Reflections from the Abyss

“Do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows. Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:31-34 NAS95)

This text came to my mind this morning in the context of the experience that I am currently going through. My motives and character and my relationship with Jesus are being presented publicly by certain individuals as being diabolical and calculatingly evil. This, of course, reflects on the reputation of God whose name I have taken and profess to be connected to.

Some people believe that I am afraid to speak the “truth” as they believe it to be, and insist that until I “confess” my “wicked motives” that they have convinced themselves are “the facts” that I am living in a delusion and represent a dangerous threat to society. The problem I face right now is not only the rupture of some very dear relationships in my life but the subtle twists on the true definitions of these words and the open character assassination launched on my reputation. For me to attempt to defend myself against the carefully assembled “evidence” would only serve to appear to vindicate their false conclusions about my motives. I have not denied that I made serious errors in judgment and have made mistakes that have deeply hurt other people. But to supposedly confess that my motives at the time were evil, calculating attempts to exploit them would require that I engage in lies about what I was actually feeling, believing and trying to do at the time. Basically I am being demanded to become the very person I am accused of being in the eyes of my accusers.

I have not wanted to write about this because I do not want to enter into public debate that will only end in much more pain and alienation. God's reputation has already been maligned and familiar accusations of His inability to do in my life what He has promised He can do are flying fast. I have found that my main effective source of life and strength during this excruciating time of my life is what God says about me and His perspective found in the Bible free of distortions of the real enemy. For I realize also that the real enemy is not the people who are presently accusing me but the original “accuser of the brethren” who uses every chance he can to malign God's character through failures in the lives of those in whom He is working to restore His image.

I have made every attempt I know how to do, short of engaging in lying, to confess my faults, ask for forgiveness of wounded parties and seek reconciliation. At this point there appears to be no interest for any reconciliation from the other parties which has created pain in my heart that currently has no healing. It is not primarily my own loss of reputation and misrepresented motives that I grieve but the intense attachment pain that is very much like the death of a close loved one or a divorce.

During this time I have been struggling to know how to relate to this situation and how to think. I have been bombarded with intense suggestions from the enemy to react in all sorts of wrong ways, to indulge in retaliation, bitterness or counter-attack. There is intense temptation to sink into self-pity and despondency or solicit sympathy from others who are not yet swayed by this slander. It is easy to see that the arguments used against me may be reflective of the spirit of the ones employing them. But if I engage in launching a defense for myself I will find myself indulging in the same spirit as my accusers and will fall into the very trap that I am alleged to already be in.

I realize that this is a steep learning and growing experience for me though it is extremely painful. I have chosen to be very open about my mistakes and be vulnerable and honest with those who have confronted me after hearing of this matter. To do anything else would only create further complications that would undermine my already questionable reputation. Many of the things that I have been learning and writing about over the past year are suddenly being challenged to be practiced under extreme pressure. Temptation to indulge in “image management” has been very intense. I had been collecting thoughts in a writing about self-justification for a week or two before this started and suddenly all those things were required to be considered under high pressure. Receiving strength from the Word and remembering my true identity that God is forming within my heart became the focal point of the intense battle swirling around me. The need for true friends who not only know the truth about me but would be willing to challenge, encourage and remind me of not only who I really am but of what God has said about me, became very evident and obviously lacking. The dangers of isolation in a time like this also became more stark as the pain and emotions became overwhelming at times with no one around that I felt safe with to share them. I am being given opportunity to learn many lessons that, if successfully learned, will certainly be called into further use in the future. I was reminded of the text in James that invites me to “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds (complex ones), because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. (James 1:2-5 NIV)

Yesterday and today the readings from My Utmost were very instructive and relevant for me in this crisis. Especially yesterday's thoughts on Peter's experience walking on the water in the middle of a wild storm applied to my situation perfectly. I have come to realize the crucial importance of getting my focus off of problems and accusations and onto Jesus Himself and what He has to think and say.

“The wind was actually boisterous, the waves were actually high, but Peter did not see them at first. He did not reckon with them, he simply recognized his Lord and stepped out in recognition of Him, and walked on the water. Then he began to reckon with the actual things, and down he went instantly.

