Discover God’s Ways

Everyone has a relationship with God because God is the inescapable Reality, the Creator and Sustainer of all that is. If you exist at all it is because you have a relationship with God. The question is, “What kind of relationship do you have with God?”

Four of the “Ways” are what God designed us for: 1. being and living in and from His PRESENCE, 2. expressing and growing in His PURITY of thought and action, motivated and infused with true love for self and others, 3. exercising and sharing in His POWER to know and to do as He does, and finally, all of these are part of a yet more inclusive “way,” 4. PARTNERSHIP where God calls on us to creatively contribute to and in His kingdom. But there are two more “ways” that capture the way human beings actually relate to God before they begin to desire His Presence and those would be: 1. PAIN that comes in three interlocking ways, first, as a more or less conscious sense of longing for something that is missing in ordinary life (God’s Presence).

This includes the pain from the failed attempts to fill the longing, the pain that comes as a consequence of the mismatch between the longing and the ways people choose to fill the longing. Second, is the pain that comes from being on the receiving end, the “being-used” side of someone else’s attempts to fill their longing, that is, being hurt, violated, abused by someone else whether that is physical or psychological. Finally, there is the pain that comes from knowing that I, as a human being, have also used others in my own attempts to fill the longing in my life. God wants us, His human creations, to live with Him, in His Presence, as his Partners, exercising his Power from Pure motivations. Anything less than that results in Pain.

Feeling poor, POVERTY, is not a description of economic status. It’s not about not having car, cash or house. It’s about how you feel when you’re next to Someone who is “rich” beyond your dreams of wealth; you know you’re poor in comparison. Poverty’s got some shame, some envy and a lot of fear in it. Poverty, as a way of God, describes how human beings almost always respond when they encounter God for the first time. He comes across as terrifying “rich,” powerful, pretty overwhelming. And most people are not sure they want to know more about this Rich One, at least at first.