I do realize that the Charismatic Movement has in many places grown abusive or tone-deaf to the fullness of Scripture.
And many of those of us who are associated with Bethel, have grown to treat the part that they have as synonymous with the whole truth.
It’s not, gang.
They have a small piece.
And many have become uncritical, unjudging, undecisional groupies of everything that comes from Bethel, MorningStar, or [pick your denominational influence].
However, two
Jesus didn’t command us to dwell in perpetual powerlessness.
He charged us repeatedly to pray.
He also charged us to dance between intimacy and principles. Many of us in the Bethel constellation have dropped the complex weaving together of principles for an oversimplified answer to every problem.
Bill Johnson, the Heiligenthals, and others, however, have held onto the principles of 1) resurrection that Jesus said would happen, period, and 2) to love not in reaction to the devil, but rather in reaction to the Father.
I am not saying Bethel got everything perfect. Some of their material on the fivefold ministry is absolutely dubious.
Much of the teaching on the fivefold ministry is downright toxic because it is not couched in the language of “this is what we have seen”, “let’s discuss”, and “what have you seen?”.
But this, a desire to see healing and miracles take place, is one area where they shine. A transformed mindset.
Meanwhile you Calvinists and Reformers have taken all sorts of verbally and spiritually abusive shits in Bethel’s and the Heiligenthal‘s front yard.
And Now Comes My Greta Moment To the Calvinists
Your brother and sister didn’t ask you to bash their dignity or their theology. They friggin asked you to pray for resurrection, in accordance with John 11, and you are acting like Mary and Martha who were allegorized resurrection.
How dare you….
Your responsibility is to, in light of God’s sovereign hand, to ask Him, based on the possibility that it might be given, in alignment with the Sermon on the Mount.
To jump on board and seek for His hand to move in this family’s life and not to decide the frame of what that looks like.
The sovereignty of God was designed to embrace God’s capacity to do what He wants, which includes resurrection.
If the parents determine to pray for resurrection, your job is to get off of your lazy asses and pray as they request, in accordance with the full kingdom agenda.
It is not to bash them as crazy, and tell them how heretical they are.
Jesus didn’t die so we could have the opportunity to doubt whether or not He would work, paired with the fear of our perverted view of His sovereignty.
It is to rest our lives in the hope that He just might do something that is different than your expectations.
We are sick of chronically powerless, inauthentic, partial Christianity that treats God as a dictator who has ceased to work now that the canon is finished.
We want more and we affirm Scripture and the nature of God demand there is more.
By survivors, I mean those who survived SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse)
By parts, I mean those who are divided and those who are DID.
They do not need you to be the all-knowing, all-seeing, benevolent counselor who can fix everything and MAKE them be a certain way, or fix them or their disintegration or dividedness.
They just need to you to be available, willing to connect with them, authentic, just flat-out willing to foster trust with them, and listen to them.
Their problems are not like those of others. They are not a problem to be fixed. They cannot be forced to integrate.
Nor is integration necessarily the goal.
They need you to be present. Not capable of fixing their pain.
They want to know you are willing to invest something.
Are you available to walk a mile or two, or three, or twenty?
Just being available makes a massive difference.
Even if you don’t understand everything…
Even if you don’t have a counseling degree or are not an expert, your affectionate presence makes a massive difference.
Some of them have parts that don’t trust Jesus but hate Jesus.
But the question I work have for us is, can they trust you to be present and close your mouth and just manifest the Lord in his gentleness, tenderness and love.
A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust.
Are you available and will you listen as they process without trying to tell them the answer?
In some cases, we will respond with what we think the Holy Spirit is saying. Or a glib Scripture reference.
A knee-jerk or quick reaction is not what they need.
Just your presence.
Be there, family. For they are family, even if they are programmed by the enemy.
No greater power in the world than the tender affection of the Lord, and the willingness to invest in these survivors.
The first time I felt it, was from reading the novel The Count of Monte Cristo. The last time I felt it, was in the loss of a dear friendship to me.
