Angst: strong worry and unhappiness, especially about personal problems (Cambridge Dictionary)
I have noticed a common sense of “angst” that cuts across almost all of us. There is a sense that life is not what we thought it would be like. There seems to be an undercurrent, especially in those rare times when we truly quiet our minds and assess the status of our hearts. We check in on our hearts and it whispers to us that familiar notion, “I was made for more than I am living; Am I not a king or princess?” We wonder where our life went astray. This sense we are not living out our true purpose. Ask anyone this question and I will bet a “yes” or a blank look as their mind quickly assess if honesty is the best response to keep their facade of “life is good” going.
This noticing of ourselves I believe is a nudge from God who made us in His image and likeness (Genesis 1:27). God’s image is not shown in our failures or shortcomings. For He created each one of us that we might live a life that glorifies Him (1 Corinthians 10:31)(Isaiah 43:6-7). If God is love (1 John 4:18) and we are His image bearers then our true selves must reflect His love. Love is patience, kind, doesn’t envy, never boastful or conceited, nor rude and never selfish (1 Corinthians 13:4). These are expressed in our compassion, friendship, truthfulness, intimacy, and giving up ourselves for the benefit of others which in turn glorifies God. These actions reflect His nature and our natural self before the Fall of our parents; Adam and Eve.
However, our image is marred by evil. Evil is the thoughts and actions which take us away from glorifying God. The evil has taken hold in each of our hearts because we, like our original parents chose to rely on our own abilities and not of our creator who made us for His purpose. This going away from God’s purpose is the definition of being a sinner. We are totally depraved in the presence of God (Romans 3:9-18) and not worthy of His grace, which He gives to us freely out of no act on our behalf (Genesis 6:5). Yes, I said trying to be good is not what our salvation and our predestined royalty is about. All sin has its roots, very simply, in lying to ourselves, others, and God. This, my friends, is what is keeping us individually and collectively in “angst”. We are constantly fed a stream of lies by evil, the ruler of earth and our culture (Matthew 4:7-10). Evil whispers in our ears that we are not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough or worthy of anything that is good. This pervasive doubt is why we don’t believe in heaven, for evil has convinced us that there is no such place. So out of this lie and doubt/unbelief, we try to be our own god (little “g”) and create heaven on earth.
We do a pretty good job at creating this false heaven; the heaven on earth I call the “American Dream”. We wall ourselves off to anything that is not comfortable or easy. We worship earthly success over Godliness, for we have become creators and controllers of our own destiny. Any of us who have lived long enough or have been broken realize that we have no control over our existence, life just happens to us. We are so mired in the busyness and mess of our lives we cannot step back and understand the larger story of our lives. It takes being broken to understand, we control nothing. It is the greatest lie the enemy to life tell us; that we can control our lives. We erect these walls out of fear of losing control, for if someone else is truly driving, where will He take us? He may just take us out of our comfort zone.
Most of daily existence is lived in this fear that is outside our walls. These are specially built walls which we think protects us. These visible and invisible walls are constructed in our minds by our beliefs in materialism and consumerism, and is re-enforced by bad behavior modification/suppression (religion) and painted by a pretty coat of numbness. In order to keep our walls up, we must oppress the rest of the planet by hording its resources. Once in a while we peak over the walls and see a broken world that we know needs our help! We look at the wall and tell ourselves “it’s too high, I can’t go over there it’s not safe, and/or I really can’t make a difference in what’s going on over there.” This “looking over the wall” adds to our angst and fear.
I have learned that behavior modification or better put using our own will to try to suppress our evil sinful ways, will only last for short stints, and then our wickedness returns shortly, followed by the guilt of having regressed and failed. This guilty knowing reveals itself in our angst. This behavior modification/suppression is what Religion teaches us and is why most of us at some point left the church and God to get away from the burden of guilt. Jesus spoke of this burden that the religion lays upon their congregations (Matthew 23:1-4) describes why so many don’t want to go to church.
The root of the problem is that culture/evil tells us to love ourselves MORE at the cost of others. This is not the commandment Jesus tells us to live by. He commands us to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves equally (Luke 10:26–28). Jesus commands us to love. Commandments are calls to action, something we do. Therefore, it is not a warm fuzzy feeling He asks us to find in ourselves, but a call to action. Maybe the way out of the guilt and the way to truly live is to look at the root of the problem and that is, who and how should we be loving? We all know the prevailing wisdom set forth by almost all the self help authors. They tell us to love ourselves and to strive for improving ourselves over the call to improve/help others. The message is “get what you want in life by taking it.” Looking at any magazine stand will give anyone a great snap shot on what dozens of so called experts want to tell you and I how to improve ourselves, thus resulting in a more joyful life. If this knowledge of self improvement is so easy, so accessible, and widely read/heard, shouldn’t it be self-evident that our culture is continuing to grow happier and happier, thus each generation is more joyful than the last? I don’t think the state of the world and the American family point to any such reasoning or that the success of these messages is having on us.
In my late teens and twenties, I too fell victim to these self-help shamans, who peddled these false ways. They spoke of prosperity and those things that come with it; fame, fortune, contentment, and safety. I drank the Kool Aide and became drunk on its promises. At some point in my thirties, I had attained everything they spoke of. I had won, or at least I thought. But deep inside there was this gaping hole of discontentment and angst. I tried to ignore it. I did a really good job of keeping my life busy and numb mostly by buying man toys and searching for the next river or outdoor adventure or business to conquer. The walls were doing a good job of keeping me from being able to see myself for what I was made to be. Then God made His will for me evident. He began to break those walls down around me. He took away my prosperity and what He revealed was a man who wanted to love and be loved (John 1:12-13). I began to feel and to have emotions. I now see people not for what they can do for me, but how can I know them and love them with my gifts (John 3:3). My heart and eyes opened to a whole new reality, like going from black/white TV to HDTV. This new way of seeing/feeling life is now filled with a whole range of experiences, from seeing pure evil, pain, suffering, brokenness to joy in finding love and seeing my son smile when he senses my approval, seeing brokenness restored, and all the while watching how God works out His will in others. It is a wild ride my friends. Nothing like I thought life would be like, but at times a sense of content rolls over me. Not often enough but the angst is still there!
I now know the angst feeling is God telling me that He has much more for me beyond this earthly life. He wants me to take my talents and my prosperity and give to those who have been disadvantage by geography, society, government, and economics. I will use this angst, not spur myself onto acquiring more things or in the pursuit if self actualization, but as God’s prodding me to take the gifts and wealth He has entrusted me with and spread it to those that are in need. It also pushes me to tell my story so that others can identify their angst and the hole in their hearts, in hopes they may too find a life worth living in high definition.
