God in a Box (Concept)

The following quotes are from Wayne Jacobson from his latest issue of Body Life, you can read it here.


“You would think that if one of us was serving the Living God, it would look differently.”

“Religion is the same all over the world. It is a prescribed set of doctrine, rules, rituals, and ethics. It celebrates sacred space, exalts holy-men as gurus and tries to muscle its way into the culture. For 2000 years many have practiced Christianity as a religion, essentially no different than the others, except in who it claims to follow. But if one of us was serving a Living God, wouldn’t it look very different?”

“When we cram the life of God into a box, we rob it of its life and power and only distinguish it from other religions by claiming a more truthful doctrine. Could that be why Jesus didn’t teach his disciples how to gain a following or build institutions. He didn’t teach them how to meet on Sunday mornings at 10:00 with a worship band and a leader to lecture the others. He didn’t give them a prescribed set of behaviors that people were suppose to follow as the means to serve God.”
“No, he invited them into his Father’s house, and a reality of relationship with his Father that would transform them and opened the way for them to share that love with others. That you can’t put into a religion and trying to only chokes out any hope of relationship. Putting creed and doctrine above a growing friendship with him supplants the reality he offered us, no matter how correct our doctrine or moral our ethics.”

We’re either coming to Christ as a blank sheet ready for Him to write into our being Life, or we’re coming to him with our already established religious mind set (conceptual thinking) and trying to make what He says fit into what I have determined to be the truth.
Isn’t that what Nicodemus tried to do, meaning, it was a ignorant Palestinian ‘ditch digger’ Jesus came to in John chapter 3, it was a religious, pious, educated man of learning.
It would be surmised that his morality was well in check, having a good hold on what is good vs bad etc. When he hears Jesus saying to him he needs to be “born-again” he automatically tried to fit a heavenly truth (reality) into his established conceptual reasoning, look out Nick, you’re about to have a brain fart!

Is it any wonder there is such consternation within this demographic called “Christianity?”
I hear so many looking at what God is saying which is “spirit and truth” as merely viewed as a “concept” and trying through the energy of their flesh to make it fit into their living!
What ever happened to putting (that which is heavenly-spiritual) new wine into a new wine skin anyway?

Rich

The Grace of Wrath

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

Religion

One of the most liberating benefits of coming to know or experience the unconditional love and acceptance of God my Father is in becoming more and more ‘me’, the person He purposed me to BE.

One of the things I have struggled with for a long time now in knowing it is His love alone that not only brings definition and fulfillment into our lives is this: why is it that those who were once heavily involved within the religious establishments as ‘leaders’ quickly pick up labels that point back to a former definition of who they were? How can one NOT come to an erroneous conclusion when they still see themselves having a ‘ministry’? How can this not establish a preferred status as being those who are ‘anointed/called/having a ministry’ and those who are but ‘followers’ of Christ?

How much religious activity is able to make the guilt and shame a person faces go away?
Is not knowing who’s we are, and who we are, the sick reasoning behind having to be still know as someone that is somehow not just a mere follower of Christ?

Why is it that if it is the same, only true life, wisdom, discernment, knowledge etc. available to ALL, that there is this needed, “Hello my name is not just a believer” but?

Rich

The Limitations of Religion

Within the static, fossilized, limited structures of religious ware-housing, there is a shocking upheaval taking place. Is it any wonder there is being awakened, stirred up in the hearts of those distinguishing, discerning, the voice of the Father of their spirit verses the voices of the foster parents a knowing, that it is was for ‘freedom’ they are being set free, and to no longer become entangled with man’s yoke’s of bondage. As they begin to drink deeply of the pure unconditional loving acceptance of their Father (Papa) it is freeing them from their intoxicated addiction, dependency of being ruled by their flesh. They are beginning to hear a sound and a melody that resonates within their very being, “In Him we live, move and have our being.”

Rich

The Limitations of Religion—Law and Organizations

More from Bill Landon, "The Devil You Don't Know".

Another religious view of God is a reliance on the law. The Bible is clear that it is impossible to achieve righteousness by observing the law: Romans 3:20. Yet the religious approach to God continues to this day to make this attempt of justification by legal observance. The legal approach to living is a near necessity for the religious because religion brings along with it organization. Having an organization dooms religion to failure because organization requires an external structure. It is because of this need for external structure that organizations are law-based and not life-based.

Organizations are rules-based because behind the drive to organize is an attempt to make things predictable, controllable and systematic. You can walk into a meeting for any given denomination anywhere and, if you are familiar with that denomination, you know exactly what to expect. Unfortunately, life is spontaneous and unpredictable. This simple difference makes organizations and life basically incompatible.

