There is a story behind this cut. Some of this is pulled from memory of wikis and online articles that are no longer available, as well as literature to which I have no current access.
The title of the cut refers to events that occurred on August 30th, 1995 when Martin, Stu G, Stewart Smith, Tim, and Jon were still known as The Cutting Edge and were pondering going full-time. On that day, Martin Smith; his wife, Anna; and bassist Jon Thatcher were involved in a near-fatal car accident, which left Martin badly injured.
After the accident, while Martin was convalescing physically, he wrestled internally with depression. During that time in the hospital, he was partly-inspired by reading Bill Flanagan’s biography of U2 to make the jump. As a result, the Cutting Edge became Deliriou5?, with the 5 possibly representing the 5 band members (while also noting that Stewart Smith’s keyboard was missing a letter S), and the question mark representing a transition from the questions of “What if we fail?” (doubts and fears) to the statement “Just imagine if…?” (Possibilities).
Also, the police report stated there were four people in the car at the time of the accident….
This is a reminder, gang, that no matter how dismal, nasty, or uncertain the future is, there is a place in the King’s presence, and a destiny He has for you.
He does not look for you to wander or to be without hope. In the presence of your enemies, He prepares a table before you. Each of y’all.
Without remorse, without repentance, without argument.
And His tender bid to you is to come and see, to come and dine, and to come and drink.
Not one condition. Not one blockage. Not one wall.
So, yesternight, I and a friend went to a Switchfoot concert in Birmingham at Avondale BrewCo. What I originally thought was this was a concert. What it turned out to be was an assignment to understand some land dynamics present.
While I did enjoy the music a LOT, there were some aspects of this city that captured me, especially given my grandfather was adopted in Birmingham.
Sometimes I am in a place and the land speaks to me. Other times it feels like the land is receiving from the King.
In the case of Birmingham, there as an aspect that felt like home.
But that was not all that’s as there.
Instead of being in the middle of the crowd, we were on the edge of the crowd, and the people around us ended up moving away from us.
Further, in the course of the evening, the people moved from a disorganized crowd to arranging themselves in concentric circles around the stage as if they were in an amphitheater.
In the spirit, however, on the ground of the location where we were, I actually discerned the presence of a sound portal that was built into the ground and part of which was arranged like an amphitheater.
Grass terraces and concrete steps for the levels.
Sound portals parallel the Redemptive Gift of Giver, and they focus the sound of Heaven, and especially the star song that is communicated by the Sons of G-d in an area to resonate the sound of G-d’s justice in a situation: Justice and dominion as embodied in the Son, Yeshua. When they are misaligned, a number of bad things happen, much of which can be chalked up to an increase of lawlessness. When they are aligned, they cause the area in which to resonate with frequencies that are Kingly.
Also, beer as a industry and beverage strikes me as Giver, and in Giver communities like Charlotte and blue-collar communities, beer has a heavy presence.
And, in brewing companies, there is usually live music as well as lots of SOUND and carrying on, and people generally enjoying themselves in conversation or connection of some sort.
That was no exception in this case.
Pondering what this means, I am certain the King was doing things with us there to bring cleansing to the land.
Further, I also became aware of what I can only classify as a portable fire portal, as there appeared in the spirit a column of fire around us. My friend also had relayed to me that there are times when they are frequently in a place and people will not be seated anywhere near them. In those instances, the King is at work.
And that night was definitely an occasion for us to go vertical. And the words to Dare You To Move definitely hit differently, and they felt like exhortations to sonship and building the thing or engaging with the thing you have always been intimidated to build or engage.
“I dare you to move I dare you to move I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor I dare you to move I dare you to move Like today never happened Today never happened before”
“Welcome to the fallout Welcome to resistance The tension is here Tension is here Between who you are and who you could be Between how it is and how it should be, yeah”
Also, Switchfoot concerts have punctuated SIGNIFICANT events for me, marker stones at intervals of about 10 years. The last time I saw them live was July 2013. And that preluded a significant season then, as now. A transition is taking place.
From this, I learned a very valuable lesson.
Sometimes, the reason the King sticks us in a certain place is completely different from the reason we originally planned on in going to a place.
So, gang, I will share more on this as the days progress, but I share all this to say, the reason you are in a place may not be the reason you originally went to that place. Find out what the King wants you to do in this season, and go do that.
Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran. Now the L-RD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
Genesis 11:31–12:1 ESV
Victim Spirits Make You Settle
Gang, when we are begin setting ourselves to engage with the L-rd in a particular way He has given us, and then we choose to settle….bad things happen. Truly, it is the Victim Spirit that causes us to begin to settle.
Settling means we have reached a place of believing the prevailing attitude of contentment with the provision of the natural or soul-based realities of life are enough, so much so that settling results in us not moving forward to possess the fullness of what the L-rd has for us. We allow ourselves to walk in so much Deyanu (the Hebrew phrase from the Seder of Pesach that, roughly translated, means “it would have been enough”) that we allow ourselves not move forward to possess the whole of what Father intended for you.
