“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
2 Timothy 2:15
I don’t necessarily have a topic that immediately comes to mind right now — life is moving fast; at lightspeed.
“Sometimes moving a thousand miles an hour feels the same as stillness,” my main buddy and brother, Garrett once said, and I lived the last two years experiencing — for the most part — this exact imperceivable trajectory that feels similar to perpetual stagnancy; it creates a seething in a man. It’s accompanied by a load of hidden spiritual pressure, with which we have absolutely nothing to do with, but hold it up to the only One who can deal with it; and it always seems like foreeeever!
Like my second oldest daughter — Ella — once said;
“Time is a long time…”
I imagine it like floating through space through complete darkness at ‘who-knows’ what speed. When there is nothing nearby — the nearest object within sight being thousands of miles away — the perception of movement, basically, disappears. The speed of an object is directly related to another object. When we measure speed on earth, we are beginning our base measurement at the speed we are already moving — the speed of earth. But leave earth — and everything else in physical existence — behind; what’s left is stillness; no matter how fast you’re moving.
I believe it’s this stillness, though, that fallen mankind runs from; and I believe it’s this stillness we need; it’s what God wants for us.
So, in every Christian’s journey — even Jesus’ — there are seasons where the growth and progress is just really hard to see. But I encourage you, this quiet time is wildly necessary for growth. It’s the time we need spent under the soil; in the dark; absorbing nutrients, hope, and enduring spiritual strength training that will produce endurance and increase our faith.
But while this — subtle, yet massive — growth is necessary and extremely productive, it tends to feel like nothing is happening, at all; like we’re alone, in the dark.
But, I left post #52 off — at 5 o’clock in the morning — with a few loose ends that beckon for some sort of closure.
In the only post — up til now — that I’ve recorded before typing it out, I began a stream of thought about the watering down of words in our understanding; specifically, the Bible’s words.
And, I spoke of the word ‘love’ and how it’s quite difficult to immediately identify what someone would mean when they said it because of its many, many, possible interpretations that we’ve incorporated into our vocabulary. And this is true about lots of words we hear, like trust or obedience; what does it mean to be ‘holy’? And we all know the confusion surrounding the definition of ‘sin‘ and what it means to be “evil.”
Then there are words in which we all have stubbornly dug our heels in as to what their meanings are, and most of us won’t budge when it comes to thinking differently about them.
Take words like ‘path’ and ‘walk,’ even the word ‘go’ in Proverbs chapter 5; and many other chapters in the book; as well as lots of other books in the Bible. We are probably all going to remain clutching onto the idea — a little longer than we should — that the words here are literal and only have a physical meaning. This may lead one to believe that if we do not engage with our temptation in a physical way, then we are all clear of any wrong doing.
This is gigantically not true.
In fact; the physical part is what happens after the sin is birthed. If we sin outwardly, we’ve probably already been dealing with sin quietly in our hearts for a while. James 1 tells us that it’s lustful desire that is the beginning of our temptation to sin.
Verse 5; “…when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin;”
And 1 John 3:15 tells us that; anyone who just hates a brother or sister is a murderer.
We also are aware of the famous John 3:16, where in which, God tells us that belief — at the heart level — is equally as important as what our mouths do, out here in the “real world.”
Therefore, when Proverbs states lines about the temptation to lust for a woman like; “…her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave,” we cannot immediately assume we are safe if we just stay home.
I believe the words in Proverbs — describing how to navigate our life choices — are referring almost entirely to our thought processes; our nuero-paths. This is the work I’ve been studying.
It’s really difficult though! Because there are phrases in the Bible that sound extremely rotten if thought about wrongly but, here’s the case; we can’t just assume we’ve all gotten everything right up until now!
I’m discovering that the Word of God has been stifled in our culture these days because, we’ve all decided it couldn’t possibly mean ‘that!’
This is, partially, what got me kicked out the first time, a little ways back. I started ripping the Word apart; flipping over sentences; combining, rotating and dissecting each passage, and sometimes, I was completely wrong about the meaning, yet still passionately shouting possible solutions.
Here are two pin-point examples I’ve experienced;
A fellow brother of mine — staying in the home at the Men’s Ministry with me, that summer I spent the year away from my family — once corrected me when I quoted a verse to him on the subject of humility.
I mentioned how I did not want to go speak to the leader of the ministry about a question that may not have been entirely important, and I used Proverbs 25:6 to make my point;
“Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and do not claim a place among his great men…” it says
My friend, Burbey, didn’t see the connection to the situation, as he quickly pointed out that “Ken’s not a king;” and the wisdom of the verse was lost on him.
One day, when talking with my sister — upon my return to St. Louis, we were discussing the need for a counselor — and/or any sort of mentorship or guidance — during my plight to be restored with my family, and how I believed the Bible instructed me to go about things.
There are two obvious verses in the Proverbs about getting advice but, I could only think of one; Proverbs 24:6;
“Surely you need guidance to wage war, and victory is won through many advisers.”
The other one — the one I couldn’t remember — is in Proverbs 15;
“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.”
My sister’s response cornered me in with simple logic; “You’re not in a war,” she shot back.
Man, I wish I would have said the other one.
The verse I quoted earlier — in 2 Timothy — tells us to do our best to “rightly divide” the word of God; or to use a phrase penned by C. S. Lewis in chapter 14 of his book called, ‘Miracles’; “to multiply distinctions and rule out false analogies.”
We have to look closer at God’s Word. And I believe we must shake off some of the rigidity and “socially-correctness” when we attempt to understand it. Mentally, as a society, we’ve drawn some lines in the sand that we ‘ought not to cross.’ But it’s this “common understanding” that is hanging a lot of people up.
They say; “that’s not God,” or “that’s not what that means,” like they’ve got it on lock but, the Bible is living and breathing. We need to keep changing perspectives in order to see more of the truth, so speed isn’t a bad thing, but it’s easy to get caught up in a current of progress that God has not asked of us. A lot of times we are distracted and end up getting quite off the mark.
“Desire without knowledge is not good— how much more will hasty feet miss the way;” the second verse of Proverbs 19 says.
So, I’m currently jumping from astroid to astroid as I soar through a huge amount of abundance, doing my best to stay plumb. I wobble some days — the vacuum gave me an incredible black eye; that was hard to handle.
On the other hand; next week, my Bride and our daughter, Ella, are heading to Switzerland for a two week visit and;
The restraining order expired just one year ago.
– God Exists –
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