Loss of a Secret Place

Some people can carry their secret place -- the space in which they are free to pray and be alone with the Father -- everywhere with them. I never got the hang of this. In fact, since the actual, physical space I'd been using for prayer got turned from very-private to no-hope-of-privacy, I've been pretty well lost to prayer.

My secret place, before it got annexed by a new living area (formerly a storage space never frequented, now our bedroom), used to be my refuge. I could go in, close the door, lose myself and be neither self-conscious nor subject to being snuck up on and surprised. If I were ambushed mid-prayer or Bible reading, even by a well-meaning spouse, I'm not sure I'd be able to pray again. That's how self-conscious I still am about it; that's how enormous the risk of starting to pray again in an openly-ambushable area.

The only space I have now (the space vacated) is a loft, which isn't like a room with walls and a door; it's just an open space with stairs leading up to it. It's a place, but it's not private. It's not even close to a secret place.

I miss that secret place terribly. I've been trying to keep surrounding myself with things of the Spirit (but not too much -- not too loudly, as if I were tiptoeing around someone sound asleep -- lest I awaken to how much I want to pick up and move to a certain faraway place), but I miss my one-on-one time with Him. I listen to sermons about it, as recently in a message about the Holy Spirit being the force that brings the Word to life: "Yeah, I remember that. Right on! Good times. Can't have those anymore. Damn."

These recurrent, ultimate arrivals at "Damn" take their toll on the soul. Too much "Damn" is salt in the gears. Too much "Damn" is lemon juice in the eye. Too much "Damn" snaps its sneaky fingers and hope is nothing more than a thing with feathers, flitting quickly out the window and away.

The absence of hope reduces my potential to a storehouse of dusty holographic plates that haven't tasted the pleasure of a laser in what feels like an eternity. You can walk around and look at the two-dimensional plates but, since your mind isn't made of math, the patterns don't make spatial sense. There really is a person in here, but there is a catch: needs Light.

I need a secret place again, so that I might return to the secret place, alone with Him. I'm living under a huge deception and my eyes need to be opened. Prayers welcome.

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Confessions of a Facebook Addict

This is horrible. And I never saw it coming. Somehow, I got addicted to Facebook.

I think it started when one of Bethel's leaders mentioned on BethelTV that he had posted some information on his Facebook page.

Hmm, I wondered, what is this Facebook thing of which they speak?


Famous last words.

Perhaps not quite the last. There's so much that's happened in the past month. Time to begin.


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Half-Baked

There are several half-baked posts I'm still working on, including a word I received in prayer which should make for a really nice one.


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If you check out subscriptions with this link, you can let them know that I sent you.


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On Sabbatical

I'm indulging in a reading marathon of sorts, so my brain's been focused on drinking in the thoughts of others rather than leaking anything out. I didn't anticipate my blog going dormant so suddenly and protractedly, but I suppose this is a season for me to listen, pray, and read.

Peace.


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James 5:16 (Prayer Book)

Prayer is good. Part of James 5:16 (KJV) reads:

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.


I can't remember what today made me suddenly recall the dream I had last night, but it hadn't come back to me in wakefulness until then. In the dream, I was being given the gift of a prayer book and it was contained in a box which, when I opened it, contained a very small volume with a dark cover and some kind of irregularity on the front cover toward the right-hand side, as if it were perhaps one of those small notebooks with an elastic band that slides around to keep it closed, but I couldn't quite distinguish it.

It was a bit worn, as it had been owned before, and it was at least a couple of decades old. I recall in the dream thinking that, when I picked it up, I could halfway expect to see yellowed pages from how it looked on the outside. Receiving this prayer book in my dream filled me with the incredible joy of finding treasure and also an overwhelming gladness that this book was now being entrusted to me.

Shortly after I recalled the dream, my spouse and I were sitting in the car eating some drive-thru cuisine to the sounds of the local Roman Catholic radio station. I'd say we had the radio on for maybe half an hour tops, and I know it's pretty likely that one would hear the words "prayer book" mentioned on such a radio station, but when I heard it, the dream was reinforced and I began to be sure that I was to seek out that book quasi-immediately.

I told my spouse about the dream and said that, if we passed a Christian bookstore on the way back, I might need to stop there and pick up a book. However, just as we started out of the parking lot, there was a Half Price Books store less than a block away, and looking at the store's sign felt right to me, so we stopped there and I went in. As my spouse was going to stay in the car, I said to call my cell if I was taking too long.

Got to the religion section, found prayer books, and there were two shelves to examine, with all kinds of hymnals intermixed. As I was looking, it occurred to me that browsing used books was definitely the right way to go because the book in my dream wasn't new. However, I opened my mind to the possibility that the book He wanted me to get might not look just like the one in the dream and, scanning the shelves, waited for one of them to call out to me.

I felt the Holy Spirit upon me and peace came over me. I paused to say a prayer of love and thanks that He was right there with me, and how I honor and cherish His presence.

It was a small, dark-colored volume, leatherbound, and it had seen some hard times. The first few pages had been torn out and a previous owner had written in the first half of the Table of Contents on the flyleaf attached to the cover, and all the publication information was missing. The upper-right-hand corner of the cover looked like it had been a little mauled by a dog, and there were lots of scratches across the page edges, which were a silver color.

My cell phone rang which, at the time, I didn't see as an indicator that my search was over, but in retrospect that's pretty clear. I kept looking for a short while, passing slowly over the books so as not to leave out even the smallest volume. Then I finished, paid $7.55, and brought it back to the car.

As I held it, it occurred to me that not only did this book resemble the one in my dream in that it wasn't new, but also the mangled cover corner made the edge look irregular, just like it was in the dream. We had some more errands to run, for the next of which my spouse had to get out of the car, leaving me alone with the book for a bit. I asked where it wanted to open and I prayed the prayer to which it opened. As soon as I started, a physical manifestation came upon me that I can neither describe nor explain in the context of a blog, but be it said that something was happening.

Then I started having a conversation with Him in a low voice, right there in the car. I asked,

Should I go back to Bethel again?

to which He replied with the question,

Do you want more of me?

Oh boy. I said Yes in every way I knew how. Of course this brings up a ton of conflicts and it won't be easy, but I sorta have to. I need more of Him!


Now that I think of it, I really had sowed the seeds of this encounter earlier today: First thing today, I had to go accompany my spouse someplace and then wait for about an hour, so I brought a book to read (one of my extra-Biblicals). When the time came, though, I never got to the book because I had started praying and just kept going, feeling ever nearer to Him. It was after this that I remembered the dream and the rest of these events came forth.

Glory to You, Lord Christ!


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Resurrection Day 2009

Got to church today hoping to receive, but I was called to give instead. We sat in the back row (at spouse's insistance, long story) and during the worship time, love just went out from me to these people and I started praying love, peace, and healing over that house. I drew from what I suppose has become a resource now, the connection that comes when I turn to Him in faith, and the house there just needed an outpouring of the Spirit, so I stood there in the back row praying over them, loosing Heavenly things over their house inasmuch as I'm able.

The specific altar call at the end of the service was for people who were especially broken or suffering, so I waited for that crowd to thin down before I went up and just quietly knelt down to try to listen to what He might be trying to speak to me. I closed my eyes and just saw pages of the Bible flipping in front of my eyes; I tried to single out a chapter and verse, asking whether there was a specific one He was trying to show me, but the pages kept passing quickly. Isaiah and Hebrews were the two chapter headings I could make out but the numbers kept changing, so although I honed into two ZIP codes, I didn't find a direct address.

Add to this the peculiar fact that He has just (in the past week) opened up the letters of Paul to me, and things get complicated. Every time I'd get through the New Testament to the end of Acts, I'd get a message to go back to the Gospels and go through again, that I wasn't yet ready to start on Paul (I went through those chapters maybe five times). Now that I'm opening up Paul's letters, today I just got two more chapters to add to the stack. The stack's becoming intimidating, especially with all the extra-Biblical stuff I'd had lined up as well.

