I invite your spirit, whether broken or who, shattered or put together, safe or hurting, on the run or at a save haven, to be present with me kn the name of Yeshua:
Spirit in seven portions, listen to the Word of G-d for you for today.
My beloved is dazzling and ruddy, the Fairest of Ten Thousand.
-Song of Solomon 5:10-
Spirit, as much as you have heard this used to describe Yeshua, I am ant you to rest in shalom and see how he sees you, His beloved bride, pure and spotless.
You, spirit, harried or at rest, sit a while with this reality. Soak in it, meditate on it.
You, right now,
You, following the harassment and abuse….
You, following the mistreatment….
You, following the hang-ups, screw-ups, sins, mistakes, misjudgments, foul-ups, and wreckage…
Spirit, you ARE dazzling and ruddy……
You ARE the Fairest of Ten Thousand.
You ARE the Apple of His eye, and His affection, tenderness, and adoration are yours. They are your treasures. From everlasting to everlasting. From the depths of His being to the depths of your being, He wants to provide a flow of water and love and when you are ready for it, fire, by turns. But He isn’t going to force anything on you. He will partner with you, spirit, in your seven portions.
I bless you to rest and to allow the King of Glory to carry you to the place where He will remove the shrapnel and the gunk and the pus and all the matter that is gumming up your inner workings.
I bless you with the revelation that Father’s lap is the surgical table, and even while you are on that table being worked on, even with all your hang-ups and deep in junk, WHILE YOU ARE DARK, you are still the most LOVELY in His eyes.
I bless you to rest in stillness and allow Him to work, and even should you pass out, He will keep you alive if you will allow Him.
I bless you to know not just the saving power of the Bridegroom, O Bride of the King and the Fairest of Ten Thousand….
I also bless you to know the KEEPING power of G-d, dear one, lovely and beautiful.
I bless you with all of that revelation, spirit, 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.
That was a razz on my Prophet friends, given the tribe, when they make decisions and judgments about items, tend to have a pretty good track record of being right. Not because they are arrogant, but because they are able to extrapolate from principles and see when things are not well-put-together or well-thought-out that the rest of us miss.
Further, they have a heart for justice, and they are centrally impacted by issues of right and wrong.
And given my last post in this series finished up how G-d Wounds and then Heals a Mercy and then dealt with the same issue concerning a Prophet, I was going to start with Servant, and the King said, “no, Teacher.”
Heading In the Right Direction versus Heading In the Best Direction
Sigh….
This is my absolute favorite gift to deal with, without exception, because there is so much potential and so much that gets undersold and mislabelled with the Teacher, so much so that many do not understand themselves. They are known for keeping their heads about them and heading in the right direction, generally speaking. However, so many of them are not known for being dialed in to the best direction of many right directions, which requires some fine-tuning and callibration, that can only be accomplished with the gentle whispers of the Executing Spirit, the Holy Spirit. (Whereas sin and defilement are the violation of principles, holiness actually means “weaving principles together”, and few can tinker and dial things in as well as the Spirit-governed Teacher who leads with their human spirit.
The Teacher, universally almost as slow as the Mercy, is also very deliberate and demonstrates a preference for telling the whole story, and also has a predilection for getting the details and the account of a thing or event right.
However, unlike the Mercy, they tend toward a predilection for the old and the well-researched, as my post on that RG shows, and they often get stuck in their thoughts, whereas the Mercy tends to gets stuck in their emotions. Both gifts can appear a bit absent-minded or head-in-the-clouds, and so they each need to have a couple of close friends that see them as they truly are, and be able to reach them where they are. The Mercy tends to find this in a Prophet or another Mercy, and the Teacher tends to find this in an Exhorter, which are typical pairings for those respective gifts.
A problem with the Teacher, as with the Mercy is the issue of being in control of a situation, versus being out of control. The King will routinely give both gifts situations and circumstances that are not neat and where they do not have control, to see how they respond to those.
See Exhibit A of the Exhorter/Teacher combo: Tony Stark and James Rhodes. And the line that hits me here, is “you got your best friend back”. Rhodey was not in control during this sequence in Iron Man 2 because his suit had been hacked by the fiilm’s antagonist, and the Prophet had to fix that problem.
