personal growth

How a word becomes a Word of God?

End-of-year thoughts about the power of God’s Word

 

1. In how many ways the words of the Bible can be interpreted? Hermeneutics that examines the interpretations of a text is a quite diverse field of science. All of us carry the imprints of our own previous experiences and interpret everything we come across in this "life experience context". All these are incredibly honorable efforts to reveal the hidden correlations of a text and the billion versions of its interpretations. However if we apply these methods only in a "sterile" way, we would miss the Essence of understanding the Bible. Only our minds have been working, not our hearts. We have not become shaken. Jesus has been missed from the text – thus the conversation with God has also been missed. (For further details, please read my last essay before the summer break here.)

 

2. What helps to recognize the Word of God? We take the Bible either literally or seriously. I prefer old texts because these provide us much more to think about due to their "incomprehensibility" than today’s "ready-made" translations giving obvious interpretations. If we read the Biblical texts in their original languages, in Hebrew and in ancient Greek, we may realize that all these antique languages offer a wide range of possible interpretations. All this pulls us out of that interpretation frame which sticks our understanding to our own "life experience contexts". If we do not read or listen to the Word being open to the surprisingly new Vision of God then our souls remain closed for the truth. (For further details, please read my last essay before the summer break here.)

 

3. How a word becomes a Word of God? If we would like to accept the lines of the Bible not as a text but as a Word of God then we have to get ourselves out of our comfort zones. Most of the time God does not want to take us where we are just going. A word becomes a Word of God only if we are not alone when we accept it. Without the presence of the Holy Spirit and the presence and mercy of Jesus we do not get to recognize the will of the Father during reading the Bible. The act of studying the Bible in a community becomes important here. Preaching is not simply another one of the many interpretations, because the Word of God is not proclaimed by the minister but by the Holy Spirit through the minister. Preaching, songs and prayers of the sermon are the Silence of the Spirit in which the Word of God is revealed. "The Word will do what it states" (Péter Grendorf, my minister has recently said). Yes, the Word will be still working days and years after it was said. This is how the working of the Holy Spirit forms the image of Christ in us and shows us the Kingdom of God already in our lives on earth. (For further details, please read my last essay before the summer break here.)

 

 

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What makes the church attractive today?

Pentecost thoughts about the power of the Gospel

 

1. What makes the church UNattractive today? Pentecost is the birthday of the church. However nowadays many people already start to bury the church here, in Europe. There are centuries old churches which became practically empty, priests make series of funerals instead of baptisms, there are many directionless congregations... I have collected some recently published reports in my essay. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my Pentecost essay here.)

 

2. What do we, people think can make the church attractive today? A lot of solutions have been created to address the current problems of the European church. I quote some of them in my essay. All these are remarkably respectable points and suggestions. However the Essence of the European Church’s renewal is missing from them. What is this Essence? The third, closing part of my essay will write about this. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my Pentecost essay here.)

 

3. What does make the church REALLY attractive today? What would like to see the young people in the church to attract them? They would like to see credibility. "Deep relationships are needed between the authentic adult servants and the youth." "Young people would like to have a relationship, an example and such a faith that means not only a Sunday morning program but can serve as a help in their challenging everyday life." (David Kinnaman) Credibility is not arisen from us. Credibility is an undistorted transmission of the Holy Spirit’s power through us. The church of Europe needs depth instead of wideness. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my Pentecost essay here.)

 

 

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The forms of the Presence of mind

Thoughts about holiness of life

 

 

 

1. When would we need the presence of mind in our everyday lives? The presence of mind is usually interpreted as the capacity of solving difficult situations. In this essay I interpret the presence of mind as the presence of the Holy Spirit. How many of those situations can we recall also from our own lives when one of our good deeds have not been realized because we recognized too late what we should have done? In the first part of my essay I describe a few examples of this. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay here.)

 

2. Forms of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Appearance of the Holy Spirit may happen in a million ways – exemplifying the infinity of God’s creativity. The Holy Spirit may pour out, may sweep everything away, may wash everything clear and may re-create everything. However, the silent everyday work of the Holy Spirit is much more frequent than the pouring out storm of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is as much disciplined as It cannot be controlled. The Holy Spirit lives in a permanent and intensive love relationship with Christ and the Father. It invites us into this love relationship, too. This love relationship has a quite important role in that what way the Holy Spirit is creating and sustaining the power of the believers’ community and the church. We can experience the help, comfort and power of the Holy Spirit in the most amazing and unexpected moments of our lives. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay here.)

