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Being led by living from the heart instead of leading with the head.
Living with synchronized passion fed by the passion of God.
Sequence of train – Spirit of God leading man's spirit by filling it with God's passion. Man's spirit leading the imagination to express its unique creativity and personality using both the natural gifts and abilities and the supernatural gifts received by the baptism (immersion) of the Holy Ghost. Then all of this passion and fire is protected and reinforced (virus checker) by the logic and information filling the left brain from reliable resources like the Bible.
Analogies:
Trying to push a chain instead of pulling it is like living from the head first.
Trying to take an aircraft into outer space by depending only on propellers while suppressing all use of rocket fuel and engines.
The familiar train analogy frequently used on us growing up may be one of our strongholds preventing us from thriving. The engine is our intellect and will based on logic and formulas derived from the Bible and other “chosen” sources. Our emotions were the caboose that had to be put at the end of the train. By
implication (and now even in the real world of trains) the caboose is often apparently missing altogether.
I wonder how much this instruction from our early years has caused us to suppress our heart and even resist the promptings of the Holy Spirit in our lives?
I met someone this weekend that I had known many years ago that, as I listened to their story I realized how persistent their heart is in its desperate struggles to stay alive in spite of unspeakable atrocities committed against them by countless people in their life from the day they were born. The abuse was diabolically designed to destroy their heart and permeate their mind with lies about their loving Creator. Yet in spite of all this damage,
both physically and emotionally, I can still recognize the unique characteristics of the beautiful heart that I had seen many years ago when I knew them somewhere else. At that time I was intrigued by the unique, captivating nature of their smile and the sense of “aliveness” that emanated from them, not knowing then how much damage and violation had already been perpetrated against them at that point. After many more years of damage the results have become much more obvious and debilitating, yet the special heart that Jesus created within this person still struggles to stay alive and grasps for hope. Their spirit is yearning for connection to the Spirit that created it and for which it was designed to connect to so it could thrives and feel satisfied.
My own heart has had stirrings lately that are impossible to formulate into words. At times I have unfamiliar moments of – well, how can words explain them adequately? It takes a lot of words to explain what seems so simple in the arena of the spirit. In those moments I have a combined sense of anticipation, peace, synchronization, assurance, hope, and even potential for living freely in genuine, selfless love while I stay connected to the obvious Source of this peace. These moments feel so refreshing and alive and I want to stay there to grow and thrive. These feeling are new and somewhat unfamiliar but make me feel really alive. I suspect that if I stayed very long in this state of being my face might begin to glow unnaturally (for me anyway) and people would wonder what happened to me. I have a strong sense that this is what life is supposed to be like all the time, but it doesn't fit well with the rigid paradigms and rules of the religion that has been superimposed on me for most of my life.
As I thought about this while waking up this morning I realized that maybe I need to reverse the power arrangement in my life in order to become efficient (or even truly functional) and be in alignment with how I was originally designed to live and thrive. Trying to lead my life with logic-based truth and keep my heart suppressed (as implied by typical religious instruction) has only resulted in great frustration, pain and too much dysfunction. Yes, I can spew out correct answers apparently, but I (the real me – my heart) cannot really thrive and experience the abundant life that Jesus promised I could have. Now I am beginning to sense that it may largely be due to my attempt to operate my “train” backwards according to the misleading instructions ingrained into me since childhood.
As many others might likely remember, I was taught that we must not let our emotions lead us. Emotions are like the caboose of the train that must always be kept behind everything else. In reality, they were often by implication to be disconnected from the train and left somewhere else. 
The engine was to be our intellect firmly rooted in the Word of God and the training of our leaders. We were never to allow our emotions to influence us in any way as far as the movement of the train (our life).
I know I can easily make myself an easy target by talking about such “settled truths” as this, but I am now beginning to seriously question the validity of the assumptions in this analogy. While I will agree that there is a lot of truth in this, I also see a great deal of potential for error and even abuse contained in this analogy. While I am not advocating
we follow every whim of our emotions wherever they may direct us, my growing understanding of the importance of living from the heart conflicts sharply with the way this instruction has been used to suffocate so many hearts over the years.
Our emotions, while not the engine that should drive our train, are symptoms of the condition of our spirit. As I have said before, emotions are like indicators on the dashboard that reveal what is going on inside in the spirit area of our lives. Emotions are not good or bad, they simply are. They can be allowed to incite us to do other things that may be good or bad, but emotions are just emotions and cannot be blamed as the cause for our condition. Choices, either ours or other people's, are the real cause of the condition we find ourselves in, and emotions are the “graphics” that show up on the screen telling us what is going on with our spirit.
