Interests:God, Family, Friends, Music, Africa, Israel, The Bible, My parents' opinions, Relationships, Hair, Knitting, Being at camp/camping in general, Cards, Orphans, Love, Tattoos, Wax people, Hockey, Guiness World Records, Being tickled/massaged, Jokes, Woods, Walks, Hippies, Weird things little kids do, Old people, Weird things old people do, Giving, Runs, Museums, Chicago, Laughing, Chocolate labs, Mountains, Granola, Dimples, Barnes, White water rafting, Reading, Kitchen table talks, Trucks, Road trips, NYC, Popular Mechanics, Humility, Pictures, Guacamole, The weather. Life. Occupation:Student
I found some notes I took on one of my favorite studies of all time “Communion With God” by Mark and Patti Virkler that I need to share and get out on digital memory so I will have it forever!FOREVERRRRRRR. Sounds permanent.Kind of is I guess.Better read that book “Delete” discussed on NPR last month.I digress.
When I did this study about 3 summers ago it changed me in a lot of different ways towards my relationship with God and actually helped shape my faith into more of a relationship rather than rules.I hope you can find something in this that you can take and use.
“I will stand at my Guardpost and I will keep watch and see what He will speak to me.Then the Lord said ‘record the vision’…”—Habakkuk 2: 1-2
Prayer is a spiritual experience, God does speak to us.We need to learn how to have spiritual experiences that come from God’s spirit to our spirit, to our mind.
Learn to experience God through spiritual experiences, not just dry mental monologue of our brain.
Our prayer life is a love affair with the King of Kings, not just listing stuff off
Learn the principles the Bible offers in prayer.
Allow the spirit to mold your prayer life—rather than legalistic bondage.
Letting the spirit man reign over the flesh
Ezk 22:30-31 *God voluntarily limits himself to mans’ requesting.
John 5:39, 40 “You search and investigate and pore over the Scriptures diligently, because you suppose and trust that you have eternal life through them.And these very Scriptures testify about Me!And still you are not willing to come to Me, so that you might have life.”
Intellectualism profits our Spirit man zero, we must have loving trust in Jesus understanding he is alive and yearning to be in our lives.
Finney’s 3 classes of people:
Understanders of the confessions of faith-neglect the Bible, rest in the belief of the articles of faith
Others-cautious-search the Scriptures to see what they say of Christ but stop short and rest in the formation of correct theological opinions
Lovers of the scriptures- because they tell them who Jesus is and what they must trust him for.
Chapter 1:“Spiritual Encounter”
-Guidance from the spirit who offers peace to our hearts
-the spirit is our strength, overcoming in areas where we fail
-“I cannot fully experience God’s love until he touches my heart w/His love—when he fills me, I experience love”
-rationalism can take over, and we can miss the fullness of relationship with God.
-49% of the New Testament contains references to spiritual experiences; do you want to cut that out?
-“rational Christianity does not meet the needs of the heart”
-“direct inner experiences w/the Lord bring healing to the spirit, soul and body”
Out of the mind flows LOGOS-written recorded word, out of the spirit flows RHEMA what God is speaking to me at that moment.Be grounded by logos but not only logos, both logos and rhema.
Revelation itself is not irrational—it is superrational—it’s not foolish, it has taken into account the reality of the spiritual world—which is irrational per rationalism
Ch 2: Rhema
Logos:the whole Bible
Rhema:the word of God spoken by his mouth for the immediate time and situation (Isa. 55:11)
The alternative to God’s spoken voice is God’s Laws.Hebrews 12: 18-29, God is a consuming fire
We don’t want our relationship to be reduced to a religion which is what happens when we don’t communion w/the Holy Spirit—Christianity becomes a burden.
“Rhema, or the voice of God, is spirit-to-spirit communication where the Holy Spirit in union w/your spirit; speaks directly to it.Rhema is sensed as a spontaneous thought, idea, word, feeling or vision—thoughts from my mind are analytical, thoughts from my heart are spontaneous.”
PAGA-“the chance of encounter” Gen 28:11, especially when you have a desire to pray for someone, “a chance idea” “An idea from God, lighting upon our hearts and being registered in our mind as a spontaneous idea”
God’s interjected thoughts into your heart will be characterized by:
They will be from your heart spontaneously, not cognitive
Can come easily as God speaking in 1st person.
