Bob Hamp

18 Jul 2009

The Power of Life

C.S. Lewis says that we are much more than we thnk we are, and God hides our full identity from us so that we will not become swollen with arrogance. Simple logic may tell us the same thing. We are created in the Image of God. We were once connected to the very Source of all Life. We were created to be His image, and His representative on earth. I used to think of Adam as a man who was just less insecure than I. I am starting to think of him as extraordinarily powerful.

Connected to the Tree of Life, Adam had to be a conduit of…well…life. Not just signs of life. The roaring, throbbing engine which drives every living thing to breathe and be. The Force compelling every cell to multiply, and every beast to obey it’s instincts. The kind of force that could bring to life creatures of every size, shape and type with a word. The kind of force that could bring a dead body back to alive-ness. This is the kind of nuclear reactor to which Adam was hooked up.

Imagine now that kind of raw power available to an empty, lonely, self-centered creature. Thinking quickly, and lovingly, God said that man must not be able to access that kind of energy while in a fallen state. Man would have to be restored to his intended source, before he would be allowed again to tap into this thing called LIFE. Minus his connection to God, this power would be devastating to man and those he loves.

Re-connected to his creator, his Father, and His source, man is also re-connected to LIFE. Not just life, but life abundantly. Life explosively. Life in full measure. How might he wield such power? Well, God said that man would have the power of life in his tongue…his words. Why not, the One in whose image we are created had the same power, right?

What if the entire symphony of life is still at our finger tips?

17 Jul 2009

Duct Tape Therapy

I once heard a comedian elaborating on the incredible restorative power of duct tape. He said it can fix anything. He then described an incident of driving down the road when the CHECK ENGINE light on the dashboard came on. He promptly pulled over, grabbed a roll of duct tape, covered the light and drove on. Genius. We would never do this of course.

Oh wait…what if we actually teach one another to do this very thing.

What if we have indicators in our lives that are designed to warn us when things are not quite right? What if these indicators are given to us and designed not only to tell us that something is wrong, but can actually help us learn what is wrong? If we had such indicators in our soul it would be ridiculous to cover them up and ignore the information they can provide us.

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The Christian world has been told for years that their feelings will deceive them. People who are afraid of their emotions can use this idea to distance themselves from feelings that are uncomfortable. I would like to go on record at this point to dispute this dangerous idea that our feelings will deceive us. I am convinced that our feelings will always tell us the truth. Not necessarily the truth about reality, but the truth about what we believe.

Keep in mind that when I use the word “believe” I am not referring to the intentional choice to agree with an idea. I am referring to the programming of our soul which in many instances may be hidden from our awareness. It is this very hidden-ness which necessitates indicators. Our emotions, acknowledged and understood can help identify places in our soul where God would like to operate. They can also help indicate places where God is already operating!

Feelings like confusion, frustration, agitation, fear, and others like them can help us identify areas in our hearts where God would like more access. Feelings like joy, peace, and affection, can show us places where God has full access.

Slow down, let your spirit catch up…then ask yourself, ask God…what are these feelings and where did they come from? What can they tell me about the contents and the arrangement of my soul? Are these feelings like God? Are they different from God?

Leave the duct tape in the trunk. Take an honest look. God is not afraid of your honesty.

16 Jul 2009

Don’t Leave Your Self Behind

A friend of mine tells the story of a group of Gold Miners who hired top notch Indian guides to take them accross the frontier. In a hurry to find their fortune, the men woke early, rode hard and rode late.

On day four of the journey, the Miners woke and prepared to depart. They came out to find their guides, sitting, unprepared around the fire. Try as they might to urge the guides to rise and prepare for departure, the Indian braves would not budge. Finally one of them explained.

“We have been moving so fast, we left our spirits behind.” The elder guide explained. “We must wait here until our spirits catch up to us.”

Stop now, turn around and look behind you. Do you need to stop and wait?

(Today’s entry comes from John Sandford)

14 Jul 2009

Why Do my Eyes Hurt?

One of my favorite lines from the Matrix…”Why do my eyes hurt?”, Neo asks. “You’ve never used them.”, Morpheus replies. If you’ve never seen the movie, Neo has just been released from a lifetime of imprisonment in a computer generated simulation program. He has literally not used the eyes in his head.

