Deeper 10: We are greater than God

Ok, I admit, part of my reason for adding that title was to pop your eyes out of your head and make you want to read on, but please bear with me.  There is a valid point to be made. 

 

How many times are we encouraged to bless God?  King David said it several times.

Psalms 103:1 (HRV) – “Bless YHWH, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His set-apart name.”

And yet, the apostle Shaul/Paul had this to say about blessing.

Hebrews 7:7 (HRV) – “And behold this no one disputes:  that the lesser is blessed by the greater.”

So if we are to bless God, and the greater blesses the latter, then this leads us to the obvious question and stunning thought.  Are we greater than God? 

Yes, we are.  We are greater than God by His design in one aspect and one aspect alone:  Freedom.

Psalms 111:10a (HRV) – “The fear of YHWH is the beginning of wisdom;”

To fear God means to acknowledge and respect who He is.  To fear is to bow.  To fear is to worship.  Fearing God is recognizing that He is King and Lord and Ruler of all even if you hate that fact.  To Fear YHWH is to come face to face with Him and say, “You’re God.  I am not.”

BUT this is only the beginning of wisdom.  It was never meant to end there.  YHWH wanted us to grow.  He wanted us to become His true love.  It’s one thing to acknowledge that He is God and to bend your knee to Him.  It’s quite another to enthusiastically embrace Him.

1 John 4:19 (HRV) – “Therefore, we love Eloah (God) because he first loved us.” 

A friend of mine said once that he loves God because He is God and therefore deserves our love.  I told him what I'm telling you now.  That's not true.  We bow because He is God.  We love because He chose to love us first.  He didn’t have to.  If we become separated from God, He continues on, we don’t.  He doesn’t need us, we need Him.  He gave us life and then He gave us His life on the cross.  Everything He has done has been for the purpose of unifying us with Him.  He never had to create us in the first place.  This is why we love, because He gave us everything.  He loved us first.  We fear Him because He is God.  We love Him because He first loved us.

In order to have true love, there needs to be the freedom to choose not to love.  Without the freedom to disobey and walk away, there is no love on our part.  If I hold out my hand and ask you to love me and you take it, that expresses love.  If I hold out a gun to your head and ask you to love me, and you concede, that fails to express true love.  Love forced is not love at all.  An atheistic friend of mine once asked me, if God exists then why doesn’t He remove all doubt and reveal Himself.  Why is faith required?  The response was simple.  Because if He did what you’re saying He should do, our freedom to choose would effectively be taken away.  You would no longer be able to truly love Him if you had no other real option. 

Having the freedom to chase Him doesn’t make all of our choices correct.  Even in our freedom, He is still the King and His supreme authority has not gone away.  We’re told we’ve been set free from the law of sin and death, and yet Jesus/Yeshua said that He did not come to destroy the law, so the law still applies.  How do we reconcile this?

Romans 6:16-18 – “Do you not know that to whom you present your nefesh** for service, you must obey?  You are the servants of that one whom you obey, whether to sin or to the obedience of righteousness.  But thanks [be] to Eloah, because you were servants of sin, but [now] you have obeyed from the heart the form of teaching to which you are committed.  And when you were freed from sin, you were made subject to righteousness.” 

(** = Meaning of nefesh, quoted from Hebraic Roots Version, Translation issues, page LX.  “The Hebrew word NEFESH is a very ambiguous word which simply cannot be rendered well into English.  NEFESH can mean ‘soul, life or self’ and often carries connotations of combinations of those meanings at the same time.  In order to properly convey the real usage of this word to the reader I have in most cases, in the New Testament, transliterated the word NEFESH into the English text.”)

These verses speak of freedom from sin, and yet they’re constantly talking about obedience.  We’ve been given the freedom to find Him, not the freedom to create our own way and call it good.  When the bible says that we are freed from the law of sin and death, it is not a manifesto by God allowing us to ignore everything or anything He has given us, but rather it’s saying that by way of Jesus’ blood paying our penalty, the penalty of death no longer can be required of us.  In other words, we’re no longer destined to die as a result of our sin, but we may instead fall upon Jesus’ death and resurrection as having paid our burden.

Romans says that when we are freed from sin, we are made subject to righteousness.  This is why Paul, who understood the freedom he had in Christ, continued to refer to himself as a bondservant or a slave.  We no longer obey out of fear of reprisal, but we now obey out of love because it’s what He wants and it makes Him happy.  Think about it this way.  If you’re courting the love of your life and he or she hates peas and you know this, then if you’re having him or her over for dinner, you won’t prepare peas.  You will not obey that “law” because you’re afraid of being beaten.  You will obey because you love them enough to avoid hurting them even if you love peas.  When God says, “This is who I am and what I want done,” when we ignore that and respond, “That’s too bad, God, because I’m doing it my way,” who are we worshipping?  Who are we obeying?  God or ourselves?  We have the freedom to do it our way, but that doesn’t mean every single choice we make pleases Him. 

