Over at Kent’s blog Faithfully Dangerous he has shared some thoughts entitled “The Political Distraction.”
I have commented on his piece and I thought I might put it up here for others to read that might not visit his most excellent site.
After reading and commenting on these thoughts, it was a jerk me up straight moment realizing the extent of the title he chose to use, Political Distraction, wow, I thought.
Why is it that whether in the USA or any other country so many seem to think, especially the Christian demographic that our residing political government figures should be angelic like, people full of integrity etc, are we mistaking this world for the Heaven of which God has for us? Did Jesus actually come with a prioritised agenda specifically to see that any democratic establishments would truly be a government of the people, by the people and for the people? As I offered in my thoughts, I thought it was all about a door being opened up for who so ever chooses to have a full blown encounter with this one whose offer was Life, Love now and forever. And it somehow is having nothing to do with making this world a nicer, safer place to live.
These were my thoughts I shared on Kent's blog.
The political tyranny that you speak of is interesting as I see it being but a metaphor for a far more all invasive inner tyranny. Look at the children of Israel being extricated from their Egyptian bondage, talk about a corrupt demoralizing system. In my opinion this perverted and corrupt system was but an outer shadow of a sinister monster hidden within the lives of those who saw themselves as being exempt from this reality. It wasn’t long after exiting what they saw as their taskmasters that the real one came rushing to the forefront of their supposed freedom, they were slaves of the inner tyranny of sin.
Fast forward this same picture to the totality of the corrupt system assimilating anything that stood in the way of Rome’s total dominance. The Jews in Jesus’ day were convinced his appearing in their real estate (neck of the woods) was to kick Roman ass, once again they had a deliverer who would set things right, and I’m sure in the faint historical memories of their mind this was of a similar undertaking through one of their great patriarchs, Moses!
Bottom line, Jesus as you know was coming to us for the purpose of Life, something ALL dead humanity stood in need of. The Jews of that hour differed in no way to their ancestors held captive to Pharaoh back in Egypt, they were under the tyranny and complete slaves to SIN, Jesus was aiming far higher than trying to establish a decent and just government for the people!!
Rich
You wrote: "God loves us, we love him, and life happens" which is interesting because "And Then Life Happened" just happens to be the title of my blog. I chose that title because it's the chords to the song the Lord is playing as he directs my life.Due to the length of my wife's musings, I thought I would answer your question as a new entry in my blog.This is a combined response, btw. My wife, Margo, is adding her input below:
From Margo:
Dear Beth,
You are a very good writer, and we both love how the Lord is revealing his heart to you, personally, as an individual. Love that about him!
Here's my take about the advice you were given:
I think the advice was good (thank heavens for the Internet!), but even if you didn't have access to cyberspace I believe God would have been able to answer your question. Why? Because you appear to have a sincere, inquiring heart...and I believe that sort of thing gets him all fired up (not being disrespectful...but I am coming to know him as a person and I do think he gets excited about some things)! Life does tend to happen to everyone and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to discern that good and bad things occur all the time for no apparent reason. Having access to the scriptures is nice but not necessary. Case in point; Job didn't have a bible either!
The book of Job has played a big part in our lives, simply because we had our own kind of Job experience that lasted about ten miserable years. During that time, God not only crushed and ground us to bits but then pulverized the resulting dust. You may ask why a God of love would do such a thing, as did we - billions of times!
I think there are innumerable things our finite, clay-based minds cannot possibly comprehend about our Heavenly Father - the wonder, the terror, the majesty, the meekness...BUT - there is one thing that's a constant, and that is God is love. Until we get our minds around that truth, and know it as an unchanging, unalterable fact (no matter how chaotic, cruel or nonsensical life can be) then nothing else is relevant. I can take comfort in that never-changing truth: God is love. It seems so simplistic, yet is so all-encompassing. It seems like a platitude, but it's pregnant with truth. And at times, that's all we can manage to whisper when we are broken with grief or horror or disappointment or depression or gut-wrenching sorrow: "God is love".
God is love. I guess that's enough for us to know right now. One day we will understand, but until we get to the sweet by-and-by, in the nasty now-and-now that's where faith comes in, faith founded on the truth that "God is love".
I recall the story of Helen Rosevere. She was a medical missionary doctor stationed in the Congo. Eventually, guerrilla forces overtook her camp and she was savagely beaten and brutally raped many times. She demanded to know from God why he had allowed it to happen, particularly when she had sacrificed her own life in order to serve him. I won't ruin the story for you in case you ever read the account, but when God gave her the answer she was ashamed she had asked. It was sufficient to her to know...God is love.
