Bind the Sacrifice

The reading in My Utmost for His Highest today talks about a very uncomfortable issue that God has been pressing me about. I have realized at times when He convicts me about things I say to others that are self-promoting or undermining that my resistance to repentance usually involves self-pity. I often whine and drag my feet with God while analyzing myself and maybe even trying self-therapy. I believe it is important to get past the surface circumstances to unmask the deeper issues. But the self-pity is a liability that inhibits growth in ways I do not yet full realize.

“'I am ready to be offered.' It is a transaction of will, not of sentiment. Tell God you are ready to be offered; then let the consequences be what they may, there is no strand of complaint now, no matter what God chooses. God puts you through the crisis in private, no one person can help another. Externally the life may be the same; the difference is in will. Go through the crisis in will, then when it comes externally there will be no thought of the cost. If you do not transact in will with God along this line, you will end in awakening sympathy for yourself.”

I saw the familiar pattern at this point. The Spirit prompted me to go ahead right now and tell God that “I am ready to be offered”. I detected a great amount of resistance, a desire to change the words – to soften them. But that is evasive and betrays something trying to hide inside, most likely another strong false god in there. So I go ahead and say the words. Yes there is fear and a certain amount of pain. But I also instantly realize that it is a choice, an important step toward the intimacy with God that I long to experience.

Then I read the next line and it tightened even more. “'Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.' The altar means fire – burning and purification and insulation for one purpose only, the destruction of every affinity that God has not started and of every attachment that is not an attachment in God.”

Not only must I offer myself as a sacrifice, my self-protection, self-justification, self-defense, but I must fasten it there with some kind of security measures to keep it from escaping the flames. This is serious and threatening. But then dying to self is not a picnic at the park. The flesh inside of me that has tried to protect me all these years becomes angry that I am “betraying” it to be destroyed. It threatens to create hell for me if I really go through with this. The truth is, that is what hell is all about. If my flesh, my self-dependence does not die now in the fire of God's presence it will die later in God's presence at take my soul with it.

“You do not destroy it. God does; you bind the sacrifice to the horns of the altar; and see that you do not give way to self-pity when the fire begins. After this way of fire, there is nothing that oppresses of depresses. When the crisis arises, you realize that things cannot touch you as they used to do.”

Yes, I see it more clearly. Self-pity is often the symptom of my resistance, whether it is complaining to God during conviction or trying to subtly elicit sympathy from others to soften my struggles. But as I read the last line the Spirit was insistent. “Tell God you are ready to be offered, and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.”

Thank-you God for that reminder of what this is all about. I must remember that the whole object of this sacrifice is to remove all the things inside of me that prevent me from experiencing your presence more fully. Your passion is to prove Yourself to be more than I could ever imagine, to ravish me in your love, to satisfy and fill the deepest emptiness of my soul.

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3 NAS95)

Winter is Cold Finally

It has gotten very cold here lately and promises to get even colder over the next few days. This is what happens when the door doesn't get shup properly. Of course maybe its good that it froze open or it may have frozen shut and we could not get in or out at all. As you can see our house (actually my daughter's) is in need of more insulation so we don't lose so much heat out the roof to form all these stalagtites. They are forming a bigger and bigger curtain over our kitchen window. Last week my daughter's car transmission went out on her. With the Lord's blessing a 90 year old customer and friend of mine told me of a relative trying to sell a car for a very reasonable price. We were able to pick it up from them last week but are still in process of getting all the paperwork finished. Here is some interesting natural snow art that I stopped to capture after dropping my daughter off at work one day. I have spent most of the day typing up multiple writings from an old ledger that I had written between May and October of this year. I will soon be adding them to my site back-dated. If you have been perusing my writings recently you will find the new ones inserted by date as I enter them over the next while.

