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

Waking Up 2

There are so many thoughts being stirred up in me with regard to what I have shared in the previous post along with other reading and writings I am doing.
Funny, these words just popped into my consciousness...Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Who the Son sets free, is free indeed!
Rich

The spiritual life is something which goes altogether beyond the range of man's mind. It is a very blessed thing to have that settled - provided there has really taken place that new birth, and there has been no positive, deliberate, conscious violation of the law of the new life, by which that life has been paralyzed, and shut up, and rendered for the time being inoperative because of disobedience; providing that we are going on in the light as we have it, and in obedience to the Lord. There will be times when the SENSE of the Lord will have disappeared from the realm of our souls, and when everything in the realm of our minds seems to be confusion and contradiction. Nevertheless the fact abides, the union is there. He is more faithful than our feelings.

It is a great comfort to know that, when our feelings vary, and our sensations change, when perhaps by reason of physical and mental weariness those stronger spiritual sensations, as we would call them, disappear, and for a time we seem to drop down out of the realm of the higher ecstasies of the spiritual life, and things get flat. But after a little while it passes, and we find the Lord is still there and we go on again. We come to understand that it was not the Lord who changed, but we were just having a bad time, and our bad time brought no basic change. We can cripple God by disobedience; we can paralyze Divine life by sinning against light; but even then "...if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father..." John puts that in his letter in connection with fellowship, and it is a comfort. It simply says this: "...our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son..." We are to "...walk in the light, as He is in the light." As we do so "...the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth [Greek: keeps on cleansing] us from all sin."

The union is right deep down there in our spirit, deeper than the soul life in its variations, deeper than thought, deeper than feeling, yes, deeper than consciousness. In this matter our consciousness may not reach to the depths of God's work. You ask: "What do you mean by that?" We mean exactly what the Book of Leviticus means, when we find there a distinct provision for someone who sins unconsciously. Is there such a thing as sinning unconsciously? That means that you have no consciousness about it, and yet it is sin. Consciousness is not the final rule. The final rule is God's standard, not our consciousness. Our consciousness, after all, is limited. God's standard is unlimited. God has provided in relation to His own standard, and not to the measure of our consciousness. That ought to help us. God has made provision right to the end of His demands, and not just to the measure of how much we are awake to those demands. God's work is deeper than anything that belongs to us.

Spiritual Porn Addiction*

Ummm…okay…
At first glance this phrase would strike most Christians to be just a tad shocking, jarring, oxymoronic, and incongruent to the extreme, but at the same time strangely intriguing… when you allow yourself the freedom to think about it. After all, one does not normally link the word ‘spiritual’ with ‘porn’ (it usually being equated with erotica). However, I was drawn to this lesser-known dictionary definition:

pornography
: the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction

Now, I recently discovered my own addiction: house porn. For several years, I felt compelled to buy decorating/renovating magazines and constantly watched shows dealing with the same subject matter on TV. I couldn’t wait for the next programs or publications (a.k.a. ‘fixes’). The world stopped while I got my next hit. It all seemed so harmless! I wasn’t hurting anybody. On the contrary, I derived many excellent ideas from my little obsession. The problem was I couldn’t afford to see these ideas materialize! I am not even remotely a rich person…we live in a modest house with a big mortgage and we struggle financially. But because I lacked the money to carry out my projects I found myself endlessly frustrated - which led to an envy of rich people, to coveting wealth, to extreme discontent with my lot in life which in turn led to marital discord and an underlying, slow-burning, smoldering resentment towards God. What I didn’t realize was that I had gradually been beguiled by the enemy of my soul who twisted my ‘innocent’ voyeurism into a serious spiritual entrapment, which in turn sought to poison my trust in and affections for my Heavenly Father.

