What does God want from us?

Devils Punchbowl Lake, Central Sierra Nevadas, CA

September 20, 2018

     God does not view mankind like we are plants and animals on his farm on earth, and that he is watching and waiting to harvest produce from us for his own personal use. God was not needy in any way before he decided to create the earth and mankind dwelling on it. He did not create us for his benefit, he created us for our benefit. You may find that hard to believe, but God is not like human beings. His great supernatural holiness and love allow him to confer gifts on people without expecting to receive back benefits as a condition of that love. God’s love is one which is conferred without conditions, and is a kind which is totally selfless, unlike human love. Scripture teaches us:

“…………..the God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands; nor does he receive man’s service as if he were in need of it. Rather, it is he who gives to all life and breath and everything else.”  –Acts 17, 24-25

Having said all that, God does expect and desire things from his creatures, but these expectations are more like what humans hope for their sons and daughters: good character and success in life. We love our kids and delight in their accomplishments and the respect they earn from their fellow human beings. As parents, we light up with pride when our children live exemplary lives on earth, because their success is our success. We share in their joy because they came from us and will always remain a part of us. God’s relationship with us is very similar to parents’ relationships with their children on earth, and he similarly delights in us when we are doing well.

His ultimate delight and joy will be when we are reunited with him in heaven forever. That is his ultimate hope for us and he works hard on earth on our behalf to make it happen. However, there is one thing that can thwart him from accomplishing this: our free will. He will not force us to return to him, or to love him, or to obey him. He has granted to all humans what he has: the right to freely conduct our lives the way we want to. He values this gift so much that he will even allow us to turn our backs on him and exist apart from his love for eternity. But, it breaks his heart, just like if our own children turn away from us, and he similarly sorrows when we repudiate and reject him, and choose to suffer apart from him.

Why would we do this, you might ask. That same question is undoubtedly asked by every parent who has ever been rejected by their own children. There really is mostly no logical or reasonable answer that we can come up with, only those doing the rejecting know why they did it. And God is baffled as well when we choose to suffer without him for eternity, because when we do that we are acting against our own self interest. God undoubtedly knows what goes on in the minds of his creatures who reject him, but we may only be able to guess.

My opinion is that people reject God and are atheist or agnostic for two primary reasons or a combination of these two. 1) They are ignorant and think that God doesn’t exist because they have not put in enough time or effort to actually find out. 2) They suffer from human pride which chaffs under the idea that they be subordinate and obedient to a being far greater and holier than themselves, or to any being, for that matter.

These are serious and important issues which I will address in later postings, but for now let’s examine what God wants from us. There are really two major things that God wants  as revealed in the scripture passage below:

“Jesus said to him: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments the whole law is based, and the prophets as well.'”   –Matt 22, 37-40

The Bible quote above shows that God wants us to love him and love each other. It is really simple in concept but much harder to practice in everyday life. He wants us to love and obey him, because by doing that we become more and more like him, who is perfect in holiness and love. This in turn enables us to extend that same kind of love to our fellow human beings. That happens because when we love and obey God, he begins to live within us, and his very presence transforms us to be able to love hard to love humans with a kind of love that probably didn’t exist within us previously. So loving and obeying God is needed before we can truly love our fellow men with the God like love they need–selfless love.

That’s how it works, we need God to help us properly love others, as well as to stop sinning against them. Perfect love means that we don’t wrong our neighbors and we don’t do anything that would harm them in any way. If you are like me, you probably have tried to love others in this way, but found out like I did that I just didn’t possess within me the love I needed. I tried over and over, but finally realized that I would need help from God to do it. I found that the more completely I allowed God’s spirit to live within my spirit, the more that his love became my love.

Once we get this understanding, a major purpose of our lives is to work at keeping God’s spirit firmly within ours. This becomes our everyday focus and effort. But even then, we can never fully accomplish perfection in this life–but we can be at our best. After we die, God will perfect all people who earnestly desire it and want to live with him in heaven forever.

Next time:  What does a successful life on earth look like?

