Spirit, listen to the word of G-d for you for today.
…then the L-RD G-d formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the L-RD G-d planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. -Gen 2:7-8 ESV-
Spirit, there was a time when man was created in this segment. He was formed by Father, composed by Father, and then endued with the presence of the human spirit that was given to him by Father….
To the whole person reading this: You were created by the L-rd and fashioned with affection, tenderness, and with an eye toward reality. And into you, G-d placed the human spirit. And in that moment of placement of spirit into body, the soul came into being, and was designed to grow into life-giving partnership with the spirit in the lead. And too often, we bring healing to the body and to the soul, and very little gets done with respect to the spirit. And my heart is to see all three ministered to well. Hence, when I write blessings, it is for the too-often-neglected spirit I write.
Spirit, after you were breathed in, and then began the sequence of knitting together the soul and the body, following that process, the L-rd took Adam, and put the man into the Garden of the L-rd.
The text does not spell out that segment of the process, but I am under the impression He, as a G-d of Process, did not just create him and then immediately drop him into the Garden the next moment. Rather, in light of His love of processes that unpack, I wonder at the possibility that He took man to the Garden by way of a journey, and while they were on the way to Eden, conversed.
And what they conversed about, and what, as the new creation was present, what the man was thinking on the way to the garden.
Spirit, in thinking about this, I want to encourage you with the following.
G-d did not just make you in a haphazard or hasty moment. No, he took a process to form you. And that process was laced with affection and love and with an eye to your purpose and design. As many of us as there are, spirit, there are also unique designs and purposes.
So, spirit, I bless you to hear and rejoice in the reality of the gift of Dad breathing you into the body of the human of which you are part. I bless you in your leadership role. I bless you to know a revelation of G-d’s love for you. And I bless you to know that you are His gift of love and uniquely designed to solve a specific set of problems. Problems are not a bad thing. Rather, they are a good thing. And problems were given to us to be solved. And as we solve problems, tools are developed.
I bless you to find the tools you need to solve the problems you were given, spirit.
I bless you with the revelation that you were made to be unpacked more and more so that complex problems are met with complex solutions.
I bless you to know there will be a journey that G-d takes you on that is designed to unpack you as you work in growing in reconciliation to Him and in turn, help reconcile others to Himself.
Be at peace, spirit, in your growth journey, in the name of Yeshua. And as you arrive at your home, be further at peace as you receive the pieces the King has for you, and as He provides problems to solve.
Know that in his provision of problems, solutions will develop as you get familiar with the nature of the problem. And that process might take time. I encourage you to be patient as you ponder and process the set of problems in front of you.
And I bless you to always remember His love as you work the problem in front of 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.”
I was reading something in the biblical text this evening and I had a bit of something like a revelation.
Sometimes the one thing the King wants to emphasize, is the one thing we as translators and the writers of the original canon treated as an afterthought. We treat things as an afterthought because of the way they are phrased. And simply because of the smallness of the word, maybe the original writers did, too, if we take the words in the text at face value.
Allow me to explain.
It was Genesis 1, and always with the Fourth Day, there is something with the Fourth Day the King likes to highlight for me, and it is a kiss from him. It is a small phrase, only three words, and I have never heard the phrase emphasized, thus it seems to me most people do not treat it with emphasis when the read it, because it takes up such a small percentage of the text.
Maybe the original writer of the Creation Narrative, whether you call him Moses, or JEDP (ahem), or anyone else, just wrote this one phrase and gave it no further thought, but I would like to think it meant something, especially since these entities feature prominently elsewhere in the Tanakh, and in the Revelation and the First chapter of James.
So, here is the text for the Fourth Day of Creation:
And G-d said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And G-d made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And G-d set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And G-d saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
Genesis 1:14–19 ESV
Did you see it?
And the Stars
I wonder, gang. I wonder if we know of this in this way. For He is the G-d of the Seven Stars, Who Walks Among Them, and knows the starways, and walks among the starlight.
