Unholy Trio

In our discussion at the Tuesday nights men's group a new insight emerged. Some were struggling with internal issues which is normal for that time. My mind went back to the original subversive elements introduced in the Garden of Eden; fear, shame and blame. Suddenly it dawned on me what lies behind each of these false principles. There are three basic lies or application of lies.

Fear – at its deepest root all of our fear is based on lies about God, on our twisted view of God that causes us to doubt that He will take care of us or wants the best for us and will protect us. When we really know God and believe in His goodness and rest in His love, all fear will be extinguished. Perfect love casts out fear.

Shame – in all its aspects is simply based on lies about myself, whether received from others or created in my own mind. Shame is a sense of worthlessness, of not being valuable, feeling that I am a mistake and am not worth caring about. Our natural response to counteract shame is pride – our personal attempt to add value to ourself to fill the void inside. So any form of pride is also based on shame which is based on lies about ourselves.

Blame – is our attempt to shift responsibility from myself to someone else to resolve the first two problems. This is based on lies we choose to believe and even create about others. Blame becomes the lock that keeps us from facing our issues honestly because we are waiting for someone else to change or for circumstances to get better etc. This rounds out the unholy trio that prevents us from growing in grace and in healthy relationships with others and with God.

Why Intercession?

Why is Jesus interceding before God on our behalf when God is not angry toward us? I have learned clearly that God feels the same toward us as Jesus does, with complete and unchangeable compassion, mercy and love. The problem is all on the human side rooted in the lies we believe about God. So, if Jesus and God are identical in thought and perspective and motives, why is there anything to plead? It seems you only approach someone to intercede when there is at least some difference between your thinking and the person you are talking to. It seems more logical that all of the pleading would be directed toward the parties that contain the ideas that need changing. If God does not need His mind or heart changed toward us then what is the pleading for?

Maybe the desires of God that need intercession of a mediator are actually opposite of what we usually have assumed. Maybe Jesus is an intercessor because of His unique position as the only human being who fully understands and has experienced th “wrath” of God. Once we understand clearly that God's wrath is actually God's overwhelming passionate love that is lethal when exposed to sin, it becomes a little clearer why we need an intercessor.

Jesus may be pleading with God to restrain Himself from revealing more of His passion than we are capable of surviving. The very thing that we need to draw us to God and toward repentance – a revelation of His heart of infinite love – is also the very same thing that creates hell for us when encountered under the lying filters of sin. “Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.” (Lam. 3:22)

Sanctuary

What is the meaning of “sanctuary”? By definition a wildlife sanctuary is a place that is protected from undue disturbance or threat so that certain wildlife can live there in peace and thrive and flourish.

Our hearts and bodies were designed by God to be His sanctuary. My heart should be a place where He can relax and live in safety from attacks or slander from false gods inside me.

Natural Obedience

(see My Utmost for His Highest for today's reading) Natural obedience as contrasted with legalistic formula-based obedience, is like being able to drive a car or ride a bicycle without having to concentrate on it. When something unusual happens our attention becomes much more focused, but we still have the subconscious skills largely in control.

When we are learning to drive, the skills mostly begin as external rule-based exercises that often feel very complicated and even awkward. But as our subconscious mind assimilates and coordinates more and more of the necessary movements, data, facts and limitations, then the skill is largely internalized and the conscious mind is freed up to think and dwell on more interesting things.

If some of those skills are learned incorrectly or maybe ignored in favor of some other stronger desires, like the craving for speed or the body-pressing sensation of acceleration and power, external forces may be employed to remind us of the parameters imposed on drivers. Or, if our subconscious mind is impaired by drugs or sleep-deprivation, we may find our natural ability to drive largely missing, endangering ourselves and those around us.

When I tried to drive home one time while under the strong influence of pain medications I found out the stark difference between driving naturally and driving with only the conscious part of the brain. It was terrifying as well as very exhausting.

So too is external obedience. It may look right and be technically correct according to code, but if it does not flow naturally from a heart fed and nourished by love it consumes most of our attention and energy and leaves us more and more exhausted and frustrated. In God's economy it is not really obedience, but just performance of self-promotion.

