Tricky me, out tricked

I made plans this summer to step out and lead an endeavor.  These plans were good for me, they allowed me to exercise my creativity, comfort in being in charge and in control.  I was going to have a chance to make things happen.  But God….

God had some deeper plans for my summer.  My plans would have been great, on the surface level.  God’s plans are deeper, like a pit.  Have you ever noticed when your in a pit you look up more?  If you are not unaware of that reality you probably haven’t spent much time in a pit.  Pits help you look up.

The day this “God tricked me” thing happened I was reading and praying through Col. 3:1-17.  It’s a whole “look up” passage.  We often can “look” with our thoughts.

From my years in construction I know that pits are foundational for building.  If you don’t have good “pit people” your whole building can be off balance.  Pits are also dirty.  They are dirty both physically and emotionally.  Few people enjoy the emotions of pits.  Being a big guy, I tend to get squeezed in pits.  Being put in a squeeze by God is another story though.  “Lord, I’m OK with the pit – don’t put the squeeze on me unless you absolutely need to.  I trust you Lord.  Mostly.”

The pit I am called to (I am putting a Christian spin on God’s activity in my life this summer.  I would have said the pit I am trapped in, but since I want to sound more spiritual I am saying “what I am called to”).  Let me try again. 

The pit I am trapped in, is the favor of God.  Most people say God is favoring them when they get out of a pit.  Yet the truth is, “getting out” only happens because you got in.  So, “being put in the pit” is the favor, it simply is the kind of favor that takes time. (No spin here – honestly)

At times, or sometimes it takes days to rise out of the pit.  Mostly it takes months and often it takes years.  The whole “great tribulation” is only seven years, that is not that long of a pit.   I have done seven years before.  Coming out after the “great tribulation” will be very special.  I wonder how many will learn to “look up” during those days?  I suppose a few will be so depressed they will only look down.  Sad!  I am glad I have had some pit training.  I ‘m gonna look up. 

Did I tell you my pit?  I’s helping others when I wanted to be the one who was going to do things and be helped.  Yes.  It’s like planning on cooking a great meal.  You plan your menu, you think of how to do things to delight your guest.  You consider your favorites and get this whole idea of doing something special.  Then the time comes to prepare the meal and you are placed, not in the kitchen, but in the living room cleaning.  You get to wash the dishes, clean the poach and get the heavy bowls and mixers down for the “real cooks”.   The closest you get to preparing the food is running to the store so that they “other guys” can make something special.  I know people like clean dishes, but no one has ever said, “these clean dishes are so special, thanks for having me over tonight”.

Can you see that a pit is a place where you are taken out of the picture, it is like a hole has opened up in the earth and you stepped into it.   You dropped out of sight.  You can be heard, maybe I’ll write on grumbling later.

So what can you learn in a pit.

• To look up
• Not to fret that people are looking down on you
• How much you love being seen
• How humbling, helping others is.  It is an opportunity to be unseen and unheard (silence and solitude)
• You are removed from actions that relate to people pleasing.  The guy in the pit doesn’t see the smiles and awes at the dinner table, he is washing the pots and pans.  He is at least one step away from the praise of man that can steal away right living.  Why do we call it “people pleasing” when the real motivation of our heart is to please ourselves?

Well I’m in my pit now.  I think I wrote this note so that I could raise my hand above the ground, just a little and say, “Here I am”, “see me” (my hand).  I had better be careful, I know pits can get deeper.

YoU Be YoU

Stuff to Come

Right now I am amazed at how long many, possible most, prophetic words take to come about.  It is like the “promise land” is just 30 days from here, but it takes us 40 years to be ready for it.  What is sad is that in our time, most people throw away a word in a year or two if not in a day or two.  I find it hard to find people who know their own history let alone the history of the people they live among.

I am also hearing reports of people trying to handle the things that are coming with the old failed strategies of the past – namely “control”.  When fear, the unknown or lawlessness start to rise many turn to a spirit of control (making more rules and regulations) to keep people in order.  At times you can see leaders selling out to make sure something appears to be safe and secure.  A lot of human energy is being released right now to bring about a sense of peace and “if you do what I say things are goanna be all right for you”. 

I want to share what I see.  There is not safe place on the earth.  All who desire safety and pace can enter into Jesus Christ, you can abide in Him – literally.  This abiding is an inside thing and cannot be controlled by anyone else.  You alone must be personally responsible to choose Christ and walk in His ways.  No discipleship class, no Bible study, no mentor can do it for you.  These can all help, or hurt, but in reality, you alone make the choice to indwell and be indwelt.