It has been several days since I posted last…instead I have been staring at an indescribable, unending vista of mountains, rivers, cliffs and valleys. Some of these views are actually too big to take in. I look. I scan. I step back, and take a breath. I look again. It’s not that I can’t see it. I can’t comprehend it. So I say to myself, “It looks like a movie”.

Really. That’s what I say, “it looks like a movie.” Absolutely impossible. No movie, no camera, no reproduction,can even come close to this view. What I am really feeling is, it looks unreal. So beautiful. So big. So stark. The only way I know to categorize it in my mind is, that it looks like a movie. A simulation of beauty. Ironically what I am looking at is more real than what I look at most days.

Freeways. Buildings. Sculpted lawns. Endless commerce. If only those things looked like a movie, and these landscapes looked real.

Don’t miss it. Really…don’t miss it. Because my eyes have been regularly looking at synthetic, man made vistas, what is real, looks fake. Is it possible that what is fake, also looks real? My eyes have been trained, or perhaps untrained. My eyes, connected to my mind, can only really take in what they have grown accustomed to, and I call this real. I find everything else difficult to take in; my mind calls the things I am unaccustomed to, unreal.

I have used my eyes. But like all my senses they have become trained. Unfortunately I don’t even know how trained they have become. They are the only eyes I have. Unless, perhaps I have eyes in my heart. I wonder if they may have been trained as well. I hope not.

(For pictures, no matter how unreal they may be check my Facebook)

9 Jul 2009

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Where Am I?

The question rings through the air, like an echo in my heart, that is simultaneously in the wind. I feel like a child caught and I’m not even sure the answer to the question. Where am I? Read more…

9 Jul 2009

Where are YOU?

God picked up a ball of dirt and breathed into it the breath of life. Man became a living soul. Somewhere between the bright burning life of God on the inside and the outermost layer of dirt, man developed in the image of God. A mind…A will…a heart…God’s life on the inside, pulsating out through the once-dirt making a creation never before seen.

When man (Adam) disconnected from His source of life, the Tree; he reconnected to his own knowledge. He became his own annointing.

Where once the life of God throbbed in the inner man, now nothing…darkness and death.

Man felt dead…feeling dead…feels…dead. If only he could not-feel-dead.

He began to make a construction site in his soul. Shaped his mind with his will. Shaped his will by his emotions. Brick by brick he manufactured a new almost-him.

God came by and asked where the man was. Where was the man who had been. If God being in Adam made him, HIM, then Adam did not know the answer to this question. Where am I…I can’t find who I was a few moments ago.

Brick by brick he manufactured a new almost-him. A pseudo-him. It felt as close to alive as he could muster.

Today all we have in our soul, separate of God, is our pseudo-us. It’ hard to let go of the closest thing we have to life, for some promise of life abundant.

Let go anyway…the Breath of Life is near again. Let go of your construction site. Breathe in again, breathe in the only thing that can make you alive.

6 Jul 2009

Stress: Free!!

Stress is the result of functioning outside of your intended design.

You are designed to exercise authority (take dominion) over creation.

You will have stress if you:

DO NOT take authority over things you are responsible for.

or if you:

DO TAKE AUTHORITY over things you are NOT responsible for.

Relax. Be who you were made to be. Let everyone else be who they were made to be.

Today’s entry courtesy of: Jackee Hamp

4 Jul 2009

What I DO Believe

I believe humans are created in the Image of God to be His Re-Presentation on Earth. He intends to, and will accomplish the eternal fulfillment of that design .

I believe that Adam and Eve did more than just sent us off course, I believe that they fundamentally changed our nature and perceptual mechanisms. What we once knew by seeing, we must now know by “hearing” and trusting (faith).

I believe that when God and His loving powerful, Life-Filled Being is returned to the center and source of our existence, we are born again and restored to our original state.

I believe this is made possible because God, in His AMAZING love reached out to us from His realm, made the cleansing of our souls possible by Jesus death on the cross, and invited us to again have His life resurrected in us, in the same way Jesus Himself was brought back to life.

I believe that the Holy Bible is a book like no other book, that God inspired humans to write His story as it unfolded, so that God might make every way possible for us to hear and believe, and learn to enter again into our intended design.

