Christmas Currency

I have good news and bad news. First the bad news. In spite of what you thought you heard, we are exchanging gifts this Christmas.

Now the good news. The money you will use is not printed by the U.S. Government. It is currency that you have the capability to print yourself and actually has much more value than dollars. Yes, you can be as rich or as poor as you choose to be depending on your willingness to produce your own money.

The substance of the gifts we are going to give is actually in truth the only thing that you really ever have to give. It is the gift of your very self, given in selfless, undivided attention to another person. You can give largely or in very small amounts. But a wholesome, valuable expression of your gift needs to be without distraction or a shift of focus to yourself.

Take time to be genuinely interested and focused on the other person with a special interest to synchronize with what is going on deep in their heart. Be trustworthy in not betraying their vulnerability but be willing to be vulnerable yourself. Listen with you heart, not just your head. Encourage yourself to enter into as much sympathy as you are capable of with them and you will discover your capacity increasing.

The number of potential gifts and their value is only limited by the length of time we share together and our willingness to give and receive these gifts. We are creating memories that will far outlast any material presents we could possibly afford, and with much deeper and long-lasting bonds of love and affection. Let's experiment. Respect our current limitations, but encourage growth. Do everything we can to be a safe environment where hearts can experience value and healing. Let's see what God can do through us and surprise us with this Christmas.

(I wrote this piece as I contemplated how we could make Christmas more meaningful and relationship-oriented as well as what I desired the most. However, I don't it got any farther than the pad I wrote it on.)

Fearful Unbelief

When the disciples were stuck in hopeless despair and negative thoughts, refusing to believe reports of good news especially if delivered by emotional women, they missed the opportunity to meet Jesus and discover His plan for them in Galilee. They did not go there as instructed but hunkered down in the familiar, both in place and in thinking. Jesus had a difficult time awakening faith in them even after He found and exploited a weak area in the massive resistance through the couple from Emmaus.

But when they began rehearsing true stories of His appearances which began to produce the tiniest flicker of hope in their deeply hurting hearts, it created an environment where He could show up and fan the flame. Even then the flame wavered in unbelief as they all went immediately to fear and doubt instead of belief and joy. Jesus was desperate to fellowship with and minister to their hurting hearts but He would not force Himself on them. They had to allow belief to take root in their whole mind and release their clinging grasp on tradition and human-based explanations of reality. They had to choose to believe and embrace true reality before they could move on to deeper intimacy and joy.

Luke 24:38 Why are you troubled and why do doubts arise in your heart? This is a very interesting example of left/right brain incongruity. The hearts really wanted to hope, wanted to accept Jesus, wanted to be fulfilled and satisfied and wanted to be released from the overwhelming pain, the detachment pain of losing Jesus. But their left brain was full of surging doubts fueled by the all-pervasive unbelief and lies in society and tradition about what is true and real. After the crucifixion all the insinuations of the Pharisees and leaders now carried much more weight to make them question their previous beliefs about Jesus. All tangible evidence pointed toward and reinforced the gnawing suspicion that maybe they had been duped big-time, that they were victims of some incredible and massive fraud designed to torture their hearts and diabolically make them mere play-toys to be abused and discarded. All kinds of fantastic negative scenarios and explanations raced through their minds and filled them with depression and foreboding as they repeatedly reassembled bits and pieces of evidence trying desperately to figure out on there own what was real and what was illusion. Without Jesus to explain things they were intellectually lost in a dense fog with no clue of which way to turn.

This was actually their greatest opportunity to listen to their heart and discover real reality if they had only been willing to suspend their left-brain explanations and laid down their social prejudices and paradigms. Their life-long training to accept without question the authority and teachings of religious leaders, their deep-rooted social disdain of women's credibility, their natural human bent toward leaning on their own understanding inherited from the Tree of Knowledge – all these worked together to keep them in the hopeless maze of unbelief and confusion.

No one knows how the story would have unfolded very differently if they had believed the message from Jesus through the women and had in faith left Jerusalem and gone to Galilee to meet Him there. Thousands more might have been involved in the story and the Gospel might have exploded much faster.

Bitter Unbelief

I am deeply disturbed at the growing awareness of the depth and pervasive extent of the bitter spirit that dwells in me. It robs me of my identity and freedom in Christ and grossly distorts my attempts to share His beauty with others. Last night at the Bible study I became painfully aware that every comment and idea that anyone else expressed only aroused within me a spirit of argument and spiritual superiority. In one way I'm glad it is starting to emerge from the fog in my life and be seen in its true ugliness. But its roots and tentacles permeate every part of my existence rendering me helpless to escape its stranglehold on me. For any part of me that might attempt to be used for my revolt against this spirit is discovered to one degree or another to already be infected with this terrible virus.