I don’t know if there are times when books or friendships bring to us that feeling of a structure that can create a black hole that sucks life from us, but I can say that when I read books as a very emotionally-sensitive person, I feel them intensely, for better or worse.
I read and can see each scene, and each plot device, and resonate with each similie, metaphor, allusion, and turn of phrase.
I think there are certain books that are designed, especially if the author in question has been given a gift with words by God, and an anointing for wordsmithing, which are designed to draw us in and leave us with something, a treasure or an antitreasure, if you will, if we let them affect us.
For those of us who are emotionally sensitive, we experience books in a different way, and as a result, we may have to read books through a filter in order to prevent negative structures from becoming erected by the assaults of the critters, especially of authors whose flow is defiled.
For example, those of you who know William Butler Yeats, might know that he practiced automatic writing, and had a way with words, and as a result, he was completely tied up with powers that were not of the kingdom.
Life-Giving Writings
Lewis and Tolkien, conversely, had streams that were plugged into the Lord as their source, and, as a result, for those who read his material, we see principles throughout that are not accompanied by defilement. Conversely, it is like a white hole manifesting when I read these. Especially when the relationships are lifegiving and mutually beneficial rather than sucking and depleting.
For example, the discovery of the White Sapling in The Return of the King shewed forth the life-giving relationship between Mithrandir and Aragorn II Elessar, the King of Gondor. Further, Aragorn fulfilled the known legend in Gondor that said “the hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known”, when, after the wounded were taken to Gondor’s Houses of Healing following The Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Aragorn healed them with the athelas plant. This exquisitely-penned account shows one of the deep dynamics at work in Tolkein’s writings that exposes the work of a Redemptive Gift Teacher.
With Reservation, A Further Recommendation For Understanding Relational Dynamics
I will say, though I cannot recommend her works apart from some serious reservations (for those of y’all that wonder about those reservations, feel free to ask Father about them), Joanne Rowling imbued her Harry Potter series with some of the best relational dynamics among friends, particularly around the area of loyalty, of any set of books I have thus far written. Granted, it was pulpy fiction, but the dynamics of interpersonal relationships in those books played out exceptionally well. If you have a solid filter in place, and Father gives you the grace to do so, read them, but only with a massive filter in place.
My Major Questions When Asking Whether Or Not We Should Read a Particular Book
What is the source of the stream that flows from the essence of a writer, and thus, through their writings? “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34).
Has Father given you permission or instruction to read that writing? If so, then there is something in it for you.
Are there principles in the work that you are writing? If so, then read in order to hunt for the principles of a given work. For, all truth is God’s truth, whereever it may be found.
Is there a filter you need to have in place as you read a particular work?
Sometimes Father is going to give you a grace to read something that He will not give to another, and vice versa. Thus, just because you see Him teaching one through this or that work, does not mean you have a free pass to read. What you do have is a free pass to talk to Father about the book or piece in question. Use that pass repeatedly. Discern, discern, discern. For example, because of the witchcraft in HP, it is not something I would readily recommend to any and everyone. Same with Yeats, or any others. I also have some real reservations about recommending a believer read Calvin’s writings, if they are susceptible to despair that could be magnified by reading the works of a man that believed in double predestination. For those who wish to wade into a particular work, great care should be exercised in discerning what is meat to eat and what is bone to reject.
This might sound like a laborious set of tasks for some, but when we use these filters as we read, we read ore effectively and with an eye toward executing more in alignment with the priorities of the Kingdom of God.
“Where are all the real men?” is regular fare for talk shows and new books. You asked them to be women, I want to say. The result is gender confusion never experienced at such a wide level in the history of the world.
How can a man know he is one when his highest aim is minding his manners?
-John Eldredge, Wild At Heart, p. 7.-
I am a fairly sensitive and empathic soul. And yet, the westward expansion of this Antichrist spirit that wants to destroy women with misogyny also wants to destroy men with misandry.
Whether or not we realize it, and we may only deeply realize it when we understand the war has pitted men and women against one another’s inherent dignity, the critters (namely the Mesmerizing Spirit and the Spirit of Antichrist) have pitted male and female against one another.
