Sea change expected, possibly soon..... I have been very busy working out of state for about 4 months remodeling houses for relatives and friends. I have not finished any of them but I have learned a great deal during that time about relationship dynamics and about myself. I am assuming that I will be returning to each of those jobs to finish up soon, if possible. Meanwhile, back at the ranch... Things at home have been coming apart and falling into disarray as might be expected. The yard got quite out of control, the garden is overgrown with weeds, appliances are breaking down, bookwork is 4 months behind and people are asking if I still live here. I came home and brought Kevin and Rose Ferreira to stay with us for awhile to offer their service, or process as they like to call it, to anyone interested in the local churches or community. Amazingly it seems almost no one in this area has any problems whatsoever that need resolving, no conflicts, not even any marriages that need improvement. I guess I never realized how close to Nirvana we really lived. Anyway, we are trying to let them work with us while we have the opportunity. As expected (one of the problems they have fingered -- expectations) it is very difficult for us to unlock our hearts and get real. But that doesn't prevent us from continuing to chip away at the ice. I am noticing signs of cracks developing in my ice barrier which is encouraging and frightening at the same time. I have been writing a lot of thoughts and insights down on legal pads but obviously none of them have made it to this site yet. I need to have a better system if I want to use this forum as an outlet for my musings. When I am away from home it is nearly impossible to post as I usually don't have internet access or even a computer. We both spent a very enriching week together a month ago up in Big Rapids, MI attending a THRIVE conference. They paid our expenses to record the whole conference and produce the master copies for them to use for sales. Even though we didn't participate in the many right-brain excercises that are so important to the learning experience because we were not registered attendees, we were able to listen to most of the presentations by Jim Wilder and some by Chris Coursey and were immensely blessed by the worship and Messianic dancing every evening. After the conference I spent another week and a half working more on the house project in MI and then when I arrived at home I began editing and preparing the master copies of the recordings. It was a much bigger project than I had anticipated and took me about another week and a half of solid long days to finish up the project and send it off to them. When I have more time I may go back and fine-tune the editing and remaster them, but for now I will leave it alone. It was very frustrating to be doing this while we had our friends here who were waiting patiently for us to have some time so they could work on improving our marriage and our internal baggage and blocks. This couple is very skilled at what they do. They are quickly getting enormous experience all over the country with absolutely amazing results in people's lives, families, relationships and even businesses. The word is spreading about them quickly and transformed and energized people share their stories with all their friends and more people beg for help. I will post their contact information on my ministry resources list if you are interested in learning more. I spent some time reading a few chapters of Linda's book and noticed how many times she referred to many things about her perspective and feelings that I am now learning so much about. It's nice to know, in a way, that some people are way ahead of me in some of these areas of perception of life and what is really important. That means I have people that understand some of what I am doing and even have an idea of what is ahead for me because they have already been there and done that. Well, I should bring these ramblings to closure. I am praying for major breakthroughs in my thinking and heart-understanding soon. I have learned a great deal about it lately but dropping down into a heart experience is a whole different story. I have been listening to the series of Munchies, Kingdom Snacks by Jim Wilder (available from CARE Packaging) and every one of them have amazed me. They have really opened up my mind and given me startling and practical applications to stories and verses I had never dreamed of before. They have also given me realtime assistance as I struggle to break through the fog and the lies that have distorted my perception of reality all of my life. I highly recommend them to anyone who wants to grow and expand their spiritual insight. Well, that's all for now. Hopefully I will have time someday to transfer some of my legalpad logs to the web for what its worth. Grow and come alive today. God wants nothing more that for us all to be fully alive and moving together in perfect harmony and energized by His passion.

Logs and Splinters

“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5 NRSV)

The reason there is always a log in my eye and a splinter in yours....

When I see a fault in someone else it magnifies the same fault that lurks inside me. The splinter is a chip off the block made of the same material. Because your fault tends to magnify my fault and I don't want to see my own fault first, then I attack your fault to quiet my own discomfort.

A splinter may even be the same size in both your eye and mine. But through the principle of perspective the relative size of trying to look past a splinter that is so close to me that is in me makes it appear as big as a log. And as far as useful vision is concerned it is the size of a log.

