Clay Feet

Forty-one Years Ago

2012-01-25T09:31:00.000-06:00

Forty-one years ago this morning was a significant day, a turning point in my life. I still remember it rather well because I had come to an impasse in my life, not only spiritually but emotionally as well. But a little background needs to be explained to make sense of that statement.

I grew up in a conservative religious environment in the sense that I had been led to believe in a very strict, arbitrary, demanding God who expected everyone to keep His rules perfectly or face punishing. Very likely this was because that was the way I was generally treated by my parents, particularly my father who was not adverse to using corporal punishment whenever he felt it might be useful to force me into more obedience. Thus my view of God increasingly was filled with fear and intimidation.

As I entered my teen years my heart began to rebel more and more against this kind of life. But at the same time my conscience had been trained to always be honest, to try to be good and to seek for holiness as far as I could figure out what that meant. I now realize that this is the double-mindedness that James speaks of in the Bible. And as I learned all too well, double-mindedness always leads to instability.

The religion of my childhood in many respects resembled the cultural religion of America in those days, a culture where authority demanded implicit, unquestioning obedience and every infraction of the law was met with stern retribution. But as I was approaching adulthood in my early teens things were changing in our country; the Vietnam war was raging and coming to a climax and young people both there and at home were chafing under the abuse of a country exploiting them and using them essentially as cannon fodder in a far away land.

Protests began to break out, but not just over a stupid war that was going nowhere but in reaction to increasingly abusive authority here at home. Hypocrisy was on the rise among the older generation and the youth were hungry for more authenticity, for something that addressed the real issues down inside instead of just repressing everything for the sake of keeping up appearances. Out of this environment the Hippie movement was born with a rather colorful history and mixed reviews.

Whatever you might think was going on with the Hippie movement (which was slightly before my time in some respects), it was truly a mix of reactions to the abuse of power, not only by the government but by religion and adults in general. Some of the young people in that movement were honestly seeking for real freedom, to explore uncharted waters not unlike Columbus who had 'discovered' America long ago, and they also wanted to a better love and learn to real. As with any revolution there were also those who took advantage of the uprisings to express their selfishness by exploiting others and causing havoc. But it cannot be denied that the repressive atmosphere of abuse by those in charge brought on this massive movement not unlike what we are seeing all throughout the Arab world today.

My own life was being lived out in an even more restricted, protected environment. I was carefully shielded from nearly all outside influences such as popular music, movies and most other cultural activities that were considered worldly in society. I am not saying that this was all bad but simply stating that this is what shaped my thinking and perceptions during my formative years. But because of the intensity of the pressure to conform to the rule of law both at home and in my church as well as in society at large, I found myself increasingly chafing under the pressure for conformity and started having my own urges to revolt myself.

As I mentioned previously, my conscience had been trained quite intently to act as a guard against my straying too far into off-limit activities. I had great ability to heap enormous amounts of guilt and shame on myself whenever I felt I had sinned. The problem was that I had very nebulous ideas about just what sin really was and this was part of what fueled my confusion and growing resentment against authority. My conscience had become very sensitive, but without experiencing real love I increasingly lived in growing terror of losing my soul if I did not 'confess' every last little 'sin' that might still be lurking in my past or present.

I came to believe from the teachings/threatenings of well-meaning religious instructors that God, who could see all things even in the deepest recesses of my soul, was always looking over my shoulder waiting to condemn me to burn in hell if I did not perfectly conform to every last requirement/demand expected of me. To make matters worse I never seemed to be able to determine just what demands were from God and which might just be petty demands of those in authority. For it was not unusual – in fact it was the popular method in even secular culture – to make up rules more for the convenience of those in charge than for the good of those under their authority.

So in many ways I entered my own 'Hippie movement' in my own way, but not necessarily at the same time as the one going on outside my home. And even though I did begin indulging in listening to forbidden music on a radio I discovered in my house, which raised the friction level between me and my parents significantly, the pop music I listened to was more reflective than instructive in my life.

During this period in my life I began to experience an internal conflict that I can only describe as resembling schizophrenia. Because of my very dark views of a demanding God waiting to punish me reinforced by a father who was very similar, and an overactive conscience that did its share of condemning me as well, I found myself in essence 'doing penance' that increasingly consumed more and more of my waking hours. During this period of time when I was around 11-13 I took on my first job as a paper-boy for a Chicago newspaper and suddenly had access to far more money that the pittance my parents had given me for an allowance each week. That gave me resources to do many more things but not necessarily all beneficial for me. But pervading my conscious mind through whatever activities I found myself involved in, and like a computer virus running behind the scenes consuming more and more of my mental CPU, was a mantra of sorts that ran over and over and over and became more and more obsessive and compulsive.

This virus that increasingly took up more and more of my waking moments was a cycle of confessing whatever violation or past sin I might be able to imagine or remember and begging God to forgive that sin so I would not face punishment for it. However, even this activity brought very little relief for I had no way of being sure that God had relented and chosen to wipe that sin off my records in heaven. Thus I would find myself repeating the same confessions again many times because I still wasn't sure if I had gotten it right and removed it from the list God was using against me for the day of Judgment.

This may sound very bizarre to some but may resonate a great deal with many others. Whatever the case, this was my situation and no one around me had any clue that this was what was going on inside my head nearly every moment I was awake. Things progressively got worse though, for my overactive conscience pushed me harder and harder to comply with the expectations of religion as I perceived them, which meant that I was also supposed to close my eyes, bow my head, kneel down and fold my hands whenever I prayed. But since this cycle of fearful, compulsive 'penance' was happening during many of my waking moments, increasingly it was impossible to do all of those things at the same time. That of course, brought up the potential that I was adding even more guilt to the list of sins I was trying to whittle down with all my frenzied, obsessive praying.

I can remember riding my bicycle through car traffic in town trying to recite my penance routines and feeling compelled to close my eyes in because I was praying but with dangerous results. Finally I had to just keep reciting my mantras without doing any of the outward physical requirements just to stay safe but in turn that only increased the weight of guilt I was already feeling. My condition could easily be compared to the situation of Christian in the story Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. He is described as having an incredibly heavy burden fastened on his back that he could not escape. That description of the Christian life truly resonated in many ways with my own journey toward God.

This obsessive-compulsive habit that was developing in my internal world finally became so disruptive that people must have begun to wonder about me, yet no one ever bothered to ask or to allow me the freedom to share my fears and confusion with them. The only thing I got from the adult world were more expectations and ever-increasing requirements that I needed to conform to in order to be accepted as well as prepare my life for heaven.

With this background explanation it can be more readily understood why I felt the way I did when I woke up on my sixteenth birthday and lay in bed pondering my predicament that cold morning. A number of things crossed my mind that began to inter-relate to each other. One thing was the popular notion that the age of sixteen may be some sort of magical transition point in life from which the expression “sixteen and never been kissed” emerged. And while it was true that I had never been kissed by a girl, being the pragmatic sort of mind I was, I rather disdained such notions. But that morning I began to ponder that just maybe there might be something significant about turning sixteen that was outside my frame of awareness. I began to wonder if something might potentially be different for me that day, something that might surprise me, that might cause me to take a different direction in my life. Little did I realize that I was indeed about to turn one of the most significant corners that would affect my journey for eternity.

As I lay there in bed pondering whether there was anything to this sixteen business or not, another thought began to emerge more forcefully from my heart. My resentment had been building up for years against my internal picture of God who demanded impossible levels of penance and expected me to live such a dysfunctional existence as I had been experiencing for several years. My heart was so suppressed and squashed by all this abusive internal frenzy that I was finally ready to consider throwing in the towel so to speak and giving up on all of it. Maybe this religion was too crazy for me, and certainly it was becoming clear that the direction I was heading was untenable. It was impossible to live much longer with this compulsive obsession sapping more and more of my energy and it was interfering with my relationships and even my ability to concentrate on normal activities. It was only increasing my levels of shame, guilt and fear rather than diminishing them and it was starting to become clear that this must not be the right road to heaven. The way things were going I would soon have a mental break-down rather than a breakthrough into holiness.

As I lay there and thought back over the past few years of my life in connection with this obsession, I decided to make what felt like a very dangerous decision that morning. In the light of the pain and dysfunction this obsession was bringing into my life, I decided that for at least that one day I was going to attempt to suppress this compulsive urge to confess and grovel every time it presented itself no matter how insistent it might feel. Only if I obviously committed some egregious sin would I choose to try to make it right, but for all the other real or imaginary sins that seemed to never go away anyway, I decided that for this day I was going to fight back and refuse to obey this internal dictator any longer.

As I made this decision I felt a threat emerging from the demon (I now see that is really what it was) that was driving me to live this way. I could hear him threaten that I would surely burn in hell if I didn't continue to obey this obsession. But in response I decided that it couldn't be much worse to burn in hell than the miserable existence I was already experiencing. And somewhere deep inside I felt just a flicker of hope suggesting that maybe, just maybe what I had been doing was not really God's plan after all. And if that was true then maybe this decision might possibly open me up to a better option than the one religion had produced in me thus far.

That day became one of the most significant turning points in my life up to that point. Because of my choice to begin to turn away from desperately dark pictures of God in my head and move toward a more healthy picture of Him, my life has been on a different track ever since. I am not suggesting in any way that it was the intention of my parents or religious guardians to lead me into such insanity. But nevertheless it was the product of a legalistic approach to religion that always results in malfunction and a loss of peace in the heart. And peace is one of the most important ingredients for a Christian to experience if they are to grow and thrive and mature.

As I thought back on this day that changed my life 41 years ago this morning, I couldn't help but feel again that I am in some ways continuing that choice again today. I find myself in the middle of even more intense questioning of my dark pictures of God, pictures that still pervade the thinking and teachings of most of those around me in religion even today. The same atmosphere of fear still pervades not only my own church but every brand of religion throughout the world to some extent. Only recently have I begun to discover that the real truth about God is even more radically beautiful than I could ever have dared to imagine that day I turned sixteen. Now here I am still processing and rejecting faulty opinions about God so many years later and wondering how much longer it will take before I can be free of the inhibitions and rebellion that all of those lies instilled into my psyche during those formative years.

I made a decision back in those days that I was going to take the harder road than many of my friends were choosing. Rather than throw out religion as being worthless or impossible or a fraud as many others chose to do, I decided that the real problem was that I didn't have a correct perception of what was really true about God or religion and that I needed to figure out what was really true in contrast to what I had been taught all my life that made me so terrified of God. That choice has shaped the rest of my life up to this day and continues to be the basis by which I live my life.

I am now more convinced than ever that the real problem, not only in my life but with all of us, is that we have grown up in an environment so saturated with lies about God that unless God intervenes to show our hearts the real truth about Him there is no hope of us every figuring it out. But on the other hand, if we allow Him enough respect to give Him a chance in our hearts, He will begin to share with us a love and will ravish our hearts in ways that cannot be matched by anything else we could imagine. The human heart was designed to be satisfied by only one thing, and that one thing is the passion of the God who created it to start with. But the thing that keeps us from embracing that love are the myriads of lies we still believe that prevent us from trusting Him with our hearts.

Religion has miserably failed to present the real truth about God, not just to the world but to its own adherents as well. Religion still insists that God operates primarily through laws and even so-called liberal theology is obsessed with resolving our legal standing with God. What I have been discovering is that God is far more intent on winning my respect and my affections than He is on me achieving perfect conformity to a list of demands. Trying to fulfill a list of rules actually diminishes my ability to love, yet love is the only thing that prepares my heart to live in His presence. The only way I can live in love is to lay aside my obsession with rules and first learn to appreciate the real truth about what He is really like in contrast to all the lies religion and/or culture has foisted on me. Then as I come to know Him more and more intimately my life will naturally begin to gravitate toward being like Him without me obsessing over whether I have offended Him or not.

I still have a long ways to go to get rid of the many lies that still lurk deep inside me and get triggered from time to time. But God is faithful and His love is everlasting which is the only thing I can depend on when it comes to my salvation. The more I focus on knowing who He really is the more I sense my own heart beginning to heal and to increase in its capacity to respond with reflective love back toward Him. And this, I am discovering, is the real preparation for heaven that my heart has been longing for all along.

Temporary Beach Bums

2011-07-14T14:50:00.003-05:00

Leaving behind the sweltering heat of the midwest, wifey and I flew out to chilly Northwest Washington last Monday to visit with our daughter for a few weeks and see some of the beauties of this region. Knowing how little pictures really convey what needs to be seen and smelled and experienced firsthand, I sometimes fail to take enough pictures. Yet they can serve as reminders of the fuller memories of cherished experiences for those who participated in what the pictures represent.

Today we went out to the 'ocean' such as it is in the straits of the sound. I can see how I could very quickly get addicted to just spending weeks strolling the beaches exploring the millions of kinds of life in the tidepools available here, smelling the scent of the sea and soaking up the peace inherent in nature as God designed it. I missed seeing the Bale Eagle on the branch that my daughter caught with her camera, but we did finally come across some amazingly beautiful creatures in the tidepools before retreating ahead of the returning tide.

Sea Anemone

Starfish

Sunflower Starfish

At the risk of boring those who find this commonplace, I will share a few pictures of how our morning transpired today. It sure beat the baking sun of Illinois but did require that I wear a few more layers of clothes than I am used to having this time of year.

Multiple Starfish of bright colors

Upcoming Director

2011-06-22T09:15:00.002-05:00

A week ago my wife and I went to the last practice of the Barbershop Chorus I am a part of before their annual show last weekend. Since I was not singing in the show we decided to sit in on the dress rehearsal which would be the next best thing to attending. At the end of each rehearsal every week it is a tradition worldwide for Barbershop choruses to sing the anthem of the society, “Keep the Whole World Singing”. Our director usually selects someone from the group to direct it and the chorus usually pays close attention to that director to follow whatever they might do in their leading of the song.

In the past when I have been chosen I have usually made the song rather unexpected which requires the men to watch quite closely to my directing. Since I have not been to practice much over the past couple months I suspected in my mind that he might select me to direct the song. I said to myself that if he chose me to do it I would get my wife to do it in my place.

Sure enough, the director asked me to lead the song so I turned to my wife and invited her to lead it in my place. She was extremely reluctant and embarrassed to be so assertive in front of so many people, but upon a little physical coaxing and encouragement from the men she finally stood up to direct.

Since she has never done anything like this before and had no idea of what is involved in directing a chorus and didn't even know the song, she asked me what she should do. I told her to just wave her arms around and see what might happen.

Sure enough, as soon as she began moving her arms the men began singing the song according to her gestures. She seemed rather shocked and sometimes just stood there while they were stuck holding a note. I had to encourage her to keep moving her hands so they could finish the song. It was all very interesting and after the song we all gave her a standing ovation. (Well, they were all standing anyway)

If any of you like to sing I would encourage you to check into finding a Barbershop or Sweet Adelines (the female counterpart) chorus in your area and at least listen to a practice or concert. These societies are open, relaxed and have a lot of fun together. Its also a great place to make friends and improve your musical abilities. You don't have to feel obligated to be a professional but if you want to learn they are always teaching skills that can help you learn how to be a better singer.

For more information or to find a chorus in your area you can visit their worldwide web site at Barbershop.org.

On That Note

2011-06-04T20:10:00.002-05:00

We are blessed to be able to live out in the country. Because of that we are much more aware of the rhythms of nature, and this year is one of those rare moments that only happens every seven years. This is the year we get to enjoy the serenade of the cicadas.

It began with many small holes suddenly appearing in the ground around our yard. It almost looks like someone fired at the ground with a large caliber machine gun in places. The cicadas emerge from their underground hiding places once every seven years to take over the surroundings by storm. I have recently heard stories about campers being overwhelmed with cicadas covering their food within minutes after placing it on the picnic table. We have not seen near that many here, but our dog has enjoyed a few as tasty morsels on his daily walks occasionally.

The other morning as I listened to the constant singing of these cicadas I decided to guess what note they were singing, what pitch they were using as they all sang in close unison all through the surrounding woods. I guessed that it might be the note A, but after checking it on the piano I discovered it to be E instead. So much for perfect pitch on my part, huh.

Today we noticed in the times we spent outside (though it was a very hot day) that there is another competing, or complimentary, chorus in concert with the cicadas. The tree frogs have their own symphony going on that is different than the constant note of the cicadas. Their song intensifies and diminishes in a cycle with no distinct note like the other background song of the cicadas.

It reminds me of the truth that “all nature sings and around me rings the music of the spheres. This is my Father's world...” I am gladdened by the songs of the birds that arrange their wake-up chorus of intense praise early in the morning, though we don't hear it too well with the windows closed. The cheerful expressions and colors of the Oriels when they come to the hummingbird feeder brighten our day on occasion and the buzzing and chirping of the many cute hummingbirds and their occasional dive-bombing over our heads when we walk by are reminders of a Father's love for beauty and variety.

Of course there are uncomfortable things in nature that remind us that sin has marred many things. The deer flies that attack us when we walk the dog present daily challenges to keep our head covered while still having to flap our arms around gracelessly as we walk down the road. But it is still better to be close to nature and away from the many distractions and isolation from much in nature that those living in town experience.

This year we will enjoy the cicada's songs for as long as they last. I'm not sure how long they sing for, but it is not very often that they come around so we will enjoy them and remember them after they are gone in anticipation for their next grand appearance in another seven years.

Fading Winter

2011-03-04T08:37:00.001-06:00

Due to setting up my other blogs and mainly focusing on those topics I have not been very good about keeping this one up to date as far as my own activities. Some things happen that I intend to post about but by the time I get around to it it seems so far after the fact that I just don't bother. Like the singing Valentines event where I sang in a quartet all day to surprised women all over town. Of course there is also the fact that FaceBook has nearly taken over the role that blogs used to have for people's expression of their lives. But even there I almost never post anything because of the very public nature that intimidates me. Knowing that almost no one looks at this blog makes it a little easier to post things here than where I am guaranteed that hundreds of people will immediately see it.

Anyway, having rambled on about that too long, I thought I might post at little here both in review and in advance. The advance is that we have a concert coming up on March 20 with our Barbershop Chorus. It is our annual Lenten concert where we invite ladies to sing with us in the concert. This year it looks like we might even be outnumbered by the ladies which would be quite interesting. If any of you would like to attend this concert we would love to have you and I know you would enjoy it. I think my wife and my sister who recently moved in with us will both be singing in it this year.

As far as what has happened recently, my wife and I spent right at two months during the dead of winter in Michigan with our lovely (adopted) daughter refurbishing her house to ready it for rental. It had not been taken care of much for many years as far as painting and repairs so it took much longer than she had hoped to finish the job. But after spraying all the ceilings, fixing and painting the walls, replacing carpet with laminate floors and cleaning and painting the whole basement it looks better than it ever has since her original family moved in years ago.

But even more exciting was the deepening bonds that were experienced between all of us during this extended time we were able to spend together. We have taken her in as part of our intimate family for a number of years now since both of her own parents died less than a year apart, and at times it has been stressful for all of us. But over the past couple years she seems to have gone into a growth spurt as far as maturing emotionally and spiritually which has opened up our relationship dramatically. She is currently attending the seminary which is keeping her very busy and pressured, but then what's new – she is very smart and has always pushed herself very hard in school.

She also is keeping her eyes open to see if there is a man for her somewhere while training herself to rest in God's timing and guidance for her life. We are so proud of what she is becoming, the choices she is making to move into deeper intimacy with God and her willingness to take much bigger risks trusting others, especially in her relationship with us as her surrogate parents. She has chosen to be more affectionate, more trusting, more open and more patient which has allowed us in turn to be more open and vulnerable with her as well. What has come out of this while we spent this extended time with her is a much deeper bonding as she has allowed us to bring healing to some of the deep wounds from her past and damage from previous relationships that were less than healthy.

Like us, she is learning to trust God much more through this time and is learning how to distinguish His voice from other counterfeit communications which is something all of us need to learn too. Though she is often frustrated she is choosing to be patient, to open up to others and ask for help, for advice, for wisdom which is very brave of her given where she has come from emotionally. At the same time I feel suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that God is providing through her an opportunity for me to practice how to be a better father than how I performed when my children were younger. And though she is the same age as my other grown children now, she is still choosing to relate to us in a trusting way as a daughter which is allowing us to share our lives with her as caring parents and to have our hearts attached to her in a way that is uncommon today even within biological families.

Living in Michigan again during the middle of winter gave us time to enjoy more snow than we see back home in Illinois. While we were gone there was a very hard ice storm at home which we missed. Now the weather is finally starting to ease up and make us very hungry for warmer weather as it teases us in fits and spurts. But it was nice to drive in the snow again. I know, many might think I'm crazy that way, but I enjoy the challenge. It's like a game to use cars interactively with snow that can't be done under normal conditions.

While in Michigan we also had the wonderful privilege of connecting with some old friends and to tap into the many cultural and religious resources not available where we live. We had some wonderful times of refreshing in meetings, social gatherings and small groups that really enriched our lives and made us wish we could do something similar with people in our area. Maybe someday.

Toward the end of last year my sister and her husband moved in with us from Virginia. This means that our house is again overflowing with more stuff, more furniture and boxes and the garage is once again full to the brim challenging us to sort and shuck and make lots of hard decisions. We are remodeling one of the upstairs bedrooms into a kitchen which is nearly finished now. Another one is turned into an office with the intent of allowing them to have their apartment upstairs though they have not started staying there yet. The forth bedroom upstairs is still packed to the ceiling with storage which is not helped by the fact that both our child and their child have left some of their stuff at home for storage.

Since we now have found a way to deal with the Early Blight problem in the soil with products from the company I joined, we now plan to have a full-blown garden this year. It helps too that there are four people to help with it instead of just two. We are still trusting God to provide the income necessary to take care of our needs here, but He has been faithful to send us jobs and other things and we have all that we really need. We still are eating food canned by our parents years ago and have had some given to us from others on top of that. We live out in the country in the woods and have a creek running through the property. God has blessed us and we want to become better channels of blessing to others.

Accept His Presents

2010-12-25T01:23:00.006-06:00

Christmas is possibly most associated with the idea of giving and receiving presents. Yes, there are many other traditions connected to this time of year, but presents usually play a very central role in our relationships with others during this holiday season more than at any other time. This tradition has also enabled commercialism to exploit our fears and desires and has produces a whole different twist to the holiday season that is far from what God has in mind for our lives.

As I sat watching a program on television relating some of the fascinating things to be learned from the earthly sanctuary given to the Israelites through Moses by God, some thoughts came to my attention that relate directly to our relationship with God. Some may be more open to thinking about these things this time of year more than at any other.

One of the hardest things we have to discover is how to maintain a healthy relationship with God in the area of presents, gifts and the appreciation that these are supposed to produce in our hearts. Some have a very difficult time admitting that they ever need gifts from heaven while others take God's blessings for granted so easily that they fail to experience any significant appreciation for the many things God provides for them all the time. Unfortunately too often I fall into both of these categories.

As I jotted down notes of ideas as they were coming to me, the very first thing I wrote down was, Accepting His Presents. Several times I have written about this topic and I am still fascinated with the way that God sometimes puts interesting things into the language that I grew up using in ways that convey subtle but important lessons about my relationship with Him. To my amazement, the more I looked into the idea of presents and how it is directly linked to the word presence, the more in awe I am of how these two synonyms tell me what God really wants most to do in my life.

God wants me, more than anything else, to come to know the joy of His presence. And the greatest, most valuable and life-changing gift He can ever offer me is His presence – which is His present to me.

As I have pondered my own desires relating to the traditions of gift-giving, I have come to realize that what I usually long for far more than presents someone might try to offer me is the presence of their heart and person. If someone I care about would offer me themselves in ways that were vulnerable, meaningful and heart-connecting, it would be far more exciting and bonding for me than anything else they might try to purchase to give me instead.

Now, I have heard people talk about these kinds of things for years, but most of that talk seemed like so many religious platitudes to me and had little effect on how my heart felt about God. I suspect these words may have the same ring to some who may come to read this as well. But when a person begins to experience the deepening of these principles more at the heart level and the words begin to come more from a taste of the actual experience rather than just an intellectual theory, the experience begins to really come alive and so many other things begin to fall into place that it is impossible to convert many of them into words adequately.

I have sought to really sense the presence of God in my personal journey to know Him for many years. I have deliberately practiced making myself more aware of His presence, have visited places where I might better encounter His presence. Sometimes I have been disappointed when I discovered that where many people insisted they could feel God's presence readily that in fact they were more likely pursuing an emotional high from intense music rather than really meeting with the true God described in the Bible. Elijah had that problem at times and God had a few words to say to him about it.

Something I learned today that is very important for me to remember in my desire to experience much more of His presence/presents in my life more consistently is my own need to stop agreeing with Satan. It is so easy to think along negative lines, to allow discouraging assumptions, and let the insinuations of the enemy act as dark filters to block me from enjoying the presence of God who might be very close but not affecting me as I want to be affected. Someone has reminded me tonight that along with my need to stop agreeing with Satan's insinuations about God that only reinforce his lies in my life, but I also need to start affirming the truth about how God feels about me and about my true identity.

Instead of verbalizing discouraging thoughts, I need to take charge of my expressions and begin to vocalize the truth as it is in Jesus and about how much God really loves me. I can express faith, sing faith, become bold in faith by simply choosing to dwell on those truths in my thoughts and speech instead of falling into my default rut of gravitating toward viewing the faults in others or amplifying problems and difficulties. I can focus on God's goodness, His faithfulness, His everlasting forgiving attitude and His incredible grace.

Speaking of forgiveness, I also felt impressed in my spirit that the issue of offense that I have been learning more about recently is one of the main stumbling blocks that can prevent me from embracing the presents of God. When I allow offenses to remain in my heart, I will be quickly sucked into the trap of Satan and there soon will follow darkness, deception, anger, bitterness and all sorts of other problems. With these heavy cloud covers over my life it then becomes next to impossible to embrace the joy of God's presence with me as I can only see the problems in and around me.

If I want to live in the presence of God and celebrate the presents that He provides for me so lavishly all the time, I must be willing to become aware of any offenses I may be holding onto against anyone or against God. I must take ownership of the pain caused by those offenses in my heart, releasing the other person from responsibility for resolving them. Then I can in turn give them over to Jesus for release and healing and freedom in my own heart.

When I let go of offenses (which is the real definition of forgiveness) I become less and less encumbered and have increasing capacity to embrace joyfully God's presence/presents in my life. In effect, when I lay down the offenses I have been holding onto so tightly thinking they will somehow give me protection or advantage over someone else, I free up my hands to then be able to take hold of God's glorious presents for me and can enjoy the pleasure of His presence.

Do you think the Scriptures mean nothing? The Scriptures say,

"The Spirit God made to live in us wants us only for himself."

But the kindness God shows is greater. As the Scripture says,

"God is against the proud, but he is kind to the humble."

So give yourselves to God.

Stand against the devil, and he will run away from you.

Come near to God and he will come near to you.

You are sinners, so clean sin (resistance) out of your lives.

You are trying to follow God and the world at the same time.

Make your thinking pure. Be sad, be sorry, and cry!

Change your laughter into crying. Change your joy into sadness.

Be humble before the Lord, and he will make you great.

(James 4:5-10 ERV)

Where the Terrorists?

2010-12-21T08:49:00.003-06:00

I had a lingering dream some time before I completely woke up this morning that later grabbed my attention. As dreams often go, the logic of the plot makes little sense to an awake mind, but the underlying concepts that are revealed sometimes are very enlightening.

I was dreaming about security lines that people are forced to pass through at airports. Now, I'm not going to comment on my intense feelings about such matters, but to dream about such a thing for so long is rather unusual for me as I don't even remember dreaming about such a thing before.

Most of the time in my dream, the lines of passengers were unusually sparse and the activity wasn't exactly as intense as in real life. After a time I actually found myself interacting with the security personal (when they were there) on a more friendly basis than is customary.