We are not alone in this angst and we are not without a guide, a Sheppard (John 10:10-11). Angst connects us all to God’s promise and His will. We just have to love Him and others by taking up our cross (Mark 8:34) and following Jesus for He came to show us the way. By loving others, our action(commandment) of love changes other’s lives for the better and not by sheer coincidence it give us Life and stores rewards for us in Heaven for eternity. Jesus said "for whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:36-36)
May your angst nudge you back towards becoming the man/woman God designed you to be. My hope is you realize, that you are not in control, and that you were made for more. When angst arises it is the holy spirit, your intuition; a helper that Jesus put in the hearts of us all, which guides us to reclaim our true image (John 14:16-18). The answer is contained in our hearts, and by having faith, you and I will work out our way to God by following Jesus and not the ways of culture. Your heart is good. Let others see it. It contains your true image. This journey of the heart will hurt for their will be much suffering in giving up ourselves. Life/Salvation does not come cheaply. Live in angst, but do not ignore it.
I love you all more than you know.
Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Finding a Woman; Our Missing Rib
To My Son Dean –
If I only knew these things when I was young it would of saved me great heartache and loneliness. It is these words from God’s I share with you so that one day you and I may truly find a good Godly woman. Takes these words to heart, I do. For God has promised the following woman to me. He has made you the same promise. Many will try to capture your goodness and your love for Jesus. Women will use their beauty and emotional power to win your heart but I implore you to seek God’s council in His Word. I am beside you and will guide you also the best I can. For our Eve awaits us and that is great news.
God as Mom writes: "Oh, son of mine, what can you be thinking of! Child whom I bore! The son I dedicated to God! Don't dissipate your virility on fortune-hunting women, promiscuous women who shipwreck leaders.
A good woman is hard to find, and worth far more than diamonds.
Her husband trusts her without reserve, and never has reason to regret it.
Never spiteful, she treats him generously all her life long.
She's like a trading ship that sails to faraway places and brings back exotic surprises.
She's up before dawn, preparing breakfast for her family and organizing her day.
She looks over a field and buys it, then, with money she's put aside, plants a garden.
First thing in the morning, she dresses for work, rolls up her sleeves, eager to get started.
She senses the worth of her work, is in no hurry to call it quits for the day.
She's skilled in the crafts of home and hearth, diligent in homemaking.
She's quick to assist anyone in need, reaches out to help the poor.
Her husband is greatly respected when he deliberates with the city fathers.
Her clothes are well-made and elegant, and she always faces tomorrow with a smile.
When she speaks she has something worthwhile to say, and she always says it kindly.
She keeps an eye on everyone in her household, and keeps them all busy and productive.
Her children respect and bless her; her husband joins in with words of praise:"Many women have done wonderful things, but you've outclassed them all!"
Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades.
The woman to be admired and praised is the woman who lives in the Fear-of-God.
Give her everything she deserves!
Festoon her life with praises!
Proverbs 31 The Message (emphasis added)
In Service, Dad
If I only knew these things when I was young it would of saved me great heartache and loneliness. It is these words from God’s I share with you so that one day you and I may truly find a good Godly woman. Takes these words to heart, I do. For God has promised the following woman to me. He has made you the same promise. Many will try to capture your goodness and your love for Jesus. Women will use their beauty and emotional power to win your heart but I implore you to seek God’s council in His Word. I am beside you and will guide you also the best I can. For our Eve awaits us and that is great news.
God as Mom writes: "Oh, son of mine, what can you be thinking of! Child whom I bore! The son I dedicated to God! Don't dissipate your virility on fortune-hunting women, promiscuous women who shipwreck leaders.
A good woman is hard to find, and worth far more than diamonds.
Her husband trusts her without reserve, and never has reason to regret it.
Never spiteful, she treats him generously all her life long.
She's like a trading ship that sails to faraway places and brings back exotic surprises.
She's up before dawn, preparing breakfast for her family and organizing her day.
She looks over a field and buys it, then, with money she's put aside, plants a garden.
First thing in the morning, she dresses for work, rolls up her sleeves, eager to get started.
She senses the worth of her work, is in no hurry to call it quits for the day.
She's skilled in the crafts of home and hearth, diligent in homemaking.
She's quick to assist anyone in need, reaches out to help the poor.
Her husband is greatly respected when he deliberates with the city fathers.
Her clothes are well-made and elegant, and she always faces tomorrow with a smile.
When she speaks she has something worthwhile to say, and she always says it kindly.
She keeps an eye on everyone in her household, and keeps them all busy and productive.
Her children respect and bless her; her husband joins in with words of praise:"Many women have done wonderful things, but you've outclassed them all!"
Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades.
The woman to be admired and praised is the woman who lives in the Fear-of-God.
Give her everything she deserves!
Festoon her life with praises!
Proverbs 31 The Message (emphasis added)
In Service, Dad
Friday, July 10, 2009
Way, Truth, Life in red letters!
“If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today.” Gandhi
I would go further to say "all of the world" would Be!
I would go further to say "all of the world" would Be!
Friday, February 06, 2009
A Gift of My Self - sermon
Introduction
I want to take you on an adventure of our hearts. This great adventure is about discovering how we can as both physical and spiritual beings find the meaning in our lives. We will look at the origins of our sexuality driven by our strong desire to be know and become one with another person. We’ll see that love and serving each other is at the foundation to finding our meaning. This is not a “don’t do it” speech on sex, it is at its core, a rediscovery of the language and longings of our hearts. When we submit in service to each others heart, God's gift of intimacy appears. A gift God wants us to make to others and in particular our spouse. If we learn to make ourselves a gift of love, we may just find the true meaning to life in a very special way.
Open your hearts, free your mind of what culture has or is telling you. Let the Lord Jesus speak to you in this talk for where you are at today and for what you need. In this brief time with you I hope I can re-tell a story of God’s romance. The beauty of his original plan for us is truly his most special gift to us. It is up to you to discover what this looks like for your life. This romantic adventure will take trust, it will take solitude, and it will take much suffering of the heart. It will for sure ask you to die in some respects to things you thought you needed and understood about your physicality. I do promise you this for I have experienced it myself, there is no greater joy than loving someone with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength (paraphrased Luke 10:27). For this is the love God has for us. He wants us to know what 100% surrendered in love feels like, so we will love him in the same way. He gave us the gift of our body as a means to express his love.
You will find not all the answers, but a starting point to look at your own desires to be in relations with another. I give this as a gift from my own experiences and with a lot of help from Lord, who has put a fire in my heart to tell a different story. A radically different story, totally opposite from the story of the world around us which teaches us to be consumers/takers of that sex and intimacy for our own selfishness.
Much of what I contemplate comes out of reflections on marriage and my diligent search for meaning in my past marriages. It also comes out of the many wounds I gave woman with my selfishness pursuit of satisfying my own needs. But it is joy which I have felt that really drives me to show you the truth of God’s gift. I want you to know what true love is and how it works into our sexuality. This sexuality when combined with love is the closest thing we can know of what heaven will be like. It is one of the greatest forms of worship we can offer Jesus. In this talk I will totally depend upon God’s word in the Bible, along with a lot of help and direction from Pope John II sermons on the Theology of the Body. His sermons on this subject are a beautiful analysis of Genesis and Jesus’ Gospel about male and female relationships. I want to thank Christopher West for his summaries of John Paul’s work. It is revolutionary in its message. I encourage to read more of Mr. West's work. It will deepen and change your marriage.
