Definition

The following is from a brother, Mike Rule, you can view his blog here.

What he shared here is something in my opinion that was birthed out of his life being reduced to one thing, and in my opinion that one thing is, “That I might know Him”!

None of us who think we know our inner motives, reasoning’s, and heart attitudes know any reality apart from His divine untameableness blessing our lives by working utter devastation in them.
Jesus is NOT an add on to what may already be working so wonderfully well in your already smooth sailing life, He has come as a Ruling Prince, bearing a sword, His intent is division, separating the flesh from the spirit, and therein lies the unpronounceable pain.
Out from this prolonged agony is birthed the living ecstasy of knowing Him and wanting nothing more than for that burning reality to consume the wood, hay and stubble that I have known as living in the “real world.”

Rich


I am realizing more and more that our hope cannot be in what God is going to do in our situation. It cannot be in Him changing the circumstances; it cannot be in Him changing us IN the circumstances. Our hope can only be in Him, and Him alone. I teach, preach, and counsel that Jesus is enough, but in daily life I really struggle to believe it when God makes so little sense. Amen. I am glad to participate in His life, to be involved with a God who is not predictable, who really is not safe. But I am so thankful that He is good, all the time. However, there are SO many times when it does not FEEL like He is good.

Recently, as He and I were having a discussion, He point blank said, "Mike, I love you as you are. Flesh and all. Stop expecting yourself to change. Stop expecting me to do some miraculous thing to save you from your circumstances. Stop expecting me to do so miraculous thing to save you IN your circumstances. Am I not enough for you?" As I have continued to walk this journey and argue with God, I still continue to pray as He has led, "ENOUGH". During one of these discussion/arguments, He recently revealed something very profound. One of the Hebrew names of God - Shaddai - is translated into English as, "Almighty God", but it can also just as easily be translated to mean, "That's Enough." I find that interesting to say the least. The timing of His revelation is quite profound to me and not a coincidence I am sure. What does it all mean? I have no clue. In the past I would have made many assumptions about what it meant. Now? As I said, I have no clue. However, I trust Him to teach me in spite of all my kicking and screaming and cussing.

We all want so much attention from God. We want Him to make things go OUR way. We have huge temper tantrums when God does not do things the way we want, in the time we want. Most of us have made God into an idol, and we attempt to craft Him after our own designs, but He cannot be crafted. He cannot be forged. He does not play the game according to our rules, and so often He does not play the game according to our perception of His rules. Did it ever occur to you that your frustration is a revelation about your situation?

Can you take up the challenge to embrace this God who is untameable? It will be the greatest challenge of your life. He will not necessarily change you; He will not necessarily change your circumstances. Isn’t it arrogant of us to think He even wants to? We stress and fuss about our circumstances and think they are the problem. But the problem is rarely if ever the problem. WE fuss and stress about ourselves too, we conclude that maybe WE are the problem. Did it ever occur to you that it may not even be about your comfort or happiness?

Again, I ask, can you take up the challenge to embrace this God who is untameable? You will learn things about yourself that will make you shudder in revulsion. You will learn things about Him that you will not like. Yet you will also find encouragement and hope in spite of it all. Is it worth it? Honestly, I don't know. For me, the verdict is still out. But this I can say... just as the disciples said to Jesus, "To whom else can we go? Only You have the words of eternal life" Amen? Amen!

“May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.”

No Need for Balance

There has never been a need for balance within the believer’s life, I realize this will be met with great chagrin, none the less, it’s true.
All of us who have been received by God the Father have a perfectly established unshakable divine order within the essence of our being, it goes like this, “Who’s we are and who we are!”

The trouble is, that we all have and will continue apart from His tutelage try and naturalize the spiritual, by using natural methods of reasoning, such as trying to ‘establish balance.’
There has never been a divorce or disconnectedness between the spirit and the Scriptures, ever. What God has joined together let no man separate! The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the Law of sin and death. This reality is waiting to explode in the hearts of those he has called to BE His!