...If you are recognizing your Lord, you have no business with where He engineers your circumstances. The actual things are, but immediately you look at them you are overwhelmed, you cannot recognize Jesus, and the rebuke comes: 'Wherefore did you doubt?' Let actual circumstances be what they may, keep recognizing Jesus, maintain complete reliance on Him.

If you debate for a second when God has spoken, it is all up. Never begin to say – 'Well, I wonder if He did speak?' Be reckless immediately, fling it all out on Him. You do not know when His voice will come, but whenever the realization of God comes in the faintest way imaginable, recklessly abandon. It is only by abandon that you recognize Him. You will only realize His voice more clearly by recklessness.” (MUHH 6/18)

Today's reading (6/19) reminded me sharply that discipleship is not adherence to a belief or creed but is based on devotion to Jesus Christ. “There is no argument and no compulsion, but simply – 'If you would be My disciple, you must be devoted to Me.' ...If I am devoted to the cause of humanity only, I will soon be exhausted and come to the place where my love will falter; but if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity though men treat me as a doormat. The secret of a disciple's life is devotion to Jesus Christ, and the characteristic of the life is its unobtrusiveness.”

The greatest pressure that I have felt over the past week is to deny my relationship and dependence on Jesus and to abandon my attempts to live from my heart. Because of the subtle nature of the charges leveled against me it has been made to appear that my relationship with God is only a cover for a “depraved cravings seeking to exploit others for personal gratification.” There is no effective defense against such accusations but to leave it in God's hands who is the only one capable of revealing the true motives and intents of the heart.

The text brought to me this morning about confessing Jesus is this very application. To "confess" means to agree with someone. The main focus of this controversy is whether I can be pressured into agreeing with those who are certain they can read my motives and my heart better than either I can or God can, or whether I will agree with what I already know to be true both from my own experience and from what God says about me in His Word and through His Spirit. I have been very surprised at how intense the internal pressure has been from the cacophony of internal suggestions from false gods to compromise away what God has been growing inside of me over the past few years. Basically I am being pressured to discount everything I have been learning and receiving and internalizing from God in exchange for a temporary appeasement which would not even lead to any reconciliation or healing. It doesn't make any sense but the pressure is still there nonetheless.

I want to be very careful not to paint my accusers in a bad light by attacking their reputations and give cause for them to become discouraged when they realize later what they have really done. I love them dearly even though they do not believe that right now and I want them to experience God's love for themselves as I have been learning it slowly over the past few years. I cannot communicate with them at the present because they have cut off all ties with me, but I want to do everything possible to keep the road unblocked for reconciliation whenever God softens the hearts of everyone involved. While I still suffer intense pain at the loss of our close friendship and pray for God to open all of our hearts to the real truth and for us to see things through the eyes and with the Spirit of heaven, I have to leave them in God's hands to work out His plans in His time and with His methods. I know of nothing else I can do that will contribute toward this end and have to trust in the goodness and kindness and faithfulness of God to win our hearts in the end.

While this has been very devastating to my family emotionally, I also believe in the ability of God, “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28 NIV) God has called all of us for His purpose and He has the wonderful ability to take the most filthy messes and produce the most spectacular outcomes if we are willing to let Him be trusted with control. I choose to trust Him with this problem and receive from Him whatever He wants to do in my life and in my family.

“For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, 'who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth;' and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.” (1 Peter 2:21-25 NAS95)

During this past week I have been collecting different texts that come to my mind as reminders of God's thoughts or as warnings, precautions or assurances. As I stopped to listen this morning for another word from God I opened my Bible at random and received this new assurance.

O Lord, be gracious to us; we have waited for You. Be our strength every morning, Our salvation also in the time of distress.

The Lord is exalted, for He dwells on high; He has filled Zion with justice and righteousness. And He will be the stability of your times, A wealth of salvation, wisdom and knowledge; The fear of the Lord is his treasure. (Isaiah 33:2, 5-6 NAS95)

Contrasting Trios in Romans 2

Comparing the opposite trios in Rom. 2:7,8.

Seek for glory, honor and immortality.

Obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation.

