Living out Loud

My Response To Pete

I thought because of the length of this, I would reply with a separate post regarding Pete’s question/s comments when I put this blog entry up.
Pete's thoughts etc. are in white, mine are in green.

I had listened to Darin on the God Journey podcast and I have friends who are very much part of Darin's Free Believer's Network, who encouraged me to look at the site and listen to some of the podcasts. The first thing I noticed on the home page was the introductory SERMON and the request for donations of $20 or more. That was two red flags!

Pete, All I know is that our heavenly Father has always made himself available to those seeking Him for Himself. I love how in Luke it says of Jesus, he sent the full away empty, but the empty, he sent away full! Not sure how that ties in here, but it is the truth just the same then as it is now.

I guess what I am pondering is, is my life, the life of the Father in us, as us, is it creating a hunger to want Him, to know Him without any unnecessary props? Are we more concerned in making others disciples of my/our opinions than of Him?
It seems that there is this mentality that has a firm grip on the hull of our thinking much like the barnacles on a ship, that if there is indeed a genuine hunger that has been birthed in the life of an individual then I must be that special someone they must have in their life in order to accurately hear Papa for their continued walk in grace. Is this the Truth?


BUT I did look at several articles and listened to a couple of podcasts. Some of the material is excellent but ...

I expressed my concern to another friend who pointed out that Darin was still giving sermons and that it seemed to him as if Darin was on a journey but hadn't yet had the courage to really step out of the box.

As I mentioned on my blog , Father has wonderfully enriched me personally through things he has written, on his pod casts etc, but I no longer see anyone especially those who are looked upon or on as being someone special. I kissed way to much ass in my former days playing the game within churchianity.

I am in the process of reading Wayne Jacobsen’s book, The Naked Church, and although in the very start of it I am seeing things he shared back more than 10 years ago being MOST relevant to some of what I have expressed in my thoughts re: this blog entry as well as in my reponse back to you.
By the way, before I forget, there was something you posted on a blog somewhere not sure where a line/phrase you said you had heard once that goes something like this; “I don’t really know what I think, until I have spoken it out loud.” I probably have misquoted you, but I loved that.
So in saying that even now in my pondering and sending this on to you, I too am learning, discovering much about what I really think, by voicing my thoughts out loud.
I love this part from Wayne’s book, and I intend to use this in a letter I'm forwarding to a good friend that has recently contacted me.

“Anyone who does not gush with admiration for church institutions and activities today is accused of being arrogant, rebellious, or judgemental. That’s our modern equivalent of being stupid or unfit. So, even though our Christian experience feels empty, we think we’re the only ones to feel that way. To admit this is unthinkable, so we rationalize those nagging thoughts that tell us this can’t really be what God had in mind. After all, there is always more to be gained by exploiting a system than there is by exposing it.”

We could both see that Darin had a lot to offer primarily younger people, who were beginning their journey outside of traditional Churchianity.

Pete, in my opinion, NONE of US has ANYTHING to offer anyone apart from Christ in us as us, period!! We are all placed in our journey of discovering at different times we are both students and teachers.
We are all being discipled by Christ Himself through His spirit working in and through each of us.

But this raised another question. How would we answer someone who suggested that had an elitist attitude?

Great question Pete; I love the story in Acts where it talks about a brother, an ‘Apostle’’ named Apollos who was an ’eloquent’ man, and he was mighty in the ‘Scriptures’. (Acts 18:24-28) This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord. He was according to the Scriptures speaking fervently in spirit, teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John, none the less spoke out boldly in the synagogue.
But, it says, and this is the heart beat of my response to your question; Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more ACCURATELY!

In my opinion when one sees them self being as a ‘someone-body’ as in, who do you think you are trying to tell me, don’t you know who I AM!
I am NOT saying this is how Darin sees himself, all I know is the church was fortunate back then that Apollos didn’t get all puffed up on who he was, but in fact a very real spirit of humility seemed to set the stage in his life in receiving a greater revelation of who this Christ was/is through what has often been referred to as ‘lay people.’
These two ‘lay people’ were fellow workers, colleagues with Paul himself.

I believe we miss so much in being puffed up vs. Being established and built up out His love 4 us ALL. It says in the Scriptures that the whole body is to be built up as a result of speaking the truth in love to each and every member. Our reliance is on one man, the man Christ Jesus as our only mediator between the Father and us!

I NO longer see any heroes, great men of God, but slowly as the eyes of my heart are being opened, I am SEEING the greatness of Him, our Papa in all that have been received of the Father.