Gotta start somewhere.
Oh yeah, and He is risen indeed: Alleluia!


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Return of the Electric Bible

My "electric Bible" is a compact ESV Bible that I bought in 2006 when I had the experience of receiving God into my life for good. I brought it with me everywhere I went for more than a year, and bit by bit I waterproofed the thick, leather cover by working melted bits of wax into it. It's worn at the corners and exceedingly soft to the touch, and some of the gold has rubbed off the edges of the pages where I read most. It fits right into my hands and is a little smaller than the span of my hands so that when it rests there, my fingers touch and start to fold together.

This book in particular has always done something special for me, and a few times it has sent surges of energy up my arms as I held it (thus my affectionately naming it "electric"). Generally speaking, though, it does give me these gentle, quiet pulses of energy when I hold it, like little waves lapping against a boat sitting still on a lake. It's such a delight to hold that once I touch it, it's hard to put it down again and leave it alone. It calls to me, almost as though it yearns for me to come and touch and hold and read. It settles me and declares peace over my body no matter what the conditions. It wakes, warms, and energizes me as it calls me to an ever-deepening relationship with its contents.

When we went on our trip to Bethel, this particular Bible went directly into the small carry-on bag that I held onto at all times and never let out of my reach (along with plane tickets and other vital necessities). When we got to the hotel room, however, I searched the bag and the electric Bible was nowhere to be found. I'd remembered seeing it in the bag at the airport and, though I hadn't recalled having taken it out, it had somehow disappeared. Both my spouse and I searched all our bags and the entire hotel room until I became quite upset, having thought I'd lost it.

The "most probable conclusion" at which I arrived was that, the night before, I had needed to use it after I was finished packing, so surely I left it out, had imagined seeing it at the airport, and would find it upon our return. The "most probable conclusion" at which my spouse arrived was that someone had stolen it during the trip and that we'd never see it again.

I soon took courage in the thought that perhaps it would bring joy to whomever it ended up with, and also that perhaps it was time for me to go buy another one, so I did. The one I bought was a different translation (NASB), different size, and different feel, but still I like it quite a lot. It took the place of the old one in my always-at-hand carry-on bag, and it went with me everywhere during the trip: I read and prayed with it at the prayer house and brought it to services with me.

The night we got home from the trip, however, was a very weird night for a few different reasons. I had gotten into a worked-up, shaky state in which I could feel my pulse pounding at what was probably about 110 bpm, my left arm ached, I was having trouble breathing, and there were small chest pains. Wanting not to wake and alarm my spouse, I just kept an eye out for any "crushing" sensation in the chest that would signal a definite heart attack, but none came.

Still shaky, achy, and wired, though, I started to get very upset again about the loss of the electric Bible; I started to be truly grieved about it and became a little obsessive about the matter. I scoured the place three or four times looking for where I might have left it and neglected to pack it. Giving up looking, I prayed fervently and almost frantically asking the Lord that it be restored to me. I knew that He knew how much it had meant to me.

I knew He had heard me, so I ended with a prayer of thanks and headed upstairs to the bedroom. A feeling of peace descended over me, even though my body was still shaking and hurting in ways that made me a little nervous. I still wondered whether I was going to have a cardiac event that night, but now there was a new peace in having lifted up my prayer, so I lay down in bed to try to sleep. I thought, "well, if it's my time now, life sure just got a whole lot easier, as I'm being called home before more of the really hard times could come." I decided that if it was His will that I go, I'd like to be holding the two things I treasure most in the world, so I put one arm around my spouse and held that new Bible in my other hand. I fell asleep asking that no matter what else, His will might be done.

Somewhat surprised to wake the following morning, I noticed that all the nervousness and the physical symptoms that had me worried were gone, though I felt a little drained. I went downstairs to get a morning-type beverage and, on the way back up, my mind caught sight of that small carry-on travel bag. I heard a small voice suggest, "unpack that one now," so I did, thinking it was a voice of reason primarily for the sake of entropy control, as the bedroom had gone beyond messy to "disaster area." Putting things away, I had unpacked the bag about halfway when my hand found a familiar shape and pulled it forth in disbelief: there it was. The electric Bible had been restored to me.

When my spouse woke up, I hid it behind my back and started, "just in case there was any doubt in your mind as to whether His hand is at work in our lives..." and pulled out the Bible. I received back one very surprised expression.

"Where'd you find it?"

"In the same bag, under the little shelf thingy that lines the bottom. I thought I'd looked there before, but I didn't find it."

"I felt around in that space too, when we were searching the hotel room, and it wasn't there."


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Glimpse

It was just for a short while, but we did make it to Bethel's awesome Friday night worship service. It was the first time I'd been in the Sanctuary area as a part of their body of believers. We got there early and sat a while watching people gather and listening to the worship team band get ready for the service.

Does anyone remember the analog radio dial? Perhaps they still exist out there somewhere, where you actually turn a dial or do something continuous (not like clicking along in uniform increments of frequency as is usual now) to scroll up and down the radio band. If you do this very slowly, stations will fade in and out; some will get very clear before they fade and others will barely come in before they're gone. You'll pick up a piece of a sentence here or a fragment of a song there, with stretches of static in between.

That's what it felt like in my head as I looked from one person to the next and my ears heard pieces of conversations fade in and out. With a couple of people, I looked at them and felt as though I'd known them for years, like passing a radio station in the band where you recognize a song from just the brief moment that comes in clearly. People were registering with me, fading in and out amid the static, and I got a syllable -- three phonemes -- when my eyes passed over one particular person; it said, "Sol," (pronounce it somewhere between Saul and soul) and I don't know whether that was a fragment of a bigger word, was its own word in a sentence, or a portion of the person's name. It was just spoken in my head very clearly and had nothing to do with anything I was hearing at the time.

Though that was the only syllable that came through, I felt the fullness of nascent pronouncements when I looked all over the roomful of people, as if there were a statement or message in there concerning each one of them but something was impeding my ability to "tune in" to everything save that one breakthrough, runaway syllable.

Now, I could tell you only vaguely what the person looked like; the memory has faded out. It's not as though it got burned into my mind or carried any sense of great urgency. It seems significant, though, that the potential for much, much more seemed already to be there.

The same feeling did not occur at any of the three services on Sunday, nothing of the same sort at all. The next time I go there, though, I'm going to go sit in the same place where it happened on the same evening of the week and try again, hoping to trigger a more lengthy "download," as it were.

That was my first download ever, though; an infinitesimal glimpse of potential things far greater. I can only marvel at whether He might have done this to whet my appetite for something to come more fully at a later time. It's certainly something I'll not soon forget.


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Into Love

I'm about to testify to the greatest miracle I've ever personally witnessed and to which I can hold up no doubt in the world because it happened right here within me. First, let me tell you what it is; then I'll tell you what it means. During a period of prayer and fasting, I was asking for two things: to be closer to Him, and that He would make me whole. In response,

He made me into love.

That's the only way I know how to put it. I became love at His touch. I walked in love, I looked around and saw through the eyes of love, it went on for days, and sometimes I can even still get there now. I saw people as love sees people, and I felt toward other human beings as I'd never been able to before.

Perhaps with a little background I can attempt to do some justice to the sheer magnitude of this miracle.


I've always hated children. People would say to me, "well you were a child once, too," to which I would reply, "yes, and that's why I hate them!" To me, no child was ever cute; when people would show me baby pictures I'd smile and feign affection but would feel utter disgust. When I saw a child I'd be overtaken by an instant, gripping, all-consuming urge to get away from it somehow, even if it wasn't screaming or misbehaving. If the child were of a different race or of the opposite gender, that could help my disposition a little, but seeing any child would set me into a blazing fury (often of expletives). A family with four or more children would make me physically nauseated. I won't even talk about how I felt about women getting pregnant, especially "by accident." I had a zero-tolerance policy for procreation in general.

