Category: Lecture thoughts

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How to move forward: humble, repent, submit, believe, forgive and walk in the light

Its over, the lecture phase of my DTS has finally come to a close. What Ive learned and how Ive grown isnt judged by the amount of knowledge Ive gained or how different I am but how much more of my heart the Father has. Over the last 12 weeks Ive been introduced to a few new ideas but mostly Ive been radically encouraged to pursue the ideas I already know to be True. Last night, June 27, I committed to following life and God more closely. I laid down a few of the lies I believed and picked up the foundations of Gods love and desire for my life. Sure, I’ll read my Bible more, have a more pure thought life and stop judging everyone that crosses my path, but these are all things I should have been doing daily before last night. Allow me to introduce the path of the more pertinent commitments I made. These are the steps I committed to follow on a regular basis so as to run on Gods answers instead of my questions.

 I will humble myself. Becoming humble is simply placing yourself under God. God has a place for us all, sometimes our position is over or under others but that position is for efficiency in Gods plan not a place of more or less power in Gods eyes. Leaders serve, masters love and servants support. No position is more or less valuable. We carry extra weight with us when we take on extra things that are not designed for us in our position. Humility is the first step I’m committing to take regularly.

I will repent. Repenting before this looked like weeping, wailing  and a bunch of feelings associated with all the stuff I thought I had done wrong in my life. We know the drill. Tear something, burn a bunch of stuff in a strangers secluded back yard late at night and promise to stop everything I enjoy in order to change my life forever! And how bout we never do that again… It was different this time. I call it repenting because I don’t know of a better word.  I asked God to show me in what areas I had been operating outside of His character. This brought to light how I had been controlling my environment and not allowing God to use me outside my safety box. I didnt consider myself too safe, comfortable in my own capabilities but not too safe. This safety ,I realized, wasnt keeping out of harms way but was instead creating an environment that set me up for my success, an environment clothed in my own imagined capabilities. When God showed me how inferior my imagined capabilities are in comparison with His designed gifts and position I realized how agonisingly safe I had been living. I gave up my future relationship, my dreams of success and my pursuit of a comfortable lifestyle. What I gave up I exchanged for Gods plan for me. I had the impression that if I gave these things up I wouldnt ever get them. thats not the case. The case is I will pursue Gods relationship, Gods success and Gods lifestyle for me. Without any weeping, fires or bruised knees from writhing on the ground for hours. It simply means I put Gods ideas before mine when He gives me His details. As of now, He hasnt, but Im now prepared for when He does. So repent. Its easy, just ask God to show you His character and where youre different and move forward with Him from there.

Here’s a bonus for you. You cant make yourself do anything. God doesn’t even make people do things. He shows us who He is and allows us to be more like Him through a relationship with Him. This does result in change but it doesn’t change you, you just start walking in how you were created instead of how you think you should. Again, its easy, simply ask God who He is (repent) and you’re on your way already.

 I will submit. Submitting to God is acting on Gods desired position for you. I previously considered one position more valuable or more important than another, I was wrong. If Gods desired position for me is a servant and I work hard enough to be the master I haven’t submitted. If Gods position for me is to be the master and I work hard at only serving my master and not becoming a master I still haven’t submitted. This was a unique revelation on my idea of success and submission. I gave up my ideas of success and failure and picked up the position of complete sonship, Gods adopted son. Ive never felt more accomplished when I realised how little I had just done to be one of the most successful men on earth.

I will believe. Believing is harder than one might think. That one may believe that believing is merely agreeing with what is concluded from experience or knowledge, this, believe it or not, isn’t complete when it comes to believing in ones self. Ok, I believe Ive said believe enough, walk with me in my revelation on believing more completely. Do atheists believe there is a God? No… Do you believe in yourself? Sometimes… Do all believers go to heaven? Define believer… When I say I will believe I put myself in my last question and declare yes. God wants everyone to not only believe in trustworthy things but to believe in Him. When I believe I accept the power of God. Also, that God is good. With His good power He created me. He created me for a special purpose of which I have been designed perfectly to fill and nobody has ever been more perfectly designed to fill that position. I have decided to regularly search out what God wants for me and believe it in with my very core. This is the perspective I walk in when I say I will believe. Maybe Ive said allot here or maybe you’ve caught me rambling again, regardless, please consider taking your beliefs to the next level. This new level of belief in itself has made me look at life a little differently. What I believe and how I believe may change over time but I’ve committed to who I believe in and He believes in me.

I will forgive. If I decide to walk in the humble truth one very important step I must consistently take is to forgive. There are many significant benefits to forgiving each other but Im going to work on forgiving myself as much as forgiving others. Shame and judgement are two very strong foundations that I have built so much of my life on and these are both strongly against Gods character. Im not going to labour any longer on this one, its desperately imperative it becomes consistent in my life.

