Date:   12/6/2012 3:43:54 AM ( 12 y ago)
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URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=2013311

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One of the most powerful tools for understanding what has ahold of one's mind and heart is to pray. You pray for Jesus to walk with you in His spirit, you invite him in, and say, 'here's my attic, I really, really need your help cleaning it up!'. who knows what lurks in a creaky old storage area, among the fiddly little spiders and old dustballs? Often enough a ton of stuff from TV, the radio, other people's words and impressions, and our own imaginings. It's all clutter, and being born again- well, it's one of the most important things you can chase down and enjoy!

If there's anything I know pretty well, it's a confusion over what exactly the holy spirit is, and how it works. If you've had a good few teachers expounding on the bible in your past, you may be familiar with how the Holy spirit manifested itself with abraham, moses, Elijah, and many others. Unfortunately, it's most common for us western-minded, public-school-taught folk to be taught to think with brain logic, and not the heart. If it doesn't make mathematical, logical sense, it goes out with the bathwater. Hopefully you're familiar with the saying about the baby and the bathwater? Ok? Good.

When God made His pact with Abraham of slaughtering the sacrificial animals and walking by Himself through the parted bodies of the critters? That was how people in Abraham's day made a binding oath. 'If I break this pact, may this happen to me. If you break this pact, this will happen to you.'

God went through the path of slaughtered animals, instead of making Abraham walk with him. Abraham's descendants were directly covered by the pact, and broke the oath many times over, but God..? God sent the sacrifice.

So what was the manifestation of Spirit there? God is Spirit. He has no physical or dimensional boundaries, but He chose to manifest himself so that Abraham knew who was taking that walk of the pact.

For the hebrews in the wilderness, God showed himself in a pillar of fire and an unwandering cloud, which led them from place to place. That is also a manifestation, but without taking time to read and understand the history, wisdom and prophetic books of the OT, we often miss completely the understanding that the people /of that day/ had of God and HIS spirit. When a prophet writes 'And I was shown in the spirit', 'I was lifted up in the spirit'... etc, etc, those are manifestations of God speaking directly to a person who capitulated their will to God's will.


Now there's something very important to understand about how God chooses to work among us. I was born and raised american, taught in the public schools, and attended many different types of churches. My father was always searching for a church that taught what he was taught in college, where he met Jesus- he was introduced to God via Campus Crusade for Christ. I've experienced PCA churches, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and quite a few times attending catholic churches in the Washington DC area! These places I mention, we often think of them as buildings, as groups of people that teach, pray and follow rituals and teachings. They're big, they're each individual organisims of their own type, and you can pretty easily get lost in trying to figure out how to integrate yourself among them.

Physical churches, communities and flocks of people are educational. They're social, often political, and sometimes very powerful- especially if we rely upon them as our one source of understanding the bible!

Now forgive me for hopping to a completely different subject, but there is one passage of the OT I am very fond of. It is only about one chapter long, but it was written by a prophet who was chosen by God to warn, speak out against, and basically blaspheme the entire religious system of Israel. He was marked out specifically by God, he answered the call made to his heart and his mind, and served, even though it meant his very life was turned inside out. He had to speak against the priesthood (who were sacrificing and teaching without the wholeheartedness that Y-ah-owv-ah deserves), the hard-heartedness of the people, and pretty much everything. The teachers of Israel of that day had chosen to make replacement names, like addonai, to use in worship and everyday speech so that Yah's proper name would not be used commonly among the people.

They were trying to follow the commandment, 'Thou shalt not take the name of Y-ah-owv-ah' in vain. This can be interpreted as using it as a curse, but, more importantly.. Do not call yourself under God's name without meaning it! Don't go under that pact unless you are whole-hearted and earnest about it.

Do you think that calling yourself under thename of the 'Lord' has any power? Lord is a title. It is a generalized title for any landowner, rich man, king, president.. whatever you like, but when there is a name attached, suddenly it has meaning- like Lord Bhudda, Lord Krishna, Lord FancyPants, or heck, if you like, Lord Fuzzybutt, ruler of the cat tree.

The name has power. 'Y' (Yod) in hebrew means 'Arm and hand / Work / Deed', 'Ah'(Hey) means 'Lo!/ Behold!/ The', 'owv' (Vav) means 'Nail / Peg / Add / And', and again, 'Ah' (Hey) means 'Lo! / Behold! / The'.

It can be taken several ways, but it's best seen in paleo-hebrew. Yod appears as a bent arm with an open hand. Hey appears as a person with it's arms raised (a stick figure) in surprise, and Vav is simply a capital Y. Usually it's thought of as a connector, representing for example the peg you use to hammer down a nomad's tent corner, or keep a goat bound to one spot with a rope, or to hammer things together...

Literally you can think of that connection as God reaching down to manking to bring them together a simple act that happened with a nail. Now who do we know that experienced that... ?


I'll point you back to understanding how God works among us. He is spirit, not flesh. He is unbound, and we are bound- we are creations made of dirt, dust, water, salt and without God's spirit, we are machines without the important ingredient, Light. God's angels are beings of light, energy, and we are a creation set apart- 'E=MC^2', light made into matter, mixed again with light. We are living cells, not critters of brain matter alone, but of thought, emotion, curiosity and creativity. That is one of God's greatest gifts to us- creativity, and the ability to reproduce (unlike the angels).