For whatever reasons I kept having to go back around and around through the various stations as some of the other people sometimes had to do. At times it seemed that the whole area was almost devoid of any people which I found a bit strange. Even the surrounding rails and walls were not all that secure. It seemed like these were more temporary setups, like they were portable or something. It was more like they expected you to honor the system more than forcing you to do so. But that was not the point that really got my attention later on.

After some time I became aware of a man who seemed to have been designated to pass through all the security processes in a very thorough way for a most unusual reason. It seems now a bit vague and even illogical, but in the dream it seemed like a bright idea. At this point in my dream it was even starting to take on religious connotations as this man was supposed to somehow function as a stand-in for a number of children that he would be responsible for in such a way so as to eliminate the need for them to pass through all that security themselves. It was assumed that if he could pass security well enough that he could then vouch for those under his care and they could pass on their way with less hassle.

Again, in the dream it seemed rather logical, even a great idea. But as I watched him try to implement this unusual idea my dream seemed to bog down. I found myself beginning to sink into a deeper sleep where dreams don't function very well, but then suddenly I woke up to a lighter sleep with a jolt. The following thought then struck me with force and I sensed that there was something very important to learn from this illustration. These thoughts came clearly to my mind about the dream:

Man can develop all kinds of strategies and equipment and techniques to try to detect weapons or figure out who might be a danger to others, while the real problem is in the motives of the heart. But there is no way for humans to create equipment or develop programs to scan that part of a person. In fact, as I pondered it after waking all the way up, I realized that the very people who most avidly seek to expose those they label as terrorists, in the very process of looking for them begin to cultivate the very same attitudes and attributes in their own hearts. It is a principle of reality that the very act of looking for faults in others unavoidably begins to develop those same character traits in ourselves.

Only God has the 'equipment' to be able to discern the motives and thoughts of the heart. And only those who are willing to come into close fellowship and humble submission to Him will have the privilege of Him sharing with them at the right times what they need to know about what is going on inside others. Only God can see the heart while the rest of us obsess about the outward appearances.

A terrorist is not someone who is discovered carrying weapons around but is someone who harbors hate and bitterness inside and seeks for revenge. Given that definition I suspect that most of us could easily be found to be terrorists, especially those who spend much of their time trying to detect them.

The real danger in our lives does not come from bombs or guns or any other physical weapons, but it comes in the attitudes that we harbor against others that we think to have less value than ourselves. The whole system of society that we have grown up in has become a mold for inducing terrorists. And the more we try to use force, fear and violence to eliminate or incarcerate those we consider dangerous, the more we create resentment causing others to join in seeking to oppose us and use violence against us.

Like attracts like. When we resort to force we activate this universal principle that always operates. When we rely on violence thinking to suppress violence, we only end up producing more violence that will react back upon us. Jesus told Peter that those who take up the sword will die by the sword. The methods that we are subscribing to as a nation now becomes the very thing that produces and proliferates our enemies. And trying to stay ahead of others in the ability to use ever greater force only intensifies and hardens the resolve of those who resist us.

By choosing to follow this path in the name of promoting freedom we are actually destroying both the freedom of others and undermining and disassembling our own freedoms. Our government has chosen to reject the principles of freedom that we claim were the foundations of our nation originally. We have been deceived into thinking that we can rely on a different set of principles, weapons and logic of the kingdom of darkness, and still enjoy the benefits of living in freedom. But just like love, when freedom violates others and abuses those who disagree with us, it quickly disintegrates and morphs into nothing more than an empty claim, a thin shell of pretense that covers up the presence of the very same motives as in those who now attack us. All the time we reject responsibility for our own horrific actions against our enemies by blaming anyone and everyone else while we are becoming the true terrorists.

I believe it was Winston Churchill that once made a famous statement with so much insight. “We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.”

Only by following the methods and principles of heaven will we be led to living in true safety and freedom. The more we obsess over security for ourselves the more we are destroying the freedom of our own people. The claim that it is necessary to sometimes exchange freedom for security is one of the most successful lies of Satan to enslave free people and throw away all that has been won for them at such a costly price by their forefathers along with the death of Jesus Christ. Security cannot be achieved by denying it to everyone but ourselves while abusing anyone we don't like. That is not real security, it is just plain abuse of power and only serves to corrupt and destroy our souls.

It could well be said of us if we were willing to admit the truth that Churchill discovered, “When we meet the terrorists we discover to our horror that the greatest terrorists are in the mirror.”

Washing Dishes With Gratitude

2010-11-26T09:58:00.001-06:00

We are having a time of great interest right now in our lives, my wife and I. We don't know yet where it is leading us, but we sense that life is at a turning point and that quite likely it may look quite different very soon. But let me share how something little might reflect that something larger right now.

Because we had no children choose to come and spend the holiday weekend with us for Thanksgiving and had no invitations to spend the day with anyone, my wife called up a church in a nearby town to volunteer us to help out with their Thanksgiving day dinner offered for the public. We chose to arrive there not too long before they were to quit serving figuring that they would likely need more help cleaning up than serving.

Of course, when we arrived they wanted us to eat but we had just finished breakfast at home so declined the invitation, instead asking what we could do to help out. We knew no one there so we didn't really know how to fit in well, but we soon found a place at the washing sinks to relieve people better suited to do other jobs in the area. They had a very large sink well suited to washing the large cooking containers being used and then two more sinks next to that that we used for rinsing. I began washing whatever utensils were being dropped off and my wife started rinsing and drying them.

Given the ongoing nature of such a project, we spent the rest of the time there processing the containers and various utensils without any backup. From our corner of the kitchen we were also able to observe the interactions between the others and get a feel for the social network in place among these friends. Most of the lunch crowd had already finished when we arrived and so there was not a whole lot of activity going on except for a few meals being served and a number of take-outs made up for deliveries.

A half an hour before closing time even arrived it became clear that no one else was likely to show up and so they began putting everything away and cleaning out the big cookers. The servers were eager to go home after many hours of volunteering to leave the cleanup to whoever was left. We actually found it enjoyable to be able to efficiently and quickly clean all of the pots and utensils and dry them; it did not seem like a real burden for us. I noticed that my wife was often humming or singing some Thanksgiving song all through the time there which she enjoys doing this time of year.

As the staff dwindled down to just three or four and the decks were cleared, it was evident that there was a lot of mess around the counters and on the floor that no one was too interested in dealing with. I decided to wipe the decks clean and then located a mop and bucket in a nearby closet and thoroughly cleaned all the floor of the kitchen. I remembered with pride how well I had been trained as a teenager how to mop floors in the sanitarium that I worked in as a student by an old German lady who insisted on us doing an absolutely thorough and perfect job. She taught all of her students well and many of them later in life impressed many people as they demonstrated their ability and willingness to do an exceptional job handling a mop. It makes one feel good to know they can do a really good job when others are expecting far less and assume that this kind of work is to demeaning to enjoy.

As we left we were showered with appreciation but did not really make any social connections at all. I began to sense during that time that my own motives were not nearly so noble as my wife's and felt a bit ashamed of my selfishness and secret desires to get some benefit for myself out of this experience. I felt convicted that I need to learn to participate in acts of selfless kindness and generosity with no desire for personal gain as part of my training as a Christian. For too long I have focused on my own needs and how any situation might be used to profit me in some way. I have a long way to go to be free of this habit of looking out for myself first.

After we arrived back home, my wife shared something with me that really touched me. For the past several months, actually back in August, she was suddenly stricken with a severe condition of pain from bulging and ruptured discs in her lower back that left her crying in pain and lying on the couch 24/7 for nearly two months. Very slowly she has been recovering but it has been an intense time of reevaluation of priorities and heart searching to see how our relationship with God fits into all of this. Of course she had to quite her job and since I have had very little work myself our finances have been very if'y at best. We are finding ourselves forced by circumstances to seek to know much better how to live a life of faith rather than trusting in our own resources to take care of our needs.

Last night she shared with me that what was going through her mind as she was helping with the dishes at that church was a sense of extreme gratitude that she could actually once again stand there and do those dishes without the extreme pain that she has been experiencing for so long. She has recovered to the point now where by Thanksgiving day she was able to do this activity for several hours and not even need to rest or feel tempted to complain of the pain. For her, this was a wonderful cause for deep gratitude and she didn't even need to mention it to anyone else. She just chose to enjoy it and praise God for it from her heart.

God has given me a wonderful wife who is perfectly suited to meet many parts of me that are sadly lacking. She has been appointed by God to bring suggestions and promptings that, if I am humble enough and willing to pay attention, might save me a great deal of grief and problems. I am a slow learner in this area but am trying to practice being more sensitive and willing to listen and pay attention. I know that God designed each of us to be incomplete without a mate of the opposite sex designated by God to unite with us as a more perfect reflection of the wholeness of our Creator.

33 years ago today God sealed us into marriage. She was 18 and I was 22 and she felt like I had nearly robbed the cradle. She was shy and quiet and pretty and I still had enough hair at that time to be attractive. Within a couple years we had our first baby who is now a beautiful young woman with interest in a suitor for her affections. I pray that God will protect and guide her and that she will make Him the highest priority in all of her decisions. We later had a son, formed in our image just as God designed us to do, and now they both live at the other end of the country from us.

God is also very busy reeducating us in matters of the kingdom right now and we are seeking to cooperate with Him and be better students than we have been in the past. We are also coming much more into synchronization with each other's hearts more than ever in our union with each other and are finally beginning to experience a level of the love and respect we wish we could have learned long ago. But as the saying goes, 'Better late than never'.

We are thankful, but we desire to be much more thankful and have a more consistent attitude of gratitude all throughout the year. We are richly blessed with a house to live in, warmth in the growing cold, cars to drive, food to eat and love to share. We are blessed with friends who open their lives to share with us and who can challenge us to change when we need it sometimes. And most of all we are blessed with dramatic revelations over the past few months from various sources that God has brought to us concerning the real truth about God and how He really views us. We want to absorb and soak up these truths and allow them to wash our brains and our hearts of all the lies that have poisoned us for so long. It is time to live in the joy and freedom of real love for our Father in heaven and with each other.

Revisiting The Shack

2010-11-11T10:03:00.001-06:00

Although I love to read, I find it hard to actually get all the way through any book and finish it. I have lost count of how many books I have started and really enjoyed but that ended up in the pile next to my chair still unfinished even a year or two later. (I am almost breaking my own pattern because in the past few weeks I have actually finished two books.)

But once in awhile I either take the extra time or I am so riveted in a book that I actually get all the way through in a relatively short time. The last book I could not escape until I finished it was when I purchased The Shack. I had been told about it by a good friend and it sounded interesting, but I had no idea how close it was to what I am coming to believe about God through my own personal study. This book was both intensely emotional for me and refreshing at the same time. And the insights about God's character were so advanced I was caught by surprise but very delighted. I can also see why there is so much intense opposition to it for it does not support the dark views of God held by mainstream religions.

As I looked over the ensuing books available that were ignited by the popularity or notoriety of this book, I noticed another one that caught my attention and I ordered it as well. It is called Finding God In The Shack. It is written by a theologian who wanted to come to the defense of The Shack considering all of the flack that it has received. The reviews sounded interesting so I have had it lying here for several months waiting to get into it.

Last night I picked it up and began about a third of the way through from where I had gotten and began to read the rest of it. Again, I was encouraged to discover a thinker who was willing to stand up to the traditional views of God and reexamine the long-held opinions in religion that have made God out to be the frightening terrorist that many teach Him to be. I was quite surprised to find this theologian willing to challenge even the fundamental beliefs held by many Evangelicals and Christians as he presented insights from the Bible few have taken seriously. I highly recommend this book and would even like the chance to dialog with the author myself if that were possible. But only read this book after taking the time to first read The Shack if you have not read that yet.

Freezing Holocaust

2010-10-29T09:36:00.001-05:00

Last night I decided to go out and rescue the last of our tomatoes before the expected freeze overnight killed them off. Because of a new product I used this year on the plants and ground, we have been blessed with abundant tomatoes all the way up to now in stark contrast with previous years where the plants were all dead and gone by this time from a fungus in the soil. This household cleaner that is useful for all sorts of other applications dealt with the blight fungus that normally kills most of my garden and we have been very pleased with the results and the many tomatoes this year.

I picked all the ripe ones last night, all the ones even hinting at turning ripe and also all of the green ones of any significant size no matter how green. I did something similar a few days ago and set them in the window. They are starting to turn color quite nicely and also have very few bad spots in the process. We are so pleased with this blessing but still wonder how to eat this many tomatoes quickly.

As I was finishing up picking two more bags of tomatoes with a flashlight last night I was almost overcome with a strange thought. Here I was, like some diabolical monster deciding between which would go into my bag and which babies would be left to freeze to death in the coming holocaust. I couldn't shake the feeling of guilt even though with my logical mind it was an utterly silly idea. It made me realize how sensitive our hearts start to become the closer we get to viewing things through the eyes of heaven where nothing was ever intended to die.

This morning I went back out and sure enough there was heavy frost on everything. The tomato plants still look normal because they are only in the first stages of death by freezing, but I know that very soon they will wilt and turn yellow and die for the winter. I still felt guilty as I looked at all the little babies that I knew were past saving this morning because all the moisture inside them was frozen hard. What a guilt trip. I'm sure glad its only false guilt though it still doesn't feel very good.

Youth in Harmony

2010-10-26T18:00:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was a long but quite enjoyable day. I made it even longer by waking up at 12:30 AM and not being able to go back to sleep. Leaving the house shortly before 7 I helped unload risers at the university and then spent the rest of the day singing with around 100 high school boys learning 2 songs with the help of a world-class trainer from Nashville.

This was the seventh annual Youth in Harmony event put on for all the area high schools who want to participate. This year we had eleven schools send students and teachers to participate with a 15% increase over last year. I believe we had around 350 students attend this year with most of the girls. Then in the evening a concert is put on with the students singing their music for the teachers and parents as well as visiting quartets and a Sweet Adeline's chorus putting on a good show for everyone.

It was tiring being on risers for hours but the music invigorated us and kept us going. This is the third time I have helped at one of these and it is something that is always quite rewarding. My wife came for the evening performance though with her current physical problems we had to bring her up in a wheelchair. She too really enjoyed the guest quartet's performance as well as all the music that evening.

Cheek Slap

2010-09-19T08:16:00.004-05:00

The sea began to be stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. Then, when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat; and they were frightened. But He said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." So they were willing to receive Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. (John 6:18-21)

This is the story that I am studying right now and documenting on my blog where I record what I am learning. This morning it took on a whole new meaning for me personally.

Yesterday I found myself suddenly in the middle of a very intense storm of unexpected, stirred up emotions. I was blindsided, attacked by a self-appointed 'policeman' who loves to enforce arbitrary policies especially when it gives him a sense of power over others. I was caught totally by surprise and it triggered me in some of my most vulnerable areas which immediately caused a great deal of adrenaline to begin circulating through my veins.

I knew instantly that I was under spiritual attack, not just from this man who delights in confronting and manipulating others, but much more so by my real enemy who remains invisible but who delights even more in stirring up old emotions and shaming me publicly. I was strongly tempted to retaliate, to defend myself, to counter-attack and I did take the bait for awhile, giving this man some pleasure in being able to jerk me around publicly with his advantages over me. But I also realized that there were other people around us who were spiritually vulnerable and who are influenced by my example and I needed to be extremely careful how I acted and spoke.

The deeper issue here was God's reputation, not mine. But the matter was very complex. It was not simply a matter of whether I was following some petty rules made up by a committee in secret that had never been shared with me before. That is what it looked like on the surface. But in reality, there were many facets of this temptation that nearly no one knew about that conspired to lure me into Satan's trap of offense. I knew that instantly and I knew I had to be very careful not to bite that bait too readily or I would fall into that trap of deception and it might take a long time to get back out or recover many things I have gained over the past few months.

As might be expected, this incident and all the emotions surrounding it kept my attention the rest of the day. I woke up this morning early and pondered it carefully as I discussed it with God. I realize that I already have many blind spots that set me up to be vulnerable to this attack and I want to receive healing in all of these areas of weakness that play into this. But because a blind spot is not easily discerned it is difficult to even discuss that with God or one's self because it is hard to see clearly to know what to talk about.

I try to focus on the areas that seem to have the greatest trigger effect on me. That is almost always a sure way to go after the most sensitive core issues that remain unresolved in such a situation. I know that anytime a person is disproportionately triggered by something or someone, it is almost always because there remains a hidden lie deep in the heart that needs to be exposed by God and replaced with healing truth. When the deep core issue is addressed then future encounters with similar triggering situations have little to no effect on the life. That is when one can experience genuine freedom and can begin to truly advance in maturity.

I don't want to get stuck in my maturity growth. I don't want someone else's immaturity to lock me into bitterness or cause me to react in-kind from a desire to get even. It is ludicrous to want to get even with a person who is very immature. To get even with such a person is to copy their level of immaturity, and why would anyone in their right mind want to do that? But that is the nature of temptation in general – getting us to lower our own maturity level. That is why our churches and governments are full of leaders who are very immature. People who thirst for power more than for maturity and integrity generally rise to the top in our culture today. That is what sin has done to our thinking and our social relationships.

As is often the case, God arranged for the readings for today to match my situation. Funny how God always knows when something is going to happen and arranges years ahead of time to have that topic covered on that exact day when someone compiles a book. Both of the devotional books I am reading addressed my situation rather eloquently and I accept the messages God is giving me through them.

Watch when God shifts your circumstances, and see whether you are going with Jesus, or siding with the world, the flesh and the devil. We wear His badge, but are we going with Him?

...We have the idea that we ought to shield ourselves from some of the things God brings round us. Never! God engineers circumstances, and whatever they may be like we have to see that we face them while abiding continually with Him in His temptations. They are His temptations, not temptations to us, but temptations to the life of the Son of God in us. The honor of Jesus Christ is at stake in your bodily life. Are you remaining loyal to the Son of God in the things which beset His life in you? (My Utmost for His Highest September 19)

I sensed yesterday that this temptation was designed primarily to steal away my fellowship with Jesus and my sense of His presence and leading in my life. But at the same time, Jesus was allowing this confrontation to expose weak areas of my life that still are in need of repair and strengthening. My problem is that I don't know how to properly respond yet to these situations. Because they are my weak areas I am weak in knowing what to do. I guess the main thing I need to do is to cling to Jesus and not allow anything like this to divert my attention from focusing on God's goodness and faithfulness and His presence with me. That's what Chambers said here. Continually abide with Him in His temptations in my life. It is Jesus being tempted here and I need to let Him handle them. I also need to not forget to keep an atmosphere of praise and gratitude in my spirit no matter what is going on around me.

I still don't know how this is all going to play out. I still feel very raw from this attack but at the same time I realize that I must pray for this man and experience the passionate love of God flowing through me for him. I need to see this man through heaven's glasses instead of my own reactive emotions which is going to be starkly different. And I have to do this at the heart level, not just put on a facade of 'Christian piety'.

There is much more than just my feelings toward one person involved here. Other sore relationships are involved as well. In addition there is also the issue of a lack of respect between many people who are part of this group along with a spirit of arrogance and pride. But then, what's new? Those things are always going to be present among growing believers and it is God's job to take care of those problems, not mine. I am not in charge of growing up other people; I have a hard enough time dealing with my own growth in maturity. Yes, other people's issues and pain and immaturity certainly cause problems for me, but my job is to learn to always see them through heaven's eyes and to respond to them differently than what they expect from those they offend. This applies to everyone no matter whether they hold a position of authority or if they just feel like a peon in society.

I also sense that if I choose to respond to this situation better than 'normal' that I have a wonderful opportunity to move into a new phase of growth and responsibility in my own experience. I have no idea what that involves and don't really want to know at this point. But it does feel good to sense that I opportunity to grow up and not remain stagnant or stuck mature-wise. God meets us where we are but He never leaves us where we are. I don't want to be left where I am and so I am actually grateful for this encounter even though it is very painful initially. Growth is often painful because it requires change. But unless I am willing to change I can never grow.

Father, I choose to cooperate with You through this growing experience. I still don't have the wisdom to know just how to relate to all the facets of this problem and I suspect I may have already made a number of mistakes. But what I most want is to remain close to You, to feel Your presence and to know the value You place on me from Your heart. If I have Your assuring presence then I can feel safe enough to face my faults and the weak, vulnerable areas of my soul.

Keep me close to You and help me with wisdom and perspective. Fill me with Your attitude. Allow me to both see these people through Your eyes and feel toward them the way You feel instead of with resentment or shame. Help me keep my eyes on You and see Your attractiveness so that it eclipses all other attractions or attacks.

Meant to Be?

2010-09-03T07:03:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I found myself standing near this sign which really grabbed my attention. Since one of my favorite hobbies is to sing in a local Barbershop chorus in Illinois, I thought I would capture this sign and let my directors see it to maybe prove that destiny had me in mind when I came across them a couple years ago. Whatever the reason, I still enjoy making harmony with them and bringing pleasure to the hearts of those whose lives we touch with our unique blend of music.

Like Old Times

2010-05-26T15:30:00.001-05:00

So on a whim while poking around in my garage, I noticed my unicycles that have been hanging from the rafter pretty much ever since we moved here six years ago. I decided to take one down and see if I could either seriously damage myself with no one around to pick me up or find out if I still might have it in me.

Well, for an old man I didn't do too bad even if I do say so myself. I never hit the ground (though the cycle did a few times) and for someone who never did really master this skill I managed to stay on for some extended rides much to my delight (and exhaustion).

Sorry, since no one else is around (I already said that didn't I?), I had to take a picture of it without me on it. So you can believe it or not, but it was fun while it lasted.

Life Getting Interesting

2010-03-24T07:26:00.001-05:00

Just a note or two about what's been happening lately in our lives. Last Sunday afternoon my wife and I both sang in the annual Lenten concert produced by the Coles County Barbershop Chorus that I joined a couple years ago. We always enjoy these concerts as each year the chorus invites women to join us for the Lenten concert. My wife has sung in it for two years now along with another lady in our church.

My life has become very busy and quite exciting for the past six weeks as I have decided to become involved in a very profitable but also very stable home business that requires no large investment, no inventory, no sales and no risk. I know, it sounded too good to be true to me too until I thoroughly investigated it for several weeks. But believe me I did some serious homework because of previous bad encounters with home businesses. When I finally decided to give it a test run the results were far better than even I might have expected and without all of the danger to relationships that usually accompany such ventures.

I am now quite confident that with this new channel of income provided for me by God as His current way to take care of us that within a short time my wife will not have to work under the difficult circumstances she is having to put up with at this point. I am seeing good success and very positive reactions from nearly everyone I share this with, even those who have been seriously burned by other businesses they have tried out. It is also a very wonderful opportunity to make a lot of new friends as well as re-establish a number of old friendships as I now have a very positive gift to offer them without any of the risks that are usually connected with such ideas. This has been a real growing experience for me spiritually as well as God has been using this to confront some of my old fears and lies from past experiences that were far less stable or socially beneficial.

So that is what has been keeping me busy. I would love to hear what is going on in your life as well.

One Provider, Different Channels

2010-02-15T10:31:00.001-06:00

Our lives right now are in serious transition and things are getting exciting. At the same time a lot of old memories, fears and emotions are also being stirred up that I am having to face and deal with. But I can see that God is in charge of all of this and intends to use my current circumstances to mature me and help me overcome many things that still hamper me from functioning and relating to others the way I need to do.

I have sensed rather clearly over the past few months that God is changing channels on me. I learned a few years ago how to relate to finances the way heaven intends we should. This means that I must have as my unequivocal foundation the fact that Jesus has promised to take care of all of our needs irregardless, no matter what I do or how much I tithe or give offerings or anything else. His care for me is a promise not based whatsoever on any performance on my part. All that I need to do is to believe that truth with my heart and mind which then allows Him permission to fulfill His promise to me.

When that step is firmly underfoot, then I am prepared to move to the next steps in properly relating to how God may choose to provide for our needs. He does not always use the same channels through which to provide for us as demonstrated in the life of Elijah. He will provide one channel for a while such as a job that I can cooperate in to bring in what is necessary for us to live. But later that job may disappear and it is then that my true belief system will be exposed.

If I begin to fear and fret and stress out about my lack of money, it only reveals that I do not have the first step as my foundational belief firmly in place yet. Jesus made it explicitly clear that we are not to be anxious about anything. This is not something we can force ourself to do, it is a natural result of what we believe in our heart. If I don't want to be anxious in obedience to the command of Jesus I have to first have a real trust in His heart that He is taking care of me no matter what external circumstances may appear to indicate. Otherwise I am only attempting to repress my anxiety, not eliminate it.

If I do have that foundation in place securely, then I have the freedom to feel even a sense of anticipation instead of fear because I know that God has something else in mind for us. He is faithful which means He has some other channel ready for me to use to receive provision from Him. Elijah depended on ravens and a little brook for his provisions for awhile which is pretty strange compared to the jobs that most of us depend on. But when that provision dried up he trusted God to show him the next channel and God sent him to an ever stranger source of provision – a starving widow in the area that was the center of the worship of the false gods that were at the root of all the problems in Israel.

So when my work in remodeling and construction dried up over the past few months I chose to deliberately focus on not becoming anxious but talked with God about what He might have in mind as His channel for me next. As I look back I can see clear indications that He has apparently chosen to introduce me to a new business through a friend I have known for many years and who was in business with me some time back. This friend was a person of integrity that I have admired and appreciated and was probably the only person I would even have been willing to listen to about looking into starting a business like this. But since I knew what he had been through previously and how similar it was to my own experience, I listened to him with an open mind and felt God prompting me to give it serious consideration.

As a result I have sensed that God wants me to get serious about doing this business as the new temporary channel of His provision for me until He indicates another change. Part of the important aspect of relating to God in this way is the fact that I need to do my part in participating in whatever it is He is using to provide for us. If He gives me employment with someone else I need to actually go do the work and do it with all my strength. If He gives me a business to run then I need to do it with enthusiasm and integrity. All of these things are not just ways of providing money for my family and needs but are also ways of living out the plans that God has for me to interact with others in more important arenas of life and also for my own personal growth and development of character.

As I said, this is also raising a number of old wounds and emotions that I realize God wants to deal with along the way. I am seeking to cooperate with Him as I see Him healing me deep inside where I am not able to reach. Even when it involves having to face very painful areas of my heart, I am actually excited that I am beginning to experience more and more freedom and joy and feel that I am actually learning what it means to thrive. God has a great deal of work to do yet but it is good to see that He is working in every way possible to change my relationship with Him and to bring me closer into harmony with His ways.

My wife too is experiencing a great deal of stress and tension in her work. But we keep reminding ourselves that God is our only real boss and that the other people we work for are only temps that He is using that may be there to shape our character at times. If our time is up on that job then we can be confident that He has something even better in mind because He is faithful and He is always good and He is our only real provider.

Catching Up

2010-01-25T06:51:00.001-06:00

It is that time of year again. We had a reprieve of a little milder weather for about a week and now we are heading back to below freezing temperatures again for the foreseeable future. I won't mind seeing the weather move closer to spring anytime now, but that is what winter is like.

It is also the time of year for quite a number of my own family's birthdays. My Dad's birthday would have been a few days ago, my sister's birthday was the first day of January and my own birthday is today. This year is a little bit different than the average birthday, at least according to the traditions of the culture in which I find myself. This year, at least according to the opinion of many institutions in this country, I officially turning – yes, it really is true – I am turning 'old'.

My daughter asked me yesterday if I was really feeling old and I told her that as far as my memory is concerned I certainly can qualify. In other areas I don't really feel as old as the number might suggest, but then I better be very careful what comments I make about such topics because people who are older than me sometimes have rather sensitive and very strong opinions about such things and are not afraid to get defensive about this subject.

My wife's birthday is next month in about three weeks but she is safely four years behind me yet. She is trying to catch up and as far as percentages go she is getting closer all the time. But according to my sharp mathematical calculations I don't think she will ever be able to catch up – at least as long as both of us stay alive anyway. My children are also fast catching up with us on the percentage side of the math but they too will still stay safely behind us for quite awhile.