Vacuum Cleaner Prayers

I was thinking about the way we pray today as I was praying for a couple people close to me that I believed were likely in a situation that would create potential for very intense temptation. The thought came to me that too often our prayers devolve into simply praying our fears. How often I hear prayers that primarily beg God to get rid of the negative things we don't want in our life and don't do much more. How many times have I found myself praying that way. “Oh God, please deliver me from this temptation. Please take away this bad feeling. Please fix my financial problem. Please protect me from evil and bad things happening to me....”

Focusing primarily on my fears can actually have the unintended effect of making those fears my gods and empowering them instead of overcoming and eliminating them. One of the enemy's greatest weapons against us is fear, so when we allow our imagination to obsess with those fears, even in our prayers to God, the fears become bigger to us than God is and the fears and objects of those fears are literally turned into gods that gain control over our lives. We then live in reference to those fears and make our decisions and goals in relationship to them instead of orienting our life using God as the solid source of reliable reference. It is very much like allowing a compass needle to be distracted by a nearby magnetic object that cause it to produce false readings instead of referencing the true mother-lode magnetic North.

It is true that confession is an important aspect of prayer. But it is also important to understand what confession really is and what it isn't. The literal meaning for the word confession is simply “to agree with”. When we are convicted of something wrong in our soul and life we simple agree with God's Spirit and His assessment of that fact about us. That is confession. But when we attempt to preempt the Holy Spirit or replace its role in our life by trying to dredge up more and more evil that may be lurking within us instead of moving on to growth and forgiveness and following the leading of the Spirit, we fall into a trap of negative prayer that leaves us nearly powerless and makes a mockery of the power of God to effect change in our lives and those we are praying for.

An examination of some of the powerful prayers recorded in the Bible shows that they often, if not always, started with confession. But confession also involves not only agreeing with God about sin but agreeing with God about God. Really, effective prayer and confession is simply a reality check. When you want to go on a trip using a map, you first have to know where you are on the map before you can figure out how to get to someplace else. Confession is perceiving and acknowledging where I am so I can then make definite plans and progress toward where God wants me to go.

I believe that many of our prayers are like vacuum cleaners. We spend a great deal of energy and focus on trying to get evil and discomfort out of our lives but we do not ask God for the good things that we need and that He desires for us. “"Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came'; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept (vacuumed), and put in order. Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.” (Matthew 12:43-45 NAS95)

Notice that it is not wrong to clean and sweep your soul-house. It is very important to participate in the process of cleansing, healing and restoration to wholeness. But an empty house can also become an open invitation for druggies, pimps and others such characters if it is not filled up with good things and good people.

As I was praying for my friends yesterday and thinking about this, I began to reorient my prayers to ask God not so much for protection and deliverance from temptation for them, but more for good thoughts implanted in their minds, for blessings to fall on them and for them to inexplicably fell urges toward goodness and love and purity. I asked that God glorify His name and reputation in their experience and that growth and good lessons will emerge from whatever takes place in their experience. As I chose to pray in this (unfamiliar) way I found my own feelings toward them and my fears melting away in the atmosphere of praise and the positive presence of God. I realized that even if they were overcome by temptation that God has the amazing ability to bring more good out of bad situations than we can imagine if He is just given permission by His people on earth.

I have a great deal to learn about this, but I am glad that I am starting to be more aware. There are many very powerful things we can do that are easily within our reach but are often kept just outside of our awareness because of our past conditioning. Maturing and growing involves bringing these things into our lives and practicing them by choice until they become more integrated into our thinking and living.

Filter Shield

I am aware that around each of us there exists an atmosphere. I am not referring to the physical aroma that emanates from our bodies, though that may be somewhat of a factor, or maybe more of a symptom. I am speaking of the spirit, that elusive part of us that may be more real than the physical realm that we usually assume is reality. The word “spiritual” really means anything in reference to this spirit realm.

When we start throwing these words around the idea of “spirits”, as in ghosts or angels, also comes into the question. They definitely are a factor that strongly plays into this issue at times, but what I am focusing on here is the immediate sense or flavor or “spirit aroma” that is created and surrounds our own unique individual spirit and the effect that it has on both ourselves and others. This is an area that is often completely outside the awareness of many people. Because they are not aware of their own spirit or may even be hostile to even believing that it exists, they lose the ability and cognizance of what is going on in this realm, how they are being powerfully influenced by others and how much of an effect they are really having on their surroundings.