And yes, I do agree: "there is nothing greater than being with God, in all meanings of that preposition." With God, in God...love those prepositions!
Re Job: You already know God took away all that he had (children, livestock, real estate, health, respect etc.) But isn't it interesting that at the end of his life, God replaced it all - in double portion - everything that is, EXCEPT his children. Job originally had ten. You would have thought that the next family would consist of twenty. Now, why do you think that was? I think I know the answer but I would be interested in hearing what you think!
From Richard:
Beth,
Here is a link, see here, to something that reaches into the depths of my being. I perceive what is penned here to be succinctly relevant to what is being postulated by us both.
In Him,
Rich/Margo
In some dialogue with a good friend today, Dave said, “That most don’t give one another the freedom to be imperfect, rather we want someone with the answers for all our woes, so you better be that perfect person and not screw up.”It’s totally liberating to know the power and growing scurrility of Father absolute unconditional love for us, it frees us to perfectly speak of that perfection within all that is so imperfect in us!None of us being born into a fallen sinful race, shaped in iniquity have escaped the inner desolation, devastation or utter bankruptcy, none! The scriptures paint a clear picture for us all being cut off, alienated from the very life of God, but God who is rich in mercy and kindness loved us and died for us while we were yet His enemies-wow.The work of sin entering into the whole race by the first Adam was such a perfect work of an inner corruption and releasing within us total depravity, or did God get it wrong when He said, “All have sinned and fallen short of His glory?”Our desperate need is to know of His unspeakable unconditional love He has for each of us, it is a perfect love that wants much more than to simply save and unite us within our spirit, but also to redeem, transform us within our poverty stricken soul.Here in lies the good news, it has nothing to do with us doing things perfectly as much as it is in a moment by moment encounter with His perfect love displacing the residual affects of the hellish tormenting fearful grip of that which tries to cling to us like a blood sucking lamprey robbing us of our very birth-right.The scathing inner desolation that being born in fear has accomplished in us all is powerless to stop or impede a like wise God breathed inner revelation of His kindness and goodness to us, where sin once abounded, grace (love) will super abound.In some lives the outer evidence of the inner torment of fear is most obvious, but know this, there is no one apart from knowing, experiencing the power of His tender compassionate love who will ever walk free from this under tow.
There is NO need to be ashamed by discovering my/our need to be yet further and more deeply perfected in the true knowledge of Father’s perfect love, it is the perfect Christ in us encouraging us all to share, speak of that which has become so real to us coming out from under the yoke of fear and its tormenting oppression. Rich
“I pray and ask you to join with me that He would open to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.”
Are we the prisoners of circumstances and situations, or are we His whether we live or die? Are we anything like our brother Paul in how he described himself as an, “ambassador in chains?”
For most of us our geographical surroundings may not be as Paul’s’ often were, incarcerated behind bars, but there are more than one type of bars and for that matter many different kinds of prisons as well.
I ask you, where did Paul want to portray the mystery of the gospel, Christ in you the hope of glory, if it wasn’t right there where he WAS in front of or behind the bars?
Doesn’t it begin pretty much in our own back yard versus the supposed “calling” on my life to some proverbial “mission field?”
It takes what it takes to bring each of us to see from our true placement In Christ seated far above all powers and principalities in Christ at the Father’s right hand that anything that was used in having us sold or sent into some form of imprisonment was the Father sending us. Also we begin to see that which was purposed for evil, spelling our hurt and demise was the Father using it all for our good!
Why is it that we fail to see that He is fully able to make me and you a “witness” unto Himself right where we are at?
Set a barn, house on fire and men will come from miles around to witness such a site!
Is His life in us as us provoking folks unto such a craving, longing, thirst for what is real now and forever? Or are we more concerned about my/our own comfort?
Folks there is NO spiritual “kink” in the hose when it comes to our Father ruling and reigning and in charge of everything that ‘appears’ to be so out of control.
We are we where we are, for one purpose, that we might discover what we so easily, glibly mouth, “He loves me” to experience the resurrected One in us as us, to be embraced by this insanely loving Father, to drink in deeper than anything we have ever known, much like a dusty dry sponge.