The person who is changed on the inside always, yes always, starts to change the world around them.  It may not be a change that is noticeable by many, but it is there.  It is not noticed by many because we tend to see what human energy and charisma are doing and tend to struggle to see the activity of God through another person.  We have “stage vision”.  We can see what people on a stage dramatize for us, but tend to miss the million acts of Christ like love displayed by common people ever day.  I know this is an endless theme with me.  Power to the people (the saints who live daily and do the will of God on the earth).

Right now I want to yell out (in full redneck fashion) stop killing your people.  Stop trying to help them if all you have is a spirit of control.  What we need is people who can help people live in freedom, not bondage.  Set people free to make wrong choices and you will give them the power to live rightly before God and walk into all tribulation with confidence.  Nothing is as good as having God lead us.  No structure can do what God alone does through the Holy Spirit.

Over the last two thousand years what has worked and not worked?  Beyond pragmatism, what is the way of the Lord?  While all of us have been caught in the tricky wisdom of God, how many of us have been controlled by God?  And since God is loving, which remembers not a wrong suffered, I don’t think God makes rules to keep us from hurting Him again.  We make a lot of rules to keep people from hurting people.  There is a huge difference between someone is prison (locked up to avoid bad behavior) and some who is free.  Judas was a friend of the Lord just like Peter, James and John.  He really was!  If you learn to love Judas, how much more will you love the rest of the gang?

If you build it… your built it.

The more we get to know God, the more we live by faith.  This trust, this faith, becomes increasingly in “who God is” and not what we understand God to be.  All those rules we have made to make God manageable in our mind, are deserted in order to lovely embrace who God actually is.  Our best Bible studies are enhanced by our actual living with God.  What we could not see in Scripture in our 20’s is clearly seen in our 40’s.

I am not saying that you need to be old to know the Lord rightly.  I am saying that the longer you know the Lord the more you will know Him rightly.  A maturing relationship is the way of the Lord.  I personally believe that my relationship with God will be maturing throughout all eternity, and that is a long time (sort a).

Here are some of the rules that I have believed about God that effected the way I understood Him.

• God always gets His will, His desire
• If you pray it and it is God’s will, it will happen
• God overlooks internal sin if you have external actions
• You can have a little sin as long as you also have signs and wonders in your ministry/life. (Was your first thought “everyone sins”?  Why did you have this thought and not “be perfect as I am perfect?”
• God was angry at “stupid” evil people and I can join Him in that emotion.
• I wanted God to be mad at people who disagreed with me so that I could justify my anger with their rejection and difference.
• God’s emotions have limits.  God gets “fed up”.
• Deep down I wanted God to reject me and get fed up with me because I was fed up with myself.  In this way I was making God after my own image.  I was making a God I agreed with, even if this God of my making was not the real God.

OK, that is enough for now.  There are more because I have lived a few decades on the earth now and I have had time to think.  Now you see why I argue for a maturing relationship with God.  If you are the same now as you were when you got saved, you may not agree the same way.

Here is the main point I wanted to make.  You cannot give up on a life of prayer once you realize that God will not get all the things you are praying for.  You and I (if you are called to it) will spend years crying out for God’s will and kingdom to come to earth.  It is His hearts desire that His will would be done on the earth.  But it may not happen in certain specific terms.  And on this point, this point of unanswered prayers, you cannot be discouraged.

When Jesus, the God/man walked the earth, His desires for the earth were not always accomplished.  Jesus desired Jerusalem to allow Him to embrace her, but she did not.   God desires all men to be saved, but they are not.  God wills that all His leaders and ministers be holy, but all are not holy. 

I have encountered some people, people of prayer, who are sweeping some tough issued under a rock and making a rule to cover up their insecurity in their relationship with God.  Don’t do it.  Jesus is the main reward of our intercession and do not shove Him under some rock just so you don’t feel the pain of a maturing relationship with God.  Did we make a rule that “knowing He who is unknowable” would be easy?

Here are a few more rules that I have faced recently, I wonder if they are partly true,

• God is love and has no wrath
• If you declare a thing it will happen
• This is not the same as declaring a thing so that it happens
• The more passion I express, the more truth I walk in.  Zeal trumps wisdom
• The best way to serve the Lord is to put your life on pause and join the prayer movement. 
• I wonder who would fund the prayer movement?

To live under the whole counsel of God is humbling.  To live a life that is truly ever learning who the Master is, is both rewarding and full of insecurity.  Insecurity, because we cannot control the relationship and must depend more on His love for us than our ability to be lovable.

Here is a link to some old books.  I don’t want you to think I agree with everything written in these books.  I don’t agree with everything I have written.

http://www.catholicspiritualdirection.org/catholicclassics.html

If you have some time in the rest of your life you may want to read about the intimacy and prayer movements of the past.  What revelations did they know that we now call “new”?  What did they lean that we can learn from them without making the same mistakes?