Glory – doxa from the base of 1380 (dokeo); glory (as very apparent), in a wide application (literal or figurative, objective or subjective):--dignity, glory(-ious), honour, praise, worship. dokeo, to think; by implication, to seem (truthfully or uncertainly):--be accounted, (of own) please(-ure), be of reputation, seem (good), suppose, think, trow.	Unrighteousness – adikia from 94 (adikos); (legal) injustice (properly, the quality, by implication, the act); morally, wrongfulness (of character, life or act):--iniquity, unjust, unrighteousness, wrong. adikos, unjust; by extension wicked; by implication, treacherous; specially, heathen:--unjust, unrighteous.
Honor – time, tee-may' from 5099 (tino); a value, i.e. money paid, or (concretely and collectively) valuables; by analogy, esteem (especially of the highest degree), or the dignity itself:--honour, precious, price, some. tino, to pay a price, i.e. as a penalty:--be punished with.	Wrath, Indignation – thumos from 2380 (thuo); passion (as if breathing hard):--fierceness, indignation, wrath. thuo, a primary verb; properly, to rush (breathe hard, blow, smoke), i.e. (by implication) to sacrifice (properly, by fire, but genitive case); by extension to immolate (slaughter for any purpose):--kill, (do) sacrifice, slay.
Immortality – aphtharsia from 862 (aphthartos); incorruptibility; genitive, unending existence; (figuratively) genuineness:--immortality, incorruption, sincerity. aphthartos, undecaying (in essence or continuance):--not (in-, un-)corruptible, immortal.	Indignation, Wrath – orge from 3713 (oregomai); properly, desire (as a reaching forth or excitement of the mind), i.e. (by analogy), violent passion (ire, or (justifiable) abhorrence); by implication punishment:--anger, indignation, vengeance, wrath. oregomai, to stretch oneself, i.e. reach out after (long for):--covet after, desire.

These two sets of words stand across from each other in contrast. They are the driving motives of two opposite kinds of people described in this chapter. As I analyzed them in the Greek and followed them deeper to their roots I found some very interesting underlying motives emerging. Look at the highlighted words in the chart realizing that not every word has to contain every nuance of its meaning in every occurrence but these meanings seem to fit well into this context.

(next in series)

Shaped Words

Words and thoughts and feelings can be illustrated by the toys made for babies that are shaped like balls and have various shapes in the surface to put matching shapes inside the ball.

In my imagination of this illustration, the ball is very large and represents the inside of our soul, what we feel, perceive, believe, experience etc. The pieces that fit into the holes are words that we utilize to transfer what is inside of our ball to another person's ball. The holes are the outlets through which we squeeze our thoughts and ideas into a certain form that hopefully will be recognizable and relevant to the other person so that when they take it in through a similarly shaped hole and expand it and reassemble the sequence of words inside their own ball, they will have an approximation of the original thought or feeling we are trying to convey to them.

Our actions are likewise condensed representations of our intents and desires, but for this time I want to focus primarily on words.

In addition to a multitude of shapes, the communication pieces are also coded by color that is supposed to match the shapes. For instance, let's say that blue is supposed to always be associated with circle, green with square and yellow with triangle. This added dimension allows us to have deeper meaning, more definition and usefulness for words so that they will more closely match the meaning and accuracy of the sender. Our language and culture, our upbringing and our experiences largely determine the encoding process that teaches our brain the complex library of definitions and associations necessary for truthful communication.

However, this complex system is nowhere sufficient for really conveying the immense size and complexity of the original thought or feeling to be reproduced accurately as the same thought or feeling in another mind. There is always a certain amount of error in the transfer process and very often much more than we suspect. To further complicate this, the attitudes, disposition, biases and emotions of the receiver add their own strong flavor to the reassembly of the words inside the mind and sometimes seriously undermine the integrity of the message intended by the sender. Considering all the pitfalls and hazards and risks involved that are much more than here touched on, it is really amazing that we can communicate as effectively as we do.

What happens, though, when there is deliberate tampering with the code itself? What about improper or abusive distortion that created a rearranged and confused library that consistently interprets certain messages in a way vastly different than what was sent? We all tend to believe that our own library is more accurate than others because it is all we know. But what happens when we refuse to update our library and our pride demands that our spin on the words coming in is the only correct interpretation? What too, about differing levels of maturity that have an affect on our ability to comprehend concepts or our ability to have a large enough context to not jump to false assumptions?