In becoming saturated in and with the greatness of His love for us, we become a living oasis in a barren and arid wilderness, and by word of mouth faster than a speeding bullet, the good news leaks out for all who thirst and want Him!
Rich
Why is it that there are so few that can identify with what is happening in the lives of so many of our siblings that are going through such utter desolation?
Maybe it’s because they have never experienced having been in His crucible themselves. Like Joseph, there are those He has sent ahead for this (His) purpose. “God did send me before you to preserve life” (Gen. 45:5).
Rich
What rich encouragement these words are to me from Austin Sparks.
And that leads us to the peculiar cost and deep way by which such a function is fulfilled; for in type there were few in the Old Testament dispensation who knew more deeply the meaning of the Cross than did Joseph. Yes, the Cross was planted very deeply in his life. He suffered in a measure all that the Lord Jesus suffered later: the suspicion of his own brethren after the flesh, the prejudice, the ostracism, the hatred, the malice, the jealousy and the murder. Joseph went through it all, cast off among the dead, lowered into the pit as one slain, put into the dungeon and left by men, forsaken, cast out. And it says, “His soul entered into the iron” (Psa. 105:18). Poor Joseph! And he did not know what it was all for. He did not know what was coming. He did not know of the glories that should follow. He went through it in utter loneliness and if the Cross means one thing more than another, that is where we feel it most, the utter desolation of soul where no one can go with us in understanding.
Yes, there was peculiar cost in suffering, in experience, bound up with this function. We can say that others do not go that way; even others of the Lord’s people do not go that way. It is for this particular kind of instrument. It goes by a particular kind of way and it has so much that a multitude of Christians know nothing about. Their Christian life is more like a playground than a winepress.
Yes, Joseph knew the Cross deeply and terribly. Disliked, suspected, cast out, hated, killed, made to suffer immediately by them of his own family, and made to suffer resultantly at the hands of the world. You get the interpretation. I need not say more.
You can read the whole article this was taken from here.
Consider the following phrase: “having a form of godliness, but having no power”. What does that mean to you? Could ‘having a form of godliness’ have anything to do with the anti-Christ spirit which seeks to transform a person into something resembling a well mannered, domesticated house pet?
I can personally attest to the toxic corruption of religion and its influence being used to keep me tightly bound up while giving the illusion of being free. To clarify: as believers are being unplugged from the matrix of religion, anything which to any degree has established within them a false identity is going to be targeted by the Father of their spirit. It has nothing to do with them “processing” anything as much as it is Jesus Christ in them as them, He being their only life, processing them. In being “birthed” of the Father (not created like Adam and Eve), they received an indestructible life, the very life and nature of the Father. This unshakable life is designed to shake everything that can and will be shaken.
I love the following line spoken by Morpheus in the movie The Matrix: “Welcome to the real world, Neo”. Prior to being disconnected from the Matrix, Neo like everyone else had been living (if you could call it living) in a dream world. Similarly, as our loving Father begins to extricate us from the lies of the religious leaven we have consumed, which established our so-called “Christian” identity, we are going to feel much like someone coming off prolonged drug or alcohol addiction… only worse.
This is one of the reasons the beginning steps into freedom from the bonds of religion are so precariously fearful. As we are being set free from all life-support props that previously made us look and feel good, once again we begin to hanker after going back, even though we know how harmful this could be for any further maturation. No one likes the stigma attached to or associated with living outside of the religious camps. I like how a friend of ours has described this season of the journey as “living in the leper colony.” What we do not see or know yet with any sobriety or clarity is that we are in fact being stripped of anything that motivates us at an unconscious level to “boast in our fleshly ability.” For those who say that they have escaped this process, cool. But hear me: He has a specific and unique arrangement set up just for you as well. He’s so good at what He does!
I want to end my thoughts by including this quote from my dear brother Oz Chambers:
“Unless we get hurt right out of every deception about ourselves, the word of God is not having its way with us. The word of God hurts as no sin can ever hurt, because sin blunts feeling. The question of the Lord intensifies feeling, until to be hurt by Jesus is the most exquisite hurt conceivable. It hurts not only in the natural way but in the profound personal way. The word of the Lord pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, there is no deception left. There is no possibility of being sentimental with the Lord's question; you cannot say nice things when the Lord speaks directly to you, the hurt is too terrific. It is such a hurt that it stings every other concern out of account. There never can be any mistake about the hurt of the Lord's word when it comes to His child; but the point of the hurt is the great point of revelation."
