Tongues of Fire

27.10.12

I sat in the dark and was filled and bullied with winds inside me. I lifted my head upward and yelled and I flew into pieces.

I was wracked with emotions: big slimy ones and huge red slippery ones, enormous green heavy things.  I couldn’t handle them. I was filled with helium that was rocking and needed attention.  I sat down and lifted up my hands. My head broke open and a wind and smoke came in, pushed apart my halves and sifted out the debris in me. I confessed I wasn’t my own, even the thoughts the emotions stemmed from were not me. The smoke passed over my hand and left bullets, teeth, small bones. And the emotions were lifted. 

There was still weight. I was cracked open again and a giant tongue slid into the crevasse, past my brain and heart to the center of me where things start. The tongue was warm and it filled me – I was an ear and it was speaking to me. I could hear his voice. The tongue became fire and burned and burned – it remained and was lit on the oil of me. 

I was rocking and couldn’t shake something. A voice began in my core and from the roots of the earth, it grew in a steady roar that shook the room, the world, it was my voice and the sound of everything and it developed into the words ‘YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW STRONG MY LOVE IS’.

Standards and Dreams

Our fathers really are our models for God: they teach us who we are, how to be men, how to be humble, how to be a steward, how to accept grace, how to draw the line, how to love. Your father never gave anything away; He taught you how to question everything, and to do so, but he didn’t give you anything to stand on and no sense of self. To build your life around arguments, pushing one way and then the other, is to be forever on unsteady ground because you construct a ‘best-of’ sort of existence, if you construct one at all. Without a line, something sturdy to stand on or measure from, an absolute, everything is arbitrary and relative. People say nothing in life is sure, but  speaking with you these last days, looking at how my life of learning to see absolutes speaks for itself, I have no problem saying ‘you might be absolutely right’ and be done with it. God’s ways are higher than man’s and they cannot be figured out. They must be heard and received; they must be walked out and then scoured roughly for understanding; they must be walked out again and then polished; they must be applied and applied improperly so your idea of ‘getting a concept’ can be smashed. God is all in all: your ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ (set-up according to a world’s standard), your application and not applying, your love and hate and servanthood and ‘I’m a good person’ acts, your malicious intent and the murder in your heart - - God uses it all for your growth. So walk free from doing yourself into any worth. The idea is that you’re worthwhile regardless of what you do. When you can hear that, then receive it, then live like it, you’ll be something new, seeing the world with new eyes and a new perception. We change every day so we can see more clearly what is real. We’ve just been trained in the habit of telling others to see how we see instead of seeking greater clarity for ourselves.

I had a dream yesterday: we were Arab (thank you Aladdin), working and living in a palace, trying to overthrow a complex and lying “democratic” dictatorial government.  We tried to establish the collapse of the economy or some such nonsense many times and always failed, but this time, with the palace guards right on our tails, the plan we set in motion succeeded! I remember being exultant. We used the Japanese Yen as the standard against which the state of our economy somethingsomething was measured and just when the national news related our financial collapse (which would lead to reform), the phone rang, and one of our leaders answered it. His face fell. He looked at us ashen-faced and said ‘the Japanese Yen has fallen’, and this large LED board behind him illustrated that dramatic point with numbers that dwindled. It was instantly evident that the government had manufactured and somehow controlled this standard the whole time, and that there was no hope.

-Of course it was all cinematic and breathy, like a Bourne movie, all drama and lighting and running and suspense…and all that stuff told in just a couple quick scenes. Anyway, the whole measuring-against-a-mobile-standard thing applied.

We judge ourselves constantly because we see and remember all our mess-ups and wickedness. But God doesn’t remember any of it – he says our sin is cast into the sea of his forgetfulness.  So we can walk free right now into what we want to be or where we want to go. 

Who your dad was or is and what he did or didn’t do doesn’t matter – where are you at now? What serves you? You’re free to choose. That’s the point. You can argue all sides of an issue, pros/cons, merits/demerits, and come to some conclusion, but freedom lies in your heart, and you know with more than logic when you find it. Our choices are rarely based on logic, anyway.
 
