"His brain was going through one of those violent and perfectly calm moments in which revery is so profound that it absorbs reality...It seemed to him that he beheld Satan by the light of Paradise."
--Victor Hugo
What do we do with those moments of revery? How do we invite God into them, when we see Satan, even as the light of Paradise washes over us?
Max Lucado says, "Circumcision proclaimed that there is no part of our life too private or too personal for God...[it] symbolized the nearness God desires with His people. God puts a knife to our self-sufficiency." (p. 47, the Grip of Grace.)
I wrote a letter back on Oct. 16 of 2005 to an acquaintance who was suffering profound rejection. I knew him only slightly, so it was an absolute God-prompt letter, but his response was this: "Your willingness to respond to a burden on your heart and contact me is a great example of sensitivity to the work of the Spirit."
Here's the letter:
Dear ____,
I have seen God choose some people to be deep heart evangelists. I think you are one of those people. Many are good "head" evangelists who can explain theology, salvation, sanctification, God's historical relationship with His people etc.; but a few are called to be primarily channels of His wooing grace. When we meet such a person, we see him or her as the sweetest wine of Christ communing with His saints. Rarely do we realize that to become that communion wine, that inspiring person at some point had to go through the experience of becoming crushed grapes. (Analogy credit to Oswald Chambers.) God knows the wine He's making, but rarely does the person--or even those around him--really know what to do with that grape-crushing moment. I wonder if you have had a grape-crushing moment? If so, don't think it ends there.
I don't know the details about your experience with leaving this place, but I know this from my own experience and from that of others: before God can pour that deep-heart evangelistic love through you, before you can really become a river of living water, He must first show you what would happen if you were to take any of that water for yourself, build a dam, create a pool, soak in it. It seems like it would be so obvious not to do that...but the water He sends is so sweet. His love is described as an all-consuming fire; and it is a fire that you can go through safely, but it will burn you if you try to stop and hold it for yourself. The ironic thing of it is, the better you perceive the glorious passion God holds for those he sends you "fishing" for, the more not less tempting it is to cling to such beautiful love and make it all for you. (Another Oswald credit.) So to protect you, He lets you have a taste of "what could come," a taste of the hell that this love wrongly managed affords a person. In this allowance, He actually preserves you, giving you power to be more sensitive, more direct and less tempted to destroy yourself in the process of rescuing another.
Whether you are actually clinging to something God's heart wants you to spend out for Him, or if you've suffered the pain of false accusation, either way the experience teaches a valuable lesson. The potential for this temptation, this want to cling to God's rivers, it will always be there. It might very well even grow greater, but alongside it grows the perception that restraint must be companion to the holy-fire love of God. In my opinion, this is a most supernatural definition of meekness. If He allowed us to fully comprehend the depths of His love all at once, that glory would surely destroy us, as even Moses couldn't see the face of God and survive. The face holds the eye, and the eye is the window to the soul, where love resides most potently. In analogous terms, God was saying man could not survive such a view, though we are the apple of His eye on the flip side.
Try to submit to His way of grooming you for this call. You won't always be just "crushed grapes" before Him. You won't tarry in suffering one moment longer than is necessary to accomplish God's highest purposes for you.
Keep the faith, Brother! I am honored to pray for your ministry.
"What causes the head to move from a reliance on concepts to a reliance on faith? Or the will to move from a reliance on possessions to a reliance on charity? Or the personality to move from a reliance on security and control to trusting in hope? We enter into the dark night of the spirit when we make the decision to live by raw faith...No longer able to derive any support from our natural faculties, we experience a horrible emptiness, a sense of weakness, a feeling of abandonment...the soul feels that God has rejected it and with an abhorrence of it casts it into darkness. Still, deprived of their normal way of relating to the wold, our intellect, will and memory begin to rely on faith, hope and charity." (Ronald Rolheiser in The Shattered Lantern.)