Finding God

Sand Dunes,  Death Valley National Park,  CA

September 13, 2018

As I mentioned last time, all people have embedded within their spirits and hearts a kind of knowing that God exists, sometimes faint and sometimes competing for our attention. Even though it seems like a message too good to be true, we all have a voice within that tells us of a being infinitely greater than we are who is responsible for the vast universe we live in, all the beauty we see every day, and all forms of life, including the highest form living here–mankind. If we think about it, the beauty and purpose and order we see all around us are like ever present heralds proclaiming that God is near. If we take the time, we can all strengthen that presence of God within by merely encouraging the fledgling knowing that he is there to grow enough to be felt.

I remember a time on the school playground, when I was about 5 years old, that I was looking up into the sky and wondering and hoping that I could really know God. I don’t know why I was thinking that, but I was. I also remember that with these questions and thoughts going through my mind came a pleasant feeling of peace and hope that reassured me it would happen. I had a knowing that I would meet God one day.

Looking back, I could recognize that God was actually responding to my thoughts instantly by being with me for that couple minutes of time. That’s really just how close God is to all of us at any moment in time. But when I was young, I was hoping to experience a radical face to face encounter where there was no doubt it was God. I found out later that while God does make miraculous visits to people, he usually comes in a “still small voice” like I heard that day. About 15 years later, I started experiencing and recognizing his presence regularly as he came to me each day, and I knew he was real.

The real God is not just a thought we might have of a distant being who is not interested in getting too close to us flawed and tainted human beings for fear of contaminating his holiness. Or that he thinks of us like cockroaches that he needs to spray from a distance with commandments and obligations which will make us better bugs that can be useful to him one day. No, he wants to be near us now, as we are, partner with us and fellowship with us. His only requirement is that we want to be with him too.

Instead, many of us tend to think of him as forever wanting to take vengeance on us for our sins and failures, watching us all the time hoping to detect the slightest mess ups, and even monitoring our thoughts about sin. That thinking, unfortunately, promotes fears which keep us away from him, because we human beings are prone to shame, often feeling unworthy and incurably flawed. We shouldn’t let ourselves be pressured by such thoughts. The awesomeness of the real God far surpasses the thoughts we might have of ourselves as he already knows what we are like, and despite this, his supreme desire is to comfort us and help us to improve.

I have met people who ask me why we need God anyway. Can’t we be good and successful on our own and without him? I have entertained these thoughts myself in the past and even my own children have posed these questions to me. When we think like this, we misjudge and dismiss the true character of God and why he wants fellowship with us. In fact, such questions can have an implied supposition that maybe God doesn’t exist anyway. Nurturing thoughts like these makes it more difficult to seek God, because the human default position to rely solely on ourselves seems not only safe, but can strongly appeal to our pride and desire to be self reliant and strong. But we must realize that the weaknesses we feel within actually stem from a life lived apart from him, with the only remedy being to return. Until we realize this and confront it head on, we can’t gain the tremendous benefit we would enjoy by partnering with God. And if we don’t come to the realization that God is truly real and truly here, we will probably never put out enough effort to seek and find him. That would be a tragedy.

I have discovered that God is a giving and loving God who wants to enhance our lives with his holiness and power and wisdom and love, with the ultimate goal of immortality and bliss in heaven with him forever. Don’t think of him as perhaps just patrolling the universe one day, and then unexpectedly finding mankind huddled and alone on earth, like orphans created through chance by the cosmos and needing to be rescued. He didn’t find us, he painstakingly planned us. I have learned that he made us and the entire universe and everything in it for a purpose, and that we are not orphans, but rather God’s children. That changes everything!

We actually came from him in the beginning and that he has the expectation and hope of us ultimately returning to him and sharing in his glorious perfection and love. He is not a stranger to us but like us in his very nature and spirit. This truth is very comforting because life in our massive universe can at times be intimidating and overpowering.

For me, it wasn’t until I searched for and found him in reality when I was about 26 years old, that a true understanding about why we are here on earth, who we really are, and who God is were revealed to me. Answers to questions like these, I began to realize, don’t come to me by my efforts to search them out and reason correctly with flawless logic to understand and therefore know. They came to me directly from him, through his spirit flowing through mine and bringing untold enlightenment. NO ONE can obtain this kind of wisdom without their embracing him. Alone, we can come only to flawed and incomplete knowledge, wisdom, love, and happiness, which are also temporary and will eventually die away and disappear. I wanted the eternal and ultimate, and I found that they are only present in God.

