Baby steps to Listening to God

As I was in the beginning stages of wanting to get to know God, (you know, eternal life is a life of knowing God...experiencing Him!  That IS what the Bible says.) there rose up so much opposition to the idea that God actually engages us personally...you know...like a person does....even though there is much said about the Person of God.  It was a very daunting battle I found myself in.  I was shamed and mocked for thinking that Father wanted to engage me like a Person.  But I knew that I was being wooed by my God to come and seek connection with Him.  And its been quite the journey!

The first time I tried this out, I was living on a farm.  I asked God about what I should do with my day.  And it was clear.  Go down into the basement and bring up those jars of preserved food that have been sitting there for years.

I didn't want to do that.  Its a yucky job!  But I also knew that I would never use what was in those jars...and I might need those jars for future canning.  But still, I resisted the idea and went about doing something else.  After all, what I went to go do was not a sin...so I should be able to do it and be okay.

In a way, there is truth in that.  However, the point of life is to experience it...not try to control everything about it....since...you know....we can't!.  I went about my day and was okay...except for this little nagging invitation to go get the jars!   I decided to just go do it.

My most vivid memory about it was just how difficult the struggle became about whether I had to go do the jars, or not.  Would I be in sin if I didn't?  Don't I get to decide how to do my day, as long as I'm not violating the laws of God?  Such a dilemma over something so trivial!

However!!!... the result was life-changing in that even though the job wasn't much fun, there was joy in the companionship of doing it with my God.  After all, He was the One who invited me to do it with Him.  He never asks us to go do something all by ourselves without Him.  Never.

Its also good to remember that He never forsakes us.  Never.  Even when I set aside His invitation and went to go do something else, He didn't leave me.  He just couldn't join up with my pursuit of it, and therefore even though His presence was with me, the camaraderie was not because I had deliberately refused His invitation of guidance.

I share that story to say this.  It isn't so much what we can and can't do as it is with Whom we are going to do it.  The right of personal autonomy is strongly touted as a reason to go your "own" way and be your "own" person.  And that is a very, very, very important thing to happen.  We do need to be our own person and make our own decisions and own our decisions.  It is so very important that we own being a person of autonomy.  

But this truth is twisted and used to disguise the very deviously skillful manipulator to keep us away from the Life-giving Joy of fellowship with God Himself.  It keeps us in chains to the dictates of that said Evil.  It works because God is upfront and clearly says that if we want life with Him we will have to lay down our own self-dependence and join up with Him.  In direct opposition, the Evil one hides and manipulates and woos us with skills that we are not able to resist.  HE, the Evil one owns you, but he hides that fact by assuring you that you have a right to live your own life ON YOUR OWN.

Remember..."Eve, honey, if you'll just break trust with the One who has given you this beautiful garden and this cushy life and eat this fruit, your life will be so much better!!!"  Only, when she gives in, she becomes his prostitute and he becomes her pimp.  The rest of the story proves it is so.

So yes, I can choose not to empty yucky jars of rotten food, complete with mold!!  I can go my "own" way.  Only its not my own..its the way of one who loves to rob us the sweetness of loving companionship.

Or I can join up with my Good Father and get to do stuff with Him.  And the more and more I do that, the more and more great stuff I get to do, the more joy, the more receiving of love, the more life is worth the living!

Hallelujah!!  What a Savior!!!

the Value of God's laws from one small perspective....

What loving parent wouldn't be very anxious and panicked if they saw their two year old toddler on the roof of their house...or the edge of a tall bridge?  Why?  Because of the law of gravity.  Its just so real, and so unforgiving of its trespass.  Laws, true laws, you know, the ones that always work (unless a greater law supersedes it...like the reason big heavy airplanes can fly)....are constant realities that affect our lives whether we want them too or not, whether we recognize them or not, whether we agree with their legitimacy or not.  They just work out their power day in and day out.

The laws of God are like that.  They are designed to manage life.  They make it work the way that its been designed to work.  They cannot be obliterated just because we don't like them.  They work day in and day out.

They are good and life-giving and designed to bless as we cooperate with them.  Hence the human dilemma.  We break laws.  That’s just what we do.  And then we suffer the consequences.  Hence the higher laws of God’s grace are the only ones that can deliver us from this human dilemma.

