I invite your spirit to connect in the name of Yeshua ha-Maschiach
Spirit, listen to the word of G-d for you for today.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1:16-17 ESV
Spirit, everything that you have received that pertains to life and godliness dwells in you, the human spirit. Everything that the person in whom you dwell needs resides with you. Every tool, understanding, need, resource, component, all of it, the whole thing, resides with you.
One of those gifts, one of the greatest of these gifts is the gift of Father Himself.
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
John 14:23 ESV
Way beyond the Father merely forgiving us our sins and deigning to allow Himself to see us as miserable sinners barely saved by grace, He TRANSFORMS US and LIVES IN US.
The Ancient of Days gives His whole self to you, beloved. He resides in and partners with you. He does not keep His distance. Rather, He crosses the full distance and desires to make His home within you. You are not a reworked trashcan, spray-painted white and then He tosses in a shot of bleach to kill the stench. No, my love, rather you are completely transformed into a different vessel altogether, one for glory and beauty and love and tenderness and intimacy and adventure.
And He gives you a bunch of different tools and vessels to use, some for drinking, some for planting, some for growing, some for pouring out water, and on and on.
Spirit, He does not give a single bad or seconnd-rate gift. All of His gifts to you are first-rate and special and unique.
So spirit, I bless you.
I bless you to know the depth and range of His gifts. I bless you to feel how much pleasure and love and joy resonate in Father’s heart to be living with you. I bless you with the revelation that Father does not look at you and barely tolerates you. Rather, He longs for the moment when He can talk to you about all sorts of things, and His purpose and birthright for you.
I bless you to see deeply the good and the perfect, and that they are with you, and that there is no more perfect gift He can give than the fullness of Himself in you. He lives in you and makes home the way He wants it in you, and He is fully committed to changing everything about you or about His living environment that is not in alignment with the absolute best path and place for you.
He also takes on the burden of transforming you to a vessel of honor and filling you with His love.
I bless you to be free and full of all the things He has for you.
The more I receive protection from Him, the less I need it from other sources.
The more I allow His blood and love to cover me, the less I need that from others.
The more I am with Him, the more I cover friendship, but not because it protects me.
Emotional and spiritual connection are what I seek with others, not protection that brings them legitimacy.
The less I need you to protect me, the less energy you expend and the more you can spend time as a son executing.
Holiness is not just “set apart”.
Biblically, holiness is execution on the cause-and-effect that produces changes and moves us from glory to glory, faith to faith, strength to strength, and deep to deep.
Movement that flows from being set apart….the process more than the product….followed by the product that leads to change….change…that is holy.
That is, holiness is way more transformational than positional.
This is why reconciliation is the point of the gospel, rather than salvation……process, not point.
The reality is, will I let Him control me, if others attempt to co-opt that authority, or will I reject the awe of man when it comes time to choose this day whom I will serve. This is the gospel of grace in Joshua 24:15
”Choose this day whom you will serve…. But as for me and my house, we will serve the L-rd.”
A few weeks ago, I posted some thoughts pertaining to Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, and some of the cruel realities of fathering in the last 40 or so years.
I wrote the following as part of that post:
“For those of you that have not seen Guardians of the Galaxy 2, you might not understand….but for those who have, father issues are some of the hardest to deal with…and for those of us who had messed-up interactions with our fathers who refused intimacy, and who had to attempt to make do with predators as fathers, until we embraced the Father of Lights as our Father or His Son as Father, this cut and the following posted segments from GOTG 2 are for you.”
Now, my sister, Dina, had pushed back to me, when I was remarking bitterly against the dynamic of spiritual fathering typically presented by most charismatic churches, that G-d does set the lonely in families.
So, in light of that remark, I continued in that post:
“And to Yeshua, thank you for the steadfast fathering you provided.
“He sets the lonely in families…” even if those families are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And the nature of those family units might range from place to place.
Well, there is a place in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, where Peter Quill is forced into a major fight with his father, Ego, in which one of them must kill the other. Earlier, in the prequel to this MCU film, we learn Peter’s mother died from cancer, and during the unfolding of events in the second film, Peter is drawn into the fight with his biological father because Ego was the one who implanted the tumor in his mother’s brain that killed her.