I will walk in the light. To walk in the light means to take these newly found revelations and look at my life through their filter. I cannot do one without the others. One fact about light is it must be sent to receive it. So it is with forgiveness. When there is light around us we never worry about it getting in the way, it can blind us but it wont ever trip us up. Forgiveness effects us similarly, when we forgive we walk in the effects, but never stumble over it. The illusion is that its difficult to forgive but the reality is its not forgiveness thats hard but what forgiveness requires us to respond to. We dont have the power to forgive, only God does so for me if I can learn to forgive I can learn to walk in what forgiveness reveals. I believe forgiveness will shed not only light on my path but also shed some weight on what Ive been carrying. Maybe with less weight I can walk in humility more efficiently.

In conclusion, These revelations aren’t complete but will assist in my newly committed life towards God. I know prayer works so I humbly ask for yours as I take one more small step in Gods kingdom and a giant leap towards me becoming a more godly man.

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The Fathers Heart

How do you explain or process a relationship that needs to be experienced to be known? I went into this lecture with wild expectations of weeping and discovering a giant empty hole in my soul that needed to be filled. I wasnt disappointed but didnt get at all what I was expecting. My opinion of a perfect father figure has changed over the last few years and that in itself has been a journey let alone figuring out what I missed in not having a perfect father. So to sum it up I realised that to be a Son of the Father you need to be a Son of the Father. (capital ‘S’ isnt suggesting Jesus in this article but differentiating between my earthly father and my heavenly Father). A Son isnt merely a position that you were born into but a position received by grace. An orphan only fills the position of a son if he accepts his new identity, regardless of his legal position. This new received identity comes with an incredible inheritance! We often accept the legal position we receive but miss out on what the Fathers true desire is, Relationship. This new identities foundation is based on humility and the recognition you werent ever going to deserve your inheritance. Only after you realise this can you really start living as a Son. If you think of the movie” Titanic” you remember it not because you have a special fondness for a once beautiful ship but because you got wrapped up in a love story. Our story should be the same. Maybe not the sinking ship and everyone freezing to death part though… you get the idea though. This was a new outlook for me. I was always worried about my ship getting from one point to another without sinking. The funny thing is often the people that God uses have what looks like major life ship wrecks yet God cant seem to get enough of them! He delights in them, blesses them and insistently pursues a relationship with them. Only when you know who you are can you adequately fill the position in society that God has for you. This is my goal now, know myself better by getting to know God better. I encourage you to look into becoming a Son/daughter also, it just might change your life as well.

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God speaks so listen

Technology is growing, this results in more solutions but these solutions cause more problems. What are we doing with these problems and their solutions? When we look at everything around us we look at things that were created to be below us as people. We cannot have a complete relationship with anything less than something equal to us. No matter what we discover or solve here on earth we will never be able to replace human relationship with something other than another human. God had the same problem. He was limited to what he could have a relationship with so out of an overflow of love God created something that could have a relationship with Him. We can have a relationship with God because He created us in His own image. Nothing else is in Gods image. Man is more reflective of God than anything else in creation. Gods original desire was perfect relationship between everything. The building blocks of that relationship consist of communication. When we communicate with God we prove our freedom, we are not puppets, we can listen and respond with free will. God lacks nothing but desires much, He desires that relationship above all else. One way of communicating is worship. If God wants a relationship and relationships involve communication and communication is a dialogue and not a monologue worship should be done with God not alone. My conclusion: God created us to have an intimate relationship with Him, so have one!

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Do we search out Gods will or God?

I have lately been pondering the different ways of searching out God and His will. Two seemingly opposing ways are logically analysing what His will is and simply experiencing His guidance. If we decide that logical thinking is the opposite of experiential action and analytical thinking is the opposite of simple actions we can look at who God is and see how he prefers us to follow His directions. Lets look at two scenes in the Bible. Jesus at age 12 was logically analysing what was offered by the church teachers. Jesus completely changes His approach in His ministry and simply experiences the Fathers will. From illogically spitting in the mud for some blind guy to washing His disciples feet He was simply experiencing how His Father had taught Him to live. On the other end we have the Israelites in Egypt for 400 years before Moses introduced the Fathers power. They experienced lots of illogical stuff. Bloody water, rocks that spewed out water and manna were just a few yet they insisted on deviating from Gods will. Whats the difference? Jesus and the Israelites both had the same information, they both had the same God and both experienced that Gods miracles. Jesus logically analysed who God was so when it came time to follow Him He simply experienced what He knew. The Israelites simply experienced God but logically analogized who He was and because it didnt make sense to what they knew missed who He was. My conclusion and revelation: Its not bad to logically analyse who God is through the Bible but when it comes to knowing His will He wants us to simply experience His walk with us.