Satisfaction is not circumstantial because circumstances change. Emotion is not satisfaction because it’s so elusive it’s often hard to name. Satisfaction has to come from some standard that does not change and can always be revisited. That’s why the bible’s a big deal: when you can say ‘I believe the bible is the final authority’ you have something that doesn’t shift like sand. We get in arrears about interpretation and blind reception, but that’s where faith in GOD and not in man comes in. So believing the bible could be a faith in anything if one is to believe it by faith in God. The thing is just the symbol, like a torch in a dark night: you don't believe in the torch, you believe it'll lead you the right way. But people believe in the things: money will make the way easy, or relationship will save them, or looking good will make the world know their worth. We all believe in something – the bible simply has answers and illustrates a WAY that, like God (go figure), is self-propagating. Once you’re on the way simply being on the way helps keep you there. And when your heart is set on the way falling off it isn’t such a big deal because the trajectory you’ve set yourself on brings you right back to it.

I have been hurt when I have held onto things that didn’t serve me. Pride, for example. I can have these conversations with you now when I couldn’t a year ago because I wanted and NEEDED to have an understanding of God, so I would have defended my stance and who I was sure He was and would  have told you you were wrong about this and that and that. But now I just have me and my experience of God, and it’s so light. It gets heavy again when I have an idea about who I am or how I stand or how to be in God or what’s good and right and all that, but it just goes to show me where I still think like the old me – then I can put that off and grow light again.

We make identities, like you said, by seeing people and determining ‘I am that’ or ‘I am not that’, and we find names to call ourselves and behaviours to integrate or maintain and when one day a friend kindly lets me know I’m ‘not acting like myself', the internal crisis in me comes to the surface: I am in conflict. Conflict is in me. We learn who we are because we were made for certain things – building relationships, understanding and becoming Love, walking free of the world (in it, but not of it). All of those are active things in process and to be done now. The bible says ‘Now is the moment of salvation’ because God is HERE RIGHT NOW and to recognize that is to come under something that doesn’t hold you down or torment you, doesn’t demand anything of you, but blows all the fowl of the air away so you can breathe again. Then, once you’re quite recovered, he teaches you how to shoot the damn things down, those violent and consuming thoughts. How to take them captive to something that doesn’t change and is proven true (all day long if you look for it). When everything’s relative, all these ideas that crowd your mind fight for voice and because everything has merit to some degree, there’s no reason to clear the air. So the murder of crows remains. And kills you all through the day and more so at night.
It is necessary to hold something True, whether it’s that God is, or that He is not, because to be in the middle is to be in chaos. The bible says be either hot or cold, that is, choose a side – you can always change sides, but to try-to-want-to-be or to think-you-ought-to-be or to try-to-act-as-if are all weak postures that keep you stagnant long enough for the carrion to come in. The idea of faith is movement, because what you have faith for is where you will move. You go to work because you understand that if you don’t work, you don’t eat. Your faith is that your work will provide for you, and more than that, it gives you something to be about all day long. Somewhere to test your energies in a different field, under the same master in a different form, to work out your salvation under the harsh, the hippie, or the yuppie taskmaster.
God's all one.

Come again...?

My view of the second coming is different.
Jesus returns every day. If God dwells outside of time, why do we wait and look forward to heaven and peace someday? We’re told to be prepared for his return, and it says he comes like a thief in the night. To what degree do you prepare? Are you vigilant? Are you watching? If our walk is an inward thing that  manifests itself in our actions and we find that ‘Woah! He has been watering the seed!’ why do we wait for this event…this someday…when God is a present God? And if God’s present now, and we experience the holy spirit, where do you think Jesus is? His actual body? His meaty flesh? Above the clouds? As we grow into God, via Christ (the measuring of the effective depth and degree of our redemption), we become more like Him – Him who believes and acts in time and season, Him who is spirit, and we put off this flesh as we identify with it less and less. We stop operating as first man, then in-God, but we are in God perpetually, and the change here is a spiritual matter that affects the physical world.
We grow into God; we grow into Heaven.
We become the bride as we see and receive Christ. Do we wait until 2025 for him to show up and say ‘Honey, I’m home!’? To put ‘the end’ out there at some indefinite time, to wait for the King, is to be the same as the Jews who still don’t believe he’s already done / doing / does his work.          
Boom.
We say Jesus lives in us, but we don’t understand it and don’t recognize that means he’s close – that we dwell with him, that Emmanuel. This messes with our fundamentals, I understand. I’ve been there.That's kind of the point.