You can see where this was coming from, yes? A therapist once told me, "There are some people in the world who simply should not have children. Unfortunately, your mother was one of those people."


After the Lord made me into love, all that attitude, all that hatred and anger, all that hurt just wasn't anywhere to be found. It's as though I looked inside myself and only saw a vacant storefront with a "For Lease" sign in the place all that pain and rage used to live. No forwarding address: just gone.

My spouse was the one first to pick up on the miracle. I'd been standing in line at a sandwich shop for about a half an hour waiting to get said spouse some food (this was during the time I was fasting) and there was this huge group of people with like eighteen zillion sandwich orders just ahead of me. I was standing there loving everyone, in awe of this new gift from Him, and everyone I saw made me smile and glow warmly.

I put in my order, got the food, and when I got back to the car my spouse said, "I'm so sorry you had to wait that obscenely-long amount of time in line, and with all those children around, you must've been going crazy!" I hadn't thought about it while I was in there, but there had been maybe 5 or 7 children in the huge party in front of me and I hadn't noticed a thing. I simply loved everyone I saw, like it was the most natural thing in the world, and somehow that included children.


Everything's different now. People being angry at each other puzzles me now. I can still get annoyed or frustrated, but I no longer spontaneously experience the pure, seething hatred I'd sometimes feel toward others (in traffic, for example). I mean, if I dig for the hatred and trigger it I can get to it, but I'm no longer seeing it through my own eyes; that whole deal now belongs to someone who doesn't exist anymore, so the emotion feels a little like stale bread tastes (if that makes any sense). Even my expletives are getting replaced by harmless, hate-free words.

And the only way I know how to even attempt to explain this incredible, instantaneous shift in my perspective, my outlook, my world-view, and even my knee-jerk reactions to certain stimuli, is to give glory to His hand at work.

I don't believe I would've been in a right place to receive this miracle if I hadn't worked through an issue of forgiveness that I had (problem stated in To Forgive, 3/6/09, and resolution described in Treasure Revealed, 3/17/09); of course, God's miracle would have stood no matter what state I was in, but I feel that my having found forgiveness through Him is what enables His gift of love to continue on in me to this day.

Walking in love -- as love -- is an experience that provokes a turn of phrase I've used before when He's intervened and changed my life: it's as though I'm now on a slightly different planet from the one I was on before. To Him be the glory, thanks, and praise!

Ephesians 5:1-2 (ESV)

1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children;

2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up
for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.


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Devilweeding

This one requires a little bit of background before I launch into description and also requires a bit of faith to believe/understand. I'm going out on a limb because some of the things I'm writing here are of the sort to which I wouldn't have given the slightest bit of credence, say, a few years ago. Now, turns of phrase like "demonic powers" and "gave me a vision of" are WNL (within normal limits), whereas they used to be off the charts, as it were: outside the whole realm of discourse. So proceed either with faith or with caution, to whichever you have the most ready access.

About a month and a half ago, when first I started this blog, I had just been delivered from captivity in the hands of the enemy (demonic powers), which had lasted for at least 6 months. As my good friend was praying for my deliverance, it felt as though the main resident enemies kinda slithered out the top of my head, and on the way out, they gave me a vision of what would happen to me when they got back.

Imagine a body held in place in a high-velocity wind tunnel where the temperature of the air is high enough to vaporize anything in its path. For a large, solid object, it might look rather like an ice cube as it melts; you can't see it melting away at the edges but you can see it shrink, seeming to go faster as the ratio of surface area to volume increases: you can't see the object burning away at the surface because the smoke and vapors it turns into are so quickly blown away in the wind tunnel, too fast to see.

That's what they showed me. An incredible forced-air furnace that dissolved my body.

The Lord is good at turning the enemy's weapons against him, and so He did again with this. I was at Bethel in the prayer house and God had just worked a miracle in me (which will be next post's content), but still I was being attacked intermittently by thoughts I know didn't come from me and I know didn't come from God. I asked Him what I should do with such things. He showed me the following.

I was looking at an overgrown lawn that looked much like the back lawn at our house. Mostly tallish grass covered the ground, but there were three or four large, prominent, thick and tall weeds among the grass. I saw the weeds start to lift out of the ground as if an invisible hand were plucking them out right at the bottom of the stalks where the roots begin, until I saw all the weeds, roots and all, just hanging there in the air.

And He said to me, "now, blow on them." When I did, my breath was somehow amplified and heated so that it produced a wind tunnel of super-heated air just like the one I'd seen before, and the weeds bent in the rushing air and were consumed from the outside in, until there was nothing left but the lawn of grass below. Not even one particle of ash remained.

The Lord gave me an incredible gift in showing me this. Not only does it work on unwanted thoughts, but it's also shown success in application to demons. But not just a puff of air like blowing out a candle; these require a protracted breath to disintegrate fully. Sometimes I'll just have fun by throwing in a huge blast of light along with the furnace just to remind them what they're really up against and not to come back anytime soon.

I do this until my mindscape is clear of them. I always feel closer to Him afterwards, the more free to follow Him more nearly, and waves of joy -- be they little ripples as in a pond or larger waves as in a pool -- often wash over me.


But I'm still waiting for His great tsunami. I'm running along the shore like a frantic ant, seeing it whack other people and chasing after it, aiming directly for its path inasmuch as I can even discern it. I am so ready to "drown the old man," there just aren't human words for it.

I think it was Pastor Kris Vallotton who once said that water baptism isn't just symbolic, but rather it's a prophetic declaration over a person's life. I was "Christened" as an infant with a sprinkling which I think was probably a nice little ritual with no power to it whatsoever. I'm ready for the real thing and so hungry for it my soul screams; nothing could make me stop sprinting along that shore.


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Alabaster House; Fire on Hands

Alabaster House, Bethel Church's Prayer House, Always Open

Bethel Church in Redding, CA calls their prayer house Alabaster House, referring to the alabaster vial of perfume poured out over Jesus' head in (I'm fairly sure the following is the particular Scripture to which they refer; someone please let me know if I'm misremembering; that little monument is one of the things I forgot to photograph) Mark 14:3-6 (here in NAS):

3 While He was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper,
and reclining at the table, there came a woman with an
alabaster vial of very costly perfume of pure nard; and she
broke the vial and poured it over His head.

4 But some were indignantly remarking to one another,
"Why has this perfume been wasted?

5 For this perfume might have been sold for over three
hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor." And
they were scolding her.

6 But Jesus said, "Let her alone; why do you bother her?
She has done a good deed to Me."

In the same way, when we bring our gifts of worship, prayer, and service to Him, we encourage each other to pour out our most precious gifts unto Him, and if someone wants to call that "waste," then great, let's "waste" the heck out of the best of all we have in offering it to Him!

Knowing that Bethel had a prayer house that was always open was a key factor in my deciding to actually head all the way out to California and go there. Pastor Bill Johnson, I think, once jokingly referred to Bethel as becoming like a "Denny's®: Always Open" when they first started leaving the prayer house open 24 hours. (However, as Alabaster House is overseen by Pastor Beni Johnson, I rather like thinking of it as "Beni's: Always Open" instead.) There is 24-hour video surveillance over every square centimeter as well, so don't even think about heading over there with any ill intent.

Sure enough, the morning after we flew in and got to Redding, I dragged my poor, unsuspecting spouse out of bed at 5:00 and through the chilly, pre-dawn darkness so I could come and pray. What was most surprising is that there were already several people there! There is praise and worship music playing inside at all times, though the volume varied so there must be a control for it somewhere. I kinda wish there were designated "quiet times" of day or week, when one could go and pray and just listen to the waterfall (yes, there's a smaller one inside the building as well as the big ones, with the pond, outside).

