Resist not Evil

I have been struggling for days, even weeks with a situation that remains unresolved and frustrating to my spirit. One of my closest friends has shut me out of his life and closed off all communication with me without any explanation whatsoever. I have made repeated attempts to contact him in various ways but without any response. This has left my mind open to running all kinds of scenarios to come up with possible reasons and explanations for why this is happening. A pain is deepening on the inside that I now realize is called attachment pain. This is the deepest level of pain known to humans and is the most difficult to remedy.

I have reason to believe from past communications that they may be doing this believing it is for my best good, to pressure me into a position of spending more time getting close to my wife. If I knew this to be true it would give me great relief, although I feel it is an extreme measure on their part to accomplish something that is already taking place without their withdrawal. But to simply stonewall every attempt on my part to seek a reason for the sudden disconnect of what has been a long and close friendship has caused me to analyze my deep pain and how I must come to terms with it.

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39 KJV)

I have realized for some time that resistance produces heat. That has helped open up my mind to the real truth about hell and has radically changed my picture of God over the past few years. But the resistance that produces hell is resistance to love. When Jesus says I should not resist evil it creates questions and conflicts in my mind as to what He really means.

James 4:7 says, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” So apparently I'm supposed to resist the devil but not resist evil. This is not a theological argument that I wish to engage in, this is a principle of Reality that I must come to understand if I am to be in harmony with Reality.

I looked up the original word for “evil” used in the verse from Matthew. I found it very interesting, as is often the case when checking closer to the original than what translators assume. In this case evil involves a number of possibilities that include; hurtful, calamitous, vicious, mischief, malice, anguish, pain. This kind of evil brings in the necessity of forgiveness as an antidote to preventing bitterness from taking root in my soul.

Forgiveness itself is a most misunderstood concept in most people's minds. It usually means something along the line of accepting excuses or trying to just forget an offense. It often means for many people trying hard to not feel anger and resentment toward someone who has hurt them which becomes very hard work with very little good result. None of these, of course, are a part of real forgiveness.

But without real forgiveness our hearts quickly begin to fill up with pain and unresolved issues left open to grow and torment us. Our minds resent the idea of forgiveness if we are honest about it. It seems majorly unfair and unjust. Why should people who cause us so much pain be forgiven and thus apparently get off without any consequences for the pain they have caused others? Something inside is rises up and demands that they should feel as much pain at least as what they have inflicted if not more. That takes us back to the issue of temptation. (see Reflective Temptation and Temptation and Worship)

Real forgiveness is very painful, even excruciating business. It involves coming to the point of taking full ownership of all the pain someone else has caused us, or is causing us even in real time. It means releasing all “rights” to retaliate or even desire to get any amount of revenge. That point is well beyond natural human ability. Forgiveness takes full responsibility for the pain and consequences I am suffering because of someone else's choices.

Responsibility does not mean that what they did to me was my fault. That is an issues that many struggle with in trying to understand this. Responsibility has to do with “ability to respond” instead of react. When I react to pain it will almost always be to return what I have received which only increases a vicious cycle and is rooted in the back of my brain that just wants to do anything to make the pain stop or the problem to go away. To respond means to accept what is dealt to me, take ownership of it without resentment (but not without pain), and then choose to act from the front of my brain under direction from my true heart as to what is best for our relationship. This takes maturity.

If I resist evil, the hurt from calamity or mischief, or maybe the anguish and pain from malice or just rudeness, or maybe even simple misunderstandings; if I resist then I am living in reaction instead of responding. Resistance amplifies the pain I am experiencing. And I have seen that in my own experience all my life, sometimes to other people's amazement. A heart that values justice is a heart that especially notices what is unfair and can be deeply hurt by those things. But in resisting those experiences it amplifies the pain beyond its original intensity. No wonder Jesus recommended not resisting evil. Evil is bad enough on its own without me amplifying its effects in my soul and emotions.

So I see my need for an antidote, a balm as some call it, some Oil-based lotion that can bring soothing and relief to my aching heart and return me back to joy and peace. Forgiveness is not fair, but it is indispensable if I am to grow and thrive. It is also impossible given the mental equipment I received growing up unless I receive it through grace. “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Heb. 4:16.