Well, throughout the film, there are a number of alternative-family themes that are presented. As we know that Gamora was the adoptive daughter of Thanos, the Mad Titan and genocidal maniac, and Rocket, the Guardians’ very-wisecracking genius raccon mechanic, was the product of experiments that resulted in him literally being ripped apart and put back together, making it difficult for him to trust anyone. So that when Rocket becomes vulnerable, it hits on things that many of us Gen-X’er’s, and beyond, have endured: Especially being thrown-away by many of our fathers, pastors, and “coverings”, which is why so many of us are suspicious of people purporting to be apostolic fathers and spiritual leaders.
It also helps show that many of us in my generation, because the Trinity Himself has sovereignly raised us, because we were fathered by G-d, there is deep compassion in many of us who survived the loss of physical family, and many of us developed hearts to father other throw-aways.
Dorothy, a friend of mine, remarked the following, and I want none of y’all to miss it, gang:
“The idiosyncratic broken-but-healing-and-unlearning-toxic-patterns found family in Guardians was the realest part of the movies, tbh. And it needed the comedy and the satire, because it hit pretty hard sometimes. We’re all in this broken scene, somewhere, however long or briefly… On a few levels, it’s about stopping and redeeming a multi-generational saga of dysfunction.
Also, it was a tiny bit cathartic to watch [Rocket] the raccoon vent so much semi-justified distrust and pain and rage in the “safe” context of a story with a happy ending. That kind of strong-coffee vicious bitterness doesn’t show up in cinema too often, but it’s very familiar.
Dorothy
My ex-spiritual father and mother did some things like this to many of us who were college-age in the early 2000’s.
The “father” preached a sermon one December evening in which he was responding to a group of us who had taken it upon ourselves, at the direction of the L-rd, to engage in territorial warfare against the major clowns that were over the college in our small town, and we were quite effective against them.
In said sermon, he remarked, and I quote, that:
“a bunch of kids were squirting at principalities with water pistols”. And he had said this in light of the reality that we refused to submit our ministry to his apostolic oversight and covering.
Further, practicing witches had infiltrated the church’s intercessory group, which was led by the “mother”, whether or not she realized it, and launched attacks against us, cursing us in a number of ways. All in all, by the time we all left the college after graduation that year, many of us were really beaten up badly. And many of us were trailed for years afterward by a network of antichrist spirits that had connected between every town where we each moved to. It made our capacity to hold jobs and buy property all but impossible. On top of that, other things were imparted to us because these believers perceived we were not submitting to their authority.
So, when you barf on me with “submit to my covering and apostolic oversight”, that’s a trigger that I am going to probably have trust issues. I don’t do covering, and I don’t mess with control or manipulation, one bit.
And when your covering proves to provide me no significant increase of spiritual protection or blessing, but rather constrains and constricts me with the threat of cursing if I don’t lick your boot or kiss your ass, then we are also going to have issues.
What follow are a few clips from Guardians that show what real fathering is like.
Once Yondu realized what Ego was doing with children, he resisted delivering Peter to Ego.
There are other places where this fathering shows up, and it provides solid impetus for us to model some level of fathering the best we can, as many kids are growing up without a solid model of earthly fathering, even if it means the only fathering we received was directly from G-d the Father; friendships with; or through books, materials, blog posts, composed by men and women with a fathering mantle.
And granted, Yondu was probably not what many people would describe as a model father, but he did intervene to protect Peter from Ego, and he did reconcile with his clan, the Ravagers, and made peace with Stakar.
There will come a time when we each have to accept the fathers in our lives, however imperfect the packaging is, and just allow them to love on us as best they each can. And I think this is why we need things like strong-coffee vicious bitterness to help us heal something deeply that we cannot possibly heal on our own, gang.
Be deeply at peace, precious friends, and know you are each loved so incredibly, and please, if you need to talk about some of these issues, my email is theparacleteshammer@gmail.com or the paracleteshammer@protonmail.com. I can also be reached on my cell at (413) 657-1887
There have been a few times where I told the story of my divorce. And while I mentioned the adultery and the emotional abuse and the other dynamics, I will note that the divorce in the spirit did not coincide with the divorce in the legal sense.
Sure, my legal divorce was filed Pearl Harbor Day 2012 and finalized the day of the Boston Bombing, but the actively divorce took place a couple of years earlier, in March 2010.
