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.

What About Law?

(This post is in response to a comment on my previous thoughts also posted today. As can be seen, the answer got rather lengthy and I decided to simply put it out as another post instead of having it hid away behind the comments link. For context behind this writing it will be helpful to read the last post as well as the questions raised in the comments on it. I welcome and enjoy the discussion raised by these honest questions.)

Josh, you bring up some very good issues here that I too have struggled with and am not satisfied to accept simplistic answers to resolve. At the same time, many of these very issues are bothering us precisely because we have accepted far too many simplistic answers already, maybe not knowingly but as a culture and partly just because we are under the delusions from inheriting Adam's fall.

What is becoming much more clear to me very recently and is helping me to make sense of the issues you raise is the great need to delineate a clear difference between legal thinking that was invented by humans very early in the history of the world and natural law or more accurately the basic principles that undergird reality such as gravity and heat and physics etc. The commingling of these two very different constructs has brought about the stress and fear that we feel in trying to sort out much of our misunderstandings. It also greatly contributes to the serious misconceptions about God that distort our views of Him and prevent us from trusting Him more fully.

I understand that much of what I have been saying comes from recently learning a great deal more about the bigger picture behind how we arrived at our current state of culture. Much of the background information from which I am synthesizing many of my comments come from a researcher and professor who has spent years carefully immersing themself in very ancient near-east records of how people thought and lived back then and the cultures that arose through the beginnings of Babylon that gave rise to everything we see today. When we better understand our roots and the context in which much of the Bible was written it is much easier to understand more about our problems. In addition it also sheds a great deal of light onto what God's original design was for us that has become so eclipsed by thousands of years of obfuscation that it is now almost indiscernible.

What is helping me settle and feel comfortable about many of these things that have troubled me for most of my life is the separation and clear descriptions of each of these forms of “law” and the differences between them. As I see which side each element might belong to I then see how the mingling of these concepts has caused so much confusion in my mind and with everyone else. I see this very much also in some of your comments as well and I hope to be able to help maybe a little bit through our dialog to explore these together. I do not want to come across as dogmatic about these things but would like to have the freedom to look at life from different perspectives that may allow more of us to see things from a much more mature vantage point.

A couple days ago a friend told me that they had a discussion in their church about punishment and/or discipline. My friend asked the people what the difference was between the two and basically everyone there could not think of any; they believed that the two were pretty much the same thing. When he asked me the same question I immediately said there is a world of difference between the two. That is because I have been learning so much about the clear differences between these two systems of thought, these two views of reality that dramatically affect how we view God and His dealings with us.

Let me just present some basic foundational principles that must be in place before there can be any meaningful progress in one's understanding of this problem. First and foremost, we have to start with the absolute truth that Jesus put to the disciples that God the Father and Jesus were not any different in the slightest. Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (see John 14:7-11) This has been a tremendous help for me, an anchor and a key that helps unravel many of the mysteries and questions that are raised about God throughout the rest of the Bible. If there is a discrepancy between something we read about God elsewhere in the Bible and what we see demonstrated in the life of Jesus, then the example and words of Jesus must trump every other notion or conclusion that we may have come up with in the past. I cannot emphasize the importance of this principle enough in seeking to understand the real truth about God.

Beyond that, it is going to take time to unpack piece by piece the issues and questions that arise that we don't understand or don't have enough background information to explain. I am finding that the more context I learn about the much bigger picture of the Great War going on since Lucifer revolted in heaven and is conducting in great detail here on earth, the easier it is to see from a bird's eye view so to speak what God's real intentions are and what He is really trying to convey to us. God's motives and communications have often become very garbled because of the sad shape of our mental and emotional receivers over the centuries, but the revelation of God in Jesus and the glory of truth that is being felt in these last days as prophesied in Revelation 18 I believe is leading to an unveiling of many things that have long been misunderstood or repressed.

As I have been shifting my own perceptions about this issue of the role of law lately, I also am starting to see much more clearly how many of the writers of the Bible were trying to convey this same message to us, especially in the New Testament. But because of our addiction to the legal model of thinking we were unable or unwilling to see these passages in this light and so missed the real intent of many of their writings. There are a number of texts that make this issue clear if we are willing to not skim over them lightly in favor of those that appear to support our traditional views.

Let me just mention a couple here. I know that this sounds very strange at first, but allow the Spirit of God to guide all of us as we allow our own minds to ponder things possibly new and strange and potentially more wonderful than we ever imagined.