There's also been mention of putting a vending machine in there where one could buy little communion packets with a piece of bread and a tiny cup of juice; my opinion is that if there were a place to just take one (or purchase with a nominal sum) and an offering box next to it, they'd probably make more money that way and it wouldn't rob the largely-impecunious student/youth population of the experience. Idea: a vending machine that will take a student's (or any church member's?) ID card swipe as a form of payment, with a limitation of maybe 23 hours between uses (an hour's grace for those who come every day at nearly the same time). Complications abound and, at any rate, I digress.

Were it not for the general imperative that my spouse and I not be separated outside our home city (very long story), I would have basically lived at that prayer house all my waking hours while we were there. Even as things were, I got in several blessed sessions of decent length.

Every time I could relax enough to listen for Him (all except once), He was there, and I was in a place (not just physically) to receive Him. Things started to be revealed to me.

For a while, I'd heard people talking about The Anointing coming upon them in physical ways and, though I did (and still do) have my own peculiar physical manifestations (Maybe I'm a "Lefty"), there seemed always to be a theme among others of a fire-like sensation in the hands that I'd not experienced at all, and I had been both puzzled and dismayed.

Well, it came.

It didn't feel like a painful kind of burning, nor did it feel like sizzling per se, but it was more than just tingling or the feeling of a pulse. When I jotted down an exceedingly brief note of what had happened just after the fact, I wrote, "fire on hands" (not "hands on fire"). There was a sensation of tongues of flame licking but without the actual burning or hurting that one would normally expect to accompany it. It was a fairly strong sensation and felt quite unusual. When it faded away, it went out of my right hand before my left, and the last places it lingered were the left thumb and first two fingers, all the way up at the tips.

Now, what actually came of it? Nothing thus far. I've only tried using it three times, though, so it almost doesn't even count. Actually, I'm really glad it hasn't begun yet because I don't yet know how to carry it, especially now that I'm back in an environment where I'm not surrounded by a "Kingdom culture," full of resources and support. I just got a small taste when I was there.

I got a small taste of a great many glorious things during this trip. More to come.


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So Much News to Give

We had our first trip to Bethel Church this past weekend. Three wonderful days of church (real church!), prayer, and fasting (for me, at least).

I have much to post including pics, miracles worked in me, and many other experiences & thoughts thereon.

Without faith, it would be difficult to believe all that happened for us there. But, having traveled through Buddhism, agnosticism, atheism, and a couple more different mindsets to new life in Jesus, perhaps I'm in a decent situation to try and convey these things for believers and nonbelievers alike.

Also, much love to two new friends, C. G. and M. R.

_______

Sneak Peek
He gave me a word:

Let there be respect for measures of time, but let time only be given measure.

All things important are given without measure: Holy Spirit without measure, mercy without measure, love without measure. Measures of distance across the planet have been largely overcome with high-speed transport and the internet. Our big limitation in being put here on the earth is our being confined to time as it exists for us. That's the only real obstacle with which we have to contend in bringing His heavenly will to our hungry, desperate, longing world.

Measures of space, however, do provide beautiful analogies through which I'll someday soon be able to explain ways of thinking mathematically that will point the way to God, and then to right relationship with Him, especially for the math-minded.

The equations already started coalescing this past weekend at Bethel. So close I can almost taste them.

Praise and glory to the Lord!

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Bethel Church, Trip 1

First Trip to Bethel Church in Redding, CA
March 2009

For the sake of organization in future months, let this serve as an index for posts about this visit.

Posts will be listed in the order in which they're posted (oldest first). New stuff will be added to the end of the list so that once I've written the full scope of what I can, there will be a full index here. Hazzah.


So Much News to Give

Alabaster House; Fire on Hands

Devilweeding

Into Love

Glimpse




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Kingdom Rice Krispies

I have this plan in mind, and for the past couple of days I've been doubting that I'm on the right track, that this is really what He wants me to do. For me it's a pretty radical idea, but they say obedience is supposed to be that way. Still, some pesky little doubtlettes (small doubts) were lingering in my head.

So this afternoon, I'm waiting on my spouse to go out, and my eyes gently roll across the stuff on the kitchen counter: peanut butter, bread, microwave popcorn, and then to the side of a blue cereal box: the print's so small it looks fuzzy and, even though I do recognize the box, my mind parses the text on it as:

Kingdom Rice Krispies

Of course, it really said Kellogg's (I didnt really have a heavenly cereal box in my kitchen), but I started smiling and all the doubt just melted away. It's potentially a beginning stage of a kingdom mindset, as it were, and my confidence is bolstered in what we're about to undertake.

Thank you, Lord, for bringing each of us that much closer to our destiny in You. Even if it's weird. Even if it's radical. And especially if it takes our lives in directions we never could have imagined.


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It's Always in the Last Place You Look

When you're searching for something, it's always in the last place you look.

Not that it's in the last place you would look, but that it's in the last place you do look, because after you find the object you usually stop looking.

The kingdom of God isn't like that, though. Seeking it out is a lifelong process -- I mean, there's more there than we could possibly learn in the natural course of time itself -- so in times of success, when you've reached for the kingdom and have found it and connected with it, and with Him, just keep reminding yourself:

Don't stop seeking; for the kingdom of God is not your car keys.

The thing about the kingdom is that if you seek it out, find it, and feel that point is an endpoint, then you've not found the real thing. Seeing, approaching, touching, and even walking in the kingdom of God should always make you hungry for more.

Just as in good science -- where the questions raised by each significant discovery will far outnumber the original questions that led to the discovery itself -- the more you see in the kingdom of God, the more you'll see there is to hunger for, and thus your hunger multiplies in being fed.

And with this increased hunger comes the potential for so many more ways of having that hunger satisfied. Remember Luke 12:32 (ESV),

Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure
to give you the kingdom.

Take a minute to digest that one. When you seek the kingdom and find it, you. give God. pleasure. Think about how huge that is. So many times when I'm thinking or praying I think if only I could know without a doubt that, through all my efforts, I'd pleased Him for just one moment, that would be food for my soul for the rest of my life; that's all I would ever need.

Knowing that would be ammunition enough to blow away the evil ones that still try to come and dwell with me and convince me to destroy myself. It would sustain me through the "dry spells," the seasons in which I might not be able to get as close to Him as I'd like.

It would be an existence proof! In logic, an existence proof means that once you prove that something can be done, you then have to consider it as a possibility (a possible reason, a possible cause, a possible diagnosis, a possible explanation, or just possible to do) in everything you do from then on. If you can observe an instance of a thing, then you've proven that something in that category of things can exist, because it existed at least once: even the category itself does exist, even if it just contains that one instance, but it opens up the realm of possibility that other things might also exist in that category.

If I had an existence proof that I'd pleased God once, then two things happen: first, I can celebrate that one occurrence because it existed and secondly, knowing that it's possible provides encouragement for me to try to repeat the experience and please Him many times.

So seek, find, rejoice, take courage, repeat.
Amen!


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Favorite Biblical Verse

Perhaps my very favorite Biblical verse of all time is John 16:33 (here in ESV):


I have said these things to you, that in me you may
have peace. In the world you will have tribulation.
But take heart; I have overcome the world.


Does anyone else see Him smiling while saying that last sentence?


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Pillow Talk

If Jesus is the lover of our souls, does that make prayer analogous to pillow talk? Only of the most intimate and sanctified variety, but yeah, why not!

