Random Blog Clay Feet: 2006-09
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Saturday, September 30, 2006

The Heart of the Earth

This morning while waking up another thought came to me. The Garden of Eden was to the earth like our heart is to our own being. Since God designed us to live openly and nakedly from our heart He placed Adam and Eve in the heart of the world to live naked and unashamed. When they received the sinful, twisted “programming” of Satan and moved quickly to a focus on external identity in place of internal value they immediately begin to experience fear and shame and loss of personal worth. They then attempted to fix the problem by addressing the externals and looking for someone to blame only aggravating the situation exponentially.

Because of this new condition, God had to change their physical circumstances to match their internal condition. Since they had chosen to live outside their hearts He required them to leave the Garden, the heart of the world, provided external coverings for their nakedness and gave them someone to lay their blame upon—an innocent lamb. He did this to protect the heart of His new world from experiencing the same defilement as their hearts had experienced until the plan of restoration for all humanity was sufficiently progressed to allow them back into the Garden. This will take place after the Second Coming of Jesus when all the saved are introduced to heaven where the original Garden was transplanted temporarily for protection until the New Earth is restored.

Thus God illustrated how He is dealing with our own heart. He initiated protection for the “heart” of the world by personally keeping it with Him. He also protects our original hearts as He designed them with an angel with a flaming sword to keep us from trashing it completely until we learn to live from it once again in innocence, honesty and naked transparency. This is the object of salvation – salvaging us, restoring us to our original function and design. “Getting to heaven” is almost incidental as simply part of the process of restoration, not the main focus of salvation. The main passion of God in salvation is to accomplish full reunification of the broken relationship of intimacy between Him and every human being willing to accept a vital connection to Him at every level of existence. He is hungry for our affection. He craves to make us outlets and channels of His own feelings and emotions. He wants us to experience the joy of closeness to Him and to each other that He created us to experience. And He is relentless in pursuing His passion until He has drawn every willing soul into the redemption that He has provided in Jesus Christ.

Then humanity will again have access to literally live once again in the “heart” of the earth, the original Garden of Eden restored to the original earth from which it was taken so long ago. The New Earth will externally reflect the restoration that has taken place internally within all the redeemed.

And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, "To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever." (Revelation 5:13)

“The great controversy is ended. Sin and sinners are no more. The entire universe is clean. One pulse of harmony and gladness beats through the vast creation. From Him who created all, flow life and light and gladness, throughout the realms of illimitable space. From the minutest atom to the greatest world, all things, animate and inanimate, in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy, declare that God is love. {GC 678.3}

Friday, September 29, 2006

Why Anger

The back of my brain has been quietly analyzing ideas and mulling them over subconsciously as usual. When it comes up with a possible conclusion it then offers it up to my consciousness for affirmation. These ideas are not timed as far as I can tell, they just appear when they are ripe. They formulate from inputs and updates both new and old.

One of these appeared a couple days ago and I quickly had to write it down before I lost track of it. I have been a little puzzled about the nature and substance of the emotion of anger. People have a lot to say about it and against it and often have such strong opinions about it they cannot be objective or open-minded to new views of it. But I now think that in many cases anyway, if not always, anger may be more of an “intensity indicator” of other emotions than a stand-alone emotion.

In analyzing my own experience of when I become angry, it often does not make sense for the situation. But if I carefully uncover the original feeling that preceded the anger and then see how or why anger follows it, it begins to make a lot more sense. For instance, in my case many times anger follows almost instantly after shame or fear. Because I feel frustrated by either my inability to express those emotions from fear of exposure and shame or my belief that others will not recognize the depth of those feelings, I then employ anger to attempt to force them to recognize how intense my original feeling is.

Of course this obviously is not very effective at all since I never expressed the original emotion to start with so how would they know how intense it was. But my emotional mind is not so much concerned with being logical as it is desirous of being understood. That's why someone who can have the ability and desire to look past the anger and gently expose the original emotion and synchronize with it has much more influence than simply reacting to the anger and thereby amplifying it. This too may be much of what Jesus was talking about when He said, “Do not resist an evil person”. Resistance tends to amplify the frustration whereby a gentle and loving spirit sees past it to the pain and shame that is screaming to be recognized.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Sleuthing for Identity

9/26/06

I am trying to uncover my true identity. My daughter A- asked me what I am finding – I don't know yet. How will I know when I do see it?

A clue – characteristics of my true heart are probably the opposite of the lies the gods have piled on me. And the deeper the pile, the more intense the lie, then the stronger that trait must be to take that much to hide and suppress it.

Anger is usually a cover for fear or shame – it is defensiveness.

Anger is the suppressant for compassion and understanding(?)

Fear is the suppressant of confidence, assurance, peace and boldness.

Shame is the mask to hide my value and deny it.

Ingratitude is...? tied to fear and shame? Devaluing others?

Over-affection belies my true desire to deeply connect with my wife and children.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Living From My Heart

Several thoughts stirred around in my mind this morning insisting on being captured on record before they evaporated. The issue has been raised, after one of my recent postings about living from my heart, that living from one's heart is viewed by many as a very dangerous and even heretical concept. This does not surprise me in the least as I fully expected to hear something along these lines sooner or later. Religion as we know it has largely divorced us from all understanding of even the existence of our heart, much less learning how to live from it. We have usually been led to believe that we should never trust our heart because of it's terrible reputation of being “desperately wicked”.

But it is equally true that God has promised to give us a new heart of “flesh”. “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27) Is it logical that God wants to give us a new heart but never intends for us to live from it? Do we have two hearts? I believe some of the answer to these issues we struggle with lies in the false gods that lurk in our souls purporting to be our real self's. I also happen to believe that there is a unique “blueprint” or DNA written into us of what God designed us to be in reflection of His image even before we were born or even “converted” that He wants us to become aware of and fulfill as our destiny. That is what I refer to as the “true heart”.

I am beginning to suspect more strongly that the “wicked heart” in us may actually be a “heart facade” erected there by the false gods we accumulate during our life. It is called a heart of stone and is composed of the walls we build around our hearts from our earliest experiences of discomfort to protect our hearts from pain. Because it is built around our real heart to “protect” it, it's shape looks a lot like our heart and we often mistake these walls for the heart itself. These walls are hardened over the years and reinforced by the lying gods that offer themselves to assist us in protecting our hearts from further pain and trauma. They lead us to believe that we must always avoid pain at all costs, that we must mask our true emotions and present false identities and masks to exert control over what people think about us and thereby how they treat us. We amass a very complex structure or maze of masks and appearances to be prepared for any eventuality, but primarily to keep anyone from knowing who we really are on the inside. In doing so we lose sight of our real identity ourselves and come to believe that the masquerade is the real thing.

For instance, as I was growing up I ran into a serious obstacle to many things I felt I really desired to do in my rebellion and anger. It was the deeply rooted, fundamental idea of being honest. It was drilled into me by parents and teachers, church and culture. Honesty and integrity were stressed and illustrated in dramatic stories with wonderful outcomes and strongly encouraged and enforced. I accepted these instructions and became super-conscientious about always being honest. I developed great fear of the dire consequences I might suffer if I was dishonest in any way and went to greater and greater lengths to be meticulously honest. In the process I became very reticent about making promises of any kind. I also developed a very strong reaction of intense anger and shame if anyone questioned my honesty or did not trust me about something. My mother noticed this strong character trait in me and sometimes used it to her advantage to manipulate me into altering my external behavior. My aversion to making promises even troubled me deeply when I realized I would have to make an unequivocal promise when I got married. As hard as I tried I could not find any alternative to making that promise short of not getting married.

Until this morning I have always believed that there was nothing to add to this part of my story. But as the experiences of the past few weeks have chipped away at the ice and stone surrounding my heart in attempts to find my real identity, it has occurred to me that the deep sense of honesty that has been such an intense part of my psyche all of my life was, in fact, only half of honesty. It was just an “intellectual honesty” that I many times found ways to circumvent through rationalization and creative schemes to avoid the pain of exposing what my real heart was feeling. So ironically, while externally maintaining strict honesty factually I was really being trained to be almost wholly dishonest about the condition of my heart and thereby losing touch more and more with my true identity.

