I Need the Almighty

3/1/07

This morning I meditated on the reading for 2/29 in My Utmost for His Highest. Several points impacted me with their importance that I want to continue to remember. The whole message was very good but these stood out in bold relief.

1. “Do not deify common sense. When Jesus asks us what we want Him to do for us in regard to the incredible thing with which we are faced, remember that He does not work in common-sense ways, but in supernatural ways.”

This seems so obvious when it is stated but is often very difficult to apply in everyday life. It is so easy to blur the distinction between what advice, counsel or decisions are based on good training, maturity and a wealth of knowledge or are based on a true revelation of God's desire for us. There is certainly a place in our lives to implement common sense in making decisions and learning to live together with others. But when the stakes are high and I have an impossible problem to overcome, I need dependence and a connection with wisdom and guidance beyond my abilities or of those around me.

I believe when he says to not “deify” common sense, it means that I need to always keep my connection and dependence on God at a higher level of priority than using human common sense to solve all my difficulties.

2. “Watch how we limit the Lord by remembering what we have allowed Him to do for us in the past: I always failed there, and I always shall; consequently we do not ask for what we want. 'It is ridiculous to ask God to do this.' If it is an impossibility, it is the thing we have to ask. If it is not an impossible thing, it is not a real disturbance. God will do the absolutely impossible.”

I felt very convicted when I read these words. How many times my faith fails to expect much beyond what I have already experienced, hence my growth and maturity are stunted by my inability to believe God will do something radically greater than I have ever seen in the past. This set me up for the most important answer to this problem that I read further down the page.

3. “You have to come to the place where you believe Him to be Almighty.”

I realized that despite my intellectual assertions or professions, my heart is still far behind in really resting in the reality of an almighty, all-compassionate Father who never for a millisecond loses attention of my situation, needs or feelings. When my heart really believes the truth about God my whole life will suddenly respond very differently to every circumstance or threat.

4. “Faith is not in what Jesus says but in Himself; if we only look at what He says we shall never believe. When once we see Jesus, He does the impossible thing as naturally as breathing.”

I remembered how many times I was instructed over many years to put my faith in the Word of God. I do not believe the intentions were wrong by those promoting this teaching, but the time has come to wake up to the real core of where faith comes from and what it really is. As he emphasizes all through this devotional book, my focus must be directly on the person of God primarily; not to allow any other aspect of our relationship to be greater than that one thing.

When applied to human relationships this becomes very obvious. But we struggle so much to understand that it is crucial to having a healthy spiritual life (which is the essence of all life, really). If I desire to have a close relationship with my wife, would I put more importance on the words she says than on her as a person? Would I value her letters more than I value being with her and just enjoying her presence? And yet we too often treat God as if His Word, or our own experience, or our work “for Him” is of more value and importance than cultivating intimacy directly with Him through every means possible.

I want to make these insights an integral part of my own life. I want to experience a more dynamic faith in my Father who is Almighty and not limit His freedom to transform my life by my small expectations of what He wants to do based on past experience. I want to cherish the words He shares with me, but even more I want to experience a growing affection and closeness to Him as the only true and capable source of satisfaction and abundant life full of joy and rest.

The Missing Oil

The parable of the ten virgins that Jesus taught in Matthew 25 has always been in the back of my mind ever since it was impressed deeply on me as a child. It was repeatedly emphasized that this story had critically important messages in it for us in particular living near the end of the world. I accepted that analysis and I still do. However, I also have felt impressed that most religious people, including myself, are still missing the real significance of what Jesus is trying to tell us in this parable.

This morning I felt reminded of this story and after a few moments of pondering it a number of insights began to quickly coalesce. I am seeing something that is indeed very significant that I don't think I have seen before, or if I did I was not seeing it with my heart but just intellectually with my head.

"Then the kingdom of heaven will be comparable to ten virgins, who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. "Five of them were foolish, and five were prudent. "For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the prudent took oil in flasks along with their lamps. "Now while the bridegroom was delaying, they all got drowsy and began to sleep. "But at midnight there was a shout, 'Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' "Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. "The foolish said to the prudent, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' "But the prudent answered, 'No, there will not be enough for us and you too; go instead to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.' "And while they were going away to make the purchase, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast; and the door was shut. "Later the other virgins also came, saying, 'Lord, lord, open up for us.' "But he answered, 'Truly I say to you, I do not know you.' "Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour. (Matthew 25:1-13 NAS95)

Some very important links and definitions came to mind that are crucial for understanding the deeper message that needs to be understood here. And while I don't particularly disagree with the standard interpretations always put forth on this parable, I believe that most of us have become very complacent with those “canned answers” and are missing some of the most important truths here.

In the story it is clear that the central ingredient that is emphasized is the oil. Without oil the lamps would never burn in the first place and it is the lack of oil that creates consternation on the part of half of the virgins. It is the forethought of having extra oil that makes the dramatic difference between otherwise apparently identical women in the story and makes all the difference in the outcome of their destinies. Therefore, I believe it is the most critical element of the story to understand, not only with our mind but understand how it relates to our heart which is where the real issues are centered.