Again, with the lack of control. This time in Captain America: Civil War. This time, hitting much closer to home.
And then having to be faced with the reality of his circumstances.
The fight needed to be fought, and the Teacher is central to the fight. Central with their humor. Central with their anchoring presence. Central with their safety. Central with their slowness. Central with their strength to endure.
And this whole thing with paralysis sucks…..But it is his consistency that helped Tony stay grounded.
And one other Teacher….who was saved by his divided personality….
Beyond that, there is, as with all the gifts, a certain stronghold that must be dealt with, in proper order, if the Teacher is to submit to the process by which they are wounded or broken, so they can grow into the fulness of what they were designed to be.
One of the major issues with the Teacher, and an issue G-d makes with them is the question of them being in control of a situation apart from His divine empowerment.
Teachers have to get to the point where, in order to walk in fuller authority, they give up their right to know in order to control.
Rather they know intimately, in order to wash feet and be a safe place, and to break the stronghold of witchcraft and rebellion by offensively engaging with those entities directly in the spirit. Further, they must wrestle, hand-to-hand, in close quarters, and submit (think the wrestling definition of “submit an opponent”) the predator spirit that seeks to hold hostage those they love.
They have to find the way that, through the spirit, enables them to marry what they know, to the Fire of the One Who Is All Truth, and allow the Holy Sprit, who is the Spirit that Executes, not merely Sets Apart, to lead them into all truth. It is not the biblical text that leads us into all truth. It is the Spirit of Truth that leads us into all truth. Our own mind, with all its absorbed and accumulated biblical knowledge, trivia, and understanding of the truth, is not what leads us into truth. Rather, it is the Spirit of Truth alone that can rightly divide the written biblical text, and apart from Him, with Torah in hand, we will risk killing the life-giving thing G-d gave to move us into the next realm of divine understanding.
My question to the Teachers in the crowd is this:
Do you want to continue being the one that kills with your cerebrum alone, or do you want the spirit G-d has placed in you to rule over the work of your mind, marry that to the felt work of your heart, and then your reins, and together with the thoughts, allow your emotions to emerge as your heart is strangely warmed by the Holy One of Israel?”
Apart from Him, you are incapable of exegeting at all.
I do not care how much Torah you know. If you do not know Torah Himself, the Word Himself, all your supposed truth is nothing more than the Vale of Ben Hinnom.
We go into all truth and get into all truth, ONLY by the Spirit of G-d.
And trust me, it is going to look really weird, the end product, and it is going to unsettle you and those around you, but as you grow into it, you will see the King’s faithfulness, and the Exhorter Himself walking alongside you will stay with you as you undergo this healing and transformation.
It is going to take time and a process, but it can happen, and Teacher, you are worth knowing, and being more fully known, even as you so fully know so much.
The Ancient One : But you are leaving out the most important part. In order to return the stones, you have to survive.
Going beyond the science and the knowledge acquired, the Teacher has GOT TO STEP INTO THE PLACE WHERE THEY PUT THEIR HEART, FAITH, AND WILL ON THE LINE, AND RISK DANGER WITH HEART AND SKIN IN THE GAME, in order to step up to the next level of who they are, which can invite circumstances that can hurt them in the process, trusting the L-rd to make them and their very, VERY tender hearts whole again. Teacher have to risk emotional exposure in order to be made more whole, bring wholeness to others around them, and to grow reality to a place where the L-rd needs it to be, embracing a potentially painful responsibility, the one thing they are supposed to do, in order to make the potential reality kinetic.
Be at peace, Teachers, for your is the most precarious of the seven gifts, I deem.
You are truly the motorcycles among the gifts. Huge payoffs and incredibly fun when the gift is done right, but also the risk of great destruction when mishandled.
