Divine Appointments: Holy Spirit’s Gentle Nudges

Part One: The Story

I showed up early to church one Sunday, and the hallway was quiet as a ghost town. Not a soul in sight—until a young lady strolled up, looking a tad lost. “Excuse me,” she said, “do you know where I can find some water?” Right away, my Spidey Sense started tingling. Okay, maybe it was the Holy Spirit giving my sleeve a tug, whispering, Pay attention. I glanced at her—sweet smile, innocent eyes. No setup here… or was it?

Imperfect Truth: Navigating the Illusion of Separation from God – Part 1

“And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light.” Matthew 17:2

Paul said: :    “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians‬ ‭13‬:‭12,‬ ‭ESV.

The Truth, the ultimate and perfect and singular truth, can’t exist in our four-dimensional world. Let’s pretend that a sphere is the truth. For us living in four dimensions – the time-space dimensions – a sphere is an obvious truth. For us it needs no proof. If we lived in a three-dimensional world – space but no time – a sphere would be true some of the “time” and not at others. But because there is no time in a three-dimensional world, the sphere would appear and disappear. When it’s there in your proximity, it’s true, but at other times when it’s not there, thus it is true and not true. God is like that sphere for us in 4-dimensional space: at times we sense His presence, at times we feel abandoned. But the Bible tells us that God is always with us:

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me.” Psalm 139:7-10, NASB 1995

The only real truth we can have is a glimpse, a brief exchange with eternity, with Yahweh. Today we argue about religion, mine, yours and theirs. We argue if there should be a religion or if God even exists. I think humans are rigged to have to be right. When it comes to religion, we each have our own version of the truth, except none of us has the Truth, only God does. Every religion has its version of the truth, and we all feel we have to defend it and prove it to everyone else. Verbal arguments will never prove anything:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9, NASB 1995

The only real truth we can have is of Yahweh, the I AM. The Scripture point us to Him. Holy Spirit is our living connection:

“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” John 16:13, NASB 1995

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Note to reader: I’m trying a new format. I hope you’ll like it. I love the shorter format and the scriptures interlacing my thoughts. I’d love to know your thoughts. Would you “like” and let me know. As you can see this is a portion of the previous post and the rest will follow in more digestible little meals.

Preaching a Trinity of Two Persons!? AKA Eradicating Holy Spirit from Christianity.

You might call this the parable of the ladder missing all the lower rungs. You can’t get there – Heaven, the Kingdom of God, experiencing Him – without removing those leaden boots off Earth.

Michael Heiser said: “We routinely underestimate the average person in the pew.”

We think we have to dumb down Christianity by removing Holy Spirit from our teachings. How dare we remove Holy Spirit from the Bible? We essentially have defanged and declawed the Gospel to a story that makes little sense. What is Jesus without the supernatural? A good teacher who didn’t really heal. A gentle, loving man who could rage on occasion. Was he tempted by Satan? Did he really resurrect from the grave after being dead three days? Command a storm to stop? Of course you’ll say you’d never omit teaching all that. I understand. But when you omit Holy Spirit from the Bible, you’re doing all that and worse.

Of course, without Jesus, there would be no Christianity. But without Holy Spirit, if Christianity were a train, it would still be sitting at the station with Peter, Mary, John and the rest trying to push. Jesus found twelve assorted men and trained them for three years. He demonstrated miracles of healing, raising the dead, and more. They had been in physical proximity to the incarnation of God, the presence of the Kingdom of God, the multi-dimensional presence of the I Am. But when it came right down to it, they still weren’t ready. So Jesus had to tell them to hunker down in an attic somewhere and just wait for Holy Spirit to zap them with POWER from on high. And before dying, He told them that He was leaving, but He was leaving us all another One, a helper, who would give us everything we were lacking. Holy Spirit was and is all the missing steps that can get us up that ladder. He has all we need of power and love.

Recently our “little” mega-church was starting down a road very few churches even attempt to take. The introduction of the supernatural and the Holy Spirit in their teaching. I was thrilled. A month before I had begun to hear the Lord repeatedly say to me: “Intercessory prayer!” It was always at church, so I knew it was a call to pray for the church, the senior pastor, staff, and so on. I discovered that the satellite campus we attend did not have intercessors. Intercessors are those rare brave souls who venture into the invisible world with prayers for those they are called to pray for. Ideally, this is done in concert with what they perceive in prayer that God is doing. So I obeyed, and prayed between services, in whatever little corner I could find. I primarily I found myself praying for our senior pastor and of course for the people of the church. I’ve never ever heard of the leader of a large church attempting to invite and release Holy Spirit. But he was! He definitely was! Even the worship began to speak to Holy Spirit, beckoning Him to come, to fill the church, to empower with power and love. We were on our way!