What is a Garage For?

2010-01-05T13:06:00.001-06:00

We experienced a moment of history-making last night.

No, it was not accompanied with a fireworks display or written up in the newspapers. In fact, no one hardly even noticed including myself until I stopped to think about it this morning. But it was a milestone of sorts anyway and I thought I would at least take note of it for the record.

We moved into this house a little over 5 ½ years ago in a very great hurry. We were not only urged quite compellingly to leave where we were living but also found ourselves greatly needed to occupy my parent's house after the death of my step-mother. My dad was in a nursing home at the time and my mother's death from a car accident left their house unattended and all the affairs of their estate in need of a caretaker.

The problem was that we then moved into this large house with stuff that not only we had accumulated but the leftover stuff of several other people who had lived with us or had left their things in the previous house we had lived in. On top of that, my parents had taken in my step-mom's mother for awhile before she died and so they had many of her things stored in this house already. So as you might guess, the house was already quite full when we arrived as we began to unload truckloads of furniture and household items here. The only thing we could do under those circumstances was to pack the two-car garage completely full as well as several rooms of the house and the basement.

Needless to say, it took several years for us to find many of our things and we are still sorting through boxes and furniture uncovering things we have not seen in quite some time. Over the years I have managed to reduce the height of the stuff in the garage to a level where I could navigate around in it and at least have access to most of it. Last summer I finally got enough courage to tackle this job for several days straight and was able to at least go through a once over with most of the items still stored there and rearranged the whole garage in the process.

A week or two ago I did a small version of that raid on part of our basement area. As a result I hung all new lights (new to us) down there and mounted some shelves and even built a very large clothes hamper out of an old wooden kitchen table to catch the clothes from a new chute I had built into our bathroom upstairs. This greatly reduces the stress of trips up and down the stairs for my wife with the laundry and also makes me feel like I am doing something useful while out of work for over a month.

Anyway, my wife has been gently nudging me about the possibility of maybe getting the car into the garage this winter. It would be such a wonderful thing to do and would eliminate a lot of time scraping snow and ice off the windows in this weather. I told her that it was a nice idea but that we needed a lot more intense cleaning in the garage before I could reduce the clutter enough to pull that off.

But then yesterday I got to thinking about it seriously and even though the temperatures were well below freezing I decided to go out there and just see what I might be able to do. I also figured that since it was so cold anyway for the next couple months I would not likely be spending a lot of time in the garage looking through things anyway and so I might just be able to accept smashing everything to the sides enough to make room for the car, at least temporarily.

That is in fact what I was able to do. I made enough room to get the car inside and still have space to open the doors comfortably. Last night I drove the car into the garage for the first time in over five years and today I laid down some boards to act as alerts to let me know when I have backed in far enough. This same car actually belonged to my parents and is the car that was involved in my step-mom's death. It took six months for the repairs and bodywork to be finished on the care after that accident but it has been a very good car for us, both my parents and now for us after their passing. They actually had been keeping it in this garage all along until the accident happened and we moved in, so this was something sort of like a reunion for the car and its long lost friend and protector, the garage.

So, hopefully when the heavy snows come and the ice storms hit, if we can keep this arrangement going until spring we might be able to actually enjoy our garage for the very purpose for which it was built years ago. Now imagine that – what an idea!

Christmas Love

2009-12-31T17:37:00.005-06:00

As usual I am a bit slow in posting personal events in my life on this blog. Sometimes I fail to even mention them many times. But of course pictures always give me a little more incentive to try to share some of the special times in our lives.

As might be expected, the Christmas holidays would be a time to have a higher chance of making some memories than other times. Many years those memories are often quite mixed, at least for me. When there are large groups getting together there is almost always the tension of widely varying personalities, old grudges, unresolved disputes and potential flare-ups hiding just beneath the surface. Most people are very aware of this potential and it has even become a good source for many holiday jokes now.

I am certainly not the traditional Christmas type of person as anyone in my family could assure you. For many years I have resented the whole onslaught of expectations and commercialism revolving around gift-giving. Many years ago I made it plain each year that I did not want to receive gifts because I don't want to be guilted into spending a lot of money buying 'guess' gifts for people I am clueless about. I am terrible at guessing what people want and often at this time of year I am very strapped for money anyway. Given all the variables and seeing the hard feelings that happen involving people and the gifts they do or do not receive, I have decided that staying out of the whole process completely is preferable to trying to find some compromise.

However, that does not mean that I don't value some things extremely highly. But the things that people could easily give me and that would cost them little to nothing in many cases are the kinds of things that do not fit into the typical mold of people's expectations. They are not things measured by the price tag attached to (or removed from) them but are measured by the long-term affect that they can have on the heart.

Someone has stated the the only real gift any of us can every actually give, the only actual, authentic gift that we even possess that is of real worth is our undivided attention to someone. When I heard that statement the first time it resonated so deeply inside of me that I knew it was profoundly true. But in the reality of how most people interact at Christmastime that is one of the rarest gifts ever given to anyone. But I cannot avoid the fact that this kind of gift – someone taking the time to just spend quality time with me, open up their heart and soul to me and allow me to open up to them – that is a gift I could never buy with any amount of money and they do not need to spend money on giving such a gift as that me, except of course unless it involves some travel.

Given all that context and background from my perspective, I literally felt honored and blessed to actually get some of that very gift this Christmas. Two of our daughters drove down separately to spend the weekend with us and we had only the four of us together. There were no tensions, no hidden agendas, no expectations for reciprocal gift exchanges – just time spent together hanging out, talking, eating (our family cannot do holidays without engaging in some very specific holiday cooking extravaganzas due to the British blood in their veins) and generally enjoying each others company.

We had all agreed ahead of time that we would not do the gift exchange thing so I felt reasonably comfortable in not buying anything for anyone. I know that labels me in many minds as a heretic, but so be it. My family finally accepts me this way without trying to lay a guilt trip on me, even subtly as often happened for many years some time ago. This has greatly eased tensions now I have to say. But our girls did bring along a bunch of stocking gifts for all of us for which they did not expect any return.

After we went through the small items of food etc. and it was obvious that my wife had received gifts that were not paralleled for me, they asked me if I felt bad they hadn't bought me anything. Again I assured them as clearly as I could that I have no trace of desire for that kind of gifts at Christmas. However, I do cherish and appreciate very much their presence and willingness to accept me, love me and just be here with us as the most valuable and important thing they could give.

We had some very earnest, heart to heart talks over this weekend more real and open than I can remember having with one of our girls. These talks were more transparent and had less resistance than any that I can remember having with her in the past. A few days after they returned home I was speaking with this daughter on the phone and shared with her that I believe this may have been the best Christmas I can ever remember enjoying in my life. That is a pretty radical claim to make, but from this vantage point I still feel that is true. That is not to say it could not improve a great deal. There is always much more room for more transparency, more heart synchronization, more love, more connecting. But what we experienced this year was so much more in the direction I have longed for all of my life that I don't think I can really express it in words effectively.

So to my two girls who I love dearly, one biological and one a gift from heaven when she was much older, I want to express my deepest gratitude for just giving me a few days of your love and your presence with me and your mother. You really cannot sense how much it has meant to me and how long these memories are going to stay in my heart as incentive for more such encounters. I pray for you and put you both, along with our son and our other estranged daughter, into the hands of God. I also pray that I can grow to be a much better father for you that I have failed to be in the past. I am taking lessons from the best Father but it is taking me a long time to learn how to do this. But He is also my children's Father and He knows just how to love them and guide them and protect them and draw them to His heart far more effectively than I have ever dreamed of being able to do.

Father, keep them firmly in Your hands and show them the real truth about Your love, Your faithfulness, Your fairness and how crazy You are about them. Let them see Your face and know for themselves that You really do care about every detail of their life and that You can fix every problem, heal every pain and unravel every problem if they will let You. Bless them Father and ravish them with Your love as only You know how to do.

Sounds of Christmas

2009-12-06T21:30:00.000-06:00

I know I am rather delinquent in keeping this blog updated. My quartet actually participated in a three-way quartet concert a number of weeks ago and I intended to post something about it but never took the time. It was quite an interesting experience for us but turned out much better than I expected given that the other two quartets had many more years experience that ours. Each quartet gave their own section of the concert and then all twelve men joined together in the last song as a grand finale. Everyone seemed to enjoy it all immensely. I thought that I had some pictures of that event but when I went back to look I could not find any.

Today our Barbershopper Chorus put on our annual Christmas concert in two different churches which is always a very stimulating experience for all. I noted to the men just before our first concert that it was exactly two years ago in that very church that I had first heard this chorus perform in a Christmas concert and afterwards asked how I might join them. I have been singing with them ever since and now encourage others to consider joining us in the fun.

Of course we all dressed up in our “monkey suits” as some call them to look dashing for Christmas. The shoes are miserable for everyone and especially for me since I have very flat feet. My feet go numb sometimes wearing them but they are certainly very shiny to look at. This year they had me sing in one of the quartet numbers which included both of our directors. Evidently I was the wildcard in this venture as the other three have sung this song many times before. The first time we actually all practiced it together was about a half hour before our first concert. But it worked out very well and I enjoyed the song very much. It was a melancholy type of song which fits my general personality some of the time. I believe that it was arranged by our director who is an excellent musician and a very fine Christian as well.

Standing for that long of a time and keeping myself intensely focused caused my upper back to become so tense that after each concert I could hardly stand up straight. And by the end of the last song of the evening my voice was starting to seriously give out. I don't believe I could have made it through one more song. But it was a very good experience and I only wished more of my friends would have come to listen.

The next two weeks our chorus is going to do some caroling in a couple towns around here. Then we are taking off a couple weeks to start up practicing again after the new year. This has been a good outlet for me to be involved in music and also to make friends with people in areas where I usually would not ever get to know.

Anyway, that's what is going on in my neck of the woods right now. The weather is supposed to turn very cold this week and we might even get a little snow. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas as some people might say.

Beyond Coincidences

2009-11-28T23:27:00.003-06:00

Some answers to prayer and miracles are dramatic, jumping up to catch your attention in a spectacular way. Those are the ones that most people prefer and are exciting to talk about in testimonies and stories.

But then there are the more subdued versions that are a little harder to sell as being spectacular, at least initially. But I wonder if upon reflection a little farther along that they may be seen to be at least as significant if not more in the story line of our lives.

I think that I had some of the latter kinds over the last couple of days and am waiting to see how the “rest of the story” plays out in each of these situations.

Two of these cases involved a deeply estranged relationship between myself and someone else. Both of these have been sources of deep emotional pain to me over the past couple years and have been a subject of prayer. I have been insistent on putting these relationships into God's hands and leaving them there for Him to work behind the scenes as only He is able to do while at the same time keeping close tabs on my own heart to be sure I am not harboring resentment toward these individuals. Whenever I feel some of it inside I try to flush it out into the open and choose again to consciously forgive them.

In the last two days both of these situations have come into focus in my life and with both I have had surprising encounters that I was not expecting or even trying to orchestrate. Neither of these relationships are to the place where I could safely claim that they are fully reconciled, but at the same time I have been encouraged by the small things that have taken place to diffuse some of the tension that has existed for too long. In both instances I have been able to speak with someone on a friendly level and in one relationship we even spent several hours sharing openly almost like old times again – and this after several years of complete incommunicado.

A couple of other things have also transpired in just the last 24 hours that have also affected other sensitive areas of my life. One of them involved tapping into some intense leftover emotions and triggers from my relationship with my own Dad in previous years, and another involved a potential change in my form of livelihood. The later is much, much more tentative and I am certainly weighing a number of factors and options to look for more clear guidance from God's providence. But the issue involving my intense and surprising arousal of old emotions from my Dad was much more interesting.

As I sat in church this morning during class time I was almost blindsided by some comments from another person in the class whom I had never met or known before. But the subject matter, the spirit and amazingly even the tone of voice and vocal pronunciation of certain syllables were so very close to what my Dad would have done just a few years ago while he was still alive that I was almost stunned. Needless to say it was not a pleasant experience because the memories aroused involved some of my Dad's most controversial weaknesses that caused many people who knew him much pain. In his later years he had become so involved with some critical religious organizations that perverted his perceptions that his life became filled to overflowing with bitterness and faultfinding.

I can distinctly remember the last time I ever attended church together with my Dad – in the very same church that I now regularly attend. He acted so confrontational and abrasive during that time that I was humiliated and embarrassed beyond anything I had ever experienced in my life. I had some of my family with me that day and I was seriously wishing that I could just slink down and crawl to the back of the church underneath the pews and escape out the door hoping no one would notice. I also vowed emphatically that I would never, ever find myself sitting in a church with my Dad again for as long as I lived.

I think I may have actually attended church again with him later on, but it was never in that particular church and it was some time after very painful and traumatic events took place that literally banned him from ever entering that church again. Some time later my parents began attending another church some miles away and were much subdued in their interactions with the people there. But it was also not long after that that he started having strokes which landed him in a nursing home finally where he was never able to attend church again anyway.

Not long after entering the nursing home God arranged a series of events in my life so as to bring about a very dramatic reconciliation between us as well as a genuine conversion of my Dad's heart. It was a spectacular miracle to say the least because of the sheer impossibility of the whole event, but I had been daring God for some time to do just that and He did do it, but not without making sure that I was involved in the process as part of my own healing journey.

I suppose that is a lot of background information to create the context for what happened today. But for many years my Dad's virulent attitudes and actions involving strident views he had about certain religious topics were a constant source of friction and triggering between us nearly every time we talked together. Whenever I visited home for a few days I was certain to feel triggered by the worship periods that were required each morning with him. The internal triggers were linked not only with the things that he wanted to emphasize but very much by the tone of his voice, the word inflections and the hidden messages conveyed that only I knew about because I had known him for so long. Other people were sometimes baffled by how many triggers I could receive just listening to my Dad read something or talk about something because they did not have the inside repertoire of links to the many subtle things my Dad inferred whenever he spoke about certain subjects.

What amazed me and elicited these same emotions this morning was the fact that this complete stranger was so closely aligned with the same beliefs and attitudes and spirit that had so hijacked my Dad's attention the last few years of his life, and listening to this man was like being in the presence of my Dad all over again. It was so similar that I could almost predict what this man was going to talk about next – and I was right. His logic and arguments were the very same ones that my Dad had always used and when I heard the same tone of voice and word articulations I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Needless to say I had some rather strong emotions stirred up that I had to deal with right away.

When I decided to make a comment in class to counteract the poisonous sentiments being spread by this person I knew that I might become the target of his anger if he was not willing to take what I said to heart. I was not mistaken in the least as he suddenly turned and fired off another predictable quotation at me meant to stop me in my tracks. But instead of withering away I decided to answer him with what I have come to about this passage after years of reflecting on that particular statement. This caught him by surprise and he was about to launch into an all-out assault on me when the teacher immediately shut down the conversation to bring the class to an end and stop the damage before it got any worse.

I was quite relieved at this because I really have no stomach for getting into a pointless, fruitless argument with a person who is not in touch with his own heart and is so infected by a root of bitterness. I am all too familiar with these roots and the fruits that they always produce and I know that trying to reason with such a person only adds fuel to their fire instead of bringing anything closer to resolution. The real problem is not a lack of correct information or proper interpretation of some passage as they suppose but lies in the condition of a person's spirit. What must take place is a change of heart and attitude, not corrected information or the argument of a better formula.

After the church service had finished I was a little surprised but encouraged when this same man came up and apologized for getting upset with me in class. I cannot judge his motives, though I still think I can read him almost like a book because he seems so similar to my Dad. But later on I took opportunity to have a long talk with the class teacher where I was blessed to have much more insight into the other side of the story and some of the dynamics taking place in that church. I was blessed to see how God was working more than could be seen on the surface and I also spent some time sharing with several people who gathered, my own experience and the story of my Dad and his conversion experience before he died.

Immediately after leaving there we went to meet our girls at another small church that was coming to a close and getting ready to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner together. As our girls related to us the incredible stories that were shared in the group before we arrived I was wishing that we had been there for the whole service so we could have heard these stories ourselves. A number of things also happened during our time in this place that I believe were significant but again I do not know how it all fits together until more developments mature. But it was unavoidable to see that God's hand was in a lot of things that were going on through all of this.

I cannot say why all of this happened today and over the last couple days, but it seems that they were for some specific purposes, many of which I may never know for some time. But the range of emotions that were experienced or resurrected today were certainly unexpected and had a variety of effects on me this weekend. I don't know what it all means, but I do have a sense that I might understand it more as time goes by.

Father, I simply accept all of this from You and trust that You are doing things to bring about more reconciliation on a number of fronts that need to be healed. I ask that You continue to change my heart and my attitudes that get in the way and to also work in every way possible on others who are still resisting Your love or Your convictions in their hearts. I praise You for what I have been able to perceive today along with all that I can't see that You are doing behind the scenes. I trust Your heart and Your plans and Your ways. Bind our hearts together as we all learn to trust You more completely. I give myself, my plans, my will, my life to be used as a testimony for Your goodness and faithfulness.

Happy Anniversary

2009-11-26T15:18:00.000-06:00

Today is our 32^nd wedding anniversary. As I just wrote that it suddenly occurred to me that my Dad was married twice and both times he was married 32 years. Both marriages ended in the death of his wife, the second one on the day of their anniversary. But my wife just assured me that she has no plans of dying just because that happened to both of my mothers.

Because we were married on Thanksgiving weekend (to accommodate everyone else's travel plans coming to the wedding and because it was more likely to get them to come then instead of around Christmas), each year we are reminded to be thankful for our marriage in more ways than just our anniversary. And every so often, like this year, our anniversary and Thanksgiving day line up on the same day.

This year we are enjoying the privilege of spending this holiday with two of our daughters, one biologically and one by spiritual adoption. I just spent several hours this morning having the most open spiritual conversation with one of them that I have ever been able to have in our whole life. As you can imagine my heart hardly knows how to act after this blessing. I am thrilled to see her opening up to God, learning to listen to His voice to her personally and practicing how to relate properly to the messages she is now sensing from His Spirit.

We have had at times a very rocky relationship with each other over the years. Her biological parents had many of the same hangups that my parents had and that I also had in raising my own children. So the tension that has marked many of our interchanges is not unfamiliar to me but has been a source of great pain at times. I have longed to be able to share my heart with her and get her to understand that I really care for her heart. But most of the time we end up knocking heads instead of meshing gears.

My desire for my relationship with all of my children has been to be able to relate to them at a deeper level as an adult – like a best friend. I am very jealous of people who can honestly say that their parents are their best friends. I wish that was the case between my children and I, but in honesty I have to say that is not the case. I also have to accept most of the blame for this situation because I failed to love them and honor them and inspire them like a good parent should have done. I now realize that this happened because my own picture of God along with the modeling I received from my own upbringing was poor preparation for the job of parenting. I tended to resort to the methods and emotions that were used on me but that proved so damaging in my life. So it is no surprise that the relationship I have to a great degree is not much different than the tension I felt most of my life with my own Dad.

But God is much greater than all of our mistakes and faults. I have been seeking to know His heart for a number of years now as well as asking Him to repair the deep damage my modeling and treatment has had on my biological children. God has sent several other children into our life at various times with different effects and results along the way, but our family is still in process and learning how to relate to each other better as God leads us.

One of these children ended up dying a few years ago at a young age. This was very painful for us especially because it happened while we were estranged from her. Another adopted daughter is still estranged from us and I continue to pray for reconciliation and healing in this relationship. Nothing is impossible with God and only He can bring about the healing and restore the trust and confidence needed to have a positive relationship again. But the daughter with which we are staying right now is really listening and seeking God's heart in spite of all the baggage she received from her parents that was similar to what I experienced. In spite of her background and misconceptions about what God is like she is responding to His drawing love and is allowing Him to love her more and more. This is a source of great joy for me as I sense that she is moving into a stage of her experience where we can communicate about things that before she could not relate to me about without much discomfort.

I know that all of these relationships are very much in process. I know that there will be misunderstandings, hurt feelings, assumptions and all sorts of other bumps in the road ahead with all of my children. But my heart's desire above all is for each of them to somehow begin to see the real truth about God, about His inescapable love for them, His untainted feelings of affection for them that they failed to experience from me. I not only wish that for my children but for my wife and for me as well, to sense the unconditional love of our Father.

This is a day to remember a life of shared love, shared hardships, shared pain, shared experiences, shared memories that have united our hearts and minds for over 32 years together. It is a shared journey of seeking to discover how to relate to the God of our parents who often misrepresented Him to us while raising us as their children. It has been a life of many emotions as we at times felt that God was not listening or caring about us based on our desperate circumstances. But through it all we still have to say that God was and is faithful and that if there has been a problem believing that that it has always been in our perceptions and not because of His lack of abilities.

Our marriage has not been the high profile romance as portrayed by Hollywood and that is idealized in the movies. Our relationship has been a mixed bag of emotions and experiences. But one thing that has stabilized us through all of these years is the ironclad decision that we have always maintained and that I can remember my parents instilling deep into my thinking, the decision that divorce was never going to be an option for us no matter what happened. I cannot say that I have had too many reasons for even wanting to think in that direction, but the very fact that it simply was never an option that we would even allow into our thinking has led us to be serious about facing our differences and problems instead of running away from them.

I know that I am not the ideal husband. Many times when I see other people who are enjoying obvious marital bliss or when a husband is openly selfless and sweet to his wife that I at times feel very guilty and delinquent. I have way too many faults and have far too much selfishness to be the blessing to my wife that she deserves. This may not sound like the ideal anniversary tribute, but I feel that honesty is something that is remedial and important for my heart. I know I am learning and growing but that I have a great long way to go to be the loving, caring husband that God wants my wife to have.

But in 32 years of give and take and standoffs and reconciliations, through it all we have grown closer to each other at levels beneath what we can consciously perceive. I am so thankful that my wife has a heart to know God as I too want to experience. And though her journey to find God at a deeper level is usually very different than the way I do it, I am learning to respect her private journey and to encourage her uniqueness and expressions and struggles as she learns to respect mine.

I am not one easily given to flowery language and romantic expressions. Everyone who knows me much at all can tell you that. I am more of a pragmatist and what I think is a realist. But for me, to be real and face things like they really are is the first step toward being better able to then move toward a deeper relationship that is genuinely connected and has affections that are based on more than surface beauty or performance. We are learning, albeit very slowly at times, to know each others heart while also seeking to know the heart of our Creator and Father. I wish that romance was something I was better at, but I am the product of my past. And while the future does not have to equal the past, what I am in the present has always been all that I have to work with at the moment.

God led our lives together in very complex situations in both of our lives. We still wonder what some of the reasons were behind how God has led us over the years, but of course we will never know until He can explain it all better in heaven. But for now we are learning that God's heart can be trusted even when we may fail each other. God is love, and if God is not in the marriage it is impossible to know true love between a man and a woman. There may be emotions and excitement, but real love can only be found from the heart of the only One who is love.

Today we mark the milestone of 32 years of experimenting together, of learning how to love in the context of marriage. Have we learned anything yet? I believe we have. But I will be the first to say that there is far more to learn than what we have already grasped. And I pray for God to keep opening and softening my own heart so that I can be a better father and husband to the hearts of both my wife and all of my children so they can more clearly see what love should really look and act like in real life.

A Triple Dipper Day

2009-11-15T14:31:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I had what I called a triple-dipper – a day spent with some of my favorite people.

The night before I decided at the last minute to take a family that is becoming close to us up to Chicago all day yesterday to attend some meetings by one of their, and my, favorite speakers, Herb Montgomery. This young man is one of the most exciting preachers that I know of when it comes to presenting a clarified picture of what God is really like. His teachings have greatly helped me to sort out many confusing issues revolving around why Jesus died on the cross and why bad things happen to good people. He is not afraid to tackle the most challenging and emotionally charged issues in religion and I admire him for this.

Because we have never met him in person even though we have listened to many hours of his sermons, I was quite interested in taking this opportunity to see him live and maybe get a chance to interact with him a little myself if possible. I had actually contacted him several months ago about assisting him with some of my audio editing skills and helping get some of his series recordings ready for public use. But over the past few months I have become very discouraged over even communicating with him as he has been so busy. I had about come to the point where I decided that possibly he was trying to avoid me and did not want to come right out and tell me that. So I decided that if I couldn't make meaningful connection with him this time in person that I would just drop my efforts to hook up with him and let the whole idea die.

Our friends, a family of five, have become very interested in the things that Herb teaches after I began sharing his talks with them some time ago. They somehow felt that the things he talked about and the way he presented them were so sensible and compelling that they wanted to learn more. They even went to his website and downloaded more of his series to listen to. So when they learned that he was going to be this close to us they were very excited to take the opportunity to meet him in person. However, since they were having car problems they had decided to give up on the idea until I called them Friday evening and offered to take them in our car.

As a result we all had to get up around 4 AM which for them in particular was not an easy thing to pull off. But we got all loaded not long after 6 AM and got on the road with eager anticipation. When I had called for directions the night before I learned that in the afternoon there was going to be a Michael Card concert. This popular Christian musician is one of our favorite singers and my wife was very upset that she was not able to go along. Since she has been sick the past few days she decided that it would not be wise to try to make this trip and risk getting other people sick. However, she was very jealous and upset that she would be missing out on one of her favorite Christian artists and reminded me of that each time we talked on the phone.

But since the concert required tickets I assumed at this late date that it might be impossible to get any tickets for us. We choose not to generally buy or sell things on God's Sabbath according to His instructions so I assumed that short of a miracle we would either have to miss out on the concert and wait around outside for the last evening meeting with Herb or just come home early after the morning meeting.

It took us around 2 ½ hours to arrive at the church where the meetings were to take place and we got there about 9 AM. I decided to hang out upstairs where the sound and video techies hang out because that is where I feel most comfortable. They were kind to show me their software and the equipment they have which I found very interesting and informative. The balcony area where all this is located was also a very good vantage point to view everything going on in the church, much better than anywhere on the main floor.

After participating in Sabbath School for both the adults and the children, we very much enjoyed the compelling message by Herb for the church service. He was close to wrapping up a 10-day series called Life Unlimited which is all about how to find real fulfillment and satisfaction in every area of life – mental, financial, emotional, spiritual, physical and social. It is an excellent series that he has developed and is presenting it repeatedly all over the world at this point. It is also keeping him so busy that he is coming close to burnout it seems. Fortunately he is done for this year after this one closes and can spend some much needed time with his children and wife for a period of time before flying off to do more seminars.

We had a delicious fellowship dinner together with a large number of people after church. I felt I was so hungry after not having hardly anything for breakfast that I almost overestimated how much I could eat and uncharacteristically got two platefuls of food. That was enough to keep me for the rest of the day but in the evening the church secretary brought in more food for us to eat which was very kind of her.

I decided to go and talk with the man in charge of the tickets for the afternoon concert to see if I had any options. He told me that we could still get tickets and that I could just pay him later. I told him that I had not come prepared with that much money and he allowed me to just send him a check after I got home to take care of the cost. This was really exciting for us as we could then enjoy the full day listening to both Herb and Michael Card all on the same day. Michael had played a couple songs before Herb spoke in the morning and we knew that the concert was going to be very inspiring because of his personal style and laid-back personality along with his excellent musical abilities.

I chose to view the afternoon concert from up in the balcony sitting with the sound man and his wife. I tried to get a couple pictures from there but it was a challenge to get a good shot without a flash that could reach that far or a stronger lens. But the music was superb and it really blessed our hearts.

That evening we stayed for the evening presentations by Herb and were even more blessed and inspired. My friends really soaked up the amazing insights that Herb shared directly from the Bible which are so different than anything other speakers ever talk about. During the intermission and a bit after the last meeting I was finally able to spend a few minutes speaking with Herb about various things and we agreed that we wanted to stay in touch much more. I feel a real resonance with the spirit that Herb has and would like to get to know him much better if possible. I hope that this can work out for both of us.