Often light and gentle and can easily be cutoff by any exertion of self (own thoughts, will, etc)
Unusual contentàthey will be better and often times different than your thoughts.
Will cause a special reaction w/in your being i.e. excitement, awe, peace
When embraced, carry a fullness of strength to carry out and joy.
It will get easier to hear as time goes on
Test the spirits to determine spontaneous thoughts form God or Satan
Fix your eyes upon Jesus, remove idols from your heart so your visions are not contaminated.
Balaam’s Story:Numbers 22: 1-35
When we pray w/an idol in our heart we may get an affirmative answer from the Lord, but will bring us to destructions, therefore when we pray, we must be certain that our vision is purified and that we see Jesus as one who is much larger than the thing or issue for which we are praying…then our answer will be pure and life-giving.
Ch 3:Becoming still
Remove all distractions
Quiet your inner being, take a few minutes to become still, then proceed w/prayer
Stage 5:Union—“I become a reflection of that person”
I was regretting the past
and fearing the future
Suddenly my Lord was speaking
“My name is I Am” He paused
I waited, He continued
“when you live in the past,
With its mistakes and regrets
It is hard.I am not there.
My name is not I Was.
When you live in the future,
With its problems and fears,
It is hard.I am not there.
My name is not I Will Be.
When you live in this moment,
It is not hard.I am here.
My name is I Am.”
--by Helen Mallicoat
Ch 4:Dream and Vision
A.The place and value of the dream, vision and image
a.We must present this to God to be used by Him
b.We have to be mature enough to use our head and our heart
B.Developing ones capacity to see in the spirit
a.We must value this
b.We are looking for a flow of inner vision, prompted and directed by the Holy Spirit—His vision, not our own
c.Jesus SAW the father doing(Jn 5: 19, 20)
d.We must enter this world with faith—or we’ll go nowhere with it
e.Images bring us closer to actual experiences…”incubate” your visions from God
f.When we can’t get the theology, walk in Jesus, walk in God
g.Rationalism has made this type of relationship with God strange or odd to many
C.Seeing in the Spirit, not worshiping an image
a.Jesus=the invisible God in visible action
b.Fix your eyes on Jesus (Heb 12:2)
c.“Lucam vero”=true light
Ch 5:Journaling:a means of discerning God’s voice
-150 psalms written in journaled fashion—prayers and what one senses to be God’s answers
-if we can learn to clearly discern God’s voice speaking to us, we will be much more confident in our walk in the spirit
-Journaling is a way of sorting out God’s thoughts
-write in faith knowing they are form the Lord (not subject to rational and sensory doubt) and test them later
-the flow of God is arrested by DOUBT—journal to allow the flow of RHEMA in your life
-Journaling keeps your mind occupied (and out of the way)
Hold tightly onto Christ alone, loosely to dreams, visions, words, journaling…
-Journaling should come from the vantage point of “the cross of self-sacrificing love”
Ch 6:Habakkuk 2: 1-3 combining stillness, vision, rhema, and journaling
Three elements:becoming still, using vision, journaling
“come apart unto the Lord”
Ch 7:Moving from soul to spirit
Soul=mind, will, emotions
Spirit=deep, consuming, underlying attitudes, motivation, character
The Christian life should flow from the spirit
We need to grow strong in spirit, our spirits were made to be filled with God.We restore our spirits by filling them w/the Lord—digesting his words, drinking from His Spirit, breathing His Rhema.
Ch 8:Tuning your heart to hear God speak
Keep heart pure of anger, bitterness, negativism, and discouragement
Ch 9:YADAtimes:sharing love together
To know God eternally means to grow closer than a friend w/Him, Phil 3:10, 11
A lover’s relationship is characterized by relationship, not rules—sharing hearts whenever they can.Joy and spontaneity.
Seek Him as our greatest treasure and greatest priority
There are no shortcuts to living in His presence every moment.
