Welcome to my first ever blog: Mysteries and Wonders: Exploring the Truth and Beauty of Christ and the Cross.

This blog is about the mysteries of the God’s precious truth. Knowable and unknowable. It is about the majestic and incomprehensible wonders of Christ and the Cross. It is about God’s infinitude and mankind’s  finite ability to grasp it. It is about truth and faith.

My name is Craig Hippensteel and I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I am at best an average Joe, maybe with one, very sad  exception. I love to read. I say sad because it saddens me that more people don’t read, especially Christians, and especially especially Christians who say they love Jesus and they love the Word of God.

I hope that, through this blog, I can, in some way (that I KNOW is beyond me) to inspire people to read and study and memorize and meditate on and pray over God’s word more. And more and more and more. I say “beyond me” because I know that is something only God can do. So, I pray he does. In a big way. 

Let’s go back to the ‘average Joe” part. I am 69 years old (at the the time of this writing – 12-12-2024) and I have wanted to write almost my entire life. When I was in grade school I entered an essay contest on “Why My Dad Should Be Father of the Year.” And I won!!! (Probably because my Dad helped me to write it. ;)) Even though my Dad probably wrote most of it (I don’t even remember!) I was still hooked on the idea of writing. So, almost 60 years later, I am finally getting started. 

Also, I am say “average Joe” because I graduated in the bottom third of my class in high school and it took me twenty-five years to get my B.A. (and I barely made it!)

It could be said that  I a m  a  l i t t l e  s l o w. Because I am. 

I did, however, finally get my B.A. from Trinity International University on January 1st, 1998 through the REACH program with a major in Interpersonal and Group Communications and minors in both Bible and Psychology. I was majoring in Psych before I got saved and just kept all the credits. 

So, I guess I am both slow, and a bit persistent.

I love the Lord with all my flawed, broken, poor in spirit heart. And I love His Word and cant’ get enough of reading it and reading about it. My hope in this blog is to :

• Simply share what God has slowly (me, not Him!) been teaching me. 
• To point to a greater love of Him. 
• To use and (hopefully) improve upon my gift of teaching.
• And to somehow create a greater appreciation and interest in taking God’s Word more seriously in regular average people like me. God’s Word is really special.

Simply put, I believe it is really difficult and very rare (if not impossible – see Matt. 19:26) to be able to really know and understand our awesome God apart from His Word. And without knowing His Word, how can one obey him. And if you can’t obey Him, how can you love Him?

The Apostle John says in John 14:15, “If you love me, keep my commands.” 
And in 14:21 he says, “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

And again in John 14:23, he says, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.”
I may be a little slow, but saying essentially the same thing three times in nine verses gets my attention. And, just to put a cherry on it, John says the same thing again in John 15:10!

How can someone love God if you don’t really know Him and how can you obey him if you don’t know his Word? 

The answer seems pretty simple to me. Simple, maybe, but not so easy. 

I think the answers all start in our hearts. “It All Starts in the Heart.”