What follows is a series of somewhat random thoughts, but it deals with a series of dynamics where people have been obsessing with this gift’s weakness or that gift’s Achilles’ Heel.
OFFENSE AND ONE OF THE GIFTS: TEACHER
I have to say, I have a friend who is a Teacher, and I think the potential for offense in Teacher would be because people often have a crappy perception of Teachers.
We have a whole lot of “new treasures” in the body that came through the other gifts, and the Teacher’s love of the old can be a source of great offense.
I am irritated, exceptionally vexed, that the Teacher’s love of the old is such a stumbling block that gets mistaken for a religious spirit.
In a healthy Teacher, the offense for others would be low.
Imagine our nation without Baltimore for Catholics, or Pennsylvania for Quakers.
ONE-DIMENSIONAL ASSESSMENTS AND TWO-DEMINSIONAL VIEWS OF THE GIFTS
Now, backing up to a larger frame, looking at the RG’s from one aspect creates a two-dimensional view of the gifts, especially if we are looking at one aspect of us that is a hangup.
If we are looking at this as a “which gift is the most offensive?” then you are talking about Prophets all day long. Same for the question of condescension.
But, I would urge a whole heaven of a lot
of caution when it comes to making snap decisions based on one trait.
And in the case of each of us, the overarching quality cannot be quantified in one sentence; a test won’t reveal a whole lot when wounding or personal biases with respect to the gifts or other issues are in place.
I can make all sorts of claims for myself for four of the gifts, but ultimately I have to know what I am, even if this or that person is right or wrong.
And we can get so caught up in the teaching on the Gfits, that we forget to be our own people and come up with our own stuff, our own revelation.
And, lest we forget, people like Arthur do get it wrong from time to time. People like Megan and Sandy do get it wrong. People like John Mosley to get it wrong. And people like David MacNelley do get a whole lot wrong.
I would urge all sorts of caution in using those single qualities to identify this or that gift.
THE PRIORITY OF DESIGN
But ultimately, our greatest strength comes down to, what is our design? Design is way more important…
Finding your transmission and engine, are vastly more important than knowing your gift. Get the design and what makes you come alive and the gift will follow. The disproportionate ROI.
And if your transmission does not exist, then you have one option, either do without, or get greasy and design and build your own transmission. That is what the Wright Brothers did.
In what area of your life does the golden-glittery-oil drip? For you, where is the work the most effortless?
My spiritual mom would probably push in the area of our effortlessness in part to help us out.
MANY FACTORS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ONE MAJOR FACTOR
And I would exhort us to look at a number of factors, and especially where the ROI is.
Now, for some of us who have had NASTY trauma, the process is harder, and especially when brain trauma or neuro-trauma is present, the path to a place where we are not bumping into others is going to take some time. And there are a variety of factors that can cloud the journey, the mining job, the digging around under the earth in order to come up with our gemstones that describe us well.
But really, what Dad is trying to do is pick us up in His lap and take us each on a journey to find the treasure in us.
SHORT-CIRCUITING THE JOURNEY BY FOCUSING ON ONE FLAW
So, in short, this is no easy process. But it can become a glorious adventure.
We can, however, shot-circuit the process by focusing on one issue, one flaw, one sin, one pattern. Many patterns and many aspects reveal the multi-dimensional nature of the gemstone.
And offending people can come from wounding, or scandal, or sin, or design, or family, or Leviathan, or any number of factors.
But recall two things,
1) “how I began this life is not necessarily how I am going to finish this life”.
2) Every single stinking thing that is wrong with us, is on G-d’s to-do list, whether He has to tell us that those things are part of his design, whether wounding, or sin, or devil, or affliction, or chain, or cell, or dimension, or portal, or whatever.
And recall from earlier this week, I said that He died to roll back not just our sin, but everything that is off-kilter or wrong with the universe.
Every sin was laid to Christ’s account, and he willingly took it up, and His death was and is and will be sufficient to redeem every wrong thing you ever did, every wrong thing that was ever done to you, every sin of the enemy that twisted the original design of everything, and everything else.
His death is sufficient to redeem the entirely of the cosmos, and forever separate His and our enemy from us forevermore.
So, take heart and be encouraged.
THE CAPACITY AND TENACITY TO PUSH THROUGH
One other thing: for those of y’all who are further down the road and are far more healed or whole, please take a couple of us wounded souls into your circle and walk with us.
I have one PRECIOUS brother who, when I met him, had MASSIVE negative 5th head of Leviathan at work in areas of his life. For some reason, I suck at the Principle of Stewardship in my own eyes, and yet for some reason, his 5th head DID NOT TOUCH me at all.
I was able to talk through that clown, and it irritated that entity that I had the grace to ignore him and minister grace to this man’s spirit.
I was able to walk in the face of the presence of that negative head, call it my tenacity or pigheaded stubbornness, but his friendship is more valuable that the negative stuff he put off.
I have this built-in capacity to not be affected by those sorts of things and still walk with others. Things I don’t get.
And I have a loyalty and trustingness which is unusual for a Prophet or an Exhorter.
And it took years of being pummeled by the enemy, sexual assault by the Jezebel Spirit to get where I am.
THE VEIN OF OUR DEEPEST STRENGTH
The bottom line: each of you has a vein or ore, or a specialty, or a long game, or a deep vein of emotional or spiritual ore that is deeper than anything the enemy can reach the bottom of. For me its loyalty. Play to that one strength in working with that person, brother or sister, rough edges and all, and go in the strength of that bread, because that is the one place in you that is most unbroken where the grace is the strongest and deepest.
Each of you has a place where the earth is turned up as by fire, no lion knows the path to that place, and no devil or twisted serpent can touch it.
Run there with the L-rd and use it as a regular place of refuge from which to strike.
It was put there for a reason.
“Surely there is a mine for silver,
and a place for gold that they refine.
Iron is taken out of the earth,
and copper is smelted from the ore.
Man puts an end to darkness
and searches out to the farthest limit
the ore in gloom and deep darkness.
He opens shafts in a valley
away from where anyone lives;
they are forgotten by travelers;
they hang in the air,
far away from mankind;
they swing to and fro.
As for the earth, out of it comes bread,
but underneath it is turned up as by fire.
Its stones are the place of sapphires,
and it has dust of gold.
“That path no bird of prey knows,
and the falcon’s eye has not seen it.
The proud beasts have not trodden it;
the lion has not passed over it.
“Man puts his hand to the flinty rock
and overturns mountains by the roots.
He cuts out channels in the rocks,
and his eye sees every precious thing.
He dams up the streams so that they do not trickle,
and the thing that is hidden he brings out to light.”
Job 28:1–11