Ch 10:Principles of the Spirit
Ch 11:Praying in the spirit pattern
1.Relaxation
2.Contact God in your Spirit (be still and know)
3.Unite with his life (love Him)
4.Believe in faith (thank Him)
Reeducate your subconscious w/the word of God
Acknowledge errors, repent, move on.
Part II:The rational aspect of Prayer
Ch 12:testing spiritual experiences against the Bible
Things that can affect your spirit:Life, Body, Satan, Man
Your mind testsby:look for evidence of influence form others, what is the essence of rhema?, are you centered?MUST know the BIBLE
Ch 13:principles of prayer
1.Forgive ALL!EVERYTHING!So you’re not blocked.
2.Walk in holiness
3.Prayer must flow w/Rhema
4.Pray w/your whole heart
5.Pray in Jesus’ name
6.Speak to the mountain
7.See it done.Vision.
8.You are not done til you have praised and have peace
I heard the buzz about the latest Bachelor and confess I actually spent time viewing some of the videos on the ABC website of the different girls who were sent home, reading bios, etc. I guess people are in an uproar because The Bachelor proposed to Melissa in one of the last episodes, and then later said he wanted to be with another girl who he had sent home. In turn, he was called many things by many people. I’m not surprised by this move on his part, nor do I even really find it that interesting. People have been dumping people in similar situations, in similar ways for a long time I’m sure. The magnification of people’s problems that “reality” TV brings is intense. People’s passionate reactions to what this guy has done are interesting—like The Bachelor dumped them personally. People are writing essays on ABC’s board on why he is a bad person, how he is of bad character, how sad they are for Melissa, how difficult it must be to be her... Check it out.
For a society living closer and closer to complete independence from others, that professes not really needing anyone else ever; we are concerned with every aspect of our TV people and cannot get enough of their lives. I am more interested in my friends’ profiles on facebook than I am in actually sitting down with a lot of them for a visit. I do not know my neighbor of 8 months first name who made me a carrot cake last weekend (I did thank her …”Thank youuuuuuu!!! So nice of youuuu” ::oh god what’s her nameeeee:: ). I honestly cannot tell you the last time I hugged my grandmother!! How does this happen? Busy-ness? Pseudo-Busy-ness?
I don’t know dudes. Right now it's 1:42 a.m. as I type this, seven legit homeless people are sleeping in this shelter I’m at. I wonder what would happen if their stories—good, bad, indifferent—were on TV. Maybe people would be moved to act on their behalf in some way. Maybe people would stick up for them and write essays on how they “deserve the best life and love have to offer.” Perhaps those essay writers empathizing with the dumped one, would empathize with the pregnant 22 year-old who works late almost every night and wakes up awfully early every morning. One lone ranger here awkwardly reached for my wrist the other night “to check the time” but part of me believes he just wanted to touch another person. He has been living in shelters across the US and has not been near anyone who loves him going on 15 years now.
I guess we can get burned when we “reach out and touch somebody’s hand” (love you dear, dear Diana Ross). I can name instances where I have shown depth and vulnerability to people that I have found out later were completely undeserved by their actions. People in leadership positions, people who were close friends, guys I thought I loved. Key here: found out LATER. That’s why life can be risky. We can’t insure everything, even though the idea we can resounds. So get over it. It's a lie.
Don't live in a space suit floating around space by yourself like the Donald Miller cartoon. Don’t be afraid to love on somebody. A real BODY. Not a TV character or MySpace user. A human! A real living, breathing human! I’m going to hug my grandma!
Hello dears.I miss
you.I hope you’re doing well wherever
you are, whatever you’re doing.I always
would love to write to you and read your writing, but am unable to on a regular
basis for one reason or another.Today,
being that I am literally stuck in my house due to April’s behavior; I have
some time on my hands.
Life has been going well.Lately I’ve been struck randomly with moments of intense grace, and I
haven’t been moving…which is weird for me.Usually I am moving in some direction, looking for some affirmation,
some sign and Grace meets me with fire and light overwhelming me with emotion…this
time I was standing still, and Grace walked right up and looked me in the face.I had not been actively searching for
anything really.Just breathing pretty
much…So about 2 weeks ago, I was
watching House and calmness came over me that I’m where I’m supposed to be
doing what I’m supposed to be doing becoming who I’m supposed to become.I gave up the last twigs of knowing what’s
best for me that I was clutching and surrendered to the idea that my life is to
be spent helping sick, vulnerable people.That’s all.I want to learn this
body.I want to know the answers.I want people to trust me.I want to hold hands with the dying and help
heal the busted.A deep peace flooded my
heart, and I’ve been breathing deep since…reading my text books….