First of all, the standard explanation given for the meaning of oil is that it is the Holy Spirit. While I will not discount that, I think it may have led us to stop short of digging deeper into its meaning and how it relates to us personally. Whatever this oil is or represents, it does have a great deal to do with spirit, not just God's Holy Spirit as a separate entity. Maybe that's what had bothered me for so many years. Just accepting the standard answer that the oil is the Holy Spirit has somewhat de-personalized the imperative nature of understanding this parable. But I have still sensed an urgency that something is still missing here that is very important, not only to discover, but even more importantly that I need to experience deeply myself.

Simply saying that the oil is the Holy Spirit somehow puts pressure on me to somehow “get” the Holy Spirit so I will be “ready” for the Second Coming. This is the primary construct put on this parable in most of the teaching I have received. But its focus is still primarily intellectual and still leaves something very important missing. I believe it does involve receiving the Holy Spirit into my life. But having that experience has also been a source of great frustration and discouragement for many people as well causing not a few to give up on following God altogether.

So here is some ideas that seem to fit perfectly into this puzzle like missing key ingredients.

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners; To proclaim the favorable year of the LORD And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn, To grant those who mourn in Zion, Giving them a garland instead of ashes, The oil of gladness instead of mourning, The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified. (Isaiah 61:1-3 NAS95)

This, if you recall, was the “mission statement” repeated by Jesus when He launched His public ministry quoted in His very first sermon. This prophecy was pointing directly at Him and described what He was all about.

The next text simply reinforces the understanding that the “oil of gladness” was at the center of Jesus' life and relationships.

But of the Son he says, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever, the righteous scepter is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness beyond thy comrades." (Hebrews 1:8-9 RSV)

When I recalled the following verse in connection with the previous ones, it became even more clear why this oil is so necessary.

Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." (Nehemiah 8:10 NIV)

The oil of gladness is also translated the oil of joy. Putting these texts next to each other we see the oil of gladness and the joy of the Lord are the same thing.

He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the labor of man, So that he may bring forth food from the earth, And wine which makes man's heart glad, So that he may make his face glisten with oil, And food which sustains man's heart. (Psalms 104:14-15 NAS95)

I see here a connection again with gladness and oil, and a further clue that this gladness and oil have an affect on one's face. What really brought all of these together as I looked over every verse in the Bible containing oil was this last verse from Psalms that described what the condition of having oil is rooted in – what it looks like.

How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron's beard, down upon the collar of his robes. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore. (Psalms 133:1-3 NIV)

When I apply these various senses related to oil back into the story of the ten virgins, it becomes very clear to me that the oil that is so crucial for me to have if I desire to enter into fellowship with the Bridegroom when He comes is joy itself. This then reminded me of all the teachings and important insights we have been receiving from Jim Wilder's ministry explaining how our brains were wired by God primarily for joy. Scientists and expert brain researchers are discovering more and more evidence reinforcing this understanding. We are creatures of joy. It is unavoidable; we are just designed this way. It does not change a thing if our lives have been largely devoid of joy; that does not change the way we were originally designed. It simply means we are living far below the level of fulfillment and satisfaction that we were meant to experience. But that is no surprise either. That's the intended affect that sin has had on our lives. Satan's goal for us is to rob us of all joy and keep us in darkness about the truth of how God created us to interact with Him.

So if I take these insights and apply them liberally back into the story of the virgins, what do I now see more clearly?

To abbreviate an exhaustive explanation of the parable, I see the following.

1. All of the virgins were believers in truth.

2. They all had lamps that were burning. Therefore, to begin with they all must have had some level of joy, gladness and unity in their lives initially.

3. The wise, or prudent virgins, somehow invested in stocking up extra joy in larger capacity containers that they kept with them while the others didn't feel any necessity to do so. This very clearly reminds me of the “joy capacity” function of the brain that Wilder refers to so often.

4. It clearly states that when the foolish took their lamps they took no oil with them. This may be the most important statement in the whole story viewed in the light of joy in the oil.

5. When the Bridegroom delayed, all of them slept. So staying awake was not an element that made the difference between any of these virgins (believers).

6. When the announcement for the celebration to begin in earnest was made, all of them woke up and trimmed their lamps.

7. The tense interchange between the two groups of virgins when the foolish discover their foolish decisions exposed have significance. But I would need more time to flush out the important nuances of this conversation. However, it is significant that they noticed that their lack of oil was the cause of their lamps going out.

8. At this point in the story, the results of investing in greater joy capacity become painfully clear. The Lord – also the same as the Bridegroom – insists that He does not know those who have not entered into His house when the time was right.

9. The two elements that seem to be stressed in this parable are having extra oil and getting your timing right. Because the oil takes time to get, those who invested time to prepare ahead with extra oil had capacity and ability to enter into the joy of their Lord when the door was opened. The others found themselves scrambling to get more oil and in the process wasted critical time that ended up costing them everything in relationship to participation in the celebration.

It is important to note that the very nature of the event itself was immersed in the element of joy. It was all about a wedding, not a funeral, a program or a political event. It was centered around the most joy-intense relationship known to human beings; that of joining a man and woman together into one flesh and spirit who are deliriously in love with each other.

As I think about this and the implications that is has in relation to my own experience, I shudder in fear at how much more I am like the foolish more than the wise. My heart is very inexperienced and lacking in joy-capacity. And while I know it is still not to late to have this deficit remedied, I wonder how to go about getting it fixed. And if I put it off much longer I will find myself at the last moment rushing to the store with the foolish virgins frantically trying to barter whatever valuables I have to get more joy and gladness so I can participate with others in the grand celebration. But if I wait and put it off, I too will suffer the agony and despair of the foolish virgins (which itself is the beginning pangs of hell).