The existence of an external structure imposes its own (artificial) rules, regulations and restrictions on its members. The rules and regulations are needed to maintain the organization’s functionality and manageability. Organizations, by their very nature cannot exist in a spontaneous environment. Yet life is spontaneous. This is why organizations have no real life in them but rather, take on a “life” of their own. This organizational “life” is really a death life. I can say this because the organization’s “life” opposes the unrestricted exercise of God’s life in the believer. The proper outcome of God’s life working in our lives is for growth, not for us to maintain the status quo.

Religious Atheists

Those who don’t know the Lord are often contemptuous of those who do. They think believers are stupid at best or brain-washed at least. They don’t realize that they, too, have been totally duped by the enemy of their souls.

EVERY person alive exists within the confines of his/her own personal matrix, custom-designed to keep him/her blind from seeing the truth. What is this matrix? It’s religion, pure and simple. But how can people who don’t pretend to believe in God be entrapped in religion? It’s because we typically think of ‘religion’ as being something which goes hand in hand with one’s particular faith, when actually religion is one’s lifestyle. It’s how people choose to live their lives. “I may not be the best person in the world”, they say, “but at least I don’t abuse my sick days at work”. “I don’t claim to be religious, but I am kind to others and give money to charity.” “I don’t believe in God but I consider myself to be a moral person” etc. etc. etc. In this sense, even atheists are religious, because they live their lives according to their own personal moral code.

Religion was instituted by Satan in the garden as a means to circumvent having dependency on God. Merriam-Webster defines religion thus:

- a personal set or institutionalized system of attitudes, beliefs and practices
- a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

What better temptation could Satan have contrived than one that would persuade humankind we don’t need God? That we, by virtue of our own ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ could decide for ourselves what is an acceptable code of conduct, or what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’? What people don’t see (because they have been blinded) is that apart from Christ, there IS no ‘morality’. Why? It’s because at the moment when Adam and Eve succumbed to temptation, a cataclysmic event disfigured their souls, and Satan has been able to replicate himself in the flesh of every person born since. That’s what the scriptures mean when humankind is described as having been ‘born in sin and shaped in iniquity’.

The truth is, without knowing Christ as our life, we are eternally, totally lost and without hope - and no religion or religious set of beliefs is going to alter that fact one whit. Non-believers (and many believers) have absolutely no concept as to the utter depravity of their own souls. They blissfully live their lives in utter ignorance, endeavouring to be ‘good’ people by following the rules, playing nicely with others and adhering to social mores.

This religious veneer, however, is incredibly thin. No one has any idea what s/he is capable of when backed into a corner. When consumed with fear, rage, jealousy or hunger, people have done horrendous things (check out the daily newspaper). It’s at those moments that people come face to face with the evil inherent in the core of their very beings. “I would have never thought she was capable of murder!” Oh, really? We are ALL capable of the most horrific, despicable acts. There is not one of us better than any other.

This is the good news/bad news scenario. The bad news is that we are irreparably flawed, depraved and rotten to the core. The good news is that we are irreparably flawed, depraved and rotten to the core! It’s bad news for those who live their lives according to their own moral code, who don’t recognize that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is the only hope. It’s good news for believers, because it testifies to the fact that we can do NOTHING to measure up or to try to attain to God’s holy standards. It sets us FREE from trying (and failing) to keep the rules and agonizing over our total inability to change ourselves – because HE HAS DONE IT ALL FOR US (but that’s another blog entry)!

My wife wrote this, but it is most definitely a collaboration of a similar heart beat.
I'm going to launch out from here using these thoughts to share some things I know Most will find extremely offensive, but hey, is it the Truth we want or just our ears tickled?
I will be sharing from my good friend Bill Landon's book, "The Devil You Don't Know" in up coming blog entries.

Rich and Margi

Amazing Grace

His grace is truly amazing isn't it!

Going through this maze of grace, there is this constant offer of His unconditional loving acceptance, without it (the oxygen of His Love) I would suffocate.

Through a series of twists and turns I was lead to read about Kathleen Norris and some of what she has written, the picture of the book I have here is the one I am just starting to read.
Funny how after looking and searching for this book along with others that caught my interest, it was at our local library I was able to obtain two of them~go figure.

This alone captured my attention: "Struggling with her return to the Christian church after many years away, Kathleen Norris found it was the language of Christianity that most distanced her from faith. Words like "judgment", "faith", "dogma", "salvation", "sinner" - become so codified or abstract that their meanings were all but impenetrable. She found she had to wrestle with them and make them her own before they could confer their blessings and their grace. Blending history, theology, story-telling, etymology, and memoir, Norris uses these words as a starting point for reflection, and offers a moving account of her own gradual conversion. She evokes a rich spirituality rooted firmly in the chaos of everyday life - and offers believers and doubters alike an illuminating perspective on how we can embrace ancient traditions and find faith in the contemporary world."