You love Revelation: “The power and glory of God that is displayed is awe-strikingly inspiring. It’s such a beautiful thing.” It’s called the Revelation of Jesus Christ … and again, if God’s at getting our hearts, how is Jesus revealed? When we walk into a new spiritual space and understanding it’s called a revelation. Try seeing the ENTIRE BIBLE in spiritual terms, directly applied to you, your heart and motive, and then find out why it’s the perfect book. Don’t accept that's so because you were told it is – that’s real faith, but we don't act that way yet - grow in understanding. If you can witness the bible's effectual work and that the call for Abraham to offer Isaac is the thing we are called to every day, then the book opens up to you because it’s not just stories with morals, it’s not ‘yes tongues, no prophets; not today’,  it’s  your heart on paper.  People don’t understand that to get into it you have to stop interpreting and just receive like a child. To be with those who have God and hear under them in submission; questioning, yes, for clarity, but unquestioning the way a child receives. When kids ask questions it’s not usually from a ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’ perspective, but that’s what we do, and God doesn’t honour that because a heart that isn't humbled cannot receive. (It's impossible.) So we get what we want::: we can’t hear them because we’re not listening for the response, and we walk away thinking we have more than they do, even though we’re the one who’s not changing.

My heart just cried out for the weight on your shoulders, that you carry your life and everything it entails on yourself. It’s a lie. The voice that makes us second-guess and fear and worry is untrue. When God saw Adam was covered and said ‘what’s up?’ and Adam said ‘I’m nekkid!’, God’s response was ‘Who told you?’

Who told you?

Who told you you had to have it all together, that everything you desire or do has to be good for you? Certainly not God. He made you and knows exactly what He made you for. He demands NOTHING of you; He's just love. He offers a way when we can see no way, but he doesn’t shove it on us – we have to be children coming to a father to receive his ease and eyesight, his freedom.  He hopes we choose what’s profitable for us – the easier road, the narrower road, the one that puts the soul under the spirit and back in order. It’s not harder, we’re just unpracticed. Satan’s the one who says ‘Perform! If the good fruit isn’t in your life you’re not doing it right or well enough!’
It’s a question of which father we receive.
It only takes a perception to change from one side to the other: freedom to bondage. A single sentence will send one person into euphoria and another into fiery condemnation. What’s the difference? The voice the person relates to/is hearing. If your father demands of you, he will strike and yell and manipulate and convince. If your father loves you he will teach you, show you how – but you must draw close to him. Sometimes just that act of drawing close feels impossible, but it’s because we, again, are trying to perform something and get hindered by the past, sin,  and how we always fail. (1. God's present and doesn't dwell on the past, 2. our sins? those times we forgot who He is and that we're loved? Forgotten, 3. He knows our identity and rests [GOD RESTS!] in faith that his faith begets faith in His children.) We're justified whatever we do (thanks, Jesus), but mucking about in pity and self-loathing and accusation is a major waste of the day.

Satan’s a pass/ fail do-better-next-time kind of father.  But God's easy. He laments for us when we cannot let go of this something-low identity but still holds us, stills calls every morning to check in.

An Irishman told me yesterday ‘Man makes plans and God laughs.’

Pre-destination is one of those things that has arisen out of a need for clarity and been twisted into a carnal minded concept. God doesn’t think like that. He dwells outside of time. You make a choice, there are consequences. You make a choice in faith, there are consequences. The seed begets the end. We are free, and we will remain free.

I find that my behaviour better reflects Jesus the less I think of myself and the more I think of Him. When I see Him I will be like Him. If you invest in watching for him, considering how God serves man, has served me, how can you not be humbled? How can you justify sadness or self-pity? How can you think you are worthless or how can you blame anybody for any single thing? We are not our actions, we are the state of our hearts – people just don’t know it. Oy. We try to take on Jesus and in the same breath say it can’t be done. People want to be justified in trying and falling because they cannot comprehend that a life lived IN Jesus is clean and clear and bountiful, full of order, peace, prosperity, real love…and freedom. But, as you and I both know, we like putting our hands to things to feel successful, to feel like we’re DOING something, like we’re MOVING toward an end of our own choice and so getting there under our own power. Saying we try to be like Jesus but are 'only human’ lets us do the work, slogging like a good Christian through the fiery darts of the enemy, without ever expecting the end. If we were in business I would fire an employee like that. Your works are your reward, Christianity! How about a life of faith? Yes, please.