 

3. The continuous presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives: the holiness of life. The continuous, strong and realized presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives brings the holiness of life. In this status, our deep and sustained love relationship with the Holy Trinity becomes so strong that our lives settle into their right directions so that this love relationship may remain intact. Pope Francis writes about this in his "Rejoice and Be Glad" exhortation: "Trust-filled prayer is a response of a heart open to encountering God face to face, where all is peaceful and the quiet voice of the Lord can be heard in the midst of silence. In that silence, we can discern, in the light of the Spirit, the paths of holiness to which the Lord is calling us." (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay here.)

 

 

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Life situations of fulfillment at young and old age

Thoughts about the Totality of a life in Jesus

 

 

 

1. What is the difference between the young and the old? Being young is identical with our openness to the world, the diversity of our responsiveness and our capacity to lifelong learning. The old age can be described with an experience encoded as an effective behavior pattern, the wisdom of distinguishing the substantial issues from the unimportant ones and the restraint from the extremes. The young and the old behaviors are not linked to the chronological age. Systems become complex if they are capable of both behaviors – alternately. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay here.)

 

2. Life situations of fulfillment at young and old age. Young age is the age of exploration and enrichment of the information of the environment. In young age there is no permanent order. The young cannot be controlled, it is vigorous and happy. For the young every moment is a whole life. The fulfillment of the young breaks the limits and creates a new world. The old age is the age of clarity, the capability to identify what is important and what is not, thus the age of wisdom. The old age has learnt to wait. The old age has learnt to listen. For the old the whole life is a moment. The old age has experienced the beauty of purity and silence. (If you would like to read about this more, please, please, read my essay here.)

 

   

3. Life situations of fulfillment in Jesus. The man living in Jesus is not alternating between young and old but he has entered the timelessness of the Holy Trinity where he can be both young and old at the same time. Jesus as the Door (John 10:9), opens the Totality of the Father that gives an unlimited space for the youth to grow and enrich. As the Path and the Truth, Jesus endows the old age’s capability to identify the essence with the Totality of Vision. Jesus, as the Life, joins the impulsivity of the youth with the timelessness of the old. Man living in Jesus lives in the Resurrection where death is not the end but the door opening to God’s Totality. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay here.)

 

 

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In how many ways can we be happy about the totality of life?

Thoughts about the thousand faces of joy

 

 

1. Our "own" pleasures. In everyone’s life the moment comes at different times and in different ways when he starts to feel something about that he lives in the middle of a huge ocean of love – that he has not noticed so far. Realizing this is an unutterably big source of joy. It is a beautiful feeling when already here, in our Earthly lives sometimes we can feel or experience something about the Holy Trinity’s loving relationship. The joy of the archetypal woman is an immanent joy that discovers the infinity of God in the heart’s innermost totality. The joy of the archetypal man is a transcendent joy that is poured out and discovers the infinity of God in the beauty of the whole world. Both of them start from the same place and arrive at the same place. Just in different ways. This is one of the miracles of the creation. We can also experience the joy of God’s persistence during our Earthly lives. Mutual commitment, the joy of faithfulness; serenity: the joy of safety and understanding; hope: the joy of Providence and working of the Holy Spirit all are such silent joys that are much deeper and much more complete than the joys of individual events flaring up. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay published here.)

 

2. The joys of Totality’s foretastes. Among the joys of encounters with God’s love the joy of God’s Word stands first. The Word of God is not a dead letter. The Word of God speaks in the depth of our souls by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Word of God always fulfils what it has declared. (It is worth thinking about this sentence for a while. The most important events of our lives depend on whether we understand this sentence or not.) When our encounters with the Holy Trinity’s love get more regular, we become more and more capable of seeing ourselves and everybody around with the gracious eyes of God. When these meetings will get even more regular, we will see the Face of Jesus in front of us. The Face of Jesus is not a precisely seen image but a radiation. It is the beam of the Glory of God projected on us in Christ. We delight in it, and we bathe in it. Peace, love and serenity fulfills us that we all radiate in our surroundings. This is the joy of being blessed. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay published here)

 

 

 

3. The joys of Totality. In the Kingdom of God the boundaries of the individual disappear. All that we have been guessing "by the mirror obscurely" so far (1Corinthians 13:12), we will see and know. God, the persistence of the world’s essence, is not noise but Silence. He is not a range of galloping events but timelessness. He is not a set of bonds but undistorted purity. God’s timeless, pure Silence is not empty. This Silence is full of love and the energy radiating His love around. God’s Silence is filled with the Glory of God. The highest level of joy is bathing in the Glory of God and spreading It all around. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay published here.)

