Center of Life

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR? Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33-36)

Once in a while I catch a clearer glimpse of reality from outside the normal view of things and it always awakens an intense desire for much more. As I read these words this morning I was not only reminded of the parallel passage in 8:31-39 but the fact that the main reason Paul was so passionate about His ministry was to get everyone to see the truth about reality and God like he could see it.

What I see a little clearer in these passages is the fact that reality revolves around the center and Source of all life which is only full of goodness, compassion, mercy, justice and passionate love. It does not revolve around us, our problems, our salvation, our reputation, our... The focus of the Bible is much bigger than most people ever catch onto. We usually think the Bible is a book of rules or a book of complicated history or a secret code or an instruction manual on how to get us into heaven. But the primary purpose of the Bible is to reveal the real truth about God, to unmask the lies about Him promoted by His archenemy and ultimately to accomplish God's salvation in the eyes of the whole universe.

What these verses tell me is that I need a dramatic change in my focus, my reason for existence, my motivation for living, the center around which everything in my mind and life revolves. I have lived most of life like those described throughout the book of Romans trying to please (appease) God in order to be saved. Primarily this has been attempted by trying to get rid of all the bad things in my life so I can “get right” with God. The goal of all this was so I could be “saved” in heaven and escape the alternative. But all this revolves around a focus on me, my problems, my pain, my rehabilitation, my...

But I am slowly learning – and God help me, I want to just completely switch over – that when I focus deliberately on the true picture of God that He has been revealing, His goodness, His love, His truthfulness, His attractiveness and beauty, that the real work of transformation begins to accelerate naturally. Oh, I still have to deal with the obstacles of personal faults and mistakes and lies that crowd in to block my view of God and distort my picture of His beauty. But those are not the things I should stay focused on.

As I relate to all these internal distractions by taking them all directly to God and clinging to Him even tighter, I find much more relief than when I allow them to become the center around which my life revolves. Sin at its core is really selfishness. We were not created to live this way even though it now feels so natural. So as I begin to live life in a strange new way and learn more and more through a focus on the real, life-giving Center of all things to live life in an outward modality, I find myself feeling more fulfillment, more alive and my heart begins to thrive. This is what salvation does for me; this is restoration to my original design and function.

But ultimately salvation belongs to our God (Rev. 7:10 and 19:1). It is His reputation that needs salvaging much more than ours. We are just witnesses and jury and judges in the greatest trial of all time and eternity.

It has been pointed out many times that the real issue in the Great Controversy is worship. That is a term that I believe very few people comprehend but participate in anyway. Everyone worships, they just don't recognize the way they worship or what it is they worship. But as I am beginning to see, worship is the actions and decisions of the heart as it looks for sources of life and satisfaction so that it can come alive and thrive.

With that understanding it is easier to see how the pieces fit together. With sin causing us to focus on ourselves and our ideas of what will bring us life and satisfaction we will always tend to look for primarily external things and people to eliminate our pain and satisfy our cravings to feel valuable. The list of potential false gods is endless but very real. But the underlying problem is very much like the earth-centered view of the universe held by the religiously controlled world of the dark ages.

They insisted that all the rest of the universe circled around this earth. I believe the main reason they held to this opinion was not because of any evidence but because it was reflective of their self-centered spiritual view of reality.

While we may think that we are much more enlightened today because we believe more accurate scientific evidence about space and stars, we have not progressed at all away from a spiritual universe where everything including God revolves around us and our happiness and eternal welfare. This is the central theme of almost all religions on the earth, the common denominator that keeps us from experiencing real life as it is enjoyed throughout the rest of the unfallen universe.

The main difference that marked the early Christian believers and made them an irresistible force that swept the world was the transformation caused by the gospel that caused them to live their life focused on revolving around the Source of life, Jesus Christ, rather than around themselves or any other source of earthly satisfaction. This was startling and baffling to the rest of the world but unmistakably attractive to anyone who was willing to be honest at heart. It was polarizing as well, forcing everyone confronted with this radical new way of thinking and living to choose whether to embrace it fully or reject and oppose it. For real Christianity never allows those who view it to remain neutral.

