When we ask questions of others, and we have the opportunity to engage in something we desire, we have then been given two things. Resources, if you will.
Rights plus responsibilities.
We do not celebrate Christmas, and this may or may not create friction with others, because there are expectations, some twisted, that frequently attend the celebration of that day.
Expectations of stuff. Expectations of purchasing on borrowed money. Expectations of rolling with a yearly pressure that may be tied to celebrating the birth of the King, or not.
That said, we as a family usually go and watch a movie. This is something that has its roots in my first marriage but makes a lot of sense. And frequently, those movies are times where the L-rd sits with me in the movie theater and talks to me about what is playing.
And I frequently see principles in said film.
This year we were delayed in seeing the film, and we finally got to see our chosen movie yesterday.
And as a huge Marvel fan, we saw Spider-Man: No Way Home.
And in this film, Peter has dealt with the reality that his secret identity has now become revealed to all. And in frustration, he visits a friend, Steven Strange, in order to ask him to make reality such that people forget who he is. During Strange’s incantation, Peter begins asking him to make exceptions, and provisos, and the balance of the movie is then given to the mess that comes from Peter wanting reality his way.
He wants the rights without the responsibilities and he continually messes things up, which then ultimately leads to a near-destruction of reality. On the way, his Aunt May dies. And other villains from previous realities come to mess with the natural order of things.
And the only way he can fix the mess is by accepting reality the way it is. And enabling Strange to cast the incantation that causes everyone including, his loved ones, to forget who he is
Gang, we have been given a reality and a set of causes that mesh together with a set of effects.
And that reality, when we don’t opt out of the whole of it, can be beautiful, though difficult.
But it is far worse to want some of reality and ignore the rest. That twists reality into something that it wasn’t made to be.
When we do that selective appropriation of reality, we avoid the problems G-d intended us to wrestle with.
And we avoid the following two passages.
“Count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds.”
“You meant it for harm, but G-d meant it for good.”
G-d, in bringing us to growth, leads us through trials and hands us problems to solve.
And He may or may not force the issue.
The issue is, when we ask Him for a chunk of reality that includes hla major blessings, are we willing to cultivate the skills necessary to scramble over and around and by that set of rocks in order to possess all He has for us in terms of blessing.
We may not fully appreciate the blessing until we have been given the curse to wrestle with.
Now, be careful when you read what I write. By “curse” I don’t mean G-d literally curses us. By “curse” I mean “problem to solve”.
Now, why did I use the word “curse”?
Two reasons. One, because the poetic nature of the way “curse” pairs with blessing.
Two, because too frequently, WE CURSE the difficult or inconvenient problem G-d gives us to solve, because He treats us as sons.
Slaves do not get problems to solve. Sons, rather, are they who get the problems to solve.
So, take heart, love. Because if you are getting problems when you pray, it is likely because G-d is trusting you as a son.
Be at peace, and if you need to solve a nettlesome problem, please feel free to reach out. I and others, as fellow sons, can help you to solve that problem.
G-d wants to bless you, but in order to do it, He has to calibrate you in order to equip you to solve problems.
Beloved, I would like to invite your spirit to attend to the text of Scripture below. Spirit, hear the word of the L-rd for you for today.
Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead was the father of Jephthah. And Gilead’s wife also bore him sons. And when his wife’s sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, “You shall not have an inheritance in our father’s house, for you are the son of another woman.” Then Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob, and worthless fellows collected around Jephthah and went out with him. After a time the Ammonites made war against Israel. And when the Ammonites made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah from the land of Tob. And they said to Jephthah, “Come and be our leader, that we may fight against the Ammonites.” But Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “Did you not hate me and drive me out of my father’s house? Why have you come to me now when you are in distress?”
Judges 11:1-7 ESV
Spirit, it is possible to possess your birthright in isolation, but we cannot become people of destiny apart from community.
And in order to have the destiny that belongs to us in fullness, we need not just any community, but the right community.
