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.
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.
Here is the kicker, gang. We can be so adept at knowing the written word of Scripture, which is a good thing, that we do not take the time to u spool and understand our own issues and weak spots and never seek to go on the adventure of sonship to unpack our design and find out our weaknesses and areas where we need to grow, especially in the area of our design.
It will usually take a well-rounded Prophet who is capable of seeing weaknesses to come to the table and teach us how to toss our boxes in the trash and show us what we are made of in order to help us move into a more healed place.
The question is, when the enemy comes with a situation we have not seen, will we sit back and allow ourselves get destroyed because we think we knew how things were supposed to be set up, or will we go back to Father, and ask Him to teach us while we sit at his feet in a new situation.
Too many are too familiar with “the way things are supposed to be”. Sonship, after we have gotten to know the heart of the Father, is all about unpacking design and learning how to creatively build and skillfully fight.
We receive revelation, but then we also develop tools.
And too many think, all we need is a little bit of Bible and that is enough. No, friends, we need to know Him and we need to know ourselves and grow not just with integrity of heart, but also skillful hands.
So, what are you going to do here?
It’s a learning curve to get beyond the book’s text and into using the principles to think and feel outside the box and grow in skill.
This is another chunk of the value an RG Prophet brings to the table.
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 Father shows you where He is taking you, He also might show you chunks of the process involved in sustaining you there.
It takes a process, and not just a movement to get to a place.
G-d may actually take you a place, due to His faithfulness to keep His word, where you had adequate time to develop the skill, but did not allocate that time to develop that skill necessary to sustain you in that place.
If you will not only ask the Father for your destination in this season, but also the willingness to embrace the character necessary to flourish in fulfillment in this season, He will gladly coach you.
But if you do not, then you may get there, but because the process was bypassed, you may not last there.
Blessing
So, beloved, I invite your spirit to be present. Spirit, if you will, the following is not issued as a command or an order, but as an imploration and an exhortation to listen. I plead with you to hear the word of El Shaddai for today:
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let ENDURANCE have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Jas 1:2-4 NAS95
Beloved spirit, you were made to occupy a place of leadership in the partnership with the soul. And in that place, you were made to receive from the Trinity the resources necessary to not merely survive, but also to thrive in a place, whereever ______ goes. They have gifts, a design, callings, and aspirations, but those aspirations that flow from their design will not be sustainable without the process that galvanizes _______ and enables them to stick it out in a place when circumstances get difficult.
Testing…trials…these are part of our portion that lead us to a place of endurance in faith. They build the hardiness of sinewy, life-strong muscle that does not buckle. And spirit, I know life can be rough. But it is even more rough when that fruit of endurance has not been cultivated.
So, spirit, I bless you with a revelation of El Olam, the Everlasting G-d, who outlasts every other god in the field and in the realms of eternity and time. He is built to Everlast, so that he might provide you with Ever-Rest.
Spirit, I bless you with a deep love and longevity that will outstrip every adversary, outdo ever accuser, and outwit every serpent.
I bless you to fight for those you love. I bless you to be encouraged against those who would doubt you.
I bless you to travel the many leagues and have strength yet to fight.
I bless you to have the endurance that leads you to overcome and conquer the ancient enemy that would seek destructions.
I bless not just the product of victory, but also the process that is difficult that is a Bessemer furnace that leads you to have and possess the strength to move toward victory.
I bless you with the skill to see what is ahead and what is in you, and I bless you to lean deeply into the heart of your Bridegroom and Father who “trains your hands to war and your fingers to battle” (from Psalm 144:1). I bless you to know what strongholds are present in a place, and what authority you need to cultivate in order to come in the opposite spirit in a place that needs freeing. I bless you also to see what issues you need to deal with personally so you can cultivate and earn the authority necessary.
And I bless you to see the land freed as a result of the endurance you will cultivate for _______.
I would like to invite your spirit to connect in the name of Yeshua.
Spirit, listen to the word of El Shaddai for you for today
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”
Genesis 3:1 NAS95
Spirit, there are going to be times when you are in creation dealing with the enemy of our souls. You are likely going to hear him question your place, your love, your heart, your very design, and your purpose.
In this case, the serpent was questioning Eve’s right to stand in the place as a foxhole buddy, and a fellow warrior of her husband. And the church has been doing this for a long time.
And using hammer/bludgeon passages to silence powerful sons of the King, both male and female, when it comes to executing on their design.
Such as:
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
1 Tim 2:12-14 KJV
As if Paul, who was taught by woman was actually stating this as carte blanche for all women in all churches.
Now, whether or not Paul was a chauvanist is not my tack on this or the other passages. My issue is one of design. Our women were made to fight, build, and lead just as much as the men.
And given that G-d made us to be compatriots, male and female, we do better when we fight together and lead together, pointing our weapons at the true enemy of our souls.
Spirit, you were made for the fight, no matter your sex. You were made for community and to lead no matter what the soul says, or the culture says, or the church culture says. And this is one issue I brook not one bit of unbiblical foolishness. The King made us to be keepers of one another. And we belong, with equal rights and equal access before the blood and the love of the Holy One of Israel.