“Beware of making a fetish of consistency to your convictions instead of being devoted to God. 'I shall never do that' – in all probability you will have to, if you are a saint. There never was a more inconsistent Being on this earth than Our Lord, but He was never inconsistent to His Father. The one consistency of the saint is not to a principle, but to the Divine life. It is the Divine life which continually makes more and more discoveries about the Divine mind. It is easier to be a fanatic than a faithful soul, because there is something amazingly humbling, particularly to our religious conceit, in being loyal to God.” (My Utmost for His Highest 11-14)

The Results of Prophecying

God's clear word to me this morning was in both devotionals and climaxed with Eze. 37:9 reminding me of the promise of God twice given to me in the past in 1 Sam. 10:6,7.

What is my testimony? How are others influenced to believe about God when they read my blog or hear my words? It cannot be a matter of faking a good front – that is dishonesty. But what am I dwelling on?What is my underlying perception of reality that I paint? Am I only going part way by being hones about my feelings and struggles with my attempts at more self-disclosure?

Maybe that's it. I am trying to be honest in self-disclosure but I am not giving Jesus enough air time. When my testimony takes on the attributes of being clear and strong for God, others will be refreshed. I will speak of His love without hesitation. I have to admit, I am not doing that now.

When darkness and unbelief is in my heart it is manifested in my testimony. The answer is NOT in changing my testimony to sound more appropriate and in line with the rule; the answer is to have more light and faith and joy in my heart.

“Do not gratify the enemy by dwelling upon the dark side of your experience, but trust Jesus for help to resist temptation. If we thought and talked more of Jesus and less of ourselves, we should have much more of His presence.”

“When we make our Christian experience appear to unbelievers, or to one another, as one that is joyless, filled with trial, doubt, and perplexity, we dishonor God; we do not correctly represent Jesus or the Christian faith. We have a friend in Jesus, who has given us the most marked evidence of His love, and who is able and willing to give life and salvation to all who come unto Him....

“It is not necessary for us to be ever stumbling and repenting and mourning and writing bitter things against ourselves. It is our privilege to believe the promises of the Word of God, and accept the blessings that Jesus lives to bestow, that our joy may be full.” (RH 7-20-1886)

“We have to battle through our moods into absolute devotion to the Lord Jesus, to get out of” our narrow, self-focused, depressed view “of our own experience into abandoned devotion to Him.... Think of the meanness of the miserable faith we have” in contrast to what Jesus can do for us. “He can present us faultless before the throne of God, unutterably pure, absolutely rectified and profoundly justified. Stand in implicit adoring faith in Him.

“Jesus Christ wants our absolute abandon of devotion to Himself.... Our Faith must be built in strong emphatic confidence in Him.

“It is along this line that we see the rugged impatience of the Holy Ghost against unbelief. All our fears are wicked, and we fear because we will not nourish ourselves in our faith.” (My Utmost for His Highest 11-13)

The Spirit impressed me with these important messages of conviction and then led me to Eze. 37. This chapter is closely linked with 36 and is wonderful good news for all of us struggling these issues, with darkness in our hearts and a shell of external faith that is internally infected with subtle unbelief.

I, and most of the people around me, are very much like dry bones. We are devoid of very much spiritual vitality, we are in many ways disconnected with those around us and often confused inside. We are the whole house of Israel in verse 11 that feel like “our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.”

The wonderful message is, since we fit the description and we are also the ones who have profaned God's reputation with our sorry, weak testimony (chap. 36), then we qualify perfectly to have God do to us everything promised and described in both these chapters.

But one thing sharply caught my attention in 37:9. It is what I see as the “rugged impatience of the Holy Ghost” I had just read about in My Utmost. God is urgent when He says, “Prophecy to the breath, prophecy, son of man...” The Lord was speaking directly to me, urging me and reminding me that the words of my testfying become self-fulfilling prophecies to a great extent. This is why it is important to dwell largely on the goodness and beauty and power of God, not just my struggles and confusion.

I must be willing to be honest and open about myself, yes. But I must go beyond that and prophecy to the breath as well as to the bones. As shown in the first prophecy in this story, prophesying to the bones may result in wonderful reconnections, reconstruction and getting things back to their original functions. But their was still no life there in all these reassembled bodies. The prophecier must turn his attention beyond the reconstruction of our messed up lives to the Source of life itself.

And then I remembered the prophecy about me received twice over the last year or two and impressed deeply upon my heart each time. God's plan for me is along these very lines and described in 1 Sam. 10:6,7. “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.”

For God is with me. That is the ultimate definition of joy, and the joy of the Lord is strength.

