Mystic Dance

Every person can awaken to the inner mystic inside them.  Whether how small, weak, imperfect one be, the road less traveled that leads higher and higher is the mystic path.  This pathway is the narrow and most difficult road.  It is not for the fainthearted and those who desire a pain-free life.  It is a pathway marked by great difficulty, self-discipline, courage, and greater confidence in God to fulfill it.  If we devote ourselves to this mystic dance, the whole world will think we are insane.  The leading of the Holy Spirit will teach us new steps we have never thought possible or would have ever come up with on our own.

This great mystic dance is not for the future or expected just for the hereafter.  It is the mystic dance of the here and now.  It embraces the real in all its glory and all its sufferings.  It is the dance of Sonship where our transfigured self is lost in God.  This is the secret plan since Creation.  The music of the gospel of Christ swirls all around us into God's cosmic destiny.  The world of appearance gives way to the world of the Spirit and heaven is more real on earth than the earth beneath our feet.

As we enter into holy week, God is leading us deeper into the passion of Christ.  The ladder we are climbing leans against a cross.  There are many ancient mystics who guides along the way.  They are our guides, expert mountaineers, the great explorers who show us the way as well as the pitfalls on the journey.  This inward journey is a journey home.  It is where we find true life is hidden in Christ.  Just like the women came running out of the tomb that first resurrection morning filled with amazement and wonder, so we too have radiant faces to pass the revelations on of what God is doing in taking each one of us on this journey from the depths of the cross to the heights of the resurrection.

Mansion of the Soul

St. Theresa wrote a beautiful book called the Interior Castle.  This is about the interior mansion of the Christian soul and the many rooms we explore in the castle of our own soul.  My boys were so excited the NF's new Mansion songs were coming out today.  My youngest son played me the lyrical words of the Mansion song which inspires these words.

"Reality is not as it used to be. 
Everything is so confusing and falling apart.
How can one find the answers to life if one does not know the questions?
It's like I have overslept and missed out on life.

I chase after perfection which is like a phantom and a ghost.
I'm trapped in the inside and nobody knows me from the outside.
My mind is like a mansion with many rooms.
The rooms are covered with dirt and dust because they have been empty for a long time.
Rarely do I enter these rooms because I choose to stay in the rooms that are familiar and inviting.

The truth is I really don't want to change. 
Because I don't want to change, do I really fear God?*
I wish things were clearer but I can't see through all the dust on the mirror.
It's easier to keep the doors shut and locked so that nobody can get in.
Some people want to burn the whole world to the ground rather than let the light in.

There is fear everywhere and the truth is locked up somewhere deep inside of me.
My mind is a mansion with walls covered in pain.**
I try to hide my pain so that nobody will see.
I try to cover my tracks so that nobody will know.
I try to repaint the walls so that nobody will see the cracks.
I can not leave the mansion I have created for me.

There is so little room in my soul for it is so full of my stuff.
I struggle to know who I really am?
Is God there, what is God to do with the best I am?
He is watching, waiting, and looks right through me.
I shudder, I'm full of fear, what if I surrender and disappear?
My mind is a mansion with many rooms.
Will I dare to let go of myself and let God in?"


*Psalm 55:19
**NF quote where he said "house" instead of "mansion."

NF New CD Mansion

"Do the strange adventures of the Spirit tell us to dance to the music of heaven?"

I used to mock poetry.  I just didn't get it.  I don't have a poetic bone in my body.  I used to mock rap music.  I hated everything about it.  Now God is bringing out my inner poet.  Now I love the passion and poetic lyrics of Christian rap music.  I started listening to Christian rap music because of my boys.  Their world is also my world so as much as I want to be an influence on them, they have been an influence on me.

Unless someone listens to Christian R&B and rap music, people will probably never have heard of the Christian rap singer NF.  He is a bright shooting star in the night for those who happen to look up and look at that part of the sky at the right moment.  As I listen to NF's rap music, his heart cries out in lyrical beauty and in deep anguish.  It's like he is wanting anyone to listen or hear him.  I hear you!  This is not a crying out of pain of the body but a crying out from the depths of one's soul.

As I have been studying the history of Christian mystics, I listen to the deep signs of the spirit and the cries of their souls that come out in art, music, poetry, hymns and songs, and their writings.  Their dreams and heavenly visions propel them with creative energy to speak and write about their interior lives and the inner suffering they endure by going to the cross daily.  The lives of these saints reveal not just active minds but actives hands and feet that serve others in ways that shock and disturb our comfortable mansions of our soul.  So here are some words I wrote yesterday.


Mystic Poem

Safe in the silence where lovers lose themselves.
O little child resting her head in her Father's bosom.
Drunk in the love of Christ and immersed in an ocean of peace.
The laughter of heaven is heard in a smile.
The ancient world lost in the fountain of youth.
The simplicity of wisdom wrapped in a baby.
Earth, wind, fire melt into eternity.
The dark gasps at its last breath.
Heaven is shaken as The Truth gives birth to hope.

Secret Ecstasy

"We behold that which we are, and are that which we behold" -  Meister Eckhart

When God takes us into that secret chamber of His heart, the Holy of Holies, the sweetness of mystical communion, we normally think of rapturous ecstasy, a hidden treasure of incalculable sweetness, radiant light and heavenly bliss and peace.  What we sometimes forget is God's presence is also like a stormy sea.  A stormy sea of Divine Love.  The Song of Songs in Holy Scripture is one of the most beautiful descriptions of this union of the human soul with God.

In the midst of a sweet calm in a storm are divine turnings or changes.  There is a turn from outward things to interior and inner promptings of the Spirit of God with your spirit.  There is a turning from the visible to the invisible.  There is a turning from the mind to the heart which in turns renews the mind.  Sometimes this rapture of the body is so violent or heavy that one loses all strength in the body even though one's mind is perfectly aware of everything that is going on.  There is a kind of physical immobility as if one is being lifted up to a higher reality.  The power of physical movement may be lost but one now moves from thirsting for God to entering into God.  All earthly delight is absorbed into heavenly glory.

Consumed in the furnace of God's presence we abandon everything for God.  This is the mystery of love consummated.  This is what ancient Christians referred to as deification where one becomes one with God and finally enters into their true being which they were created for in eternity.  It is the place of finding home where the divided self is finally at rest in the undivided self of the Divine.  Although one is perfectly as ease and safe in God, there is nothing safe about God.  One time you may experience perfect joy and another time you are weeping uncontrollably or feel like you are going to die.  One never knows where the winds of God's stormy love will take you.  And when one rises up, its with a renewed vision and purpose.  A purpose no smaller than embracing the whole world and all creatures great and small with God's infinite love.

The Perfect Number

I had written before about how God has been using the number 111 and 1111 in my life.  God can use anything and can also work through numbers.  So here is my crazy last two day journey with these numbers.  Yesterday, I went to the nursing home to help with a birthday party for the residents.  There was one lady who could not come out so I took her birthday present to her room.  Her room number was 111. 