The Fall – The Case for Sex Gone Wrong
The teachings of our culture and times tell us that sex is a selfish act made just for our own pleasure. It tells us we don’t need love to have great sex, we just need perfect bodies, the right perfume/cologne, a beer or the best clothes and you will get more sex. They also beat into us that sexual performance makes us who we are it defines our worth to society. Men are condition to be like race horses expected to give women unbelievable mountain top sexual experiences. For women it is being the perfect sex toy, with the perfect body, the best clothes to attract a man.
Men are ranked by other men on how many women they can conquer. Sex becomes a sport to use women for our own pleasures. Women are forced into pleasing men to be accepted or to keep a boyfriend by how well sexually they perform. Sex is everywhere because our culture instinctively knows its power. It has made sex into a selfish act far from the selfless act of giving our bodies as a gift to that special person we love. Evil twisted our inner most prized gift from God. God wants us to have it back not by controlling us to do so but out of loving us, giving us the freedom to reclaim his gift. For it is out of choice that love can be found. We must choose to be a gift to each other once again if we are ever to experience the original unity and deep connected love again.
When we have sex with another person before the establishment of love and commitments or any emotional depth, our heart senses the emptiness and lack of the all important foundation of love. We become confused about love because sex and nakedness of our souls and hearts came before love. Repeated like this sex becomes mechanical and purely a physical release and not the way God intended it to be. Our intuition tells us even when we are young for sex in this capacity never lives up to what culture or our friends tell us. So we search for better ways to experience sex like using sex toys, pornography, different sexual positions, and multiple partners to find that ecstasy that is so promised.
Making love (sex) is not about sex toys, positions, pornography, or whatever aberrations we can dream up. When we invite God into this place we have no need for all those tricks and gimmicks. Wrapped in each other’s arms, skin to skin, face to face, breath to breath, warm lips together, peering into each other’s eyes finding that complete intimacy and making a place for God and praising and loving him for this gift. Now that is making love. Sex any other way is letting satan use you for his pleasure which will lead to heart ache and dysfunction.
Researchers have known for a long time that teenage sexual activity and depression are linked. In a publication by (Smith and Denton pg21) Teenagers get depressed when they cannot understand the physical, emotional and spiritual loss that happens when the act of intimacy(sex) is not done out of love.
We use sex like a drug to make us feel good for a period of time but like alcohol we do experience not only physical hangovers but also spiritual and emotional ones to. Sex is a temporary escape from this world and like any other escape mechanism some become addicted to it just like drugs and alcohol. This is why we are seeing pornography become so destructive for it gives us sex without love and without another person. It requires nothing of us, it is an illusion and will lead to addiction.
“Addiction is the most powerful psychic enemy of humanity’s desire for God,” says Gerald May in Addiction and Grace, which is no doubt why it is one of our adversary’s favorite ways to imprison us. Once taken captive, trying to free ourselves through willpower is futile. Only God’s Spirit himself can free us or even bring us to our senses.
The "heart" has become a battlefield between love and lust, habitually threatening the meaning of the body. As John Paul says, because of man's disordered passions, "The human body in its masculinity and femininity has almost lost the capacity of expressing this love in which the person becomes a gift…" (General Audience 7/23/80).
How did sex get so twisted? Let us know look at what sin did to our original state of the male female union. How has evil and culture misdirected God’s original design. This starts back in the Garden of Eden in Chapter 3 of Genesis
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
Here the evil serpent convinces us not to trust God that we too can know good and evil. We can know what God knows but this taught us to grasp after God’s likeness instead of receiving it as a gift. All of a sudden we now see our nakedness, our flaws or inadequacies. We hide from God, we hide from each other. God looks for us, we are ashamed and this begins our fall from our original creation. This falling away continues we now grasp on to our original unity and nakedness. Out of this grasping the roots of lust come forward. We try to control and posses the opposite sex for out of fear of losing him/her of being alone and in some respects being found out. We find it really difficult to be totally naked again with each other. This is meant by the fall. The falling away from who we really are. Let us now try to find our way back.
Original Man before the Fall (How we were meant to be)
We have to go way back when God created Adam and Eve to understand God’s original plan for us as man and woman. Here we will find some clues how we were originally created and what life was like for the first couple. We will also see what God asked of them and what gifts he gave them.
There are two accounts of our creation in Genesis. It is important to note the first two accounts describe man and woman before sin. This is very important to the story because we have fallen away from the pure goodness of God’s original plan which is perfect unity of man and woman. Also I want to point out that Jesus who is the only man both of Divine and Flesh whose words offer us a direct understanding on how God wants us to live. Lets us begin with Jesus pointing us back to “THE BEGINNING” in Matthew 19 where we hear Jesus being questioned by Pharisees when they asked him about divorce. He refers them back to man and woman’s perfect unity “that in the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' God’s intention for us was to be in pure relationship or to have a perfect union
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Genesis 1:26-28 NIV
So we read here that God created us IN HIS IMAGE and in His Likeness. So we are physical but yet more than physical. We have a likeness to God who is spirit and who is love 1 John 4:18 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. NIV
He gave us rule over all the animals. He also created us male and female. He did not describe the animals in this manner. We know ourselves that we are much different than the animals, we posses His image therefore the image of Love. Also if we have his image our bodies must reflect Him in some way. So we must conclude that we can come to know God through our physical body. He also blessed us and not the animals. Again God differentiates us from the animals by blessing us. So this gave us a spiritual quality and creates a great mystery for we know we are more than just physical matter but like God in what way?
We can look further into how we are different than the animals by what God tells us next in Genesis 2:7
7 the LORD God formed the man [a] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Here God gives us the breath of life. The Hebrew word (nÿshamah, “breath”) is used for God and for the life imparted to humans, not animals. Its usage in the Bible conveys more than a breathing living organism. Whatever is given this breath of life becomes animated with the life from God, has spiritual understanding.(from the NETBible)
God’s breathes life into us. In some early traditions people did not speak name of God. To utter his name was too holy. God’s name in Hebrew was Y H V H which we would pronounce Yod, Heh, Vav, Hah which when we say it, it sounds like the rhythm of our own breathing. Is the name of God the sound of our breathing? (Rob Bell in Nooma: Breathe) So God is our breath without it we die without God we die.
Now that we have a foundation of being spiritual beings made in the image of God we can start to dive into the origins of our sexuality by further examining the next details that follow in this 2nd account of the creation.
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." 19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
So Adam named all the animals and realizes he was alone in the world as a person different from the animals. He knew he couldn’t love the animals so he felt alone in complete solitude. This alone feeling is something we all feel. We fear it, we hate this feeling, we cannot live without being in communion with others to find another to love and be loved back drives our inner most desires. To not be alone means to be in communion with another to be in love and be loved in return. This brings us back to what we identified early that God is Love. John Paul II concludes “Love is, therefore, man's origin, vocation, and end.”
So God says “it is not good for the man” to not have someone to Love and to have Love in, so God’s solution is create someone who he can love, so he creates someone that embodies His beauty and is the final touch on His creation this He called woman.