I'm sure you will be hearing more from me as I dive into these living streams.

Rich

More Losing of Religion

Talk about an oxymoron, never has it appeared to me of that being more true than today.
I am viewing Christianity as becoming more and more irrelevant to so many, but especially to many, many Christians.
I can not but see God the Father’s hand in all of this; it is a wonder in the making.

Why (and I’m being rhetorical here) has Life-Truth-Love become synonymous with simply furthering what we were doing before the personal God encounter in our lives?
Meaning what has Love-Life got to do with it, perpetuating although now under the banner of ‘Christianity’ any religious adherences?
I thought it was all about God in the person of His Son saying, ‘I have come that you might have Life, and experience it to its fullness.’

Somehow Jesus is seen as someone who came to establish the only right religion, no longer the old format called Judaism but bringing to birth a whole new improved and MUCH better religion called, ‘Christianity’.
As I mentioned in a previous post, that in my opinion the basis of all religion, (or the impetus aka the father of religion being Satan himself), is based solely upon a performance based acceptance towards whatever God we say we worship.
And why shouldn’t it be that way when all we have ever known from birth was the religion of the age (the religion of our fathers), be a good vs bad boy and you will be rewarded etc, from the sublime to the ridiculous, really its all ridiculous isn’t it!

So somehow in becoming a recipient of the Life-Love God freely offers, why is it necessary to perpetuate any expression of any religion?

Rich

I wonder?

The Feat, His Divine Fiat

There is way too much to try and copy and paste here, so for those wanting to read (Keeping Christ In View) further, bon appetite.

These will be some more thoughts on what I shared earlier, also for those interested in another’s thoughts, Ruth over at Come Away My Beloved, has also shared some wonderful thoughts as well.

Here are a couple of quotes: There is everywhere today an immense amount of definite or tacit admission of the failure of Christianity; the asking of the question: 'What is wrong with Christianity or the "churches"?' The would-be doctors seeking to diagnose the malady and prescribe the remedy are a growing multitude. Not all are mistaken, and if we seem to have joined their ranks, we do not think that we are speculating when we assert that that which is preached and taught has become - although largely unwittingly - detached from the personal significance of Christ Himself. The business of the Church and its ministry is not to propagate a system of Christian truth, but to bring Christ Himself, in the power of the Holy Spirit, wherever it goes and is. The Gospel as such saves nobody. Salvation is a vital personal contact and union with Christ Himself. Hence, and this is the crucial point, Christ must have a living organism in which and by which to make that contact and that union.”

“Christianity has become something almost entirely apart from the Person of Christ. It is a religion, a system, a philosophy of life, a set of ways, practices, and ideas. It is something that people enter into, take up, join, and choose. They come to Christ through the Christian system, but the Christ they come to is a denominational, sectarian, ritualistic, or evangelical Christ. The Christ that they know and believe in is the Christ of this or that connection and interpretation. Christ rarely now creates Christianity; it is Christianity that creates Christ.”

Maybe as a wise master builder, the Apostle Paul was unwilling to deviate from the DNA design that constituted what His church was to BE? In other words, he didn’t resort to clowning or cloning around with that which was entrusted to him. You know, somebody who say is very skilled (talented) at painting assuming they can take one of the recognized great masters paintings and make it even better with the magical brush strokes.

Flesh and blood humanity has not evolved nor will it ever become a shinning pinnacle of man’s doings, never! And yet it is within man the miracle of the re-birthing is to be established.
Maybe that’s why Paul could see first hand out of having been translated (caught up) into the heavenly realms wherein it says ‘he both saw and heard things he could not speak of’ regarding the coming together of His church, which IS His body.
And just maybe that’s why he prayed for His church that although there were such wonderful expressions of His life flowing through it, he was privy to the Father’s design, and asked of the Father to give unto His church a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the true knowledge of Him.

Within man, long before the technology was discovered regarding the ability to ‘clone’ was very much a reality that was set into motion from the church’s inception. Whenever the individual/s moved away from their only Life, Christ in them, it devolved into a form of godliness, but lacking any power.
It seems without fail every time God the Father makes himself known to someone in the uniqueness of what that constitutes, man only seeing at best the external results of these holy encounters begins sooner or later to manipulate it and turn it into a movement and ultimately a denomination, and of course the only one who HAS the truth!

I will most likely come back to this conversation many different times regarding His church which is His body, as so many are being awakened to the reality of who He really is and the loving but probing question he seems to delight in asking; “Who do you say I AM?”