All I know to do is to again cry out to God in desperation and helplessness to unlock my heart of stone and do a work of transformation in me that I am totally incapable of doing myself. I need a very big miracle to radically morph me from a left-brain religious believer hungering for something better into a heart-based child with new capacity for joy and humble willingness to synchronize with other virgins in happy celebration of the goodness of God.

I want to have the heart of an innocent child who is fearless in his joyful exhibitions of celebrating being alive. He is not afraid to run and skip and fling his arms around and have his face glow with life and joy. He is not afraid to sing and dance and interact freely with others and be open and transparent from his heart. Yes, that is what I want to be – a child who feels so safe and protected by his powerful and loving parents that he is not afraid to express with abandon his real identity and celebrate life with others who are free to play with him.

Come now, Jesus. I need a major heart-transplant!

The Glue of Joy

We had a wonderful talk last night with one of the ladies at the Twelvetribes Community in Chattanooga last evening. We talked a little about their history and when we knew them back in the seventies. We talked about their return to the area in the last four years and what they are doing now. She shared with us their plans to open a new deli right next to UT near downtown and their current project of fixing up an old frat house next to it. She also talked about their developing network of trucking organic products between communities and we discussed a little the potential that could have for a large Coop opportunity that could produce some income for them.

During our whole conversation and underlying it was the sweet, Christian spirit we sensed as we talked. There must have been many unspoken messages we received that maybe I am not even aware of yet. As I read over their web site about their history, their culture and their beliefs, I could sense that these are communities very much based on joy and deeper bonding than what we have experienced. And each time we talk with them that perception is reinforced.

I woke up this morning very abruptly about 5:30 with no chance of returning to sleep even though I went to bed late. I was thinking about our conversation last night and a few things began to emerge in my thinking. I am beginning to realize how it is that a person deeply entrenched in a set of doctrines that they are absolutely convinced they will never give up could suddenly let them go and switch to another life quite suddenly and almost unexpectedly. From their first position that possibility appears impossible. They are certain that because their beliefs can be validated and proved by solid Biblical exegesis and they know all the arguments to vehemently defend their positions, that they are safe in “the truth” and nothing can move them. If anything appears to threaten their security in their beliefs, the solution is always to dig in deeper with stubborn insistence on their correctness of position and rehearse even more emphatically the verses and quotations that they have assembled to defend their views. Typically they take a harsh attitude toward anyone questioning any of their assumptions or interpretations and often they feel a strong need to base their beliefs on a particular version of the Bible, usually the old King James Version.

From this person's settled position, only people of like minds are safe to freely associate with and open up to safely. Everyone else, particularly on a spiritual level, is viewed with either suspicion or as a target of “witnessing”, which usually means some type of coercive attempts to convince that person to “convert” to believing “our” set of doctrines just the way we believe them. This condition of settled stubborn, determination to cling to a set of doctrines come “hell or high water” so to speak, is believed to be as close to a saved condition as one dares to hope. Great emphasis is put on rehearsing over and over the reasons why we believe these doctrines which involves memorizing and rehearsing the supporting texts and quotations put together over the years by others, and repeating the well-honed arguments that favor our position. This is believed to be our only safety to prepare us for the coming crisis that will try to pry us loose from our firm foundation of Scripture.

It is believed that those who are successful in clinging tightly to their beliefs in doctrine without being swayed by outside pressure to deviate on any point, will at last be rewarded by being taken to heaven by Jesus at His Second Coming. At this point we will experience what is called Salvation.

I'm sure many who may read this may not completely relate to this perspective like I am so familiar with. But to some extent I see this type of thinking and these assumptions, not only in most all Christian denominations but also in every belief system in the world. Generally it is called prejudice when it is in someone else who differs with our beliefs, or it is honored as being “settled in the truth” if it is someone with whom we agree.

As I contemplated our conversation last night and thought over other experiences in life and the things I have been learning the past few years about how our minds really work, I realized how very unstable and shaky the foundation is under most people who sincerely believe they have little to worry about. Jim Wilder talks about the real reason that so many pastors, even very high-profile ones, are so susceptible to catastrophic moral failures seemingly unexpectedly. Many people openly wonder how a person so knowledgeable and skilled in counseling others on the very same issue can succumb to moral failure so easily and quickly. Based on typical religious thinking they have to assume that there must have been some hidden doctrinal flaw in their belief system that undermined their ability to resist temptation. I have heard these situations discussed on radio and that very reason was put forth, with people quoting the pastor making public statements that this person believed was the “heresy” that brought him down.

But I believe that Wilder has put his finger on the real flaw that lies at the root of catastrophic failure, not only morally but in all major spiritual collapses. The primary hidden root that creates the weakness that undermines the whole structure of religious profession is the starvation of our hearts from the lack of genuine joy. This joy, apparently, is not an optional nicety in the Christian life – it is absolutely critical to the strength of the mind and heart. It is as crucial to have joy mingled all through our experience as it is important to have correct quality cement mixed into the gravel and sand composing a highrise steel and concrete skyscraper. People are understandably outraged when it is discovered that builders cut corners to make a profit by using poor quality concrete or improper mixes to build a large public building that later collapses. But we think nothing of building “Christian character” while using very scant amounts of real joy and very large proportions of stern instruction and harsh discipline. We may be able to assemble a large and imposing-looking structure that appears very healthy and religious for a time. But when the stresses arrive and the storms began to “beat on that house”, Jesus says it will fall with a very great crash.

