The Longing of My Soul

In light of what I have been sharing here, learning to live loved and to live free from looking to man or anyone for that matter, learning to satiate my soul in the true knowledge of my Father’s complete and total unconditional love, is and will always be about choosing.

I read something from Henri Nouwen the other day that so highlights the longing of my soul, I trust this will like wise be a comfort to anyone that might read this.

Solitude is the garden for our hearts, which yearn for love. It is the place where our aloneness can bear fruit. It is the home for our restless bodies and anxious minds. Solitude, whether it is connected with a physical space or not, is essential for our spiritual lives. It is not an easy place to be, since we are so insecure and fearful that we are easily distracted by whatever promises immediate satisfaction. Solitude is not immediately satisfying, because in solitude we meet our demons, our addictions, our feelings of lust and anger, and our immense need for recognition and approval. But if we do not run away, we will meet there also the One who says, “Do not be afraid. I am with you, and I will guide you through the valley of darkness.”

Let’s keep returning to our solitude.

Through a series of events in following the Lord, leading me out of organized religion this whole area of solitude became more and more of a place that slowly became much more of a caring friend to me. Unfortunately as with everything, we are never exempted from having to make choices, and living in solitude is a choice, a big one. I am seeing with growing clarity a deepening need to be further weaned from so many things that promise me, immediate satisfaction (gratification).

Here is another of Nouwen’s thoughts on this matter of solitude.

When we feel lonely we keep looking for a person or persons who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts cry out, “Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me.” But soon we discover that the person we expect to take our loneliness away cannot give us what we ask for. Often that person feels oppressed by our demands and runs away, leaving us in despair. As long as we approach another person from our loneliness, no mature human relationship can develop. Clinging to one another in loneliness is suffocating and eventually becomes destructive. For love to be possible we need the courage to create space between us and to trust that this space allows us to dance together.

There is someone searching and seeking for us in those very lost parts of our lives, and everyday is a new day of discovering things about ourselves that we have never understood could be so beautiful.

Rich

Is There Life After Face Book

Yes!

Addictions come in many different flavours, and I thought that the detoxing from religion was a most unbearable ordeal, well; being extricated and detoxed from Face Book is equally a mind and life altering journey.

Many different times after reading on face book it didn’t seem to take to long before my life felt and seemed like shit in comparison to those lives being reflected to me from this house of trick mirrors. I said to my wife on numerous occasions, I felt like the moth that fly’s toward the hot burning light bulb, it just can’t seem to break free from the magnetic pull toward this brightly pulsating welcoming light, not knowing this thing of wonder and beauty wass going to spell its demise.
I told my wife about a cartoon I saw in my thoughts one day, it went as follows; the wife walks by the computer room where the husband was and asked, are you watching that porn again, to which the husband sniped back, no, I’m on face book.

I like what my wife dubbed face book as; “cyber porn for the masochist”.

I want to make it clear that I am not trying to disparage face book, it is something I now see the Father using in my life to begin to shine and expose beyond just surface symptom issues and to further the ongoing extrication from my hidden attempts at carving out an identity apart from His personal provision designed for me, his son!

More to come, layer by layer, discovering how rich and full life can be, learning to live out, being loved.

Rich

Don’t Tell Anyone

Almost without exception, whenever a person was healed, Jesus would say; “Don’t tell anyone about this, just go and live.”
Was this some kind of backward psychology designed to make the healed person blabber mouth everything that had just happened to them, did Jesus simply and covertly want to do his own brand of shilling? *

It is my understanding that Jesus was very much into promoting his Father and not himself, wanting the world to see, hear, and know, that this unseen God was not at all like the God they had believed in, that caused everyone to tip-toe around in fear all of their lives.
God in the flesh (Jesus) was not tip toeing around humanity, he fully embraced it by clothing himself with it, which allowed the God of heaven a show and tell opportunity to interact amongst us humans without causing people to freak out as most did whenever there was any angelic or God break through into our space time continuum.

