Tag Archives: heart

A Cleansing Dive into a Garden in Eden

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 I offer to you, dear reader, a personal journey of subjective relationship with the Lord. It’s a multifaceted journey that is meant to show the evidence of Christ working in me utilizing imagination and my spirit as the lamp of the Lord. May you be encouraged by any insights herein derived for your edification. 

July 8, 2023

This is a “Spirit Searching the Depths” kind of imagination, in which I sorted through my life and came out the other side, with a greater understanding of priorities in life and how to enjoy life to the fullest.

I wrestle my scattered thoughts beneath my control.
I am seeking the truth at Your hand.
[I picture a cat with a toy.] No cat’s paw can seize with a more strenuous and precise pounce. The cat eyes his pray with focus, just as I eye the imaginary sight and carefully lay hold of it, like a jeweled egg.
Light flashes from within it. Pink like a flame. It bursts forth and soars up ahead, and I fly after it. The world around me rushes past, and much is a blur. I settle on two feet.

[Interruption]

The ground is not there anymore, I am floating in the white construct.[1] I have boots. I find the ground loaded beneath again.

Ahn whishkeh mau oon.
Rahleigh westoon wayess.[2]

Can I go into a place where I am welcome and find there treasures of hidden gold?
[Though another is nearby]
I have sought and found much here, and will not be deterred by a quailing heart.
Father in Heaven, in Jesus name, let me enter.

[1] From the matrix

[2] Writing whatever words seem to represent what I am speaking in my spirit.

Entering into Vivid Imagination

I enter the gate into a grand and green countryside. The sky is blue over rolling hills bright with summertime. The warmth in the air is verdant and famous with life. The waters of the stream are the same waters I found after my time in the cave long ago.[1] I ran in the cool waters and the light was shining then. I found a way forward out of darkness and under the open sky.

O Lord, is heaven open to me? O let me see into the expanse the knowledge that is too wonderful for me.

The sky is frighteningly vast. I am in search of . . . no . . . more like caught up in it overwhelmed by its enormity. I have often been frightened by the night sky in the real world, and here I am finding greater eights and I am emboldened with pleasurable confidence to probe more deeply inot the heavens and see who is there. I am here.

Can I see the planets as you see them?

They spin with light, dancing and whirling in their courses. A Great dance it is.[2] Rings within rings, but on every possible axis and angle. Smatterings of broken rocks from collisions long since collided. It is more than my breath for I do not need to breathe here.

I falter, or at least I slow. What am I doing here? Is this the eye of “The Dig,”[3] which is where “all living minds communicate perfectly” in imagination to create stories and can easily get lost from the importance of reality? Perhaps. The real world possesses enough perils and intrigues and importances which I happily engage in. Lord, I give you my imagination as a tool for discovering more of what the Spirit sees. The deep things of God, or perhaps only the deep well of understanding in my own spirit which You have dug and sprung up from yourself there. I am not a source of wisdom, but enjoy it when I find it, and give it as freely as I have received it.

How will all of this mean something in the end? Creative writing is best done unimpeded, but O for the powerful heat of flow. Is it creative or destructive? My own volcano can and should be utilized to bring forth new heat into cold areas of life long left dormant and unexplored.

Will you show me what You want me to see? I enjoy the heat of heart as the mind takes flight in the forming and engaging with, writing and erasing of thoughts, but I want to see what You see Lord? Lord, I am not here to seek anything at all, save You, the true prize of this venture.

[1] See The Cave on Wondercano

[2] C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, Perelandra.

[3] The Dig, computer game by Lucas Arts. Steven Spielberg was a writer for it.

Conversing in the Spirit with the Lord

I am here.[1]
______Then why do I feel so aloof, so limited in the amount of access I have to You.
Not limited by Me.
______Am I limited by anything else?
Your choices. What choices? Age of Empires? Harris Teeter? Yes to both. The part time in your mind?[2] Of course it is of me. So it is not a banishment [from closeness with You] but a season. Yes, only. And ______Age of Empires?
*Smiles*”What do you hope to receive from this game?”
______To merely enjoy a part of your good creation that will enhance my thought, and grant feelings of pleasure.