Later that night, my family decided to relax together and watch a comedy together.  Did I tell you that God has a sense of humor?  We watched the latest Dumb and Dumber movie.  Several times throughout the movie they made jokes about remembering the house number which was 1111.  Are you starting to see a pattern in all this?

Just recently a friend of mine who has done ministry with me called me to tell me he had a big revelation about the number 111.  It was the number of God squared.  So when I woke up this morning, I suddenly had my own revelation or illumination about the numbers 111 and 1111.  111 is the number of God which is 3 and 1111 is the number 4 which reminded me that on the fourth day of creation God created the material universe.  Now God wants to complete the spiritual universe and make us into a new creation.  Also notice how Jesus is the perfect man in 4 gospels.  3 + 4 = 7 and 7 is the number of perfection.  God is one, God is all in all, and God is perfect.

So later today I went to talk to a family where the man had lost his wife and the kids had lost a Mother.  At the end of the conversation, the man asked me if I could call his phone and leave him my phone number. When I opened my phone today, it was 11:11.  Then I went back to church to look at the text I am preaching on for Palm Sunday.  I have been preaching through the gospel of Mark and I am on Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  Did I tell you God has a sense of humor?  The text begins at Mark 11:1 and ends with Mark 11:11.

Finally, I got ready to leave and go see a friend whose life has spiraled out of control.  I suddenly realized if there is a heavenly spiral, there is also a dark spiritual spiral of degradation.  So when I got into the car, it was 1:11.  God is with us all the time and God can even reveal this through numbers.  Did I tell you that God has a sense of humor?

Secret Journey

"The easy, comfortable and predictable road, that is not the road to take.  The road that God has for you is difficult, narrow, windy with many curves, and it will take you to somewhere you could have never imagined yourself."

In my brokenness and despair at the end of 2014, all I knew was God telling me to study everything I could about dreams and visions.  I never would have imagined how this took me deeper into scripture and deeper into the lives of the saints.  The great spiritual fathers and mothers of the past and present not only have God encounters but heavenly visions and spiritual dreams that change their lives.  God teaches them how to completely die to self and live in the realm of heaven on earth.  One can not give peace away unless one is peace.  One cannot pray for heavenly fire if one is not already fire!

Little did I know how this road to discovery would take me on a new turn in my spiritual life, a secret journey ascending the mountain of God and into a secret garden full of mystery and unimaginable beauty.  Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, one travels a strange path marked out for you only to find in the end that it leads you home.  The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end.

The world has so blinded me that I failed to recognize myself much less the incomparable glory of my Creator.  As a graying adult, I am becoming a child again.  As God draws me deeper into Him, I am coming to realize this is not for my sake but for the sake of others.  God is preparing me to be a spiritual father to others.  God is teaching me how to be a son so I can be a father.  God is teaching me how to be a lamb so I can be a shepherd.

As a Protestant minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I have been like a biological father who has seen many children born anew into God's kingdom but I have not been a spiritual father and caregiver of their souls.  I have experienced the joyous rapture of new births but I have rarely experienced the joyous rapture of seeing God's children grow up as warriors for God's kingdom.

It's like I have awaken from a dream from a long sleep and for the first time clearly see what it means to be a spiritual parent.  What it means to lead God's children out of the darkness completely renouncing this world and into God's kingdom of heavenly light.  I am starting to learn what it means to teach others how to purify their souls and no longer walk as slaves to this world.

What God is teaching me, I am to pass onto to others.  God is forming and designing me to be a spiritual father.  I don't know what this all looks like or how it will happen but it's all in God's hands.  I simply resign myself in all this to God.  Whether I face miseries or pleasures, failures or successes, poverty or riches, it's all the same.  Here my prayer O Lord,

"O Masterful Architect of my soul,
So conform me to Christ that I am stripped, naked and poor in spirit before You.
O Ravisher of my soul,
Let me lose all to gain all,
I give all that I am, all that I have,
So give me all that You are and all that You have.
Hide me in the secret chamber of Your heart.
Amen."

Secret Prayer

O God of my ancestors and Lord of mercy,
bring to fruition what you teach me in secret.
Clear away the rubble and remove the pollution of my soul.
Make my heart steadfast for You for your love is irresistible.

Free me from all anxiety for your power has no limits.
Penetrate my spirit and breathe on me your power.
Clean the mirror of my soul so that I may be a reflection of your eternal light.

May all the words I speak be devoid of me and what I speak to others be words of repentance.
Test me in your love and discipline me in your mercy. 
Every day is a new day to meditate on your goodness.

O Sovereign Lord,
Your providence steers the course of my life.
All I can do is look to the cross for there is no one else to behold,
but the soul piercing eyes of your Son.

When I think of the wood that He created which suspended Him between heaven and earth,
I am like a wild beast of the earth tamed by my dying Savior.
O blessed wood that hung my Savior upon that tree,
"for blessed is the wood by which righteousness comes."

(Inspired by reading the Wisdom of Solomon and particularly chapter fourteen, verse seventeen)

Why Two Creation Stories?

Bible scholars will give several different answers to why there are two creation narratives at the beginning of Genesis.  I would like to focus on the spiritual reasons for why two creation stories?  There are two creation stories focused on creation and man and woman over creation.  But if one looks even deeper, one begins to spiritually see there is physical birth and there is spiritual birth.  There is creation and there is the new creation.

Here is how the four gospels begin in telling this story of Genesis to fulfillment in Christ.  John 1:1-2 is like a summary of the other gospels. 

Listen to John 1:1-2:
(v.1) In the beginning - Christ (Matthew)
Christ was the Word of God (Mark)
The Word (Christ) is God (Luke)
(v.2) Christ in the beginning with God (John's gospel)

There is this second creation of second sight, second birth, and second creation.  Now listen to how the other gospels tell the creation story.

Listen to Matthew 1:1:
(v1) The genealogy of Jesus fulfills the genealogy of Genesis.
In the beginning -  Christ

Listen to Mark 1:1-2:
(v.1) The beginning of the gospel of Jesus.  The good news of God's Word in Christ.
(v.2) It is written.
Christ was the Word of God

Listen to Luke 1:1-2:
(v.1) Jesus story fulfills Genesis.  This word from the beginning is Christ.
(v.2) There are eyewitnesses to the word.
The Word (Christ) is God

This is why the gospel of John is one of the most spiritually deep, rich, and mystical gospel.  All the gospels but particularly John's gospel points us all to Christ as this pure gospel shapes us to be a new creature, a new creation in Christ.

Contemplative Mental Prayer

"Seek in reading and you will find in meditation; knock in prayer and it will be opened to you in contemplation"  -  Carthusian Guigo II

I believe one of the greatest failures of our day is not teaching people how to go deeper in prayer to God.  It's like we start them off in the same way and then twenty years later, not much has changed in the way people pray.  God is taking me deeper into meditation of God's Word as well as contemplative prayer.  Here are five areas to we can dwell and mentally enter into as we contemplate a deeper life with God through Christ.

