8 Sep 2009

Words get in THE WAY…another perspective

Words; both an obstacle and an opening. My last post was about the inadequacy of one of my favorite resources; words.  I wrote of what they cannot convey and the limitation of trying to transmit certain realities with syllables.  But I feel a bit like I have been critical of one of my best friends.  I love words.  They can have great power.  Wielded correctly they can change lives and partner with the transforming presence of God.  When you exhale over your vocal chords, God can add His breath to your words and transform the very atmosphere of a room.

Sometimes I sense something stirring inside me and I reach into this treasure chest of word choices, trying on several before actually settling on the best combination.   Ideas that seem bigger than words can actually be broken down bit by bit and shared until whole concepts are shared by a friend, or a roomful of people.  How much fun is that?

Words can assure, or terrify,they can heal,or wound, they can clarify thoughts or confuse a matter.  Let’s be fair, they are inadequate to accomplish what only the presence of God can accomplish, but they are great tools to lob back and forth while we wrestle with the great experiences and meanings of life and its moments.

I remember a particular counseling session where the woman in front of me was in great pain as her circumstances were collapsing around her, and were outside of her control.  I sensed the swirling and growing presence of God in the room, and felt deeply that He wanted to do something very powerful for her.  Something so powerful that I felt inadequate to do what I was sensing.   I sat paralyzed for a moment by her need, and God’s manifest presence.  Then I heard, sensed, grew in awareness of, this thought:

“Just open your mouth”

It was almost urgent.  Like God was saying, “I am waiting on YOU!”

“I don’t know what to say” I thought.

Here is what I heard. “Just open your mouth, I will do the rest.”

So I began to speak.  Lame stuff, I think.  I tried to be inspiring, but it was just words.  In amazement I watched as her heart opened and healing began.  I was not very clever, nor persuasive, but God had waited on my meager utterings before He delivered.  The inadequacy of my words partnered with the absolute sufficiency of God and something happened that was bigger than me.

I love words.

6 Sep 2009

Words get in the Way

We took a trip to Lake City, Colorado this summer.  The stark beauty of the place was indescribable.  Literally.  Every language set, with all the emphasis and attached emotions, fell short of accurately conveying what our eyes had seen, and our beings had absorbed.  I finally settled for the  “you had to have been there” concession.  It is impossible to communicate experience with words only.

Let me try.

american Basin

The three-hundred-and-sixty degree panoramas, the enormity of the mountain peaks and sheer rock walls, the distance covered by ever-growing mountain streams moving from trickling snow to white-water rivers, are even physically larger than can be described.  Add to this scope, the aesthetic of this geography.  Things change inside you when you stand and take in this kind of view.  Try to impart that kind of change through verbal description.

Now, think of this.

Lake City

Jesus stood in Heaven from the beginning of time. He could see all things in all directions.  Star-creating nebulae, fields of simmering stars, the minute details of each planet, and all of the vistas I just described.  He did not only view these things, He uttered something from His mouth, and these things came into existence.    These things and more (think; the Great Barrier Reef, The Aleutian Islands, Mt. Everest, Platypus…) all issued forth from His nature, through His mouth and into our sphere of existence.

I can’t help but think of how much fun this process must have been for Him!!!

What was likely not fun for Him was trying to describe these things to narrow minded people who had never left their own geography.  He had seen HEAVEN! He spoke to people who thought God wanted to control when we picked wheat!

freedom 2009

I noticed this week, as we discussed world-changing ideas and realities, how limiting language was as a vehicle to transmit such things.  We all wrestled to transcend the medium of word-use, and impart to a room full of men and women that this same cosmos-breathing Being is intimately engaged in the lives of the men and women He had created.

God came to class with us this week, and thank goodness.  Without Him, we would have only experienced syllables.  With Him, things inside us changed as we listened, watched and absorbed His movement in the room.

 

Never settle for syllables when the Living God is available.

5 Sep 2009

I switched off my Brain

I am certain that my friend, Dr. Caroline Leaf could explain physiologically what I am about to describe experientially.  She is a brain researcher and the author of “Who Switched off my Brain” as well as a number of other helpful resources about “brain care”.  All I know is that this last week, I switched of my brain.

My website is entitled “Thinking Differently”  I made a post about “Thinking  Differently”  My soon-to-be-released book is entitled “Thinking Differently”  People always comment on how differently I think.

This week, by the time I got home at night I could barely think cohesively much less differently.

In two weeks time, my team put on two major events.  We did a two day intensive ministry/transformation event, which I occasionally write about, called Kairos.

Freedom training 09

And we just completed forty hours of intensive training for our own team as well as leaders from around the country and around the world.  During both of these times, I was intensely focused (try not to laugh), and engaged.  I poured out thoughts, engaged my heart, connected spiritually both upward and outward, and engaged in large group, small group and one-on-one conversations about world changing ideas.