After a couple of months or more of some great teaching and worship, just when it was getting good and deep, it all came to a screeching halt. So, I questioned one of the staff pastors. I asked why our senior pastor was called off the deep stuff, the teaching Paul would call the meat of the Gospel as opposed to the milk. I said we needed meat as well as milk – which is how Paul puts it. I expected denial, even prevarication. What I was told is that since we had just baptized 1000 new believers, we needed to go back to milk! As I walked away, I heard the question, How do you teach Christianity 1 – the milk – without the supernatural being a foundational part of the curriculum? What was Jesus’ opening lesson with the people that followed him? Was it not demonstrating the Kingdom by healing the sick? With his upper division students, it was calming the storm. But they didn’t graduate until they were filled by the fire of the spirit at

I am not standing in judgment of a church that regularly baptizes new believers by the hundreds. If it sounds like I am, I repent! But the majority of the evangelical church, and much of the rest of Christianity has eliminated the power and fire from the Gospel. What if you avoided teaching your kids about fire because fire could burn their hand. How far would our civilization have gotten if we had stopped teaching the next generation about fire? Holy Spirit is fire. The Bible calls for us to be baptize of water and fire!

Returning to the New Testament, what do we see? Acts chapter 2: 1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. (Acts 2:1-4)

Immediately following this baptism that included actual flames, the remnant of Jesus’ disciples, newly baptized of fire, pour out on the street, and Peter preaches to the crowds, the first Christian sermon. The crowd was composed of Jews from many lands, most of whom could not speak Hebrew. Miraculously, they all heard Peter in their own language, and 3000 believed in Jesus Messiah! From then until the early fourth century, Christianity exploded throughout the known world. They were not coddled with warm milk. They were persecuted, beaten, tortured and torched alive on poles. And they were discipled for one to three years before they would be officially called Christians. Today we’re afraid to explain who Holy Spirit is, even less to lay hands on new believers and ask Holy Spirit to baptize them by fire. We speak of miracles as metaphors.

Jesus said: 5-6“Don’t begin by traveling to some far-off place to convert unbelievers. And don’t try to be dramatic by tackling some public enemy. Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Tell them that the kingdom is here. 7 And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:5-8. Verses 5-6 from The Message Bible; 7-8 from NASB)

The people are frustrated because they’re asked to perform behavior modification and sin reduction all by their own bootstraps. The nitty-gritty of this is that we must teach and model how we can align, present ourselves to God for receiving the anointing that will radically change the way we live. The correct word is sanctification. It can only happen supernaturally. Yes, I know this is not news to the leaders of the Church who have gone to seminary. And yes, it does take place to some extent without our conscious participation by the action of the indwelling of Holy Spirit we receive when we make a decision to believe. But without prayer, we’ll be turning quarter miles in 10 minutes till the day we die. We don’t have to be extreme. We could make an easy start of it by explaining a few basics about approaching God in prayer, aligning ourselves with Him intentionally, inviting Holy Spirit to come and help us to be cleansed of our addictions, bad habits, all those things that stand between us and our Father. The leper asked Jesus to heal him, adding are you willing? He was, and He is!

The Parable of the Screwdriver and the Magnetic Field: Prayer – How We Are Transformed by the Presence of God

The Parable of the Screwdriver and the Force Field

Most of us Christians are baffled by all the copious ways we’re expected to become better and better people. Preachers are constantly setting such high goals and expectations that we likely have lost all hope of attaining them. My very special friend, Monty Christensen, who ministers in Prisons, calls this approach sin management and behavior modification. That just says it all. How in the world are we supposed to make all this improvement happen? The quick answer is that without God, without Holy Spirit, and of course without salvation, we cannot. The screwdriver is going to show us how transformation can happen supernaturally. We’ve tried the bootstrap method and it hasn’t worked.

Like all the parables of Jesus, this is a metaphor to help us believe that God is super-natural and that we are as well. Jesus’ parable of the sower and the seed falling on good, moist soil, or hard dry soil is also a metaphor, an analogy. It’s meant to help us understand that the words of Jesus are like seeds that need good conditions in us such as an open mind and a receptive heart in order to bring forth fruit in our lives. The question is, how do we become that good soil? Unfortunately, after the rebellion in Genesis 3, we came to know evil, and if we had then fed on the tree of immortality, we would have become very dangerous on Earth. Imagine something like Superman leaving the planet Krypton and having super powers on Earth. Fortunately, he hadn’t become acquainted with evil or we’d have been in a heap of trouble. So what about this screwdriver?

Discovering the Neglected Person of God: Holy Spirit

The Jews grumbled because manna wasn’t tasty like the garlic and leeks they left behind in Egypt – along with their slavery. Are we grumblers, treasuring the sensations in the world? Is intimacy with God not exciting enough?

If you had a casual relationship with your wife, that would be a poor foundation for marriage. Our relationship with God must be at least as intense as the one with our spouse. He thinks passionately about you! He was tortured and killed for you.