We have been designed to know the truth and yet God will not force it upon anyone and anything less than the truth and knowing it, (Him) will only cause us to try and carve out what we are craving.
I said that to say this, it truly perplexes me in knowing that I know Him, and yet how easily I have succumbed to prostituting myself over and over because of not going to Him as many times as I need to in order to allow Him, the Father of my spirit to continue establishing my entire being in the steadfast, unshakeable, consistent, unconditional love that he has for me.

As the truth continues to invade my soul exposing things that I would prefer not to see, I am slowly recognizing the subtle ploys of our unseen enemy Satan, and his never ending lies.
I initially started sharing (writing) down my thoughts on my first blog a few years back (I now have three of them), and I know I stated then that I was doing so primarily for my own benefit of simply thinking out loud, also, it was something that I knew I wanted to do, it being a creative expression of how I am wired.
Sadly this was short lived, instead of continuing in my writing and enjoying the benefit of doing this, a shift began to work its way into my thinking. It no longer mattered about the joy and freedom of writing, thinking out loud unless, there were people commenting on what I was saying. It was bad enough to see this happening right before me by constantly checking to see if anyone had been visiting my blog and perhaps, even left a comment, but after some time I took it a step further, I began posting on Face Book any additional blog entries hoping that my efforts, insights and humour would bring me what I was sadly craving, being acknowledged, and recognized! What a cheap substitute this was instead of allowing the truth to free my heart.
Writing was no longer a passionate joy in and of it self; I allowed it to be high-jacked because of an unmet need from deep within that only my loving caring Father could meet.

This distorted thinking in my life is facing up to the truth, and surrendering to it, will make the crooked straight in my heart all over again.

Rich

*A person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty.

As a foot note, I honestly wonder how much shilling and self-aggrandizement is being done where ever and when ever we do not allow the Father of our spirit to satiate us in the lavishness of his unconditional love?

Dare to Believe

There is one inalienable, unalterable truth:

God is Love.

If we dare to believe that truth, then we will approach the scriptures with a radically different mindset, and view the scriptures through a drastically different lens.

When recording cultural and historic events from their limited perspective, could it be that the scripture-writers (being mere men), painted God with a brush dipped in sin? What I mean by that is this: sin had so permeated man’s perspective (sort of like a white sock immersed in red dye) that he could not help but view God through clouded lenses – glass coloured darkly, as it were – and painted him with colours that seemed to repudiate the truth: God is Love. These sin-drenched colours erroneously portray God as being violent, judgemental, cruel, vindictive, self-centred, uncaring, capricious, etc.

It’s also very important to keep in mind the cultural and social mores, customs and traditions of the time, as well as the fact that these men would be very acquainted with malevolent tribal gods who demanded appeasement and sacrifice. Combined, all these factors would produce a blend of colours resulting in a grossly disfigured, Picasso-like portraiture of the one true God. And who, do you suppose, is the Great Master working behind the canvas, mixing such garish colours? Satan himself, operating through sin in the stained scripture-writer’s flesh, portraying God-is-Hate instead of God-is-Love.

It’s a well-known fact that all visible hues are comprised of a blend of the three primary colours: red, blue and yellow. Those are the colours that our earthly eyes can detect. However, there are an infinite number of colours our earthly eyes are incapable of seeing (ones which will be readily visible in all their splendour in Heaven). If we paint God using only earth-bound colours, we get an inaccurate portrayal of his true likeness. However, if we dare to believe God is who he says he is – the essence of Love – despite what we think and see, and instead dip our paintbrushes into the infinite variety of colours available to us through the prism of belief, then the truth about God’s true nature becomes clearly visible.

So how are we to view God?

First of all, don’t worship the scriptures! Keep in mind the flawed perspectives of the men who wrote them. Accept the fact that the scripture-writers, though inspired, were heavily influenced by the distorting aspect of sin in their own flesh and by the instigation of Satan whose sole desire is to convince multiplied generations of human-kind that God is anything BUT a loving Heavenly Father.

Secondly, re-read scriptures through the lens that God is Love, and then question anything that would suggest otherwise.

Then what is love?