The reason Christianity has so little impact in the world today is because it has become so compromised by a self-centered mindset that it is not really much different than any other philosophy in the world. It bears little resemblance to the dynamic, status-quo challenging, vibrant power that possessed the lives of the early believers. But it will happen again and at a much greater level than ever before in history. Revelation predicts that before the next arrival of Jesus Christ on this planet the glory of God will fill the whole world (Rev. 18:1-4). And this will cause the last and final polarization that will differentiate for the last time between the people who choose to orient their lives and hearts circulating around the center of God as their only source of life, bonded only by love and devotion for Him, and those who choose to focus earthward and inward and rely on fear and force to promote a false system of worship that looks to men or any other place as their source of authority and life.

Paul had learned years before that his life only had real meaning and his heart could only thrive as he allowed God to be the center of everything. He was so full of passionate devotion for God that he would occasionally burst into exclamations of worship and praise whenever he got close to it in his writings. This is what is seen in this passage and at the end of chapter 8. These are spontaneous outbursts of natural worship and gratitude from a heart that is being refreshed from the fountain of real life. This is the kind of life that Paul wants to attract others to experience and I believe is the burden of all his writing, preaching and teaching. He simply wants everyone possible to shift their focus from religion or any other distractions to the One who can satisfy all their deepest cravings, heal all their pain and make living meaningful. He is intensely desirous of sharing the good news about God, the gospel, so that as many as possible will become addicted to being loved and living in a love relationship with God.

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Where is God?

But the righteousness that comes from faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim). (Romans 10:6-8 NRSV)

I got to thinking about this this morning in relation to the sentiments that I have often heard in the context of churches that put great emphasis on the second coming of Jesus. I notice that many things like healing of inner pain or enjoyment of intimacy with God are cast in the framework of happening at the second coming. It almost seems like anything other than knowing the right doctrines are postponed to be dealt with after we get to heaven.

As this verse came to my mind in that context I realized a little better what it might mean. We have a tendency to think of God as at a distance from us and we are simply here trying to figure out how to get ready for His coming. We learn to say all the right-sounding words and phrases, but when it comes right down to having a tangible, dynamic relationship that affects our everyday life and is intertwined with even the small details in our lives we really don't have much of it. We often are comfortable with keeping religion and the rest of our life in separate parts of our mind. We believe that the week belongs to us and that only one day we have to go through enough religious routines to feel that God is satisfied with us.

When we find ourselves in trouble we then want to appeal to that God who is out there somewhere to come and help us. In some of our very urgent prayers we might even find ourselves appealing to all the “good” things we have done or the obedience we have performed or even the tithe and offerings we have returned as reminders as to why God should listen to and answer our prayers. When that does not seem to be effective we will even enlist others who we believe are spiritual minded who might have more clout with God than we do to join us in our prayers. But isn't this the same thing as saying who will ascend into heaven to bring Christ down?

On the other hand, we may have a darker view of God. We struggle to really believe that He has any power to make a real difference in our life. Oh, He may work wonderfully in the lives of missionaries or other people who seem to have an inside track with Him, but we have very serious doubts that He would ever pay much attention to the likes of us. So we depend mostly on our own wisdom, experience and the help of our friends or maybe even try to get advice from others who seem to have a better connection with Him. But as far as our life goes, God might as well still be in the grave. 'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).

The good news is that neither one of these popular myths is really true. What Paul is trying to get us to see is that God is much closer to every one of us than we ever thought. "The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim).While we are looking and believing that God is “out there” somewhere and has to somehow be cajoled to paying attention to us whenever we need Him, He is wanting us to know that He is already right with us as close as our own heart and our own lips. It is almost like looking for a pair of glasses not realizing that you are already looking through them right on your face. It is really us that needs to be convinced.

