Forgetting To Be Normal

I wrote a piece on one of my other blogs back in 2009 and I wanted to update it with some fresh thoughts shared here from both my wife and myself.
One of the things that stirred this up afresh was in listening to a recent pod cast with Darin and Robert over at Into The Wild; Is What I have The Real Thing.

The following is what came to mind when responding to a friend’s statement:

“I wish we could all be honest about it, what this death of self life is really like. It gets glamorized somehow, like it is a badge to wear… but I’ll be the first to say, it sucks too.”

My wife and I were talking about something very similar the other day. We had just listened to the latest God Journey podcast entitled, ‘Fragrance of the Father’, and it stirred up a conversation regarding what we routinely deal with in life: hurts, pains, frustrations, disappointments, etc. If we’re honest, most of us live a pretty lackluster, repetitious kind of lifestyle. We wake up, shower, go to work, do our job, come home, eat, watch TV, go to bed. This routine repeats itself over and over, day after day. This is in direct contrast, however, to what we hear when others share their ‘testimonies’. These folk really seem to live cutting-edge lives. For example, they give away their last dime to pay their tithe, and then miraculously get a huge cheque in the mail. They pray for God’s protection traveling on the road, and find out later they escaped, by minutes, a horrendous twenty-four car pileup on the Interstate. They shake like laundry on the line in a windstorm in revival meetings; the Lord speaks to and through them regularly; they get asked to speak to congregations in far away places.
But is this normal?

In comparison, our lives seem dismally mundane. If it were not so, why are we attracted to the sizzle of the spectacular or sensational? (I said to my wife that we have no idea the degree to which those stupendous and breathtaking testimonies have been embellished, air-brushed, rehearsed to sell an image or an identity that most, if not all of us, seem to be so lacking). To be perfectly candid, if I were ever asked to share my ‘testimony’, this is what it would sound like: I give away my last dime to pay my tithe and go belly-up financially. I pray for protection traveling on the road and nevertheless end up in the twenty-four car pileup. In revival meetings I don’t so much as shiver. It seems any ‘word’ I get from God doesn’t come from some preacher or ‘anointed’ evangelist. It comes from the cashier at the checkout or a chance encounter with the meter man; although I love the Lord with all my heart and have a wealth of life experience getting to know Him more and more every day, no one ever asks me to share.
Because so many of us experience an inner discontent with the monotony of day to day living, we mistakenly believe God is calling us to forsake our common, daily routines in order to do the heroic, go for broke, press the envelope and leave the pew-warming to the nominal lukewarm believers! Ha!!! As my wife said, maybe it was never His intention for any of this to happen. Maybe His intention was for us simply to live a very normal life and in that context experience the reality of His love for us and accordingly, learn to deal with life’s twists and turns like any other human being – the difference being, of course, we have Christ living our life through us, as us.

I think we have short-changed a loving God and Father in not experiencing the perfection of His love right where we are. We end up doing stupid things, like giving up our last dime to pay our tithe, or refuse to take needed medication in order to appear full of faith… and then expect God to bail us out. After all, he rescued others – shouldn’t He come through for us? We who have sacrificed everything to prove our loving devotion and commitment to Him? In my opinion, whether or not it’s a conscious mindset, the thinking goes something like this: “He is obligated to come through for me in light of my “obedience” to His call upon my life. He won’t let me down or disappoint me, right? After all, He’s on my side!” And we quote scripture after scripture to bolster up our flagging faith or to appear ‘spiritual’, when actually all we’re being is weird.

I am so grateful that He is able to bring forth what is the best for my life through any and all things. However, if I don’t know the reality of His deep, deep love for me there’s a tendency to become obsessed with wanting to do the heroic, such as what Peter did when confronted with the storms of life: “Lord if that is you, speak the word and I’ll come to you.” Yes, it was the Lord and Peter did walk on water upon the power of that spoken Word, only to experience also the power of gravity’s tentacles!

But, what an exciting experience! What a testimony Peter would have had! The sad thing is (as the scriptures state) later Peter ‘followed the Lord afar off’. Performing the sensational didn’t address his inner bankruptcy, nor did it negate his fears or his pride. There was something waiting to burst upon his consciousness that would only become real to him on the other side of the sifting process God had custom-designed for Peter.

