Episode 23 - What Gets in the Way of Understanding God

Very SPECIAL episode!!! First, it's the first episode available in true video format meaning that you can watch me perform the podcast with visual aids throughout (link below)! Secondly this is part one of two, which all leads to an explanation how Free Will and God's Plan work together (no paradox here, folks). And, of course, I address the biggest thing that gets in the way of understanding God for most people.

Watch the Video Version: https://youtu.be/kZxJRQe5vvQ

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
(Auto-generated)I've had a great many people show me that clearly one of the most misleading and misunderstood

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hidden concepts that blocks them from having a better understanding and feeling closer
to God and his history with mankind and creation of our universe, people have often shown me
that one of the roots of their feelings of disconnect from God is in fact time, or rather
the way that we think about time.

(00:27):
We're born into this world and progress through it all the way to our deaths.
It's one of our absolutes when we make the natural calculations before decisions are
made.
Time will progress forward.
We will always be older.
Time stops for no man.
You're not getting any younger.
It goes without saying.

(00:50):
So we rarely think about time.
Not objectively.
It's becoming grained in us and we're completely submerged in it.
It's something that human race has dealt with since the dawn of, well, you know.
But God would exist outside of time.
He's the beginning, middle and the end.
He's not ruled by time.

(01:11):
Is a computer programmer ruled and governed in his everyday life by the rules that he
writes in his own code?
But that makes sense.
And when you ask him for help, how often is it that things that you had ultimately no
idea would lead to your help were already in motion before you asked for help?

(01:32):
God is infinitely clever in the ways that he guides help to us.
Like trick shots, but with a near infinite amount of variations to consider.
I don't know how many of you have gone through this, but I sometimes am able to catch the
back trail on how help arrived and several times it's been one of those things where

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help began the journey to me before I even asked for it.
And I don't think that was so much an idea of God saying, yeah, he's going to want help
with this, but it might be, who knows?
But in certain situations, I think it may have been, I asked for help, just kind of

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reached back, made an adjustment, help arrived.
I guess the point I'm getting at is that he would exist differently than us in time and
would have significantly more control in where he or rather when he made interventions or
acted.

(02:40):
God is infinitely clever and we constantly do him a disservice by trying to fit him into
this box that we made for him that, well, God couldn't do that.
We don't have an inkling of what God could do.
Imagine God making small changes to the world and its events, not as we do as they happen,

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but as an artist changing different parts of a sculpture, which represents the whole
of our existence throughout time.
God knows every atom in your body because even as science and physics teach us, every
single atom in this universe was part of a singularity, a single point in space.
And we had the entirety of our existence spring from that one point.

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God said, let there be light.
And there was the brightest light that could ever exist.
The big bang.
God knows every possible path you can pick and watches your future change with every
decision.
Suffice it to say, God knows what you're going through.
God knows that you have to face down demons.

(03:50):
God knows that you aren't always going to be aware of your struggles with them, nor
will there always be a struggle.
We can be pretty complacent when we sin, especially at a time when survival has seemingly been
conquered and our focus seems to be entertainment.

(04:11):
Wow, let's go hand in hand.
For me, when I think sinful, mainly I think of the things that disconnect us from one
another.
I think of the things that harm your neighbor, that teach humanity to distrust, that further
separate us from each other.
And we can be so much better than that.

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And God knows it.
And God understands things about us inside and out better than we ever will.
But we will never be fully aware of God nor his intentions or his methods, nor much more
than an iota of his majesty when we are confined in these bodies.

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Something cannot happen while we are still in this world of that which has form.
The human mind is just too limited to comprehend it, and our physical senses are just too constrained
to provide context.
Our senses have only ever experienced the world of that which has form.

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It isn't until we leave this form and spread out a bit after the death of our bodies that
we are going to be able to understand more of it.
Though even the concept of understanding is a physical concept.
While we are here in these bodies, we will never be able to understand God or how everything

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works.
True, I lay down a pretty solid logical roadmap in my book and on the podcast, but you will
never have everything you need to know for certain.
It's never going to be 100%, and so we come to the three most important aspects of our
relationship with God.

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He doesn't ask us for our understanding or for us to know for certain, because he knows
that those are impossible tasks.
He instead asks the first of the most important aspects, that we believe in him without that
absolute proof.
He doesn't ask us to know the outcome of every possible decision and to choose that which

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will have the least negative effects in the long run for everybody, because he knows we
can't see that far ahead.
We can only guess and predict.
Instead he asks the other two most important aspects.
He asks that we are kind to each other, that we do for each other, that we act from love

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and that we bond and connect, because regardless of what lies ahead in the hidden future that
hides one second away from the noses on our face, acting from these motivations resonates
through us and it amplifies.

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And it's something that without ever having to apply objective thought to it, we inherently
know how to be good.
We understand it at our cores.
And the third of the most important aspects of our relationship with God is that we trust
him.

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As I said before, you can't understand him, and motivations are a human concept that is
far below God's complexities, so we can't know his motivations or where he will lead
you if you elect to follow his lead.
So he asks faith of us, for us to trust that he will care for you, that he won't reject

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or betray or harm you.
I believe that the way that we exist in time acts as a pretty solid disruptor of these
things, so please try to remain aware that all that has happened is there right now.
It's just as real as this moment, or this moment, or this one.

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It's just as forgive the pun, present.
And all those possible paths that we might yet still choose, they are there already,
moving and shifting and changing as each decision is taken and each action is made.
And God is the only one that knows all that came before, and where all the paths ahead

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of us individually lead.
Let go of the thought that we know what best to choose.
Make your decisions and acts out of a place of love and generosity and patience and understand
that we can't understand and just believe in God, and by way of that, put your trust
in him.
It's the only way to live that makes sense.