Accused or Excused? Book 2 of God On Trial Series

Have you ever started watching a murder mystery in the middle of the program?  Trying to determine what’s going on can be so confusing especially if you turn it on during a fight scene. You can’t tell who is the good guy or the bad guy. Perhaps you overheard a short conversation between characters before turning to watch the fight scene. You can end up having to choose a side based on a snippet of a conversation.  Depending on the characterization, you can end feeling sorry for the bad guy.  

What if you become glad that a feature character got hurt, not realizing that it was the good guy. Your friends might look at you oddly and say, “Why are you so excited?  That was the good guy!”  If you become really engrossed without knowing the back story, then your emotions will be mixed up.  

If you are like me, you’ll ask your companions to press pause and explain what you missed or you'll just leave and decide to watch it another time from the beginning.

Becoming a Christian or opening up the Bible is very similar to walking into a movie in the middle of a scene.  Many people come to church and hear brief snippets about God such as “God loves you! God wants the best for you!  Come to Jesus! God is all powerful! He will take care of you!” However, when you look around or watch the news, all you see is destruction and heart ache.  Any reasonable person would have to question the statements about God.  I would!  In fact, I did. This is why I chose to write these books. 

If I had to give the one minute version of the history of Christianity, this is how it would read:  God made the world and everybody in it.  God made them perfect.  The man and the woman disobeyed God.  “Sin” entered the world.  People began to do bad things on a regular basis.  To save Mankind, God sent His Son into this world. The Son of God was named Jesus. He became a man and gave up his God powers temporarily. He was falsely accused by His own people. He was brutally beaten and tortured and killed. He rose again from the dead. Because of His death, God is “allowed” to forgive sins now. Those who believe these facts become “born again or saved”.  We die and go to a place called Heaven. Heaven is God’s home.  The end.

Come on. Seriously! Reasonable people are expected to believe this?  First of all, if God is all powerful, then why in the world wouldn’t he just obliterate sin?  Who is going to tell Him, “No, you can’t do that?”.  Why wouldn’t he just obliterate people that opposed him? He’s God, for goodness sakes!!!  It appears that this Christian God doesn’t use his power very well. Who could possibly make the decision to allow his son to be killed by torture, to save bad people? Why did God make this decision? 

Wow!  If I were God, I’m not sure I would have decided that my son would ever die for anyone.  Let’s think about this. God makes the rules and he decided that the death of his son had to be a part of the rules. Any reasonable person would have to ask why. 

Suffice to say, this Christian religion is not the easiest to accept logically. Now I can see why faith is so important. Stay tuned for more.

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Book One of 3-part God On Trial Series

Slumps and Resurrected Vision

January is the time where many people celebrate newness. But what if you’re stuck in an old season? The reality is that the challenges of the past calendar year did not just go away at midnight on January 1^st.

While life’s seasons may not automatically be deleted in one minute, we can use the first few days of a new year to reassess, to ponder, to clarify vision or simply to see what is needed to move forward.

We never want to be needlessly stuck in an old rhythm, just because we can’t see what lies in our future.

Without a vision, the people perish.

Last September, I began to have a vision attack. Disappointment and discouragement set in because goals hadn’t been met. I grew blind. My passions were tossed aside because I just don’t like to waste my time if there is no promise of fruitfulness.

So I constantly prayed for God to show me what desires or dreams I had that were not for then or ever because I knew that sometimes childhood’s imagination can build fantastic adventures that have no borders. And while I was and am convinced that God plants seeds of destiny in our hearts while we are young, I knew that we see in part and it takes years of maturing to really discern the God-seed from the parent projected-seed or the fairytale-planted seed or the soulish seed that covets someone else’s destiny.

So my new “year” started way before Jan. 1, 2015 when I began to ask God to dismantle any vision that I had that was a mistake and birth His vision for how I am to spend my time and how much time to give to the passions that I know He put in my heart.

Oh my passions!

Most involve allowing the Creator to create through me: phrases, sounds, gardens, food, and the artistry of the home.
  

Oh my passions!

One book on the shelf: the plot is decided, over 60,000 words, but the falling action and resolution remain in my mind.

Another book just started, Ages and Stages: The Book, inspired by my blog series by that name. This one will be a soul journey as I write.
A series, part fantasy, part historical fiction: The Ages of Laus Perennis, which was started too many years ago…. (sigh)
So many songs lay in a drawer in the music room, done or in need of editing but my skill has maxed out.
The advice of my kids: “Buy a viola and play again!” but really kids, when?
A piano that calls me, but once I sit down, the warfare overcomes me.

Oh my passions!

Six children and a husband, house and yard that need seventeen hours of my day.
My spirit’s need to clutch heaven’s Heart every moment of every day, for this is what maintains my sanity.

I wake up each morning to a world that needs my tongue to pray and my hands to serve in whatever way.

My passionate list goes on...

I long for His presence to be known, experienced, celebrated…His name revered, adored…His heart kissed and understood, our worship of Him as extravagant as His love, and His world redeemed through the people that He calls His own. (selah)

I told my husband that my productive nature was feeling unfulfilled these days. Sometimes fruit takes too much time see. But like I said before, I want to make sure that I don’t waste my time on things that were never meant to be.

So that’s when it’s time to scale back on everything, except the necessities:
my family, household duties, and the God that maintains my sanity.

This is the ground in which He can plant or prune vision in me.

Jeremiah 29:11 

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Author Tina Webb

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