1.  Think about heaven for twenty or thirty minutes.  Picture yourself running and falling at Jesus' feet.  Focus and image sitting in your heavenly Father's lap.  Join the celestial choir of heaven as it sings "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come" in Revelation chapter four.  Imagine heaven and you are already there!

2.  Think about the passion of Christ.  How it broke his Mother's heart.  How Jesus brother John felt?  Or Peter hiding somewhere but watching from a distance.  Keep your eyes on the many scenes of the passion of Christ, torture, crucifixion and death.  Let your tears water the garden of your soul.

3.  Think about your misery and God's mercy.  Think about how God's love is greater than our sin and weaknesses.  Our sufferings and miseries can be a pathway to Christ.  Suffering and restoration lead us into the deep presence of God.  In dying to self, we are changed into love.  We go from a severe mercy to a magnificent mercy.  On the cross, Christ embraced our misery so that we might know God's mercy.  By contemplating Christ, we begin to see ourselves as Christ sees us as we offer our limitations to God.

4.  Praise God for who He is as you enter into the divine mystery of the divine Trinity.  Let thanksgiving overflow into kingdom prayers.  Enter into God healing the brokenhearted, setting the captives free and thanking God in advance for greater fruitfulness and a great harvest of people coming into God's kingdom.

5.  Mystical and contemplative prayer is where our words end and God's words take over.  It is the Holy Spirit praying through and in you.  It is where our heart beats to the heartbeat of God.  We hardly even know what we are praying because it's not really us praying but God praying prayers to us and back to Himself.  These prayers can be so intense and passionate where one prays out loud at the same time with others.  These prayers clash together like a great symphony of heaven where angels set our prayers on fire by the flame of God's Spirit.  This is the prayer of the Holy Spirit.

A Glorious Dark

"Christianity is the only religion in the world that believes that God for one brief moment in time, looked like an atheist"  -  G. K. Chesterton

Even Jesus on the cross said, "Why God? Why have you forsaken me?"  God forsaken, have you ever been there?  Every skeptic and atheist makes this same point.  And what may be worse for the believer is "Why have you left me?" Why am I all alone?"  There is a new book I have ordered called A Glorious Dark.  I don't know if A. J. Swoboda is dealing with a dark night of the soul but this hits very close to home for me at the moment.  God is withholding Himself and saying, "How much do you trust me?"  I am also pastorally dealing with a potential suicide situation.  Terrible suffering and loneliness is all around me.

What I am discovering is suffering is the very place where God wants to expand our souls.  Suffering is the space where our heart can be enlarged by the heart of God.  The only way to kill pride and our expanded egos is to take them to the cross of Christ.  It's not about being brave enough to go there for it's only by the grace of God we go there at all.  It is only by going to the cross that self can fully die and the spirit-led life can fill the space of our emptiness and our desire to control the world around us.

I said in an earlier post that the spiral way is the way to God.  We typically think of three movements of spiritual cleansing or purification, spiritual illumination and union with God.  Each one of these spirals turn upward towards God in the Divine Trinity.  The first spiral is where we unlearn the ways of our familiar prayer and learn to pray once again like a child in simplicity.  Like a little boy running up a hill towards its home with joyful gratitude and trust.  The Second spiral is where we bear the cross of Christ uphill towards Christ's death which leads to our death of self.  Once this happens, this spirals upward again to ecstatic union with God.  It is here that the dark is glorious because we have found our way back into oneness with God immersed and baptized anew in the peace of the Living God.

Prayer in the Dark

"By faith Lord I can see in the dark.
The river from the tabernacle is rising and flooding my soul.
I am like a dead man awake or an emptied out vessel that is still full.
God is washing the darkness from my eyes as I see with childlike radiance.

O fiery Spirit, pierce my soul.
O heavenly incense, make me smell of the sweetness of paradise.
O Divine Wisdom, fill me with the Eye of eternity.
Arise O Resurrection King and consume me in ineffable light.

The entire universe kneels before your throne of grace.
You nourish my soul with heavenly drink and heavenly food.
I drink your holy body and I drink your holy blood.
I lift my arms to heaven and my heart dances before You.

There is a storm coming as God also calms my soul.
Even through my tear stained eyes You are with me.
Every worldly desire and every worldly hope, crucify it.
Send your ministering angels to me for I am weak and helpless.
If I am to be a martyr of Your love, then even the darkness can seem like light.
Amen."

I, Monster

I'm not scared of monsters from the outside, I'm scared of the monster in me.
I am so sick of me that it makes me ill.
O Lord, quiet my lying self so that I can hear your Word of Truth.

People say I'm crazy because I am crazy in love with You.
God has set my heart free and I have to sing it, write it down and dance to it.

I know the monster I've been and the monster that hides in me.
But God is the great monster killer, so slay the monster in me.
Kill it and murder me so that the new creature that's been hiding in me can be released.

I am wrecked and ruined for God.  There is no going back so God, please never leave me.
I'm no longer a puppet of the world for the strings have been cut by the blood of the lamb that was slain.

I don't care about my name anymore.  I can forever be nameless. 
The name of God the Father, the name of God the Son, the name of God the Holy Spirit is now forever a tattoo on my soul. 
His name is all that counts in a world that only counts names.

In the twinkling of an eye, in a moment's blink, nothing is the same for I am forever wrecked by God's eternal love.
If my old self is murdered and dead, then the least I can do is go to the funeral.


(inspired by NF Intro lyrics.  Maybe somebody will make this into a rap song? :-)

Conversion: 7 Awakenings of My Soul

The whole Christian life is like a series of conversions.  Each one takes you deeper and closer to God in some area of your life.  Here is my spiritual journey thus far.  Here are seven spiritual awakenings I have experienced in a little over fifty years of life.

1.  First Awakening:  Conversion to Christ when I was fourteen years old.  I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church and I sensed the Spirit of God pulling me so hard to give my life to Christ that I tried to resist for a month and I finally gave up, surrendered, and gave my life to Christ.  I have had many spiritual valleys and mountains in my walk with Christ but I am learning to go deeper into a life with Christ.

2.  Second Awakening:  Call to ministry at age seventeen.  Church camp was like my Bethel experiences of drawing closer to God.  It was at church camp I accepted a call to preach the gospel and it was at church camp just a few years later I baptized a close friend of mine into Christ.  I am learning to go deeper into ministry.

3.  Third Awakening:  The Unity of the Body of Christ.  I learned about the Cain-Ridge Revivals of Kentucky in the early 1800's and about the Restoration Vision of full communion between all Christians when I was in college.  The Restoration Vision was spiritual unity through a deeper understanding of God's Word.  I am learning always to go deeper and farther into God's Word and being a bridge builder for the unity of God's church.