The result of this is that I have become a well-groomed and self-deceived hypocrite with deeply embedded habits of thinking and reacting that are very difficult to overcome or to even perceive now. Living from my heart is such a foreign experience to me that I grapple with even understanding where to begin and how to continue. It does help to explain some of my baffling gaps in my character like my lack of natural compassion and my lack of appreciation.

Learning to live from my heart is very difficult to do after years of training for the opposite. It means for me being honest about real emotions and desires in the present tense and getting acquainted with my true heart vs. the false god heart. I am now realizing that I need compassion and pervasive forgiveness to completely replace bitterness and resentment in my spirit so that when I am under pressure and being squeezed, those attributes will be what spills out of me. For whatever is filling me on the inside is what will spill over on others when I am pushed or offended.

The thought came to me this morning that I must be a safe enough person for my opponents to confess their faults to without fear of my censure or shame. That was a shocking thought to me when I began to apply it to all the people that I am prone to criticize and find fault with. I have an awful lot of growing and maturing to do.

When I sat down for my communion time with God this morning I read this in My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, a devotional book that I have read every day for at least 5-6 years now. “If there is sin, confess it, not admit it. Are you willing to obey your Lord and Master whatever the humiliation to your right to yourself may be?

“Never discard a conviction. If it is important enough for the Spirit of God to have brought it to your mind, it is that thing He is detecting. You were looking for a great thing to give up. God is telling you of some tiny thing; but at the back of it there lies the central citadel of obstinacy: I will not give up my right to myself—the thing God intends you to give up if ever you are going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.” (UHH 9-24)

The story came to my mind of Moses striking the rock in anger in his frustration with the blindness and rebelliousness of the people God had asked him to lead to the promised land. The reason God gave to Moses for punishing him over this incident was not a reprimand for not following God's orders nearly so much as for misrepresenting who God is before the world. Moses presented a distorted picture of God’s passion and spirit toward the disobedient, setting the stage for the present terrible misunderstanding about hell and how God relates to those who oppose and reject His love. We are still struggling to overcome the ill-effects of Moses' wrong choice centuries later and still largely believe the lie about God that he acted out.

It is time for new examples and demonstrations of what God is really like. He desires to incarnate Himself in me just as much as He did through Jesus and demonstrate through my spirit and actions how he feels about lost human beings. To do this He has to get me to begin living from my heart the way He designed me live, the same place that He lives, and fulfill the destiny through the identity that He created me to be. I don't know what that looks like, but He does, and He's in charge of growing me into a man that reflects this aspect of Him to bless those around me through encouragement, compassion, unconditional love and honesty of heart, not just of mind. God, you've got a lot of work cut out for you, but you have my permission to do whatever you desire to fulfill your plan in me.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

We Prefer...

We Prefer

Men prefer darkness rather than light

We prefer force rather than compassion

We prefer confrontation rather than humility

We prefer argument rather than heart work

We prefer to be right rather than to care

We prefer tradition rather than transformation

We prefer to inflict pain rather than to admit pain

We prefer fear rather than love

We prefer to blame rather than to accept responsibility

We prefer to be nice than to be honest

We prefer fake perfection rather than vulnerability

We prefer preaching rather than careful searching

We prefer pleasure rather than deep satisfaction

We prefer to mask our pain rather than face it honestly in community

We prefer a pretend religion rather than real spirituality

We prefer a God who reflects our own image rather than a God who cannot be manipulated

We prefer an angry, wrathful God rather than an intense, passionate lover God

We prefer to have a list for right and wrong rather than wrestle through issues of a committed relationship

We prefer truth rather than spirit

We prefer spirit rather than truth

We prefer simplistic, prepackaged doctrines rather than continuous openness to growth

We prefer cultural exclusiveness rather than joyful unity in the full body of Christ

We prefer minimal growth rather than challenging exploration of our potential

Men prefer darkness rather than light

Friday, September 22, 2006

Resist not Evil

I have been struggling for days, even weeks with a situation that remains unresolved and frustrating to my spirit. One of my closest friends has shut me out of his life and closed off all communication with me without any explanation whatsoever. I have made repeated attempts to contact him in various ways but without any response. This has left my mind open to running all kinds of scenarios to come up with possible reasons and explanations for why this is happening. A pain is deepening on the inside that I now realize is called attachment pain. This is the deepest level of pain known to humans and is the most difficult to remedy.

I have reason to believe from past communications that they may be doing this believing it is for my best good, to pressure me into a position of spending more time getting close to my wife. If I knew this to be true it would give me great relief, although I feel it is an extreme measure on their part to accomplish something that is already taking place without their withdrawal. But to simply stonewall every attempt on my part to seek a reason for the sudden disconnect of what has been a long and close friendship has caused me to analyze my deep pain and how I must come to terms with it.

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39 KJV)

I have realized for some time that resistance produces heat. That has helped open up my mind to the real truth about hell and has radically changed my picture of God over the past few years. But the resistance that produces hell is resistance to love. When Jesus says I should not resist evil it creates questions and conflicts in my mind as to what He really means.

James 4:7 says, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” So apparently I'm supposed to resist the devil but not resist evil. This is not a theological argument that I wish to engage in, this is a principle of Reality that I must come to understand if I am to be in harmony with Reality.

I looked up the original word for “evil” used in the verse from Matthew. I found it very interesting, as is often the case when checking closer to the original than what translators assume. In this case evil involves a number of possibilities that include; hurtful, calamitous, vicious, mischief, malice, anguish, pain. This kind of evil brings in the necessity of forgiveness as an antidote to preventing bitterness from taking root in my soul.

Forgiveness itself is a most misunderstood concept in most people's minds. It usually means something along the line of accepting excuses or trying to just forget an offense. It often means for many people trying hard to not feel anger and resentment toward someone who has hurt them which becomes very hard work with very little good result. None of these, of course, are a part of real forgiveness.

But without real forgiveness our hearts quickly begin to fill up with pain and unresolved issues left open to grow and torment us. Our minds resent the idea of forgiveness if we are honest about it. It seems majorly unfair and unjust. Why should people who cause us so much pain be forgiven and thus apparently get off without any consequences for the pain they have caused others? Something inside is rises up and demands that they should feel as much pain at least as what they have inflicted if not more. That takes us back to the issue of temptation. (see Reflective Temptation and Temptation and Worship)

Real forgiveness is very painful, even excruciating business. It involves coming to the point of taking full ownership of all the pain someone else has caused us, or is causing us even in real time. It means releasing all “rights” to retaliate or even desire to get any amount of revenge. That point is well beyond natural human ability. Forgiveness takes full responsibility for the pain and consequences I am suffering because of someone else's choices.

Responsibility does not mean that what they did to me was my fault. That is an issues that many struggle with in trying to understand this. Responsibility has to do with “ability to respond” instead of react. When I react to pain it will almost always be to return what I have received which only increases a vicious cycle and is rooted in the back of my brain that just wants to do anything to make the pain stop or the problem to go away. To respond means to accept what is dealt to me, take ownership of it without resentment (but not without pain), and then choose to act from the front of my brain under direction from my true heart as to what is best for our relationship. This takes maturity.

If I resist evil, the hurt from calamity or mischief, or maybe the anguish and pain from malice or just rudeness, or maybe even simple misunderstandings; if I resist then I am living in reaction instead of responding. Resistance amplifies the pain I am experiencing. And I have seen that in my own experience all my life, sometimes to other people's amazement. A heart that values justice is a heart that especially notices what is unfair and can be deeply hurt by those things. But in resisting those experiences it amplifies the pain beyond its original intensity. No wonder Jesus recommended not resisting evil. Evil is bad enough on its own without me amplifying its effects in my soul and emotions.

So I see my need for an antidote, a balm as some call it, some Oil-based lotion that can bring soothing and relief to my aching heart and return me back to joy and peace. Forgiveness is not fair, but it is indispensable if I am to grow and thrive. It is also impossible given the mental equipment I received growing up unless I receive it through grace. “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Heb. 4:16.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Salvation by Competition

Believing that what someone else believes is wrong does not by default make what we believe right. We have an unconscious idea that black and white thinking means that if I'm not on one side then I am on the other. We become so caught up in competition of beliefs (evangelism) that we completely fail, or at best largely ignore the issues and problems with our hearts. We have elevated correct information to the level of God and thereby have made it a god that prevents us from knowing God.