We had a long drive home and got in around midnight with a car full of very tired children and adults. But all of us were so blessed and my tiredness seemed different than usual. I was surprised that I did not get very sleepy even after being up for so long and driving so far. It just seemed that my body and mind had been so energized by the wonderful mix of friends and favorite people and the presence of God that I may have been feeling a little of what Jesus was talking about when His disciples couldn't figure out why He lost interest in eating after sharing the wonderful good news about God with the woman at the well.

Back From the (near) Dead

2009-10-08T20:11:00.000-05:00

I can hardly believe it. But it is still working yet today. After months of great frustration and seriously considering throwing in the towel and buying a new one to replace one that has not been used very much at all, I finally got my printer to begin working properly.

For months I have had a problem with my printer just fading out of black (instead of fading to black like in video production). When it would print, which was never predictable, it might just as suddenly quite printing in a very few minutes. On top of that I also began to have problems with it spreading great pools of ink around the corners and along the edges of the sheets of paper. It seemed that my nice new multifunction printer was not such a great investment after all.

About a year or two ago I had installed a continuous-feed ink supply to this printer. At first it seemed to work quite nicely. But then I had problems keeping the hoses attached firmly out of the way in the routing. When they came loose the print carriage would jam inside and make awful noises which made one believe that the whole printer might be self-destructing. I tried several methods of attaching the hose inside the printer after the original double-sided tape from the supplier failed and finally ended up sawing a hole in the plastic to allow the plastic retainer tab to sit flat up under the top of the inside.

That seemed to solve that problem but then I started having this more serious issue of ink fading out completely more and more often. I tried everything I could think of. I raised the print bottles higher, I cleaned the heads repeatedly, I readjusted the routing of the hoses – nothing seemed to have much effect.

I called the people I bought the ink system from and the lady told me the ink bottles absolutely had to be on the same plane as the printer or they would not work right. I figured out that was what was causing the flooding over the paper but it did nothing to get it printing like it was supposed to. I did hook up a hose to the internal dumping system however and routed the output of the head cleaning process to drain into an external bottle instead of dumping into the bottom of the printer like the default factory setup did.

I decided to try again yesterday to see if I could do anything to make it start working again. I filled up the black ink reservoir. I put the printer through repeated head cleaning cycles but with no effect. I even tried putting some ink directly down into the carriage to see if maybe it had dried up somewhere along the way. As I was doing all of this my cat jumped up on the desk and demanded attention. As I tried to pick him up and move him out of the way he swatted the whole set of ink containers off the desk with his tail and they hung down beside the desk by the hoses connecting them to the printer. I dropped the cat on the floor and grabbed the hose to fish up the bottles which all had their vent caps open. There were various colors of ink splattered all over the sides of the printer, the desk, the wall and dripping onto the carpet underneath. What a mess! Of course that cat was totally unconcerned.

I finally decided to call the supplier again and see if I could talk with the man there who always seemed much more knowledgeable about their systems. He seems to have invented most of their processes and is very familiar inside and out with these printers and usually has much better insights for solving difficult problems if I can actually talk to him directly.

Fortunately he was the one who answered the phone yesterday and I explained to him my problem. I was nearly at the point of getting rid of this printer altogether and buying another one but I really didn't like that idea and don't have the money now besides. I had been so frustrated for so long and just felt impressed to call him today which may have been a suggestion from higher Wisdom anyway.

When he heard my description of the problem he told me to prime the cartridges. He said that it sounded like they were starved and needed to get ink flowing from the bottles again. He told me just how to get it primed and so I hung up and proceeded to try it. On the second attempt I began to notice that while trying to suck ink out from the bottom of the cartridge with a syringe it seemed that even with a great amount of vacuum placed on the outlet there was almost no ink coming out.

I thought that was a bit strange since there shouldn't be anything preventing the ink to flow from an open bottle full of ink to the top of the cartridges where the hose entered. As I thought about it more I examined a pinch point where the hose entered the printer from the side. The lid sits down very snugly at that point and the hose always looked very restricted there. But I simply could see no other way of getting the hose to where it had to go inside the printer. I had installed it exactly per instructions that came with the system, but as I looked very closely I realized that this very well might be the very problem that has plagued me all this time.

I took time to massage the hose to try to unrestrict it as much as possible and then decided to take a pocket knife and cut a relief cavity into the side of the printer cover to let the hose have some free room to squeeze through. Since I have no plans to return the printer to the manufacturer I can do whatever I need to do to it to make it work right no matter how hacked up it might look.

After putting some slack in the hose and getting a good notch cut into the printer cover, I put everything back together and tried to prime the cartridge again. This time the ink flowed very freely and I knew I might have solved the problem. I tried another print job and this time it printed fully and completely without any problems whatsoever.

At that point I decided to catch up on a whole bunch of print jobs that I had been needing to do for the past week or two. As each page came out perfectly I could hardly believe my eyes. After all the ideas and crazy notions that I had tried to solve this problem, the real issue all along had likely been this one little pinch point. And to think that I was ready to throw away the whole expensive printer when the only problem was just to give the hose a little relief in the right spot.

I have been thinking about that a lot lately. How many times have I been so sure that I knew what was causing some problem, maybe in someone else's life even, only to spend a lot of time judging, second-guessing or criticizing what was not the real issue at all. Then later I might find out what the real problem was, and maybe the real issue was far more simple or less offensive than the things I was so tempted to accuse, at least in my own mind.

I could hear God pressing home the warning in this experience with my printer. Don't throw out valuable things and especially people and relationships just because you are so sure you know how worthless they are. You simply don't have the wisdom needed to know what is really going on. You must learn to listen to outside insights, to defer to those who do have more experience and seek to see things from heaven's perspective and not be so ready to give up easily. When the real truth comes out you might be very glad that you did not give up too soon.

Post Op

2009-10-01T22:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I did it. Or more accurately I should say they did it. They stuffed my sausages back in and sewed and glued me back shut on both sides all without letting me watch them at work. Well, that's just as well I suppose. I have a weak stomach when it comes to getting stung or getting cut open and they would not have liked that in their nice clean operating room.

I went in this morning at 6:45 and by 8:45 I assume they were hard at it. My surgeon is a very gentle and king man who is fairly new to this hospital. He moved here from a small town in the middle of nowhere but from the same state and I overheard him telling someone that he grew up in North Dakota. Most people I have met from North Dakota are really nice people. I am very impressed with the job that he has done on me. It not only looks very neat but if I sit just right I actually do not feel any pain at all. Of course, that is likely at least in part to the nice Vicodin they gave me about 6 hours ago as well as the possible anesthesia left over in my system.

I left the hospital around 3 PM but didn't get home until about 6:30. It's really hard to push the pedals and keep your concentration while your brain is feeling so good. I'M KIDDING, really! Of course I didn't try that, though I felt good enough that I might have been able to do it. It is true that I did pull that stunt many years ago driving from this same town back to this same house when I was 18 and on strong pain medication. It was such a terrifying experience that it cured me of ever considering trying that again. My subconscious driving skills were completely absent and I had to utilize all of my left brain memory and focus only my conscious brain to carry out every little detail of driving. I was so exhausted from expending that much nervous energy that by the time I was almost finished driving through downtown I had to get myself into a parking space without hitting any cars and collapsed in the seat until I recovered enough to finish driving home through the countryside where there was less traffic. That was a couple days after having all four wisdom teeth extracted under sedation, some of which were impacted. Not a good idea at all.

This time I am married a wonderful wife who took off work today to chauffeur me around while I enjoyed the ride. She even slowed down carefully the closer we got to home on these back country roads to avoid the many dips and bumps from making themselves known in my gut. She's a wonderful lady and we have been happily married for 32 years this November. We stopped by a coffee shop on the way home to look at some things on the Internet using their high speed connection that I can't get at home. After awhile I suddenly started feeling nausea and we had to leave and get on home.

I do have to say that the discomfort level is maybe five times less than what I expected. I don't know if I overestimated what would happen or if I had an exceptionally excellent doctor or if the pain pills work really well (they don't make me feel strange like some medications). But if it gets only better from here I will be very happy with how this is turning out – much better than the extended discomfort from the deep leg cut I inflicted on myself a few years ago with my circular saw.

Well, I am starting to feel a bit silly just talking about myself so much here. But that is how my day has unfolded so far. Hopefully I can maybe get back to working again in the next couple of weeks. Of course I am going to have to learn to be cautious about how much I lift for some time. I asked the doctor on my first visit about this surgery and wondered if I would be able to lift three times what I normally could before. He assured me that hernia repair surgery does not impart supernatural strength to a person, it only restores your body back close to what you could do before. Oh well, I tried.

I just talked with my daughter and told her how good I felt today. She warned me that tomorrow might be quite different possibly. I hope not, but I guess I will find out soon enough.

Thanks to all of you who have called to check up on me. It is times like this that one can sense a little better the people who feel bonds of friendship a little above the average. I only pray that I can become more that way myself toward others who are passing through their own times of suffering or even joy.

What Is Music?

2009-09-30T15:06:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I had a question come into my mind that I couldn't answer.

What is music?

I mean, what really defines whether something is music or just noise. I am not looking for the passionate responses of conservatives who are eager to share their prejudices against music they don't like. What I am curious about is very literally what makes the difference between simply talking or other forms of sounds and what is generally recognized by most humans as being music.

Why does extending pitches using words (or without words) make music so different than simply speaking? And obviously there seems to be the need to string these various pitches one after another in various lengths of time with some rhythmic organization to make it more recognizable as being music.

And beyond that, why does music has such enormous impact on our psyche and our feelings at times whereas simply speaking seldom is able to deliver nearly such impact?

I couldn't answer these questions yesterday for whatever reasons. So I simply left it hanging and then frankly forget that it had ever crossed my mind until this morning. Then something that happened last night at chorus practice came back into my attention and I heard God maybe say to me, “That is the real definition of music.”

During our weekly practice period of the Barbershop chorus and just after the break time last night, our director, Tom wanted to share with us a video clip of a quartet he sang with during a contest some time back. He and his son were privileged to sing with two champion musicians making up a quartet where they sang two songs in contest that made a very deep impression on him. Both Tom and his son Tim work together in directing our chorus. This man has a deep passion for people and is very effective at making people feel good about themselves and affirming them. His spontaneous comments and affirmations seem to just come from nowhere at times and creates bonds in people's minds and hearts that keep them wanting to come back week after week, year after year.

Music is a very important part of life for both of these men, and even though his son is adopted they share a deep love for Barbershop music and great respect for each other. Tim is currently in training to be a fully accredited judge for contests following in the footsteps of his father who has been a judge for many years. They have very different personalities and styles of directing, but they both have great skill and passion both for the music and for encouraging men to be inspired to be better than the average.

The video clip that Tom wanted to share with us last night was of a song this quartet sang called “Singing with Dad”. Before he showed it to us he explained that during this presentation he felt intense emotions like he had never experienced in his life before. They became so caught up in the music together with the two champion singers on either side of them that they didn't even think about the choreography needed to express the song correctly, they just poured themselves into the music and let whatever gestures happen that felt natural in the process. Interestingly, as we watched the replay it appeared that their gestures matched very well with those of the other two men who sang with them.

As all of the local chorus watched this video with great interest, especially given the context of the introduction comments from our director, I began to see some of why he said that he had never felt this much excitement in his whole life – which is saying a great deal for him. For the words of the song conveyed quite dramatically the emotions of a person who had come to deeply appreciate a common passion for quartet music that he shared with the passion of his own father who had sung for years in a quartet before him. The song talked about the joy and satisfaction of singing in the same quartet with his own dad – which had great added emphasis because in fact, what the song was describing so accurately was actually taking place in real time as this father-son team lived out just what they were singing about.

Watching the video was compelling and deeply moving for me and maybe for others there. I sensed various levels of recognition and emotional connection among the men watching the video, and the spontaneous applause after the second song was finished spoke of more than just polite praise for a good rendition. The emotion in the room by that time had become significantly noticeable and could not easily be put into words effectively.

This morning as that memory came back to me I seemed to hear God say,

Remember that question you had yesterday about music? Well, here is at least part of the answer. Music is the means whereby passion is wrapped about words that gives the potential to bring them to life, to take them into a whole different dimension of existence. Music is the means whereby words can take on enormous power to express far more effectively what the heart is feeling but the head simply cannot convey effectively through simply words or any other means.

Thank-you. That answer rings so true, especially for people who's lives are wired a little more for music beyond the average person. I have always felt that music could allow me to convey things that was impossible to do in any other way. And I also intuitively knew that music could have the potential to also bond me to other people in ways that simply cannot happen otherwise. Likewise, music also has the ability to convey the presence of emotions and bonds already in place that words simply cannot come close to conveying. And on top of that, when words and music are properly synchronized and are congruent with each other, the amazing power of music actually amplifies and intensifies those emotions and bonds – as clearly seen in that video we watched last night.

As I watched the father and son standing close to each other and pouring themselves into the music that talked about a deep connection between a son and a dad sharing the same passion for music, it was unmistakable that they meant every word they were singing and more. And it could also be seen that the emotional connection between them was actually intensifying through that public expression of this emotion that they were describing. Their feelings were being synchronized, their words were congruent with all the other forms of expression surrounding those words and the effect was far more powerful than simply trying to speak and describe what their hearts wanted to convey or even to sing about something they were not personally experiencing.

This potentially speaks volumes to me. I have struggled all of my life to both listen to my own heart and to find ways to allow it effective expression. My communication skills for allowing my heart access to the outside have been severely damaged as many people's have been, so it is no surprise that I feel a great deal of frustration when people don't understand me or misinterpret my motives or confuse what I am trying to say. Sometimes we long for other people to just be able to read our mind, but we know that we have to find other ways of connecting with other hearts.

Maybe this is telling me that the passion for music that filled much of my life when I was a teenager has been largely suppressed and is now unused along with my heart's ability to connect with others very effectively. Maybe the passion that God implanted in the heart can only find more efficient expression when it is allowed to be released in the context of music that is congruent with the inner passions. I am not trying to address the issues of good music verses bad music here. Clearly there are different forms and effects of music. But at its core I can see more clearly again that music itself has the amazing capacity to transfer or even induce ideas, thoughts and feelings from one heart into others that simply cannot occur by any other means.

So I continue to chip away at the barriers and fears and obstacles that keep my own heart caged in and also prevent me from connecting more directly with the passion that flows from the heart of the One who created music to begin with. I have heard that heaven is filled with music. And if the above insights are true, then I can see why that would have to be the case. I have seen some people who are so afraid of the enormous power of music to affect our souls that they run from it instead of learning to understand it or how to relate to it effectively.

I know that I miss very much the times when I participated in musical groups that seemed to have some level of closer integration through the music and praise that we presented together. And I look forward to times in the future when I may be able to experience similar experiences that are even richer and deeper and more purely defined so that my own heart will be able to find freer expression and be able to connect with other hearts and the heart of God as it is designed to do.

The Meatgrinders

2009-09-21T13:04:00.001-05:00

Well, it is now official.

I am scheduled to submit myself to the meat processors to have my sausages worked on.

I have never done this kind of thing before and it seems a bit strange for a lifetime vegetarian like me to be messing around with sausages.

O.K. So most people put different labels on this. But really, what's in a label? So it sounds more civilized to call it a hospital instead of a meat processing plant. Don't they all deal with the same stuff?

I am supposed to go in the first of October so they can rearrange my innards that have apparently gotten too far disarranged and in the wrong places. I discovered about a week ago that I have a hernia and though I have heard rumors that there possibly might be some outside chance of curing it through some other means, I have decided this time to surrender to the medical system and our society's expectations about how to deal with such things and let them slice me open and have at it.

I really hope that while I am coming out of anesthesia that I don't reveal too many deep dark secrets that the nurses refuse to let me know about later. If I do I at least hope that I could hear about them myself so I could know what they are too. Other than that, I am supposed to be back home within 6-8 hours of when I arrive very early in the morning. My how times have changed. They don't even give you long extended periods of pampering in the hospital like they used to do.

So if any of you are so inclined (not sure there are any “you's” that might even read this), you can take this opportunity to indulge my weakened condition to feel terribly sorry for me and heap upon me all sorts of gifts, attentions and affections that I probably would never receive otherwise.

Well, I can try, can't I?

Of Roofs and Thumbs

2009-09-06T09:51:00.000-05:00

I have been in the roofing activity for the past couple weeks. Two of us shingled an 8/12 pitch roof in two days finishing up by flashlight one night without using any cleats or ropes. Then around that job we have been working on a large equipment shed roof at an grain elevator repairing a lot of rotten wood and preparing it for a new steel roof. Last week my helper fell through a rotten place in the roof but providentially did not go all the way down where he would have been seriously hurt. He caught himself by his elbows on the purloins and was able to hang on until he could get maneuvered around to get his feet onto some supporting rafters and climb out.

Last Friday we almost finished placing all the steel panels on the roof and now just need to screw them all down. However it has started raining and I don't know when we can finish it. We will see how much rain or dry weather we have when tomorrow comes around.

Thursday morning as I was getting ready to leave for work I was trying to let one of our tomcats into the house as we do each morning so we can let our other cats out during the day. When I opened the front screen door our other tomcat was standing just inside and they both found themselves facing each other quite unexpectedly. Instinctively I reached down to pick up the outside cat to get him away from getting into a fight but instead I received a very deep bite into my thumb which started bleeding profusely.

I finished getting the cats where they belonged and then ran water over my thumb for awhile while it hurt more and more. I put a little cream and a bandage on it and went to work. By noon my thumb had swollen up like a balloon and was starting to hurt in my hand and arm. One of the men I work for much of the time became very concerned and arranged for me to get a prescription from a doctor for an antibiotic that I picked up that evening on the way home.

My thumb continued to tighten up and immobilize over the next day or so. Yesterday it was so stiff that it felt like a wooden attachment connected to my hand that just sent pain through the lower muscles connected to it whenever I moved it too much. Most of the time it doesn't hurt very much except when I bump it on something which then sets off all kinds of alarms and bells and whistles.

Last night I put Tea Tree Oil on it which I wish I had thought about right after it happened. A friend of mine reminded me of this at church and I believe it could accomplish more good than most of the other things we have tried like charcoal and clay. It is still quite swollen and useless at this point and I am discovering the need to do all sorts of things differently without the use of a thumb. Buttoning shirts becomes a little more interesting and even holding a spoon is sometimes a challenge. Trying to write with a pen takes some concentration and I have to slow down a bit.

I am grateful that it is not much worse than it is. I am even very blessed that it has caused me so little actual pain considering the amount of infection involved. I thought about taking a picture of it and posting it with this but then thought better. Most people are not that interested in being grossed out with that kind of image.

Yesterday after church we showed a video about the discovery of the real Mt. Sinai for those who wanted to stay and watch it. I find this video very fascinating and compelling and wonder why so may so-called experts are averse to even considering the overwhelming evidence presented here. It seems to me to be a clear case of deep professional prejudice and fear of what others might think overriding obvious evidence both Biblically and scientifically of truth disproving the current beliefs about Mt. Sinai.

After that we stayed around and talked for several hours about spiritual issues which I always find refreshing with those willing to think and dialog openly. I am praying for our church members to become more hungry to know God and to seek Him on a personal basis instead of being satisfied with just going through religious routines each week. I want to see more and more people get serious about having a personal, vital relationship with God on an individual basis that will result in bonding with others who are doing likewise. I believe this is God's plan for His people and I want to be a part of it.

Making Sweet Memories

2009-08-17T21:21:00.003-05:00

For the sake of the one or two who are interested in what is going on in our lives here, I am posting a few pictures from our last weekend. I didn't get very many pictures and didn't take any when we went to the lake for a little while after we finished this job. But we had a good time with four families getting together and processing between 55 and 60 dozen ears of sweet corn for freezing. We ended up with almost 120 quart bags of corn to freeze and still had over a couple dozen left in the shucks for any of us to use in the coming days at home.

The people we bought the corn from were very nice and not only threw in one to three extra ears per dozen but also gave me several bags extra just because we bought so much. I thought that was very generous of them especially since they also rounded the price down several dollars as well.

As you can see we had a good time together that day. Late in the afternoon some of us hurried off to the lake so that one of my friends here could try out some skiing. He had not tried to ski since he was a young boy around nine or ten years old so I wanted him to have a chance before the weather turns less warm soon.

He did very well and got up on the second try after the support pole on the back of the boat broke on the first try. He skied very well for never having done it before and took two trips around the lake for a good time before we had to get the boat out of the water for a quickly approaching storm hit. We hope to get a chance to do it at least one more time before the summer is too far gone if we can get our schedules to match up and the weather to line up at the same time.

This is the second year that we have frozen this sweet corn. We just finished up all the corn we froze last year and it has been very good. This year we decided to do a little more than last time but also wanted to get other people involved this time partly for the fun and to get the work done quicker. Of course certain people also had to indulge in a number of “corny” remarks throughout the day which kept some in stitches and others rolling their eyes. But hopefully everyone will look back on this as a good memory to repeat again sometime in the future.

Cleaning the Garage

2009-08-08T07:51:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I launched into a project that I have been procrastinating for a number of years – cleaning the garage. Now that may not sound so profound to most people, but then they haven't seen the ghosts or know the history lurking in my garage. This is a very complicated place filled with relics of old memories from many years and leftover tools of various trades I have been involved in for a very long time. It also contains much of my Dad's leftover tools and items that I have never dealt with since his passing.

A number of problems have inhibited me from tackling this project for a long time. It began when we first moved here in a big hurry a number of years ago. My step-mother was killed in a car accident suddenly while my Dad was in a nursing home and I rushed down here from Michigan with my sister to deal with the situation. A week later we were forced to move here very quickly and since the house was already full of my parent's things much of our stuff ended up filling the garage rather tightly as well as some of the bedrooms.

Over the years we have whittled down much of the pressure and reduced the height of the stacks of boxes and furniture stored there, but I have never really taken the time to sort through everything thoroughly. Part of the reason for this was that I have always felt a mental block against doing this. I simply couldn't get myself to make so many decisions about things from every area of my life since childhood. The clutter was quite representative of the way I felt inside emotionally and I felt stuck for many years.

But events over the past few months have brought me to a major crisis and turning point internally and seem to have had the unexpected effect of breaking loose the log-jam emotionally preventing me from tackling this enormous undertaking.

The first thing I felt I needed to do was to fix the garage door header. Whoever built the garage originally had undersized the header and it had sagged dangerously over the years. When I replaced the shingles on the roof a few years ago before Dad died, I jacked up the header to its proper height and installed a temporary post in the center of the doorway until I could deal with the problem correctly. I had already purchased a ten inch wide steel plate the full length of the header to fasten to its face but I had never taken the time to install it. Now I finally got the initiative to do it.

Part of my initiative came from the fact that I had something else very pressing that I needed to do that I really did not want to face. Ironically it is those situations that have sometimes given me the most motivation to do other things I have been putting off for years. It seems that one unpleasant job can suddenly become very appealing to me when something even more unpleasant becomes urgent. While I am stalling against dealing with the most unpleasant job I suddenly become very motivated to accomplish all sorts of other unpleasant tasks that I could not bring myself to do before.

So I extracted the steel plate from the floor of the garage from under the clutter and began to drill holes for the bolts to hold it tight to the header. Then I cleaned and painted it to keep it from further rusting and took the garage door supports loose so I could insert it behind them. A friend generously came over to help me lift it into place and we were able to secure it enough to allow me to finish it without him. After I released the supporting post in the center it still sagged around ½ to ¾ inch even with 50 strong lag bolts holding it in place. But that is just going to have to be good enough.

With the door opening now cleared I felt one less obstruction to really getting serious about cleaning the garage properly and facing all my ghosts from the past lurking in there. Since I was between jobs right then I also didn't have the distraction of needing to spend time away and could focus all my energies and attention making the difficult decisions required to deal with all the things I would uncover. For two days straight I sorted and cleaned and tossed and agonized and moved things around. At that point I had filled 8-9 large construction garbage bags full of items to throw away and still have much more to go. Many things had simply deteriorated over the years or had been damaged by mice and rust.

All through this time I could feel my emotions going through some similar and parallel sorting processes. I feel like internally I am also sorting through many things from my own past and being forced to toss out some things I have clung to for years as being very important in my life. That too is a very difficult and painful process that does not happen easily or very quickly. But I know God is in charge of that process and is likely even using this external occupation to facilitate part of that internal cleaning operation.

In my sorting and cleaning and tossing I was keen to find some things that have been missing ever since we moved here. One of them is some journals that I was writing from my first days studying the Bible inductively, but unfortunately they still have not appeared. Another was a large number of CD's that contained music that I realized was missing a few months ago that I wanted to share with my quartet. That was discovered in the furtherest drawer in a desk in the far corner of the garage including a good number of much valued cassette tapes from many years ago.

In that discovery I also came across a recording of the very last time the Praise Team I sang with years ago ever sang together. We had gotten together for one last program all the way up in Canada and presented a whole service in a church pastored by the former leader of our team. As I sat down and listened to the songs that I had not sung in many years I couldn't help but begin to feel very emotional and nostalgic. I have deeply missed the opportunities to worship God collectively with others through praise music ever since that last day we were together and this recording only reminded me of this deep emptiness inside as I once again sang along with the team and thought about those times of joy long ago.

I have still not finished this project. I have quite a ways to go and I hope to make more progress this week as I don't have any work lined up right now. I think that God intends for me to deal with this issue because it really is connected to things that need to be resolved internally as well. It has certainly stirred up many old memories as I have gone through old boxes and drawers. We even came across my wife's wedding dress which we have not seen for quite some time.

There is much more going on in my life that I cannot talk about publicly right now but that is creating a great deal of opportunity for me to trust in God very intently and consistently. Yesterday I found myself slipping into some old emotional habit patterns that alarmed me. They are not easy to shake off and I had to pay extra special attention to my own spirit for quite awhile to keep me from launching off in the wrong direction and possibly loosing some divine protection inadvertently.

So pray for my project, both internally and externally, that I can become free and open and more usable for greater things than just storage. I hope to have the garage actually usable to put a car in there this winter for the first time since my parents used it for that years ago. I also hope to have my own heart cleaned up enough soon so that God can park His possessions in there and have free access to do more with it besides just house-cleaning.

New Life

2009-07-28T12:45:00.005-05:00

I realize that I have not posted much on this site lately. That is because I have diversified my output to 4 different blogs according to content. This one is more for just life which at times is not necessarily either real interesting or too interesting to put on the web. Anyway, I took a few shots of our plants that some call resurrection plants. I probably did the same thing last year and I know I posted a few pictures of these when they came up the first time around this last spring. It seems to me like they are coming up the second time earlier than usual but maybe I'm wrong. I would like to get some picture of the many hummingbirds that crowd around our feeders just outside our bay window but that is a much greater challenge photographically. This last picture is one of the very first of these plants to bloom. Each time they come up like this is gives me a little shot of encouragement, even though in my opinion the flowers are not all that glamorous. The first ones to bloom were close to the house while all the others all over the yard are playing catch-up.

Music and Work

2009-06-20T21:23:00.001-05:00

Just a little note here to post a little of what has gone on in my life recently. Last Sunday we took our boat out and had some fun on the lake with some friends. The week before we did the same thing with some other friends and ended up having to be towed in by the lake police after the boat refused to start again and the wind blew us to the shore.

After that frustrating experience which has been plaguing me for several years (the boat starting to stall out and run rough after about an hour), I installed an electric fuel pump replacing the mechanical one that we suspected might be overheating the fuel. This time we only experienced a few minutes of rough running and then it seemed to clear up. I still don't know for sure what is going on but this was a big improvement over previous escapades.

I have been painting and replacing some of the floors in a church member's house the past few weeks and took a few pictures to document what it looks like. The floors are so much nicer than the old ones and I took the liberty to paint the doors a little more interesting than they usually get painted.