You can begin to see potential for catastrophic problems when the shapes on one ball are colored with a very different color than on the other ball. The code is mixed up and the message gets hopelessly twisted either in the sender or the receiver. This is a very common occurrence and lies beneath much of our interpersonal conflict and pain. One person sends out a yellow square and the other person takes it in through a green square hole. Who is right? The first person is using improper coding but believes they are right because they have always used yellow for squares – their parents and upbringing conditioned them to do so. They may get very upset when the receiver is confused or seems to misinterpret the intended message and is charged with being devious when in actuality it was the senders faulty coding that created the conflict. Very many of us, if not all of us, need a lot of repainting and refining of our outlets and inlets to better synchronize and bond with each other.

I see the inside of our ball – our mind and heart and soul – as filled with all kinds of material, maybe raw material or partially assembled material of all sorts. These are ideas, many times only partially finished. They are emotions, sometimes like intense gases, that are always impossible to accurately squeeze through the tiny holes of words but containing very great pressure that forces them to seek outlet anyway. They are beliefs that are more substantive and defined but not necessarily as strong as we think they are until a crisis comes to reveal what they are really made of. There are theories and propositions laying around waiting to be assembled, scrapped or rearranged to make more sense before being ready to export.

All of these things are moving around like in a biosphere sometimes very active like storms or sometimes very peaceful like a quiet river. When we want to connect with others and share what is inside, these things head for the inside surface of the ball to find a way out through the means of shaped and colored words to be delivered to the other person. A great deal of condensing has to take place on the way out because words are so small compared to the size of the originals. That is one reason we have to use many words in our attempt to parse our ideas into deliverable format in hopes that the other person will know how to reassemble them all somewhat accurately and maybe have enough of the right context to grasp a little bit of the flavor of what we want them to understand about us.

Because the words are such small parts of the original and have to squeeze through the little coded holes both leaving us and entering the other person, there is always great loss from the original content. In addition, the words are somewhat dehydrated versions that have had much of the “liquid” extracted from them before delivery and the receiver has to “reconstitute” our words, along with all the other communications they are receiving, with their own “liquid” to rehydrate the message to make sense of it. This adds another dimension for confusion and misunderstanding but can also create a lot of variety and flavor for life.

Now add to that the problem so pervasive today of meaningless words. The more a person abuses their words and fails to be transparently truthful, the smaller in value the words become. That means that one necessarily has to use even more words to convey the same message than they could otherwise and so their words continue to have to be multiplied as they become weaker and weaker.

Some of us find ourselves compelled to use more and more expletives in our attempt to express ourselves with less and less satisfaction that we are being heard. Expletives, cursing and vulgarity become an addiction in our attempt to be heard and understood but leave us more and more dissatisfied and frustrated. Similarly, we may become loud or boisterous, angry or whiny or any number of other means to try to get out what is building up so much pressure inside. But the more we abuse our words the smaller and more useless they become to us starving us from the very interaction that we need to bond and thrive and feel satisfaction. These problems are a disease that is like cancer eating away at all of our relationships.

When words are full of meaning and mean exactly what they say and nothing more or less, they are like the toy objects that fit perfectly into the holes on the balls. When they slide through the hole with almost no room to spare there is a certain sense of satisfaction and synchronization that takes place in our minds. However, when the objects shrink smaller and smaller, that sense of satisfaction is lost because the words no longer fit nicely; they just fall through the holes and the whole point of playing the game is lost.

As our ability to communicate is limited by these problems all of the material inside our heads becomes very difficult to share. As a result there is an increase in isolation and loneliness. This is the opposite of joy which is a free-flowing interaction between two minds and hearts that share many common feelings and stimulate each other to more creativity and satisfaction.