We all NEED to see, especially those who might feel a bit superior to those ordinary garden variety type believers that He continues to oppose the proud, but graces the humble.
We are in great need of His grace and truth to NO LONGER recognize-know anyone after the flesh! Until this becomes the norm within the church, the cast systems will reign even outside ‘the box.’

And for the record, if I was able to sit down with Darin I would lovingly and calmly speak my heart to him expressing his need for me as much as my need for him, no more or less!!!

Rich

The simple answer is that I can't. I know the journey I have been on - outside the box to some extent for about 40 years - and how my thoughts and beliefs have changed gradually in that time.

Any thoughts?

Messin' With my Universe

Lyrics to, "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd







The way in which the Father is able to communicate with us is utterly astounding, and for me it is often done through my passion of watching movies.
The other day I watched again the movie, Pleasantville, wow talk about having my eyes opened. I am utterly fascinated with movies such as The Matrix, The Wizard of Oz, The Island, Pleasantville, Field of Dreams, The Truman Show etc., movies depicting so clearly the lies that are readily imbibed just like the 'kool-aid' swallowed by the Jim Jones followers.

From the scriptures where it talks about us having been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom (family) of God I see this reality and its rippling effects in continuing to shake up my universe.
The two clips I have included from the movie Pleasantville, graphically illustrate by pulling back the curtain and beginning to see what really is real!

The words from Pink Floyd are priceless in being choreographed with the one clip.

What spoke volumes to me in watching Pleasantville again was how the unconditional love of God the Father is able to direct and fulfill our lives without the aid of any external supplements.
Sin has so dumbed us all down into a position of deferring what we perceive the truth to be, because of what somebody else has said it to BE.
The love of the Father is intended to rescue us from being constantly tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, and that is usually done through those setting themselves up as the mouth piece of God for our lives, why, so they can control us.
Please don't call merely existing for LIFE. Knowing Him is a celebration of Life in its fullness!

Rich

Who Am I?

I really don’t know you. Who did you say you were?

What does it mean to be a new creation-creature?

Most of us seem to be pretty much in touch with reality. We know that real-estate is real (or is it?). Definitely there are different aspects or dimensions of what is real, but reality has to be much more than just what exists at the moment. I’m alluding to something that exists forever!

In being reborn, an invasion of unmatched magnitude took place within us. Scripture (2Corinthians 5:17) points to this hidden reality that has within it components for now as well for all eternity. Without the aid of our loving Father, bringing us to see and partake of this reality, we will continue doing and working with the same old point of reference - our natural understanding. Whatever unique set of events triggered this invasion and became a personal experience within a person, it stands to reason that reason in and of itself will not suffice to move us beyond what we have been persuaded to think we actually know.

There have always been those who are being awakened to a living reality that transcends mere physical or intellectual dimensions. These ‘feelings’ that subtly interfere with our limited perspectives are most unsettling to say the least. How can a general sense of God’s peace in our lives coexist with this sense of uncertainty? Is there something wrong with us, or could it be our Father awakening us to a deeper perceptive of our true identity?

My friend Bill Landon said: “I must confess that when I first heard Warren Litzman say, “There was never a you-you, I neither understood nor accepted the truth of this statement. What on earth can you mean when you say that the person I saw myself to be never really existed?”

This is the reality of our identity as God’s birthed children through Christ.

The disturbing and yet gloriously good news is that the Father is gently and firmly pulling back the curtain that has veiled our minds since our natural birth into the physical world and exposing us to the truth that our previous identity was a lie! Is it any wonder that this new awareness, albeit real, is the source of our feelings of distress and insecurity?

Here is something to ponder in terms of the replacement of our fundamental nature: “Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer.”

These feelings of insecurity are actually caused by the one who has kept this false identity intact. It is not an evidence of weak faith. "It is not failed faith or any other defect on our part that either causes or is causing this trauma. The uncertainty or uneasiness this revelation brings is due to the enormity of the revelation. It is a wonderful testimony to what God is doing in us that the father can bring us to the place of receiving this truth without it destroying us."


More thoughts to follow.

Don’t you just love colouring? I read the following someplace: "Christianity is not about learning to live within the lines; Christianity is about the joy of colouring."

Rich

This Present Christ

If there is no ability to choose, then what good is free will?

It is my contention that being a human being and also a Christian is much like oil and water - they just don’t mix (or do they?), and it is within this dissonance our loving Father constantly presents us with such choices.