“As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.” Isaiah 62:5

God, the One who created the universe with a word and keeps it from reverting to a mound of entropic jello, the One who set up an entire universe in such a precise way for us to survive and thrive in it, is a very complicated God. The specifications for an environment that can sustain human life are incredibly stringent and yet God met them all when he created the universe. God is so complicated that to help us understand and relate to Him, he explains himself and appears to us as three “persons”: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus says clearly:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 28:19

We came along and called Him a Triune God, a Trinity, a Three in One. The Jews were so proud of being the first people to worship One God that they never could swallow this triune God concept. They summarized this singular belief in One God with this fundamental statement they called the Shema:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Deuteronomy 6:4-5

I think that the transition from pagan, polytheistic religion involving the worship of sordid gods and including human sacrifices, was so drastic that God had to keep it simple. The early Church fathers took decades of discussion over this triune concept to come up with one sentence: “Three Persons, One Essence“. Frankly, I don’t think anyone really understands the Trinity, but we like it because it helps us understand and relate to such a complex, immense, limitless One. Imagine if the New Testament would have had to repeat a phrase such as “I will come to you in disembodied, invisible, all-knowing, but comforting, nurturing, form” every time God wanted to refer to Holy Spirit?

Tell me this: when you pray – and I hope you do – who do you pray to? Is it the Father? Is it Jesus? Or is it Holy Spirit? Some recommend praying “in the Spirit, to the Father, and in the name of the Son”. It’s pithy, but maybe it’s too pat, too formulaic. It’s so satisfying it risks removing all the wrestling I think we should be engaging in to understand God just a little bit more. When religion sets in, we seem to fall into a hollowed out kind of relationship with God. On occasion, I’ve almost chuckled as I tried to decide which of the Three I was going to address. Yes, it’s allowed to chuckle with God, after all, he tells us to address him in Aramaic as Abba, Daddy. Little Jewish kids call their dads abba, and Italian kids call their daddies, Babbo. The important thing is to talk to Him. If you talk to him and then listen – it’s called prayer – you may even hear Him answer!

The Church is just as confused as we are about which of the Trinity to pursue, but the Holy Spirit is the most neglected person of God. Many churches are afraid to even mention the Holy Spirit because of the fear that God may actually do what He does – be miraculous, bestow supernatural gifts, and so on. They point to other churches who have gone off the spiritual deep end. In one particular denomination, people actually joke that for them it’s not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but Father, Son, and Holy Scripture. Personally, I think that comes close to blasphemy.

On the other end of the spectrum, are the churches that are so enthralled with the manifestation of the Spirit that the Bible becomes an almost forgotten item. They think other churches are crazy to miss out on hearing the Father’s voice, feel His presence, or experience his amazing miraculous ways.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. “Acts 1:8 –

Here we risk the extreme, wherein we chase the manifestations of God, ignoring the written Word and what it can contribute to our lives. I think we should want all of Him – all three “Persons”, the power, and the Bible. The Bible itself is so utterly amazing that some churches forget about their relationship with God, spending all their time studying Scripture.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17

But Jesus explained to the Jews that the Scriptures were there to point us to God, to Him, and not to become an idol.

“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:39-40

And the miracles are meant to demonstrate the Kingdom of God, a supernatural reality that He came to make accessible to us. When Jesus repeatedly said, the Kingdom of heaven is here, He wanted the people to reach out and grab it, to step into it.

So, if we concentrate only on the written word, we’re missing the living God. If we abandon the written word for only the miraculous, we’re neglecting the amazing Scriptures that God gave us to help us understand Him and His ways, and to keep us on a safe path. Are we risking making one of these two mistakes?

I have to say that after 40 years of following Jesus, I’m getting excited about the Bible more each day. But I also treasure the times when I feel the presence of Holy Spirit, hear God’s voice, or see His miracles! The Kingdom is not up there somewhere, it’s right here, all around. Jesus brought Eden here once again for the taking. However, as everything in this apres-rebellion fallen world, it requires some effort.

Karma or Salvation? Choose Door Number 1, 2, or 3

Although life may seem at times a game of Russian roulette, I see it more as a game of Let’s Make A Deal. The good news is, God hands us the Keys to the Kingdom, telling us exactly what is behind each door. Evil, Good, and Salvation. Why then are so many Christians depicting God as angry, unforgiving, and eager to punish us with eternal torture. God is warning us of the dangers of door #1. And He’s enticing us to choose Him behind door #3.

For a very long time, I have held the belief that apparent contradictions in the Bible are the only means by which God can present Truth to our limited little brains. Verbal statements can only go so far in representing transcendental Truth – a truth that is true in all situations, for all people, and in all dimensions. As an example, the Bible presents many verses which give us hope that eventually, God will bring all beings into His shalom embrace or ultimate reconciliation. But equally numerous are the verses that warn of the consequences for making choices in life which run counter to God’s intended plan, run counter to the very fiber and grain of the universe He created – love.

