Wednesday, April 29, 2009

FAITH by Simone Byrne Photography


Amanda Catherine Hawkins




This is my gorgeous, wonderful daughter. She's a genius just like her momma! LOL :P

Biblical Jabberwocky


The sky was dark, the earth was bright,
Its green was all a gray.
It dawned on me that very night,
I must leave this world to stay.

No bricks or wood could my home make,
No fire could keep me warm.
The truth had been a grave mistake,
Its safety had brought harm.

The Son of Man, The Son of God,
By chance, there was a plan.
What made sense was very odd,
That God should be a man.

I found my life in dying, then;
My weakness made me strong.
Self-hatred let me love again,
Set apart, I now belong.
by A.S.A. Jones from ex-atheist.com

The Four Witnesses

I picked this book up today at my Church library. Thank you God for Cokesbury United Methodist Church in Pensacola! You guys are so awesome! It's called The Four Witnesses by Robin Griffith-Jones.

Jesus himself asked, "Who do you say that I am?" In this book, you'll find out why four of his followers give strikingly different accounts of the life of Jesus.

Faith is the Basis for the Revealing of God's Righteousness in a Christian's Life


"For in it (in the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'But the righteous man shall live by faith.'" (Romans 1:17).

"But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ ... whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness ... that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." (Romans 3:21-26).

"For this reason it is by faith, that it might be in accordance with grace, in order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all." (Romans 4:16)

"Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."(Romans 5:1).

"So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17).

"The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God." (Galatians 2:20).

From Skepticism to Worship


This persons story is from ex-atheist.com and is his story of how he came to embrace Christ. Thank you for allowing me to share it here...

FROM SKEPTICISM TO WORSHIP
by A.S.A. Jones 09/01/02
MY PERSONAL TESTIMONY

I was a devout atheist for over twenty years. In July of 1998, I finally managed to see the biblical truths that had managed to elude me. The following is an account of how I went from hardcore skepticism to hardcore worship of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

RATIONAL THOUGHT REPLACES THE GOD OF MY YOUTH
I was raised a Roman Catholic in a home where the name of Jesus Christ and God was never mentioned. I was encouraged to attend catechism and church every weekend, but the concept of God was never made completely real to me. I entertained the notion as any child would, but I just wasn't into the imaginary friend scene and by the time I was thirteen, I had concluded that God was merely a vicious adult version of the Easter bunny. I abandoned the lie, informed my upset parents that I would no longer be attending church, and began seeking truth.
In the absence of a religious belief to answer life's questions, I turned my mental energy to science. Science had an awesome track record of solving many problems and its resulting technology had provided tangible benefits to all of mankind. Science was the answer! I reasoned that if we could educate our populations and continue to make advances in medicine, agriculture and energy production, we would one day have the mythical Eden as our reality.
I threw myself into my studies, determined to become a scientific messiah who would one day deliver people from the bondage of disease. At the age of sixteen, my IQ and my grades made me eligible for my high school's early release program and I began my studies in biology and chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh.

Read the rest of the story here: http://www.ex-atheist.com/from-skepticism-to-worship.html