A season of pendulum swings between testing and revelation feel like they're swinging less wildly for me now, even as a new season hooks into this one that is finishing. I'm still learning lessons about not "using" others to define myself, which was an essential part of what I was saying in this letter written years ago. I'm also learning important things about not letting others use me to define themselves, a new threat to freedom and unique personhood in God that I'm only now beginning to see as significant. I'm sure there maybe other layers to this onion as well, but for now this layer is plenty to keep me occupied. It will need its fair share of time under the microscope before I reach for another slide.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
Learning to Shift Gears
I learned to work a manual transmission when I was a young driver. My father taught me on a straight-arrow gravel road that cut through corn fields and in a car that was exactly as old as I was.
I'm not a young driver any more, but there are still many ways I'm only now learning how to smoothly shift gears.
September 17, 2005
So now I have started a study--or feel led to do one--about how to do life when revelations are a frequent occurrence. Another quote from Oswald Chambers in his book, Daily Thoughts for Disciples (April 12) fits the topic: "Those of us who have never had visions or ecstasies ought to be very thankful." Ha! Indeed! He says this because "visions" tend to be sensuous, in other words they touch the senses when they come. I can certainly attest to that! Both the good ones--like the one I had of the Bride--and the bad ones--like the dark, broken star approaching--were incredibly sensuous. They can even come with a temptation attached, especially if they are intended to serve as intercessory for someone else. Reminds me of the verse that says beware when you reach out to help another in their weakness lest you fall into temptation yourself.
Chambers says, "The hindrance comes when we begin to keep sensuous images spiritually in our minds...Visions and any emotions at all are the greatest snare to a spiritual life, because when we get them we are apt to build them round our reasoning, our reasoning round them, and go no further." This is where I have been. This is where God is working on me. Chambers notes that people who are stuck here are "still true to God, still true to their testimony of what God has done for them, but they have never exercised the great God-given reason that is in them and gotten beyond the images of their experience into the knowledge that 'God alone is life.'"
It's time I learn to receive these visions with my spirit and not just my senses, lest I be ineffective! Make it so, Lord! And, I still say, give me more!
Ten years later, and I am still being groomed on a level deeper than conscious reasoning on this one, I think. For a long while--3 or 4 years, I was too physically weak and incapacitated to receive much of anything in a visionary sense. Those years of living just below par physically and in something of a mental fog put all consideration of this sort of thing off the table. But within the last few months, health has returned. Acuity, too; and along with them have come a slowly blooming passion for life, ambition to receive more from God, and a prompt to look back and see what was happening with me before the coma-like phase of my life began. In fact, this post somewhat defines the theme of this whole blog. To continue:
Another thing about revelations--Paul says that they were the reason he had to carry a thorn in the flesh around with him, so that self-exaltation would not tempt him. Knowing this makes God's response far more a gift than it would seem to be if we don't know the reason for the thorn. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness," says God to Paul. And when Paul understands the full scope of thorn to answer--understands with that "spiritual reasoning" that Chambers talks about, Paul says, "Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, them I am strong." He even says he boasts in that infirmity, that the power of Christ may rest upon him!
Forgive me, Lord, I am not there yet. The sense of my own weakness still brings me shame--which is a form of self-exaltation, I now realize. I guess I still think I should be able to be "good" for you, but in myself. So if you deem it fitting to sink a thorn into my flesh, may I walk in Paul's shadow faithfully, making Your strength my own, keeping me ever dependent on You and not myself alone.
This looks good in its pencil-to-paper format. Far more difficult and far more a cause of consternation when God puts it all into practice in a life. Working to take a breath-taking sensuous vision (or as I would experience later, one that presents itself with such mysterious symbolism as to defy any sort of reason at all) and carve it down to its "applicable" form...this takes supreme effort. It is like the work of a sculptor who chisels a block of fine stone. Even more daunting is doing this work of refining and recasting the vision while being gnawed by a thorn of in-sufficiency and utter dependence. It is like doing that sculpting blind-folded.
And I, like Paul, still have to reach for that grace and sufficiency outside my own capacities every day. Sometimes I'd rather pose than sculpt. Sometimes I want to peek out from under the blindfold. It is a challenging discipline.
But it continues to grow nonetheless.
I'm not a young driver any more, but there are still many ways I'm only now learning how to smoothly shift gears.