I don’t know the details.Maybe I won’t have a family of my own or an HGTV house.Maybe I won’t spend as much time with my
friends.Maybe I will never play the
bagpipes on Austin City Limits.I’m not
worried.The only thing I’m worried
about is my heart hardening towards God—to the point of not knowing why I’m
standing where I’m standing or with who I’m standing.I’m afraid to find myself asking “what’s the
point?” and having no clue, having no hope.
Television is not my friend* but today on this glorious snow
day I walked into the living room to see that Family Feud was on with superstar
impersonators as the contestants.There
was Bono and Angelina Jolie and Whoopi Goldberg…I decided today that the creepiest
thing on earth is when people dedicate their lives towards being someone else…that
my skin crawls to think that these people get a rush out of being mistaken for
someone else.I know, they get paid
probably for what they do and MAYBE some of them just naturally look like
stars, but the ones that get surgeries to look like the star, spend their lives
acting like the star, study to know everything possible about the star…And wait a minute; I should take the word
star out of this.They are people pretending
to be other people.Some I’m guessing
have lost who they really are in the process.
I too am an impersonator, in a more covert way.Sooo I guess you could say I’m a creep as
well.A creepstAr, get it??**Hahaaaa.
I just am not Danae
as often as I’d like to be lately.I’m quick
to speak and right and practical and rational lately almost all the time.The Danae I’d like to know is a lover and
dreamer and patient and helpful and heartfelt.I don’t know exactly how this happens…but something tells me it has to
do with the rush I get from logic and managing my time and hustle and bustle
and comfort with my surroundings and my eventual no-load mutual fund and
401K.“Making BANK” if you will***.I just need help and I need the Grace of God.All the time.
It’s way easier for me to live out of my soul—my mind, will,
emotions…than it is to live out of my spirit—my character, the deep me, who I
am when I’m alone.This hollowness
crowds in on me often and I tell myself it’s stress or someone else’s fault and
I try to fix it or move on.More often
than not I eat with the world, I drink with the world, and I breathe the breath
of the world…as Sam Beam sings “And there is smoke in my clothes/Too much time
with just smoke in my nose”…Instead I should be digesting God’s word, drinking
of His Spirit, breathing His Rhema.I’m
losing myself in this day by day business.I want to come apart in front of God morning by morning.I want the real Danae.
NOTES:
*although I do watch the office and LOST religiously
**I am becoming my dad a little more everyday
***I think that’s such a clever statement, congrats to whoever
first coined it.HAHAHAAAAAA. (again see **)
What’s going awwnnnn.Breaks been good.I’ve been sick
for awhile, ate a lot of cookies, one of my best friends wedded…I’m pretending that it’s neat that school’s
starting tomorrow...
I’ll just jump into this.
Right off the bat, I’m doing this to have for later rather
than to be pretentious, as I often feel typing to the internet.So I can come back and say “ohhh I remember
what that book was about”.I don’t want
to push anyone into a corner.
I finished reading The Language of God by Dr. Francis
Collins and thought it was pretty decent.It wasn’t a page turner in my opinion, but probably would be to people excited
about the subject.I mostly was just
seeing what he had to say because of his expertise.Basically the man has worked on the human
genome project for a zillion years and is a former agnostic turned atheist
turned Christian and writes to defend evolution and faith in God from a humble,
yet convincing standpoint.Ultimately Collins
presents the idea for a BioLogos perspective, avoiding Darwinian Evolution,
Intelligent Design, or Creationist labels—mostly because of their flaws and also
peoples misinformation (evolution=scary?) , uncomfortable feelings on the
subject (aka science VS. God, oh no), and ignorance (I suppose) that comes with
each of these labels.