I know some will rush to correct me and say that Jesus' point in that story was that we should build on the solid rock foundation. They also correctly point out that the foundation is Jesus Christ Himself. But maybe they forget to remember that the “joy of the Lord is your strength”, and that the very meaning behind the analogy that Jesus gave involved establishing a solid, deep connection to Him as close and dependent on Him as a large house is dependent on and connected to its foundation. And the healthy adhesive that keeps anyone connected to another is the ingredient of joy.

Of course, there is a counterfeit adhesive that Satan's style of relationship is based on. Unfortunately most of religion today has adopted this approach believing that it was designed by God; another one of the most common and pervasive lies about God circulating around. The counterfeit adhesive is fear. When we live in a joy-starved environment based on fear and rules and force, we are ripe for a catastrophic failure, whether it is a moral failure or a doctrinal collapse or a complete rejection of God and religion altogether. The lack of joy strength and joy capacity is our very greatest liability and most often the liability most ignored and over-looked.

At this point it would be good to review just what joy is and is not. Joy is not necessarily happiness and good feelings as such. Joy, as the brain was originally wired to know it and as the Bible describes it as well, is the experience of being valued and cherished by someone no matter what emotion or condition you find yourself in at the moment. When you know that someone wants to be with you, alongside you, willing to share your experiences with you as an intimate friend who cares deeply about you and loves you, then your mind and emotions begin to understand the sensation and reality of real joy.

When you understand joy from this perspective it is easy to see how one can experience joy even when going through great pain, sorrow, fear – even when feeling shame, disgust, despair or even anger. When there is nothing you can do or feel to make that person not want to be with you or cause them to care less about you, then you can experience joy in its reality.

So what does this have to do with my conversation last and waking up early this morning? And what does it have to do with catastrophic and unexpected failures? Because in a joy-deprived life that is based more on fear bonds than joy bonds with those around us, when something that looks like joy comes along, even if it is not the real thing, our hearts will jump into the opportunity, abandoning all our previous claims and positions and responsibilities. This can happen not only to the amazement of all around us but most of all to our own surprise. Because we were created as creatures designed to thrive on joy, our hearts will override our minds and cause us to leap for it in a desperate attempt to experience a deeper sense of fulfillment, even if we already know the consequences will be disastrous. Pastors who live in an austere, joy-deprived religious atmosphere are very susceptible to another person who offers them affirmation, smiles, kind words and displays a caring attitude for their hearts. Likewise, people of any persuasion who are confronted with a person or group who enjoy and display a spirit of joy will inexorably be drawn toward them to bond with them. This will result in great internal pressure to accept that person or group's “doctrinal” belief system even if it greatly deviates from what they presently believe. Because, contrary to what we often believe ever so strongly, our strength of endurance does not lie primarily in knowledge of correct facts and ideas but in the strength of our relational bonds. This cannot be over-emphasized. If we place our confidence in our intellectual grasp of “truth” and our ability to articulate arguments and recite texts in defense of our position and beliefs, we are guaranteed a spectacular failure in our future.

I am not recommending that we neglect a thorough study of Scripture to discover what is true and what is reality. It is vitally important. Sand and gravel is very important for concrete and the building would surely have just as catastrophic collapse without those as it would without cement. But that is not usually the problem, at least within the culture that I have come and circulate in, although it too is becoming a much bigger problem. Satan will try to push us to any extreme to cause us internal weakness so he can destroy our live. But we can never experience too much joy.

So I still have not answered what this has to do with our conversation last night with one of the members of the Twelvetribes community. I believe it is easy for most people to sense the spirit of joy that can be felt among the members of these communities, not just from talking with them but even from just reading their self-description on their web site. At least that is what I sensed as I read through it. I remember back 28 years when we used to visit their deli in the early days and when they were so gracious to help us deliver our first baby at home. I did not understand most of this then. But now I realize that the magnetism that we felt then, even though it seemed quite strange to us, is the same magnetism that I felt when we talked with them last night on the phone. That strong magnetism emanates from the very strong bonds of joy that the people in these communities share with each other in their openness and love and devotion, not only to each other but to the God they worship. It is so obvious and so attractive that it draws in people from all directions to take a closer look at what they are all about.

The struggle that ensued within me made me take a look at several things going on in my mind and heart. I realized that some of their theological ideas were not Biblical as I believe the Bible. But their lives and lifestyle is undeniably much closer to the spirit and style of the early New Testament believers than anything I have ever observed; certainly much more than what I am living. This confronts me with a feeling of conviction of my need for lifestyle changes and attitude adjustments. But these two things then found themselves in conflict and I felt confused for a while. It created a tension in my mind between keeping doctrinal beliefs that I truly believe are more in line with Scripture but accepting the need for challenging my lack of real community and experiencing joy.