I tend to look for a more effective way of communicating concepts than the garden-variety way of describing things. Or I enjoy describing things that keep people from the rote “amen” and “preach”. The religious spirit is no different. There are a bunch of ways people have described the religious spirit, but I personally like the following description. The religious spirit, which parallels the Redemptive Gift of Teacher as the root stronghold in your gift of Teacher individual, group, community, state, nation, or organization, is the spirit of “one thing”. Do anything or anything except the one thing you are supposed to be doing? Engaging in a flurry of activity, even devotional activity…just do not engage with the one thing G-d wants you to do. There is a tie-in to this concept. The Philistine Curse….which in a nutshell is, one thing short of a full package. The one missing item that leads to a life-giving package, which is usually missing because we choose to do without the One Thing we need to engage in. And the way that curse is broken is usually with the One Weird and “does-not-make-a-lick-of-sense” solution or tool. For Samson and Shamgar they beat the Philistines with Ass Jawbones and Oxgoads. The strange or unusual. And usually along the way, you end up looking or feeling pretty foolish doing whatever you are doing on the way to disempowering the Philistine Curse, O Teacher, since this is the third of the Seven Curses. That is, regardless of all the other descriptions you can layer on top of the religious spirits and regardless of thr comparisons to the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the rituals that are dry and full of dead man’s bones, the religious spirit will busy you doing a bunch of crap that is not His best for you. Just some thoughts here as I head to bed, gang. So if you struggle with the one thing, find out from the King if there is one thing you should be engaging… Benisons…..
Whelp, the Teacher post is again delayed….But that is okay for the moment.
If you are coming from the previous post in this chain, you will know I just dealt with the Mercy, Spider Man from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because I love dealing with and analyzing the culture for patterns of the Redemptive Gifts.
Two cuss words ahead….
Reality…..
It’s a difficult thing to grasp….
In fullness…
Frequently, it doesn’t end the way we want it to end.
But, all our curses, and all our pain, and all our offenses, will not change a thing. Our Only one thing present can redeem us, our pain, our offenses, our curses, our janked-up lives.
The Root of Reality….
He sets the lonely in families, but he first does this by giving us battle buddies, partners, lovers, wives, husbands, brothers. Pairs. It takes a couple to make a family. And that couple started, if redemptive, by Father’s initiation, at the Bridegroom’s response, by wooing us to Himself first. And then by enabling us to see reality if we will embrace it. And that may take us embracing a great deal of pain in order to get to reality in fullness.
Families come because Father places us in proximity, and enables us to fight for one another.
And this unity starts and leads to endurance in fullness because husband and wife will fight for one another according to truth and principles. Unity can only come between husband in wife when they will fight for one another first, and then in the context of that, to fight for those given to them. If we stop being foxhole buddies reloading against the real enemy together, then we are fighting with half our fucking resources.
And I am done watching people fight with half their hands tied behind their backs.
I am done watching people insisting on a fighting with a handicap, and resisting the whole of what Father has given us.
You must fight alongside, pointing your weapons at the true enemy.
That’s reality.
Christ does not fight without his bride.
Why would we expect to be able to fight the enemy of our souls without the keeper of our hearts and lovers of our spirits?
In both of my marriages, my wives and I fought on our own.
I have spent 38 years watching couples fight one another with their earned authority or neglecting their earned authority, focusing on one another with their weapons, rather than partnering against the true enemy.
And I am done with this broken-ass paradigm.
If a marriage is to succeed fully, husband and wife must be joined as partners in the fight. Completely.
If there is a division, then that marriage will be hamstrung. Which means G-d must get us to the place of radical interdependency on one another, partnered with the Executing Spirit (whereas Defilement means “to break apart and violate principles”, Holy and Holiness means “to weave together principles to produce change”, and thus, “to execute”; G-d doesn’t just set us apart to leave us in a place, but rather sets us apart TO DO SOMETHING: it’s a number-line and a vector (direction plus motion) not a boundary line like a fence), then the threefold cord can proceed to the set of works for which we were designed.
Gang, you don’t do this without your partner. Which means G-d has to enable partnership.
Russian Epic of Cinderella……
If shoe fits, wear it….
And in this case, the shoes are the shoes from the Armor of G-d, and no they are not called the Shoes of Peace. The Shoes, which parallel the Redemptive Gift of Teacher, are called the Shoes of Readiness.
καὶ ὑποδησάμενοι τοὺς πόδας ἐν ἑτοιμασίᾳ
And having bound on the shoes of/in readiness/equipment/preparation
Aaaaaannnnddd cue Teacher rant, because I know that gift…..
DISCLAIMER: If you think this is only directed at the Teachers, you are sorely mistaken. I only talk about the Teacher because it is the gift I love and know the best.
