Where to Begin

February 16, 2024

There is so much I want to share about God, Jesus, and the Bible, but where to begin?

What I have learned is personal.

The way that I’ve learned has usually been the hard way.

I am very slow on the uptake and thick headed. So I am slow to understand and even slower to put what I’ve learned into practice.

Isn’t knowledge useless until it is put into practice, and isn’t putting ideas into practice the ultimate test of usefulness and reliability?

That’s kind of a general rule of practical knowledge… Maybe some acquired “knowledge” is not really knowledge at all but only a whimsical fantasy. Knowledge can be proven true only by being applied.

There’s a verse in a song that might apply here: “I know what I know, if you know what I mean.” (Edie Brickell) Yet, the problem remains. How to share what I’ve learned, what I know.

There are so many roadblocks to sharing.

Credibility. Trust. Communication, and so on… and all are two way streets. Good talking/good listening. Believing what is said, and genuine willingness, sincerity, and integrity to listen and consider what is said.

However, all those things come from familiarity, and most of us have never met before. We don’t really know each other, and that kind of encompasses the whole initial problem of where to begin…

There are thousands of religions, philosophies, viewpoints, experiences — both good and bad — cultures, social and political structures, and moral and ethical rules and regulations, but maybe Shakespeare had the best observation when he wrote “All the world’s a stage and we are just actors playing our parts.”

It is more serious than that, however, because when the curtain comes down, life goes on. Let me compare this to actors and athletes…

In both professions they have walk-through rehearsals which cement each other’s roles and responsibilities, and each person learns the others’ placement and roles they are to play.

Our entire lives are that kind of rehearsal. Then, in a manner of speaking, how we perform determines our futures, whether we remain or get cut from the team or from the motion picture.

Try to put that in an eternal framework.

Anyways, I think I have gone on about that long enough, and it’s time to share what I’ve experienced:

• God exists.
• Life is eternal, not finite.
• The inner man or woman is that life.
• The soul, the mind, the heart exists.
• God can reach a person wherever.
• God can forgive anyone.
• God can repair the harms we caused.
• God can heal relationships.
• God can help us make new ones.
• God can redirect a person’s life.

Individuals instinctively know these things, because we all have a conscience which convicts us whenever we trespass across whatever are the lines of demarcation in our particular religion, philosophy, viewpoint, experience — both good and bad — culture, social and political structure, and moral and ethical rules and regulations we espouse — no matter how many or how few.

In Paul’s letter to the Ehesian Believers, chapter 3, verse 20, he proclaims, “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think…”

Reach out to Jesus, because He’s reaching out to you.