For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, "Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you." Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward. (Jeremiah 7:22-24 NRSV)

It has been noted by this researcher that when God first brought the Children of Israel out of Egypt He did not want to take the route of bloody sacrifices which were the typical worship methods of all the nations around them. As is made clear in this text, God's original desire was for them to have a radically different relationship with this God quite opposite to the gods that the other cultures felt had to be appeased and placated. God did not want anyone to view Him as an angry, controlling god that considered his human subjects as his slaves to serve his every whim like many of the other imaginary gods were believed to want. Israel's God was exactly like what Jesus portrayed when He stooped to wash the feet of His betrayer just minutes before Judas sold his soul for a few pieces of silver. God desired a relationship of love, not of fear.

But what did the people do with God's offer? They refused it and turned around and built a golden calf representative of power, self-indulgence and oppression – the gods of their former Egyptian slave-masters. They rebelled and looked backward rather than forward and chose to view God through the lenses of appeasement rather than love and service. From that point on, God was forced to spell out what the nature of the sacrifices needed to look like as they choose to follow that model. God was not commanding them to offer sacrifices as is made clear in the above text but was obliged to at least give them directions concerning the sacrificial system that they insisted on following so that their sacrifices did not mimic the satanic views of God nearly so much as did all the other forms of sacrifices modeled by the surrounding cultures.

Let me offer another text from the New Testament. I realize that this is likely raising far more questions than it is answering, but at least it is a beginning of a study that I know can be very fruitful and enlightening if we are willing to follow on with it.

Examine chapter 10 of Hebrews very carefully in light of this new paradigm. It will be seen there that it is even more clear that God never desired the whole system of blood and sacrifices but all along wanted a relationship of love, trust and obedience. But as I was learning these new things myself one verse kept popping into my head that remained unanswered, one verse that I didn't bother to go read for myself in context or I might have seen much sooner the answer I was looking for. The phrase, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” kept coming into my mind and raising objections to all of these things I was learning. But on closer examination a very key phrase at the beginning of that verse explained it more clearly. What it really says is, And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. (Hebrews 9:22)

God is having to deal with humanity's obsession with law. Because our thinking is so wrapped up in legal offenses and penalties, the only way that we would ever come to believe anything about the real truth of God's feelings toward us was to do things in such a way as to satisfy our demands for what we think is justice. I have not finished following this line of thought completely yet, but I am becoming very suspicious that much of what we impose onto God's image as Divine justice is really our own human demands for satisfaction of our prejudices and beliefs more than the realities of God's own heart. Quite possibly, the only way God could get through our legal mentality that would accept no alternative was to shed His own blood to satisfy our twisted views of justice, not God's. But if that is what it took, then God was willing to do it to turn us around and take a more serious look at the real truth about His unsurpassable love for us.

Because God has made it clear that He never originally desired the sacrificial system but accepted it as a secondary arrangement because of the stubbornness of their evil will,it can began to be seen that the whole system of thinking from a legal model, which is what the sacrificial system is totally based on, is also greatly suspect. Let me offer yet another text that further indicts the system of law as a supplanter of God's original desire for our relationship.

But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. (Romans 5:20 NRSV)

What is very interesting in this verse is that when you look at the original word that was translated “came in”, it denotes an air of stealth. It could be more accurately translated that “law sneaked in with the result that trespass multiplied”. The more that I study carefully the many passages on this matter both in the Old and New Testaments the more clear this issue is becoming with all sorts of very interesting implications.

What is becoming more clear in my mind, especially in the light of the example of Jesus' life, is the unavoidable fact that God has a much better arrangement that He desires to operate His universe within that does not revolve around rules and dictates. This is made clear when we realize the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers. (1 Timothy 1:9) And the lawless and rebellious are soon going to be out of the picture in the near future after the final payment from sin is received. After that point there will be no need for imposed law whatsoever.

This may not clarify the differences between God's “laws” and man's invention of an arbitrary legal system, but it does help to begin to show that God's real purpose for creation did not revolve around a legal mentality and that is not the model He wished to have for His people. Through the glimpse we get into the heart of God through the life and attitudes of Jesus we can see that His real desire was to form bonds of loving relationships with His children and draw them into a life-giving intimacy with Himself.

