Notes From Inside My Head

This title is not to be confused with a blog site of the same name which I enjoy reading on a regular basis. But it seems like a good description for what I have to share right now.

We have started reading a book we got from the library called Healing Your Family History by Rebecca Linder Hintze with the forward written by Stephen Covey. We have not gotten too far into it but it is already obvious this is a keeper. I think we are going to have to find where to purchase one soon because we are going to want our own copy.

In what we have read and discussed so far we have learned that this is an excellent resource for unlocking a great deal of issues that plague the minds and hearts of everyone. It is very practical ideas and guidance for facing assumptions not only from our past but from our culture and our families. If a person is serious about experiencing real improvement and change in their life I would recommend getting this book. Of course, like so many other things it will only work to the extent that a person is willing to be honest about what is going on inside and not just go through motions. But this is a good forum for facing that issue as well.

We have had a lot happen over the past weekend that I do not yet feel free to talk about to the whole world yet – not that anyone other than two or three people even look at this except by accident. I will say that I have visited a lot of my personal emotions in some very intense ways that I do not normally do that has left me wondering where or who I am at times. There were moments when I hoped there might be some major breakthroughs that never materialized, at least at the conscious level. On the other hand I believe after some hard work and painful but careful exchanges that significant progress in some of my relationships has occurred.

While I could wish that there was much more taking place I also remember that God is very thorough in the work He does at the heart level which sometimes takes much longer to accomplish than the surface job that we may be looking for. Man looks on the outward appearances but God looks at the heart. I want to allow my heart to catch up to many of the things my head has been learning about over the past few years, but that is an area that is difficult if not impossible to direct easily. Because the heart growth is much more dependent on relationships for real progress than head knowledge requires, I have a much more difficult time growing in this area because my relational skills are so stunted.

I was faced this weekend with opening up a somewhat recent very painful emotional wound and revisiting it for the sole purpose of attempting to bring some healing and restoration into it. I am trusting that the process of healing has been initiated and will progress under the influence of God's Spirit doing whatever it is that He does behind the scenes, but that will require much more time and transformation on the part of others besides just myself to accomplish what I hope to see take shape. Of course I do not have to remain unhealed just because others might choose to remain stuck in certain thinking patterns and try to hold me hostage. To wait until they are willing to heal would be willing bondage to someone else's triggers and making myself a hostage to their growth schedule. I can and am determined to continue my own healing journey with or without others around me who may be involved. But it is always much better when the healing and growth can be mutual and parallel in the lives of people involved in incidents of pain and misunderstanding.

In light of what is happening in this area I find it significant that we started reading this book at this time in our life. It is bringing yet another approach to solving the real issues of life that so often hold us hostage for many years and yet confirms very closely other methods that we are already familiar with. Nearly every ministry and source that we have involved ourselves in over the past few years is so similar in many ways that it becomes clear that they are all modeled in some way on the ancient principles through which God designed for us to find healing and growth in our lives and hearts.

Right now I have been out of work for a number of weeks which has allowed me a lot of time to fill my mind with good things to feed my soul and spirit if I choose to do so. I have tried not to waste that opportunity and have been learning a great deal on a number of different fronts. I am also trying to put into practice the things I have learned for years about how to relate properly to situations like this in true faith and not indulge in fear or stress. I am realizing that the mind is a very slippery thing to steer and that living in proper relationship with God and with others takes a lot of openness and willingness to revisit many assumptions. That's where I am presently living inside my head right now.

37 Years Ago Today...

It may appear that I have quit writing so much recently. Actually that is not the case. It is just that I am processing something very much in writing that is still a little too personal to post for all the world to see at this point. I suspect that maybe soon I will go back and bring much of it out and post it as another inductive study, probably on my other site, Deeperword.

My study began earlier this week when I came under strong conviction of the presence of bitterness in my life that I need to face more decidedly and find freedom from. The following text came to my mind from Hebrews 12, See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and through it many become defiled. (Hebrews 12:15 NRSV) As a result I decided to spend whatever time was needed to explore the context of this verse to see if God would show me some of the reasons, the roots for the bitterness that is poisoning my life and my relationships.