We like in constant fear that we may entertain or overlook some piece of wrong information that will cause us to be lost. We believe that we will be judged and saved based mostly on the purity of our doctrines and secondarily on our relationships. In fact, we view many relationships as a threat to our obsession for pure doctrine and so avoid having meaningful connections with anyone whom we perceive or suspect may “corrupt” our accomplishment of “truth-gathering” up to this point in our lives. This has the growing tendency to cause us to associate more and more exclusively with only those who most nearly agree with our viewpoints and we more and more shun and pull away from everyone who makes us religiously or intellectually uncomfortable.

Evangelism as we see it today is largely an attempt to forcefully persuade people in a short time to align their intellectual/religious beliefs and external behaviors to be very close to ours so we will then have more people we can feel safe to fellowship with. If we can convince them to change with enough proof texts and arguments to switch sides from outside our church to inside our church then we suppose they are now converted and secure. From then on they only need weekly doctrinal maintenance and updating through unifying lesson quarterlies and formal sermonizing. Fellowship is considered a perk or maybe even a necessity, but only as a means of support for doctrinal growth and settling.

This is the model and reasoning developed and practiced by the Jews in Jesus' day and further fine-tuned and perfected by the Holy Roman Catholic Church for centuries. And as much as conservative protestants despise the Catholics they are, in fact, following very closely their lead and beliefs in how to correctly arrive at “truth” and “salvation”. If the truth were really exposed, it might be discovered that our animosity toward Catholics is rooted deeply in jealousy at their successful control over so many minds creating overwhelming competition for us in our desire to control other people's minds. Our doctrines may be different but our spirit and methods may be very similar. Jesus says to us as forcefully as to His own closest disciples, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of...” Luke 9:55.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Expectations are Prophecies

Expectations are permissions, compulsions, prophecies. This is how they operate both between people and within ourselves.

I have noticed for many years that when I wanted to change the way I acted and related to people, it was very difficult because of their expectations and assumptions of who I was and how they expected me to act. I did not have permission to be different than how I had always been or perceived to be. Their expectations of me also became my expectations of what I was supposed to be and became a strong compulsion to be that way. In that way they actually became self-fulfilling prophecies that obey the expectations.

For instance, I grew up with the expectancy of the people around me that I was an ungrateful, unthankful person. They tried to correct that by attempting to force me to say grateful things against my will and it usually turned into a very unpleasant experience. Since memories are indexed in the brain by emotional category my mind probably since then has associated gratitude with feelings of force, shame and even anger. Since I don't enjoy re-experiencing those kinds of emotions over and over I unconsciously avoid the behavior that is associated with them which unfortunately in this case is gratitude.

When I was ungrateful as a child I was also condemned for being an ungrateful child. I can even somewhat remember occasionally people prophesying dire futures of what I would become because of my ingratitude and selfishness. Prophecies have an amazing power in our lives. They are not unlike the spells of witchcraft. They have magical powers in our lives to cause things to happen. They are powerful expectations that embed themselves deep in our psyche and cause us to view ourselves in line with their predictions. That is why “reverse psychology” is such a destructive idea. It is not the wonderful motivator for positive growth that it is often assumed to be.

The results of my family's expectations of my ungrateful spirit has produced in the rest of my life just what they predicted. I have struggled all my life with both feeling grateful and expressing it. Sometimes even when I feel it and want to break out of my “mold”, I don't have permission to be different and feel compelled to continue to fulfill the image people have of me yet today.

On the surface this looks like a simple problem with a simple solution. People around me say, “Just choose to be different. You don't have to stay that way. We're not forcing you to be that way. We don't like it any better than you do, so why don't you just change?” But underneath and woven through their statements is still the same old expectancies that continue to inhibit me, raising feelings of shame and fear that again drive me into self-defeating behavior even though I really want to be different. It is back to the Romans 7 scenario again.

The key word in the transition between Romans 7 and 8 is the word “condemnation”. Condemnation is the active ingredient in negative expectations. It is the compelling force that was injected early in my life and casts its ugly spell over me yet today. It is also subtly present in the expectancies of the people around me today and especially in my mind. It is usually camouflaged as some other motivation but is always present when these symptoms exist. Condemnation is very tenacious and grows deep tentacles into my mind and heart. It thrives and feeds on shame and fear and dispenses the same back into my heart and out of me to others as well.

This situation is like a locking mechanism in the mind. Like the lock on a ratchet when it is engaged, the harder you try to work against it the harder it locks you down. Trying to overcome it by more force, logic, persuasion or threats only creates more resistance. The ratchet wheel on my boat trailer seems to be a good illustration. The only way I can release it to allow the boat to slide free into the water is to turn the wheel slightly in the opposite direction and then unset the latch before the wheel can spin freely in the right direction and release the safety strap. Once it is relaxed I can then unlock the boat from the strap and can enjoy the full freedom of boating without being tied down to the trailer.

Negative expectations are like that latch that keeps the ratchet locked. Those expectations need to be exposed (slightly turning the ratchet tighter at first creating even more tension) and then changed or unlocked. Part of this process is the discovery of old vows and expectancies that keep us yet in bondage and acting to renounce those vows, both from others and in ourselves. But what I see as just as important is the replacement of those negative expectancies with new and opposite ones.

This can be very tricky at this point, however. It is not unusual for many people to actually camouflage an old expectancy just beneath a new one. The words may sound right but the old spirit is still sending the old message very subtly. That's when the word “expect” has the alternate meaning more familiar to me. “I expect you to do _____,” or “I expect you to be this kind of person...” with the insinuation that if you don't perform as expected you will be in trouble (shamed and devalued). The expectations may be worded properly but the message is still the same – “I don't really think you have changed but I expect you to anyway, so you better try harder this time.”

New, positive expectancies have to be a heart experience. They have to be projected from one heart that believes in you and sees (prophecy's) something good in your heart that you cannot even see yourself. They have to be insistent as well as heart-felt and genuine. That person will persist in the face of repeated contrary evidence to believe in you and remind you often of what they see in you and in your future. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Heb. 11:1 This kind of faith is rooted in love and creates hope, “and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Rom. 5:5

This begins to create an atmosphere of permission so that it finally feels safe to be a different person than I always knew myself to be. When I receive repeated, genuine, heart-originated expectations irregardless of how I currently feel or even act, my own heart slowly begins to awaken, hope begins to flicker and I begin to perceive a different identity than what I always believed about myself. This new identity is very unfamiliar and maybe even a little frightening at first.

As I begin to shed my old identity I go through periods of terror, fear of death of the different parts of who I am, without confidence yet as to what is to replace it. I need to see my real self in the “face” of another person who will really care about my heart, who believes in me more than I believe in myself, and who is committed to a long-term relationship with me, especially if I can believe they will never abandon me. I need repeated reassurance and reminders of who I really am in my real heart because I easily loose sight of it in the clamor of the old gods losing their grip on my soul. I need to know that someone understands how I feel, that my deepest motives are good even when evidence seems to all point to the contrary. I need an environment starved of condemnation and enriched with confidence and life-giving nuggets of joy and affection. This creates in my soul the rich, plowed earth that will begin to produce much good fruit and overflow to affect other people's lives.