For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. (Hebrews 10:1) How much would you know about a tree if all you had ever seen of a tree was a shadow of one? And while it is admittedly necessary to have rules to restrain immature children from hurting themselves or others until they have learned by teaching and example how to live a healthy, inter-connected life within a community, that does not mean that the system of law is God's desire for the long-term. None of us wish for our children to remain immature and dependent on our restrictions for all of their life, that would be a travesty. In fact, healthy parents (where do you find those?) desire a relationship with their children from day one that would not require any restrictions if the child trusted the word and advice of the parents implicitly all along. And the same is true of God's desire for our lives. He wants us to grow up into the full maturity of Christ and no longer remain as children. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ. (Ephesians 4:14-15)

I have not yet fully addressed the issue of punishment verses discipline but I want to do that before too long. Keep reminding me. It is a very important concept to see but must be viewed in the light of the bigger picture so that it makes more sense. I also know this does not really directly address all of the questions about the place of law or the confusion about God's wrath that you raised. But it does give some background and hopefully lay some foundation for further thoughts to be built upon. It is very important to start with the right foundations, otherwise if we put the wrong things at the bottom the other things we place on top may not make sense and will cause continued confusion.

Continue to listen and ponder what God is revealing to all of us as we learn together the wonderful truths about Him that have been hidden or distorted for so long. As we learn these things about God the results will become clear in the way we treat our children, our spouses and all those in our circle of relationships. Thanks for your input and I am still praying for you and your family.

Sincerely,

Floyd

Integrity

The word that came to my mind this morning was “integrity”. It was in answer to thoughts about situations and rules and responses and values that were swirling around in my head.

There is always discussion generated whenever a Christian is faced with a dilemma of whether to obey laws or whether to act in violation of laws for the best interest of someone's safety and well-being or even for the honor of God's reputation. There is always a lot of argument over what criteria should be considered the correct measuring tool by which to determine the rightness or wrongness of such decisions.

I am not attempting to settle this age-old discussion by any means. However, these decisions in times of stress reveal the fundamental concepts of reality that have been nurtured and adopted by the person over their lifetime and show what they believe to be the most important things in their life. When circumstances force a person to make a very difficult life or death decision, especially when it involves the risk of other people's lives who are trusting them for protection, it is no time to begin to wonder and study and research what is the right thing to do. At that point it is simply the time when whatever has been put into the heart up to that point in life will come out without hypocrisy; it can accurately be called a day of judgment. For judgment really means the revelation or exposure of what is really on the inside.

It is in this context that the issue of integrity comes into focus. But integrity is not so easy to label or define as most people might think. Because integrity is a description or revelation of a heart condition before God and human beings are notorious for misreading the heart even when they are absolutely certain there is no possibility for error. That is what I am beginning to see when it comes to rules and relationships and motives.

I have noticed the tendency for most people to base the definition of morality or integrity on how closely a person keeps a list of rules. Those rules are usually man-inspired rules and regulations but the concept also extends to the rules assumed to be God-inspired. The main point is that we generally use rules and laws as the measuring device by which we are certain we can determine whether someone is right or they lack integrity.

Our whole life revolves around the strictures of rules. The problem with this however, starts to become a little more obvious when it is seen how quickly and easily people can change and tweak their system of rules to accommodate their own desires or even whims. It does not take a very intelligent mind to observe the way our country's legislators primarily work to pass laws that are designed to serve their selfish interests with little regard to what is really right or with a view to principles higher than their own greed for power and control. In fact, what we are observing over the past few decades is a broad process of reverse maturing as it becomes more and more evident that the political system favors less and less mature people in positions of power. I have come to believe that the desire for power and control over other people's lives is diametrically opposed to the consideration of the need for mature people to lead wisely and look out for the lives of others.

Consequently we are quickly filling up the public offices of trust with people who have a hunger more for control and advantage-seeking than for anything else. They are easily bought and sold behind the scenes with bribes or threats that are more and more legitimatized by the ever-changing accommodation of shifting rules. As a result of this reverse maturing we can see that we have put power-hungry adults with child-level maturity at best into positions of rulership over people who are often more mature than those in leadership. The end result of this process is certain ruin and the disintegration of all that has been built up since the founding of our society.

