Spirituality & Tech – Page 4

In Christ Week 2

by admin Devotions, memesplanation, Spirituality & Tech

Memesplanation Short: April 24, 2023

“I am the sprouting vine and you’re my branches. As you live in union with me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you—but when you live separated from me you are powerless. If a person is separated from me, he is discarded; such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire to be burned. But if you live in life-union with me and if my words live powerfully within you—then you can ask whatever you desire and it will be done.
Abide in Him. You will grow when you live in union with Him. You will cease growing when you step away and disconnect from Him. What does it mean to live in union with Him? It means that we surrender our ways and adopt His. We go small. We cease to assert our own desires and choose to live with open hands of blessing toward others, and correcting what needs correction in ourselves and others as we grow.
#memesplanation #john15 #abideinme #thevine #inChrist #Jesus #Truth #TechFreedom #spiritualityntech

Memesplanation Short: April 26, 2023

Who am I in Christ? I am holy, alive, complete, chosen, called, justified, glorified, redeemed, forgiven, and so much more. If I cited passages to back all of these up, I’d be here for almost an hour. We each need an identity overhaul so that our beliefs about ourselves match what The Lord tells us in the New Testament. As long as there is even a “yeah, but” in you when I tell you that the Bible says that if you are in Christ, you are HOLY, you still have work to do. That is not a pride thing to believe what God says about you, still repent and work to walk in a more kenotic state so that you stay on track with God’s words over and about you.
#memesplanation #inchrist #whoareyou #Truth #Bible #God #TechFreedom #spiritualityntech

Memesplanation Short: April 28, 2023

Who are you in Christ? A masterwork created In CHRIST, so that you can do the good things that God designed for you to do before you were born. That is a huge statement, isn’t it? Let’s break it down:
1) God plans ahead from the before the beginning of time
2) God pursues you and makes a way for you to be in Christ.
3) God remakes us when we are in Christ
4) We choose to submit to Him
5) We get remade and have these good works, whatever they may be, revealed to us.
Wow. That may be too much for a memesplanation, but that is where I will leave you for now.

#memesplanation #ephesians2 #Bible #Paul #inChrist #Truth #TechFreedom #spiritualityntech

In Christ Week 2

Father,
Thank you for being present with us, along with the Holy Spirit as we are in Christ. Thank you that we get to learn what it means to be “in Christ”. Thank you that it is a divine mystery that we will never fully understand. Come and be in our midst as we continue this study.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.

Welcome to this series on what it means to be “in Christ”. I look forward to walking through much of what Paul had to say on this topic, as it is a rich mine that rarely gets tapped. Last week’s memesplanations covered some passages from Colossians, and I want to recap to these passages, briefly today. I will put a nice little bow on those passages, and that will be the norm for this series.
Colossians 1:18-20
He is the Head of his body, which is the church. And since he is the beginning and the firstborn heir in resurrection, he is the most exalted One, holding first place in everything. For God is satisfied to have all his fullness dwelling in Christ. And by the blood of his cross, everything in heaven and earth is brought back to himself—back to its original intent, restored to innocence again!
If Jesus is the head of the Body of Christ, and we are that Body, then we have all the fullness of God available to us. Why do we miss this, more often than not? We are not told that it is available, or we don’t dig to find the Truth. Jesus is all in all through His sacrifice, and we are in Him. That is HUGE. Let that sink in, He has made us pure again. That is the starting point, not the endgame.
Colossians 3:1-4
Christ’s resurrection is your resurrection too. This is why we are to yearn for all that is above, for that’s where Christ sits enthroned at the place of all power, honor, and authority! Yes, feast on all the treasures of the heavenly realm and fill your thoughts with heavenly realities, and not with the distractions of the natural realm.
Your crucifixion with Christ has severed the tie to this life, and now your true life is hidden away in God in Christ. And as Christ himself is seen for who he really is, who you really are will also be revealed, for you are now one with him in his glory!

You are dead to this world, but alive in Christ. You no longer have to live as a slave to pride or any other thing that is not Him. Because we are dead to the world and alive to Him, we can feast, as this passage says, on the treasures of heaven, here and now. All of the buzz about identity and identities these days finds its proper end there. That is your identity, Christian. You are in Christ, first and foremost. Nothing else really matters.
Colossians 2:9-11
For he is the complete fullness of deity living in human form. And our own completeness is now found in him. We are completely filled with God as Christ’s fullness overflows within us. He is the Head of every kingdom and authority in the universe!
Through our union with him we have experienced circumcision of heart. All of the guilt and power of sin has been cut away and is now extinct because of what Christ, the Anointed One, has accomplished for us.