21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
John Paul II points out in a footnote that the word "rib" in the original biblical language is a play on the word "life" (General Audience 11/7/79). Woman comes from the life of a man. The man now has a missing a piece that rib that God removed to make woman holds a very special role. So a man longs to replace his missing piece and a woman longs to find a man to give her piece back to; the man she came from. This desire to find each other to replace the piece is our deepest desire. It is so strong and at our core that it drives almost everything we do in life. Next we hear Adam cry out what we all would love to say when we find our missing piece.
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man." Genesis 2:23
As the Pope explains, "there is no doubt that man falls into that 'sleep' with the desire of finding a being like himself. In this way, the circle of the solitude of the man-person is broken, because the first 'man' awakens from his sleep as 'male and female'" (General Audience 11/7/79). Immediately the man declares: "At last this one is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." That is to say, "Finally, a person with whom I can share the gift of life. Finally, a person I can love!"
So we see here that God has given us the Gift of Life and in that he provided everything we need to know Him and to love and be loved by another person. Now that we have another to love how are we to Love? How are we to find it? How are we to know what love really is? When are we ready to do this? Let us try to answer these by looking into this Gift of Love and this ultimate reunion.
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (NIV)
For God tells us that we are to leave our parents. Are you ready to leave your parents? This is when God and most traditions tell us we are ready to be married to take a spouse in marriage to be reunited in one flesh. This God says signals our readiness for becoming one in flesh with our Adam or our Eve a reuniting of the flesh in holy sex and nakedness.
What does becoming one flesh mean? Is this not a better word for sex “one flesh”? As we unite our flesh in this holy reunion, God lets us go back to how he created us “in the beginning” pure in heart the world disappears around us for a brief amount of time bringing us to the place where we feel as one. This is total relief from our feeling of solitude and it must be the ultimate expression of love. For God made it so enjoyable nothing else in our physical life can match this experience for this is not sex as talked about by culture but it is the true act of making love. So special it is only here that God lets us co-create another human being with His help. In the act of making love we come face to face with each other naked bringing only our bodies to each other as a gift.
The Second Vatican Council teaches us, "man can only find himself by making a sincere gift of himself" (Gaudium et Spes n. 24). So with our bodies, in and through our sexuality, that we realize we are called to give ourselves to one another as a gift. Thus, John Paul can say, "we are convinced of the fact that the awareness of the body’s capacity to show love is the fundamental element of human existence in the world" (General Audience 1/16/80).
In this brief encounter of the flesh and spirit we replace the missing piece within us, thus completing what was once lost long ago. We get to relive part of God’s creation story in the intimate act of making love. Do you not see the power, the awesomeness of it? Is it no wonder that God makes our sex drive the most powerful thing in the universe? Can anyone name something we all think about more in common or more often than sex? The missing piece may be the root of our internal sexual drive not only to create new life but to replace this missing piece. How else do we describe where this urge or need comes from? We don’t know what drives us so passionately and strongly but this need/urge does not go away until we have been reunited with our own Adam or Eve, who holds our missing piece. Our hearts long for each other to dive deeply into the purely intimate act of rejoining and becoming one again with each other. For God wants this union to be a special one, one out of His love.
When this rejoining is wrapped in Love, it brings with it a filling up of our hearts. We feel gratitude, amazement, and joy or better put ecstasy that something so wonderful could feel this good. Webster’s dictionary defines ecstasy as “rapture from the contemplation of divine things”. Don’t you think our divine creator God wants us to have a divine contemplation of the eternal life with Him? Maybe it’s through this uniting of our hearts in the act of sex that God whispers into our hearts this secret that so many of us fail to hear. Once you have really listened to Him and have heard the secret you so would love to tell everyone, but you just cannot find the human words to express it. It is such a big secret God wants us to keep it safe within the context of marriage and not to share it with just a random person. It is so deep and profound, to share it with an acquaintance or friend would be reducing sex to a physical act of pleasure much like drinking a glass of water when you’re thirsty or eating your favorite food. Is not sex so much more than just satisfying a bodily function or controlling a selfish need?
We see that in our original sexuality that at the end of Genesis 2 25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
When we find that true love, that piece, and become the truest gift to each other we feel no shame being completely naked knowing each other so intimately that we have nothing to hide from each other. Trust each other with each other’s Gift of Life.
Let’s look at how Moses describes sex in Genesis 4:25 using a few different translation of the Bible.
NKJV - And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore
NIV – And Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth
NLT - Adam had sexual relations with his wife again, and she gave birth
NET- And Adam had marital relations with his wife again, and she gave
In the Hebrew language the word for sexual relations was the word YADA defined as TO KNOW. Is this the first man and woman knew each other thus not feeling any shame. Can you imagine having a friend someone so close to you that you are ashamed of anything to tell them or show them? I find this at the core of why I don’t just have sex and intimacy with just any woman. For me and for most of my life even in my teens and twenties when I was single I knew I did not want to share my gift with just anyone. Does anyone feel that too? You don’t have t answer that out loud but answer that in your heart sometime.
Conclusion and Benediction
If we are to live according to the original capacity of our body’s ability to express love and thus "fulfill the very meaning of his being and existence," we must win the battle in our hearts over lust. We must come to see the body, once again, as the revelation of the eternal mystery of God (cf. General Audience 3/18/81).
I hope this truth of the Bible sets your hearts free from what culture and evil are trying to tell you about sex. You have been duped no longer. God created our bodies so we could show our spouses the sacrificial gift of Love through the union our bodies becoming “one flesh.” We must look at our body as a temple to God for we were made in His image. Our sexuality is so strong and powerful that God made it this way so we wouldn’t miss the purpose of it. The Bible is a guide to a great romance that God invites us to. It’s for sure not a legal document. The Bible uses marital love as analogy more than any other example to help us understand God’s eternal plan for us.
If we live in accordance to what God is telling us and has revealed through our bodies we will fulfill the very meaning of our lives and that is to Love. Jesus primary commandment was and is “Love one another as I have loved you” John 15:12. Jesus gave his physical body up for us for the forgiveness of Sin from our falling away from real union. On the cross he died a physical death as the ultimate gift to us. He showed us the power of giving ourselves as a gift, for his gift was to all of us. In his Resurrection he defeated evil and showed us a way back to “THE BEGINNING”. His way of life will restore our sexuality to the way it was meant to be before the Fall. It is why He came.
I challenge you to find your Adam or Eve when you are ready to embrace God’s will for marriage and sexuality as a gift. Be careful it is not much of a gift to the one you want to spend eternity with if you have given it to 10 others prior. Go out from here knowing that God wants you to have His gift all you have to do is open your hearts and wait. I leave you with this promise from God in 1 Corinthians 2:9-10
No one's ever seen or heard anything like this,
Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—
What God has arranged for those who love him.
