All There Is To Know

All you need to know is the truth about yourself and about right and wrong. How can this happen unless you have access to God?

The Lord Jesus stands in front of you today and says you have access to truth and to God in Him. For God himself is truth, and truth points to God. Jesus says, "I am the truth! No one comes to the Father but by me."

On September 19, 1985 a devastating earthquake rocked Mexico City’s General Hospital sending Dr. Franciso Bucio crashing five stories down into the basement of the structure. For hours on end the young doctor bellowed in frustration hoping that someone would rescue him from the metal and timber and wires and plaster that crushed his body. Finally, after four days of crying out, dehydrated and perilously close to death, someone heard his plea. In no time at all the rescue team found Dr. Bucio and removed all of the debris that was on top of him--setting Dr. Bucio free.



You have intellectual debris all around you, about to crush you. You have been crying for help. Cultures and religions have been trying to help you, but only one person hears your plea--the Lord Jesus Christ. He will set you free.

The Fundamentals

I have a son who was always impatient with his school. He constantly asked me why we should go to school. "School is useless," he would complain. I told him he needed to go to school to get knowledge about the basics of life, things like two plus two is four. He of course replied, "But I already know that. Shall I stop going to school now?"




"NO," I said, "There are more basics to know." He asked, "if we are only studying the basics, when will get done with studying the basics?"

In one sense we will never be done, for what is basic to one discipline may be advanced for another discipline.

Jesus has given us the basics of the basics of what we need to know. He answers the fundamental, intellectual questions. All you need to know is the truth about yourself and the truth about right and wrong.

How do I find out all I need to know and that is right for me to know? Turn to Jesus for direction for this intellectual impediment. He will tell you all you should know about yourself; reveal things about you from His Word, the Bible, that gives you deep insight, as to how you have been put together; what makes you function. How you can be freed from your moral bondage. The answer is actually quite simple. Get to know Jesus.

Is Your Destiny Written?
Slum Dog Millionaire’s Reality Show

Ramesh Richard PhD Thd
www.rameshrichard.com

The phrase, “It is written,” frames both ends of Slum Dog Millionaire which claimed every worthy movie award in 2009. The story warms the hearts of young millions of India (and the world over) in karmic conviction: nothing can stop destiny.

Yet that same conviction generates frustration among the disadvantaged over being left out of the good life. A deep sense of injustice from an impersonal “it is written” causes confusion, resignation, even laziness in the present circumstance. If all circumstances of life are impersonally written, then one had better resign to the present situation. If one’s own and other’s situations are impersonally written, then nothing needs to motivate our initiative to personally succeed, or to help others who are caught in what is impersonally written and inexorably enforced. One’s best options are to try the hand of luck, for who knows, lucky breaks could have been written into one’s story.

Contrary to a fatalistic, impersonal happening of life, the Bible speaks about a personal writing of each human life. “In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed” (Psalm 139:16).

A personal sovereign God has written a book on all reality, including your life. Just like SDM’s original story was written by a creative author with a thought and a plot; and just like the movie director adapted and produced the award-winning movie, God has authored and produces your life. Just like nothing in the book or the movie happens without meaning, nothing happens to any of us by impersonal forces at work. A personal, all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God, has personally developed the theme and the plot of your life.

God is concerned about you, and the details of your life. He has planned for them and provided for them. You are not left to resignation nor randomness, but to discovery, and action. God’s sovereignty includes your freedom to choose as well as facing the consequences of your choice. In fact, when the Bible uses the phrase, “it is written,” it is to point to a body of writing that relates God’s story and his plan for the human race.

If we judge ourselves worthy of eternal life then we would humbly accept His provision for His personal purpose for us. God sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as part of His story for humanity and to provide for your entire story, from now to eternity. He has not only written in the length of our days in his book; he has written out the way we need to live for the rest of our days. You are a part of plan that you don’t fully know, but is working itself out daily, not impersonally, but in a supervised manner. Indeed you know the Person who wrote the plan.

You can choose to believe SDM’s view of reality—a life based on an impersonal “it is written;” or one which views circumstances knowing that the creative, power of a Personal Author has woven an award-winning story around your life. Now, you can realize that your life is already filled with meaning, and you can begin to live it with purpose and initiative. I invite you to a confident, hope-filled, intentional relationship with the Sovereign God. The phrase, “it is written,” assumes a Writer. Write me at the website above.

Limitations

Different cultures have different values. In some cultures people like to eat dog; yet in other cultures they like to beef. Beef eaters don't like dog eaters. They wonder, "How can you eat a dog? They are our pets!" But other cultures wonder, "How can you eat beef?"



You have different colors of skin, speak different languages, come from different cultural backgrounds, and so you eat different foods! You can complicate the whole thing because there are monkey eaters, and pig eaters, and vegetarians. And in some cultures they even have man eaters--humans who eat humans!

So, there is major confusion. We have minds that are confused, limited, and error-prone. We lie to ourselves. We feel omniscient. We think we know everything, even though we know a minuscule amount of what really is.

We can't know all there is to know because of human limitations. But we also find it difficult to know all we need to know, all that is right to know. Where can we find the answers to these intellectual queries?

Actually, it takes God to know all there is to know. But it also takes God, for us to know all we need to know and all that is right to know.


Why? He knows our needs better than we know our needs.

All You Need

We don't know all that we need to know. Could we know all that is right to know? How can we decide and who can decides what is right, let alone knowing what is right to know?

Usually, cultures, background, training, makes us comfortable with what we think is right. We are trained by those around us. Culture is a thing of the mind. Some of us like to eat with our hands, others with spoon and forks, and yet others with chop sticks!