September 17, 2005
So now I have started a study--or feel led to do one--about how to do life when revelations are a frequent occurrence. Another quote from Oswald Chambers in his book, Daily Thoughts for Disciples (April 12) fits the topic: "Those of us who have never had visions or ecstasies ought to be very thankful." Ha! Indeed! He says this because "visions" tend to be sensuous, in other words they touch the senses when they come. I can certainly attest to that! Both the good ones--like the one I had of the Bride--and the bad ones--like the dark, broken star approaching--were incredibly sensuous. They can even come with a temptation attached, especially if they are intended to serve as intercessory for someone else. Reminds me of the verse that says beware when you reach out to help another in their weakness lest you fall into temptation yourself.
Chambers says, "The hindrance comes when we begin to keep sensuous images spiritually in our minds...Visions and any emotions at all are the greatest snare to a spiritual life, because when we get them we are apt to build them round our reasoning, our reasoning round them, and go no further." This is where I have been. This is where God is working on me. Chambers notes that people who are stuck here are "still true to God, still true to their testimony of what God has done for them, but they have never exercised the great God-given reason that is in them and gotten beyond the images of their experience into the knowledge that 'God alone is life.'"
It's time I learn to receive these visions with my spirit and not just my senses, lest I be ineffective! Make it so, Lord! And, I still say, give me more!
Ten years later, and I am still being groomed on a level deeper than conscious reasoning on this one, I think. For a long while--3 or 4 years, I was too physically weak and incapacitated to receive much of anything in a visionary sense. Those years of living just below par physically and in something of a mental fog put all consideration of this sort of thing off the table. But within the last few months, health has returned. Acuity, too; and along with them have come a slowly blooming passion for life, ambition to receive more from God, and a prompt to look back and see what was happening with me before the coma-like phase of my life began. In fact, this post somewhat defines the theme of this whole blog. To continue:
Another thing about revelations--Paul says that they were the reason he had to carry a thorn in the flesh around with him, so that self-exaltation would not tempt him. Knowing this makes God's response far more a gift than it would seem to be if we don't know the reason for the thorn. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness," says God to Paul. And when Paul understands the full scope of thorn to answer--understands with that "spiritual reasoning" that Chambers talks about, Paul says, "Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, them I am strong." He even says he boasts in that infirmity, that the power of Christ may rest upon him!
Forgive me, Lord, I am not there yet. The sense of my own weakness still brings me shame--which is a form of self-exaltation, I now realize. I guess I still think I should be able to be "good" for you, but in myself. So if you deem it fitting to sink a thorn into my flesh, may I walk in Paul's shadow faithfully, making Your strength my own, keeping me ever dependent on You and not myself alone.
This looks good in its pencil-to-paper format. Far more difficult and far more a cause of consternation when God puts it all into practice in a life. Working to take a breath-taking sensuous vision (or as I would experience later, one that presents itself with such mysterious symbolism as to defy any sort of reason at all) and carve it down to its "applicable" form...this takes supreme effort. It is like the work of a sculptor who chisels a block of fine stone. Even more daunting is doing this work of refining and recasting the vision while being gnawed by a thorn of in-sufficiency and utter dependence. It is like doing that sculpting blind-folded.
And I, like Paul, still have to reach for that grace and sufficiency outside my own capacities every day. Sometimes I'd rather pose than sculpt. Sometimes I want to peek out from under the blindfold. It is a challenging discipline.
But it continues to grow nonetheless.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Do Not Disturb...
... in the place where God is kicking up bright clouds.
"The most staggering thing about Jesus Christ is that He makes human destiny depend not on goodness or badness, not on things done or not done, but on who we say He is." --Oswald Chambers, Daily Thoughts for Disciples, March 13.
And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Rev. 12:10-11
Sept 15, 2005
God has utterly broken me. Indeed, He took me into excess of light even as He did the disciples at the Transfiguration. And I, too, was afraid. And I, too, found myself alone there, with only Christ.