The Whale Song

I had a series of dreams last night that, as usual, I can't recall most of them. But the last one woke me up with strong emotions. In it one of my old classmates, Rick Westermeyer, was doing a video presentation that illustrated a new song. The music and words were emerging from various other sources that seem too foggy and strange for my logical awake mind to reassemble, but the resulting single little ditty I quickly put back together soon after I woke up from the dream at a very early hour.

The music as best I can reassemble it went something like this: (pardon my crude way of notation)

E-D-C- -C

FFFEED- - -

G-F-E-EFD

C-B-C- - -

The video clip was of a supernatural whale that I began to realize represented Jesus, swimming in the vast ocean opening up his mouth to swallow up the surrounding filth and poison that was contaminating the surrounding water. I could see at first hundreds of gallons of water falling into the cavernous open mouth just below the surface of the water as the whale slowly surfaced head-first. Then the whale would turn, dive and return to the surface for another huge gulp. Since not all of the pollution had been eliminated, the ratio of the scene dramatically increased so that the size of the whale relative to the surroundings increased exponentially. It was like the first gulp was relative to one person's filth floating around in the water and the next gulp was a whole countries contamination. Then the pollution from the whole world was taken in and finally the ocean represented the whole cosmos as the whale continued to swallow into himself all the floating debris that threatened the purity of the waters.

The words of the song were equally very simple, like a little child would make up. It was just these:

Love, love, love

Can swallow up anything.

Love, God's love can swallow up

Anything at all.

The reality of the truth behind this little song that absolutely nothing, no amount of sin no matter how disgusting, evasive or widespread that can be found anywhere in the universe is outside the ability of Jesus to ingest into Himself and overcome its negative effects on the surroundings – the reality suddenly hit me in that dream and my amazement and gratitude and relief overwhelmed me with sudden, intense emotion and I woke up almost crying. The song kept running over and over in my mind for the next several hours of the early morning as I wonder why it is here.

For awhile I wondered why the emotion faded so quickly but the song remained. I craved a longer period of intensity and started to ask God to bring back the original emotion and let me feel it again. But I was reminded that my life must not be rooted and grounded on emotions but on the facts of redemption. Emotions are not wrong – they can be very helpful sometimes in clarifying our attention and focusing us on something. But they can easily become addictive if I want to always live from emotion more than the reality of God Himself. Emotions can just as easily be produced by lies as by truth. They are not bad or good of themselves, but they make for very unreliable footing material to build a solid structure over.

My pride god was embarrassed by the simplicity of this song. It is afraid of what people will think of me if I share this story with them. Another part of me wonders if someone will hear this and receive wonderful confirmation of something they received from God themselves. I don't know if that thought is from God's Spirit in me or a more devious face of my pride or may some of both.At any rate, I will simply accept what I have been given and see what happens after this.

I also wonder how much this “revelation” was influenced by the movie I watched last night about the Tucker automobile story. The spirit that Mr. Tucker demonstrated was so radically different and uncommon that it definitely stirred my curiosity and disrupted the status quo box I am often stuck in.

O.K. It happens again! The devotional I read after writing the above strongly reinforces what was given and written before I knew what I was going to read. To Be Like Jesus exposes the reality and a glimpse of the immensity of our very closely connected family in heaven with us here on earth. The angel choirs literally take up our thanksgiving and praise and incorporate it into their own songs immediately. This means that instead of being a stupid little ditty that my pride is ashamed of, I may have been entrusted with a solo part of one of heaven's current hit anthems. The music may be a theme line that the angels embellish and amplify and fill all the arches of heaven with when I am willing to accept my place and sing my little part from my heart. This is more than awesome!

Ezekiel 36 again.

Well, I've spent considerable time wondering what caused me to fail so spectacularly the other day at the airport. I'm not too interested in deep answers right now, I want to know the real reason. I know it is part of God's plan to allow the worst in me to be exposed to create opportunity for me to deal with it. This betrayed some of my deepest root weaknesses, but what to do is still a mystery.

This morning I finally felt like I could hear God again. Yesterday I could hear some warnings but felt very unsettled all day no matter how I prayed. The devotional To Be Like Jesus said I should not separate Christ from my life and family, and close the doors against Him by un-Christlike words and actions. That description certainly fit me very well. But this morning I felt like the Children of Israel after the defeat at Ai.