The log is always in my eye, not just because it may or may not be bigger than the splinter in another's eye but because (1) it is composed of the same material and (2) it is at extremely close range making it appear much larger and (3) it hopelessly distorts my ability to be of any use helping the other person. The splinter in my own eye (notice it is not in my hand or anywhere else) is the only one I have an effective choice of dealing with. If I attend to my own repair, realize I need the assistance of someone who no longer has blurred and obstructed vision to help me remove my own problem, then I will experience and model to others the very process and ensuing freedom that they need to experience and enjoy. Then I can assist them in humility, compassion, patience and sympathy sharing from a new perspective of a recovering fault-victim. Instead of being a fault-finder and accuser I can now become a hope-sharer and an assistant for the Divine Surgeon.

By story-telling my own experience of transformation from victim to healed I bear testimony and thereby effectuate the growth of the Body. Testifying was the trademark activity of the early New Testament believers and it was their most effective tool.

Classes of False gods

False gods are not just sources of life that are pleasurable. The other class of gods operate by fear of death. Both classes promise to give us life. The first class promises to enrich us with pleasure and happiness and satisfaction but when we indulge them we discover the death-effects of pain and guilt and bitterness masked by the lies.

The other class threaten us openly with pain and death and fear unless we conform to their demands. They promise to allow us permission to live if we will appease them and submit to their manipulation of our souls. Both kinds of gods promise life – the first positively and the second negatively and grudgingly. But both are diverting our loyalty and trust from the true God.

Jacob's Trouble

Jacob clung to God until he received a blessing. He was desperate to have a sense of true identity and value. He had lived most of his life being shamed and devalued. He was starved for joy, someone to cherish him.

God did not really give him a new identity. He revealed to him his original blueprint, what his heart had all along been designed to be. The deceiver Jacob was a false self created and perpetuated by himself and his mother in wrong reactions to pressuring circumstances. Jacob's heart had always yearned for intimacy with God but the lies embedded early caused him to act out in sins which created shame which produced more lies which produced more shame and anger and pain.

We too must realize and feel a desperate, passionate hunger for God Himself that eclipses every other craving and pleasure. This is the whole explanation of “Jacob's time of trouble” in the end. It is , pure and simple, an abandonment of every lie, every other source that we have tried to use to receive life and love and satisfaction. It is getting real about every emotion, feeling and belief we have stuffed, ignored, suppressed or tried to deny or escape from. We finally become fully honest and transparent and hopeless, realizing that our only source for any sense of value and love must come directly to our heart from God alone.

It is not about a focus on achieving perfection and forcing ourself to overcome every sin like many of us have grown up to believe. It is about embracing our guilt, our pain and facing our lies about God and about ourself full face. It is only at that point that we can fully appreciate the totality of our hopelessness and bankruptcy and full embrace His grace and rest completely in His righteousness alone to redeem us.

Strange Boat Dream

Strange dream this morning. Got on an old yacht-like boat on a decent sized lake with my family. After pushing out a ways we stopped to begin cleaning it while the kids swam around. Used a strange ladder that was custom built to reach halfway across the deck and attached to the rail to slide along the rail.

Before all that, someone was describing the boat – said the only feature was a house in the middle and a bubble at each end that stuck up above the flat deck. I observed that the square bubble in front was about a king-size bed with a window hatch in the bubble like my sister's old boat. The house in the middle was the pilot house. Later in the dream those both shrank to just round holes in the deck as the whole boat kept getting narrower until by the end it was very narrow, tall and long.

At first, the few times we actually ran the boat it was fast. Sometimes people would be in the water or someone would fall in – like when a skier goes down – and the boat would go in circles. The wave the boat created while trying to stop was sometimes much larger than the boat and would overwhelm the boat and all of us making everyone but me afraid. I would explain to them that this was normal and to just wait until the wave subsided. This happened two or three times.

Then while cleaning the boat as we were drifting around I noticed the wind had pushed us to the side of the lake which was now not much bigger than a pond. I started the engine and went a few yards back toward the middle of the water and shut it off again to clan some more and let the kids swim. It drifted over to a chain-link fence along the right side of the lake and even bumped the fence.

Ziggy was now on board (our daughters unusual cat) and I couldn't keep him from jumping over onto the fence and escaping into the yard past the fence. The area was semi-barren with brown dirt and clay showing and some junk and clutter here and there – maybe some people on the land but I didn't notice much else. Then another black and white cat jumped up on the fence and got onto the boat and I couldn't keep him off.

We then drifted into very shallow, muddy water where it looked like the area was an old dump that was now partially covered with water. There was mud exposed above the water with ashes and pollutants. I wanted to get away from all this and get back into deeper water to protect the boat. I started the boat again and had to rev the engine to plow through the shallows and mud and junk. The engine was like a jet boat that sucks in the water and expels it so I was very uncomfortable having to plow through all this mud an debris. I was worried about the effects on the jet pump and damage to the intake and even the bottom of the boat. But it didn't seem to hurt it a great deal.

