Breakthrough

I experienced another one of those wonderful events that come into my life once in awhile that absolutely must elicit genuine and heart-felt praise to an amazing God who can do the seemingly impossible.

Over the past few months I have been experiencing increasing tension with a person in my church. I suspected that it had much more to do with the history of my Dad in this church than it had to do with me, but I simply could not find a way to escape that association and identification with my Dad's reputation in the local church. This assumption about me was poisoning a number of relationships and I was at a loss as to how to overcome it. So I had to just keep putting it into God's hands and asking for a right spirit to love people even while being judged and even censured by some people behind the scenes.

I have been learning a great deal from God through this ongoing experience and I am well aware that it is far from over. But things came to a head not long ago when I attempted to reconcile with one of the main individuals who seemed to hold the most animosity towards me but was curtly rebuffed. They told me in no uncertain terms that they were not willing to talk with me except on a superficial level in public. They refused to even tell me anything about why they were upset with me.

This left me feeling very much in a quandary and again I had to simply leave it in God's hands and depend on Him to guard my own spirit against being overcome with resentment, bitterness or judgment. I continued to pray for this person and every person in our church with faith that God can do anything and specializes with the most difficult situations. I saw Him transform my Dad a few years ago and that was a completely impossible case as far as I could see.

As I continued to leave it all in God's hands I felt impressed a few days ago to write this person a letter trying to let them know how I felt and my perspective. I tried to carefully address the various issues that I thought was bothering them and prayed very earnestly all the while I was writing the letter for the right spirit to be felt in everything I said. Then I mailed it off early this week and again left it in God's hands and just rested in Him.

Today after work I realized that I was nearly out of gas and so I went to Wal-Mart to fill up. I thought my card was out of money and so I ran into the store to put some more on it and immediately saw this person and their spouse coming toward me on their way to the check-out. I decided to greet them and make small talk as they had indicated they were willing to do and we had a good conversation for about ten minutes about various things.

After their spouse went to talk with someone else for a few minutes this person shared that they had received my letter and had read it. I felt quite a bit of apprehension as I waited for their next words having no idea of how they felt. Their following words brought a flood of relief and joy to me as they apologized for the way they had been treating me. They affirmed that indeed they had been convinced that I was going to be just like my Dad during his later, very troubled years and they had been very apprehensive about me. After reading my letter explaining that I had been on the receiving end of much of my Dad's problems they realized that I was not a clone of my Dad after all.

Upon hearing this I felt immense relief and excitement at what God was doing in our lives and we ended up sharing with each other for around an hour while standing in the middle of the main part of the store in front of the registers. It was such a relief to have this shadow removed, and they finally had to let me know finally that they had a doctor's appointment that they needed to go to.

The timing for this is also rather interesting to me. Tomorrow is the first time our new pastor is speaking at our church and I have been wondering how he was going to relate to this ongoing thorny problem that has been causing so much tension in our church. Now that the situation has completely changed I am wondering what God has for us next. I can hardly wait to see.

After our conversation ended I quickly moved into an empty store aisle so that I could release some of the enormous and intense gratitude bursting from my heart in words of praise to my God who had again pulled off a huge breakthrough in changing hearts. He has given us the ministry of reconciliation and I want to see it continue to grow and deepen and transform my church. During our conversation I shared with this person my dream that I believe God wants to do things with this church far beyond our wildest imaginations and they agreed with me. I believe this is only the beginning but a very important step in that direction.

Father, words fall far too short of ever being able to express the feelings and relief that You have brought to me. This just has Your fingerprints all over it and I want to thank You in ways beyond the simplistic words that we typically offer You. Make my life an example of Your experiment of grace, joy and peace as You continue to infect this church with Your sweetness, love and unity for Your name's sake. You are simply awesome. Continue to reveal even more of Your amazing ways to us as we learn to trust You even more fully.

Odds and Ends

Since I have somewhat isolated this blog by creating other ones that specialize in what I write on most of the time, it leaves me realizing that I have to be more intentional about relaying things going on in my life if I want to keep this site somewhat active. Most of my writing ends up on my Deeper Word blog and I have not been much at writing about the average kind of life that I normally live. But then there is always that subconscious, subtle pressure of keeping up appearances on a blog....

For the past several months we have been staying after church with whoever feels like staying, and then after sharing some food together we spend some time visiting or sharing about spiritual things. Since nearly everyone lives quite a distance from the church it just seems logical to me that this is the best time to create opportunity for people to come together more effectively socially if they desire. It avoids having to make another trip for people to get together and allows time to socialize more freely than is conducive during a service. So far usually only about five people have stayed but recently a few more people have occasionally stayed by to fellowship with us.