He showed me the beauty of His love, passion, vision, supernatural intervention in the life of another person, and I wanted to make that vision real for myself. I wanted to BE Him making things turn as I saw with His eye they could be. Strange covetousness consumed me, and I became Satan Incarnate. I wanted to own, to control the Beauty You allowed me to see...even though this belonged only to You. But You did not leave me there. No, YOu plunged me into the nakedness of Adam and Eve in the garden and allowed me full identification with the Fall. I had no idea! I had no idea it was THIS, God! How could I know what it is to be the most dangerous thing to all mankind, to "feel" the fall? How could I know what it is like to stand in the place of Peter, receiving a vision of the perfect way, and then beingcalled Satan, told to get behind the back of the very One who painted the picture. Behind the back, because even though it is avision I'd like to make real for Your sake, I want to do it NOW, for my sake.
But to likewise touch redemption. To see You approach, lift up, step into the circle of weakness and offer strength; to have You cover shame, complete what is unfinished, weather away selfishness and covetousness until all that remains is the beauty that ever shall be, the realization of the original vision, only now in its best realization, one that remains true to Your nature.
Love springs eternal. What a heart You have! That You chose at all to return on the third day. My Redeemer! Give me such a strong heart, to rise from death and ashes to love again from first to last!
Oh, the timing of these visits to my old self.
Today, I find myself standing on the other bank of this particular river-crossing, and needing to allow others to struggle across as I merely watch and encourage, but do not assist. Today, I am not so much the butterfly fighting its way free of the cocoon, I am the hand that could ease another butterfly's escape, but in so doing ruin its chances to ever fly strong. What if someone had "saved" me from my experience that September years ago? Would I be where I am now, if I had been spared the experience of suffering through the more horrifying side of self-awareness?
Oswald Chambers speaks to me on this side of the river-crossing as well:
So precept follows precept.
"The most staggering thing about Jesus Christ is that He makes human destiny depend not on goodness or badness, not on things done or not done, but on who we say He is." --Oswald Chambers, Daily Thoughts for Disciples, March 13.
And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Rev. 12:10-11
Sept 15, 2005
God has utterly broken me. Indeed, He took me into excess of light even as He did the disciples at the Transfiguration. And I, too, was afraid. And I, too, found myself alone there, with only Christ.
He showed me the beauty of His love, passion, vision, supernatural intervention in the life of another person, and I wanted to make that vision real for myself. I wanted to BE Him making things turn as I saw with His eye they could be. Strange covetousness consumed me, and I became Satan Incarnate. I wanted to own, to control the Beauty You allowed me to see...even though this belonged only to You. But You did not leave me there. No, YOu plunged me into the nakedness of Adam and Eve in the garden and allowed me full identification with the Fall. I had no idea! I had no idea it was THIS, God! How could I know what it is to be the most dangerous thing to all mankind, to "feel" the fall? How could I know what it is like to stand in the place of Peter, receiving a vision of the perfect way, and then beingcalled Satan, told to get behind the back of the very One who painted the picture. Behind the back, because even though it is avision I'd like to make real for Your sake, I want to do it NOW, for my sake.
But to likewise touch redemption. To see You approach, lift up, step into the circle of weakness and offer strength; to have You cover shame, complete what is unfinished, weather away selfishness and covetousness until all that remains is the beauty that ever shall be, the realization of the original vision, only now in its best realization, one that remains true to Your nature.
Love springs eternal. What a heart You have! That You chose at all to return on the third day. My Redeemer! Give me such a strong heart, to rise from death and ashes to love again from first to last!
Oh, the timing of these visits to my old self.
Today, I find myself standing on the other bank of this particular river-crossing, and needing to allow others to struggle across as I merely watch and encourage, but do not assist. Today, I am not so much the butterfly fighting its way free of the cocoon, I am the hand that could ease another butterfly's escape, but in so doing ruin its chances to ever fly strong. What if someone had "saved" me from my experience that September years ago? Would I be where I am now, if I had been spared the experience of suffering through the more horrifying side of self-awareness?
Oswald Chambers speaks to me on this side of the river-crossing as well:
"One of the hardest lessons to learn comes from our stubborn refusal to refrain from interfering in other people's lives. It takes a long time to realize the danger of being an amateur providence, that is, interfering with God's plan for others. You see someone suffering, and say , 'He will not suffer, and I will make sure that he doesn't.' You put your hand right in front of God's permissive will to stop it, and then God says, 'What is that to you?' "--My Utmost for His Highest, November 15
So precept follows precept.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
A Matter of Shifting Perspective
Ever since I started the journal that is chronicled here, I've had one dream. I've dreamed that someday, someone would come alongside me. Stand shoulder to shoulder with me, look at the same "out there" and converse with me on the view we shared.