Another major problem with words used without meaning is that not only do others come to doubt what we say but we ourselves come to disbelieve at our heart level what we hear ourselves say. As a result, our promises to ourselves and our resolutions to do something or change something become weaker and weaker and we find ourselves slaves to whatever feelings or impulses that may come along. In addition we will find that God does not believe our words either no matter how good they sound or how well they are delivered. We may have the most inspiring praise and worship times together with other people and say the most wonderful and pious-sounding insights, but if in our daily life we use words loosely, carelessly and without integrity then God will not accept anything we offer Him. (see Malachi 2:13-17)

What can we do if we find ourselves slipping into this trap? First we need to recognize what we are doing and have some sense of what it is costing us in strained relationships and pain that we are causing others. Then we need to ask God for a spirit of repentance and turn away from our habits of loose and careless words. As I have become aware of these issues I have begun to analyze some of the things I say and check myself more often to be aware of when I use words with diminished meaning. Since using words at full force means that one can use far less of them, I pick up clues as to where I am in this area when I catch myself having to use far too many words to convey something very simple. If I find that people often don't believe me I wonder what lies behind that problem. Of course, it sometimes is not because I am not telling the truth but is because the other person is not using words carefully and so they also discount much of what everyone else is saying.

What is very interesting is that God never has this problem. When He uses words He fully means what He says and whatever He says is always true. The reason we have such a difficult time believing God is not because He cannot be trusted but because we cannot be trusted and we project that onto other's words.

For two minds to bond in love they have to come to some level of accurate and reliable level of using words with each other or the relationship is undermined. If one person is telling the truth but the other is living in fear and fails to be open and honest then the relationship is fatally flawed. Often the honest person is the one blamed for the resulting problems even though the fearful one originated the cause. Fear and deceit are like termites that eat away at our lives and leave us crumbling while we point the finger at those around us and blame them for all of our pain.

To have healthy, growing relationships that help us mature and thrive we need to practice honesty in our speech and think much more carefully about our own relationship with our words. I believe everyone has some failures in this area but today it is reaching epidemic proportions. God is drawing us back to live in community with other believers in simplicity of speech and openness of heart. This is the only safe environment in which we can thrive and grow.

I Want More Lust

Everything I have been learning and receiving through inductive Bible study and from a number of other sources for the past few years insists that my identity in Christ is diametrically opposite of what is contained in the messages I often get from those around me or from the accusing voices inside me. It seems that the real challenge I am facing is much deeper than my circumstances and the messages they convey to me. The real challenge is if I am going to really believe what God has done and is doing in me based on what I have learned from His word both in the Bible and personally expressed to me, or whether I will believe the lies of the enemy insisting that my true identity is a sinner full of evil lust, anger and rebellion.

Sometimes I am in great danger of forgetting who I am and what it is like me to act. In fact, under the recent pressures in my life there have been times when I have almost forgotten who I really, and when that happens I feel like I am in a tailspin. I need people around me to remind me of who I am who know me and can see me through the eyes of heaven.

One of the things that came to me this morning is why lust (as we usually think of it) is so harmful. If Oswald Chamber's definition of lust is accurate – I must have it NOW – then some other ideas begin to make sense. Lust is not necessarily sexual in nature, although we usually associate it with that. There are many different kinds of lust but they all have the commonality of intense desire and the immediacy craving. Maybe the real problem with lust is that it acts just like an addition, and often it ends up as one. An addiction is an attempt to receive satisfaction for a legitimate desire through an alternative immediate pleasure that leaves one more empty and hungry than before. The pleasure is not really satisfying but only masks the emptiness and cravings while it is being experienced. But the consequential feelings of guilt, shame and worthlessness that follow an indulgence of an addiction intensifies the craving for real satisfaction. Since one is either ignorant of, or unwilling to admit the real object of their craving and the real source that could satisfy that hunger, they usually return to whatever alternative they have chosen to temporarily mask the pain by another indulgence only to deepen their hunger even more.

But it occurred to me that we may have painted lust with such a negative color that we have lost sight of the fact that it really is a counterfeit of a real “lust” that is the true craving our hearts were designed to thrive on. A counterfeit is absurd, even non-existent if it does not mimic something of value that is true. Jesus said to His disciples that He lusted to be with them at the Last Supper. Jesus embraced His lust to be with His friends at a very intimate level, which is really a description of “joy”. Since our hearts and brains are hard-wired to crave joy more than any other experience (according to even non-Christian brain researchers and scientists today), and joy is only found in healthy attachments of love-bonds, then the true original that lust counterfeits is the joy found in the intimacy of closely bonded relationships both with our families, our friends and most of all with God.

So it seems to me that we need to have and embrace a very intense feeling of healthy lust and need to learn how to indulge it at every opportunity that we can. But this true lust that Jesus indulged in was a passion to connect deeper and stronger and more permanently with the hearts and lives of others in the presence and with the love of God.