As far as my husband Richard goes, after having been born-again for over twenty years, the day finally came when to his dismay he discovered that he had inadvertently become as addicted to religion as any crack addict is addicted to his/her next fix. He could never get enough! In essence, church** became his crack den where he got high. Since he was in a leadership position, it made the attraction even more alluring because it fed his soul’s longing for attention. He craved (and often led) the praise and worship, the teachings, the bible studies, the home gatherings. He spent multiplied thousands of dollars on Christian literature, books, magazines and tapes as well as traveling to retreats, seminars and conventions. What made it even worse is that he was in the thick of and mesmerized by the “Toronto Blessing” with all its hype and excess. That in itself was an intoxicating narcotic, arousing (according to the dictionary definition of pornography) “a quick intense emotional reaction”…not only in my husband but in literally hundreds of thousands of others worldwide.

Now, to fellow Christian friends and congregants (including me), Richard’s apparent devotion to the Lord was considered admirable. Over and over we commented on his obvious passion and zeal, his ability to speak articulately and to expound upon the Word of God, and you’d have to be blind not to see that the Lord had obviously deposited a hunger for truth in my husband’s soul. But we were all very wrong. What we saw really wasn’t commendable whatsoever, because Richard had fallen prey to the insidious lies of the enemy of his soul which made his zeal only look lovely and ‘spiritual’. In actuality, he had been beguiled. He had essentially substituted his love for God with an unquenchable thirst to gain knowledge and to be seen and heard. It was a subtle enticement, but extremely effective in a diabolical way.

However, we now know it was good thing that Richard had been led astray, because eventually he came to a place where he saw that what he had mistaken for God was really Satan usurping the Lord’s rightful place in his affections. Richard’s unquenchable hunger for spiritual highs became his personal Turkish Delight (if you haven’t read “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, Turkish Delight is an enchanted candy that leaves the consumer with an insatiable desire for more).

When he finally left organized Christianity, it was such a traumatic, sorrowful experience that Richard felt as if a part of him had died. In essence, it had – it was as if a gangrenous limb had been amputated. However, since that time he has been on a journey of liberation, of extricating himself from the bonds of the religious addiction that had so ensnared him. The bible refers to this process as ‘working out your own salvation’.

It is written that “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose”. It would be tempting for Richard to feel great remorse over the fact that he had wasted so many years as a religious addict, but in truth the best thing is that coming to know the truth about who he is in Christ has been Richard’s ongoing, glorious rehab!

*a phrase coined by Darin Hufford in a piece he wrote on “The Free Believers Network”:
http://freebelievers.com/blog-entry/spiritual-porn-addiction
** by ‘church’ I mean organized Christianity

Rich/Margi

Flying By the Seat of my Pants

Why is it (merely a rhetorical question) that as soon as God does anything in engaging us, making Himself known to us that we immediately try and make it fit into a natural mind set?

Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again,” to which Nick says, “Are you saying I have to go back into my mother’s womb and be born all over again?”
Or when Jesus engaged the Samaritan woman, here is some of that conversation. “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.”You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.”God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

Is there now through the re-birthing a “new me, a new you,” that most of us are totally unfamiliar with, and yet this “new” person we have become is in sync with knowing and hearing the voice of this living God who has become our Father?
The natural minded man does not receive the things of God, hear or understand this reality that has invaded us in being re-birthed.

Without a continued revelation (man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that flows from the heart of our God and Father) is it any wonder that what Jesus is building (His church) has been through the carnal natural minded man turned into a grotesque and hideous monstrosity that so many flock to.

Rich

Famine, is A God Thing

When you begin to hear repeatedly the same thing, it might just be God?!

I want to share some recent thoughts from others that are registering within me, much like what the scientists are still trying to figure out regarding the abnormal behaviour in some animals that they know are inwardly picking (registering) up the initial signals of an impending tsunami or earth quake.

This is from a friend/brother Ravi, something specifically he sensed Father speaking to his heart.


