Next Questions

Here are the next few questions.

4. What is your understanding of the purpose and nature of Scripture? How does
Scripture influence your life?

The scripture is the Holy Spirit inspired word of God. It is how we come to learn about God. The scriptures chronicle the interaction and patterns of interaction of God in human history. By examining these past patterns we can better understand how God is working now.
The scriptures are a faithful companion on my journey of faith. The Holy Spirit teaches through them, and they have helped me through the hardest times of my life. The scriptures are such an awesome gift to us, and I am greatly appreciative of their insight into life today. Their depth and density give me new insights every time I read them.

5. How would you describe the Fall in terms of humanity’s need for salvation?
What is Christ’s role in our redemption?

The fall was the gateway into disobedience and dishonesty. The entire human race plunged headfirst through that gate, and raced in to this new seemingly powerful place. We didn’t pay attention to the way we came, so can’t find our way back to the way things are supposed to be. How often have I heard the question “How did I get here?” or “How did things go so far?”
Jesus comes in and breaks the chains that we have bound ourselves with. He then shows us the way back to obedience and a life of integrity. It is only through Jesus sacrifice that a way back into God’s grace could occur. Justice had to happen, but the only one who could satisfy that justice for all of us is God himself.

6. What is your understanding of justification and sanctification? The “Baptism of the
Holy Spirit” means different things to different people. What does it mean to you?

Justification is the satisfaction of God’s justice that occurs when we acknowledge our inability to save ourselves and accept the sacrifice God made for us in Jesus. Sanctification is the lengthy process of change that begins with justification and ends with our deaths. This change is from who are into who we are meant to be. The more we accept the changes God makes to us through the Holy Spirit, the closer we come to our intended state of being.
The “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” is the birth of our souls. This is the point when the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us. Some births are spectacular and some are quiet and easy, but each birth is a momentous occasion when someone becomes truly alive.

Statement of Faith

One of the things I have been asked to do is come up with a statement of faith. The Board of Ministerial Service gave me a questionnaire with 22 questions on it. My next few posts will include some of the questions and my answers to them. I am very open to discussion around them, and would like to hear some of your answers to them. If you desire clarification on any of these points, ask.

Thanks,

Gil George


1. What is your understanding of God:

I would have to say that my understanding of God is very limited. I have times in my life where I think I understand more, but mostly I realize that after 20 or 30 thousand years I will still have only scratched the surface.

The bible says that God is love, but I think that we as humans don’t have the ability to grasp the fullness of what that means. A love so unconditional that has been and is self-sacrificing for the good of the other is at times beyond my understanding, and I wonder that God has not decided to repeat in a different way what he did in the days of Noah.

God is fully active in His creation. He has not set something in motion, then uncaringly stepped back to watch it wind down to its end. He is engaging and directing human history and culture to come closer to Him. There is resistance, but that is God’s plan and His final goal and He can not be thwarted.

God is a victorious God. The people of God have nothing to fear in this life. Since God has defeated the greatest enemy, it is now our jobs to take back all that was and is lost, and bring it to its rightful place again. There are some that do not know they are lost, but the Holy Spirit is faithful to open the right doors in people’s minds.

2. Who is Jesus Christ? What is your understanding of the Trinity? The atonement?

Jesus is the Son of God and part of the trinitaic community that makes up the one God that is in three parts. Wrapping my mind around the Trinity has been rather difficult, and some of the books I have read on the subject have not made things much clearer. The closest I have come in my understanding is that God the Father is the masculine manifestation of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit is the Feminine aspect of the God head, and Jesus is the Childlike physical manifestation of the God head. That is a way oversimplification of their respective roles, but some hints of this family-like structure of the Trinity are spread throughout the Old and
New Testaments, most notably in Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
The reality is that my understanding of the Trinity is woefully inadequate of the reality, but that’s the best I can do with the mind I’ve got.

The atonement is the most wonderfully crazy, from a human perspective, doctrine in the church. That the most powerful being in the universe would love His creation so much that he would fully experience the life of a lower class Jew during a reign of brutal oppression, and in addition to that permit Himself to be unjustly accused and murdered so that even the people who killed Him could experience the forgiveness of God, goes against the grain of how power and God have each been perceived. That Jesus rose again proves the efficacy of His forgiveness and His Godhood.

3. How do you understand the work of the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit is the organizer / ringleader of the people of Christ. The Spirit gives us the gifts and talents we need to accomplish the tasks that are set for us. The Spirit is our source of comfort and power, and is our intercessor with God the Father. The Holy Spirit speaks to our inmost being, and changes us to conform more to the image of God that is stamped on us. The Holy Spirit is also at work in the world preparing people’s, who do not believe, hearts to hear the message of the Good News of the Kingdom. The Holy Spirit gives us insights into the lives of those around us, and into ourselves. The holy Spirit is the one who gives us the words to say when it is time to defend our faith. Luke 11:11-12 11"When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, 12for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say."

Why am I here?

This blog exists to share and discuss what I am learning about the Friends' pastoral recording process. There are some interesting things I have learned as I have started this journey, and I am loking to foster healthy discussion. If you are looking to positively interact, you are welcome here. If you are looking for a target for your vitriol, look somewhere else, these are not the droids you are looking for. My next post will go into how this process got started.

I decided to Blog about this, as a tool, not only for ease of communication with the interested people, but also to hear from people who stumble across this blog, and challenge myself to communicate my ideas adequately.

I hope you enjoy reading this.

Gil George