A bad choice doesn't necessarily mean we're sinning either.  It just means we're  not finding Him and therefore not growing closer to Him in the way we should be.  Playing Mario Kart all day long isn't sinful in and of itself.  But what if God has told you in some way that you should spend your time in prayer this day and you instead decide to obey your own desires and play games?  And what if you say, "I'm free from the law of sin and death so I can do whatever I want and I find God in this game"?  The answer is simple.  Yes, we do have the freedom to do whatever we want, but just because you say God wants you to find Him in that game doesn't make it right, and your disobedience is causing you and He needless suffering as a result. 

Have you ever heard of Preacher’s Kid Syndrome or Church Kid Syndrome?  This is the name given when the children of the preacher or the kids who grow up in the church are the worst behaved kids around.  Why is this happening?  Of course it’s not an absolute, but it happens often enough to give it a name.  And the fact is that church attendance is increasingly shrinking.  If a church is growing it’s usually not because of a revival, but because other churches are closing their doors.  Kids who grow up in the church are not coming back to church when they’re out on their own.  Why?

I believe that in part it’s because our churches are full of platitudes and programs, but not an honest search for a living God.  Our churches lack the true freedom to genuinely seek YHWH and then to let YHWH lead us where He wants us to go.  So we’re not finding a God of life.  We’re finding a man-made God of platitudes and rules.  Our kids, and us too if we’re honest, are hungry for life, and since they’re not finding it in our churches they’re looking elsewhere.  (And please don't feel like I'm saying every single church is a cookie-cutter version of every other church.  This is a generality and does not apply equally in every situation.)

If you’re one of those “kids,” whether you're nine or ninety, my prayer for you today is that you have the courage to follow your heart’s desire to truly seek His life, His face and His love.  There are many in churches today who can help and want to help.  I’m not decrying everyone who attends church.  But I hope you recognize that even the best out there are just as imperfect as you are.  A lot of bad advice has been given to me over the years from very good intentioned people just as it has been given to you.  I hope you understand that He wants to be found.  The journey was made difficult to prove your heart’s desire.  You've got to find His truth in the midst of all of the lies.  If you seek Him, and I mean if you TRULY seek him, he WILL be found. 

 

Go for it.

Scott Snyder

Edgiscript3@yahoo.com

BTS: 11/22/13 I-Con come and gone

Hey, gang.  What's up?

Normally I try to rotate my behind the scenes stuff with my "Deeper" stuff, but we just finished I-Con last Saturday and I wanted to give my report. 

First of all, I got some cool pics of Batman, Spider-Man, Stormtroopers, a Minecraft guy and more.  Ok, I admit I'm biased towards Spider-Man, but I've got to say that I thought the most creative idea for a costume was Cyclops re-imagined as a steam-punk character. 

Second, my son absolutely freaked out when I showed him the plush-doll Dalek that I got for him.  He (gasp) hugged me.  He even hugged me in front of people.  He's put it right beside the TV in our living room. 

And third, I want to say thank you to the ninjas in training that continued providing us with candy for the entire day.  It was more than just the sugar rush, guys.  It was the fact that it was just too cool watching you BAMF out and then BAMF back in with candy.  (If you have to ask what "BAMF" means, then you're not a licensed nerd.) 

:)

It was a blast seeing all of the people.  The, as I like to call it, Massive Mystical Tome was once again a huge hit.  I lost count as to how many people lit up when they saw that they could open it.  One person became absorbed in it and quietly read the whole thing.  Everyone who checked it out was impressed.  It was very encouraging to see the reactions we were getting from people. 

Once again we gave away a ton of free stuff.  It really helps draw people in when you're not asking them for money.  You know that feeling that you get when you're at the state fair or some other similar location with dozens or even hundreds of neat booths and attractions, and you want to see them all, but at the same time you know that each one of them wants you to spend all of your money there?  It was so cool seeing the transformation on people who passed by our booth:  Passing by not wanting to make eye contact, to semi-interested because of a free comic, to stunned that we were giving away everything, to jaw-dropping amazed at the MMT (Massive Mystical Tome). 

Thanks to everyone that stopped by and thanks to everyone that keeps tabs on us online.  My fondest hope is that through us the Holy Spirit is inspiring and encouraging somebody out there.  More than one would be nice, but I won't get greedy.  :)

Briefly, here's our tentative plan for the future.  Finish issue 2 (story and pencils as it looks now) by the end of the year and finish through issue 4 by summer 2014.  Then go back and finish all 4 issues with ink and color.  Once that is complete we'll see about putting that on various sites to download a digital version of it in graphic novel form.  Several people have asked about getting print copies.  Unfortunately, that won't happen right away.  We'd love to, but the financials simply aren't there at the moment. 

