Tag faith

Saying Is Seeing

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I had a long conversation with my pastor about the beauty and growth of our church. The more we spoke, the more I realized that everything I said exposed where I am in my personal growth. I see the church in terms of where I am. That may or may not directly correlate with where the church is. We, the church, are a single group made up of diverse individuals, as my friend Heather says. We are each a unique part of the same creature.

The pastor has the unenviable position of seeing all the individual parts, hearing each speak from his/her point of view, and the requirement to discern what they say in the context of the whole. He has a most difficult job, especially when you consider that He has to apply what he hears the family say to where the Lord is leading and to move all the family toward God. Anyone who has had to keep a group in a good working relationship while on a journey together knows the challenge.

Speaking to the pastor shows me my limitations and individual point of view. I may not have really seen myself honestly in my thoughts. My insight became much clearer as I opened my mouth to speak. My words, out loud and in the open, began to be more clear when put in the context of a broader and deeper point of view. The pastors ideas, responses, and point of view acted as a mirror, reflecting my words and ideas back to me so I could see them better through context than when they were just located in my mind.

The insights give me the opportunity to pursue the Lord with what I’m seeing inside myself. Though the pastor made no complaint or correction to me, my words showed me immaturity in my thinking and insecurity in my feelings. What was not seen or said by my pastor became obvious to me through my own words.

I used to say things to my students like, “You can’t write any assignment without exposing the author behind it.” It is as true in me as it was for them. Listening is a two way proposition. It is hearing the other and hearing what is really behind what you are saying. It is the complex art of self correction and awareness for growth’s sake. It is choosing to reflect and become aware of your own motives, good and bad. Your own words can help you see what growth lies in your future. God uses relationships so that, through our communications, we can see Him, each other, and ourselves with clearer vision. God’s plan is our growth toward Him. Our openness allows Him to teach us, even through our own words.

Thoughts on Prayer

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What is prayer? A wish, a hope, purposeful thoughts, or a conversation? Prayer as a conversation means there is another engaged in the dialogue. Who is the other you converse with? Is it an idea, a standard, a disconnected deity, a person in power, or possibly a true God who responds and engages in the conversation with you? Faith and religion can be as simple as the Bible describes or as complicated as humans can make it, and we often complicate things extraordinarily.

Consider an ant holding a conversation with a blue whale as a wild example. The whale is beyond any ant’s imagination in size and power. It lives in an environment beyond anything an ant can experience. An ant entering a whale’s environment, though natural to the whale, is death to the ant. Neither can the whale live in the small, earth-bound environment of the ant. There is no way the two can coexist in the natural. These two creatures are incompatible due to their different natures. We are both whale and ant in this strange example.

That relates to humans and God only to a point. There is a third element that is within humans that can directly connect to God’s nature, and that is spirit. Spirit is that part of us that is made of the divine nature in that it is a forever piece of us that is bonded to flesh and blood. That means there is a piece of God’s environment tied to this physical nature. We are, to keep with the example, part whale and part ant. It is no wonder that the differences do not leap into harmony with each other within us.

Jesus is the perfect manifestation of God in both natures to connect with humanity, body and soul/spirit. Jesus is the perfect wedding between spirit and physical humanity. He is able to communicate through all barriers and confusions to create understanding for productive conversation. He is spirit made physical for the work of relationship. His life, death, and resurrection is convincing proof that God wants the conversation/ relationship. He has truly gone the “extra mile” by coming to us as only He can. Prayer is a living conversation with God who starts the conversation, carries the conversation, and responds to the conversation. Prayer is not words on the wind, but a dialogue, a two way conversation.

Dad’s Complaint

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I’ve talked to many fathers who have a similar complaint about how children hear. Dad would tell us some truth that we children needed to hear and master. A neighbor would mention this truth in passing, after father had told us the same many times over, and we would come home with that truth as a sudden revelation. Dad would complain, “I’ve been telling you that for months,” and he had.

Recently, like many times before, I went to church and had the same experience. Ideas floating through my mind would be coalesced into clear images during the songs and/or sermon, and it was like I heard it for the first time. I can imagine the Lord, like my dad, saying, “I’ve been saying that to you for a long time,” and He has. Sometimes it is easier to hear it from someone else than to trust that my thoughts are being encouraged from heaven.

I have talked to many people, faith and non faith, whose ideas have been encouraged from heaven. Maybe it is easier for me to see/hear it than it is for them because the ideas form in their minds. They are aware of the thought, but not the source. I had an atheist explain his beliefs to me one day. He was all about life being random, but his love was order and organization. He perfectly described intelligent design of creation while saying it was all formed by random. He was saying one thing, but we were hearing different things. Order and random are absolute opposites, but he didn’t hear it in what he was saying. I think that he loved the qualities of God but just didn’t want anyone to interfere with the way he structured and lived his life.

Artists see beauty and want to have it, be it, create it. They accept that discipline is a requirement of the process. Christians perceive that God has invited them into His beauty and accept that discipline is a necessary part of the process. The beauty of God’s life is way beyond us requiring us to have help and leave the bad parts of ourselves behind. Non believers see what we believe to be wonderful as God the enforcer shoving His will and priorities down their throats. What Christians see as rescue, non believers see as having their boat torpedoed.

I find this confusing because everyone seems to love the values of God like love, joy, peace, justice, honor, truth, and the like. We all seem to be in agreement on one level, but not in agreement as to the source or the process for gaining those true values. The purest qualities of all those values only come from God’s warehouse. All other sources are like bathtub gin, pretty low grade and chancy, the difference between street drugs and medicine from the pharmacy.