I believe Jesus, in His life on Earth, showed us what this kind of life could look like, and then sacrificed His life so that we could have the life He had shown us.

I believe God sent the Holy Spirit to earth to re-fill mankind, restoring the original state of man, as seen when God “breathed into Adam the Breath of Life”

I believe that God, in Jesus, joyfully invited His sons and daughters to again become sons and daughters.

I believe that Satan and the kingdom of darkness would like to oppose the ultimate fulfillment of God’s Big Plan, but can only momentarily confuse and frustrate us, in his attempts to get us to focus on anything except the above truth.

I believe that as we learn to live again as Spiritually re-created beings, we are preparing for an ultimate conclusion of the reality we know, and the commencement of a reality we currently only know by Hearing (faith).

I believe this is a really cool plan!! C’mon in.

3 Jul 2009

What I DON’T Believe in!!!

As a young man, I would have told you that I was an atheist. Not the card-carrying, T-shirt wearing variety. Just the kind of guy who, if you asked me, did not believe in God. Today, I understand a bit better who I was back then. The picture of God in my mind, made no sense…so I disposed of my picture. I thought my picture was God.

Today men and women have movements and meetings, websites and debates built around this belief called atheism. It means “without god belief”. ”A” means without, “theism” is a belief in a god”. I am amazed at the emotion and organization around a “non-belief“. Movements stir people to rally about what they don’t believe. Weird huh? Here’s what I have learned about me. My non-belief had more to do with emotions and reactions than it did any kind of faith or non-faith. Many atheists I hear today, really have been hurt or have perceived an injury from someone or something claiming to represent God. So they build an entire relational system around what they DON’T believe. It’s a good thing christians don’t do that.

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Or…wait…what if we do? What if in our own camp, movements have formed as a response against what we perceive someone else is not doing right? I mean, we wouldn’t do it on purpose, but we might just try to do it better because we see what we believe someone else is doing wrong. So a leader might stand up and say, “WE do things this way, here is our creed, and our practice…” and whether he follows up out loud or in his heart, he might actually entertain the thought that “ahhh..now someone is finally doing it right…not like those people over there”

Worse, what if a great deal of our system is built around how NOT to have church. You see Paul wrote in the New Testament about a lot of things to NOT do. So we develop a number of strategies to adhere to the warnings of this great Saint. We can become the best at not making the mistakes we were warned against.

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It makes more sense to me to look at what Jesus did and said, and try to emulate that, than it does to build our doctrines around the correction of mistakes.

Let’s look at an even bigger picture. What if we think this whole “Christianity” thing is about NOT sinning? We shape our whole lives around trying to avoid bad behavior, thinking God designed us to NOT sin. Certainly He did not make us FOR sin. But we could avoid sin our whole lives and still never step into the fulness of who He created us to be. If you become that person…well, it seems pretty natural that you will act like that person. It would be sad if Christians were known more by what we don’t do, than by the amazing things I see being done by Christ-Followers.

Before we make too much fun of the atheists who organize around what they DON’T believe perhaps we should look at the speck in our eye…or wait…is that a log.

2 Jul 2009

Positve Confession

Words are powerful. They open and shut doors, and have the ability to steer the course of life. A very good friend of mine was telling me the other day how much they had exercised positive confession, the practice of speaking positively in any givien situation. A common thought for us as believers; we need to be careful with our confession. We want to have a positive confession not a negative one. I think perhaps that may be the wrong thought. What if we think differently about confession. What if positive or negative are not even actual options? To understand what I mean, let’s consider the word “confession”.

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The word for confession in the New Testament actually means “to say the same words”. For us to “say the same words” the “words” would have to originate somewhere besides us. It is built into this definition of confession, that the words originate from God. We hear them and then repeat them. We have just “said the same words” as God Himself. Is it possible to say the words of God and the resulting language be negative?

The real option is not to choose between positive and negative but to choose between one of two sources. If the thought originates from us, it is not a confession, it is a thought. If it comes from God it is a confession. Not positive or negative. Simply CONFESSION.

Whether you think positively or negatively, stop…listen. Don’t let your thoughts be the source. Listen. You can only confess, if you first HEAR. Listen. It will make you think differently.