What I am starting to realize much more is that our spirit is the part that we have ignored far too long and is the missing element in learning how to really live in right relationship to life and to God. Due to the obsession of “religion” to suppress or ignore emotions, we have at the same time disconnected from awareness of our spirit and thereby cut off from ourselves
the very connector that our train needs to be led by the real power – the Spirit of God.
Because we are so disconnected from our spirit, which is almost the same thing as our heart, we really cannot relate properly to God and experience the real power that He wants us to experience that will be the real engine that can successfully move our life.
The only real power source in the whole universe from which all other power is derived is the passionate love flowing from the heart of the Creator-God of heaven. To be truly alive, all other created beings in the universe need to be properly connected to that unfailing Source of life and love. For us humans that link to the unlimited Source of power is our spirit that is shaped to uniquely connect with the Spirit of God like the couplings that connect the train cars to the engine. If our spirit is so damaged or ignored or distorted by lies that we refuse to be connected to the Spirit of God, we cannot be led by the Spirit of God and experience the power we need to move the train of our life. Salvation is the plan by which God is repairing the damage to our spirit so we can once again become connected to His unlimited power and experience the thrill of passion that flows from His heart to all of His created beings. We are brought into synchronization with the passion of God and come to life as we begin to experience the life-giving flow of love, joy and peace surging through our nervous system and charging our emotions with real satisfaction.
To use another analogy, I usually find myself trying to push a chain and chains simple don't work effectively by pushing them. In fact, by doing so they only end up in a jumbled mess instead of becoming straight and tall and strong. 
That might be an accurate picture of how I feel at times – a jumbled pile of correct ideas, links of truth that are not being activated from the right end. Even though one might carefully lay out the links of the chain in the “right” order and arrange them in such a way as to appear correct, as long as I am trying to push them instead of pulling on them correctly it will not function as it was designed to. What is lacking seems to be the element of synchronization.
As I thought how this might relate to what I am unearthing from my immersion in the book of Romans I realized that this may be just what Paul was contrasting in chapters 7 and 8. Chapter 7 is a description of people who know lots of good information (the Law) and are trying to lead with their knowledge – their left brain logic – to achieve a “righteous” life. What they missed is that real righteousness displayed in a person's life cannot be self-generated but can only happen as a result of a dynamic, vital umbilical-cord type connection with the only Source of real righteousness. They have been trying to “push the chain” of righteousness in their lives while focusing on having all the correct links. But no matter how accurate or truthful their links are, if they are not being pulled by the power of the living Spirit of God connected to their own spirit then all they can achieve is a jumble of confusing truth and a great deal of frustration.
Romans 8 is an exciting description of what it looks like to get the
train in the right order, to allow God to pull our chain (instead of the enemy yanking on the other end of our chain all the time). When I come into right relationship to God, led by His Spirit pulling on my spirit, then my spirit will pull on my life from my heart in harmony with my mind. My life will begin to reveal the results described in this chapter naturally and my heart will come alive and thrive. While chapter 7 describes the results of living from the head while chapter 8 describes the results of living from the heart connected to God's heart.
What does this all mean? Why do I feel compelled to ask that question anyway? It feels like pushing on the chain again so that I can bring this writing to a tidy ending to satisfy the rules of writing and public expression. I enjoy the fact that I can dialog with myself (and even with God) through this means without feeling the pressure to bring every post to a resolved ending like a successful one-hour television show. This is simply a window into the process of growing and exploring and query that is going on inside me that I allow others to peer into once in awhile. So I don't have to be confined to the “rules” of writing because I am not looking for a grade to measure how much or little I am worth. This is simply where I'm at right now.
God, grow my heart more today and teach me – both my heart and my head – how to really experience the abundant life that Jesus talked about and promised me. I also want to intercede for the people I connected with this weekend that You are pulling toward Your heart. I give you permission to do anything You want in their lives to heal and restore and re-create Your likeness in them. I do this based on the assurance of the authority that Jesus invested in all His followers when He left earth 2000 years ago. So in the name and authority of the One who now has taken away all the authority of Satan in this earth, I present before Your throne of grace these loved ones who are so damaged and hurting and grasping for hope and life. They have been terribly abused by the enemy of our souls and You have felt every pain with them. Allow them to see the truth about Your untainted beauty and loveliness and help them believe You never were the cause of the abuse heaped on them even though it was done using Your name. Allow them to taste a little of the intense passion in Your heart to connect with and heal their heart and restore them to better than their original design. Rescue their hearts from the cruel hands of the enemy and amaze the world with the success of Your experiments of grace in their lives.
