God: the Power Source of Everything: 71 Reflections

By Stephen Shepherd

God: The Power Source of Everything is a series of seventy-one devotional essays with a stated theme and questions to prompt discussion in small church groups. The 750-word essays are based on Bible verses from the Old and New Testaments and are arranged by theme under four chapter headings: (1) Relationship with God, (2) Relationship with Jesus, (3) A Christians Life, and (4) Satans Influence. The table of contents is arranged by theme number for easy reference.

Each short 750-word essay is the authors reflective comment on the Bible verse, which both helps the reader to understand and to relate to the verse. Themes for discussion include personal shipwrecks, desert place and electronic monkeys, Gods timeone tick without a tock, and bearing false witness and weapons of war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973614425

Stephen Shepherd

This is Stephen's first book written for his two children. He likes to tell a story that captures a little light out of darkness using his own illustrations and poetry.

Book preview

GOD:

THE POWER SOURCE

OF EVERYTHING

71 Reflections

Stephen Shepherd

MFA, Creative Writing

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Copyright © 2018 Stephen Shepherd.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

KJV: Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-1443-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-1442-5 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 01/17/2018

DEDICATION

To my wife, Janet, who has mentored me in my walk with Jesus.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1:   RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

Theme 1: Landmarks as Ethical GPS’s

Theme 2: God’s Residence in You

Theme 3: Personal Problems: Our Private Basement Brawls

Theme 4: A Primary Audience of One

Theme 5: The Prayer of God’s Involvement

Theme 6: Prisons

Theme 7: From the Beginning of Creation

Theme 8: The Seaworthy Miracles around Us

Theme 9: Life and Death: The Greatest Show on Earth

Theme 10: Shipwrecks in Life

Theme 11: The Size of Hell

Theme 12: Working with God to Mow the Lawn

Theme 13: Vanity

Theme 14: Respecting the Creator

Theme 15: Approaching God Honestly

CHAPTER 2:   RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS

Theme 16: Greater than the Power of Their Weapons

Theme 17: Only the Holy Could Follow

Theme 18: The Resurrection of Us

Theme 19: The Land of Many Mansions

Theme 20: God Working in Your Heart

Theme 21: Through the Eyes of a Christian

Theme 22: Conditions and Directions

Theme 23: A False Premise is a Logical Nemesis

Theme 24: Reason and Despair

Theme 25: God’s Time is One Constant Tic without a Tock

Theme 26: Calculating Your Life Expectancy

Theme 27: The Call of Wisdom is Jesus’ Voice

CHAPTER 3:   A CHRISTIAN’S LIFE

Theme 28: The House of Heaven

Theme 29: Desert Places and Electronic Monkeys

Theme 30: The Freedom of Knowing and Believing in Jesus Christ

Theme 31: The Poor, Christian Duty, and Ego

Theme 32: The Fear of Unknown Places

Theme 33: A Congregation with One Accord

Theme 34: The Armour of Light and Christian Knighthood

Theme 35: The Summation of Our Daily Life

Theme 36: Always Be of Good Cheer

Theme 37: Christians Know Who Wins and the Final Score

Theme 38: The Truest of Truths about Knowledge

Theme 39: Discernment and Spiritual Blindness

Theme 40: Understanding A Christian’s Separation from the World

Theme 41: Death and What Happens

Theme 42: Being Called is a Heart Issue

Theme 43: Born Again into a New Spiritual Person

Theme 44: Plain Language and Puff Speak

Theme 45: Where the Crossover Begins

Theme 46: Christian Behavior and Self-Control

Theme 47: Upside Down Values

Theme 48: What the Pallbearers Will Be Carrying

Theme 49: It is All Downhill to Hell

Theme 50: Your Life is being Pondered by God

Theme 51: The Odds of Success with a Half-Full Holy Spirit

Theme 52: The Spiritual Self is the Invisible You

Theme 53: Jesus’ Fish Fry and Bringing Christians to Him

Theme 54: The Stewardship of All Living Things

Theme 55: Christian Activism and Lifeguarding the Issues

Theme 56: He Will Not Leave You Stranded: A Story of Horses

Theme 57: Silo Thinking: The Reverberation of Circular Content

Theme 58: Knowledge and Inevitable Sorrow

CHAPTER 4:   SATAN’S INFLUENCE

Theme 59: Racism and A Christian’s Acceptance of Difference

Theme 60: Old Fools Seldom Learn