Today we showed a video, the first in a series by John Regier called Rekindling Marital Intimacy. Though it is geared toward helping married people resolve strongholds so that they can enjoy deeper connections with each other, the principles apply across the board for everyone. I have watched this video countless times before but each time it seems almost like the first time there is so much to remember. And it has been several years since I saw it myself.

I am not sure how people felt about it because we got very little feedback so far. The first session is a bit long and sometimes causes feelings of restlessness, but it thoroughly covers the introduction to all the rest of the seminar. This seminar relates details about ten strongholds that the enemy has within our lives and both the effects of those strongholds as well as methods of how to resolve and become free from them. As these strongholds are released from our hearts we can then begin to experience genuine love, affection and fuller life in relationship with those around us.

I am praying that God will do some dramatic things in our church family to resolve the many differences and tensions that are lurking just beneath the surface. I want to cooperate with Him and to have some idea of what His plans are so that I can be part of God's solutions instead of part of the problems. Next week we will meet our new pastor for the first time. We are looking forward to that.

In a few minutes we are going to another town where some friends have invited us to attend a Passover meal at their small Barn Church. They have become interested in studying the Old Testament over the past year or so and recently decided to celebrate a Passover meal together in a unique way for fellowship and enlightenment. I have no idea what it is going to be like but am looking forward to whatever happens.

Spring

I just want to take opportunity to share a little of what it looks like in my front yard. I am not a big fan of flowers in pots, but sometimes the flowers that God puts in the woods or the grass grabs my attention and I like to savor the moments as a gift from Him.

And then there was this busy little bee....

Have a blessed spring!

New Blog Launch

I have decided to differentiate a little more in how I manage my blogs. This is my original blog site and I still have been placing a number of things here. But because it seems to sometimes be a hodge-podge of ideas that sometimes don't seem to fit together all that well, I decided to leave this site more for personal notes, events and such that are not so purely spiritually focused, if that makes sense. I already have two other sites for more specific spiritual focuses but I have decided to launch yet another one that will be more of the catch-all for the insights that seem to suddenly appear out of thin air (or Holy Spirit air if you may believe) that are not along the lines of what I am studying in particular. That is already being covered by my blog titled Deeper Word where I focus on whatever area of the Bible I am currently meditating and studying about.

This new blog is going to be where I post the more miscellaneous items of spiritual interest that usually ended up on this site. That will free this one up for more family or personal or newsy types of things – at least that is what I am supposing at this point.

At any rate, this is sure to mess up some of the links to this site until others come to notice that things have changed a little. I hope no one is offended by this.

As always, my primary focus is not to post things to convince others of my viewpoints so much as to simply share what I am learning and make it available for others to ponder. Because of this I have decided to name my newest blog, Spiritual Ponderings. If this is of interest to you then feel free to click on over and see the latest posts that have kicked it off. I hope you enjoy it and are inspired. And as always, I love to hear your thoughts and response and even questions whenever the spirit moves you to do so.

Negative Numbers and the Sapphire Sea

For whatever reason, I found myself thinking the other day about the Sea of Glass described in several places in the Bible, which then in turn led me to another very interesting observation that opened up whole new dimensions about my perceptions of reality.

Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself. Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank. (Exodus 24:9-11)

Now over the heads of the living beings there was something like an expanse, like the awesome gleam of crystal, spread out over their heads. (Ezekiel 1:22)

Then I looked, and behold, in the expanse that was over the heads of the cherubim something like a sapphire stone, in appearance resembling a throne, appeared above them. (Ezekiel 10:1)

And before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. (Revelation 4:6)

And I saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, holding harps of God. (Revelation 15:2)

A number of years ago I received a set of sermons that introduced me to these various passages about this expanse called the Sea of Glass. They went into great detail about the various colors and the deeper significance of those colors and I found it all rather fascinating and informative.

But one thing that interested me and that sent me off in a different direction this time was the fact that in some of these references this surface seems to be viewed from underneath and in others it seems to be described from the other side. But all of them appear to be talking about the same subject or place, just from different perspectives.

Then my mind went to mathematics – of all things. It occurred to me how confused I often get when trying to work with negative numbers, especially when I was younger. What feels logical when working with “normal”, positive numbers seems intuitively backwards when working with negative numbers. Adding and subtracting I could handle reasonably well if I was careful to think it through logically. But when it came to multiplying and dividing, the results would always confuse me with unexpected results.

