a cold fear
hedged my heart in
harsh words
of running away
i set my jaw
losing you is here again
like so many times
somebody says they’ll leave
but this time i’ll not
protect my heart
i’ll take it on the chin
and me a man
i’ll take it on the chin
pain cries in many voices
not l of them mine
we’ll pick up the pieces
because we love
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Dallas Willard says the following:in his book “Renovation of the heart”:
“We must clearly understand that there is a rigorous consistency in the human self and its actions. This is one of the things we are most likely to deceive ourselves about. If I do evil, I am the kind of person who does evil; if I do good, I am the kind of person who does good (1 John 3:7-10) Actions are expression of who we are. They come out of the heart.
One of the most common rationalizations of sin or folly today is ‘Oh, I just blew it.’ While there is some point to such a remark, it is not the one those who use it hope for. It does not exonerate them. While it may be true that there are circumstances in which I would not have done the foolish or sinful thing I did, and while what I did may not represent me fully, ‘Blowing it’ does represent me fully. I am the kind of person who ‘blows it’. “Blowing it’ shows who I am as a person. I am, through and through, the kind of person who ‘blows it’ — hardly a lovely and promising thing to be.”
What do you think of this? Is it uncompromising? Is it unfair? Is it true? After all, Jesus says that a good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit. (Matt 7.17) What does this “truth” do to your soul? Does it make you angry, feel guilty, hopeless? Hopeful? Since, surely if Jesus said that, he had to have some hope that it could be possible that we could be people that don’t ‘blow it’!
I find this quite challenging! I am angry when I hear it. I am rebellious. Where is the grace? where is the hope. How could I possibly be such a person? Everybody that I know that doesn’t occasionally ‘blow it’ is an unbearable and infuriating PAIN! All my life I have been a person who blows it. I would like to be a person who doesn’t, not because it would be a notch in my belt, but because somebody who doesn’t blow it would be like Jesus: and most likely I wouldn’t be a person who hurts others.
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I have always been a leader simply because people are prepared to follow somebody who sounds like they know what the are talking about and who acts with conviction. I am now in a quandary. I am discovering depths of distrust in leaders that I only suspected are there. Did Jesus ever mean for us to give away our lives to church leaders and leaders of nations etc in the way that we do? I suspect not. He says to call nobody father because there is only one Father and he is in heaven. In his Lord’s prayer he teaches us to pray that his Kingdom would come on earth as it does in heaven. I don’t think that this means that we are to follow blindly leaders’ vision of what that means and join organizations which are reflections of each particular leader’s own wounding. I don’t even think that teams are necessarily a guarantee against that because men gather other men around them that have similar brokenness, so what is likely to come out of their mouths will probably bear out what the “leaders” think in any case.
What is the answer? Communities of like minded adults who take mutual responsibility for each others’ lives and spur each other on to maturity in Christ. He will fulfill the work he has started in us, and he uses people, but church leaders cannot, in more than a peripheral way, be part of that, since, unless they have relationship, they will hardly ever be in a position to dispense justice and discipline redemptively.
I am going to start praying for people to be church with.
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Leaders have such a hard job shame.
I don’t want to be led by anybody but Jesus anymore. I will be led by him as example and as Father and brother. It is much too easy to be wrong and think that you have covered all the bases. Relationship is the answer. Leadership is a cop out both for the leader and the led. It seldom produces real disciples. I want t be a self-led person. I want others to be self-led too. I would rather be a friend and example. It is much harder and genuine. There is no inherent acclaim and credibility.
I am getting to the “{not going to church” place again… I fear…
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a cold fear
hedged my heart in
harsh words
of running away
i set my jaw
losing you is here again
like so many times
somebody says they’ll leave
but this time i’ll not
protect my heart
i’ll take it on the chin
and me a man
i’ll take it on the chin
pain cries in many voices
not l of them mine
we’ll pick up the pieces
because we love
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This blog will now be linked to my Face Book account. I was wondering whether to mix the two world or not, but why not. Most people who know me anyway know my story and whether I try to hide it or not, my life goes up and down like waves in a storm.
