions to eradicate evil. There is no greater example of Love than that of Jesus as Savior.
Throughout His Ministry on Earth, Jesus ministered to the outcasts of society and to those most destitute, which He Calls for us to do today. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, taught the uneducated, and helped those He came into contact with to understand the Father. Today, we are Called to continue His Work of reaching out to those on the fringe of society in Love through the many different Ministries of our Churches.
The Lord knocks on the hearts of all, hoping that each of us will let Him in. Knowing that Jesus was human helps me to realize that He knows exactly what I’m going through and how to help me overcome the obstacles I may be facing. When I feel alone and depressed, weighed down by the turmoil of the world, I remember Jesus and the world starts to look better. No matter what I do, or where I go, Jesus is always with me, walking and talking with me all the while. My unwavering faith given by the Holy Spirit helps me to know this is always true.
Holy Spirit
A new Heart I will give you, and a new Spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a Heart of Flesh. I will put My Spirit within you, and make you follow My Statutes and be careful to observe My Ordinances. (Ezekiel 36: 26-27)
God is Spirit, and those who Worship Him must Worship in Spirit and Truth. (John 4: 24)
The final person of the Trinity, along with God and Jesus, is the Holy Spirit. She is the Spirit of God, Sophia in the Greek and Hokma in the Hebrew, that is ever present in the world around or within us. The Spirit dwells in each of Her faithful, Sustaining the Redemption (our freedom from our slavery to sin) which started with Jesus on the cross and is continuing to the End of Days. Jesus Redeemed us once and for all time; it is through the Spirit that we are kept in that Redemption. That Redemption and consequent Sustaining power of the Spirit, awakens us to Relationship with the Lord.
It is through the Spirit that we are sanctified (made holy). With Her constant working on our hearts, souls, and minds, She is able to daily mold us more fully into the true image of God. Through the Communion of the Holy Spirit, we are able to take part continuously in that Relationship God has Called us into. She strengthens Her faithful (those she indwells) during our weaknesses. The Spirit enables believers to emulate Jesus’ Life through Her dwelling within each believer, transforming our whole selves to be more like Jesus.
It is through the Spirit that Her churches are able to fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission, to bring others into Relationship with God through Jesus. The Holy Spirit helps me to feel that God is ever moving, and yet never far from me. When I speak of the Holy Spirit, I use feminine terminology because I understand God the Father and Jesus the Son in masculine terms, but know that God is beyond any gender, so therefore think of the third person of the Trinity as feminine and in keeping with the feminine words in both the Greek and Hebrew. I believe that by the Presence of the Holy Spirit within each of us Christians worship, serve, and produce the Fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit Calls sinners to Repentance and gives them Spiritual Gifts to be used for Ministering to others and for building up the Body, which are Her Churches.
~PK
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