I’d suggest reading the book if you are interested in
detailed information on each stance, but I’ll just quickly explain the BioLogos
thing.BioLogos is science and faith in
harmony. It is a theistic evolutionary stance, saying 6 main things:1.“the universe started 14 billion years ago, 2.the properties of the universe appear to have
been tuned precisely for life, 3.while
the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life
arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development
of biological diversity and complexity over long periods of time, 4.once evolution go under way, no special
supernatural intervention was required, 5.humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the
great apes, 6.but humans are also
unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual
nature.This includes the existence of the
Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes
all human cultures throughout history.” (Collins, 200).
It’s not too difficult for me to believe God and
science—mostly because I believe that God is in no way threatened by advances
in science.He is God.In fact, I believe he is glorified by them.
So if science says that the earth is billions of years old, I say ok
science.And if science says our DNA is
very close to a chimpanzee’s, I say ok science.And if science says evolution is a theory (theory does not mean e.g. “my
theory is she was killed in the library with the candlestick”), I say ok
science. At the same time, if God says,
I formed you in my image, I say ok God.You
are loved, ok God.I have a plan, ok
God.
The bottom line is, whether the big-bang happened or not,
science doesn’t have the tools to answer what initiated it.No surprise there.That’s where faith comes, in something or
nothing.(kind of a big reason I don’t
buy the whole agnostic thing, that’s just putting big questions off til they’re
convenient to answer I’d say…but hey, shoot, it’s a free country.)
I kind of laugh to myself when I hear people say faith in
God is intellectual suicide. I find those that say that quite endearing
actually because usually to your face they are quite sweet.Although they don’t really engage in any
meaningful conversation with you, they do smile and awkwardly laugh a lot in
your presence which is sweet in my opinion.I guess they’re trying to protect us?I just don’t think that God as writer of truth is threatened by truth, know
what I mean?Whether it’s our DNA being
mapped out or dating dinosaur fossils…
Again, science does not answer the basic question of----
why?
The disagreement comes in with Genesis’ story of Creation
and science not jiving.Mostly it’s
because people take the Bible as being a lesson book in science, when I don’t
really believe it’s intended to be.Believing that all of creation was literally formed in 7 days is hard to
say, considering first off our measurement of a day being the sun wasn’t created
until day three….and the Bible says as well “a day is like a thousand years” to
God and other things that point us more towards allegorical rather than literal
meanings in some sections.Even the
wonderful Saint Augustine
warmed against taking everything in the bible as being literal data...
For me, it’s not worth the fight or the animosity to bring
this up around people, especially Christians.I know some will say “well Danae, I believe the BIBLE!” Well, I do too.And I also believe in being a God-pleaser,
not a person-pleaser so I guess I don’t care if people don’t believe the Bible
anyway…sheesh.The other night I was
flipping through the radio in my car and came across this song by Geoff Moore
and the Distance, which goes:
Darwin
first did the imminent service of arousing attention to the
probability of all change in organic, as well as in the inorganic world,
being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition.
For all life is a continuum. All living things despite their awesome diversity
are related to each other. And evolution is the term we give to that
process, by which the structure of plants and animals changes with the
passage of time thus accounting for the continnuum.
I was staring through the blackboard trying to keep from sleeping,
doing my very best to hear the subject they were teaching.
When to my surprise, I couldn't my believe my ears,
this is what you looked like back a million years.
Your uncle was a monkey, he was swinging through the trees,
he lived on green bannanas, and his arms swung to his knees.
He spoke with such conviction, it really made me think,
Maybe my teacher, He's the missing link!
He said...
I believe in evolution,
ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies.
It's the only possible solution,
Big Bang fiction, that we factualize.
Therefore Crow Magnum Man!
It takes a lot of faith to say we're accidents of nature,
but I believe we are the work of a loving Creator.
Now you can wait a million years and hope that nature does it's part,
but it only takes a moment, for God to change a heart.
That's why...
I believe in evolution,
changing of the heart, renewing of the mind.
It's the only true solution,
God is always working, changing lives (changing lives),
It's evolution redefined.
Kind of funny, but shows the “at odds” some want to have
forever with science.
For me, I love and trust God the Alpha and Omega.And I believe Jesus is the Christ.