References:
Man and Women He Created Theology of the Body by John Paul II (translated by Michael Waldstein)
The Pope’s Theology of the Body by Christopher West 2001
Nooma – Breathe by Rob Bell
Biblical verses from the New Internal Version
I want to take you on an adventure of our hearts. This great adventure is about discovering how we can as both physical and spiritual beings find the meaning in our lives. We will look at the origins of our sexuality driven by our strong desire to be know and become one with another person. We’ll see that love and serving each other is at the foundation to finding our meaning. This is not a “don’t do it” speech on sex, it is at its core, a rediscovery of the language and longings of our hearts. When we submit in service to each others heart, God's gift of intimacy appears. A gift God wants us to make to others and in particular our spouse. If we learn to make ourselves a gift of love, we may just find the true meaning to life in a very special way.
Open your hearts, free your mind of what culture has or is telling you. Let the Lord Jesus speak to you in this talk for where you are at today and for what you need. In this brief time with you I hope I can re-tell a story of God’s romance. The beauty of his original plan for us is truly his most special gift to us. It is up to you to discover what this looks like for your life. This romantic adventure will take trust, it will take solitude, and it will take much suffering of the heart. It will for sure ask you to die in some respects to things you thought you needed and understood about your physicality. I do promise you this for I have experienced it myself, there is no greater joy than loving someone with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength (paraphrased Luke 10:27). For this is the love God has for us. He wants us to know what 100% surrendered in love feels like, so we will love him in the same way. He gave us the gift of our body as a means to express his love.
You will find not all the answers, but a starting point to look at your own desires to be in relations with another. I give this as a gift from my own experiences and with a lot of help from Lord, who has put a fire in my heart to tell a different story. A radically different story, totally opposite from the story of the world around us which teaches us to be consumers/takers of that sex and intimacy for our own selfishness.
Much of what I contemplate comes out of reflections on marriage and my diligent search for meaning in my past marriages. It also comes out of the many wounds I gave woman with my selfishness pursuit of satisfying my own needs. But it is joy which I have felt that really drives me to show you the truth of God’s gift. I want you to know what true love is and how it works into our sexuality. This sexuality when combined with love is the closest thing we can know of what heaven will be like. It is one of the greatest forms of worship we can offer Jesus. In this talk I will totally depend upon God’s word in the Bible, along with a lot of help and direction from Pope John II sermons on the Theology of the Body. His sermons on this subject are a beautiful analysis of Genesis and Jesus’ Gospel about male and female relationships. I want to thank Christopher West for his summaries of John Paul’s work. It is revolutionary in its message. I encourage to read more of Mr. West's work. It will deepen and change your marriage.
The Fall – The Case for Sex Gone Wrong
The teachings of our culture and times tell us that sex is a selfish act made just for our own pleasure. It tells us we don’t need love to have great sex, we just need perfect bodies, the right perfume/cologne, a beer or the best clothes and you will get more sex. They also beat into us that sexual performance makes us who we are it defines our worth to society. Men are condition to be like race horses expected to give women unbelievable mountain top sexual experiences. For women it is being the perfect sex toy, with the perfect body, the best clothes to attract a man.
Men are ranked by other men on how many women they can conquer. Sex becomes a sport to use women for our own pleasures. Women are forced into pleasing men to be accepted or to keep a boyfriend by how well sexually they perform. Sex is everywhere because our culture instinctively knows its power. It has made sex into a selfish act far from the selfless act of giving our bodies as a gift to that special person we love. Evil twisted our inner most prized gift from God. God wants us to have it back not by controlling us to do so but out of loving us, giving us the freedom to reclaim his gift. For it is out of choice that love can be found. We must choose to be a gift to each other once again if we are ever to experience the original unity and deep connected love again.
When we have sex with another person before the establishment of love and commitments or any emotional depth, our heart senses the emptiness and lack of the all important foundation of love. We become confused about love because sex and nakedness of our souls and hearts came before love. Repeated like this sex becomes mechanical and purely a physical release and not the way God intended it to be. Our intuition tells us even when we are young for sex in this capacity never lives up to what culture or our friends tell us. So we search for better ways to experience sex like using sex toys, pornography, different sexual positions, and multiple partners to find that ecstasy that is so promised.
Making love (sex) is not about sex toys, positions, pornography, or whatever aberrations we can dream up. When we invite God into this place we have no need for all those tricks and gimmicks. Wrapped in each other’s arms, skin to skin, face to face, breath to breath, warm lips together, peering into each other’s eyes finding that complete intimacy and making a place for God and praising and loving him for this gift. Now that is making love. Sex any other way is letting satan use you for his pleasure which will lead to heart ache and dysfunction.
Researchers have known for a long time that teenage sexual activity and depression are linked. In a publication by (Smith and Denton pg21) Teenagers get depressed when they cannot understand the physical, emotional and spiritual loss that happens when the act of intimacy(sex) is not done out of love.
We use sex like a drug to make us feel good for a period of time but like alcohol we do experience not only physical hangovers but also spiritual and emotional ones to. Sex is a temporary escape from this world and like any other escape mechanism some become addicted to it just like drugs and alcohol. This is why we are seeing pornography become so destructive for it gives us sex without love and without another person. It requires nothing of us, it is an illusion and will lead to addiction.
“Addiction is the most powerful psychic enemy of humanity’s desire for God,” says Gerald May in Addiction and Grace, which is no doubt why it is one of our adversary’s favorite ways to imprison us. Once taken captive, trying to free ourselves through willpower is futile. Only God’s Spirit himself can free us or even bring us to our senses.
The "heart" has become a battlefield between love and lust, habitually threatening the meaning of the body. As John Paul says, because of man's disordered passions, "The human body in its masculinity and femininity has almost lost the capacity of expressing this love in which the person becomes a gift…" (General Audience 7/23/80).
How did sex get so twisted? Let us know look at what sin did to our original state of the male female union. How has evil and culture misdirected God’s original design. This starts back in the Garden of Eden in Chapter 3 of Genesis
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
Here the evil serpent convinces us not to trust God that we too can know good and evil. We can know what God knows but this taught us to grasp after God’s likeness instead of receiving it as a gift. All of a sudden we now see our nakedness, our flaws or inadequacies. We hide from God, we hide from each other. God looks for us, we are ashamed and this begins our fall from our original creation. This falling away continues we now grasp on to our original unity and nakedness. Out of this grasping the roots of lust come forward. We try to control and posses the opposite sex for out of fear of losing him/her of being alone and in some respects being found out. We find it really difficult to be totally naked again with each other. This is meant by the fall. The falling away from who we really are. Let us now try to find our way back.
Original Man before the Fall (How we were meant to be)
We have to go way back when God created Adam and Eve to understand God’s original plan for us as man and woman. Here we will find some clues how we were originally created and what life was like for the first couple. We will also see what God asked of them and what gifts he gave them.
