{"id":16437,"date":"2018-02-13T09:25:45","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T14:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16437"},"modified":"2018-02-13T09:36:30","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T14:36:30","slug":"reconnecting-to-our-original-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16437","title":{"rendered":"Reconnecting to Our Original Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reconnecting to Our Original Identity<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday, February 13, 2018<\/p>\n<p><strong>For what can be known about God is plain . . . because God has made it plain. . . . Ever since the creation of the world, God\u2019s invisible nature, namely, God\u2019s eternal power and deity, have been there for the mind to see in the things that God has made. \u2014Romans 1:20<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/y1RQciil7B0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>God always and forever comes as one who is totally hidden and yet perfectly revealed in the same moment or event. The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. Thus, nature is the first Bible, written approximately 14 billion years before the Bible of words. God initially speaks through what is, as the Apostle Paul affirms above, before humans write words about God or from God.<br \/>\nIt is interesting that in the biblical account, creation happens developmentally over six days, almost as if there was an ancient intuition of what we would eventually call evolution. Notice that on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days, God calls what was created \u201cgood\u201d (Genesis 1:9-31); but at the end of the first and second days this statement is missing. The first day is the separation of darkness from light, and the second day is the separation of the heavens above from the earth below (1:3-8). The Bible does not say that God saw that it was good\u2014because their separation was not good! It becomes the very function of religion to put darkness and light, heaven and earth back together in human consciousness. The precise reason that Jesus is the icon of salvation is because he holds these seeming contraries together so beautifully within himself, thus assuring us we can do the same.<br \/>\nHeaven and earth, divinity and humanity, have never really been separate of course, but we think so. The Bible calls this perceived state of separateness \u201csin\u201d; \u201cnaughty\u201d or so-called \u201cbad\u201d actions proceed from this state of consciousness. The essential task of all religion is to reconnect people to their original identity \u201chidden with Christ in God,\u201d as Paul says (Colossians 3:3). This happens through forgiving and thus loving what first seems to be imperfect, unworthy, excluded, separate, wrong, or sinful. This is how we reunite that which the mind had begun to punish.<br \/>\nThe Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) described, as only he can, the diversity of our createdness\u2014forgiven and beloved:<br \/>\nAll things counter, original, spare, strange;<br \/>\nWhatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)<br \/>\nWith swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;<br \/>\nHe fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:<br \/>\nPraise him. [1]<\/p>\n<p>________________________________________________<\/p>\n<div class=\"row title-row\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"utmost-devo-title col col-sm-12 col-xs-12\">\n<h2 class=\"entry-title\">The Devotion of Hearing<\/h2>\n<h4>By <a href=\"https:\/\/utmost.org\/oswald-chambers-bio\">Oswald Chambers<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"clearfix\"><strong>\u00a0Samuel answered, &#8220;Speak, for Your servant hears.&#8221; \u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?version=31&amp;search=1+Samuel+3%3A10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1 Samuel 3:10<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<div class=\"row entry-meta\">\n<div class=\"col-sm-4\">\n<div class=\"top-sharing\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"top-rule\">Just because I have listened carefully and intently to one thing from God does not mean that I will listen to everything He says. I show God my lack of love and respect for Him by the insensitivity of my heart and mind toward what He says. If I love my friend, I will instinctively understand what he wants. And Jesus said, \u201cYou are My friends\u2026\u201d (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John+15:14\">John 15:14<\/a>). Have I disobeyed some command of my Lord\u2019s this week? If I had realized that it was a command of Jesus, I would not have deliberately disobeyed it. But most of us show incredible disrespect to God because we don\u2019t even hear Him. He might as well never have spoken to us.<\/div>\n<section class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"post-content\">The goal of my spiritual life is such close identification with Jesus Christ that I will always hear God and know that God always hears me (see\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John+11:41\">John 11:41<\/a>). If I am united with Jesus Christ, I hear God all the time through the devotion of hearing. A flower, a tree, or a servant of God may convey God\u2019s message to me. What hinders me from hearing is my attention to other things. It is not that I don\u2019t want to hear God, but I am not devoted in the right areas of my life. I am devoted to things and even to service and my own convictions. God may say whatever He wants, but I just don\u2019t hear Him. The attitude of a child of God should always be, \u201cSpeak, for Your servant hears.\u201d If I have not developed and nurtured this devotion of hearing, I can only hear God\u2019s voice at certain times. At other times I become deaf to Him because my attention is to other things\u2014 things which I think I must do. This is not living the life of a child of God. Have you heard God\u2019s voice today?<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reconnecting to Our Original Identity Tuesday, February 13, 2018 For what can be known about God is plain . . . because God has made it plain. . . . Ever since the creation of the world, God\u2019s invisible nature, namely, God\u2019s eternal power and deity, have been there for the mind to see in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16437"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16437"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16440,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16437\/revisions\/16440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}