It was such a small trigger with such a large reaction that, even while it was happening, I was aware this was tapping into something else much deeper. Evidently rebellion and pride are still holding large tracts of real estate in my soul. I feel like I have been wounded by a traitor in my midst. The false gods revealed their true character by betraying my integrity for various valuables cherished and hidden by them. It may be interesting and useful to know what they are hiding, but the real problem is not just the monetary mis-value beliefs I have but the deeper attitudes of the false Achan-like gods that infect my mind and rob me of God's presence when I need it most.

I think the setup started when I got sucked into watching the movie The Family Stone with my kids the night before. That created all kinds of moral lies and scenarios in our minds and laid the infrastructure for the enemy to access me much easier. Then the intense emotions during my discussion with my sister on the way to the airport elevated my emotional state so I was much closer to danger than I usually am.

Analyzing what could have been different may be helpful or may be a decoy to detract from the real issue. In My Utmost this morning it seemed to finger the core issue quite plainly. Self-pity takes me out of trusting God and creates an atmosphere of fear in my life that will always result in failure, either in small ways or with spectacular public fireworks.

Ezekiel 36 again!

So..........!!!! I'm angry!!! I just went through security at Detroit airport and they STOLE my body wash and expensive toothpaste that I just bought in their ruthless terror-promoting frenzy of inane rules designed to crush the spirit of every person in this country. My adrenaline is still so high it is hard to write legibly.

So, why am I mad – really? Because I am a victim of injustice, robbery and insult. Because I value the bitterness from monetary loss more than my peace or the spirit I project to those around me. My independence has been assaulted by the use of force and intimidation. My pride is wounded a little and my imagination is eager to indulge in scenarios of what I could have attempted to do to return the insults – like pouring the soap all over the conveyor belt or squirting it all over the security guys. Now that would really generate kind feelings, wouldn't it?

Of course, the only responses they have waiting for disturbers of their grinding bureaucratic forces are harassment at best or more likely arrest and much more harrasment and even more economic expense. That's all a very slippery slope to deep disaster just to vent my feelings for a few seconds. And in the process I drop into a very deep hole socially and maybe even spiritually that would certainly create lots of fuel for tongues to way.

Letter vs. Spirit

It takes humility and heart-sight to be willing to focus more on the spirit I convey as more important than being right, convincing the other that my interpretations are more accurate than theirs. The letter kills but the spirit gives life. What am I conveying in my interactions with people, life or death? If I insist on being right I may “win” the claim to being right, but how and what do I do with it? It is tainted with the subtle poison of force and profanes God's name; it feeds my pride and makes me feel justified but it is self-justified which by nature precludes justification by faith in Jesus.

We are always justified by faith, but faith in who or what? If we place our faith in how carefully our logic is assembled we trust in our own wisdom. If faith is in a string of proof-texts and quotations we are trusting others who assembled them for us. If we assemble them ourselves it has the potential to be even more subtle because we can actually put more faith in the “Word” or God than in the God of the Word. Many put more faith in EGW than in the God behind the writings. All of these things have one common element/ingredient that can have the strong potential to keep us self-deceived – the letter.

As important as having valid information is, it is even more important to have the right spirit, which in essence is simply an outgrowth or result of a right relationship to God based on a view of what He is really like that is constantly improving and updating. If we love our beliefs, our arguments, our church, even the consistency of our interpretations more than God Himself, it is the same as loving father and mother more than Jesus. The result is, we cannot be His disciple.

We are loving our own life and beliefs more than abandoning ourselves to His redemption – the letter kills but the spirit gives life. I may be full of verbal and biblical truth but still be imparting a sense of death by my spirit profaning God's name among the nations. (Eze. 36) We know we have crossed over from death into life, from darkness into light when love for one another is more important than “being right”.

Lord, train my mind to surrender control to allow me to live from my heart.

Ps. 143:8

(See My Utmost for His Highest for 11-6) The danger of obsession with understanding truth greater than a personal obsession for intimacy with God.

Relationship Roots

The cause and effect of relationships determines the stability and durability of our relationships. For instance, if I form an intimate relationship with a woman based primarily on her beauty, obviously the relationship is in jeopardy when age begins to take its toll or even when she looks scruffy and unkempt. Or if my relationship with someone is based on their kind ways or sweetness or their brilliance, when those characteristics come up missing then our relationship may easily become unstable and rocky.