There are two accounts of our creation in Genesis. It is important to note the first two accounts describe man and woman before sin. This is very important to the story because we have fallen away from the pure goodness of God’s original plan which is perfect unity of man and woman. Also I want to point out that Jesus who is the only man both of Divine and Flesh whose words offer us a direct understanding on how God wants us to live. Lets us begin with Jesus pointing us back to “THE BEGINNING” in Matthew 19 where we hear Jesus being questioned by Pharisees when they asked him about divorce. He refers them back to man and woman’s perfect unity “that in the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' God’s intention for us was to be in pure relationship or to have a perfect union
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Genesis 1:26-28 NIV
So we read here that God created us IN HIS IMAGE and in His Likeness. So we are physical but yet more than physical. We have a likeness to God who is spirit and who is love 1 John 4:18 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. NIV
He gave us rule over all the animals. He also created us male and female. He did not describe the animals in this manner. We know ourselves that we are much different than the animals, we posses His image therefore the image of Love. Also if we have his image our bodies must reflect Him in some way. So we must conclude that we can come to know God through our physical body. He also blessed us and not the animals. Again God differentiates us from the animals by blessing us. So this gave us a spiritual quality and creates a great mystery for we know we are more than just physical matter but like God in what way?
We can look further into how we are different than the animals by what God tells us next in Genesis 2:7
7 the LORD God formed the man [a] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Here God gives us the breath of life. The Hebrew word (nÿshamah, “breath”) is used for God and for the life imparted to humans, not animals. Its usage in the Bible conveys more than a breathing living organism. Whatever is given this breath of life becomes animated with the life from God, has spiritual understanding.(from the NETBible)
God’s breathes life into us. In some early traditions people did not speak name of God. To utter his name was too holy. God’s name in Hebrew was Y H V H which we would pronounce Yod, Heh, Vav, Hah which when we say it, it sounds like the rhythm of our own breathing. Is the name of God the sound of our breathing? (Rob Bell in Nooma: Breathe) So God is our breath without it we die without God we die.
Now that we have a foundation of being spiritual beings made in the image of God we can start to dive into the origins of our sexuality by further examining the next details that follow in this 2nd account of the creation.
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." 19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
So Adam named all the animals and realizes he was alone in the world as a person different from the animals. He knew he couldn’t love the animals so he felt alone in complete solitude. This alone feeling is something we all feel. We fear it, we hate this feeling, we cannot live without being in communion with others to find another to love and be loved back drives our inner most desires. To not be alone means to be in communion with another to be in love and be loved in return. This brings us back to what we identified early that God is Love. John Paul II concludes “Love is, therefore, man's origin, vocation, and end.”
So God says “it is not good for the man” to not have someone to Love and to have Love in, so God’s solution is create someone who he can love, so he creates someone that embodies His beauty and is the final touch on His creation this He called woman.
21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
John Paul II points out in a footnote that the word "rib" in the original biblical language is a play on the word "life" (General Audience 11/7/79). Woman comes from the life of a man. The man now has a missing a piece that rib that God removed to make woman holds a very special role. So a man longs to replace his missing piece and a woman longs to find a man to give her piece back to; the man she came from. This desire to find each other to replace the piece is our deepest desire. It is so strong and at our core that it drives almost everything we do in life. Next we hear Adam cry out what we all would love to say when we find our missing piece.
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man." Genesis 2:23
As the Pope explains, "there is no doubt that man falls into that 'sleep' with the desire of finding a being like himself. In this way, the circle of the solitude of the man-person is broken, because the first 'man' awakens from his sleep as 'male and female'" (General Audience 11/7/79). Immediately the man declares: "At last this one is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." That is to say, "Finally, a person with whom I can share the gift of life. Finally, a person I can love!"
So we see here that God has given us the Gift of Life and in that he provided everything we need to know Him and to love and be loved by another person. Now that we have another to love how are we to Love? How are we to find it? How are we to know what love really is? When are we ready to do this? Let us try to answer these by looking into this Gift of Love and this ultimate reunion.
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (NIV)
For God tells us that we are to leave our parents. Are you ready to leave your parents? This is when God and most traditions tell us we are ready to be married to take a spouse in marriage to be reunited in one flesh. This God says signals our readiness for becoming one in flesh with our Adam or our Eve a reuniting of the flesh in holy sex and nakedness.
What does becoming one flesh mean? Is this not a better word for sex “one flesh”? As we unite our flesh in this holy reunion, God lets us go back to how he created us “in the beginning” pure in heart the world disappears around us for a brief amount of time bringing us to the place where we feel as one. This is total relief from our feeling of solitude and it must be the ultimate expression of love. For God made it so enjoyable nothing else in our physical life can match this experience for this is not sex as talked about by culture but it is the true act of making love. So special it is only here that God lets us co-create another human being with His help. In the act of making love we come face to face with each other naked bringing only our bodies to each other as a gift.
The Second Vatican Council teaches us, "man can only find himself by making a sincere gift of himself" (Gaudium et Spes n. 24). So with our bodies, in and through our sexuality, that we realize we are called to give ourselves to one another as a gift. Thus, John Paul can say, "we are convinced of the fact that the awareness of the body’s capacity to show love is the fundamental element of human existence in the world" (General Audience 1/16/80).
In this brief encounter of the flesh and spirit we replace the missing piece within us, thus completing what was once lost long ago. We get to relive part of God’s creation story in the intimate act of making love. Do you not see the power, the awesomeness of it? Is it no wonder that God makes our sex drive the most powerful thing in the universe? Can anyone name something we all think about more in common or more often than sex? The missing piece may be the root of our internal sexual drive not only to create new life but to replace this missing piece. How else do we describe where this urge or need comes from? We don’t know what drives us so passionately and strongly but this need/urge does not go away until we have been reunited with our own Adam or Eve, who holds our missing piece. Our hearts long for each other to dive deeply into the purely intimate act of rejoining and becoming one again with each other. For God wants this union to be a special one, one out of His love.
When this rejoining is wrapped in Love, it brings with it a filling up of our hearts. We feel gratitude, amazement, and joy or better put ecstasy that something so wonderful could feel this good. Webster’s dictionary defines ecstasy as “rapture from the contemplation of divine things”. Don’t you think our divine creator God wants us to have a divine contemplation of the eternal life with Him? Maybe it’s through this uniting of our hearts in the act of sex that God whispers into our hearts this secret that so many of us fail to hear. Once you have really listened to Him and have heard the secret you so would love to tell everyone, but you just cannot find the human words to express it. It is such a big secret God wants us to keep it safe within the context of marriage and not to share it with just a random person. It is so deep and profound, to share it with an acquaintance or friend would be reducing sex to a physical act of pleasure much like drinking a glass of water when you’re thirsty or eating your favorite food. Is not sex so much more than just satisfying a bodily function or controlling a selfish need?
We see that in our original sexuality that at the end of Genesis 2 25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
When we find that true love, that piece, and become the truest gift to each other we feel no shame being completely naked knowing each other so intimately that we have nothing to hide from each other. Trust each other with each other’s Gift of Life.
Let’s look at how Moses describes sex in Genesis 4:25 using a few different translation of the Bible.
NKJV - And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore
NIV – And Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth
NLT - Adam had sexual relations with his wife again, and she gave birth
NET- And Adam had marital relations with his wife again, and she gave
In the Hebrew language the word for sexual relations was the word YADA defined as TO KNOW. Is this the first man and woman knew each other thus not feeling any shame. Can you imagine having a friend someone so close to you that you are ashamed of anything to tell them or show them? I find this at the core of why I don’t just have sex and intimacy with just any woman. For me and for most of my life even in my teens and twenties when I was single I knew I did not want to share my gift with just anyone. Does anyone feel that too? You don’t have t answer that out loud but answer that in your heart sometime.