What I’m saying is this: I simply want to live a normal existence in a life that is, to the untrained eye, lackluster and routine. I want to be aware of God in my little corner of the world and in everything I do. I want to sense his presence in the most mundane of events such as getting my groceries. I want to be aware of my Heavenly Father personally greeting the cashier with a smile, taking note of her name tag, saying “I appreciate your help, Doris. Have a great day!”… because it is HIM working IN and THROUGH me reaching out to a lost and dying world. That is how normal becomes spectacular. That is how mundane becomes vibrant and alive. I don’t need to yearn for glorious experiences so I can have a stupendous ‘testimony’; all I need is to experience the joy and camaraderie of getting to know Him on a day to day basis in my own, routine, perfectly normal life.

Rich

Read Full Post »

Lost in Translation

It says that the Law came through Moses, but that grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. In another place it says, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And, “For of His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

Is truth simply relegated to the best translation of the scriptures and if so, then why the sending of the Word that was made flesh, perhaps there was something so much more imperative than having the right translation of the (Torah) scriptures, i.e. but in having Him the author, the Word Himself abiding from within?
Meaning, for some, they see it like this, there’s God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Holy Scriptures.
What if in the Word becoming flesh as a man, that all the arguments would be removed in trying to wrestle and debate over rightly understanding whose concept was the right one?

Perhaps “grace and truth” are so much more than the religious abstract theological puzzle pieces men have used to keep us from responding to His closeness?
The Father’s closeness came among men through his son Jesus only to become that closeness within us through the finished work of God.
The work of the Father as I see it is present in the “now-here” in this moment of wanting to bring revelation, not a concept of who and what grace and truth really is, and with that unfolding discovery, there will be a further unleashing of the invisible God and Father made visible in the world through our flesh right here where you and I live!

Rich

Read Full Post »

What’s He Talking About

Shhhh, just in case anyone is overhearing our conversation Jesus; you know this could prove to be a highly combustible outcome for me if any of my colleagues ever caught wind of my actions.
I’m so nervous about my meeting you at this very late and ungodly hour, and yet at the same time my heart is beating not so much with the fears I have, but with something else that has drawn me here. Ever since I heard the voice, I haven’t been the same!

I know you are from God, no man could say and do what you have done without that being so, but, you have to give me something to work with, please. Some principles, precepts or concepts, otherwise I just don’t get it. You know the deal of my having to get back into my mother’s womb is no longer possible, she died a year and half ago, so this being ‘born again’ matter isn’t a viable option anymore is it?
What I see you offering us is a highbred version of Judaism and God knows we need to be revived from the staleness and lifelessness of our air-tight orthodoxy. So, if you could help me to try and fit what you have to offer and make it work within our religious system, I just know after the leaders within the high council get a taste for this new way, they’ll love it!

Nick, you are right, you don’t get it, this isn’t me offering who I am and turning it into another add-on, pin the Jesus onto the lifeless system and jump starting it, I’ve come that you might have life. I haven’t come to make your programs more effective and more attractable to those with a lingering bad taste in their mouths because of religion. Much more to the point, this new wine has to be put into new malleable, supple wine skins, otherwise it is merely trying to make life fit into the rigidness of your already fossilized programmes, the end being a horrible mess.

I woke up this morning with this story playing in my heart and boy does it ever sound like the Nicodemus’s of today, although born-again, trying to replicate what the Nick of old was fixated with trying to make work. “Brother, I, we, just love this grace message you have come to share with us, but, we need to have something more than being ‘wind-blown’ by His spirit, we need some principles, precepts, workable concepts to integrate this vibrant and living message of grace and fit it into our already existing fine church programs.

What we have offered to us in Christ is something so totally unfamiliar to us, our deep fetish of loving rules is an unseen undertow always there like gravity just waiting to pull us under, back into a more secure and knowable way of doing “church.!

Rich

All of the fixed landmarks and sign posts that at that time spelled security for them have been mostly removed, they are being drawn almost compelled to keep going forward, where to they are not certain, and yet an irresistible knowing and gnawing persists, just follow Me!

Read Full Post »

His Very Nature, Our Life

The nature of the Kingdom of God and the Life that is found in the one who said, I am the way, the truth and Life are a synonymous reality and not some ethereal concept.
I love the following thoughts expressed here in the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.

Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. Let us think of Nicodemus as being a perfectly honest man. A great many things have been said about him which are not to his credit, but I believe that he was a very sincere man. He came and he called Jesus ‘Teacher’ – “We know that thou art a teacher come from God” (John 3:2). What did he come to Jesus about? Evidently he had come to talk about the Kingdom of God, because the Lord Jesus read his thoughts. He knew that Nicodemus was interested in the Kingdom of God, but He said to him, in other words: ‘You will never get into the Kingdom of God unless you have God’s life. You and I cannot even talk about the Kingdom of God because we have not the same life. How do you get this life? You must be born again, and if you have never been born you are not alive.’ So it is quite clear that Nicodemus had not the nature of the Kingdom of God because he had not the life. For any of us to get into the Kingdom of God we have to receive the life of God, which is His very nature.