It has happened only rarely. Only a time or two. Mostly when I'm not expecting it. And only briefly. Not enough to feel like my "dream" has come to fruition.
It has been a disappointment, but it has remained a hope.
Today, however, I felt the nudge to abandon that hope, that dream for this particular sort of human communion. I should let it blow away like a fallen leaf.
In its place I received a new assignment.
Allow myself to sit and face my companions, eye to eye rather than ear to ear. See each other rather than see distant things together. It has been a long time coming, this realization that the old longing I felt was a form of temptation.
Allow myself to sit and face my companions, eye to eye rather than ear to ear. See each other rather than see distant things together. It has been a long time coming, this realization that the old longing I felt was a form of temptation.
Oswald Chambers says, of this sort of thing, "He [Satan] does not come to us on the premise of tempting us to sin, but on the premise of shifting our point of view...He tempts us to make us lose what God has put into us through regeneration, namely, the possibility of being of value to God...and only the Spirit of God can detect this as a temptation of the devil."
--My Utmost for His Highest, Sept. 18 entry.
I understand why I wanted that shoulder to shoulder visionary beside me: human validation. Interestingly, the planted seeds for that longing are the topic of today's old-journal review:
August 9
Larry Crabb says, "Reconnecting a detached soul to the life blood of community requires power that only a few people seem to possess. Powerful people accept the challenge to identify, nourish, and release the life of Christ in others by connecting with them." So I try doing this. I look at a fisherman and say, "Hey, Peter! You're going to be a powerful leader, and the wind of Pentecost will blow through the building and put tongues of fire over EVERY head where you'll be preaching. I know you're just fishing now, but I can see it!" When I try to share what You've given me to "see" for these others' futures, I get a lukewarm reception, or a perplexed look at best. So I come back to You, and I say, "What's the deal? They think I'm an idiot!" And then I roll on the floor laughing, because this is not how the stories of prophets run at all!
But I think about the Christ as He is in John 6. The sign-seekers fall away when He refuses to give any sign but His own flesh and blood, which they do not understand as a sign at all. The relationship of indwelling is the offer, and they shrug. All but a few walk away. Do You still take us into relationship with people sometimes where there is no commitment, no obligation, no ties and no easily-perceived pay-off? Loving, connecting from such a posture is awfully vulnerable--for if there is rejection, then the blame for it rests squarely on our naked selves, on who we are either to ourselves or to each other. And for this we have no recourse but to bring it back to You for the comforting or else drift into bitterness.
"...the word of the Lord was rare in those days, there was no wide-spread revelation." --I Samuel 3:1
This is the world Samuel was born into, while the sons of Eli had reign over the "church" of the Hebrews. Side-by-side viewing of the things of God wasn't happening there.
But this is also the same Samuel who later anointed David king.
But this is also the same Samuel who later anointed David king.
And now it is apparently time for me, too, to turn my view and really see who sits on the facing bench. And it will be a good thing.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Feel the Grass
"Jesus said to her, 'Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?' "
(John 11:40)
Being reminded of the power of believing, now after a long season of letting a promise go dry and shrivel up. Living long as one resigned to hunger during a seemingly endless famine. What a strange thing it is, to lift the face to rain again and know that the ground will surely yield in response to it.
August 7
Continuing in John, and taking another look at the feeding of the 5000 in chapter 6.
When Jesus sees the multitude coming, He asks, "Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?"
The question is a test.
He knows what He can do.
Their responses run the same spectrum ours do: one disciple says, "We have no resources." Another, "This lad here has 5 barley loaves (the food of the poor) and 2 small fish, but what are they among so many?"
And Jesus answers, "Make the people sit down."
Faith only finds its definition, its substance in your trusting something "else" more than you trust your common sense. More than you trust your current field of vision. More than you trust your capabilities. More than you trust the things that seem permanently insurmountable. Not surprising that He wondered if He'd find "faith" when He returns. I wonder that He'd find it even now among those who profess to be His followers. Not faith by this definition anyway.