Conclusion and Benediction
If we are to live according to the original capacity of our body’s ability to express love and thus "fulfill the very meaning of his being and existence," we must win the battle in our hearts over lust. We must come to see the body, once again, as the revelation of the eternal mystery of God (cf. General Audience 3/18/81).
I hope this truth of the Bible sets your hearts free from what culture and evil are trying to tell you about sex. You have been duped no longer. God created our bodies so we could show our spouses the sacrificial gift of Love through the union our bodies becoming “one flesh.” We must look at our body as a temple to God for we were made in His image. Our sexuality is so strong and powerful that God made it this way so we wouldn’t miss the purpose of it. The Bible is a guide to a great romance that God invites us to. It’s for sure not a legal document. The Bible uses marital love as analogy more than any other example to help us understand God’s eternal plan for us.
If we live in accordance to what God is telling us and has revealed through our bodies we will fulfill the very meaning of our lives and that is to Love. Jesus primary commandment was and is “Love one another as I have loved you” John 15:12. Jesus gave his physical body up for us for the forgiveness of Sin from our falling away from real union. On the cross he died a physical death as the ultimate gift to us. He showed us the power of giving ourselves as a gift, for his gift was to all of us. In his Resurrection he defeated evil and showed us a way back to “THE BEGINNING”. His way of life will restore our sexuality to the way it was meant to be before the Fall. It is why He came.
I challenge you to find your Adam or Eve when you are ready to embrace God’s will for marriage and sexuality as a gift. Be careful it is not much of a gift to the one you want to spend eternity with if you have given it to 10 others prior. Go out from here knowing that God wants you to have His gift all you have to do is open your hearts and wait. I leave you with this promise from God in 1 Corinthians 2:9-10
No one's ever seen or heard anything like this,
Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—
What God has arranged for those who love him.
References:
Man and Women He Created Theology of the Body by John Paul II (translated by Michael Waldstein)
The Pope’s Theology of the Body by Christopher West 2001
Nooma – Breathe by Rob Bell
Biblical verses from the New Internal Version
Friday, January 23, 2009
I Go By Way of the Heart
A few things came up in my talks with God I wanted to share. Sometimes He put things on my heart I don’t quite understand until a series of events or His communications are put together. Last week He said to me “Test him” did know what that meant but I said bring it on. What I realize know is Saturday night and Sunday were a test for me to see if I would truly go with my heart and not the rational mind I so depended upon in the past to make big decisions in life. I wrestled thru Sunday called out for help from friends who gave me their rational thoughts. Not one of them put themselves into my life to feel what I feel to truly understand the pain of my heart. I cried out that my heart was breaking. I didn’t need rational thoughts I needed someone to just show me some compassion that I was hurting. So God knew what I needed a friend who understood where you were and I was to truly help me. Thank God he sent an old friend to counsel me. My friend gave me her story for it is what my heart needed.
As you know I was heart sick for several days. This test was really big for me for I am learning that friends and even ones I trust want to provide cultural rational wisdom to help. In dealing with Love, sorrow, pain and those things of the heart we need to be less rational and more compassion to try to truly swallow those situations those feelings into our own heart. From there ask God and the Holy Spirit to give us words or a hug or just be silent to the other person.
Lord please help me give less rational advice. I also need to rely now more on my heart and God’s. He gives me much better advice and counsel then my friends.
God is strengthening me for the Kingdom I know to so to live the Kingdom way. I am learning so much being feed on a daily basis. I know God is with me. I know He is doing more than I can comprehend. He is guiding , teaching, loving, and preparing me for His needs.
This God gave to me yesterday but I read the verses around it and it is what he was trying to teach me this week. His Wisdom is for me to trust the Holy Spirit that resides in me. Maybe I should of said my Holy Spirit was manifesting itself as physical sickness be it wanted me to not do what my rational mind was doing!!!
Corinthians 2:6-15 (The Message)
6-10We, of course, have plenty of wisdom to pass on to you once you get your feet on firm spiritual ground, but it's not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that will be out-of-date in a year or so. God's wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don't find it lying around on the surface. It's not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene. The experts of our day haven't a clue about what this eternal plan is. If they had, they wouldn't have killed the Master of the God-designed life on a cross. That's why we have this Scripture text: No one's ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it— What God has arranged for those who love him. But you've seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you.
10-13The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God planned all along. Whoever knows what you're thinking and planning except you yourself? The same with God—except that he not only knows what he's thinking, but he lets us in on it. God offers a full report on the gifts of life and salvation that he is giving us. We don't have to rely on the world's guesses and opinions. We didn't learn this by reading books or going to school; we learned it from God, who taught us person-to-person through Jesus, and we're passing it on to you in the same firsthand, personal way.
As you know I was heart sick for several days. This test was really big for me for I am learning that friends and even ones I trust want to provide cultural rational wisdom to help. In dealing with Love, sorrow, pain and those things of the heart we need to be less rational and more compassion to try to truly swallow those situations those feelings into our own heart. From there ask God and the Holy Spirit to give us words or a hug or just be silent to the other person.
Lord please help me give less rational advice. I also need to rely now more on my heart and God’s. He gives me much better advice and counsel then my friends.
God is strengthening me for the Kingdom I know to so to live the Kingdom way. I am learning so much being feed on a daily basis. I know God is with me. I know He is doing more than I can comprehend. He is guiding , teaching, loving, and preparing me for His needs.
This God gave to me yesterday but I read the verses around it and it is what he was trying to teach me this week. His Wisdom is for me to trust the Holy Spirit that resides in me. Maybe I should of said my Holy Spirit was manifesting itself as physical sickness be it wanted me to not do what my rational mind was doing!!!
Corinthians 2:6-15 (The Message)
6-10We, of course, have plenty of wisdom to pass on to you once you get your feet on firm spiritual ground, but it's not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that will be out-of-date in a year or so. God's wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don't find it lying around on the surface. It's not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene. The experts of our day haven't a clue about what this eternal plan is. If they had, they wouldn't have killed the Master of the God-designed life on a cross. That's why we have this Scripture text: No one's ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it— What God has arranged for those who love him. But you've seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you.
10-13The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God planned all along. Whoever knows what you're thinking and planning except you yourself? The same with God—except that he not only knows what he's thinking, but he lets us in on it. God offers a full report on the gifts of life and salvation that he is giving us. We don't have to rely on the world's guesses and opinions. We didn't learn this by reading books or going to school; we learned it from God, who taught us person-to-person through Jesus, and we're passing it on to you in the same firsthand, personal way.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Sex Part I: A Divine Gift
God gave us sex as a gift which bonds a woman and a man together to create a union of our hearts and souls out which we are given a role in Co-Creating with Him. Sex is holy which we have learned that being Holy is entering into God’s Love. This act of Love is co creating with God therefore is not something to take lightly. So sex is a Holy act. Secondly, God created sex as a way for us to share ourselves completely with one another, to become totally naked, vulnerable, and open to one another. Sex when shared and honored in this way becomes truly an act of worshiping God. This is what true worship looks like, to worship our creator God and one another at a super intimate level.
