Angst Over The Truth

I would love to be able to use this cartoon that Mark Parisi has drawn, but I’m not going to pay $$ for it.
It is in the lower right corner, the original scarier version of Star Wars, I laugh every time I see it!
See it here.


What a melt down discovering the truth of God extending to us his unconditional love, this sharply cuts through the veneer seeing through the believed ‘real world’ I thought I was living in, the one that I used as my unmovable point of reference that defined what life and living were all about.

I have heard many times over the years countless stories of children now grown up as adults discovering for the first time that those two closest people in their lives, mom and dad, where in fact their adopted parents. On the other hand, many adopting parents have made it, the truth of their being adopted known to that child or children as the parents deemed best in its timing.

What I want to share here is the scathing assault upon the blind leading the blind within the religious world so many have and continue to be extricated from.
None of us born into this world have escaped the sad reality of when born; we were by nature children of wrath, sons of disobedience as the scriptures so clearly point out. Within that Matrix and it being our only ‘true’ point of measuring anything and everything about life and relationships, little did we know that it was ALL about performing, measuring up, love if you want to call it such, but filled with little or many conditions!

There are many being brought to a beginning point to see the truth that the religious establishments refereed to as “churches” were not their true authority figures, a father or mother, but in fact a surrogate or adoptive replacement for knowing intimately the one who had Fathered them in the first place.
Why shouldn’t there be a violent crashing into the consciousness in these sons and daughters, an intense sense of rage, angst, out of the truth beginning to dawn on them of whose they really are, but all along having this hidden from them?

Performance (law) based living does what it does best, filling our inner being with something we were never designed for, angst, fear, anxiety, self-analysis, comparing and competing with the constant shifting and changing of the rules by the rule making gurus.

There is so much, so many thoughts I have on this matter, but suffice it to say, as I and so many others are learning by drinking deeply into our lives the reality of being loved so powerfully and unconditionally, that the angst and deep anger of having been duped is displaced by a sobering realization that I didn’t have to go to my grave seeing life and love being based upon what anyone person dictated for me.

Rich

Sons Not Sects

Is it any wonder the lines of definition have become so blurred and the best that most ever see, is this thing called “Christianity?”
I was thinking this morning how I am living in a nameless, faceless time, and it transcends my particular generation, it is one of the most ambiguous and assimilating life sucking entities operating, masquerading as that which tries to define who and what we are, aka, religion!

I love this quote from Rob Rufus, “Jesus needed to know that the Father loved Him! He didn't just assume that - He got revelation that the Father loved Him before the creation of the world. In heaven He knew it already. He was fully God - but when He came to the earth, His divinity was restrained and He had to walk in humanity depending on the Holy Spirit.”

Two specific times the man Christ Jesus heard these words, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased!” The first time this exploded within the life of the ‘man Christ Jesus’ was after thirty years of obscurity, following John the Baptist into the Jordan River to be baptized, the windows of heaven were opened up, a dove came and rested upon Jesus, a loud voice affirmed and defined Who’s this son of man was and who he, Jesus was.
On the heels of this event, Scripture says that Jesus was driven out into the wilderness where he was going to be subjected to the onslaught, barrage of attack aimed and targeted at the heart of this son of man.

The first salvo was designed to cripple this man, the man Christ Jesus, “If you are the “Son of God” use your power to alleviate the duress of this painful moment in your life.
The true sustenance needed in this situation was not a warm and fuzzy “conceptual” buzz, but out of knowing Who’s he was, the ability to respond, “It is written.”
For those following some of my thoughts that are very much in flux, motion, this illustrates well how many know the scriptures so well and yet are totally bankrupt with regard to knowing the WORD!