Is there a place for Deyanu and having peace with current circumstances? Yes, provided we are not settling and refusing to go after all the King has for us? If there is something more for us, then Deyanu can be deadly. If He has called us to rest for a season, Deyanu can be good for a season. And we need to discern what is needed in the current season, versus transition to new season.
It means, in the sevenfold parlance of Matthew 23, that we ultimately and progressively preach and do not practice….
The Victim Spirit will tell us to preach/confess things, while simultaneously laying a sort of suffocating cloak or mantle around us that will begin to progressively mess with us, choke the life from us, strangle us, push our spirits in such a way that they move away from us because we no longer have sufficient life to support their presence, and eventually become the burial shroud or grave clothes around us.
This is why the Prophets and Exhorters and Mercies and Givers among us are so critical. They will realize that something is going on and will sound the alarms that not all is well, in order to provoke us to fight for the whole picture, each in their own various ways. They are the Four-Alarm Fire Alarms to the rest of the body.
So, in Matthew 23, here is that settling of the Victim Spirit that wages against godly desire (For those who have not heard me teach through Matthew yet, I call that gospel the Gospel of the Tenth Commandment or the Gospel of Desire. It is godly desire with which the King infuses us, that causes one to wage war against settling.
On the other hand, the Victim Spirit tells us the following:
Do not enter into the responsibility of the Kingdom to Build according to Design (23:13), and you keep others from so doing (becoming factories, which empowers the Third Head of Leviathan, which I will deal with in a future post).
Make proselytes of your incomplete settling and do not engage in the full execution of your G-d-given Authority. Teach those proselytes it is okay to not follow through to press toward and move after their own fullness and fulfillment (23:15). As long as they attempt to do so. Give up at the first sign of any resistance. Contentment with the resources we already have on the natural or soul leel will cause us to stop moving toward birthright, which requires we embrace a certain level of pain which have been filtered and allowed by Father to refine and prove us, testing our mettle and our endurance. Feeling fulfilled and content and BEING fulfilled by possessing all He has for us are not the same thing.
Make oaths and do not engage with the fullness of the Responsibility for walking out the fullness of that oath, and you set up altars and spiritual structures for connecting with G-d via the fence laws and rules but there is not real and complete and riddle-solving encounter, but you end up blinding others in the process to all else except the rules and as a result, the Religious Spirit comes in and makes them do everything except the one thing they were supposed to do (23:16-22) And as a result, you are now a blind guide and a blinding guide.
Tithe all the right money but give no thought to your current Reality and teaching others according to justice (decision-making process: an aspect of love), mercy (staying your hand from vengeance or revenge or vindictive retribution: an aspect of love: Luke 17:1-5, See The Bait of Satan by John Bevere for more material on the execution of this topic), and faithfulness (constant AND consistent treatment of your fellow: an aspect of love) (23:23). This is not managing the reality of your time in the right way, because you are settling for the partial managing of your reality (I am a good boy or girl because I gave my ten percent to the church and can ditch the rest or my Responsibility to engage with Reality as not a priority, which can lead to a nasty devouring of time as you seek for time that feels like it is getting extracted from you as the taxes set in.
Make your Stewardship to look right but still be partial in it because you are full of avarice and self-indulgence (23:25). Settilng for the appearance of looking like a faithful steward while harboring an altar of avarice, which is something the dirt poor can do as effectively as, if not moreso than, the wealthy.
Erecting edifices and systems that look living on the outside (looking at you, Jeff Bezos), but internally are full of grinding death, destruction, exploitation, and break Freedom, instead of the more painful work of moving toward the heart of the Father, Adonai Tsidkenu, Who Makes us Righteous and Who Is Our Justice and who is Eternally the Father Who Teaches Us How To Build and How To Fight.
And finally, treating the exhortations of the past as if you heard them, while embracing a heart that would see the exhortations of today killed off, and settling for a lesser form of fulfillment that ultimately leads to futility (23:2932). This fills up the measure the fathers who were muderers, and that word there for “fill” is the Greek word πληρώσατε from πληρoώ, pronounced like “play-rah-oh”, meaning “I fill” or “I fulfill”. These settlers are fulfilling not the life of men, but the mission of those who in previous generations brought death.
And truly, the Victim Spirit does not want us to engage with our inherent authority and power as G-d’s vice-regents. He does not want us to own our own portion of responsibility for our current problems. So, whatever the Victim Spirit can do to cause you to come up short, change directions, or oscillate, or vascillate, or to go partway, he will bring his friends, the Spirit of Heaviness and the Spirit of Slack (which will masquerade as the Spirit of Peace), and we can, from time to time, mistake vigilance and readiness and pressing through for not having peace.
There is more than you have been taught there is, gang. Desire and do more. The DESIRES OF YOUR HEART are so important to the King, because they given you motive to push through and to fight.