In his book “Her Gates Will Never Be Shut”, Brad Jersak says:
“It is generally known that, in the New Testament, two series of statements run along side by side in such a way that synthesis of both is neither permissible nor achievable: the first series speaks of being lost for all eternity; the second, of God’s will, and ability, to save all men.” ¹

So, I ask myself how and why are there these two sets of seemingly contradictory statements in the Bible. My conclusion can only be that given free choice, there are two possible outcomes: one is terrible and one is divine. All the dire warnings are there to impress on all humanity just how dire are the results of making the wrong choices. All the sublime promises are there to encourage good choices. You might say we’re like game show contestants getting a peek of what’s behind door number one and door number two in a game of you bet your life.

From before the beginning of time, we see evidence that God built choice into all beings. Even the angels are given free choice. We know this because according to the Bible one of the chief angels chose to rebel and as a consequence could no longer remain in the atmosphere or dimension of God. Ish, (Adam), and Ishah (Eve), make a whopper of a bad choice and lead us all down one heck of a rabbit hole. Our lives are a series of choices, all of which have consequences and the Bible is trying to warn us of the consequences of choosing good or evil.

But if we ended the story here we would be missing the whole point of Jesus, the Cross, redemption, and really of Christianity as a whole. So far we have something that resembles Karma.² Tom Lehrer³ – a Harvard math prof and amusing social commentator/bard of the 1960s – defines it this way: “Life is like a sewer: you get out of it what you put into it.”

But God!… God as demonstrated in the incarnated Jesus, and portrayed in the Bible, offers an altogether different option, the third option, door number three if you’ll indulge me to continue the simile. That is, if we align ourselves with Him, with Love, and what is good, not only will we receive the rewards “due” us, but much more than is due us for the good we do, and much less than we deserve for the bad choices we make. Now that is a good deal! The Karmic option is mathematical, relentless, and scary because, I don’t know about you, but I know I can’t avoid screwing up now and again, and I’ve made some doozies in the past. So although many Christian theologians, pastors, and others have painted God as a likeness to Zeus ready to pulverize anyone he dislikes, I’ve read the Bible and it just ain’t so. Here is a little sample to whet your appetite for the good news contained in the New Testament. Makes me want to work on making those good decisions:

“ ¹⁶ God is love! Those who are living in love are living in God, and God lives through them. ¹⁷By living in God, love has been brought to its full expression in us so that we may fearlessly face the day of judgment, because all that Jesus now is, so are we in this world. ¹⁸Love never brings fear, for fear is always related to punishment. But love’s perfection drives the fear of punishment far from our hearts. Whoever walks constantly afraid of punishment has not reached love’s perfection. ¹⁹Our love for others is our grateful response to the love God first demonstrated to us.” 1 John 4:16-19 TPT

One last thought. These verses refer to “living in God”, while in other translations this is referred to as “abiding in God”. Paul calls it walking in the Spirit. I consider this not a one-time choice in the order of praying the so-called prayer of salvation. Living or abiding in God, walking in the Spirit is a continuing action manifested as a sequence of choices and concurrent actions, a lifelong undertaking of continuously aligning ourselves with the Creator of all. It is to be done, as John says, without fear of stumbling and not for fear of punishment. And, in light of these passages, how we share this good news (evangelism) should not be utilizing fear but love-driven.

What do you think about this? I’d love to have you leave a comment. And as they say on Youtube, like and subscribe!
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¹ From Brad Jerzack’s book, “Her Gates Will Never be Shut”.
² “Karma in Sanskrit means an action, work, or deed, and its causal effect or consequence. In Indian religions, the term more specifically refers to a principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called the principle of karma, wherein intent and actions of an individual influence the future of that individual” from Wikipedia
³ Tom Lehrer: I highly recommend listening to his performances on Youtube for sheer amusement. It will not help you choose which door you pick.

Mystery

Discerning what is true by the spirit should be as easy as knowing which is the reflection in this picture taken from our former home in Montana.

Mystery can be defined as the sum of what we don’t know or can’t explain. If we focus on the first four dimensions (space and time), we’ll have very little mystery, but when we enter the subtler worlds of the other dimensions, mystery is abundant. In his youth, Einstein defied conventional wisdom – Newtonian physics – and developed relativistic physics. After graduating from university, his intended pursuits made him an outcast from the scientific community. He was venturing into the unknown, unseeable, and theretofore unmeasurable to pursue mystery. Few people dare to defy convention and orthodoxy, in the pursuit of truth. After his amazing breakthrough with relativity, Einstein stumbled upon the discovery of the Quantum “world”, the realm beneath even sub-atomic particles, where particles and waves, matter, and light become confused. What is remarkable is that relativity had become orthodox, and Einstein could not launch into the unknown once more. While a few colleagues launched into Quantum Physics, Einstein worked fruitlessly for thirty years to explain it away seeking a mathematical explanation for the unknown.

Recently we’ve seen “science” bend to the will of political and social pressure. But nowhere is this compromise to conform to orthodoxy more pronounced than in religion. In the realm of the spirit, mystery abounds. But man, seeking to be in control or fearing to venture into the unknown, the miraculous, is constantly developing intellectual systems to deal with the uncomfortable, to deny the “impossible”. Like Einstein, we try to patch together rational systems out of opinions and old dogma.