Then go for it. I put no hinderance upon you.

______Do I do it at the expense of something you would rather me do?

Not exactly.

______Is it at the expense of something that I would rather do?

“Only you can answer that.”

What do I want? I do long for the heart stirring flourish of creative thought again. Stories well written evoke in me the desire for more creative outlets. Ways to express the beauty and truth of what You show me, and to share the delight of what I learn. Will Age of Empires, a strategy war game, give me that? It is a lesser desire, but I find my heart is often weary of pursuing my greater desires.

I long for an apprehension of the Christ in personal transformative way by which You may execute the effect in the world You would seek to have through me. This is wearisome to the flesh, but invigorating in the spirit. And I live in both worlds of flesh and spirit. In Flesh, I need money to cover my procedures, and in the Spirit I wish to simply sit at Your feet. Although, I confess, times before You have often felt like catchup of late. Just to go beyond and sit at Your feet and enjoy the refreshment of my heart’s every desire satisfied in you. Angels attend, and hurts mend, thoughts transcend, and Your face commends. The World bends to that eternal space where goodness and truth never, ever end. Just to simply be Your friend.

What has kept me from this? Is it marriage? Work? Play? Possessions? Each in their own way will fill the space at the center as I allow. You are within each, but any of these at the center is the detriment of itself and all the others.

The heart has room to moan here. It has room to let tears slide down. For laughter to scoop out the soot of repressed hurts, and cast up a happy and relaxed sigh of contentment. “Dark have been my dreams of late.”[3] I wish I could find the way back home, but in translation, and in the beauty of music, and in the love of my beautiful wife, and the joy of unobstructed play, time has healed this wound, and beauty has returned, as I imagine angels leaning in close to hear the song of my play. When my heart smelled putrid from the desires granted audience before it and imbibed in, no messenger of heaven would stand so close. The cold shiver I felt of the wind rushing away would remain a hollow space where the glory once abode upon me. This may seem this way of course not withstanding the truth that You will never leave me nor forsake me.[4]

But I am still rather adrift in this place in Raleigh. My friends are far or new, my church getting used to me but rightly handling things, my wife 50% full, my work fulfilling, and space still being made. New bold things are attempted. Old things are tried and found wanting.[5] Music grows slippery in my hand, and considerations are given to the elderly, who hear what my journey has so far revealed.

What is revealed so far? I am anointed by the Spirit of God, for the revealing of Jesus Christ, interested in walls. But what of city walls being more about the gates than the walls? What about God’s security being in relationships between humans rather than fences that supposedly make good neighbors? What about my desire to open doors for people, and my aversion to them being closed to me? How can one so unsocialized be a friend to the hearts of men? “How will I find food in the wilderness Lord?”[6] Just keep following Me. Confess it? Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. [1 John 4:4] Just keep talking with Me.

Your love which welcomes me into this intimacy is the sweetest treasure that glistens in the tears that collect in the corners of my eyes. I do love the freshness of the words You speak in the heart. You find a young man now, who while he enjoys the sound of your voice, still has an easy tendency to let other things push him around.

[1] Italics are usually what I hear from the Spirit speaking. If it’s in “quotes” it’s from some thing other than Him, or I’m not sure who or what is the source of it.

[2] The Lord let me know that working part time at Harris Teeter was His direction.

[3] King Theoden The Two Towers, Lord of the Rings.

[4] Joshua 1, Matthew 28:20.

[5]  Shane Shaddix shared feedback on the 10 stages, and Devin took my insights for a schooling in Joshua.

[6] Ten Commandments, Moses.

Insight and Spiritual Cleansing

To work and to keep the garden.[1] To guard it. To take this Eden place, where I may eat of any tree, and let nothing in this garden, this fountain of rivers of life, in my heart that would be unworthy of You. Have I done so?