They have made us out to be a laughingstock, and our responsibility is to speak truth to power that is being used to abuse and desensitize male and female to affection for and defending of one another.
We as a culture are in need of recovered masculine and feminine souls. Souls that have war chops and bedside manner.
Souls that love deeply and are willing to risk one for another.
Gang, our highest aspiration as men is not to be swell guys or subservient women.
It is to mirror image our dangerous and beautiful King who will not extinguish a smouldering wick, but rather will pour gas on it.
Our responsibility is to handle each other well, and to equip and release.
Sometimes a person’s soul is like a King case, and sometimes a person’s soul is like a Blessed Furnace.
Can we adapt to both, as the season demands?
Or shall we continue along this path of declawing the lions?
TRIGGER WARNING: Positive posting of a passage from the Message Paraphrase by Eugene Peterson.
If I may, Eugene Peterson wrote a plethora of works that have stood the test of time for those who are ordained and called to the office of pastor.
From Tell It Slant, Run With Horses, The Pastor: A Memoir, Under the Unpredictable Plant, A Long Obedience In the Same Direction, and Eat this Book, to Traveling Light, Reversed Thunder, Answering God, Where Your Treasure Is, Like Dew Your Youth, and Leap Over a Wall, the author of As Kingfishers Catch Fire was known for not a few well-penned-and-smithed turns of phrase.
And this capacity to smith words from the Old Testament, Hopkins-educated purveyor of biblical truth from the Tanakh was persistently on display.
And while one of those vloggers I enjoy told us to burn his bible paraphrase, there were some places where The Message shone, as it fell flat in other places.
And, yes, I am sure you can cite 12 or so places where the Message sucks it up badly, but here is a place where Peterson, an honest OT scholar, unlike other…ahem…passionate…types…does some of his finest work.
One of those places where I as a scholar really appreciated Peterson’s streetwise lexicon was Romans 12:1-2, which reads:
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Romans 12:1-2 (MSG)
Now, granted, if you have not read a major translation, you might not know the backbone of what is behind this passage, but it really does add some interesting color and decor to the concepts to which Paul is speaking.
From the ESV, we read:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers,[a] by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.[b]2 Do not be conformed to this world,[c] but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.[d]
Romans 12:1-2 (ESV)
And the NASB 95:
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, [a]acceptable to God, which is your [b]spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this [c]world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may [d]prove what the will of God is, that which is good and [e]acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:1-2 (NASB95)
WHAT?!?!?!?!? YOU MEAN PETERSON EVEN SHINES IN THE MESSAGE….
Yes….even in the Message that talks about all sorts of unusual things….
One of the things that I appreciate about Peterson, when that paraphrased is preached by someone with a large amount of earned authority to people who are well-versed in Scripture, is that another layer of revelation may come.
Look at that first phrase in Peterson. He is talking about the everyday life that you and I live, and he is exhorting us to place those before God. In other words “God, it is all yours.”
Your every single act in your every single day belongs to God. Your every single quirk and trait was placed into/hardwired into you by God. Your smile when things evoke pleasure when you are alone, and joy when you are in community, was put into you by Him. Your anger when something violates God’s justice was placed into you by Him.
NEWS FLASH: not every evokation of anger is off or in need of medication or counseling. Some things are just wrong. Full stop.
Your every enjoyment of friends and community, your every problem-solving furrow of the brow was placed there by Him. he made problems as tools for growth into our deeper design.
Next, read this from the Message.
Don’t become so well-adjusted
Right, which means allowing something to force us to comply or into a mold or to become pliable for another….
to your culture
Coming so far into alignment with the culture that raised us or that birthed us or that saw us come into completeness… Or so becoming what everyone else needs us to be..or a level of compromise that indicates a relaxing of the standards…
that you fit into it
that we become one with it, and move right into “our assigned place”
without even thinking.
Gang, this is the beginning of the brain rot that was described in Romans 1. Although they knew God, they did not glorify him.
ON THE OTHER HAND
Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.