This is the main thing that I want you to take away from this website. If you find him, he will help you to do and know the rest. That is what I found out from my experiences with him. And he doesn’t teach you through logic or facts. He instead puts a knowing directly into your spirit from his spirit. It is the only way you will understand the profound mysteries of the universe, and of life, and of God himself. This is the great reward of seeking him with all your heart and eventually finding him. Only then will happiness and joy flood your heart, hope sustain you, and God’s presence within help you to be victorious and successful in life. I learned this myself 45 years ago, and his presence has been the springboard to success and satisfaction in life ever since.

And I want that same thing for each of you reading this–that is my entire goal, because knowing God is the answer for everything.

Next time:  What does God want from us?

Is Evolution Our Creator?

 

Cactus Flowers,  My Yard,  Fresno, CA

September 7, 2018

     As absurd as it might seem, the title above is not far from what large numbers of people believe in America today. And belief is truly what it takes to accept that dirt, water, rocks, chemicals, warmth, and sunlight somehow pulled it off all by themselves!  Wait………..what?

Yes, unthinking dead matter by itself was solely responsible for eventually bringing into existence every form of life today, plant and animal; all life that has ever existed as revealed in the fossil record; and which also created me the writer and you the reader of this narrative you are presently reading. This is a mighty large piece of “fact” that we are asked to swallow whole. Does it even make sense to do such a thing? In my mind a lot of red flags pop up challenging me: Where did our life within come from? Where did our thinking capacity originate? How did the awareness of ourselves as separate beings as well as our ability to study ourselves and the world around us spring into being? Are we just ultra sophisticated mud that simply is at a higher level than the mud that existed right before that first life sprang up? Or are we something entirely different than simply “new and improved” dirt, mud, and rock? Journey to Truth will present and make the case that we and all life are entirely different than matter, a wonderful and unique addition I must say. Deep inside, everyone knows this, but that fledgling understanding we find within needs to be protected, nurtured, and fertilized to make it strong enough to challenge the status quo and say enough is enough!

What’s wrong with evolution? The first thing that is wrong is that it is a theory that has never been proven, not a fact. Below, I will present evidence that I have gathered over the years which shows that evolution has little support from logic and reason.

First, science has not backed up evolution by explaining in detail how matter was able to generate something that is alive. Life is something that didn’t exist before, it is an addition to matter’s basic atoms with their protons, neutrons, and electrons. How does this life, which seems to have a mind of its own, launch out on its own, oblivious to the need to obey the laws of physics which heretofore dictated what matter could and could not do. NO more! Life moves where it wants to, when it wants to, how it wants to, and why it wants to. No, it is not just a part of matter, because it just won’t obey matter’s laws.

Also, scientists have attempted to create life in the laboratory, but despite decades of trying, no life has ever appeared. If matter created life, then we should be able to duplicate it in the lab.

Science also has not been able to explain exactly what life is, what it is made of, or what its connection to matter is. It is a complete unknown. It certainly isn’t generated by matter. If it was, then how do you explain how my elderly Mother was talking to the nurse one minute, and then two hours later was cold and still. The matter that made up her body still existed in essentially the exact same structure as when she was talking, but she was gone. Who and what is this “she”? She’s gone, but the matter is still here.

Evolution states that all life came from that first life, which was probably a single cell with extremely simple DNA. This DNA was improved little by little through random mutations probably billions of times until it created all forms of life that ever existed. No, the environment’s demands in which a life form existed didn’t prompt an improvement in that life, but rather it was a random mutation in its genetic code that did it. Science has never explained how randomness like this can team up in a huge unrelated chain of changes to improve a life form, each change working in harmony with all previous ones to improve that life. Can you imagine how many beneficial changes it would take to go from a rudimentary single cell to a human being with arms and legs, a heart and other organs, a skeletal structure, a digestive system, eyesight, hearing, and a brain more sophisticated than the most powerful computer man has ever made? This would have taken literally trillions of changes working together to accomplish. My mathematical mind tells me that, logically, randomness cannot produce the order and function that we see in a human being. Why? Because randomness does not possess such fantastic ability. That science swallowed this whole, reminds me of a similar case from the past where scientists theorized that raw meat was capable of producing maggots. They thought this because when they left raw meat out in room temperature, maggots almost always eventually came crawling out. They subsequently discovered that when the meat was protected with netting that kept flies out, there were no more maggots. They eventually figured out that flies had laid eggs on the meat, and that maggots were merely baby flies! The meat had no power to create maggots, and eventually scientists will similarly realize that matter by itself also has no power to create life.