The Principle of Responsibility is tied to being ready and equipped and capable of handling the situations in perfection and excellence with a well-thought-out-and-well-revealed strategy from heaven that is multipronged and give consideration to a breadth of factors.
Take the text the knowledge and do what Del Tarr said and allow the Trinity to turn that knowledge into “KNOWLEDGE ON FIRE”.
Teachers, your job is to lead the charge on this, as did the sons of Levi did at the foot of Horeb, and put your sword to your belt and handle business. Reading the law and hoping it will deliver on the thing on which you should be acting with skill and zeal is not sufficient.
You must do that thing yourself.
And those shoes, which are part of the equipment of every believer and follower of Messiah means that each believer must also get ready and be ready.
That flows from a Gospel of Wholeness/Shalom, but the outward quality that shows itself in the EXECUTION is readiness…..and that skill must predominate between couples that are the root of a family.
And readiness is how you establish a kingdom. Are you ready to run and fight and build and move and work with what you have been given.
That is the work of sons.
And just as men can be the Bride of Messiah, women too can be sons. Congratulations, life is uncomfortable for everyone.
Matthew 24:44…
Get ready……
And now, maybe I can get to the Teacher in due course.
If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.
Proverbs 18:13 ESV
Our government’s job is not to make us safe by stripping us of our natural and G-d-given freedoms.
And calling the government cowardly because of our perception of their perceived inaction in response to death is a straw man.
Our responsibility is to lead the way and initiate the instruction of the principles of responsibility as those rights and responsibilities get passed down from unconfined and godly moms and dads to sons and daughters.
FDR and LBJ engaged in a lot of “do something” that was driven by panic over circumstances and a willingness to circumvent due liberty and process.
Goading people (churches, governments, politicians, etc.) into “doing something” usually results in terrible solutions and even worse execution.
We don’t merely seek to say “do something” in response to a panic. Rather, we look for RIGHT AND PROPER solutions to problems. We look for weighed-out and thoughtful responses to problems once we have gathered all the data and considered the full nature of the problem.
Especially given the wrong theory or hastily-formed-then-acted-upon presuppositions can lead to a terrible solution or solutions that tie our hands rather than freeing them.
The false accusations that politicians are “not doing anything” likely proceeds from a mindset that “any answer is better than no answer”.
At worst it can fell like we are being gaslit into making a quick decision that is worse than the problem.
Not like we have experienced this recently anywhere. Kung flu anyone?
Yeah, I went there. Fight me.
I am not sorry to say that ANY answer is NOT better than the perception of NO answer, especially if the product of any answer is an abridgment of design or principles.
And for those who think this problem is the NRA’s fault…
I would first direct them to wonder why effective laws fail to pass, such as Beth Van Duyne’s (from the Texas 24th district) bill to prevent the expungement of minor criminal convictions upon the 18th birthday of convicted felons. Felonies make one a prohibited possessor.
The truth is, it is primarily the left is not as interested in prosecution as it is in controlling the execution of duly-granted natural rights given to us by G-d due to our inherent design as His sons (see not just the text of Scripture, but also the Ninth Amendment to the Consititution).
In the process of hunting for solutions, proposing solutions that violate the G-d initiated natural order are not advisable.
So, to you who are calling the church, government, or believers cowardly, I would urge you to back away from the keyboard and consider the broader context and all of what is happening.
And for those curious about one such example, here is Dana Loesch’s recounting of the Parkland shooting.
And for those critical of Loesch, she still maintains contact with a whole bunch of parents who lost their kids in the Parkland shooting and whose stories are not being told because the MSM is covering up their stories with propaganda.
For example, here is a book from one of the dads whose daughter was killed in Parkland.
It gets into the policies that made Parkland possible.
Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created The Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students https://a.co/d/5XBEW8j
Slaves obey…..and they have zero creative will or desire or tools….and they have access only to what their master gives them…..
Sons create…..
I have a few questions for you. And I have hammered and pounded and beaten this drum forever.
Why the impotent focus on what Bezos and Gates do with their money?
Shouldn’t the focus be on unpacking your own stuff?
Is our job to handle other people’s stuff and see to it other people pay “their fair share”, when fairness is not in the Bible anywhere?
Is our job not to unpack the massive amount of treasures G-d has given us?