Salvation by Competition

Believing that what someone else believes is wrong does not by default make what we believe right. We have an unconscious idea that black and white thinking means that if I'm not on one side then I am on the other. We become so caught up in competition of beliefs (evangelism) that we completely fail, or at best largely ignore the issues and problems with our hearts. We have elevated correct information to the level of God and thereby have made it a god that prevents us from knowing God.

We like in constant fear that we may entertain or overlook some piece of wrong information that will cause us to be lost. We believe that we will be judged and saved based mostly on the purity of our doctrines and secondarily on our relationships. In fact, we view many relationships as a threat to our obsession for pure doctrine and so avoid having meaningful connections with anyone whom we perceive or suspect may “corrupt” our accomplishment of “truth-gathering” up to this point in our lives. This has the growing tendency to cause us to associate more and more exclusively with only those who most nearly agree with our viewpoints and we more and more shun and pull away from everyone who makes us religiously or intellectually uncomfortable.

Evangelism as we see it today is largely an attempt to forcefully persuade people in a short time to align their intellectual/religious beliefs and external behaviors to be very close to ours so we will then have more people we can feel safe to fellowship with. If we can convince them to change with enough proof texts and arguments to switch sides from outside our church to inside our church then we suppose they are now converted and secure. From then on they only need weekly doctrinal maintenance and updating through unifying lesson quarterlies and formal sermonizing. Fellowship is considered a perk or maybe even a necessity, but only as a means of support for doctrinal growth and settling.

This is the model and reasoning developed and practiced by the Jews in Jesus' day and further fine-tuned and perfected by the Holy Roman Catholic Church for centuries. And as much as conservative protestants despise the Catholics they are, in fact, following very closely their lead and beliefs in how to correctly arrive at “truth” and “salvation”. If the truth were really exposed, it might be discovered that our animosity toward Catholics is rooted deeply in jealousy at their successful control over so many minds creating overwhelming competition for us in our desire to control other people's minds. Our doctrines may be different but our spirit and methods may be very similar. Jesus says to us as forcefully as to His own closest disciples, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of...” Luke 9:55.

Expectations are Prophecies

Expectations are permissions, compulsions, prophecies. This is how they operate both between people and within ourselves.

I have noticed for many years that when I wanted to change the way I acted and related to people, it was very difficult because of their expectations and assumptions of who I was and how they expected me to act. I did not have permission to be different than how I had always been or perceived to be. Their expectations of me also became my expectations of what I was supposed to be and became a strong compulsion to be that way. In that way they actually became self-fulfilling prophecies that obey the expectations.

For instance, I grew up with the expectancy of the people around me that I was an ungrateful, unthankful person. They tried to correct that by attempting to force me to say grateful things against my will and it usually turned into a very unpleasant experience. Since memories are indexed in the brain by emotional category my mind probably since then has associated gratitude with feelings of force, shame and even anger. Since I don't enjoy re-experiencing those kinds of emotions over and over I unconsciously avoid the behavior that is associated with them which unfortunately in this case is gratitude.

When I was ungrateful as a child I was also condemned for being an ungrateful child. I can even somewhat remember occasionally people prophesying dire futures of what I would become because of my ingratitude and selfishness. Prophecies have an amazing power in our lives. They are not unlike the spells of witchcraft. They have magical powers in our lives to cause things to happen. They are powerful expectations that embed themselves deep in our psyche and cause us to view ourselves in line with their predictions. That is why “reverse psychology” is such a destructive idea. It is not the wonderful motivator for positive growth that it is often assumed to be.

The results of my family's expectations of my ungrateful spirit has produced in the rest of my life just what they predicted. I have struggled all my life with both feeling grateful and expressing it. Sometimes even when I feel it and want to break out of my “mold”, I don't have permission to be different and feel compelled to continue to fulfill the image people have of me yet today.

On the surface this looks like a simple problem with a simple solution. People around me say, “Just choose to be different. You don't have to stay that way. We're not forcing you to be that way. We don't like it any better than you do, so why don't you just change?” But underneath and woven through their statements is still the same old expectancies that continue to inhibit me, raising feelings of shame and fear that again drive me into self-defeating behavior even though I really want to be different. It is back to the Romans 7 scenario again.

