So, Thursday was what I call a “Higher”.[1]
It was characterized by a couple of wonderful experiences of sharing the good
news with people in the morning, a great time with our daycare kids during the
day, and a meaningful relational time with our church in the evening.[2]
Yesterday was a Deeper,[3]
with a handful of attempts to reach out to people that exposed their anger
towards me and the themed message that attachment with me is not part of their
plan if I get them mad. I didn’t like the way it made me feel.
Today I awoke to a Sigh morning.[4]
Although it was a Saturday and I hadn’t set my alarm, my body still woke up at
precisely the time my alarm goes off every other day. So, I got out of bed with
a readiness to find out what Father had in mind to address how I was doing.
Here’s what I discovered.
On Thursday, Father addressed my propensity
to PREPLAN things. He brought me to confess the wrongness of doing that, and to
put my faith in his leading into whatever he wanted me to do with whomever he
wanted me to minister to. The divine appointments showed his grace in helping
me to do just that.
On Friday, throughout the course of the
day, Father addressed my propensity to REPLAY things. Not only is it wearisome
to spend so much time preplanning how I would handle conversations if they ever
happened, but it is equally as wearisome replaying conversations that did not
turn out as well as I had hoped and trying to figure out all the things I could
have done differently.
This morning, Father made both of those noticeably
clear to me and then exposed the common denominator: angry people and Attachment-Light-Always-Off
people (hereafter referred to as ALAOFF). As he reminded me of various things I
have faced in life, these are the two traits in people that have affected me the
most.
And then I saw something. These are not two
kinds of people. The angry people who traumatized me with their abusive tongues
were partnered with a very clear ALAOFF relationship in every other area of our
relationship. On the other hand, the ALAOFF people partnered their detachment
with an anger that simply went and hid whenever there was opportunity to attach
to me in a painful situation.
Suddenly everything became clear. The
predominant reason angry people get angry at me is because I am threatening
their minefield of self-protection around their attachment-pain.[5]
In other words, the whole idea of people
turning off their attachment light is so that it stays dark “in there” so they
don’t have to see things that happened to them and how those experiences affect
them to this day. When I come nosing in to their hidden places and shining my
attachment light around to see how things are going, I am breaking the rules of
secrecy that require darkness to hide in.
For me, that is where I struggle to know the
right thing to do. And then I see that it comes down to knowing what it is like
to be real. When I reach out to people with a genuine sense that I am one of
God’s “children of light” who is now “light in the Lord,”[6]
and my most sincere attempts to be my real self with people triggers an angry
response that immediately increases their detachment, the deep (implicit) part
of my soul tries to echo the old belief that I must have done something wrong
to get that person angry. Now I need to begin again to preplan the next
conversation to try and get their attachment light back on towards me (however
little it was on in the first place).[7]
Why is so important for us to constantly see
these things in the way of the Beatitudinal Journey?[8]
Why is it only “the poor in spirit” who are blessed by admitting what is
wrong inside? Why does God keep leading his children into the “blessed are
those who mourn” reality that grieves how we are really doing? Why does he
keep taking us through the Higher/Deeper experiences where we meekly resign ourselves
that whatever he is exposing (like preplanning and replaying meetings) is never
going to fix what is broken? And why does he persist in shining his light into
our hidden places until we hunger and thirst for the righteousness we begin to
see in him because we certainly don’t see it in ourselves?
It is because it is only the poor in spirit
who experience the kingdom as a treasure hidden in a field.[9]
It is only those who mourn who are comforted with the reality of knowing God as
they have never known him before. It is only those who meekly accept that they
have nothing to contribute to their own deliverance who inherit all that
belongs to Jesus Christ our Lord. And it is those who allow their dark hearts
and secret places to hunger and thirst after the righteousness they see in
their Firstborn Brother who “shall be satisfied”.
Now, how does that all tie in with the
Scripture God has most been speaking through this week? Because Jesus wanted me
to know what he was up to before I saw why my Deepers tend to sabotage my Highers.
This is his word:
“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence”.[10]
Guess where I get my propensity to preplan
and replay conversations: “Through the knowledge of” people with explosive
anger and attachment lights always off towards me.
Guess where I get freedom and healing in Jesus
Christ: “through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and
excellence.”
Guess where we get our hope that knowing Christ
will have a greater impact on us than what people have done to our souls: “His
divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.”
I expect to preach/teach on this tomorrow
in our online home church time. Today, our heavenly Father wanted me to see how
personally it applies to the real troubles of our souls, and how practically it
will lead us to freedom and healing in Christ. As we turn our attachment light
on to God, and pour out our hearts to him about all that the angry
attachment-light-off people have done to our harm, he will show us all that his
divine power has already granted for our fullest and richest experience of both
life and godliness.
And that will win over anger and
attachment-light-offness every single time.
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English
Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition:
2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News
Publishers.)
[1] “Higher” refers to
ways God speaks to us through his word where he lifts our attention up to things
about him we haven’t yet come to know by experience. It is like an invitation
to get to know him better than we have ever known him before.
[2] During the isolation
of Covid-19, our church has been using online video-meeting programs to stay
connected for our church times, prayer meetings, counseling and Bible studies.
[3] “Deeper” refers to
things God shows us about ourselves, usually things we would rather not look at
because they expose that we’re not doing as well as we outwardly portray. The
also are invitations to get to know God better than we have ever known him
before, but with a stronger focus on how much we need him rather than the “Higher”
view that focuses on how great he is in ways we have yet to experience. The two
obviously need to work together.
[4] A “Sigh morning” just
means a morning where we can’t escape unresolved things that haven’t been
fixed, and so a sigh of sadness, resignation, dissatisfaction, etc, helps
express the unfinished business going on in our souls.
[5] I say “predominant” because
there are times that people get angry at me because I have genuinely let them
down.
[6] Ephesians 5:8. I speak
of this individually like an LED light that is part of a whole array of LED’s
that is “the light of the world” Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the
Mount (Matthew 5:14).
[7] I need to clarify that
I do not claim that my attempts to be real with people are so pure and mature
that I never deserve negative reactions to things I do and say. I simply mean
that it seems to be when I try to get to know people at a deeper level than the
pseudo-performances of the outer person that there has been a consistent
reaction of self protection that shuts things down (something Larry Crabb
warned me about at the beginning of the 90’s).
[8] All this comes from
the Beatitudes at the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew
5:1-12.
[9] Matthew 13:44
[10] II Peter 1:3
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