I will give you one last set of examples that help to discredit evolution as creator before moving on next time to a whole new world. But, if you want to read an excellent and rather complete expose of evidence which refutes evolution and supports the existence of God, I would highly recommend getting the book, THERE IS NO A GOD, How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind, by Antony Flew. The evidence he gives, as well as his life itself, present a very compelling picture.

The last thing I want to go over is the “evolutionary tree”, which has the first one celled life form at the bottom, the most complex life forms at the top, and intermediate forms in the middle–all connected together by “begat’ lines. Scientists insist that this tree exists, but the evidence says otherwise.

If you look closely at the fossil record, you will see different species appearing seemingly out of nowhere, increasing and then decreasing in number, until they disappear from the fossil record. There should be fossils which show a smooth transition from one form of life to another, but we don’t see it. Each new life form that appears and disappears seems to exist alone, as if it rose up on its own. Scientists have tried to find fossils to fill in these gaps, but have found almost none which support an orderly transition from one form of life to another.

And, lastly, we have the “Cambrian Explosion”, where most of the major groups of animal phyla suddenly appeared in the fossil record. This happened about 540 million years ago without any record of a long line of precursor ancestors which changed little by little over long periods of time. This presents an almost insurmountable barrier to evolution’s requirement of slow change fueled by random changes in DNA over time to produce entirely new creatures.

In the end, science refuses to withdraw its theory of evolution, simply because something is needed to account for the plethora of life we see at the present and in the past. They use the same logic as they did in explaining that the meat produced the maggots–because they saw creatures coming from the meat that weren’t there before. Similarly, on the earth they see life now that wasn’t there before, so……………..duh, the earth must have produced it!

The problem with scientists is that they refuse to acknowledge the existence of a whole separate world where God and other spiritual beings exist. They insist that matter is all there is. However, when I look at myself, I see a spirit being living in a physical body. My body is material like the earth, but the me inside is a spirit, like God is. When I die, I will leave my body behind, which is not me, while Dave, the real me, heads into the spiritual world where God dwells.

Studying science can only explain how the physical world functions. That is why trying to find God by searching through the material world is a fruitless endeavor, as is also trying to prove that God doesn’t exist. You need to search for God where he is.

Next time: Finding God

Why are we here?

Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, CA

                                                                                         September 2nd, 2018

Since the beginning of time, human beings have wrestled with, wondered about, and speculated about the central question concerning human life on earth: Why are we here?

Every human being who has taken the time to examine life has encountered this question which can’t be ignored. It gets into his mind, penetrates his psyche, and ultimately lodges deeply in his heart. The heart can’t rest until it gets some kind of answer. Just any answer won’t do, it has to be an answer that a person truly believes, that resonates as real. Therefore it takes time and effort to come to even a temporary answer that can satisfy for the moment, but which begs for more probing, more investigating, and more life experiences.

And there is a kind of pressure one feels not to wait too long, not to wait until too much time passes by, because we know that the clock of life is ticking relentlessly down to its end. That end of life comes to all of us–will it even come unexpectedly, suddenly, and tragically tonight? We don’t know.

This is what all people on earth are eventually faced with as they go through life, and answers to the question, “Why are we here?”, can become a desperate need. You may be there right now.

This website’s primary purpose is to answer this very question, and to provide you with the tools and understanding to help you become victorious and successful in life. There are no easy cliches or plans or fixes or answers that will do the job quickly or completely–it usually takes time and effort on your part, hence the name of this website is “Journey” to Truth.

The first question that needs answering is: Are we alone? Did our existence get started simply by chance through the evolution of some rudimentary life form which rose up on its own from a favorable mix of chemicals, water, warmth, and perhaps a random lightning strike sometime in the distant past hundreds of millions of years ago? And then this life form improving little by little through probably billions of random mutations in its very simple genetic code, eventually producing every single different form of life on earth, including modern man? This has become the common belief and mantra of a majority of Americans today, even Christians, and is taught in our public schools as fact.