I stand amidst the trees, and look around. The serpent is in the black shadow of the tree.[2] His voice seems slithery, ready to speak.

“Do you not find your pleasure in other things besides the tree of life?”

I find pleasure in all the trees of the garden, which the Lord has given me. Behold, the Raleigh tree, the Rebekah Tree, the Games Tree, the Running Tree, the Organization Tree, the Meeting people Tree, ah but the jewel the best of all, is the Tree of Life, of which you may not partake.

“What more could a son of God want?”

He gives me every desire, but the creeping things which have entered the garden, like other sexual desires, or interests, are slitherings which you have whispered in my ear. BLOW AWAY YOU FOUL FIEND!! YOU ARE CAST OUT BY THE SOUND OF THE VOICE OF ONE WHO IS AUTHORIZED, PROTECTED, VICTORIOUS, and POSITIONED in CHRIST JESUS MY LORD. YOU WILL NOT HAVE ANY SAY IN THIS GARDEN OF MY HEART. YOU ARE A DECEIVER, AND NOTHING, NO PERSON, NO FRUIT I COULD TAKE INTO THIS GARDEN IS WORTH THE COST. I REBUKE, No, the LORD REBUKE YOU, BY THE GLORIOUS POWER OF THE CROSS OF JESUS CHRIST! NO FEAR OF MAN CAN PLUCK ME FROM HIS HAND.[3] YOU ARE VANQUISHED AND BANISHED FROM THIS GARDEN. YOU AND ALL OTHER OF YOUR MINIONS! FARE POORLY, YOU SPAWN of LIES, DARK-MONGERER, DEATH SLAVE-DRIVER! OUT! GET OUT!!!!!!!!

Father, forgive me. I have suffered the world, the flesh, and the devil to draw me toward the tree of knowledge of good and evil in this garden of my heart. Drawn toward an individual. I nail it to the cross! Drawn to lustful thoughts. I nail it to the cross. The Cross is become my tree of Life! For by it, I am crucified to the world, and the world to me, and on the other side, I lay hold of resurrection by which I will see You, my Savior’s face!

Thank You for this garden of delights! Thank you for Your glorious tree of life, of knowing and trusting You! Thank you for Your provision, and for the battles that I have fought and won, by the blood of Jesus Christ. Thank you for a church home for now. Thank you for my wife. Thank you for bringing me through many dangers toils and snares. Forgive me for how I have turned away from simply loving and serving You and others. Sin is ever present crouching, desiring to have me. Help me by Your Spirit to not grant it any access to destroy what You wish to create.

And so, gathering thoughts, sowing seeds of spirit, entering imagination, leaving the open heaven, exploring far, and seeking You, a refreshment of my spirit with the sweetness of relationship, and a showdown in my heart, my own personal garden of Eden, in which the answers come together.

All of these things I am free to enjoy. Adam and Eve did not eat of every tree in the garden all the time, there was always more than they could ever try in one day. But when the Tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of Life, is imbibed, then life is forever with You, and all these other trees are delicious: Rebekah, work, children, games, etc.

Final Word to Self

[4]But none of them are the tree of Life. And you know where to find it.

It is a garden that needs tending, and guarding, because the evil one is deceitful, more crafty than any living thing. If he can get you super focused on any other tree as your tree of life, you will become more and more dissatisfied, and you will start to think that the tree which lets you determine your own way of good and evil, denying faith in God will be the right answer. So, by all means enjoy games, and whatever He has given you to enjoy. They are His gifts, but sleep every night under His tree, and wake every morning beginning with that which is food indeed.

[1] Bible Project podcast was instrumental to the following insight. The application is my own.

[2] I remember this image from a children’s picture bible.

[3] In Christ Alone Keith and Krystin Getty

[4] Here I begin to speak to myself.