The key word in the transition between Romans 7 and 8 is the word “condemnation”. Condemnation is the active ingredient in negative expectations. It is the compelling force that was injected early in my life and casts its ugly spell over me yet today. It is also subtly present in the expectancies of the people around me today and especially in my mind. It is usually camouflaged as some other motivation but is always present when these symptoms exist. Condemnation is very tenacious and grows deep tentacles into my mind and heart. It thrives and feeds on shame and fear and dispenses the same back into my heart and out of me to others as well.

This situation is like a locking mechanism in the mind. Like the lock on a ratchet when it is engaged, the harder you try to work against it the harder it locks you down. Trying to overcome it by more force, logic, persuasion or threats only creates more resistance. The ratchet wheel on my boat trailer seems to be a good illustration. The only way I can release it to allow the boat to slide free into the water is to turn the wheel slightly in the opposite direction and then unset the latch before the wheel can spin freely in the right direction and release the safety strap. Once it is relaxed I can then unlock the boat from the strap and can enjoy the full freedom of boating without being tied down to the trailer.

Negative expectations are like that latch that keeps the ratchet locked. Those expectations need to be exposed (slightly turning the ratchet tighter at first creating even more tension) and then changed or unlocked. Part of this process is the discovery of old vows and expectancies that keep us yet in bondage and acting to renounce those vows, both from others and in ourselves. But what I see as just as important is the replacement of those negative expectancies with new and opposite ones.

This can be very tricky at this point, however. It is not unusual for many people to actually camouflage an old expectancy just beneath a new one. The words may sound right but the old spirit is still sending the old message very subtly. That's when the word “expect” has the alternate meaning more familiar to me. “I expect you to do _____,” or “I expect you to be this kind of person...” with the insinuation that if you don't perform as expected you will be in trouble (shamed and devalued). The expectations may be worded properly but the message is still the same – “I don't really think you have changed but I expect you to anyway, so you better try harder this time.”

New, positive expectancies have to be a heart experience. They have to be projected from one heart that believes in you and sees (prophecy's) something good in your heart that you cannot even see yourself. They have to be insistent as well as heart-felt and genuine. That person will persist in the face of repeated contrary evidence to believe in you and remind you often of what they see in you and in your future. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Heb. 11:1 This kind of faith is rooted in love and creates hope, “and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Rom. 5:5

This begins to create an atmosphere of permission so that it finally feels safe to be a different person than I always knew myself to be. When I receive repeated, genuine, heart-originated expectations irregardless of how I currently feel or even act, my own heart slowly begins to awaken, hope begins to flicker and I begin to perceive a different identity than what I always believed about myself. This new identity is very unfamiliar and maybe even a little frightening at first.

As I begin to shed my old identity I go through periods of terror, fear of death of the different parts of who I am, without confidence yet as to what is to replace it. I need to see my real self in the “face” of another person who will really care about my heart, who believes in me more than I believe in myself, and who is committed to a long-term relationship with me, especially if I can believe they will never abandon me. I need repeated reassurance and reminders of who I really am in my real heart because I easily loose sight of it in the clamor of the old gods losing their grip on my soul. I need to know that someone understands how I feel, that my deepest motives are good even when evidence seems to all point to the contrary. I need an environment starved of condemnation and enriched with confidence and life-giving nuggets of joy and affection. This creates in my soul the rich, plowed earth that will begin to produce much good fruit and overflow to affect other people's lives.

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” 2 Cor. 5:18,19 This is the life-changing opportunity we have to release each other into freedom. Taking people through this process who are locked down under multiple ratchets of negative expectations and vows, seeing them through the eyes of heaven and then injecting into their hearts and minds a new vision of who they really are and what they are becoming; this is the ministry of reconciliation that God has committed to us to fulfill. It is spreading the contagious infection of hope, joy and love setting people free from the heavy chains that have bound them all their lives, “and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” Heb. 2:15