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

GNOSIS



Is God an ultimate Answer?
Or is He a living, pulsing Question?
Do we trouble Him with our Questions?
Or are We the still unfinished Answers to his Quest?
If so, do we have the courage to bear Him as a Question?
Not the question of whether He ‘is’ or is not, but
The question that He is, and that we are too.
Is all our Questioning a fruitless pursuit?
Or is it the very pulsation of His own Divine Quest?
A Quest of whichWe ourselves are the fruit.
Is faith to be found through religious belief?
Through the model answers of modern science?
Through the false certitude of Final Solutions,
or in The true Zone of the Divine - the Zone of the Question?
This Zone of the Question can become a tomb or a womb.
For some the Zone is a prison and a place of torment and torture.
But it is the same Zone that is the source of wonder and terror.
That is both a barrier and a gateway to the countless worlds.
The Question is ours to open or foreclose, to bear with,
Live and flourish from, or shy away and die to.
“Questioning is the piety of thinking.”
It is a Questing of the soul that answers only to Him.
The Questing soul is a holy soul, infused with His inner vitality.
A soul at home in his Divine Zone – the Zone of the Question.
Therefore do not ply Him with your questions, but
Listen to the question that you Are.
The question that you are is His question too.
Be the question and you will Become the answer.
An answer that never ceases to grow nor ever becomes Old in its certainties, but is ever refreshed from theRoots of its unknowing, Questing Being.
What is a Question if not the oscillation of a relation?
What is this oscillation if not the essence of energy; vitality itself?
What then, is the relation that matters most, that is most vital to us,
If not the oscillation that matters the very vitality of our Questing,
Answering itself as atoms and molecules, stars and galaxies.
As the very flesh and blood of which we are composed.
Those who only seek Answers to Questions
Forget that the source of all Answers is a Question.
A cosmic ‘Big Bang’ is not a Question but an Answer.
Just so, a great Cosmic Creator, a Cosmocrat of the All.
No science or religion that quests ultimate Answers to
All and Everything can comprehend Anything at all.
No soul content with its own Answers can enter
The Zone of the Divine, or find the meaning ofHis Quest,
His dark cosmic matterings.

What is a Christian Gnostic?


Gnostic Christianity is a Way of Life based on the original teachings of Jesus Christ. A gnostic is a person who believes that salvation is gained through the acquisition of divine knowledge or gnosis. Gnostic Christians believe that the knowledge necessary for salvation has been revealed through Jesus Christ. Gnostics recognize that this world is subject to powers of darkness that distort our concept of reality. As Jesus explained, "The shadows of this world are perceived by mortals, and they think they know the Truth, but the Reality which casts the shadows is hidden from them, and they do not perceive the Light." (Sayings 2:2)

When gnostics speak of salvation, they mean being freed from these illusions of darkness so that they can perceive Reality. As Jesus said, "I tell you the truth when I say that only when you perceive shadows as shadows, and search the Light, will you perceive the Reality which is God." (IBID.) He also said, "If you continue to acquire gnosis through me and live by the principles I teach, you will be my true disciples. Then you will learn of Truth, and Truth will set you free." (Testimony of St. John 8:31-32)

While Jesus used symbolic parables to motivate his hearers to search for the knowledge of Truth, he privately entrusted to his disciples gnosis, experiential knowledge which they could share only with those who became their fellow disciples. On one occasion, Jesus said to his disciples,

It is your privilege to learn the mysteries of the realm of the Eloheim because you have entered the Covenant," Jesus replied, "but to those who remain outside the Covenant, Truth can be shown only in parables. This is because they live in a world of illusions and shadows where Truth is hidden from them. Only the shadow of Truth can reach them until they reject the lie and come into the Covenant of Light." *** In this way, Jesus used many parables to point their minds to the word, for the parables were all they were able to receive, but through the parables, some of them would have their minds opened and would begin to perceive the Inner Truth. When he was alone with his disciples, however, Jesus expounded these principles, unfolding before their minds greater Light and carrying them deeper into the mysteries of the spiritual realm. (Testimony of St. Mark 4:10-11, 26-27)

My Precious Angel


This is my beautiful daughter Amanda Catherine Hawkins. She'll be four in June. Thank You God for bringing her into my life. She's a wonderful blessing and is such a joy!

God's Landscape



These pictures were taken with a Sony DSC-H1 in the Summer of 2008 at the Loveland, Colorado Civic Center and Library park. I have many more I will be posting this week...stay tuned...

Thank You God for All My Friends


Dear God,

I have so many wonderful friends that I had forgotten about until I joined Facebook. Every week someone from the distant past finds me there. I didn't know so many people cared about me or even considered me their friend.

Thank you God for bringing them back into my life after so long. I didn't even realize I had SO MANY friends!!! Heck, some of the people who looked me up are people I really didn't think even cared for me or would even remember me.

I am so blessed because friendship is truly a golden thing to have in this world.

One of my friends, Stacey, is such a joy. Every time I think about her I have to laugh because we have such great memories. We were always laughing and if life was sucking hard we made fun of ourselves.

To Stacey:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.