Tagged! You're It

I have been tagged as “it” in the world of blog. This seems to be a very interesting game being enjoyed by various bloggers who are expected, when tagged, to publish 8 random facts about themselves on their blog page and then tag 8 more people who in turn become “it”.

Of course one would never even know they have been tagged if they do not keep up with the other person's blog who tags them. And while I sort of keep up with maybe up to 8 other blogs I certainly am not know to that many of them as one who could tag them. I don't know of eight other bloggers who keep up with my blog to know that they were tagged. But then, I suppose that's not my problem anyway. If I list 8 bloggers as tagged even though they never read my blog I have fulfilled the “obligation of the law”, right? Interesting how I can nearly ruin even a game by analyzing it nearly to death.

Well, since I have been tagged by Colin on his site Darkening Glasses, I will not miss this opportunity to highly recommend everyone to put his site on their favorite bookmark list and visit it regularly. I never fail to be inspired by his words of wisdom and insight. He has been one of the surprising blessings in my life I never expected to find when I started out this experiment in blogging months ago. Right now he is running a series of thoughtful comments about the S.O.T.M. – the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus. Don't miss any of it and take time to go back and read some of his previous posts. You will be glad you did.

So, is that a long enough preamble to get you to forget what I am supposed to be doing here?

1. I wear shaded prescription glasses that makes many people suspicious of me because they can't see what my eyes are doing. Contrary to their suspicions, however, the reason I wear them is because my eyes are very sensitive to light and right now I can't afford to buy another pair of clear ones to wear indoors to appease my friends.

2. I wear steel-toed shoes for all the shoes I wear, both work and dress shoes. When I was a teenager and younger I tried to wear other shoes but always ran into the problem of losing them quickly due to holes emerging out the top of the toes long before the rest of the shoe was ready to quit. This is not due to failure to keep my nails trimmed but to the strange shape and design of my big toes that bores holes out the top even when they are trimmed regularly. I used to joke that if they managed to bore a hole through my steel-toed shoes I would put my toes in a museum. M-mmm, maybe after I'm dead and pickled that is.

3. I love participating in quartet music though I have seldom done so. I was part of a quartet around 10 or 15 years ago for a period of about 2 years which I enjoyed very much. I even requested and received handwritten copies of music arrangements from Haven of Rest Quartet which we used for many of their songs. But some of my favorites were from a book one of the members gave me of gospel music written barber-shop style which we thoroughly enjoyed singing together.

4. Along those lines, have you ever heard of the “5^th voice”? I learned about it years ago when I first visited a barber-shop practice session in Chattanooga, TN. During a break in practicing small clusters of men would stand around just striking a chord and intently listening for something. Finally another man explained to me that they were listening for the 5^th, a phenomena where 4 voices blended just right and with the right acoustics will literally create a 5^th voice from the harmonics of the original voices blending together. I never heard them that day but many years later in our own quartet we occasionally heard it. I will never forget one day when we were practicing in the lobby of our church and all the way through a particular song I heard the 5^th voice so loud and distinct that I kept looking around at each of the other 3 guys in amazement trying to figure out if one of them was the one singing that extra high, distinctly clear note. It was so beautiful it sent chills down my spine.

5. OK, like Colin I am getting bogged down trying to come up with more things. Maybe I need to give someone else a call to get me jump-started. I am the 6^th and last child in my family, one of which died 2 days after birth not long before I was born. Since I am not a spring chicken anymore that make the rest of them – well – whatever you want to call it.

6. Back to the music genre again, I spent 2 years about 5-6 years ago singing with a worship team in 2 different churches in Michigan where I lived at the time. One was a large university church and the other was the other fairly large church in town where I attempted to be a worship leader for about a year. I tried to introduce some new ideas in thoughtful programming changes and worship concepts but finally realized that the church simply was not ready for any changes. However, I learned a great deal about worship personally during that time and expanded my thinking a great deal which I will appreciate for years to come. I miss those special times and often wish I could participate again in something similar.

7. About 20 years ago I learned to play the Saxophone with a friend tutoring me who was an excellent player and absolutely loved to play with anyone no matter how bad they sounded. He certainly needed that attitude for a few months to keep coming back as I never learned to read music and sounded more like a bleating goat for awhile than an instrument of music. The first day he came to my house to teach me and play with me he burst out laughing when he saw me playing happily along with the mouthpiece on my instrument upside down.