There is a great need for the presence of real integrity in the midst of all this confusion. But a problem arises when integrity is defined as one who perfectly obeys the law. Because our notion of law is so contaminated by the selfish and immature nature of lawmakers who constantly use manipulation of laws to arbitrarily control the lives of millions for their own selfish advantage, we also become confused about the nature of God's “laws”. It is very easy for most people to mistake the motivations of God because of the abusive nature of the activities of human lawmakers.

When God presents “laws” throughout history, He is simply revealing principles of reality that we must be in harmony with to live a thriving life, not arbitrary rules by which to control our lives. There is a distinct difference between the principles of reality in the universe, which are often referred to as God's laws, and the arbitrary nature of the artificial impositions and punishments thought up by men to control the lives of those around them. But the blurring of this distinction has created great confusion and darkness in understanding the nature of real integrity.

As I said previously, most people assume that honesty and integrity means that a person keeps the rules and should be honored for doing so. This is very much in line with a childish level of maturity that pervades nearly all of society today. And the problem is that a person is incapable of understanding or grasping broader concepts that govern the lives of people who have grown to a much higher level of maturity. A child is simply incapable of grasping the complex decisions and considerations that must be grappled with by a very mature parent, and even more so a true elder. The issues and inner guidelines and principles that go into the decisions of a wise elder are completely foreign and baffling to most people at best and often come under much suspicion. There are so few true elders among us that they might properly be added to the endangered species list.

But true elders do not live in the pettiness of rule-based thinking and logic like most people living in far less maturity levels are bound by. This makes sense if one simply looks at the normal family and how young children need many more rules at times to protect them until they develop internal integrity and self-discipline and can be trusted to live beyond those rules. The whole notion of our need for laws to control and govern us presupposes that we are all infant or child-level maturity. The greater problem arises when you have child-maturity people in charge of government who cannot imagine a society operating anywhere past their own level of maturity. They have not the capacity to envision such a world, and those who do have the capacity to craft such a society are not allowed to take their role as leaders because they do not service well the selfish interests of those more hungry for power and control.

In this kind of world, a person who dares to grow past the ruling classes level of maturity risks being labeled as an outlaw and a rebel. Man-made rules are generally designed to service the selfish interests of the ruling group and anyone who thinks differently is considered a serious threat. Thus is put in place a very strong incentive for people not to mature but to simply maneuver for advantage and power.

But real integrity involves seeing that man-made laws are by nature arbitrary and thereby inherently faulty by nature at best, particularly when produced by people who are infant and child-level maturity. But even beyond that, the very concept of living under the dictates of rules altogether is to insist that a person cannot be allowed to live at higher levels of maturity as they could in a true family model. In effect, society is coming to the place where we are denying the very existence of higher levels of maturity simply because we may not believe they exist. We generally do this because those who do progress to higher levels than we are currently do not pander easily to our selfish desires for control and pride. So the easiest way to avoid the exposure of our own immaturity is to refuse to accept our need to grow any further and deny those who have more maturity any part of our government.

Of course, this is all very subtle and in the public will be vehemently denied. And this is not to say that no one in government is mature at this point. But what I am pointing out is the trend that has been taking place over a long period of time and that is now coming to a crisis point. There is increasing pressure at nearly all levels of government to slowly push out those who have true wisdom and maturity and have them replaced with pliable characters who are more interested in placating our cravings for power and greed than in living by true principle.

We are increasingly becoming a very divided society with distorted ideas about the intrinsic value of those in power and demeaning the value of those who are not in power. This is the essence of the concept called Kingship. We pretend to serve the idea of honesty and integrity on the surface but at the heart level there is little left but deceitfulness and selfishness. The false trinity of power is coming to a climax that was begun many centuries ago and we are about to see its final collapse. That false trinity is what makes up the foundations of what we consider civilization: Economics, Kingship and Law.

It is at this approaching point of meltdown that we will discover the elements of true integrity coming to the light in contrast to the darkness of man-created civilization. Of course it will be decried as the opposite by those who know little about integrity themselves. But true integrity has nothing to do with keeping artificial laws and trying to appease men's selfishness. Real integrity has to do with real maturity and will be in stark contrast to the general absence of maturity that now swallowed up most of the world. Real integrity is inspired by much deeper motivations and considerations than keeping an artificial list of requirements, even if those are promoted by the most religious people around. Real maturity means that one is no longer under the rule of law or confined to a legal way of thinking but has grown beyond that to live in harmony with the true principles of reality as defined by the One who created all of it to start with.