Another quote from Rob Rufus, “Thank God for Christianity but being a son is far better. The word "Christian" does not appear once in the Old Testament and under the New Testament it only appears once in Acts 11:26. Yet all over the world you hear talk about "Christianity", "Church-ianity" but the New Testament only mentions the word "Christian" once - but dozens and dozens of times it talks about being "sons".
Please hear my here, I am not endorsing this brother other than the fact he is my/our brother, but how he is using what he is seeing and it fitting into his idea of son-ship is not mine!

Only out of this life quickening unfolding revelation of Who’s we are will the blurred lines ever be removed from our lives.
This makes me laugh in light of the plethora of names available and being used to define sects, such as Christianity, heck even some cool new ones like, “Missional and Organic” to name a few, but this does/will not define who we are, because that is but the fruit born from Who’s we are!

Rich

Seeing is, Believing

Seeing the world through the eyes of others.

The caption under the picture I chose for here was, “You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can encourage others.”

One theme I am permanently stuck in and trust I will never get out of is, the “unconditional love” of God the Father!
The main reason I redundantly use the prefix of ‘unconditional’ with regards to Love, is because at best the only so called love any of us have ever experienced is about performing measuring up, ergo if it is sufficient, we will then ‘be loved.’ Interestingly Jesus said, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Only in seeing, knowing, experiencing this unconditional love will we ever discover the ability to move away from what is nailed down, obvious, and secure and walk out into the desert without rational explanations to justify our decisions or to guarantee our future.
The journey of faith across the chasm between knowledge and experience is what is calling out to us from within the Father’s unconditional love for us. We prefer to read the map rather than visit the place. The specter of our actual unbelief persuades us that it is not the experience that is real but our explanation of the experience. Often it’s our beliefs—which William Blake called “the mind-forged manacle”—distances us from the grip of personal experience.

Unlike the children of Israel being lead out of Egypt’s bondage, we are being lead out from something far more insidious, Adam.
We are either still in the first Adam, or in the last Adam-Christ. If any man be in Christ he is a whole new creation, the old has passed away and all things have become new.
It says that the god of this world (Satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not SEE.
The Father’s intention is to open our blinded eyes causing us to see, and in seeing, we experientially enter into that which He has prepared for us.

Becoming rooted, grounded, founded and established in the truth of the Father’s unconditional love is going to encompass a life time. It is the Father’s good intention to press into our hearts a living knowing, that we ARE Loved!
Jesus, as the revealer of the Godhead, defines God as love. In light of this revelation, we have to abandon the cankerous, worm-eaten structure of legalism, moralism, and perfectionism that corrupts the Good News into an ethical code rather than a love affair.

We have the choice set before us to either keep believing in the distorted, disfigured, unpredictable mean God, the god of this world, (Satan) has and keeps before us or, we can allow ourselves to be fully, lovingly embraced by the God and Father that Jesus came to reveal.

Rich

Seeing The Unseen

I’m going to launch out into something the Father is making SO real to and in me.
I was talking with my wife and she had the TV on and said, isn’t that a guy you use to listen to, I wasn’t sure what or who she was talking about, as I looked and listened to what was being said, I heard the one brother saying in response to his guests, “So you’re saying, confess your faults to one another and you will be NAILED!” He was joking, as he was simply addressing what has happened to this God directed opportunity to experience His grace and healing within our individual lives, but in community as well, when we confess our sins to one another.

Family of God, we have NO fricken idea of the power of the One Scripture points to, “Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.” Of course we do the little dog in the back window of the car and do the head bobbing yes, of course that is true, but is it-really?

My wife was sharing with me as she was taking her bath this morning how yesterday at school (it was a day off for the kids) she and her colleagues were in several different meetings. The one meeting was about a project called “The Danny Project,” how to help with the long term effects of poverty within the lives of children. Her school was the one chosen from all of the schools in our county to go to Toronto later this fall to a national get together addressing this growing and crippling erosion.