Example:  Revenge is wired into our very souls.  Its flows, righteously, out of a desire for what is right.  It is technically a law of life that was righteously created into us to spur us towards justice.  What does God say about revenge?   He says don’t take revenge...here let me do it for you!  This is the grace of God superseding this righteous law.

Why?

Because taking our own revenge is basically a dependence on myself to make things right, according to my own power, my own opportunities, and my own understanding.  If you compare those three things that we own to those three things that God owns...who do you suppose wins the depth factor?  Who has more power, opportunity and understanding?  You and me?  or the One who can speak a word and make universes happen?  the One who is always around, everywhere?  the One who happens to know all individuals better than they do?  

Duh....

When I release to Him the obvious wisdom of letting Him do something for me that He can do a gazillion times better than me, its a done deal.

I am released from all that bitter bile that rises up inside of me as I plot and plan and relive the injustice.  I am freed from the resentment, the fears, the rages that wreak havoc on my physical being.  I am encased in peace.  I am comforted with love.  I am freed to live in the joy of this moment without having it hijacked by this pressured demand of self-dependent revenge.

This is cooperating with the law of God in union with the grace of Jesus.  He takes care of me as I release my desires/needs to Him.  Its why its so important to learn His “laws”,  “ways” “paths”....whatever you want to call those powers of life that just work themselves out day in and day out.

We can’t escape the laws of life.  But we can find the life-giving blessing in them as we release our self-dependence over to the loving invitation of living life in union with our Creator/Savior and find that He enables the both of us to be together in cooperating with His ways, laws, paths...

So, its not wise at all to ignore our great need to learn His ways/laws and to walk with Him in His paths.  The laws of God are boundaries of Life keeping us from eternal harm.   But law-keeping is not my job.  My job is choosing who I will trust with my life.  Will it be my own self-dependence, based on inadequate power and understanding, in union with a malevolent rebel or will it be in One who would suffer crucifixion torments just so we could be connected again to the God of all? Those two options really are the only two options.

And it really does just come down to the trust issue.

My experience of putting this to the test is that when people have been against me in unrighteous ways, and when I have run to my Father who is over all and give Him all the things in my heart about it with hope in His sense of justice for me, I am saved from the torments of plotting revenge, reliving the hurts and the physically destructive forces of rage.  I am given a front row seat to watch my Father take revenge for me.

I must say, the “show” has been magnificent.  Satisfying in every way.  Even sparking compassion for the one Father is tending to on my behalf because of the obvious losing that goes on for him/her.

Knowing this law of releasing revenge into His capable hands has been nothing but an amazing blessing, life-giving in so many ways.  So when it comes to God’s laws, I totally affirm and concur that we need to know them.

What we mustn’t do to ourselves or to anyone is lay the whip on us to do them by ourselves.   To lay the onus of responsibility of their completion on our abilities.  We are, after all, humans.   We can’t.

The wonder is that we can respond to them as an invitation to Life.  A God who loves us offers to us His hand to take (all because of the myriad issues involved in the cross...the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus)  so that we can walk through life as He enables us to cooperate with His laws by His constant giving of His life to us.  It isn’t a loss of self/personhood.  It is a joining up of two to create a new life spawned by the trusting obedience of cooperation with Him.  A new life happens in which both of us are experiencing the same thing.  

To pursue this is to enter into one sam-hillish process.  No denying it.  It turns us inside out!!!   But its so worth it.  Its way past worth the difficulties of the process.  The awesome factor is through the roof.

Its really too big to adequately and thoroughly describe.  But there is my best effort in describing the value of God’s laws.

We are not unaware of his schemes....

 Emotional pressure; Emotional blankets; Emotional waves...Emotionally tangible walls!
These descriptions are of a tool that the enemy uses against us with great strength and power and too often, success.

When I lived in Nebraska, we had the terrible experience of having one of our elderly citizens ravaged and beaten in her own home.  This is small town living.  People didn't lock their doors. Everyone knew everyone.  How could such a thing happen?