On the surface this all seems very plain and obvious, but it also seems to be very subtle and overlooked on the experiential level. It seems we have a very hard time being honest enough with ourselves to admit our true motives, probably for fear of the shame we would feel if we were to admit the truth. The fruit betrays the root. This may be the easiest access to begin uncovering my true motives. Of course if I don't want to know my true motives because I have no good alternative to replace them, then likely I will use any maneuver to avoid going there.

When my relationship with someone is marked by sudden disconnects or ugly feelings and I entertain thoughts of reducing my involvement in the relationship to reduce or avoid my pain, that is a sure sign that to some degree this relationship is based on externals. I say externals not just in the sense of physical but anything outside of a connection between our true hearts. Externals are great additions to sweeten and enhance the pleasure of relationships. But if the relationship foundation itself is not composed of selfless caring for the other person's heart it is in constant danger of crumbling and failure. Remember the house on the sand?

Most of us enter into relationships based on externals. This may be unavoidable and maybe even guided many times by heavenly influence. The problem lies in not investing the time and effort to mix cement into the initial sand, water it and form it up deep so it can harden into a reliable foundation that can withstand the storms that inevitably will strike. 1 Corinthians 13 may be a good description of what a good solid foundation looks like. But I am curious. What is cement? What is water? What is sand?

Work on the Affirmative Side

Our right brain learns primarily by imitation, by being mentored. I am starting to see a little more clearly how poor a mentorer I am. When people watch me to learn how to act under different situations and pressures they are often seeing more a mirror of their own problems than they are seeing the responses from the spirit of heaven.

I want people to see how blindly defensive they are and how they thereby are avoiding facing their “stuff”. But when they trigger my stuff what do I do? My first overwhelming impulse is to feel defensive and point out their stuff – which is exactly how they react in turn. A vicious and accelerating cycle.

I want people to not make assumptions about what I am thinking. But I also expect them to read my mind when I am afraid to express my true feelings. I want people to understand my true heart motives in spite of my words and actions that seem to convey the opposite. But when others treat me by doing the same thing I want them to be more honest about expressing their real core feelings. I want people to live from their hearts and not just from head formulas or from their triggers. I want people to take ownership of their “stuff” and be willing to be humble enough to admit and apologize when they hurt me. But how often and willing am I to do the same for them? Very little I'm afraid.

Therefore, I really may understand them quite well because they are simply reflecting my unresolved “stuff” back to me and I don't like what I see and experience from them. They don't like it when they see their unresolved issues reflected in me and so they attack the mirror and blame it/me for everything bad they see about themselves. That really hurts when I am the mirror being spit at and slapped around emotionally.

I need much more grace and heart-sight to break this closed cycle. I need radical healing of my triggers so I don't mirror other's problems back to them. I need to look more frequently at the mirror-face of Jesus to get more acquainted with my true identity and value. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAS95) If I can see my real self as God is forming in me I will be more transparent so others will see less “stuff” mirrored back to them and more value as they look through me to catch glimpses of their true self-worth in Jesus' mirror.

I need a spirit of instant forgiveness, humility, unconditional love in the face of abuse. I don't have those qualities very much and I can't produce them. God.......

Just after I finished writing the above I read todays message from the devotional book To Be Like Jesus. It was directly for me in the present. “If there are any of you who have weak faith, remember that it is because you do not work on the affirmative side. It is of no use for us to think that we can carry forward the glorious work of God without strong, unfaltering faith.... Those who have educated themselves to stand on the negative side should without delay repent and be converted. Remember that when you stand on the negative side, accusing and condemning, you make room for the agencies of the power of darkness. Precious time has to be spent in waging war against these agencies, because there were those who refused to stand on the affirmative side.... "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory." Satan is behind all strife and vainglory. Let us get out of his company, and stand with those who say, "Victory is for us, and we will cling to the arm of infinite power."

I have weak faith because I do not work on the affirmative. I cannot reveal more of God's glory without strong, unfaltering faith. I can see that I have been programmed to stand on the negative side, as many around me have as well. I need to repent and be converted without delay. When I take the negative side I make room for the power of Satan. The negative side involves accusing and condemning. This extends the time needed for healing since more baggage is created that then has to be resolved along with the original problems, all because I refuse to stand on the affirmative side.

Satan is behind all strife and vainglory. Those two sound like two sides of a common coin – the two branches of the Tree of Death.

The solution? From the reading I see these:

• Seek the Lord with my whole heart so He will come very near me.

• Take hold and present God's promises to Him.

• Ask God to lead and direct.