"Have you ever felt the pain, inflicted by the Lord, at the very center of your being, deep down in the most sensitive area of your life? The devil never inflicts pain there, and neither can sin nor human emotions. Nothing can cut through to that part of our being but the Word of God.”
Rich
Why have You kindled in me the flame of faith, this dark light which lures us out of the bright security of our little huts into Your night? And why have You made me Your priest, one whose vocation it is to be with You on behalf of men, when my finiteness makes me grasp for breath in Your presence?
(Karl Rahner)
Rich
No, it is not yours to open buds into blossoms.
Shake the bud, strike it; it is beyond your power to make it blossom.
Your touch soils it, you tear its petals to pieces and strew them in the dust.
But no colours appear, and no perfume.
Ah! It is not for you to open the bud into blossom.
He who can open the bud does it so simply.
He gives it a glance, and the life-sap stirs through its veins.
At his breath the flower spreads its wings and flutters in the wind.
Colours flush out like heart-longings, the perfume betrays a sweet secret.
He who can open the buds does it so simply.
(From the Indian poet, Tagore).
This poem speaks of the wonder of His love and power stirring within those places in my life that cry out Abba, Father!
Rich
But isn't that just what the Father of our spirit has purposed - to introduce a custom-designed and unique application of the cross to my will? If God the Father is love (and He is), then be prepared to embrace the "goodness and the severity" of the Father, at times simultaneously! And although your immediate thought might be, "This can't be of the Father" think again…or better yet, think it NOT strange what has befallen you!
Let's take a look here into Hebrews which plainly speaks of this blessing that goes hand in hand with our being received of the father. To further illustrate, a couple of verses from the King James translation is particularly sweet:
"If ye endure chastening, God is dealing with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chastens not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons."
From my perspective, the reality that none of us sees is the reality that deals with the unseen current of our hearts. I love the story of the pastor who allowed his youngest son to have a sleepover with a parishioner's son. The next morning the pastor called his friend to inquire about his son's behavior. To his surprise, the pastor was informed that his son was simply a delight, but experience led him to add ruefully, "I guess you never had to cross his will."
The story in Luke 15 of the generous father is a graphic illustration unveiling the hidden reality of our hearts, and how without being disciplined, corrected, and extricated from the Matrix of religion our needed and continued growth is aborted: "But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons". It would appear as if this father's sons were outwardly perfect – until their wills were crossed. Likewise, we are our Heavenly Father's forever children, but His ultimate intentions are for fully mature (perfect) sons!
Isn't it amazing how, at a heart level, we can divorce ourselves from the Father of our spirit simply because we choose to go our way? The kicker is, because of the intensity of His love for us, He grants us that very freedom. Sooner or later as truth-filled sobriety invades our inner senses, we begin to see the stark reality of this being a divine conspiracy which harmoniously flows between Father, Son and Holy Spirit - that there really is only One way, His way, Jesus the Way! Because of the innate inclination of our foolish "wisdom", we try to go the right way versus the wrong way, and in that process blindly miss out on the best way - His! However, thanks be to God who allows us to go wrong before we learn to go right.
Rich
the following is from the Ragamuffin Gospel.
“We accept grace in theory but deny it in practice. Living by grace rather than law leads us out of the house of fear into the house of love. “In love there is no room for fear, but perfect love drives out fear: because fear implies punishment and no one who is afraid has come to perfection in love” (1 John 4:18).
While we profess our faith in God’s unconditional love, many of us still live in fear. Nouwen remarks: Look at the many “if” questions we raise: What am I going to do if I do not find a spouse, a house, a job, a friend, a benefactor? What am I going to do if they fire me, if I get sick, if an accident happens, if I lose my friends, if my marriage does not work out, if war breaks out? What if tomorrow the weather is bad, the buses are on strike, or an earthquake happens? What if someone steals my money, breaks into my house, rapes my daughter, or kills me?
Once these questions guide our lives, we take out a second mortgage in the house of fear.
Jesus says simply, “Remain in me, as I in you” (John 15:4). Home is not a heavenly mansion in the afterlife but a safe place right in the midst of our anxious world. “Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him” (John 14:23).
Home is that sacred space-external or internal-where we don’t have to be afraid; where we are confident of hospitality and love. In our society we have homeless people sleeping not only on the streets, in shelters or in welfare hotels, but vagabonds who are in flight, who never come home to themselves. They seek a safe place through alcohol or drugs or security in success, competence, friends, pleasure, notoriety, knowledge, or even a little religion. They have become strangers to themselves, people who have an address but are never at home, who never hear the voice of love or experience the freedom of God’s children.