Juicy fruits, no? If Jesus is God incarnate, and we are in Him, then we get all of that as long as we submit to Him. We get to be filled with all the fullness of God. Let that sink in: since we are in Christ, we have full access to the riches of heaven.
So, God has made it possible for us to be more than we are, through Jesus. We have access to the fullness of God, the riches of heaven, both spiritually and in the natural. We are dead to the world, the pride which sets it and enslaved us in opposition to the Lord, and alive to the freedom that comes through submission to His ways. We get to be formed in His way now, rather than wandering the trackless places in this world.

In Christ Week 1

by admin Devotions, memesplanation, Spirituality & Tech

In Christ Week 1

This is the question we will be seeking to answer over the next several weeks. If we are, as Paul says, “In Christ”, what does that mean? Does that have physical connotations of some sort? Does that mean that our individual souls are caught up in Him? Does that mean that our sin is hidden? Does that mean that we are One with Him in some way? Does that mean that we have new life “in Him”? That we are masterworks “in Him? This and more. Stick around to learn how we are “In Christ” and what it means, over the next several weeks.

Does “in Christ” mean that we are one with Him in some way? This is why I chose to do this as a followup to the Theosis discussion we had before Holy Week. Yes, in some way that we do not fully understand, we are both one with Him and becoming and growing into that unity. What the precise end of that is, even the Orthodox have not come to firm conclusions. It is a mystery as beautiful as the Cross itself. The Cross is the key to this door, the compass rose for this map, the Rosetta Stone for this lost language. We could spend eternity unpacking exactly what happened on the cross, and we still would not exhaust it fully. That, I feel, is the same with this mystery. We are One with Him, now, but are growing into greater dimensions of unity through walking with Him.

In Christ, we have newness of life. We have been reborn IN HIM. What does that mean? On one level, we have been birthed into His death and resurrection, therefore we have a new Lord, and no longer need to be dominated by the patterns of pride which manifest in attitudes and behaviors which ultimately destroy us, both physically and spiritually. We can walk in freedom. That is the new life that 1 Corinthians 15:22 talks about, here. Life under new Lordship where we are no longer constrained to live according to pride.

Father,
Thank you that we can rest in Christ. Thank you that we can slow down from time to time to look at things like this. Holy Spirit, be with us as we learn over the next few weeks. Help the Word to really get down in us so that it can transform us from the inside out. Jesus, help us to learn from experience as we learn in our minds what it means to be in you. In Jesus’ name,
Amen

This last week, we started our journey into what it means to be “in Christ”. Last Monday, we asked a series of questions which I hope to answer over the next several weeks, about just what it means to be “in Christ”. On Wednesday, I showed in part that I chose this series as a followup to the series on Theosis that we did before Resurrection Sunday. In some sense that we do not understand, we are indeed united with Christ, we have been made one with Him. We have been called righteous because we yielded our lives to Him. We have been welcomed into who He is, and His Truth, His belovedness gets all over us and all through us, like anointing oil that changes all it touches. Friday we talked about how we have new life in Him. That is the miracle I was just struggling to explain from Wednesday’s recap. He gives us his resurrection life once we die to ourselves. Baptism is meant to be a symbol and a sign of that inner reality, though many believe and see it to be more. I am coming to see this as a daily exercise, not that we lose our salvation each night (heaven forbid), but a daily choice to die to self, pick up the cross, and follow Him. That is what makes us followers of Jesus, not some mental assent, or even Spirit-baptism. We cannot truly be in Christ if we do not give up our lives, our lordship, to Him. There are so many passages about this great exchange in the New Testament, so many references to being “in Christ” or “in Him”. It is something that is worthy of study for so many reasons.
In the coming week, we’ll talk more about what it means to be “in Christ”, tomorrow, we will cover an encouragement from John 15, from the mouth of Jesus Himself. He tells us that we are to stay in unity with Him at all times so that we can produce fruit as believers. We cannot do things on our own, at least not for long, and hope for finally good results. Too many of us try to do that, and things do not go as they need to, do they. The fruit we expect winds up just being a husk rather than something nourishing. It may look good on the outside, from a distance, but when we get closer we see that it is no good. On Wednesday, we will talk about one of my favorite things, Identity in Christ. In Christ, we have so much: righteousness, holiness, healing, friendship, a brother who will never betray or fail us, and so much more. How do we live “in Christ” though? We must first die to self, as I mentioned earlier. We must lay our pride down, choosing to submit to His ways, rather than asserting our own desires. Once we do that, we can start to tap into who we are in Christ. Finally, on Friday, we will talk about how God has truly done the heavy lifting for us, and once we are “in Christ” we can begin to walk out the amazing good things that we were originally made to do. It is all quite stunning, particularly against the backdrop of our previous discussion of theosis. This, series, I think, will put more rubber to the road for many of us. Be blessed this week, and I’ll see you tomorrow for the memesplanation.
As an aside, the posting schedule is changing around here: I am now doing only 3 memesplanations per week, to match the 3 news days, which will be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday rather than Monday-Wednesday. I will continue with the devotions for Sundays and the streamed show on Fridays.