Spirit, I would encourage you to remember, that G-d wastes nothing, even our mistakes and our selections of the wrong communities. He was here first, He allows and orders our steps, and though He is sovereign, He is not in control as with a marionette. Unlike Panem, He does not dangle your reality out of reach like a carrot to a donkey.
He does not reap you in order to terrorize you and keep you grasping for something unreachable.
He may use you to thwart a wicked system or wicked systems, and He may allow you painful passages for a season because He is hunting for true social justice, not the place where one political party overthrows another so that the oppressed can become the oppressors, but the L-rd’s destruction of unjust power structures so that HE CAN RADIATE HIS GLORY IN INTEGRITY and so the government can be placed more firmly upon His shoulder (Isaiah 9:6). In order to accomplish this, He may allow you to come to some level of harm in order to accomplish an end against his enemy from which they will never recover. You may end up putting some real skin in the game, and enduring some real pain, so the enemy thinks you are out because of despair. Friends may appear to turn against you, but this is all to the working of the L-rd.
Spirit, the question is, how will you respond when you are placed in painful situations, not situations of abundant comfort, but of abundant discomfort, pressed in on every side?
Jephthah faced three problems as I see it.
He forgot who the real enemy was. He was focused on the people who had made fun of him, ran him out of town, probably gaslit him, not remembering that the L-rd’s enemies throughout the book of Judges were the Baalim which His people stubbornly worshipped. He focused on their hatred and so backed himself into a corner that was not the L-rd’s focus for him.
He did not realize the L-rd was allowing pain into his life in order to build a greater victory against the L-rd’s enemies. G-d allows pain to bring us up to a higher place of earned authority.
Most importantly, Jephthah responded to the pain in many horrid ways, wrong ways, and this wrong response to pain, instead of bringing a blessing, brings a skewed perspective and violated boundaries.
So spirit, when bad things happen to you, I bless you to slow down, stop, pause, and reflect.
I bless you to Selah.
I bless you to purposefully ascertain and discern any potential reasons the L-rd may be allowing painful situations.
I bless you to stop and connect as deeply as you can with the L-rd and to learn His plan for you in this season of pain. Jephthah was a warrior and designed to war, not to lead politically. The L-rd intentionally created a vacuum in military leadership so He could bring His children to accept His appointed general for that season.
I bless you not to engage in rash vows or hasty decisions.
I bless you to hear His voice.
I bless you to enshroud yourself in Father’s-wisdom-baptized decisions, and not go beyond and sacrifice things He never told you to sacrifice, unlike Jephthah.
I bless you to rest and allow the L-rd to unfold His plans in fullness so you can have not just your birthright, but also your destiny in the context of the series of communities He has for you.
When you remove something that has metastisized at an alarming rate, what instrument do you use? Answer: a scalpel. Or a sword. That depends on the context.
Likewise, when you are in Denial about a result and the truth, and the stronghold is allowed to gather strength, that stronghold rooted in denying or hiding from reality creates an oppression. This oppression, left unchecked, will result in the Fourth Head of Leviathan, which we will discuss in the post on that head.
In order to survive and then thrive, you MUST tear down that stronghold, or fall under its weight. In order to tear down that stronghold effectively, you must deal with the root of Denial.
Denial. We heard it when Bob Jones said Bill Clinton had a mantle of humility. We heard about it when people suggested on one side that the morality of the President has little to do with whether or not he or she can govern. “We are not electing a pastor but a President.” We got to the point with Clinton when he said “he didn’t mean it as adultery”. We suspend judgment when it is our people, but heap it when it is the other party or group.
And meanwhile, Joe Biden is grasping for legitimacy because we allowed the President’s office to get that raucously defiled. This creation of the Office of the President-Elect, complete with Presidential Blue backdrop is a Denial-laced grab for legitimacy, because he has not been sworn in.
And many of us appear not to give a damn nor bother to pray for the toll this passed-around nonsense is taking on the marriages and families of those in positions of influence and public service.
So, Donald Trump can be the wrecking ball all you want until the cows come home.
Bill Clinton can be humble all Bob Jones claims.
Bush 43 can be the one who wants to “restore dignity to the Oval Office” while he commits us to an open-ended battle campaign with zero end in sight.