Satisfied on the Day of Famine

"They will be satisfied on the day of famine"! I felt the Lord speaking this to my heart as I was seeking Him for directions in this coming new season. I felt the Spirit of the Lord saying that even in the midst of uncertainties, calamities and disasters; the Lord will supernaturally sustain those that lean upon Him. If He feeds the bird of the air and clothes the grass of the fields, He can and will do much more for His people. What is needed is faith...SUPERNATURAL FAITH! Supernatural faith not of the individual, but of Christ Himself! When we unlearn the conditioning of religion, which teaches us self-motivation instead of pure faith and inputs guilt upon us for lack of faith, when the supposed 'promise' does not come to pass; and understand that we are simply the branches and that He is the vine that sustains the branches, we will prosper, even in times of famine.

John the apostle says that we shall prosper and be in good health, even as our soul prospers. There is a greater famine than the famine of material things. That is the famine of the soul. I felt the Spirit of the Lord speaking to my heart that many of the people who love Him are experiencing this famine in the soul. They experience this famine for they have substituted the Rivers of Living Waters, for a stagnant pool. I hear the Spirit saying realize that the famine of the soul is so because you have allowed these counterfeit waters to water your soul. And because it is not good waters, instead of creating life, it has created death. You shall prosper and be in good health even as your soul prospers. To proper in this season of famine, our soul first needs to prosper; and we need the Rivers of Living Waters, the Word of God who is Christ Jesus Himself, to cause our soul to prosper.

In this new season, the Spirit will give many that love Him a major discernment. A discernment to understand the subtle counterfeit; a discernment to realize the substitutes. And even as we are made aware of this substitutes and counterfeits, the Lord will call us to make a choice to choose the real stuff. The choices may call for difficult decisions. But when we trust Him enough to make these difficult choices, the Lord shall surely cause us to prosper in this season of famine for the world.

I have often quoted this as I see it is a “God thing,” that He lovingly brings into our lives.
"Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.”

For the longest time the best that most of us have seen operating, better yet masquerading as His life is but the remnants of the first Adam. To better highlight what I am fumbling with in trying to illustrate this, please read the following from Os Chambers.


"And Every Virtue We Possess"
“All my fresh springs shall be in Thee.”
Psalms 87:7

Our Lord never patches up our natural virtues, He re-makes the whole man on the inside. "Put on the new man," i.e., see that your natural human life puts on the garb that is in keeping with the new life. The life God plants in us develops its own virtues, not the virtues of Adam but of Jesus Christ. Watch how God will wither up your confidence in natural virtues after sanctification, and in any power you have, until you learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus. Thank God if you are going through a drying-up experience!
The sign that God is at work in us is that He corrupts confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what God created man to be. We will cling to the natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us into contact with the life of Jesus Christ which can never be described in terms of the natural virtues. It is the saddest thing to see people in the service of God depending on that which the grace of God never gave them, depending on what they have by the accident of heredity. God does not build up our natural virtues and transfigure them, because our natural virtues can never come anywhere near what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to His demands. But as we bring every bit of our bodily life into harmony with the new life which God has put in us, He will exhibit in us the virtues that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus.
"And every virtue we possess
Is His alone."


Watch how God will wither up your confidence in natural virtues after sanctification, and in any power you have, until you learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus. Thank God if you are going through a drying-up experience!



Rich

Fairy Tales (Continued)

To many people it would be considered ironic to speak of pragmatism and Christianity in the same breath. Christians are usually considered by worldly people to be the most impractical of all people.
I feel it is important to look into this word describing a demographic, e.g. ‘worldly people.’
It never seems to fail that in trying to establish a definitive demarcation, one immediately is accused of this: ‘an, us verses them’ mentality. The thing is God himself has clearly already done this; there are only two groups of people, those who are in Christ or those still in Adam!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The worldly (physically oriented) person sees and understands the things in their life as primarily intellectual and physical. Thinking that is bounded by physical and psychological existence I will refer to as worldly thinking (understanding, seeing etc.). Thinking, seeing and understanding that includes a spiritual component I refer to as spiritual understanding. This is to say that people who restrict their thinking to the worldly view (physical and mental existence) see reality as defined by the bounds established by physical law and human psychology. By calling this “worldly understanding” I am not trying to insinuate that this is evil. My point here is that this is merely an incomplete or unnecessarily limited view.