But generally the trend is upwards. I have been unearthing stuff from my past and how it influenced me. I always thought that the things that had happened to me were so insignificant that they couldn’t possibly have influenced me so negatively as it seemed I have been hurt. But they did and even if there is nothing more that I can’t remember, there is enough for me to be pretty screwed up. Also it seems that I am a particularly sensitive soul and needed more affirmation than most and received less.
The main issue it seems was caretaker betrayal. When people should have cared for and protected me they punished and abandoned me. The second main issue is humiliation which has left me feeling like a “charity case”, where I could never receive stuff that people do for me as good, since it always injured me further as I experienced as a further humiliating blow my my heart. Interesting that the Lord has shown me the flipside: How do I feel when I am extending charity to others? I am feeling his love, tenderness and compassion for them and it is not demeaning to them, but rather an expression of his love and affirmation, grace and care. It is an eye-opener!
I am learning to love and appreciate myself.
Last week Friday I glimpsed the anger that whirls in my soul. I could only look at it and hear it faintly but could not access it. When I get to the feeling place, I will be getting somewhere. Pray for me!
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Everything goes in cycles.I am back and different from myself previously. In a better place, having received more healing. Having gotten to some of the cores issues that have wounded me.
A theme in my life is caretaker betrayal. Instead of having been protected at crucial moments in my life, I have either been punished or alienated. And its amazing how it works: when you have a theme like that, it can become like something that people hone in on like a shark after blood in the water. Children who have been abusd sexually or who are vulnerable to abuse have the same thing: people hone in on that and continue the abuse. Of course it is demonic. The Enemy knocks a wedge into your achiles heel and eventually that becomes either infested or oppressed.
I have been abandoned and punished and marginalised consistently in one way or another my whole life, even as late as last year.
But I have been healed a bit from that and it is showing. I am turning to the Lord again. (not that I turned away, just that I was unable to lift my head much!) I am reading some books that are reigning me in from the wild, out of control place I have been in for more than a year. I am thinking about the church again, and can’t help thinking that I want to find my place of belonging. I want to be part of something different and if I can;t find it I will most porbably start it!
Anyway…God is good and and that is good!
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I was thinking yesterday in a rare moment of clarity: The church is my family regardless of whether I agree with the way it happens. So the onus is on me to engage and to get to know people in a way that will enable me to trust them enough to actually attend a home cell and learn to trust again and get /receive ministry. Inside this Home Cell I can ask the questions about form. But I need this family. Without them I will die. I love the church because come hell or high water, Jesus loves his bride and HE WILL PRESENT HER WITHOUT SPOT OR WRINKLE. If he can’t do it neighetr can I and I have to trust him to fulfil his word. He said he will build his church. It is because we try and do it that it is a stuff-up. So here I go again into the fray. I will have to make some changes in my life to do this. But it feels right and it will hurt but… well, that is who I am now. A part of this family. For better or worse.
COMMENTS?
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I am wondering if I am not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If i allow myself to be ministered to in church and listen to the sermons with the intention of hearing God speak, and have my own private worship life as well, then there is a place for me to see whether the Lord will offer me the chance of being part of a renewal from within?
dunno
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Other blogs are interesting things. You see people’s opinions and are exposed to other points of view.
I have been reading a blog about house churches
There was a link to another page about house churches. A lot of what they say makes sense to me. But when they start speaking about spiritual authority I feel my hackles rise. “We are submitted to spiritual authority wherever it crosses our path. We
do not believe in “selective submission” which says, in essence,
“I am submitted to this group or that Leader and to no other.” We
do not say “My pastor” or “My Prophet” or “My Apostle
or “My Teacher” or “My Evangelist.” We seek to remain
open to any Pastor, Prophet, Apostle, Teacher, or Evangelist wherever and
whenever their ministry or council touches our lives.”
Heito! I obviously have BIG issues. I realise that I don’t want to be in that place where men have authority over me again. I need DEEP healing or another model of church. Probably both.
My problem is the unrestrained power that we accord church leaders. They seldom want it. At least not knowingly. But somehow we buy into the notion that they have a God-given right.
My answer to this is relationship. I will only accord authority in my life to those I trust and those I trust would of necessity be those I have relationship with. So that puts a limit on things…
Thoughts?
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