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” 2 Cor. 5:18,19 This is the life-changing opportunity we have to release each other into freedom. Taking people through this process who are locked down under multiple ratchets of negative expectations and vows, seeing them through the eyes of heaven and then injecting into their hearts and minds a new vision of who they really are and what they are becoming; this is the ministry of reconciliation that God has committed to us to fulfill. It is spreading the contagious infection of hope, joy and love setting people free from the heavy chains that have bound them all their lives, “and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” Heb. 2:15

Friday, September 15, 2006

Every temptation is an invitation to worship. This has probably not crossed our minds lately but it is true. I believe the reason we know so very little about real worship is because we have destroyed it in our incorrect response to temptations. Typically we have believed that the right way to react to temptations is to stuff our feelings, exercise strong will-power, fight to suppress all our urges and force our external behavior to conform to religiously correct norms. If you have very strong will-power you may be able to look good and perform correctly, but actually without realizing it you may have wounded your own heart even more. When we build walls around our hearts to shield us from temptation those same walls prevent us from experiencing and expressing what our hearts were originally designed for. Religion has become so devoid of heart experience today that many people turn to other sources to try to keep their hearts alive. In effect, they fall for the second-best notion that because their heart actually can be felt during temptation then giving in to temptation may be a way to enhance being in touch with their heart. Innately we all know at some very deep level, even if we have spent years of training contrariwise, that we were designed to live from our hearts primarily. That is simply the way human beings are wired. It is unavoidable but also a great source of consternation for religionists and pain for everyone. We have developed all sorts of programs and alternatives to satisfy this need, but most only end up crushing us even more and causing further damage and pain. After it gets too intense to endure we then switch in desperation to another technique that promises to nourish our hearts and free us from bondage only to be further wounded and crushed, shamed and devalued. The heart was designed to find its fullest fulfillment and joy in abandoning itself in creative and unique expression to another heart. It craves the reception of the same for itself – another heart that abandons itself in complete trust and transparency to my heart. The result of two or more hearts taking this kind of ultimate risk is called joy, something very few of us know much about. But we have tasted just enough to know we don't want to live without it. In fact, life is really pointless unless we can figure out how to connect with it. But how does temptation relate to this? Temptation is an invitation to abandonment, promising in return some kind of satisfaction and nourishment for our heart. Temptation is an invitation to trust someone or something to bring us a little bit of life and fulfillment of the cravings we naturally feel in our heart. Unfortunately, if we view the cravings themselves as the problem and try to attack, shame and suppress them, we only end up crushing our heart instead of experiencing growth in an opportunity to worship. Worship, if correctly understood, is an invitation to the very same experience as temptation. To really worship our hearts must be drawn out into an experience of freedom and abandonment to another heart. In that freedom the heart wants to receive love that is secure and unconditional and forever reliable. In that atmosphere trust can begin to flourish and quickly expand. Affection is received and expressed, awakened and deepened. Joy begins to appear and motivate us pursue deeper relationships. Joy is the emotion and experience of being cherished and valued by another heart and it quickly multiplies exponentially in this environment. The heart is satisfied, strengthened, it can rest and be at peace. It can experience boldness and be courageous in the face of anything. In short, real worship will produce what was briefly seen in the history of the early New Testament believers but is seldom seen authentically today. So how should we respond to temptation? If suppressing our heart is counter-productive and death-producing, what should we do with our emotions and urges? If we understand these feelings as actually desires to worship and not sources of sin, then instead of suppressing them we should instead redirect them. We must understand that our heart needs sources of life and will always seek for them, even more intensely if it has been starved and beaten into repression by intellectualism or formal religion. If we come to understand that our heart cravings are not wrong, we can begin to respect our heart's needs and desires and encourage their expression both in ourselves and others, which is in fact an act of worship. Worship is simply choosing a source from which we desire to receive life and pleasure and then surrendering control of ourselves to that source to receive what it has to give, be possessed by it and be transformed to become more like it. The problem always comes in surrendering to sources that cannot give us real life. Obviously many sources promise to be life-giving, some with much fanfare and exhibition. Many sources carefully package themselves to look very genuine or reinforce their claims to be reliable sources by assembling impressive credentials and endless arguments in their favor. Many proposed sources of life claim to be God-endorsed and compile great ramifications of scripture and other quotations to enforce their claims. They also use the carrot/stick approach and threaten that if you do not accept their claims and demands that you will suffer unimaginable amounts of pain, possibly for eternity, if you do not subscribe to their beliefs and submit to their control. So how do we know what is life-giving and what is not? For too long we have tried to rely solely on left-brain arguments and methods to condense the answer to this dilemma from endless amounts of research or attempts to determine which “authority” can be trusted among the myriads of competing voices. Or we may turn to “emotionalism”, a technique of simply throwing ourselves into any emotional experience that offers itself and hoping that by trial and error we will discover the true source of life for our heart before it runs out of life in the process. That's what Solomon tried and reported his findings in the book of Ecclesiastes. Both of these solutions eventually leave us damaged, confused and more deeply hurting than before we started. This is the condition in which most of us find ourselves. Identifying the true source of life to nourish our heart is something that has to be guided by the heart, not just by the head (left brain). Our hearts function very different than our minds. The heart is even baffling to the logical mind and defies explanation in verbal language. The heart was created to find satisfaction in intimate connection with other hearts, not in formula-based, rigid, intellectual strictures and controls. The heart longs to be felt and understood to some extent by another heart. It longs to experience and express boundless affection. It wants to thrive, to expand, to feel, to sense, to live in real reality. God has placed eternity in our hearts and we are always dissatisfied with anything less. If we learn to cherish and value and love our own hearts the way God does, then we will be empowered to love other people's hearts and connect with God's heart thereby receiving the life and energy and fulfillment that our heart was created for. When Jesus said we were to love our neighbor as ourself, He was stating a maxim as much as a command. Our ability to love our neighbor's heart is predicated on how much we acknowledge and care for our own heart. This is not selfishness and self-serving. That is the counterfeit. Selfishness seeks to appease and satisfy the false gods that live in us, not our true heart. Those gods are parasites that clamor for more and more nourishment while robbing our true heart of life-giving needs. These gods purport to be our identity, but in fact are foreign to our true selves. They are like cancer that grows and wraps itself around more and more of our internal organs, but should never be mistaken to be a legitimate part of our being. The God of heaven is a very jealous God and will not share space with any other gods. He is fighting for the life of our true heart, our true identity, our true self. He created it to start with. Then He redeemed it on the cross, earning the right to receive back what was taken away from Him at the fall of man in the garden. He is the only source of real life that fits our heart's cravings and He is doing everything possible to reconnect the supply line and begin resuscitating our dying souls. His heart is hurting worse than ours and is also desperate, passionate to be understood, shared and joined back into unity with our hearts. The appropriate response to temptation in the light of the above then is to give in to our truest heart's desires and acknowledge them and accept them. When we carefully uncover the root of every desire we feel when we are tempted, we will discover that the desires are not bad or evil but are symptoms of emptiness and hunger. We must expose the truth about our heart's needs and recognize that the offer of the temptation will not satisfy as promised. The need felt in our heart is legitimate and is really a desire to worship, to receive and give life. We must resist the notion that our cravings and needs, the deep desires of our hearts are the problem. We must avoid attacking and condemning the desires of our true heart or of those around us. Instead of worshiping (indulging in a false source of life) the little gods that cannot deliver real satisfaction to us as promised, we must redirect our hearts attention and emotional energies to the channels God has provided for us to receive life from Him. These channels may be our spouse, our friends who are sharing the journey with us, and of course a direct communication to God's heart and mind through prayer and receiving His messages from the Word and the Holy Spirit. If any of these channels are clogged or broken we will experience pain and reduced growth. Clogged and damaged channels are often found in lack of heart connectedness between spouses, dysfunction and pain in families and churches, isolation in the community and the presence of prejudice and bigotry. Pride glazes over our perceptions and blinds us to the true nature of our restricted sources of life. Over the years our hearts slowly shrivel and waste away and we accept our condition as “normal” since the people around us are not much different. We medicate the painful symptoms, deny them, repress them or whatever other gimmick we can employ to avoid them. We insist that we are fine and continue the charade of the walking dead. Our description is well defined in the Revelation message to the church of Laodicea. Salvation is the process of restoring (salvaging) us to a fully-functioning rhythm of living from the heart as God originally created us. “Until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.” (Eph. 4:13 Message) Salvation is God's method of restoring us to living in reality, having openly expressive hearts, living transparently and not avoiding any emotions. Being fully alive involves knowing our maturity and living in community to increase our maturity. Temptation is any diversion that tries to derail and subvert us from experiencing being fully alive. Accept the offer of temptation to express worship. Go ahead and give in fully to the desires of your heart. Just redirect it from the false source that temptation offers to the true source that it is counterfeiting. Then through every temptation we will find fresh opportunities to release worship and experience increased life. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” 1 Pet. 4:12,13. Jesus was the only man who lived fully from His heart. This caused Him untold suffering but also freed Him to experience unrestricted joy. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Heb. 12:2,3. The primary tool of the enemy against us is shame. Shame is devaluing our worth and identity. Shame sets us up for temptations and the result of giving in to temptations is more shame. Jesus despised shame by focusing on joy. This is how He dealt with temptation and is our example of how to successfully do the same. The definition of joy according to our nervous system is the experience one has when someone is genuinely glad to be with us, when we are cherished and special to someone's heart irregardless of our performance or feelings. We experience joy when our spouse, our friends, our family values and affirms us, especially when we don't appear or feel valuable ourselves. That is exactly why Jesus emphatically stated He would never leave us or forsake us. Joy is our strength for meeting temptation. And instead of running and hiding from temptation and repressing our heart's pleas for recognition and expression, through the strength of joy we can redirect our heart's desires to the channels that connect us to the ultimate Source of pleasure and life. “Until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.”