God's “laws” are not really laws as we have the concept of law. The reason that God uses the term laws and statutes is not because He endorses our immature concept of life but because He has been forced to “dumb down” His terminology and the means He uses to communicate reality to us because of our language and concept restrictions. He has been forced to relate to us using infant and child-level methods with a view to help us move past those levels and grow up into mature sons and daughters of royalty. A most important part of that transition from childhood to adulthood is the transformation from living blindly under the idea of controlling rules in our life – conformity – to living with higher priorities in selfless relationships where we discover the real joy of continuous service in community with the rest of God's perfect creation.

Real life is described more accurately as primarily thriving in close relationships with others, receiving and giving life in a perfect circle of unselfish love, gratitude and praise. This is what we are designed for and this is the future of all who are willing to rise beyond the dark confines of selfishness, desire for control and the abusive nature of arbitrary law. It is not enough to just strive to make ourselves obedient to all of God's (or man's) rules and statutes; that is the mindset of the system of Babylon the Great, the mighty counterfeit of God's government. We need a radical transformation of thinking that comes from a complete renewal of our mind and a separation from Babylon and its ways (come out of her My people).

Real integrity is not found in keeping rules but is revealed in the lives of those who have the internal principles of God's character imprinted in their hearts and who have a spirit that is reflective of the true Spirit of God. Law-keeping is by nature external and immature. A character full of integrity and real love no longer takes note of petty and artificial rules. Real maturity operates from the real “law”, the character that has been brought into sympathetic harmony with God's creation. It is living from the heart given to us by God and may at times produce external actions or decisions that appear to be in conflict with our perception of law-abiding.

Integrity is not in conflict with true “law” but may often be found to be in tension with our Babylonian legal-based way of thinking. The reason I refer to it as Babylonian is because it was from the earliest roots of ancient Babylon that all of these foundations of counterfeit thinking began. They are now almost completely matured to fulfillment in what we call civilization and the book of Revelation prophecies that this whole system of operation will collapse when the true glory of God is revealed to the world. But God is not going to use force to overcome the false system – that is the weapons of His enemies. He is going to simply undermine the false concepts that keep that false system in operation by revealing the real truth about Himself and about reality. The Bible refers to this as the glory of God.

When the false system of force, fear and phoniness is exposed – the system we so highly esteem as modern civilization – then those who have received the renewal of their minds instead of being conformed to this world's mentality of rules and force, (see Romans 12:1) will be not only seen to have made the right choice but will become transfigured quite literally as was Jesus who prefigured this event on the Mount of Transfiguration. It will then be seen that the bonds of love are far superior than the bonds of fear and force. And right now the choice is still up to us as to which system we will live under.

Inner Resistance

(For those wishing to follow my exploration of Romans follow my link to my newly inaugurated site exclusively for my inductive studies)

As I was waking up this morning my mind and heart were stirring around with questions and feelings trying to understand what is going on inside of me and trying to discover how to relate to life and to God. I sense at times like this that I can perceive vaguely a great deal of resistance deep inside of me. I cannot say specifically what most of it is about mostly because of the vagueness of it but it definitely feels like resistance.

As I pondered that and questioned how I can ever be free of it given that it seems so pervasive at the heart level, I began to also realize that it is one of the greatest obstacles to having real faith. The thought occurred to me that just my penchant for analyzing and trying to figure everything out is my attempt to condense life down to an understandable formula so I can follow that formula to freedom. That is not all that I do but it has to be admitted that I have that bent.

I realize from my study and observations that formulas are not conducive to faith. Formulas are generally the substitute of faith. The very question that comes so easily to my mind whenever I feel frustrated and stymied in my growth or relationship with God is, “What do I have to do?” That reminds me of the times people asked Jesus, “What must I do to be saved?” Invariably the response from Jesus seemed less than directly related to a simple repeatable formula. It is true that we have tried very hard to make His answers to these questions into a formula to apply broadly to everyone's life, but without a great deal of noticeable success.

It seems that the most direct and effective answer, but also maybe the hardest to understand, was when He would simply say, “Believe on the Son of Man”, or “Believe in me and you will be saved.” Then we are faced with trying to unpack what it really means to believe with all the multiple arguments and opinions about what that might mean. Now we are back to who's formula is the right one and who is deceived or trying to mislead others.