Sex in its purest form is so intoxicating and deep that we can only linger in the moments before during and after an orgasm for minutes. As we become one flesh (Matthew 19:4-6) in those moments we melt into each other giving us the act of pure union meant for a marriage only. When we make the first penetration into the woman we both feel this utterly amazing feeling of “ah” it is that moment we say no verbally to each other “I love You”. This act ties our souls and hearts together in a way we may never fully understand. I do know this we cannot share this intimacy, this bond with more than one person at a time. I do believe there are differences between a man and a women in how each experiences this union. For us men the act of entering into a women with our flesh while having her flesh wrap is like diving into pool of perfectly tempered crystal clear spring water. We immerse soul into hers. This is very different from the woman’s point of view. For her it is an invitation to the man to come in, to open her heart and soul like a door that is being unlocked and as we enter the room where she says none verbally “come deep into me” and she provides you that look that you just found something out so deeply about her that words cannot describe it. In this time we are completely together even though how we got here was different for each but now as we are heart and souls one flesh one body bound together are inclination to finish kicks in. We want to finish it, have an orgasm. Now little time is left, for the finish of an orgasm is minutes away ending our union. I suppose God made it this way because most of us would if given a choice would stay in that feeling, that union forever and we would not get any sleep or anything else done that day.
As we progress towards the finish of the union we worship each other through each movement and each sensation. This in and out movement representing song we are singing to each other. As the orgasm approaches something more profound takes place this heightened sensitivity brings us that feeling of “I would do anything for you and this love and nothing in this world matters”. Our concentration is so focused and so intense nothing can stop it. We now are at the climatic end. We call it a climax for a reason for what is about to be unleashed in the orgasm is life creating and soul bearing. I can only speak towards the male orgasm for that is my only internal experience in which I can reflect upon. As we start to ejaculate the impulse and reaction is to thrust as deep into her as I can. Trying to pull out at this point is so counter intuitive to do so ends something so abruptly it takes discipline most of us don’t have and it why we should teach our young people that this is not a good form of birth control. This sense of driving deep into her can only mean I am putting something so special so profound and meaningful, I want it to go to the depths of her heart where she will remember my soul and keep it locked away telling no one else this secret, this intimate detail of my being. In the midst of this explosion of love something else is going on. A release of life that when combined with her life with the help of God will form another child of God. This love explosion then puts God’s creation capabilities into action. It is much like a prayer but instead of verbal or through a thought this prayer is a physical one. It says to God here you go we want to create a human being in the image of you Lord and hey can you make this child of yours look like Mom and Dad?
So it is finished we lay there together in a heap of sweat and bodily fluid looking at each other with such satisfaction and love for we cannot fathom a better place to be in those moments. We know then that something of that union stays with us forever only to be broken when we choose to break this bond by loving another in that same way. To reduce this amazing act of worship to just something pleasurable would be a travesty and false as to the power of this immeasurable gift from God. This is what true worshiping of God should look like! Thank you Lord for this gift, this glimpse of Heaven and what true union feels like. Continued Sex Part II: A Divine Rejoining
Sex in its purest form is so intoxicating and deep that we can only linger in the moments before during and after an orgasm for minutes. As we become one flesh (Matthew 19:4-6) in those moments we melt into each other giving us the act of pure union meant for a marriage only. When we make the first penetration into the woman we both feel this utterly amazing feeling of “ah” it is that moment we say no verbally to each other “I love You”. This act ties our souls and hearts together in a way we may never fully understand. I do know this we cannot share this intimacy, this bond with more than one person at a time. I do believe there are differences between a man and a women in how each experiences this union. For us men the act of entering into a women with our flesh while having her flesh wrap is like diving into pool of perfectly tempered crystal clear spring water. We immerse soul into hers. This is very different from the woman’s point of view. For her it is an invitation to the man to come in, to open her heart and soul like a door that is being unlocked and as we enter the room where she says none verbally “come deep into me” and she provides you that look that you just found something out so deeply about her that words cannot describe it. In this time we are completely together even though how we got here was different for each but now as we are heart and souls one flesh one body bound together are inclination to finish kicks in. We want to finish it, have an orgasm. Now little time is left, for the finish of an orgasm is minutes away ending our union. I suppose God made it this way because most of us would if given a choice would stay in that feeling, that union forever and we would not get any sleep or anything else done that day.
As we progress towards the finish of the union we worship each other through each movement and each sensation. This in and out movement representing song we are singing to each other. As the orgasm approaches something more profound takes place this heightened sensitivity brings us that feeling of “I would do anything for you and this love and nothing in this world matters”. Our concentration is so focused and so intense nothing can stop it. We now are at the climatic end. We call it a climax for a reason for what is about to be unleashed in the orgasm is life creating and soul bearing. I can only speak towards the male orgasm for that is my only internal experience in which I can reflect upon. As we start to ejaculate the impulse and reaction is to thrust as deep into her as I can. Trying to pull out at this point is so counter intuitive to do so ends something so abruptly it takes discipline most of us don’t have and it why we should teach our young people that this is not a good form of birth control. This sense of driving deep into her can only mean I am putting something so special so profound and meaningful, I want it to go to the depths of her heart where she will remember my soul and keep it locked away telling no one else this secret, this intimate detail of my being. In the midst of this explosion of love something else is going on. A release of life that when combined with her life with the help of God will form another child of God. This love explosion then puts God’s creation capabilities into action. It is much like a prayer but instead of verbal or through a thought this prayer is a physical one. It says to God here you go we want to create a human being in the image of you Lord and hey can you make this child of yours look like Mom and Dad?
So it is finished we lay there together in a heap of sweat and bodily fluid looking at each other with such satisfaction and love for we cannot fathom a better place to be in those moments. We know then that something of that union stays with us forever only to be broken when we choose to break this bond by loving another in that same way. To reduce this amazing act of worship to just something pleasurable would be a travesty and false as to the power of this immeasurable gift from God. This is what true worshiping of God should look like! Thank you Lord for this gift, this glimpse of Heaven and what true union feels like. Continued Sex Part II: A Divine Rejoining
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The the following is a compilation of passages of The New Testament using the verses 10:10. This number sequence I have used for years going back to the sports number 10 I used on many jerseys. I hope this speaks to my story and my life to come taken through God's Divine word.
Do not take along any gold or silver no bag for the journey. Who divorces his wife and marries another woman. The kingdom of God is near. May have life, and have it to the full. He saw heaven opened. It is with your heart that you believe. Who trusts in him will never be put to shame. And do not grumble warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. We will be in our actions when we are present. We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, take away sins. You must prophesy again about many peoples.
Do not take along any gold or silver no bag for the journey. Who divorces his wife and marries another woman. The kingdom of God is near. May have life, and have it to the full. He saw heaven opened. It is with your heart that you believe. Who trusts in him will never be put to shame. And do not grumble warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. We will be in our actions when we are present. We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, take away sins. You must prophesy again about many peoples.
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