Most of our religious routines cause us to assume the posture of God at a distance. But true spirituality realizes that experiencing God's presence is a very close thing, many times closer than we feel comfortable with. But as we learn to be more honest about what is really going on inside of us we will become more aware of the presence of God within and surrounding us. And as we accept the truth of His trustworthiness and experience His goodness in our own lives on an ongoing basis, faith will awaken spontaneously within us and we will experience what is termed “righteousness by faith”.

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Our Jewish Roots - Who will be Saved?

...for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29)

I have noticed over time that whenever it becomes clear that something I am reading has a spin put on it by religious people that is incorrect, then I am at a place, an opportunity to listen to what God wants to reveal as to what it really does mean. For many years I was trained in a culture that often remained stuck in a defensive posture about many texts but failed to move on to explore the deeper truth lying beneath the surface. That is what fear-bonded thinking usually does; it remains fixated on proving someone else wrong but is not nearly as interested in seeing what real truth could be applied to our own heart.

That is one reason God is so repeatedly insistent all throughout the Bible that we should not live in fear. Fear blinds our minds to so many things and keeps us stymied from maturing very much. Fear is antagonistic to joy and freedom and experimenting and exploration. Fear is enslaving and keeps one under tight restrictions and ever-increasing rules to prevent something wrong from entering in. Fear inhibits thriving. Fear is at the heart of all false religion and is the power of the false gospels. Fear is the primary motivation of legalism and turns our attention to externals and away from the true condition of our heart. Increasing fear moves us from the front part of our brain where our logic, reason and creativity originate (utilizing both halves of the brain) to the mid or back part of the brain where our baser emotions lacking moral restrictions churn and tend to overwhelm us.

Well, I didn't intend to get off on that topic. What I want to explore is the idea of looking deeper into thoughts in Scripture that on the surface do not seem to fit with other more clear revelations about God. The opening text here from Romans strikes me as one of those opportunities. Most of my life this text has been only addressed from a defensive position with explanations about why it is not teaching that all Jews will end up being saved somehow as some Christians often try to claim. From my own study I agree with that conclusion, not because I was taught to believe it but because from the context it is becoming clear to me independent of external teachings. All Jews is not synonymous with all Israel.

But I want to move beyond just defending a position in resistance to what others may be propounding and explore what this passage may be really saying. I want to have a spirit of anticipation free of fear so that I can think outside of any box put around this by someone else and see what the text has to reveal on its own with the guidance of the original Author. That is the nature of inductive study which I am finding to be so rewarding and nourishing.

I can see that it is clear in the passage context that Paul is referring to biological Jews in this verse; the previous verse makes it reasonably clear that the group he refers to are enemies when it comes to the gospel. Most of the Jews in Paul's day and ever since then have generally been enemies of the gospel. Unfortunately, after Paul's time the gospel has become so distorted and misunderstood by those promoting it that the Jews often have good reason for being repulsed by its presentation. I have heard sad stories of professed Christians working to convert Jews to “Christianity” insisting that Jews profane key elements of their beliefs like eating pork and rejecting the true Sabbath as proof that they are now “true Christians”.

With false ideas of the gospel like that circulating around among Jews it is no wonder that they remain intensely hostile toward all Christians. Most versions of the “gospel” being espoused today have little resemblance to the real “good news” about God that is the real essence of the true gospel. For the truth about God does not negate the truth that God entrusted to the Jewish people throughout all of history. Real Christianity is not a separate and new religion from Judaism, and I think that is made clear here in Romans. True Christianity is an extension, an outgrowth, a metamorphosis of the true religion founded upon the fundamental truths established for centuries in the Jewish faith.

While it is true that some of the symbols and ceremonies came to fulfillment and therefore concluded at the death of Jesus, much of what God entrusted to the Jewish nation is still valid and unchanging. Christianity in general has made a tragic mistake in assuming that anything Jewish must be wrong and that God started all over again with the early Christian believers. That is not the view taught by the apostles and is not supported in the Bible. Their understanding and teachings assumed that the Christian church was simply the true continuation of the body of believers originating and founded on all those from the Jews were willing to accept the unveiling of expanded truth beyond their present perceptions.