Father, make me an instrument of Your grace and healing also. Help me to know Your ways, to wait for Your promptings and to respond more readily to Your Spirit. Melt away my fears and resistance to You and replace the many lies still within me with Your love and compassion and truth. This is a whole new way of thinking and living for me that is very unfamiliar. Revive my heart and fire me with Your own passion for Your reputation's sake.
Floyd -
ReplyDeleteIt was good to see you last night, although we didn't get to talk. I probably won't be coming to Tuesday nights anymore - I can explain later or in an email.
I just had a thought on your work with the train analogy. I have heard another take on intellect / emotion dichotomy; that is that energy to get things done is found in the emotions, but that it must be harnessed, taken and made to do good work, not just explode. Trains have run on a variety of energy sources - steam, diesel, electricity - none of which is productive in and of itself - steam will scorch and explode and dissipate; diesel will leave you with smelly hands, or just explode under pressure; electricity will shock and burn and explode things. But when harnessed into the effective engine of a locomotive, used properly, these energy sources do tremendous work. The caboose is just another car that is being towed and is not like emotions at ALL. On the other hand, an engine without steam or diesel or electricity is a powerless hulk which can only be moved with great difficulty, all its dials and levers sitting idle or registering simply the lack of charge or pressure that would be needed to make it go.
The other thoughts I had are related to your analogy of the airplane trying to get into space on propellers without using any rocket engine or fuel. That is right on. Thriving is a lot like interplanetary travel - every action produces an equal and opposite reaction and a rocket engine is able to produce higher and higher speeds because there is no resistance. Propeller and jet planes, on the other hand, RELY on air (to combust the fuel) and air resistance (to produce lift) - but they can NEVER lift you out of the atmosphere for that VERY reason, there being NO AIR outside the atmosphere. Jet and propeller planes are also quite dissimilar to rockets in another way - in order to take advantage (and to avoid) air resistance, they HAVE to conform to certain rules of construction. There are very real limits on how they can be designed. There is a lot of variability within those limits, but there are limits. Rockets, on the other hand, once they are IN outer space, have absolutely NO limits on their shape and configuration - they simply follow the rules of action/reaction, gravity, etc. Jets and prop planes are not designed for interplanetary travel. Neither are rockets designed for earth-bound travel. Witness the difficulties that people are having constructing a vehicle to replace the shuttle, a reusable vehicle that could get into the very nearest "space" of orbit and still operate in the atmosphere. It is highly impractical.
All of this seems to me like an analogy for "flesh" and "Spirit" - for "sark" and "heart". Perhaps you could work with it in some future posting.
I have some other thoughts which I'll share with you in an email.
Josh.
I like the things you bring out here. The reason I used the caboose for emotions was because that has been a source of mis-guidance from teachers in the past that I suddenly realized contained false premises. I believe you are right in that emotions are more like fuel. In fact, I think that if we were to connect with the heart of God more intimately we would find that God's passion would become the most important fuel in our own lives for living a "successful" Christian life.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have time to develop the rocket analogy but I like your thoughts on that too, especially the idea of thriving being like interplanetary travel. That is excellent!
Another couple of thoughts -
ReplyDeleteWhat is the best wording for our prayers? In the words of your prayer at the end of this post you ask the Lord to "allow" people to see, to taste, etc. What is true about prayer? It DOES seem like we should be ASKING Him for things. It's commanded, spoken to us "Ask and you will receive, etc." But why would we ask God to "allow" things or prevent things? He is pretty good at deciding what to allow or not allow. Is a better word "help" or "heal our spiritual sight?" Or something like that?
I'm getting more and more (I have been, but now more) of a stickler for word use. Words are so powerful and effective. That is one of the amazing things about the Bible - not a word is out of place! EVERY WORD of God is pure... as it says of itself. And "ALL scripture is God-breathed and is powerful and effective..." But the seed of the Word can be ineffectively sown, even snatched up by hungry birds and swallowed (perhaps to be pooped out in a more suitable location and bear fruit!) But you see my point.