If you're checking us often for updates, I wanted to let you know that there will be a lengthy delay until issue 2 is ready.  I said in my last blog that Paul is taking a much needed break for a week or so.  Then, when he starts in on issue 2, he said he believes he could speed things up by working straight through on penciling the drawings and then go back and add all of the dialogue.  So there won't be a page up every couple of days.  If it works the whole thing will be up in one shot after a few months.  Or maybe large chunks of it will be out sooner.  We'll see what happens.  Either way, please be patient with us.  We want to get it to you as fast as we can.  Issue 2 gets into the spiritual warfare side of things and Martin wonders what God needs him for with Spiritman here.  Chelsea and Cameron want some answers as to what's going on too. 

And I'm going to start adding pieces of a story to Gorillahead.  I apologize that it will be in novel form and will not be added as a comic.  Paul can only draw so much at a time.  I don't want to kill him.  The story's title is called "Valid".  Sorry, but that's all the tease you get right now.  I'll drop other teases in later BTS posts.

For now, have fun.

Tanoshinde.  (I've been told that means "have fun" in Japanese.  I hope that I haven't been lied to and that it's actually something very offensive.)

Scott Snyder
edgiscript3@yahoo.com

Behind the scenes 11/15/13: I-Con coming up and Spiritman #1 complete

I-Con is this coming Saturday (11/19/13) in Des Moines, IA, and I'm looking forward to it.  But I'm even more excited that our first comic has been completed.  It's been up for a few days now and it just feels awesome. 

Paul's going to take a break for a couple of weeks and get some stuff done around the home that he's been neglecting while he's been working on Spiritman.  If you check back in the first part of November, something may be up by then.  I'm not sure. 

I've got a story that's been swirling around my head for a while.  I tried to turn it into a stage play at one point, but it was too big for that.  I turned it into a screenplay just to do it, but that didn't go anywhere.  So I thought, hey, why not change it up a little and add it to Gorillahead?  I was waiting until Paul was done with Spiritman #1 before starting to write Spiritman #3.  Spiritman #2 is finished and I didn't want to get too far ahead.  So now I'm working on that script and kind of dinking around with the other story.  So it's not my highest priority at the moment, but I'll try to get a chapter out before the end of the year.

So we'll see you at I-Con if you're going. 

Have fun

Scott Snyder
edgiscript3@yahoo.com

Deeper 9: Physical examples

In my last blog I made the statement, “So, in His grace, he gave us physical examples of His truths.  He gave us practice runs.  They were never intended to save us or make us perfect.  In and of themselves, they only have physical value and cannot affect our spirit other than as an example.  They were intended to reveal God to us in the only way we could understand at the time.”

Let me ask you this.  What made an Old Testament believer righteous in God’s eyes?  Most people I have asked say that it’s the shedding of the lamb’s blood on the Ark of the Covenant under the Mosaic law, but this is incorrect.  Noach/Noah was declared righteous as was Avraham/Abraham before Mosaic law and before the Children of Yisra’el/Israel even entered the promised land.  In fact, they were declared righteous before Ya’akov/Jacob (whose name YHWH changed to Yisra’el) was even born.  And let’s consider the people of Ninveh/Nineveh, a gentile city, for a moment.  Yonah/Jonah spoke the words that YHWH gave him, the people repented, and YHWH forgave them.  They made no pilgrimage to sacrifice at Yerushalayim/Jerusalem.  They sacrificed no lamb.  They placed no blood on the Ark of the Covenant.  And yet they were forgiven.

What made an “Old Testament” believer righteous in YHWH’s eyes was exactly the same thing that makes us righteous today.  It’s putting your trust and faith in YHWH.  We have the advantage of viewing Yeshua’s death and resurrection in the past, while they viewed it with hope for the future, but trusting that YHWH is our salvation and our lord is what makes both Avraham and I righteous.  We both have sinned, but we both fell upon YHWH's plan of salvation to rescue us from ourselves.

Avraham is called the father of the Jews, but we need to understand that he was a gentile.  There was no such thing as the Jewish people in his day.  He became the first Hebrew.  He wasn’t born that way.  The term “Hebrew” refers to one who crosses over. 

