Aweikinin 1/09/201

      

Psalm 139

H,

Of course, as you say, there is more to intimacy than being known. There is no such thing as a fulfilled but one-sided love. If we are talking to someone we intend that they talk back to us at some point or we have not yet begun to communicate. We have to deal with the problem of hearing from God once we decide that He knows us and He can hear us.

There are many arguments against hoping that the voices in our head and heart are of a benevolent sort. Voices in the head are a sign of schizophrenia. Sometimes they are not clear. Sometimes they say opposite things. Sometimes it all feels dark. The real problem here I think is that we assume that the voice will always be ghostly and not spiritual. I mean that we are looking for a voice that raises the bar of what is physical and what is metaphysical. It cannot be natural so it must be supernatural. It is but not in the way we want it to be. We are still looking for the thunderclap and older voice when it is the tiniest turns to the left and to the right that show us where the voice of God is.

There are many ways not closed to hearing this voice but the clearest sense I always get is from the bible. When I sit and suffer over a direction I always find a way into it through some scripture that takes on personal application to my own situation. It shows up unexpectedly and mostly when I have let it all be shown to God in prayer and then sat down to listen to what He will say. I do not know the dynamics of how this always works. A lot of bible study, I presume. It is a perfect book in that vital sense that it tells a perfect story and all of truth runs through it like thread. It all connects. It all makes sense. It has for me and I think it does for everyone who looks.

So, we have to be willing to hear and our great resource is the bible and all it has to say about man reaching God. It is a discipline and we are disciples. Our calling is to be made into the character of Christ. He could speak with authority and He would often speak from the ancient texts. There is no other foundation that can be laid but this. There is no way to make it current or modern. This is an eternal thing. It will be true one thousand years from now. We study it not only because it is the history of man in all his imperfection seeking to reach God but it is also, so much more of value to us, the evidence of a perfect God reaching out to speak to man in every way possible.

Aweikinin 31/08/2015

    

Psalm 139

H,

I think it is the James Brown song that tells us: express yourself! Well, we have done that to near death, have we not? Seriously though, is there a greater place where the expression of self is more integral to truth than before THE eyes that know you completely? Is there any place pretense is obsolete than before the rock of ages? We have invented no new sin apart from the original disobedience. There is no need for fig leaves because He looks at hearts not acts.

 The fear holy rollers have is that to give human beings the right to breathe is to make them sinners. Any more than they are already? Is it better to make the world a placid white than a vivid blue? Is it more important to pretend you do not need a doctor than to show off all your symptoms to Him? In any case no one who is coming awake to God can sin lightly. It is not that you will not have that turn that gets you or that you will not frequently fall. It is that you cannot be comfortable in both the light and the dark. You have been arrested by a certain truth and that good infection is spreading. It will have its say in all you do. It is not there to create guilt but to show you that you are helpless. It is there to show you why you need a savior. It is there to remind you that you are in the hospital called grace. None of this can happen if you smile and call people weird monikers and act like declaring holiness has anything to do with holiness itself. We are cut open by the love of God. It is not to excuse our falling down but to cure it.

The 139^th psalm first cut me open. Do you remember? It was in those tricky university days when life felt ripe for the taking but everything that felt wrong was loud and in your face. The things you could not say for fear of being judged by those you loved. The cravings you were not supposed to have. The things you were not supposed to think about or be into. Of course, you were doing some version of all the above. You were hiding well. It was clear by now that ‘anointing’ was not character and Gbile Akanni’s analogy of the fan still spinning without electricity was so very apt. Then came along this psalm that just spoke to being known and known from the start.

I did not think it possible that the bible could still surprise me with clarity and purpose to heart. It did. I was open to the idea that there was no hiding place in intimacy with God. It became clear to me that He knew all these things I was trying to hide from others. Of course I knew this before but I did not know His reaction to knowing was not a bolt or hell but more love. This is the miracle of the thing between man and God; the eternal response to fallen man is a loving God. There is not another love story like this. There is not another burst of freedom than in knowing God’s love for you. There is nothing left of the old need to hide when you know that your sickness of sin is met and defeated beyond repair by accepting the eternal love of God, proved in Christ, and waiting for you on the other side of waking up.

So, go ahead, express yourself.

To Him.

……..amen.

Aweikinin 28/08/2015

    

Genesis 1

H,

I know that it may sound simplistic and to all our pretensions it may even seem a little bit off but it is like this: you take your medicine or you die. Also, you take your medicine and then you die. The latter has life at the end of the tunnel. The former, well, I do not know. Some claim it does. I do not know. I have not been there yet. We both know that the human ailment is sin. Some call it self. It is much the same thing. Sin or self is when we seek our own way over God and others. It is living in the now even if the ‘now’ is a sixty year plan. I know that your catholic soul will protest, as my Pentecostal soul does too, and say: what about lying, stealing, the old slip and slide, fornications, adulteries, murder and so on and so on. It seems that for a quite a long time, we have mixed up the symptoms with the disease.

The things we do are the symptoms of the disease and the way we are is the disease itself. Are we not told that it is what comes out of our hearts that it is the problem not the heart itself? Are we not told to guard the metaphorical heart because out of it comes everything else? We are told that a man is as he thinks he is from his own heart. We are told that things we do not out of actual belief are pointless. We are told, finally, that what we do without love is useless. All these things together paint a picture of life as not a series of events but one whole thing that comes from an inner state of being and not an outer state of doing. The light must lead to acts from the light and the dark will lead to acts in the dark.

I know that it is time to put our hands up and say, how about all the things we do? Are we always in the light? Well, we go back to the thing about taking your medicine. All of us have the disease of self or sin. We have had it for a while. When we accept the light we have agreed to go to the hospital and to take our medicine daily. That is what Christianity is. This is what discipleship is. We are not really here for the acts of power but to receive the heart of God. The bible tells us exactly what happens to those who think acting for God is living for God, who have mixed up what the hand does with who the heart must  be and who want to be conduits but not friends with Him. It is not a question of hypocrisy. We are human. We will fail. It is a question of being honest, open, and teachable. It is when we admit that we are sick and we are in repair in the face of God that our message of hope and life truly has any significance. We will be in treatment till the end of our earthly lives because we believe that this life is not the end of the story. Whoever we will be is marked by how we accept the forever cure of self and wake up to the certain more of God.

There is a new humanity rising from the ashes of fallen man and that place where we “slip the surly bonds of earth...to touch the face of God” is now open to receive us and turn us into true daughters and sons of original intent.