Synchronization

When we call someone on the phone to chat for awhile or sit down to visit with a friend to just enjoy each other's company, what we are really doing is synchronizing our minds and hearts with each other. Depending on how long it has been since we last talked, how close a friend they are to start with and how many things have transpired in our lives since we last synchronized, it may take some time to get onto the same wavelength again.

The process of synchronization is very complex and fascinating. I do not claim to know a great deal about it but it seems apparent that it is very real. We call it “catching up” with each other sometimes. Just like gears trying to mesh with each other in a gearbox, we each have to adjust the speed of our movement, the sense of our emotional state, until we find harmony and a closer sense of connectedness between us. And depending on how serious we are about this relationship determines how much time and effort we put into the exercise. If we want to simply have a casual connection and be just friendly we may only lightly touch emotionally with the other person. But if we mutually crave a really deep heart-bonding then it will usually take a great deal more effort and time to synchronize the much deeper feelings in our hearts that often we ourselves do not even understand.

The lack of feeling synchronized with others leaves an intense feeling of emptiness inside of us. We were designed by God to find real satisfaction in synchronized bonds with other hearts and when we don't have those relationships we feel cheated and poor. Many times we resort to all sorts of means to mask that pain: chemicals to make us feel better and numb our awareness, virtual relationships that externally promise to satisfy our deep need for bonding but rip away from us leaving deep wounds and even more intense pain than we started with. I say virtual, not just in the sense of distant as in using the internet or videos or some other impersonal means, but also physical intimacy with anyone without legitimate, covenant-based bonds to protect the relationship for the long term.

We are so surrounded with all the false alternatives to real bonds of friendship and love that we are almost totally unaware of what the real ones might look like or feel like. We have been forced to be satisfied with underdeveloped relationships at best and pain-inducing relationships on average if that can be called satisfaction. Our hearts crave for something much deeper, much more committed, much more satisfying than anything we now experience. We often question if such a relationship is even possible given the fruitless years we have spent trying to find such a thing. Is there really someone out there who can ravish our souls and make us feel fully alive without leaving us once again in pain and darkness and feeling desperately alone? Is there a way to experience more of our relationships in more fulfilling ways than what we now have?

These are questions of the heart that cannot be answered by the intellect. Oh, there are plenty of platitude answers floating around out there that most of us could rattle off quite easily. But when it comes to really experiencing them instead of just talking about them very few people can honestly confess that they have found genuine satisfaction and bonds of real love.

The act of synchronizing with another heart is an attempt to love and be loved. There are many times when the attempt at synchronization is only one-sided and leaves both parties feeling frustrated or even violated at times. We very often make clumsy attempts to synchronize with someone else, sometimes even complete strangers if we are desperate enough for friendship. But our attempts are interpreted as attacks and threats instead of expressions of a desire to honestly synchronize and we are quickly rebuffed or even shamed. This adds insult to injury and our fears and pain deepen even further and our hearts add yet another layer to the walls that we have built around them. We desperately want to live free but our fear of pain prevents us from synchronizing in ways that would allow us to feel free.

So we resort to a synchronization of broken hearts. This is very apparent as I look around. We meet together to swap horror stories of how other people have hurt us or insulted and offended us. We commiserate together about how miserable we are and feel a certain amount of satisfaction that others may be able to understand our pain because it resonates with similar feelings in their life. We may even get so synchronized in our sharing of pain that we think the other person really cares about us and may enter into an emotional and/or physical relationship with them thinking that we have found the real cure for our pain and they likewise.

But this experience ends up just being yet another event that causes us trauma as our selfish hearts meet to exploit each other in the name of love. When we finally discover that the other person is only there to service their own pain and has no real resource to heal our pain we pull away yet again and our friendship or love turns to bitterness or even hatred. We believe that they have deliberately set about to hurt us not realizing that they have the same feelings about us. So we move on to look for yet another opportunity to synchronize with another heart in hopes that we can someday find the real thing but losing more hope all the time.

It sounds like nothing more than a religious platitude to say that God is the only reliable option to heal this problem, but nevertheless it is true. The One who designed and created our hearts and minds to crave love is the best suited to arrange for its fulfillment. It is true that we need to experience satisfaction and bonding with other beings as well as God, but these can only be long-lasting and deeply fulfilling as they are guided by the Spirit of the One who is the only One that can read our heart like an open book. Ultimately, our deepest and most intense longings will only be satisfied in the presence of the One who originated them in the first place. And He placed them there like a guiding magnet to attract us back to our origin and Creator. Not being satisfied with any alternatives pushes us to keep searching until we connect with the real thing and feel fully alive.

Synchronization is a most important element in the body of Christ but is possibly one of the most lacking ingredients at this time. That should be no surprise given the intensity of deception that Satan is using to keep us from uniting into a real threat to His system. He knows far better than we do what the most important things we need to focus on if we are to be reunited with our real source of power. And he does everything possible to minimize and discount all these important elements and keep us focused instead on things the world thinks is important for unity and success. If he can keep us distracted and our hearts from connecting to each other and to God effectively, he has little to worry about in perpetuating his agenda.

The most effective way Satan has to keep us from experiencing real power and love in our lives is to keep us away from our hearts and focused on the externals and the intellectual aspects of our life. Or if we do get into our hearts he tries to fill us with so much pain and despair that we won't believe that God can really solve our problems or heal our pain. If he can keep us in unbelief then he can keep us in pain and powerless while he continues to abuse us in every way possible.

So how do we respond in the face of all this? Where do we focus our attention and energies to come into life-giving synchronization with God's network of life? I am still asking those questions myself and am not ready to accept or expound any simplistic, unproven answers at this point. Just because I can see a question more clearly does not mean I can see or experience the answer clearly. I am far more an example of dysfunctional and desynchronized relationships than I am of healthy ones. I am learning a lot about what good ones might look like but as of yet have very little if any experience in actually participating in them.

All I can do at this point is ask and trust in God's providence to bring together those He is working with to produce the closely knitted body that He has promised to reveal. I have no idea how I fit into that body and right now I feel very, very loosely connected to it at best. But I am eager to experience it much better in the future and look forward to bonding at the heart level much more than I currently can conceive. I am praying that God will continue to draw me into healthy relationships, that He will transform my own heart and mind to not be so damaging and clumsy in my relationships and that I can begin to experience the effects of feeling genuine satisfaction and love. As I learn to receive love I am told that I will be able to give love. I look forward to that as soon as possible.