All of this confusion has made most of us quite weary over the years. Many have simply given up ever trying to solve this seeming mystery and have just abandoned the effort altogether. Others become dogmatic and deeply entrenched in a very rigid and narrow interpretation of carefully arranged passages and then try to impose their views on everyone else. Still others continue to listen to the questions and longings of their own heart and that of others around them and continue to seek answers that better satisfy the deeper needs of the heart.

Something that flashed into my mind as I thought about these things lying in bed was “faith comes from fellowship, not from formulas”. That certainly had the ring of truth and is consistent with what I am learning in my personal study. But as I think about it I also realize that when it comes to fellowship with other people I seem to get more frustration than I do faith. It is easy to believe that the more genuine fellowship I have with God that the more faith will result, but the problem comes when I hear that God insists that I have fellowship with the rest of His body at the same time. That is where the real questions begin to fly.

But I cannot deny that God will not settle for a single, isolated relationship just between Him and myself exclusive of everyone else. While that is very appealing and many try to go down that path, the Word makes it very clear that with God that is simply not a viable option. If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. (1 John 4:20-21)

I do not have the answers for all of this. I am simply recording the questions that are stirring around in my heart and the frustrations I feel at being so stuck in my experience. I feel that I am growing far too slowly and that at this rate I will never be fit to associate with the pure, unselfish inhabitants of heaven for many decades. I know that God has many ways to accelerate our growth, but frankly that also frightens me because I know that it will involve a great deal of discomfort and facing my fears.

That takes me right back to where I started. I sense a great deal of resistance inside of me to all sorts of things that I cannot even perceive yet. It is so pervasive that I often cannot get a decent night's sleep without waking up from strange dreams and fears crowding in to pester me and wake me up. Part of me wants to shake off all my fears and live in joyous freedom, but another much more controlling part of me will not release its silent grip on my life and refuses permission for me to abandon myself in the joys of real faith.

At the same time, I am aware very much from my study of the nature and eventual results of retaining resistance inside of me. To put it very bluntly, whatever resistance I am unwilling to release within me to the working of the Spirit of God, to that very same extent I am storing up wrath inside of myself to be unleashed in my own destruction if I am not freed from it. But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. (Romans 2:5)

This warning was directed not at unbelievers who were abandoned to living in open sin but to unbelieving (in the real truth) religious people who were sure that had a handle on knowing the right formulas and were firmly on the road as being the chosen and saved of God. I have to admit that I find myself much closer to this last group than I do to the first group. But either way, both groups are full of one kind or another of resistance toward God that will result in a revelation of wrath if they are not freed from it before that day. So it does not matter so much which group I find myself more aligned with as it does how much resistance I retain in my heart and mind to the work of grace that God wants to work within me.

When I measure my current life with the Word of God, especially with the passage from 1 John, I have to confess that I have very little genuine love for those around me. I also realize that I cannot remember receiving love very much throughout my whole life, and I find it quite impossible to give what I have not received. That is not to say I cannot be friendly with people who respond to friendship and I cannot have some level of healthy bonding with like-minded people. But that is a very far cry from the kind of love I read about that I must have to participate realistically in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Just a few seconds ago as I discussed a painful situation with my wife I said something that I hadn't really thought about that way before. I have to trust God in faith without knowing how He is going to work things out, otherwise my faith is based on formulas. Like Thomas who insisted he could not believe until he physically touched the body of Jesus (very formula-based reasoning), I too often feel like waiting until I can compile enough viable proof, either external or logical, to convince myself that God can indeed work things out for good. But must I have some idea of a scenario by which God can resolve a problem before I simply leave it in His hands and live in an attitude of praise for the unknown outcome based solely on His goodness and not at all on my ability to figure out how He will do it or what it will look like?

It seems to me that real faith is based on my trust in His goodness that has been cultivated through a very personal experience of that goodness or at least a choice to believe in it based on His word. Real faith is not initiated by external evidence so much as it is a gift from the One who is faithful Himself. My faith can certainly flourish and grow through many experiences of evidence, but it still has to be based on the character and reliability of the One in whom my faith is placed, not on the formulas I create or the hard evidence that I accumulate. Real faith is rooted in relationship and cannot exist outside of that relationship.

So where does that put the issue of resistance? Is resistance preventing my relationship from producing real faith? It certainly seems suspiciously like that would be the case. Resistance and relationship seem like opposing forces pulling in two different directions.