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Dance Lessons

Interesting emotions today. Our guests/friends who have been living with us and ministering to us intensely for several weeks left today. This morning one of them was trying to send value messages, talking to my heart. It occurred to me that I was in a similar situation with similar feelings I had when my Mom tried to talk to my heart many years ago on the edge of my bed. In fact, I couldn't distinctly remember anyone doing that since then. While she was talking I was analyzing my reaction in the present. Was I trying to completely block out all incoming messages like I did before? No, this time I found myself listening with interest but still with a great deal of resistance and disbelief. After years of shame messages to my identity and perceived rejection it is very difficult to just open up and receive affirmations of value without question, as much as I want to be able to.

I also realize, to a little extent anyway, the immense blockage that I have built up over the past 30 years to receiving and giving care for hearts. It is the most difficult thing to believe the sincerity of others compliments or affirmations. In families it is much easier for us to connect with people not related to us than with each other. Of course, if continued this will become our destruction, not only of our family but of our souls as well. But that is negative motivation which, while true, has usually resulted in more resistance and further shutdown. Somehow we have to develop radical new habits of reacting and thinking when we feel attacked, threatened, demeaned and devalued. It is a good step to learn that's what we need to do, it is another to begin exercising and experiencing it.

Rose noted a very interesting insight and relationship between love and trust. True love is unconditional and expects no return for its investment. It is freely given without strings attached. Trust on the other hand expects a return for its investment. We get into trouble when we reverse the two and use them in place of the other. Love needs to be extended first to create an atmosphere where trust can flourish. If we try to trust someone first before we extend love to them, we will likely be disappointed and hurt when they fail our trust and love is never experienced.

I drove them out to the airport this morning so they could fly themselves to Wisconsin. It was almost nostalgic to be around planes again and the old desire to fly started growing as I talked with the friendly people in the hanger. As I drove away I also noted my emotions of attachment pain as Kevin and Rose begin the process of leaving us for good. They will be back for a short time at the end of the month, but we are being weaned to practice what they have worked so hard to teach us and model for us the past few weeks. They have certainly pried deeper into my damaged heart than anyone has ever done before and I am far more vulnerable to both joy and pain than I have been in years. What will flow into the holes and cracks freshly opened will largely be determined by the choices I make over the next few days and weeks. It is both very frightening and tantalizing at the same time. The bonding part of my brain has been somewhat reawakened and I have to overcome some deeply ingrained habits to steer my bonding efforts toward my wife if I want to have any healthy relationships at all for the rest of my life. My little gods are clamoring to stop all this and God is-- well, I'm not sure exactly what He's doing. I keep hearing Him encouraging me in the right direction and I trust He is continuing the plans He has for me and all my relationships.

As I copied some song lyrics off the internet a few minutes ago I suddenly was confronted with this message from God to my heart. It seems to be the theme coming at me from several people interested in my heart. I was moved deeply as I sang, or tried to sing, through the following words.

Lord of the Dance

I danced in the morning when the world was begun, And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun, And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth, At Bethlehem I had my birth.

Refrain

Dance, then, wherever you may be; I am the Lord of the Dance, said he. And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be, And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

I danced for the scribe and the Pharisee, But they would not dance and they would not follow me; I danced for the fishermen, for James and John; They came to me and the dance went on.

Refrain

I danced on the sabbath when I cured the lame, The holy people said it was a shame; They whipped and they stripped and they hung me high; And they left me there on a cross to die.

Refrain

I danced on a Friday and the sky turned black; It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back; They buried my body and they thought I’d gone, But I am the dance and I still go on.

Refrain

They cut me down and I leapt up high, I am the life that’ll never, never die; I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me; I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.

Refrain

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Internal Floundering

Deeper exposure of evil for evil relationship last night. Nearly all my communication is based on view of other person's resistance. Working very hard to dislocate splinter from another's eye. Definitely need a new heart and new perception.

It is very difficult for me to discern difference between conviction and false gods. False gods are very adept at using my mind to make me feel depressed and self-pity when others don't value me. I especially feel depressed when I believe I have yet again overwhelmed a sensitive person with too much “intimacy” and frightened them away from ever getting near me again. I feel intense shame, beat myself up emotionally, tell myself that I'm a jerk and I never know how to properly relate to people emotionally. It is always too much or too little affection. Every time I try to express what I believe is being honest about how I feel it either scares people off or makes them angry or both. Now on top of that I can add feeling guilty about being an image manager and trying to always control what people think about me.

How can I identify lying spirit gods? It seems I have to know the real laws and my relationship to them. I have to know what is true as well as know God, the source of truth. When I try to argue with the voices they always win because they can always out-feel me.

  • I need discernment that I don't have and can't produce by my mind to uncover the disguises of the enemy gods. They are not me, they are sin living in me.

  • I need to know solidly how much authority I have in Jesus Christ, not just intellectually but in my deepest spirit.

  • I need to exercise that authority against the gods as soon as I identify that they are harassing me again.

  • I need to arrest them boldly and decidedly and force them into judgment before the court of heaven.

  • Then I need to know how to impose a strong restraining order against them to prevent them from stealing, killing and destroyed my life and marriage and relationships further.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Internal Analysis

I am slowly becoming aware that the immense wall of resistance inside me has a mixture of fear, guilt, pride, shame, rebellion, self-justification, self-defense, fear of death. Sounds like the same ID's as the gods that have been getting exposed. I feel incapable of managing them in this situation as far as getting them to relinquish resistance, they refuse to take directions about this. I stay confused about what method or handle of willpower to use to unlock my mind or even where permission is needed. The exit door is not clearly marked, at least on the inside. And one of them that most people on the outside insist is the only exit clearly looks like it will not only destroy my false identity but my real heart as well, though that fear has been unpacked much better than ever before.

Yesterday Rose observed that my basis for thinking – perceiving reality - is deeply distorted due to a life-long lack of encouragement and affirmation. That feels very true. It feels very strongly that that is one of the primary missing ingredients I need to be able to discern the way out of my trap or take action to move. This is clearly what the Life Model describes as type A trauma. My early years of deep fear of God have not been completely undone yet and the residual effects are still evident far more than I wish was true. Of course, this simply means that I am finally starting to uncover deeper levels of the brain and embedded beliefs that have not yet been exposed over the years of new beliefs that have replaced much of the upper level lies. In fact, I now remember Wilder explaining that when you get down to level 1 and 2 problems and emotions it is beyond the reach of the will or consciousness and can only be changed from the outside. He said the only use for the will at these levels is to trust the other person to make the changes, but with no control either over what is changed or any ability to reverse the changes once they are made.

I don't understand why I don't feel much more appreciation and spontaneous gratitude for what they are doing for us. This is probably the best effort anyone has ever put out for us for the least appreciation. The only positive thing I see in this is that I am not like the people that Regier talks about that shower him with flattery making him realize they didn't get what he was trying to get through to them. This lack of natural gratitude as a constant in my life is baffling to me. Maybe that's because it is rooted in such deep levels of the brain that is is beyond access from my conscious searching. It also makes me afraid they will run out of patience with me and give up because they are not appreciated. Of course there is also the expiration date fast closing in on their stay here that stirs my fears.

Uncovering these emotions is only possible at this point in my journey by capturing them early in the morning and chasing them from one to the next and capturing them in writing before they go deep into hiding again. They only peek out when everything is quiet and my mind is actively digesting the previous day's input and the overnight filing process. Then after awhile they all sink back into hiding and don't emerge again unless some unexpected emotional event occurs. And even then only selected ones surface in response to whatever fits the nature of the event and quickly return to hiding to avoid observation.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Two Languages

I am in the infant stages of learning about real heart communication and identification. I am beginning to learn some of the most elementary principles that seem so obvious and yet so unknown. After they dawn on me, (which probably means they are linked together between my left and right brain), I realize they were right there in the Bible all along and other people have been trying to convey them to me for a very long time. That makes me feel a little stupid. Maybe that's what the Bible is talking about in 1Cor. 3:18-20 Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, "He is THE ONE WHO CATCHES THE WISE IN THEIR CRAFTINESS"; and again, "THE LORD KNOWS THE REASONINGS of the wise, THAT THEY ARE USELESS."