Without having this “life” is it any wonder that as it was then so it is now, trying to relate to God, trying to grasp what the Kingdom of God is all about, is simply reduced to mental conceptual pole vaulting.
If it’s a matter of lining up the right “concepts” discovering the right formula, then entry into the Kingdom of God is basically reserved for the ones with accelerated I.Q.’s.
The thing is, when Jesus was engaging Nicodemus although they were seeing each other face to face, they were in fact living in two different worlds.

The life that we have in Christ will produce the following.
The consciousness of the Lord Jesus was of the very closest union with God as His Father, and that was because the very life of God was in Him. His life was a God-conscious life; but God-consciousness in the sense of perfect oneness. And that is what it means to have this life. Man never had that. Jesus came to bring it in His own person: not to talk about union with God, but to live out a life of union with God and to bring His disciples into the same union. “I came that they might have life” – in other words: ‘I am come that they may have the same consciousness of God as Father that I have and that they may have the same divine nature in them as I have.’ (Not deity, but nature.)

Rich

Read Full Post »

Bummer of a Birthmark

It appears that its not just my opinion but many others who have enjoyed Garry Larson’s type of humour depicted down through the years, especially loved the cartoon I have used here.
Birth marks can be very inconspicuous or very obtrusive in nature; mostly they are not something most ever desired. I remember when my twin sisters were born, one had a mole (not really a birth mark but similar) on the side of her head, it was the distinguishing mark that was needed in telling them apart for the longest of time.

In the fall of man there was an insidious birth mark added to his makeup, from what I have learned it was a metaphysical component called, “the flesh” something that was not part of his original design.
It was within this component the very covert and intrusive impetus of the father of lies and religion was masquerading as our human nature, another misnomer believed by most everyone.
Man was not created with a nature, nature is something derived through a spiritual source, man in the beginning was living in a state of innocence; as it were his soul was amoral. This was in my opinion set up for Adam to choose what nature was going to be displayed in and through him and all of man kind (as Bob Dylan has aptly put it, you’ve got to serve somebody)!

It truly amazes me in how many seem to come so close (but no cigar) in describing the warfare that continues within the believers life, not to mention the sinning issue without being able to pin the tail on the culprit, the one Jesus identified as Satan, the sinner from the beginning.
It is my understanding that the reason when Jesus came into our lives, Satan was not evicted, (he was never in the spirit of man~NEVER) although his power over us was broken he yet remained within us still operating within the flesh, why, because if there was no other option presented to our soul (remember the soul is amoral) to have a moral governor, we would be but automaton’s.

Rich

Read Full Post »

The Wonder Factor Repeated Again and Again

What a need to-day for men and women who can stand spiritually in the position in which this man stood and say, I was blind, but now I see, and this one thing I know! It is a great thing to be there. How much I do not know, one thing I do know, I see! Which was not the case before. There is an impact, a registration, with that. Life and light always go together in the Word of God. If a man really sees, there is life, and there is uplift. If he is giving you something secondhand, studied, read, worked up, there is no life in it, other than, perhaps, that temporary and false lift of interest, passing fascination. But there is no real life which makes people live.

So one does not plead for changing the truth or having new truths, but for spiritual sight into the truth. “The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from His Word”, which is true. Let me get rid of that thing which has been fastened upon us here if I can. We do not seek for new revelation, and we do not say or suggest or hint that you may have anything extra to the Word of God, but we do claim that there is a vast amount in the Word of God that we have never seen, which we may see. Surely everybody agrees with that: and it is just that – to see, and the more you see, really see, the more overwhelmed you feel about the whole thing, because you know that you have come to the borders of the land of far distances, lying far beyond a short lifetime’s power of experience.

Let me repeat, that, at every stage from initiation to consummation, spiritual life must have this secret in it, I see! Right at the commencement when we are born again, that should be the spontaneous expression or ejaculation in the life. Our Christian life ought to begin there. But all the way along to the final consummation it must be that, the working out of this miracle, so that you and I are maintained in this atmosphere of wonder, the wonder-factor repeated again and again, so that every fresh occasion is as though we had never yet seen anything at all.

