Gifting, Lifting, and Shifting

And since I've been dealing a lot in "three's" lately, here's a wonderfullittle "three-in-one" - and thanks, Annie, for getting this one started - referring to our opportunity in life to really live, remembering that, "The person who believes God, is set right by God on the inside—and that's the real life." -- from Gallatians 3 (The Message)


When you are invited into someone's heart and life as a voice of truth,

G - get more fully

I - involved, and always

F - follow

T - through


When their pain is just too great for them to hear you,

L – listen to them deeply and well

I – intuit and feel God's presence

F – follow His guidance precisely

T – trust His hand completely


When you get caught up in your own pain,

S - set your sight

H - highest,

I - in pursuit of

F - full

T - transformation


Allow yourself to be your whole self for others, which is always truly magnificent (vs. the cold, distant, hardened, "know-it-all" - the scared, shut-down "imposter" who shows up from time to time as an angry, ineffective "body and soul guard").

Put yourt wide-open heart on the line, gifting and lifting others up at every opportunity. There is nothing real to lose. And allow yourself to be "blown up", "set right", and "totally transformed" when you need that.

With a little courage and some heart, we get to be such a huge, mind-blowin', world-shakin' presence for each other, and why not, eh? It's a short trip, folks! Enjoy it to the fullest!

Love waits ... and wins ... every time

The third in the series, and the perfect culmination. Love waits ... and wins ... every time ... and if you don't really see it, it's just a matter of your attention span and the limitations of your perspective, and it couldn't care less about fixing that. That's totally up to you, and when you're ready, and you shift,

E N J O Y!!!!!

The Unstoppable Power of Truth & Love

When love waters and nurtures the seed of truth, walls of separation and rejection are blown down and obliterated, and God is glorified through the beauty and wholeness of our reconciled and redeemed relationships.

Two hundred years ago in Hanover Germany, a stone tomb weighing over a ton and a half was encircled with iron bands to maintain its integrity for ages to come. Moisture seeped into the tomb and the rays of the sun warmed the stone walls and somehow a little poplar seed began to grow through a tiny crack in the surface. Decades later, as the tree rose to the sky, the tomb broke open and the iron bands burst.

That's how the power of love and truth works to heal offended relationships. The tomb surrounded by iron bands represents the closed spirit of a friend or family member. The seed represents the liberating word of truth. The moisture and warmth of the sun represent the unstoppable power of truth and love.

As we begin to accept the truth about ourselves and our shattered relationships, truth and love begin their irreversible work of breaking the walls that separate us. Sometimes the process takes years. Our problem is that we don't have faith in the unstoppable power of truth and love to do its work.

We want instant results and consequently we often take actions that result in more iron bands being placed around the tomb of our closed relationships. Consequently some people never experience the beauty of reconciliation and redemption, and others sadly don't find it until they are on their death beds. And yet some - through their awareness, experience, faith, patience, prayer, understanding, and wisdom - bask in the glory even before it is made fully manifest, because they know the undeniable, irrefutable, unstoppable power of truth and love, and they wait with joyful expectancy, celebrating each sacred step in the process with honor, dignity, and a sense of awe.

-- Pastor Eugene P. Harder, July 12 (my birthday), 1999

This photo entitled: "Joyful Expectancy" (sorry, no photo here)

"Mark this: Unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in."

-- Jesus, in Mark 10:15 (The Message)

We so often talk about love in an intelligent, reasonable manner, talk about its importance in the world and how to "do" it right, so that we can "get in" (notice how it is so often about us), but love is neither intelligent nor reasonable, and it can't be "done," and it isn't concerned about itself or its "accomplishments." In fact, real love defies logic and reason and any kind of doing or achieving. It just slowly and methodically "undoes" everything that's "not it." Real love couldn't care less about fairness, importance, justice, likelihood of reciprocation, size of the obstacles and roadblocks, timeliness of results or rewards, its own safety, winning in any way. Real love simply is, and it brings us to our knees, in shock and awe at the mystery and marvelousness of it. Real love leaves us looking up in wonder and amazement, waiting for the next amazing miracle to unfold.

Try this, if you dare (because it will actually reduce you to your proper size): get on your knees in your back yard, take a moment to recognize what a beautiful child you are in His eyes and really feel that child's heart (this could take a moment - to receive how totally loved you are, even with all your blowhardiness, gamesmanship, goings on, and shenanigans), and then feel the smile slowly light up your face as you bask in the sun. Feel the preciousness of this moment's breath and the healing power of this smile. If you can, get someone who really loves you to take a picture ... so you can remember ... that there is so much more going on in every moment than the next frenzied thing that you think is so very important.

On divisiveness: the Spirit brings us together ... but we pull ourselves apart.

"Working to bring people together is a sacred responsibility for all of us. But sometimes some people just seem to have a knack for pulling or pushing other people apart, by:

Starting meaningless or trivial arguments.
Spreading gossip and lies.
Judging and condemning.
Creating cliques.
Holding grudges.
Backstabbing.
Deliberately undermining those in authority.
Pitting one person or group off against another.
Lying and/or manipulating.
Over-committing and under-delivering.
Consistently not being true to one's word.
Pontificating or over-proselytizing.
Setting up rules in order to create social barriers.
Being a racist or sexist or elitist.
Barking out orders and demanding obedience.
Using principles (or even 'righteous' anger) as an excuse to cut off contact.
Personalizing a political dispute.
Raising the stakes in disputes.
Having an 'I win, you lose' attitude.
Acting seemingly unaware or unconcerned about how one's behavior affects others.