And then there's the "sitting down" of covenant, the tarrying that adds depth and dimension to the faith--dimension of perseverance, of patience. If we have the faith to believe that He can make something out of almost nothing, do we have the further faith to allow the work to happen around us while we simply sit n the grass and receive its over-abundance? Or do we rather say, "Yes! I can believe what You promise. I can believe for the nourishment. I can believe for the end of the terrible hunger. So, I will make it happen!" No. Not in this instance. You sit down and feel the fullness of the grass.
Faith following through until the loaves and fish are in the hand.
(John 11:40)
Being reminded of the power of believing, now after a long season of letting a promise go dry and shrivel up. Living long as one resigned to hunger during a seemingly endless famine. What a strange thing it is, to lift the face to rain again and know that the ground will surely yield in response to it.
August 7
Continuing in John, and taking another look at the feeding of the 5000 in chapter 6.
When Jesus sees the multitude coming, He asks, "Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?"
The question is a test.
He knows what He can do.
Their responses run the same spectrum ours do: one disciple says, "We have no resources." Another, "This lad here has 5 barley loaves (the food of the poor) and 2 small fish, but what are they among so many?"
And Jesus answers, "Make the people sit down."
Faith only finds its definition, its substance in your trusting something "else" more than you trust your common sense. More than you trust your current field of vision. More than you trust your capabilities. More than you trust the things that seem permanently insurmountable. Not surprising that He wondered if He'd find "faith" when He returns. I wonder that He'd find it even now among those who profess to be His followers. Not faith by this definition anyway.
And then there's the "sitting down" of covenant, the tarrying that adds depth and dimension to the faith--dimension of perseverance, of patience. If we have the faith to believe that He can make something out of almost nothing, do we have the further faith to allow the work to happen around us while we simply sit n the grass and receive its over-abundance? Or do we rather say, "Yes! I can believe what You promise. I can believe for the nourishment. I can believe for the end of the terrible hunger. So, I will make it happen!" No. Not in this instance. You sit down and feel the fullness of the grass.
Faith following through until the loaves and fish are in the hand.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Dreams Not Made for the Faint of Heart..
...often they bring the seeds of mysterious witness. And I don't mean the little "handing out tracts on a street corner" type of bearing witness. I mean reaching in your gut, dragging your naked soul out and allowing someone else to affect it. I mean being a light-bearer in a dark places, and the first thing the light does is illuminate you as a target for trouble. I mean shedding prayer-tears on behalf of someone on suicide watch--or even really knowing a person in that much anguish.
I mean that.
August 5
Wow! I woke up praying for P. in a dream. In the dream-prayer, I was recounting the reality that nothing is particularly harder or easier for God. He's God! It is all do-able to Him. So we can freely and faithfully bring what would seem hard (to us) as smoothly and confidently before Him as we would bring what seems easy to solve.
R. and I were in prayer for her, and P. was in anguish.
On my reading, I'm beginning the Gospel of John, and seeing in the footnotes the literal meaning of the name, John. "God has been gracious..." and the name used for God in that meaning is the most personal, intimate one He assigned to Himself. In the description of John the Baptist and his witness are these words: "This man came for a witness of the Light, that all through him might believe." And he, too, like the Gospel-writer wore the imprint of God's most intimate name, and he pressed people into the water of life. Yet, "He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light." Do we have any idea the incredible balance he had to maintain? the spiritual tension involved in living such a calling?
Powerful witness. Powerful submission. Mystery. Reflections on all these washed over me like tidal waves responding to a distant moon.
A few days later, I whimsically emailed P. about the strange little dream I had about her. She emailed me back. That very night of my dream, she'd been in the ER, serious problems with her heart. She was fine in the end. Came out of the whole episode with a treatment plan for the healing of her heart.
But from that day forward she considered me as one who has what she called a dream ministry.
Other dreams like that one did sporadically follow.
But why I'd be called to it, I had no idea at the time.
I mean that.
August 5
Wow! I woke up praying for P. in a dream. In the dream-prayer, I was recounting the reality that nothing is particularly harder or easier for God. He's God! It is all do-able to Him. So we can freely and faithfully bring what would seem hard (to us) as smoothly and confidently before Him as we would bring what seems easy to solve.