Most of this bitterness is so ever-present and feels so normal that I cannot even recognize it as bitterness. To me I guess that it just seems to be what I consider normal because that is all I have ever known as the context for life. It is only when I begin to get a glimpse of what life might be like outside my own paradigms that I begin to sense that maybe what I always assumed was normal is maybe very warped perceptions of reality. As I get more acquainted with the feelings that my heart has had for most of my life, as it begins to feel safe enough to slowly allow my left brain to catch a glimpse of it here and there, I am sickened at all the confused ideas and assumptions about God that are drawn from much of my painful past.

The right brain, what I consider the seat or processing center of the heart, does not work logically like the left brain and so its conclusions are not easily understood by a left-brain dominant thinker. But the Spirit of God has been working for quite awhile to awaken some of the very dark places of my heart and my past in order to bring light and healing and life into the dead places within me. As I have spent the past few days meditating and writing what I am learning from Hebrews 12, I can see that this whole chapter has a wealth of resources for uncovering many places from which bitterness can spring up. It also has a lot of things to say about how to counteract and receive healing for those roots. I am carefully working my way through this chapter each day listening for whatever God wants to show me and trying to not let my head get too far ahead of my heart. That means that I need to stop at times and just listen to both my heart and for anything the Spirit wants to show me that cannot come from logic or exegesis.

Soon after I woke up this morning I began to thank God for what He is doing in my life. As I felt the surge of strength from the act of gratitude beginning to lift my spirit, I remembered that exactly 42 years ago this morning I had one of the major turning points in my personal relationship with God just after I woke up. I will never forget it for it marked a sharp turning point for me to reject a life of suffocating false religion that had by that time very nearly driven me to literal insanity.

It would likely take too long to explain it all, but I will give just a little background. Over the previous few years leading up to my 16^th birthday I had become increasingly what I would perceive as paranoid-schizophrenic. I had a very intense hatred toward God that was fueled by my increasing hatred toward my Dad who was at a loss as to how to force me to be a good boy and a Christian. But overriding that, and again reflective of my relationship with my Dad, I was even more terrified of admitting that I hated God or my Dad for fear of unimaginably dire consequences. I could not even allow my thoughts to entertain an awareness of my hatred for very long for fear that I would be punished even more severely, so I worked incessantly to be what I now see as the perfect hypocrite.

While I writhed with resentment and bitterness on the inside against the lack of love and nurture and the abusive “discipline” I experienced, at the same time I spent increasingly nearly every waking moment trying to eradicate “sin” from my conscious mind and heart in an attempt to appease a threatening deity who was keeping close watch on me in order to discover any excuse to keep me out of heaven and fry me in the fires of hell for the slightest infraction.

And when I say every waking moment I mean that quite literally. By the time I was around 12 or 13 the intensity of these opposing forces within me had become agonizing and ever-present. On the one hand I was increasingly desiring to rebel, to enjoy the alluring pleasures of sin, sex and “rock” music. I would sneak out my window at night, crawl across the length of our steep roof and slide down the porch posts to go the the neighbors house to watch television until late at night. This allowed me to have feelings of relief or escape from my inner turmoil but at the same time added to my increasing sense of guilt and fear. When my sister finked on me one night and got me in trouble with my Mom who put a stop to my escape outlet (that is a whole other story full of emotions) I was left with an even more closed heart filling up with explosive resentment.

My mind was always under rigid control from my religious training that was deeply ingrained in my psych and kept me from indulging in many things that my flesh increasingly craved to do. This battle was considered by most all the religious people around me to be just the normal struggle of being a Christian, at least that what I assumed. But I now realize that what I was experiencing was completely unknown to anyone else and was far more severe than anyone imagined. Of course it was fueled by the legal approach to living the Christian life. Almost no one understood the importance of having an intimate relationship with a loving God as the foundation of the Christian life before trying to work on behavior. That was considered to be a dangerous heresy by my father and probably many others in the church, so I was left with a battle between two false gods inside of my soul that nearly caused me to lose my sanity.