On a daily basis, to one degree or another, we are faced with the choice of being drawn, dragged back into our past or stymied with fear at the uncertainty of what the future holds. So many things compete to cloud our minds, and a clouded mind sees nothing!

The canvas of our mind is being painted with vivid and powerful strokes. The paint is especially formulated by the enemy to keep us living in an illusory world of fear lies and shadows, but the God of love stepped into this surreal world, clothing himself with our humanity, and in so doing embraced every fear we would ever experience. He lived as a man - and as a man overcame, defeated the father of lies and made a way of escape for us, right now, this very moment.

It is simply but powerfully summed up as, ‘I AM’!

Rich

Love is All We Need

"Behold, O My people, I will open your graves . . ." ( Ezekiel 37:12 ). When God wants to show you what human nature is like separated from Himself, He shows it to you in yourself. If the Spirit of God has ever given you a vision of what you are apart from the grace of God (and He will only do this when His Spirit is at work in you), then you know that in reality there is no criminal half as bad as you yourself could be without His grace. My "grave" has been opened by God and "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells" ( Romans 7:18 ). God’s Spirit continually reveals to His children what human nature is like apart from His grace.

Here’s the rest.

It is truly amazing how the master of disguise, Satan, the father of lies goes so unnoticed in and through what we like to call ‘human nature’.
Learning, and that is only possible as the invasion of a Father’s love begins to address (undress) that which has become but a cheap substitute to define who I am, who we are.

All that is missing, all that is lacking, is found in only one thing, the love of God the Father, and that love as it is becoming fleshed out in and through us, is releasing into my world the truth that God is indeed LOVE!

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.

In the Throes of Being Awakened

This Jesus is a real shit disturber when it comes to him addressing, ‘religion is but a symptom of a dis-ease, not the disease itself.’

I was reading more of Jeff’s thoughts over at, Losing My Religion: Re-Thinking Church and how he is trying to process things that have and are continuing to unfold in his life, cool thing is imo I see him along with SO many being processed, and in spite of the night mare that this has and is setting into motion, so much clarity is being birthed and not as a result of some new religious fad-fix-buzz-high, but because of the Lover of our soul!

I read this from Oz Chambers this morning and because of Jeff asking this poignant question ‘Am I just completely jaded? Have I totally lost my passion?’ I thought it fit in here so beautiful.

Rich

What’s Your Name

Life seems to be for most of us one long draining wrestling match, and we’re usually not the one coming out on top.
I wonder if innately built into (within) our frame work there is this lingering, haunting reoccurrence of thought that pricks us, (like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad) that there has to BE something more than just living with all that, that encompasses and then simply dying?

As I have already mentioned in a few other thoughts on my blog, I see all of us being born slaves, prisoners to what I am calling the ‘sin-matrix-imprinting’, and that imprinting expands to become a custom made fit for any and all, regardless of race, creed, color, gender or whatever.
There is no escape from its permeating and corrupting influences. For i.e. some dialog from the movie the Matrix between these two characters, Morpheus and Neo;
Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but its there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?The Matrix? Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. What truth? That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.

From what I think I am beginning to see in part, is as follows. The only way that the ‘sin-matrix-imprinting’ could be addressed is in a personal head on assault. The scriptures referee to the ‘Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent ones take it by force’.This violence was fully implemented when the Word became flesh like you and me, and the kicker was, it was not ever fully detected by the father of lies, for had he truly known, he would not have worked to see Jesus the son of man turned over to the killing machine called Rome.

Incognito, what a luscious word that is. Hidden as it were in the womb of a young virgin girl, the incarnation was about to come forth, and in so doing he Jesus, would usher in a way of escape (from our inherited imprinting) heretofore not possible. Wow!
It clearly spells out in the scriptures how, for this purpose the Son of God was manifested (in the flesh), that he might destroy the works of the devil.

At the core of our being, and I want to liken that to our DNA, there was made possible for the first time ever a living connection between God and man by and through the new birth a joining of himself to us, ‘he that is joined to the Lord is ONE spirit’.

Here’s the consternation, the rub that I see. This awareness of even remotely considering any other way (possibility) of looking at life, than which we have grown up believing has to be initiated by God’s spirit, and how He does this is as mysterious as the blowing, moving of the wind. Jesus himself implied those who were not only re-birthed into His family, but operate as God’s sons acted much like the winds movements. For a lack definitive words, lets use this, a whole new operating system has been inserted and the code is inseparable from that new DNA.