And it is the stars as the Sons of G-d that shout for joy in the book of Job, and the Father of Heavenly Lights that gives every good and perfect gift from above as He walks among the stars, which are themselves heavenly lights.
With rain, with sun With much, with less With joy, with pain With life, with death
The only things that satisfy come from You They come from You
Everything that’s beautiful Everything that’s wonderful Every perfect gift comes from You
Your grace, Your heart Your voice, Your touch Your word, Your peace Your hope, Your love
A thousand words could not explain A thousand worlds could not contain Every perfect gift comes from You
It comes from the Father of Lights It comes from the Giver of Life It comes from the Heavens above It’s coming straight from Your heart To the people You love
“Everything” by Chris Tomlin
When I was 18, the very first time I got to see the starways and the pitchblack of the heavens, I was in ROTC in college, and we were in Camp Blanding in Northeast Florida. My batallion was on a night march, and that was the very first time I was able to identify more than 12 constellations just based on patterns I had seen in books as a kid. And it was radiant, though not radiant like the sun. Sparkly.
And on the Fourth Day, as with other things pertaining to the Redemptive Gift of Exhorter, G-d usually highlights things in patterns of threes.
The nature of G-d
The Three major Exhorters of Scripture: Moses, Solomon, Paul.
The Sun, the Moon, the Stars
For me this highlights something that I wish to give to you as a gift in the arena of how I do hermeneutics, and precisely why the tagline of TPH is “Into all truth by the Spirit of G-d”.
It’s not the whole of scripture, written with a 1-to-1 mindset, with each word having and sharing equal weight with all the others. Sometimes, the Holy Spirit is going to highlight or lowlight certain words of phrases, depending on what is going on with you, and where He wants to point you in a given matter.
Sometimes, a phrase waits 10-30 years to emerge and glow off the page.
And this phrase “and the stars” just hits me in all the right places, moreso now I have seen stars and auroras and other entities with proper telescopes.
I put to you, as me reader, that, when you are reading, that you allow Holy Spirit the lattitude to highlight or emphasize something differently than you have allowed Him previously. If you allow Him to guide you along the river, you have no idea where He will pull the canoe up so He can take you exploring. Reading the text, as with other parts of our life, should be an adventure that is completely life-giving.
He may emphasize a piece of the text you never thought He would.
For example, when was the last time you heard there were three “veyahavtas” (the Hebrew Phrase translated as “You shall love”) in the text of the Torah.
And for you who are Torah haters, how many know the heart of the bible is the law, and the heart of the law is Deuteronomy, and for those who want to get intimate with how blessings and curses operate, you have to be intimate with how Deuteronomy operates?
I know we are not under the law and G-d abolished the law completely without exception, but maybe there is something of value in reading the law.
Just some thoughts. And yes, some of what I wrote above is a bit tongue-in-cheek.
But seriously, maybe it would behoove us to see, instead of a bipolar book, where the G-d on the Right Hand Side of the Book apologizes for the acts of the G-d on the Left Hand Side of the Book, perhaps we are dealing with the outworking of a very complex WHOLE COVENANT.
Perhaps there is life and fathering that will break the bastard curse off of us, if we will begin to obsessively hunt for the Father in the Tanakh, and in the Torah.
It’s not a list of rules and regs, gang, appended by Talmuds and Mishnahs and Gemaras. It is a arkload of principles and relationships available to anyone with the cojones to hunt for Dad’s mind AND heart within its pages.
For example, the first time “Father” is specifically implied in the pages of the Biblical Text is Exodus 4:22.
“Thus says the L-RD, ‘Israel is my firstborn son’.”
From Exodus 4:22 ESV
I wonder if one problem with too many of us that want to run from the Torah and the Tanakh and Whole Covenant into Better Covenant/Worser Covenant is that our relationships with our own earthly dads were so messed-up that we cannot bear the thought of beginning a relationship with G-d the Father in His fullness without a social worker present. And truly, if we were abused by our fathers, we might need someone who will take that role in the spirit for a season.
