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Say It Back to Me
January 2015 starts year four of these little “musings and mutterings” I post. I was a little surprised to find it’s been that long. In any case, I have been doing some remembering, thinking about why I write them; about the purposes they might serve. I write because, at this point in my life, I have to write. It is the singular way I effectively sift through my inner stirrings and I happen to deeply enjoy the process. There is something utterly satisfying about consolidating language and clarifying thoughts, so that when you have strewn together 500 or 600 words, you are saying what you mean to say, with all the…
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Immanuel
I wonder if at the same time God was dialoguing within Himself about His plans to create the world, He also planned what He would do to redeem it. Father, Son, and Spirit, knew the humans they would create would exercise the free-will they’d be given. God knew we would choose to move away from Him, and so He devised a plan to ensure we could return. He also worked out and set in place how the whole of what He would create would be restored, never to be corrupted again. The day The Son of God entered a young virgin girl, that redemptive plan was set in motion. When…
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Vulnerabilities & Strongholds
And David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him into his hand. ~ 1 Samuel 23:14 ~ ~ Vulnerability Susceptible to harm, moral attack or open assault. Within the spectrum of who I am lies strengths and weaknesses, places where I have some level of competency and areas where I recognize I am susceptible to harm. Between those two “bookends” are a plethora of tendencies that stay off the radar most of the time even though they quietly contribute to my everyday life. I’ve been thinking about vulnerabilities, about…
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Thoughts on Transitioning to a New Normal
These are thoughts not necessarily in sequence. Each paragraph is meant to make sense independent of the others, (fingers are crossed). I’ve written them down for someone I have the great honor of walking beside in their grief. A man’s spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear? ~ Proverbs 18:14 ~ When someone has experienced significant trauma, there is no vein of life that is untouched by it. Normal life vanishes. Grief comes, entering the center of the person in pain, and a journey ensues, transitioning them from what was their ‘normal’ to whatever the ‘new normal’ will be. Anyone who has truly experienced the process…
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The Fear of “What If”
With so many looming global changes on the horizon, fear is an invitation offered me all too often. Will my comfortable American way of life alter irreparably? Informed Americans, which includes American Christians, are thinking about and forming images of what it might mean to live with profound restrictions across the whole spectrum of life. It seems essential that I begin to have these conversations in the company of The Lord. ~ …to those who are elect exiles… who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. ~ 1 Peter 1:1,5 ~ I can tell you all day long…
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The Frog In the Pot
Have you heard the story of the frog in the pot? A frog sits comfortably in a pot of temperate water that unbeknownst to him is in the process of boiling. The frog wakens to his desperate condition only after the water comes to a boil, when it’s too late to escape. ~ See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. ~ Colossians 2:8 ~ My adversary is a great deceiver, doing his best to ensure I live life fueled by my old-nature. I believe my objective…
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The Eternal Component
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind… ~ Luke 10:27 ~ I am heart, an emotional being. I am soul, an eternal being. I am strength, a physical being. I am mind, an intellectual being. These four aspects represent the whole of every human; of me. Some time ago, I began to search for language to describe the inner process always percolating within my very busy mind. It came out of a need to understand the wrestling between my old and new natures. I reasoned if a seasoned Apostle is unable…
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Fatal Distraction
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, & that it was a delight to the eyes, & that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate… ~ Genesis 3:6 ~ I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing. ~ John 15:5 ~ Genesis 3 provides a lens into what humankind does when they are tempted away from what’s central. Following the creation account, it’s the very first story presented to us in scripture. It’s the…
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Deconstructing the Impossible Dream
What if somewhere in the middle of our lives, for those of us who are genuinely asking that God would have His way, there takes place a series of events that leaves us empty, wounded & disoriented? What if, after bringing those events before The LORD we find out that it was He who sanctioned those happenings? What if we discovered that in those areas where we once felt competent, where we moved through life operating “out of our giftings,” God allowed those strengths to diminish, so that we could no longer rely upon them? What if God purposefully and aggressively deconstructed the under-girding we’d come to count on… so that…
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Desires – Really Big Ones & the Rest
This is a “mid-life” conversation. Folks in their twilight years are past these conversations, for the most part, either resigned or resolved to “real life.” Folks younger are still grappling with issues that are typically on a lower plane of importance, though they wouldn’t consider them so. But I am having conversations almost every day with people in their 40’s and 50’s who, if they have a truly BIG unrealized desire, are not sure what in the world to do with the depth of it. “Shouldn’t the intensity have waned by now? Is it cruel (in which case I think I might need to blame someone, probably God) that I…
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The Faces of Desire
“For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.” Some desires come to us very undeveloped…like dreams or possibilities that we have not really thought through. I have a picture in my mind of a little child mesmerized by a newly discovered wild-flower as she walks in the woods. She presents it immediately to her Father who is beside her, assuming He knows all about this delicate discovery, and she allows Him to guide the experience. What He says about it will determine its value to her; its importance to her. That’s what I’d like to see happen as I go about…
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Self-Deceit, Desires & Discernment
There’s a strong link between self-deceit, desires, and my ability to discern. How do I ensure that self-deceit is exposed so that my longings have a chance to mature into healthy desires? Here’s my working definition. DESIRE – A longing, craving, or expressed wish, as for something that brings satisfaction or enjoyment. ~ “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Do you believe that’s true? Do you believe that your heart has the ability to self-deceive so that you are not aware of the deceit? King David prayed that God would keep him from “secret sins”…. things that might live within him he…
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Thankful, Honest & Surrendered
As thankfulness provides context, honesty provides a launch point. Honesty is the starting-gun firing. Everything that leads to honesty happens before the race even begins, but the Starter can’t fire the gun until honesty shows up. I wonder how long I have grappled with certain inner struggles, to no avail, simply because I have not been willing to be honest about what’s really within me. Sometimes I can’t see what’s really there. In either case, there cannot be true growth until I’m able to see and call out the reality of a thing. Once that happens, often the remedy is near and simple to digest. Not always, but often. I’ve been…
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Commodity or King?
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Driven To Him