Anyway, here are some prayers I've been saying lately, that I want to share. I know I've borrowed parts from everywhere in my experience, from readings to teachings to songs and hymns, so I claim no "ownership" of, or originality in, any of these words. For example, the last phrase is stolen shamelessly from prayers in church I remember from childhood. In fact, I feel closest to God when I find myself thinking of nothing as my own, so here; I hope you enjoy my abject and despicable thievery:


Heavenly Father,

Let Your breath be my life;

Let Your light be my joy;

Let Your love be my strength;

Let Your word be my bread;

Let Your call be my walk and my way;

Let Your will be the desire of my heart also.


Father, please help me grow and sustain perfect trust and faith in You;
Lord Jesus, please help me to follow You ever more closely in my daily life;
Holy Spirit, please come to dwell with me, that I might be transformed through Your manifest presence;


Heavenly Father, you know what we need even before we ask it of you;
Please grant unto us everything we need, even (and especially!) if that includes things we might not expect nor even have in mind;


Please help us to become strong vessels, laid upon the sound foundation of Your word, that we might have the integrity to hold together as we are filled to overflowing with Your grace;


Please help us to know Your voice and to see the movement of Your hand in the world, to the end that we might faithfully sow the seeds of Your heavenly kingdom here on the earth;


Heavenly Father, all this we ask in Jesus' name -- to whom with You and the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory, world without end.
Amen.


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Treasure Revealed

Had a breakthrough on the forgiveness thing (original post). Many aspects of life suddenly have become amazingly easier. I'm also finding shorter pathways to kicking out demons when they try to come.

The person I forgave was an important influence in my childhood so with this new-found forgiveness has come this HUGE treasure chest overflowing with old memories that can now come back to me in a non-destructive form. I'd thought no good memories could ever come of my thinking back on that relationship, but now they're coming in droves! Songs and the words of some prayers and hymns start coming to my mind just about as soon as I start praying -- things I'd forgotten or suppressed for years. The memories emerge with this glow of love about them because the forgiveness I found for this person grew out of a new love for them through the Lord.

It's as though I'd been blinded to the good parts of experiences in that relationship before I could forgive the person, but now I see them -- they were there all along, of course, just my capacity to enjoy (or even perceive!) them had been squelched by the venomous evil with which that relationship was tainted. But there were good parts, and my mind is starting to shut down old pathways and start digging new troughs through which my thoughts can flow.

Heretofore, I'd only been able to remember the bad parts of the relationship and I know that, in order for my thought processes to change, there had to be something to replace the old pathways: a shunt to a new way of thinking. The catch with trying to change your thinking in this way is that the new thought absolutely must be more appealing to think of than the old one; no matter how hard I've tried, I've never been able to push thoughts down another path from behind but always have had to coax them out gently and lead them with a treat, as if holding a carrot in front of a tortoise on which I'm riding (or just holding a big piece of cake in front of myself; perhaps that's the better analogy).

Then good ol' GABA goes to work. Sy Rogers acutally impressed the heck out of me during a talk he gave by starting on about thought patterns and using the full name of this neurochemical: gamma-aminobutyric acid. If I recall correctly, it's GABA in the brain that suppresses the firing of neural pathways (I think glutamine is the corresponding antagonist molecule that stimulates neurotransmission, but I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment). So I would contend that not only do you need to shut down the old pathways but actively seek out new pathways down which the thoughts can flow and to make these the paths of least resistance (or greatest reward) to think about, so props to glutamine as well.

At any rate, just recall Luke 1:37 (ESV):

37 For nothing will be impossible with God.

That word nothing, traced to a Greek word, I believe, has to do with the freshly-spoken word. I'm still trying to tune in to God's freshly spoken words, but I think I'm making some headway there.

Praise God -- from whom all blessings flow!


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Instructions

Another dream just now while napping just after some prayer time; so much happened there's no way I'm going to even remember it all much less get it down. However, I can certainly say that there were some pretty clear instructions there. And it happens that I woke up at about 6:58 PM and was facing the clock when it turned 7:00 PM.

Does anyone else get a little scared when it seems that, with increasing clarity and certainty, He's sending you messages?


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Timing

I just awoke from a dream wherein my dream-self was visited by an angelic presence, and it had a lot to do with timing. I'll attempt to describe it a bit.

A tangle of vehicles, from motorcycles to RVs, some moving and some stationary, a TV in nearly every room of every residence, houses without outer walls such that there were no completely enclosed rooms, and motion, constant motion back and forth among these dwelling places. I was darting around, always glancing at a TV to see what was going on in this community and who needed my help. It was as though I were some sort of spirit of comfort.

People were going through things like relocations, divorces, family issues where children were coming back home, broken limbs, auto accidents, and travel to faraway places. I was somehow zooming around among them, checking TVs as I went; the TVs were changing channels every few seconds and when I looked up at one, I got an eyeful of whatever (or more specifically, whoever) was the object of the current channel. I never had time to stop for more than a few seconds to watch the TVs though, because I'd see some urgent need arising and would need to go to the people I saw who were in need.

They were always glad to see me and they kept asking me questions I coudn't answer; all I could do was go to where the calls were strongest and try to do my best with the situation.

Will my arm stop hurting in this cast; will I get better?
When will my son come home to visit me?
Why do you think such-and-so thing happened in this situation; can you explain it for me?
How long should I keep dancing?
Can I be joyful and celebrate now, or is something bad about to happen?
Is my expected party on their way?
Will I make it as far as I need to go?

but sometimes it was just a cry out for comfort, like:

I'm alone and in a strange place; would you come to me?
I'm feeling sad and need your support; would you come to me?
It seems like the dark times will never pass; would you come to me?

Oddly, it was as though I were still in some period of training; I was still learning how to react to these questions and situations as I visited people, and some visits were more awkward than others. I recall things got a little smoother by the end of the dream as my experience built up.

But at exactly 7:00 PM in the dream (a constant urgency that I had to keep checking my watch as I went around to different people and places), I had to be in a particular broken-down, red truck with a crack extending halfway across the windshield, in the front seat. I felt maybe 80% sure that's what the message was, but I knew that if I got there on time and something happened then and there, it would be something really big. It was one of those thoughts that just comes out of nowhere in my head but comes with great weight and certainty. I just had this faith about it.

I made it to the truck in time (but not too early); I could finally rest a little and take a breather, and my eyes lazily followed the crack in the windshield and I just sat there quietly examining and comtemplating it for a moment, but I didn't have to wait long before the angel came. I either don't remember or never could discern the angel's gender, but it was clothed in radiant white and it was very glad. My spirits absolutely soared, I felt restored and no longer weary, and I burst out into smile and even into joyous laughter as the angel and I communed.

I was as glad to be with this angel as people were glad that I had come to visit them.

Then I woke up.


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Happy Pi 2009!

It's 3.14.2009.


Happy !





Joy of Pi Website

Send an e-greeting card for Pi Day

Stare at a big Pi and listen to a Pi-themed song


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Why Physics?

I've not been terribly prolific lately because I've been spending most spare time reading. Let me share a very resonant part of the book I'm reading; but first, the context.

I've often been asked, "Why Physics?" and I've given many different answers.

1) I love it, I love it, I love it: as soon as I found out what experimental science was, I couldn't keep my hands, or my mind, off it.

2) The people I ran across in math and hard sciences tended to be those whose company I most enjoyed and after whom I most wanted to take as a young person.

3) Physics and math are things I was brought up being told I could not do.

4) I got tired of language, literature, and philosophical fields because every time I'd write my own paper on a subject, I'd see the same thing had already been expressed. Everything had been thought before, written before, and done before.

Reading in the humanities was always disheartening because I kept making connections in my head, arriving at new ideas, and then seeing that same idea expressed on the next page; frustration ensued. When you're reading a physics publication and start forming new ideas in your head and then find out the equation you just arrived at is indeed located on the next page, waves of joy ensue instead.

Also, the people I ran into in the humanities tended to be haughty and exclusive and liked nothing better than to say things like, "oh you haven't read that, you just have no idea, and now you're excluded from this conversation; ha ha." So many treated their professions as an outlet for what I like to call "intellectual masturbation," and many more just loved to hear themselves talk above all else.