Recognize what Papa wants for you as his child, as his son, and as his bride. Don’t give the world a place that should belong to God and vice versa. Have Him seated in the throne of your heart and move and listen, and hear and act accordingly. In accordance with that, your very life will be found on the altar in order to become material for sacrifice. Revelation 12:11 echoes the fact that setting your life down on the altar is one of the ways that you overcome the wiles of the dragon. His slick presentation is met with both a shrewdness that comes from being as one of the King’s Serpents (Matthew 10:16), and pairing that with the innocence of doves.
We so frequently pick the one or the other. Either to be pure and holy, and senseless tougue-wagging fools who do not know when to keep our mouths shut around the secrets that the Lord has told us, and we so blab everything and yield our position to the prince of the power of the air with every word we think is God-fearing, because we think we are supposed to speak all of the truth we have been given and so we do not keep tabs to distinguish what Father has instructed to to share versus what He has told us to ponder.
Or we are so slick and slimy and wise, as it were, but we also don’t maintain a threshold of innocence. God has made us to pick up both serpentine and avian tendencies. And to alight on a situation, and to be careful with the strategies that Father has shared with us so that we do not accidentally blabbed to the enemy in a provocative fashion.
OF CAKES AND GAYS
Question: When are we going to have believers who own a bakery that bakes cakes for gays as well and, clothe that freaking cake with our earned authority, such that there is a presence of conviction and love that travels with that cake, so that everyone who comes to that gay wedding falls out under the power of God, after they have paid us top dollar, they come to know the Lord and their eyes are opened.
Our current mentality towards social issues lacks a whole lot of shrewdness and a lack of understanding pertaining to our own earned authority.
It is time for us to change our strategy from an adapted position of powerlessness, to one where we exercise the FULLNESS of our authority.
Speaking of adjusting to meet the new attack with a new counteroffensive. Because they can stop us from baking and making a living doing what we are passionate about.
But they cannot stop us from praying, and if we are willing to serve them and “wash their feet” with our baked goods or whatever else, they may come away transformed.
SCOTUS telling us we could not pray in school did not keep prayer out of schools. Your not praying is your own choice. And as long as there are tests, there will always be prayer in schools.
Again, you are not a victim, and you are not powerless.
AND NOW ONTO LISA BEVERE
So, what does Lisa Bevere have to do with this.
Simple.
She carries a whole lot fo earned authority to speak to the issue of Romans 12.
And she speaks with an unction that some might label as feminist, but not quite.
She knows who her King is.
Listen to the following, where she uses the Message to get her point across.
And recognize, it is not just about exposing false teaching, but it is also about exposing inadequacies in our self-perception as preached to us by powerless pulpit-mongers.
Gang, THE CROSS IN NOT JUST ABOUT BLOOD AND PEACE AND SALVATION! IT IS A WEAPON!!!
When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”
John 2:4
Mary observed the physical reality, and expected her son to fix that reality.
And there was a wine that Jesus was going to pour out in the future that it was not time to pour out.
We need to know when and how and to be aware of and in alignment with the right thing at the right moment.
When it is time to expect the physical wine or the spiritual wine, our response should be allowing Jesus the latitude as to the precise moment of when to provide the what.
Jesus was about to provide the physical wine, not yet, for the revelation of his Messiahship, not yet…and for the full expression of that wine pour-out, way not yet. That expression and that provision of spiritual wine was years from then.
Teachers will exercise this habit that is glorious to Father and annoying to the more moving, unpredictable, and spontaneous of the Redemptive Gifts.
And we need to be ready to work in the context of those that, to some of us, is irritating.
There are sports cars among us, and there are payloaders and semis among us.
And God made them all.
And those of us that are steady and consistent and ponderous, like the Teacher and like Mary the Teacher, are going to say the same thing in each situation, and we need to be ready to function in their presence and blow their mind, and for them to walk in deeply thinking about the situation that just happened.
And I guarantee you, Mary thought about that exchange for the rest of her days.
And in the process of fixing the problem of no wine, he manifested (he incieived—that is, provided the INCEPTION of a solution to a deeper problem: lack of spiritual drink.