8. Wow! I actually got to number 8. Well, since music seems to be the easiest thing to talk about (even though I have almost nothing at all to do with it now) I am a keyboard player who loves to play “by ear” and can hardly read music at all except when singing. All of my teacher's since I was 5 years old gave up trying to force me to read notes as I would simply memorize the music and then pretend I was looking at it while playing it for them. However, I wish I had had a teacher who would have picked up on my love for music and my ability to play by ear and tried to develop it much more instead of just staying with the normal teaching methods which did not fit me at all. Oh well, I still enjoy sitting down occasionally at a fine piano and expressing my soul and feelings and even more so if someone who really appreciates it is receiving it from my heart. I love to accompany singers who sing deeply from their heart because then we can feed off each other and really connect in a way that I seldom have the chance to do with others.

Well, there I did it. If you managed to wade through all that and are still reading you might find yourself on the hit list of friends privileged to be “it” and spill your guts share your specialness on your own web page for all the world to see. (I have learned a little bit reading other people's blogs.)

I hereby bequeath the honor of being tagged to the following eloquent writers and bloggers:

• Mountain Laurel at Dusty Angels – check out her book for some very personal and interesting reading.

• Maiden, Bringer of Peace

• Notes from Inside My Head not that I think she may ever see this, but she has a great blog.

• rachman-unprecedented

• meow – Surprise

• formerly a student.... Another blog I like to keep up with but may not notice they are now “it”.

• Seana Waters Welcome I may have to jog her to look at this, but she already has some very interesting info about herself on her web page.

• SUICIDE BICYCLE RIDE OK, so I reaching and I'm sure this guy will never see this tag. But he has an interesting page and I have run out of ideas.

For those who want to continue the game and are tagged here, you are supposed to post 8 fascinating, compelling, startling secrets things about yourself on your own blog and then tag 8 more people to pass it on. Got that? You're it!

By the way, if you are reading this and have an interesting blog that I don't know about, leave me a comment and let me check it out. Or if you are one of my friends that never blogs but just stares at mine once in awhile (I know some of you do), think about starting up your own blog and posting now and then. It's extremely easy to do and actually does connect you with others in surprising ways. If you want any help setting one up I and many others will be eager to assist you. Someone else set mine up completely to coax me into getting started. Let me hear from you.

Salvation a Bit Deeper

I sense my mind and heart bumping up against maybe the biggest fundamental lies in my soul that undergird all of my frustrating confusions about God and religion and living life. But when I start to put them in writing they begin to sink back into the fog. They are like high, thick walls of stone that still surround my heart and prevent it from coming fully into expression. They also protect the imps of fear and shame and guilt from being fully vulnerable to exposure to the greater powers of truth and love and peace. These false gods have been pounding me for days trying to suppress the truths that God has been placing in my heart with complex lies about my identity.

These fundamental lies are the deepest lies of my life that were formed and instilled from birth and throughout all of my life through faulty assumptions and mixed ideas about God, about salvation, grace and forgiveness. They are the same lies that are the foundation of Satan's government and plague every sinner on earth, but just the same I have to deal with them primarily in my own heart. That is the only place that I have authority to really make a difference by allowing God access to expose and replace these lies with glorious truth at the heart level of my being as well as the intellect.

Yesterday while I was working I listened to some sermons by Herb Montgomery from Light Bearers Ministry that brought fresh light into my mind and heart. I have heard the words before but the right brain cannot understand words so it was really the spirit of Herb along with God's Spirit that was really opening up the truth about salvation to me in ways that went beyond what I have experienced before. I have concluded that Herb, at least so far for me, is the most effective minister of the true gospel that I have ever heard in my life. (If you are interested in hearing him you can download his material and talks from their website for free – that's where I got these.)

Still, it seems that these revelations only sink into my heart in micro-increments which still frustrates me, but I will cherish them and long for more. To repeat them here will of course not have the same impact, but I do so mainly to capture what is happening for my left brain's sake so I won't lose so much of what I have received. But thinking back over what I am learning and reviewing how God is leading me does deepen the roots of these seeds so I think this may be useful.

This morning as I got out of the shower I had one of those epiphanies that others would wonder at, thinking I must be incredibly dense. They are right. That's why I feel like I am bumping up against a giant wall that is trying to prevent me from breaking into the light of God's real glory. That wall is my denseness due to all my life experiences designed to reinforce Satan's lies about God and Redemption and the Atonement. Those have been just abstract religious teachings for me most of my life but now they are starting to sink into the emotional and heart area of my soul a little more.

What came to me this morning were deeper connections in my thinking about the real meaning of forgiveness. My idea of forgiveness most of my life, which I suspect is not much different than many people's, was something along the order of trying to forget, ignore, suppress or accept excuses for wrongs done to me or vice versa. A few years ago while watching John Regier's videos for the first time I learned that forgiveness is radically different than that, that it really involves taking full responsibility personally for all the pain and anguish that another has caused me and not holding it against them. It means completely releasing all desires for retaliation or revenge of any kind. That does not mean that I feel responsibility for causing them to hurt me, but I take full ownership of the pain and suffering that their offense has caused me because it is completely impossible for them to ever pay for it themselves. If I do not forgive the only alternative is bitterness which will eventually eat my soul alive.