5) A physics teacher once gave me a college recommendation letter stating that, in his opinion, I would make for a "perfectly adequate" physics major. If you know anything about wiriting a college letter of recommendation for a student, you know that anything short of high praise is considered fairly abysmal damnation. Come on now, I just had to prove that guy wrong (always tempted to think, "God, bless that fellow... with a brick")!

Those are most of the ways in which I've answered that question.

DISCLAIMER: Now all the negative stuff I've said about people in the humanities most certainly CAN, and just as often does, apply to people in the sciences. I'm just saying that when I was young, at the time at which I was making decisions as to which field of study to pursue, and in the particular environments to which I was exposed at the time, these were my general impressions. Oh boy do I have stories to tell about Math Snobs and the "intellectual masturbation" of some scientists who believe the world revolves around them -- but I digress.

Regardless of whom I ran into, ultimately, the joy of science itself always lit my path of study.
_______

But the whole point of this entire bloody post is that I've finally found the perfect answer to the question, "Why Physics?"

The natural realm is the anchor of unbelief. But that realm is not to be considered as evil. Rather the humble of heart recognize the hand of God through what is seen. God has created all things to speak of Him -- whether it is rivers and trees, or angels and heaven. The natural realm carries the witness of His greatness...for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
-- Bill Johnson, When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide to a Life of Miracles. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, Inc, 2003. Chapter 4.

In becoming a physicist I trained my eyes to see and my ears to hear God through the natural realm.

Actually, I've given that as a reason before as well, just not nearly as eloquently as Johnson does; I'd blurt out, "I do physics because I'm listening to God talking," or something to that effect, which would most often cause my interlocutor to look at me askance and slowly start backing away, so it's not an answer I've made a habit of giving. But again, perhaps I've just not been hanging around with the ideal crowd.

Now, to continue into the supernatural realm. Yes, I know I've certainly taken my time getting around to reading this book: back to it!


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Not My Week

<-- What's this rectangle doing here? (lol) Anyway...

Ended up not being my week for churchgoing again, to my dismay. Dismay turned to frustration, which turned into anger and, my emotional stamina having been run over by these like a freight train, lethargy took the place of what was supposed to jump up and fight those temptations. (Nothing as troubling as Backslidden, though.)

Woke up with a new song in my head, though; it sounded of the genre of praise and worship music I've been listening to of late (but of course I added in an interlude of heavier metal guitar in there for a solo). I'm musically illiterate but, fortunately, can play by ear and sing whatever I'm thinking. I can lay down a couple of tracks and a few bars to jog the memory but then, if I can get lucky and flesh them out and mix before I get to the point of exhaustion, I'll try to find a site that hosts random peoples' music for linking to blogs and put this up there. (Suggestions?)

Tuesday. Pivotal day for quite a few people, it seems.
They say it comes after Monday.
We shall see.



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To Forgive

Generally speaking, forgiveness is easy, for a lot of reasons:

1. God's love is an infinite source and is given without measure when we draw upon it.

2. If a person has done evil to me and comes to me for forgiveness, their current state of repentance (changing the way they think and act) means more to me than whatever happened in the past. God put us in a world with a monotonic dimension of time for a reason. I believe part of that reason to be that, as our conscious minds live on the cusp of time as it happens (at the crest of the wave), God is making a point that the present time has vastly more importance than the past (recalled) or the future (imagined). If someone is asking me for forgiveness, their present state has a far greater "weight" than any past state in which they have done evil, and so forgiveness is easy.

3. The very fact of someone's admitting they made a mistake is usually cause enough for me to forgive the person before they ask. One of my strongest attributes, to which I've paid a great deal of attention developing over the years, has been the culturing of a compassionate heart. Compassion goes a long way in our life here on this earth, to say the very least.

4. Close to compassion is empathy, the ability to put oneself in the other person's place and feel as that person feels. When you've walked enough miles in your own shoes, you start to find more situations in which you recognize -- if not a person's actual situation, at least the flavor and power of -- that person's emotional state. Sometimes, being able to switch perspective, to understand (in your own way) why someone might have acted as they did, helps make forgiveness easy.

5. I try with all my heart to follow, and thus come closer to understanding, Jesus' commandment to love my enemies as well as my friends and to consider every human being a child of God.


And yet my heart remains hardened toward just one person, the single person in my life I have never forgiven and, in my current state, cannot forgive. If I go through the list above with regard to this one person, here's what comes out.

1. God's love is limitless, but God's love through me simply does not extend to this person. My limitations do not allow it to reach far enough.

2. and 3. As probably doesn't need to be stated, this person did me high-amplitude damage, but this person never admitted wrongdoing nor came to me and asked for forgiveness in earnest, but only with absolutely transparently false tears, all as a tactic of manipulation.

4. I have tried repeatedly and yet have not been able to put myself in this person's place. I simply cannot understand how someone could act as they did; I surely cannot imagine myself doing as they did.

5. There is no love in me for this person. I can admit, on an intellectual level, that they are a child of God, but still my heart is stone cold.

Last, as this person is dead, there is no hope of interactive, human reconciliation. I don't foresee any hope of reconciliation without divine intervention of some sort, for which I actually do hold a pilot-light-sized hope in a faraway corner of myself.


My spouse believes that I do not need to forgive this person. My last therapist was an atheist and did not help at all because he simply could not fathom, in the end, the depth of my need to forgive because it's a manifestation of my hunger to draw closer towards God.

I know that I do need to find forgiveness for this person because the lack of it, I feel, is actively keeping me from drawing closer to the Father. I can walk (or stumble, as the case may be) in some semblance of alignment with Him, as a compass aligns to the magnetic orientation of the earth (ever slowly, and often not quite rightly due to the influence of other, nearer fields), but my distance from Him cannot close any further until I can forgive. It's as though I have to stay a certain radius from the source of the Light, no matter the direction in which I try to travel to "get around" and get closer.

I feel that I could be ready for the next step in my calling should I be able to resolve this issue. Sometimes it feels as though the only thing keeping me limited to my level is my inability to resolve it.

Feeling His light and warmth, drawing as nearly as I can and reaching out as far as possible, I hear His voice saying to me -- with this brilliant, ever-enduring, all-pervasive and depthless love, almost as quietly as to be a whisper, just barely voiced:

No.

Not until I'm able to forgive.

It feels as though I could run up even into Jesus' arms if just this barrier were removed. How I could walk in the spirit! How I could be this force of God's love in this world! Almost. Almost. So very close it hurts, it aches desperately, it makes me cry; it feels like it's killing me.


Now into the early morning of Saturday: just as you can sense another person's eyes on you even not knowing exactly where they are, I feel the Creeping Sunday begin to draw near.

Will this be my week?


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Sin Getting You Down?

This is a lot of scripture to dump on you at once, so if you want to get to what I've got to say about it, feel free to jump down below and then scroll up here for reference as to where I'm getting some of these thoughts. Also look at Kris Vallotton's last sermon; it took me this long to get it, and it just so happens that it gets to the heart of some of my more recent struggles, so I think it merits reiteration, even if for no one's sake but my own. [Edit: Vallotton's opinion and mine do diverge at a certain point, gotta say that so as not to mis-represent him here.]

I had to do a little de-King-James-ification to work this one out, so here it is through my ESV and even so, they use the word "law" so much that it baked a dang tuna-noodle casserole in my head (don't ask where the tuna came from). So here's Romans 7:18-23, 8:1-6 (ESV)

18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is,
in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right,
but not the ability to carry it out.
19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not
want is what I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who
do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right,
evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war
against the law of my mind and making me captive to the
law of sin that dwells in my members.
[....]
8:1 There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus.
2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ
Jesus from the law of sin and death.
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh,
could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law
might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the
flesh but according to the Spirit.
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their
minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live
according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of
the Spirit.
6 To set the mind on flesh is death, but to set the mind on
the Spirit is life and peace.