Paul always approached the Jews first whenever he traveled to new places with the gospel. He did not do this to draw away from Judaism as many as he could but he did it because he understood that Judaism was still the group of people who had the gifts and calling of God and were the foundation for the truth of the gospel. A true understanding of real Israel entails seeing an unbroken line of truth throughout all of history from Adam to the end of time. Israel had been entrusted with most of the prophecies about Jesus as well as prophecies about events all the way to the end of the millenium and the wrap up of the whole Great War going on in the universe.

While it is clear from Paul that God did not reject His people, it is also true that as a nation they rejected Him and forced a divorce to take place in their relationship with Him. But even that did not neutralize the reality of the truths that Judaism still contains. They may as a people (nation) be enemies of the gospel because of lies about God entrenched in their hearts, but that does not change the love and passion of God for His chosen people. We are just beginning to realize that the deep mindset and traditions and culture found in Judaism is much closer to a true understanding of reality than any other culture on earth. And just because it is poisoned with prejudice and hardness of heart does not change that fact.

What I noticed in this verse this morning was the fact that what Paul says is irrevocable is not the salvation of all Jews but the gifts and the calling that they had. I think it is rather clear throughout history how gifted the Jews are as a people. They are so gifted that they have often become the object of intense jealousy and hatred by those who accuse them of being even diabolical. Antisemitism is all too accepted among many who claim to be Christians. But I believe that it is driven by a Satanic jealousy of the natural gifts that exists in the gene-pool of the Jewish race.

Of course these are not the only gifts that Paul was referring to here. The Jews were blessed above all nations on the earth as a means of revealing the kind of God who is trying to attract the attention of all people on the earth. God made it very clear in the Old Testament that His blessings on this nation were not due to anything they deserved or earned but wholly to the goodness of God. (see Deuteronomy 8 and 9) It is absurd to think that God suddenly decided to throw out all the truth revealed through His dealings with His chosen people to start over again with a new group under a “new Christian dispensation”. It seems even more bizarre to me how many Christians attempt to force Old Testament prophecies into strange contortions to prove that at the end of time God will have yet another “dispensation” in which the literal nation of Israel will again be reinstated so that God can fulfill through them all the conditional prophecies that they failed to inherit due to their unbelief and rejection of Him and His Son. As a nation they invoked a divorce from their unique relationship with God. But God's promises will still be fulfilled through a people identified as Israel but this time made up of all those from every nation who unite in faith as the bride of Christ.

Insisting on another round with a literal, political nation of Israel is a classic case of coming up with ideas and then forcing everything in the Word to fit and support those ideas. That is always a very dangerous way to read the Word of God and always leads to disaster in the end. We must allow the Word to speak for itself and not force our preconceived ideas to shape and distort the truths that are laid out in it. It is always very helpful to keep in mind the bigger picture of the universal War going on for the context from which to view things here on earth. Truth is not established by stringing convincing chains of texts together to prove a theory. Truth is only discovered by first having an honest, open heart and a humble, teachable spirit willing to listen to the Spirit of Truth and then immersing itself in the Word to seek the face and truth about God.

I believe that it is highly possible that in the last massive shake-up about to take place on this planet that many Jews will indeed accept the truth about Jesus when presented with more honest revelations about God that most Christians will not even accept. Whether every last one of them will do so or not I think is beyond what we can yet reasonably know. But this movement will actually create more jealousy than joy among most so-called Christians because they will insist that these believers in the real truth about salvation are being misled by a small group of non-mainstream Christians that are scorned by most of the world. But I still do not see in this passage justification for the idea that the Jews “as a nation” will be once again used by God as they were in Old Testament times. Paul makes it explicitly clear earlier in Romans that true Israel is composed of all those who enter into a faith intimacy with Jesus and are connected to the body of Christ, which body is really an extension that expanded from the true parts of Judaism that never changed.