“An ant can never understand a cell phone”, just like a 2-dimensional being can’t understand anything from three-dimensional reality. A Flatlander – a being living in a two-dimensional world – has a difficult time understanding a three-dimensional object such as a sphere. To them, if the sphere is not presently intersecting their world, it doesn’t exist. If the sphere is close by and intersects its world, it looks like a circle. Try to explain a sphere to them…

Clue is an old mystery board game. Players have no way of knowing what the cards (the clues or bits of truth) are, although they’re right in front of them. But they’re upside-down! That’s how easily truth is hidden from us. But before you start to think that I’m a Camus-style philosopher bent on driving others as crazy as they are, we can extrapolate from the Clue game metaphor. Just like the game, life is a process of progressive discovery. In Clue one rolls the dice and turns over one card at a time and accumulates a piece of truth at a time. So in life, we catch a glimpse of truth bits and make a collection of them. Before you know it, you’re holding this ridiculous hand of cards, some of which fall out of your hand as you struggle to hold them all, and every so often you study all the cards (truth bits), trying to decide which are truth bits and which are untruth bits. Well, you get the idea of the complexity of this process of shaping a worldview.

Mystery is something we don’t understand… like playing the game of Clue. As it progresses, you start to know some things that are not truth… one piece at a time you build a construct of knowledge segments some of which are bits of “what is” (truth segments) and some are “what is not”. In the game, you finally get enough bits of both types of truth, and you can piece together whodunit and where. That’s mystery and truth at its simplest level. That’s a type of binary truth, where everything is either true or false, You add it up and you get a result that is also binary:  true/ false, guilty/not guilty.

In the real world, truth is both more difficult to discover and more nuanced. Take, for example, the question, “Is God good”? Of course, I’m really zinging to the opposite end of the truth spectrum. Before you can even start to answer this question, you have to start with the questions, first, “Do I believe there is a God?”, “Who or what is God?”, and “What is good?”. Each of those questions is definitely not binary or simple. Then sometimes, just when you think you’re making sense of some part of your worldview, your point of view changes or you pick up more chunks, and you see a different picture appear.

I’ve always held my worldview with a very light hand. Until the age of 26, I vaguely believed in a supreme being of some kind but rejected any kind of religion. In large part, this was a result of growing up in Italy in a Catholic culture which makes it their business (and I do mean business) to define truth. Through a somewhat complex process, they define truth and determine the rules and regulations by which you will play. This kind of truth is called dogma. Dogma is a mystery killer. Dogma is a truth impersonator. It pretends to be truth using authority and seemingly rational self-proving frameworks. Here is a dictionary definition:

Dogma: dôg′mə noun

1. A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a religion.
2. A principle or statement of ideas, or a group of such principles or statements, especially when considered to be authoritative or accepted uncritically.
3. A settled opinion; a principle, maxim, or tenet held as being firmly established. ¹

I would say that some forms of dogma are more benign than others, and some are downright evil. Imagine being a good Muslim believer, and one day finding yourself strapped into an explosive vest. But I suggest that any dogma swallowed whole, without chewing or digesting, is a bad thing.

I hold strongly that we do whatever possible to catch a glimpse of those other dimensions. I know of no other way to speak of this other than using the metaphor of dimensions. How and what we do to catch a glimpse of truth beyond our four dimensions, those of space and time, is up to you. Meditation, prayer, and contemplation are all meant to give you glimpses of what is transcendent, of what is beyond the mundane.

My personal journey led me to Jesus some four decades ago. I try to read the Bible with an open mind without wearing those religious dogma glasses. I propose that this is very rewarding but difficult to do because the wagon wheel ruts are deep and it’s so easy to let yourself just follow the path of least resistance. Those well-trodden ruts are the path of dogma.

Not all dogma is all bad: it may just not be all good. And there is no way to be a totally “independent thinker”. There is much that is good to consume in terms of writers and speakers. As I see it, many have some slice of the pie of Truth. Many of our esteemed Christian thinkers have much that can be useful in deciphering who God is, how the world works, how to be a good person, and so on. But NOONE has all of THE TRUTH. No-one! Having said that, not everyone is meant to explore the universe without any kind of map. Many are much more suited to some unquestioned religion. To pray without answers or miracles. Many wonderful followers of Jesus are happy with a very simplified dogmatic worldview. I think that’s wonderful if that works for them. I wish for them that life does not rock their boat too hard.

Pray expecting to hear. Ask expecting receive – even if it’s not what you expected. And remember that Jesus said that to enter the Kingdom of God one has to be like a child, which I take to be humble and maybe even simple.