4.  Fourth Awakening:  Reading the Bible with Jewish eyes.  It was the largest gatherings of ministers ever in the United States at a Promise Keepers stadium event.  God's reconciling reviving Spirit was so powerful during that event that I was changed instantly.  I cried with a Hasidic Jewish brother and have grown immensely in a deep love for church history and the Jewish roots of the Christian faith.  I am growing deeper in becoming the one new man in Christ where man-made traditions and ecclesial practices which separate Christians are slowly being removed.  I am learning to go deeper into the unifying symbols of the Christian faith.

5.  Fifth Awakening:  Experiencing the Power of the Holy Spirit.  It was only after I graduated from seminary that God led me into a deeper journey of fighting both demons and being overcome by the presence of God.  God took me deeper enlarging my heart with God's heart and enlarging my gifts with supernatural power.  I am learning to go deeper in the life of the Spirit and it's been a slow journey of learning to walk in the Spirit.

6.  Sixth Awakening:  The sacramental reality of all of creation and the catholicity of God's church.  It was an Emmaus Walk that led me into a deeper journey seeing God in all of creation and everything in the church as a means of God's grace to participate in the oneness of God.  I am learning to go deeper into God's good creation as well as experiencing the catholicity of God's church.

7.  Seventh Awakening:  Waking up to the mystical path.  I had a break down from ministerial burnout and physical and emotional suffering not that long ago and I still have not fully recovered.  In the midst of my pain and suffering, I discovered God is preparing me and taking me on a deeper path in Christ.  God is purifying my soul.  God is illuminating my mind.  God is erupting my spirit with His Spirit.  I am entering another world and living a very different rhythm of life in bringing mind, body, spirit all together in a more balanced lifestyle.  I am going through a mystical conversion of my soul.  I am learning to go deeper in knowing myself and in knowing God.

A Matter of Perspective

An Atheist's View On Life

I will live my life according to these beliefs

God does not exist

It is just foolish to think

That there is a God with a cosmic plan

That an all-powerful God brings redemption and healing to the pain and suffering of the world

Is a comforting thought, however

It

Is only wishful thinking

People can do as they please without eternal consequences

The idea that

I am deserving Hell

Because of sin

Is a lie meant to make me a slave to those in power

"The more you have, the happier you will be"

Our existence has no grand meaning or purpose

In a world with no God

There is freedom to be who I want to be

But with God

Everything is fine

It is ridiculous to think

I am lost and in need of saving


A Christian's View on Life
(read this bottom to top)


Author unknown

Thank God for Spiritual Mothers

"This has my mother written all over it" -  Prince Charming quote from Cinderella

My son played the lead role in the high school musical Cinderella.  God has given him such wonderful gifts and he sang so wondrously throughout the performance.  The whole world is a stage and God is the audience.  I am humbled and blessed by the beauty and providence of God all around me.  I am about to go on vacation with my family this week and I look very forward to spending time with them and also seeking your face O God as time set aside for Sabbath rest.

I am taking along two books who the writers are becoming like spiritual mothers to me.  The first is Teresa of Avila The Interior Castle which is so profound yet simple, so clear and yet so deep.  I am also taking Julian of Norwich Revelations of Divine Love.  God still gives his children visions and dreams to live out these divine directions and purposes for God in his good time.  My youngest daughter who is married and lives far away is home this weekend and she is wondering what dreams she should be going after in her life.

I believe God has revelations of Divine Love for each of us who have spiritual eyes to listen and see.  One way to learn truth is to listen to others who have gone before us.  To learn from the saints who are now in heaven and have fought the good fight and are now enjoying eternal rest in the presence of God.  Catherine Marshall book on prayer has a chapter about dream prayers for my daughter.  I also just received before this vacation a book I believe timing is providential called The Spiritual Combat written by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli.  This may be God preparing me for a major spiritual battle but I already sense in my spirit what God wants me to face are the inner demons and the battle of conquering my own flesh.  When this happens, the results is total immersion into inner peace with God.

We all need spiritual mothers and fathers and we all need to learn from the example of the saints who have shown outstanding courage in their faith as they lived devoted surrendered lives for God.  We have thought praying the same prayers would bring us closer to God and change us deeply but we must go farther into contemplative prayer.  We have thought the Bible alone would change our minds and lifestyles just to find we are far more shaped by the world than by God's Word.  We need a deeper life of community in the present and the witness of the saints in the past to help us along this road of faith in Christ.  I praise God for spiritual fathers and mothers who have helped us "grow up" in Christ.  Who are your spiritual fathers and mothers?

God Consiousness and Mysticism

"I said the world was insane,  The world said I was insane.  Confound it they outvoted me!"  - the late James D. Strauss

The world is full of itself to where it has no room for God anymore.  When it comes to the great Christian mystical tradition, talk of God, ecstatic trances, contemplative experiences and heavenly visions, the scholars, the philosophers, and the psychologists say St. Paul was an epileptic, Saint Theresa "the patron saints of hysterics" and St. John the cross, Madam Guyon and people like Michael Molinos were kooks, extremists, heretics, and people who simply had bad mental health.  How far the mighty have fallen and how high we have arrived judging those who have paved the way before us.

The truth is many of these people lived long healthy lives.  They had the rare capacity to draw together a grand vision of the spiritual life bringing heart, reason, and will together.  Where most people go through life with both eyes wide shut, these lovers of God, poets, saints and mystics sucked the nectar of life to its fullest.  Their spiritual lamps were lit, their hearts wide awake, their consciousness was a singular focus on God.

I have these great spiritual mothers from Jesus' mother Mary, St. Theresa, Madam Guyon, Hildegard von Bingen, Julian of Norwich and Hannah Whittal Smith.  Then there are my spiritual fathers like Origen, Michael Molinos, Francois Fenelon, St. John, Maximus the Confessor, Meister Eckhart, St. Claude and St. Francis.  The list goes on and on with those who marched before them and those who have come after them.  A cosmic parade of a great cloud of witness who blazed trails that now so few follow today.

We are so comfortable on earth whereas the mystics were more comfortable in heaven than on earth.  They actually through the help of the Holy Spirit brought heaven to earth.  They experienced mystic love, joy, and soul piercing visions from God.  Probably the book of the Bible that best describes the mystic journey is the Song of Solomon with all of its intimate poetry and pregnant spiritual truths bursting forth and shining new light on our minds and hearts.

The mystic soul went through a series of adventures or discoveries that ended up in a rapturous union with God.  Whether one uses language of amazed, happy, joy unspeakable, ecstasy and delight where the annihilation of pride and self comes to fulfillment in God's perfecting and perfect love.  Language never did this justice but they called this spiritual purging or purifying love things like the cloud of unknowing, the darkness of God, the divine spark, the inward light.  No matter what the language, they all were trying to describe the ineffable and the same kind of spiritual encounters with the Divine mystery, God.

