Tag Archives: Jesus

Omni-scient or Omni-quaerens?

Posted on by

I hope this can generate some healthy clarifying discussion without causing heretical divisions.

I have known most of my life that God is all-knowing, but a childish question that often comes upon the first discovery of this truth is the question, “How does He know everything?” The simplest response is “Because He’s God, and that’s just who God is. He knows everything.” This is not satisfying to me as an explanation. I want to understand what it means for Him to be all knowing. I also don’t want to make sections of the Bible fit my conception of God knowing all. Rather, I want to let the Bible be the prime informant, and the Holy Spirit be my prime guide to understanding this about God.

Anyone who talks about God flirts with heresy, a cardinal evil which is to be avoided at all costs not only for the detriment it causes to the heretic, but to all who are confused and misled by him. So why bother to reexamine the nature of God’s knowledge afresh? For me, I am motivated because doctrine separated from conversation with Him grows stale as a result of the deceitfulness of sin. Our hearts grow hard as we “figure things out” about God. Yet, are we not most like Christ when we are humble? Is Christ not imaging God best when He is being fully human? Humanity reveals God, just as the character of God reveals humanity, (Just as the Imaged and the image) and it is in relationship that these questions are answered in the way the heart needs for them to be answered. After all, if we wish to have a solid bed-rock faith, the confident assertions of theologians are not enough for many seekers to ground us in something so all-encompassingly real as God. We should ask questions and search things out, for this is the glory of a ruler. (Proverbs 25:2)

On the one hand we have the doctrine that God is omniscient—“All-knowing” that there is nothing that is not encompassed in his infinite knowledge, and therefore lacking nothing that anyone would teach Him. I have found it interesting that Scriptures that are cited for this do not express exhaustive knowledge so much as a privy position to all knowledge. 1. He knows the deepest secrets of all hearts. 2. He has understanding that is infinite. 3. Nothing is hidden from His finding out. Does this automatically mean He has exhaustive knowledge? The only passage that seems to say this explicitly says, “We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him, in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.” ~1 Jn 3:19–20. How should we consider this in light of other passages of scripture?

On the other hand, we have a God who seeks things out. In Latin this could be expressed by the phrase omni-quaerens: “All-searching-out.” Genesis 18, Genesis 22, The Lord’s messenger expresses that the Lord is looking into things. He sees, and in the moment interprets the value and meaning of what He sees before Him, and He responds to it in an un-premeditated way. Could this same type of “(now I know)” also be applied to passages in Genesis 3 and 4, when God asks Adam, Eve, and Cain questions? Could this be a clue to how His knowing all things works?

When we put both of these together, we see both a God who knows all, and a God who discovers. There is a tension that He who knows the end from the beginning is able to express fresh, genuine, present response to a situation as it unfolds. This is a beautiful mystery, which somehow keeps in play both His eternity and His intimacy; His immensity and His immanence; His being higher than Heaven and deeper than the deepest thought; His being the crafter and basis of the craft of every human heart, and the one who turns each heart over to delight in or disdain the aspects of His creation gone awry. Is one picture more accurate to God? Both are present, and to relegate one to a lesser place of importance leads to a misappropriation of the nature of the One whose image we bear!

The same God who asked where Adam and Eve were in the Garden, was the same God who promised ahead of time what would happen to the seed of the Woman and the seed of the serpent. The same God who told Abraham the way things would be for Abraham’s Seed in Genesis 15, is the Same God who expressed “new” knowledge when Abraham sacrificed his son Isaac. Is this just anthropomorphism– talking about God in human ways but not really encompassing his True nature–or is His true nature revealed in His image of Humanity on earth, specifically in the person of Jesus Christ?

Here is where I think the conversation leads: The same God with all power and love who promised the future to be, also adjusted his course of action in response to the failure and successes of the humans with whom He partners. This, I think is key to plumbing the depth of this mystery. After all, how can an all-knowing God say He will do one thing, and then change His mind when there is a human to intercede? Surely this does not point out a deficiency in the character of God, does it? Is this just a mystery that has to wait for heaven to be entered? Or is there something here as to a clue to the relationship between Christians and God, faith and prayer, the Trinity with the church, and the intended plan of the One who was perfectly represented in Jesus of Nazareth?

