There is Still a Lot We Miss

I love how the natural things point to a much greater reality, and nature to me is a wonderful mirror that draws us to that realm.
I read an article about mice that sing, and in reading it saw how that we as humans in so many ways are not in touch with our limited senses able to see and hear so much more that is happening all around us.
Is this pointing to the spiritual realm as well, are we not seeing or hearing so much more that waits for our senses to behold?

A mouse makes much more than squeaks when it comes to mating time. It appears that they sing like birds to attract their mates. The problem for us humans is that the songs are sung in the ultrasound – frequencies outside the hearing of our ears.

As amazing as the natural world may seem to us there is still a lot we miss out on because human senses are not sensitive enough to see or hear everything that’s going on. Flowers when viewed with special cameras reveal a wealth of colour to attract insects and bats communicate and navigate around using sound outside our range of hearing.

“It seems as though house mice might provide a new model organism for the study of song in animals,” says Dustin Penn. “Who would have thought that?”

Rich

Do You Speak Silence

In the secret places hidden from sight and not detectable by any natural senses, a cacophony of sounds was awakening within me a world of wonder, and in this wonder of dissonance, I listened.

Rich

I so enjoyed this from Brennan Manning: “I’ve been here for six days in silence and solitude. This retreat has been a journey from absurdity to obedience. Absurd comes from the Latin surdus meaning “deaf.” Obedience comes from the Latin ob audire meaning “to listen to.”
Our busy world too often makes us deaf to the voice of God who speaks to us in silence.”

“Thus it is not surprising that we often wonder, in the midst of our occupied and preoccupied lives, if anything is really happening. Our lives may be filled to overflowing—so many events and commitments that we wonder how we’ll get it all done. Yet, at the same time, we might feel unfulfilled and wonder if anything is worth living for. Being filled yet unfulfilled, busy yet bored, involved yet lonely, these are the symptoms of the absurd lifestyle that makes us inattentive to spiritual realities.”

Itching Ears

In many different places within the scriptures it speaks of Jesus speaking with authority, and that was witnessed by those very familiar with promised words void and empty of any true substance or authority.

So many crave a gospel that comfortably fits in well with their life style, just take a look around, that ‘met’ need is being offered on every street corner.
I love what Wayne Jacobsen says here from The Naked Church; “In a word, kingship leads to exploitation, even if those involved don’t intend to do so. It stifles the growth of hungry believers and it alienates the world from hearing the gospel.
Nothing has turned off this generation more than people who use Christianity to play political power games for the exaltation of their own ego and charge the poor for it.”

We who have believed that the role/office of the prophet was in tact have refused to let them face us with our own nakedness. “Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!” (Isaiah 30:10-11).

Doesn’t this ring a familiar bell in Paul’s warning to the church; “For the time is coming when [people] will not tolerate (endure) sound and wholesome instruction, but, having ears itching [for something pleasing and gratifying], they will gather to themselves one teacher after another to a considerable number, chosen to satisfy their own liking and to foster the errors they hold, And will turn aside from hearing the truth and wander off into myths and man-made fictions.”

“Humanity has never regarded truth itself that valuable-only an illusion of truth that leads to personal ease.”

As we the church are coming awake to His life in us, and learning that we can indeed live out of/from, every word that comes from the Father’s mouth, He is establishing in the earth words/lives of authority that are being heard through the voices of those once gagged and muted by the cheap tricks of the father of lies.

In sharing with my brother Dave this morning, I jumped for joy in hearing how Father met him and set him free. He was reading an email from a friend he has stayed in touch with over the years. The email was heavily laced in such oppressing and fear filled words. Dave said at first he was simply going to delete the email, but decided to respond. In speaking the truth to his friend, suddenly the Truth, Christ in Dave was unexpectedly speaking to him, and in hearing these words of authority, the lies that had been binding in his own life lost their death grip on him.
In following Him, we experience the truth, and the Truth makes/sets us FREE.

It’s not a seminar, it’s a revelation!

Rich

My Father’s Voice

This is a repost from last year that spoke to my heart in light of His growing intense fondness of the one He chose to call Richard.



The entrance into the Kingdom (or the Kingdoms entrance into you) is through the panging pains of repentance crashing into a man's respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, Who produces these agonies, begins the formation of the Son of God in the life.

The above quote is from Oz Chambers.

I woke up this morning with the clear and distinctive sound of my Father's voice saying to me, 'Why do you call me good?' I believe this was Him wanting to further illuminate what I had been pondering on from Oz's quote, and how it was used to speak so deeply to me.
You can read the full account of this (in the bible) dialogue between Jesus and the young rich ruler who came to Jesus and asked the quintessential question, "Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life"? Then Jesus says, "Why do you call me good?" Following this it gets real dicey.

I do not see God the Father coming to lost humanity and saying to those like this young rich ruler, you've managed your life well, and have such admirable and sought after qualities, I'm going to now simply add (grant you your one wish) Me to all of that which has been working so well for you in your life~ha!

I think what Oz says in his quote is most fitting in this unfolding drama, not just with this so called self-made, self-righteous young man but of all humanity.
It is my understanding that this fallen world system, aka, the Matrix is something that far surpasses any form or flavour of religion, but in fact has become a diabolical woven scheme that has all of us firmly believing, we're doing our own thing, living our life. It is the only reality any of us have ever known, and that reality has so tainted, so warped our perception, that apart from the normalcy of who God the Father is, and experiencing His love, no one will convince us that what we are seeing, experience is anything but real.

Maybe David was seeing and coming into a dimension of reality that seems to fly way beyond any radar detection?
From one of the illuminating times in his journey he said, "Behold, I was shaped in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part you shall make me to know wisdom.
I love this saying, "Nothing is as it appears to be".