The Four Captains

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Four ship captains set sail to go to sea. One captain let the wind and waves carry him and did not steer, and he ended up crashed on the rocks. Another Captain being nervous about the strong winds, rolled up his sails and made his men row the whole time, but the men grew tired, and the ship quickly turned back for home. Another captain had no compass, but he steered his ship towards any visible or imagined points on the horizon, but he ended up getting lost at sea. Still another captain steered his ship into the winds with sails unfurled, and used his compass to guide him, and he sailed to his destination over the horizon pushing through every wind. He reached his destination and all of his men and his goods made it with him.

The Scar Chapter 2

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A week later, they were all eating dinner together, when a desperate knock came at the door. Zoe’s father went to the door, and spoke to someone out of sight of Zoe sitting at the table. She looked over her spoon as she sipped the vichyssoise her Mom had made. Her dad came back carrying a man in uniform with one arm around his shoulder. The uniformed man looked wan and frail. The mother got up and hurried to clear the table. Zoe backed away as the adults pushed everything off the table to make ready. Her father gave her a knowing glance which they exchanged with previous understanding: Do nothing.

“I barely got away.” said the man in uniform, who up close looked to be clad in the garb of a park ranger, though he reminded Zoe of a soldier from the Revolutionary war. The warm light of the chandelier above gave it that feel. Zoe’s eyes were transfixed on the man. He was middle aged and stared blankly at the light of the chandelier. She could see he was in a state of shock. The father and the mother talked with the man, and found out that this he had been attacked by a bear, and his bowels severely injured by the claws.

“Zoe,” shot out her father, “get some water.” She started for the door to go to the stream, but he said, “No use the water we’ve already boiled!” He said motioning to the refrigerator. She looked inside the opened refrigerator and located their carafe filled only half-way. The mother poured water on her own hands and did what they could to clean up the man. His breathing was shallow.

Zoe ached to help. Her mother was not picking it up, but her dad was. He kept looking from the man he was caring for to Zoe whose eyes remained glued to the poor man.

She got lost in a memory triggered by the sight of her father leaning over the man, but powerless to help. One time, little Zoe played with a little rocking horse her Dad had fashioned from with him of Micas polished. She tipped it over, and the side collision landed on the stone fireplace, and the head split off. It was the first moment when her world shattered, as children’s world’s often do. She didn’t know it, but her father’s outcry was not because it couldn’t be fixed, but because he felt what happened to it in his innermost being as if it were happening to him, because it had come out of him. She saw her dad seize with anguish for a moment that twisted his face, and then he looked at the girl’s face. Huge tears were just starting to gush forth, when he reached out and clasped her close to him in a comforting embrace. She did not mean to do it. He patted her on the back gently and rubbed her little head, and told her not to worry. He took the rocking horse with its shattered head into another room. She waited for him, turning over this new feeling of anguish that was not her own, but it was her dad’s. A short while later he came out of the room, and held wide the rocking horse remade. She ran up and gasped. Her daddy fixed it. He could fix anything.

But not this. She said to herself. I can fix this. Then she saw the man’s head tilt back unconscious. She could feel something was wrong inside him. Hope was waning, though she stood right there.

She begged her dad to do something. He did not look at her. Instead he said, “Be still.”

“He’s dying.”

“Silence!” he cried, still staring at the man.

The urgency of the situation swelled inside her. She had to do it. And so, she stretched out her hand past the adults toward the man.

What happened next was shattering. Suddenly, Zoe’s arm was caught in a flash of flame, and the unconscious man faintly heard the outcry of Zoe in pain. The father’s hand had turned molten pale yellow like lava hot in the mantel, and had grabbed the wrist of his daughter whose hand burned under his touch. She sank to her knees as the burning continued. Her screams startled everyone, except the man on the table who was barely conscious. The mother screamed and yelled, “STOP! Stop it please!!”