Spirituality & Tech Holy Week 2023

by admin Devotions, memesplanation, Spirituality & Tech

Holy Week 2023

Father,
As we enter Holy Week this year and stop to look at your Son’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, be with us. Help us to join in the joy of the day. Help us to hear Him clearly in the text. Help us to feel and smell the dust from the road, the wind and the sweat from the throngs of people who greeted Him in defiance of Empire. Jesus, help us to feel your heart for Jerusalem, for Your people. Holy Spirit, help us to join in with what you desire for us in this moment. In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
It is a warm, breezy day as Jesus prepares to ride to Jerusalem from Bethany. He dispatches two of the twelve to borrow a young, unbroken donkey’s foal from a local person. He knows much of what will transpire in the next week, and the human side of Him relishes in the approbation that He knows He will receive that day, but then balances that against the reality of what will be coming later in the week, whether sooner, or later. I don’t think that He knew that He would be raised from the dead, but I think the Father let Him know that the cross was coming, that these who cheered so loudly for Him would so easily be turned against Him. Against that internal backdrop, the two who He sent out to find the donkey come back with the animal, with jubilation because all was as the Master had said it would be. They catch a glimpse of Jesus’ face as a cloud passes over it. Jesus shakes off the thoughts and feelings He was having, then tells them to get the others, because it is time to go to Jerusalem. Two of them lay their cloaks on the animal’s back, then mounts the young donkey, and they set out on the 2 mile trip from Mary & Martha’s place to the gates of Jerusalem.
Just a little way into the trip, a crowd begins to throng around the road, cutting and placing palm branches, waving cloaks, and crying out:
“Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David!!!!”
“Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!”
Then, almost on cue, the pharisees get Jesus’ attention:
“Shut them down! Don’t you realize what this could look like to the Romans?”
I see Jesus laughing at them, but not at THEM, but the spirits behind them, then He grins from ear to ear, and shouts, over the crowd:
“If I silence them, the very ROCKS themselves will begin to cry out, and you will hear it.”
That shut the pharisees down, though I sense that they simply added it to their “list”, and got even more angry with Him because He didn’t bow the knee to their demands, so they went to plot about how they could take Him down. They hated that they could not control Him, their pressure meant nothing… It was almost as though He was challenging them to do something about Him and His message. It was a clash of Kingdoms. A war of the worlds, so to speak. Jesus knew that He had come to die, not that He wanted to suffer, but was committed to the Father’s rescue plan, as we have talked about in our recent memesplanations on theosis. I love that other interpretation of why Jesus came. It wasn’t because we were basically evil, though we have become bent in that direction over time. It was to restore relationship and communion with us, and to open the way to experience communion with God even here, if we will empty ourselves of ourselves, and learn to love one another in the way that we were originally designed to. It is that simple. Heaven is union with God. That is why Jesus came.
This is Holy Week, and this week, I will post short reflections on the events of that week, with an eye towards convincing you that perhaps the traditional account doesn’t make sense in terms of time. The meaning of the events is the same, but perhaps most of the action happened in the first 4 days of the week, from Sunday-Wednesday, rather than skipping about 2 days, and truncating the 3 days Jesus was supposed to be in the grave to 1-1.5 days. Never sat right with me… At any rate, tune in for those, here on the Spirituality & Tech channel on Rumble.