The symptoms of this duel inside of me was that every time a thought would come to my mind that I felt might be considered wrong by God that I was required to confess it and beg for forgiveness from God. If I did not deal with every potential sin, as well as dig up every past mistake and sin and extract forgiveness for all of those too, then I would lose all hope of salvation. Of course, there was also the constant threat that at any moment my life could be snuffed out by an accident and I would face my eternal fate based on my “standing” with God at that particular moment. Hence, the intense need to keep up to date to that very second with all my confession and forgiveness routine. It became almost a game of life and death, a duel between me trying to perfect myself through “contrition” and confessions and God on the other side always looking for that one little sin that would give Him excuse to nail me to the wall and justify Him keeping me out of heaven. This was the agony of mind that kept me occupied for literally maybe 4 years or so of my life.

(Ironically, this type of thinking and view of God is almost identical to that of the great church that was so derided as the epitome of false religion by most members of my own church. I had become just like those I was taught to despise.)

I can remember driving my bicycle in traffic and repeatedly closing my eyes and making very fast confession/begging-forgiveness prayers hopefully fast enough to get my eyes open again before getting creamed by a car or running into something. This may sound hilarious, but to me it was deadly serious. And why did I close my eyes while riding my bike? Because God would be upset if I didn't close my eyes when I prayed. And that would give Him yet another excuse to accuse me.

There are many others things I could describe about that time in my life, but I think you can get the gist of what I was going on inside of me. As the guilt and fear and terror extended their tentacles within me, my heart continued to seethe with more and more anger and rage at the unfairness and oppression of it all. But then I would try to suppress my anger for fear of God's wrath and the internal conflict continued to escalate. There was no one that I could trust to share what was going on inside and I felt very isolated. In my frustration I longed to be free of this conflict and just enjoy sin and the seeming relief that it promised to give me, but my religious brain was so strong with fear that it prevented me from acting out what my heart desperately wanted to indulge in. I suppose that result was considered a success by those who believed that fear was the right motive for preventing sin in our lives.

This brings me to my 16^th birthday and what happened that cold morning when I woke up on the top bunk in a dormitory in Tennessee. I had been thinking about all of this inner activity and had begun musing that maybe there was something wrong with my Christian experience. I didn't really notice anyone else going through what I was experiencing and my paranoia was keeping me from having any healthy relationships. In the back of my mind the idea began to grow, though very, very small, that maybe, just maybe God did not intend for me to live this way all of my life.

That thought had all the hallmarks of a dangerous heresy and I dismissed it many times in fear of Divine punishment, but it continued to resurface. Finally that morning I decided to face myself square on and make a determined decision as to how I was going to continue to live.

I have always been a rather pragmatic, left-brain dominant person and as such I believed that a birthday was really an arbitrary assignment, and event only meaningful by artificial designation. A person really is no different on their birthday than they would be waking up on any other day – that simply makes sense. But that morning something else woke up inside of me and began to question my logical mind and ask, “What if I am wrong? What if turning 16 really is significant and I am just too pragmatic to admit it? What if that popular saying, 'turning 16 and never been kissed' actually had some hidden meaning in it that most of us don't know about? What if 16 was an important number in people's lives?What if I do have the option today to actually become a completely different person? What if I really have the option to make a radical decision that violates everything my tyrannical mind insists is true?”

These thoughts were terrifying to me but at the same time very appealing. I was exhausted from all the years of fighting inside and I had come to the point where I felt that maybe hell would not be much worse than living life as I was. If this is what it took to get into heaven then maybe it was just too much work, too high a price to pay. But that other thought that had been lurking in the dark shadows of my mind trying to escape extermination by my dogmatism was starting to glow brighter. What if, by some outside chance that I didn't know about yet, God actually had a better way to live that was not so exhausting and debilitating? What if He would actually allow me to make some mistakes without viciously attacking me or abandoning me altogether? What if He was actually different than everything my mind had assembled together in fear and dread?