R. and I were in prayer for her, and P. was in anguish.
On my reading, I'm beginning the Gospel of John, and seeing in the footnotes the literal meaning of the name, John. "God has been gracious..." and the name used for God in that meaning is the most personal, intimate one He assigned to Himself. In the description of John the Baptist and his witness are these words: "This man came for a witness of the Light, that all through him might believe." And he, too, like the Gospel-writer wore the imprint of God's most intimate name, and he pressed people into the water of life. Yet, "He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light." Do we have any idea the incredible balance he had to maintain? the spiritual tension involved in living such a calling?
Powerful witness. Powerful submission. Mystery. Reflections on all these washed over me like tidal waves responding to a distant moon.
A few days later, I whimsically emailed P. about the strange little dream I had about her. She emailed me back. That very night of my dream, she'd been in the ER, serious problems with her heart. She was fine in the end. Came out of the whole episode with a treatment plan for the healing of her heart.
But from that day forward she considered me as one who has what she called a dream ministry.
Other dreams like that one did sporadically follow.
But why I'd be called to it, I had no idea at the time.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Why Men Go to Brothels
Timing.
Such a crucial element.
This entry is for me now.
August 6
"Satan's seduction of our heart always comes in the form of a story that offers us greater control through knowing good and evil rather than the unknowns of relationship." --The Sacred Romance Wow!
Questions to pose and consider from my John Eldredge reading:
Are you finished trying to arrange for a safe life?
Can you give up your resignation to life as it stands to embrace something larger, more elusive, more unpredictable but infinately more hopeful?
Will you step into a relationship with me that could be dangerous because it is relationship delivered by the hands of the Wildest of Lovers--God Himself?
If we risk spiritual communion now, could we learn even here, in this life span, how we are "in His image" not simply as islands alone, but as part of a Triune God?
"I will go before you and level the mountains;
I will break down gates of bronze
and cut through bars of iron.
I will give you the treasures of darkness,
riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the Lord,
the God of Israel, who summons you by name." --Isaiah 45
And this was spoken by God, not to a holy man, but to a powerful man.
A man who was not following God...said to draw him. So this is a journey of the heart, after all. Not simply a line to walk between good and evil,sifting everything with politics and doctrine and calling that holy work. Instead, God is calling us to walk away from "less-wild lovers that have become part of our identity, embrace our nakedness, and trust in his goodness." --Sacred Romance
But the risk of looking for the treasure in the darkness, the riches stored in secret places: getting lost again in that dark in the form of addiction to those things that give immediate relief, a taste of transcendence so close, yet not to be touched, because it is not in itself the treasure.
How do you prescribe thirst for yourself, standing beside a less-than-eternal well, yet still a well--and not drink?
Can you accept a season that is designed to simply make you acquainted with thirst?
Such is the beauty, the nobility of the fast.
The Christ said his disciples did not fast because he was with them, but that they would fast...when longing for him was a part of their lives. Does anyone long for Christ anymore? Do they fast for that reason?
But why must it be so, that the "less-than-eternal well be attached to our desire for eternal intimate communion with God and each other in the midst of Paradise?" Risky, God, to make it so...
But if we stand at that well together, even gaze into its waters, and yet accept thirst willingly, we are on a most intimate thread of the image of God. WE are become the society who tastes God's deepest longing for a Bride that he is unwilling to force to anything until she begs it, for love does not force, nor is it self-indulgent.
G.K. Chesterton says, "Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God."
I turn my heart off and get busy.
You turn to your addiction and get busy.
We can not by sheer willpower do anything else.
But if we hold fast to the "aching abyss" of our hearts in a dance together, then real transcedence may even yet come.
Will we "hold our hearts out hopefully in partial emptiness in a way that allows desire to be rekindled?"
As we blaze a trail along the "road less traveled" between discipline and desire can we find that "treasure of finally ceasing from being half-hearted creatures?"
Only there can we begin to receive the mystery of "ecstasies yet to come" as we embrace the mystery of being the Beloved.
Is it time for this?
Are our hearts weary of the familiar and indulgent?
