Half the country is upset, and half the country is feeling glad.
Here’s a very, very radical idea: love everyone.
Love your favorite politician. Love the opposition. Love followers of each of them – all of them. I didn’t say you should or have to agree with them!
So calm down and try it again if needed: love everyone! You don’t have to agree with anyone you don’t want to. You don’t have to like or love their positions. You just have to love God with all your heart, soul and strength; and others as yourself – and please love yourself with the God kind of love.
Agape everyone. Your politician. (Yes, I know you’re not as attached when you do this; it’s all right.) The opposition. Yes, you really can do it; or it would not be the most important commandments. Love everyone. God, your politician and followers, the opposition and their followers. Agape them all. God first, everyone else second. Everyone.
Yes, that’s right, everyone!
And you don’t have to agree with anyone that you don’t want to.
Agape. You can do it. And when you have difficulty, ask for help.
Ask for more of Holy Spirit; receive with faith – already given! Follow Holy Spirit. Express love out of your New Person, to everyone. The generous, God kind of love.
Now go ahead and disagree all you want. Just keep agape – for everyone! What a radical idea. Doing as Jesus says. Radical.
I’ve noticed several things that help me live out of my New Self, my New Person. So I make a list to help me remember and do this, especially when I am under pressure. (So read slowly & meditate, or even better, have a conversation with Jesus about these matters.)
Why is this important?
My Old Person has:
been marked by sin,
has wounds & is reactive (has trauma & PTSD) because of them,
is carnal and fleshly, selfish and mean. Feels smaller than I am.
does not please God.
Does not hear God except for audible voice, which is rare and something I personally have not yet heard.
Carries the curses of a broken world, including sin, sickness and disease. Feels bad.
Cannot minister effectively.
.
My New Person has:
always been free of sin – and has no marks of sin.
Has no wounds and so is not reactive to wounds (has no trauma or PTSD). Feels bigger than I am.
Most frequently implicit or ignored, it can also be explicit – and when there are difficulties – just about any difficulties, an explicit Learning Contract can be an immense help.
What situations call for a good Learning Contract? Ministry, including healing and exorcism. Discipleship, including teaching and learning. Counseling. Therapy.
One of the most common problems when learning and growth are not taking place as wanted is the lack of a good Learning Contract.
So…what is a Learning Contract? First, it’s a context. Context provides an element that is likely to control or limit and what will happen. When a situation is chronic and problematical, the context is nearly always a problem. Look for the context when things are not working well.
What sort of context is a Learning Contract? It’s an agreement to learn and an agreement to teach.
Counseling, teaching or other ministry without an agreement to learn and an agreement to teach – too often goes poorly. When ministry is not going well – make a Learning Contract.
Too often a people try to minister, counsel or teach without an such an agreement.
A contract says what people involved will do, and often what will happen if they do not do as agreed. It provides a context for learning and ministry of all kinds. It is an agreed upon context – without which it is difficult to make things to happen.
Jesus spoke to a fig tree, it obeyed. Jesus spoke to the wind and waves, and the storm quieted. Jesus taught us to heal, and demonstrated speaking to the need – we should do the same.
I have heard of people speaking to tornados, which changed course.
I have called for electricity to be restored, and when I am totally determined and single minded – easier to say than to do, I have experienced several times the electricity coming on within a second and a half. So many times this has happened, it cannot be a coincidence.
When you speak to your dog, your dog knows if you really mean it. When you really mean it, your dog is much more likely to obey. This is authority. You can feel it when you speak with such authority.
So speak to situations, to your mountain. As Jesus has been teaching you to do. And delight in results! Give thanks and rejoice!
Jesus, the Word, teaches and empowers you. Use what you have been given. Learn. Explore. Be willing for failure to take place – you can learn a lot this way!
Is easy to find when we do the what is right; and is too easy to lose when we wander astray.
Want to experience more contentment and joy? Explore these ways to attain. Learn. Add your own ideas – or, best is to do as Holy Spirit guides you to do. Key is: doing what God says to do, such as:
Love Jesus with all your heart, strength and mind. Right now!
Receive the love of Jesus, which is beyond what you yet understand.
Let God’s love spill over to other people – through you.
Give thanks. Praise God. Worship our Lord.
Follow your calling, use your gifts.
I’m serious. Really do each one of these, one at a time. Experience deeply. Explore. Learn for yourself.
Rejoice! This is so important I’ll say it again: rejoice!
We all want to hear God well, and nearly all of us want to hear God better.
There are horse whisperers, people who pay exquisite attention to horses and learn; there are dog whisperers, people who pay wonderfully attentive attention to dogs.
What you may not know is that there are people who help you hear God better. Not prophets who hear God for us, sometimes. (Although since Jesus came, we are to hear God for ourselves, and what a prophet says should resonate because of Holy Spirit confirming to us what a prophet says.)
These are people who are what I sometimes call, “God Listener’s”, and their job is to help you hear God better for yourself. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?
There is a long tradition of such ministry, going back to at least the “Desert Fathers”, usually solitary monks who lived in the desert. From them a succession of ministers have helped people hear God for themselves.
Today we often call these people, “Spiritual Directors” or “Spiritual Friends”. You can look up these terms, they are well known. There is a long tradition of such people who help others to hear God better. This is a precious ministry.
They don’t listen for you; they help you hear God better for yourself. A ministry worth having, if not having always, at least sometimes.
We have all had periods of time that are rough. I remember one particular time when that was happening to me. My computers were not working right. My dogs were misbehaving. Around the house things were not working well or would break. I prayed about it, for these things and against these things. I finally decided I must be having a problem with demons. So I told them to leave. Usually not a problem for me – but the problems persisted.
