Just gold dust...

So I've been thinking a lot lately about physical manifestations of the presence of God.  Manifestations like gold dust, angel feathers, perfect jewels, manna etc...  It's actually hard to ignore here at Bethel because so many people have seen gold dust appear, glory clouds, gold dust falling from glory clouds, and things of that sort.  Shoot, I've seen gold dust appear in my hands during times of worship.  It's fun for sure, but different.  I naturally wondered, why God would do that.  After all, the Bible doesn't mention gold dust falling to the ground when the presence of God came. 

So came the question.  Is God limited to His Bible? 

I quickly realized after a few minutes of exercising my common sense that God is not limited to what He's done in the Bible.  He can't be.  It doesnt't make sense.  First of all, we serve a limitless all powerfull God who can do whatever He wants. 

Then I started thinking, "What about all the people in the world with HIV/ AIDS?"  If God is limited to scripture, then there's no hope for these people because Jesus never healed anyone with AIDS in scripture. 

We do know that it is still God's will to heal AIDS patients though, despite it not being in scripture.  Why?  Because His nature doesn't change.  His acts do, and must for Him to be God, but His nature remains the same.  That is the reason we can pray for those with new strains of viruses and believe that we have the will of God backing our prayers.  That's the reason we can ask Papa to provide for us things that may not have been in the Bible.  We can do these things because we know that who He is (the God who heals, and the God who provides) will always remain the same. 

When  people look at things like angel feathers and gold dust, most of the time they will process these occurances like so.  In fact, I myself had to get used to NOT doing this.  They will look for it in scripture.  If they dont find it, they then say "Well God doesn't change according to Malachi 3, so it must not be from God." 

Our job isn't to judge what God is doing based on what He has already done.  Rather we must determine what lines up with His nature revealed to us in the scriptures.  The Bible among other things shows us 2 things.  It shows us what God has done, and what God is like.  If we cling to what God has done, we are stopping short of knowing what Father God is like because seeing what He's done is supposed to bring us into a revelation of His nature.  And that is where our discernment has to lie.  That's the standard.  His nature, not His track record. 

AIDS?  That's a sickness.  We know how Jesus dealt with sickness, and God never changes.

The presence of God?  It is very real.  In fact the Bible tells us that the unseen is more real than what is seen.  It manifested physically in the Bible, and God never changes.

So, all that to say just because it isn't in the Bible, doesn't mean it's not from God. 

Now what about the why question?  Why gold dust?  Why do feathers fall on people sitting in their cars, or on airplanes?  Why do some places see manifestations of jewels to perfect to be worth anything in this world. 

I have no idea. 

Why a pillar of fire?  Why a cloud?  Why a bush?  Why not a talking sheep on fire?  Now THAT would have been symbolic!

What we can know is that if we understood why God did everything, we would end up with a God that looked very similar to us.  And that's just no fun.

Side note... I was going to mention laughter as a manifestation, but there are so many verses on joy being a part of the Kingdom that it would've been too repetitive.  Bottom line make room for "new," in your understanding of God.  He never changes, but what He does is a whole other story.  He's like Domino's Pizza.  The pizza is the same wherever you go (thank God), but the specials might be different.  Yep.  That's right.  God is like Domino's Pizza.