Or is it to wonder why someone else had any fulfilling OUR vision and OUR plan for their lives?
Your problem is not Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.
Your problem (or problems) are issues that you personally deal with….
Your problem is between your ears…
Your refusal to see what G-d has given you….
Whether or not we realize it, these issues we have been dealing with for YEARS….they already have a slew of answers to them.
I will again mention two things.
We froth at Amazon, Disney, or other company C, and we miss the issues in government, or we froth at government and miss the evil companies.
But it seems we never put the two together.
And deal with the cohesive whole.
Our excuse? We like either the red or the blue solution. One of two Republicrat solutions.
And we ignore the reality that “what you pay taxes on, you own.”
Meaning, we have paid massive amounts of money into services and companies that have done evil things, and I rarely hear believers attempting to leverage the financial investments in these companies to ask the King to steer these companies in a direction that better aligns with His will.
Further question.
Can we leverage our investment to intercede for that alignment of those companies without coaching G-d as to what his purpose and direction for these companies is?
And we rarely ask Father to shine His light whereever He damn well wants to shine it.
And we rarely down a corporate womb of agreement long enough to ask Father to steer companies or governments because we’d rather talk about the injustice as if a yutz of a businessman can or has gassed Jews.
Or we Yell about the penis-shaped ship long enough to say, “he could end world hunger with those billions.
Forgetting world hunger IS….
Because of mindsets…..
The problem of world hunger and creating the foolish solution of confiscating wealth to end it won’t end it.
You will end world hunger when you end personal hunger.
And you end personal hunger when you stop saying “the answers to my problems belong to someone else”.
And when you stop trying to force people to care for the poor or hungry.
That damn spirit of jealousy that has caused fascists to loot and pillage and burn whole cities is a real problem.
And jailing or interning or concentrating or exterminating a race because you think another race is superior.
Calling for reparations when you fail to heal your own wounds is precisely what gets us to ripping all kinds of things apart.
Failing to understand your Southern brethren because you think you can talk down to him or her and they are backwards…
And using the fire of the world to confront what is ultimately a spiritual problem is how you ensure fractured relationships will continue.
The problem is not billionaires or millionaires.
The problem is misfocussed attention on the gifts and resources of others and a failure to unpack, steward, or use your own.
I just recently pulled out a major cork to some large-scale problem I have been dealing with for 3.5 decades.
And you know what?
I am going to keep on pursuing solutions to problems that have not yet been answered.
Gang, this peanuts of the Billionaires is going to get us nowhere.
The problem is the spirit that wants to keep us blind to our own resources (spirit of Jealousy)
The problem is the spirit that says we have no resources (the spirit of slavery)
The problem is the spirit that says other people are responsible for fixing our own problems (the welfare spirit)
You are not a slave, unless you stop creating and start pointing the finger and expecting that your solution is what Jeff or Bill have.
And world Hunter proceeds from a mindset that I cannot do anything to change my station.
And when Scripture shouts:
HIS DIVINE POWER HAS GIVEN US EVERYTHING THAT IS NECESSARY FOR LIFE
And yet we continue to act as if some people were given the goods and others simply were not….
We can quit making excuses that the solution is someone else’s responsibility….
That is a damn carnal Teacher with selective responsibility or a half-blind, non-principle-weaving and severely-wounded Prophet speaking.
And I simply will not make excuses for the juxtaposition of anyone’s radically-gifted-for-life life and “my problems are solved with their crap”.
This is not how any of this works.
And you won’t work if you think your problems are supposed to be owned by someone else.
I realize I am in the process of a number of other things, but, Teachers, again, your unusual and unexpected capacity to:
1) Preserve life when it isn’t looked for, when you are rightly aligned and strong with the Principle of Responsibility,
2) Defend and preserve rightly-aligned sexuality,
3) Occupy your very pertinent position in the sequence of seven Redemptive Gifts, between two other notes life-givers, the Servant on the one hand, which protects new life and the thing G-d has conceived from premature (hear this pronounced the British way with the short “e” sound) extinguishing, and the Giver on the other hand, which births new blood life.
The following is a long sentence, so in the spirit of the length of the Declaration of Independence’s single-sentenced preamble, stay with me as I weave together the following thought.