Freedom 09

And afterwards, at night, my brain didn’t seem to work.

It felt thick and slow.  It was filled with fatigue.  Simple, normal thoughts didn’t come easily, I certainly wasn’t thinking unusual, creative, or original thoughts.  My thoughts were very concrete.  And Basic.

“I’m hungry” or “I want cake”

“I don’t want to work out” or “can I just sit here”

That was about the extent of my thoughts. Not much different about those thoughts.

Somehow, my normal (term used loosely) thought processes just weren’t working, normally.

Giving out without taking in seemed to leave me empty.  Not existentially speaking, but regarding cognition.  I am sure my brain chemistry changed, (right, Dr. Leaf?) because my brain absolutely took in less, processed more slowly and more simply, and resisted anything challenging.

I have a simple day today, and two days completely off.  I am hoping my brain switches back on.  Then I can start posting again some different thinking.  Stay tuned.

To read more about Dr. Leaf and her resources, click on her name.

Jennifer thanks for the Pics

30 Aug 2009

Faith Comes by Hearing

Several Years ago, I was in a car wreck.  It was my fault.  I turned too quickly, the car behind me had little warning, and almost no opportunity to stop.  Behind me I heard screeching tires and felt a powerful impact.  No one was hurt seriously. Bruises and scrapes, and a few days of sore muscles.

For months afterward, every time I heard screeching tires I startled, and braced for an impact.  My nervous system seemed to have a mind of it’s own.  I reacted without consciously choosing to do so.

San Diego Day One 089

This response was the substance of something unseen.

Here is what I have come to know.  Faith Comes by Hearing.

If you are someone who knows the Bible, you may recognize that this phrase comes from the New Testament.  The book of Romans in particular.  You might even know that the next verse says, “…and hearing comes by the Word of Christ”

But I think the first part can stand alone.  Faith Comes by Hearing.

I heard screeching tires and my heart deeply received…for months, my faith, my deep, deep belief, was in the sound I heard, and in an event that was no longer happening.  Everything about me responded as if the event was still real, present and active.

I have a friend, who for years heard these words. “You are stupid”

She heard.

The words had power over her, her heart had received, and she believed.  She did not have to see herself acting stupid.  Her faith was the substance of something she initially did not see.  The more she believed, the more she DID see.  Her grades in school, her life choices…became the experience of what she believed, and she believed because she had heard.

Faith comes by hearing. Coose carefully who and what you listen to. Listen to those things that you want to experience as real, present and active in your life.

29 Aug 2009

Words and Meaning

Language fascinates me.  Sounds and symbols somehow connect us to realities much bigger than actual words.  We had a fun night with amazing people in our house last night.  I was struck that my family was the only monolinguistic crew in house.

Everyone else in the house had at least two languages, two sets of vocabulary and structures with which they could describe and share their reality.  I love the setting where in the corner two people converse in Hebrew, because it connects their common history, while others, dripping with international accents, (like Louisiana…) engage in hilarious story-telling, connecting one another to uncommon moments.

I am struck by how much life is exchanged in our exchange of words.  Not just lifestories—life.  How much energy, and aliveness is transmitted in relationship through words.  Sounds and Symbols.

Behind every story is a real experience.  Every word, or cluster of words connects us all to a moment and a set of feelings.  The moments, and the experiences are the REAL thing.  The words somehow draw us all together to share one persons experience, and make us more than a gathering of 0ne-persons.  The words make us a community, connected and related.

Words.  Powerful little sounds and symbols.  Like currency, we should both choose carefully, and enjoy fully how we exchange them.  Wrapped up in these sounds and symbols can be either life or death.  And we can give either to anyone we choose.    

Now, read this:

“In the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with God, and The Word was God.  HE was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being. And in Him was Life and the Life was the Light of men.”

God had something to say.  When He said it, out from His mouth came an infant. An infant who would heal the sick, raise the dead, and transform the the hearts of the heartsick.  He would turn the selfish and the fearful  into lovers and givers.  When God said the Word, it was not merely a sound or a symbol…it was The Experience…Him Loving us.  Listen, He is saying it again.

26 Aug 2009

Faith

“I’m just not sure I have the faith it takes to get through this”.

” I just know I don’t have as much faith as I should”.

These thoughts, and many like them, course through our minds as we wrestle with our sense of inadequacy as children of God.  I am convinced that we wrestle with this sense of inadequacy because way too often, we try to generate from our soul, what can only come from God Himself.

Faith is not the mental agreement with a religious system or doctrine.  Nor is it our resolve to carry out a mindset or a mission.  It is a way of seeing that comes from listening instead of thinking.

I also see, far too often, that people think that the fact that they experience fear means that they do not “have enough faith”.  What if that is not true?