The ancient biblical tradition spoke of knowing God in many ways from the mind, to the heart, and the gut.  The gut was the place where holy fire filled one's belly.  We either take in the fire of the enemy which consumes and destroys or we take in the fire of God which purifies and restores.  I love the words by Frederick Buechner in his Wishful Thinking,

"When our faith is the strongest, we believe with hour hearts as well as our heads, but only in rare moments, I think, do we feel in our stomachs what it must be like to be engulfed in light" (p.23). 

These early Christian mystics not only understood this but they lived it.  Their lives were bright shining lights because they stayed engulfed in God's purifying light.  There is no other place I would rather be . . .

A Parable by Meister Eckhart

"There was a learned man who desired that God would teach him the truth.  After many years, a voice of God came to him and said, "On a certain street, you shall meet a man who will show you the way to blessedness." 

When he went down the street, he found a poor man covered with dirt.  He greeted the poor man, "God give you a good day."  The poor man answered, "I have never had a bad day."

The learned man said, "God give you good luck."  The poor man said, "I have never had ill luck."  "May you be happy."  "I have never been unhappy."  The learned man said, "Pray explain this to me for I can not understand it."

The poor man answered, "If  I am hungry, I praise God.  If the weather is foul, I praise God.  Even when I am wretched and despised, I praise God.  For I have never had an evil day."

Finally the man shot back at the poor man, "But if God should cast you into hell, what would you do then?"  The poor man answered, "If God cast me in hell, I will have two arms to embrace him.  One arm of true humility I will lay beneath him and with the right arm of love, I will be united with him since I have two arms to embrace him.

I should so embrace God that He would have to go to hell with me.  And I would rather be in hell and have God, then in heaven and not have God."

Then the Man finally understood that true abandonment with utter humility is the nearest way to God" (Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, p.209).

 

Kids Say the Darndest Things

I was talking to a young girl the other day and as other kids were praying for family members, her prayer was, "Let everyone be at peace and without fear."  Spoken like a seasoned monk or one who is deep in the ways of prayer.

I asked a group of small children how many seasons are there?  They told me four.  I asked them if they could tell me something else in the world that had four in it?  One kid said quickly, "God is for us!"  The student became the teacher.

O Creator God,
Stoop down and whisper to me for I am small.
It is our adult ways that ravish the world without possessing it!
Every morning I am like a new born miracle for you make me feel young again.
Every day I am to put away the proud adult and to walk like a humble child.

You hide things when I come in the power of my own understanding.
You reveal things when I come to you in the powerlessness of a child.
Your eye penetrates everything and there is no where to hide.
Shatter my narrow thoughts and fill me with your wide ones.
Enter the chamber of my soul and may Your Spirit be my favorite guest.

Open wide the gates of heaven and close the gates of despair.
Pierce my soul with Divine Wisdom and do not leave me with my own thoughts.
You extinguish my feeble attempts and clothe me like a new born baby.
My heart burns for you and my soul rejoices in delight.
You are the One who ravishes my soul and I am lost in wonder.

Who Can Know the Mind of God?

God is renewing all things and has fashioned everything that exists.
God breathes out life and beauty into the world.

God wants us to enter into a wide experience to know the things of old,
And to know the things that are to come.

God knows and gives the solution to life's riddles.
God righteousness and immortality transforms the dead to life.

God is creating us into a child again.
Who can learn the counsel of God or discern what the Lord wills?
He sends His Holy Spirit from on high which is the wisdom of Christ.

God increases our fruitfulness and decreases our labors.
God does not leave us in prisons of our own creation
but God delivers us and makes us into a new creation.
Maranatha.

The Wisdom of Simplicity and Humility

"There is no peace until we enter the river of forgetfulness of self"

Wisdom is clothed in simplicity and humility.  Simplicity makes us forget about ourselves and humility tells us that everyone else is to be remembered more than yourself.  Simplicity and humility focus is on our own faults and not the faults of others.  Do not listen to complaints or murmurings against others.  Self love exaggerates our distresses and magnifies them.  Do not listen but suffer in the simplicity of God's love.

Do not be disturbed by any distraction but keep your gaze fixed on Christ.  When crosses, sufferings, and humiliation come, they are not attacks of the enemy but sent by God to destroy self love at its root.  As long as we keep focusing on the symptoms, self-love will remain hidden deep within and will only appeared to have left when in reality it just went into hiding.

God's wounds are medicine to the soul for those who can accept it.  Weakness is better than strength and love is better than knowledge.  Distrust the vanity of your own reasoning that wants to be in charge of your life.  People can get so puffed up with knowledge that they do not see that love has been driven away.  God reveals the hearts to those who are like babes and hides His ways from the proud and those who think they are clever.

Simplicity and humility gives us courage in two ways.  First we must have the courage to weep over our old ways and let it die.  Secondly, we must have the courage to be prepared by God to enter into a whole new way of being, praying, and doing.  May God remover the darkness from my eyes and give my eyes childlike radiance.  May God clear the weeds from the field of my soul so that seeds of God's goodness can begin to grow.

"Tame my pride O God for I can not!"

Entering the School of Prayer

The Holy Spirit is without measure nor can the Spirit of God be confined by rules.  There are patterns of the Holy Spirit but we a greatly mistaken if we think we can pray some formula which operates more like magic to give us the desired results we want rather than a radical abandonment of self and total surrender to the Spirit of the Living God.

The first practice of prayer is to wait humbly in God's presence.  Prayer can not be done on the run or in a hurry.  Love propels prayer forward so love God in His own way and not in your way.  Our longing is in God alone and not what God gives us or can do for us.  God is the Master and we are simply humble beggars asking for bread from heaven that we neither deserve nor earn. 

When in comes to praying God's Word and prayer in general, there needs to be massive shifts from the mind to the heart.  Shifts from our reasoning ability to the abilities of God's Spirit. Seismic shifts and earthquakes in our soul from literal perception to spiritual intuitions. 

The second practice of prayer is you will never experience the depths of God with an exalted view of yourself.  As long as we continue to place confidence in our abilities, our intelligence, our flesh, our walk with the Lord will be very slow and little will change.  When we no longer fear our illusions and capacity for deception but embrace them and face them head on, then God does His greatest work in us.

In my own spiritual journey, I have discovered that my illness is my greatest blessing.  Without it, I wonder if I would have ever moved forward or made any progress at all in my faith in Christ?  God has shown me tremendous mercy and is sanctifying me in the process.  The only way we can rise courageously is by riding on the wings of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer of a Wounded Soul

O inexhaustible Radiance,
You are forming my heart and wounding it with your Divine Love.
You are a gardener planting deep within me the secrets of heaven.
You are a builder constructing a cathedral within my soul.

O Bridegroom of my soul,
Search my heart and make it fruitful.
Cleanse my soul and bow and kiss me on the face.
Awaken my heart and chase away any darkness there.
Anoint my head with the oil of Your mercy.

