Tag Archives: Revelation

A Recaptured Vision

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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.”

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.

Famine of God’s Revelation

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Hearts harden under dull ears
And dim eyes
The eyes and the ears are purposed
To explore the very nature of God
Visible to us and audible to us
During this short life we have on earth.

“The eye is never satisfied with seeing”
“Nor the ear with hearing.”
“Rivers running endless to the sea,” the preacher says.
So how can our eyes and ears adequately explore
This very nature of God visible to us
Even though it is spiritual eternity in pragmatic time?

Well, perhaps one way is to avoid the trap
Of the insatiability of the eye.
The eye in our technological society
Has more than enough to see in picture and video
The ears are deafened by the machinistic murmurings
Of everything man has made incessantly drumming.

And somewhere the simplicity of God’s nature
Is lost to a thick and overpowering web of Man’s devices
Noise and flash,
Song and dance,
Light and music—
Are not all of these things the diet of our eyes and ears?

A famine! A Great famine! Devestating and ruthless!
Storm-forced winds tear away all peaceful stillness
The glaring desert sun scorches the bare ground.
The rain is not permitted enough time to gather
The ground is cracked and dry.
The seeds within wait to be sprouted by just one word from the Lord.

A single drop of His truth
To cool the burning thirst of our souls—
A quiet whispered hush
In which veracity can settle—
One candle in the darkness
When all pseudo-lights are extinguished.

Pray the Lord of the Harvest
Send the rain that brings real life.
Clear the ground of its towers of Babel.
Let the eyes close in sleep and wait til morning.
And then, once you’ve tasted of the voice of Heaven.
Do not forget He who speaks and shows Himself to you every day
“Seek the Lord while He may be found, and call on Him while He is near.”

I’ve Glimpsed Him. (Poem)

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It takes faith to believe that God is.
Once you have this, you can see him.
I do not promise that you will
Because He must decide to reveal Himself.
It takes a pure heart, with no guile.
Some believe that this is impossible,
But all things are possible with God.
How will you recognize him?
You won’t be able to ignore.
No more than a stick can ignore an all consuming flame.

How did I see Him?
I waited.
He spoke.
I looked.
He stood.
I bowed.
He is.

Music purged my heart of unexpressed filth.
Writing arranged my thoughts according to biblical specification.
Love set my heart on fire for another.
Joy surged in my creative freedom and pleasure of wisdom.
Peace quieted me in His approval.
Translation laid sticks of explosive dynamite end to end.
The Holy Spirit’s voice was the match.
The prizing and valuing of His own personal being.
And Jesus the Living one of all my life came.

T. Austin-Sparks~ “God’s answer to strengthen His people for Suffering.”
Is a new unveiling of the glory of the person of Jesus Christ.”

“What is the answer?
A new grasp of His greatness
That’s all.
And then if we are suffering
If we are knowing adversity, trial
And the clouds seem to be gathering, Accumulating, increasing.
How will we get through?
Only thus: by this:
Getting away
And asking
And seeking
And pursuing
In prayer
A new heart revelation–unveiling
of Jesus Christ.
And I am sure that will do it.
God give it to you.”
~T. Austin Sparks

 

The Effect of Finishing MYST IV Revelation on My Conscience

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What rumblings wrestle within me?
Ah yes, that game MYST IV Revelations
Such a striking contrast
Between the simple and good
And the deep and deceptive.

Long ago I played the game
And my heart was hamstrung by the kidnapping of dear Yeesha
But my affection for the Atrus character
Doubled over me with an effort to get the girl back.

These games are precious treasures of character.
They shiver the mind’s analyses down to the spinal column of our own choices
Shaking the branches to the trunk
To see what hart it holds within.

But when the spirits got involved
When invitations into darkness of unguarded dream awoke
When the so-called guide to truth in the spirit world spoke
I felt deeply quinged by the unstructured whim of another.

And I heard The Holy Spirit bid me to destroy what I could not truly love.
For I had chosen to love Him fully and not disown Him.
I cracked the DVD in half,
Mid-story
Mid-heart-throb
Mid-sob of relinquishing a soul’s investment.
And my sister who gave it me as a gift was deeply offended.

The years passed, and the story remained undeveloped in my spirit.
I had to know what happened to Yeesha,
How would the seed bear fruit that was good?
Could I trust the word of amulets worn around the neck of the unseen?

And so today, at last, I took up the card that said, “It’s only a game.”
And stared through the safely distant lenses of a player who walked through the game for me.
With eyes unveiled at last, and puzzles solved clear and fast
I came to the moment of decision.
My own weak heart could not have released me to do what was right.
Indeed even now, I stare at the screen typing this poem
Where once little Yeesha was imprisoned in a chair
Her memories being parasite-d away.

Hope, what a game you gave me.
It ended well, and a bit unsatisfactorily.
I wanted to rescue Yeesha myself,
But I could not see the danger
Unless the one other than He who truly is:
The shadow cast by a human imagination turning his back on God
Had come and shown me the answer.
Boo hiss you Serpent seductive.

And now my spirit crawls on all fours
A dry and thirsty land is the world when your own mouth consumes dust.
The conscience once guarded, and the heart never satisfied.
What a price to pay for the instigation out of innocence!
That one or the other must remain un-met, un-kept, or un-sung.

But nay, mine eyes were too weak to see His light, back then.
I was young, and filled with all the vigor of beautiful sights
Of which this game was full and rich.
And My heart, being trusting so fully as it was
Trusted in the inherent goodness of what was before me.
But now I know better.

The music of adulthood, has been tuned to a deeper fundamental
Than games that are of the devil, or cares that were superficial.
But now, I see the love of humanity,
And how we are meant to reflect our father and creator well.

How frightful the effect still was on my conscience.
Spiritual vomit seemed the only recourse.
And the past cannot be made different in the present.
But the past that belongs to God can be reshaped so as to better situate the present.

And the profoundness of the lessons of hope
And of the power of life to convert the soul
While the conversion of our souls for power will end in death.
But still, some depths are not to be plummeted
Unless they are in the bosom of the father.

I am resting now. Such a journey was not a waste.
But I bid all who wander there, tread with care.
If the spirit and the bride say come
Then come, and do not go the wedding of a corpse.