The firelight died down, and a thud was heard as a sizzling, darkening orange bracelet and glove of rock thudded to the ground with Zoe’s tender living wrist cuffed inside it. The mother’s face was fixed in fright and amazement. The mother’s face burned with tears and anger at her husband.

Zoe was still on the floor sobbing and holding her arm now with a warm but solid black mitten. Her skin was still tender from the burn. Thus her father found her and stood above her. She looked up with eyes pleading and crushed as she looked through the strands of her hair. “Papa?”

Her dad’s heart softened til it broke, and he sank to his knees beside her. He reached out his hands to her, but she pulled her arm away and started away. He reached further to embrace her, but she pushed him away.

“How could you?”

“I had to protect you.” He said softly.

“What about him?” she cried pointing to the man on the table, “I was given this gift for a reason, and you . . . you punish me for using it?”

“You have to trust me. Sometimes we parents do things that don’t make sense. Please, you have given me your heart.”

“Well, maybe I was wrong.” She fumed, and then she passed briskly to the wall and took her black stone-gloved wrist, and lifted her arm with a back hand thrust and smashed it against the stone wall. It had the desired effect. Her father’s face was torn by that familiar anguish. Tears started down his cheek as he felt the house’s pain and the bracelet’s destruction within him, but more so, his daughter’s repulsion of the very one who brought her into this world.

She saw his reaction and blackly accused, “You care more about your own creations than you do about me.”

“You are the BEST thing that ever came from me!” Roared her father in a sudden burst.

“Well, I’m not you!” She said.

She screamed and stormed out and slammed the door, threw herself onto her bed, punched her pillow for a while, then sobbed. She felt both the shattering truth that she had broken her father’s heart, just as much as he had broken hers.

The Enemy’s Scheme

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In the spirit, I presume, of the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, let me share what I think is a glimpse into one of the schemes of the Evil One of which we should not be ignorant:

“Let the nation burn with the fires of sex. As it leaves the fireplace of marriage, that which He meant for light and comfort will destroy their homes, and their shelter will be lost. Then people will consume each other for fuel to keep warm.” laughed the Evil One, “And all the while their hearts grow more unfeeling; and they quickly forget His likeness found in sexual union, and those ‘images of Him’ born from these unions will be brought up in a place where, in His very blessedness that bore them, He is completely unrecognizable.”

Flighty Bird

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My heart is like a flighty bird
Bobbing around from place to place
Fearful at the suddenly heard
Little leaving little trace

I once rescued a flighty bird
Frantic flapping by window pane
Til I gently cupped it’s fragile wings
And brought it safe outside again

The bird stayed in my hand a spell
And searched the meaning in the calm
I treasured it and wished it well
As it flew free from my open palm

Lord, save this flighty bird from the pane
Cup me gently with your hand.
And opening free help me stay
Treasured more than I can understand.

A Pathfinder out of Self-exaltation

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In the half-a-year since my last post, I have continued to walk with Him, and have been spared much self-exaltation by the input of people in my life who keep me grounded in Gospel reality. Getting Covid, being in a time of some “transition” in my life, and also experiencing relational abundance that I have long desired has recently brought me to an all-too-familiar temptation of self-aggrandizement and self-righteousness. I am sure others struggle with this too, but for me it looks like having pretend conversations with people that make me feel good about myself. This bad habit has led me into temptations of more practical natures such as indulging in lusts of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life that leads to treating others carelessly and unlovingly. This most recent time, I recognized I was turning inwards on myself, trying to assuage feelings of sadness and by journaling, I marked the pathway out.

I believe God has given us tools to manage and combat the sin in our internal world that arises from within all us. If you would like to follow me, I will show you the path from self-pleasing thoughts, to God-pleasing thoughts. The person who spends his time pouring over his own private treasures of achievements and accolades, and bases his view of himself upon them is a very poor man who has little experience of the Love of God in his life. And it is the Love of God that our hearts are truly seeking.

Here is the way back to God if you have fallen or some later day fall into this trap.

