Tag: Principles of Building Relationships

παρατίθημι and the Emotional Budgets That We Must Make As Believers

by theparacleteshammer, posted in Principles

καὶ ἃ ἤκουσας παρ’ ἐμοῦ διὰ πολλῶν μαρτύρων, ταῦτα παράθου πιστοῖς ἀνθρώποις, οἵτινες ἱκανοὶ ἔσονται καὶ ἑτέρους διδάξαι.

and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

2 Tim 2:2 GNT and ESV

Budgeting…

We hate it.

It’s discilpline.

It’s no fun.

It is refraining and removing the fun and freedom that we want.

Granted, there are many who like this sort of thing.

I was speaking to those who dislike this discipline.

As a father, I was listening to an exposition on this text this morning, and the L-rd had specifically said something to me during the sermon, while the pastor was explaining the Greek word used for “entrust”.

επιτίθημι seems to refer to this dynamic of despositing. Hearing that word made me think of a safe, a bank safe. Paul told Timothy to treat the teachings Paul was describing as something to “place beside” or to “place with” others who were trustworthy.

And I heard the phrase “emotional desposits”

And I saw the things that we do and we build up, different mindsets and different sets of decisions that, when consistently made, built up or piled up a large pile of something that creates momentum and makes gtravel easier.

And then I heard Him imply with His eye…

“For better or worse”

An addict has built up a pile of deposits that he has accrued emotionally in an area. Porn, alcohol, drugs, you name it.

A farmer provides to his soil seed that came from a previous deposit. Plants, Monsanto and their blood crops aside, yield seed that will reproduce themselves after their own kind and will in turn each seed produce multiplied dozens of other like precious seed that will each produce plants.

A husband will add deposits emotional or spiritual or physical or pinancial or sexual into a bank account.

We can deposit many different types of things with others.

Are we depositing the sorts of things from which we will eventually want to reap and harvest?

Intentional and emotional and relational and spiritual deposits, gang.

“These things entrust…”

Be not deceived. G-d is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, that also shall he reap.”

Galatians 6:7

It is easier to withdraw from a positive deposit that we have piled up over the long-term, than to try to create something positive at the last minute to stem the tide of a negative deposit that pours over us like a flood, that we have accrued over time.

Alienation Is Not the United States’ Inheritance Or the Intended Destiny of Any Of Its Inhabitants, Native Or Otherwise… Do Not Buy Off On It In Your Political Zeal

by theparacleteshammer, posted in Principles, Principles Of Relationships

People, especially followers of Christ in the United States, are going to certify and legitimize massive alienation beyond what the L-rd has commanded in this season.

Granted, in the case of Saul and Samuel, the removal of G-d’s Spirit from Saul and His commanding Samuel to stop grieving over Saul is one example where G-d legitimized alienation as a result of persistent rebellion–

And DO NOT get it twisted. This blog post is not an opportunity for people to say one political party or another is damned by G-d for its behavior. so do not use it as your time to grandstand for your chosen model

Rather, it is an opportunity to remind you, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Socialist, Progressive; Anarco-Capitalist, Keynesian, Smithian, Austrian economists, Communists, etc., to work for reconciliation and for removal of your pet ideology and to look for the execution of the Kingdom of Our L-rd in your life and with your fellow man.

Granted, various partisan and “non-partisan” groups have taken this time to attempt to alienate you from followers of Orange Man or Sniffit.

But Orange Man and Sniffit are not the point.

Your political ideology is not the point.

The point is the “kingdom of G-d”. Thank you, Judge Barrett, for reminding us of the chief end of man.

Gang, if you regularly digest ANY of the news that is out there now, you are getting fed a regular and mandatory mindset of alienation and fracturing of relationships, when, as a nation, we were meant to build something constructive and help other men and women to a place of sonship rather than a mindset of poverty.

The fly on VP Pence’s head during the debate serves a point.

You are getting manipulated by Beelzebub. He is a threshold guardian.

Do not fall for his trap.

Do not get victimized by saying “because Trump/Biden is in the White House” I cannot move forward.

Damn the mask….put on the damn mask.

Slave to the government. F*** the goverment.

Big Government. Small government. No government.

Stop it.

Granted, we have a need to execute the kingdom.

But, gang, no matter who is in office the next four years.

Look around you on the ground in your immediate vicinity and in/with/among your relationships, and FIND THE RAW MATERIALS that you can use to build something.

Your best work as an American is to be a builder in the life of another human. To help them unpack what they are made to do so they can go do it.

SCOTUS is not your g-d. It is become a golden calf.

Yeshua ha-Mashaich is your G-d, who has made you and predestined you to good things and to help others unpack their things inside of them.

This political theater between two sides of the same coin, intending to control you through fear and alienation, is not your end.

Some of you are hardwired for government and leadership and service.

For a season, or for permanence.

I remind you that the archetype of the husband found in Proverbs 31, and he is a type of the idea, the Proverbs 31 husband was a career politician.

Your job and my job is to find what we were each made to do, and to snub the distractions that seek to bind us to the kingdoms of this world.

And we were made to shake things up.

There were things that Barack Obama did to cause alienation and racism as much as there were things Donald Trump did to bring us together.

I know there people will call that previous statement garbage.

But can you find the good and the bad in a presidency or a politican and still call them by G-d’s intended design for them and call that design good?

If you can, then you have resisted the pull of the Mesmerizing Spirit.

The Mesmerizing Spirit that calls us with its siren song and begs us to label the part that we see as “the whole of the matter”.

Even if you are on one side or the other and you call your side right, you are still only seeing through a glass darkly.

Your job is to reflect His light.

Find what He is doing and where He is operating in you, and go do that.

I understand, this post is way more political than I sometimes like to get.

But my job is to help remind you that you still only see a part of the whole, and others that a part of that whole. G-d intended you each to gather and bring your parts together so you can see the whole more clearly.

Be at peace.

A Sucking Pit….Structures That Can Become Erected While Reading…

by theparacleteshammer, posted in Spiritual Structures, Uncategorized

Not All Reading Is Fully Beneficial

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

  1. 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).
  2. Has Father given you permission or instruction to read that writing? If so, then there is something in it for you.
  3. 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.
  4. Is there a filter you need to have in place as you read a particular work?
  5. 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.