We invite you to participate with us in a daily devotional time called “Your Daily Bread.” These daily devotions will come to you via our podcast network. It is through these daily podcasts that we hope you use to allow God to minister to your daily need enabling you to walk each and every day in the spirit of Christ.
Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God Is Government called Your Daily Bread. Taken from Christ's teaching of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting scripture, but scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today's focused discussion will be on understanding what we think about life. At the center of almost all controversy today, whether self-imposed or influenced by our civic government, political leadership, mainstream media outlets, or even our churches is who are we? How do we define ourselves? When does life start or even end in some cases? Even some scientists today can't even define life itself. We failed to learn, in our formal education, answers to these questions and more. Information about our creation, our history, our citizenship, and our biological relationship to our earthly parents, and even more important, our biological relationship to God our Creator, have been almost completely removed from any educational activities. No wonder we live in a chaotic world. We have allowed everyone but the primary single source creator to govern what we learn, how we learn, and what is the truth about our life. We have allowed even religion to get on the bandwagon of false education, instead of looking at the truth provided by God Himself, within not only scriptures, but scientific evidence of our existence and our biological relationships one to another. How can it be that we think about everything else and make decisions about all that we encounter? But the one thing that is at the center of all decisions, life. We have been so misled and made to understand we should not or, in some cases cannot, think for ourselves. We have to be told about what life is, what creates life, and what can happen about life other than what God states is the condition of life itself. Josh Gabatis, in his second January 2017 article titled, There Are Over 100 Definitions of Life, and All Are Wrong, published by the BBC, contained a statement made by Carol Cleland, a philosopher at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She states, The definition can actually hinder the search for novel life, says Cleland. We need to get away from our current concept so that we are open to discovering life as we don't know it. So let's begin our journey at discovering the truth about life. We will start by looking at the definition of life by some of the largest dictionary companies. Wikipedia defines life as life is a characteristic that distinguishes physical entities that have biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased, or because they never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. Merriam-Webster defines life as the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body, a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings, an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction. Dictionary.com defines life as the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally. The sum of the distinguishing phenomena of organisms, especially metabolism, growth, reproduction, and adaptation to environment, the animate existence or period of animate existence of an individual, to risk one's life, a short life, and a merry one. A corresponding state, existence, or principle of existence conceived of as belonging to the soul. What we can take away from these three independent sources is that life is a characteristic that has processes that allows for it to be animated, ability to move, and that can adapt itself to its environment to allow it to exist with functions that are not dead. It is only dictionary.com that comes close to the true definition of life, as defined by God. It stated, a corresponding state, existence, or principle of existence conceived of as belonging to the soul. To define life is not that easy. Many of us have been taught in our early childhood that life begins at birth and ends with death. We also have been taught, depending on our religious beliefs, that long-lasting life in the spiritual world never ends. This long-lasting life has various states or levels based upon our actions here in the physical form. So, why do we need to have a common understanding of this definition? Because many of us have taken for granted our early childhood teachings and have never sought out the true definition. For it is in our belief as to the definition of life, birth, while we are in this physical form, and after death, that creates a foundation grounding us in the wisdom of our spiritual being. We need to explore the baselines of various professions and religions so that we can establish a common spiritual view of this definition in order to build such a foundation. We will begin with a clinical view of this definition and then move through the other definitions as they apply to the subject of this book. A common definition between medical dictionaries for the word life is 1. The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism. 2. The characteristic state or condition of a living organism. 3. Living organisms considered as a group. 4. A living being, especially a person. 5. The energy that enables organisms to grow, reproduce, absorb and use nutrients, and evolve, and in some organisms, to achieve mobility, express consciousness, and demonstrate a voluntary use of the senses. The legal systems definition taken from U.S. Legal Inc. defines life as the state of being which begins with generation, birth, or germination, and ends with death, or the state of an animal or plant in which all or any of its organs are capable of performing all or any of their functions. When we look at the definition of life from a religious point of view, we find not one concise definition, but many concepts surrounding this definition within each religion. We will look at the top four religion definitions for purposes of providing a level of understanding about the complexities and consistency issues of the religious definition of life. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of understanding what we think about life. Until next time, remember to keep the faith. Stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way.