 

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Cross and glory

Good Friday/Easter thoughts about the totality of salvation

 

1. Good Friday: The Path of the Cross – understandings and misunderstandings. Christ’s Cross stands in the center of Christian faith, in the middle of our hearts. Still: we are unable to understand the scandal of the Cross. Human thought is very much limited and simplifying. We think: If something is that majestic like Jesus, it cannot be humiliated. When we feel that "something is wrong" with the serial scandals of Jesus we actually feel that there is something wrong with ourselves because we are still not able to stand in front of Jesus and look at the beautiful Totality of His Face, Cross and judgment. With everything. With anything. With Him. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my Good Friday essay published here.)

 

2. Holy Saturday: The beauty of the Silence of mourning. It is silence on Holy Saturday. Is this silence frightful? Is it the silence of the absence of Jesus? No, it is not! It is the silence of hope, expectation and our internal communion with Jesus. The Silence of the Holy Saturday is the Silence of God’s Totality and Purity reflected in Jesus. Good Friday is the occasion to face ourselves, while Holy Saturday is the time for immerse in ourselves. Let’s feel as we approach the core of our existence: the power of the resurrection’s Gospel that rewrites everything. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my Good Friday essay published here.)

 

3. Easter: The Glory of resurrection. According to the Greek Orthodox thinking Christ suffers for us on the Cross in every moment. Let us experience this as the inconceivable pain of the Father above the Cross, the suffering of Christ on the Cross and the heartbreaking pain of Holy Mary under the Cross are becoming unified. Let us experience the dignity of that the Father does not stamp the Creation but opens the direct Path to Himself as the tapestry of the Sanctuary of the Jerusalem Church is ripped apart (Matthew 27:51a). The covenant is made once and for all: the Father has become the Father of us all to whom we all can turn to – by Jesus and for Jesus – in a first name basis. Let us experience the beauty of resurrection! Let our hearts also resurrect from their dead and let them revive, live a new life that is Eternal! Let us ask for it together with the psalmist: "One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. That I may see the delight of the Lord, and may visit his temple." (Psalms 26:4). Our prayer in the Psalms has been fulfilled: the fact of resurrection is unchangeable, irrevocable and eternal. Hallelujah! Amen. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my Good Friday essay published here.)

 

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Lenten thoughts about the FORCE-field of Jesus

The power of the Eucharist

 

1. Lives accompanied by Jesus without noticing His presence. Many of us have Jesus sitting in the middle of our lives while He remains invisible and incomprehensible for us for years or even for decades. Why is it a problem if we do not recognize that Jesus living in ourselves is Jesus? Since our hearts may harden to openness, attention and accepting the love coming from Jesus. From that moment on we only "use" Jesus and do not pass on what He has given us. In such case we close ourselves into our own egos that isolate us from Jesus’ FORCE-field. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

2. What is the FORCE-field of Jesus? Jesus’s FORCE-field is a compass: it shows us the Path, moreover: the right Path leading to the Truth. Jesus’s FORCE-field is an inexhaustible source of love filling us with such a "flow" feeling that can be shared with everyone without limitation. This "Jesus-flow" is nothing else but Life itself. Jesus’s FORCE-field is an inextricably strong love community making us capable of doing everything that fulfils the Father’s will and serves His Glory. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

3. How can we feel the FORCE-field of Jesus? We may become sensitive to feeling (and accepting) Jesus’ FORCE-field through thanksgiving: in our joy; through crying out appealing: in our great trouble; through purification: right now, in the Lenten period; through a prayer, practicing love, mercy and humility: anytime. There are a thousand ways to get opened for the FORCE field of Jesus’ love. Even a faith community of only "two or three members" has a huge power to call the Holy Spirit who can make us capable to find the Path to the heart of Jesus. Finally and as a fulfilment: when we take the Body and the Blood of Christ in the Holy Communion or Lord’s Supper we get into such a physical and spiritual unity with Jesus, with the Trinity and with all the believers who have ever lived since the foundation of the Christianity, live now and will live in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, that eliminates the darkness in us and puts us into the love community of Jesus’s FORCE-field. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

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The difference between hope and expectations

Lenten thoughts about the power of faith

 

 

1. A life of expectations is a trap. A lot of people adjust their lives to the expectations of their environment. In most of the cases the expected benefit of fulfilling the expectations is gaining acceptance, sympathy and love. In our human world love quite often becomes the means of emotional blackmailing. The most dangerous expectations are those, which we have of ourselves. The distance between our expectations and reality is not anything else but the pain in ourselves. We should not consider our life goals as expectations but as desires. A man free of expectations remains self-identical. However, it is much more valuable even than this, if we do not link our desires to specific things but we let them out and long for the good in general. Longing for the good in general is hope.  (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

