The experiences I have had of unconditional love have radically changed my whole belief system concerning who God is and therefore the reach of God’s love towards all of His creation.
God’s love is unconditional for everyone and everything and that love has no boundaries or limitations.
God is love BUT? Religious buts …There are no BUTS. God’s love is totally unconditional.
I want to explode some more religious myths that kept me in a bondage that unconditional love has set me free from.
In previous sessions we looked at the truth about how God views sin, forgiveness, repentance and confession, faith, being born again and salvation.
We are going to look at the truth about the Bible in regards to unconditional love.
In future sessions we are going to look at the truth about the old and new covenants, law, duty and obligation.
The relationship between unconditional love and the restoration of all things and about God’s desire for us to live in health and immortality.
When we begin to experience unconditional love it will inevitably challenge many things we assumed to be true because we have been told the Bible says so; and that will inevitably put into question the role of the Bible in our lives.
I am not saying don’t read your Bible, or that God can’t speak to us through the Bible, but it is hard to discern God’s voice through the filters.
I don’t believe the Bible is God’s primary method of communication but for some it is the only way.
Most of my understanding about God and Christianity came from what I was told the Bible said.
Sadly there are 30,000 + denominations all claiming to know what the Bible says.
Only face to face experiences with God have revealed the truth to me about God as unconditional love.
I went to Sunday school at 2 years of age in my local Bible Christian Methodist church (we had 6 different Methodists churches, each a different a variant: Primitive Methodist church, Wesleyan Methodist church and a number named after were they situated).
Suffice it to say I was brought up as an evangelical Bible believer who was taught the principles of sola scriptura (Bible Alone) without ever using that term.
I was taught that the Bible as holy scripture was totally inspired by God and as such was inerrant and infallible.
‘Holy Bible’ – who said so?
I was taught that the Bible was the word of God.
I was encouraged to read my Bible and pray every day and be a God-botherer (as a friend of a friend calls evangelisers).
I was taught that the Bible was the only absolute authority for life.
I was not taught anything about the role of the Holy Spirit in my life and the Holy Spirit was a very peripheral figure in our version of Christianity.
When as a teenager I joined the Brethren church I was further programmed as to the role the Bible played in my life but definitely not the Holy Spirit’s role.
I was never taught to expect God to speak to me directly other than through the Bible.
I was never taught that God as love could be directly experienced and shows of external emotion were frowned upon.
I was never taught that God is my Dad
I was programmed by a very specific theological position regarding the future that looked forward to us being rescued.
Both the Methodist and Brethren eschatology was heavily dispensational, premillennial, infernalist and cessationist.
I was taught that if you did not accept Jesus as your personal savior you would be punished and tortured forever in Hell with no chance of reprieve – bad news, which the world has rejected.
Evangelism was more fear than love focused and more about avoiding something bad rather than receiving something good.
How did I ever get to where I am now as one who is passionate about the unconditional love of God for all creation and the restoration of all things?
Good question.
I am a forerunner and a visionary pioneer by nature.
It has been a long journey to learn to experience God directly and that journey has had many milestones, including much deconstruction of my programmed religious beliefs and the role of the Bible and the Spirit in my life.
God is so patient and kind that this journey has been a long and winding road of discovering the truth about who God really is and about the power and reach of His unconditional love, limitless grace and triumphant mercy.
My journey and testimony of experiencing unconditional love has been a slow deconstruction and renewal of my mind more of an evolution rather than a revolution – but that may not always be true of everyone’s journey.
Only God knows how to get us there.
I was taught never to question the Bible or what it taught about God as that would have been heretical.
Therefore, there were many things that didn’t feel right but studying the Bible mostly only confirmed what I already believed.
I was never taught that the Bible as we know it never existed before AD385 and that there are many different versions that even had different numbers of books in it.
66 Protestant
73 Catholic
80 Original King James
84 Ethiopic
My own process of deconstruction made me aware just how much I had rationalized and glossed over the huge differences between the God of the Old Testament and Old Covenant and the God seen in the New Testament and New Covenant.