So, I bless you, when you are on the land blessing it.
I bless you to recognize the voice of the evil one, and to respond rightly to it.
When the devil opens his mouth to speak YOU HIT HIM!!!! -E.V. Hill @ Promise Keepers-
I bless you to HIT HIM!!!! HIT HIM!!!!
I bless you spirit, to be strong, no matter what, and confident, no matter what, and to HIT THAT CLOWN WITH THE TRUTH.
I BLESS THE SHARP TWO-EDGED SWORD THAT IS IN YOUR HUSBAND’S MOUTH TO ALSO BE IN YOUR MOUTH, BRIDE!!!!
Spirit, I bless you with love and all the tenderness and confidence and affection and truth in every way, no matter what happens.
And after the enemy has fled, I bless you to hear the heart cry of the land. I bless you to hear the love of the Bridegroom your Husband to your heart, spirit. I bless you to hear His voice in the cool of the day. I bless you to abide as you hear and respond to the land. I bless you with His strength in your weakness. I bless you with divine strength in your inner man.
I bless you with love that transcends all your doubts.
I bless you with the revelation of the truth that transcends and CUTS the enemy’s nonsense.
And I bless you to be established in the Truth that is your Bridegroom and Lover and Husband…..For He is both romance and strength, truth and tenderness, cold and hot; mind, heart, and reins.
And He adores you deeply as you connect with the land.
I bless you in that revelation, in the name of Yeshua.
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.
I was going to go with a post on the Teacher, but then something struck me from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and so I had to run with it. So, here goes…
A Bit More On the Mercy From the MCU, and Then, I Promise We Will Get To the Teacher
Of course, I had to go here for a bit, because there is more than I wanted to say about the Mercy, given the material on the gift keeps bubbling up. So, because I analyze the RG’s in pop culture, there is a significant buildup of material that naturally flows. So, here goes…
Yes….the kid is a Mercy….and had the Exhorter for a surrogate/adoptive father…..
And his wound? It’s being presented with the question, “are you enough without the crutches, and the people, and the relationships, and the tricks, and the gifts, and the resources, and everything that is not the L-rd Himself who must alone stand guard over your heart without any additions?”
Because if you aren’t enough without the suit, then you’ll never be enough with the suit.”
When we first meet Peter in the MCU (Captain America: Civil War), we see as a boy with serious confidence deficit. He hides himself from those who love him and blames himself for the bad things that happen around him. In Homecoming and then Far From Home, we come to an individual with not just problems with self-confidence, but also serious legitimacy issues. From Civil War to Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, there was a deep internal struggle with both his identity, place, and purpose. He did not see himself for what Tony saw in him, even though it took Tony some time to come around to embracing Peter’s inherent value and design, and to father him effectively.
But eventually confidence bloomed and grew in Peter. This deep well took a hit when Tony died. With his father figure gone, he had to develop a different source, and dig a different well.
Unfortunately, this very negative belief about himself that he wasn’t good enough or strong enough to fill Tony’s shoes, led him to give up the resources that Tony gave to him to someone he thought could be trusted. Following that, Beck toyed with him and, because of Beck’s possession of Stark Tech, he was able to fool Peter into questioning the fabric of reality.
Though it was never about filling Tony’s shoes, but filling and walking in his own shoes, and flowing in his design.
Mercies, when their confidence is deeply tested, usually in the area of relationships, may question reality in the worst way. And this will bring them to a crossroads.
They ultimately must come to a place where they rest in the One Thing that will never abandon them, even when everything crumbles around them: the anchoring point of the nature of G-d, Who Is fiercely loving, completely consistent, will not forsake them, and commited to His covenant.
The wounding comes when they are stripped of those things that once brought them confidence, and the healing comes when their internal structure is so aligned with The One Who Is Perfect Reality that the external world deteriorating impacts them in a decreasing fashion. Dependence on the Bridegroom and no one else, not even family, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, spouses, close friends, is what stabilizes the Mercy as they grow through the season that threatens to wound them.
As a result of that, the L-rd pushes the Mercy to adopt a capacity to fix their problems piece-by-piece, without crutches, and as a result, they grow to respond to the following challenge.
As a result, they can either grow into what they were made to do, or shrink back, and their legacy be forgotten or picked up by someone else.
Mercies are going to either bloom or crack under pressure, and as a result of staying the course under pressure, something else comes of them. Something really good.
So, if they bloom in adversity, and they respond to the pressure by leaning hard into the L-rd (Proverbs 3:5-6; Isaiah 54:1-16) instead of relationships governing them, they govern their relationships. And to those relationships they add boundaries, which breaks the spirit of codependency.
Biblically speaking, I think about the confidence John got as a Mercy through living on the Island of Patmos, where he wrote the Revelation and then penned his gospel.
Just some thoughts here…..
Now, onto the Teacher….or not really…but that should be the following post…if I can get off my soapbox long enough to execute…
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.