To those of us in flight, who are afraid to turn around lest we run into ourselves, Jesus says, You have a home. I am your home. Claim me as your home. You will find it to be the intimate place where I have found my home. It is right where you are, in your innermost being. In your heart.
For those who have moved from the house of fear and have made their home in Jesus reads the following.
Eviction Notice!
You are hereby banished from the house of Fear forever. With malice aforethought, you have flagrantly withheld the monthly rent of guilt, anxiety, fear, shame and self-condemnation. You have adamantly refused to worry about your salvation. Already I overheard one dismal tenant say, “There goes the neighborhood!” Your freedom from fear is not only dangerous but contagious. Real estate values have plummeted; gullible investors are hard to find. Why? Your callous and carefree rejection of slavery! A pox on you and all deluded lovers of liberty!
The Prince!
Rich
"One of the mysteries of the gospel tradition is this strange attraction of Jesus for the unattractive, this strange desire for the undesirable, this strange love for the unlovely. The key to this mystery is, of course, Abba. Jesus does what He sees the Father doing; He loves those whom the Father loves."
(From the Ragamuffin Gospel)
Rich
From the first time we wept as infants left alone by our mothers, we began learning that no one can be happy without love. By ourselves we are helpless, threatened, anxious, and fragile as cut flowers. Without our roots deep in the common soil, touching the roots of others, we dry up and wither. Only by touching another do we know where we leave off and the mystery of the other begins; only by love can we penetrate that mystery. As babies raised without the touch of love pine and die, so do adults if they separate themselves from those who would love them and be loved by them.
The energy of God meets itself coming and going when two of God's children meet heart to heart, eye to eye, loving and being loved. That love that moved the sun and other stars precipitated the Word, Jesus Christ. He was enfleshed as man so that we could by knowing and loving Him be gathered up in the arms of God the Spirit, out of the swaddling clothes of our flesh.
God wants to give Himself to us in every possible way: first through Jesus, who loved and touched His people with human heart, human hands; then through the Holy Spirit, who knits us all into one seamless cloth that wraps the world; and finally through the hands of another human being, laid on us in love, as ours are laid on that other person. When we open ourselves to this other person, we open ourselves to God and God can touch us, like the sun touching the heart of an unfurled flower. Closed, we can't be reached. But a life spent loving is a life spent open. To reach out and receive, we must open our hands; to be loved, we much first love. The wife or husband [or friend] next to you is more than your spouse [or buddy]. He or she is your path to God. In the face of a wife laboring in birth or a husband crushed at the loss of his job, you see the face of God, open to your love, wanting you to give it.
Deeper, deeper you go, till you touch the place in the other where God is, dropping your own veils of ego, self-defense, falseness as you go, until you both stand before each other and God naked as newborn babies. At this moment when you see God in each other, you see. . . the image of Christ as He might have looked walking the earth. As the veils fall, we see God not through a glass darkly, but face to face in the light of love, in the one through whom God sees and touches us. And each moment in which we give and take love, we touch God.
Without God, we cannot love; without the other, we cannot show our love. . . In our love for others, we express the link between flesh and spirit, as God expressed it in the Incarnation. Like God, we are an intimate community of love, pouring ourselves out so that we can fill others and be filled.
Growing up means 'growing out,' dropping our walls and opening in selfless love to another. We become a two-way channel through which the uncreated energies of God flow. The more love we give, the more love grows in the place we have planted it.
Love has everything to do with the ordinary events of daily living, since the giving of all we are and the receiving back of all we can be happens in the workshop, the nursery, the office. When we discover the energies of God in each other, we pour those energies into all we do, reconciling the world to the Father.
True love - God's love - is to see others as God sees, knows, and touches them. To love truly is to see with the eyes of God, to go beneath the skin and plunge straight to the heart, where the other shows him or herself to be as unique as if alone in the world, the sparrow whose fall God notices, the lamb for whom Jesus died. True love is caring for the other, mindful only of the other's good. It is being quick to hear the other's need, to serve the other's growth toward his or her true self and carrying the other into deeper touch with God. The prayer of Jesus before he underwent death was that we would be ONE as He and the Father are one (John 17:21-23). It happens as we love one another.
--Excerpted from Loving the Christ in You.
