Message Recap Revelations 2:12-17

The message this week was on the letter to the third church in Pergamum
This was a rich message and I could write about it in a number of different ways but the title of my blog is My Humble Walk, so I feel that the best way to approach the messages is in how they impact me personally and in my walk and growth as a Christian. And so the key point I got out of this weeks message was that since we were created in God's image, we were made to worship Him and to get our needs met through Him alone. When our relationship with Him is broken then it impacts our relationships with things and people. Since we were made to worship, we will seek to worship, if not God we will turn our worship towards people, things, money, power, relationships, prestige any number of things. The way to heal broken relationships with the "horizontal" all these things, is to fix the relationship with the "vertical" God. And the healing for that is found in the word, manifested both in the written word and in Christ himself. But what does that mean? I am preparing to get back into the counseling field in the next couple of years and the implications of this are important to me in re-entering the helping profession. So can I help others fix unhealthy relationships if I don't focus on their spiritual relationship? Or can the spiritual relationship be healed through healing of other relationships? Some people have such a distorted image of who God is because we ascribe to Him characteristics of people. In my work with abused children there was so much anger toward God who was seen as both an abuser and an abandoner. So if we help people have hope in mankind by providing healing and health through human relationship can we then pave the way toward broadening the view of who God is and provide access to Him. That is how I see it now. I don't want to work in the capacity where I can't address issues of faith, but I also don't want to focus on getting right with God first when that seems unimaginable or perhaps too abstract to someone. Sometimes we need a concrete reference point, to get a grasp on something tangible before we can understand it's spiritual implications. My pastor talked about Hidden manna, meaning "just enough" God provides all we need, just enough of all we need in Christ not Christ plus something. Christ sufficient.
I also believe that hidden refers to obscure. God hides his truth, He claims to do so in His own word,not hide it so that we can never find it if we seek, more so that we can develop a treasure map so to speak to find it. He wants us to be delighted to find His truth to have kind of an aha moment. And that is what I would like my counseling to be, a kind of treasure map to something bigger than I alone would ever be able to provide.