Theme 61: Satan’s Forces of Disorder

Theme 62: Distortion’s Viewpoint

Theme 63: Lies as Lethal Weapons

Theme 64: Blinded Minds and Blinded Times

Theme 65: Spiritual Warfare: Where’s the Battlefield?

Theme 66: The Imbalance of Balance

Theme 67: The Clatter of Self Praise

Theme 68: Stealing in Progressive Steps

Theme 69: Morally Unfit to Lead Others

Theme 70: The New Creature Must Watch at the Walls

CHAPTER 5:   CONCLUSION

Theme 71: The Power Source of Everything

CHAPTER 1

Relationship with God

Theme 1: Landmarks as Ethical GPS’s

Read: Proverbs 22:28 Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.

Reflection: Young people often believe that this world started with their birth on earth. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Generations after generations have lived and died creating the foundation for human existence. However, to the vain young, cell phones were always a part of human history and its landscape. Their vanity causes the young’s short-sightedness, and the sooner young people understand to respect their elders, the sooner they will come to appreciate their elder’s contribution to social order. In Proverbs 22:28 the writer advises the reader Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set. In other words, don’t forget about those important things established by previous generations by destroying the physical monuments that remind us of their importance. Landmarks, therefore, are reminders of the people of the past to those people living in the present to carry on the traditions in the future established by previous generations. Most notably in the Old Testament, stones were often stacked to remember the historical events of the past. God and important events of God should never be forgotten, and that is precisely why we have the recorded documents of the Old and New Testaments. They are a landmark of all the events that historically and spiritually transpired in man’s relationship with God. From the Mosaic Law in the Old Testament to the New Covenant and Good News of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in the New Testament, the Bible is the landmark to establish historical and moral instruction that …thy fathers have set (Proverbs 22:28). Landmarks are often just thought of as having physical properties. But what about the landmark decisions made in a court of law. The word landmark pertains and takes on a wide spread application to many people. Just like the US Supreme Court’s landmark case decision would affect 322 million US citizens, the landmark Bible decisions influence billions of people worldwide. Good things for society and good advice should not be forgotten because they add stability to a fallen and unstable world. The Bible, therefore, is a moral landmark for all of us to respect; it is an ancient landmark established by the many writers whose hands were moved by God to record the moral principles of Godly behavior. With such landmarks, the living can distinguish between right and wrong and good and evil. The Bible, therefore, is the landmark that serves as the barometer for human behavior, and it assesses our actions accordingly. Those people who read the Bible -- the Instruction Manual for Life -- and follow it are carrying on the moral traditions established by it. God’s advice is as good today as it was among the ancients. But those people who do not read, understand, and apply the Bible in their daily lives miss the greatest ancient landmark of all, and add in removing it from the minds of the present generations. Therefore, a landmark is a guidepost of heritage and tradition that gives direction to those who need it; it’s a sign established by those who have passed this way before us. Some people will stop and read and, therefore, understand its meaning and the significance of the contribution made by ancestors, while others will hurriedly walk passed without hardly a notice as to its meaning and impact on their lives. The wise will stop and ponder, while the foolish will ignore.

Discussion Questions

1. Can one learn to not repeat past mistakes without landmarks?

2. Do landmarks strengthen bonds among a culture?

3. Name some landmarks in the US that strengthens the culture?

4. When one country wants to destroy another country’s history, what does it destroy first?

5. Can you discuss some instances of this happening today?

Theme 2: God’s Residence in You

Read: 2 Corinthians 6:16: … for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them….