Give me such a great vision of you that prideful self is annihilated.
The earth rumbles underneath and the heavens shake at Your Voice.
Your holy fire dazzles me and quenches my thirst.
You reveal the end from the beginning in the present moment.
You are concealed and hidden and revealed and manifested.

O Radiant dawn of my soul,
You and You alone attract my heart,
Illumine my soul,
Revive my spirit.
I dare to stay with You for I am lost without You.
I lift my eyes to heaven so I can truly see the earth around me.

What's in a Number?

I have been thinking of the number nine when it comes to the spiritual gifts that God generously gives his children.  There are nine fruits of the Spirit which culminate as one fruit of God's love which covers them all.  There were ten lepers who received healing and one came back and Jesus said, "Where are the nine?"  Nine in the Bible refers to finality, judgment, and here I want to focus on God's merciful gifts he gives us.  In First Corinthians 12:7-11, there are nine manifestation gifts that God gives us listed in these verses of scripture.

So when it comes to going deeper into Christ and God's manifest love in our life, here are nine areas that God is showing me in the present where we need to go deeper. So today, the number God has on my mind is nine.

1.  The Gift of Being:  We try to create our lives by the things we do, by filling it up with things we have, and by fueling it with the praise that other people give us.  But this only creates a false self, an idol that does not have God at the center of our being.  Life with God is about being which overflows into doing and not the other way around.  We do not attain the presence of God.  We are already in the total presence of God but our problem is we are unaware of it.  God simply wants us to stop being the self we have created and simply be the true self that He created us to be.  My identity is based upon who I am in Christ and not on what I do (even for God).

2.  The Gift of Being Yourself:  There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of oneself.  Nor can we know our self without knowing God.  We have tended to focus on knowing God while failing to know ourselves.  As long as we keep our focus off ourselves, we will continue to miss the deeper life in Christ that God wants us to experience.  God wants to expose our false self and the many god-substitutes that fill our lives that take our focus off of God.  We try to steal things from God whereas he simply invites us to drink deeply of the wells of His love which He freely gives us.

3.  The Gift of Being in love with God:  This is personal knowing that goes beyond knowledge.  I do not just know about God, I know God in the core of my being.  Truth can not be known apart from love and loving God intimately can not happen unless we surrender our will to Divine Love.  Loving God is not superficial or romantic.  Loving God is the deepest love of all because its very source is God.  It's because of God's love I can love myself and everyone around me.  It's because of my being in love with God that I know who I am and whose I am.

4.  The Gift of Being God's Beloved:  Do you recognize, do you know you are God's beloved child?  You are the one that Jesus loved and died for.  You are the one who God calls "My Beloved."  This truth is where we experience the very heart of God.  This is the place where God heals every wound and rejection of our soul.  This gift once received removes all the striving, the pushing and rushing, the performance trap that so many of us get caught up in.  This gift brings us back to the beginning with God and it is here we become like a child again.
 
5.  The Gift of Being a Child:  When we discover fresh revelations of God's love for us, it transports us back to being God's child.  We no longer have to work so hard but simply delight in the presence of God.  Doing for others becomes less of a chore and more of a privilege.  The lower I go, the higher God becomes.  I am small and God is huge.  I am nothing and God is everything.  I am but a child and God is my heavenly parent who knows how to take care of me and everything around me.  I am learning that no matter how much one grows in Christian perfection, God always leaves certain weaknesses to keep us humble like a child that keeps depending upon Him.

6.  The Gift of Being a Radical Lover of God:  God's divine love is unconditional, unlimited and extravagant.  When we discover that we are deeply loved by God then we begin to desire a deeper and more radical love for the God who loved us before we ever loved God.  God's divine love is relentless, radical and reckless.  This is how Jesus ended up on a cross because love put him there.  God wants His Love empowering us to love with His radical, relentless and reckless love.

7.  The Indescribable Gift of Being In Christ:  You are not only deeply loved by Christ, you are the one that Jesus loves, but you also are a sinner saved by God's love.  You are not simply a sinner, but a deeply loved sinner.  God not only loved us into being and preserves us by His being but in Christ, He redeems and restores our being back to Him.  All of life is spiraling back to the center which is Christ as we find our identity, purpose, and life in Him.  "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" (2 Corinthians 9:15)

8.  The Gift of Being Jesus's Bride:  We miss the most important gifts that Jesus offers us by focusing on the wrong things.  Like the Samaritan women focused on physical water rather than the living eternal water, "If you knew the gift of God, you would have asked," God invites us to His wedding and guess what, you are the bride.  The bridegroom is waiting expectantly for you like an impatient lover wanting to experience the divine union of marital intimacy and constant love.  As the Bridegroom races to meet his Bride, we the Bride will not see anything else around us except for Him.  The world clamors for our attention but all we hear is the music of Jesus' love flowing through and to us.  The world wants to distract us and look at it but the only thing that captivates us and what our heart longs for is to see the face of the Bridegroom.

9.  The Gift of Being in Union With God:    Union with God begins with death.  Death to all the old ways of coping and how we learned to manage our world.  Die to self and the many ways we hold onto things as if they are ours to posses.  As long as we strive to take control of our lives, we will never enter into the depths of union that God is calling us into.  Even in my brokenness and pain, you are there.  I embrace the cross which is the only pathway into the deeper journey God desires for every one of His wayward children.  Rest in God's love.  Choose peace every day no matter what the circumstances.  Leave everything in God's hands and do not try to take things back once you have given them over to God.  Plunge yourself into the deep peace and love of God and stay there with Him.  Soak in His presence!

So the number God has pressed upon me today is nine.  As I think about these deep truths and God's magnificent love, I am overwhelmed by God's love and mercy.  I am reminded in all this that I am a part of a spiritual formation group called Deeper Journey.  I will be having my spiritual coach help me absorb the results of my Enneagram personality test the next time we meet.  Did I tell you how many personality types there are?  Nine!  This is another way I believe God is helping me face my many deceptions and illusions about myself.  The goal is not simply knowledge about myself but being transformed into God's New Creation.  Pure love is waiting for each of us who are willing to travel this path.

Confessions of a Contrarian

"The first battle that must be fought is the conquest of one's self"

God desires transparency and an undivided heart.  We think the way forward is to fight hard with our inner demons.  We think its all about the fighting whereas God wants us to rest in Him and His love.  It's not about warfare but about His love.  As long as I keep focusing on myself, I will miss what God is trying to show me.  As long as I keep struggling to advance myself in the Christian walk, I will continue in the lie of self-effort.  Seek only perfect submission to God's will.  And always keep love in front of everything you do.  I can not live for God anymore.  I can only live in God.

Do not be deceived by those who appear strong.  Do not try to get others to think you are strong.  Learn weakness and know God's strength and power.  I must come to God as a child and stay in child-like faith and trust.  God loves holy dependence and reliance upon Him.  Unless we stay humble, we are deceived.  Do not think yourself as spiritual, perfect or having arrived some where with God.  Christian perfection does not mean sinlessness but being in the perfect presence or state of being with God.  God's perfection is all that matters.