Some in the spiritual healing ministries have drawn pictures to illustrate the condition many of us find ourselves in with locked hearts. They sketch a drawing of a person with something like a force shield around their body that has been put in place to keep others from getting to their heart. This is usually erected very early in life as a barrier in our attempt to keep our hearts from being further damaged after repeated abuse and pain. It is a natural part of our human experience to act this way, but it is also very damaging and obstructive to the process of healing and growing in maturity.

This “force shield” around us is really an atmosphere that acts as a very selective filter that blocks out or allows in only selected ideas, emotions and communications according to the evolution of the damage done to our hearts previously. It is constructed in our mind through the various experiences and traumas that we have been through, many of which we are no longer aware of. The healing process involves undoing the locks and bars that have been constructed over the years so that we can once again begin connecting meaningfully with others at the heart level and begin to understand and experience life as God intended for us.

I have been thinking about this filtering shield the past few days and some of the ways it operates as I observe it in action both in myself and in those around me. I have noticed that this filter is built mostly on assumptions about life, about others, about God, about what is good and bad, about what if desirable and what is threatening. Most of the time many of these assumptions are at best partially wrong if not totally, but we believe them very strongly in our heart even when our head knows otherwise.

These filters seem to have the effect of allowing us to only see and hear what is important to us and also what are serious problems of our own. Though we almost never think of it this way, this is why we most often focus on the problems and issues in those around us that are the biggest problems of our own but that we have the least ability to see in ourselves. This seems to be a very pronounced attribute of this filtering phenomena. I think this may be because these “mutual” problems are where our mind dwells, either consciously if we are working on them, or unconsciously if we are in denial of them.

This filtering atmosphere around us often causes us to focus on the negative problems we perceive in those around us, those we work for, people in the store, people in church or in our families. We talk about them to our friends and complain about their faults while our friends silently are wondering when we might wake up and realize that what we are so accurately describing is really ourselves more than the people we are complaining about. But often our friends or family are too intimidated of our reactions to express what they are seeing us do so they just quietly let us vent until we have exhausted our energy or time. Or, worse yet, they may join into the pity party and began telling their own stories of the faults they see in their co-workers or others, being careful to not include us in their list of complaints at least for the time they are with us.

It is really amazing to me how very accurate the complaints a person has about those around them often fit the very character of that person themselves. It is also very frightening because I realize the same truth must apply to my complaints about others and I begin being much more attentive to the things I feel compelled to say about others and asking God to show me why this is such an intense feeling inside of me. The more intense my frustration is with someone else's problem, the more likely it is that this issue must be a part of my own nature and needs to be discovered and healed.

I also begin to think about how this same principle applies on the opposite side of the equation. When I choose to break out of the rut of focusing on the negative in others I can begin to create a new atmosphere that will invite people to see in me what I am seeing in them which in turn becomes motivation for that positive thing to be strengthened in me. For instance, how many times have we heard an unexpected, genuine expression of deep appreciation and suddenly felt to urge to be more appreciative ourselves? When we hear someone receiving affirmation, especially when they don't seem to have obviously earned it, we become aware of the incredible power inherent in affirmation to transform a life and we want to both experience it and give it. We feel the warm glow of life surging through our body and spirit and for a short time we resolve to be more positive and more loving. But habits die hard and we too often find ourselves back in the rut of negative thinking, criticizing and fault-finding with our filter locked solidly in place.