One final thought: however you manage your journey through life, I hope you find a way to open yourself to some direct input, some access to other-dimensional contact, glimpses of the prime cause, Supreme Being, and spiritual inspiration. If you can find a way to be open to the right source of inspiration, that will give you wisdom as to reading all those cards you’re holding. Having said that, there are many transcendent sources that are not good. If you’re searching, I would suggest trying Jesus, Yahweh, and the Holy Spirit. Address them with your questions and needs, then listen, and you will be safe. For me, they/He became the destination, but they can also be the starting point. But please be discerning, and don’t get lost in the “spiritual” weeds!

that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. (Ephesians 1:17, New American Standard Bible)

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¹ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

What is God like to you?

Tessy my Pointing Lab at the door of our studio.

I was seated with a school of theology after some kind of celebratory meal when unexpectedly a member of the faculty who was not particularly fond of me or my Biblical interpretations decided to challenge me to a debate. The subject he announced was to be how a Christian conceives of Jesus, whether a physical/historical Jesus; at once fully human and fully God; or a spiritual, invisible, everywhere-but-nowhere-in-particular kind of God. And did it matter? I was to choose one side or the other and argue its merit. I was still a little stunned when this gentleman announced that I could go first. In other words, I would not have the benefit of pondering what in the world I would say while he took the lead discourse. As the dream continued, I stood and began to speak, and this is more or less what I said:

Jesus is, without doubt, many things. While on earth he referred to himself in his discourses in many ways: Son of God, Son of man, rabbi or teacher, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, and so on. Whether we see him as the physical Jesus of the incarnation, or an invisible unknowable God being everywhere and nowhere, I believe it definitely matters. How we perceive God matters greatly. If we see God as an angry God ready to punish man for our glaring imperfections and bad behavior – in other words, the God most Jews in the Old Testament portrayed – we will hide from him and run away in fear as they did in Exodus when he showed up on Mount Sinai. If we see God as perfectly revealed in Jesus, a God who is love, a God who allows himself to be tortured and killed in the eternity-changing event of the cross, we run towards God and allow the Holy Spirit to change us. Uttering the ultimate words of forgiveness, Jesus invited the Godhead to forgive and redeem mankind once and for all time – the Godhead of which he is part. This picture of God will make us lovers and participants in his redemptive plan.

Although Jesus is mostly unknowable, we all develop a sense of who he is. For me, it’s been a lifelong journey of discovering bit by bit. When I was a child in Italy, my very Catholic grandfather would tell me about Jesus. My idea of Jesus was very incomplete and misshapen. I remember Francesco, my Nonno, kneeling next to my bed, telling me about the parable of the denari, the parable of the talents. To whom much is given much is expected. I knew one thing for sure: God had given me much and like my grandfather, he would expect much from me. As it turned out, my grandfather had expected much of his own son and was very disappointed. As our story unfolds, my uncle was very hurt by this, and, not having children of his own, he expected much from me and my cousins. Of course, we couldn’t measure up and he was also disappointed. He came to America and worked his way through a doctorate and a chairmanship of a department at the University of Texas but was never able to please his father. My uncle tried to talk sense into me when I was a teenager, but it didn’t take. I never got the Ph.D. he wanted for me, and I was practically dead to him as he was to his own father.

How we see our fathers, or grandfathers, or uncles, matters greatly. But how we see God and Jesus matters even more. Some believe that those of us with bad fathers have a difficult time seeing Father God as good and loving. My own journey began by being abandoned by my earthly father on the day I was born, but somehow I never judged the One through the dirty lens of the other.

My own concepts began with a kind of New Age God, then began to change when I studied the Bible. At the outset, my Christian understanding was largely shaped by pastors, professors, and other mainstream sources. But with time I began to read more widely, especially with the early fathers who were closer to the actual days Jesus walked the Earth. The most valuable lessons have come in those precious moments of inspiration and miracles that spoke more eloquently and clearly about him than words ever could. The most important theological point I can share is that God loves me just as I am, even if he’d like to help me be better. 2

As I woke up from this dream debate, I slipped out of bed quietly so as not to awaken my wife or forget the dream, and sat down at the computer to write. It was definitely a God moment. I never took a clear position in this supposed debate, but it really doesn’t matter, because it was all a dream. But it was a great dream. And as I began to awaken, I continued to “speak” most eloquently. What is your version of God? Don’t think me presumptuous if I just say that if that vision does not see a God who is love!,  then perhaps you should keep on searching.

Before signing off, I want to share just one episode in my journey that exemplifies the wonderful experiences of God that have modified how I view the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.   One wonderful Saturday in Montana, I was on the couch with a few books about God and a notebook, relishing this moment of peace and pondering Him. The phone rang and it was a neighbor inviting me over to bring Tessy, my Labrador retriever. In a field in front of his house, he had a tiny little blind and a flock of goose decoys set up, and I could go and probably shoot a bird. I reluctantly left my books and prayers behind, more for Tessy than for me. She was a great couch dog, but also a very eager bird dog. It was a gorgeous, clear blue sky of a day and Tessy hadn’t been afield for a long time. A vivid cerulean blue with fluffy cotton-white clouds, and mountains. I slid into this little tent and lay there with my shotgun on the ground next to me, pondering the big sky beauty of Montana, the mountains, and God seemed as close as he had ever been.