Only God will give us peace in the storm.  Only God can captivate our heart beyond the daily distractions and busyness of life.  Only God can fill us with praise and not complaint or grumbling about one's circumstances.  Only God!  What God is teaching me is as I go deeper, nothing will appear to be the same anymore.  Reality will not have changed but how I look at reality will have been changed.  Simplify, die daily, be child-like, and surrender your will completely to God.  This is the way of God's pure love that purifies our soul to prepare us to live like heaven on earth.

"Forgive me Lord of my hypocrisy. 
I forgive those who have deceived me as I have deceived others.
Lead me in your eternal way and give me patience in my impatience. 
Amen."

Renewing the Mind and Healing the Soul

"The simplicity of God is greater than the complexity of man"

In my reading many of the great Christian mystics, two that show some interesting parallels and contrasts are Evagrius and Maximus and Confessor.  Evagrius wants to purify the mind and Maximus wants to purify the heart.  Prayer for Evagrius is a great spiritual battle against demons.  Evagrius looks on the negative side which we all must face.  Maximus on the other hand looks on the positive side.  It's about God's love shaping everything we do.  Maximus focus is on a deeper pure love that conquers the enemies from within us.

Evagrius and Maximus both speak of contemplation but for Evagrius, it is where we escape idle thoughts whereas for Maximus it's where we rest in the perfection of God's love.  Although both of these saints would say that one does not approach God by reason alone, Evagrious speaks more about the battle of the mind and Maximus of the battle for your heart.

In the end, there is a kind of movement in Maximus the Confessor's contemplation that takes us to the transfiguration of Christ.  This is not so much a linear movement as it is a lateral one, moving sideways in a kind of a spiral way to grasp the spiritual significance of our own transfiguration.  I was first introduced to this idea of a kind of spiritual spiral in the academy by Grant Osborne when it came to understanding the Bible.  His classic work The Hermeneutical Spiral became a classic explaining how the horizon of the text and the reader spiral towards each other over a sequence of events engaged together.

What I am just beginning to grasp is a kind of spirituality where either the Trinity is like three spirals (Celtic Trinity) or prayer flows in a spiral pattern like Angela of Foligno or Theresa of Avila seven mansions is a kind of lateral movement of spirals all converging into the center where the soul ascends to God.  Maybe my heart simply needs to receive this revelation for my mind cannot grasp it at this time.  I pray that a transformation of my heart by God's love would renew my mind as well.  I suspect the image or picture of a spiral in the spiritual realm is more a picture of how it appears to our spirit and not necessarily what it really looks like in its essence?

I know there is a danger here of so many pagan religious ideas that speak of a spiral or labyrinth of the soul or our psyche.  Satan always tries to counterfeit the real so I suspect there is a lot more to this perception of a spiral when it comes to the developing our mystical mind and faith.  Although this is beyond my comprehension in so many ways at the moment, I hope the Lord will give me more light and revelation on this issue in the future.  Maranatha!

Prayer of Heaven on Earth

Arise O Lord of the Universe,
Take me to the secret place of the tree of life which is the cross.
Even when I pray you watch over me.
When I sing to you there you are listening.
And when I fall asleep, there you are awakening my soul.

When I gaze upon your beauty, I see my self as I truly am.
When I seek your face, I realize I am a foreigner in a strange land.
Your holiness overwhelms me and I am ashamed at my nakedness.
My sin stings at me like a scorpion but your mercy floods me with rivers of grace.

Serpents try to bite me but I hide in your presence safe from the enemy.
O Lover of my soul, when I am tempted to despair, you lift me up.
When I am weak with no strength, you carry me like eagles wings on your back.
When I feel all alone in the dark, even there you are with me, loving me.
When I am darkened by illusions of myself, you show me the cracks in my mirror.
You wake me like the morning to dream dreams and have visions that shatter all my illusions.

I cling to you like heaven on earth.
Even when my nakedness mocks me, you clothe me in garments of praise.
I fear no evil for you are always with me.
What can man do to me?
You are my life and my resurrection.
Satan wants to drag me down to the pit.
But You O Merciful Father take me higher as I ascend to you.

The Way of Love

"If we love the way God loves, we will be embracing the cross" -  Deanna Deering

The more we die to ourselves and come to the cross, the more you will live the way of God's empowering love.  God is calling us to higher levels of perfection and this will only happen in the purifying love of God.  It is only when we simplify our lives, slow down, look and listen, that we begin to hear and see things we have been missing that have always been right in front of us the whole time.  God wants His love to so fill us that circumstances hardly have any to no effect on us.

What feels like God's judgment on your life is really God's purifying love burning away all the chaff and worthless things we have attached ourselves to.  God is calling us to a deeper life with him.  A deeper life in prayer.  A deeper life in his word.  A deeper life with others.  We can not hang onto the old if we are to embrace the new.  Why is the way of love so hard, I thought it would make me feel good or at least feel better about myself?  God is not abandoning you in your pain but it would be so much worse if God just left you alone living in the flesh.  God's love is curing you from the sickness that resides inside of you.

Don't focus on your circumstances or discomfort or pain or trouble.  There is a purpose behind it all and it is love.  The only way to learn the way of God's love is to embrace the cross daily.  Every other way hijacks what God is really after, a pure heart.  Unless you allow God to take your through this painful process of pure love, your heart will not be pure for God.  Your flesh and worldly passions will fight God's love but simply rest that God's providence will see you through and take you to higher places that you have never been before.  Seek the pathway of God's perfect pure love.

The World, God's Playhouse

"We must get the self out of the way in order to make ourselves available to God"

In reading the Christian mystics and even emulating them, some of their highest aims are reoccurring themes like how does the human soul which hungers for perfection from God draw closer to God in prayer?  For these Christian mystics, the inner life is the life of the soul and the outer life that of the body. 

It is somewhat disconcerting when Christians today find that "normal" Bible study and prayer time has not transformed them into the kind of followers of Jesus that they see from the Bible.  We keep praying the same prayers, doing the same spiritual exercises and find very minimal change in the process.  What the Christian mystics are doing, and more properly should say, in being what God has intended them to be in developing the interior life through a whole deeper different kind of praying than many of us are used to today.

We stop fighting with others and begin the real battle from within.  We stop trying to do more and sit still and begin to listen to what God may be saying in all this.  We find ceaseless activity is not a gift of the Spirit but is a trap of the Devil.  We discover that prayer is not about how we are going to change our lives for God but how God is going reveal what our true needs are and what real changes will truly transform us.

It's not that everything we have been taught or shown is wrong but so much of it unfortunately is backwards.  Holy inactivity leads to activity and not the other way around.  We want to begin as young men or strong warriors for God and God is calling us all back to being a simple child again.  In our helpless and utter weaknesses we find that only God can bring out of us, deep in our soul, what we can not do for ourselves.  It is only the fire of God's love that can melt our cold hard hearts.