Here's how I'm seeing it:
Flesh = operates according to the law of sin and death
Mind = knows the law of God (we know The Rules)
Spirit = life and peace in Christ
Oneself = the "inner being" (Rom. 7:22), which can focus the mind on different things.


Our simple human time continuum naturally divides itself into three parts:

1) Before the law: people just acted according to their own, innate moral compasses; sin as such was undefined.
2) With the law (Old Testament): people now knew what sin was, so their minds fought with their flesh over what actions they would do, the good or the evil.
3) Now, with Christ: we walk in the Spirit, which transcends the whole mind-flesh, law-sin conundrum altogether.

This doesn't mean that the mind-flesh, law-sin war stops altogether; the law is still good and the flesh still wants all this sinning, so the battles rage on, but if you walk in the Spirit, that whole deal just gets a lot less central.

Imagine being able to concentrate on an infinite number of things at once (being the ULTIMATE multi-tasker): some of those things would be sinful things, from the flesh, just by virtue of our being human (and we're never going to stop wanting them; that's just the nature of the flesh).

But instead, we can only focus on a certain number of things at once -- there's a blessing in disguise (sometimes a very good disguise) -- which means that if I'm focusing all my mind on walking in the Spirit, there won't be any part of me LEFT to get into the sinful things that the flesh wants!

When you're not fixating on the mind-flesh conflict, it fades away, becoming less a giant field of land mines you have to get through and more of just a constant, annoying bickering somewhere in the background.

But if you get stuck in the whole sin-shame-guilt thing, go on back to that incredible fragment of Matthew 6:33 (ESV) --

seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness

and start walking in the Spirit again, and there you'll dwell with the Father and the Father in you, as Christ dwells within you, and the Holy Spirit dwells within you [cant find reference; argh!]. When that's all set up and equilibrated, actions falling out of that equation generally don't end up coming out as sinful.

Seek first that kingdom and a whole lot of the rest just takes care of itself.


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Worthiness and Deserving

Deserving: there's just no such thing, because it only has meaning if different people deserve different things or circumstances. I don't believe there's any difference among people as to what they deserve; everyone deserves a wonderful physical and spiritual life, always connected with the Father.

Yes, the murderers; yes, the evildoers; yes, the Satan-worshippers; yes, those who turn from God. Those who turn from God deprive themselves of the abundant life in God which they deserve; it's their choice.
_______

Worthy of the redemption we receive through Jesus, though? I can only speak for myself, and it's something I don't think I could ever be.

But guess what?
We're redeemed anyway.
This fact thwocks me upside the head like a ton of bricks every time I dig in deep and think about it.

Jesus already died for our sins; if we believe in Jesus as our Lord and savior, we don't get a choice as to wether we're redeemed. It already happened.

If we say we won't enter God's kingdom because we're not worthy, we deny the fact that we're cleansed from our sins (as many as they may be) by the blood of Jesus. If we say we're too full of sin to be saved, we reject the fact that Jesus died for our sins and that we are saved.

If we look down at our spiritual selves and see a grimy corpse with all kinds of baked-on, caked-on sin, then we're living in the "old man/woman," the one who died -- out of whose being we were delivered -- when we were baptized and raised up from the water. We are new men and women of the new covenant through Christ. We are born again.


When I first turned to Jesus in earnest a couple of years ago, it took me lots of time, much agonizing, and tons of logical argument and counter-argument with my spiritual mentor to work out this stuff. Christianity begins with accepting a gift you aren't worthy of.

I can't help but be reminded of John 3:38 (KJV):

38 I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no
labour; other men laboured, and ye are entered into
their labours.

And also Luke 5:8 (KJV), when Jesus had told the first disciples where to cast their net and they caught so many fish their boat started to sink:

8 When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees,
saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.

But don't forget the next two verses (Luke 5:9-10, KJV) say:

9 For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at
the draught of the fishes which they had taken:

10 And so was also James, and John, the sons of
Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. And Jesus
said unto Simon, Fear not; for henceforth thou shalt
catch men.

Christianity continues from there.
That's how I see it, anyway.



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Can You Go without Sin for 10 Minutes?

This keeps coming up as I listen to different preachers speaking on the topic of sin.
Ten minutes? Sure, they can!
Ten hours? Sure, they can!
Ten days? Sure, they can!


Okay, for me? Ten minutes without sin? I can do that. (Being asleep helps a lot, though.) But seriously, I can do that.

Ten hours without sin? I guess I can do that if I'm really distracted with something all day long and just don't quit focusing on it.

One day without sin? I suppose I've gone this long a handful of times throughout my life.

Two days without sin? Maybe a couple of times total, over more than three decades.

Three days without sin? Three consecutive days? Not a chance in the world.

TEN days?!? Even with as much spiritual advancement as I would like to achieve in the rest of my life, I cannot see myself ever going this long without slipping up somehow.


What the heck is wrong with me? Has everyone else just gotten to a higher plane of existence that I'm doomed never to reach? Is there a point along the road where God grants you a gift of being able to block all sexual thoughts from your mind, or perhaps there's a heavenly neutering experience that just removes all those glands and parts of your brain without making you start looking like a member of the opposite gender?**

Is there a blessing these other people have obtained that stops one from ever getting angry again, or that instantly quenches anger with some boundless righteousness? Are there angelic visitations when they're about to let out a curse word that turns "f--" into "whoa" just in the nick of time? When something out in the world triggers their PTSD and they start losing it, does the Holy Spirit come to dwell with them and comfort them before they can fall over the edge?

Or does God just choose some people to live in His grace and to hell with the rest of us who haven't made the cut?

See; I just did it again. Timer reset: 0:00:00.

** Because if there is such a thing, SIGN ME UP AND I'LL BE FIRST IN LINE.

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In Suspense

<previous material deleted>

I've nothing intelligent to say, so I'm just going to wait on something to come rather than filling this space with lamentations or other BS.

Maybe I'm a "Lefty"

Bill Johnson once said that there are specific meanings to physical manifestations of the Spirit that occur one one side of the body or the other. If I've got it correctly, things that happen on the right side signal that something's happening over which one is to take authority; things that happen on the left side have to do with one's purpose or calling in this world.

Now here's where it gets weird.

Nearly all of my life, I've had physical manifestations accompanying certain types of thoughts on my right side. Only in recent years (say, the past eight or so) have I had any analogous manifestations on my left side, but they're developing and, in fact, have been growing more powerful as time has progressed. These left-sided physical signs accompany thoughts of a nature pretty well opposed to the thoughts that bring on right-sided manifestations. Only once or twice can I remember having both sides go at once, perplexing the heck out of me.

I've never thought of these as more than natural manifestations; always wanted to find a neuroscientist (a real one) who would put all kinds of electrodes on my skin and show me sequences of images, to which I'd react with neural cascades from either my right or my left sides, and do some crazy cool analysis of it all. But I've got to ask myself: what if they've been more-than-natural manifestations all this time?

When I was first reaching out to God a couple of years ago -- first very faintly and then increasingly strongly -- I could (and still can) tell when a heavenly presence comes to me by a concurrent manifestation on my left side. Bill Johnson said that what he'd thought of as a heavenly presence (before he learned what it all meant) came on his right side. The first time I heard this, I was greatly discouraged and the only self-redemptive idea seemed to be that perhaps I was just a "lefty," in the same way that a small portion of the population writes, paints, or bats with the left hand dominant.

All I know is that currently, I have more manifestations than I know what to do with. I need help and guidance to learn what these signals mean and how He might want to implement whatever gifts I may have based on these manifestations, from the little "nudges" to the rampant cascades.