I lay there for about an hour, feeling more Chalom peace than I could ever have gotten from those books on the couch. No geese were to be seen, and frankly, it didn’t matter one bit. Tessy lay quietly behind me. Then I heard a voice as clear as ever I’ve heard. “Get ready, here they come!”… I gathered my wits, trying to understand what was going on. I was ready, or thought I was. But I heard the voice again: “Don’t you need to pick up your gun?” I supposed I should, so I reached over and picked up my seldom-used Benelli, and waited. Within no more than ten seconds, I heard it… “Honk, Honk…Honk”… and it got louder until a flock of fat geese burst into my field of vision, lying in the little bivouac tent, and I sat up. there they were, landing right in front of me! But wait, before you anti-gun people are too scandalized, I shot three times and missed. They were so bunched up for me to get two with one shot. Sadly for Tess, I didn’t even get feathers.

You may be wondering how this amazing day might have shaped my concept of who Jesus is. Did I conclude that God is pro-hunting? Does he enjoy a bit of sport from time to time? Some of the guys might be wondering if God might also like to participate in a good game of football. But no, that’s not what I got out of it. I was struck by a God who wanted me to know just how much he cared about what I cared about. A God who would participate in even the most “un-spiritual” moment in my life. And what really made it perfect was that I didn’t have to deal with dead birds, feathers, and bird guts. Did he make me miss? Or did I manage that all on my own? That theological point would never be clear. How he stands on football is for you to find out.

Truth and Dogma

The more I live the more I believe that growth happens with the disruption, change, and even death of what were once closely held beliefs and world views. Beliefs that have become rigid and unchanging result in diminishing life, vitality, joy, and love. Eventually, a rigid worldview becomes judgmental, intransigent, condemning of other’s positions, and worse.

When we stop our spiritual growth, we stagnate and begin to die. The spirit lives in the in-finite; when we put our beliefs in a box we are looking for finite solutions, we’re trying to understand multi-dimensional worlds from the confines of our little four-dimensional perspective. (Read “Dimensions”) It’s worse than if you tried to measure the speed of light with a tape measure and a stopwatch. ¹

Spiritual growth is dependent on learning and experiencing “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard” 1 Corinthians2:9-10

Jesus tells the disciples, “There is so much more I would like to say to you, but it’s more than you can grasp at this moment. But when the truth-giving Spirit comes, he will unveil the reality of every truth within you.” ²

To understand God even a little bit, the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of truth – must be welcomed, invited, and involved.

A rigid belief system becomes dogmatic, meaning that we begin to live by a set of rules and regulations rather than as a result of a dynamic relationship with a living God. Not only is dogmatic crystallization a problem for individuals but also for groups and civilizations.

The ancient world predating Abraham consisted of a rigid construct based largely on mythical beliefs of a reality whereby humanity lived at the pleasure of a variety of angry and demanding gods. Although we tend to lump all the books of the Old Testament as descriptive of one homogeneous religion and culture, it is actually a document of a journey from a pagan, mythology-based reality to a more enlightened worldview. As an example, after Abraham, child sacrifice was replaced with animal sacrifice. The mythical selfish gods were replaced with a supreme creator with plans for our well-being, and so on.

Jesus tells us that these Old Testament writings were meant to make the way for his coming and a new world view but men had perverted it into a dogmatic system that was  resisting growth and transition to Messiah. The Old Testament, it turns out was supposed to not only reveal the Creator-God better than had the mythological constructs of the ancient world, but to point to Jesus and a whole new way, a new reality, and above all, to forgiveness, grace, mercy, humility, and love among many other revolutionary concepts.³

Finally, just because some item of doctrine is preached from ten thousand pulpits doesn’t necessarily make it Gospel truth. For instance, does God really torture anyone who hasn’t prayed the salvation prayer- whichever one your church subscribes to? Is anyone damned to eternity because he or she hasn’t been confirmed by a priest or received last rights? Is anyone damned because they never heard about Jesus? Well, you get the idea. Start by reading the scriptures, but not just a few carefully chosen verses. What do the early church fathers say? They were closer to the source of it all. Most of all, don’t worry, God is a merciful father and he’s not going to damn you for not having perfect theology. He loves it when we want to know him better, but certainly, he isn’t going to blame us for not knowing the TRUTH about all things. I’m most suspicious about religious sects – Christian or otherwise – who tell you that only those of their group have the inside scoop that will save them and only them from damnation.

The absolute truth – sometimes referred to as “all truth” in the Bible – is unknowable in its totality because of how we are made. An AM radio can’t “know” what’s being broadcast on the FM frequencies. The Bible gives us glimpses, and the Holy Spirit gives access to a bit more:  “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard… For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God” 1 Corinthians 2:9-10.

“Searches all things”… sounds like a cosmic search engine doesn’t it? All we need to do is align ourselves, to tune ourselves with the Holy Spirit. With and through him we can experience God.