With a worldly view and understanding, the spiritual side of reality is unknown and unknowable. A physical/psychological view of reality can, at best, only see the spiritual as a subset of existence. To the physically oriented mind, the spiritual side of reality is a sideshow in life. The spiritual is something that, to the worldly minded person, we can take or leave as we choose. The spiritual side of reality is seen by the physically based mentality as something that is, at best, subsidiary to “real” (physical/psychological) life.
Further, in such a physical view the true nature of any issue is unknown and unknowable.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Christians are often seen as inherent dreamers and not very deeply in touch with the “real world.” I believe that these views of Christianity have grown up because real Christianity is rarely seen in this world. What most people see (and practice) in this world is religion and not Christianity. Christianity, real Christianity, is a state of being and a personal relationship with the Father.
Religion is outward works, rites and rituals. Religion is primarily about looking good smelling good and doing the “right things.”
Real Christianity is about living and further, Christianity is a life not to be seen.

The spiritual is invisible to the physical. This has always been understood: “so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:4) This is part of the reason that worldly people consider the Christian to be impractical. However, this does not mean that the spiritual has no impact or discernible effect on the physical. In fact, the wonder and beauty of real Christianity is that it is the only thing that can really make a positive change in our living. The rest of the world is living under the great illusion that they can (and do) change their lives. The truth is that humanity has plowed on for millennia in the same way because they cannot, apart from the Father’s influence, change anything for the better.

Rich

Connecting the Dots

In our coming through the portal of grace into a new and living world, what lies ahead of us has never been seen or heard of before. It has not yet fully dawned on us what is ours. “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”.
Up to this point in being a human being we have only really known a two dimensional existence, all along thinking we’re actually alive.
In the re-birthing we received what was meant to be our “birth-right” that which even Adam and Eve did NOT have or ever experienced!

In a heart beat everything we knew changed and yet appeared to be the same. The finished work of the Father from before the world began as well as in space, time, and history was instantly ours, we became completely His sons and daughters. We were complete and yet this completeness had to be worked out in the area of our lives that was still totally unchanged, our soul.

The sinner from the beginning, Satan, the one who held us captive, we being dead in our sins and trespasses, instantly lost his death grip on us the moment we responded to this loving God and Father of grace. The Scriptures describe this as, “Being translated out from the kingdom of darkness into the marvelous kingdom of light, aka, the family of the Father.”

The kicker is, although completely set free in our spirit, our soul was now the targeted battle zone where, as the battle ensued, all of us will be tempted to believe the LIE that in fact nothing has changed in us at all.
We are now living in two realms at the same time, the spirit realm where we are seated in Christ at the right had of God, and yet we’re still here in space, time and our geographical locations. What’s with that?

Salvation is just another abstract concept seen, experienced apart from the God and Father our Salvation. The Father’s ultimate intention was never to free us from hell only to give us a front row seat in heaven, but in saving us to complete us, spirit, soul and body.
The spirit dimension of our make up was instantly made complete in the re-birthing, the body aspect is something that awaits each of us on the other side, and it is my opinion, from the beginning the body was always meant to be ‘disposable’. Now that leaves us with one last component of our being, our soul. This is where it gets very interesting!

The father of lies is very much alive and well within a component that was added to the original creation of man after the fall, called the ‘flesh’.
It is from this unseen, but very real vantage point he continues his hellish best to attempt at bringing and keeping us although gloriously re-born (saved) ruled by the dictates of our fleshly yet un-renewed soul, mind-will-and emotions.

I want to say here, that I am not trying to come across as someone who fully in any estimation entirely sees or knows about this subject matter, but what I do know is that what I am seeing and growing in IS the truth. The beauty of Him, Christ Jesus being the Truth, we each must discover through His grace alone at a personal and experiential level the truth for us.
Other wise, we will be deceived into becoming an outer display of an inner distortion, having only a form of Godliness, but without the substance, NO power.

To be continued…

Rich