Reflection: Many people believe that to worship God that they must attend the physical structure of a church. And while attending church service in the physical structure of a church with other Christians helps to comfort Christians and helps to bring non-Christians to Christ, and while Christ called the church His bride, the fact remains that because your physical body contains the Holy Spirit, the in-dwelling of God in you— by God’s grace you have been granted a holy structure unto yourself. That’s right! Because Jesus has given your body a comforter the Holy Spirit, you are considered by God a holy place—a temple unto yourself. Furthermore, because your physical body is a holy temple, you must take care and provide for it with the due respect it deserves. Because the Holy Spirit is God in-dwelling in you, you and your body have become holy and you must treat your holy, worldly vessel with respect. Therefore, you must act as a Christian to give your body the holy respect that you give to God. When you don’t, your Holy Spirit is hurt, and you know it because your behavior is not befitting of a holy place. So, you are both a physical and a spiritual body. The physical body takes up physical space, and the spiritual body takes up spiritual space. And any time that you offend the physical body you are probably are also offending the spiritual body as well. For instance, if you drink too much alcohol one Friday night, the next morning your physical body will hurt. The body will more than likely have a headache. In the same process, whereby you offend the physical body, your over indulgence in alcohol also grieves the soul (your spiritual self) because of your lack of control. In fact, sometimes long after our physical body has recovered and the headache is gone, our soul still hurts and aches because of what we did. You know the feelings that accompany the infraction. You feel worthless—that you have let yourself down, and you feel stupid for having done so. This is not your physical-self talking to you; it is your Holy Spirit talking to you and helping you to understand how your actions have offended God within you. So, unchristian behavior is both physically and spiritually detrimental, for long after the physical harm has been eased the spiritual harm lasts a lot longer. Sometimes, in fact, the spiritual harm remains a part of a bad memory for the rest of your life. The good news is that God will forgive the Christian if he genuinely seeks forgiveness. We all fall short of the glory of God. But, you, because you are a holy place, need to be careful about how your treat yourself because the Holy Spirit is God’s residence in you.

Discussion Questions

1. Where is the location of God’s church?

2. How should the location of God’s church influence your worldly behavior?

3. If your behavior is harmful to your body, does it also harm your soul?

4. Which harm often lasts longer, the harm to the body or the harm to the soul?

Theme 3: Personal Problems: Our Private Basement Brawls

Read: Corinthians 12:7 …thorn in the flesh.

Reflection: When in Corinthians 12:7 Paul writes to the church in Corinth, he doesn’t want them to exalt him into a higher place than human. Despite seeing and speaking to Jesus on the road to Damascus and despite him being an apostle for Christ and enduring beatings and shipwreck, Paul still has his own human and personal battles, which he calls a thorn in the flesh given to him by Satan. And although he has asked Jesus to take it away three times, Jesus does not but tells Paul that His (Jesus’) …grace is sufficient for thee for my strength is made perfect in weakness. It is hard enough for an ordinary mortal to accept the fact that seemingly our prayers are not answered, although God’s timeline is different from ours. But imagine Paul’s frustration when even after being commissioned by Christ to be His instrument to establish churches that Paul is not relieved from the thorn in his flesh that constantly reminds him that he is human. And Paul uses this thorn, a regrettable but persistent failing of his own, as an example for the Christians at Corinth to not put him upon a pedestal because he is an ordinary man who must fight Satan himself every day and to be reminded every day about how much even he, an apostle, needs the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Therefore, Paul’s affliction is just a little reminder to the people of Corinth that all power stems from and grows from Jesus Christ. Could Christ cure what ails and reminds Paul of his humanness? Certainly. But instead of curing Paul of his failing, He reiterates the fact that He is the powerful one and that He will help Paul by giving him the strength to fight Satan, but He will not simply make the human affection disappear. Knowing, understanding, and receiving the power of God in one’s life is, therefore, a two-way street. Prayer and meditation to draw closer to God will help, but human beings must endure their earthly state—while knowing that God knows of it—and that He will give them enough strength to temporarily ward off Satan. Paul’s fight with Satan over his affliction will continue, just like our own afflictions, because we live in a fallen world where our own perfection is impossible. Thus, our private basement brawls will continue. We all fall