  1. Repent, looking to the Lord. The most terrible thing about pride is it gets our eyes off of God and places them onto ourselves or that thing in which we take pride. The first step to any right orientation of the heart is the re-placing of the sight upon the face of Jesus in the Scripture. Seeking His face, His grace, His love, His truth. Without this, one is trying to find his way out of a room blind.
  2. Confess the fantasies and my pride in them. Let’s say I had a fantasy of someone who I thought didn’t like me very much. This person in the fantasy is in danger, and I save their life. If I was to rehearse this fantasy often so that my heart got used to a feeling of superiority over their appreciation, when I engage with that person in real life, it has happened that I find myself dissatisfied with the reality of the exchange at the heart level. It is a fantasy that my heart has wanted to believe to be true, because my heart wants to accumulate more worth to itself. It becomes a lie when I choose to desire that reality over the reality God has given me to live in the Gospel. In other words, when I indulge my heart in good feelings over a fantasy of people’s praise, I base my heart on my own imagination and I become puffed up and I “lose connection with the head.” (Colossians 2:19) This sets me up for the same failure of any member of the body that is powerlessly disconnected from the brain. I say all of this because it may not be immediately obvious what is wrong with fantisy. To imagine it is not necessarily wrong if it’s not in violation of God’s moral will, but the way the heart takes the fantasy and uses it to ascribe worth to itself: this is the wrong. The only true standard of worth that the heart should take pleasure and delight in, is conformity to the image of Christ Jesus. And so, I lay out the fantasy before God, and acknowledge my pride in that self-created smokescreen. This is because “In all your ways acknowledge God, He’ll make your path straight.” (Proverbs 3:6) God can only straighten us out, if we are willing to be straight with Him.
  3. Take each fantasy and feeling and self-thought captive to the obedience of Christ. This is where we can use our imagination against our pride. Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily, and follow me.” So, ever Christian has a tool to put to death their old life, and to remind them of their present life, and the promise of their future life. The Cross is this very tool. It is that which a Christian carries with them, until the time God has appointed them to set it up and give their life as a representation of Christ. It is the very thing that separates Christians from non-Christians, and it is a stage of Christian development that not every Christian attains, but this is how the Cross can be the answer to any sin struggle. In this case, what I like to do is use my imagination to picture my Cross. It’s usually laying down on the rocks in a dark-cloudy place. I see my fantasy stretched out on the cross, and take a hammer in my hand and nail the fantasy to the cross for it to die. I usually incorporate a tangible bodily action like swinging my hand with a make believe hammer in it, because fantasy touches reality through our emotion’s impact on our bodies. The reverse is also true. Reality touches fantasy through our bodily actions impact on our emotions. And so, when I take a fantasy, let’s say pictured as my idea about the way a person should feel appreciative toward me, and I nail it, it’s not like I am wishing evil upon that person. It is my acknowledging that this thought of them is unworthy of them, and must be dealt with. Not only this, but it is unworthy of Christ. And the Cross is the Gate by which anything inside us or outside of us can be given to God as a sacrifice. If God wishes our heart, or our imagination about something to be spared, then He can resurrect it for His glory by the leading of the Holy Spirit. Once this step is taken, I find that there is an emotional response like loss or a sadness over the fantasy given up, but this is where the heart must take the next step.
  4. Thank God for the good things that remain. Whenever I have done this, I have found that God gives me great clarity about the things that are of Him vs the things that are of me. The things that remain still alive after all is nailed to the Cross are things are of God, and therefore worthy of giving Him thanks. The things that are of me are temporary, but the things that are of God are eternal. And when I thank God, I anchor my heart’s sight upon the Lord, by recognizing God’s goodness in the things that are from Him, through Him, and to Him. (Romans 11:36). To Him be the glory forever.
  5. Worship, delight, and rejoice in Him. O the joy of leaving behind the worthless and vain things of our own heart-idolatry! Our hearts grow so unhappy simply because we are so determined to want anything and everything short of God Himself. But when our eyes are on God, we feel based on His truth, His gospel, His love, then we have an overflowing cup of eternal joy that will spread to every area of our life. This eternality of Joy is the secret on the other side of the Cross a Christian carries. The source of every dissatisfaction in a believer’s life, is anything un-crucified, or un-surrendered to his or her new Master. But in obedience and submission to Him, a human being finds his purpose fulfilled, and all his life is as it should be until he hear those precious words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:23)

May you and I find our deepest delight in the One whom our hearts were designed to worship.