But, really, the gems are in the Torah for us to find if we are willing. The fat of the land, all of the fat of the land, is present for those of us who look to be transformed from disobedient to obedient, with hearts that are FILLED with the earnest of the Kingdom.
His heart is for us to know all of Him, and not just the parts with which we are comfortable.
The starsong….proclaiming the justice of G-d….
“And the stars”
May the King give light in strange and unexpected places for His kids to walk.
I call your spirit to attention in the name of Yeshua, and it is appropriate this time for me to do so.
Prophet portion, I call on you, dearest love.
Listen to the Word of G-d for you for today.
Then Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised; it may be that the L-RD will work for us. For nothing restrains the L-RD from saving by many or by few.”
So his armorbearer said to him, “Do all that is in your heart. Go then; here I am with you, according to your heart.”
Then Jonathan said, “Very well, let us cross over to these men, and we will show ourselves to them. If they say thus to us, ‘Wait until we come to you,’ then we will stand still in our place and not go up to them. But if they say thus, ‘Come up to us,’ then we will go up. For the LORD has delivered them into our hand, and this will be a sign to us.”
1 Samuel 14:6–10 NKJV
Johnathan, the Prophet, the son of Saul, the Son of Kish, showed his intensity and his fierceness of devotion to the L-rd, even when outnumbered by hundreds-to-one odds.
Prophet, even though you are oftentimes the most beaten-up; the most hammered-on by the body; the most relentlessly-pursued for your incurable intensity; and the most-reviled for your black-and-white, often-simplistic worldview; beloved, you are also THE ONE that the Redemptive Gift Tribes rely on to get the crazy-ass shit done that NO ONE else will do. With few, you accomplish much.
That is your dignity.
Sure, on the way to accomplishing the ends for which you were designed, you will likely piss off a few admirals, be placed in an impossible situation with few resources, be concerned that you might not be able to help everyone in harm’s way, and fight dark things that others might fear, but with you, you carry one of the greatest assets and resources needed for those dark paths. You carry this as free money, Prophet.
Faith and fearlessness.
You were made for the fight. Hardwired for the war. Designed for the hardest and harshest environments.
So, Prophet, I bless you as you gamble on these principles that are your bread-and-butter.
I bless you to be the rallying point for the community to the fight.
I bless you to be the tip of the sword, and the thorn in the enemy’s flesh.
I bless you to know you were forged for the hardness. And because of that, as a precursor to peace and the gathering of community, you were made to lead the charge and protect those of us who are more vulnerable, and for whom faith and fearlessness are harder to handle.
I also bless your heart to find a safe place, one or two or more people who are a place with whom you can rest.
The heart…safely trusts….and that one shall have no lack of gain.
You were made to have a tough and strong exterior, but you were also made, because you have access to great faith without knowing all ends, a tender heart. I see your heart for the people in your tribe. My darling Prophet, you were made to bring the family together in ways you do not yet understand, in high moral standing, and with ethics etched into your very being.
You are a deep light, Prophet. And the King’s heart yearns for you to see it. The way forward, which is why you see the vision in the distance and handle principles so effectively, so you can extrapolate and see what will be, not by the Spirit or the revelation of the moment, but by your design and hard wiring. Your nature is to solve problems with the principles.
It is different with you than with an office Prophet or the manifestation of prophesying.
For this capacity to believe comes because you weave together principles into building blocks to produce change and to see those results far down the road.
I bless that distance vision and the skill of weaving to be unencumbered. I bless you to have strength for the fight. And I bless you to not worry about whether or not you will be justified in the sight of others, for you know your justification will come in the King’s sight because in the fiber of your being, you have all you need inside of you, coupled with the limited resources outside of you and inside of you to solve the problem of the moment.