As I lay there that morning waiting to get out of bed and pondering what I should do about this problem, I finally made up my mind that I was going to take what felt like the highest gamble of my life and not reflexively pray, confess and beg forgiveness for every “wrong” impulse that might cross my mind that day. I had actually come to the point that I included every temptation as something that had to be confessed as well as known sins because I was not sure where God drew the line between an impulse toward an evil thought and entertaining that evil thought, so I treated them all the same just to play it safe. You can imagine how many things that could involve for an early teenager with hormones beginning to fill his system and an equal amount of guilt for every feeling or desire for love or sex. I was about ready to either change the way I related to God or begin to consider suicide to escape the pain. And suicide was not an option either because God would punish me even more for that too.

So I made my fateful decision with a great deal of trepidation and that whole day I resisted every impulse to compulsively “pray”. I began to notice how much extra time I had to actually interact with other people and how much relief I began to feel inside. And most importantly, I sensed at some deeper level a feeling of confirmation from somewhere outside myself that I had made a right decision and that indeed, God had something much better for me than the hell I had been experiencing for so many years. I had turned a corner in my life the day I turned 16 and had begun to reject the false image of God that had been painted in such terrifying colors in my heart.

I wish I could say that I saw a much clearer picture of a loving God and my life was dramatically transformed, but that did not happen. I spent many more years in a legalistic relationship with God, though not to the extent that I had up to that point. There were millions of lies about God that still blackened His face that took many years to slowly unmask and address, but the process had started and the progress began.

I am still in the process of unmasking many of those early lies that still cause me trouble and confusion. I am sure many who read what I write or listen to me very long can pick up on the intensity with which I address certain issues. That comes from my anger about all the lies that have kept me away for so long from the One who could have made so many years of my life so much sweeter if I had not been so darkened in my heart and mind. I still resent the fact that it is so difficult for me to become free of many lies yet today that remain hidden in my heart and damage my relationships. I am ever seeking any means or ministry that shows promise of effectively exposing and bringing healing to these lies and their resultant dysfunction in my life. Some have even called me a “ministry junkie”. That is the journey that I am still on today, learning to reject the distorted images of God and seeking to see the real truth in His face.

So now you know what happened 37 years ago today, for what its worth.

Elements of Civilization vs. Creation

As I am learning and assimilating concepts that are important to me I find it helpful to write them down. This helps clarify them better in my own mind and helps synchronize my left and right brain a little bit better. Sometimes these big thoughts sit in my mind and continually rearrange their components during the day until they become more clear to me and I feel the need to capture what is emerging.

The following principles were ones I first heard about a number of years ago and have revisited the subject more intensely the past few weeks. This morning I felt compelled to simply contrast the two opposing systems that have so much influence on every aspect of life for every one of us. It is the conflicting, underlying perceptions of reality as presented by God and presented by Satan and most of society as we are familiar with it. Sometimes I call it the false trinity – this system we take so much for granted. But as we learn more about the true principles that this false system attempts to mimic and counterfeit, its ugliness and emptiness becomes more evident. Here is a side by side comparison of the root ingredients of these two diametrically opposed ways of viewing life and reality.