We are temporary- temporal, physical, and 'dead', in that sense that our lamps are gone out, our wicks shortened, our abilities dampened by a simple disconnect from the source of light and life. Our creator is Y-ah-owv-ah, that Spirit by which all spirits and all flesh and all matter came into being, the one who chose to reveal himself to Moses as a flame in the midst of a bush. Sin cuts us off from that fire of life, and repentance makes us whole by shoveling the dung off of our minds and hearts- and in turn, our bodies, in turn.

The prophet I wrote about, the one chosen to speak against all the evils and stupidity of Israel of his day? He fled into the wilderness because his people were looking for him to kill him. He cried out to God that he wanted to die, that he was miserable. God sent his angels with food and water for him, there in the desert, hidden away in the crags, and the hours passed, hard and rocky and dry and cold at night.. and the person I am writing about.. He wrote that he saw several things happen while he was waiting to hear from his God.

A wildfire passed, but God was not in the fire. A mighty wind rushed past... But God was not in the wind. And later.. a soft breeze came past, and the whisper of God's comforting word was there.

That is the Holy Spirit. That is pure light, like Jesus is pure light, after he was ressurected. 'Thy word is a light unto my path and a lamp unto my feet.' The Word is our source for spiritual discernment, for personal identity, and for a guide in wandering with the maker of heaven and earth- it's history, guidance and clarity, right from the beginning to the end, and when it's unclear, you pray for clarity. When it's sharp and unforgiving, you pray for understanding of what is in the way of your heart and mind, and wait on God to show you what's in the way. When it's soft and warm, it's better than home-baked apple pie on a saturday morning when it's snowy outside.

One of the most important questions you can ask is 'Who am I', but one of the best ways to answer it is, 'Who is God'?

In genesis, there's a mistranslation in the english texts. Right about when Enoch was born, it's written, 'about that time Men began to call on the name of the Lord'. In the original language, it's 'Men began to call themselves /by/ the name of the Lord'. Enoch wouldn't have much to speak out against if folk were already crying out to God! He'd have an easy job! I don't think he did, and I don't think it'd make sense for God to wipe out all but 1% of humanity in the Flood if there were many seeking His face already. The report of the first chapters of Genesis says they were getting worse and worse, not better and better.

Now if I were to call myself by the name of the Lord, I might say, 'I am God'. 'I am a God'. 'I make all the choices myself, and no one tells me what to do'. ... This is the state of Sin and unrepentance. It's pretty simple. It's what they call the sin of pride, and it's right down in our DNA~ ... The flesh. It's inherited, inherant, and we all are born dieing, as it were, with a limit to our lives, but why leave us there to stew?

Who am I? I'm Y-ah-owv-ah's creation, redeemed by no value of my own by the blood of Y-ah-owv-ah's son, 'Y-ah-oshua' (Jesus in greek), on the cross, and given back the chance to plug back in to that source of light!

'You are the salt and light of the earth. What good is it if salt looses it's saltiness, and who chooses to cover up a light?', 'If your eye (pineal gland) is good, then your whole body is full of light', 'by his stripes (wounds) we are healed'. 'For I have not come to replace the Law, but to fulfill it'...

Personally, I'm not content with the once-a-week pre-chewed meal of preacher-teacher scripture, and I've been hungry after a better understanding of the word for a long time.

Trying to understand the Bible as being spiritual messages only is pretty cut and dry and hard to apply to daily life. It's like trying to pull a plough through winter soil, and in the place where I live, it's winter, the first snow has fallen, and you can't even walk on the sandy spots around my house without feeling that you're walking on ice. The holy spirit is a refining fire, and every part of it, from Genesis 1:1 to the very end of Revelations is good for teaching, instruction and nurturing, and blast the idiot that ever equated the fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil with an apple, because I sure could use one right now!

God's Word is practical, understandable (Pray for the holy spirit to grant you understanding of anything in it, and you'll recieve it. that's the power you have in accepting Jesus' blood.), nourishing and powerful. His instructions to Moses about food is conclusive and wise (Heck, look up pork), and they are not onorous (heavy, a burden, a sorrow).

Human teachers and organizations build extra laws on top of what God has given us, by writing all sorts of books and interpretations and crap, but God doesn't. He uses the KISS principle- 'Keep It Simple Stupid'. He usues lanuage that the people he is talking to understand, he uses allegories and parables to make difficult concepts clear, and He invites us into a family, not a cathedral.

I hope that sticks in your mind.
Family.
Not a bunch of rituals.
Family.
Not a silver incense brazier swung on a chain over a bunch of altar-boys.
Family.
Not a guy behind a pulpit living off of the donations of the people he teaches.
Family.
Not a cracker off of a plate with a bit of fermented grape juice in a cup.
Family.

If you want to get to know who /you/ are, it's about the one who made you. Communion was first made by a guy who grabbed a loaf of bread out of a basket at the dinner table at a party, tore it up and shared it with his friends, told them what he meant by it, and then filled up his glass, and sent it around the table. They might have had an inkling of what he meant by, 'This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you.', but like humans, they certainly didn't get it until after the fact- and that's what Communion is about. It's about remembering that we're judging our own lives and being, remembering just what a powerful crack Jesus made in the very powers of heaven and earth with giving up his blameless life willingly, and bowing to that. We're called to mirror our lives after what Jesus did, and that's where the rubber meets the road.


Uhm.. anyways, time for a banana. Blessings, -Mew
 

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