I now know these things in my head and somewhat in my heart, I have even seen and experienced their powerful transformational potential in the life of my own Dad a couple years before he died. I also somewhat understood that somehow this was what Jesus did for us on the cross, but that still seems so theoretical and mostly impersonal in relation to my own heart. But this morning, even though I cannot say I received an overwhelming deeper, life-changing conversion on this point, it clicked in my mind another notch deeper that this description is exactly what Jesus did for me when He died for my sins.

Now I know that every theologically-minded person will likely roll their eyes at my ignorance when they hear this, but more pieces of the puzzle shifted a little bit this morning at the heart level and came closer together to make my picture of God more clear. I suppose it is the residual effect of the spirit I felt yesterday. In addition, the reading in My Utmost this morning (planned well ahead by God's design as is so often the case in my life) simply reinforced it and deepened its impact.

“The plaintive, self-centered, morbid kind of prayer, a dead-set that I want to be right, is never found in the New Testament. The fact that I am trying to be right with God is a sign that I am rebelling against the Atonement. 'Lord, I will purify my heart if You will answer my prayer; I will walk rightly if You will help me.' I cannot make myself right with God, I cannot make my life perfect; I can only be right with God if I accept the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ as an absolute gift. Am I humble enough to accept it? I have to resign every kind of claim and cease from every effort, and leave myself entirely alone in His hands, and then begin to pour out in the priestly work of intercession. There is much prayer that arises from real disbelief in the Atonement. Jesus is not beginning to save us, He has saved us, the thing is done, and it is an insult to ask Him to do it.

If you are not getting the hundredfold more, not getting insight into God's word, then start praying for your friends, enter into the ministry of the interior. 'The Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.' The real business of your life as a saved soul is intercessory prayer. Wherever God puts you in circumstances, pray immediately, pray that His Atonement may be realized in other lives as it has been in yours. Pray for your friends now; pray for those with whom you come in contact now.” (MUHH 6/20)

This message was directly linked to the message that I received yesterday through Herb. And it is a direct assault on the wall in my mind around my heart that has prevented me from going much deeper into a relationship with God. It is really unbelief in the reality of God's love and the Atonement, not from stubbornness so much as ignorance and fear at the heart level. I was not taught much about true grace when I was young, I was raised on rules and on a subtle but unarticulated belief that we must do certain things or work up enough faith to get ourselves into a right position so God will forgive us. So despite all the correct theology that I have been learning since then about God's unconditional love and sending His Son to die on the cross for my sins, these facts primarily have gotten stuck at the mind level as good explanations but seldom soak through to the heart where the springs of my life originate. That is not to say they never have affected me. There have been many times when the Spirit of God has impressed my heart and softened it and introduced light. I am sure there is very much more of that ahead as well; I certainly hope so or I will be hopelessly stuck.

Yesterday as this truth about what Jesus really did for me was fresh in my mind in an unusual way I had to jot down a few notes of what was swirling through my mind before I forgot them. Here is what I wrote down.

I think I may have discovered a big clue to the question I have had for many years. Towhom did Jesus pay the price for our sins? Was it God or Satan, or somebody else?

I am starting to realize that a problem is the assumptions behind the question. As soon as we say the words “pay” or “price” or “ransom” we immediately frame it in the context of contract mentality where there are two parties involved and exchanges are made between the parties for due consideration and equal value. Coming with this Western mindset thinking we run head-on into confusion when trying to understand Redemption, especially when it is in the spiritual arena.

I now think it is safe to believe that the substance, or the currency utilized in the paying of the price for our sins was pain. This is not just pain in one area of human consciousness, but pain in probably every arena of existence that pain can be experienced. But to experience pain is not necessarily to implicate that a transaction has or has not taken place. It is receiving something, but is it giving something back of equal value as is assumed in a contractual relationship?

Forgiveness really means accepting the pain and the responsibility or ownership of the pain incurred from an offense or violation without holding it against the person who caused us that pain. Is that a transaction/contract? A contract is usually an agreement entered into by two or more parties. But if we reject someone's forgiveness then the contract model does not fit well because from God's side we are still unconditionally forgiven. If we were not we could not be drawn by grace and the kindness of God to repentance.

If anyone has received payment of the price for redemption, it appears that it would be the redeemed ones themselves. They are given the offer of receiving the righteousness and life of Christ in exchange for Him taking on the suffering and natural consequences of their sins. But that is not an exchange of equal value so it does not fit the contract model either. This is where covenant thinking makes much more sense but is very unfamiliar to most of us. But even that falls short of explaining redemption because forgiveness is provided for everyone whether or not they believe it or accept it.