Saying you get what you deserve is Justice (aka God). If you identify with the low things, you get the low things because that’s what you have faith for. I began to move in faith for bigger things, beginning to take on Jesus and the role of a Son, and so I began deserving higher things. How do you see yourself? What do you deserve? We choose our happiness and satisfaction: if you’re unhappy, find out why. Find faith to become happy where you're at, and the moment you find the light God'll move you into something your truly desire.
All things have a time and season - an order.

The idea of living in community is for protection. Having elders around so you don’t make rash decisions - they provide a perspective that helps keep you free, and God fiercely guards your freedom.  The choice is yours, but when everything you do and fear and love and think and feel is submitted unto the throne, before men, in God, then everything is blessed because the chaff is separated from the wheat, and the harvest is good for everyone.  You go free in your heart, your next step is laid out before you, you’ve found the faith to move in it, and your circumstances grow … less circumstantial and debilitating.

“Holding onto sins is something so human.”

What you hear from God and what you believe become your everything. But here’s a new understanding:  you are not your own and there is no middle ground. Either you are in God or you are in Satan. If every moment's thought is on God, or increasingly on Him, then you find yourself with Him. But even in that increasing, those moments without him are moments under Satan. We think we can stand between them on any issue or for life, but we are made by one and duped by another; we try not to take sides on a thing and are in satan’s court, because to be in God is to find out what HE thinks and become that, every moment moving toward the light. It’s nothing to perform, but if I have faith that I'm not worthless, then I won't be.

You can see that living a life of intent with others who are intent brings heaven down because we take back stolen land hand over fist. Everything here is edible, food for growth, and nothing is left out.

My placement at the moment is kind of a wreck. What I want is usually pretty clear to me: spiritual growth. Knowing that, I should get to Alaska in a flash. (*note the should -  God doesn’t should. He says things like ‘it’d be a good idea if…’ and then I can either do it (because GOD SAID IT WAS A GOOD IDEA) or be condemned by not wanting to do it, and so not do it, and so not reap the reward that’s there for me. Doing the hard thing (what I don’t want to do) is always liberating because it puts the soul (the mannish, fleshy, emotionally-ruled side of things) back into its proper place: under the spirit. I’ve been led by a spirit, not the spirit, into my lusty desires and into the independence of young manhood: a dangerous place. But it’s not a problem.  My heart is still for the Father, and my soul is just being proven as a wild animal to me: insatiable and fickle. I still grow, it’s just slower, and it feels like it costs a lot more because it takes longer: the surgery is with a rusty blade because I resist the clean and neat, painless efficiency of the father’s heart-circumcision surgery.  But the power is in your hands to book yourself for surgery.But all things in season, and nothing happens before its time.

Bahahaha. You said ‘look how sorted he is with God.’ I’ve just spent more time with Him than most and know that I’m better for it.

What are you looking for? All your plans have been your focus, but this new eyesight has struck a note in your spirit that will change your priorities. If God is number One, the plans come out of that.  Be intentional. Find the things that MAKE you grow, and then seek them out, dig in deeper, until you only vaguely recognize who you used to be. BUT DON’T JUDGE YOURSELF. God’s the judge, and he’s judged you Righteous, so success or failure, loss, increase, salvation, fame, love, a following, all arel evidence of the seeds growing in you. Neither good nor bad, but some preferable. ALL THINGS WORK FOR THE GOOD OF THOSE WHO LOVE HIM because it’s all meat for consumption.  Christians would say ‘you had an affair?! Go be penitent, do some community service, and flog yourself before your husband for the rest of your life’. But God doesn't need you to do anything to let go of guilt and come back to him - if it's in your heart to receive again, you're already with him. At that point he just says ‘Why'd you do that? That’s not you at all!’ and then you recognize that it really isn’t you (because we are not what we do, but in God, so spirit, and so different than we have thought.) When we believe we are something outside of him He cocks his head to the side and says ‘Huh? Who told you that?’    