Memesplanation Short – Holy Monday

The cleansing of the temple. In most accounts, this happened just after the fig tree incident, a day or two after Palm Sunday. That is why I chose to put this on the Monday of Holy Week. Over the course of the week, I will show that the traditional accounts are incorrect in terms of when what happened. Why did Jesus clear the money changers and merchants out of the Temple courts? Why was he so upset by this situation? He knew that these individuals and systems, while originally intended to make life easier for the faithful, ultimately created a very oppressive situation. These bankers and merchants extorted the poor who came to worship and sacrifice. How is a church bookstore or coffee shop any different from these men who interfered with the people’s desire to be with God as best they could. The Temple was meant to point to the reality that after Jesus died, was raised, and ascended into heaven, we would each be our own place to meet with God, our own place where God can commune with us. It became a horrible situation, run by money-grubbing, power-hungry men (not all of the ones on the Sanhedrin matched this description, but most did). Jesus could not brook that continuing, so at the Spirit’s urging, he fashioned a whip out of cords and kicked all of that marketplace nonsense to the curb. What elements in your temple might need cleansing today? God is not against us providing for ourselves, as long as that provision does not preclude us from being with Him. If it becomes the center of who we are, and starts to control our lives, then God will probably desire to cleanse our respective temples.

Memesplanation Short –

Holy Tuesday

As Jesus and the 12 were returning to Jerusalem after Palm Sunday, Jesus saw a fig tree in leaf, but it was barren, so he cursed it because he was hungry. The next day, when they came back to the City, the tree was withered from the root. The disciples, particularly Peter, were stunned at that development, so Jesus used it as a teaching moment for them, on the nature of faith. What faith did it take for Jesus to end the life of that tree? This translation says that it was instant, most say that it happened by the next day. Either way, though, the tree withered in very short order after Jesus cursed it, and he taught them about the nature of faith and what it can do when wielded properly. Much ink has been spilled on this topic, and I will not add much more to it. Where is your faith? What is faith, as you understand it? Let me know in the comments.

Memesplanation Short –

Holy Wednesday

Here we are on the Day of Preparation, which would be after the Fig Tree on Tuesday, and Jesus sends the Peter and John to find accommodations for them to each the Passover Meal. This story opens with Jesus speaking prophetically about what they will find in the city. As I wrote this, it hit me that perhaps the term should be that He manifested what he desired, then they found it just as He had said. Remember, he had just taught them about faith earlier in the day, and who knows what he taught on in the Temple that day. So I’m going to say that Jesus manifested the Upper Room to that it would be exactly as He desired for them. Prove me wrong.

Memesplanation Short – Maundy Thursday

In reality, this likely happened on Tuesday or Wednesday, not Thursday. I honor the tradition, as it makes sense to split things up a bit, but even with the way that these events are presented in the Gospels, it seems more bang, bang, bang than there being a couple of days where nothing remarkable happened. So, if the Last Supper happened on Tuesday night, then the arrest was that night, the trial was that night and into Wednesday, and the crucifixion was on Wednesday, He was dead and buried by the beginning of the High Sabbath of Passover (which lasted 3 days, from sundown on Wednesday to sundown on Saturday. Normal Sabbath is sundown Friday – sundown Saturday. This, being the highest of the Feasts, has an extra long time of rest for the people. This gives us 3 days in the grave, Thursday-Saturday. He was probably raised in the middle of the night on Saturday (as we understand it).

Memesplanation Short – Good Friday

Now we come to “Good” Friday, which, if you have followed my argument so far, was actually the midpoint of the 3 days in the grave. Traditionally, this is when we remember Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross. If we were thinking historically and contextually, we would see that the crucifixion likely happened on Wednesday afternoon, not Friday afternoon. This does not negate or detract what He did for us, but it does help the story to make more sense, because I cannot think of a culture where Friday afternoon- early Sunday morning equals 3 days. That is not how the Jews reckon time. For Jewish reckoning, days start at sundown, and end at the next sundown. By that reckoning, He died at the end of Friday, was in the grave all day on the Sabbath, and was raised around sunrise on Sunday. That makes it just a hair over 1 day, not 3. The writers of the Gospel accounts were Jews, except for Luke. Think about it. If Jesus died around 3 PM on Friday (about 3 hours before the Sabbath was to begin), they would not have that as a day. You make up your mind. Let me know what makes sense to you in the comments.