As I thought about this, I realized how very easy it could be to go either of two directions. If I was not settled in my understanding of what I believe because of personal study and listening to the guidance of the Spirit, it would be quite easy to accept their belief system in exchange for immersion into a community where I felt fulfilled and could thrive in an experience of real joy. At the same time I can see how it would be easy to be critical of that option because of my insistence that my beliefs are more “correct” than theirs and thus determine that the attraction they exhibit must be of a very deceptive nature and must be avoided at all costs. This option I have seen exercised all too often with the results being an even more joy-starved environment setting one up for one of the above scenarios.

What I choose to believe is this: my church and culture has many valuable understandings of “truth”, and those understandings do not have to be tossed aside to find God's true purpose for my life. However, my church and culture and “people” also have some very great deficits, some gaping holes in our philosophy and thinking that may be even more important than the doctrinal “truths” we possess. That does not necessitate giving up some truths to receive others. God does not work that way. When Jesus dialogged with the woman at Samaria, He did not discount her while bragging about the truth of the Jewish religion. He emphasized that the Father is looking for those who are willing to worship Him in both spirit and truth. I believes this points out our desperate need to integrate very carefully and solidly both intellectual truth, continually reexamined with an open mind, and entering into a spirit, a lifestyle, of intimate bonding and community with His other children in a highly charged atmosphere of joy. I have to admit that me and the people around me are pretty heavy on the first part and very faint on the second.

How do I get there from here? I really don't know. But I do know that I do not want to harbor a spirit of prejudice against those who are experimenting successfully with the second part while maybe misunderstanding some things on the first half. I trust God to lead and convict all those who are honest at heart and I believe at the time He knows best they will embrace more knowledge of His “doctrines”. The real issue for me is my willingness to be just as open to change the things in my life that I am resistant to changing, to be more open and transparent and vulnerable with other believers, to put away selfishness and independence and an attitude of clinging to material possessions at the expense of others. I think I am eager for God to began assembling real community where I am, but I wonder how much I am really ready to participate in it if it were to appear. I don't think I really know.

I do know that my love for those around me is all too very shallow. I am very ashamed at how little genuine love I see in my own heart. Much of the affection I do display may be based on selfish desires to receive affection back instead of selfless love. And my level of joy is not much more than I experienced growing up, which was not far above non-existent. I know my heart is starved for joy, which of course makes me a prime target for some pretty spectacular failure which could expose me at any time. It makes me afraid even to reveal this openly. But I do so in the spirit of honesty and vulnerability in the belief that God is working in my life and has plans to do a lot of repairs in this area.

I would very much like to travel down to Tennessee for at least a weekend and spend a few days with these people to just experience what its like to live in joy for awhile. I have no idea how that would affect me, but I am very sure that it would and that my hunger for living in joyful community would be greatly intensified by the experience. But I still would like to see it first hand and observe how it has shaped the lives of those in the community, both those who have been in it for many years and those who have recently arrived. I believe God would have a lot of things to say to my heart through the experience and I pray that it might happen sooner than later.

Bible Reading for the Soul

Well, I passed something of a milestone this morning and on the same day as my wife's birthday. I cannot remember how many years ago it was, I would guess five or six, maybe more, that I went looking for a new Bible to study. I had recently received training in the inductive method of Bible study and was very excited about the results as I applied these concepts to my personal study time. So to enhance that experience I wanted to find a Bible that had wide empty margins so I could make notes and cross-references of my own. As I searched from store to store I was surprised that I could not find such a Bible. I was getting somewhat frustrated and didn't know what to do until I ran across a New American Standard Bible that was titled The New Inductive Study Bible. It not only had open margins big enough for me to use but it had many suggestions inside on how to study inductively. I also very much liked the fact that it was a NASB because I have heard for years that it is one of the most respected translations for its accuracy by most language experts on the Bible. So I purchased it and began a systematic inductive study of the whole Bible.

Several years before that I had also started compiling my own outline of reading the Bible chronologically and have been trying to fine-tune it ever since. So when I started this reading I decided to follow my own sequence that I had written out while at the same time updating it when I found problems. I also decided to have parallel studies, reading through the Old Testament in one study and the New Testament in the other study so I wouldn't get bogged down and discouraged when the material might seem dry in the OT like I have run into before.

Another factor came into play that fed into my interest in this project was my emerging understanding of the truth about hell-fire and the nature of God in relation to that. As I continued to study inductively through both the Old and New Testaments I was discovering amazing insights about this subject that were radically challenging and dispelling from my mind many of the myths circulating about God in religion today. So I soon decided to begin compiling as many texts as I could discover that shed fresh light on this most important subject so I could better understand and present it to others. I decided that before I tried to put all the pieces together I would like to completely finish at least one full study of the whole Bible so I could uncover as much as possible from the first round.

What I began to uncover began to amaze me even more than I expected. As I read through some of the Old Testament prophets that before I had forced myself to endure and seemed so dry and depressing, this time viewing these passages with new glasses, a new paradigm, I started seeing intense, passionate messages from God that began making me realize that His primary focus of attention, His overpowering obsession, was on the final day of revealing after the millenium. This was a bit of a surprise growing up as I have in a culture that puts almost exclusive emphasis on the Second Coming and the rest of the story almost as an addendum. I began to realize, as I read through books that before were depressing and dry, that God is repeatedly pointing us to the final day when everything will be finished, resolved, and most importantly He can be fully reunited with His children that He has been separated from for so many millenia. These “dry, depressing, boring” prophets of the Old Testament now came alive for me as for the first time I began to glimpse the intense passion of God shining through them in messages that I have never heard anyone talk about before.