There is a growing movement today among many Christians to research and take a closer look at our roots in Judaism. I believe that much of this is God-inspired though I also believe that it has false elements that have a wrong emphasis. But God is skillful in using all things and circumstances to work together for the good of those who love and serve Him and He will do the same with this. I believe this movement will awaken the attention of many people to the rejected truths in Judaism that many Christians have ignored for centuries. I am already seeing this happen in a number of people I have talked with recently and it is very exciting.

God is drawing the hearts of honest people to Himself through every means possible. But sooner or later they will all come together under the same convictions of the truthfulness of God's laws and a correct picture of the character of God. They will for the first time be overwhelmed with amazement at the perfect unity between the law and the gospel as they see the unbroken line of truth extending down to us through the “tree trunk” of authentic Judaism. As the life-giving sap of the Holy Spirit begins to fill all the grafted limbs and the alluring fruit naturally begins to mature on the branches, we will be very close to the time when Jesus will return to claim all those who are connected to Him in their hearts.

(next in series)

Diverted Conviction

I noticed something about a lying spirit inside of my head this morning that has pestered me for a long time. It shows up particularly when I am learning something very important that has the potential for deep, life-changing concepts and principles that need to be applied to the heart and mind. Very often when the importance of these things is sinking in my mind, immediately and strongly I begin to think about another person (usually one in particular who is often a source of annoyance to me) who really, really needs to hear and learn this thing. It is so obvious to me how it applies to their life, even much more clearly than to my situation and I begin to think about how much I wish I could get them to be open enough to listen to it. If they would just listen enough to realize how much this could help them they would have wonderful breakthroughs in their growth and relationship problems.

Of course, when put this way it sounds all too suspicious. My rational mind kicks in along with conviction from the Holy Spirit and I remember that every time I experience this line of reasoning that, based on the principle of reflection, most likely what I am seeing in that other person must somehow be resonating with something very similar inside my own heart, even if I cannot see it presently. In the popular phrase used in AA, “If you spot it, you got it”.

“But, but...” my mind insists. “That person obviously has this problem much deeper than I do and if only they could grasp this lesson their life would be so much better!” And of course, secretly I am hoping that they could learn it quite soon so that they would not irritate me so much with their abrasive treatment of our relationship. Yes, the unending ability of my mind to rationalize and avoid and excuse and justify...

What came to my mind when I again experienced this annoying habit of mine while reading My Utmost this morning and wanting yet again to apply it to this person was the realization that this kind of thinking is really a secret desire of my flesh to usurp the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of that other person. In actuality I think God is working too slow in their life for my liking and I think I can see better what they need to learn and want to apply it as soon as I can. That is pretty heady arrogance when exposed in those words, but really that is the nature of that lying spirit still lurking in my flesh wearing pious excuses to cloak its real identity. It is one of the roots of the terrible curse of criticism that has blighted my relationships for most of my life and has been passed on generationally both behind and ahead of me. It is the main curse that I need to be delivered from that infects nearly everything I think, say and do in some way or another.

God is certainly at work to heal me of this, and for that I am grateful, even though many times it is also painful. The reason that God allows me to see problems in others that could benefit from the new insights I am gaining is the same reason I look in a mirror to see what needs fixing on my own face. It never works to apply the needed applications to the mirror in an effort to fix the problems I see. And in the same way, it will never work for me to think that something I see in the Word or receive from the Spirit must be applied to someone else who obviously needs what I am hearing. God has not appointed me as His channel of conviction to that person; that job has been exclusively reserved for the Holy Spirit who is far more loving and patient than I and who has perfect timing and gentleness in His persuasiveness. He is the only effective way that will accomplish God's desire to draw them to His heart.

In my own life, when I allow my mind to run down the path of wanting to apply a conviction to another person it is very much like chasing down a false alley in a maze that always leads to a dead end. The sad part about that is that when I carry a hot coal from the presence of God down a dead-end alley and leave it there I fail to receive the benefit for myself that it was intended to bring to my own heart. Unfortunately there are probably a lot of cold ashes at dead-end corners in my brain from too many such forays. But I am also learning to be alert to this symptom and reign in my urges to apply conviction to someone else and instead realize that I must search my own heart for where this conviction was designed to fit.