As I think about this I wonder if resistance is not tied to the desire for having formulas or being in control. We naturally tend to resist feeling out of control. But real relationship cannot flourish between two hearts when either or both of them is trying to control the other. Relationship depends on the element of creativity and spontaneity and shared emotions to really deepen. These are all ingredients of the heart – internal realities. Formulas, control and predictability are more focused on the externals, on the appearances and the external fruit instead of on the causes and the roots. It feels much safer to maintain a certain amount of control and resist releasing my reservations to the uninhibited influence of another heart on mine. It makes sense (intellectual) and we can come up with all sorts of very right-sounding and plausible arguments why we must live this way. But how much of this is really truth and how much of this kind of thinking is a smokescreen behind which we hide our pain, our fears and our unbelief?

The frustrating thing about all of these questions is the gentleness and politeness of God to allow us to cling to our false notions and continue to live in bondage instead of enjoying a freedom that as yet we have never really tasted. That is not to suggest that He desires us to live in bondage for a single moment. It is just that He respects and values our freedom so strongly that He refuses to override our choices to remain in our ruts. That is foreign thinking to me and many times I wish He would just somehow force me to let go of my lies and enter into the joy of the Lord. But that very act in itself would destroy my capability to enjoy that freedom, for true freedom always has to be entered through the door of choice, not force. That is just the unavoidable fact of reality.

What do I do with all of this? I don't really know. I guess I am simply expressing where I am at right now and recording it for comparison to what may happen next. I am attempting to condense feelings and notions that defy expression but nevertheless need to be flushed out closer to consciousness where they can be more easily seen and dealt with. I need to expose the things that are causing the resistance in my heart that is preventing me from experiencing the freedom that my heart longs to enjoy. I want to let go of the lies and beliefs that prevent real faith from flourishing and strengthening in my heart.

This is necessarily a very personal journey that is not easily solved by pat answers and platitudes. I suspect however, that it is something that would be more effectively resolved by genuine fellowship and bonding with other hearts if I could just figure out how to get there from here. But then again, figuring it out is probably the wrong approach, a mistaken road to follow. It might be the long way around to a place that could be reached much more quickly if I used the right methods and lived more from my heart than from my head.

So, do you have any thoughts on this? Since I doubt I will solve this by myself I welcome others to join the journey and see what fellowship might produce.

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:5-7)

Synchronization

When we call someone on the phone to chat for awhile or sit down to visit with a friend to just enjoy each other's company, what we are really doing is synchronizing our minds and hearts with each other. Depending on how long it has been since we last talked, how close a friend they are to start with and how many things have transpired in our lives since we last synchronized, it may take some time to get onto the same wavelength again.

The process of synchronization is very complex and fascinating. I do not claim to know a great deal about it but it seems apparent that it is very real. We call it “catching up” with each other sometimes. Just like gears trying to mesh with each other in a gearbox, we each have to adjust the speed of our movement, the sense of our emotional state, until we find harmony and a closer sense of connectedness between us. And depending on how serious we are about this relationship determines how much time and effort we put into the exercise. If we want to simply have a casual connection and be just friendly we may only lightly touch emotionally with the other person. But if we mutually crave a really deep heart-bonding then it will usually take a great deal more effort and time to synchronize the much deeper feelings in our hearts that often we ourselves do not even understand.

The lack of feeling synchronized with others leaves an intense feeling of emptiness inside of us. We were designed by God to find real satisfaction in synchronized bonds with other hearts and when we don't have those relationships we feel cheated and poor. Many times we resort to all sorts of means to mask that pain: chemicals to make us feel better and numb our awareness, virtual relationships that externally promise to satisfy our deep need for bonding but rip away from us leaving deep wounds and even more intense pain than we started with. I say virtual, not just in the sense of distant as in using the internet or videos or some other impersonal means, but also physical intimacy with anyone without legitimate, covenant-based bonds to protect the relationship for the long term.

We are so surrounded with all the false alternatives to real bonds of friendship and love that we are almost totally unaware of what the real ones might look like or feel like. We have been forced to be satisfied with underdeveloped relationships at best and pain-inducing relationships on average if that can be called satisfaction. Our hearts crave for something much deeper, much more committed, much more satisfying than anything we now experience. We often question if such a relationship is even possible given the fruitless years we have spent trying to find such a thing. Is there really someone out there who can ravish our souls and make us feel fully alive without leaving us once again in pain and darkness and feeling desperately alone? Is there a way to experience more of our relationships in more fulfilling ways than what we now have?

