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[[http://www.jesusnetwork.eu/de/jn_de_2020_01_06|Deutsche Version]] [[Start|| Wiki Start]] [[topics_collection_ix|| Themen Kollektion ix ]]

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====== Life with God ... ======

Monday, Jan 6, 2020. How does life with God work? Who is God? We need to be careful
about what we think about God, what we believe who he is. We need to be careful about
our life in general, to build it on solid ground. 

Let us talk about the overall framework of our life. Let us talk about this world, 
as it can be observed and experienced. And let us talk about the biblical promises, 
the message of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Let us talk about experiences
of Christians, and about the life with God, what it can be ... 

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** Human Life ... **

Human life is a fascinating story, starting with birth, with being an infant, with growing
up. It continues through adolescence, with hitting puberty. But life does not stop with
the adventurous parts of our youth. It does not stop with discovering our strengths and
talents. At some point, we start a professional education and enter working life. We
start to take over responsibility for our enterprise, for projects, goals, institutes and
sometimes even whole states. But life does not stop with discovering our strengths and
weaknesses. 

The time of professional development usually coincides with partnership, with
finding a woman or a man. Humans discover that men and women are made for love, 
that we need each other, that we are made for one another. Love is one of our hopes
and dreams, it is given to our life, deeply rooted into our soul, our desires, our biology
and chemistry. But life does not stop with the partnership. It continues and mostly, 
we found a family. The first kids come, and suddenly
the nights start to be full of activity. Young kids are fantastic, a real blessing to each
of our days! 

Human life does not stop with building a family. Kids grow up, and our work environment,
jobs and colleagues develop. Some companies break down, some states get into trouble. 
Other companies arise and succeed, states change and develop. New technology changes
our life all the time, human history has never stood still, there was always change. 

But continuing innovation is not the final point of our life either. We grow old, we
realize that parts of our body starts to deteriorate and to fail. We experience severe
illness and at some point, we become old. We realize that life will end. Often, it
is not easy for humans to accept death to come. All our plans need to be given up. We
have to let go - it is imposed to us. 

Is death the end? We could think it is, since we cannot see beyond usually. But the
biblical testimony tells us that death is not the end. It is just a limit which was 
imposed to mankind by God, the creator. Every human is limited to his life time, but
there is more to come. Life as we know it is not all. We will need to discuss
this in more detail later, and explore what can and will happen after death. For
today, let us just note the typical life circle as all humans experience it. 

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** God in all of it ... **

God wants to be in all of our life. That is one of the main statements of basically
all biblical books. The biblical books, starting from the opus of Moses, through the
historical books, the prophets, the psalms and wisdom literature, they all claim 
that God has made the earth, that God maintains the earth with its natural laws, with
animals and humans, with human mind and spirit and intelligence as well as the 
spiritual world.  

The world is a fascinating place, with many religions. It is a place where different
people have their own interpretation of how the world works. If you go into 
Islamic countries, you find social systems which impose Muslim religion to its inhabitants. 
Conversion is not an option and highly dangerous. In Africa and Asia, 
you find various versions of kingdoms and dictatorships, some of them under the 
name of democracy, but too many without real
freedom of speech or political choice. Some communist countries are extremely difficult,
and modern technology enables far reaching control. You also find countries with a lot
of freedom, with free choice of religion, with Christian tradition, and some with 
very secular cultural life. 

Modern free societies have developed on the background of the reformation and enlightenment. 
These societies have been a Christian movement - mixed with many political interests, 
but with some core Christian values which became law and order. But I am far from saying
that all what calls itself Christian would be good just by the fact that it uses the
name of Christ. Even Jesus himself had his fights with the establishment of his time, 
with the misuse of faith for various purposes, and with the misunderstanding of God. 

Let us explore the core Christian message, as we find it it the Old Testament and the New
Testament. Let us try to understand God in father, son and holy spirit. Who is he, the
one who is beyond this world, but also in this world? Who is he, who seems to be a mystery,
but at the same time openly available through biblical texts and Christian life, art,
literature and worship for 2000 years. How is life with God supposed to work? How 
can it work? What ever phase of life you are in, it will always be new and refreshing
to turn to God and explore his presence, his truth, his mercy, his love, his hope and
perspective for our life today and tomorrow! Let us go this way ... 
(Roland Potthast)

**This is part of the trilogy project "Faith of a Scientist".** 
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