If God cared enough about me to give me this conviction and even allowed me to see the reflection of it in another person's life, then the intensity of resonance that it produces in my feelings betrays the existence of something very similar hiding somewhere in my own soul. If I am willing to be honest and have the integrity to ask God to reveal the fault in my own mind where this conviction needs to do a work, He is faithful to help me see where I have a blind spot and how to accept the help He is offering me. For conviction from God is never designed to lay a guilt trip on me and leave me feeling hopeless. That is Satan's counterfeit of conviction. God only presses conviction on me when He also has abundant grace ready to provide healing and new life whenever I am willing to allow Him to perform the painful surgery needed to remove a pocket of death hiding in my heart.

I am also realizing that if I am willing to submit to the process of salvation (healing) that God wants to accomplish in this particular area in my own life that at some point He may use the evidences of my healing to attract that other person to want the same thing for their life. But that work has to be completely orchestrated and timed by the Holy Spirit and is not my responsibility. I have more than enough garbage and baggage to deal with in my own heart and do not need to waste God's valuable time trying to apply medicine intended for me to someone else's problems. Whenever I do that it always turns out to be toxic instead of healing. He is more than capable of bringing them into conviction and giving them their needed medicine and healing at the right time and does not need me meddling and messing up His skillful ongoing work in their heart.

This all sounds good on the external level, but applying it at the emotional heart level is a whole different story. But it is a start to confess openly what I see going on internally and maybe it also creates a certain amount of accountability (maybe more than I want).

Balancing the Brain

Sometimes I may give the impression that I think the left brain is nearly useless except for getting in the way of true spirituality. While it is true that it is in the way much of the time it is also true that it has a very important part to play in living a life in close connection with God.

As I observe, learn and try to put into practice the continually new things I am learning in this area, I try to understand and evaluate what is going on inside of my own head. I try to see what improves my relationships, not only with God but with others and what is a detriment to those relationships. That very process of analysis is a function of my left brain trying to understand my right brain better or learn what I should try to avoid.

As I ponder whether this is helpful in my experience or a hindrance I am coming to believe that my left brain needs updating just as much as my right brain needs healing so that they can both work together in perfect harmony and in support of each other. I believe this is God's goal in the plan of salvation, to restore us to a healthy state of balance and cooperation, not only within our own heads but by extension within the body of fellowship with others and with our Creator.

I think that one of the important roles of the left brain is to provide permissions so that other things are allowed to take place in the mind. When the left brain attempts to dominate and control everything that goes on in our life and does not allow the heart to be free to function as it is supposed to, then the heart and mind are in continual conflict and tension and we experience pain, turmoil and increasing levels of stress. The same can be true if the emotions are allowed to run rampant without any restrictions and there is no respect for the intellectual structures and mental understandings of the left brain. It is often seen as a severe swinging from one extreme to the other like a pendulum between very strict control of the life by rigid rules and fanatical conservatism followed by periods of wild abandon to anything that makes one feel good no matter what the consequences. I see this played out in more or less intensity in the lives of many people and realize that it is a problem of immaturity and failure of the left and right brain to come into mutual respect and cooperation under the guidance of the Spirit of God.

Some conclude from these observations that the answer is to suppress the heart and emotions altogether so that they will not mar the life and reputation. But that is one of Satan's logical-sounding lies that is easily snapped up by people who are afraid of suffering more pain and just want to hide and bury the pain they already carry. They harden their heart with an ever-thickening wall around it and end up trusting their wall to protect them instead of trusting Christ to heal them. Their heart becomes harder and harder in what they believe is firmness of resolution and determination to stand for right though the heavens fall. But hardness of heart is Satan's counterfeit for living under the shadow of the Almighty and resting in His love and learning to live from the heart of flesh that God wants to give us. (Eze. 36:26, 27)

What I am starting to realize in regards to the proper function of my left brain is that I need to continually update the beliefs held in that part of my mind as I observe and respect the things that both my own heart is trying to tell me and that I am learning from others and from God about the proper role of the heart in my life. But while the left brain needs constant updating and revision, it also has to resist using that information to seize the control of my life that properly needs to originate in the heart. Most of the problems in my relationships with others is caused by trying to figure out logically what to do without allowing a healed heart guided by the spirit to do what it can do so much better naturally.