Last week our quartet sang at our church as the very first time we have sung in public. Astonishingly the visiting pastor showed up wearing an identical outfit including the exact same pattern and color tie that we were all wearing. Tonight we sang in another much larger church and tomorrow morning we will sing again in both Sunday morning services where one of our quartet members attends. We are also scheduled to sing later this summer at a home-owners association meeting and also at a church picnic program.

So far we have only learned three songs during the last 2-3 months but are getting better at reading music and picking up new songs more quickly. We have a large resource of music from which to choose including quite a number that I used in my previous quartet about 20 years ago. We hope to learn enough songs soon so that we might be able to put on a whole program at some point.

Our church appointed me to be director of music along with director of audio-visual services this coming year so things are getting even busier. I am encouraged at some of the changes people are willing to do in our services and we are experimenting with things never done in this church before as far as I know.

I also took a picture of the new sound room that I recently built in the back of the church. It is such a help in getting the mess out of the main part of the church and getting everything centralized in one place for a person to operate without being in the way and so conspicuous as it was before. We are now set up to record directly to CD's which has also allowed us to provide copies immediately after the service to those who want them.

I am still planning to install a fold-up shelf for a laptop for projecting images in the front of the church which will be added just under the window.

Joy or Fear

2009-05-26T06:42:00.001-05:00

I am sensing one of my natural tendencies that much of the time keeps me focused in the wrong direction. It is the natural attraction toward thinking about fearful things, foreboding thoughts or scenarios about the future more than spending much needed effort and focus on developing joy strength within my own self and with others.

What I have learned, at least intellectually, is that the only real preparation for times of crisis when fear is overwhelming and unavoidable is the inner capacity and strength that only comes from joy training. That is the way the brain is created to operate. But ironically most Christians have been trained to assume just the opposite when it comes to preparing for trials. Somehow we have come to believe that dwelling on fear itself is supposed to get a person ready to successfully face events that induce fear in us. Thus the penchant present in my life to more easily think about fearful possibilities rather than exercising in joy building activities.

Of course all of this discussion is dependent on one understanding the true definition of joy as seen from the neurological standpoint of the nervous system. Joy creates that inner stamina, that endurance and strength and capacity that is so needed whenever the brain is exposed to trauma. Joy itself is the energizing, exhilarating sensation that the brain feels when someone else is genuinely glad to be with me, when I sense that I am very special in the eyes and heart of someone who really cares about me. It does not matter what emotions I may be experiencing at the time, if they are glad to be with me and share in my experiences then my brain will experience the effects and benefits of joy.

The side effects of joy is the stimulation of the growth of certain regions of the brain that are needed in order to process difficult situations more effectively. It is repeated experiences of joy that grow this important part of the brain that increases our capacity and maturity to face fear. So the best way that I can prepare for future trials and pain is to spend much more time and energy today on sharing joy with others, not in foreboding about future pain and suffering.

This is very clearly why Jesus spent so much time talking about joy just before His trial and crucifixion. He was not trying to distract Himself from the coming pain and suffering, He was simply following the principles that He Himself had created into the design of the human brain that He was now using. He was “topping off” all the joy that He had been exercising with His disciples for three and a half years to prepare Himself to face the events just before Him.

...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

Yes, I have been learning more and more about the benefits of joy, my need for much more joy and the critical nature of how joy prepares one for dealing with suffering. But then when I look around at my relationships with those around me I see all too clearly that I really don't experience joy very much at all. I am not a source of joy to others and I am seldom experiencing joy in my own heart. As I observe the general trend of what occupies my imagination and thoughts, too much of my time is spent seeking happiness for myself instead of real joy for both myself and others.

It seems obvious that one of the best ways to experience joy is to choose to be a source of joy for someone else. That means that I need to be genuinely glad to be with them no matter what emotion they are experiencing presently. But in reality that may at times take supernatural desires and empowering, for I, just like most others, do not naturally feel like being glad to be with people who are not in turn making me feel good. I naturally gravitate toward people who are outgoing, affirming toward me and encouraging. But I find it much more difficult to be that kind of person for others. Therefore, my own joy strength and my own joy capacity is growing much slower than is needed. I am not feeling the increased inner strength from sharing joy with others in reality. I am not obeying the principles of reality and design hard-wired into my brain by my Creator. I am too often following the natural tendencies of my fallen nature in seeking feelings of fulfillment and pleasure for myself directly instead of learning to give myself away to be a source of life-giving joy for others who also need more joy strength.

So do I have a nice answer all in place for this situation? Not really. I am just expressing what I feel right now at this moment. Maybe I am hoping that in expressing it I can motivate myself in some way, though I am not sure how effective that really is. Or maybe I am secretly hoping that someone else will come along and motivate me with joy. I don't really know. I just know that I feel the need to express what is inside me at times even when it does not fit into the nice packages that are expected in most articles or discourses. I am just monologuing about what is going on inside my head for whatever reasons.

New Hope

2009-04-19T08:17:00.001-05:00

We had a significant time yesterday at church that produced a lot of hope in our hearts. Interestingly, the study for this past week was on the subject of hope and as I look back on yesterday I suddenly realize that I was inspired with more hope for the local church and our future.

If you have read the previous post you will be aware of a major event that happened in my relationship with another person in this church. This was continued and confirmed when we met again yesterday before and after the service. In fact, as we were gathering together for a delicious meal after church this person came up to me and insisted on giving me a very emotional hug and shared with tears in their eyes that they viewed me as a brother in Christ. This is in sharp contrast to the avoidance and tension that has been in place over the past few months between us.

Yesterday was also the first time we met our new pastor. He used his sermon to relate to us his own story of how he found himself in this position as our pastor. The story was both compelling and very encouraging to our hearts as it became very clear that it was God's obvious providence that led him to be here at this point in time. I have been praying earnestly for God to send the right couple to be our pastor during this time of expected revival and I feel even more confident now that He is answering our prayers.

Not only does this couple have the right qualifications and experience for this job, but the spirit that I sense in them is exactly what the doctor ordered as my parents would have said. Although this is actually his first position as a pastor, God had called him into the ministry a number of years ago and then caused him to wait for years to test his faith and patience just like Abraham. I am deeply moved and excited to see what God has in mind for this district and I want to be a willing partner in God's plans to bring real revival, life and joy into places where all of that has been lacking for so long.

Thank-you God for your blessings and most of all for your heart of compassion and love and grace. Show us your plans and cause us to walk in your ways so that our church family will become a place of grace and nurture, so that we can be a safe environment for people to grow, to make mistakes and still be loved and accepted. Fill our families with your love, your life, your presence and fill our pastors with your power and presence and glory. I pray all of this because its all about your reputation, not ours.

Breakthrough

2009-04-17T19:35:00.000-05:00

I experienced another one of those wonderful events that come into my life once in awhile that absolutely must elicit genuine and heart-felt praise to an amazing God who can do the seemingly impossible.

Over the past few months I have been experiencing increasing tension with a person in my church. I suspected that it had much more to do with the history of my Dad in this church than it had to do with me, but I simply could not find a way to escape that association and identification with my Dad's reputation in the local church. This assumption about me was poisoning a number of relationships and I was at a loss as to how to overcome it. So I had to just keep putting it into God's hands and asking for a right spirit to love people even while being judged and even censured by some people behind the scenes.

I have been learning a great deal from God through this ongoing experience and I am well aware that it is far from over. But things came to a head not long ago when I attempted to reconcile with one of the main individuals who seemed to hold the most animosity towards me but was curtly rebuffed. They told me in no uncertain terms that they were not willing to talk with me except on a superficial level in public. They refused to even tell me anything about why they were upset with me.

This left me feeling very much in a quandary and again I had to simply leave it in God's hands and depend on Him to guard my own spirit against being overcome with resentment, bitterness or judgment. I continued to pray for this person and every person in our church with faith that God can do anything and specializes with the most difficult situations. I saw Him transform my Dad a few years ago and that was a completely impossible case as far as I could see.

As I continued to leave it all in God's hands I felt impressed a few days ago to write this person a letter trying to let them know how I felt and my perspective. I tried to carefully address the various issues that I thought was bothering them and prayed very earnestly all the while I was writing the letter for the right spirit to be felt in everything I said. Then I mailed it off early this week and again left it in God's hands and just rested in Him.

Today after work I realized that I was nearly out of gas and so I went to Wal-Mart to fill up. I thought my card was out of money and so I ran into the store to put some more on it and immediately saw this person and their spouse coming toward me on their way to the check-out. I decided to greet them and make small talk as they had indicated they were willing to do and we had a good conversation for about ten minutes about various things.

After their spouse went to talk with someone else for a few minutes this person shared that they had received my letter and had read it. I felt quite a bit of apprehension as I waited for their next words having no idea of how they felt. Their following words brought a flood of relief and joy to me as they apologized for the way they had been treating me. They affirmed that indeed they had been convinced that I was going to be just like my Dad during his later, very troubled years and they had been very apprehensive about me. After reading my letter explaining that I had been on the receiving end of much of my Dad's problems they realized that I was not a clone of my Dad after all.

Upon hearing this I felt immense relief and excitement at what God was doing in our lives and we ended up sharing with each other for around an hour while standing in the middle of the main part of the store in front of the registers. It was such a relief to have this shadow removed, and they finally had to let me know finally that they had a doctor's appointment that they needed to go to.

The timing for this is also rather interesting to me. Tomorrow is the first time our new pastor is speaking at our church and I have been wondering how he was going to relate to this ongoing thorny problem that has been causing so much tension in our church. Now that the situation has completely changed I am wondering what God has for us next. I can hardly wait to see.

After our conversation ended I quickly moved into an empty store aisle so that I could release some of the enormous and intense gratitude bursting from my heart in words of praise to my God who had again pulled off a huge breakthrough in changing hearts. He has given us the ministry of reconciliation and I want to see it continue to grow and deepen and transform my church. During our conversation I shared with this person my dream that I believe God wants to do things with this church far beyond our wildest imaginations and they agreed with me. I believe this is only the beginning but a very important step in that direction.

Father, words fall far too short of ever being able to express the feelings and relief that You have brought to me. This just has Your fingerprints all over it and I want to thank You in ways beyond the simplistic words that we typically offer You. Make my life an example of Your experiment of grace, joy and peace as You continue to infect this church with Your sweetness, love and unity for Your name's sake. You are simply awesome. Continue to reveal even more of Your amazing ways to us as we learn to trust You even more fully.

Odds and Ends

2009-04-11T16:09:00.000-05:00

Since I have somewhat isolated this blog by creating other ones that specialize in what I write on most of the time, it leaves me realizing that I have to be more intentional about relaying things going on in my life if I want to keep this site somewhat active. Most of my writing ends up on my Deeper Word blog and I have not been much at writing about the average kind of life that I normally live. But then there is always that subconscious, subtle pressure of keeping up appearances on a blog....

For the past several months we have been staying after church with whoever feels like staying, and then after sharing some food together we spend some time visiting or sharing about spiritual things. Since nearly everyone lives quite a distance from the church it just seems logical to me that this is the best time to create opportunity for people to come together more effectively socially if they desire. It avoids having to make another trip for people to get together and allows time to socialize more freely than is conducive during a service. So far usually only about five people have stayed but recently a few more people have occasionally stayed by to fellowship with us.

Today we showed a video, the first in a series by John Regier called Rekindling Marital Intimacy. Though it is geared toward helping married people resolve strongholds so that they can enjoy deeper connections with each other, the principles apply across the board for everyone. I have watched this video countless times before but each time it seems almost like the first time there is so much to remember. And it has been several years since I saw it myself.

I am not sure how people felt about it because we got very little feedback so far. The first session is a bit long and sometimes causes feelings of restlessness, but it thoroughly covers the introduction to all the rest of the seminar. This seminar relates details about ten strongholds that the enemy has within our lives and both the effects of those strongholds as well as methods of how to resolve and become free from them. As these strongholds are released from our hearts we can then begin to experience genuine love, affection and fuller life in relationship with those around us.

I am praying that God will do some dramatic things in our church family to resolve the many differences and tensions that are lurking just beneath the surface. I want to cooperate with Him and to have some idea of what His plans are so that I can be part of God's solutions instead of part of the problems. Next week we will meet our new pastor for the first time. We are looking forward to that.

In a few minutes we are going to another town where some friends have invited us to attend a Passover meal at their small Barn Church. They have become interested in studying the Old Testament over the past year or so and recently decided to celebrate a Passover meal together in a unique way for fellowship and enlightenment. I have no idea what it is going to be like but am looking forward to whatever happens.

Spring

2009-04-03T09:38:00.004-05:00

I just want to take opportunity to share a little of what it looks like in my front yard. I am not a big fan of flowers in pots, but sometimes the flowers that God puts in the woods or the grass grabs my attention and I like to savor the moments as a gift from Him.

And then there was this busy little bee....

Have a blessed spring!

New Blog Launch

2009-03-31T21:31:00.000-05:00

I have decided to differentiate a little more in how I manage my blogs. This is my original blog site and I still have been placing a number of things here. But because it seems to sometimes be a hodge-podge of ideas that sometimes don't seem to fit together all that well, I decided to leave this site more for personal notes, events and such that are not so purely spiritually focused, if that makes sense. I already have two other sites for more specific spiritual focuses but I have decided to launch yet another one that will be more of the catch-all for the insights that seem to suddenly appear out of thin air (or Holy Spirit air if you may believe) that are not along the lines of what I am studying in particular. That is already being covered by my blog titled Deeper Word where I focus on whatever area of the Bible I am currently meditating and studying about.

This new blog is going to be where I post the more miscellaneous items of spiritual interest that usually ended up on this site. That will free this one up for more family or personal or newsy types of things – at least that is what I am supposing at this point.

At any rate, this is sure to mess up some of the links to this site until others come to notice that things have changed a little. I hope no one is offended by this.

As always, my primary focus is not to post things to convince others of my viewpoints so much as to simply share what I am learning and make it available for others to ponder. Because of this I have decided to name my newest blog, Spiritual Ponderings. If this is of interest to you then feel free to click on over and see the latest posts that have kicked it off. I hope you enjoy it and are inspired. And as always, I love to hear your thoughts and response and even questions whenever the spirit moves you to do so.

Negative Numbers and the Sapphire Sea

2009-03-29T13:59:00.001-05:00

For whatever reason, I found myself thinking the other day about the Sea of Glass described in several places in the Bible, which then in turn led me to another very interesting observation that opened up whole new dimensions about my perceptions of reality.

Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself. Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank. (Exodus 24:9-11)

Now over the heads of the living beings there was something like an expanse, like the awesome gleam of crystal, spread out over their heads. (Ezekiel 1:22)

Then I looked, and behold, in the expanse that was over the heads of the cherubim something like a sapphire stone, in appearance resembling a throne, appeared above them. (Ezekiel 10:1)

And before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. (Revelation 4:6)

And I saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, holding harps of God. (Revelation 15:2)

A number of years ago I received a set of sermons that introduced me to these various passages about this expanse called the Sea of Glass. They went into great detail about the various colors and the deeper significance of those colors and I found it all rather fascinating and informative.

But one thing that interested me and that sent me off in a different direction this time was the fact that in some of these references this surface seems to be viewed from underneath and in others it seems to be described from the other side. But all of them appear to be talking about the same subject or place, just from different perspectives.

Then my mind went to mathematics – of all things. It occurred to me how confused I often get when trying to work with negative numbers, especially when I was younger. What feels logical when working with “normal”, positive numbers seems intuitively backwards when working with negative numbers. Adding and subtracting I could handle reasonably well if I was careful to think it through logically. But when it came to multiplying and dividing, the results would always confuse me with unexpected results.

As I think about this more carefully, I begin to realize part of the problem between what actually happens when working with negative numbers and what feels like should happen from intuition. If I think about the seeming value of a digit – let's just say -15 to pick a random number – and then I take a positive number like 7 and add that to -15, according to the rules of mathematics I will end up with -8.

Now, I realize that anyone well-trained in math will think this is a no-brainer and may even think this is stupid to analyze. But in another part of my brain something reasons this way (not logically but emotionally):

If I start out with a digit that has the feeling of a certain value, then when I add another digit to that digit one would expect the resulting digit to be greater in size.

I realize that the rules that govern negative numbers cause the opposite to take place in this instance. Yes, I realize that with my logical brain and accept it as a fact. But that does not negate the fact that the other part of my brain simply is not wired to think in that way. It insists with my emotions that if addition is happening here, then the digit size should result in something bigger, not smaller.

Now what does this have to do at all with the Sea of Glass described above in various places throughout the Bible? That is a very good question, and here is how they connected in my brain.

I sense that ever since sin entered into our world and affected everything about our existence, our brains and “normal” logic systems always default to thinking that what feels normal to us is in fact the opposite of what feels and in fact is normal on the other side of reality as we perceive it. That Sea of Glass that looks like crystal with the color of sapphire and has fire somehow mingled all through it – that flat expanse that will someday support the feet of billions of the saved who are about to enter the gates into the New Jerusalem may be likened to the dividing point that zero is in our number system as we use mathematics.

That implies that everything below that Sea of Glass, that division between our perception of reality and the rest of the universe's understanding of reality, functions with rules of negative thinking, negative assumptions and the rules somewhat like those that govern math in the negative territory on the number scale. And most people know that the things you expect when working with negative numbers are very different than the results you would expect to see when working with positive numbers.

To add to the complexity of this situation though, consider the additional rules that must be taken into account when mixing the two kinds of numbers. When something is taken from the other side of zero and used on the opposite side, then that too has to be taken into account as to what to expect in the resulting answer produced.

For instance, if you add a positive number to a negative number, the digit size is going to get smaller instead of larger (unless of course it crosses the boundary-line of zero). But if you add a negative number to a negative number the result is going to be a larger negative number relatively (digit-wise).

In the same way, when things from the other side of reality as we perceive it, the other side of that sapphire sea, are brought into our realm and our ways of reasoning, they almost always seem completely backwards to the results that we by nature would expect to experience.

To illustrate this, let us remind ourselves of some clues of this very principle.

But many who are first will be last; and the last, first. (Matthew 19:30)

So the last shall be first, and the first last. (Matthew 20:16)

Sitting down, He called the twelve and said to them, "If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all." (Mark 9:35)

But many who are first will be last, and the last, first. (Mark 10:31)

And behold, some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last. (Luke 13:30)

And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it. He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me. (Matthew 10:38-40)

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matthew 16:24-26)

It has always felt to me like many things about the kingdom of heaven just “felt” intuitively backwards. It was like I had to memorize the unusual rules than govern how things seem to be working in some other system in order to make sense of what kind of results to expect. But it never seemed to really help change my gut-level expectations of how things should turn out. All of these sayings on the part of Jesus just seem to most of us to be counter-intuitive. This is also seen in the description of the whole attitude of Jesus as described in Phil. 2:3-11.

So in summary, sin has caused our logic, our intuition, our sense of what is “normal”, to function beneath zero. That is because of the factor of selfishness that always permeates every calculation that goes on in our brain, our thinking and our feelings. We are living currently on the underside of the Sea of Glass, that sapphire expanse that appears like the sky to us above which is a whole different perspective of reality and a whole different set of paradigms and “normals” which feel so unfamiliar to us down here. We are currently functioning on the negative side of that boundary line.

The good news is that God is doing everything possible to not leave us stuck in this underworld where everything is so different than the reality which we were designed to enjoy and in which we were supposed to thrive. We were made for a different world and our hearts are never satisfied with the negative results that are always produced from our normal calculations.

It is because of this that we have to learn to trust in the math of heaven instead of what feels intuitively normal to us. That is what faith is really all about. We have to allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit of God who will guide us in ways that feel strange at times and even illogical from our perspective or many around us. But this is part of our transition to learning how to live in the real reality which the rest of the unfallen universe has always enjoyed and to which we are headed for to enjoy for eternity if we allow God through salvation to accomplish His intended purpose in our lives.

Legal Tender

2009-03-29T10:36:00.002-05:00

I got up this morning to capture another one of those unexpected ideas that was presented to me before I lost it. It is insights regarding the nature of debt, sin and salvation that have puzzled me for most of my life and keeps me looking for more answers that make sense and line up with the principles I have been learning from the Bible. This increased understanding is helping me to further sort out some of the troublesome questions that have haunted me for years. As I have spent time listening to others who have excellent insights into this subject and put that together with what God has been showing me over the years, the puzzle just keeps getting more filled in and the picture becomes clearer. If you would care to read it, I posted it at another of my blogs where the subject matter fits in with the theme of the site quite well. You can read it by clicking here. But be aware, it is not a real short post. Enjoy and have a great day. And I welcome any comments or ideas to enhance my own understanding even further.

Without an Intercessor - 4

2009-03-28T06:58:00.000-05:00

The only reason we will ever be without an intercessor is because there is no longer any need for intercession. That point in time will occur when every person has made a final decision about the relationship offered them by God and when that relationship has been sealed or rejected. If they choose to reject God's offer to transform their heart in covenant bonds with Him, they are sealed in the service of Satan. Then there is no longer any need or use for an intercessor, for there is no one to intercede with any longer, no one left to enter into a relationship different than the one they have chosen.

Yes, truth is lacking; And he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey. Now the LORD saw, And it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, And was astonished that there was no one to intercede; Then His own arm brought salvation to Him, And His righteousness upheld Him. He put on righteousness like a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; And He put on garments of vengeance for clothing And wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle. (Isaiah 59:15-17)

As long as there are individuals who have not finalized their choice of which master to render their loyalty and service to, Jesus will continue to intercede with them, seeking to draw them in by any means possible to the side of truth and loyalty to the God of heaven. But there does come a time when people have so hardened their hearts that it is no longer possible whatsoever for them to change their minds. At this point they have destroyed their capacity and ability to choose differently by repeated rejections of the voice of the Holy Spirit. At this time God respects that choice by letting them have the consequences of their own persistent demands. He gives them over – which is the Bible's definition of the wrath of God. (Romans 2:24, 26, 28)

As for you, do not pray for this people, and do not lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with Me; for I do not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me. (Jeremiah 7:16-18)

When an intercessor pleads for God to show mercy to those who have completely rejected His mercy, that is an attempt to get God to reverse His decision to respect their final choice in regards to His offers of mercy and grace. There is no point in God continuing to offer mercy and forgiveness to those who have destroyed all their ability to accept it. The only thing left is to release them to their choices.

Some are confused when they read that everyone will bow in willing worship before God. They assume that because everyone will worship that must mean they will be saved as well. But the two are not the same thing.

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

At the same time, many take this to believe that because every knee will bow that God will resort to the use of force in the end to get unrepentant sinners to worship Him. But that is equally false because it pictures God as one willing to stoop to the methods of His arch-enemy to accomplish securing worship for Himself. This idea is reflective of the spirit of Satan, not that of our wise, loving heavenly Father. This is something that many of us think is only logical because we cannot perceive of any other way that this could be accomplished. But our own ignorance should not be the basis for our beliefs about God's character.

God values freedom more than anything else. This is because true love can only thrive in an atmosphere free of all coercion. So it simply would be illogical and counter-productive for God to resort to removing people's freedom in order to secure worship for Himself. That is a demonstration of selfishness, not the Spirit of selfless love and compassion that marks the acts of God. It is crucial that we clear away the clouds of deception and lies that still fog our vision so that we can see the real truth about the way God relates to sinners. When that begins to take place it will become much easier for us to perceive the real truth and the motivation that will finally cause everyone, both saved and lost alike, to bow before God in willing worship and acquiescence without any coercion whatsoever.

But while all will be in full agreement that God is absolutely fair in every respect and that He is just in the way He has chosen to resolve the problems that sin brought into the universe, it does not follow that all will then be ready to surrender to His authority or be able to thrive in His presence. In fact, ironically it is their very act of willing worship and recognition of His total lack of coercion that plunges the lost into the emotional agonies described as the fires of hell. For to stand in the presence of anyone who loves you so purely and passionately and has endured your rejection of their advances without the slightest trace of evil or resentment or hostility is to self-induce an emotional torment that is on a scale equal with or more intense than the worst possible torture anyone could inflict on you from the outside. This is the true condition that creates the torments of hell.

He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. (Revelation 3:5)

Jesus is currently our intercessor and friend. But that is not for the purpose of changing God's heart about us but to change our hearts about God. When we overcome the lies about God in our hearts and minds through the intercession of Jesus on His behalf, then Jesus, God and ourselves will be in perfect agreement. And the true meaning of the word confess simply means to agree.

And that is the final goal of everything the Godhead and all of heaven has been trying to achieve all throughout this long trial and controversy with Satan's rebellion. God wants to restore fully the atmosphere of full agreement without resorting to any of Satan's false techniques of force, deception or fear. God will finally win this war and He is going to be vindicated using only the truth and the methods consistent with both truth and unfailing love. It is love that is going to overcome in the end, not fear, not force, not deception.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 12-13)

Wrestling With God

2009-03-23T21:15:00.000-05:00

I am starting to understand better what was really going on in Jacob's wrestling match with the angel of God. As I ponder the crucial point of transition from spending all of his efforts wrestling against the angel to clinging to the angel, it becomes clear as I relate it to my own experience what needs to take place in my perceptions of how to relate to God.

Jacob had spent his whole life in conflict. Even though he had deep urges to be connected with God, he had been operating under many of the same false assumptions about how to be connected with God as most of us have. He thought that he had to work hard at figuring out how to get what was needed for spiritual success and so when things looked dangerously impossible he always resorted to coming up with whatever it took to move forward. But this meant that he often resorted to using methods and paradigms supplied from the counterfeit system of beliefs about God and the results of those choices always ended up making things worse for his life.

I have been learning that living a righteous life can never be accomplished by figuring out all the right things to do, all the wrong things to avoid doing and then asking God for extra strength, wisdom and ability so I can then perform all those requirements. That is the way that seems right to men, but the end of that way is always death. This is because it is all based on the wrong foundation of fear for motivation instead of reactive love and devotion to a God who is so kind and generous and full of blessing that I just can't help but want to serve Him.

Basing our lives on fear is always a bad idea. And as I look carefully at this wrestling event in Jacob's experience that has been held up as the most important turning point in his whole life, I see that it was at this point that God was able to get Jacob to move past his fear-based relationship with Him to a love-bonded relationship with Him. Instead of fighting against God as he had been inadvertently doing for much of his life, Jacob suddenly switched over to living from his heart fully and threw himself totally on the mercy of God in complete dependence on God's desire to love him, to save him and to do whatever He wanted in Jacob's life.

But from Jacob's side, this did not mean that Jacob relaxed in his wrestling. No, not at all. In fact, if anything he struggled and wrestled even more intensely. But from this point on instead of fighting against the love that God had wanted to bless him with all of his life, he now used all of his remaining energy, both physically and emotionally to cling for dear life to the only One worth clinging to. Instead of clinging to his own efforts to get himself good enough for God or to maneuver himself into a place of favor with God, he now chose to intensely trust in God's heart to accomplish this goal and to stop trying to make things work out through his own efforts and ideas.

Jacob's heart had longed for nearly all of his life for the deep satisfaction that only a real blessing could bring. I can identify very strongly with that feeling. Everyone of us is designed to crave most deeply for a blessing that will impart a sense of worth and value, that will bestow on our deepest soul a strong sense of identity and purpose and most of all to satisfy our deepest need for “joy” which is the keen awareness that someone loves us intensely and is always very glad to be close to us. This is what Jacob had been seeking to satisfy for all of his life but in all the wrong ways.

He had tried to satisfy these deep and legitimate cravings by being a good boy growing up. He had tried to get this most needed blessing by stealing it twice from his brother but with very tragic results. He had resorted to deception and manipulation in many circumstances but to little avail. He had tried to find it in love with a woman but even that backfired terribly as he became the victim of his father-in-law's deceptions and jealousy and ended up with four women. It seemed that no matter how he tried to satisfy these deepest cravings of his heart that everything he did only left him feeling a little more hungry than before. By the time he found himself facing the negative consequences of nearly all of his vain attempts to make himself feel valuable all coming together at once, he still felt completely empty and fearful and helpless. He was a rich man according to the measurements of this world, a man who had multiple lovers, many children and everything that is supposed to make one happy. But instead of feeling fulfilled he felt hopeless, depressed and so full of terror that he was at the end of his rope for figuring out any more ideas of how to satisfy the deepest longings of his soul.