Every temptation is an invitation to worship. This has probably not crossed our minds lately but it is true. I believe the reason we know so very little about real worship is because we have destroyed it in our incorrect response to temptations. Typically we have believed that the right way to react to temptations is to stuff our feelings, exercise strong will-power, fight to suppress all our urges and force our external behavior to conform to religiously correct norms. If you have very strong will-power you may be able to look good and perform correctly, but actually without realizing it you may have wounded your own heart even more. When we build walls around our hearts to shield us from temptation those same walls prevent us from experiencing and expressing what our hearts were originally designed for. Religion has become so devoid of heart experience today that many people turn to other sources to try to keep their hearts alive. In effect, they fall for the second-best notion that because their heart actually can be felt during temptation then giving in to temptation may be a way to enhance being in touch with their heart. Innately we all know at some very deep level, even if we have spent years of training contrariwise, that we were designed to live from our hearts primarily. That is simply the way human beings are wired. It is unavoidable but also a great source of consternation for religionists and pain for everyone. We have developed all sorts of programs and alternatives to satisfy this need, but most only end up crushing us even more and causing further damage and pain. After it gets too intense to endure we then switch in desperation to another technique that promises to nourish our hearts and free us from bondage only to be further wounded and crushed, shamed and devalued. The heart was designed to find its fullest fulfillment and joy in abandoning itself in creative and unique expression to another heart. It craves the reception of the same for itself – another heart that abandons itself in complete trust and transparency to my heart. The result of two or more hearts taking this kind of ultimate risk is called joy, something very few of us know much about. But we have tasted just enough to know we don't want to live without it. In fact, life is really pointless unless we can figure out how to connect with it. But how does temptation relate to this? Temptation is an invitation to abandonment, promising in return some kind of satisfaction and nourishment for our heart. Temptation is an invitation to trust someone or something to bring us a little bit of life and fulfillment of the cravings we naturally feel in our heart. Unfortunately, if we view the cravings themselves as the problem and try to attack, shame and suppress them, we only end up crushing our heart instead of experiencing growth in an opportunity to worship. Worship, if correctly understood, is an invitation to the very same experience as temptation. To really worship our hearts must be drawn out into an experience of freedom and abandonment to another heart. In that freedom the heart wants to receive love that is secure and unconditional and forever reliable. In that atmosphere trust can begin to flourish and quickly expand. Affection is received and expressed, awakened and deepened. Joy begins to appear and motivate us pursue deeper relationships. Joy is the emotion and experience of being cherished and valued by another heart and it quickly multiplies exponentially in this environment. The heart is satisfied, strengthened, it can rest and be at peace. It can experience boldness and be courageous in the face of anything. In short, real worship will produce what was briefly seen in the history of the early New Testament believers but is seldom seen authentically today. So how should we respond to temptation? If suppressing our heart is counter-productive and death-producing, what should we do with our emotions and urges? If we understand these feelings as actually desires to worship and not sources of sin, then instead of suppressing them we should instead redirect them. We must understand that our heart needs sources of life and will always seek for them, even more intensely if it has been starved and beaten into repression by intellectualism or formal religion. If we come to understand that our heart cravings are not wrong, we can begin to respect our heart's needs and desires and encourage their expression both in ourselves and others, which is in fact an act of worship. Worship is simply choosing a source from which we desire to receive life and pleasure and then surrendering control of ourselves to that source to receive what it has to give, be possessed by it and be transformed to become more like it. The problem always comes in surrendering to sources that cannot give us real life. Obviously many sources promise to be life-giving, some with much fanfare and exhibition. Many sources carefully package themselves to look very genuine or reinforce their claims to be reliable sources by assembling impressive credentials and endless arguments in their favor. Many proposed sources of life claim to be God-endorsed and compile great ramifications of scripture and other quotations to enforce their claims. They also use the carrot/stick approach and threaten that if you do not accept their claims and demands that you will suffer unimaginable amounts of pain, possibly for eternity, if you do not subscribe to their beliefs and submit to their control. So how do we know what is life-giving and what is not? For too long we have tried to rely solely on left-brain arguments and methods to condense the answer to this dilemma from endless amounts of research or attempts to determine which “authority” can be trusted among the myriads of competing voices. Or we may turn to “emotionalism”, a technique of simply throwing ourselves into any emotional experience that offers itself and hoping that by trial and error we will discover the true source of life for our heart before it runs out of life in the process. That's what Solomon tried and reported his findings in the book of Ecclesiastes. Both of these solutions eventually leave us damaged, confused and more deeply hurting than before we started. This is the condition in which most of us find ourselves. Identifying the true source of life to nourish our heart is something that has to be guided by the heart, not just by the head (left brain). Our hearts function very different than our