There is more to follow-click

Rich

No Escape

In the making of bread, you might have all of the right and exact components and yet miss having the key one, yeast. Without this explosive and corruptive ingredient all of your work will be to no avail, the dough will be just that, dough.
Its within the yeast itself that lies this dynamic power to not only cause the bread dough to rise, but define it as in a particular shape.
I liken this, the life of God, to the yeast, something as an external matter brought into (play) the settings of the dough.

I’ve talked about this before in other posts on my blogs, but I want to reemphasize it even more. We were all came into this world as still born, dead in our sins and trespasses, by nature children of wrath, sons of disobedience, cut off from the life of God, alienated from Him.
The spiritual imprinting of sin and its invasive corruption was total in its design. Jesus said, ‘You are of your father the Devil, and when you hear him speak, its simply a matter of agreeing with the inward dynamics of the sin imprinting you were born with, it isn’t an anomaly.

Yesterday in the life of my son, we, my wife and I were seeing into the unseen realms first hand all over again, the real and violent clashes of the Truth exposing the innate lies not only what my son has believed, but all of us!
It talks about the god of this world having blinded the minds (eyes) of those living in this world, preventing them from seeing the Truth.
I see this pointing to the fossilized, fixed, unmovable imprinting that sin and its influence has accomplished in all of humanity.
There is NO way any of us can see outside of this prison we are jailed to; there is NO escape apart from the grace of a loving Father.
As my wife and I had a few moments this morning to reflect and think out loud on some of what I’m sharing here we saw afresh the power our Father has invested in us as His own, giving us first of all a growing experiential learning first hand of what it means to Be loved, and within that reality, learning as he directs to PRAY for ALL men.

The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but powerful, designed to assault those things of the sin matrix imprinting and as it were, to breach through their illusionary shackles.

Even in the lives of the ‘saints’ I see this dynamic still very visible, and I’m starting with myself first, then moving out into a much broader vista of observation.It says we have been ‘born again’ not of the will of man or the will of the flesh, but by the word (sperm) of God, and out of that miracle has come a whole new race, a new man as the scriptures put it.

Our DNA as it were has been totally altered, the sin matrix imprinting has been addressed at the core level of our being, and yet, because of our soul, especially our mind that is in the process of coming into alignment with the Truth, will more often than not revert to its former state of imprisonment, and it is this issue I will endeavor to further elucidate upon, later!

Rich

Vitriolic Grace

Being derailed by life’s happenings is an actuality we all face sooner or later, and the effects are probably very similar to experiencing the shock, trauma of an earthquake or other natural disastrous occurrences.
I am beginning to see that perhaps something far more caustic and penetrating is this whole business of grace. Amazing, yes, but?

The grace of God the Father is breath-taking from and angle or perspective, but its ongoing applications especially perceived coming from a loving Father would not produce anything disagreeable (antagonistic) to the senses, to the mind, or feelings, that have already been assaulted, now would it? Let’s face it, being disillusioned by those unexpected life derailments were already too much.

I remember only too well how I had to use some heavy duty furniture strippers (very caustic) in order to liberate different pieces of furniture I worked on.
One of those being an actual old ‘ice box’, aka a fridge, the kind used at the turn of the century, it is all made out of wood, lined with metal and insulated in-between with cork, at least mine was.
I remember the day I stumbled across this treasure, although not distinguishable at the time, I asked my friend I was helping in clearing the junk out of a house he recently acquired, what is that thing over there, he said, it’s an old ice box I think, and sure enough it was.
I ended up taking it home not really seeing anything of value in its mostly ugly exterior, but was soon to discover a hidden beauty. That’s where the copious amounts of caustic love and my faithful paint strippers brought forth its deliverance!
What was discovered under several layers of dirty paint and lacquers was the most beautiful red oak imaginable, who would have ever thought?

This transformation was done from the outside in, but in the case of us humans, it’s being accomplished from the inside out.
The external circumstances and situations of our lives are being used of the Father to facilitate the necessary on going application of His grace, to those areas in our lives were we are as it were covered in gunk, usually deep seated fears that we are totally unaware of.
Oh we may be cognizant of the symptoms, but the root itself remains hidden to us.

It is in my opinion because of these entrenched bastions of fear, that when our Father begins the work of restoration within us there is only one view and it is through the filter of fear.
I wonder if it is a lot like a blood sucker (leach) that has attached itself to some warm blooded creature sucking the life out of it?
His grace has a bite to it, it is very caustic, it has to be that way in order to free us from the power of that which is sucking the life out of us.

Rich