Clinton can give us surpluses until we are blue in the face…
Both Republicans and Democrats can spend us into oblivion with impugnity…
And we can pass around lists that say Republican are for limited government…
Even though Trump and Bush 43 asked for stimulus packages totaling in the billions of dollars….
However, it will not mean a thing as long as we are single-sided in our attacks and corrections and rebukes.
We still have not come out of our Denial yet, church. Neither have our government officials. And I am not convinced they want to.
The problem, indeed, is that SHIELD is a nothing more than a front for HYDRA. Those of you who have never seen the MCU movie “Captain America: Winter Solider” may not know what I mean by this. So, here are the pertinent movie clips.
And we are conserving and liberating nothing, except for the cancer that is present. Our responsibility is not to let one party or group play us off one another. In ANY arena, political or otherwise.
Spiritually speaking, this Denial and “my-partial-perspective-is-the-whole-picture” mindset is what allows things to grow without our knowledge or consent: In government, in the private sector, in the church and in the academy (looking at you, Liberty University sex scandal).
The Mesmerizing Spirit and this partial-as-whole perspective create a defilement of our times, our seasons, and our capacity to accurately discern the rhythm of times, seasons, and our moving forward in a horizontal manner with the constellation of our relationships in the surround.
When you are vested in the success of a political party come hell or high water, regardless of the actual truth, you have crossed the line into Denial.
When you are vested in the protection of a church’s reputation regardless of who was harmed by the abuse (Mars Hill, Hillsong, the Southern Baptist Convention’s mishandling of Beth Moore who called them out on their sex abuse culture), then your attitude is part of the problem.
When Denial strikes, prophets go hazy with their sight, planes fall from the sky because of imprecise engineering, and whole movements in the church go batty because they lose their focus. I am looking at the German Lutheran church for starters, where Martin Luther, the Exhorter, wanted a number of reforms, but moved to embrace anti-semitism and wasted the latter portion of his life combatting and slandering the Jewish people.
This problem of Denial and non-reality can affect anybody regardless of their gift, but it is particuarly and disproportionately damaging to the Exhorter.
Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, FDR, Ben Franklin, Walt Disney, the Assemblies of G-d, the Apostle Paul, Moses, Solomon, the state of California, Hollywood. All have had seasons where they were massively wide of the mark while being effective in other areas, and for some of them, that distraction and non-reality cost them their birthright.
And yes, when you are a President that says “I alone can do this,” then there might be an issue embodied in that mindset.
Or you are a king who, for the sake of political peace, you marry many foreign women…..
Or you are a daughter of a pagan king and are sold as a commodity to cement your father’s political relations (Jezebel), and you swear you are never going to let another person control your destiny or aspirations….
Or if you are a skilled animator who pressures everyone around you to the point where you think that because you are Walt Disney, no one of your staff will unionize….
This diorama of reality is not about one specific set of pot shots against one person. It is about helping to illustrate the worst of what happens when we embrace non-reality.
Defining Reality
Reality is the latest manifestation of the Fourth Principle. before that, it was referred to as the Principle of Sowing and Reaping, and, before that, the Principle of Pain and Suffering.
By reality, I mean embracing WHAT IS as the L-rd sees it. He sees more fully than we do. So, right off the bat, we are talking about recognizing that we see only part of the picture, or, as one Exhorter put it:
…we know in part, and we prophesy in part
Paul to the believers in Corinth.
Gang, reality means embracing the L-rd’s agenda and applying our part for what it is, into the whole, and refusing to see our portion as the whole situation. Broadly speaking, we regularly see less than the L-rd, for some reason….
So, our responsibility is to ever look to the L-rd for direction and input as we progress into our journey.
We seek His agenda and what of His agenda He has placed within us.
Some Implications of Reality
Our responsibility in hunting for His agenda (Reality) is to refuse the popular phrases or excuses of the Charismatic Movement such as:
” I do not have the time to. research this/seek for that/therefore give me the finished product, because I came expecting….”