Anyone else have experience with this? Please do comment, even if it's just to say I'm a wacko and should, at most, just seek out a neuroscientist (a real one).


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To a Dear Friend

To the wonderful friend I just phoned, who unleashed the power of God's love over me to save my soul, I'm glad you found this page; please do keep in touch. I miss our times praying together more than I could ever put into words.
drop me an email:
karyos@rocketmail.com

Creeping Sunday

Creeping Sundays are the bane of Saturdays: their shadows cast themselves over Saturdays and creep longer and further to cover more ground as time progresses. Fear, anxiety, guilt, and spiritual longing build as Sunday creeps closer.

I've always made a crucial distinction between a Christian and a churchgoer. It is possible to be a Christian without being a churchgoer (I consider myself one of these), and certainly not all churchgoers abide in Jesus and He in them in the everyday lives to which they merrily return after Sunday services.

Since my experience of spiritual rebirth a couple of years ago, my spouse and I have tried maybe a handful of times to attend services at churches, but with no real success: we just didn't feel at home. Once, we went to church in a time of great crisis, when we weren't even sure we would make it through the next few days, and we reached out so far to the Lord that we even made it to church that week, hoping desperately to get closer to Him in every possible way. After the service (with hundreds of people in attendance), we knelt at the railing before the altar and prayed together for about an hour, in tears the whole time, and I had hoped so earnestly that some church member would notice us there and come offer to pray with us. People passed by (and perhaps even in) the sanctuary. But nobody came.

When I'm safely ensconced in a Saturday, the Creeping Sunday only looming in the distance, I always seriously consider going to a church for services. I'm acutely aware that there are some things the Lord has planned for us that can only be experienced by being part of a body of believers. I think it's very likely there are some things He wants to give to me in particular, which have to come through another person and can't be obtained through single-soul prayer. Looking at that Creeping Sunday, though, my mind remembers the futile efforts, my emotional core foresees all the awkward interactions with churchgoers whose judging eyes would pierce me, and my heart is chilled.

Sunday creeps closer, and then it comes, just another churchless day.

We live in Texas, which is the farthest west I've ever been (save for presenting at one conference in SF, during which I saw only the hotel, the convention center, and a cab the whole time). Perhaps someday we'll make it to California to seek our church home there.


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Shed Love over Evil

To understand the origin of this post, read Backslidden first.

The only way to stand against evil is to release the love of God upon it, for when all is Light, the darkness simply has nowhere left to exist.

In the room that is your soul (mine's rather cluttered with baggage and other objects), let in the Light, that it might shine from every element of your soul (yes, even the Samsonites): submit your mind to be a channel through which He may operate, let go of your will so it can merge with His will, and let your emotions soar with His very presence.

Invite, invite, invite God in: He's been reaching out to you all this time, so all you need to do is reach toward Him and make the connection.


There's a particular Bible I have, an English Standard Version translation, which is very small (smaller than my handprint) and which has traveled with me wherever I've gone for about the past two and a half years. You can tell where the Gospels start because the gold edging is notably faded from that point on and the bookmark's always lying somewhere within that last chunk. Its incredibly soft leather cover has been made smoother and even waterproofed by deeply-melted-in wax from candles by whose light I read and prayed when I had a special place to read and pray.

This is the Bible that makes my hands tingle whenever I touch it. One time when I grasped it, there was this incredible surge of energy that bolted up through my hands and arms, as if it were as hungry to enter into me as I was to enter into it. This is the Bible which somehow, by its presence, soothes away my fears and anxieties -- and that's before I open it and start reading.

This is the book I'm going to keep with me at all times until the enemy is pushed back and away.

Retro me, satanas;
I belong to Jesus,
So you can go back to hell.


And a real verse, Psalm 40:11-14 (ESV)

11 As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain
your mercy from me;
your steadfast love and your faithfulness will
ever preserve me!

12 For evils have encompassed me beyond number,
my iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head; my heart fails me.

13 Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me!
O Lord, make haste to help me!

14 Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether
who seek to snatch away my life;
let those be turned back and brought to dishonor
who desire my hurt!


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Backslidden

Debating whether or not it's wise to put this out in public forum, I'm going to take down today's events regardless. This post may disappear.

Today I slipped backward fifteen years, and I'm not quite sure how it happened. I remember I needed to be alone and wasn't getting what I needed; I was followed around from room to room and poked and pestered until I finally fled to a bedroom and locked the door behind me. I was pissed.

It felt as though I had been drained of all my strength and the only thing I could do was lie in bed. The spirit of anger overtook me and I remember having thought that if I got interrupted one more damn time I was going to leave and head for a hotel room somewhere. Anger began to give way to sleep, and that's when it came.

Lying on the border between sleep and wakefulness, my five senses giving me very clear readings of the room around me as I struggled fully to wake; proprioception entirely intact but physically paralyzed and unable to move; my breathing slowed until I felt faint and my ears started to ring and my head felt full of fuzz closing in from either side as if I were going to pass out, and then the wave, that wave where the choice comes to give in to the enemy; it would come, I would actively catch it and give myself over to be a tool for the enemy, and the sensation of tilting backwards and rising, rising, in a silent scream of simultaneous agony and victory as I led a legion of hell.

This paralysis-faintness-falling event kept recurring and must have come about ten times over me, each time a little different. Once or twice, I fought the paralysis before the faintness started, trying as hard as I could to just open my eyes, hoping that if I could catch a glimpse of the world outside my mind it could help me be drawn back into being awake; one time I went fairly systematically over all the muscle groups, trying to move them, and all efforts failed except that I could get my tongue to move slightly forward and touch my teeth, and I could move my eyes in their sockets though not open them.

Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame.
(Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
just rose to the surface, and it does feel rather apposite.

After the paralysis-faintness-falling and the wave, each time I would fall into a light dream of sleep before resurfacing for another round. Once I dreamed I was falling from a great height; another time I began to have a recurring nightmare (and, as I was aware I was sinking into that dream, I remember thinking oh brother, not this one again); but most of the time, the dreams were simple fulfillment of sexual and sensual desires.

Wave after wave, I gave over; the enemy had put me in a high-ranking place in his armies -- as I say, I commanded a legion -- and during one wave I was actually laughing in pure, triumphant evil as I lay there paralyzed; it was a laugh that was failing to escape my lips, not a scream, amidst the fluttering of hundreds of dark wings of my compatriots as we launched upward into the air.

I kept asking why is this happening; this hasn't happened for fifteen bloody years. What changed that it's now being unleashed again? I thought I was way past this part. When these used to happen so long ago, they were timed in such a way that I began to think of them as flashbacks from some horrible experiences I had. But back then, I was afraid to give in to the wave of evil rising; I turned back at the last second every time but once out of a hundred of these that must have come over me during those years.

In more recent years, my mentoring friend used to tell me that God had written me a specific destiny and that the enemy's efforts (and sometimes successes) to win my will were a testament to what a powerful tool for God's work I would become. Of course, as this stoked my ego, I readily believed and headed into reading the Bible and praying with confidence. I was stupid. Oh, so stupid.

Because then, something like this happens. Nothing so dramatic until now. I suppose that, as I was beginning seriously to walk in the Christian way again, the enemy needed to reach out and just show me what I was missing; fill a void of despair with power, pleasure, and demonic form; show me how good it could feel again.


Now, though I'm certainly awake, a very large section of my mind is silently shaking, rocking back and forth, and with every breath seems to come the threat, far away but closing in, of being sucked back into one of these episodes.

I'm of two minds, though: I feel as though I should care, and it's quite annoying.


To whomever can pray for me: please do.
To whomever re-planted this blasted thing in me: you're winning, for the nonce. Felicitations. Go report to them and tell them I'm going to start fighting back again.


Damn; where did I leave my Bible?


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