Note: This is not meant to promote a free-for-all to make stuff up! Just an invitation to seek God deeper by the means he’s provided.

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¹ By the way, the speed of light changes relative to the observer and therefore is elastic and not a constant. The speed of light seems to be a foundational factor used in the makeup of our world whereas it was once considered a constant. However, with the discovery of sub-atomic particles and quantum physics, we have transitioned into a world that behaves more like the spiritual world than the physical world. In other words, God’s world transcends analysis by our limited minds. Only the spirit can reveal “all truth”.

² John 16:12-13 The Passion Translation

³ Read the Sermon on the Mount: it is his “manifesto”. This is the nitty-gritty ways of the kingdom out of Jesus’ mouth! It is the most trustworthy glimpse we have into the heart of God.  Matthew chapters 5 to 7.

The Holy Spirit Has a Sense of Humor

Putting on the Armor of God by Christine Kerrick…I guess it’s poetic license to omit any protection for the regions below the belt.

The Holy Spirit cleared her throat to get my attention and asked me why I wasn’t applying the insight she had imparted to me. I was pondering the passage in Ephesians chapter 6 in preparation for a home group we’re leading for the church we attend. In it, Paul likens armor piece by piece to the protective and offensive provisions from God.  If you’ve attended church for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard this passage preached more than once. Typically, a study of this passage remains a dry outline of all these armor parts and their spiritual equivalents. For me, this outline of armor parts had never yielded much, and I was just posing the question, how can this be rendered useful, immediate, even powerful? To add insult to injury, whoever prepared the leader study notes had made what I consider to be a significant mistake.
Verse 17 in several translations says something like this: “And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” The notes explained that the word of God refers to the Bible. This sounds very plausible, but for some reason, I chose to look it up in the interlinear bible. If you’re not familiar with this source you might want to bookmark this app:
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/ephesians/6-17.htm
This is what you would see:

Sadly, if you went with “Bible” to explain what the Sword of the Spirit meant, you would miss what Paul is saying. The sword is, after all, the only offensive weapon in the whole armor, so I would give this item at least some special attention. After all, Paul is comparing life to a war, and you can’t win a war without an offensive weapon. Tragically, if you tried to throw your bible at the enemy, or even recite verses, I don’t think you could win the battle. I am being a little facetious because we see Jesus after his baptism reciting bible verses in his combat with Satan. But that was not an intellectual battle of words. Those were words imbued with the power of the Spirit of Christ: “taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words”.

In the interlinear translation above, you will notice that the original Greek word is “Rhema”. Now, by the magic of the internet, you click on the number above the word, 4487, and you will see its meaning in Strong’s Concordance. This used to be a big cumbersome book, but now, we are all instant experts with just a click of the mouse.

4487 rhḗma (from 4483 /rhéō, “to speak”) – a spoken word, made “by the living voice” (J. Thayer). 4487/rhḗma (“spoken-word”) is commonly used in the NT (and in LXX) for the Lord speaking His dynamic, living word in a believer to inbirth faith (“His inwrought persuasion”).

The takeaway is that in the everyday battles of life, our main offensive weapon is to hear God speaking to us with his living, vibrant, creative Rhema-word, the same word he used to create the universe! As you can imagine, I was quite pleased with myself for this discovery. This is the kind of stuff I live for… but it gets even better. In my defense, I truly never think of myself as discovering anything in the realm of the spirit, but I was just savoring this insight, or rather the gift, given by the Holy Spirit. This is one of the jobs of Holy Spirit:

10 “For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, 13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.” 1 Corinthians 2:10-13 NASB

But let’s go back to our story. Just then, I “felt” or perceived someone as if clearing their throat to make their presence known, and somehow, I knew it was the Holy Spirit. “So, Franco, why aren’t you applying this to a certain little problem…” People say that the Holy Spirit is a gentleperson, never violating our freedom of choice. Well, I discovered she is also kind, choosing not to rub my nose in this “little thing”.  If I had to characterize this exchange, I would say it was almost humorous: “Hmm, hmm…” – I really don’t know how to spell the sound one makes when clearing your throat. But I immediately knew what the little problem was. In this case the Rhema word was not so dependent on the actual words. The message was more like a Vulcan mind meld.

Immediately, I started using this idea. The idea is that the battle is lost if we dwell on or own a bad thought or emotion. If we can intercept the bad thought, nipping it in the bud, the battle is won. Paul calls it, “taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ“. But how? This may sound too simple to actually work, but I decided to just cry out, “Holy Spirit!!!” the second something unwanted “arrived” in my head. The effect has been nothing less that spectacular. And although I’m sure there is much more to be extracted in this passage on the armor of God, I’m pretty content for now to have understood something precious about the Sword of the Spirit. Bottom line, this Sword of the Spirit, this living word from God, has been completely effective in eradicating the so called “little problem”. Why not try it sometime on a little problem of your own!