I have a beautiful picture of a little boy flying a kite in my office.  I visualize often that this little boy is me as I play out in these open pastures carefree and filled with joy unspeakable.  This picture in my office represents what God wants from all of us, to be like little children and enjoy Daddy God's presence.  Sometimes I think the winds of the Spirit of God are simply whispering to each of us in the middle of the day, God speaking, "Will you play with me?" "Will you play with me? Will you?"

Last Days Revelation or What Time is it?

"Why do I wake up at 11:11 or keep seeing the number 11 11?"

Numbers have spiritual meaning and significance.  One does not have to read the Bible very far to see that there are many repeating symbolic important numbers like 3, 7, 10, 12, 40, and 70 and so forth.  God uses everything, including numbers.  I have been seeing the number 11:11 for years from road signs to the clock to the time left in a ball game to an amount on a receipt---the ways are endless.

Here are a few things that God has taught me with this special sequence of numbers.  There is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit and they equal the ONE true God (1-1-1-1).  I am amazed how numbers are spiritual pointers to greater truths that God possibly wants to teach us.  Just like the Divine mind wants to show us something like every time I see the number 1111 is like God saying to me, "I'm with you.  I'm taking care of you more than you can think or imagine."  I always have a rush of inner peace and God's presence when I see the number 1111.

After saying all this, be careful of people who want to read more into numbers than what is actually there.  Like how some people read things out of the Bible that is simply not there either.  Satan will masquerade as an angel of light and try to deceive people by taking something God is doing and turning it into something very different.  Now the numbers represent your angel or spirit guide or fill in the blank of man-made thoughts about religion.  The Scriptures tell us, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God" (1 John 4:1).

I wrote a book called Rabbinic Stories for the Christian Soul.  The book has forty chapters and there are three sets of twelve broken up by one set of four.  For those who have eyes and an imagination to see, every chapter in that book is related to a corresponding number of another chapter in the book.  This was done by the author, myself, on purpose. 

There may even be hidden numbers in the Bible we typically don't recognize because we simply don't look or think in these terms much less believe there is any real importance to structure and the way the numbers work out in the end.  I am currently reading Madam Guyon autobiography.  Her book is split into two parts with 28 chapters in the first part and 21 chapters in the second part.  If you add these two numbers together, you get 49.  Seven is the number of perfection and if you really wanted to perfect the number then square it.  Seven times seven is forty nine.  Accident?  Coincidence? Or written with this hidden spiritual pattern for those who have eyes to see and imaginations to contemplate it?

So when it comes to the number 11 11, I want to say it shouts "God is with you!"  Listen to how I apply the four gospels with the eleventh chapter and eleventh verse.

1.  Matthew 11:11 -  Jesus comes to tell you the truth that you are greater than you think!
2.  Mark 11:11 -  It was too late for the temple but its not too late for you.
3.  Luke 11:11 - God has wonderful gifts He wants to give you.
4.  John 11:11 -  Jesus wants to wake you up!

God is pointing us in these last days to all wake up to what God is doing.  God is doing a new work in these last days and God always confirms what he is doing, even with numbers.  So the next time you see a special number, pray and study and see if God is not possibly speaking something into your life?  As I read these gospel verses, I am ever reminded today:

*It's time to know who you really are in God.
*It's later than you think.
*It's time to receive God's gifts.
*It's time to wake up.

So what time is it for you?

The Genesis of Perfection

"Genesis is not only about the origins of sin; it is also about the foundations of human perfection"  -  Gary A. Anderson

Christian perfection is a red herring at best and heresy at worst.  Nobody can live a perfect life with the one exception of Jesus.  Even when we do good, we do it with mixed motives of good and bad.  Even our best efforts are full of sin or so the story goes.  There is much truth in this when it comes to our doing good, our being a religious do-gooder and our best efforts in the flesh.

But ancient Jews and Christians alike held a view of Christian perfection or that God's children can enter a state, even if only temporarily with God's help of being sinless.  We tend to forget that many things we hold dear in our modern churches like democracy, baptism by immersion, and holding the communion elements in our own hands (to name of few) were at one time considered heresy.  What we need to remember and reclaim is even though the flesh is imperfect, the Spirit of God is perfect and continues to perfect us.

So when we walk by the Spirit of God, we are actually walking in perfection.  It is not even us really doing it but God's Spirit ordering and directing our steps doing it.  We may during this process have doubts, fears, or even a sinful moment but God's perfect Spirit is even perfecting that.  Just because we don't have complete understanding does not mean we have no understanding.  Just because we might be troubled in our spirit while we walk in God's Spirit does not mean God can still give us peace in it all.

A fascinating book is Gary A. Anderson's book The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination (Westminster John Knox Press,  2001).  Adam and Eve not only represent us, they represent Israel.  Satan tempts Adam and Eve because he resents the authority that they and their seed (Christ) holds over him.  Christ became the new Adam that not only raises Adam and Eve back up to their Eden paradise state but raises us as well.

The ancient Catholic church liked to call this spiritual revelation of Eden or Paradise "the Beatific Vision."  This is the primal revelation that quickens our spirit in the eternal now and can be experienced in the present moment.  One does not have to die to enjoy the beauty of heaven. God has a feast for us now for those who will come hungry and desperate for Him.  It is amazing that one does not have to wait for the medieval mystical movement to speak of this perfect state of grace where God desires that we all would dwell with Him.  It has been already present in the rabbinic era from the very beginning.

The Gift Nobody Wants

"God loves not the believer who does the most, nor who feels the most, nor who thinks the most cleverly and best, nor even the one who shows the greatest love, but He loves him who suffers most" - Michael Molinos

We have almost lost the meaning in the west of what it means to be a persecuted church and to see our brothers and sisters die a martyrs death.  This was the early Christian vocabulary of what it meant to be a Christian.  In American Christianity, suffering and pain are to be avoided at all costs.  Self-help books and the gospel of feeling good and God wants you happy are the norm in most Christian bookstores.  The truth is suffering is a gift from God but it is often a gift that nobody wants.

 Maybe if we are ever going to get to the place of being ready for physical martyrdom, we need to learn "spiritual martyrdom."  This is the soul that has gone so deep into the Spirit of God where one has removed all attachments to the world and is so full of God's Spirit that exterior things do not really upset you.  God brings us to such a humble, quiet and peaceful place that nothing hardly disturbs you any more.

When God takes someone through this painful process, God will even remove the very resources of the Spirit that gives you peace and strength.  God strips and leaves you with nothing except God alone in the dark.  When God is all we have, we realize all the other things are simply surface things to the reality of God in our lives.  There is a wonderful parable by Meister Eckhart which later I will give in its more complete form.  I will just say for now that the parable ends with a poor crippled man who would rather be in hell with God than in heaven without God.  Now that is heaven on earth with God who is our all and all and our end of all.