God Noticed You

¹³ Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them.
 ¹⁴ Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” ¹⁵ When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.

 Matthew, Chapter 19

As humans, we all seek that spark of connection, that moment when we feel like someone, or some entity in the case of God, stops addressing the masses and addresses just us, individually. For me, that moment came when, as a child, I understood Jesus to admonish adults for pushing children aside as a nuisance and raised them up as loved and cherished. I didn't realize that the believing nature of a child was also what was being praised, not at that age, but I did connect to a God - for the first time my God - saying I was important and He wanted to see me and love me and know me.

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to explain to nonbelievers (and sometimes believers also) that God does not want you to just be a good person and do nice things. That's not actually why God created you. That would be like mortal parents saying "I want to have a child so that I can make sure it does all the things I ask it to do and so I can lord over it." That's not why humans have children and that isn't why God created you. Humans have children because they want to meet the new, completely unique creature that they can create from themselves and, hopefully, from the love they share with another. Guess what? God pretty much did the same thing. God wants to have a RELATIONSHIP with you. He wants to get to know you and all the little weird quirks that make you so special and unique.

But, you say: "God is omniscient so He knows everything; that means He already knows all about me." Okay, this is the down and dirty version of my reconciliation of God's being omniscient with humans having free will - God is like the author of a huge, pretty much infinite, choose your path book. For each human life, He knows all the possible outcomes of every choice you could possibly make (that's giving Him a LOT of credit because that's a degree of possibilities I can't even fathom); what He DOESN'T KNOW is which choice you will choose because you have the free will to select whatever option you want. He may know what will happen either way, but He doesn't know which way you will decide to go. So yeah, God really wants to know you and experience the wonder of watching your story unfold. 

That, ladies and gentleman, is why I love talking to God. Every day, about any thing, all the time; He is my FRIEND, and my comforter, and my father, and my salvation. When not another soul of the face of the earth knows you, want's to know you, or can know you, God does, wants to, and can. Some folks will tell you that you shouldn't "waste God's time" praying about little things, I say that prayer is how you communicate with God and you should communicate with Him as much as you can and rejoice that you have been granted the grace to do so.

¹⁸ And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. ¹⁹ Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, ²⁰ for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.

Ephesians, Chapter 6

But Murder is Totally Worse than Lying

"All sin is equal in the eyes of the Lord." - Sound familiar? Sure it does. But it isn't actually in the Bible anywhere. The philosophy is likely derived from Romans 3: 10-12

⁹ What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. ¹⁰ As it is written:    “There is no one righteous, not even one;
 ¹¹ there is no one who understands;
   there is no one who seeks God.
¹² All have turned away,
   they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
   not even one.”^{[See also: Psalms 14:1-3, 53:1-3; Ecclesiastes 7:20]}

 So, is all sin equal in the eyes of the Lord? Well, maybe but maybe not. There are various places in the Bible where one type of sin is compared to another and one is eventually determined to be "worse" than the other. As humans, we tend to inherit or develop our own scale of egregiousness. Some believe that while sinful action is deplorable, the sin can be mitigated or exacerbated by the intentions behind it. Hebrews 4:12 states "For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." Hebrews doesn't say, "it judges the actions." This allows for repentance to lead one to redemption, because while you cannot take back the act, you can take back the intention behind it.

The truer philosophy, in my humble opinion, behind Romans 3:10-12 isn't that all sins are equal, it is that the result is still the same regardless of the sin: it separates you from God. What is sin? Well, we could all rail off a pretty long list of actions that constitute sin in our estimation. But the definition of sin is NOT a list of rules that, if broken, create this thing called sin out of thin air. Sin is actually pretty simple to define and pretty complex to apply: Sin is anything, thought, emotion, intention, or act, that separates you from the Will of God. Note I said WILL, not LOVE. Romans 8:38-39 states "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[nor heavenly rulers] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (By the way, you ever wanna discuss whether I believe in the existence of powers beyond the mortal but not of God, read this passage first, it pretty well sums it up for me)

So, while lying to spare someone's feelings is probably less egregious than running them down with your car, in the end, you still put distance between you and God...and when it comes down to being a fulfilled entity, ANY distance between you and the eternal Creator of everything, is too much distance and, if you subscribe to judgement, which I do, one step or one mile, you still can't reach to the other side if you aren't standing in the grace of God.