minds. The heart is even baffling to the logical mind and defies explanation in verbal language. The heart was created to find satisfaction in intimate connection with other hearts, not in formula-based, rigid, intellectual strictures and controls. The heart longs to be felt and understood to some extent by another heart. It longs to experience and express boundless affection. It wants to thrive, to expand, to feel, to sense, to live in real reality. God has placed eternity in our hearts and we are always dissatisfied with anything less. If we learn to cherish and value and love our own hearts the way God does, then we will be empowered to love other people's hearts and connect with God's heart thereby receiving the life and energy and fulfillment that our heart was created for. When Jesus said we were to love our neighbor as ourself, He was stating a maxim as much as a command. Our ability to love our neighbor's heart is predicated on how much we acknowledge and care for our own heart. This is not selfishness and self-serving. That is the counterfeit. Selfishness seeks to appease and satisfy the false gods that live in us, not our true heart. Those gods are parasites that clamor for more and more nourishment while robbing our true heart of life-giving needs. These gods purport to be our identity, but in fact are foreign to our true selves. They are like cancer that grows and wraps itself around more and more of our internal organs, but should never be mistaken to be a legitimate part of our being. The God of heaven is a very jealous God and will not share space with any other gods. He is fighting for the life of our true heart, our true identity, our true self. He created it to start with. Then He redeemed it on the cross, earning the right to receive back what was taken away from Him at the fall of man in the garden. He is the only source of real life that fits our heart's cravings and He is doing everything possible to reconnect the supply line and begin resuscitating our dying souls. His heart is hurting worse than ours and is also desperate, passionate to be understood, shared and joined back into unity with our hearts. The appropriate response to temptation in the light of the above then is to give in to our truest heart's desires and acknowledge them and accept them. When we carefully uncover the root of every desire we feel when we are tempted, we will discover that the desires are not bad or evil but are symptoms of emptiness and hunger. We must expose the truth about our heart's needs and recognize that the offer of the temptation will not satisfy as promised. The need felt in our heart is legitimate and is really a desire to worship, to receive and give life. We must resist the notion that our cravings and needs, the deep desires of our hearts are the problem. We must avoid attacking and condemning the desires of our true heart or of those around us. Instead of worshiping (indulging in a false source of life) the little gods that cannot deliver real satisfaction to us as promised, we must redirect our hearts attention and emotional energies to the channels God has provided for us to receive life from Him. These channels may be our spouse, our friends who are sharing the journey with us, and of course a direct communication to God's heart and mind through prayer and receiving His messages from the Word and the Holy Spirit. If any of these channels are clogged or broken we will experience pain and reduced growth. Clogged and damaged channels are often found in lack of heart connectedness between spouses, dysfunction and pain in families and churches, isolation in the community and the presence of prejudice and bigotry. Pride glazes over our perceptions and blinds us to the true nature of our restricted sources of life. Over the years our hearts slowly shrivel and waste away and we accept our condition as “normal” since the people around us are not much different. We medicate the painful symptoms, deny them, repress them or whatever other gimmick we can employ to avoid them. We insist that we are fine and continue the charade of the walking dead. Our description is well defined in the Revelation message to the church of Laodicea. Salvation is the process of restoring (salvaging) us to a fully-functioning rhythm of living from the heart as God originally created us. “Until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.” (Eph. 4:13 Message) Salvation is God's method of restoring us to living in reality, having openly expressive hearts, living transparently and not avoiding any emotions. Being fully alive involves knowing our maturity and living in community to increase our maturity. Temptation is any diversion that tries to derail and subvert us from experiencing being fully alive. Accept the offer of temptation to express worship. Go ahead and give in fully to the desires of your heart. Just redirect it from the false source that temptation offers to the true source that it is counterfeiting. Then through every temptation we will find fresh opportunities to release worship and experience increased life. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” 1 Pet. 4:12,13. Jesus was the only man who lived fully from His heart. This caused Him untold suffering but also freed Him to experience unrestricted joy. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Heb. 12:2,3. The primary tool of the enemy against us is shame. Shame is devaluing our worth and identity. Shame sets us up for temptations and the result of giving in to temptations is more shame. Jesus despised shame by focusing on joy. This is how He dealt with temptation and is our example of how to successfully do the same. The definition of joy according to our nervous system is the experience one has when someone is genuinely glad to be with us, when we are cherished and special to someone's heart irregardless of our performance or feelings. We experience joy when our spouse, our friends, our family values and affirms us, especially when we don't appear or feel valuable ourselves. That is exactly why Jesus emphatically stated He would never leave us or forsake us. Joy is our strength for meeting temptation. And instead of running and hiding from temptation and repressing our heart's pleas for recognition and expression, through the strength of joy we can redirect our heart's desires to the channels that connect us to the ultimate Source of pleasure and life. “Until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.”