2Co 5:16 “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.” I think I may be starting to understand a little of what this might mean. It is highlighting the difference between two languages, the language that most humans typically use and the language of heart communication. Actually they are more like filters than separate languages. We always have filters in place when we think and talk. The problem is not just whether we have correct information but even more so how we interpret it and what part of our brain is allowed to interpret it.

Learning to live from my heart, even a renewed heart, is a real struggle for me right now. It is much easier to interpret others through the filters I have used all my life that were both trained into me by my family, church and culture and ones I have cultivated. But most all of these familiar filters, even though they sound very right, are easily defendable and can even be deeply entrenched in proof texts and quotations, these filters are actually based on formulations of the false gods that have deceived me all these years. These filters are based on the Sarc (or Sarx), which is the Greek word translated in the Bible as “flesh”. That is the natural part of us, human nature, what feels normal and sensible, common sense etc. Much of religion is based on Sarc thinking though that statement would be sure to raise intense controversy. Sarc thinking can be based on very true information and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt but still not be heart-oriented or sensitive.

Heart language requires having “the eyes of heaven”, perceiving not only others but also our own hearts with new appreciation and insight. It is a skill that everyone must have if they are to participate in heaven's kingdom but is so rare it is startling when we see it. In fact, we often mistake it for simple-mindedness, immature thinking or even naivety. It is most easily seen in small children but is soon trained out of them by abuse and lies. It is being able to honestly express the truth about our real emotions and motives, either good or bad. It is also the ability to discern the difference between what originates from an innocent heart and what purports to be from our heart but is actually gods masquerading as our identity. This is the part that is very new and very difficult for me to successfully navigate right now.

But as I consider the alternative - that is, to continue to misjudge and wound the hearts of those around me in my attempts to defend myself or maintain being right – I decide that this venture is more than worth the effort and dis-ease of being out of my comfort zone for a season. Viewing the immense damage I have already caused the hearts of my own wife and children over the past 30 years I believe it is time to accept a radical new direction in my thinking, believing and relating.

This is very unsettling and frightening for me and makes me feel very vulnerable, as I have expressed recently in my blogs. I have to accept the very real possibility that someone, or many ones, will choose to exploit my vulnerability and choose to hurt me deeply. That is the price I have to be willing to pay to unlock my real heart and actually begin to live real life again.

I remember when I was a teenager at LBA in Tennessee going out into the circle and lying down in the grass struggling with this very issue. I sensed that my ability to enjoy beauty and have deep relationships was fast eroding and being replaced by a feeling of callousness and walls of self protection. I no longer could genuinely revel in a beautiful sunset or experience many feelings like I used to do. Intrinsically I realized that my capacity for experiencing joy and connecting meaningfully with other people was the exact same capacity that I was willing to allow myself to be hurt and wounded without cutting myself off. At that time I made a conscious decision to be willing to accept that. I believed for many years that that decision still stood in my life. But over the past few years I have begun to realize that somehow that decision has been largely reversed, but so subtly that I didn't realize it was happening. I again became aware that many of my relationships, especially with close family, were feeling more and more at a distance even though externally they look respectable. But this time I am in the quicksand so deep that I could not get out by myself. I heart is struggling and gasping for it's last violent attempts to breath and I need emergency resuscitation.

I have been praying for months for something more than just another seminar or even a week-long counseling session, as good as those have been. I needed someone, preferably a couple, to literally move in with us and show us what it looks like while teaching and coaching us how to live and love and be real in everyday life. God was so wonderful, as He always is though I often don't perceive it, and sent that very thing into our lives. We are right now going through that very process with the most unusual couple I have ever met who have those exact qualifications. In fact, they have made it their life work to do just what I described, to live with people, provide their professional mediation skills and their wide variety of training along with their more important abilities to live from their hearts transparently in any situation. It is literally taking weeks for me to slowly unfreeze the thick walls encasing my own heart. I often feel very much like the frozen waterfalls in the recent movie Narnia, as they begin to crack and soften and leak, threatening to collapse into a torrent of revived life and free flowing emotions again.

I don't yet have an ending for this to write yet. That's because I'm still in the middle of the process and don't know what's next. I am simply trying to express and understand and share it as it happens.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Heart springs

'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' Matt. 22:37-39

I find it quite interesting that each mention of this in the Bible always lists the heart first and the mind near the last. I think that is very significant. I also am beginning to see that loving your neighbor as yourself cuts two ways and has interesting implications. It also is much more of a heart issue than a mind problem. It is, in fact, a principle as much as a command.

If I don't love my own heart, respect it, value it and care for it I am incapable of effectively doing that for the people closest to me, my spouse and family. I am not referring to selfishness, I am referring to discovering my true identity that God implanted in me at conception and designed for me to be.

I am a human being, not a human doing. But long ago I lost sight of that and have viewed myself in essence on the basis of all my doing. Therefore I became an image manager and live in constant fear of what others might think about me. This also disables me from relating to the hearts of those around me especially in my family.

Pr 4:23 Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.

I never really understood what this was saying until this morning, at least to a greater degree. My heart is really the “vital connection” to the Source of Life, God Himself. When I am not connected and aware of my heart I have choked off the channel through which I need to receive life. I also am unable to give life to other hearts. If my heart is buried under a mountain of religion, fear, shame, information, worries, distractions, addictions etc. – the spring is clogged up and I don't experience fruitfulness and joy and all the results of living water in a dry land.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Reproof and Identity

One of the big reasons it is so hard to accept reproof is that is feels like an attack on my value and identity. It seems that effective reproof would make a stark distinction between the sin that dwells in me, the false gods acting out through me, and the real heart in me that is easily wounded and never originated the offense in the first place. Separating behavior and identity in our understanding and perception of our self is a massive paradigm shift but is undermined when it is not used in reproof.

This is why it brings such hope when someone cares and affirms another person's true heart intentions while exposing the self-defeating, hurtful habits that hold them hostage. If this distinction was practiced much more, there would be much more hope around peoples hearts opening the way for love to enter and begin to work and grow. Making this distinction is an act of grace, not holding our sins against us but acknowledging it presence and control in our soul. This is the core essence of what Jesus was all about. I have heard about it as theory but am just now vaguely beginning to perceive it with both halves of my brain.

I want to know what this looks like. I want to practice it. I want to be able to receive it and have others treat me this way. The reason I get so defensive and resistant to any attempts to reveal my deep issues is that it is almost always perceived as an attack on who I am. That reinforces th shame that has been the trademark atmosphere of my soul environment all of my life and is the catalyst for discouragement and despair. Pride then comes forward to counteract and protect my heart from being hurt again and the cycle continues to spin.

If I am rebuked for pride and rebellion, my true heart motives, my real identity is attacked as being haughty, selfish and wicked. I hear my Dad repeating his mantra to me again, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee...” (1 Samuel 15:23 KJV) I remember the intensity and even how my body felt when receiving that strong message from him again and again. I didn't really know what witchcraft, iniquity and idolatry meant, but I knew they must be very bad so I must be a very bad person at my core. Another favorite memory verse often rehearsed to me was Jer. 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” This was the primary definition of my heart I learned as I was growing up.

Now I realize that this is why I struggle inwardly to be able to believe what feels like anti-truth that I have been learning from various healing ministries we have been involved in over the past few years. The idea that my true heart has good desires and may even be created perfect in its motives, or at least designed that way seems blatantly anti-biblical, in spite of exhaustive proof-texting to the contrary to convince me of the truth of God's word. I'm sure that some will be equally stirred up with strong feelings against what I am saying for possibly very similar reasons. My left-brain mind has been more or less accepting of this “new theology?” for some time, but my control center and gut belief wiring (false gods) says it can't be so. For all the texts that promise cleansing, renewal, a new heart and identity seem to always have an “if” connected, which in my training and belief system always meant I had to repent enough to impress God that I was worthy enough to be forgiven and saved (until the next offense).

