Introduction

Over the decades of my spiritual Walk, I have been taught many beautiful truths about God’s Love, and I have been taught a lot of nonsense. I have relaunched this web site to describe how I have found peace in reading the Bible, in worshipping in gatherings, and in engaging with others, whether they believe the same things I do or not. What may be even more important to some of you, I’ll describe how I identified and discarded the theological garbage others have pushed at me.

I hope I can help you in your spiritual Walk! I know your Walk will be different from mine, because we are each unique and beautiful creations made by God, so your outlook, your experiences, and your ways of thinking are not the same as mine. I also know it is in those differences that we have the greatest potential help each other learn and grow. Let me share a little about myself that I think may be relevant to this site’s purpose:

  • 1) I got my college degree in computers from a university specializing in engineering
  • 2) One of the roles I have had in a local church was directing the choir for twenty years
  • 3) Both my father and mother have seminary degrees, but I do not

For my spiritual Walk to have integrity, I must engage both my engineering mindset and my faith in God; to do just one or the other, to bring less than my whole self in worship of God, would be a dangerous heresy. Please, as you read through this site, bring your whole self as well! In my experience, I have seen where God loves each of us wholly and completely, with all our successes, failures, and rebelliousness, and when God meets us where we are, God leads us in ways to make us more complete and more loving.

I have developed some tactics that help me apply a logical critical thinking approach to learning from the Bible, from others, and from God, and I will present those in a deeper dive on a different page. I have found the scripture passage in Philippians 2:12-13 that I feel instructs me to apply who I am as I think about my spiritual Walk:

  • Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence but much more now in my absence, work on your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (NRSVUE)

Part of my thinking approach is to acknowledge those truths that I accept by faith as a foundation for everything else I believe, and I’ll go into those beliefs on a separate page. Not only does this follow intellectual processes like geometry proofs and the scientific method, this is also similar to how Paul developed in his Walk with God. There are two urgent messages for me in this passage from 1 Corinthians 1:21-25:

  • For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. (NRSVUE)

In this passage, Paul points to the death and resurrection of Jesus as the foundation of what he believed. He built his faith and life on this truth, going back to the road to Damascus where he met and talked with the risen Jesus. Paul knew what he heard, and nothing would make him deviate from his personal experience with Jesus. I want the same for you and for me, that we recognize when God moves in us, and we build our lives from the testimony of our experience with God.

The other key point for me in this passage is that all my engineering background and disciplined logic is useless if I use it just to build myself up. When I give myself to God, when I accept God’s lordship over me, only then will I benefit from applying my talents to God’s glory.

My commitment to you is that I will write these web site pages with honesty and courage as God leads me to share.

My wish for you is that you will hear God speak in your heart and be blessed with a closer relationship with your Creator.

Amen!

JM