By this time the square pond was not much wider than the boat was long. As I steered hard to the left and plowed through shallow spots the front of the boat swung around barely missing the opposite shore. By this time the boat had very surreal proportions – maybe like four to five feet wide, twenty feet high from the keel and fifty feet long. Trying to turn around such a strange shape in such shallow water caused it to finally fall over on its side. My wife was worried about it falling on top of the kids in the water, which it did, but it didn't appear to hurt them. After finishing turning it 180° and getting it into deeper water it slowly began to right itself again.

After that I wanted to run it awhile in cleaner water to flush out the clay, mud and any debris that might have gotten sucked up into the mechanical areas. But I couldn't go very fast because the pond was only about two and a half times as long as the boat itself. The surroundings of the pond were just empty fields of semi-dry grass on one side, woods at the opposite end from the dump, and the chain link fence on the other long side.

By now I could only run the boat forward and backwards in a straight line. I was starting to get really frustrated and noticing that my circumstances were much more restrictive now and wishing for more water. Then I woke up.

Frozen Faces

Eph. 4:29 Allow no word that is not life-giving proceed out of my mouth, but only allow past my lips that which is good, relevant and appropriate for building up both others and myself in the body of Christ according to what is really needed, so that my words will impart life, empowerment to prosper, the very presence of God to everyone who hears me.

Father, expose and detach the false gods in my soul and heart. Cause me to truly believe that you are the only source of life for me and cause me to remain in your life-giving presence. I choose to allow you to unlock the hidden areas of my mind, heart and memories and look inside and expose every lie with your warm light. Thank-you for protecting me from yourself by shielding me initially from the full revelation of your passion for me that would traumatize and immobilize me and create yet another lie in me about you.

I invite you Jesus to make my body and mind and emotions your place to settle down and make yourself at home. Go ahead and sort through anything you want. Throw out the trash, expose the false sources of pleasure and pain that I depend on to get me through every situation and need that arises. Show me my emptiness and hollowness. Melt the frozen ice sculptures that remain locked in my dark freezer, those faces of intimidation, abuse, anger, pride and bitterness still frozen in place in my sub-consciousness that trigger my reactions yet today. I have tried for years to scrap away those frozen faces of fear, shame, abuse and pride but I usually only manage to make my fingers cold and suffer more pain trying to scrap away the deep engravings frozen in my memories.

It is starting to dawn on me that no one can scrap away or pry loose the evil faces of ice staring out the windows of my frozen soul, even if they manage to unlock the freezer door and get inside for a few minutes. What I need more than anything else is heat. Of course, too much heat too soon would damage my frozen fingers and toes so God has been careful and patient with me. But I must have warmth soon or the cold itself will destroy even more of my capacity for being fully alive.

Jesus, I give you permission right now to pull the power supply off my freezer, to remove the locks and even the doors and bring in the halogen lights to the inner recesses of my mind and heart. It will be ugly and messy for awhile as the faces melt in grotesque nightmares of fear. But don't remove the light of your face for a moment or I will be overcome with terror.

One of your favorite names is Immanuel – God is with us. I understand that according to the way you wired us, my nervous system experiences JOY as the feeling I experience when someone is genuinely glad to be with me in my present feelings and emotions, that I am the sparkle in someone's eyes, that something about me causes their heart to leap for joy and their face to light up and their spirit to sing. That sound overwhelmingly wonderful but seems ridiculously unreal.

I have heard rumors about you that you feel that way about me. But most of what I have been taught and experienced has been the opposite. Just look at all the frozen faces and statues in my hall of fame. God, it's been a very long, cold and bitter winter that reminds me of the winter of Narnia. But even as I write these words there are melting drops condensing down my cheeks. I believe that spring is coming soon and the Son is beginning to warm up and break through the thick clouds.

Idol Struggle

God is telling me repeatedly in Ezekiel that I have no business inquiring of Him advice on how to live or how He should bless me or others because I have defiled myself with my father's idols and made my children “pass through the fire” and profaned the intimacy God offered to me in the Sabbath. Chapter 14 says if I have idols, sources of life or objects of fear-power that bow me down to them, if I have these idols in my heart and put them before my face which are stumbling-blocks keeping me from trusting God, and then I come to one of His prophets, one who is openly connected to Him to try to attach myself to God – if I attempt this double-minded action, then God Himself will be brought in to give me an answer, but in the context of my sins.