Heart in Irons

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Dripping cold off the edge of an iron leaf
It twinges quaking with the agony of past defeat
Should not the past be swallowed up with present victory?
No, the story memories tell is too weighty.

I once was swinging through the trees
The wind racing through my long hair
I once grasped for a vine with my toes
And slipping terror split my chest
Until I hit the ground hard and looked up
The branches were now so far away.

I can’t breathe the way I once did
My shallow coughing is hard and pressed together
Crunching down on my now deflated heart
Leaving no room for anything new.

A backhanded lash of cowardice
Steels my heart in indifferent irons
Crying comes whenever the weight shifts
And people do not know the life they disturb
With their well-meaning questions about the past
And now I stare out the portal of a swamped, sinking ship

Can you hear me?
Can you reach me on the other side?
Will I ever be on top of the waves again
Swinging from the tree branches enjoying new fruits?

But what’s the point?
No victory will last beyond the span of time
Except that which God does in time.
These trees grow and roots descend
At the behest of the one who gives birds their nest
The end of it all: will God defend?

So I do what is needed,
The trees tower, but I do not cower.
The irons are weaker than my heart
But He will be the one to break them.

The Workbench and the Altar

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This is a guide for those seeking the Presence of God in their hectic internal world.

So much needs to be cleared from the Workbench of my mind.
So that it can become an Altar where God can meet with me.

  1. Many cares. They keep me from seeing and knowing Him.
  2. My self-sufficiency. It keeps me from even looking to Him.
  3. Distractions–I put them on the Workbench, making no room for Him.
  1. Many Cares
  1. My Self-Sufficiency
  1. Distractions

These three things have been my mindset, and way of being. However, The following three things are what I long for.

4. An Altar–My First ministry

Presenting yourself to God asking Him for God’s filling and anointing

I cannot account for why, but in these moments I have discovered that the eagerness of God has been ready to send the fire of His Holy Presence to blow through, and search out, and scour away my heart with the Glory of His Spirit, His Word, and His presence.

5. The Fire

All of this is one thing: His letting you know Himself. It returns the heart to its original glow, and the problems are cast with a smaller shadow. His light shines from a heart now aglow with his fire. And so long as that fire is kept burning (For our heart is a most unreliable fuel) then it will keep our minds enlightened.

6. Enlightened (In the Christian Sense.)

As Paul prayed, so I pray “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. ~Ephesians 1:17-19

For this to happen, you must clear your workbench and first make it an altar.

The Bible: Theological, Historical Narrative

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As I watched a video on the Bible being historically accurate, I creatively learned this diagram to make sense of these three descriptors, and why they are important.

Taught to Christian Ed 6th Grade Grace Christian School on May 22, 2019 to

As a way to show it to people, the explanation of the “Snowman” diagram starts at the bottom with just the word “Narrative” in its spot at the start. Each word is put in quotes, it is filled into the diagram.

