What is Your Concept of God?

Has the Christian Religion taught us the wrong concept of God? We have been taught that God is "out there somewhere beyond the blue" in another realm called heaven building physical mansions to house us in...If we have accepted Jesus by grace and do our best to keep the religious rules and to live a holy life, God will bless us and we will go to live in the heavenly mansions and walk on golden streets when we kick the bucket.

I have been around religion for 50 of my 65 years...I wonder why little to nothing has been taught on how to live by the Spirit of God within us and Him doing His work through us to affect the Community of Humanity for His good. After all aren't we...the people...the dwelling place of God?

We have been taught that God is the adult Santa Clause in the sky that we call on to do our bidding at our beckoned will. This has given us a false concept of God. This has caused us to seek everything from God as though He were entirely external from us. We believe that by all kinds of religious activity and rituals God will will come down from heaven  in the Sunday-services to bless us, heal us, or as some think to prosper us with financial blessings. But the fact is, since the death and resurrection of Jesus, the dwelling place of God is in His people and we don't need prayers to ascend up to heaven to bring Him down. In actuality, everything that God is is already within us, waiting for us to discover the truth that God in us is sufficient to meet every need.

God is not withhold His blessings from us to where we have to wring the blessing out of Him and the more people there are prayer wringing Him the more His reluctance will weaken and He will release to us what we want. He makes His rain to fall on the just and the unjust. Whenever we beg God to bless us or heal us, we have a wrong concept. What we are believing is, "God, you have all these good things and are withholding them from me." If we did not think God was keeping His blessings from us, why would we ask Him for them?

Let me ask you a question, if God was withholding something from you, do you think that you could not get Him to change His mind by begging, crying, pleading or promising Him something? Can God be bribed by what we do or do not do? Will Bible reading, praying, crying, fasting, our goodness....or anything else that we might try get Him to change His mind. Do we think that if I can get 500 people praying for our healing that God will finally let go and give in? This religious concept of God is indicative of their belief and teaching that if we do what we are suppose to do, as they interpret how it is to be done, God in heaven will be pleased with us and rain down is blessings on us.

Doing the right things and looking to God in heaven for the blessing, though you may be doing right things, they are being done for the wrong reason while looking the wrong way for the answer to come from.

WE sing:

There is a river of of Life flowing out through me.
Makes the lame to walk and the blind to see.
Opens prison doors and sets the captives free
There is a river of life flowing out through me.

But...are we living the reality of what we sing. Isn't the stark truth that most people, sinner and saint alike still captives to sin, self, sickness, fear and religion? Does our living stack up to what we are singing?

The only hope we have in discovering the truth of what Jesus taught is to forsake the lies religion has taught us: "The Kingdom of God is within you" (Jesus said in John 7:38, "He that believes in me, out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water." In John 4:14, He said, "He that drinks of the water that I give him, it shall be in him a well of water springing up into eternal life." Folks that does not mean the seminarian denominated professional at some religious meeting...THAT MEANS YOU! Sad to say...it is religion that prevents you from fully realizing your freedom and the reason you have damned the flow of living waters from you.

To have a proper understanding of these things, we must realize who and where Christ is. The word Christ means "God’s anointed". Jesus was called the Christ. In Christ, is the fullness of God. Colossians 2:9 says, "For in Him the whole fullness of Deity (the Godhead) continues to dwell in bodily form -- giving complete expression to the Divine nature."

Is there any believer that has a problem believing that, I think not. But there are many that have a problem believing and living what follows: "And you are in Him, made full and have come to fullness of life -- in Christ you too are filled with the Godhead: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and reach full spiritual stature." Ephesians 1:23 speaks of the Church, "Which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all -- for in that body lives the full measure of Him who makes everything complete, and Who fills everything everywhere [with Himself]."

Once we understand the reality of the Christ life within us and are free of the bondage without us...THE RIVER OF LIFE WILL FLOW FROM US bringing life in the RELIGIOUS WASTELAND!