You Have Value ~ Jacob's Journal

I'm excited to once again welcome my husband to the blog to share his thoughts and views. Below is a guest post from Rev. Jacob Hunter. 

Through much of my personal devotional time last year, I really became enamored with the first few of chapters of Genesis. 

Genesis, from the Gutenberg Bible
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

There are just so many wonderful truths to find when you really dig deep and get over all the debates that surround the passage and get to the point. Not that these debates are bad or unneeded, but sometimes you just have to get to the point. 

So many of the themes that stream throughout the Bible start here: God’s revelation of Himself, mandates, sin, redemption, marriage, gardening, sanctity of life, etc. etc. It is amazing how much of God’s truth and love and His story for mankind unfolds in the first 3 chapters. 

I want to take a moment to focus on one of these themes, the image of God.

It is amazing to me that we can look at the first page of the Bible and see that God created us in His image, male and female, and saw that it was “very good.” Not just good, plain old good like the rest of creation but “very good.” (Gen. 1:27, 31) This simple little tidbit has such massive ramifications that it is hard to comprehend. Then on top of that you see that God created us with a purpose and a mission in mind. (Gen. 1:28)

All of humanity has intrinsic value, placed in them by the creator of all things. Value not dependent on age, gender, income, intelligence, race, time from conception, usefulness or any other man made measurement, but based on the image of the Creator.

This image ultimately finds its’ fulfillment in Christ Jesus, God in the flesh, God inhabiting the form that He made in His image. 

The Christian is continually called throughout the New Testament to pursue the image of Christ. They were formed in his image (Gen. 1:27), are being transformed(2 Cor. 3:18), purposely to be conformed(Rom. 8:29), but first they must be informed (Col. 3:10) about His image. 

Formed, InFormed, ConFormed, TransFormed: My Life in His Image.

May that be the cry of all Christians: My Life in His Image.

Blazing for Christ,

Jacob Hunter

The Uniqueness of the Universe ~ Jacob's Journal

This is a guest post by Jacob Hunter. Once more I have welcomed my wonderful hubby to the blog to share his theological thoughts and musings. 

I enjoy watching documentaries. I especially like the ones that deal with how things are made or how things work. Recently, I have been Netflixing a series titled "How Stuff Works." Just like most scientific programming you have to take parts of it with a grain of salt. They were doing a really good job on the series and I was learning a lot of really cool stuff. Then it got to season 2 episode 8. The only thing I can figure is that it got a completely different producer and writer. The whole feel of the show changed. They even changed the way the shows where named. Every episode up until this point was a one word title like: corn, salt, rubber, water etc.

The title of season 2 episode 8 was "How Summer Changed the World." It was a collection of world changing events that has some lose connection or another that was affected by the fact that there are seasons. The one that really caught my attention was the segment on how summer allowed life and specifically a large amount of different life (biodiversity) to live on planet earth.

I just sat there and watch and wondered "are you really listening to yourself, do you really understand how mind boggling impossible the things that you are attributing to chance are?" The authors of the show were very willing to see the uniqueness of all the conditions required for the earth to sustain life but not give credit to the creator and sustainer of that life. Watching this vividly punctuated Paul's words in Romans 1:20;

 From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse.

A couple of years ago a new mechanic started working at my current place of employment. We got to know each other. He knew that I had gone to Georgia Tech and that I was also a minister. One day he came to me and we were talking and he asked me, "Jacob, how in the world can a man with all of your education believe in God?"

My short answer to him was, "How can I not. Nothing I have been taught precludes the existence of God. On the contrary, it generally points to the necessity of God."

Dumbell Nebula, Picture from NASA, no endorsement implied.

Just a few Unique things about God's creation that are necessary for life that where brought out in the television show:

1. The tilt of the Earth.

2. The moon and its effect on the Earth.

3. The exact distance the Earth is from the Sun.

4. The delicate balance of minerals, elements, and compounds. Not the least of which is water.

5. The size of the Earth.

6. The strength of the force of gravity (actual all of the different forces; magnetic, strong, weak, etc. Any of which if they were the minutest bit different the universe let alone our world would not exist.)