If evolution was responsible for the creation of mankind, as I have just briefly described, then in some people’s minds there would simply be no reason believe in God. Mankind was produced naturally by the earth and is actually on its own, and the idea of God as the creator, as Christianity and most other religions on earth attest to, is simply MADE UP to meet some kind of human need. And any and all pronouncements and commandments this God is said to have given are actually put forward by deluded human beings. Why should we obey these people from the past who may be no smarter and probably much less knowledgeable than we are? These kinds of thoughts have led many in this country to abandon their faith in God that was taught to them in their youth. This has led to the precipitous rise in the numbers of people who label themselves as atheists, and also to the rise of the cousins of these atheists–the “non-religious, non-believer” category of people.

But, far from liberating these people from the shackles of religious tyranny, the burden of oppressive rules and beliefs, and giving them freedom to fashion their own lives and behaviors, many find themselves subjected to a life without meaning, without lasting purpose, without peace, without true happiness and joy, and eventually ending in a life of declining health in old age with no hope for the future. As a result, suicide in America has risen to become one of the major killers in almost all age categories. In the end, life’s purposes and success, and the arms of the God they deny open in a beckoning embrace of love, become forever lost as a dark despair tightens its grip and chokes out the life that could have been. Only you can prevent this hopelessness from overtaking you.

Next time:  Is the evidence pointing to evolution as creator as good as or better than that which supports God as creator?

JOURNEY TO TRUTH

August 28, 2018

The Truth Dawns

      Hi readers! Welcome to my first ever blog (practically first use of the internet). My name is Dave Warmerdam and I’m hoping to share some of my life and wisdom with you through this medium. As it evolves over time I may begin posting at regular intervals with different topics and perhaps a weekly Q&A.  As always, I welcome all respectful discussion and questions you may have about the things I write or about anything. Below you’ll find a brief summary of what I plan to accomplish with this site and a little about me.

This website is for all people yearning to know the purpose of life: Why we are here, who we are, where we came from, where we go at death, what a successful life looks like, and what kind of life we will live after death.

This is a Christian website, meaning that it parallels the message of the Bible while not being based on any particular Christian religion. It is for people of any faith, for believers and non-believers alike, and even for atheists. It will tell you the truth and help make sense of life. The only requirement of the reader is that he or she wants to know what life on earth is all about, yearns to have true success, wants to live with confidence, seeks peace, and desires direction and inspiration to live well.

Since this site aligns itself with and supports the Bible, I will cite scripture to lend support and clarity to my message when necessary. I will also have a goal of explaining some things that the Bible states that may seem contradictory or be difficult to understand. I will attempt to give clear answers to readers’ questions about the Bible, life, or about even seemingly offbeat topics such as do aliens exist, did evolution create humans, or are we living in a matrix-like world which is not real, but was actually created by some unknown intelligence with hidden purposes. Yes, I will try to answer all your questions, if possible.

On this site, all questions about life are fair game and inherently legitimate. If you wonder about something, then it needs to be understood and put to rest so that you can avoid getting stuck in a rut.

At this point I have no idea just how this website will evolve over time. The one thing I do know, however, is that the sky is the limit. This website is for you the reading public, and, really, whatever your needs are concerning life issues, I will try to help you with. Thank you in advance for taking the time and interest to read what I post.

Who am I?

My name is David C. Warmerdam and I am 70 years old at the present. I was raised in Fresno, CA as one of 5 children–4 boys and one girl. I’ve gone by “Dave” virtually my entire life and have earned a BA and MA in Geography at Fresno State University, as well as 3 teaching credentials.

My first major job was working for the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington D.C. Later, I became a teacher of a 5th grade elementary school class for three years, and then finally taught mathematics at a private high school in Fresno, where I retired in 2012 after teaching for 32 years. During that time I also spent many years coaching the sport of high school cross country.

I married in 1978, and my wife and I produced and raised 9 children, 5 boys and 4 girls, who now range from 20 to 38 years in age. We unfortunately divorced in 2017. My family is and always has been the joy of my life.

When I was working for the CIA in Washington D.C., I received a calling from God to learn the truth of life from him through time, and then later teach it to a world which would largely no longer realize why we are here.

That time is upon us now, hence I am starting this website. I pray to God that all people who visit this site receive a holy benefit directly from God, and have their lives lit up and changed by the Truth.

— Sincerely, Dave Warmerdam