Creation – also known as Grace – is the full provision of all the needs of God's created beings without earning it. We depend on and cooperate with God's means to take care of us because He loves us and promises to take care of us. He can be trusted to keep His word. This eliminates the need for ownership or exclusiveness with any of His blessings as we share everything with others. In unselfish love and sensitive awareness for the needs and desires of others we make available the fruit of our labor or the blessings under our influence for them while they are doing the same for us. But this is not based on a contract mentality but on a spirit of covenant commitment.	Economics – the artificial assignment of some measurement of value to everything. This also leads to possessive feelings of ownership and exclusivity and the desire to have our needs and desires met ahead of others. As our possessiveness increases so does our fear that others may want to take away our stuff so we use our economic advantage to leverage our power and create laws that will protect our possessions from others. This allows us to culture our selfishness and achieve more and more power over other people's lives. Our relations with others are based on contracts whereby we only trust others to the extent that they can benefit us.
Marriage and family relations – this is the model upon which all created beings in the universe were designed to relate to each other and to God. Selfless love was to be the underlying motivation in every interaction with others so that joy and happiness would continually thrive and grow for eternity. In this arrangement there is no need for artificial rules any more than there is need to see the bones of the body externally. Selfless love inherently has the structures built in that are needed for harmony and unity. Self-control and self-discipline are a natural fruit of the Spirit of God within our hearts so there is no need for external controls to create conformity through force or fear. Love is the fuel and the adhesive that bonds everyone together as they all live in perfect freedom and joy from their hearts.	Law – an artificial system of external controls needed to forcibly bind together diverse and selfish people to create the apparatus for a functional society. Rules are created for the benefit of the economically advantaged to force the rest into compliance with schemes designed to reinforce the artificial structures of society. Laws and rules because they are inherently weak, have to be propped up with arbitrary punishments attached to them or they generally become useless. Punishments depend on sufficient amounts of fear of some form of death or pain to be effective and furthermore have to have the third leg of this counterfeit system in place to implement them – Kingship. Laws must have enforcers who are willing to heartlessly give greater priority to artificial, external fabrications of structure over concern for the hearts and lives of living souls.
Sabbath – the greatest anti-slavery principle ever instituted by God to remind us of our proper relationship to Him and to all the rest of creation. The Sabbath reminds us that we are all equally valuable in the mind and heart of the One who created all of us. While we may have different positions and unique gifts and personalities, we are all on the same plane in value and are infinitely loved and cherished by our Creator. The Sabbath forbids us to even exploit the animals to our advantage, much less any other humans. It also reminds us that God has not even set Himself aloof from us but in the Sabbath has placed Himself on the level playing field, so to speak, with the rest of His creation in resting together. While this does not make Him less powerful or less Godly, it invites all of creation to participate in loving and respecting each other on an equal level as far as value is concerned. God did not value His own life over ours and through that example shows how we are to relate to Him and to each other. The Sabbath is a time of reminding everyone of the key elements of true reality as God perceives it.	Kingship or hierarchy – the artificial and external assignment of varying degrees of value and importance to humans, animals and generally everything living, but especially humans. This progressively intensifies the hardening of our hearts and the externalization of our perception of reality. This is the system whereby we believe that some people are more valuable than others. As this disease progresses it results in the thinking that allows people to consider some to be heroes to the point of worship as gods, and others to be considered as things or bodies to be exploited for selfish advantage without any compassion or guilt. Most of our concepts of authority are rooted in this kind of thinking – the exploitation of some for the benefit of others. This is the outgrowth, as well as the means, of enforcement of the first two legs of this trinity. It results in viewing others as obstacles for us to overcome in our clamoring to rise above them in value or importance. This is embodied most succinctly in the phrase, “survival of the fittest”. It is reinforced by the system of artificial or positive law and is leveraged by the power of economics.

Seven Devils

Yesterday I read a book that I just purchased from Amazon.com. It is a used book now out of print that was recommended by a professor that I have been learning a great deal from recently. It also confirms very well the things I have been learning from the Theophostic ministry about how lies in our hearts are necessary before Satan can have permission for demonic activity in our life.

The lady about whom this book was written looked back over her life and saw how she had become possessed of seven demons and observed how and when each one had taken up residence in her life. This story on the surface does not appear to have any obvious demonic demonstrations involved, but under the surface of what looks like a typical life, both worldly and then religious, it is revealed what was really going on.