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres”.

In the verse above, in each case substitute the word ‘love’ with ‘God’. THAT is who God is. THOSE are his true colours, but they are indiscernible to the eye of unbelief.

God is issuing both a challenge and an invitation in the form of a da Vinci-like code: are you willing to cast aside all your preconceived notions and all you’ve been taught to believe in order to know God for who he really is?

God is beckoning. Do you dare to believe?

Margo Broadbent

Is It A Phase, Please Keep That Phaser Holstered

While out for my walk this morning I was listening to a recent pod cast with Darin and Aimee entitled, Glossy Eyed Spirituality.
To paraphrase what was being shared succinctly; to be a Christian and to be “normal” was to not be, spiritual.

I love these thoughts from Oz Chambers; “To be shallow is not a sign of being wicked, nor is shallowness a sign that there are no deeps: the ocean has a shore. The shallow amenities of life, eating and drinking, walking and talking, are all ordained by God. These are the things in which Our Lord lived. He lived in them as the Son of God, and He said that “the disciple is not above his Master.”
Our safeguard is in the shallow things. We have to live the surface common-sense life in a common-sense way; when the deeper things come; God gives them to us apart from the shallow concerns. Never show the deeps to anyone but God. We are so abominably serious, so desperately interested in our own characters, that we refuse to behave like Christians in the shallow concerns of life.

You can read it all here.

For me, the growing reality of knowing, experiencing and living in the total unconditional love of God my Father is that which is freeing me to be more normal than I have ever known, thing is, as Darin pointed out, to be “normal” is viewed as being less than as far as being spiritual.

Rich

What a Gift it is to be Alive; Don’t Piss it Away

If you read stories of spiritual discovery you see the same scene again and a again, someone is travelling for something, looking for something, for direction for their life, you must take your own journey seriously.

Traveller, There is no road, there is only walking, you’ve got to start walking.

I was as I often do after work these days, walking home around the lake; I remember right where I was when these thoughts pierced my heart. “Remember all those prayers, petitions, heart cries to me about wanting my help to loose weight”, to which I immediately said, yes! It was as if the Lord was saying, “Well”?!
Funny thing was, without it being my first intention for loosing weight, walking and being in a place whereby I could nurture my soul was my longing; my excessive walking was producing wonderful side benefits of just that, loosing weight.

No one had to tell me about the dangers of being over weight and any number of potential debilitating issues resulting from it; I would simply turn a blind ear and deaf eye to it and just proceed on with living.
I see much of living as a follower of Christ being really so simple, learning to follow through, or, walking and working out what He has already worked into us.

In James 4:17 it says; “Well, remember that if a man knows what is right and fails to do it, his failure is a real sin.”
My learning to follow through on just about anything these days has nothing to do with control, or trying to please God, in fact, I see it more like this; I am learning to cooperate with the flow of life that is in me as me.

Rich

It’s the Defiance That Gives us the High

The following thoughts are something my wife shared with a fellow dieter. I told my wife I loved what she is seeing and recognizing to the be the truth and how when it is received, the lies that have kept us as loathsome bound victims, begin to fall by the way side.
The inability to differentiate between who we are in Christ and what the parasite (Satan in our flesh) is saying, is the difference between going through religious motions vs having Life.

Rich

So last night I found myself thinking, as I gazed longingly at the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting I’d made for Richard’s birthday (and of which I had not had so much as a bite since I made it two days ago):

“I’m so sick of this stupid diet! I can’t do this anymore! I’m FED UP WITH DEPRIVING MYSELF! I’m not hungry, yet I find myself craving the very stuff I cannot have. Every time I look in the fridge and see the few measly things I’m allowed to eat, it turns my stomach because I’m tired of the restriction, tired of not being able to have what I want! I’m tired of having to say no all the time to things other people get to enjoy!”

I was mad.

Then a thought occurred to me:

So what do you want, Margo? Do you want to continue to lose weight, or do you want to cave in to your familiar, feel-good lust-cravings – that part of you that DEMANDS to be fed – that relentless self-indulgence and arrogance that insinuates you deserve to have whatsoever you lust after, that seeks to undermine all your efforts thus far, the one that shouts “NO!!! I WILL NOT DENY MYSELF!!!”