The statistics are astounding...

I have to stop myself here. I could go on and on about probabilities and statics and drowned the whole message of this article in numbers but I will refrain.

The point I want to make is that God is AMAZING and he has made this wonderfully Unique creation specifically and unique for mankind so that His Love and Grace can be shown.

I will end with a quote from one of my Facebook friends. He didn't attribute an author to it so I am not exactly sure where it came from but I think it is a great reminder that everything in creation is unique and one-of-a-kind.

"God Is a Hand-Crafter, not a mass-producer"

The God Box ~ Jacob's Journal

New column! Starting this month, I'll be welcoming a regular visitor to my blog every month - my darling husband, Jacob. I love discussing theology with my husband and frequently marvel at his ability to explain things. I hope you enjoy his bits of wisdom as much as I do. 

As a side note, sometimes he likes to use the "big words". If I looked up a word or concept while reading his article, I added a link in case you need to look it up as well. 

Luke 10:27 HCSBLove the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.

Too many Christians today tend to live their lives compartmentalized. Our lives are divided up into little sections or rooms, like a house. There’s the living room, the kitchen, the school room, the playroom, the music room, the TV room, the bathroom, and the somewhere in the house they have a God room.

For some people the God Room is a tiny closet where they have to duck under the coats just to close the door. For others it is a grand an elaborately decorated space, kept pristine and perfect and separated from everything else. 

We go to the God Room on Wednesdays or Sundays or whatever day it is convenient for us to get a god fix. Some even visit the room every morning and then firmly shut the door before going to the next room. We go through life thinking we can carry God around in a little God box.

Our lives have become compartmentalized to the point that church, work, school, God, family, and every other aspect has its own little space and we do not let them mingle.

God did not intend for us to live with our lives divided in such a way, particularly when it comes to a relationship with Him. He wants us to live holistically with Him.

At times divisions are good and even important. There is some merit to having different personas for different circumstances as different situations have varying expectations. For instance, my father-in-law (we'll call him FIL) has two very distinct personas. Business FIL and Family FIL.

I have had the opportunity to work in business with him before and there is a distinct difference in the way he deals with people in both modes. It is quite funny to be hanging out with Family FIL, laughing and joking and playing jokes on each other, only to have the phone ring. When he receives a business call, Business FIL magically appears.

I learned early on that my wife inherited this gene. She has Business Kristi, Family Kristi, and a special adaptation I have named Phone Call Kristi. Author/Blogging Kristi is a strange combination of all of them. It's pretty fun to watch.   

But back to FIL. Business FIL is a great guy. His employees and bosses alike love him. Family FIL is a great father/father-in-law/granddad. But no matter what mode FIL is in, there’s one thing everyone knows about him: He’s a Christian. It is a part of who he is holistically, no matter what personality he puts on the outside.

The thing is, God shouldn't just have a room in your house, even if it is the best room in your house. He should be the foundation of the entire thing.

“The Christian faith isn’t a compartment or room in a house to be kept secret or hid away. It is the foundation on which the house should sit. It is the foundation by which you build your entire life, and every compartment must sit on your faith.
 That means you let your faith bleed through every single area of your life. You should be a Christian at work, with friends and enemies, with your spouse, on your Myspace or Twitter, behind closed doors, and every living and breathing second of your life.
You should live for God, breathe for God, sing for God, read about God, pray to God, fear God, strive to be Godly.” (Are You A Compartmentalized Christian? Judge Yourself!, Revelation.co, September 18, 2009)

Compartmentalization of our faith is one of the biggest issues with Christianity in America today. It makes us look like hypocrites... well, I guess it makes us hypocrites. We want our spiritual void filled, but we don’t want to have to live with it all the time.

God calls us to love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. When you give it all, there’s nothing left to divide.

Do you have difficulty letting God into every room in your life? What do you try to keep separate?