I wanted to take the time this morning to list out the identity and nature of these demons and their lies that she identified because I believe that it is very important and helpful to be more cognitively aware of these deceptions. While I do not believe that it is terribly helpful to spend a lot of time dwelling on the dark side, it is also important to not be ignorant of Satan's devices. (2 Cor. 2:11, Eph. 6:11)

These are taken from the book, A Heart of Flesh by LaVonne Neff. It is a story about Rebecca, a Russian girl of an immigrant Jewish family who had a very physically abusive childhood and a very colorful life. She identified very intimately with the life of Mary Magdalene and in this book identified the nature of the seven demons which over time came to possess and control much of her life. Here is a list of the seven demons and the lies which allowed them to maintain residence in her heart.

1. “People are just things so you can treat them that way. People are to be valued only for what they can do for you. If they do you harm, they can be shed casually, like a sweater on a hot day.” (p.56, 57)

2. Covet material things themselves. This works very closely with the first demon. “You can use people as things to get money to get their things. Get everything you want in material possessions to make you happy.” (p. 58)

3. The family name for this series of demons is Proponents of Bodies as Things. It usually involves sex but it can range from having sex with every meal to believing that sex itself is a dirty word. He works with demon 2. “You deserve to have fine clothing and a good time and I know how you can get them.” The person uses other people as things and turns their own body into a thing to earn money for the material things they no longer can live without. (p. 58, 59)

4. “Life itself is a thing.” This is a brother of the 3^rd demon, part of the Bodies are Things family. This allows one to abort a fetus as just another thing or to take a life, whether your own or another's. (p. 61)

5. “You can succeed in being good yourself. You can reform your life – you have what it takes inside of you. God is stern and harsh and just, but He will see what a fine person you really are down deep where it matters, and He will reward you for your efforts. If you can be good like the rest of them, God will surely notice you and love you. But you will have to work harder than they ever did because you have been worse than they ever were. Don't let your guard down, because God is interested only in people who behave. If you falter, He will kick you onto the trash pile. Work – work harder!” This demon says that God thinks of people as things. (p. 63)

6. “Promises are things.” This builds on the demons who taught that bodies are things and people are things. “A promise is good when it serves you and makes your life easier. But when it gets in the way of a good time, of your deep needs, then it should be discarded. Don't live your life on the promises you made to a community, or even to your spouse. Promises are only a tool for helping you get what you want.” (p. 63, 64)

7. “You've done it this time. You've gone just a bit too far. Look at what you've done. For once in your life you had the opportunity to start over, to live a good life, to come clean. And you botched it. You're finished, completely, totally finished. There's no hope left for such as you. You might as well just give up and do what comes naturally, because you'd better believe that God won't look at you in your condition.” (p. 64, 65)

What I find helpful is to realize the falsity in many of these lies that seem to feel true. Exposing them to the light for what they really are as deceptions is helpful to see by contrast what the real truth is. I highly recommend this book. It is a very fascinating story and very easy to read. I was surprised how quickly I finished it but I know it is going to have a lasting impression on me.

Honor Your Father...

Yesterday I was working at the church and school near where I lived growing up and where my parents spent the rest of their lives as well. I was disassembling some cabinets that my own Dad had likely installed years before and discovered a strange setup that I suspect he may have done. A wire was run inside and through the back part of the cabinets from one side to the other and connected somehow to a switch mounted just inside the door of the last cabinet. On the end of the wire where it began was a plug that was plugged into a receptacle on the wall and at the other end was another receptacle mounted in the far side of the last cabinet. The switch was designed to turn off one half of the receptacle and had scotch tape over the switch to prevent anyone from turning it off.

It became pretty obvious why the tape was on the switch when I found what was plugged into the receptacle, although it did not make a lot of sense to me. A refrigerator and a dehumidifier were plugged into the receptacle, so I suspect that if the switch was turned off there was a good chance that the refrigerator would go off and everything inside would be spoiled.