Deep down I knew something was wrong but my upbringing in sola scriptura with the Bible as the sole source of authority for living the Christian life meant there were many inconsistencies that I wrongly glossed over.
This fear of questioning the Bible actually kept me from asking the hard questions that were subconsciously splinters in my mind.
Only when my experiences began to challenge my beliefs was the Father really able to seriously renew my mind to the truth.
It was not until I began meeting the Father face to face that it created such major cognitive dissonance that change became inevitable.
My experiences of unconditional love really accelerated my process of deconstruction from 2016 onwards.
I will share some of my testimonies next time.
These experiences challenged my understanding of the Bible as a consistent whole, its inerrancy and infallibility (which it never claims to have, by the way).
What is scripture?
What is the word of God?
Why is this so important?
Because most Christians are programmed by their understanding of the Bible and that will vary depending the different streams that have influenced those beliefs.
That is why I use the Bible a lot as a reference point for deconstruction.
I discovered that the Bible has little or nothing to say about itself because it is a collection of many people’s experiences, most recorded by different scribes hundreds of years after the fact from the passed-down oral traditions.
2 Tim 3:16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
What is scripture?
What is the word of God?
What is the Bible?
When was the Bible formed?
Does our understanding of the Bible help or hinder experiencing God as unconditional love?
The Greek word graphe translated scripture in English in 2 Tim 3:16 is not referring to our Bible (which did not exist then, or for 300 + years) but it does mean any unspecified previous or future inspired writings.
How do you know what is inspired?
Resonance with the Holy Spirit and Jesus as the Truth and love.
2 Timothy was written in approximately AD63 and the Bible was not canonized until AD385, so the writing it was referring to was not the Bible and may or may not have included some parts of what we refer to as the Old Testament or letters written to churches.
2 Tim 3:16 All God-breathed or inspired writings are profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
This might come as a shock to some people but the Bible as we know it is not the scriptures or writings that Jesus or Paul were referring to.
The Bible is not the word of God but Jesus is the logos, the living and active word of God.
Divisive arguments over theology and doctrine using the Bible have caused most of the 30,000 + denominations to form.
Jesus is the way, truth and life and the Word of God; and He said “My sheep will hear my voice” not “read my book”!
I do not read the Bible or study the Bible in my personal relationship with God as I have direct face to face access with Him and need no other mediator.
I use the Bible as a reference point in teaching and as a starting point for deconstruction.
I believe it would be very helpful to have Jesus the truth and the living word of God take us through a process where He says to us as He did to His disciples – “You have heard it said but now I say unto you…” in reference to everything we believe, with no exceptions.
Luke 24:27 Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures. 32 They said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?”
45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,
Jer 8:8 (AMP) “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us [and we are learned in its language and teachings]’? Behold, [the truth is that] the lying pen of the scribes has made the law into a lie [a mere code of ceremonial observances].
Don’t visit the Old Testament without your “Jesus passport.” You’re not a Jew living under the Old Covenant before Messiah came. Hence, you have no business visiting and spending time in the Old Testament, the world of Moses, without taking Jesus with you!
The Old Testament becomes beautiful to us when we see it through the eyes of the Spirit and not through the letter of the Law (2 Cor 3).
Jesus is the only truth and living word we can truly rely on.
The Bible is at best in English a book that points us to Jesus.
We need to develop our relationship with Jesus directly, not through trying to study Jesus in the Bible.
John 5:39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; 40 and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.
What scriptures did Jesus open His disciples’ minds to?
2 Cor 3:3 being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 4 Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, 6 who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Jesus summed up all of the law and prophets in Himself and made the focus of everything one simple thing: LOVE
You have heard it said but I say unto you – LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.
John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
John 15:12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”
You are a living epistle by receiving and freely releasing unconditional love.
You are a living love letter to the cosmos.
John 13:35 “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Have you experienced unconditional love?
Are you living in unconditional love?
Are you demonstrating unconditional love?
Do you have a heavenly vision of unconditional love?