I know the Bible tells us that faith without works is dead.  I also think that faith without fear may be dead.  If not dead, at least it is not really faith.  Often the lack of fear is because we can see or reason the solution to, or we can rescue ourselves from our circumstances.  What happens when we can’t see, but believe anyway?

Let me put it this way.  Which demonstrates more faith; jumping off a curb, or jumping off a cliff.  The first requires no faith at all because the risk (or fear factor) is minimal.  Jumping off a curb allows you to still catch yourself, to rely on your own capabilities.  Where is the fear (or faith) in that.

Jump off a cliff. (Don’t really go do this OK?, it’s an illustration…) You are now without the ability to catch yourself.  Your resources are of no help.  Only God can help you now.  The fear factor increases the faith required to act.

Sometimes real faith means feeling the reality of the fear, but trusting and acting anyway.  Trusting because you have a way of seeing that came from hearing and not from thinking.

25 Aug 2009
Thinking Like Parents

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Thinking Like Parents

For much of our lives as Christians we view Jesus and the Cross as a way to give us access to God.  When we need forgiveness we find it through the cross.  When we need comfort, we find it through the cross.  When we need healing…well you get the idea. Read more…

24 Aug 2009

The Knowledge of Good and Evil

Israel Day two 051

The Attack against mankinds role in God’s unfolding plan came when Adam and Eve took into their beings the  fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

This means opposition to God’s Plan in our lives has two basic strategies:

 

1.  Evil:  Nuff Said

2.  Good:  Anything good we do separate from God.

I’m just sayin’…

23 Aug 2009

Transfer of Power

“When the frequency of one system matches the frequency of another, power is transferred between the two systems”

The Million Volt Man

I heard him say this as he continued his demonstration of the nature of God and His Kingdom revealed in the principles of physics.  I was exhausted, but I heard something important in his words.

Guatemala 266

I was exhausted because we were several months into the reconstruction of our home.  It had been ruined in a flood and we were living in our “refugee house” while we oversaw the gradual restoration of our home.  What had once been home was a chaotic conglomeration of foundation, frame, loose wires and ducts.  Life went on.  The kids had school, Jackee and I had work, and we did not have a home.

It was in the midst of this disruption that The MIllion Volt Man came to town.  A one man science demonstration, I attended as a distraction and because the auditorium was air conditioned.  I left re-connected to God.

He told us that power transfers from one system to another when frequencies match.  A note sustained and intensified could shatter a crystal glass, if the note was the same frequency as the glass.  A guitar string, untouched by human hands would begin to vibrate if another string, tuned to the same frequency was struck and sustained in proximity.  Power was transferred.

Power is transferred when frequencies match.

I was exhausted because I was completely tuned in to a construction project that had been my home.  Concrete and adhesive, unfinished cabinets…all these things daily transferred to me their power because I was absolutely on the same frequency they were.

transfer

Broadcast from the throne of God is the very Nature of the King and His Kingdom.  Power—Life—Peace—Joy—all just hanging in the air nearby waiting to be received.

Broadcast from all around are a variety of other power sources.  Traffic—Conflict—Sickness—Your own construction project; all these and more would broadcast to you the life draining force of their activity.

Our hand is on the dial…we choose each day that which we will match frequencies with.  Judgment, fear, injustice…or the invisible presence of God-with-us.

Either way—power transfers between systems when frequecies match.

Click here to see The Million Volt Man

22 Aug 2009

Some Days I just want to “Think the Same”

Thinking differently takes some work you know.  Sometimes I just want to think the same.  It’s easier…You know what I mean?

Some days I want to pretend that what I see is all that there is.  The past has nothing to do with my life and there is no spiritual dimension to my being and my existence.  Whatever impulse I have, I would love to just act on it.

some days

Some days I want to act as if my, yet unrefined desires, are all completely accurate, and that the rest of the world around me just hasn’t come to agreement with me yet.  I am tired of asking the question “why do I experience this?” or “where did that thought come from?”

Some days I want to live a if I really am the center of the universe and everyone else ought to just get on board.

Some days I want to let my impulses tell me what to believe about life, God, you , and reality.  And then I want to act on those things.

Some days I want to act as if I’m not connected to the other people on the planet and in my immediated geography, and that my choices and words don’t affect anyone but me.

Some days  I just want to tell God that He is not doing it right because He is not doing it the way I would.

ian

Some days I want to keep  a record of wrongs.

Some days I just want to scream, cry and throw a fit.  Am I the only one?

Even as I write, I try to picture the ruin I would make of my life if I thought “the same”.  Holy Mackerel…what a mess that would be!

By the way, if you are my friend, family, or boss, and you are worried about me when you read this, most days, I think differently, and I want to laugh, play, hug people and transform the world into the picture that I believe God puts in my mind.

But, if I am completely honest, some days I just want to think the same.

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