Rich

Dead Men Walking

Our teachings about the Bible and its purpose in our lives have basically made us a generation of dead people. Since we don't believe we can hear God on our own without the Bible, we find ourselves searching the Scriptures to find out whether something is right or wrong and we don't even stop to look into our own heart and ask ourselves.

I honestly believe that out of this zombie and lifeless belief system, we have no other option but to blindly stumble throughout life clinging to our WWJD bracelet in hopes that we can survive yet another day. It's a very depressing time we live in when we have to stop everything and analyze what Jesus would do in this situation or that before we act. It's fake. It's scripted and from the head.

And we wonder why people today have no real intimacy with the Father. Listening to many Christians witnessing in todays age is perhaps the most grueling experience I can think of. So often it seems that their entire witness is based on what they have read in a book. (Who do men say I am vs Who do you say I AM)? Just because you read about a crime in the paper, doesn't mean that you can go to court during the trial and be a witness. Sadly, that's what our religion has produced in recent years. A bunch of well read people who haven't really witnessed a thing.

Sadly we subscribe to a religion that pretty much encourages people to have a relationship with their Bible over God Himself. It's like there is something within all of us that would rather spend time with an inanimate object then with a living being. This is why so many people don't have a problem making the trade. Real intimacy is intimidating to us.

Imagine if all you were given was a shadow of something. You would have no choice but to study it from every possible angle in hopes that you might find out what was casting that shadow.

We have been given the very One who casts that shadow! Why in the world would we ever be tempted to study the shadow when the one who casts the shadow has made His home within us? Our teachings on the Bible (and what others have said about the bible) have turned us into shadow chasers who refuse to acknowledge the Shadow Maker.

See all of the article written by Darin Hufford

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=108664028&blogID=345110290

Rich

All Shook Up

Your Not Going To Get Out Alive

I love how Papa directs me in finding the pictures I want. What I try and share here on my blog usually begins with an image/picture, that captures the essence of what He has put upon my heart to share.
I was going to use another picture until I came across this one, it so sizzles.
Maybe in light of the scriptures quoted on the picture, the following ties in better than I could have even planned...Our loving Father and elder Brother Jesus, dealing with that stuff which has been exploiting us and making merchandise out of what is HIS!

A good friend of mine has shared this very funny, but painful season in his life when the Lord was making something most clear to him.
My friends name is Rick..He said it was impressed upon him this way. God speaking to Rick, "Son, I'm thrilled you are in love with me, but the good/bad news is, the me you're in love with, isn't ME"!

What the^*+~*%??

Is it any wonder that the religious landscape is what it is, when at best, we have all been following blindly nothing more than a caricature of God?
You know the one who says, "Hey come follow me, I want to make your life a picnic with no end of fun and thrills, but no spills~Ha!
I'm sure if I had heard Him say, "Come follow Me, I have a perfect planned out life of suffering just tailored made for you, oh, and by the way, I'm going to shake the ever living shit outa your life...what the hell, I must be hallucinating here..surely that couldn't be God?

As I said, if God, the one we think we're in love with is but a caricature, why would we not believe he came to simply add 'life' to an already in motion full of ' a action Jackson' mover and shaker?

In light of this caricature God that seems so popular, lets try this one on for size, I'm sure one size fits all?
Perhaps you are praying for a "breakthrough" in some area of your life. If so you have a wonderful opportunity to meet God especially if you were taught God never gives us more than we can bear - And HE HAS. Relax, God is committed to giving us more than we can bear; otherwise we will never learn to depend on him and give up trusting in SELF and abandon all confidence in the flesh. [Phil 3:9]
What the hell, I rebuke you Satan!!!!!!

Here's a real tasty hors douvre (for the ones beginning to see He isn't a fabricated lifeless caricature God at all) from over at Jim's Blog http://www.divinenobodies.com/blog/

"Taking It In The Gut (I Suck At That Too)

I loved this and my heart goes out to this precious brother who is having the ever loving shit removed from his life, most painful, but oh so necessary..gonna let you in on a little secret, this real Jesus we are coming to 'know', He hasn't lost His balls, and the good news is, He's going to lovingly shake all and any facades you and I would like to hang onto, especially as long as it makes ME look good.
Other wise how could I ever preach the gospel of 'Wining Friends and Influencing People"?

I want to throw this kicker into the mix as well. If it's Life we want, but are we remotely willing or ready to acknowledge that's what just might be unfolding in my feeling as if I'm loosing my ever loving mind?
Come on Rich, get a grip ole boy, you know that can't be life, it's way to MESSY!

Everyone knows that's why we came to Jesus in the first place, He was going to save me from messiness!
Or is He 'shaking' loose everything that has been sucking the life out of me.

Oh, one last piece of great news, none of us is going to get out alive...come on let's follow this Mad Max, it might just be worth encountering some One other than our caricature God.

Rich