Then a second thought occurred to me:

Just exactly whose thoughts are those? Hmmmm? The ones that try to convince me to give up or that I don’t have what it takes to see this thing through to the end, the ones that make me feel sorry for myself, the ones that convince me that SELF deserves better? If they’re MY thoughts, then clearly I’m bent on self-destruction, obsessed with self-pity, intent on cutting myself off at the knees. If I give in to these thoughts, for sure I’m going to feel like an utter failure, a loser, worthless, fat, ugly and stupid, incapable of self-discipline, filled with shame and self-loathing, just like before.

But is that true? Is that who I really am in Christ? Would his indwelling spirit cause me to think that way?

Of course not! At that moment, I recognized the voice of the enemy subtly disguised as MY thoughts, so familiar to me that I didn’t even question them when they insinuated their way into my unguarded subconscious. Satan’s been losing his grasp on me in direct proportion to the amount of weight I’ve lost. I know full well he wants me to return to my former self-loathing state because I’m much more pliable in his hands when I’m in that condition. Being fat caused me to hate myself and to be filled with shame, which in turn blinded me from seeing that my mind had been taken captive by the lies I had believed, which in turn kept me from seeing the truth of my identity in Christ.

When I started to examine the thoughts, I discovered they all boiled down to the same tired old theme:

You know you’re not going to be able to stick this out! Admit it!
Enough is enough!
Give in to the temptation. You’ll feel better.
Eat what you know is forbidden for you. Screw it!
See? You haven’t really changed. You don’t have what it takes.
Give up.
You know you’re going to fail.
You deserve to indulge and coddle yourself.
Go ahead – one little bite won’t hurt.

Notice that I substituted the pronoun ‘I’ for ‘you’…because I realized the thoughts were not my own, but accusatory thoughts from a hostile alien source. Putting the pronouns in proper context helped me to discern the beguiling tone of the assaults much more clearly.
For me, the issue is with craving/consuming food I know very well is bad for me. For someone else, the issue may be excessive shopping, drinking, socializing, hoarding or whatever else it takes to get the ‘high’ that they falsely believe will make them feel better. We all know to indulge the craving is wrong: “It is a sin when someone knows the right thing to do and doesn’t do it.” (James 4:17) yet we do it anyway out of defiance: I will NOT be restricted! I will have MY OWN WAY! Even though we know very well that we’ll feel rotten afterwards and that we’ll hate ourselves for capitulating, it’s the defiance that gives us the ‘high’, and in that sense we’re much like a drug addict who’ll do anything to get the next fix.
Insanity, right?

By the way, I did not eat the carrot cake.

Was Jesus a Dumb Ass

I want to link up with a friend’s blog, here is the link.

Rich

Let’s Get Back to Eden

I find it interesting that there are those wanting to travel back to Eden; you know that “prefect” Garden thing.
Here are a few thoughts on that matter by good friend William (Bill) Landon.

In our original created state we were innocent. What this means in terms of our physical, psychological and metaphysical makeup is that we were partially functional. In Adam’s original created state, he had a fully formed body and a fully functional personality (soul). Adam’s mind, will and emotions were fully capable as was his body to perform their intended functions. The part of Adam that was not completely active (developed) was his human spirit. What I mean by “not fully active” in regard to the human spirit is that this part of our being was not originally created as fully endowed with all of the functions the Father desired that it ultimately be equipped with. Adam’s human spirit had all the component parts or potentials that God wanted it to have-intuition, fellowship and conscience. However, not all of these functions were fully operational.