The Bible is “Narrative” which means it is “Story.” And what does a story have? It has “characters,” it has a “plot,” and it has “meaning.” That part of the story that really gets us. And a story is crafted by the imagination of a man, yes?
Now a lot of people are content to accept the Bible as a wonderful collection of stories for the most part, but the debate will really start to come into the next level up. Because the Bible isn’t just Narrative. It is

“Historical” Narrative. When I say Historical it means that the things in this story, “Really happened.” And in history we don’t have just any characters or plots, or meaning, we have real “People,” “Events” of history, and as we look at history we start recognizing patterns in history. Case in point: Roman Empire’s rise and Fall. This pattern of rising and falling has prevailed throughout history.
A lot of educated people will debate if the things in the Bible really happened, but evidence supports the Bible’s historical account, just like the Senacherib’s Prism. Some people who don’t accept the Bible as God’s word will say, “It is Man’s recording, and Man’s crafting of the story.” The debate may convince them that there is historical evidence, for the story, but the final part of the Bible’s descriptors, is the part that people who are not Christians will not accept at a heart level. Because the Bible isn’t just Historical Narrative. It is

“Theological” Historical Narrative. That means it reveals things about “What is really going on. The Bible gives voice to the part of us that knows this world is more than the world we can see, taste, smell, and hear. There is an unseen “God” and there are unseen “Spiritual realities” which are moving in the world: Angels, demons, blessings, curses, and at this level we actually get to the “Truth.” Now while The Story is Man Crafted, and History is Man recorded, Theological means it is “God revealed.”

The Bible is all three levels, and in order to understand the Bible, you have to accept it at all three of these levels. It is Theological, Historical Narrative. Because The Historical Level is written at the level of “Earth”: The events that concretely happened in time and space here on this planet. But the Bible also accounts for and describes the real of “Heaven.” And because it is story it also speaks at the level of the “Heart.”

Please get this: God has revealed something to Man about Heaven and Earth which He had Man record and craft so that it could reach your heart. This is why the Bible is the best and most all encompassing book ever written. It is Heaven and Earth, and the Human heart all wrapped into one Volume, and it sets all of them back into right relationship with God.

So yeah! The Bible is Theological, Historical Narrative. Isn’t that awesome?!

6. Wilderness Manual–Fruit (17)

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If you saw a stick one day lying on the ground that had no fruit on it and walked past it, you would probably not think much of it. But if you walked by the same stick the next day and it was bearing ripe fruit, you would wonder the source of life: Where did it come from? Jesus said in John 12:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, but if it die it brings forth much fruit.” At this point of the wilderness, we are coming up from the bottom level. The promise of life is coming through the death of the wilderness stage.

Principle: Numbers 17:8~ “Now on the next day Moses went into the tent of the testimony; and behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted and put forth buds and produced blossoms, and it bore ripe almonds.” Thus, God proved his choice and validation of Aaron’s ability to represent him. Aaron was far from perfect, he had made plenty of mistakes, but God’s purpose was more important than Aaron’s mistakes. God had chosen him to be a vessel, and the fruit of the wilderness grows on limbs that have been cut off from their worldly supply. Such fruit only God can grow. The principle of the Wilderness is this. Only when a heart is fully set on God does it bear God’s fruit. A tree bears earthly fruit because it is of the earth. But a heart who is planted in God bears heavenly fruit, which is miraculous and is the beginnings of the rewards of the Wilderness.

However, you’re not out yet. The flesh is going to hate this. It will not be satisfactory to your sense of self. When Israel saw what happened, they were fearful for their lives. The Holiness of God had been proven among them in the death of Korah, and the vindication of Aaron. Their sinful hearts were rightly fearful in the presence of a holy God. So will our fleshly nature in light of the holiness living within us.

Application: By now, if you’ve gotten this far, and you have learned the previous lessons of the wilderness, you can expect the fruit of your heart planted in God: righteousness, self-lessness, and power to persevere and do good in the face of many tangible evils and difficulties. Walk according to God’s commands, and keep on rejecting anything that vies for space in your heart. Only the heart that is set on God can be whole. Ways to do this: worshipping God, walking with God, going aside for God, fasting, anything that is done purely for the enjoyment of God. The more fully your heart is set on God, the more fruitful for His Kingdom you will become. This will bring no comfort to your fleshly desires to serve yourself. The sin in you will need to be kept at bay in the members of your body.