My idols have separated my heart from Him and have made me a stranger from Him. When I separate from Him, set up my substitute sources of control in my heart and keep them before my face, and then pressure the prophet to give me a word from the Lord, I will bring my own guilt and sin on that person and cause them to suffer the same guilt and estrangement I am suffering. But then He says this will happen in order that I will no longer stray from Him or defile myself with all my sins. I will be one of His people and He will be my God.

Repeatedly I am asked to repent and let go of these foreign gods. Chapter 20 says God chose me, made Himself known to me, swore to me, brought me out of bondage, gave me wonderful principles of life, informed me, offered me intimate time with Him every Sabbath – all this that I might really comet to know Him.

But the idols, big or small that I have allowed or have been victim to, have always distorted my perception of Him. The idols lie to me about God's motives and intentions toward me and I continue to give them more credibility than God's testimony about Himself. So I rebelled against Him, am not willing to listen, did not aggressively throw out the lies and the pleasure-producing substitutes that I look to for satisfaction.

God is wrestling against His own nature through all of this to protect me from Himself while still trying to seduce and allure me to fall in love with Him. One part of Him resolves to pour out His passion on me and overwhelm me right where I am in the land of “Egypt” where I feel comfortable. But if He did I would misjudge His passion to be wrath and anger and would further withdraw from Him. So the other side of Him restrains His overwhelming longing and desire for me and determines to act unilaterally for the sake of His own reputation and to personally remove the stumbling-blocks that clutter the way between us. He overrules His own passion repeatedly and even resists and protects me from the full consequences of my idol worship while (v. 33) He promises passionately that He will be my king, He will bring me out... and gather me with great might and power and passion. He will bring me to the wilderness where there are no distractions and will enter into full disclosure with me face to face. He will initiate me and bring me solidly into His blood covenant. He will purge me of rebellion, He will bring me out of my wandering so that I will know in my heart that He is my Lord and my God like Thomas did. In verse 39 He tells me to be honest and serve my idols, but later I will listen to him and will profane His reputation no longer.

He takes responsibility for fixing this hopeless problem. He says that on His mountain in the wilderness I will serve Him and He will accept me and seek my gifts of love to Him. He will prove Himself holy in me. Then I will remember the hopeless condition that He rescued me from and all my profanities and hypocrisy against Him and I will loathe myself, but I will know that He is the real Lord because He did all this for me for His name's sake, not at all according to how I acted or thought. God will shower me clean and remove my hardness and implant the passion of love inside me – all for His name's sake so that everyone will know the truth about Him.

Face Short-circuit

When we place our face in front of the video screen we set in motion several natural laws of the mind. We begin to synchronize our minds and hearts with a greater capacity mind. We download beliefs, ideas and patterns of thinking and reacting into our mother-core that are mostly subconscious while consciously we think we are filtering much of it out. We short-circuit the system of mutual, reciprocal shared mindsight that we are designed to have with other real faces and minds, and instead train our brains to only operate in one direction. The screen cannot respond to the messages returning from our eyes and faces but continues to overwhelm us with powerful messages designed to arouse and exercise our emotions without face to face interaction.

We then experience more and more difficulty experiencing healthy mindsight with other humans because of this trained short-circuit which, if continued, sets us up for the ultimate meltdown when everyone is exposed to the intense passion of God's face in person. (see Ezekiel 14)

An idol is anything or anyone I use to get life from without enjoying the presence of God and having His blessing.

Near Meltdown

Allow the Holy Spirit to energize you with the passion of God's own heart. Allow Him to synchronize your thoughts, desires and responses with His thoughts and emotions as you continually seek His face. There remains yet a rest for the people of God for you to enter into. Be energized by His joy as you see yourself and others through heaven's eyes. Be quieted and comforted in His protective arms as you enter His rest. (Hebrews 4)

Yesterday in the middle of work and a discussion with Keith, the topic of identity came up. We talked about the problem of attempting to receive identity and value by force against others and our externals in contrast to the desperate need to discover our true identity in the face of God. I don't remember the details of the conversation, but I vividly remember the sudden rush of pain and emotion from very deep within my soul when I realized we were talking about my own condition.

Most of my perceived identity is resting on my growing knowledge and understanding of these wonderful truths and insights we have been receiving over the past few years. But in spite of all the important concepts I am learning I still don't have a foundation of restful assurance of God's confident care and His opinion of my value. I am learning about it and even promoting it but my own heart is still far from being thawed out from the ice and cold produced by the lies like so many chunks of dry ice embedded in my deepest memories forming my concept of who I am.