The 1300’s were a time in history when a lot of stuff happened.  Google a time line of the 1300’s and look at the death, despair, disaster, war, Church conflict and weather.  Why did God raise up a prayer and intimacy movement then?  What did they learn that we should know?  How do you survive with hope when half the world dies around you?

Discipleship Exercises

 

The Edited Version

Most of us realize that when we watch a movie, even a reality show, that what we are watching is an edited version of the original. Time was spent improving the lighting, sound and retaking scenes. In the end we have a reality presented to us that is vastly improved and enhanced.

God offers to all who seek to walk in His ways an edited version of life. Through the power of forgiveness we can take the mistakes of our life and have them removed, even from the memory of God. I know that we, those who made the original mistakes and sins, often cannot let go of them. In this way we disagree with God. God came to give us such a wonderful life, an edited reality that is better than our first take. For the life that is forgiven and made new is real, it is not some repaired life after the mistakes are overlooked. All those who have been forgiven in God have been given a new life. This is our reality.

Are there past sins that you have asked God to forgive, but you still keep them as a part of your reality? Do you think of yourself in a way that is not in agreement with God? Do you say to yourself that your past sins are still a part of your life, a part of who you are?

Take time to seek the influence of the Holy Spirit and reveal to you those things that you maintain in your mind and heart that are not truly a part of your reality. Ask for God’s help to be set free and have a clean conscience. Ask the Lord for the power in your inner man to live this new reality, the edited version of life with grace and truth.

The life of Prayer

At some point in your life you will discover that God is the source of all things. This is true for prayer and intercession. It is like a seed that is planted in the ground. What that seed needs to grow and mature is supplied from the surrounding soil. The way that Jesus said it was that God is the vine and we are the branches.

Many in our day seek to be separated from the vine so that they can prove how good they are to God. They take on the role of creator, so that in themselves they can show God their devotion, strength and ability to be holy. I know this sounds strange, but we do this when we take on the world view that we are responsible to produce within ourselves a life of devotion and purity before God. The truth is that on every level we are dependent upon that which the vine supplies. We need God to move upon us so that we even love God. No one comes to the Father unless the Spirit draws them. No one can approach God in their own strength and righteousness. So why do we have all this rhetoric about our ability to make it happen?

It is like we are back in the garden seeking to eat of the Tree of Knowledge while neglecting the Tree of Life. We want to make the decisions, create the plans, rule. We have a hard time being in relationship with God, He is so ruling. We even make up phrases and saying to justify our not doing what we see the Father doing. Total dependence upon God is not replaced with maturity.

Do you spend time trying to make yourself a better person? What is the difference between being connected to God and receiving from Him new life and striving to have new life apart from Him? Is pride or humility a driving factor in your religion? Do we have the humility to depend on God for devotion, obedience and motivation?

If you have issues of independence from God, what ought you to do about that? How can you depend more on God than you do yourself?

Lessons

Life teaches us lessons, but we do not always learn the right lesson. A child can be learning to ride a bicycle and fall to the ground. They can come away with the lesson that they need to peddle faster or steer differently than they did. An adult learning to ride a bicycle and falling to the ground can come away with the lesson that they are unable to ride, that the bicycle is no good or that the one who instructed them in the fun of biking was wrong. They learned the wrong lesson.

In life we can learn the wrong lesson if we do not depend upon the Lord for guidance. Maybe you are like me and form a decision before the event is entirely over. I like being “quick”. But being quick to pick up on things is good as long as the things we are picking up on are the right things.

What events have happened in your life that you made some major decision on? Where these conclusions correct? Try seeking the counsel of the Lord about the conclusions to your life lessons. First, list out some of the big events that have occurred in your life. Now write down attitudes and actions you have made a part of your life because of those events. Wait on the Lord and see if there are any changes that need to be made about your conclusions.

Worth

Which is more valuable, the chicken that lay’s the egg or the egg? That may depend on if you need eggs for a long time or if you are looking for one big meal? Which is more valuable, a million dollars or a job that will last a lifetime?

Deciding the true value of something can be a little tricky, especially when our immediate needs are in the way. What is the value of a good relationship with Mom or Dad? What is the value of good relationships at work? Is the fulfillment of a project more important? We live in a world where the bottom line motivates us to abuse people. We fire workers to have a better bottom line and in the end our business is less creative. We purchase a large screen TV while the foundation of the house which needs repair, is neglected.

List out where you are spending most of your time and money. Now go to the Lord and ask for His help to discerning their worth. Ask the Lord to reveal to you things and people of value that you are neglecting. Ask the Lord for strategy to value what is valuable and know what is not.