Tag Archives: Worship

July 8th – 11th, 2006

Posts, , , , , ,

While editing these entries I realized that in the few years since writing them, this “create-your-own-reality” approach to life has been spreading further into pop-culture. One example would be the movie “Be Kind Re-wind” (which I highly recommend, by the way). What I cannot endorse, however, is the “Hollywood Moral” of the movie ( I love it when Hollywood moralizes) which states: “Just re-define your past to create a present to your liking” . Literally imagine a NEW history that supports your current menu of desires and that will result in love, peace and companionship. Just choose a truth that works for you.

It has often been said that history is written by the winners (a statement I find ridiculous in that only those who have access to histories written by losers could come up with such a simplistic and inaccurate axiom) but a new axiom seems to be coming into vogue: “History is written by those who are dis-satisfied with the present.”

As I walked along returning from my workout, I felt the familiar compulsion to reach out and touch the boughs of the trees and shrubs that overhung my way.

I just need to feel their texture beneath my fingers.

In that moment I sensed my obedience to a voice.

In a flash, there was the familiar presence of the Creator as felt through His creation – ubiquitous, but not harsh or over-bearing. I began to cry as I considered how infrequently I listen, and therefore by direct extension, OBEY His voice.

I realize that there is a fear in me that finds it’s nourishment in what I can only term “religion”. To admit hearing a voice which should be obeyed within the impulse to touch a tree smacks of neo-paganism, new-age self-delusion, self-aggrandizement and intellectual inconsistency. And so “religion” and “rationality” (fraternal twin brother-bullies) rise-up in protest – strong protest. Even now, the desire to have the Creator fully contained within one doctrine, within one totality that fits in MY mind and that I can fully manage, is very strong.

The fear rooted in religion and rationality is this: Obeying a voice that can only be heard in the quiet, un-checked moments that are free of (though INFORMED BY) doctrine opens me to lies.

I become a dupe.

I’m wrong.

I’ve substituted my own impulses for the impulses of the Holy Spirit or supplanted simple common sense with some imagined supernaturalism.

I’ve become one of those deluded spiritual Dr. Frankensteins who’ve stitched together a grotesque version of reality based on their desire to create reality themselves. A few bits Eastern philosophy, with some scraps of “science” grafted on to a trunk of intuition and some left-over Deism.  I’m afraid that one day this “thing” will rise off the table, discolored, horribly disproportional and lop-sided, leering back at me through borrowed lips, stretch out it’s gray hands and croak, “Daddy”.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Yet…all judgment is self-judgment. My fear of being Dr. Frankenstein is rooted in my judgment in all the mad scientists I see around me every day. Or is it the other way around? Maybe I need to look at myself a little more realistically, and my judgment of others will lessen.

The truth is that I do not even grasp the edges of the knowledge of God. More than 50% of what I “know” is based on the experience and teaching of others. I resonate with it, surely. But it is a sympathetic resonance based on the action of something OUTSIDE me.

So, back to the topic at hand – I am reluctant to obey what I’m afraid might be my instincts, or the Devil even, because I want to be motivated by the truth, and nothing else. This is for sure: I miss opportunities because of it.

Even as I write all this, even while I’ve contemplated it, there has been the quiet, inescapable voice beneath it all saying, “I’m big enough. I can see you through this. Everything comes in its own time – including your knowing. I would not allow you to obey that which could be mistaken for another, until you possess the ability to choose between them. I won’t allow you to be BULLIED into lies.”

I can bring my doctrine, my grid of reality to the moments when I hear/feel the “voice”, and they serve as a filter. It’s like playing an instrument: freedom comes through discipline. I’ve disciplined my mind and my body to a certain level of obedience, and that is resulting in a certain amount of freedom to “improvise”.

May 19th – June 2nd, 2006

Posts, , , , ,

There’s a sense of….contentment? No. Peace…maybe. It’s not clean and pure. It’s tainted with the remains of idolatry….oooo! What I wrote in my long hand journal yesterday: At some point in time, every aspect of creation raises itself up, or is propped up by another aspect of creation in an effort to de-thrown the creator.

The smell of that still hangs in the air around me. It taints the otherwise lovely place I’m in these last few days. But it’s worth noting a couple of things about this lovely place:

  • It is directly linked to my spiritual disciplines. DUH!
  • It is directly linked to my willingness to put people’s opinions of me aside
  • It is still not ubiquitous (I start off conscious of God’s presence and feeling all cuddly in the morning but it wanes to mere neutrality by afternoon)
  • There is an anger just below the surface. The kind of hot, sharp, temper tantrum anger that makes me kick things out of my way, my heart to race, and vision get blurry. It seems only to find it’s focus on objects and ideas – not directly on people.

I’ve consciously said things or said them in a certain way, or behaved in a fashion that right sizes people in my world – I feel really free about it – I feel like God is being honored. But there is still the old man there, howling in the background. So even though it’s working, it’s like having a heckler. Maybe he’ll grow tired and shut-up if I keep doing things God’s way – or maybe I will simply learn to shut him out.

______________________________________________________________________________

This sermon on Romans 8….the old man. The way of the flesh. The law of sin and death…whatever you want to call it: Duality. This is where the mystery lies for me these days. All the concentric circles of “self” – trying to find the margins between who I am, and who I was – where the Spirit resides and where the redeemed me touches Him.

It’s still all very confusing to me – and I’m feeling a rising anxiety over trying to preach about all this on Sunday.

God, I’m in way over my head here theologically. In terms of doctrine – intellectually – in pretty much every way that a guy like me could get buried.

“Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life, hoping ourselves to rend the veil (between ourselves and God). God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy ‘acceptance’ from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work being done.” – A.W. Tozer

“Now is the time and place to wrestle before the divine face. If you will stand firm, if you do not bend, you will see and perceive great wonders. Christ will storm the hell in you and break your beasts.” – Jacob Boheme

______________________________________________________________________________

There has been an icreased awreness of God’s immensity. But its not immense in the AWE sense – the fear of God kind of immensity – it has a whispier quality to it. It is the still small voice kind of awareness.

Chris Rice Describes it well:

“I hear a sound and turn to hear a new direction on that rusty weathervane, suddenly the dead brown leaves are stirred to scratch their circle dances down the lane, and now those sturdy oaks start clap’n with the last few stubborn leaves that won’t let go, I can hear Old Glory snap’n and her tattered rope now clang’n against the pole and my breath is snatched away and a chill runs up my spine, feels like somethn’s on the way , so I look up to the sky I look up to the sky and from the corners of creation comes the father’s holy breath ridin’ on a storm with tender fierceness stirring my soul to holiness – stirring my soul to holiness…”