 

2. The power of hope. Nowadays it is not trendy to hope. Despite of this: hope is much more than desire. Hope doesn’t wish to reach a certain goal but to increase good. Hope creates the possibility of good’s infinity in our lives. Hope delivers us from the slavery of specific goals because it breaks the wall of our egos with what is stronger than anything else in this world: the love of God. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

3. Why is faith much more than hope? Faith is the total and unequivocal certainty in the Gospel of redemption and resurrection. That’s why faith becomes a huge power. Because faith breaks down the walls between us and God. If we live in faith, God bathes us in Himself with showering joy and shows us new and new colors of His Totality and love each day. As our faith develops, it slowly shapes the Face and Figure of God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ in us. This is how hope becomes reality. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

 

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Difference between a duty and serving others

Lenten thoughts about the benefits of self-sacrifice

 

1. Why isn’t it enough if we carry out our duties well? Man is a social being. One of the primary benefits of a community is the division of labor. Sharing work results in duties. Why isn’t it enough though if we carry out all duties well? A task-oriented life is operated by an “external control”. A task-centered man never reaches the wonderful level of self-motivation that invents new solutions again and again Task-centered man is always anxious. He cannot decide whether he completed the task well enough or not. A task-centered life is a trap. It is a trap because it closes us into our own egos and it is a trap because it closes us into the often limited community defined by ourselves. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

2. The power of serving others. In what way does serving others differ from a duty? Serving others is not controlled externally but it is arisen from Christ living in us and it returns there, too. The essence of serving others is to open our most important inner self, the love of Christ living in us, to others. Serving others is unselfish, gives vision and makes us unbelievably creative. Serving others is a huge power because it empowers our lives by the largest power of the Universe, the love of God, and passes this immense love to everyone and everything around us. (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

3. Self-sacrifice as the Door of Totality. What do we need to be able to serve others? Our own power is not enough for that. It is enough only for carrying out our duties. For the service we have to find Jesus living in us. It is not an easy task. We have to break the hardened shell of our own egos to see what is behind it. It is worth doing that. To break our egos is the most important event of our lives because behind it the Door opens which is not anything else but Jesus Himself who leads us to the love of God (John 10:9). (If you would like to read more about this, please, read my essay here.)

 

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Thoughts about the Incarnation

Why Jesus cannot be sidestepped?

 

   

1. About the mistakes of our relationship with God: in how many ways do we want to avoid Jesus, the stumbling stone? The human mind is able to invent an incredible number of ideas not to confront either with the omnipotence of God or with (especially!) the eyes of Jesus offering Himself and asking for His acceptance. God is our Heavenly Father, so why shouldn’t He look like a benignant, wise grandfather? Let Him be a king! Let enthrone Him! However, God is not a distant, well-defined object of worship but He is Everything that fulfills us. Consider then God as Silence, Simplicity, Perfection, Consistency, Immobility, and Eternity! We are not fine with these either. In the same way how God cannot be personated, He can not be depersonalized either: because the essence of God is love. If we cast away God among to concepts, we make it impossible to have a direct love-relationship with Him and with this we lose the essence of God. (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

2. How purity and the touch of God are related to each other? The miracle of Incarnation. Jesus has come down to Earth from the Trinity emptying himself slavishly (Philippians 2:6-8) because the Trinity wanted to involve us, human beings in the beauty and Totality of the love-relationship in which They live. Let’s think about what Totality of Purity was needed for that God’s only begotten Son could be conceived in Holy Mary! Let’s think about also what humility and obedience are reflected in the accepting words of Holy Mary! Let’s feel how the Holy Spirit expands exaltedly again, in a way mankind have never seen it after the Creation, and due to the Father’s Grace, Christ’s agreeing sacrifice and Mary’s pure humility the Earth and the Sky became connected. (For further details, please read my essay here.)

 

3. What does the infant Jesus give us? Let me ask the Reader to read the last part of the 2018 Christmas blog post. Pray until you reach that wonderfully pure and peaceful state what Jesus’ birth was. Feel how Jesus grows in You! Feel how Jesus accepts You into Himself. Feel the Totality of Joy – in Jesus, "out there at the other side of the Door"! Then return to this world. Feel the freedom how You go in and come out through Jesus as the Door (John 10:9b). Also feel that each and every "going in" and "coming out" makes you purer. Feel that as You become more and more pure in your relationship with Jesus, you can get closer and closer to God. Feel the wonderful expansion of approaching God. What does the infant Jesus give us? How does the birth of Jesus answer the question asked in the first part of my essay? (For answers to these questions, please read my essay here.)

 

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