This is the very spot where many people in typical religion, including me, get side-tracked. Since most of us believe it is God who makes the determination of our being saved or lost and how much we are to be punished, we cannot accept the seemingly absurd idea that everyone has been forgiven for all their sins both past, present and future. We insist that forgiveness only exists when we accept it and believe in Jesus as our Saviour and Lord. Otherwise, we reason, everyone would be saved and we would end up with a bunch of unconverted sinners in heaven, a huge disaster, and things would be no different than they are now if not much worse.

But this reasoning puts the emphasis on our believing as the key ingredient for our salvation in such a way that our faith supposedly impresses God enough to decide to take us to heaven. It is rooted back in the idea that there is something I have to do to get God to love me or save me. This belief is so deeply rooted in my psyche that I flinch to even write these words expecting the usual explosion of rebuttals from offended relatives and teachers. This is the concept and teaching that has confused me all of my life and still challenges me yet today. It is caused by a confusion about the real meaning of many of the religious terms involved as well as my inability to comprehend and accept the truth about God's unconditional love for me. (My Dad told me many years ago very explicitly that this notion of unconditional love was a heresy in the church.)

Paul says that our “Promissory Note of Debt” has been taken out of the way and nailed to the cross (Col. 2:14). This debt is the loan papers on life itself loaned to us by the only Source of life to keep us alive when sin entered our race creating a liability of death. If anything we have only increased our interest on the debt the more we sin and reject the Author of life. So is it really God that the payment is owed to and we are the borrowers hopelessly in debt?

This now begins makes perfect sense to me when seen in the parable of the debtor (Matt. 18:23-35) who owed an astronomical sum of money to the king and thought he could pay it back instead of accepting the forgiveness put in place by the king. In that parable the forgiveness given to the first debtor was never revoked, but the punishment he received was self-induced by the debtor himself and would last as long as he refused to forgive the one who owed him. By not forgiving he refused to experience forgiveness and stored up wrath for himself while keeping himself in prison.

This story has been largely misunderstood and misinterpreted because of our assumptions about the nature of forgiveness and about how God relates to us. When we believe forgiveness is some trick or legal maneuver whereby offenses are excused, ignored or simply suppressed in the mind, then we not only believe that the King in the parable reinstated the debt when his forgiveness was ignored, but we also believe that God holds our sins against us until we ask for forgiveness. Hackles are really raised when the idea is put forward that even our future sins are already forgiven. That sounds like outrageous heresy and an outcry is heard that we have cheapened grace and are despising the blood of Jesus. I know because I listened to many of those outcries over the years myself.

But in fact, the very opposite is true. If we really believe the truth about what constitutes true forgiveness – a taking on of responsibility for and experiencing all of the pain that our sins create – then when we try to say that forgiveness only happens when we ask for it and accept it, we are really trying to say that Jesus has not really already suffered the pain that our sins produced. That is the greater insult to the gift of God in the blood of Jesus, that is the real blasphemy. The cross makes the bold statement that no one can ever sin enough or create more guilt and pain than Jesus has already taken upon Himself and experienced in our behalf so that we would not have to experience it. It makes no difference whether the sins are past or future for us, Jesus has already experienced the pain. It makes no difference whether we accept His offer of life or reject it, Jesus has already experienced our pain and paid the price. This is a truth I have never really known before or embraced fully.

In view of this I can see that God's gift in Jesus really is wastefully extravagant, lavish and much more. I am learning this with my head, but I want my heart to come into this realization as well and even surpass what my intellect believes.

God, forgive me for asking You repeatedly to do what You have already done for me. Forgive me for trying to get myself right with You when Jesus has already done that. Remind me to pray, not only for my friends but for those who despitefully use me and speak ill of me. Fill me with Your Spirit of love and intercession and teach me the ministry of reconciliation by Your Spirit. Make me a Minister of the Interior in Your government with Your disposition reflecting out of me. Do this for Your name's sake as You promised me in Eze. 36.

And please God, increase my capacity and willingness to embrace the truth about Your love and Your Atonement for me. Cause me to walk in Your ways by reveling in Your goodness instead of dwelling on my fears and mistakes. Ravish me with Your extravagant love and grace. Make me Your grand experiment. Melt away the walls of ignorance, doubt and lies that keep my heart from plunging with abandon into Your ocean of love. Move into my heart, no, flood into my heart and live there for eternity. I give you full permission to do anything You want with me and in me today. I praise You and thank You and worship You as my Redeemer, my God and my Lover.