Of course it was the topic of many conversations as we met in town for school activities.  Many spoke of having nightmares about it, of feeling paralyzed by fear.  I had my own experience of waking up with a bathroom call in the middle of the night.  I found myself afraid to swing my legs over the side of the bed.  So I just laid there.  But the call was significant enough that sleep wasn't going to happen.  So I decided to take a chance.

I slid my legs over the side of the bed.  Nothing grabbed them.  Nothing happened.  But I was still afraid.  I got up and slowly, slowly made my way to my bathroom.  As I came to the doorway, I felt a wall of fear.  It wasn’t a physical feeling. It was completely emotionally experienced.  I felt like there was great harm just in front of me.  It felt so strong as to make me take a step backward.

But for whatever reason for the timing of it, grace came pouring into my soul with the understanding of power and I simply refused to cooperate with the feeling.  I confidently walked straight through the wall to find the relief I needed.   As soon as I was all the way through the doorway, the feelings were completely gone.

What was this understanding of power?  In a split second, the realization came to me that this was a demonic experience;  this was the enemy trying to intimidate me and manipulate me and torment me; Jesus has stripped the enemy of all real weapons to use against me when He went through His crucifixion, burial and resurrection; Jesus always leads His children in triumph; He has more power than the enemy; He has given me this house and authority over it; so I get to access every part of this house whenever I want to.

Truth led me straight through that emotional wall so that I could meet my need.

We all experience having many needs.  The more significant the need, the more significant will be the enemy’s activities concerning that need.

You know how a child simply raises his voice when he really wants something and you are not cooperating with him?  He doesn't care about your logic.  He doesn't care about your authority and rights over him.  He just wants what he wants and uses emotional weapons to get it.  I mean, really...you know how emotionally draining it is to have to hold your line when that child you love is hounding you for something.  Even if you are strong and don't give in, its a draining experience.

In the same way the use of emotional power is one of the most effective weapons that our enemy uses against us when we are in the fight to believe in our God-given, God-ordained identity.

We all grow up believing in wrong conceptions.  Everyone does.  It can't be helped.  When we are born again to a new and living hope, a new way of life, a new position as a beloved adopted child of the God of the Universe, the new life in us begins to grow.  It is fed with truth being embraced by our choice to desire it and to embrace it and to pursue its depths.

Our enemy doesn't like this.  He is obsessively driven to destroy the children of God.  He is merciless and has no conscience whatsoever.  He is pure evil.  Every intention of his is evil.  And he delights in our destruction.  It is our salvation to trust what our Good Father says which helps us to understand our enemy’s methods.

We have to understand that emotions are driven by ideas.  It is why Truth frees us.  Truth is an idea that is based in reality.  Lies are ideas based almost always in half-truths so as to manipulate.

Consider waking up to memories of poor choices, poor actions and hurtful results.  They are real.  They really happened.  They are memories based in truth.  Along with the truth comes the emotions of grief and regret.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Without realizing what is happening, we begin to feel the overwhelming emotional feeling of being too messed up for words.  And therefore, my value is non-existent.  I am worthLESS.  Worth LESS than most everyone except maybe the child molester, rapist and serial murderer.

These thoughts that address my value came sneaking into the depths of my feelings about the past and begins to twist the experience of the emotions of grief and regret based in reality .  The emotions are now all tangled up with self-hatred, self-contempt, and can often lead to blaming others with great bitterness and resentment.

This is how the enemy lays a blanket of emotional oppression on us.  It is so important for us to recognize it for what it is!

Our Savior has all we need for the regrets and the grief but it isn’t self-hatred, or resentful blaming.  We have to call out to Him for His truth and then we have to choose it and embrace it and pursue the depths of the truth He gives.  If we just lay there the enemy will just gleefully continue to torment us until he gets bored.

We don’t want to just let him torment us.  We want to live in the joy of forgiveness, of hope, of restoration, of redemption, of being astounded by the re-creative work of our Good Father.

Right?

Press through the walls, the blankets, the torments with Truth!   with Jesus!  He has a really big sledge hammer and loves to hammer those damning lies into iddy bitty little pieces and throw them to the wind.  All He needs is your permission.  Your choice to trust what He has said.  Your humility to admit your need of Him.

And then, katy bar the door!!

Hallelujah!!

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