I can’t go into the male/female thing right now, but age cannot be questioned. If you were a minute older than me you’d be my elder. For me to recognize and maintain this is to keep things holy in my life. I could equalize us, but that just raises me up. Whatever knowledge I have you can absolutely glean from, but if I think for a second I have more than you I am becoming like God because somebody needs me wants me and I’m suddenly justified by the goods on earth…identifying with all the stuff that I got from other people.

I only have any real idea of who I am when I am looking into God. Everything else is just distraction. I am less me, less human, when I am moving in God because I don’t have to do good or bad or right by anyone – I’m  not impressive because God’s impressed with me and I don’t need love because I’m filthy with it. I’m lighter and brighter because the earth has less hold on me: I’m not a victim of circumstance, but served by it. This is how miracles happen – my ideas of earthly limits begin falling away and I see God for who He is: consistent, pure love and rectification. That’s me. That’s you.

 

rewston

Letters for Edification II

Excerpts from email of Sept. '10

We talked about each man's walk with God turning to 'bad' things, the unprofitable and wasteful. How from their very formation it would take 'this, this, and this' for them to realize that God is True. Like a class, or a process: first we'll study foundation, then walls, then roof. This, then this, then this, and there's the house. Listen the first time (or the second or third) so you don't need to lay again the foundation of Grace.

I spent yesterday in this weird place where I was super tall, with a vision that encompassed all that God has given me, moving in stewardship over the world God created for me. I saw myself walking up to people and saying 'welcome to my world' in love, finding things upset or off-kilter and saying 'Oh, this is righted because I am steward here - be healed. Tree, be reformed. Mountain be cast into the sea.' This isn't far off. It's in that place, that eternity, that we just slip into when we move behind the veil. I see it just to my left, shift aside the curtains and sidestep into...right where I am. PLACEMENT POWER WIND UNDERSTANDING ORDER VISION HEARING COMING ALONGSIDE WHERE THE FLESH DOESN'T RULE AND BEING FORGIVEN IS THE SOLE OF MY FEET BECAUSE MY HEAD IS UPRAISED AND GOD IS THE GLORY FOREVER AND EVER. I say it's not far off because the disparity between my understanding of the location of eternity and my perception of when I'll understand it is but a small thing.
I see more and more all things on something like a fortune cookie fortune:

[    eternity/time    ]

they're so close together and so far apart - but God is the wrinkle in time that translates me from one to the other in a shffp! that I only recognize after it happens though my heart bears witness to its approach.

It was prophesied over me that I'll be so in-tune with God that everything I desire will be given me; which is purely natural, man. So organic. That's just the way it is. Of course hitting a certain frequency will make the birds flock to you; it's a matter of course that finding who I am and what I was made to be will illuminate everyspark in this heart with a clarity for pursuit of God's government; why but yes! to everything my God has proffered.

Clearly, here is a man of faith.

So you, being unremoved and holy, bear witness to the Light of the World, the one who shines and does not disdain but loves in faith, and fear Him by reverence this Most Holy God. With trembling, for we understand his power, we submit all things to the one who has made us and in truth we ride aloft, a scented wind carrying us to the ends of our very being; he brings us to that place where we find our insubstantial edges and there we feel the frayed ends of lies and little-t truths; then we dive beyond, willing, obedient, with Joy and Expectation.

heartthrob

my heart is beating wildly in my chest.
what are you doing, lord?
connecting, he says.
what with? i ask.
the string of things, the spark and ignition, the beginning, the truth, the spirit and the wind, the water there, the power, the assurance, the simplistic, easy, and free. why do you ask? do you not do the same?

This blog has been an exercise in expression. On many occasions it's become a tool to minister outside of myself, so I've been trying to write for others when really I'm just journaling, walking in/working out my thoughts and moves in salvation on paper. See the mixed motive? I can't lay me out while trying to assemble something for everyone else. I can't convince, and I can't persuade. So, now, conceiving that I receive the anointing by choice and by assumption, that is, taking on that spirit, I am free to initiate one mind.