Maybe we spend so much time trying to avoid lust that we almost completely fail to immerse ourselves in the very thing that worldly lust counterfeits. But if we spend all of our energy and focus on avoiding the false without embracing the true, what have we gained but emptiness and loss; we not only do not “enjoy the pleasures of sin” for what little they have to offer, but we also miss out on the pleasures at the right hand of God forevermore. That is the legacy of false religion and especially legalism. It is a very negative-oriented focus of life that seeks to avoid all evil in a quest for supposed perfection. But perfection is not reached by eliminating evil. Life is not the absence of death; death is the absence of life. We cannot experience eternal life by trying to focus on the dangers of death and sin or trying to avoid them. I have been trying to do that for many years and have come up very empty and hungry and messed up.

I cannot get warm by trying to get rid of cold. Many times in my life I have tried to get warm at night by piling on more blankets only to lay shivering through a night of fitful sleep interrupted by awakenings from cold feet and legs. However, I know that if someone else sleeps close to me their heat will do much more to keep me warm than trying to avoid the cold with more and more blankets. (I usually use an electric blanket or mattress pad in lieu of another body to keep me warm.) To get warm enough to dispel the cold from my body I have to have a source of heat.

Likewise, most people realize that you cannot get rid of darkness and produce light by trying to just get rid of it. It is impossible to go into a dark room and push out the darkness in order to experience light. That is absurd! And yet we do not think it absurd at all to attempt to experience true life, abundant life, by trying to exterminate all of the problems and sins and faults in our life and in those around us. Many of us make a full-time career out of fault-finding and sin-fingering, both in ourselves and in those around us. But this usually leaves us more desperate and empty and hurting than before.

There really is only one source of life anywhere in the universe. We may accept this in theory, but we usually don't really accept it very seriously in our souls. What I, and all of us really crave and need most is a full-blown, unabashed addiction and obsession for that one Source of life. I know that sounds like so much religious jargon and empty talk, but that is because we have our wiring messed up and the lies inside of our heads dismiss this as simplistic and not worthy of our pursuit. But those lies are the seeds of death and will grow to snuff out all of our life if we do not indulge and encourage a lust for God with all the passion of our being. That is what my heart was designed for and craves the most even though I may not recognize it at all.

What this “lust” may look like and how it will be expressed will be unique and different for every person, but it will be harmonious with every other passionate lover tuning into God's heart. This is the lust that is not to be repented of. This is the real thing, the one indulgence that will satisfy every craving, large or small, that ever touches our mind, our heart and our emotions. God may use people around us to channel these expressions through, but the ultimate and only legitimate object of all our affections and cravings needs to be the real Source from which all satisfaction comes.

God, fill me with pure, unbridled lust for you, with passion that resonates with your heart, that quivers from your beauty, that rests in your intimate love.

Ask - Beg!

I don't know exactly how many years I have been reading Oswald's devotional book but this morning I think I got one of his points for the first time. Somehow before it slipped past me. Maybe the context of my life and the experience of people around me caused me to perceive it today.

Ask if you have not Received. There is nothing more difficult than to ask. We will long and desire and crave and suffer, but not until we are at the extreme limit will we ask. A sense of unreality makes us ask. Have you ever asked out of the depths of moral poverty? “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God...,” but be sure that you do lack wisdom. You cannot bring yourself up against Reality when you like. The next best thing to do if you are not spiritually real, is to ask God for the Holy Spirit on the word of Jesus Christ (see Luke 11:13). The Holy Spirit is the One Who makes real in you all that Jesus did for you.

This reminds me of several things that have become high in my attention over the past few years. “A sense of unreality” is something that haunts me on a regular basis and makes me more intense to discover and experience true reality. I have come to realize that nearly all of the atmosphere around me mentally and spiritually is geared to deceiving me and creating a false reality that is then enforced by the arbitrary forms of control and government that we are so familiar with. This is true in society, in church and in families. But the reality in heaven and that the rest of the universe lives in is so much different. That is the real reality that Jesus came to reveal and attract us to when He crashed into our realm of false “reality” to shatter our paradigms and challenge our assumptions.