I’ve said all of this to get to the root of the problem, my wife has like all of us, been crippled by the one and same enemy common to us all, Satan.
Lucifer (Satan) was once the ‘light-bearer’ created to direct all glory and majesty back to God alone. When he fell, was cast down to earth, he no longer retained that capacity, in fact he is now commonly called ‘the angel of light’ masquerading himself as one who is beautiful, truthful etc.
Here’s the kicker, those who have been re-born, are now the true light-bearers, and this enrages Satan beyond imagination.

MY wife has struggled form the time she was a young girl with the sound of her voice and consequently soon settled into shutting down, in fact loosing her voice, not physically but just didn’t want to talk any more than necessary unneeded risks. There has never been too many times when she would open her mouth trying to express her heart without a huge assault of incrimination and bludgeoning upon her from the inside where no one sees, but she did, and once again out of the horrific torture this was, shut up!

I don’t want this to turn into a book here, so please bare with me, if necessary I will stop shortly and continue with the rest of my thoughts on my other blog, its that important to speak this forth!

My wife said to me this morning that yesterday in the Danny Project meeting she spoke up-out several times expressing her heart thoughts regarding how they might address the issues of poverty and its long term effects upon the children. She said once again her heart was beating so fast, so hard she thought for sure everyone must be able to hear this wild noise. In spite of the personal assault on her by speaking out, she continued to go forward.
As I listened, I could hear the Father speaking to my heart through all of this inner anguish she was still experiencing from yesterday’s events.
I realized this, we are by nature at our core, spiritual beings, and when we are re-born that connection is a permanent one, ‘he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.’

We have no comprehension of the spirit power hidden within the very words we speak, and it was this fresh realization-revelation that one of the main reasons Satan is hell driven to shut any of us down is because of the power of the Spirit of our Father not only speaking personally to us, but then opening our mouth to utter his words.

The first recording reference of God speaking is in Genesis 1:3; “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.”
It is the intention of our Father to invade this world of death, lies, fears, darkness, deception and illusions with the truth, love, hope, peace etc of His words he has formed within our spirit.
Our enemy knows the power of God’s word better than any Christian, he fears His words, by His word he was cast down from heaven, and now knows that the Father is again now speaking, invading his world of darkness through His son Jesus Christ that is the only life of the believer!

I’m going to stop here for now, its getting way to long, I will continue later on my other blog.

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

Spontaneity

The entire purpose of organized religion is the attempt to make our relationship with the Father manageable and controllable by men. Because Life is spontaneous organizations cannot cope with it. This is why organizations will not stop at merely telling you how you should relate to God and each other. They must go on to tell you what these relationships should look like externally. This is a usurping of the Father’s role and interference in the operation of His life in us as our Life.

The problem with the institutional approach to knowing who it is that God created us to be lies in the essential nature of this issue. This knowing is an intimate issue between Father and each of His children. Our relationship with the Father is fundamentally a personal issue. The person that the Father made each of us to be is a unique person. No one can tell you what your individual expression of Christ should look like. This drives the organizational church crazy. But the fact remains that each of us is a unique expression of His life. No one can tell you what your expression should look like except the Father.

(Taken from ‘My Father and Your Father’, by Bill Landon)

Rich

Who Has Bewitched You

What unmitigated gall, this conceited but unabashed ex Pharisee daring to say this.

It blows my mind as I soak in the majesty and wonder of the God imprinting that took place in our being conceived by the sperm-Word-re-birthing of God, and in a heart beat for most folks as soon as a pretty face comes along in the form of any style/flavor of religion we are seduced away from our true Father, or as Paul puts it, ‘bewitched’.
Kind of reminds me of the scene in the movie (here he goes again, talking about that stupid movie The Matrix one more time) where Morpheus is training Neo.

Neo in this setting discovers what is happening to him is but a further training situation, all intricately being used in Neo discovering his TRUE identity.

What seemingly unreal settings, circumstances and situations is the Father using in your life/training, to free you from the surrogate ones that have usurped the rightful place of God the Father and him alone being your direct access to Life and freedom.