At this point in his life his most intense desires to feel loved and valued far surpassed the terror and dangers that tried to rivet his attention as strong as those were. He realized that his whole family's existence was in jeopardy because of his bungled attempts to get right with God in his past and so he found himself in an all night prayer vigil seeking to connect with the God that had seemed to evade his desperate search for most of his life. Yes, God had appeared to him before to encourage him, but that had not brought him into the deep, satisfying relationship with God that he so wanted to know. He still had not learned how to live in a peaceful state of joy and rest in the arms of his God. He had continued to try to work things out himself and now it seemed that his number was up with his brother coming to attack him.

So in this state of mind, when God himself approached Jacob to give him the very blessing that he so longed to receive, Jacob's life of living first from fear caused him to fight against the very thing that he wanted the most – a hug from his Creator and Redeemer and God. The very time he could have spent soaking in the arms of His Savior he spent trying to fight off and to resist Him instead. How sad that he wasted nearly the whole night resisting the very love and assurance and joy that he was looking for so intently. Because of the lies about God that had distorted his thinking all of his life, he almost totally missed the very opportunity that he had been craving for all of his life.

But fortunately he did not completely miss it altogether. Before it was all done, through the final moments of overwhelming pain searing in his body he came to be aware of the real identity of the one whom he was resisting and his heart leapt into action and he latched on to the only hope worth clinging to. His heart had yearned for a sense of blessing from a Father for all of his life and his hunger for this was so intense that even the excruciating pain of a dislocated hip could not stop him from changing from all-out resistance to all-out clinging dependence. The intense pain only exemplified the even deeper pain that he felt in his heart, longing for the sense of blessing, worth and love that he needed to know to be a real man.

At this point Jacob broke away from his habits of living by fear and plunged into living a life of clinging to love. God had come to him and amplified his fears to the breaking point so that Jacob could see that this method could never supply the deepest needs of his heart. Fear always seems so logical and sensible and natural, but it will always lead us down the wrong path in our pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. Our hearts were not designed for fear but for love and it is not until we reject the suggestions of fear and cling to the unfamiliar but only true source of life in trusting God's heart that any of us will ever be able to receive the blessing that we must have in order to experience fulfillment and peace.

I know that I need to have this experience in my own life. I sometimes sense the intensity of my own heart's cravings for that blessing which I never received from my earthly father. As a result I have lived in a lot of dysfunction in my relationships with others and have had very confused ideas of how to live in relationship with God. God has taught me a great deal of truth about these things over the past few years for which I am eternally grateful. But I also realize that I still don't have that deep sense of value and assurance that was kept from me by the very ones who were supposed to impart it to me when I was young. As a result I can really identify with Jacob and his many attempts to find love in all the wrong ways.

In my study of the Scriptures I realize that God's people are destined to go through a time in the near future called “the time of Jacob's trouble”. But what began to dawn on me a few years ago was that instead of being a time to be terrorized about – as the way this was usually taught, this is going to be the time when we more fully receive that deep sense of blessing and connection with our God that we have been longing for all of our lives.

That is not to say that it will not be terribly painful. That is clear from Jacob's experience. But the fear of pain must be surpassed by our craving and desires for the heart blessing of our Father that forces past every obstacle that tries to keep us from that blessing. I can see that possibly the greatest obstacle that will become evident may be my own mind wrestling against the very channels through which God is seeking to impart His blessing to me. And this is something I need to start learning now, not just in that day when I are forced into this situation.

The reason that these stories are given to us in the Bible is so that we can relate differently to God now based on seeing the mistakes of others in the past. I don't have to try all the wrong ways of connecting with God like Jacob did because I can see from his experience what not to do before I try it myself. The same is true of all the other Bible characters who tried all the wrong ways of figuring out life. We have the advantage of the whole history of the world behind us so that we can learn and take better choices and have better outcomes based on their mistakes and successes.

False Witness Righteousness

2009-03-17T06:56:00.000-05:00

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Exodus 20:16)

Something interesting came to my attention yesterday. I was pondering the problem of how often Christians try to act “good”, put so much emphasis on appearing righteous – whatever they happen to think that means – and focus so much attention on behavior instead of the real beliefs of their hearts. As a result we tend to create a great deal of hypocrisy whether we like it or not. Even Jesus rebuked the evangelism of the Pharisees and told them plainly that the converts they worked so hard to produce only became worse hypocrites than they were.

But this is certainly not just a problem of ancient times or even just some other church. It is a problem of human nature and if we are human we are going to gravitate in this direction. Humans have a sinful nature that has skewed our perception of what is important and has rearranged our priorities incorrectly. As a result we assume that sin has to do with behavior more than anything else and so the way to get away from it is to change our external behavior and intellectual beliefs. Or we may go another direction and think that if we just induce enough intense emotions during some form of worship experience that it will make up for all our failures and that God will save us in spite of our selfishness.

But both sides miss the real point of the problem of sin. Sin at its root has little to do with behavior or even appearances. In fact, such thinking is already deep into the deception that sin causes in our thinking. The original problem that caused Lucifer to evolve into Satan was a shift in focus from internal integrity and beauty to external appearances and beauty. He started a revolution based on the idea that external performance was more important than joyful loyalty to the heart of God. And everywhere that sin has infected minds and hearts this same symptom is always sure to appear.

As I have become more familiar with the bigger picture, the context in which we all live and struggle in this life, the clearer it becomes that the core issue in life is not stopping the bad behaviors we do and eliminating “sin” from our lives externally. It is coming to perceive the real truth about God beyond all the mass of lies and misrepresentations of Satan and learning to live in the light of that truth from our hearts. Our lives are not about putting on a good performance as many suppose but about becoming authentic and useful witnesses in the great trial of God being conducted in the universe.

Consider the following verses in relation to the one above.

Isa 43:10 “You are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “And My servant whom I have chosen, So that you may know and believe Me And understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, And there will be none after Me.”

Isa 43:12 “It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed, And there was no strange god among you; So you are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “And I am God.”

Isa 44:8 “Do not tremble and do not be afraid; Have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none.”

It occurred to me that when we encourage people to act like we suppose Christians might act without first having the core heart condition and connection with God in place with a correct view of the heart of God, then we are really training them to become false witnesses. For to claim to be a Christian whether with words or with actions while failing to understand the real reasons that should be motivating such behavior and words is to live a lie while pretending to live in the truth.

When we think that just learning a set of doctrines is all we need to be a Christian, we are deceiving our own minds as well as trying to deceive others. Of course, the nature of deception is that we soon don't realize we are even deceived and become very defensive if anyone happens to point it out. We tend to assume that Christianity is all about performance and intellectual profession. But sadly the truth is that this is actually setting us up to bear false testimony in the trial of God. For God is interested primarily in a heart connection with His children, not a good outward show. He is not waiting for us to get our act together and look good before men or to even impress Him, He is doing everything possible to get us to surrender our efforts at trying to “do good” and to learn to enter into His rest and joy where He can live in us and produce the righteousness that is impossible for us to ever achieve in our efforts.

But when we resist all efforts by the Holy Spirit to reveal the real truth about God to our hearts, when we choose to live in fear and keep our religion only in the external realm of our life, then the only conclusion that can be made about our life will be that we are bearing false witness against God. For God has stated very clearly in His Word that He is the only one who can cause us to walk in His ways if we will allow Him full access to our hearts and affections. Any other method will result in a denial of His claims.

Abraham is represented in the Bible as one of the examples of how to properly live in a saving relationship with God. Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6 NIV) Paul and James both quote this text in their seemingly opposite explanations of how to live effectively as a Christian. But for those willing to carefully examine both sides of this issue it can be seen that James' emphasis on works does not undo the emphasis of Paul on faith but simply addresses the popular notion that one can have saving faith without having it then change the whole life.

The main point that I think is very easy to miss is that without a heart-based motivation for our works, a real emotional and honest attachment in a real relationship with our Creator and Redeemer, it is impossible for us to live an authentic life of true righteousness. The real problem that we are facing is not a lack of righteousness in our lives as bad as that may be; the real problem is a lack of true belief in the righteousness of God. And I think that is largely due to a great lack of understanding of what that word even means to begin with.

Over the past few years I have begun to perceive that pretty much every word and phrase in religion has had its true meaning transposed into something different than its original. As a result, we can use Bible verses to justify all sorts of false ideas about God and about how to get to heaven, etc. But as I have come to realize the real root meanings of many of these words and phrases such as righteousness – which was a real challenge – I have come to see God in a radically different light than ever before. And the more I see the real truth about God and His attitude and feelings towards me the easier it is to want a deeper connection with Him and the easier it is to surrender my will to His will and allow Him access to the deeper parts of my soul.

I, like everyone else on this planet, have been victimized by false witnesses about God. There is an incredibly huge conspiracy to keep us in the dark about how God feels about us and it has largely been successful. But God is gaining ground on unmasking this conspiracy of lies about Him and He invites all who come into a fuller knowledge of the real truth about Him to become truthful witnesses to what they are encountering in their new relationship with Him.

I do not want to be party to training either myself or others to be false witnesses for God. I do not want to encourage pretending to be Christian while not having a heart filled with the passionate love of the Father. I do not want to motivate people to obedience by frightening them with fears of condemnation or false ideas about God's wrath. I want to increase the light level about God at the heart level and allow this revelation of God's glory to do the work that it does best – produce the righteousness of God in human lives naturally.

When our righteousness is spontaneous, when it is authentic and truthful, when our obedience comes from the heart instead of being forced by the head or motivated by fear, then our testimony in God's trial will become effective to influence others to want to know Him better and respond to His love for them. As we do this we will come into line with the command about bearing false testimony and will find our lives truly authentic and alive. And we will begin to truly know and encounter the glory that Moses begged to see. We shall begin to see the true face of our loving Father.

Without an Intercessor - 3

2009-03-14T07:28:00.000-05:00

I just woke up from a very strange, and at the last a very emotionally intense dream. Upon awakening I pondered the significance of this dream and began to realize that very possibly God was drawing my attention to keeping focused on His perspective about a very dicey situation in which I have been sharing counsel and prayer with a friend of mine.

The dream involved this friend, but the situation and the other people involved were altered enough from the real-life version that it did not look very familiar to me. The offended parties in my dream were different than in real life so it caught me by surprise. I think it was intended that way.

Without divulging details that should probably remain private at this point in time about the real situation, I now see that the dream was not so much a parallel to the real-life situation as it was a reminder to allow God full access to the situation even though to all human appearances it seems totally impossible to bring about reconciliation at this point. For at the end of my very strange dream, I suddenly watched God reach into the heart of a very hardened person and draw out of them a confession of His ability to turn their heart back toward their wife that they had rejected for so long.

In my dream I was standing in the next room listening to this amazing confession and see resolution to a problem that I had been trying to work out in a much less satisfactory way that was full of compromise and potential future problems. It suddenly struck me that God's ways of resolving problems was so far superior to anything I can ever come up with that I needed to trust Him implicitly instead of trying to arrange things myself on His behalf. As the amazement overwhelmed me in my dream I began to feel an intense emotion welling up inside of me. As my wife slowly walked into the room where I was standing I just wanted to cry though I found it very difficult to do so for some reason.

But the emotion was so intense in my dream that, as is usually the case in a dream of intense emotions, I woke up and then began to try to figure out what in the world it must mean. The circumstances were so bizarre in my dream that it would make no sense at all in real life which made it very difficult to figure out at first. But then I began to sense as I prayed about it that it was not the details in the dream that were the answer but the understanding that God's solutions would be far better to trust than anything I might come up with for the nearly impossible circumstances that my friend finds himself in at this very moment. If I am to be a true intercessor, an effective friend of the Bridegroom, then I must trust His heart to bring about His desires and to listen very carefully to His Spirit as to how to cooperate with His plans instead of trying coming up with any of my own.

It is very true that God is seeking people to act in the role of friends of the Bridegroom. As I have understood the true purpose of that position over the past few years it has become very clear that this is a very exciting position to fill. Now I am beginning to see how this role is very closely blended with the idea of intercession and the true purpose and function and motives of an intercessor.

In the past two posts I have been examining some background and peripheral issues surrounding intercession as well as touching on the subject of an Investigative Judgment that many believe is happening right now. I have usually thought of this from the perspective of fear which is almost always how it has been couched by those promoting it. But the more I am shedding my context of fear in coming to know the truth about God, the more things like this begin to take on a whole different perspective and understanding. When fear is taken out of the picture then it becomes so much easier to begin to see things differently under the light of real truth. Many things can be brought to view and exciting insights begin to explode everywhere when reality is perceived in the light of a God of pure, unconditional love.

Because I have been spending a lot of time the past few weeks filling my mind with real truth about God by taking every opportunity I have to listen to speakers who have a clear perspective of the gospel much better than mine, I have been feeling a transformation taking place more quickly at my own heart level. I am sometimes amazed at how backward my own heart still is in its opinions about God compared to all the wonderful information my intellect has been exposed to over the past few years. But I also notice that the more I saturate the atmosphere of my soul with the real truth about God the easier it is for the lies about God to begin to float to the surface and be exposed for what they really are. This process is crucial for me if I am to become an effective channel of grace to attract others to want to know God more intimately.

What I am beginning to realize is that I am in training to become an intercessor for God just as Jesus is. A number of years ago it started to become evident to me that the ministry of intercession on the part of Jesus was radically different than what it had been represented to me most of my life. I had always assumed that Jesus was trying to change God's mind about me so that I could go to heaven. But now I am seeing that that kind of thinking is riddled full of all sorts of false assumptions about God, about Jesus and even about myself and my relationship with Him.

As I pointed out last time, since Jesus and the Father are very clearly on the same page in their feelings about me, there is no need for Jesus to try to change anything about God in order to save me. That would be totally superfluous. It is never God's mind that needs changing in any way as I had always thought, it is my mind and heart and opinions about God that need radical updating if I am ever to be reconciled and be able to enjoy His company for eternity. It is the myriads of lies in my own thinking about how God feels towards me that must be exposed as false and let go of if I am ever to be prepared to encounter the immense power and intensity of God's pure, passionate love and to be able to thrive in that fiery presence.

So it becomes crystal clear in this context that any interceding that may be going on between God the Father and us has to be focused entirely on altering our opinions about God, never on changing God's opinions about us in spite of all the religious talk to the contrary. God is not angry at sinners and in need of calming down, sinners are angry and hateful toward God because of their misconceptions about Him that Satan has implanted and reinforces in all the human race. It is us that needs to have our hearts cleansed from the many lies and misconceptions about God before we will be able to receive and embrace His grace and live safely in His presence.

Many parts of this puzzle have been coming together for me for many years now. My new and radically updated understanding of hell and the fire of God was a massive shift for me in freeing me to be able to love God from the heart for the first time in my life. But there are still many more lies about God that keep surfacing all the time and that need exposure and replacement with real truth. My induced fears about the judgment and my confusion about the purpose of Jesus' intercession have also been sources of confusion over the years keeping me from being more fully reconciled with God.

Some of the clearest texts concerning the intercessory role of Jesus are found in Isaiah. This is highly symbolic language and is very easily misunderstood if one does not have a corrected picture of God and His passion. But when it is viewed from a proper perspective it contains very amazing insights about the true role of an intercessor.

Yes, truth is lacking; and he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey. Now the Lord saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no one to intercede; then His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. (Isaiah 59:15-16)

I have trodden the wine press alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their juice spattered on my garments, and stained all my robes. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year for my redeeming work had come. I looked, but there was no helper; I stared, but there was no one to sustain me; so my own arm brought me victory, and my wrath sustained me. (Isaiah 63:3-5 NRSV)

What I see clearly in these verses is that God was appalled that there was no one to be found anywhere that would be able to effectively stand up and defend His reputation. So He sent His son to reveal to the whole universe the real truth about God by living and dying as a human. The whole purpose of Jesus coming to live life as a human and to suffer the wrath of humans and demons alike while they tortured and killed Him and covered him with blood was to expose the real truth about the passion of God's love that we so often mistake for anger. But I have learned that when the Bible refers to the wrath of God it is almost always referring to the concept of passion itself which does not necessarily equate with the kind of wrath or hateful anger that we always suppose it does. It is far too easy to project our perspective of wrath onto God instead of seeking to grasp the real truth about God's passionate love for us.

These verses make it very clear that Jesus came to take things into His own hands as far as changing minds and hearts about the real truth about God. Since no one else could stand up for Him and no one was even willing to stand with Him during this process, He had to do it all alone. This became very evident during the events that transpired during the last hours of His life before He was killed on the cross. Not even His closest disciples took the time or effort to pray alongside Him for even one hour while He was in His greatest distress. He had to take on the job all alone.

But far from coming to suffer the punishments from an angry God up in heaven, Jesus came to reveal the passionate love that fills the heart of our Father in heaven by contrasting it with the effects that sin has wrought in our own psyche. When real love appeared on earth in the form of a man it was immediately met with resistance, fear and animosity on every hand. It finally came to the grand climax of a fatal collision between the lies about God contained in the hearts of all humanity and the truth about God as revealed in the life and willing death of the Son of God. Jesus has always been in the role of seeking to change our minds and hearts and opinions about how God feels towards us and His true character. This is the core of what Jesus continually referred to when He repeatedly asked people to believe all throughout His life on earth.

Over the past month or so I have been privileged to be used by God to “intercede” on His behalf to someone who had all their life been under the delusions of the enemy about Him and has been very openly hostile toward God and anything to do with Him. Because of a great emotional crisis in his life he has decided to take a new look at what might be true about God as I have shared with him what I have been learning about God myself. As I have shared the real truth about God and prayed with this person, I have been thrilled to see him open up and entertain new ideas and feelings toward God that few would have imagined even possible before.

As I have been used by the Spirit to influence this man's opinions about God and have watched God work in his life and heart, I am reminded frequently that it is not my responsibility to fix his problems but is completely God's responsibility. My role is to keep sharing with him the real truth about God in ways that are relevant to his situation and to encourage him to rethink the antagonism that he has held due to his misconceptions about God from his past.

Last night I received a phone call from him relating to me a terribly devastating turn of events in his situation which could potentially threaten to undo all the progress that he has made in his thinking. At least that was the temptation that I was faced with as I heard what was happening. But I was reminded again that this is not my problem and that I have no business taking on his burden for myself or trying to fix his situation with my ideas. I have simply been sharing with him whatever the Spirit has prompted me to do and I can relax and rest in the knowledge that God is still the same and nothing has changed at all in reality. I am learning more about what it really means to be an intercessor for God.

Intercession is for the purpose of reconciliation, whether it is in a marriage, between friends or with God Himself. This is accomplished by seeking to expose the lies and false assumptions about one party held by another and replacing those lies with truth, especially when it comes to God. To do this effectively the interceder must maintain a correct understanding of the character and feelings of the one on who's behalf they are interceding. If they allow themselves to become entangled in the triangle improperly, if they allow their own viewpoints or emotions to distract them from focusing full attention on keeping a proper perspective and communication with the one whom they are representing, their effectiveness can quickly be diminished.

This means that I must have a great deal of trust in the one in who's behalf I am interceding. I have to have total and implicit faith that God is going to be consistently and intensely interested in the reconciliation and that He is always going to prove faithful to being the way that I am representing Him to be to the other person with whom I am interceding. In fact, I myself have to be very in tune with the feelings and desires of the One I am trying to represent so that I become an accurate reflection of His heart to attract others to change their minds about my Friend.

But again, I remind myself that I must let go of all self interest if I am to be a successful intercessor. If there is anything else expected from this process for me besides joy in seeing the other two parties reconciled and united in hearts with each other, then there is a seed of betrayal present that will sooner or later spring up and cause great complications. The heart of the intercessor must be fiercely loyal to the one on who's behalf we are interceding if we are to be a true “friend of the bridegroom”.

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21 NRSV)

Father, I choose to be reconciled to you because of the intercession of Jesus to change my mind and heart about what you are really like. I cannot change my own heart but I trust you to do that within me as the real truth about you soaks in deeper and deeper. I also praise you and thank you for using me to be a co-intercessor with Jesus in seeking to change other people's false opinions and feelings about you. I ask that you fill me with your Spirit so that I can experience the joy of watching others be reconciled with you and with each other. This is the joy that John the Baptist shared as he watched others become more attracted to Jesus than to himself. Fill me with the spirit of a true and loyal friend of the Bridegroom like John was. Teach me and mentor me in this ministry of reconciliation for your name's sake.

Without an Intercessor - 2

2009-03-13T21:48:00.000-05:00

Is Jesus interceding on our behalf to the Father doing everything possible to convince Him to love us enough to save us? ...to forgive us? ...to avert punishments for us?

Is there an Investigative Judgment going on right now in which every detail of our lives come up before some sort of heavenly Grand Jury or maybe before the Father in order to figure out if we are good enough to be allowed into heaven? Wouldn't this tend to imply that God is somehow not all-knowing? Does He really have to conduct an investigation to figure out what I am really like? Or is this for the purpose of convincing someone else?

If these things are really true or even partially true, then what role does Jesus have in this process? Is He trying to manipulate the facts to make me look better than I really am to get my name on the right list? Does Jesus love me more than the Father does?

These kinds of honest and disturbing questions have caused thousands of people to reject all notion of the existence of an Investigative Judgment taking place at all. But does our confusion and misunderstandings about the nature of such a potential activity give us enough reason to reject it outright? Or is it our skewed pictures of God and our mistaken applications of revealed facts from the wrong spirit the real problem that needs to be corrected instead of throwing out the whole concept of such a judgment process?

We need to keep in mind that just because we don't like the sounds of certain ideas, that does not qualify us to pass judgment ourselves or allow us to determine what should be true or false. It is far too easy to begin to form a picture of God into our own image instead of seeking to know more clearly the real truths about reality as God designed it to start with. As soon as we begin moving down the road of formulating religion based on our preferences or preconceptions, we have inverted our proper relationship with God and are trying to create religion on our own. But it is important to understand that this can happen just as easily with conservatives as it can with liberals.

I believe that it is important to grapple with truth and not be afraid to continually reexamine our assumptions. In fact, I think it is much more than just important – it is vital to having an honest relationship with the God of all truth. It is only from a position of humility and willingness to admit that our most cherished doctrines may be in need of re-visitation at times that we will be capable of embracing extended truths as God brings them within our reach. I know of many who feel very threatened by new ideas or challenges to their assumptions and take such a defensive stance that not even God can break through their stubbornness. But instead of becoming “rooted and grounded” in real truth as they suppose they are doing, they are simply becoming stuck in truth as it has been perceived at a certain point in time while refusing to move along with the ever transforming revelations of truth as God designed we should.

When we become entrenched in a certain philosophy of what we insist is truth and refuse to see it in any new ways, we then turn facts and assumptions into traditions and become cemented in our opinions instead of being willing to grow up into the full measure of Christ. Christianity is made up of many just such demonstrations of this mentality. It is so easy to become inflexible in our opinions about truth and turn them into traditions instead of taking steps beyond our comfort zones to a deeper understanding of the truth about reality. But this is primarily due to the fear that fills our minds.

We are far too dependent on fear to protect us from being deceived. There certainly is a great danger from deception for we live in a world filled with the atmosphere of deadly deceptions produced by the myriad lies of Satan. But depending on fear to keep us from deceptions is a deception itself. God never instructed us to depend on fear to help us come to a greater knowledge of truth. This is a very dangerous assumption on our part but is very pervasive in our thinking. But the Bible very clearly declares that love and fear are exclusive opposites. And since God is love, then to live dependent on fear to keep us in truth or even guide us to truth becomes an oxymoron.

The reason I bring this up is because this teaching of an Investigative Judgment as well as common teachings about the intercession of Jesus for us has been intensely shrouded with an atmosphere of fear for most people. And because this fear itself is seldom identified as the real root of our problems in understanding these things, it has been allowed to remain in place which in turn has distorted very seriously our ability to comprehend the real purpose and nature of Christ's intercession. Until this fear itself is addressed and exposed for the fraud that it really is, we will not be able to have our eyes opened sufficiently to perceive the real purpose and role of Jesus' intercession for us.

As I pointed out last time, some very fundamental beliefs must be set into place as a foundation if we are to approach these subjects in a clearer way and see their true beauty and importance for us. One of those foundational truths is that Jesus and the Father are one in spirit, opinion and perspective towards us. Therefore, anything that in any way attempts to undermine that clear fact must immediately become suspect and be challenged vigorously.

As a result, if this fact is viewed as foundational, then any notion or activity assumed to be taking place where Jesus needs to change God's mind about anything becomes a mute point. Jesus cannot be in the business of changing God's mind if the mind of God is already perfectly in harmony with each member of the Godhead which includes Jesus. But as soon as this truth is embraced it creates serious problems about many other assumptions that have gone unchallenged in our typical notions about an Investigative Judgment as well as the role of Jesus in dying for us on the cross. For it is not only those who are trying to defend the idea of an Investigative Judgment that need to rethink their assumptions but nearly all Christians have to reexamine their popular ideas of Jesus dying in our place to protect us from an angry God eager to punish those who have sinned.

These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; an hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but will tell you plainly of the Father. In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father. (John 16:25-27)

Without an Intercessor - 1

2009-03-09T09:57:00.000-05:00

So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows. Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 10:31-33)

For a number of years now I have been revising my thinking about the role of Jesus as our intercessor. There is a statement that has been the source of deep terror for many people that states that there is coming a time when we must live without an intercessor before the Father. And this is to take place before the Second Coming of Jesus.

This statement has been one of the most solid foundation blocks of those who insist on the doctrine and philosophy of perfectionism. I grew up in this ideology and this perception of religion was a deep source of fear and apprehension for me for many years. It fueled my terror of the last day events which were often dwelt upon by others for that very purpose. It was assumed by many that dwelling on this kind of fearful foreboding of the future would inspire enough terror in the heart to cause people to let go of all the sins in their lives and thus achieve absolute perfection somehow so that they would not be lost when Jesus comes.

This belief system is all too alive and well right now in various forms and its proponents are becoming even more vocal and strident in their broadcasting of this false gospel. The reason that I call this a false gospel is because the very word “gospel” literally means good news. But in all the years that I lived under this illusion of believing that it was my job to perfect myself in order to please God and get into heaven, I could never figure out what part of this ideology was supposed to be good news. Everywhere I turned and everything I heard sounded like warnings and fear and terror, not good news that would make me feel excited or even loving toward God as I was supposed to feel.

Over the past few years it has become very plain to me that nearly every aspect of these kinds of teachings are fraught with subtle but dangerous assumptions and paradigms that lend them ineffective for changing the heart in the way that needs to happen to prepare us to live in the presence of God. I could spend a great deal of time covering each item of this that is mistaken, but the most blatant and damaging part of it all is that it is based fundamentally on fear itself as the primary motivation for serving God. To suggest that somehow love was supposed to emerge from this miasma of confused thinking about God only added to my frustration, but that was also supposed to be somewhere there in the mix as well. That too confused me deeply as I was keenly aware of my inability to really love God while at the same time being increasingly terrified of the consequences of not doing so perfectly – and from the heart no less.

But I still believe that the basic facts buried underneath all these false teachings based on fear are still valid. Just because legalists and extremists and even liberals have hijacked and misappropriated nearly every religious word and phrase does not mean that they are no longer applicable for our lives. It simply means that we need the presence of the Holy Spirit and humility and patience to begin to untangle all the lies and fears that have blinded us for so long and we need to begin to discern the amazing beauty of real truth buried deep under the rubbish of false perceptions of God that fill our imaginations.