• Work only on the affirmative side.

• Think of all that God has done for us.

• Praise God for all blessings.

• Always draw others with affirmation.

• Repent and be converted from negative thinking to affirmation.

• Do not refuse to change.

• Get out of Satan's company.

• Say affirmatively, “Victory is for us.”

• Cling to the arm of infinite power.

In My Utmost For His Highest the reading for today also reminds me that obedience comes from oneness of spirit. I either synchronize with Satan by dwelling on the negative or I synchronize with God's heart and work only on the affirmative. God, change me!

If I want to be a useful disciple, I must give up my right to myself to Jesus. God does not operate primarily by rules, but in relationship. If I hesitate to obey it is because I love a false god more than Him. Jesus will not “help” me obey – I must choose and then experience His power to do it. Obedience creates and spreads life.

What is My Source of Life?

Every person, no matter how sweet, nice and loving, has the inward seeds of selfishness and death. But they also have the evidences of life as demonstrated in their compassion and caring for others. So they appear to a greater or lesser extent to be a source of life to others who are thirsting for life themselves. But they are only second-hand sources of life no matter how wonderful, thrilling or satisfying their presence is.

In our desire to bring more life into our souls and bodies we attempt to form relationships – intimacy at some degree – with others who attract us by the evidence of life we see in them that we crave to experience for ourselves. The most obvious examples of this is in our attractions to physical beauty in all its various forms. Body language in gestures, mannerisms, voice tone and facial messages are closely related. We see these in varying ways as communications of life that we desire to share and assimilate.

Pleasure is an aspect of receiving life that is high in our priority. Pleasure means different things to different people and is sometimes opposite, but it is always a craving for life in some way. Often however, our lust for pleasure imparts some measure of death to others in our attempts to extract life from them for ourselves. We are operating on the false assumption, though usually subconsciously, that to add life to ourselves we must subtract it from others. Or, conversely, to impart life to others is to subtract it from ourselves.

These basic assumptions and cravings underlie most of the interactions between people in this world both individually and collectively. It is some of the essence of selfishness and is what we all inherit from Adam. When Jesus stated that we must hate our family members in contrast to loving Him to be enabled to be a disciple in His kingdom (see Luke 14:26), He was trying to draw sharp attention to this issue of where we try to get life from. We are so naturally and almost exclusively dependent on drawing life for ourselves from those around us that we can't see the ultimate danger in our dependence on those sources. We are only working with second-hand life which is all that any of us possess no matter how alive and attractive it appears. And in extracting life for ourselves from those around us it is further reduced in its satisfaction content.

So we increase our frenzied clamor to get more and more from others and from possessions, or we sink into despair and depression and surrender to the death-inducing effects of others extracting life from us.

Theologically we say that God is the only source of life. But what we really believe is demonstrated by how we live, particularly in our “free time”. What we do for entertainment to receive relief and pleasure is the clearest indicator of what we really believe can give us life and satisfaction, even if we deny it verbally. Those who insist they don't use entertainment to satisfy themselves usually look to work or other achievement oriented activity to create a sense of self-value and identity.

Our need to receive life revolves around our need to feel valuable and our perspective on our identity. Our perceived identity is usually the composite and accumulation of all of our previous preferences of how we have tried to get life for ourselves in the past. Our identity also is perceived by what others think of us and how they have treated us, strongly affecting the way we view and value ourselves.

But most of these factors that have such overwhelming influence on shaping our perceived identity are not necessarily factors at all in identifying or revealing our true identity. Only in true reality which is rooted outside the artificial, fake environment of this world, can our true identity be found by communication with the original Designer of our heart and soul. Our real identity is not even a compromise between the two realities. Our real identity and value is solidly rooted outside the distorting atmosphere of the complex illusions created by the relationships and messages around us.

All our relationships other than with the real God are sources of second-hand life mingled with seeds of death. We are all under the drugging influence of seeds hidden in the fruit of the Tree of Death, the so-called good and evil fruit that our parents indulged in from the Garden of Eden. The only antidote is accepting God's redemption through Jesus and reestablishing our connection to the Tree of Life. There is only one source of life that does not contain poisonous seeds of death as all the other sources do. If we reject that source in preference for other sources we will eventually succumb to the death-producing effects of the hidden poison that we ingest. No matter how intense our pleasure or perceived satisfaction we receive from our human sources, we are still receiving hidden sources of death if we trust them to be our vital source of life.