This is why the Seven Miracles of the Gospel of John are called the Seven SIGNS of the Gospel of John. They were parabolic illustrations for us AND FOR Jesus’ immediate audience.
Our job with the Teacher is to exercise EXTREME PATIENCE WITH THEM TO LEAD THEM ALONG AND GIVE THEM THE WINE A PIECE AT A TIME AND LET THEM STEW.
Teachers are not Microwave or Pressure Cookers or Insta-Pots of the gifts (those of you with no patience, who don’t have the skill for the slow cook, please garner some cooking skill and patience) cookers. They, like their Father, are the crockpots, the slow cookers of the gifts.
Mary took these pieces and slowed down. She pondered.
She stewed. She cured the concrete. She baked the pottery.
And, unimpulsively, she received the trust of God to steward the deposit of those memories.
My perspective is that Father was demonstrating an incredible level of trust and confidence in Adam and Eve by allowing them to roam freely in the presence of something that could and did mess everything up.
Had he wanted a perfect environment and perfect people, he would have created passion-free automatons.
But he didn’t.
He wanted, yearned for, yea, desired us.
Deeply.
In light of the stupidity of our sin.
He wanted to show the principalities and powers a picture of redemption, showing he could and would still use a messed-up people to check, checkmate, and destroy his ancient enemy.
Therefore, the Lamb was slain, from the foundation of the world.
Before Adam and Eve ever heard the words, “do not eat”, the mystery of the ages, “it is finished”, was uttered.
And you, oh follower of Christ, are no longer a sinner.
Your identity and nature, therefore, has nothing to do with an inescapable blemish of sin.
And therefore, saying we are amazed that “God loves us anyway”…
Well that word “anyway” implies we are still sinful, unworthy, partially untransformed, or in posession of the capacity to be something other than loved.
Yet, Father does not see, even those of us who have parts that are still angry with Him, as worth destruction.
You are His. Not anyway. Not in spite of some flaw you cannot get over (see Sea of Forgottenness).
Death; its shadow; its sting
; and that tenuous argument that either you are a miserable, illegitimate failure or that you retain an ontological or metaphysical, spirit-and-soul-defining flaw or nature that fatalistically will be able to, after following Christ, ultimately destroy you are, in the I-Am-present-moment-of-the-Ancient-of-Days-Lord-of-Hosts, swallowed up in unuttetable, brilliant flawless victory.
Your flaws are simply not that powerful.
Not so powerful as to overturn His rescuing and furious affection.
He is not nearly as impressed with your view of yourself as a sinner as you are.
As a Jew and a Gadite, I have the following thing to say to my friends who have become obsessed with what is commonly considered the Hebrew Roots of the faith in Jesus Christ.
Stop throwing away or dissing the Greek portion of your roots.
You were designed to flow from both.
I saw two swords in the belts of my fellow believers. One of those swords had Hebrew writing all over it, and it was forged for the desert and for meditation and for things that are more in alignment with a Jewish and Israelite way of thinking.
The other, however, was a curious narrower, straighter, double-edged blade with the writing of Koine Greek etched into it, and it, too, served a majestic purpose.
But those Greek swords in some of my compatriots’ belts were risking to fall prey to dust and rust from disuse.
And living weapons sharpen with use, rather than dull out.
And it got me to thinking.
In the acquisition of the weapons that the Hebrew and Aramiac swords of the Tanakh were written in, given “the pen is mightier than the sword”, and these words in the canon are some of the weapons of our warfare, have we laid down and abandoned the weapon that is Greek in nature?
I will never yield the Greek weapons with which I have learned to fight, the Prophet philosophical weapon of spiritual reasoning pertaining to the mind of God.
I will not lay down one sword for another.
I choose Option C.
I am not a New Testament Believer.
I am not an Old Testament Believer.
I am a Whole and Single Testament Follower of The Way.
There is a cohort of people who think the New Testament was originally written in Aramiac. Good for them.
They have never met Craig Keener.