This underlying (with the emphasis on “lying”) theology, reinforced by life-long training and coaching by both family and church makes up much of who I perceive myself to be. And I believe until it is fully allowed to be exposed in the true Light and seen (by my heart, not just my mind) for the monster that it really is, it will continue to run as the default Operating System of my psyche. And as long as this is my OS, it's conclusions and assumptions will strongly influence how I treat other people as well as myself.

Right now I feel the confusion of two Operating Systems running in parallel inside me. No wonder I give people confusing signals and conflicting messages between my words and my mannerisms. It seems like Paul described the same problem in Romans 7.

As I think of it, my mentors in my childhood and early youth were working from the paradigm that people must be thoroughly convinced and convicted of desperate wickedness before they could learn anything about grace. I never did learn about grace. For years it was just a very confusing, baffling word that didn't logically fit anywhere in my understanding of religion. I was taught by implication and mentoring to skim very lightly over, and discount the weight of verses portraying God's wastefully extravagant plans to change us for His name's sake, and instead to dwell primarily and heavily on texts that seem to demand performance and proof of repentance before God could accept and then change us (with a lot of will-power on my part). No wonder many of my friends have abandoned the church trying to reconcile the reality of their true heart within and this theology without (without true grace).

My assigned identity with Saul as being a rebellious and stubborn boy had the effect of producing and strengthening those very traits in my life. The gods stepped in and began to perform, fulfilling my father's prophesies over me. I was receiving a cursing instead of a blessing, just as he had experienced. Indeed, rebellion really is like witchcraft; it casts a spell over you and when you receive it's predictions it assigns its own identity to your self-perception. This is reinforced by resulting actions and reactions toward the very people who assigned you the identity in the first place confirming in their minds their beliefs about you as being valid and “gospel” truth.

As all this faulty thinking and false training is floating to the surface this morning from the cesspool underneath, God pointed me to His word for me today. As I was looking for the above texts in a concordance this text also caught my attention as well. Unfortunately it is not underlined in RED in my parent's Bible like the previous ones are. “And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have wrought with you for my name's sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings..., saith the Lord GOD.” (Ezekiel 20:44 KJV) He also reminded me that Saul's identity was produced by a long series choices that resulted in his rejection as king and a life of guilt and despair. It was a terrible curse to have that identity assigned to me and forced on me for the “crimes” of childhood mistakes and sins.

Though it was a commonly held belief by my Dad's culture that “negative motivation” techniques would result in positive changes, the negative messages were only received as delivered and the false gods moved into their new home happy to extend their destruction and madness to yet another generation. The sins of the fathers are indeed visiting the third and fourth generation of those who hate God. (Ex. 20:5) And why shouldn't we hate Him, if He is of the character we were led to believe.

Praise God for His grace that “where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” (Romans 5:20 NKJV) I choose to receive the prophecy twice spoken directly to me by people of God in recent months. Though I don't yet know what it looks like or all the implications, I accept it as the Word of the Lord for my true destiny. Amazingly, it comes from the story of the same Saul that produced the previous identity curse that was prophesied over me so many years ago producing so much pain and dysfunction in my life these many years. This is the real desire of God's heart and His prophecy about me.

“And the spirit of the LORD will come powerfully on you, and you shall prophesy with them, and shall be turned into another man. And it will be when these signs have come to you, you will do for yourself what your hand finds; for God is with you.” (1 Samuel 10:6-7 MKJV)

“And the spirit of the Lord will come on you with power, and you will be acting like a prophet with them, and will be changed into another man. And when these signs come to you, see that you take the chance which is offered you; for God is with you.” (1 Samuel 10:6-7 BBE)

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Yesterday I tore out the rotten floor out of my boat. It was covered by carpet that was not quite as rotten that masked the seriousness of the problem. The underlying plywood was more weak than cardboard in some ways. Much of it literally fell apart in my hands as I pulled it out in wet chunks. The fiberglass hull seems strong enough but I am not completely sure about the 2X4 ribs longwise. They are mostly covered with fiberglass in areas but still appear quite wet. I also have serious doubts about having enough room to install a gas tank under the planned new floor. At this point I am not quite sure what I should do.

Amazingly, my soul feels strikingly much the same condition as my boat on the very same day. The enormity and extent of the hidden rottenness is only beginning to be uncovered as the masking layers are carefully peeled away. My carpet, designed for comfort and acceptable appearance, looks in much better shape than the infrastructure of false gods and images beneath though it too has some noticeable holes in it.

Last night it was revealed to us that not only much of my childhood was filled with shame messages but many of the events surrounding the beginning of my marriage were immersed in shame as well. The very night we got engaged we suffered a blasting shame message from my step-mom supported by my dad. We were accused of all manner of immoral motives and humiliating innuendos just because I had my arm around my girlfriend's shoulder during evening worship in my parent's house. After worship was closed I borrowed their car and we escaped into the night overseen by a full moon and a little while later I proposed. I was trying to escape the shame of my childhood and youth only to have it strongly injected into the very foundation mix of this relationship.

How much that has affected us and hindered us from forming close bonds of love and respect, I don't know if I will ever know the extent. But I am sure it is much greater than I ever realized. The floor is being exposed and the rottenness is falling apart before my eyes. I too need a new floor, both in my own identity and in my marriage. How is that going to come about? I don't have much idea right now much more than I know how to fix my boat sitting in the driveway. I value my boat. I don't want to scrap it. I don't see the way clear to buy a replacement and it is a valuable asset in helping create fun opportunities for strengthening bonds with family and friends. I simply don't have the wisdom, skill and resources needed for the problem in front of me.

Likewise, my life and my marriage need far more extensive remediation and infrastructure replacement than I could ever see before. And this too is far beyond my ability, wisdom and resources. I'm sure glad this God-size problem belongs to Someone God's size instead of me. “Who will deliver me.... I thank God.”

The pervasiveness of my pride, the extent and control of the many false gods inside, the paradigm of “image manager” and all that that implies is just beginning to be seen in the dim light of dawn. I don't know if I really know how to walk in the light or not, much less run or mount up as an eagle. But it sure would be a thrill to experience that on a regular basis.

Another baffling and elusive part of me is, what does the real Floyd look like, the one that God originally created and encoded into my genes. I've heard that the real design is unique and extremely valuable and even confident. He has very special and powerful characteristics that, energized by a vital connection with his Creator would bring untold blessing and joy to everyone touched by his life.

I want to discover him. He has been stuffed, stifled and gagged for most of his life. His identity was replaced early on in life by definitions and cheap copies purporting to be his real identity. “The gods must be crazy” is more than just a funny movie, it is a reality. The gods have been managing my identity and my relationships for most of my life and I was clueless. I had no way of knowing that it wasn't me making all those assumptions about myself, it was sin dwelling in me asserting that it was the real me.

Flushing this all out into the light and trying to condense what I am experiencing into words is a very unsettling experience at the least. My gods are getting more agitated by the day as their secure position is fast eroding. My accustomed job of controlling what everyone thinks about me is under threat as well and fear of unemployment in this arena is somewhat disconcerting. I feel very unstable, unpredictable, even unreliable. I have not let go fully and am not even sure I know how. I guess I have never had anyone treat me or believe in my real identity like Kevin and Rose have done over the past few weeks. That to is frightening for I cannot depend on their perspective up close much longer. There are other lives to rescue and this job cannot hog their resources much longer.

So, what is God up to here? This is scaring the hell out me now. That has been my problem most of my life, the hell in me. The gods from hell have been comfortable here for years and now they are scared. But that is pretty much all I have ever known about “myself”. I desperately need more people around me to not only see me with the eyes of heaven but to help me see the same. I sense that I know almost nothing about my original design. My images have been so thorough that I am baffled to know where to look or how separate the genuine from the counterfeit identity. I have thought about trying to assemble a list of pieces of personality that may have the ring of original design, but I'm not sure my own mind can be trusted to differentiate accurately. At the same time I don't feel safe trusting anyone else too much with that job either since other people are the primary reason and source of my false I.D. to start with.

So, now what? I honestly don't know. I'm not even sure if it is for me to know. That may be the issue of faith. I have to trust that God is orchestrating this whole thing and is more than competent to finish what He started and do it on time as well. What other option do I have, continue my job as the manipulator of everyone's opinion of me? That's very hard work, so far has been less than immensely satisfying and is very tiring. However, it's what I am most familiar with and the gods are still demanding participation and cooperation. Their carrots and sticks are still waving in my face. Lord Fear and Sister Shame are confident they can reassert their control over me and I am certainly very vulnerable to their vicious attacks. I not only need God's presence and new life inside but I also need a community of wounded lovers and believers who are living the same experience as me.