Lord, grant me audience before Your throne. There is a sense in which You, O Lord, know all. What are You seeking? Do You not seek to unveil to us Your designs and desires as you invite us to step along side you and see things from Your perspective so that we can rule and reign with You one day? Is it not also for training and development You ask? Furthermore, is it true that You search out the truth of something, as G. K. Chesterton said, because You never tire of the truth? Truth is always fresh to You. Could it be that every time you see the result of a test, you rejoice to perceive that truth afresh?

Furthermore, are we most like You when we know all details in full, or when we search things out? Humility is not merely an earth-bound beauty which You do not possess is it? It isn’t possible that the earth You made could have a beauty that could not be chiefly arising from Your own person. Humility is as fundamental to Your own nature as it is to true Humanity.

Lord, grant that I approach with the utmost fear and trembling, not because you have a cold compendium of knowledge, but because you are ever attentive to each detail of my own heart and the heart of every other human. Though You have no need for anyone to teach You, You still search things out to discover and to respond, and You delight in that which You have made. Such knowledge is too high for me. May I never seek to teach You anything, for all truth is sourced in You, as Paul said. “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever.” ~Ro 11:33–36.

Finally, Lord, grant that Your Spirit who searches out Your heart and mine, may guide me into all of Your truth summed up in the person of Jesus Christ. And let me discover this as You do, that I may share in Your delight!

A Great Sinner with a Great Savior

Posted on by

Tired of the superficiality? The lostness? The emptiness? The loneliness of self-preservation? The discontent of self-service? Well, I sure am. I am a self-righteous glory hound, who needs the shining faces of others beam at me to keep me warm, all the while being a pale, sickly, cold-blooded reptile of a viper’s brood. I am moving through life cultivating my own career, possessions, connections, and trying to maintain the confidence that I should have as a man and head of the household, all the while feeling like I’m the imposter. I am sodden with unkind thoughts about others, arrogant thoughts about self, and the temptations to taste forbidden morsels, all the while being hungry–nay starving– for the good nourishment I should seek from God alone. I have delighted in humiliating violence done to others, and thereby shown the color of the fabric of my own violated soul ready to perpetuate the cycle of brokenness which has come against me. I have kept so many only at the distance that can give each of us a temporary respite from our bleak existence, but not really expose either of us to the unbearably penetrating light of intimacy through which Christ shines the most restoratively. I do so much for God and others putting them to good work for my own comfort, my own joy, my own happiness. I despair of self and cry out “God save me.”

To such a man like me, the Jesus’ saving work on the cross reaches. Jesus waits at the center for me to leave the surface and come to meet him here. The lostness is simply the effects of the curse of those who refuse to use the cross as true north. Every human’s destiny– everything in his life– is utterly lost and meaningless without being situated according to the cross of Christ. The emptiness springs from this too: we seek out “drinking fountains” from which the water will not satisfy, when the only thing that will truly satisfy is the living water of the truth of the good news about Jesus: that He is the real King, whose subjects become his brothers and his friends, and who will lack no good thing for the rest of their lives as they reign with Him forever and ever. The loneliness springs from the longing to be known by one who could reject you but instead wholeheartedly embraces you aka Jesus Christ. No one has or will know you more thoroughly and love you more deeply or affectionately. The discontent is swallowed up by the heart’s abandon to the one who served not for himself but for me. Because He served me fully, I have no need to serve myself. Because he did all for me, I can do all for Him and for others. This is a truly great Savior!

Every damnable offense which I have done– The cross has payed the penalty, satisfying justice on my behalf forever.

Every brokenness which I incurred at my own hand or the hand of others– The cross has broken that brokenness and created something new from it.

Every spiritually powerful abomination which the Devil has utilized for my utter destruction– The cross has humiliated it and made known that it is defeated utterly.

Let yourself come to the rightful end of your own efforts: despair. Come to the end of yourself. Only there at the end can you look up and find that Jesus is The Great Savior who is able to save a Great Sinner like me. If he can save me, he can save you too, just cry out!