As was my typical reaction to such discoveries, I began to mumble to myself about how ridiculous and amateur this was and was reflective of the kind of thing my Dad would do. He was known for things like usually cutting off the ground spade on most of his extension cords so they could be plugged into the old-style two-pronged receptacles. He was very much a handy-man in some areas like electricity and plumbing and had often taken things into his own hands to install or repair.

I too have become much like him in learning a broad array of skills in different areas of the construction industry. In fact my Dad often told me that I should learn everything about as much as possible for it would serve me well later in my life and that is how I have ended up in the remodeling business. But I viewed myself as being more advanced than some of the seemingly crude practices of my Dad and I have sometimes thought a little, maybe demeaningly of him for doing things that seemed like a shortcut that was not as safe or advanced as they should be. This wiring job seemed a classic example of that.

As I was thinking these things while trying to disassemble the wires and get the cabinets apart so I could reinstall them somewhere else, a strange feeling began to come over me suddenly. I began to realize how negative my feelings are when I think these kinds of thoughts about my Dad and secondly I realized how easy it would be for my own son to have the same kind of attitudes toward many things that I do if he were to look them over. Then I thought how I might feel inside if I were to hear him express his dim view of my lack of skills and realized how put down or discouraging that would make me feel.

Of course, by extension I then realized that if my Dad were still alive and here watching me work that my thoughts and attitudes about his work would likely make him feel put down though he would not likely express it. In fact, if he were there watching the work I was doing to improve the very buildings that he had worked so hard to maintain and improve over the years he would have undoubtedly expressed a great deal of pride in what I was doing and would have been complimenting me on my skills and making me feel really good about myself. At this I began to feel really ashamed of myself.

All at once it became much more clear how much resentment and negative thoughts still hold sway in some unexposed dark corners of my mind about my own Dad, even though I have tried to let go of them and have chosen to forgive the abusive and neglectful mistakes he made while raising me as a child. As I thought about these things, that by now I realized were definitely being brought to my attention one by one by the Spirit of God, the fifth commandment flashed across the screen of my memory. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12 NKJV)

I suddenly realized with a surge of tears that I have not honored my Father and Mother very much in the way that I think and talk about their faults much more than their strengths, especially my Father. Conviction grabbed hold of me and I immediately confessed and agreed with the conviction and embraced it. I sensed that I have been still living under a curse because of this. I do not want to live in this darkness any longer, it has been poisoning my life far too many years and I want to live in the light of heaven instead. I want to – I choose to embrace my opportunity for freedom each time conviction offers it to me so I pleaded with God not to stop the conviction but to intensify it as necessary to help me become completely free.

At that point I was able to suddenly begin to have new feelings and memories about my Dad and remember him as a man who was someone I could be very proud to be his son. I felt impulses of desire to find ways to really honor this man who had worked so hard to overcome immense difficulties and enormous obstacles to raise a family under very difficult circumstances and with great personal handicaps. He had no father to mentor him and his mother had been herself a negative example of parenting. On top of that he had been very sickly growing up and had nearly died a number of times because of that. All of his life he had felt inferior and at a disadvantage to most everyone else but in spite of many odds had worked very hard to educate himself as best as possible and learn how to become a productive man and a decent Father and provider for his family.

Since he never had many advantages he had to work extra hard to just break even. This was also during some of the very difficult years of our country where many were struggling just to exist. Then he had to meet jealousy and subversive elements working to ruin his life and his livelihood and his reputation by the very people he was working for and was supposed to trust. In the parenting department, since he had no one to model his life after, he filled his mind with the Word of God and inspired writings trying to figure out the best way he could to raise five children in the fear of the Lord. Yes, he made a great deal of mistakes when it came to expressing love or administering discipline which caused his children to live their later lives with a great deal of baggage to overcome, but considering what enormous disadvantages he himself had come from he likely did much better than the average person would have done.