At that point, my then-wife gave me an ultimatum. Move with her or she was leaving with the kids.
At which point I felt the breaking of the covenant.
The rug had been pulled.
I was 30 at the time. And I knew the marriage was over and that she had chosen her mother over me.
This is a situation that caused me to turn internally and the only person I had to turn to and lean on was the King.
When you have no one, as I did, you still have the King.
And when you are alone, He will build things into you, and a depth of intimacy that can survive even death.
‘Cuz, you know, “love is as strong a death.”
Now, in order for love to be made as strong as death, it must endure against the spirit of death. You are meant to be tested in your kettle against certain things in the spirit.
Kind of like Isaiah 54:17, if you want no weapon formed against you to prosper, then you have to be willing to sing in your barrenness and embrace the first 16 verses and the process of Isaiah 54.
Cause and effect.
If you sow against testing and refinement, you will be stronger against the fight.
Ask me how I am so effective against some things.
It’s because I have been in the fight for years.
If you want the walk someone else has, you also are asking for the grace to endure what that other person has endured.
Friend, your responsibility is to dig deep wells with the King and lean HARD on him.
I am proof in the Kingdom that this can be done, and it will knit your hearts more deeply and more intimately with his and it will pour into you a well and a storehouse of resources that others will find life-giving after you pass through the season of hell.
Lean, lean, lean….
Do not lean on your own understanding….
In all your ways KNOW Him (that same word for “know” in Proverbs 3:6, is the same word for Adam “knew” his wife Eve).
There is an intimacy that only comes when you have suffered deep emotional loss.
And that will bless your heart and spirit with a spring of life you never had.
And the priest who offers any man’s burn offering shall have for himself the skin of the burnt offering that he has offered.
Leviticus 7:8 ESV
This is the only time the hide of the animal is mentioned as being gifted in the text of Scripture.
For me, this has stood out for a few weeks, and I have been pondering why the skin of the burnt offering?
What is being done here?
The whole offering is being offered to the L-rd, so why is the skin so special here to be singled out as a gift.
Skins turn to leather, which has a boatload of uses. Perosnally I love the smell of tanned leather.
So, let’s grab some commentators and see what they have to say.
Roy Gane mentions nothing about the skins (NIV Application Commentary). Richard Hess only mentions the fact of the skins transferring to the priest with no exposition as to why (Expositor’s Bible Commentary). Allen Ross, author of “Holiness to the L-rd: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus) mentions the L-rd took care of the practical needs of the priest in the offering. “Not only did they eat the meat, but they also received the skins. In addition to providing clothing for the families of the priests, no doubt a lively trade could have been sustained from the skins taken from the sacrifices. G-d takes care of those who minister thorugh the giving of worshipers.” There, in the sacrificial system instituted by Moses, is found “spiritual satisfaction [for] the worshiper and practical needs [for] the priest in service” (Ross, 176).
And finally, Jacob Milgrom says nothing as to the purpose of the hides, though he does mention it is passing, and talking about the volume of hides produced from personal burnt offerings, he menitons these all belong to the priests.
So What?
What is the purpose of the hides from the burnt offering.
Being left to speculate with my gut based on the rest of the text. I will note that the L-rd covered the first man and his bride with skins from a sin offering:
And the L-RD G-d made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Genesis 3:21 ESV
I wonder if the L-rd’s assignment of hides from the burnt offering to the priests was designed to be a perpetual reminder of his mercy to the first couple in the garden, a memorial of His mercy. And as we hand Him everything in that portion called the burnt offering in recognition of all He has done, as the children of Israel handed the L-rd the whole of the burnt offerings in regonition of His transplanting and sustaining the nation of Israel in Mizraim, perhaps it ws a reminder of the extent of His mercy in making sure the priests, and we by extension, as members of a royal priesthood, are covered, regadless of our behavior, perpetually by His mercy. The burnt offering is also the only offering that has to be executed morning and evening regardless of the state of Israel. The other offerings are only executed WHEN an event happens. The burnt offering, however, is mandated without respect to event. Therefore, baked into the process of the burnt offering is a picture of Father’s unfailing love toward us.
This is speculation, but it is speculation that makes sense.