Prophet, may you know the King’s love in the name of Yeshua.
Gang, this is a bit of an unusual post, but I am asking y’all to stay with me.
We look for and celebrate the design G-d places in us, and, sometimes, that means we follow some unorthodox methods to identify that design.
Now, anger has often been characterized very negatively, and that is not without good reason.
However, I want to say something about anger. In most situations that include anger, there is a choice of what we do with the anger. Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians to “Be angry and do not sin” implies that it is possible to engage in behavior that includes anger while also not crossing lines into behavior that is sinful.
Now, I am not saying that this is the case all of the time, but I believe the blanket exhortation to avoid anger is not generally helpful.
And like Clyde Fant, I am of the opinion that “righteous indignation is a twenty letter word for anger”.
Let me say that again two different ways. The need to use the words “righteous indignation” too often proceeds, from my experience, from a religious spirit or a spirit of being afraid of the full G-d-given experience of human emotion and free will.
To respond, instead of trotting out religious language for anger and USING THAT to justify an emotion of which we are afraid, it would be better to ascertain the root of our anger so we know what to do with it. Otherwise, we could be covering up a problem that our heart, mind, spirit, soul, or reins are trying to bring up.
Often, anger is rooted in two things: our sense of that which is just, and a violation of justice. It is not just because we are being selfish, arrogant, or proud.
To be sure, too often we are guilty of accusing of pride those who do not struggle with pride.
While some of you are wrestling with the idea that some believers do not struggle with pride, I will continue.
Indeed, there are qualities Father has built into certain of us that really incite zeal for excellence and effectiveness.
And coupled with those qualities are aspects that causes us to become rankled when excellence or effectiveness are mangled.
It is not pride or arrogance; rather it is anger as the King intended it to be the tool it is for provoking us to raise standards and hunt for better ways.
For example, when believers settle for a status quo try to move into something they know the King has for them….
…are corrected by other believers who either do not understand or do not want to understand try to correct us in accordance with a lower standard, then that friction creates issues.
In order to honor how the L-rd has uniquely made us, we really must move beyond avoiding all expressions of anger, hunt for and yearn for the G-d-ordained expressions of anger, nix religious expressions that blanket judge any expression of anger or frustration, and move into allowing ourselves to be pushed for “what is excellent…”. I would even bet money that those who are easily angered by slack-jawed expressions of faith have “what is excellent” in mind and are pushing for that excellent place.
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.
And enough experience on receiving end of what it should not look like in several dozen facets.
First marriage destroyed through adultery.
Second marriage lost due to interference from control, jealousy, and witchcraft because I work with survivors of Satanic Ritual Abuse.
January 14, 2005 to April 15, 2013: 3013 days.
April 19, 2014 to July 19, 2022: 3013 days.
And both marriages had many lessons to impart to me, and these treasures were not easily excavated. It was a crucible for the silver, and a furnace for the gold…
And I would like to offer the following bits, so thank you to those friends who enabled me to see some facets of a number of right ways of looking at this topic, and I would like to share things that maybe do not get enough daylight.
For those who ask if I am going to touch the egalitarian-complimentarian-headship debate, well, we will see.
But allow me to lead it with a couple of lines of thought….
Three Threads
Thread 0 offered, then set off to the side: Regardless of how I interpret Ephesians 5:21 followed by verses 22ff (I am very much of the view that in the context of the submission that all believers offer one to another, a wife still has a further place to submit in some way to a husband to loves her as Messiah loves His body), we are missing some critical ideas in this topic, because we look at roles, without looking at birthrights.
And design….
Women are not merely to play like they have hammers and swords….
Rather, they are to use them.
Thread 1:
A woman and her sword, once separated, leave her vulnerable in ways she should not be made so.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the L-RD G-d had made. He said to the woman, “Did G-d actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but G-d said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For G-d knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like G-d, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Genesis 3:1-6 ESV
The chief clown, Lucifer (I call demons “clowns”) came to the woman with her man and spoke to the woman.