“I do not have time to process these raw materials. G-d will send me somoeone who will provide the finished product.”
“I do not have time to do this work or that assignment or that thing over there or this thing over here.”
It is one thing for us to ask for help when we really need it, but to engage in every situation by waltzing in with a bang and a flourish and expecting others to give to you finished products from their resources with zero understanding of the cost to them, or the sequence of Giving and Receiving is something entirely different.
There is an entitlement mindset pervasive in the body of Christ that loves to claim divine intervention for Every. Single. Situation where our poor planning or lack of resources is a factor.
Uttering Praise the L-rd and G-d Came Through when He actually came through is not a problem.
However, when we poorly plan and poorly execute and someone comes in and bails us out and we refuse to thank them for fixing our problem in our blindness, and we refuse to make course corrections or adjustments so we do not have the same problem in the future, then we have a larger root problem, and are not far from walking in non-reality.
We simply have to walk this cause-and-effect thing we call Reality more cleanly. If we are chronically late, for example, then we need to figure out why we are late and fix the problem.
We must intentionally sow good seed in order to reap a good crop.
Now, I am not beating up people who have a wound or some trauma or some junk where G-d is working in a long-term process with them to bring them to a better place. Each of us has some issues and stuff and none of us has arrived at the place of sheer perfection. If you are actively attempting to work at bettering your situation, that is one thing.
But it is entirely a different thing when sloth is part of the equation, and you are allowing life happen to you. The spirit of passivity does not belong to the highly effective son or daugher in the Kingdom; they happen to situations.
You must, in walking in Reality, know the difference between pawning your situations off on others, asking for help if you are stuck, and working at the areas you know something about and have means to fix.
It is critically important for each of us to have a goal in mind and, pending our relentless consultation with the L-rd about those plans, move toward the goal that should result in us possessing our birthright.
And in engaging Reality, we must all learn how to….
Embrace the Right Level and Kind of Pain
Indiscriminate pain avoidance is not the domain of those who wish for Reality. Rather, our responsibility is embracing the right kind and level of pain.
Your Pain….Productive Or Not…You Decide…
You have a score of choices with respect to what you do with your pain. And there are two types of pain….productive or unproductive.
Grossly put, unproductive pain is pain that comes into your life situation from which you fail to derive any lesson of any sort. You do not connect with the L-rd in this pain, and as a result, the adversity brings little to know growth.
Productive pain, on the other hand, is pain from which the L-rd is able to instruct you.
Most pain starts out as unproductive. It is the lesson that makes the difference in whether or not the pain moves from the Unproductive category to the Productive category.
For example, years ago, my father abandoned me and my parents divorced. For a long time I could only feel the sting and the heartache of my father’s absence, and this was compounded by the fact that he died a few years back.
What helped transform this pain from unproductive to productive was me helping others who had lost fathers to abandonment or alcohol or death, and blessing them. Taking care of my sons and my daughter.
Sometimes, walking in the blessings that come from walking in reality means embracing others who need when you are in a place of lack and stepping into places to bless and encourage in areas where you have received little to no human encouragement.
We have a perfect Father, and we lack no father, even if our eathly fathers abandoned us. Given we have a perfect and loving Father, what do we lack in terms of tools, affection, and depth of capacity to love and father others?
Nothing.
Reality dictates that we lack nothing with which to father. Not wisdom or resources. Not heart or spirit. Not emotions. Not understanding, knowledge, or wisdom. And certainly not a sense of justice or the capacity for a heart oozing with compassion. Because our G-d could related to our frailties, we also can relate to the weakness of others, and the lack in others.
Because He received from Our Father, we also can receive and then give to others who lack.
Provided we are wiling to move beyond slavery and into the embrace of our Father and give that embrace to others.
We love, because he first loved us. We have freely received SO MUCH, and so we are able to give even in areas where we have lacked.
This is reality that comes from the Father of Lights who has given us his son. How much will He not also give us all things.
Translation: G-d gave us everything He had in the embodiment of His Son. What’s a little bit of stuff? Especially when we are sent to be life-giving to others.