I can make a case that eating with the hands is the right way because that is the original way, using what is called the original or first is the right way fallacy. In this error, I would commit what someone called the chronological snobbery.

However, chronological snobbery is sometimes used by younger cultures, who say that what is newer is better because it is newer. This kind of snobbishness doesn't establish anything except the person's snobbishness. Of course, if I think my way is right because it is my way; that is the height of pride and error.

So, what is right who is right?

Actually, it takes God to know all there is to know. But it also takes God, for us to know all we need to know and all that is right to know.

Stray Dawg Millionaire

If the 2009 Oscar-hogging Slum Dog Millionaire resonates with vicarious human yearnings, recent stories of millionaires and billionaires who have strayed into suicidal selfishness resonates with any one who is on the verge of personal loss during this time of global gloom.

So before you do any thing stupid and sinful, whether you are on billionaire lists and possibly heading to prison; or merely an aspiring businessman on the way to new millions, hold on, and read on.

I’m going to call you “dawg,” not like in “slum dog,” a phrase which evoked the objections of slum-dwellers in Mumbai, but dawg. Urbandictionary.com allows any close human friend to be called dawg.

So I speak as a friend to friend, dawg to dawg, a former stray who got adopted addressing human dawgs without a spiritual home. Let me tell you where I think you went astray, and see if you agree with me.

You strayed in your heart away from home. Straying begins in the heart for from your heart flows all life’s issues, views, and practices.

1. Did you set your heart on wrong objects as ultimately worthy?
2. Did you compromise your own principles of character and integrity?
3. Did you misrepresent your deals and make them sound easier and better than
they really were?
4. Did you refuse to look at the weak links, the fatal weaknesses in your business
model?
5. Did you maintain a confident and isolated facade, a face of confidence when you
knew your deal was dying?
6. Did you take ownership of that which you were merely entrusted, flout good
processes and due diligence?
7. Did you hide information that was material to others’ welfare?
8. Did you speculate assuming you could control the future, and speculate with
what is not your own?
9. Did you get lazy morally, organizationally, and financially?
10. Did you get greedy, even unknowingly so, and the economic crisis has
highlighted our own heart of greed?

Etc. (You can add more self-probing comments to this list.)

Well then, you qualify for the “stray dawg” epithet.



You were desirable to the public as any street-running, stray-dog. You actually were a leader among stray dogs. You led others away from the right path. They shouldn’t have followed you, but they did. That’s the mentality of animal packs. You strayed, and led them. Your family, colleagues, employees, and investors followed you. Now, every one has gone astray, we have all turned every one to our own ways.

In some places, they throw stray dogs into pounds, neuter them, even get rid of them.

Now that you are caught, and before you are permanently neutered, I’ve got good news waiting on the other side of this present reality.

1. The essence of straying is the desire to live by your own definition of life and the pursuit of your own interpretation of reality. In other words, you have strayed into usurping God’s role in and for your life.
2. Since you’ve offended God, the penalty for your transgression is both immediate and ultimate.
a. Shocked, numb, and bewildered, you face social ostracism. You didn’t start out wanting to defraud any one, but greed got the better of your heart, and you had to play the role. One $50b fraudster confessed to his sons, “It’s all one big lie.” And another admitted, “It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten.” Broken billionaires have recently taken their lives and are euphemistically said to be “found dead” in their homes or on railway lines. Others face the immediate penalty of prison.
b. The penalty for sin is also ultimate. All wrong-doers are consigned to an eternal dawg pound. Many feel you too must join the ranks of the eternally lost.
3. Except the rest of us are awaiting the same eternal fate. All wrongdoers, the whole pack of dawgs (you, me and all humanity), has become vulnerable to immediate and eternal penalty.
4. The only way to alleviate, and remove the penalty of heart-straying is to have Some One adequate and appropriate, i.e., God Himself, exchange our penalty with us. Otherwise, only hopelessness awaits us.
5. That substitutionary exchange has indeed happened. God took our penalty by placing it on His Son, the Lord Jesus. Jesus was exposed to and experienced the full effects, a frontal brunt, the final experience of our penalty—death.
6. If we accept God’s strategic initiative as personally applying to us, the ultimate penalty of an eternal dawg pound will no longer threaten us.
7. What about the immediate penalty that we face for having strayed? Here too, there is good news. God is willing to adopt you into a permanent relationship of eternal sonship. Even if you have been gravely wrong, and are facing the immediate hell of legal consequence, God He becomes your dawg-shelter.

I heard of a dog adoption and welfare group (“dawg”) whose motto is a “no kill shelter,” whose mission is to “provide a safe and loving environment for dogs awaiting permanent adoption.” Whether billionaire, millionaire, or only formerly so, you can be adopted in to a safe and loving, home and family environment—into God’s heart.

In the Bible’s vocabulary, “adoption” is a technical term. God adopts “strays” into his family, who carry negative psycho-spiritual baggage; exhibit pathological behavior; and are too clever for their own and other’s good. He is willing to adopt you off the street and into His family. In an ascent down and up again, the nouveau pauvre, now literally a slum-dog heading to the pound, can actually become a spiritual millionaire. The love of money which caused the heart to stray and entrapped him has now been replaced with the only on worthy of ultimate love.

Adoption is also a legal term. Just like the law recognizes adoptees as heirs, God invites you to be His inheritance, regardless of how much you have made, and lost. He is willing to confer His name, and heap family privileges on you. House-dogs may only eat the crumbs of the master’s table, but they still eat better than stray-dogs. Indeed, stray-dawgs, become God’s house-dawgs, the family and friends of the Most High One. However, the Lord Jesus welcomes you to his home, to possess all the rights of his family. You can go from being a stray-dawg to house-dawg.
Write to me if you want to be adopted by Gawd .