This filter not only is composed of assumptions but is knit together with expectations. We have compiled a list of things we expect to hear from people about us and we simply cannot hear or believe anything that is not on our list. It is simply beyond the realm of possibility. If we believe we are ugly we will discount and disbelieve every word anyone says to us to the contrary. If we believe we are stupid we will only allow messages into our hearts that agree with that foregone conclusion. If we believe that our real identity is found in the faults and sinful desires of the “flesh” that lives inside of us, we will gravitate toward those who point those things out in a spirit of condemnation to reaffirm the condemnation we already feel even though we may strongly resent them. What we believe about ourselves and our true identity is the filter we use to screen out all messages that disagree with the assumptions and expectations locked into that particular filter. And will tend to use the same filter to view others and judge their character. “To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted.” (Titus 1:15 RSV)

Our words combined with our spirit take on creative-like powers. In judging others we craft the very filter that will be used to judge us because it is the only thing that will be allowed in. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” (Matthew 7:1-2 NRSV) We reap what we sow.

Law or Principles

I observe that when people try to make a covenant with God based on externals the result is often rule based. We think we know what God wants for our life, we want to align our lives to look like godly people so we set up rules so that the people in our group will behave and look like what we believe to be correct. These rules are oriented necessarily to dictate outward activities and relationships because rules simply can't be applied by humans to the heart. How could you arraign someone in court for not following a rule in their heart? Since it is impossible for any human to see into another person's heart accurately no one would be able to make an accurate determination about such a matter. Therefore, man-made rules always apply to externals.

God's way of operating is based on covenant relationship. (see FFI for excellent resources on understanding covenant vs. contracts) Although humans most always try to turn covenant arrangements into rule-based contracts, true covenant relationships are based on the heart. God has promised to exchange our hearts of stone for a heart of flesh. This new heart with God's “laws” written into its DNA is flexible and adaptable, unlike rule-based formula-oriented relationships.

The major problem with ruling the external with the focus on laws is that life and times change but rules are much slower to follow. What seems to work for current circumstances does not translate well to other people or to future generations. The result is a whole lot of rules and laws that quickly become obsolete and even ludicrous. Because of the obvious irrelevance of so many rules to practical life combined with the reluctance of the rule-makers to remove the old laws, most people adapt by learning to ignore some rules while carefully following others. This is usually based on the arbitrary enforcement of selected rules by whatever enforcers are nearby to do so.

This principle is at work both in secular society and religious communities. The proliferation of rules is like a plague that is constantly increasing the confusion and complexity of our lives. It is the essence of what is known as tradition. This increasing obsession produces more and more stress which slowly erodes our emotional strength and debilitates healthy relationships. Strict attention and focus on rules hardens the heart while professing to produce goodness and correctness in people however those are defined by the particular group or person in charge.

This strategy is at the heart of the Babylon system. And it is important to understand that it is not God's plan or method. And although God has stooped to meet us in our ignorance and set up systems of rules for us to observe because of our strong insistence toward this orientation, His original and perfect plan is based on heart relationships and heart motivation. His rules and laws are descriptive in nature instead of proscriptive. Man's laws are almost always proscriptive.

What is the difference? Proscriptive laws involve arbitrary commands requiring an enforcer and arbitrary punishments for infractions. The unholy trinity described at length in other places on this site (see labels) uses this system as its modus operandi. Rules, in fact, become a sort of deity in and of themselves. It is assumed that every problem can and must be solved by creating another law. (If you have any doubt about this, just casually observe how congress operates over a period of time.)

Once rules have been formulated based on some select group or person's opinion of what everyone else must do to be “right”, then some kind of punishment must be created to frighten everyone enough to obey the rules. The punishment often has no relationship to the law except its arbitrary imposition and attachment to that law. It usually has very little to do with natural cause and effect. In our society the two most common punishments that have condensed over time are fines and imprisonment. It matters very little what the law was that was broken. The punishment is almost always the same. Only the amount or length of the punishment may vary.

Now that the punishment has been formulated for the arbitrary rule, it is passed on to an ever-expanding group of enforcers to impose the punishments. This is usually deeply immersed in the “economics” leg of the unholy trinity. The system of law enforcement is almost exclusively a means of enrichment of the elite groups of “insiders” of society, those involved in making more laws, controlling most of the economics or acting as the enforcers. This encourages segregation of society into class systems between those who can get inside the privileged groups and those who are exploited outside the groups. There are all kinds of groups that are usually overlapping, but the grouping is very apparent most of the time.