Living from the head is very exhausting work and leaves me feeling very empty in the end. It also leaves my heart feeling very dissatisfied with the results but the left brain usually just ends up rationalizing and justifying itself as to why it should always remain in control. But this only betrays the addiction to power and control that is a legacy of sin in my life. It is the sinful flesh inside of me that is always offering a very plausible left-brain solution to every situation to fix every problem. But those solutions always end up being wrong, even if only slightly so. And that makes the deception all the more powerful, because then my left brain and flesh believe that with just a little more practice I can finally get the right answer in place and be able to figure out the right formulas to live successfully. This is the quicksand of the flesh that entraps us. We need to look to a power outside and beyond ourselves that will grasp us by the heart to lift us out of this desperate condition before we are consumed by the pride and independence the permeates every cell of our brains.

The problem that I am seeing is that if the left brain does not believe that the right brain, the heart, can be trusted in any given situation, it will usually wrest the controls away from it and try to live life from an independent, intellectual approach without regard to the suggestions or needs of the heart. For the heart to really function and thrive as God intended for it to do, the left brain has to relinquish its stranglehold on the control of the life and give conscious permission for the heart to experiment, make mistakes and begin to grow and mature. This is very frightening for most of us and as a result we often label it as heresy or any number of other labels designed to keep all control in the left brain.

But we are designed to live a balanced life where the left brain respects and submits to the proper role of the right brain by giving permission and freedom for it to fulfill its place while the right brain respects and utilizes the knowledge and resources of the left brain and respects its warnings when our emotions overwhelm our maturity level and capacity to remember who we really are.

As our heart receives more and more healing it can begin to mature and strengthen and flourish as the part of us where we can experience and enjoy the dynamic, enriching presence of God and the fellowship with others that we were designed to enjoy. And as our mind continually submits to new revelations of truth both from outside and from realities accepted from our own spirit, it will better work in tandem with the heart very much like an exciting, dynamic couple in a closely bonded love relationship.

James says that a double-minded person is unstable in all their ways. When our heart and left brain are constantly fighting for control of our life the results are always instability and inner pain. There is often a great deal of guilt felt in the life whether it is obvious or is repressed to subconsciousness. For guilt is simply a description of the tension naturally felt when the left and right brain are not in agreement and respectful cooperation with each other.

I am beginning to believe that the repeated injunctions given to us both in Ephesians and in 1 Peter to submit to each other in love is a direct parallel or maybe even a synonym for this idea of giving permission. Submission involves trusting and respecting another's abilities and intentions and relinquishing control in some way and giving them access to vulnerable areas of our heart. This is a crucial lesson that has to be learned at all levels of our existence, from the two halves of our brain learning to cooperate through our marriage relationships to our dealings with others in the body of Christ as well as our relationship with God.

God wants to heal us from all our dysfunction and bring us back into the perfect balance of the children of God. This involves the radical updating of our left-brain opinions and beliefs as well as the healing of our right-brain based lies embedded in many of our painful memories that cause us to have so many triggers for negative emotional reactions. God's work of salvation is the process of bringing both sides of our brain into submission and a state of humility so that they can begin to thrive and grow together into the proper functions for which they were originally designed to perform. And as we learn to experience more unity within our own minds we will likely begin to see a corresponding increase of unity in other relationships as well.

I am starting to experience hints of this in my own experience as I am going through various stages of healing and seeing some of my relationships improve correspondingly. It is encouraging though I wish it could speed up many times. But God is interested in doing a thorough work in me, not just a whitewash job, and so He takes all the time and trials necessary to finish the work He started in me to bring it to full maturity and completion. I'm glad He is the one in charge and I trust Him to keep me in His hands during the whole process.