Dance Lessons

Interesting emotions today. Our guests/friends who have been living with us and ministering to us intensely for several weeks left today. This morning one of them was trying to send value messages, talking to my heart. It occurred to me that I was in a similar situation with similar feelings I had when my Mom tried to talk to my heart many years ago on the edge of my bed. In fact, I couldn't distinctly remember anyone doing that since then. While she was talking I was analyzing my reaction in the present. Was I trying to completely block out all incoming messages like I did before? No, this time I found myself listening with interest but still with a great deal of resistance and disbelief. After years of shame messages to my identity and perceived rejection it is very difficult to just open up and receive affirmations of value without question, as much as I want to be able to.

I also realize, to a little extent anyway, the immense blockage that I have built up over the past 30 years to receiving and giving care for hearts. It is the most difficult thing to believe the sincerity of others compliments or affirmations. In families it is much easier for us to connect with people not related to us than with each other. Of course, if continued this will become our destruction, not only of our family but of our souls as well. But that is negative motivation which, while true, has usually resulted in more resistance and further shutdown. Somehow we have to develop radical new habits of reacting and thinking when we feel attacked, threatened, demeaned and devalued. It is a good step to learn that's what we need to do, it is another to begin exercising and experiencing it.

Rose noted a very interesting insight and relationship between love and trust. True love is unconditional and expects no return for its investment. It is freely given without strings attached. Trust on the other hand expects a return for its investment. We get into trouble when we reverse the two and use them in place of the other. Love needs to be extended first to create an atmosphere where trust can flourish. If we try to trust someone first before we extend love to them, we will likely be disappointed and hurt when they fail our trust and love is never experienced.

I drove them out to the airport this morning so they could fly themselves to Wisconsin. It was almost nostalgic to be around planes again and the old desire to fly started growing as I talked with the friendly people in the hanger. As I drove away I also noted my emotions of attachment pain as Kevin and Rose begin the process of leaving us for good. They will be back for a short time at the end of the month, but we are being weaned to practice what they have worked so hard to teach us and model for us the past few weeks. They have certainly pried deeper into my damaged heart than anyone has ever done before and I am far more vulnerable to both joy and pain than I have been in years. What will flow into the holes and cracks freshly opened will largely be determined by the choices I make over the next few days and weeks. It is both very frightening and tantalizing at the same time. The bonding part of my brain has been somewhat reawakened and I have to overcome some deeply ingrained habits to steer my bonding efforts toward my wife if I want to have any healthy relationships at all for the rest of my life. My little gods are clamoring to stop all this and God is-- well, I'm not sure exactly what He's doing. I keep hearing Him encouraging me in the right direction and I trust He is continuing the plans He has for me and all my relationships.

As I copied some song lyrics off the internet a few minutes ago I suddenly was confronted with this message from God to my heart. It seems to be the theme coming at me from several people interested in my heart. I was moved deeply as I sang, or tried to sing, through the following words.

Lord of the Dance

I danced in the morning when the world was begun, And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun, And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth, At Bethlehem I had my birth.

Refrain

Dance, then, wherever you may be; I am the Lord of the Dance, said he. And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be, And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

I danced for the scribe and the Pharisee, But they would not dance and they would not follow me; I danced for the fishermen, for James and John; They came to me and the dance went on.

Refrain

I danced on the sabbath when I cured the lame, The holy people said it was a shame; They whipped and they stripped and they hung me high; And they left me there on a cross to die.

Refrain

I danced on a Friday and the sky turned black; It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back; They buried my body and they thought I’d gone, But I am the dance and I still go on.

Refrain

They cut me down and I leapt up high, I am the life that’ll never, never die; I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me; I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.

Refrain