Where are they God?

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Identity Crisis

I had a dream two nights ago that I will not take the time to relate right now. However, it was so strong that I had to get up immediately and write it down along with the impressions God was giving me.

The other day as Kevin and Rose were ministering to us they suggested that maybe I was acting as an “image manager”, carefully choreographing my life and my appearances to control what others think about me. At the time I felt a resonance inside that indicated there must be some core truth about this that I needed to consider and discuss with God. After I woke up from the dream and asked God what it meant He brought back the subject of “image manager” and began to amplify what He wanted me to see about myself.

Yes, I am an “image manager”. But this time He pointed out that the images I am managing are really the false gods mentioned in the second commandment. These are internal gods that lay heavy burdens on me and cause me to bow to them and satisfy their demands. I either look to them for pleasure and fulfillment and identity or I appease them and submit to their demands to try to avoid pain. I am their manager, the director, the caretaker of a soul-house full of images that I keep rearranging to meet every emerging situation, especially any threats to their exposure.

Many years ago I had a screaming match with “God” while traveling home to Mattoon from Cedar Lake, MI in the backseat of our car to see my dying mother. I was living a miserable life of both rebellion and trying to appease a tortured conscience based on very distorted and twisted views of God. That night after intense anger at a “God” who I knew was going to let my mother die if I didn't change my ways, I struck a deal with Him very grudgingly and under intense duress. I promised Him that if He would allow my mother to live then I would try much harder to be a good boy and put away my bad desires and be a good Christian.

Well, my mother did not die but got dramatically better. Accordingly, I kept my end of the bargain and for the rest of my life until a few days ago I marked that night as the beginning of my walk with God. However, it has very recently been brought to my attention that the god I struck that bargain with so many years ago had none of the characteristics of the true God of the Bible that I now know about. I had always rationalized this discrepancy away by saying that “God met me where I was and used that to turn me in the right direction”. But that idea greatly disturbs me now. I am beginning to realize that it is very possible that, in fact, that night may have instead marked the beginning of my long and illustrious career of “image manager” and actually introduced a number of false gods into my soul by that deal I struck with some entity out there. After that time I launched with great vigor into working on being a good Christian and doing everything that Christians are supposed to do. I realize now as I look back that over the years of those efforts more gods have been quietly joining the team until now I am gasping for a breath of reality. I am no longer sure how many my prayers have been directed to the true God or how much I am still worshiping and serving the imitation god that I promised my life to in the car that night and has held me hostage all these years since.

Yes, my picture of the true Creator God in heaven has dramatically improved over the years and I am still confident that the real God is somewhere behind the scenes communicating with me through all this. But I feel partly like Job with his twisted view of God, partly like the helpless demoniacs of Jesus' day longing to cry out for freedom but the words always end up backwards, partly like the confused disciples misjudging the character and desires of Jesus and even a little like Simon the sorcerer. I resonate quite a bit with Simon's agonized cry for Peter to pray for him. Only the problem with Simon's request was that his desire was to avoid the consequences instead of desiring a new heart.

As I lay in bed yesterday contemplating my dream and the interpretation thereof, I also strongly identified with Jacob when he wrestled with the heavenly messenger. He was desperately begging for a blessing, a new identity, freedom from the demon-gods of his past. He was clinging to the physical body of Love itself until he would feel it inside his own soul and be able to live without fear and shame for the first time in his life. The tears started to leak as I expressed that this was my own intense need, I desperately crave a blessing from the only One who knows my heart, my deepest longings that He planted in there originally. I want to know how to be real, to be free to be real, to know the joy of living from my heart with abandon uninhibited by the constraints of all the little gods that demand I conform to the religious and cultural customs they impose on me. I want to know who I really am, not the interpreted identity prescribed and micromanaged by the gods within.

I am just starting to recognize the various voices and familiar messages from many of the gods in my own head. They are quite insistent, controlling, demanding, manipulative, shaming, debilitating, frustrating and clamoring. These lying spirits have been very effective in locking up my marriage relationship, nearly eliminating my relationship with my children and straining my relationship with the church. Some of these gods are generational gods that have visited me from my father and mother and from their parents.

For instance, my own father's prominent gods of fault-finding and of bitterness have been very alive and well in my own mind and heart for many years despite my best efforts to the contrary. In fact, my despising of these gods in my dad and my repeated vows that I never wanted to repeat his mistakes only served to conveniently assist these gods into camouflaging themselves within me and forcing me to follow their demands.

But as the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day (Proverbs 4:18), the light of honesty and truth, especially this last two weeks, has been slowly increasing in the dark rooms of my soul. Consequently the shapes and images of my parents gods as well as many of my own are becoming more visible and their effect on my soul has become frightening.

I am becoming dimly aware that these gods have been so subtle and yet so pervasive over the years that they have in fact defined who I perceive myself to be. They have defined my identity and I really don't know who I am apart from them just as my Dad didn't know who he really was until a couple years before his death. Never before did I even begin to realize that they were, in fact, false gods using and abusing me and those around me. But for the past few days they have been emerging from the shadows sometimes more insistent with their demands now than ever, now that their presence has been exposed and their security threatened. Sometimes I feel like the little boy at the base of the mount of transfiguration being thrown about and abused by these mocking gods while Jesus and his father discuss his case history and the disciples look on full of helpless shame for their inability to bring about healing.

I do not want them to live here any longer, They are not welcome here. I want only one God and I want only the One who is genuinely good, who knows my true identity and who's plans for me are to give me a future and a hope. (Jer. 29:11) I realize that I am just as incapable of evicting these gods as the demoniacs were in Jesus' day. I have wrestled with them for years, managed them, avoided them, tried to argue them away and sometimes even been somewhat loosed from them by grace for a time. But they always sneak back in quietly and soon assert their control in me again further locking down my heart.

The polluted atmosphere the gods breathe into my soul is a low-level fear that most of the time remains just below consciousness. At times it temporarily becomes intense fear momentarily when there is danger of them being exposed, but most of the time it stays disguised beyond even my own awareness. This polluted atmosphere has over the years quietly drained away my life and health and has stolen most of the joy and fun and relationships in life that God wanted for me before my heart could even enjoy them and be strengthened by them. These gods have built thick walls of hard ice around me that prevent me from receiving and giving love freely and spontaneously. They have created a substitute life that looks very similar to true life and forced me to settle for that as the best I can expect. My heart has been kept at a distance from my wife, my children, my relatives and my friends to various degrees. Then the gods in concert with other people around me assert that all these problems originate from me and define who I am. Sometimes I truly want to exclaim with Paul, “who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24) I have to remember that though “I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. (Romans 7:16-17)

In spite of all this I have been amazed and humbled by the continued personal and frequent messages from God that continue to get through the clamoring voices and lies of all my little images. He has been revealing more and more beautiful truth about who He really is and how He feels about me in spite of all the counterfeit programming from my past and my surroundings. Like Jacob I have to say, “O God of my father, O LORD, who said to me, 'Return to your country (where you grew up) and to your relatives (and the people you grew up with), and I will prosper you,' I am unworthy of all the lovingkindness and of all the faithfulness which You have shown to me. Deliver me, I pray... for I am afraid.” (Genesis 32:9-11)

"This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God." (John 3:19-21) So the time has come to expose these false gods and images to the light. It is terrifying and I sometimes feel like I am going to die. And I suppose I am. I have repeatedly asked to be crucified with Christ, but that does not remove my fear of death. So I want to start by confronting the spirits of judgment and criticism that have been some of the prominent false gods of both me and my father.

As for me, first I want to be freed of all the gods except for the right One who really knows me and still loves me. I don't know how, when or how long this will take but I know already they don't leave without fierce resistance which they want to attribute to me. They have claimed to be my identity , my self-image for so many years that I have very little awareness of the true identity that God created my heart originally to express. He will have to move into all the vacancies created by the other gods absence and fill in the huge resulting gaps in my identity awareness. And beyond that I have very little idea of what is in store. But knowing a little bit about the personality and passion of the true God that I have been discovering in His revelations to me over the past few months and years, I have no doubt I am in for the wildest ride of my life. “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in me will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)