The disciples returning from the Emmaus encounter were filled with hope and joy on their return from despair and unbelief. The others were filled with excitement and some level of hopeful belief from the report that Jesus had appeared to Peter. But when Jesus actually showed up to join His own party, their capacity to believe and accept Him was exposed as too small and they fell back into fear and disbelief.

I always thought their unbelief and slowness of heart was ridiculous and unnecessary. Maybe so, but I now have a little more sympathy for their problem. Even with all the glorious revelation God has given me about Himself through insights on worship and the truth about hell, I still find that my attempts to share His beauty with others is hijacked and sabotaged by this terrible and diabolic evil spirit that dwell in the dark recesses of my mind. Jesus, save me!

Jesus says, “See my hands and feet; touch me and see.” I am looking for how to see His hands and feet and how to touch His body today. He says the body of Christ is around today. Open my eyes to see His hands and feet, the evidence of God's passionate love that can never be inhibited, that will never leave anything untried to draw me into intimacy and closeness with Him. I need to reach out and touch His body, even embrace it, so I may be drawn into belief, joy, freedom and delirious abandon to Him.

These are wonderful and true concepts. God, show me how to actually experience them today and over the next few weeks.

Assumptions

Meaningful discussion can only happen when there is a certain amount of synchronization established. Synchronization happens when assumptions are shared. The more assumptions that are shared the wider and deeper the communication can go in an atmosphere of acceptance, tolerance and openness. Some basic assumptions that are needed for synchronization are a respect for the value of the others aside from externals, a belief that something of value can be discovered from the other, and a willingness to suspend defensiveness and consider seriously alternative viewpoints.

The more synchronization that is established the stronger the resonance of respect and love can be created.

Heavenly Currency

Am I willing to give thanksgiving even if I may never understand the why of my circumstances? This is the sacrifice of praise – when it is difficult. We have the idea that we cannot be thankful unless we can make sense of something or someone. We are only grateful when we feel good. It is very important to us to understand. Is this because we want to be a judge and decide if something or someone is fair or not? If so, then we also are judging God for what is happening to us.

Gratitude may be in fact less effect than it is cause. It is the currency of heaven. We have believed that for us to enrich another with this “money” that they have to work hard and make us feel good before we will turn loose of it. The world's monetary and value system has permeated every part of our life.

But this currency is very different than earthly money. This currency can be created “on demand” by our own choice at any time. This currency, when given away does not make us the poorer but multiplies itself back to us when given away, especially to those whom we initially think do not deserve it. In fact, the only way we can become rich (in the real reality system) is by giving ourself away. When we wait for “good reasons” before we generate this transaction we impoverish ourselves as well as cheat all those around us.

This issue of understanding is at the heart of this problem. We want to understand and create a decision as to how much value a person has in our estimation and then decide how much they should be paid in gratitude. Again – the economics of Satan's kingdom. But this also involves the reverse. We desperately want to be understood by others and appreciated (paid) for our value and feel impoverished when we are not. We sometimes work hard to demonstrate our value to others hoping to receive a few “pennies of heaven” so we can have feel a little value to reinvest in others.

We want to understand before we pay.

We want to be understood so we can get paid.

Or we may have come to believe that because we are not appreciated by others that we may not have value. We don't have enough value to be loved and we need to work harder to somehow make ourself more valuable. This is reinforced by the fact that it seems to work this way most of the time. Those who do “great” things externally are rewarded with praise and value by many around them. This strengthens the lie that we can only et paid – we can only be enriched with a sense of worth – if we can squeeze it out of others, even God. So we work harder at being understood. If others could just understand us better and see our importance and specialness we might get enough currency to keep us going a little longer.

But again, we don't realize that this currency is not so much received – as in pulled in from others – as it is created by our choice to give it. There are multipliers involved in the giving too. When we praise those who are proud and successful we use a negative factor and may even become poorer. When we appreciate our friends and those who make us feel good we use various low digit factors that can enrich us only slightly. This is where most of us live. But a few have discovered how to tap in to high digit factors that create unbelievable returns and astound others with the enormous wealth that can be generated with relatively very small investments. This is when they find seemingly undeserving people (or circumstances) and choose to invest gratitude and praise into them, or often in spite of them. They turn out to be the most wealthy people in the kingdom of heaven and it baffles us.

This is because we have trued to apply the rules of earthly economics to the heavenly system and then wondered why it doesn't produce good returns. Heavenly currency (riches) is generated “on demand” by our choice to give it (not demands of others or God to receive it).

In the world's system value is transient and fickle, dependent on how much we can make other people feel better in various ways good or bad. In heaven's system value is constant but is discovered as we uncover it in others.

Unextracted praise and gratitude – unearned – is like a master key that unlocks hearts, both others and our own.