For those who say “the man should have spoken up”, I am going to stop you right there.
The attack of the clowns frequently shows us an indicator of design. Husbands and wives are made as foxhole partners. Period. Get that one into your spirit. I implore you. Wrestle with the junk that fights against both of you, and woman of G-d, pick up your sword.
Or your tent peg.
Healed Exhorter/Servant combos in action…
The Other Two Points:
At this point, the issue is not one of submission, but of dominion, and refusing the victim spirit. Also, it is not about blame-shifting, but about fighting together against the real enemy. The real question is not are you loving and submitted to one another. The real questions (and from this, submission and love will flow, as well as a whole host of other dynamics) are these:
“Are you together learning from Father how to build; and how to fight?”
“Not only that, but are you aware of the raw materials you have together with which to build in a creative fashion?”
Point 2: Building
I pose these questions to y’all, gang, because there are times when the Father is not going to give you directions to obey, but is rather going to turn the two of you warriors loose in order to make choices together about what to build creatively.
First, in the early days of your relationship, you are going to struggle because you are going to feel like there is no user manual for building. So you are might desperately struggle with working together as you slap something together because you feel like you have been thrown together with little training. And then, as you grow together, working with one another, synching with one another, you are going to get more intentional about what you are doing, and as you grow more intentional, you can begin to incorporate strategy, and timing, and understanding, and pacing, and wisdom, and you will get able to fold together intimacy with one another together with skill in building.
Slaves obey. Sons create.
Create and build together. There is something there that can be done. He wants to partner with you to enable and endue and empower you two to build.
Point 3: Fighting
Second, to fight together.
Are you also aware of the real enemy that you should both be protecting and covering one another from? Do you have your lover’s six? Can they count on you to protect them and to give the enemy an earful of the Word of G-d Himself, and a faceful of His shekinah on their behalf?
“Having done all, to stand….” As Anne Hamilton has said, have you allowed the Bridegroom Warrior to kiss you into your armor? And that is something husband and wife were made to do in tandem with He who is Adonai T’Sevaot.
Again, as with the building part, you might find yourself clumsy as you work to direct your assaults away from your mate, whom the enemy will tempt you to attack as the source of all your problems, and against the real enemy. This is why you should exercise plenty of descretion when choosing a mate. And if you already have one, then work the best with what you have. This is not a decision to rush into, but rather to wait until the markers and evidence that this will be a redemptive relationship, one in which you can accomplish more redemptively together than apart. When you have the markers there, then a lot of the marriage prophecies and dependence on other people saying “thus saith the L-rd” can fall by the wayside.
Are you a safe place for your mate, and a terror to the enemy that assaults them?
Are you a confidant?
Do you hold secrets back one from another?
Can you share the little things together?
Do you have the common interests on some level?
Is there a cause?
The biblical text that gets overlooked, and I think the King Jimmy puts this best. Matthew 19:5
For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
It’s not about the love and submission (shorthand for the Ephesians 5 text) at this point….
Go beyond the elementary principles to the roots of those things which give life to a marriage.
And at the root of every marriage, let me CAPS out three words in Matthew 19:5.
FOR THIS CAUSE….a man will leave his parents and be joined to his wife….
You have to have a cause….there has to be a reason….a purpose….for the connection….
What’s your cause…..
What’s your reason for wanting to wake up with this man, this woman…
As David said before he fought Goliath….”Is there not a cause?”
Do you have a reason? Is there something you do incredibly well redemptively with this woman that you do not do with another? Or this man?
The cause will show you what to build and what your fight is.
And are there connection points between you and she….or you and he…..?
And is there enough diversity and difference between the two of you to make things interesting.
And is there enough of a draw beyond the superficial that you will last?
I cannot believe I am sharing this cut…..
Oy,
Thanks Tiffany….