But because this reality is out of our natural reach, the point is well made that we cannot bring ourselves up against Reality when we like. We cannot repent just whenever we get around to it. It is a gift from God induced by His kindness and we have to act on it, respond to it while we are in its presence and our hearts are conscious of it. It is the function of the Holy Spirit to draw our minds and hearts into this realm of true reality.

“For every one that asketh receiveth.” This does not mean you will not get if you do not ask (cf. Matt. 5:45), but until you get to the point of asking you won't receive from God. To receive means you have come into the relationship of a child of God, and now you perceive with intelligent and moral appreciation and spiritual understanding that these things come from God.

This is the part that I have missed every time before. It suddenly hit me forcefully this time the difference between getting what I ask for in prayer and receiving it. That may seem obvious after it is noted, but I now see there is a world of difference between getting something and receiving it, with lots of implications in all kinds of other areas of my life. I can get lots of things and answers to prayer and problems solved and..., but to receive is much more a spirit, an attitude, a distinct shift in thinking and relationship. To receive is to make a deliberate choice to enter into a submissive, appreciative and bonding relationship with the one I receive from. It puts more of my focus on my attitude toward the giver instead of my focusing on what I am getting. It implies that receiving something draws my attention to the nature and character and the reasons of the one that has a desire for this relationship with me, whereas just getting something from someone often means that I am focused on what I want, what I crave – a selfish orientation of thinking and way of life.

Until I come to the place where I intentionally enter into a spirit of deliberate receiving of what God has for me I will be more interested in asking for what I am focused on, what I think I need, rather than trusting Him to reveal to me and provide for me what would really satisfy and that I may likely know nothing about yet.

This shift in focus I believe is the transition in my relationship with God from an external-oriented, self-focused one to engaging my heart and becoming vulnerable with Him. It is entering more into the life of faith which is a heart-response to One who is worthy of being trusted because of His nature and character, not so much because of my perception of circumstances attributed to or blamed on Him.

“If any of you lack wisdom....” If you realize you are lacking, it is because you have come in contact with spiritual reality; do not put your reasonable blinkers on again. “Ask” means beg. Some people are poor enough to be interested in their poverty, and some of us are like that spiritually. We will never receive if we ask with an end in view; if we ask, not out of our poverty but out of our lust. A pauper does not ask from any other reason than the abject panging condition of his poverty; he is not ashamed to beg. –– Blessed are the paupers in spirit. (MUHH 6/9)

I really like the emphasis he put on “beg”. It is an indication of an intense desire that involves my passion to a level I have never gone before. Passion can be extracted from our hearts in times of extreme desperation. I believe that is why God allows us to get into circumstances that put great pressure on us, not to hurt us though it feels very painful, but to get us in touch with our real heart and to awaken the passion that He implanted in there originally. Passion is heart-stuff and I believe God is primarily heart-oriented. This is often very foreign and frightening to us because we relate religion mostly to head knowledge and external performance. But until I allow my heart to awaken and become aflame with a passion to know God intimately and live in His presence, I will continue to feel dissatisfied and hungry and all the other symptoms of a starving heart.

When I come into the awareness of my desperate need and poverty of spirit, and give up on my own resources and solutions and fixes; when I find myself in the condition of the people described in Jesus' Blessings on the Mount in Matthew 5. Then I can enter into reality, I can beg unashamedly and I can enter into the attitude of a receiver which is really the attitude of a lover.

I like the warning that Chambers gives here, ”do not put your reasonable blinkers on again.” I am so in the habit of my old mindset that I must be cautious about falling back into old patterns of relating. When my passion for God makes me squirm with embarrassment about what people will think about me, or my failures cause me to doubt the reality or effectiveness of God's work in me, I must remember to ask God who I really am, to receive His answer in my soul and then live in that context. I cannot trust in my old rules of reason that set off flashing blinkers of warning against my new ways of thinking or lifestyle. I have to keep my mind and heart free of the lies that sabotage what God is doing in me and trust Him to protect and guide me through the confusion and imbalance that I feel during this time of transition.

God, teach me more how to live from my heart and to live in the attitude of a real receiver. This is a real weak area of my character, but you are faithful and will finish what you have started in my life. Thank-you so much for your kindness, your tolerance and your patience with me. Show me today how to live and seek glory, honor and genuine reality in your presence.