In being led as soulish or fleshly minded people, yes especially us Christians, we are trying to add to something that has been perfectly finished.
In our blinded un-renewed soul (mind, will and emotions) we are unable to embrace the reality of this Holy Ghost (Spirit of Christ) invasion that has laid a most sure and unshakable foundation within us.
Because of knowing and experiencing so little of this established divine order of His life in us as us and because there are NO vacuums, seemingly by default we resort back to what we have always operated out of, the flesh!

Because of so many excesses from the sublime to the ridiculous within the body of Christ, more often than not unfortunately the “baby has been thrown out with the bath water.”
Have you ever seen someone trying to move forward in a boat using only one oar, it ain’t going to happen, they simply keep going around and around in circles. Doesn’t that sound like much of what churchianity has been and is doing today?

Unfortunately so much of our “Christian” walk, journey is but a caricature of what it means, “In Him we live, move and have our being.”

I read something today that imparted a further knowing of “who’s I am and who I am, as I said it’s the spirit that makes alive what we only see as printed words in a book.
It is from “Unto Full Stature.” “It has been God’s intention that by inward graces we shall exhibit life, but by gifts (in and through the gifted One) we impart life.”

Rich

You're Suffocating Me

The truth is, that apart from the Truth experienced in the person of Jesus Christ, religions best, is but an opiate induced stupor, dumbing us down even further.
Our spirit was created to be filled with His spirit, the Life giving spirit, “I have come that you might have life fully meeting every need within your heart.”

There are many ‘gos-pills’, but what our Father has to offer us is not an escape from reality, but showing us the way through the portal of grace and having our eyes opened to reality.
In the movie The Matrix, when Neo was finally confronted with what was really real by Morpheus, it physically caused him to over load and throw up, it was too much to handle.
Friends we were created for the Truth, and if we continue to follow Him, we will know the truth and the Truth will make/set us free.

The following quote from The Naked Church so encouraged me., by Wayne Jacobsen.

“Elijah is fortunate that he didn’t come to me for counseling a few years ago! I know how hard I would have tried to get his mind off his feelings. “You can’t run on feelings, you know. God is always with us no matter how bad it looks. Just trust Him and everything will work out okay.” In doing so I would have robbed Elijah of perhaps the most important moment in his life. God instructed him to go to Mount Horeb and stand on the edge of a mountain as he watched a mighty wind and a devastating earthquake. Then in a gentle whisper God came and Elijah stood before him.
Elijah knew he NEEDED the presence of God, and he found it.
He trusted God enough to risk being honest and vulnerable before him, and found God was bigger than his own doubts or fears. The same opportunity is yours. You’ll find that he wants to BE a practical part of your life, and that reality is nothing to fear at all.”

I remember when we (my family and I) were with YWAM (Youth With A Mission) back in 1985, Dr. Bruce Thompson was teaching on the ‘Divine Plumb Line’. He was a medical missionary over seas and was very good at what he did, until one day he was brought up short. The Lord brought it to his attention that what he thought he was doing so well was in fact merely anesthetizing the symptoms in his patient’s lives, as it were putting a gag in their mouths, muffling their desperate cry for help.
It was soon after this loving but caustic encounter with the Lord that Bruce was instructed of the Lord to address the real problems these symptoms in his patients were pointing to.

This has always been a powerful story to me that reveals how much our Father delights in us being real. Mark 10:46-52.
This man needed to see, nothing was going fill the void in his life apart from a miracle, and by damn if he was going to sing the party line and just simmer down and be NICE!
When he was told raising his voice was uncouth, he yelled out even louder. Funny thing is, God’s not deaf, but we are, both deaf and blind, and all it takes is to acknowledge that before the Father, and guaranteed you will never get a placebo from Him.

Instead of praying to the Father on behalf of those who are questioning, struggling with life, the religious minded ones are doing their best to mute, gag them with more doctrine, just say this after me, there, now you’re a Christian, everything is all better.
The desperate cries I am hearing from so many are but the symptoms of needing revelation, not more leaven laced gos-pills.

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