As I thought about these things while pulling apart the wires and cabinets I wondered what it means to honor someone. The Bible says that love covers a multitude of sins. While I have learned that it is very important to my own healing journey to face clearly the mistakes of the past and those done to me by others, at the same time I also have to learn more about the true nature of forgiveness. Forgiveness is definitely not sweeping under wraps all the mistakes of the past and trying to pretend they did not happen or ignoring them. But after I have faced them squarely, taken full ownership of the pain and processed them correctly in the light of the cross of Jesus, I need to reframe them in ways that I am still learning about.

I also realized that I cannot manage this schedule of personal healing or rush its progress even though I wish I could be free much faster. This conviction happened at just the right time and God used this circumstance to give me an opportunity to deal with this issue more deeply. Somehow I sense that my heart has to “ripen” in my own experience to a point where I am ready for the next lesson; to attempt to jump ahead and try to learn something I am not quite ready for would simply mean I might have to revisit it several more times. I have to trust the timing of God to effect my healing in each part of my heart. My part in this process as I see it right now is to align myself properly with the Spirit of God each day and practice listening more carefully to the very quiet voice of the Spirit so that I can respond and cooperate with the lessons He has waiting for me that day.

I am almost reluctant to even put this into writing because at times it seems that the very act of writing and the necessary process of left-brain distillation needed to write things experienced in the heart tend to interfere with the right brains ability to operate freely without interruption. It is almost like my emotions and heart are stifled and inhibited by the paparazzi effect of being peppered with questions and inquiries from the left brain when they are busy trying to do something more important. Even while I was experiencing this lesson yesterday my left brain was leaping into the experience wanting to collect notes and take snapshots like an aggressive reporter and I had to consciously force it to refrain so that I could continue to listen to what the Spirit might want to further say to me. I did not want to spoil an experience of the heart by allowing the external nature of the left brain to take me out of the proper context of living from my heart.

The main reason I am even writing it now is because I do not want to forget what I feel is a very important experience of the heart and I do not trust my increasingly forgetful brain to remember it very long even though I very much want to keep it. So if I get it down in writing as accurately as my left brain can attempt it then I can go back and review the lessons from my past and refresh them in my heart. And just maybe it will also serve in a small way to begin to honor the man that did so much for me that largely went unappreciated during his lifetime.

It is a very important principle of growth that we are likely to repeat the mistakes of the past if we forget the way God has lead us in our past history.

I want to figure out how to honor my Dad more. I want to live being openly proud of him and feeling good about my memories of him. I began to experience that very much in the afterglow of this experience and I really enjoyed it. It was refreshing and liberating. I suddenly realized much more that he was a man with a good heart in spite of his mistakes and problems. There are many things about him that I can and should be proud of in spite of his mistakes.

It also came to me clearly and strongly when I was thinking about this that the feelings and attitudes that I entertain about my Dad react inside of me with the same effects that they would have had on him. In a strange sort of way he is still alive as an inescapable part of myself. Because I see so much of my Dad in my own actions and attitudes, whenever I disparage him I am disparaging his image that is clearly embedded in myself and I make myself feel inadequate and humiliated just as I would him if he were to hear those negative things spoken to his face.

I also realized that my negative and fault-finding habits toward my own Dad as well as toward many others creates the strong potential for a mirror replication of that in my own children and encourage those negative feelings in them toward me, their Dad. I am actually reproducing much of my own baggage that I have held against my Father in the heart of my own children by my fault-dwelling reminiscences about my Dad's faults and failings with me. God have mercy! I knew things were bad in my heart but this is really exposing it more painfully. I need grace and healing and deliverance and thank God He is in that very business full-time.

God, I present myself to You today – right now – in an offering of worship. I give you full access and permission to do whatever You want with me today and continue the work of healing and restoration of You image in me that You are doing. Help me remain tuned and undistracted today so that I do not miss anything Your Spirit is trying to reveal to me about Your heart and Your perspective. Help me to honor my parents in the right way without hiding from their mistakes. Connect me with Your heart of compassion and love and align my thoughts and feelings and attitudes with Your Law – the description of who You are. Fill me with the joy of Your presence today and make me a successful experiment of Your grace – for Your name's sake, for Your reputation.