Many times I felt the Spirit pointing out things to me that challenged the beliefs I had been raised with. I had to make decisions time after time to lay aside my presuppositions and denominational training to receive what was becoming more and more plain directly from the Word of God. But as I did I began to see such a beautiful consistency that I could never see before. The hard questions that so many people have about God I now realized were almost always produced by false presentations of His character and dealings with us from religious authorities claiming to represent Him.

As I continued to study I would often have brought to my mind other things I had read elsewhere in the Bible that shed significant understanding on what I was reading and I would cross-reference them whenever I could. I began to notice there were certain issues that seem very important to God because the cross-references were beginning to overflow the capacity of my margins to contain them in certain spots. Interestingly, these were often not the “doctrines” that I had always been instructed as being the most important in typical religion. I am not saying they are not important, but what I am discovering is that God seems to often have different priorities on what is important to Him than what typically people have claimed.

So what was the milestone that I reached today? Well, I just reached the end of my first complete study of the Old Testament. I have been through the New Testament several times during the process, but obviously it took much longer to conclude my first reading of the Old Testament. One reason is has taken me so many years to finish this project is that I determinedly resisted the temptation to just “cover territory” in my reading. My Dad used that method for many years and I felt, while it may have had some benefits, that it became more of an end in itself instead of an opportunity to hear the voice of God to the soul. For more years than I was alive he read the whole Bible through every year nearly without fail. Many of those years I was involved in this marathon process, and it certainly made us well acquainted with the Bible very early on. It also had the distinct benefit of making me a very proficient reader very early in grade school. Since we were usually required to participate in this reading every day in family worship, I very early on had to grapple with words well beyond what most others my age were familiar with. And that, all in the ancient, confusing dialect of the King James Version.

Now that I have finished my first pass through the whole Bible, what am I going to do next? Well, I'm really sure yet – its only been a few minutes since I finished. I have a number of partial topic studies that have emerged in the process but I don't know if I will finish them or not. I will likely start over at the beginning and do another pass, as this time I have no doubt I will discover far more that I did the first time. As my “glasses” improve I am able to see so much more in almost every passage than I ever thought possible before. Of course, none of this can take place by my own skill and wisdom. I believe none of these wonderful revelations came to me because of my smartness or personal wisdom. I have daily been careful to ask God to use His Spirit to reveal the truth about Himself to me in what I read and He has been faithful to do it.

These past years of study have changed much of my life, my core beliefs, and certainly my relationship with God. I am so appreciative that so many times God has revealed important concepts to me before I learned from other people similar insights that confirmed what I had recently discovered. If I had read their books first, it could be insinuated that I was just a follower of that person and his devised ideas about religion. But because I discovered them myself, then when I read other books, even when I didn't realize they were on the same subject, these writings only served to deepen my convictions and broaden the base of my understanding.

One project that I do want to work on now is to finish compiling all the texts that I noted during my study on the subject of hell, the fire of God, wrath, etc. and begin to analyze them, organize them and try to help others make better sense of them. A number of people during this time have urged me to write on this subject. I have written a number of pieces on it which are now on my blog, most of them under the label of “hell” and “wrath”. However, I fear there are still big chunks missing that need to be filled in and a more systematic organization needs to be developed to make it easier for others who are open-minded searchers to discover for themselves what I have been learning.

Another very enriching experience for me has been getting into some of the stories of the Bible and experiencing the emotions of the people involved. I have done a great deal of underlining as I read as well as cross-referencing and notation. Some of the stories seemed to just explode off the pages and I would find myself scrambling to write down the pictures, emotions and details that I saw emerging from the text. I found that if I watched for “emotion-relative” words in the text and allowed myself to enter into those emotions as I read the context that I would see so much more in the story than I had ever done before. Often I would grab a legal pad and began writing what I was seeing and experiencing and ended up with quite a number of pads full of notes. Some of them were lost when we moved from Michigan to Illinois but I hope that someday they will show up again so I can copy them into my computer. I have been transcribing all the the pads that I do have and have been slowly adding them to my blog as I have time. In the past few days I have been sick, but I have also been copying the story of Peter just after the resurrection of Jesus. There was so much there that I could relate to. I wrote these stories back in the end of 2005 and as I put them on my blog I enter them under the approximate dates that they were written and then label them according to their general content. Even the process of copying these stories off the pads into digital format has been a real blessing to me, reminding me of lessons and important things that I need to remember myself. I pray that God will simply use them to maybe inspire others to look at Him differently and maybe even to began recording their own thoughts and insights as the Spirit reveals God to them as well.

One important thing I learned and observed when we were being trained and were experiencing inductive Bible study was the crucial element of self-discovery under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Time after time during those studies people would be overwhelmed by the depth and beauty of seemingly insignificant words and phrases when the insight and conviction suddenly broke into their heart. I have experienced this many times in my own study as well. But it is only the presence of God that creates the environment for this to happen and stay in truth. If God's Spirit of truth is not invited and encouraged to be present by maintaining a humble, teachable spirit on our part, we will inevitably arrive at conclusions that will distort the truth about God and perpetuate the enemy's lies while we will not realize what is happening.