Christ stands and invites, but it is strange language to us.
It sounds too much like words that have used us and consumed us in the past, left us alone and exposed.
So we mortgage our hearts to less wild lovers.
Dear God.
Seven years ago I wrote these words. They merely piqued my interest then.
It was not time for them yet.
But seven years allows a lot of burrowing deep.
And now I feel life's circumstances opening holes in the atmosphere of my soul, and I look up at them. And they are awash with the ache of "yet to come's."
Nevertheless, I do not turn my face away. And I do not fear.
Alongside Saint John at the close of his vision of the apocalypse, I say:
"Even so, Lord Jesus...Come."
Such a crucial element.
This entry is for me now.
August 6
"Satan's seduction of our heart always comes in the form of a story that offers us greater control through knowing good and evil rather than the unknowns of relationship." --The Sacred Romance Wow!
Questions to pose and consider from my John Eldredge reading:
Are you finished trying to arrange for a safe life?
Can you give up your resignation to life as it stands to embrace something larger, more elusive, more unpredictable but infinately more hopeful?
Will you step into a relationship with me that could be dangerous because it is relationship delivered by the hands of the Wildest of Lovers--God Himself?
If we risk spiritual communion now, could we learn even here, in this life span, how we are "in His image" not simply as islands alone, but as part of a Triune God?
"I will go before you and level the mountains;
I will break down gates of bronze
and cut through bars of iron.
I will give you the treasures of darkness,
riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the Lord,
the God of Israel, who summons you by name." --Isaiah 45
And this was spoken by God, not to a holy man, but to a powerful man.
A man who was not following God...said to draw him. So this is a journey of the heart, after all. Not simply a line to walk between good and evil,sifting everything with politics and doctrine and calling that holy work. Instead, God is calling us to walk away from "less-wild lovers that have become part of our identity, embrace our nakedness, and trust in his goodness." --Sacred Romance
But the risk of looking for the treasure in the darkness, the riches stored in secret places: getting lost again in that dark in the form of addiction to those things that give immediate relief, a taste of transcendence so close, yet not to be touched, because it is not in itself the treasure.
How do you prescribe thirst for yourself, standing beside a less-than-eternal well, yet still a well--and not drink?
Can you accept a season that is designed to simply make you acquainted with thirst?
Such is the beauty, the nobility of the fast.
The Christ said his disciples did not fast because he was with them, but that they would fast...when longing for him was a part of their lives. Does anyone long for Christ anymore? Do they fast for that reason?
But why must it be so, that the "less-than-eternal well be attached to our desire for eternal intimate communion with God and each other in the midst of Paradise?" Risky, God, to make it so...
But if we stand at that well together, even gaze into its waters, and yet accept thirst willingly, we are on a most intimate thread of the image of God. WE are become the society who tastes God's deepest longing for a Bride that he is unwilling to force to anything until she begs it, for love does not force, nor is it self-indulgent.
G.K. Chesterton says, "Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God."
I turn my heart off and get busy.
You turn to your addiction and get busy.
We can not by sheer willpower do anything else.
But if we hold fast to the "aching abyss" of our hearts in a dance together, then real transcedence may even yet come.
Will we "hold our hearts out hopefully in partial emptiness in a way that allows desire to be rekindled?"
As we blaze a trail along the "road less traveled" between discipline and desire can we find that "treasure of finally ceasing from being half-hearted creatures?"
Only there can we begin to receive the mystery of "ecstasies yet to come" as we embrace the mystery of being the Beloved.
Is it time for this?
Are our hearts weary of the familiar and indulgent?
Christ stands and invites, but it is strange language to us.
It sounds too much like words that have used us and consumed us in the past, left us alone and exposed.
So we mortgage our hearts to less wild lovers.
Dear God.
Seven years ago I wrote these words. They merely piqued my interest then.
It was not time for them yet.
But seven years allows a lot of burrowing deep.
And now I feel life's circumstances opening holes in the atmosphere of my soul, and I look up at them. And they are awash with the ache of "yet to come's."
Nevertheless, I do not turn my face away. And I do not fear.
Alongside Saint John at the close of his vision of the apocalypse, I say:
"Even so, Lord Jesus...Come."
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