Was it as Oz said, the Holy Spirit being responsible for these crashing panging pains that were hidden as it were from this noble pursuer of exemplary living that were soon to go off in his life as if stepping on a land mine?
I do not know how any of us can begin to understand this God of love when its through such devastation that He brings into our lives. Yes devastation, why, because we have only known a false reality, a lie that has defined who we think we are.
Again as Oz says, this most needed and necessary crashing intrusion into our lives is the preliminary steps our Father takes in "forming the life of His son in us".
Those whom He foreknew, he predestined them to BE conformed into His likeness and image.

I trust this will be something from His heart to mine, to you that will provoke you to think way beyond what we think is the norm.

Rich

You Are My Longing

There is so much brewing in my heart at this late hour, well late for me that is.
Normally I would hopefully be fast asleep by now, but I am just finishing up my third week of holidays. Preceding that I have been off for five weeks with a torn ligament in my right knee.

I really am glad I do not know or am I trying to figure anything out regarding the wonderful disturbance Papa is doing one more time within me. He and I have weathered so many storms, always He is there much like me tonight being with my terrified Bearded Collie at my feet. He is terrorized by the sound of thunder, so I am comforting him with Papa’s love as I type and muse.
All I need in my storms is His assurance, “It is I,” and just like my precious pouch tonight, I will lay my head down later knowing He is perfectly bringing forth His son in me.

One of the things that has deeply stirred me today is in reading what free spirit shared here, Aint It Just Like a Kid.
Those who may be reading here, I encourage you to look at the Father’s heart expressing itself through what she wrote in response to a comment I left on her blog. Even as I write this my eyes well up with tears knowing it is Him wanting to bring us to place in Him where we know we are His, now and forever, no matter what we have yet to face!

I too join with our dear brother Paul and cry out, shout out to OUR Father, that he would give to each of His children a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the true knowledge of Him who has called us to Be His, that our inner most being would be saturated with this inner knowing of Who’s we are, and how smitten He is, over taken with rapturous joy with each of us.

What sounds, what sights are waiting our discovery as He makes known the depths of His heart for you, me.
I was doing some research today on cicadas and in the process found myself over whelmed once again by accident in discovering His delight in delighting me as I slowly step out and explore his handiwork.
I discovered there are more than 2,500 different kinds of cicadas and some that have yet to be identified. Of all the insects of the world, these are able to emit some of the loudest sounds known. Also there are some who emit a sound, a frequency so high pitched no human is able to detect it.

What became clearer to me is, so much that is within His heart for me is waiting yet to be made know. As I said, there are sights and sounds I am blind and deaf to regarding His intense love, but I know he refuses to let go of me. Somehow in the deep places within me, I sense Him saying, ‘Son, you bless me so’.

There is a pleasure that each of us uniquely bring to Him, he so longs for our interacting with him in and with all that touches our lives. He became fully human so that we might be able to fully relate to a God and friend now abiding in us as His house.

I eagerly look forward to discover all that Papa has hidden for me and my siblings, the best is yet to be.

Rich

Listen Up (Can You Hear Me Now?)

We have all been born in sin, separated from the Life of God: by nature, ‘children of wrath.’

The reality is until we are reborn, there never was a real you or me, and having no other point of reference other than the one we like to call ‘human nature’, where do we begin to see that there is another realm available to us that will release us from this prison we think is actually our home?.

We all have been conditioned to believe the lie that we are alive and doing our own thing. Such is the power of deception, but what if that was nothing more than a custom designed matrix pulled over our eyes to keep us blinded from the Truth?

The truth, to my understanding, is that man was created nature-less, and as a result of his disobedience in the Garden forfeited the real life offered him as represented by the “Tree of Life.” Further in my understanding (and because there are no vacuums), by default man received a nature other than God’s. In the fall there was added to man’s physiology a metaphysical component called the ‘flesh’, better know as ‘human nature’, that now has been passed onto all of his progeny. When we were reborn, we received the nature of God the Father to become our only Life which was not just an add-on. However, this miracle of grace did not vaporize this component within us called the ‘flesh.’

There was nothing altered in the miracle of being reborn - apart from our spirit being made alive, quickened through His life-giving spirit. Our soul and body are exactly the same as before. Our bodies were designed by the father to be disposable. The real us is not confined to our looks, age, skin color, I.Q., gender, or anything else external. On the other hand, our soul is a vital component that has to be integrated into a spiritual union of oneness with God as our Father.
This sets up the battle scenario we all experience on a daily basis. In all of us, this ‘coming into union’ will be misunderstood at best and resisted at worst. Welcome to the real world!
This sets the stage for what I now want to try and share regarding, “Listen Up.”

As in everything related to God, a.k.a. true or real life, there are the counterfeits as well. If God is the Father of love, truth etc. (and He is), then as Jesus pointed out, Satan is the ‘father of lies.’

We, having lived for however long in sin before being reborn have all been conditioned to only know one voice: Satan’s, our surrogate father of lies. We see nothing strange or alien about this familiar and seemingly friendly voice…until the ‘voice’ of another is introduced to us. In fact the introduction of the voice of the Father is perceived as one speaking to us in a foreign language!

As Kevin Costner, playing the role of Ray Kinsella in the movie ‘Field of Dreams’ said: I'm 36 years old, I love my family, I love baseball and I'm about to become a farmer. But until I heard the voice, I'd never done a crazy thing in my whole life.

This voice, the voice of the Father is about to turn our world right side up, but according to our whacked-out so-called equilibrium, we see this intrusion being not of God because our world (according to us) is already, ‘right side up.’

To be continued...

Rich