I have spent enough years now having my lies unlocked, exposed and slowly replaced with valid truth that I feel I am entering a new phase of life, a very exciting and energizing phase where I can begin to experience the strength of the joy of the Lord. As the truth about God becomes more and more clear to my heart I come into more awe and can feel genuine responses of spontaneous love emerging from my heart and emotions, something that was unimaginable only a few years ago.

There are still many pockets of residual misconceptions that keep emerging in my thinking that I need to address each time they show up. But I do not do this in a spirit of hostility as I have sensed in many people who have left my church and become deeply embittered against everything they formerly believed. I find that spirit to be just as dangerous and lethal to my relationship with God as the legalism from which I am slowly emerging. I have to guard myself from much exposure to either kind of thinking and keep my imagination focused on the real truth about God that He has been revealing to me over the past few years and continues to do daily. But as this increasing light exposes yet more of my pain and confusion embedded from false teachings and assumptions about Him, I am eager to have Him show me the real truth about the original basic facts that remain unaffected by the false assumptions and teachings that so long darkened my understanding about their implications.

I still strongly believe that there are urgent warnings that need to be heeded in preparing us to meet our God. The fanatics on the one hand try to frighten us with dark views of a God waiting and eager to punish all who fail to measure up to certain performance standards. The extremists on the other side of the fence usually push people to think that God is so loving and fickle and full of so-called grace that all we have to do is immerse ourselves in a feel-good religion and say some “magic” words in a sinners prayer and “accept Jesus into our heart” (whatever that happens to mean) and we have nothing more to be concerned about.

But what I am starting to see more clearly in this issue of living with or without an intercessor is not so much fear or cheap grace either one; what I am now seeing is the reality of the fundamental purpose and function of the intercession of Jesus in the first place. And as I perceive the true nature of intercession itself I find it is one of those areas that is very liberating for my heart.

My new and growing awareness about the immense danger of God's passionate love for us precludes me from believing in such dangerous philosophies as proposed by many protestants even as the legalism of my past was equally dangerous. It will be fatal to believe that we can be safe in the day of judgment (full revelation of God's power and passion) while failing to have our hearts in perfect synchronization with the pure and unselfish love of the Father. But this is precisely where both sides of the debate fail miserably. They both fail to comprehend in the slightest both the real truth about love and the real feelings that God has for us. They do not perceive the enormous potential of both life and death in the presence of unspeakable glory and power because of the lies that skew their perceptions of the real attitude and passion of God, and particularly on the part of the Father.

Because of the many misunderstandings and false teachings about God from both sides of the isle, it is nearly impossible to approach the subject of intercession and carry on an intelligent, useful conversation about the subject without first addressing the many false beliefs about God that drive the agendas of those involved. But once the fog begins to clear away to some degree about God's real attitude and disposition towards His children, then real progress can start to be made in understanding the true purpose of Jesus' work of intercession before the Father in relation to us.

I believe that the most important fact to establish before anything else about this issue can even begin to make real sense is Jesus explicit statement, "I and the Father are one." (John 10:30) Jesus made this even more clear when He was sharing the same truth with the disciples just before He died for us.

If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.... He who has seen Me has seen the Father... "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.... (John 14:7, 9-11)

This is one belief that seems to me to be irreconcilable with the assumptions underlying the fear-based teachings about Jesus as our intercessor before God. I was never able to make sense of these two ideas until my picture of the Father was radically transformed and replaced by the real truth about Him only in the past few years. Then it began to dawn on me that my confusion was rooted in my long-held concepts of God the Father as one who really didn't like me and wasn't real keen on my getting into heaven. At the same time, Jesus was supposedly working very hard to convince Him that I could be trusted to behave if He would let me in – that is, if I was able to perfect my character enough with a lot of help from God. That involved stopping all sinning and getting all past sins forgiven as well. I know it was never stated in those terms, but that was the general gist of the beliefs. This perception in one form or another with slight variations lies at the heart of most conservative Christianity today and even permeates most all other religions as well to some degree.

But this scenario becomes impossible when it is established that Jesus actually meant what He said in the above verses. If the attitude and beliefs and thinking of Jesus are exactly the same as the Father's, it simply becomes ludicrous to try to think that Jesus has to somehow change God's mind about us. That point must become very clear and must be accepted as solid truth or the discussion cannot proceed any further with any reasonable expectation of making sense. This is the foundation upon which everything else about this subject must rest if it is to bring us out of darkness.

Very closely parallel to this is the intense fear and agitation surrounding the teaching about an Investigative Judgment that is believed by many to be taking place right now in the courts of heaven. This hotly debated concept is believed to be a prerequisite before Jesus can be allowed to return to this earth and reclaim the saved who are waiting for Him. This judgment is assumed to be for the purpose of determining who is good enough to be saved and who is going to be lost. Again, the underlying assumptions and beliefs that distort every aspect of these doctrines cause confusion and fear in millions of hearts unnecessarily. But at the same time there are core truths that are usually discarded and ignored by those who vehemently oppose such teachings. Both sides are clouded in false assumptions about God that endanger their souls from being properly aligned with the Spirit of God in preparation to encounter the dangerous revelation of God's passionate love.

As I began thinking about this and praying for clearer insight, a number of texts came to my mind. I want to ponder them carefully to discover the real meanings and significance of their relevance to this subject that has tortured me for so long, but is now becoming a source of real hope for me. But since this is getting too long already I am going to leave that for another installment while I listen to what God may have to say to my heart about these things.

Codes

2009-03-02T06:51:00.001-06:00

Codes. Secret Codes. Mysterious codes. I can remember growing up and sometimes being fascinated with deciphering secret codes and even trying to invent codes by which to communicate with my friends cryptically. The biggest problem that I quickly ran into was the lack of any really important information to pass on to them that might need a code to mask it. So what quickly developed was an air of mystery created by the code itself. We wanted to be obvious enough in our use of coded symbols, numbers or letters so that people would notice we were communicating in code to make them very curious. We hoped that they might want to try to crack our code to find out our “top secret” information.

I suppose my greatest disappointment and what lead to the rather quick demise of our use of codes was the lack of interest by anyone else in what we were doing. No one got suspicious of what we were trying to communicate in our codes and so we gave them up rather quickly for something more rewarding.

A few minutes ago I sent off an email with some attached files. As I pondered what those files likely would look like if one were to simply open them with a note editor, I realized that they would make no sense at all in any text programs. They are likely just a bunch of gibberish that would look like trash to most people and indeed that would be their only use if one did not have the proper software and even the right version of that software to decode those digital files.

Even further, those files even when opened with a text editor that couldn't read them would still appear to make more sense than the actual content would appear at a more basic level. Those files are entirely made up of what computer geeks call binary language or simply 1's and 0's. But even to say that is not to get at the bottom of the codes used to encrypt these files. The format used to create the concept of binary language can be found in many physical forms. They may be electrical signals passing over wires or through the air. They may be subtle electronic differences on the surface of a computer disc or in a flash drive. They may even be slight differences in how light is reflected off of the media impregnated in a CD.

Our lives are filled and surrounded with codes of all sorts. Even the very words that we use in print and spoken words are all just codes for meanings and opinions about those sounds or hieroglyphs. If these hidden meanings are different between the people attempting to communicate to a significant degree, then the level of effective communication is seriously diminished. The only way that any of us can convey or receive a sense of what we want to share is greatly dependent our our agreed-upon assumptions about what our codes mean. And even then we can never really be sure that our interpretation is the same as that assumed by another mind.

Thinking about this very long can leave one feeling bewildered at best and can even drive you to distraction if you are not careful. But at the same time I think it is very healthy and helpful to explore the benefits and problems associated with trying to deal in symbols and codes. Our minds as well as our emotions are pre-wired to function in codes and to want to understand other codes. Our sense of curiosity was embedded in our minds to explore and seek to understand codes and languages as much as possible in order to feel better connected at the heart level to other beings that we want to relate to in a deeper, more meaningful way. And by a deeper level I mean any level at all beyond total ignorance and lack of contact whatsoever.

This problem of learning to decipher codes of all sorts becomes very evident in millions of ways. Consider the enormous challenge of trying to establish a new form of codes to communicate with someone whose brain or various communication senses have been severely limited. And yet we know examples of amazing breakthroughs by people who were persistent enough to sometimes spend years attempting to communicate with such people until both minds learned to connect in whatever ways proved to be successful. Even communication with animals is a fascination by some people. I have a very compelling book about a man who has spent years learning how to effectively communicate with whales and other sea creatures with very inspiring results. Another story of the man who talks easily with horses and even deer has made a deep impact of my own life.

One reason that I feel it is very helpful to think about this is to come into more sympathy with God's problem of attempting to communicate with us. Even though He originally created our brains and understands perfectly everything about how we function, sin has wreaked a great amount of havoc on the communication systems and decoding apparatus originally built into us and much of what we originally were designed to do to communicate freely with other beings and even with nature has become severely limited and handicapped.

I am convinced that there are at least a number of capabilities that have been lost or nearly lost altogether over the centuries with only traces of them still to be found in a few people. Because of the rarity of these residual communication techniques most people become very frightened even considering that they might be valid ways to communicate. I also believe that as this has happened that demons have exploited some of these original faculties and have more or less hijacked them for their uses more than for normal communications between humans. Thus there becomes a danger associated with some forms of communication that needs to be in our consciousness, though there is a lot of superstition that goes far past healthy caution and inflames undo fear in many people.

Learning to decode and figure out patterns that may be trying to tell us something seems to be one of the fascinations of the left brain. The left brain is very formula oriented and as such delights in looking for codes to decipher. But one of the greatest hindrances to establishing real and effective communication between many people is the suppression and even ignorance of the central importance of communicating with our heart as well as learning to live from our heart in a healthy way.

Some people have come to believe – and I think I agree to a great extent – that one of the most damaging and limiting things that happened to the human race when sin entered in and infected our thinking and abilities, is that our mind – our intellectual part, and our heart – our emotional and spiritual part, became disconnected in a very destructive way. When sin infected our thinking and feeling, we ended up experiencing conflict between the two sides of our brains. Indeed, this tension between what our right brain believes with its feelings and what our left brain believes with its factual logic is actually the feeling that the Bible calls guilt or condemnation.

Guilt and condemnation are not things imposed on us by God. They are simply descriptions of the very uncomfortable feeling we experience when we are out of sync with ourselves as well as others around us. It is the pain and tension from disharmony itself that creates most of the problems that we in turn blame God for inflicting on us even though that is not directly true. But the many ideas offered to fix this problem can become very dangerous if they only tend to exacerbate it instead of bringing us back into harmony and synchronization with the One who designed us to live in open and joyful bonding with His heart of perfect love.

We are designed to crave and thrive on love. This is the fuel that we were designed for and nothing else is going to make us function well except the original thing. Sin has offered all kinds of substitutes for this original love fuel for our hearts but all with damaging results. Our power is greatly diminished, our effectiveness is limited, our ability to think, to feel and to bond is greatly hampered because we are so often trying to operate our system on alternate fuels that promise to improve our performance but only add to our misery in the end.

The problem with all of the alternatives of sin is that they never allow us to understand the original codes of heaven. God created us to function and communicate using the language codes that would synchronize us with the rest of the universe effectively. But we lost much of our ability to understand that code when sin came in and scrambled the code itself. Now much of the code of heaven gives us mixed messages both in nature and in the lives of those around us. All of this has become infected with the virus of sin that creates great confusion and mixed messages about the God who created it all to start with.

But God has a plan in place to redeem us from this hopeless situation if we allow Him to place a presence in our heart that will train us to relearn the original codes of heaven. But the real issue that must be understood if we are to enjoy this heavenly decoder is that it must reside primarily in our heart and be allowed access to both our emotions and our logic. If it is not allowed to have wiring access to both sides of our brains, then sin's viruses may confuse us so much from either side of our hemispheres that we will come to believe that the decoder itself is mixed up and fail to allow it to fully do its work.

The decoder of heaven is the presence of Jesus in the form of the Holy Spirit that is the decoding agent of heaven sent to all who are humble enough to embrace it's presence and allow it full access to their lives. But it is extremely important to be willing to give that Spirit access to the plug-in terminals inside of us that it needs to begin rewiring and re-programming our whole operating systems. Those terminals are located in our heart where the most pain happens to be keeping us from wanting anyone to come anywhere near it. But unless we are willing to trust God with our pain, our confusion and our fears and let Him expose the lies that we are so sure are solid truth, He will never be able to accomplish the necessary transformations and repairs needed to live in open communication with the languages of heaven.

Father, I want you to fill me with the presence of your Spirit right now. I give you unlimited permission to access all parts of my being, my heart, my brain and my core sense of identity. Transform me into the likeness of the original design you desire for me to be. Teach both my heart and my mind to understand the real meanings of the words you have used to communicate your messages to this earth. Fill me with more insight and wisdom through your Interpreter, the Spirit of Truth that Jesus promised to send to everyone willing to receive it.

Thank-you for hearing my request and for eagerly providing far more than I can ever ask for or even imagine is possible. Make me a better communicator of your love through more of my capabilities than I have used before. Restore and heal the faculties of my mind and body that still confuse others and even myself with confusing codes that still are damaged from sin. Let your love glow more clearly from my face, from my body language and from my voice. Let your glory be more clearly exposed through your presence dwelling in my heart – for your reputation's sake.

A Problem of Good

2009-03-01T08:17:00.001-06:00

Possibly one of the most difficult temptations to discern are desires to do something really nice. I am just starting to recognize this temptation more clearly even though it has been one that has tripped me up repeatedly for many years.

Yes, I know it sounds strange to place a desire to do something nice or good in the category of being a temptation which can lead me into a state of sin. But that is precisely why it is so difficult to discern and relate to properly – because it comes in such a way as to appear to be already something good and therefore I have no need to suspect any evil might come of it. It is so easy to just indulge in it without thinking about it, believing that I can trust the good nature that God has been developing in me over the years. But therein lies the very trap of which I speak.

Now, don't get cynical and think that I am saying that I shouldn't ever do anything nice for anyone or follow my impulses to bless others. That is simplistic thinking and is actually part of the very reasoning that has been my own downfall all this time. The subtlety of this temptation is so deceptive that it needs careful examination to realize the inherent danger in something that appears so patently safe going into it. It is the very fact that a desire or impulse seems so benign as to not illicit feelings of apprehension that gives this type of temptation so much effectiveness.

This was brought to my attention this morning before I once again fell all the way into a slippery trap of yet another one of these little weasels. I was sitting here thinking about something exciting that I had asked someone else to do for me yesterday to make them feel special. As I was sitting here contemplating how nice this could all work out, I felt the quiet conviction of the Holy Spirit asking me if I had checked with Him on this matter. As a result I began to become aware that this could easily slip into yet another one of those frustrating episodes of chagrin that are all too familiar to me, ones where I suddenly discover that things don't work out the way my original motives desire.

I am all too familiar with the terrible results of this trap that is subtly designed to humiliate me, to embarrass me and even to destroy tragically very tender relationships with important people in my life. Of course I can seldom see the dark side of this trap until it is too late and then I usually find myself in a very defensive posture trying to explain my motives to a disbelieving and skeptical crowd. At that point it is very easy to move into anger and resentment which then tempts me to vow I will never ever do something nice like that again to avoid getting into yet another nasty situation that causes me so much pain.

But then I always end up having to repent of that kind of thinking because it stands as a block against doing many of the things that God's Spirit wants to prompt me to do legitimately. So I end up with more painful callouses and memories that haunt me in my collection called Hall of Shame. This has been a source of life-long frustration for me at best and I have puzzled many times as to the loop-hole that Satan accesses in me to keep getting me into these situations.

When I am coming up on the approach side of these circumstances I so often seem blind to any danger signs warning me that there could be inappropriate situations ahead that will cause consequences I don't want. Others seem impatient with me and believe that I am just very dense or stubborn or even in denial to what to them seems like the obvious. But when I consider looking at the situation through their reasons for apprehension I am always put off by the large amount of fear and tradition and even seeming insensitivity that I perceive in their logic. I feel that because they do not appreciate the values that I have for people's feelings and heart needs that they are simply playing it safe and in the process become hardened in their own hearts to the needs of those around them.

Even as I write this I can physically feel the intensity of these defensive emotions swelling up in my chest as I remember various times when I have felt very defensive and misunderstood by everyone around me. I feel betrayed, maligned, shamed and attacked. This is all part of the typical scenario that plays itself out over and over each time this little demon catches me in its cycle of deception. And while I still cannot embrace the reasonings of those who think I am just stupid to fall into what seems to be obvious traps to them, I do want to uncover the real reasons that cause me to find myself repeatedly getting sucked into this nasty pit.

As I began unpacking this over the past few minutes a story came to my mind of someone in the Bible who got caught by the very same demonic trap that specializes in this type of nasty behavior. This Bible character was one of the most respected leaders of God's people and was used by God mightily to accomplish many amazing feats of victory. And yet because he acted on good impulses very much like I have done many times, he found himself in the very same hole of intense criticism, embarrassment and shame that has ended up becoming a part of his reputation for thousands of years afterward.

Since the stories in the Bible were given for our benefit and training, I know that I will very likely find important insights as to the real nature of my blind spots in this area. But I also sense that I need to look much deeper than the simplistic obvious explanations of this story if I am going to find important keys to help me repair whatever it is that keeps getting me into this sand trap.

The story of this ancient encounter is found in chapter nine of Joshua. It is a very familiar story with a seemingly obvious punch line. I just took time to read the whole story and understand that some of the details do not necessarily apply to all of my situations. But the core principle of the lesson of this story does apply very much should be of use for me to apply to my own habits of reasoning. I am also sure that God will remind me of this story over time and continue to impress me with more points that need to be incorporated into my mental early warning system.

One of the main points that is very easy to miss in this story that has come to my attention is what I have previously called the “Elijah syndrome”. It is the great but very hidden danger that a person nearly always finds themselves in after having experienced very rich and exciting times participating in some of God's dramatic exhibitions of power. I have noticed over the years that this is a pattern that is repeated much more than many people are aware of and causes a lot more problems than most suspect. It is one of the most subtle forms of temptation because it approaches us when we feel the most invincible and are enjoying the presence of God at levels that we are seldom privileged to experience. These problem do not always necessarily happen on the heels of intense encounters with God's obvious presence, but the common theme is often a sense of security and peace in knowing that we are in sync with God which can create this most subtle situation of vulnerability that I am looking to expose.

Now, the knee-jerk reaction of typical solution-based religion might be to simply avoid feeling high on God, to believe that allowing emotions themselves to overwhelm us in the presence of God is in itself a mistake to be avoided at all times. This is the tack that I was taught for many years. But long ago I rejected that defensive position because I found it to be a major obstacle to having my heart connect effectively with the heart of God. I have come to see this belief as one of the pillars of legalism which has been a terrible curse for most of my life and has kept me from enjoying intimacy with God that I now see as the central focus of all true spirituality.

I have not changed my mind at all in my opinion about this false approach for avoiding this temptation. I don't think that Elijah should have avoided having his emotions aroused on Mount Carmel or that Joshua should have been dead-pan about the wonderful experiences he had just come through with Jericho and Ai. No, I completely reject a religion that condemns the full participation of our emotions. To the contrary, I believe that a religion that refuses emotions their proper place is a counterfeit religion to be shunned as much as other false doctrines. But that is a peripheral issue at this time even though some would like to make it the main issue.

I believe that a religion that bans the full participation of our emotions is a religion that also bans the involvement of our heart. And since the only true religion that makes a real saving difference in our life is a heart-based religion, then I am committed to a pursuit of knowing God with all of my heart and emotions along with my intellect and every other part of my being as God said we should. But at the same time I need to become aware of how Satan manipulates my emotions to create this loop-hole through which he gets access to my heart and causes me to be deceived by these kinds of subtle temptations just as Joshua got caught in.

My Eyes Are On You

2009-02-28T05:08:00.000-06:00

I am still dealing with the swirling emotions inside related to a number of situations. But what I am aware of is that the real issue has little to do with the current situations and much more to do with deep, unresolved issues from long ago that still haunt me and dictate far too much of my current feelings and reactions.

Much of the information that I have been blessed with over the past years about healing of damaged emotions, freedom from internal embedded lies and the real truth about forgiveness and about God's feelings toward me are all coming into play in addressing my sensations of current re-ignition of old fires. But at the same time I am feeling somewhat a sense of confusion, or maybe more along the lines of a loss of perspective. I feel the increasing need for others to remind me of who I really am – except that I have serious doubts as to whether anyone really does know who I really am.

One thing that keeps coming back to my attention is the issue of forgiveness. As I was thinking about forgiveness a couple days ago in reference to my current repeated temptations to indulge in feelings of anger and bitterness toward those who are acting wickedly, the distinct realization came to me that forgiveness is very much like dying. The more that I sense the real truth about forgiveness the more it resembles in many respects a choice to die. I suspect that this is maybe why Jesus talked so much about dying to self if we ever want to enjoy real life as it was designed for us.

This also confirms for me that the typical notions about forgiveness are seriously off track. Most of peoples assumptions about forgiveness do not go anywhere near causing one to feel like they are dying. Many of them feel much more like engaging in a very long-term intense effort to suppress feelings of resentment, rage and desires for revenge. Because pseudo-forgiveness does not get rid of the original cause for the internal pain we suffer emotionally, we end up having to continue to deal with that pain over and over again and get very discouraged thinking that this whole notion of forgiveness may be just a mistaken idea that doesn't really change anything.

But I have been exposed to much clearer insights about the real truth of forgiveness that have caused me to shudder at its intensity to its similarity to death. Real forgiveness is far more sobering than the false concepts of forgiveness and makes a person reevaluate and take stock if they really want to do this or not. It forces a person to tally up the pros and cons of whether this is going to be worth the risk involved, whether this is going to produce a decent return on the investment made in ways that we often don't take into account.

This accounting and evaluation of whether real forgiveness is worth investing in will be heavily weighted and influenced by what we believe about the value and truthfulness of Jesus' assessments of the factors involved. If we come to decide that forgiveness is worth the high risk involved, it is only going to happen if we can come to believe that we can trust God's viewpoint about the risks and benefits that He says play into the decision long-term. Because in our own experience the benefits are sometimes not seen at all in some situations and are delayed uncomfortably in many others.

So it seems from this perspective that to take the risk of choosing to forgive someone that we first have to have a certain amount of trust in the integrity of the God who tells us that this is the only real option we have if we want to live in true freedom and enjoy life. Of course this is the same God who also tells us that if we want to save our life we have to be willing to let go of it; all those who try to keep their life will end up losing it. This all sort of has a similar ring to it as the issues I am starting to see in forgiveness.

I keep finding myself going back to the parable of the debtor in Matthew 18 where I learned the most stunning truth about forgiveness a number of years ago. I keep reflecting on the implications embedded in this story and consider how they relate to other stories by Jesus about forgiveness and related issues.

The original creditor in this story chose to forgive the astoundingly enormous debt by the first debtor – 150,000 years of normal wages! We tend to focus on the size of the debt as well as the cluelessness of the debtor to seemingly comprehend the gravity of his situation as demonstrated by his actions soon afterward. But I am drawn to consider the situation of the first person in this story, the master who forgave this enormous debt to start with because, it says, he had compassion.

It occurs to me that the loss that was incurred by the master is seldom very seriously considered in this story. We almost take for granted that it should have been somehow easy for him to just offer this forgiveness. Maybe we think that we was so incredibly rich that he might not really be affected by this write-off of this incredible debt. But that is not necessarily true. Because the size of this debt is so staggering, I think that we tend to gloss over the cost that was involved for the master to simply write it off and give up his right to collect on this debt.

It is this point right here where I am beginning to see the connection with death being closely linked with forgiveness. By relinquishing his right to collect on the debt, this master had to of experienced something very similar to death himself. If someone owed me that kind of money – well, I really can't even relate to how much money that really means. I guess this would somehow need to be put in a context that would make more sense emotionally to me.

This is the part of the story that I sense I must connect with for it to have its intended effect. Until I can begin to really sense and appreciate how much it really cost the master to forgive this level of debt that was legitimately owed to him, I cannot begin to really appreciate the intensity of that kind of forgiveness.

I suppose that the reason Jesus used this figure and put it into monetary language was to attempt to make it relevant so that we could begin to sense the value that God gave up in order to offer forgiveness to us. Saying that the debt was this size in terms of wages is trying to connect us to the fact that it is something extremely valuable involved here, something of unimaginable worth, something very costly to the original owner that had to be relinquished in exchange for settling the account that prevented these two people from being able to have a good relationship.

This master did not just temporarily suspend the debt for this debtor and then later re-institute it as most people assume when they read this story. There is not the slightest hint that the debt was ever re-imposed by the master. In fact, in the story it states very clearly twice that the debt was forgiven. This infers that the master had officially given up all rights permanently to ever collect on this debt again; he had literally died, so to speak, to his rights to collect or hold this account open against the debtor. This was an irreversible decision on his part but was taken by his own free choice with full knowledge of the enormous risk and loss that would be involved.

Compassion is the key element here that maybe lies at the root of part of my problem struggling with my own need to forgive. And I suspect that it also betrays the real reason that the debtor in this story seemed to have such a problem himself learning how to properly relate to those who were in debt to him. This element of compassion somehow baffles me and even frightens me in a way. I used to think that I had a lot of compassion inside of me, but now I sense that my compassion may actually be something else, more of a self-serving sympathy for only selected people whom I think may deserve getting a break from me. Or worse yet, it may be subconscious manipulative way for me to get others to appreciate and love me more.

The deeper I get into pondering this problem the more uneasy I am feeling. If what I am sensing is true, I am finding myself closer and closer to having to identify myself in this story with the ungrateful debtor who seemed unable to feel real compassion for those who owed him instead of being able to identify with the master who was able to so apparently quickly forgive a debt that I can't even wrap my mind around.

And that is really where I am starting to see that my own problem lies. I really am too much like the debtor who seemed clueless as to the enormity of his debt. Just like Simon at the feast where Mary anointed Jesus' feet, I find myself unable to see myself as the greater debtor weighted under an unthinkable debt toward God needing enormous amounts of forgiveness. To be really honest, I have never been able to identify very well with people who talk about our immense level of debt toward a God who provides us with life and blessings and grace all the time with very little in return. Yes, intellectually I can assent to that theory, but my heart does not buy into it yet. I really am an ungrateful debtor and I am getting more exposed as such all the time.

Maybe this is part of my rage problem. Oh no. Here we go on another discomforting insight that I wasn't expecting. It just became obvious to me that this debtor who was clueless about the size and impossibility of paying off his own debt displayed these very symptoms of rage and resentment against those who owed him. I suspect that these two things go together inseparably. My ignorance of just how much debt I owe is betrayed by how much struggle I find myself in trying to forgive someone else who has created a debt in me.

But I really don't see the answer for my problem very well yet. And that itself is quite frightening to me. I have always been amazed in this story of how this debtor could act so callously toward another person after just having such an enormous debt paid off from his account. But now I find myself in that very situation and am amazed at my own lack of ability to sense the same thing that I feel critical about in this debtor. That insight certainly doesn't leave me with warm fuzzies. That means that if I can't figure out how to have my perception changed about my own situation and whatever debt I have incurred that is so big, I am very likely to continue to live and relate to others the way this debtor did. And after reading the end of the story I really don't like that option in the least.

So far I can't detect any clues in this story as to how this ungrateful debtor was supposed to be able to change his perception of his own attitude and situation other than living under torture and in prison until he was willing to wake up to the option of freedom implied in the directions given to him near the end. But I really don't like that part of the story either, especially as I am seeing myself very much in his shoes right now. I don't know of anyone who thinks that being tortured in prison is something to look forward to. In fact, I rather suspect that this would only cause me to become even more angry, resentful and bitter. Given treatment like that I am afraid that I would melt into a ball of uncontrollable rage and hatred – which is generally the fuel that torturers love to feed off of and intensifies their delight. I really don't like where this story is taking me now.