Memesplanation Short – Holy Saturday

Jesus’ last day in the grave, no matter how you slice it. Whether He died on Wednesday or Friday, this is when the body of the Lord was most cold. In Jude, we learn that Jesus did indeed descend to Hell to bring forth the captives, break death, and proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom in the heart of the Enemy’s stronghold, embarrassing him just as he had embarrassed (or tried to embarrass Jesus). Today, we meditate on the pauses of life, when we are most unsure of what is coming next. Those moments, much like the one we now find ourselves in, when we have to catch our breath and cling to faith, just as the disciples did. Fear is natural in times of transition, but we can breathe easier because we know that in the end, we win. There are dark moments when it would be easy to give in to fear rather than rising up and standing or even kneeling in faith, believing that God is good, whether it LOOKS like it or not in the moment, in the natural.

Resurrection Day

Father,
As we look at this rightly familiar story which forms the core of our faith in your son, help us to see something different which may help us more than usual today. Thank you that you raised Jesus from the dead. Thank you that You paved the way back to what you always intended for us. Jesus, thank you for laying it all aside. Thank you for sacrificing it all so that we can be with and become a part of the communion that you are with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, thank you for guiding us in the way that the Father would have us walk, thank you for being the seal of our salvation. In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
Christ is risen! It is Resurrection Day. The day that we focus on the reason why we are different from every other religion on the planet. Today we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead by the power of the Father. Today we celebrate that we can become one with God, that God made a way, through the cross, and showed us that it worked by raising Jesus from the dead on the third day.
With that introduction… It was early on the first day of the week. It was just growing bright when Mary and Mary and one or two other women headed to the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid at the end of the day on Wednesday. They planned to treat the body with more aloes and spices, for preservation against decay. But when they got there, they found that the tomb was open. A strange man appeared to Mary Magdalen, she initially thought that he was the gardener and had somehow not only unsealed the tomb, taken out the guards, and moved Jesus’ body somewhere unknown to her. He told her that He was Jesus… The rest of us, after she ran back to the upper room, were taken aback by this, so Peter and John ran as fast as they could to the tomb, not fully knowing what to expect when they got there. When John got there (and he got there first), he poked his head into the tomb, to see the gravecloths folded neatly on the slab where Jesus’ body had been laid. When Peter finally puffed up, he went all the way in, just like Peter to do that. He encountered an angel, who asked him who he was looking for. The angel explained that Jesus was not dead any more, that he had been raised to life. John heard this as well.
They walked back to the Upper Room, stunned. That was a rare thing for Peter to not be running his mouth, but the whole way back, they walked in silence. They were processing what they had just seen and heard, but words failed them. They could hardly believe it. Jesus is alive. John watched Him die on the cross, he had been there the whole time. He watched the “trials”, the scourging, the crowd being coerced into calling for His blood, Pilate passing sentence and washing his hands, the staggering journey to Golgotha, the nails, the mocking, the hours of anguish… To the very end, when Jesus gave Mary and John to one another as mother and son, then pled for forgiveness for all who had put Him where He was, then when He gave up His spirit and was pierced through the heart by that spear. John was there. Peter hid. Peter was ashamed of the betrayal that he had perpetrated. It nearly crippled him for days. How many of us have denied knowing the Lord when things got hairy? Have you always stood strong, or have you chosen the easy, silent way to avoid strife or ridicule? How would you feel if an angel told you that the man whom you’d denied to save your own skin was alive, after all? How would you feel if you were John? You watched Him suffer and die. You were probably there helping to bury the body before the beginning of the High Sabbath.
I didn’t have words for my feelings, either. When they got back to the Upper Room, and confirmed what Mary had been telling us, we weren’t sure what to make of it, either. Stunned doesn’t quite cover the emotion that was so thick in the room that you didn’t even need a knife to cut it, you could easily cut it with the edge of your hand. Fear, confusion, wanting to believe this amazing news, shock… So many emotions. We weren’t sure what to think either… We didn’t dare to be joyful, though over the course of the day, that started to creep over us as well. As we sat down, we 10 (Thomas had left on business during the day, and the traitor had already hung himself in the Potter’s Field), Jesus walked through the wall into the room. We nearly hung from the ceiling at that point, because we’d never seen anyone do anything like that before, so all we could think was that it must’ve been a ghost in our midst. Jesus bade us be at peace… Yeah, right… That was gonna happen in that moment. We started to calm down as he grabbed and ate a piece of the fish we’d prepared for dinner. We didn’t understand it yet, but prophecy had been fulfilled in our midst. Jesus was truly alive. We still hid much of the time, as the Jewish leadership had a vested interest in quashing any story of resurrection, and indeed, they still work hard to deny the truth of the resurrection, as it makes Jesus’ message and claims carry more weight than they could bear.
He is ALIVE! Death could not hold Him. Hallelujah!!!