But I may as well say at once that usually a new breaking in of the Spirit in that way follows the eclipse of all that has gone before. It seems that the Lord has to make it necessary, so that we come to the place where we cry out, Unless the Lord shows, unless the Lord reveals, unless the Lord does a new thing, all that ever has been is as nothing, it will not save me now! Thus He leads us into a dark place, a dark time. We feel that what has been has lost the power which it once had to make us buoyant, triumphant. That is the Lord’s way of keeping us moving on. If you and I were allowed to be perfectly satisfied with what we have got at any stage, and not to feel the absolute necessity for something we never have had, should we go on? Of course not! To keep us going on, the Lord has to bring about those experiences where it is absolutely necessary for us to see the Lord, and know the Lord in a new way, and it must just be so all the way along to the end. It may be a series of crises of seeing and seeing again, and yet again, as the Lord opens our eyes, and we are able to say, as never before, I see! So it is not our study, our learning, our book knowledge, but it is a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the (true-full) knowledge of Him, the eyes of our hearts being enlightened, and it is that seeing which brings the note of authority that is so much needed. That is the element, the feature, that is required to-day. It is not just seeing for seeing’s sake, but it is to bring in a new note of authority.

Rich

Read Full Post »

Discernment Not Judgment

I am slowly learning the difference between playing it nice, aka being politically correct and speaking the truth in love.
How often have you heard someone even you saying something like this;” I am not criticizing what this person has said,” only because of a lack of confidence that is rooted in true meekness?
It’s imperative in listening to what is being said to criticize or more specifically to experience a crisic evaluation of the spirit or impetus behind the thoughts and words conveyed.

I bumped into this word ‘crisic’ today in some reading and yes the word we use in its place is crisis, so let’s first take a look at this original word.
Crisis c.1425, from Gk. krisis “turning point in a disease” (used as such by Hippocrates and Galen), lit. “judgment,” from krinein “to separate, decide, judge,” from PIE base *krei- “to sieve, discriminate, distinguish” (cf. Gk. krinesthai “to explain;” O.E. hriddel “sieve;” L. cribrum “sieve,” crimen “judgment, crime,” cernere (pp. cretus) “to sift, separate;” O.Ir. criathar, O.Welsh cruitr “sieve;” M.Ir. crich “border, boundary”).

Here is a quote from the article I was reading and where this word stood out to me.

An Awakening to What God Has to Say.

In the Revelation this is “He that hath an ear, let him hear,” and in the case of Laodicea – which represents the end – it is “I counsel thee to buy of me eye-salve that thou mayest see.” “And I turned to see the voice that spoke with me,” said John. God is speaking, He has something to say, but there must be “a Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened.”
Spiritual discernment, perception, understanding and intelligence are all too rare. The causes are many. The engrossment with the work and its multifarious concerns; the rush and hurry of life; the restless spirit of the age; these, with an exhaustive provision of external religious facilities, all tend to render the inner place of Divine speaking inoperative or impossible of functioning. Perhaps we have forgotten that the Bible is not only a revelation but also contains a revelation, and that that deeper spiritual content is only possible of recognition and realisation by such as have had their eyes and ears opened; in other words – who have been awakened. Some of the Lord’s most faithful servants are still only occupied with the letter of the Word, the contents of books, topics, themes, subjects, outlines, analyses, etc., and in the deepest sense are not in “revelation.” (This is not meant as a criticism). The difference too often is that of a ministry to the mind or head, and not one to the heart or spirit.
The former will sooner or later tire and weary both the minister and those ministered to. The latter is a ministry of life to both, and is inexhaustible in freshness.
Whether it comes at the beginning or later, it is the greatest day in our history of which we can say: “It pleased God to reveal His Son IN me.” “I received it, not from men but by revelation.” That is the beginning of an inwardness of things which may have many crisic issues. One of these is the one of which we are particularly thinking now, namely, the awakening to see what is the thought and desire of God at given and specific times. Such a revelation – through the Scriptures – is nothing less than revolutionary, though usually costly.
Would to God that there was an adequate number at this time who, like the men of Issachar “had knowledge of the times.” We now proceed to see what comes into view when God’s instrument is awakened, and is able to answer the heavenly interrogation “What seest Thou?”

The article can be read here in its fullness.

What I’m being drawn to is the “grace awakening” that is unfolding throughout the earth and detecting once again man attempting to turn heavenly realities into a hard and fast static institutionalized system.
Whole heartedly I am in totally agreement with this attitude being expressed in the following quote; These are only questions, not charges. Indeed, all that we have said is not meant as a charge or as a criticism. We are seeking to speak constructively, not destructively.

Rich

Read Full Post »