I must find freedom from this rage and bitterness and hatred that is holding my soul hostage. It has affected me for most of my life, and even though it has not been very noticeable, at least not very often publicly, it has remained hidden deep in my subconscious memories and emotional psyche. I have felt its flames emerge at different times to torture me and cause me embarrassment occasionally and have had to be very careful to not burn others with its acid bitterness. But I am becoming increasingly aware of it over the past few days and sense that God is wanting to take me on a healing journey that is going to be way out of my comfort zone very soon.

I am not sure how to prepare myself for this trip. I have been feeding my mind with large doses of truth about God's love over the past few weeks and I wonder if that is not part of what is precipitating some of this happening right now. I wonder if I have been given enough soul training for the past few years that I am now prepared subconsciously to engage in an experience that will max out my ability to cope with old traumas so big that they will require a very large joy-bucket to handle them. Those familiar with some of the things I have been learning about the brain from James Wilder will know what this means.

Whatever is happening, I have to cling very hard to what I have been learning about the goodness and faithfulness of God to get through what I sense is starting to happen in my life. I am feeling more and more out of control and that is frightening to me. At the same time I almost feel a little sense of relief that maybe I am finally starting to really grow in some areas that have been deeply stuck nearly all of my life. One thing is very certain – I do not feel capable of facing this alone. I feel very inadequate to survive the trauma that I fear I am going to have to face as I experience eruptions from this deep cauldron deep in my psyche that has simmered for many years out of sight.

Part of my deep fears about this is that my reputation is likely to be seriously damaged at best. I am frightened at what people will think about me when they see feelings and attitudes and outbursts that are totally unlike anything they have ever seen before if they happen to occur during my healing process. I am also afraid that if this were to happen then God's reputation could be seriously damaged as well after all the things I have talked about. People may assume that I am supposed to be a demonstration of all the good things that I have been learning about what God is like. People might feel good reason to question whether God is really capable of changing a person who suddenly seems to be falling apart in the wrong directions as old garbage begins to spill out into the open. And even though that may or may not be part of what is seen in public, I suspect that at least part of this is going to be required for me to get the deep healing that must take place if I am to really move on from this wilderness I have been circling in for about forty years.

Now isn't that uncanny. I never thought of that before. I have spent very close to forty years stuck in this trap of internal, unresolved rage about things I have never even understood myself. Just like the children of Israel in the wilderness I have been learning and practicing and processing all sorts of things about truth and principles and experiences with God, but I still feel like I have not crossed over into a better land yet.

And maybe that is the best news about this that I have detected yet. Maybe God is about to show me a much better land flowing with good things that I have only hoped to imagine before. Maybe as I die to self and pass through a flooded obstacle, a river full of danger, hopelessness and fear, that through the miracle of God's providence and His resurrection power I may come out the other side to begin a life of miracles and conquests in which I can watch God knock down invincible walls of resistance and allow Him to drive out all the enemies in a land that He has promised for me.

I am choosing to trust Him in this. I really don't know how to progress from here. I do sense that I must make daily choices that will align me with His impressions about forgiveness to the best of my ability. He will have to provide the motivations, the feelings, the awareness of my enormous incurred debt with Him and the compassion that I need toward those who have incurred debt with me. He is the only source for all of these things that I so desperately need. So, like Jehoshaphat who was faced with overwhelming odds and very real threats to his very existence, I say with him – I don't know what to do but my eyes are on You.

Rage and Healing

2009-02-26T09:13:00.002-06:00

I woke up before 3 A.M. this morning and couldn't go back to sleep for awhile because my brain wanted to think about the events happening currently in the life of someone I care about deeply. The amount of abuse and injustice that he has been suffering for nearly a year now has taken him close to the point of death until he felt he could take it no longer. As a result he felt compelled to cave in to the demands of the corrupt judges who were instigating and promoting his physical and psychological torture just so he could continue to have some semblance of life left.

As I have watched this situation intensify over the past few months I have repeatedly struggled with feelings of anger, resentment, rage and deep desires for revenge against the evil men and even women involved in this case. But at the same time I also felt strong warnings from the Holy Spirit in my mind reminding me of the consequences of indulging in those kinds of feelings and imaginations. There have been many times that I have simply had to force myself to stop thinking about it to avoid become overcome with rage and hatred that I knew would become a source of regret and weakness for me very quickly.

Over the past two weeks the persecution has intensified for my friend. Even though he had not even so much as had a trial and had been refused opportunity to even be heard properly in a court of so-called law, he was thrown into a cell designed for the most hardened and dangerous criminals without any spare clothes. He had been stripped of even the bare necessities that he have been able to acquire through his long stay in prison and was only able to grab his Bible before they put him into solitary confinement under the highest level of security. And this is a gentle man who was not long ago voted as the teacher of the year and nominated for the national title as well. Nothing has changed about him except that he found himself the object of focus by a system so full of corruption that it feels threatened by any revelations of truth.

While held in this new oppression for the past two weeks he was harshly interrogated at length even though he was not even accused of any crimes remotely related to such treatment. He was fed through a slot in the door as if he were a dangerous wild beast and was even being deprived of many things he needed to survive physically without the outright taking of his life by execution. And all of this is taking place in this land that we call free and just.

Because of all these prolonged and deliberate intense attacks on his life by people claiming to supposedly uphold and protect the freedoms of all Americans, he finally gave in yesterday to let them have whatever they wanted in a plea bargain arrangement. He realized that there was no hope of them ever facing the truth that he has been insisting on over the past year and that all they wanted to do was to protect their cover of deception keeping the truth about their own corruption from becoming public even if it might cost the life of an innocent man.

There is much more to this story that I don't even know about myself yet – the horrors of prison life, the screaming guards who insulted him daily at times about things totally out of his control, the nutritional starvation imposed on him, the psychological abuse focused on him to force compliance with their desires. I am afraid that if I knew too much about this case that it might be too overwhelming for me emotionally at this point. I am actually very thankful that God protects all of us from knowing most of the horrors that go on all the time around the world because none of us have the capacity to survive such awareness.

But that is not to say we are to ignore abuse of authority or open cruelty whenever we become aware of it. What I have been struggling with is to know just how God wants me to relate to such revelations. And one thing that I am becoming increasingly aware of is that this is forcing me to face some of my own deep triggers that are set off each time I hear more of the details about the horrors of injustice going on. Whenever I feel that deep anger welling up inside of me I realize that my real fight is to face my own rage from that deep reservoir inside of me that has not yet been properly drained and refilled with grace and truth.

I have become more aware of this hidden cesspool of rage over the past few years. One time I saw a picture in my imagination of my heart of where this was located inside of me. I saw a scene that looked like a peaceful lake with nice grassy lawns along its shore and tall trees here and there. The water looked clean and it all looked like a good place to swim and boat and have fun and picnic with no sign of danger anywhere obvious.

But leaking up from deep beneath the floor of that lake were occasional bubbles of methane gas that would sometimes break the surface of the water and give off a foul stench into the air. I began to realize that deep under the bottom of that lake there was a giant container like a heavily reinforced concrete bunker very full of resentment, anger, rage and unresolved issues from all of my past history. Much of it was siphoned into that bunker when I was young and being filled with hostility by the abuses and dysfunction of those around me. As I grew older I learned how to manage it more effectively and thus the reinforcement around the container to keep it from coming out into the open and destroying all my relationships.

But the problem has been all along that I did not learn the importance of getting healing for all of this garbage being compressed deep inside of me. The religion that I grew up with taught me to simply repress all the feelings that didn't line up properly with the appearance-oriented religion so popular among Christians. So, like most of those around me, I learned to stuff my anger, my hurts, my pain and all the other garbage created by life and people's treatment of me into this deep hole in the ground and then trying to make stronger and stronger lids to keep it all contained. I was learning to use ever stronger garbage compactors to hide my waste and pain instead of getting rid of it properly and sending it away to the real landfill.

But just like the problem in landfills that we can see all around this country, the results of concentrating garbage into an enclosed area underground always produces dangerous and flammable gases that can become a real hazard to health and public safety. The same is true in my emotional life. What I have been learning over recent years is that anything that I have not faced and dealt with honestly and openly in my emotions has never really gone away even though I may think it has because it is no longer in sight. All these things simply accumulate deep inside to become a source of confusion, of explosive triggers that can be set off causing eruptions that come as a total surprise to everyone including myself.

The problem is even worse however. That is because, unlike physical explosives, these hidden reservoirs of ignition are not really disarmed by repeated detonations. They remain just as potent as ever to be detonated again and again and may even become more potent with time until the root causes are exposed and the embedded false beliefs are replaced with grace and truth only found in the face of Jesus and the real truth about God.

Though I have learned these things in principle over the past few years, I am now finding myself more and more in positions of opportunity to put them into practice. And in fact I have been practicing on many triggers that have been eliminated over the years and have enjoyed a great deal more authentic peace than I ever had during the first half of my life. But now I am becoming more aware that the real big stuff, the really volatile stash may still be full of even more deadly caches of ammunition just waiting to go off if it is not dismantled very carefully by a trained and sincere expert.

I am becoming aware that the only real expert that I currently know of is the promptings of Jesus sent through His Spirit to speak to me and mentor me as to how to deal with these issues as they become exposed. At times I wish that I could also work to disarm these munition dumps with other experts who have been trained by Jesus to do this kind of work, but so far that has not been available to me. So I accept the fact that God is faithful enough to work with me directly and in the process may even be training me to be His assistant in possibly helping others to disarm their emotional ammunition dumps in the future.

As I faced these intense feelings stirring up from deep in my cesspool of old ammunition yesterday, and especially as I was thinking about it very early this morning once again as I lay in bed not being able to sleep, I was impressed that another important lesson of disarmament that I have learned was also needed to be effective in the current danger that I find myself in now. I became aware that not only do I have to face my anger squarely and look for its underlying triggers, but that one of the most effective methods of disarming this overwhelming rage that threatens to destroy me is to implement the principle of real forgiveness that I have also been learning over the past few years.

I have felt so enriched and blessed as I have been learning the real truth about what forgiveness really is recently. But that insight has continued to deepen each time that I revisit it, and this time is no exception. It seems that time after time God brings me into new situations and then reminds me of my lessons from the past that He has taught me separately and asks me to view the pieces put together in the present. And each time I get the distinct sensation that the puzzle picture just keeps getting clearer and more obvious. This is always a source of encouragement for me and causes me to want to know even more of the ways that God has designed reality and how to live in a way that causes me to thrive and live from my heart in peace and joy.

What I am becoming acutely aware of now is that I need to apply the principle of authentic forgiveness that I have learned alongside the principles of exposure and healing that I have also been learning in order to more effectively deal with my current exposure of this hidden rage. Anger is a warning that something else much deeper is lurking behind it that needs attention if I am to ever resolve the cause of that symptom. I have been learning to be more intentional and observant in discerning what might be hiding behind various emotions like anger and find out what it has been trying to mask for so long. There is almost always a different emotion hiding behind anger that is very fearful of exposure but that needs to be identified and dealt with directly before the anger trigger can ever be dissipated.

Over the past few years as I have sought to practice this new skill, I am finding that it is becoming easier to spot these hiding background emotions and coax them out into the open as long as I make my mind safe for them to disclose themselves. It is as if they are like little hurt children terrified of being abused or misunderstood yet again and simply need time and caring attention to make them feel safe enough to disclose their secret fears and feelings. As I cultivate an internal atmosphere of kindness, honesty and freedom from all condemnation in my own heart, these quivering “little people” inside of me feel more safe to come out of hiding and trust me with their secrets in hopes that they can be released from their cells and grow up into full maturity and wholeness like other parts of me have been able to do.

Many times these “little people” are living in very old memories from my past that are long forgotten by my conscious memory. But nevertheless they are just as real and powerful as the day that they were forced into their little prison cells by the legalistic guards of condemnation and false religion long ago.

Oh my! As I just wrote that last line it hit me very forcefully how close this analogy is to the situation that my friend has been experiencing over the past year. Maybe that is why this situation is stirring up so much intense feeling inside of me besides the fact of the obvious abuse he has been suffering. What I may be feeling is resonance with a lifetime of similar feelings but from very different sources. I do not imply in the slightest that what I have experienced could be anywhere near as traumatic as what he has gone through. But the resonance remains and serves as an opportunity for me to discover some hidden prison cells inside of myself that contain prisoners kept in darkness far too long just as he has been.

One reason that I did not get up early this morning and begin writing all of this down sooner as I often do is because I wanted to focus more on experiencing it at the heart level instead of capturing it with my left brain, as stimulating as that may be. I am trying to move more into learning how to apply the many things I have been learning about healing and wholeness to my own heart to have more balance in my own experience and also become more authentic. So I just laid there in bed and talked with God about what I was thinking and feeling and focused on practicing the kind of forgiveness that He was prompting me to do. I found that as I did the peace that had been lost began to return and to fill my heart once again.

The more I focused on intentional forgiveness and taking ownership of my bitterness and resentment, the more I felt in real time the presence and love of God coming back into my emotions and internal atmosphere. I realized in amazement that all of these theoretical things God has been teaching me recently really do work in real-life difficult situations if I am willing to humble myself and choose to practice them against my natural feelings and reactions. I also realized that I need to be consistent in keeping my mind focused on that path and not allowing myself to indulge in even little feelings of resentment or I may be jerked off the road to real freedom quite quickly and have to make my way back all over again.

I am beginning to experience the awareness of the difference between knowing how to come to healing and actually choosing to go into it myself. I suppose this is the process of de-hypocritizing my life if I can make up a word here. The more I choose to practice with my heart what I am learning in my left brain the more real these things will become inside of me. I am very aware of how easy it is to learn and learn and learn but to continue to avoid submitting to the needed repairs in ones own self. But I want to come closer to having authentic balance in my soul where my left brain knowledge library is used to assist my right brain real-time applications of the principles I have been so privileged to learn over recent years.

In this case I am faced with the need to directly focus my attention on the rage that I am tempted to feel toward this judge in particular who is so obviously despotic and cruel. I remind myself of the destructive effects that my own anger will have on me if I allow myself to indulge in desires of revenge against him. I am then reminded forcefully of how God feels toward everyone who has sinned against Him and how much grace and forgiveness He has already unconditionally provided for everyone whether they want it or not.

God reminded me of the study that I did for several months on the roots of bitterness. Part of that study included facing my need for taking very seriously the command to let go of my desires for vengeance. This time God also reminded me while I was facing that choice again that He has been showing me the importance and benefits of obeying that command. The more that I have learned about how God feels toward me and toward all sinners, the more acutely aware I become of the truth that God's ways are not my ways and that His methods for retribution are very foreign to the way most of us want to see it carried out.

Then, in case I still have doubts about the validity of viewing this evil person from heaven's perspective, God reminds me of the consequences of not choosing this path of receiving His attitude of unconditional forgiveness and compassion. From the parable of the debtor I am forcefully reminded that I will only put myself in the hands of torturers and will keep myself in prison if I think I can get away with remaining angry and bitter toward anyone who makes themselves an enemy of truth and right. This thinking is totally contrary to my natural assumptions and perceptions of the right way to relate to evil people, but it has been clearly shown me through many lessons and revelations from the Word of God for a number of years now. It is just that now I am faced more intensely with actually practicing it at the heart level and applying to myself all the things that God has been making clearer to my head over the past few years.

What amazes me is the sudden and unexpected new feelings and perceptions and thoughts that appear in my mind and heart after I choose to act on what I know is the right way to respond in spite of my human logic and feelings. The impossible begins to happen very suddenly inside of me and I actually find myself becoming free of the very animosity that so recently was tormenting my heart and keeping me in chains of bitterness and even rage at times. But these new feelings and impulses are like tender little plants showing up that I need to protect, nurture and cultivate if they are to have time to take deeper root and grow up into stronger maturity in my own life. I cannot just assume that because I am enjoying their sudden appearance right now that I am safe to relax. I find myself repeatedly needing to make the choice to let go of my right to justice and fairness and to take full ownership of my pain without indulging in cravings for revenge. Otherwise the enemy will have more access once again to my heart and will fill it very quickly with the old chains and lies that have keep me from thriving for most of my life.

God, I want to praise you for the incredible things you have been teaching me over the past few years. I want to praise you for your faithfulness and goodness and kindness that leads me to want to live your way instead of the familiar ways of revenge and retaliation. I thank you so much for how you have been leading me all of my life toward real freedom from fear, guilt, shame and especially condemnation. I still want to feel completely safe in your arms, but I also know that this is more about you than it is about me. I choose to believe that you are going to continue to do what you say you can do in my life.

Thank-you for your unconditional forgiveness, your unconditional love, your unconditional grace. Continue to live inside of me, to display your character through my life, to make me a successful experiment of your powerful grace to transform a legalistic, condemning religion addict into a loving, humble, trusting child learning to reflect your beauty. Father, I am so painfully aware of how very little of your beauty can yet be seen in my life. I claim your forgiveness and simply trust you to continue your work in me until I fully grow up into the likeness of Jesus your Son.

Two Inspirations of Love

2009-02-25T10:03:00.000-06:00

I came across the following statements this morning and it really stimulated my thinking. Allow me to share the thoughts that came as a result of these new insights for me.

The law and the gospel are interwoven as warp and woof. Here mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and peace have kissed each other. We want to come to God's standard. He has a law governing human intelligences and it is for our happiness to observe it. We are to love God. Love leading to disobedience is the inspiration of the devil; love leading to obedience is the inspiration of Heaven....

Carry the light of Jesus. Carry it to your neighbors. When we bring Christ into our experience, there will be a loving of one another, there will be an unlocking of the hardest hearts. God can take a worm and thrash a mountain. If we humble ourselves and have His converting power every moment, His righteousness will be our covering. {2SAT 97, 98}

This really surprised me. I have never thought of another love being available to our minds. But now that I think of it the Bible certainly talks a lot about other loves: love of money, love of the world, love of evil.

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-17)

So, here is what I am starting to see. Obedience is impossible without being a symptom of love, and love itself is inadequate without its fruits of obedience being allowed to grow. But now I am seeing that part of our confusion may be coming from our lack of awareness of what both love and obedience really is. I have suspected this most of my life, but now it is becoming even more clear.

I am starting to sense that love is very close to, if not the same thing as, worship. I suspect that the words are simply describing two facets of the same thing but from slightly different directions. But at the same time there are authentic diamonds and there are fake diamonds. Both of these will have dazzling properties and will have various facets to examine, but only one will hold up when the hot light of God's presence is unleashed. At that time the fake diamonds will melt down in shame and disgrace while the true diamonds will glow with brilliancy never before imagined possible.

Like worship, love may be something that our hearts simply are going to do because that is just what hearts are designed to do. Maybe it is time to challenge our paradigms about love and our hearts and think more outside our old boxes in this area. For a heart to have reason to love is much like the reason that a fish will swim. It is not something you have to train, it is what it is going to do simply by its design.

The problem comes when the affections of the heart become attached in the wrong directions. Because sin at its core is selfishness, our hearts have been short-circuited by this counterfeit wiring pattern and we are naturally filled with self-love from birth. But self-love and love of everything designed to promote this model of thinking in our world removes us further and further from the source of life. God designed us to be part of the much greater circuit of life where we are to receive to give. This can be clearly seen in nature. Lakes that receive and give freely can thrive and remain healthy. Lakes that refuse to give begin to stagnate and eventually become dead and repulsive.

All true obedience comes from the heart. The heart by design is a loving machine so to speak – that's just what it is going to do if it has any life at all. Attempts at producing obedience in any other way only create fake obedience no matter how externally proper it may appear. Obedience that is forced is nothing but a sham. But it is really much worse than that because it keeps our minds deceived into believing that we are safe to encounter the presence of God.

God is the only power source of life and love in the whole existence of reality. Any belief that leads us to think that we can depend on any other source to get life for ourselves is conceived of deception and will eventually prove fatal to our very existence. But God has not just designed us to get life directly from Him, though that is part of the arrangement. God has ordained that we should function within a whole, complex circuit of life which means that we are to receive life both directly from Him and indirectly through other sources in many ways.

We are to receive life through good food, through breathing healthy air, through clean water, through our eyes by dwelling on beautiful things and enriching our hearts. We are to receive life through our ears by hearing inspiring things such as words of life and especially stirring, heaven-inspired music. We are even to receive life through our sense of touch even though this may be one of the most neglected sources for many of us. All of our physical senses and capabilities are designed by which we can intake life for our souls and synchronize our lives with the life of God.

We are also to learn to receive life through our contacts and connections with others that God has put into our lives. This is a much more hazardous source for us because other people have varying degrees of confusion about their roles in imparting life-giving nourishment to us. With their attempts to share life with us they are likely to also pass along confusion about life and love and false implications about how we are to interact and nurture each other. In so doing we can often become very confused about the nature of love itself and may become afraid of allowing others to pass along life to us.

This is where it is so important to have a deepening relationship directly with God for ourselves. His Spirit can buffer the problematic aspects of the life that we are to receive from others as well as teach us how to better pass along life to others ourselves in ways that more accurately reflect the true heart of our heavenly Father. While God intends for us to become bonded more closely with others in our position within His circuit of life, we must not allow their mistakes and confusion about God to define our own beliefs about the real truth of our Father's heart. We must listen carefully to our Father directly as He communicates more clearly to us through His Word and His Spirit the real nature of true love. We must give Him total access to our hearts and minds so that He can accomplish all the healing and repairs necessary to restore us into healthy, functioning components of His vibrant circuit of life.

But it is critically important that we live in constant expressions of out-giving as well or we will soon become diseased and begin to die. Just as it is extremely unhealthy and even eventually fatal to try to eat and eat without eliminating naturally, it is fatal to think that we can take and take of life-giving blessings from heaven without properly fulfilling our role of giving out life in the great circuit where God has placed us. In fact, our willingness to cooperate with the design for our lives, to receive to give of the life and love that is flowing all through God's circuit of life – that cooperation is itself the obedience necessary for us to thrive and remain as a viable part of the great circuit of life.

The real problem with artificial or forced obedience to God is that it deceives us into thinking that obedience is something we have to produce to satisfy some artificial rules imposed on us by God. This mentality in itself removes us from even being able to understand the reality in which we are supposed to be able to live and thrive. It views obedience only as the external descriptions of how a healthy person will appear when they are properly functioning in the circuit of life. It is more focused on appearances than on the condition of the heart and the spirit. It fails to understand that it is completely impossible to give without first receiving. Likewise it is impossible to receive and remain healthy without passing on all of God's input for healthy life.

Artificial obedience leads people to try to produce fruit without paying attention to the real causes of fruit. It attempts to force fruit to appear on the tree of our life while paying little attention to the things necessary to making the tree itself healthy. Self-righteousness leads people to think that God is primarily interested in performance rather than in blessing us and mentoring us into living within His circuit of life. False ideas about righteousness lead us to work very hard at trying to live a life of supposed obedience while failing to allow our hearts to receive the very nurturing ingredients necessary for it to thrive and be healthy. This is like trying to force prisoners to work ever harder while cutting back their food rations, their rest times and all the other things necessary for healthy bodies. You may for a while get more compliance and output from them through the use of increasing levels of fear and intimidation, but it will someday become evident that forced obedience is a dead-end proposal – quite literally.

Both love and obedience, like all the other religious words that we are familiar with, need to be carefully reexamined and understood in their proper perspective and in the light of the real truth about God. We have such distorted ideas of what these words really mean that it becomes nearly impossible to even talk about truth using words such as this because of the false conceptions inherent in people's thinking about what they mean. I have been discovering that the more I understand the real meaning of words and shed my false ideas associated with them, the easier it becomes to make sense out of life and the Word of God. But this is not just a good intellectual exercise necessary for us to decipher reality, it requires an engagement of the heart in order for our intellect to properly perceive the much deeper meanings of all of the language used to convey to us snapshots of reality as God designed it.

From the above statements it becomes very clear that there are alternative kinds of love that can be inspired. That tells me that just because my sensations of love feel inspired that it is not enough to lead me to believe that they constitute authentic love. There are deceptive forces all around us designed to create a great deal of inspiration in everyone thirsting for love and for life. I think most everyone is quite familiar with the fact that the entertainment industry has honed inspiration to a fine art. But that does not mean that the resulting feelings produced inside of our hearts are going to be the kind of love needed to deepen our proper connections in the circuit of life. Most of these inspirations are designed to embed us more deeply into the counterfeit circuit designed by the enemy of our souls to make us feel temporarily excited or to give us pleasure. This kind of love is the current that flows through and empowers the counterfeit circuit set up to imitate the original circuit enjoyed by the rest of the universe.

Pleasure is the great counterfeit of real satisfaction. Pride is the counterfeit of a self-confidence that comes from being genuinely loved, valued and cherished. Everything in Satan's system of reality is designed to mimic to a great extent the real elements in the circuit designed by God. But the counterfeits generally focus on appearing good on the outside but fail to meet the much deeper needs of the heart. That is because only the One who created our hearts to start with, who designed those deep cravings is the only one that can give us the ingredients needed to make our hearts truly thrive and enjoy peace and bond together in healthy joy bonds.

Forced obedience is one of the most deceptive counterfeits that religion has to offer us. Self-induced obedience is extremely misleading because it uses so much religious terminology, quotes so prolifically from the Bible and uses the name of God so liberally. It leads people to think that God has promised to help them in their efforts to obey His laws but that they have to invest as much effort as possible and God will make up the difference. Their mantra is the often quoted phrase, “God helps those who help themselves.” This sounds so logical, but then every counterfeit appears to be authentic on the surface or it wouldn't be a very effective counterfeit.

All true obedience comes from the heart. But it can only come from a heart that is receiving love and life and is also dispensing it to others as it receives. It is very important to notice that you can never give what you have not received. To attempt to do so will only lead to frustration, discouragement, emptiness and eventually lose of life. This is the destiny of all false obedience because it does not acknowledge our total bankruptcy of the heart. It tries to achieve an external obedience while trying to suppress the deepening hunger pangs of a starving heart devoid of love. This kind of person finds themselves struggling ever harder to satisfy increasing demands for perfection while facing equally increasing emptiness deep in their soul. They don't dare to admit their inner growing feelings of emptiness because it would discredit the claims of authenticity for their beliefs, so they steel themselves against all appeals to reconsider their assumptions and end up hardening their hearts in an attempt to satisfy the requirements of a stern, holy God.

Isn't it interesting that the analogy of a hard heart is so relevant to the situation we find ourselves in when we try to obey instead of living in a circuit of love. Our heart is our love organ. It is designed to receive and to dispense love just as our physical heart's primary function is to circulate life-giving blood throughout our body. When our attention gets fixed on obedience and performance instead of receiving love and life into our heart in order to pass it on, then our heart becomes more and more hardened from misuse and from starvation. We may engage in alternative forms of love such as that described above, but all forms of counterfeit love fail to nourish the heart effectively just as junk food cannot sustain a healthy body for very long.

True obedience is not created by focusing on the external symptoms and behavior as we are so often prone to think. True obedience, like so many other things in the healthy circuit of life, is simply the synchronization of our hearts and lives with the design of the circuit of life as purposed for us by our Creator. Real obedience is simply cooperating with whatever it is God designed for us to do in our role of receiving and giving life with our heart as a functioning component in the great circuit of life. Obedience is letting go of our resistance to the basic principles of reality that define how everything works together properly to enhance life.

Intellectually we need to understand increasingly the basic principles of reality that are sometimes called laws. But that intellectual pursuit can never be allowed to be substituted for the function which our heart was designed to do within us. It is our heart that only can produce real obedience which is simply cooperation with God's design for our life in conjunction with the rest of creation around us. Compliance through any other method will always be along the lines of counterfeit obedience which always leads to dysfunction.

And because the heart is designed to be loved and to share love, then the authentic obedience that naturally emerges from a thriving heart will itself be seen as encouraging and inspiring. The very word itself will begin to lose its false implications and associations as we begin to see that true love is the real current of life that is used to power all of the universe. It is not obedience that should be so much the focus of our attention because real obedience is simply the natural result of a heart that is learning to function as it was originally intended to function within God's circuit of life.