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.
Props to Heidi Michelle, who asked for an epilogue to two posts ago. For those who would like to know to which post I am referring, go here.
When you have been traumatized from the misuse of the biblical text, and you need to detoxify through other streams the King provides, including looking for His Works (the Works of the King have equal weight as testimony to the Words of the King: John 5:36), when you are ready to renege get with the written text of Scripture, how should you go about that task?
Zeroth on the list, wait until you want to try out reading the text. Then if you need a friend on hand while you cross the threshold of reintegrating yourself with the text, pick someone you trust who loves you and let them sit with you in silence if need me while you pick it up and read. It may take some time.
First and foremost, do not ditch the context where you received healing, unless the King says to do so. It’s not like you are using the items you learned about in the season of healing as a stopgap measure until you can go back to the authoritative rule for faith and practice, as if you were settling form one aspect of the King’s reality instead of another.
Second, carry the affection of the King into the reading of the text, and take off a tiny chunk of biblical text and chew through it. Ask Him to be present with you while you read. He is the point, not the text.
I will say that again. He is the point of this whole thing, not the text. And yes, I am strong in teaching, and my teacher is exceptionally strong, who knows the value of the text, but He is the point of working with the text or any aspect of reality.
Third, read only what you can manage. You just got done rehabbing a broken wrist. You cannot put 85 pounds on it.
Your job is to rehab muscle groups, not shoulder an over heavy responsibility and do 3000 pushups out of the gate.
Fourth, be damn patient with yourself. Maybe a phrase or two.
Fifth, do not overload yourself with disciplines and listening to eight thousand hours of another man’s opinion on the topic.
Sixth, stop when He tells you to stop, and stop before you find yourself pushing yourself.
Seventh. Just rest with Him in the text. Most of y’all that I know are experts at keeping the day of Shabbat, but suck at keeping the mindset of Shabbat. There is a mentality perfected by the Desert Fathers of resting in the midst of work, and having a chilled and rested mindset and heart set while they worked.
And some of y’all are fine with the dynamic of observing G-D’S holy day, but bomb on having G-d’s wholly holy heartset, especially when the Shabbat was made for man and not man for the Shabbat.
And you need an actual day of rest AND. a mindset of rest through your week. And to make Him and His gooshy and squishy Mercy affectionate reality and embrace your Shabbat rest.
Anyway, those are just some quick and practical thoughts here.
And yes, I did meddle with some of my friends who ain’t doing the rest thing right.
And realize there might be a cost of which you were not aware. So, when you say you want something, and it is out of G-d’s timing to give it to you, the clowns might be willing to give it to you….with strings attached.
“You will make your prayer to him, and he will hear you, and you will pay your vows.”
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.
