Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Shalom Already, Not Yet

I just wanted to share a lecture that we learned last week in my Foundations of Christian Living and Thinking class. We covered the basics of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. With those 4, my teacher (Dr. Laurie Matthias) compared those with the four types of shalom.

For those who don't know what shalom means, it generally means "peace." Or as some might think, "life...as it should be." With that said, here are the four different types of shalom.

Creation: Shalom --> "peace, perfect happiness, harmony" - Cornelius Plantinga
AKA when God created the heavens and earth- along with all creation, including us.
Fall: Shalom Shattered --> Not at peace, brain is crazy, conflicts, broken relationships. "not the way it ought to be."
AKA when Adam & Eve, human kind first sinned. 
Redemption: Shalom already, not yet. --> bible says that you already have shalom as a believer in Christ. However, not yet ! You have it, yet you're not complete. You still struggle with sin.
AKA Christ died for us! We are redeemed.
Consummation: Shalom Restored- We would get to this place of restoration when Christ comes down again.

So where are we exactly in this timeline? Yep~ We are in the redemption phase, aka, SHALOM ALREADY, NOT YET.
I just love how my professor put it. We have the shalom, yet because of this secular world we live in and all the sin we're covered in, we're not completely there yet.

So then she asked us a few questions: What do you hope for this week? This month? This semester? Next 5 years? Next 10 years? With all those answers, there were temporary wants, then what we hoped for in our lifetime. But...If you got what you wanted (all of the things you hoped for from above), what would you have that you soul really wants?

With that said, i realized that while we wait for Shalom Restored, we must continue to hope in God. Because we're already redeemed, we now just need to make our lives filled with things our soul wants- not what we temporary want. Also, because of consequences from the fall, we're going to have a lot of trials.

But as James 1: 2-3 says: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance."
He says consider it pure joy ....how many of us can say we're jumping up & down for joy when trials come? I don't know about you guys, but i am angry and hopeless. This just is yet another reminder from many passages in the bible that God knows what He's doing. (duh)

So even with trials, we need to realize that we're living in the Shalom Already, Not Yet. So we're restored, God is with us, and we have Him by our side rooting for us, blessing us, molding us, and just overwhelming us with his grace. We just gotta keep holding to the NOT YET part and realize that until Jesus comes down, we need to keep pushing.

Idk if this all made sense to you but i really wanted to share it. I just loved how she compared the creation, fall, redemption to all of those different "shalom" ~ Especially for me, i think of Shalom and i automatically think of Jewish people. LOL i was very sheltered in my christianity and i'm learning a lot..don't judge ! haha. But yeah this just gave me a lot of encouragement not only from reminded myself that we are restored and we have peace even with trials, but He knows what He's doing! He has this whole plan, and we're just in the midst of it all. We just need to continue to push forward and keep our heart, eyes, hopes, and just everything on Him.

ANYWAYS, sorry eunice, i'm not posting a selfie, but heres another post for you to read. hehe.
Thanks again everyone for reading. Hope this helps in any way possible :) Have an awesome rest of the weeeek! ALMOST THERE!


Do Everything In Love, Always~
SK

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