Mountains of Fire

Posted on by

Written for a devotional compiled by friends going into the mission field:

Mountains of Fire

“He looks at the earth, and it trembles;
He touches the mountains, and they smoke.” ~ Psalms 104:32

A volcano borrows its name from Roman mythology. In The Old Testament they were called a “mountain of fire.” These vents for gas, gigantic clouds of ash, and blazing liquid flame beneath the surface are testimonies of God’s glory. With tremendous horn-blast, surface hardened rock, black and lifeless, is split in two by the wonderous engine of rebirth to lay out new earth and sky with its recycled elements. The theophany of Yahweh to his people at Sinai, was very fire mountain-esque. It was God’s introduction of His Law as the bedrock of their Covenant, the revelation formed in stone written with the finger of God, yet breathed with a holy breath of God’s own intimate person. What else in creation combines all these elements: molten earth, powered by subducted water, burning with white-hot fire, and fuming with various organic compounds to change the air. A magnificent testament to the living, breathing, groaning of creation as it continues the work of creation of renewed land being formed.

Such a magnificent demonstration of God’s glory grants insight into God’s character in His image here on earth. The World that we know is living not on the foundation of a dead and cold shell, but a living and dynamic underground which moves and determines much of life here on the surface. Even so, just as the World is based in this fiery reality, the human being with a body is animated by a living spark of God’s divine fire. And just as fire-mountains, raised by the internal pressure of the old to be re-expressed in new ways, are vents for the world below to cry out for the redemption of God, so we too groan within ourselves, as the holy fire of God is at work within us to make new not only our own lives, but the life of everything around us.

Therefore, what is a better metaphor to describe a prophet? As Leonard Ravenhill said, “[A Prophet] has a heart like a volcano, and his word is fire.” A mere mound of human form, raised up by the revelation which fills him to manifest God’s glory according to their secret history together. He becomes the message, and as he roars with release he descends into the aftershock, content to have been fully expended for the pleasure of the One who loves the world and makes all things new, he is established forever as a monument in the landscape of the working of God for both judgment and renewal. And what was his qualification for such an important role? Availability. He was simply there to listen, to wait, to let God’s word have its way with him. “Would that all God’s people were prophets,” (Numbers 11:29) Moses cried.

What can God do through one simply willing to wait upon Him, like a servant on his master? He will move the mountains with his faith. (Matt 21:21) This is our victory that overcomes the land, (1 John 5:4) and God will once more be glorified as the Living God, (Deut 5:26) the all-consuming fire. (Heb 12:29) Until the day when He remakes the land completely, the elements burning with intense heat, (2 Pet 3:12-13) and there is a new heaven and earth, where this no longer any chaotic wasteland of death known as the sea. (Rev 21:1). Do you not know that most of the mountains of fire that exist today are under water? What more of His glory shall we see?

What Do the Eyes of Faith See? (C&R)

Posted on by

These are perspectives found in Hebrews 11 that strengthen God’s people to suffer and overcome resulting in the obedience of faith to the glory of God in Jesus Christ.

The Eyes of Faith see these things:

  1. Vs. 3–“The word of the unseen God is what orders the world that is seen around us.”
  2. Vs. 6–“God exists, and He rewards those who diligently seek Him.”
  3. Vs. 10–“We seek to live in a city that has an actual foundation designed and built by God.”
  4. Vs. 11–“Our God who promised is trustworthy.”
  5. Vs. 13–“While we wait for God’s distant promises, we are now strangers and exiles in the earth.”
  6. Vs. 14-16–“We do not seek our own country, but a Heavenly one.”
  7. Vs. 19–“God is able to raise the dead so as to keep His promises.”
  8. Vs. 24-25–“I’d rather be God’s people and suffer than be royal and enjoy sin’s fleeting pleasure.”
  9. Vs. 26–“The reproach of God’s anointed one is worth more than any treasure of the world, because of its reward.
  10. vs. 27–“Because I see what is unseen, I endure not fearing the wrath of the king others see.”

A way to use this tool: each of these calls and responses can be done with the family gathered at the table after dinner, read from a list posted nearby, and discussed at length. Each is a deep well of what faith is about. They are meant to generate questions, and discussion, and to give words to confess together with believers in Jesus Christ what we believe about the gospel. Chiastically they unfold by theme: the Unseen-ness of faith, the Reward of of faith, the Citizenship of faith, the Promises of faith, and the Eternal Hope of faith.

May God strengthen your faith in He who is unseen, that through Christ you may enter into greater reward, as Spirit in-dwelt citizens of an unshakeable kingdom, trusting in God’s promises both now and forever. Amen.

