Fading Winter

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

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?

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

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

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.