Consider this today as you read the text, that His mercy and his love must always burn, and there is never a time when that fire does not burn out (Leviticus 6:13), and that fire is powered by the never-faiing burnt offering, morning and evening.
My son, Isaac, is an outstanding example of obedience and submission and helping others.
That said, he sometimes takes it too far and it occurred to me as though he acts like he is living on a plantation.
Let me explain.
Plantation Mentality
Isaac was up this morning, and as per his MO, he was standing at the bus stop under an overcast sky that as threatening with some rain. I asked him to come to the porch in order to sit down. Now, the bus is not incredibly easy to hear, but if you quiet down, you can hear it, and given Isaac’s arm was hurt from a biking accident today, he could not play, and I encouraged him to sit down at the front porch, some 200 feet from the curb, and talk to me. He pushed back that he did not want to be left behind, and that the bus would leave without him, and I pushed back and asked him to calm himself, and not to fret or fear, and that I have a key and a car, and would give him a ride if they left him, which didn’t calm him much.
He was afraid the master was going to whip him into submission if he did not jump and sprint to the bus.
So, we talked, and listened for the bus, and a couple of times he thought the bus had come, and it was just a car. I reminded him that I taught him what a diesel engine sounds like, and just gently told him to continue sitting.
And, discerning the presence of something malicious, I said:
“That is a spirit of fear that you are walking in, and it is keeping you from being able to rest and walk with a sound mind, son. You know how I know this? I walk in the same thing, and when I get in a spirit of fear, I respond by getting angry and mean and cussing and hurting stuff, people, etc. Let’s just calm down.”
And the bus showed up, and we walked together, and I encouraged him to slow his pace and to not freak out over the bus.
It was a set of expectations that was placed on him by that critter, and he rolls over regularly for whatever the source of the pressure might be, and sometimes acts like a slave (I do the same thing myself). And I said, “you are a son, not a slave. I do not want you having the mentality that you have to sprint, risk falling and injuring yourself again, and having to, instead of going to school, going to the ER, and having a doctor fix more issues. The bus driver can wait another 45 seconds while you walk safely.”
And as we walked, surely enough, the bus waited another half-minute, while he walked at a decent pace. And as he got on, and I talked to the bus driver, I was telling her that he needed to learn how to be safer and not panic that she was going to leave him behind.
She thanked me, and drove off, with Isaac on board.
And I saw the picture of Isaac picking cotton as a field hand, and heard the words in my spirit, “leaving Satan’s plantation.”
And I recognized my plantation mindset as well. And began the process of repenting of that mindset.
The Spirit of Fear
It is the spirit of fear that keeps us on the devil’s plantation. Makes us push ourselves and those around us to just slave away to whatever agenda he has for us, and makes us drop our boundaries and our willingness to say “no” and crowds us. And that brings us to the brink of Thyroid and Adrenal Fatigue.
And it prevents us from embracing the Power of Yeshua, the Love of the Father, and the Sound Mind of the Ruach Hakodesh, which brings us to a place of security in Him. When my strings get pulled, I get jazzed up on whatever irritant is tweaking me at the time, and it’s harmful to whatever purpose Father is moving me toward in the given season. And it disconnects me from my timeline.
But…
And G-d through Yeshua did not design us for this. He did not design us to flow in fear of circumstances. And when we violate the design, we come to harm. It is the fear of the L-rd that is the only fear in which we should walk (honoring, and keeping Him our priority, as contrasted to mindlessly being afraid of Him). And when we walk out of the Fear of the L-rd, and in the fear of the enemy or the fear of the circumstances, we disintegrate, and that pretty rapidly.
Gang, it is time for us to come off of the devil’s plantation, and to see the shackles cut from around our feet.
The only way we can do that is by embracing power, love, and a sound mind through the Fear of the L-rd, which is a desire for Him and His honor, in response to the multi-colored expression of His love.
And the embrace of power, love, and a sound mind comes through repentance (which is vastly more than just the starting block of changing the way you think, and moving forward, pointing your orientation in a new direction), and working with blessing and coaching our adrenals.
The Adrenals-Future Post Preview
The adrenals are the landing pad for covenants and agreements.
They are also very spiritual organs.
And, with the brain and the heart, they are one of three thinking organs.