Rich
While doing my route yesterday I saw this huge make shift sign on a front lawn that read in big bold pink letters, “IT’S A GIRL!”
This was so cool to see, it evoked within me a wondrous sense of Father saying to me, “Son, this is but a reflection of how I rejoiced over you the day I heard your first cry-breath as you came into the world.”
I am the Lord your God and Father; I rejoice over you with great joy and with shouts of gladness, you have captured my heart!
Wow, could it be that he loves me that much?! I am inclined to believe it is so.
Rich
There is nothing more freeing then having the Father of my spirit breath his very heart beat into so many lifeless, static, cold words.
Without knowing the spirit behind, in and through these words, is it any wonder that living, and real life is being missed all around us?
My wife and I listened today to a recent pod cast by Darrin Hufford entitled “Worship in the Wild,” a wonderful and encouraging story of one brother’s insights and thoughts as to, “What worship is to him.” Not, “what is worship.”
He shares some additional thoughts here, “Going for the Worship,” and here, “What is Worship?”
According to Scripture, God is spirit, not “A” spirit, and God is seeking such that will worship (love) Him “in spirit and truth.” Is He simply looking for me/us to gratify some self-centered need within Himself by having us spout off none stop a barrage of religious worshiping blather?
As God is actively seeking us out, wanting to engage us in that part that is like wise as He is, spirit, there is something evoked within us that logic, mere common sense knowledge cannot produce, a spontaneous combustion.
It is out of the truth of His heart being revealed, exposed to us that we find a God ability to worship Him in and with that very spirit, Truth.
The letter kills, but the spirit makes alive, breathes life into what we say, sing, proclaim. As in anything of real importance there are those self-qualified authorities that pronounce, “This is worship,” you must do it exactly the way we have laid it all out here for you. On the other hand as our loving heavenly Father engages us and reveals Himself to us, it is from this inner knowing, experiencing his closeness in us, that we are freed to love-worship Him.
Out of the constancy of Him time after time making his heart known to us, worship becomes less and less an IT, but a intimate and personal close encounter.
What worship is to me will not be what worship is to you, for true worship will never happen according to a fixed choreographed script, but by the intensity of His love bursting into our consciousness, this will evoke an expression of a most intimate nature.
I love the heart-insight God gives to us in knowing and seeing what true worship can look like.
“It happened that as he made his way toward Jerusalem, he crossed over the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men, all lepers, met him. They kept their distance but raised their voices, calling out, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" Taking a good look at them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." They went, and while still on their way, became clean. One of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus' feet, so grateful. He couldn't thank him enough—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus said, "Were not ten healed? Where are the nine? Can none be found to come back and give glory to God except this outsider?" Then he said to him, "Get up. On your way. Your faith has healed and saved you." (Luke 17:11-19)
The implications here are, there were ten lepers; nine of them were Jews, and one being a Samaritan. Even Jesus had said to a Samaritan “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.”
Nine of these lepers (Jews) from what I can see received nothing more than a miraculous touch from God, healing their disease ridden bodies, but this non-Jew receives along with his outer touch an inward revelation of being loved which evoked, releasing within him the ability to worship.
This event in my opinion what was experienced here in this account was but a shadow picture of what was to become so much more than mere touches from God, but in fact brought into a vital life-union with Him, which is far more than a mere touch from Him.
Let Him make Himself known to you His way, then be prepared for the dam to be burst within your heart!
Rich
We must be convinced that both God and life will maturity. But they do more than passively will our maturity; they conspire in every possible way, short of breaking down our wills to make us mature. Life makes us discontented and unhappy in our immaturities. Suppose we could settle down happy and contented in being a half-person, then that would be a tragic situation. But we cannot. Divine discontent is a goal that impels us into higher, fuller life. Life won’t let us settle down-to nothingness.
And what kind of Father would God be if He did not disturb us toward maturity? No earthly parent could be content to have a child who refused to grow up. The parents’ joy is in development, in growth, in going on toward maturity. God cannot be otherwise and still be God, our Father. So the disturbances we feel in our immaturities are not signs of His anger, but a manifestation of His love. He loves us too much to let us settle down in half-wayness.
But if God should stop at that point of making us discontent, then He would this side of being God, our Father. To be our Father, He must provide literally everything for our maturity. And He has! He has put at our disposal all the resources for our being what we ought to be-everything except coercion. There He draws the line, for if he coerced us into maturity-then of course we wouldn’t be mature. The will to be mature must be at the center of our maturity.