This whole system of external rule-based living is inherently designed to harden hearts and make us cynical and callous. The “Babylonian” system designed and implemented by the greatest enemy of our souls is intent on destroying the image of God implanted in our hearts. It purports to have a better alternative to God's relational family-relationship system because it focuses on external performance and results more than God's system seems to. It teaches that the externals are the most important thing about us and that our value is based primarily on our ability to exalt ourselves at the expense of others.

Descriptive law is a completely different order of thinking and living. Descriptive law is not so much law as we are used to thinking of the word but is simply descriptive of the underlying principles of reality as it really is. In fact, God's laws, if understood correctly, are not really laws as impositions but are simply explanations of the great principles of cause and effect inherent in creation and the universe. These have been condensed into written descriptions in the imperfect and incomplete language of men adapted enough to get us to begin to understand how things work outside our limited understanding. The “laws” of God are like the laws of nature, which in fact are the laws of God. But unlike human arbitrary laws, God's laws do not require the system of arbitrary enforcement and oppressive enforcers to impose irrelevant punishments. God's laws are completely natural and His guidance (received through the heart) is designed to align us correctly with these principles so that we do not run crosswise to them and suffer the natural consequences of doing so.

God created the universe with immense power built into the various aspects and forces. These “natural” powers must stay in the synchronization and balance that was designed for them so that they accomplish what they were intended to do. As long as all the elements and intelligent entities stay in harmony with each other as originally designed they act as a blessing to each other and glorify the amazing skill and love of the Designer. But as soon as choices are made to violate the inherent principles in place, the incredible forces built into the system are in danger of breaking out of their boundaries and causing harm and unintended consequences that God never intended.

For instance, take the “law” of gravity. Gravity is not an arbitrary rule with arbitrary punishments for violators and with enforcers standing ready to impose the punishment. It is not at all like man's system of rules. It you violate the “principle” of gravity you unleash power inherent in gravity that results in consequences that are directly related and proportional to the violation incurred. We do not usually accuse God of arbitrarily punishing someone for violating the law of gravity, we are usually observant and open-minded enough to admit that the resultant pain and problems were directly the responsibility of the “violator”. We understand, usually, that if we stay in harmony and live within the constraints of this principle we can actually use it for our advantage and blessing. The inherent and immense power in this principle or law is woven into nearly everything we do. We know how to apply other principles that at times may supersede the normal constraints of gravity, but we understand our relationship to this law as simply a description of reality, of how things are in the world we are placed in.

When we apply this concept to all the rest of God's “laws” and begin to view them in the light of natural principles, that they are simply descriptions of reality that describe the boundaries of dynamic forces kept in balance, we will begin to unmask many of the lies about God as being an over-powering enforcer of capricious arbitrary edicts looking for opportunities to punish us and condemn our hearts.

In reality, God is passionate about restoring the balance of power in the universe to the model He first created. This model is based solidly on interconnected hearts in perfect harmony and joy with each other, drawing abundant life from the Creator and blessing everyone around them with life. This is our destiny and design. This is the identity built into to us called the image of God. When we realize the blessing and identity implanted within us that God longs to grow in our hearts we will re-connect with the real Source of life and begin to flourish and thrive within the natural constraints of all the mighty forces of nature and relationships.

Some people become alarmed at this perspective because it sounds in many ways like New Age thinking. New Age does teach a lot about inherent forces in the universe and living in harmony with natural principles. Like all false systems of thought, New Age has a great deal more truth in their understandings than most Christians are willing to accept. But the higher percentage of truth a belief contains the more deceptive potential it carries to smuggle in the small but deadly errors. In this case, the main embedded error that is fatal in this system of belief is the original lie given to Eve that we can be our own god, that God is not a separate entity from us but is our collective consciousness. This is largely reinforced in their minds because of the horrific lies about God that Christians still teach and believe in today.