Before You “I Do”
Though, a man should be confident enough in his own identity and authority on some level BEFORE HE STEPS INTO A RELATIONSHIP BEFORE IT TURNS INTO MARRIAGE that he will not have married a harpy or yielded his authority and is asking a woman to lead him or make decisions for him OR TO OTHERWISE GIVE HIM HIS LEGITIMACY…
Conversely, a woman should be confident enough in her own identity and authority on some level BEFORE RELATIONSHIPS AND MARRIAGE HAPPEN that she does not marry either an abusive or controlling jerk or a passive, milquetoast man, or an immature manchild who will not listen to her voice when she speaks to him in fullness, honesty, and rawness.
There has to be not merely the biblical text triteism of mutual submission, but also some level of mutual vulnerability, and both parties walking in partnership with Messiah, and willing to work through the tough issues, especially of growth, healing, deliverance, and love with one another.
And G-d did not say we had to be completely healed before we step into relationships or marriage. Nobody in Scripture, including Messiah who was fully human was fully whole without emotional issues as a human before stepping into relationship.
What G-d looks for is willingness and vulnerability, not absence of wounds or scars. The three together of y’all, working through things and journeying on this adventure…G-d looks for people who will just walk with Him and put Him at the center and forefront of their lives.
And couples who will walk together with Him, protecting one another.
It really means something when we war together against the enemy of our souls. And instead of the usual dynamics, we look at life between two battle buddies, two partners in crime, two companions in this eternal adventure.
And we engage with one another without passive/agression.
Some couples choose the way of sarcasm, and that works for them.
The real clincher here though is, are you together on close to a similar page about the L-rd, and the enemy?
And the next question that I would ask is, is there a spirit-to-spirit connection between you and your beloved, because so much happens in that space, when the portions of your spirit, and the portions of your beloved’s spirit actually interact and mingle.
It’s not just about being one flesh. It’s about the joining of spirits and the connection of journeys so that things flow in alignment.
When the King gave counsel in Matthew 6, as with the rest of the gospel of Matthew, he was not advising us in the arena of the sorts of physical things we tend to obsess over, though physical assets are important on some level for living here.
Rather, repeatedly we see a predilection for the internal, the location of the heart, the emotions, the spirit, the soul, the unseen things, the desires on the inside that lead to our actions on the outside.
Matthew was taken up with a 28-chapter exposition, not to give us a new covenant, or a new command, but with exposition of the Tenth Commandment.
Chapter 6 tells us where our desires ought to be. And then the basics of life and everything necessary for life and godliness are added to us.
It is interesting, given the reality that so many struggle, and especially the Giver, with the physical assets, and again, resources we touch are not unimportant, and those who say they are, well, there is something wrong there, with an unhealthy hyper-worm bastard Calvinist theology that says, I do not deserve anything at all. This “total depravity” even of believers flies in the face of the reality of what Father (who strikes me with a massive streak of Giver) did for us, in yielding up His Most Precious Resource for our sakes.
Men and women, you are sons of the kingdom. And the King gives you resources with which to build, and those even include the skillful allocation of the temporal. He does not expect you to be guilted into giving all you have away. He does, however, look to see if you are willing and available, not to be used (as if you are His ho to be used: praying “use me, L-rd” strikes me with a prostitutionary vibe, I almost never pray that, that is devoid of the partnership language the King intends for us).
I do not want to be used. I already had enough issues with rejection and abandonment. Rather, I want to partner with the King who Is Love, and does not USE us, but rather connects with us.
So, let’s look to connect with Him and walk with him.
And, just in case women are irritable at being called sons, just remember, men are called the Bride of Messiah, and I am very comfortable with my Bridal Identity.
So, congratulations, life is uncomfortable for everyone.
Jim Alseth is a friend and physician from Alberta, and he penned the following, that I would like to set forth as a way to better reframe marriage vows. Something to ponder and apply as you see fit, gang.
