Can I just begin by telling you how validating it was to read the quote that is the title to this blog. "Transformation happens experientially, not intellectually." That's pretty much been my hearts cry for the past several years. I have cried out, God I want to know your love, experientially. I know it intellectually...but I want to know your manifest love in my life.
So as I have asked God for that, I have made some progress, but probably not as much as I would like. This weekend at the Pursue Conference, I went up for prayer. The couple that prayed for me, knew bits and pieces of me, mostly thru different prayer times together. They proceeded to pray that God would reveal his love to me and that I would know that I know that I know how much God loves me. Awesome! Great prayer. Wait a minute....how did you know that was an issue...is what I thought to myself. Am I walking around like Pigpen on Charlie Brown? Is there a cloud of dust that follows me around? Was it discernment? Was it a Word of Knowledge? Had my friend who works with them been blabbing about me and my issues? No matter, it bothered me. I asked God how do we fix this, and I was reminded of a statement I had made a few days earlier. In reference to my work ethic, I told my boss..."I'm not hungry." (My boss is a friend, so I can have honest conversations like that and it not be weird.) I'll work, do my job, but there is not an internal drive to "be all I can be." I'm comfortable, satiated, complacent. Yuck! Which is why I tend to move to a new city. I need a jolt in my system. Somehow I've quit focusing on the beauty and majesty of Jesus, started focusing on my pain, and decided to become comfortable and even lazy when it comes to life. Be it a job, weight loss, dating, education...I've lost my drivenness. I want it back. But I want it refined, so that I can be driven relying on God's strength and not my own. Here are some more good quotes.
The following are quotes taken from the Monday Morning Memo by The Wizard.
“The brain has three natural roadblocks that stand in the way of truly innovative thinking:
1. flawed perception
2. fear of failure
3. the inability to persuade others.”
– Dr. Gregory Berns, neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and Distinguished Chair of Neuroeconomics at Emory University.
“It typically takes a novel stimulus – either a new piece of information or getting out of the environment in which an individual has become comfortable – to jolt attentional systems awake and reconfigure both perception and imagination. The more radical and novel the change, the greater the likelihood of new insights being generated.” – p.58, Iconoclast, by Gregory Berns.
Get out and smell the roses.
This is something I'm pondering. I'll write more later.
2 comments:
I remember listening to an old pastor on the radio years ago who took random questions from callers. One night a guy called saying, "pastor, I fall asleep when I pray... what to do?"
I was angry with the question ...and conflicted. It upset me that a Christian could say such a thing on air infront of perhaps millions of non believers. What kind of spiritual masterbation did he exemplify before the pagan hords? On the other hand, I understood his problem.
The wise old pastor, who I admired, suggested a bunch of practical things: dont pray lying in bed with the lights out - go for a walk and pray etc etc...
But I got to thinking how that Jesus' closest friends had the same problem in the garden the night He was arrested. He woke them up 3 times! and scolded them each time!
In my mind, I contrasted their experience with that of Jesus. For them, it was a night like any other... but for Him, it was anything but. He was compelled to pray from deep within... sweating blood as He prayed. The friends were tired from the march up from the kidron late at night just going back to the lodge after a night of partying.
Then I recalled times in my life when prayers were compelled from me and times when I had to force them. Both are valid. Remaining faithful in dry times is our gift to God. Faith is not, in the end, about me having a good experience, though I, like you, seek them vigorously. But, when you go to the places, the tasks, the people etc, that God calls you to, you find He puts you in the gears of a great cosmic machine. Your blood will be the grease that oils it and brings healing to the world. And in reckoning with that, you will pray from deep within, and you will not sleep. And you will experience the life of Jesus.
Many blessings....
honestly, Pigpen is exactly how i have thougth of you at times.....and i have wanted tot ell you to stop all this mental ascent into God for a long time, but i didnt know how to tell it to your mind.
try this - Theo=God, Logos=discourse, so
theological = talking about God
God can never be fully understood - He never meant those words to go together.
We can learn about him, but only in the context of experiencing him. But - in our Christian World, learning about God is how you get saved.
Post a Comment