The tighter the group is, the worse such divisiveness can get (the Enemy loves when things start to feel really good and right among a small group of "us who get it" vs. "them who don't"). It starts to feel like combat. In many churches, this is what church life is like -- just ask the steady stream of once-active Christians who walk away in disgust. These people have been burned by the world, so they turn to the church as their burn unit, but instead of being healed they get torched with a flamethrower.

Jesus gave us a better way. He taught us to love one another with God's love - to love each other like the Perfect Father. Paul laid out the vision when he wrote about "spiritual gifts:" they are to be used to build each other up and to build all of us up as a whole. Paul also wrote about peacemaking and having a ministry of reconciliation. The Christian faith is full of struggles and terrible conflict, but also full of great healing and strengthening, powerful conflict resolution and life transformation, miraculous redemption , nourishment, hope, and growth. Have you gotten the message? In your church, community, or organization, can you take it on and claim your responsibility to 'be' a healing balm for others, 'be' the reconciling light in conflict, 'be' a stand for all members of the Body coming back together in love and understanding?

"Despise no one, and carp not at anything; for there is no one who does not have their hour, and there is no thing that does not have its place." -- "Ethics Of the Fathers," 4,3

-- Robert Longman, Jr.

A timely piece, as it relates to business, church, family, and any organization in which people are trying to "make things work" together. Here's an invitation to let God work in us, vs. make us work for Him. People are entitled to their feelings, always, as long as they remember that feelings are "feelings" - irrational and not always understandable - and not "truth." As I've shared before, one's feelings tend to emerge naturally out of one's paradigms - one's beliefs about themselves and the world - so if you want to feel differently under any circumstance, you need only choose to believe differently. And as you might recall from last week's entry on family work:

"We are always 100% responsible for our own actions, thoughts, and words, even if they're performed, thought, or said in direct response to circumstances and people for which and for whom we are not responsible."

-- Allan Massie

There is no wiggling out of what I think, say, or do, ever, under any circumstances. I know what's right, in my heart and through my deepest intuition, always, and I can sometimes find that awareness temporarily over-ridden by some intense emotion (usually fear), but if I keep my finger on my own "pause button" I can stop in any moment and reflect, and then fully own the unique nature of my very human and "patterned" melodrama and my own responsibility for what I think, say, or do in the next moment. And the best sign of my spiritual maturity is how consistently and effectively I manage my very intellectual "self-made self" while God works in me (cultivating and refining the amazing "me" who He made), and then works through me (and others He chose to surround me with for my benefit) in the magnificent unfolding of His design.

On living wisely and well

Another 3-parter, beginning with this one, on the art of living well in community life.

When you get a glimpse of a life you'd like to emulate, a life worth living, lived wisely and consistently well, you shouldn't "rush" to "follow," for the way to live wisely and well can be brutally difficult at first, as you wrestle life away from your past bad habits and blindness, and it's really important to "measure the cost" first, as Jesus said, because this will cost you everything. And rushing into "teaching mode," to pretend that you "get it" now, is the best way to kill and maim others while you die an agonizing second death. In other words, try not to "give it away" before you've "fully received it." Or, to wax poetic, "Don't try to be giving what you're not even living; don't try to be teaching that to which you're still reaching." Focus on taking it all in before giving it out; breathe it in deep first; let it own you first, before you attempt to own it and speak it. I didn't listen to this in the beginning of this 11-year ride I'm on. I was too busy trying to heal a life of destruction and shame, and wanting to look so "over it" and so "better now." It cost me at least three years of frustration and humiliation. They were useful experiences in the end, but not necessary. The last paragraph of James 3 says it all; it is the daunting truth of living a life of teaching, serving, guiding.

Whoa! Dignity and honor - everyone - under any and all circumstances.

What a measuring stick!

James 3 (The Message)

When You Open Your Mouth

1-2Don't be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you'd have a perfect person, in perfect control of life.

3-5A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it!

5-6It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

7-10This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can't tame a tongue—it's never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!

10-12My friends, this can't go on. A spring doesn't gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don't bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don't bear apples, do they? You're not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?

13-16Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here's what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It's the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn't wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn't wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn't wisdom. It's the furthest thing from wisdom—it's animal cunning, devilish conniving. Whenever you're trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others' throats.

17-18Real wisdom, God's wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not ever two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.

Faithfulness

"Our misery is that we thirst so little for these sublime things, and so much for the mocking trifles of time and space."

-- Charles H. Spurgeon

"Faith in God is putting all your eggs in His basket and then joyfully counting your blessings before they hatch."

-- Ramona C. Carroll

"And fear is not the absence of faith, but is simply faith in the wrong thing - that it won't ever work out."

-- Unknown

"Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of reason and thought."

-- John R. Stott

"'What you believe' moves people, especially when it lines up exactly with what you're saying."

-- Yours Truly

"Every life is a profession of faith, exercising an inevitable, silent influence on the world."

-- Henri Frederic Amiel

What influence do I have on the world? It all depends on what/Who influences me.
It is amazing to consider how little there is to be afraid of or concerned about.
We are delightfully imperfect; He runs all of it; we get to learn and grow.
I am only as effective and powerful as I am aligned with His wisdom.
My faith is the only real enabling or limiting factor in my life.
Walking in faith is the only place of freedom and peace.
From within faith, all anxiety and pain melts away.
Following, there is nothing else to do or say.
I am grateful for the experience of You.
I am grateful for seeing the game.
I am unconcerned about winning.
I am only concerned with truth.
I am loving the opportunity.
I am learning and growing.
I am joyfully here, now.
I am no longer afraid.
I am transcendent.
I am at peace.
I am bliss.
I am.
I ... ay ay ay ... aaahhhhhhhh.