But we must be very careful not to discredit the true part of something simply because it has been coupled with something erroneous. This is a very strong tendency among many but prevents us from embracing many concepts that are actually based in true reality. Every one of us is incomplete in our knowledge of truth and we all harbor lies that make us potential agents of deception ourselves. I have observed that many people associated with New Age are far more open-minded about learning new things than most other “religious” people. The prejudice against God that I see in most people who embrace New Age thinking is almost always based on terrible lies and abuse heaped on them by others claiming to represent God while acting more like demons. In response to this abuse, these people find the harmony and common sense that is more prevalent in New Age circles a refreshing breath of fresh air compared to the oppression and nonsense perpetrated by “religious” abusers.

The laws of nature are the laws of God because God created nature. This applies to all the universe. But sin has disrupted the balance of powers originally set up by the Creator and we now see some of the natural results and consequences everywhere we look. I personally believe that even some of the chaos we observe far out in space may possibly be continuing catastrophic results of sin on the part of some of the angels who fell so long ago. There are strong hints to this effect in the book of Jude and elsewhere in the Bible.

Sin is, in its essence, a crossing or violation of natural principles of harmony with the powers set up in original balance. The Bible defines sin as “transgression of the law”. “Trans” means to go crosswise to and “gress” involves movement (such as pro-gress or re-gress). When the law is understood as descriptive of natural principles with inherent built-in power, then to go crosswise to these natural principles will result in suffering the consequences of the power released in the wrong way. Sin disconnects us from not only from our only source for continued life but from the only reliable guidance system that will keep us aligned in harmony with all the forces surrounding us.

We are so ignorant on this subject that we are pitiful. We have tried to reduce all these concepts into religious talk and meaningless phrases strung together like so many mantras. We assume that if we can find the right religious recipe then we can maneuver our way into escaping pain and into favor with God.

But we must realize that God is already on our side, He is not the one against us. He is passionately doing everything imaginable to attract us to Himself and allow Him to bring us back into healthy alignment with the rest of creation so we can thrive and reconnect with all of the channels of life He created for us. This is the plan of salvation, to restore us to our proper place and function in the life-giving circuit of power. If we insist on remaining mis-configured and continue to trust other sources for guidance and life in place of trusting Him, we violate and break open the natural boundaries of intense but largely unknown forces in place all around us and unleash those forces into destructive results they were never intended to accomplish. God's incredible grace is the only thing currently protecting us from the disastrous affects of those forces even now. He is waiting and working within this atmosphere of grace to draw every person who is willing back into the protection of harmony with Him and His principles.

The time is soon coming when the level of sin and its effects on these forces will result in terrifying consequences that are inevitable when the grace of God is pushed firmly out of the way. Those who still cling to their barbaric lies about God will insist that God is a punisher and executor. They firmly believe that God operates His government like men do and therefore He will enforce His laws with stern punishments just like evil-hearted men do. The terrible thing is that this is largely the view and belief of most Christians right now. These lies about God become the filter through which everything is viewed and interpreted. Because this false picture of God is cherished so strongly, they will in fact experience the very results of the false ideas they impose on God.

Only those who are willing to radically be transformed into a completely new reality and perceive God from His perspective will be synchronized enough to survive the effects of nature's forces out of control because of sin. And more important, they will be fitted in heaven during the millenium to come into perfect harmony with God so they can not only look on His face in the final day of reckoning but will, amazingly, become part of His very body. They will participate in the greatest exposé of God ever to take place in all of time.

Sinners in Zion are terrified; Trembling has seized the godless. "Who among us can live with the consuming fire? Who among us can live with continual burning?" He who walks righteously and speaks with sincerity, He who rejects unjust gain And shakes his hands so that they hold no bribe; He who stops his ears from hearing about bloodshed And shuts his eyes from looking upon evil; (Isaiah 33:14-15 NAS95)