But God has a vested interest in revealing the truth about Himself to every one of us. He does not play favorites. He has promised to personally tutor absolutely anyone who is willing to entertain a hunger to know Him intimately and challenge the lies about Him that have ruined our lives for so long. I continue to want to choose that place. I want my capacity to greatly increase. As I look inside and see how frighteningly small my capacity is to love even my own immediate family, I cringe in horror and regret. But I believe that my only hope is to continue to connect at a heart level to the One who has infinite capacity for love and has the power to progressively create more capacity and more love of the real kind inside me that I so desperately need.

Twelvetribes Discovered

A most unusual and exciting (for me) development happened yesterday. But first I must fill in the background.

28 years ago my wife and I were very poor, expecting our first child, and stuck in Oregon with no money to get back home to Tennessee where our home was. We had made tentative arrangements with a Doctor in TN to deliver our baby but had never met him yet. After befriending an old man in Oregon that was marginalized by many of the people in the local church we began spending a lot of time at his very tiny house cleaning it up and trying to organize all his stuff. He did not see very well so the house was in terrible shape with all of his belongings and clothes mixed up everywhere, the shades pulled down and mold growing rampant on the walls. I did not have any work at the time so we both invested most of our time working on cleaning and organizing his house while enjoying his company. He was actually very knowledgeable health, diet and many other things. He had made friends of some of the students at the local university where he worked picking up trash who sometimes came over to learn from him. His kitchen was so narrow that if you wanted to pass anyone, then everyone had to exit the kitchen and rearrange the order and then go back in.

When we finally got the house pretty well clean we realized that it needed painting after cleaning the mold away. I called his landlord and asked if he would be willing to pay for the paint and some simple equipment to paint it with. I was a painter but did not have any tools with me. The landlord not only offered to pay for the paint but insisted he would pay for my services as well.

This was a God-send for us, for we desperately needed the money to go back home before our daughter was born.

Not long after we did leave for home, stopping for a week in Colorado to work a little more and stay with relatives. I so much wanted to just stay there it was so beautiful, but with my wife eight months pregnant we felt we should take the money we earned and go on home.

On the way home we stopped to see the doctor that we had arranged with to deliver our baby. After visiting with him for awhile we both felt strongly that we did not want him involved in the birth. Everything in his protocol revolved around his convenience and we were very uncomfortable with his spirit. However, this put us into a deep quandary with the baby due almost any day and no doctor and no money.

At this point I back up in time to explain about a Community based in Chattanooga that lived very much like the New Testament Christians, sharing everything in common and worshiping with joy, living in community as believers. They had started up a number of small deli's called The Yellow Deli and were a delight to be around. We used to enjoy (when we could squeeze out enough money) dropping in especially on Saturday nights when they would have live music, Jewish-style dancing and various craftsmen while the patrons watched from the main floor or the balcony reached by a spiral staircase. I was always to timid to join in the dancing but we enjoyed watching them.

We knew that this Community delivered all their own babies and many of the mothers would help each other by nursing their babies while taking turns working for the Community. It seemed a bit strange to many people but we found it somewhat intriguing. After we had been home back from Oregon for a short time and had received no useful ideas as to what we could do about our predicament after approaching the local church and others, we decided to approach the Community from the Yellow Deli and see if there was any possibility that they could help us.

They sat down with us and began asking us questions like, how did we feel about home births, what were our convictions in this area, etc. I had never really thought about it so I did not have any strong convictions. I thought it was a neat idea but did not hold it as a strong belief.

At first they were very reluctant to assist us. This was understandable given the growing tension in the area against them by the local religious community. A very large Baptist college just a few blocks away had but an emphatic ban on any of their students ever stepping foot into their restaurants or Community on pain of expulsion. Other churches in the area had begun to spread slanderous reports about them and things were not looking well for them in that town.

But after visiting with us for awhile the leaders softened their face toward us and became more sympathetic with our plight. They were a bit shocked when they asked us when the baby was due and we told them it was due right now. They agreed to let their midwives help us deliver the baby at home on condition that we read the book they recommended to us called Birth Without Violence and another book that I cannot now remember. I did read the book which strongly influenced my feelings and convictions about home birth. They also gave us a list of simple materials that we needed to purchase and prepare before the birth. When they learned that we did not have any money whatsoever they even gave us 20-30 dollars to purchase them.

Two weeks later our first daughter was born in the evening after several hours of labor. There were probably 4-5 midwives there at least helping out with one of them there to nurse another one's baby. We had a very wonderful experience watching and helping with the birth and felt honored to be able to make her first memories of the outside world with her family in our own house with such kind people in attendance.

Not long after this things turned much worse for the Community. The local churches whipped up the prejudice of their members and the city against this Community spreading blatant lies about them even on television. Parents of one of the girls about to be married in the Community were so paranoid that they even hired a professional to literally kidnap her and hold her in an abandoned house for many days while they imposed intense psychological “deprogramming” on her until she was willing to say she did not love the man she was to marry and leave the Community. After a series of such incidents the Community closed all of their Deli's, sold their houses and moved to Vermont where they had already established another Community. After that I was never to here of their whereabouts again in spite of repeated attempts to track them down over the past 28 years.

Now we are living in Illinois with our latest “adopted” daughter staying with us. This daughter decided a couple weeks ago to hop into a truck that the son of a friend of ours was delivering to Colorado who had stopped by for the night. She traveled with him out there while he talked nearly non-stop in his excitement at having a new friend, which created its own problems at times. After they delivered the truck in Colorado he bought her a bus ticket to return back home while he took a bus back to Indiana to pick up another vehicle. The ticket she got sent her on a two or three day trip down through NM and TX before getting back to Illinois.