For a few minutes I could not speak or work or even stand as I tried to allow the emotions to be recognized and acknowledged while at the same time I was also trying to prevent a complete meltdown (probably not the best choice). I mentioned my internal situation to Keith and he became afraid he had said something wrong. The experience was awkward because two systems were clashing. I was grateful that my heart was awakening at all from a much deeper level but was confused and afraid of what to do with these unfamiliar feelings that I only recognized theoretically from recent training. I praised God that there are signs of life in my little boy heart but sad that we as a community of friends still lack the context to know how to encourage and create an environment that is safe enough for any one of us to spontaneously process these God-moments.

Anger and Shame

Anger is commonly the emotion of choice to avoid experiencing shame. Shame is a feeling of worthlessness, devaluation, feeling put down, suppressed. Shame is usually forced onto us by other people who themselves likely are full of shame. Since they feel a great need to feel more valuable they think they can achieve it by putting others down to make themselves feel a little higher by contrast. This is attempting to use subtraction to arrive at an apparent net gain – a mathematical nonsense.

When others shame, belittle, criticize and demean us for whatever reason, we are tempted to react in kind because we already feel we are operating from a disadvantage. When we believe their message about our identity because it resonates with embedded lies which are activated in our memories, our pride immediately reacts to defend ourselves since we are sure no one else will defend us. And if no one defends us we are afraid of some kind of death and associated pain. Therefore the root of fear is activated and the sarc is employed to formulate an answer to this threat to our personhood.

But shame is a shameful thing, and being of that nature we are very shamed to admit to anyone that we are feeling shame. Because we are being shamed and devalued by someone, especially when done in public, our sarc chooses to employ force to counterattack and hopefully protect ourselves from further pain. Because the shame coming at us is often from people with power over our circumstances we often internalize the cravings for counterforce (anger) and seethe inside against them until we feel safe enough to vent our frustration and anger to someone else because we feel to intimidated to direct it openly against our protagonist.

It has been observed that the more intense the anger there is in someone during a discussion the less truth they have to support their position. Anger is often rooted in the desire to force others to value us, to take us seriously, to use intimidation to get them to respect us. Anger is a grasping for value but also an attempt to put others down and diminish their power so by contrast we will appear to have more power. Anger usually employs shame to weaken others to that (we believe) they will be afraid to hurt or threaten us again. Of course this is simply a self-reinforcing cycle that never ends until new element are introduced to neutralize the crazy cycle.

Shame/low value must be replaced with salvation value found in the face of God.

Fear bonds must be replaced with love and joy bonds.

Anger and self-defense must be replaced with trust in God's defense and also experienced in The Body.

Paul's Presentation Style

I see an interesting pattern in the book of Acts. Paul had a penchant for arguing and debating which was how he was trained from childhood. This had made him very popular and had earned him the admiration of the establishment Jews. He worked his way up quickly to be a champion of the original faith delivered to the forefathers and was respected as a fierce defender of the truth that could not be resisted.

In the process however, he laid aside sympathy and compassion and humility as weak traits of character that would be liabilities to his cause. He believed in strength and boldness, that one has to be tough in the face of creeping error. He believed strongly that heresy and emotionalism were at the heart of the “new theology” that was sweeping many off the firm foundation of centuries of carefully cultivated and established truth.

Then he himself was confronted with the reality of the true condition of his own heart in the presence of Jesus. He saw the contrast between his dogmatic, fierce defending of didactic truth with the open, wounded pain he was causing in the heart and emotions of Jesus, the Son of God, and his own heart was re-awakened.

However, old patterns remain in the mind and for years Paul struggled with his habit of arguing and persuasion as the means of presenting truth. It often seemed so effective and seemed to satisfying that it was very difficult to let go. Yet the spirit of combativeness produced mixed results that eventually ended sometimes in physical attacks on his life.

The original new testament church had started out with the nearly undiluted passion of God in love and humility that was an unrestrainable power for a period of time. But as human methods and ideas began to be mixed in to the body of believers there came a subtle and imperceptible shift away from fully living from their hearts filled with the passion of God to reasoning and persuading and eventually arguing. This introduced an element foreign to th Holy Spirit and slowly began the descent toward the Dark Ages.

Notice the result in Corinth when Paul changed his presentation style from arguing and persuading and reasoning – the methods used in the previous cities – to immersing himself in the Word and going back to simply testifying as a witness as was the consistent pattern seen in the disciples early in Acts. Not only did he not het thrown out of Corinth violently, but he was affirmed by God directly and his Jewish opponents ended up being the ones who received the beatings and violence that he usually received.