There are going to be times when the other gifts are preoccupied in such ways…
that their focus will not be on the protectionary measures you easily derive from remembering the past…
and even though you might appear as though you are stuck to the other gifts, while being married to the apparently (“apparently” is the adverbial form of “appear, so by their estimation the appearance, which may not be the same as reality) valueless past, and while you may seem slow to others who don’t see the five-dimensional frame of the big picture, there is a stranger and much-less pronounced form of special discernment that the Teacher provides to make truly safe the rest of the community.
This form of discernment has brandished itself in film in the last 10 years, and it is on full display as M, who is RG Teacher here, tells the Ministry of Intelligence in the film “Skyfall” a good deal that is necessary.
Gang, are you capable of seeing the beauty of this aspect of the Teacher presented here.
Teachers, do not ever beat yourself up, and do not dare let some impulsive gift beat you up for owning and enjoying your connections to the past that give you a form of discernment that none of the other gifts can have.
And again yes, I know, seven portions, one dominant portion.
But this sort of dynamic is precisely why I argue we each have only one Redemptive Gift. And one-seventh of our tribe has the critical role of being Teacher.
So, I would encourage those of y’all who think you are three gifts because a test told you so, to stop letting the tests tell you what you are, and do find out what your gift is. As a card-carrying Mercy who has six other active portions, some of which are quite active.
And if we spread our foci too thin, we become anything and everything and therefore nothing.
The Philistine Curse is one of those things about which I have thought very deeply, so let me see if I can over-simplify it.
A Better Definition For the Religious Spirit
Our definition of the Religious Spirit does need some refining. We like to define it as not doing the stuffy things that certain denominations do. And then we list our favorite denominations that exemplify this behavior. And we bash Catholics, and Anglicans, and Methodists, and Baptists, and anybody except our own favored special group, who somehow does it right and is somehow more special than others.
Bologna.
I define the spirit of religion as “doing everything except the one thing that G-d told you to do”.
Dear Charismatic, if G-d told us to quit engaging in whatever our pet sin is, and we are engaging in this flurry of activity that includes passionate worship, flagging, dancing, prophesying, and a bevy of “spiritual” or “spirit-filled” charismatic activity, accidentally or intentionally, when we should be giving our energies to overcoming whatever that sin is, then that is a religious spirit. We can claim to be free of a religion and yet change the color of the religion. In another vein, the religious spirit can also be identified by those who squelch their design and act in a way that is incongruent with how G-d designed them to act.
Yeah, worship can become a sin if we are engaging in all kinds of displays of activity at the expense of the one thing.
This is why G-d through the Teacher Isaiah was so concerned about the Israelites practicing justice with certain groups (the widows, the orphans, the fatherless, etc.) and correcting their own systematic practicing of injustices.
The One Thing and Squelching Ourselves
In our execution of the One Thing G-d gave us to do from season to season, He also gives us the gift our our unique design to complete the execution. So, the same One Thing given to two different people, will probably look different in the process of its execution.
If G-d told us to quit squelching how He made us, and we accedentally or intentionally do that in order to fit in, we can end up in trouble.
When we squelch our design in order to fit in, and resist doing the One Thing or series of things He is leading us to do, we then are:
Rejecting the One Thing that Father hardwired us to do,
Rejecting our One Principle, One Gift, and One Design,
Rejecting the One Place where we will have disproportionate ROI,
Rejecting the One Reason G-d made us,
Rejecting the One Pathway of His grace flowing, disproportionately in our lives (contra Romans 12:6–gifts given in accordance to the grace in our lives),
Resisting the One Thing that will cause us to possess our birthright,
Resisting the enthronement of the One Man, Jesus, on the land that is our lives,
At risk for Empowering the Religious Spirit, the Spirit of Anything But the One Thing
At risk for Empowering the Philistine Curse, the Curse of One Thing
At risk for Lacking the One Thing that we need constantly, because the One Man is not enthroned in our lives, and we are rejecting the One Key that will turbocharge our lives.
All I can say is, I am guilty of doing this as well, and I am in desperate need of liberation, so I am not throwing stones at anyone before I throw them at myself.
So let’s look at the One Thing and intentionally go after dealing with it, because if we do not, and we keep doing what we have always done, then we will keep getting what we have always gotten.