A Recaptured Vision

Posted on by

Two opposing viewpoints are helpful, like two legs supporting a torso. It’s not always about balance. Sometimes it’s about shifting your weight between the two viewpoints in order to make progress in a particular direction. But there still must be a united vision of one who can see above, between, and in sympathy with the two views the direction in which this whole group of members called a body must move.

I see an altar for sacrifice. The Lamb was slain upon it, and by his being slain willingly in submission to his master was enthroned as King of not just the spiritual realm, but also the earthly realm coming back to life spiritually and physically. The Lamb does not see corruption.I look and behold a group of spectators whose eyes once hardened in vehemence now moisten and soften with tears, as that which is in them, that compassion at the center of the LORD Himself melts their proud hearts. The more they stare, the more they shed their weapons and shrink down to become more and more a lamb themselves, made innocent by forgiveness. They bleat the simple cry “I will give my life for my enemies, for thus my Savior did for me.” Their persecutors, like blind puppets with the shape-shifting serpent venemous and hateful animating behind them, draw back their sword to strike. The Lamb does not move, but the bleating song of this lamb is sung as an echo of the Lamb enthroned. Struck deep in the throat, the lamb bows its head, blood staining the white wool of spotlessness. Such obedience is the sacrifice pleasing in God’s sight. The fragrant aroma of the smoke of the altar changes to an animal roasting. The lamb does not see corruption. Though his body decomposes there on the flame, his spirit goes to be with the Lamb, awaiting the day when his body will be reanimated and the blood-stained wool will be washed whiter than ever before. Thus the lamb shared the altar-throne, and thus the lamb will share with the exalted throne.

More and more the lambs following the Lamb are drawn to walk this simple path, and more and more the blind puppets are more clearly animated to look like their master. Until the day when all is revealed, and that which is true, right, and good, and full of life shall remain forever, and all that is false, wrong, evil, and full of death shall be judged forever with damnation. And all peoples, tribes, and nations will sing, “Salvation belong to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb.”

Where Doom and Hope Cross–A Message for the Church in America

Posted on by

Christian Church in U.S.A. is not thriving. It’s dying, and for many churches the life they continue to live is not worth living. If a group of people who are called to carry a cross for the salvation of their communities like Jesus did have settled for inactivity and living for this age not the age to come, they are wasting their time and the grace given them.

Let me explain: Christianity’s root system of the biblical story leading to Christ crucified is still in tact, but the current modern manifestations of what the branches look like above does not parallel the root system below the way a tree should. One does not need to look far to find Churches bearing the name, and claiming the aim of Christ who capitulate and compromise, or who build buildings to make their own names great, who try to maintain relevance, while many leave the shallow faith of their childhood, and the older grow proud and belligerent or indolent and fruitless. In order for the Church in the U.S.A. to thrive again it must go through the same gate through which Jesus passed: the Cross. Christianity without the cross isn’t Christianity at all, and the Cross applied to every financial, cultural, social, spiritual, physical, traditional, and national aspect of the church ensures its life as “The unseen growth that is caused by God.” No other growth can sustain the church, because a church cannot merely be a community club: she is a supernatural organism powered by prayer, if any activity of man can power such a thing.

The Church needs a renewed vision of what Christian is: a life lived by the Cross. A Cross for self-denial, a cross for luxury, a cross for security, a cross for family, a cross for wealth, a cross for power, a cross for injustice, a cross for justice, a cross for service, a cross for celebration, a cross for every precious thing in our lives, a cross for every relationship. Jesus did not love only love people on the cross, he loved people by carrying his cross. Not counting his self-denial as his own, but committing it to the righteous judiciousness of His Father. Not counting his own life something worthy to be saved, but rather, as a precious gift worth giving so that someone else could be saved, and this brought glory to the Father, as “the perfect representation of His nature.” As God’s image, out not we do the same?

This is both a message of doom and joyous hope. Because while every institution of man–even the ones originated with God but have been kept beyond their use to Him–will be overturned, overturned, overturned, the Church who is Christ’s body will merely be changing clothes. The Robes of Righteousness of the saints must remain white, washed regularly in the blood of the Lamb who leads the way to life through his own sacrificial death. If the robes will not be cleansed, they must be changed to what God intends. Again here prayer is the answer, confession of sin which stupefies the body with sin-selfish sleep and repentance–the changing of the inner being and outer doing by the renewing of the mind.