They do not understand the value of the Greek, which for 300+ years, including the earthly life of Christ, which was the language of the people, the language of commerce, the language of business, and whose concepts are no less spiritual than Hebrew and Aramiac, and whose principles and idiom and expression gave them another third of the armory that we call the written word of God.
In our rush to acquire more Hebrew Weapons have we forgotten, denigrated, laid down, abandoned, or talked down to or about, the Greek weapons our Father gave us.
There are aresnals in both.
And Brian Simmons is not on the level with Craig Keener. Yes, I did go there.
Note, I did not call Simmons a false teacher and further note, I did not say he was not capable in his own right and arena.
However, the process of vetting his work is vastly different from that of every other major group of scholars that were involved with every other actual translation and paraphrase, the Message included.
Yes, we are all going to find something we do not like about this or that translation.
But, gang, my challenge to you is to recognize and be reminded that:
Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too,
Romans 3:29
There is truth of a different nature in the Greek of the NT. There is truth and wind and pure fire in that. And the Hebrew and Aramaic have access to the mind, and the Greek likewise has access to the heart.
Do not lay down your weapons, gang.
And quit, in your Hebrew roots arrogance, talking down to the Koine originals and the Koine weapons of your warfare.
If you need a Holy Spirit-filled fighter who executes using the treasures found in the Greek world of the NT, then for God’s sake, Reach out to me, reach out to Gordon Fee, Reach out to Craig Keener, Reach out to someone.
Those weapons should not be shied away from, but they should be embraced.
We need to walk in fulness, including the nimbleness to execute with the weapons that flowed from the Greek heart, and the Greek mind.
The Redemptive Gift of the Greeks is Prophet.
And the Prophet has zeal, heart, compassion, a builder’s tendency, and a mind for strategy and justice and right/wrong.
This is not a battle for the priority of the heart or the mind.
Rather, our job is to marry the two and see Heart and Brain as trench/foxhole buddies. To think and Feel.
Left Brain Right Brain.
Brain and Heart.
Not spiritual Aspergers or “do we function out of our heart more or our brains.”
As a Mercy who functions more from my heart, and I always have, why does it take a Mercy to exhort others to incorporate their mind into the equation?
I do not know or understand.
But, gang, we are hunting for a fulness that we cannot have if we abandon fulness because we think we have found a more ancient way that comes by embracing Hebrew and Aramaic ways at the expense of Greek ways.
Trigger warning: discussion of Assyriana torture methods.
And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.
Curious.
First and LESS importantly, is this G-d’s response to free will, or G-d’s sovereignty, or some mixture of the two?
You should be able tell how much overall value I place on overworn debates regarding Calvinism VS. Arminianism based on that question alone.
Secondly, and MUCH more importantly,
What does this say about how he deals with nations?
Read this and consider it also in light of Jonah’s prophecy of destruction of Nineveh, which included no message of “if you repent, he will spare you”. It was just straight wrath and destruction “yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overturned”.
In response to Jonah’s merciless message, the Ninevites repented and, to Jonah, God did something unexpected.
Also, on a smaller note, is Abram’s action in 15:11 of driving away the birds of prey an analogy of “judgment will come to the carcass of nations, but not yet”?
There are plenty of thoughts to consider in this text.
Gang, let’s cultivate a fascination for construction and weaving together a plethora of principles and use a set of tools that is ever-expanding.
Father, Son, And Holy Spirit use trade schools to bring us into a world that is desperately in need of fathers.
Let’s use everything we have, and be sure we have mastery of the right tool, and everything that tool can be used for in a pinch.
Deliverance is not a single tool. Rather, it is a developing, ever-expanding tool shed where we need to come to each situation with a general understanding of our tools, and a readiness to pick up and use what is unfamiliar.
For example, we sparkies (trade parlance for “electrician”) often don’t have access to hammers.
In which case, in a pinch, we need to realize the hammers to which we already have access.
Sometimes, the only tool you currently have is a wood sword, or a pair of side cutters.
So, be ready to accept that you might need a different tool, but also do jot be afraid to think about all the different tasks the tool in your hand can do, even if it means thinking outside of the box.