As I think about this more carefully, I begin to realize part of the problem between what actually happens when working with negative numbers and what feels like should happen from intuition. If I think about the seeming value of a digit – let's just say -15 to pick a random number – and then I take a positive number like 7 and add that to -15, according to the rules of mathematics I will end up with -8.

Now, I realize that anyone well-trained in math will think this is a no-brainer and may even think this is stupid to analyze. But in another part of my brain something reasons this way (not logically but emotionally):

If I start out with a digit that has the feeling of a certain value, then when I add another digit to that digit one would expect the resulting digit to be greater in size.

I realize that the rules that govern negative numbers cause the opposite to take place in this instance. Yes, I realize that with my logical brain and accept it as a fact. But that does not negate the fact that the other part of my brain simply is not wired to think in that way. It insists with my emotions that if addition is happening here, then the digit size should result in something bigger, not smaller.

Now what does this have to do at all with the Sea of Glass described above in various places throughout the Bible? That is a very good question, and here is how they connected in my brain.

I sense that ever since sin entered into our world and affected everything about our existence, our brains and “normal” logic systems always default to thinking that what feels normal to us is in fact the opposite of what feels and in fact is normal on the other side of reality as we perceive it. That Sea of Glass that looks like crystal with the color of sapphire and has fire somehow mingled all through it – that flat expanse that will someday support the feet of billions of the saved who are about to enter the gates into the New Jerusalem may be likened to the dividing point that zero is in our number system as we use mathematics.

That implies that everything below that Sea of Glass, that division between our perception of reality and the rest of the universe's understanding of reality, functions with rules of negative thinking, negative assumptions and the rules somewhat like those that govern math in the negative territory on the number scale. And most people know that the things you expect when working with negative numbers are very different than the results you would expect to see when working with positive numbers.

To add to the complexity of this situation though, consider the additional rules that must be taken into account when mixing the two kinds of numbers. When something is taken from the other side of zero and used on the opposite side, then that too has to be taken into account as to what to expect in the resulting answer produced.

For instance, if you add a positive number to a negative number, the digit size is going to get smaller instead of larger (unless of course it crosses the boundary-line of zero). But if you add a negative number to a negative number the result is going to be a larger negative number relatively (digit-wise).

In the same way, when things from the other side of reality as we perceive it, the other side of that sapphire sea, are brought into our realm and our ways of reasoning, they almost always seem completely backwards to the results that we by nature would expect to experience.

To illustrate this, let us remind ourselves of some clues of this very principle.

But many who are first will be last; and the last, first. (Matthew 19:30)

So the last shall be first, and the first last. (Matthew 20:16)

Sitting down, He called the twelve and said to them, "If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all." (Mark 9:35)

But many who are first will be last, and the last, first. (Mark 10:31)

And behold, some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last. (Luke 13:30)

And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it. He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me. (Matthew 10:38-40)

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matthew 16:24-26)

It has always felt to me like many things about the kingdom of heaven just “felt” intuitively backwards. It was like I had to memorize the unusual rules than govern how things seem to be working in some other system in order to make sense of what kind of results to expect. But it never seemed to really help change my gut-level expectations of how things should turn out. All of these sayings on the part of Jesus just seem to most of us to be counter-intuitive. This is also seen in the description of the whole attitude of Jesus as described in Phil. 2:3-11.

So in summary, sin has caused our logic, our intuition, our sense of what is “normal”, to function beneath zero. That is because of the factor of selfishness that always permeates every calculation that goes on in our brain, our thinking and our feelings. We are living currently on the underside of the Sea of Glass, that sapphire expanse that appears like the sky to us above which is a whole different perspective of reality and a whole different set of paradigms and “normals” which feel so unfamiliar to us down here. We are currently functioning on the negative side of that boundary line.

The good news is that God is doing everything possible to not leave us stuck in this underworld where everything is so different than the reality which we were designed to enjoy and in which we were supposed to thrive. We were made for a different world and our hearts are never satisfied with the negative results that are always produced from our normal calculations.

It is because of this that we have to learn to trust in the math of heaven instead of what feels intuitively normal to us. That is what faith is really all about. We have to allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit of God who will guide us in ways that feel strange at times and even illogical from our perspective or many around us. But this is part of our transition to learning how to live in the real reality which the rest of the unfallen universe has always enjoyed and to which we are headed for to enjoy for eternity if we allow God through salvation to accomplish His intended purpose in our lives.