While she was sitting at the bus stop in Albuquerque, NM she notice a man sitting across the room who seemed to have a lot of peace about his countenance. He noticed her as well and after awhile came over to visit with her commenting about her spirit that he could see. He said he was on his way to a commune in Colorado called the Twelvetribes where everyone shared things in common and treated each other in Christian love. After leaving the room he returned and handed her his card commenting that he didn't know why he was giving it to her but just felt impressed that he should.

After she arrived back home she looked up the commune that he had told her about with the internet information he had given her and bookmarked it for me to look at. She thought I might be interested since we have been learning a lot about the importance of community and relationships over the past few years.

So yesterday I decided to look into what she had found. I went to the website and found listings of maybe thousands of intentional communities all over the world of every kind imaginable. I looked under Twelvetribes and found a listing of 36 communities by that name. As I looked through the list I noticed that there was one in Chattanooga. This peaked my curiosity so I clicked on the link to check it out.

Just the day before I had received an answer to my email query to a church in TX called the Vine Church wondering if they had any roots in Chattanooga. I remember hearing the name Vine in connection with the Yellow Deli and had run across this church on the web while trying to track down one of the speakers we saw on video last weekend at the Marriage Covenant weekend we attended. The pastor wrote back that they had never been in Chattanooga, that they had started up in TX many years ago. So I dismissed one more attempt to trace down the people we had met so many years ago.

As I began reading the web site for the Twelvetribes Community I began to get very excited. It was starting to look very much like they might have links to the original group we had known before. I quickly skipped to the page in their history about Chattanooga and was overjoyed to discover that it was the very same people. They had recently returned to town and are planning to open a new Yellow Deli as soon as things work out. I was so excited I could hardly take time to read much of the other history except to find our where they had moved to when they left town.

At this point I determined that I had to talk to someone in this new establishment and find out if any of the same people were there, especially any of the midwives. So I picked up the phone and called the number in Chattanooga. A lady answered the phone and I asked her if this was the Twelvetribe Community. She assured me it was and I began explaining to her why I was calling. It turned out that the lady I was talking with was one of the original members of the Community and was living there when we met them. She personally knew all the midwives and gave me their names, which definitely sounded very familiar even though I am terrible remembering names.

As we talked she herself began getting more excited. When I told her that they had delivered our daughter I'm not sure if she believed me or not. She told me that during that time they had only delivered three babies outside their Community. Then as her excitement grew, she relayed to me that she had been visiting with an Herbalist associated with Wildwood where my sister had lived at the time we were living down there. She had been talking with him since last June but he did not know her association with the Community. Then one day last December when she went in to see him she dropped off a sheet of paper talking about their Community and the Yellow Deli. When he saw the reference to the Yellow Deli he became very excited. He told her that their midwives had delivered his daughter during that time and he did not know they were around again.

When this lady relayed this to one of the midwives who is now living there again she was overjoyed at finding one of the families they had helped. As we talked, we were both excited that now two out of three of the families they had delivered for had now reconnected with them and we wondered if maybe the third might be found as well.

Since my wife was working an extra-long shift she was not with me in the conversation. I asked all kinds of questions about their community life, their history and their experiences. I did not have near enough time to ask most of the questions but I told them we would love to see them again. She assured me that we were welcome any time and they would have a room for us. I believe we would love to take them up on that.

Their communities are now multiplied all over the world. They are open and welcoming to visitors who are free to stay and participate and observe community life. Something about this is very magnetic to the soul. We were all designed in our hearts to live in transparent community with each other in the family of God. Religious perversions over the centuries have all but obliterated the experience of the early New Testament Church believers. And while many have attempted to replicate what they read about that time, it almost always fails because it is mixed with false ideas about leadership and ends up stirring in the element of force, intimidation or deception to achieve the desired appearance.

But I firmly believe that God will arrange circumstances so that once again it will be seen that His body on earth can live in harmony, community and love for each other that has not been seen since early A.D. It will not be imposed on anyone or carefully managed by power-brokers looking for influence. It will occur most likely in the strangest ways and come out of traumatic events putting together some of the most unexpected people in the world's eyes (and that includes the “religious” people).God will arrange people in connections that He has been preparing them for individually over time to be perfectly linked to others who have been prepared to perfectly compliment their strengths and weaknesses.

I believe that there are communities today that may be approaching somewhat that design. To the extent that they are willing to be humble and led by the true Spirit of God, they will more and more reflect and remind us of the original church in the early days of the Apostles, full of the passion of God and overflowing with rivers of love and compassion for those around them. I'm hungry for it. I crave it and want to not only see it in action but to be fully embraced in it. I'm not saying that these Twelvetribes communities are doing this. I know very little about them at this point. But I detect a sincerity and see some of the symptoms of genuineness that I believe will result from experiencing real community in the family of God.

So that is my story today. I am eager to share it with more of my family and especially my daughter that was the one involved. I am hoping that it will not be too long before we will have a chance to met them in person. And in the meantime, I intend to spend some time on the phone learning more details and renewing bonds that we were afraid were lost forever.

P.S. If you are curious about learning more about this Community you can read about them on the web at www.twelvetribes.org