My idea of self as an individual, as an independent, as just a guy, someone just trying to get by, as a funny person, a writer, a leader, a follower, traitor, liar, holy person, sinner or a saint; all of these that I have operated in and under, trying to fulfil and holding onto as labels for an understanding of where I fit: I pronounce them no more. I am in God. This is my identity. I no longer relate to the world, but I see the world as the fruit of the spirit of God. I do not need to perform a thing (either do this or go here) because I am free. I do not need to be anything (what I thought it meant to be a man) because I am free. I do not need to serve God (it is my heart to do this anyway) because I am free. I choose to hear him, I choose to receive Him, I choose to move with him in faith. I receive the anointing unto empowerment. I am not a soul, but a spirit. I've born witness to the reuniting of the soul and spirit - they were out of order, then separated for clarification, now made one again - and have found how easy it is to move. How easy to believe something incalculable, and how it's a matter of course I lose myself to it.

There's a Way

I've perceived a line with 'Love' and 'Law' at the other, where God's the balance between. Being part of a body where I lived in constant (crushing) awareness of others' perception of me, I have lived on the Law end for a while. I just asked myself how to dial down the law and dial up the love, to move more toward God's balance and yogi-bliss, and the fact that this is super 2-dimensional man-thought hit me.
I saw love and law come together on God to form one point. In the same moment I saw the line grow upward, outward, and sideways into a three dimensional universe in which the God of the center expanded as a ball of warm light into the very reaches of the still-growing everything. It was a cool impression.
I'm not apart from Him even when I'm in the law because there's love all over it. The law is just the way. It's the weight of the law that's not of Him.

In seeking God, I've been looking for something that's super foreign to me. I was trying to study it like I studied Spanish culture in high school: with little enthusiasm and because I was told to. I've tasted the life of him (far better than flan), and have gotten lawful on myself because I should dive in to all I can. I haven't. In school I worked for A's; in real life I aim for intangibles which are far harder to measure. So why measure? Isn't any progress advancement? I went for good grades to please people, but my momentum in God begins to mount when I realize I've been walking without knowing it: He doesn't leave, so we're always hanging out. I'm constantly seeing Him and myself in Him, I've just been trained to believe there's nothing exceptional about it so everyday has more on me than I have on it. God wants me free and I want to be free. I don't have to go anywhere or look like anything to be free - it's an inalienable right.

In reading the bible I'm reading about myself - I've never seen myself that way. You know, powerful, able, faithful, true; doing big things because I was called to regardless of how insane they looked. He told me again today that nothing about my life is mundane. This must be true because he's here right now, and when does someone so creative do anything unintentional? Zone out for a bit? When is God's downtime? He lives in peace and rest still doing things, but unhurried and without pressure. We say 'well He's God' as if that justifies the how of anything he does. But he's knowable. Everything he does he does so we would know him and his presence, his power and love. We are his likeness and image for goodness sakes, how different do you think we are? Jesus said we'd do the things he did and more, so why do we think an active and living God who doesn't take a break from caring for us is unreachable, hard-hearted and impossible to comprehend? Who the hell is this? He sounds capricioius and mean-spirited, like a Greek god. We admit one thing with our mouths (testifying of His goodness and grace) and do the obscene opposite (believing and so living that he's untrustworthy and going to punish me unless I can do well), hypocrites that we are.

Moving forward in God means aligning yourself with him, like a marriage. I put off my old self so that my new identity might be more like his; we are the Bride, after all. He presented the Bride to himself without spot or wrinkle, so I'm clean and wonderful before him. Where every day is a chance to be less of what I used to be (and hated), and more of what I desire (the one I've chosen to spend my life with), nothing's mundane. We don't grow familiar with each other, we grow more expectant and excited: He's made himself available. When I draw near to God and put off my old patterns of thinking, perceptions of him and who he is, perceptions of who I am or how I'm supposed to be, concerns and fears and hangups and wishes and on and on...when I willingly lay those at his feet, then I am free to be loved. And he's rapturous. I get red in the face reading Song of Songs because it's about me.

There is a way; it's through the bride. It's from a father who makes a son, through the mother that produces him. It's being part of a body who will shape you and raise you in the way you should go. It's submitting yourselves one to another, confessing your sins, building one another up and blessing those whose hearts have been given to you. All of this because we have a mediator and because we are cared for by the one who loved us first. He's made a way where there was no way, and it's nothing like we understand or imagine.