This is true of the spirit of every human being that has ever been born or ever will be born. In our “off the shelf” condition we do not have a fully functional human spirit. The faculties of intuition (the ability to sense communication from God) and fellowship (the ability to have personal relationship with God) are not fully empowered in us at the time of our physical birth.
These things exist in us but they are not empowered to be fully functional. In Adam, I believe that his intuition and fellowship were partially functional. Adam had some relationship with God (see Genesis 2:15-20 and 3:10) but this was not the full “Father to son” contact that is the ultimate relationship the Father intends that we have with Him. We must be clear on this point-God did not leave our spirit undeveloped out of spite, incompetence or malice. It has always been the Father’s intention that we are to choose our own completed spiritual state by exercise of our free will. It is in the operation of our free will that we fulfill the characterization of our condition as beings created in the image of God.

It has always been the Father’s desire that we should be completed in our human spiritual functionality by the exercise of our free will choosing of His life. The Father created the human spirit to be a container for His life. This is what happens to us when we allow Christ to come into and mingle with our human spirit to form one, new spirit: “There is one body and one Spirit just as you were called to one hope when you were called” (Ephesians 4:4). We can see from the events in the Garden of Eden that there was another possible option. This was to reject God’s leading and opt to follow another spirit. It is a given that in order for us to have true free will we must have at least two paths to choose between. To have only one option is to have no choice at all.

Rich

That I Might Know Him

My continuing ongoing adventure of river walking; walking around the river here in our city has and continues to be a safe place for me to seek His solace and comforting encouragement as a alien passing through this life. That’s right, I’m extraterrestrial.

This quote from Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cites” feels right in so much that is all working together for my good.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Walking home after work tonight was no exception to these continuing sorting and sifting out times as I lean unto my Father’s great love for me.

I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I was processing something that Clark shared in response to what Wayne Jacobsen posted on face book regarding the release of his re-edited book, “In Season.”

Clark wrote: “My spirit leaped when I read: “This is a joy that springs from the deepest part of your soul with a knowing that he is with you and his purpose is being fulfilled even in the most difficult times.”

There’s another quote from A Tale of Two Cites from chapter two that is very much in the forefront of my thoughts right now; “Jerry, say that my answer was, ‘RECALLED TO LIFE.’” I am witnessing this being, recalled to Life.

Something I sensed Father whispering into my heart walking home went as follows. Once again how Father by his spirit weaves all (everything) together is a huge part of continually being amazed. Something Wayne shared in the previous pod cast, “Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow” was that the DNA in a Monarch caterpillar was the same as it was in the Monarch butterfly.

My wife was told last year I think it was by a bug expert that as the caterpillar begins to form its chrysalis and once it has been totally encased in its light blue with gold specks coffin, its whole being is turned into a thick jelly like soup during the metamorphosis; a faceless and formless entity. Its right there within that jelly like soup the magic of the existing Monarch butterfly DNA is working to bring forth in time what it was from the very get-go!

What I sensed Father speaking to me was this. So many of my siblings including myself are often very similar at least in our thought life to how the Monarch caterpillar must see itself, just a overly fat earth bound worm.

Where it talks about in the beginning the earth was without form, it was faceless, but, the spirit of God was brooding over the face of the deep. That in itself is a glorious subject to ponder on for a life time. Suddenly God said, let there be light and it was, and out from the light, there came forth form and a face began to emerge.

The very DNA of God the Father is now ours, how, in the re-birthing, and like the mere caterpillar I spoke of, often we do not even know of anything of this inner unseen, undetected reality working from deep within us at all!

I’ve said all of this to say, that in the believer although in many cases most often not detected on our radar screen is the very DNA of the Father, like an imprinting, there is this innate relentless craving desire to know Him.

It says that in the re-birthing it was not done by the will of man or through the power of the flesh but was done by the creative life impregnating (sperma) of God!

What I am sensing is that just like in the beginning where the spirit of God was brooding over the chaotic, formless and faceless deep, so even now is that same spirit brooding over the cry within the heart of the believer; to know Him.

I want to encourage my siblings with this, if you have at any point either sensed or even spoken out that longing of wanting to know Him, then know this, that whatever circumstances and situations you are finding yourself in is the setting, the very place where that jelly like soup within you has and is taking on a form, and a face. To this reality, the spirit bears witness; I see Jesus in you!

Rich