Genesis 12:1, 4a (HRV) – Now YHWH said unto Avram (Abram): ‘Get you out of your country, and from your kindred, and from your father’s house, unto the land that I will show you.’” – “So Avram went, as YHWH had spoken unto him;”

Avram traveled from a land known as Haran, where his father and family dwelt, into a land called Kena’an/Canaan.  To get there, he had to cross a river.  Crossing the physical river didn’t make Avram righteous.  Crossing over from following and obeying his own selfish desires to following and obeying YHWH was what made him righteous.  The physical crossing was representative of this.  Every single one of us that have decided to put our faith in YHWH, to accept Yeshua’s sacrifice on the cross for our sins, and to make YHWH our savior and lord are Hebrews.  Some will say we're not truly Hebrews, we're only spiritual Hebrews, but I say  that that's exactly what matters.  We have crossed over from death into life.  No matter how we were all born, we were all gentiles separated from His promises until we chose to be a part of His kingdom.  Your physical race, gender, nationality, whatever, is all irrelevant to your spiritual condition. 

I said before that YHWH is perfect and timeless and too many Christians treat the Old Testament like it’s been done away with.  Too many Christians treat the Old Testament like it should be ignored.  BUT, the reverse is also true.  If we hang on to the physical laws of the Old Testament as if they have the power to save us, we deny the spiritual truth they were pointing to.  We think we’re holding to God’s truth, but we’re unwittingly calling God a liar by declaring that there’s more to salvation than the cross of Yeshua. 

Most of us fail in this way too, whether we know it or not.  In fact, almost all of us fall into both categories.  The path is straight and narrow and it's easy to swerve both right and left off of it from time to time.  We both treat the Old Testament as if it’s irrelevant, AND we hold on to Old Testament laws as if they’re required as part of our salvation.  How many of us believe we have to be in church on a certain day because the Old Testament says to honor the Sabbath, but we ignore the parts about eating pork because it smells and tastes too good?  How many of us believe that getting dunked in a tub of water is essential to salvation but don't care at all about following the Feasts of the Lord that YHWH said were everlasting convocations?  When we pick and choose which to follow and which to ignore, we’re creating a religion of our own and we're rewriting God to be what we want Him to be and not who He is.

The truth is, as I said before, YHWH is perfect and the entirety of what He gave to Moshe/Moses and the prophets is perfect, BUT it was limited to a physical level that they could understand at the time.  ALL of it pointed the way to Yeshua.  Yeshua Himself said that He did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.  We need to understand the Old Testament and interpret the New Testament according to what YHWH gave us in the first place because it’s ALL perfect and it ALL lines up with itself, but NONE of the physical laws He gave us matter at all other than to give us physical representations.  They are tools that help us understand.  They are not our salvation. 

This doesn’t mean they’re worthless to us now.  It just means we have to translate them spiritually.  This is what Yeshua began to show us when He came as a man.  He said Mosaic law tells us that picking up a knife and plunging it into a man’s chest makes us a murderer, but He said that hanging on to hatred in your heart is what really makes you guilty of that sin.  Mosaic law tells us that having sexual congress with someone not your spouse makes you an adulterer, but He said that holding on to lust in your heart for another makes you guilty of the sin of adultery.  The physical sinful actions reveal to the world the sins of our hearts that had already been committed.

YHWH wants our hearts.  If our hearts are His, our thoughts will follow.  If our thoughts are His, our words will follow.  If our words are His, our actions will follow.  Physical actions should be the revealer of a pure heart, but physical actions are not our salvation. 

The Old Testament says we need to be dunked in water.  Spiritual truth it points to:  We need to be immersed in Yeshua and let Him wash away the death in our lives and make us holy.  Water is a physical example of cleaning that we can see and understand.  The Old Testament says we shouldn’t touch dead things.  Spiritual truth:  We need to avoid ideas and teachings that lead us down a way that seems right to a man but only leads to death.  Picking up a dead animal and getting sick because of it is a physical example we can understand.  The Old Testament says we need to give YHWH Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown, or in other words, the Sabbath day (It's not even Sunday people).  Spiritual truth it points to:  We need to intimately commune with Him and not just do His works out of a sense of duty.  We need to maintain a loving relationship with Him.  The Old Testament says we need to kill a perfect lamb and place its blood on an altar for our sins.  Spiritual truth it points to:  You must accept the blood sacrifice of Yeshua for you.  The physical laws were all perfect REPRESENTATIONS that had no power in and of themselves AND STILL DON'T.  This doesn’t mean the physical laws don’t have physical value.  (For crying out loud, we need to “baptize” ourselves all the time.  You do bathe regularly, don’t you?  Don’t you?)  It just means that their real lasting value lies in the spiritual truths they were meant to reveal. 

He whom the Son has set free is free indeed.  Are you someone who hates church because of the rules and regulations, the demands placed upon you, and all of the pomp and circumstances that go along with it?  My prayer for you today is that you will see YHWH as He truly is and not what we’ve turned Him into.

“I don’t object to the concept of a deity, but I’m baffled by the notion of one that takes attendance.”

          -          Amy Farrah Fowler, “The Big Bang Theory”

Scott Snyder
edgiscript3@yahoo.com