If God and life and we ourselves will maturity, then there is nothing in heaven or earth that can stop us from being the mature persons we ought to be. We are destined to be mature, and that destiny is written in every cell of our bodies. We can slow down or block that destiny. The choice is ours.
Hope begins to spring up within my heart, for if I am destined to be mature then I can and do accept that destiny and make it my own.
Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity (perfection).
Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect (mature) man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ:
Rich
For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.
Yikes, commandments, what’s that got to do with grace and living outside of a yoke, is there something I’m missing here?
Every prayer the Son of God prayed is going to come true, not one word will fall to the ground; it will accomplish that which it was sent to do!
The Father has opened a door for any and all to fully experience his offer of life in its abundance all revolving out of His heart of desire and intimacy with us.
I so appreciate how Father was making his heart more real to me from what I read here in Brennan Manning’s book, “The Signature of Jesus.”
“Further along in his ministry, Jesus would say: “The Father and I are one,” indicating an intimacy of life and love that defy description. To Phillip he would say, “He who sees me sees the Father.” And again, “It is the Father living in me who is doing this work.”
Jesus is the human face of God, with all the attitudes, attributes, and characteristics of the Father.
So many Christians I know stop at Jesus. They remain on the Way without going where the Way leads them-to the Father. They want to be brothers and sisters without being sons and daughters. In them, the lament of Jesus in John 17 is fulfilled: “Father of all goodness, the world has not known you.”
As the Father loved him, so Jesus would love us and invite us to do the same. “Love one another as I have loved you.”
Rich
Even as I begin to write these words, I can barely see through the heart brokenness within spilling out through a flood of tears. Not tears of shame or guilt but of a sobering reality of my loving Papa saying to me, “Son, look at ME!”
How many of you that have kids and maybe there all grown up now remember back through their growing up years would reach out to you by saying, “Look at me dad?” Weren’t they wanting to see mirrored back to them through our hearts, eyes and waves, I am valued, I am special, my dad just said SO.
I missed out on mirroring back to my two precious children that total loving affirmation and acceptance of them for who they were and not for what they would be or could DO.
I was a father needing so badly a father to love me, I was alive but dead in not knowing I was totally loved, this prevented me from giving what I did not possess.
In reading more of He Loves Me by Wayne Jacobsen, I suddenly heard the voice of my heavenly Papa saying, “Son look at me, I’m here for you, I have never taken my eyes off of you, you are and have always been in my heart and thoughts.”
I sensed in a new way Father saying, “keep looking at me son, see mirrored in my heart/eyes, everything you will ever need. Son it is my delight to make known to you in the deepest places of your being, how pleased and proud I am of you, let’s explore together all that is, and yet to be yours.
As you learn to freely drink deep of my love, freely you will have me as your source to liberally give away!"
I feel very much like a small child learning the wonder of crawling, and yet hearing my Papa shout out, “That’s my son, look at him go!”
Rich
These words gripped me this morning as I am finishing up reading The Naked Church by Wayne Jacobsen.
He has been talking about “clothed with power,” and this stood out so real to me.
“Not only does God’s power flow through our relationship with him, but it is also the conduit that lets us share that power with others. Often when Jesus healed people he was motivated with compassion. What moves us when we pray for others? I know I’m often bombarded with an awareness of how bad I’m going to look if nothing happens. God’s power doesn’t move freely in that environment.”
“At other times I’ve prayed for a miracle specifically to avoid more costly personal involvement. My prayer was not an extension of my compassion but a substitute for it, like asking, God to heal the beaten man on the road in the parable of the Good Samaritan because this would be easier than bandaging the wounds and paying for his stay at an inn. The early church regarded selling their property to help one another in financial need as a miracle just as real as multiplying the loaves and fishes. Until we’re moved enough to spend our resources, chances are we’re not ready to rely on God’s.”
I look upon this not as a condemning thought but in fact I see it pointing me to the One who makes this totally possible.
No longer having to try and suck up the where with all to be caring, loving etc.!
What liberty and freedom knowing, silver and gold I might not have, but I can honour and care for others in my path this day only because my Father knows no shortages.
Rich
Is it really all that much different today than it was 2,000 years ago regarding how fear and lies have kept man imprisoned within an identity that serves as a coffin?