The Kingdom of Christ is a Rock made without hands and therefore no chisel in a man’s hand can harm it; only that which is added onto it by man’s hands will slide off this ever-growing mountain of Daniel’s Vision which shall fill the whole earth! So pick your side: will you carry your ross with Jesus in prayer, and repentance laying down all of your life, thereby saving it, or will you seek to save your life by staying with man’s kingdom and lose it all? For those who leave anything un-crucified in their life, this is a message of doom, for those who surrender all their life to the cross, this a message of hope.

A Cleansing Dive into a Garden in Eden

Posted on by

 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.

Parable: Two Temples

Posted on by

Once upon a time in a great kingdom far away, there was at the center of the realm, a Temple. This temple was immense, and it was also a garden. Fruit trees, cherry blossoms–a self-sustaining eco-system where the animals and plants all produced and flourished with life. It was tended and kept by watchful guardians, and it was perfect.

Then one day, someone came and dumped a ton of trash in the center of the garden. The keepers of the garden were devastated and since they didn’t know how to deal with the trash, they left it there. And the trash started to mess with the ecosystem and make it fester. It started to pollute the whole garden until it overran it. People abandoned their care of the garden, and they abandoned visiting the temple, but their hearts still hungered for the beauty of the temple.

So they started building temples of dead things, and started to put up artificial fruit trees. The people there were all very friendly, but they had only one rule: you had to call the artificial trees, “real fruit trees.”

One day a visitor from a neighboring kingdom came and visited the realm, and went to the temple they had constructed, and he remarked to them all, “What is with all the fake trees?” The people politely corrected him since he was a stranger, “They aren’t fake, they are real.” And he said, “No they’re not. In my kingdom, our fruit trees bear real fruit and you can eat them. This is not a real fruit tree.” Impatiently, they said, “Well, when you are in our kingdom, you will call these real fruit trees. If you don’t like it you can leave.” And he said, “What about the garden at the center of your kingdom? Don’t you have real fruit trees there?” At this they grabbed him and kicked him out of their temple and said, “Don’t come back here again, if you’re going to treat us so disrespectfully!”

Scratching his head, the visitor went to the center and saw all the trash littered there, and he started to call people in the kingdom to help him clean it up. A handful of them worked together until at least a small part of the Garden looked like it did before. Then he brought to them the fruit from the center of the Kingdom, and offered it to the people in the “Artificial Temple.” Of course they had some type of fruit, but it was imported and borrowed and as artificial as the trees, but not nutritious. He offered the fruit to anyone who would take it, and when he handed the fruit to someone who accepted it, he called the fruit a word which they did not understand at first.

Sacred.

The Center of the Holy

Posted on by

I wish that words could capture what it is I’m trying to say
It can’t but that’s okay, it gives access in the moment:
Plaguing anxiety, weight deadening and chilled
A cool grip of loneliness, lit only by a dim fear light
The ugliness ‘gainst which I toil to scratch a living for others
Nay! My lack, my loss, my wasted time, futility my only fruit.

To the end, I press until I break. I break from this frightful trap
I sink ‘neath billows of sorrow sharp and painful, doleful, woeful, wailing
I cry unto the Savior who hears my cry and answers.
He shows himself beautiful in promised truths that break through the clouds.
My fearful flame is cast off with disdain as I blaze with a new flash of hope.
Th’eternal gospel kingdom fully accomplished in Jesus’ name.

That same name by which I am sealed, and whose glory is my only aim.
No weight of ugly sorrow can be matched with such a radiance.
Nor does it lose its value in the bright rays of joy at the recognition of His face.
Rather, recognizing how much more glorious He is than every sorrow,
Makes even this storm in which I am tossed, a beautiful golden display of His light.
Blessed be He, that not that for which I suffer loss, but He is the center.

I wish that words could capture what it is I’m trying to say
But it can’t and that’s okay.
It’s the center of the Holy
And only those touched by the Holy may enter.
Ask and it will be given to you.
Seek and you will find.

An Unfinished Chiasm

Posted on by

Keep your Philosophy, Latin and Greek
—I have a Person’s face to seek
——To know the micro expression thoughts
———And the innermost melodies of His heart

———They play in every word well sung
——Read by those seeking truth and love
—His gaze, His lips, His gentle breathing
_________________________________

Who dares to finish it?