So I called on a God Listener who I knew was very good with unclean spirits and asked for help. She managed to convey to me rather quickly that the problems were not demonic in origin. The problems were being caused by my own attitude. She told me that my wrong attitude and my own energy was causing the problems with my computers, dogs, and household appliances.
This was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted her to fix the problem for me. (Sound familiar?) But, I knew she was right. Holy Spirit confirmed what she was saying.
So I changed my attitude and my energy. The problems quickly went away and disappeared. I was blessed to have the help of a good God Listener, because I needed help to hear God well. And to solve problems that I mistakenly thought were being caused by demonic spirits when it was my own attitude and energy that was causing difficulties.
When you have big problems, opportunities you are not sure what to do with, when you need good guidance – a God Listener can be a huge help – so you can more reliably and accurately hear God for yourself – especially when doing so matters even more than usual.
You can easily learn more about God Listeners, Spiritual Friends or Spiritual Directors. There is more information than you might at first suspect.
In the culture of the Old Testament, normally people were considered clean, unless they came into contact with the unclean, such as by touching a dead body.
(Various bible translations use “Holy” and “Clean” for the same word; and “Unholy” and “Unclean” for another word. For me, “Holy” is more powerful; and “Clean” is more clear. Which words do you prefer?)
There is an important key principle here:the Unclean is more contagious than the Clean.
There is an important and parallel principle: When the Unclean came into contact with the Holy of Holies, the Unclean became Clean.
This is a ceremonial lesson about Jesus: who is the Holy of Holies and who makes clean whatever he comes into contact with.
So there is another important key principle here:the Holy of Holies is more contagious than the Unclean.
Which has important implications in healing and other ministry.
Jesus, his Anointing, and the Holy of Holies are a great context for ministry, such as preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God, healing the sick or freeing the bound.
The Holy of Holies is a model of Jesus, who makes everything clean, who makes us whole, and who heals who has set us free. Jesus has overcome the world!
Context shapes and even controls what happens; Jesus was a master with the powerful and loving use of context. No surprise, really. But we do have much to learn from him about what he did with context.
This is a very common and too often an unrecognized issue. So much so, that when you are having repeated difficulty with an issue, it’s a good idea to examine the context.Context seems to control or limit what is likely to happen in that context.
Jesus frequently told his disciples to preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God. And in that context, to heal the sick and free the bound. Preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God (that is near or at hand) is a context that makes healing and freeing the bound much more easy. When people agree to be ministered to or healed, or to accept other kinds of ministry, a Learning Contract has been established.
Jesus always created what amounts to being a special kind of context for healing or for other ministry: a Learning Contract. An agreement to learn or do something that everyone agrees to implicitly or explicitly. Which creates a powerful context for successful ministry.
When Jesus came into a place, he changed the context. The atmosphere changed: he carried the Anointing and great compassion. Everyone noticed him. Such a context makes healing people and freeing the bound much easier.
You can learn to do this because you carry Jesus in you, and you are in Jesus Christ.
So practice being more and more aware of context, and good timing – which is part of a good context. Minister with greater ease and effectiveness, and celebrate the Life Jesus brings more often and even more joyously.
Father and son observing Comet Pan-Starrs in Massachusetts
There is a straightforward way to transform terrible memories, which I just recently discovered and noticed through a Facebook friend, Henry Kanu, who lives in Sierra Leone.
This works so well for me because I already have experience with and belief in a particular promise of God: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good”, Romans 8:28a., ESV.
Henry Kanu and I were discussing and exploring this promise, when Holy Spirit prompted me to test this out and prove it to myself – even further.
So I thought of two memories that I considered terrible memories of things I had experienced. (My wife’s unexpected death and a painful childhood time.) Then I applied God’s promise to those two memories.
Remarkably, they no longer seemed like terrible memories; there were just precursors – things that happened first, before God tuned those experiences into good things – which I can now easily notice and appreciate. I am grateful for what has happened.
Applying God’s promise literally transformed the memories from being of things I felt were bad – into memories of how God made good out of those things. I literally remember and experience the blessings that God gave as a result of these experiences.
They no longer were terrible memories for me.
If you have enough experience &/or enough trust in this promise from Romans 8:28a, I believe this transformation can easily happen for you, too.
And if you need more experience with this promise, I recommend you do two things. First, meditate on God’s promise. Second, remember some specific things that are terrible memories, and notice how God turned these experiences into something good for you.
After doing this for a while, see how the promise may help you transform a memory of something that felt bad, and that you thought of as a terrible memory.
I believe you will notice as I have, a memory of something you thought of as being bad and that felt bad – can be transformed by applying God’s promise of Romanss 8:28a.
Oh – and it’s an excellent idea to give thanks for the improvement and transformation to Jesus. And to praise him for this. Which will have the side effect of nailing down the transformative experience of a bad memory into being the start of something good that God has done for you.
Thank you, Henry Kanu. And most of all, thank you, Jesus Christ!
Help is closer than you probably expect, is easy, and quite rapid. When you do these two easy things:
Ask for more of Holy Spirit.You will receive. Guaranteed. (See Luke 11:11-13.)
Then follow Holy Spirit; intend to follow Holy Spirit. Ask Holy Spirit to help you follow Holy Spirit even more.
Yes, it’s this easy, just:
-1. Ask for more of Holy Spirit, and
-2. Deeply intend to follow Holy Spirit or even ask Holy Spirit to help you follow. (See Gal. 5).
That simple. Easy. Check – now you are more single-minded. You are not so overwhelmed and maybe not overwhelmed at all.
I do this to get help when I am too sad at the loss of my wife. I ask for more of Holy Spirit. Then, automatically, with zero drama, grief is small and Holy Spirit is huge. What a wonderful and easy transformation!
I am operating out of my New Self, not my old self. The same for you. New Self with Fruit of the Spirit, including –
Galations 5:22 – …the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control.