The word "use" (the verb) is another of my particular words that I'd like to see put out of common use in the God-man relationship. God does not talk (I don't think) of "using" anyone except for those who are opposed to Him and His will - pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzer, Sennacharib - instruments of His righteous judgment and "wrath", but not loved, not had mercy on. Those whom He has called, He does not talk of "using". He commands us, He instructs us, He encourages us, He strengthens us, He lifts us up on our feet, He redeems our lives from the pit, but nowhere do I recall the Scriptures talking of us being USED by God. We are created as people, real people, like our Father Himself, made to share in a real loving give-and-take relationship with the Father and the Son, made to be capable and valued servants in the Master's household, made to be cared for and provided for sheep in the Good Shepherd's flock - not to be USED. USING people is the devil's work; it's the work of corporations and factories and sweatshops and slave-owners and pimps. Do you agree? If you don't, why not?
Perhaps the words used OF God - that is instrumental (in the sense of an instrumentalist in an orchestra) in His work - is still an accurate use of the word "USE" for us. But the idea of us being a "conduit", a "hollow tube" for God to flow through to the world is entirely repulsive to me. Maybe that is just where I'm at now. But, God help me, if that's where I have to get to, I'm almost opposed to going! But He WILL help me to get where HE wants me to go.
Floyd - have a great day and thanks for being a communicator and thinker in the fullness of your God-created, God-sustained, God-love-ya personhood. He is blessing you and you are blessing others in His love and truth.
Yours,
Josh U.
Good thoughts there you guys. "Gentlemen, Start your engines!"
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Josh. I certainly don't know what is going on in your life right now but I am praying for you and trust God to do whatever He is desiring to do in your life.
ReplyDeleteI too have become much more alert to the words that I choose and try to be sensitive to the messages they convey. I highly recommend the book Meaningless Words and Broken Covenants that is very enlightening on this topic. However, a sometimes even much bigger problem is in the perception and background that each person brings to their own understanding and interpretation of words. When a word triggers someone very strongly, as it seems that some of these words you mentioned do, there is always a story behind it that needs to be looked at and some healing that needs to take place. I am not saying this to accuse you or anything like that, it is just an observation I have learned through personal experience and observation of other people's struggles.
Another thing that is coming very much onto my radar lately that I feel strongly God impressing me about is that my own spirit and its affect on both myself and others is of far more concern in heaven's eyes than the words I choose. That is not at all to diminish the importance of words. But the whole reason for using words in the first place is to convey messages from our deeper level of the spirit to another person or from God, who is a Spirit, to humans who tend to only pay attention to primarily external things like words and actions. I am realizing that when I get upset about what someone says that most likely there is something inside of me that I am not facing or maybe am unwilling to face.
The other problem is that many words mean very different things from one person to the next. I know that there are some words that have a lot of negative baggage for me that for others have no weight at all, sometimes much to my surprise. But when I stop to think about it I realize that my own experiences skew the meaning of those words for me that others have not experienced. When we take the time to unpack what a word means to us together with open minds and hearts we are almost always surprised at the dramatic difference between the thoughts and feelings attached to those words between individuals. This can easily lead to mistaken judgments and assumptions that can further lead to all sorts of hurt feelings and disharmony.
This is why I believe that God is far more interested in the condition of our spirit than He is in us always using the correct linguistic expressions to convey what our spirit is feeling. We should certainly strive to be as accurate as possible as well as unoffensive as we can be, but we must be even more observant and careful that the condition of our spirit is one of seeking harmony with the Spirit of God Who desires for all of His children to live in love and care for each other.
In my own prayers over the years I have changed much of the way I pray because of the very issue that you have raised. Many of the religious words either didn't mean much to me (just learned and repeated from religious leaders) or some which even triggered negative feelings within me that interfered more than helped me to connect with God. That's one reason I have spent so many years trying to get behind many words to find out what they really mean in plain language which has turned out to be a real blessing for me. But even then I realize that it is always impossible for me to accurately convey the feelings, desires and emotions of my soul through the use of the symbols of words. Even Paul noted this in Romans 8:26. “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Our only hope in life is in depending on God and His Spirit to save us and transform us. All we can do is cast ourself on His mercy and love and trust Him to do His work in our heart so that we will be restored to the image and likeness of His Son. We are learning what is involved in the phrase from 2 Corinthians 10:5 where he says “...we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” The real battle taking place in our lives revolves primarily around our hearts, not in the external realm.