These are questions of the heart that cannot be answered by the intellect. Oh, there are plenty of platitude answers floating around out there that most of us could rattle off quite easily. But when it comes to really experiencing them instead of just talking about them very few people can honestly confess that they have found genuine satisfaction and bonds of real love.

The act of synchronizing with another heart is an attempt to love and be loved. There are many times when the attempt at synchronization is only one-sided and leaves both parties feeling frustrated or even violated at times. We very often make clumsy attempts to synchronize with someone else, sometimes even complete strangers if we are desperate enough for friendship. But our attempts are interpreted as attacks and threats instead of expressions of a desire to honestly synchronize and we are quickly rebuffed or even shamed. This adds insult to injury and our fears and pain deepen even further and our hearts add yet another layer to the walls that we have built around them. We desperately want to live free but our fear of pain prevents us from synchronizing in ways that would allow us to feel free.

So we resort to a synchronization of broken hearts. This is very apparent as I look around. We meet together to swap horror stories of how other people have hurt us or insulted and offended us. We commiserate together about how miserable we are and feel a certain amount of satisfaction that others may be able to understand our pain because it resonates with similar feelings in their life. We may even get so synchronized in our sharing of pain that we think the other person really cares about us and may enter into an emotional and/or physical relationship with them thinking that we have found the real cure for our pain and they likewise.

But this experience ends up just being yet another event that causes us trauma as our selfish hearts meet to exploit each other in the name of love. When we finally discover that the other person is only there to service their own pain and has no real resource to heal our pain we pull away yet again and our friendship or love turns to bitterness or even hatred. We believe that they have deliberately set about to hurt us not realizing that they have the same feelings about us. So we move on to look for yet another opportunity to synchronize with another heart in hopes that we can someday find the real thing but losing more hope all the time.

It sounds like nothing more than a religious platitude to say that God is the only reliable option to heal this problem, but nevertheless it is true. The One who designed and created our hearts and minds to crave love is the best suited to arrange for its fulfillment. It is true that we need to experience satisfaction and bonding with other beings as well as God, but these can only be long-lasting and deeply fulfilling as they are guided by the Spirit of the One who is the only One that can read our heart like an open book. Ultimately, our deepest and most intense longings will only be satisfied in the presence of the One who originated them in the first place. And He placed them there like a guiding magnet to attract us back to our origin and Creator. Not being satisfied with any alternatives pushes us to keep searching until we connect with the real thing and feel fully alive.

Synchronization is a most important element in the body of Christ but is possibly one of the most lacking ingredients at this time. That should be no surprise given the intensity of deception that Satan is using to keep us from uniting into a real threat to His system. He knows far better than we do what the most important things we need to focus on if we are to be reunited with our real source of power. And he does everything possible to minimize and discount all these important elements and keep us focused instead on things the world thinks is important for unity and success. If he can keep us distracted and our hearts from connecting to each other and to God effectively, he has little to worry about in perpetuating his agenda.

The most effective way Satan has to keep us from experiencing real power and love in our lives is to keep us away from our hearts and focused on the externals and the intellectual aspects of our life. Or if we do get into our hearts he tries to fill us with so much pain and despair that we won't believe that God can really solve our problems or heal our pain. If he can keep us in unbelief then he can keep us in pain and powerless while he continues to abuse us in every way possible.

So how do we respond in the face of all this? Where do we focus our attention and energies to come into life-giving synchronization with God's network of life? I am still asking those questions myself and am not ready to accept or expound any simplistic, unproven answers at this point. Just because I can see a question more clearly does not mean I can see or experience the answer clearly. I am far more an example of dysfunctional and desynchronized relationships than I am of healthy ones. I am learning a lot about what good ones might look like but as of yet have very little if any experience in actually participating in them.

All I can do at this point is ask and trust in God's providence to bring together those He is working with to produce the closely knitted body that He has promised to reveal. I have no idea how I fit into that body and right now I feel very, very loosely connected to it at best. But I am eager to experience it much better in the future and look forward to bonding at the heart level much more than I currently can conceive. I am praying that God will continue to draw me into healthy relationships, that He will transform my own heart and mind to not be so damaging and clumsy in my relationships and that I can begin to experience the effects of feeling genuine satisfaction and love. As I learn to receive love I am told that I will be able to give love. I look forward to that as soon as possible.