Jim writes:
Much has been said about the necessity of renouncing our hidden agreements with death.
Michael C. King spends time on that one in his book.
This morning I found myself going over that ground—in particular, our wedding vows, of all things. “Till death do us part”, and “in sickness and in health” are common components of those vows. We said them ourselves (or at least the pastor did, of which we came into agreement).
Isn’t it interesting how an event so innocent and precious to the human community can get unknowingly infected with sickness and death! This is not hyperbole, friends. Remember, the unholy realm are legalists, to the extreme.
I understand we had only good intentions and romantic notions in uttering those vows. We all want to be loved when we’re down, but the fact is they weren’t necessary. In our allegiance to Christ we already made the vow to love: “love one another”, “love your neighbor as your yourself”, etc., etc.
When we say to our future spouse, “I love you”, this ground is already covered. There simply was (is) no need to open the doors of sickness and death to the predatory legalists—in front of a house full of witnesses, at that—in such a binding agreement.
In Matthew 12 when Jesus says we would have to give account for every careless word we have spoken, He’s not being the legalistic, harsh judge I just mentioned. He himself is Love and He knows how powerful words are, for good or for evil, AND what a predatory legalist our enemies are. He doesn’t want us to get caught in our words. Praise his Name.
So I spent time confessing, repenting of and renouncing those words uttered in innocence, yet ignorance, and sending them and all their effects to the Cross of Christ; and further, asking Him to close those doors to sickness and death forever. Hallelujah.
May the Life and Health of the King be upon you undiminished this day, beloved. Amen and Amen.
Whenever you hear me mention “The Twins” and we are on a call together, it’s a reference to these two.
They are Basket Oaks, and while Cedar and Faye usually drop their leaves earlier in The Fall, The Twins wait till the last minute, here in late November, early December to drop their crop.
What’s more interesting for me, is that they behave mischievously for me. I will hear them laugh or chuckle or roll over in uproarious guffawing, as they remark on the bird poops and the leaves and other aspects of how they attempt to irritate or vex me. And I speak to the with love and logic, and I enjoy their reparteé.
And I do talk to, listen for, and hear plants speak with some level of understanding as to what is being said.
So many people love to tell us how preaching “the gospel to all creation” means to all Homonids.
I disagree.
πάντα τα έθνη from Matthew 28:18-20, can be taken to mean, “all the ethnic groups/nations/races”, but the longer ending of Mark 16, which says to all creation/every creature (DOT: depending on translation) uses a different word that isn’t primarily limited to the two legs with 46 chromosomes. The Greek there is κηρύξατε τὸ εὐαγγέλιον πάσῃ τῇ κτίσει “confess/preach the gospel to all the creation”.
Now, κτίσει (roughly transliterated with pronunciation as k-TEE’-say: below is the beginning for the BDAG Lexical entry for the word in question) refers to creation, “the result of a created act, creation).
And this dynamic of stewarding or managing creation means that there are those who are meant to be skilled at connecting with the land. The original design of the Druids would have included some understanding of these dynamics BEFORE their design got twisted and perverted by the enemy.
See the link below for more on this concept.
I think we are designed to have a bevy of differentiated gifts to work with ALL aspects of creation. And part of that stewardship is to interact with not just humans and preach to them, but to all the created order.and to speak of the hope of His coming and all those dynamics, and to work with the land as we build so that we do so in light of how the King wants this or that tree or bush or plant to be planted here or there, or to see a plant removed.
So, part of our late fall task is to corral the harvested crop of these two jocular arboreal teenagers and to care for them as they provide much-needed shelter for myriad birds, and to be able to hear them for what they need before they become sick and endanger property.
There are dynamics that need to be dealt with as we engage with these sorts of things. And part of what the King looks for from us, is the capacity to not only speak to those things we are ministering to, but also be able to listen for what they might say.
Be blessed, gang. And please, feel free to post as you have something you wish to discuss.