As the Father of a vast immeasurable family is awakening us, we are discovering as a result of His total, unconditional loving acceptance of us, that we in fact have a voice. Where before as in so many cases so many if not in fact all of us were gagged, our thoughts opinions were seen as being less than useless, well folks, family, that is as the song says, “The times, they are a changing”.
Gosh darn I love this; “But how can people call for help if they don't know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven't heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it? That's why Scripture exclaims, A sight to take your breath away! Grand processions of people telling all the good things of God!
But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act. Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: "Does anyone care, God? Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?" The point is: Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ's Word is preached, there's nothing to listen to.”
Just as the life of the Father in His son Jesus, became a huge threat to the gate keepers of religion in his day, so it is today.
Jesus talked plainly, clearly about this; “All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Please read the whole tenth chapter of John 10 if you have time, fitting in the quote used here takes on a much fuller dimension in its proper sandwiching.
The hidden motives and agendas are being exposed in every life, but especially within His church, and folks, this is GOOD news. “And His father and mother were amazed at the things which were being said about Him. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, "Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed-- and a sword will pierce even your own soul--to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed."
“For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart.”
One of the greatest areas of opposition is in the authority of the Father’s love freeing us to speak forth the TRUTH, not my truth verses your truth, but the one who IS the Truth.
The liar within all flesh is being exposed for who he is, and in particular, hidden within the flesh of those not seeing themselves in opposition to the will of God for us, His church.
Deception runs rampant and one expression of this is depicted in those who have become surrogate, foster parents/father’s to those still stuck within the lie of believing if they do not ‘submit’ to ‘God’s anointed’ then their very soul is in grave danger, please excuse my French, what a load of crap!
I was watching a World War 2 documentary recently (I am deeply fascinated with this time in history) talking about two great minds/personalities that had/were shaping the minds of the world. One was Adolph Hitler and the other Sigmund Freud. I love it when Freud said, “there was a time in history where it would have been me they would burn alive, and not just my books, what I have written.”
To be forewarned is to be forearmed, as more light, revelation continues to transform us the true Church, the death grip that Satan has on the church through those blindly being used of him, will rise up and in God’s holy, righteous name surgically remove what they deem a cancer (us) from it.
Rich
In the process of everything that can be shaken being shaken, there is an inner release within the believer a realized maybe not fully yet, voice, and that voice being the voice of the Father of our spirit.
Can you say emancipation-freedom with me?!
The picture I choose for this entry spoke to me in a violent and powerful way. As you will notice the tape on the mouth of the young girl, gagging her from exercising her ability to speak freely, is a visible metaphor depicting where the church has been for a very long time! That is changing rapidly, not by might, nor by power, but by a revelation of the total unconditional loving acceptance of God the Father.
In a few blogs I peruse frequently, I am being blown away in seeing the head of the church (which is His body) the same head over us all Christ Jesus, doing exactly what he said he would do, “And I will build my church”.
We have all been seduced to one degree or another coming out from under the opiate drugged influence of the Matrix of religion and then set out to discover the “Holy Grail, a perfect expression of how to do ‘church’ or, whatever else is vital to our perceived understanding of what it truly means to be a Christian. Pursuing what we feel is a holy cause, isn’t it always, we are being lied to and even distracted further from trusting the Father of our spirit to open the closed, blinded eyes of our heart.
In coming to know the Word, you know, “n the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” yes that Word, the Scriptures have never been or looked the same to me.
Here in Ephesians 4:14-16 is laid out what I am seeing first hand. As the Truth Himself is making His heart known to his children, out of that inner explosion of love, realty they in turn are speaking forth the Truth in Love, ergo, is causing the growth of the body to come together being built up in and through love.
I will only sight two examples of His heart that I am seeing with regards to the Truth being spoken in love that is making, setting the captives free.
Over at “The Best Parts” Tracy is expressing a tangible view of the Father’s heart for His church.
Over at Amy’s blog “Walking in the Spirit” she as well is being given a voice to speak the truth in love to His body.
In being privy to what the Father is making known, often the picture from the Old Testament where God says to a prophet, “Son of man, can this valley of dead bones return to life,” the prophet replies, “Lord only you know.”
The Lord then said to prophesy to this lifeless heap and stage after stage what was once a lifeless pile of rubble became fully alive.
To my way of thinking this was a shadowy metaphor for what I am witnessing in this hour of the church, His body no longer being tossed too and fro by every wind of doctrine, cunningly devised by demonic persuasion to keep it mute.
Rich
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