P4E.176 Now What? - Part 6

In Part 5 of Now What? I said that "I pay attention to other's spirits to see what I can discern in them and I pay attention to the physical circumstances that come into my life and how they make me feel and affect my spirit." and you may wonder what that looks like on a daily basis.

The physical circumstances that make me stop and take notice fall into two categories:

1. The same %^&*#! thing keeps happening over and over again.

2. Something that's never or rarely ever happened before.

These two types of circumstances get my attention because they cause my spirit to be affected and me to feel things that I know I need to take notice of. I'll be honest and tell you that this was not always the case. Gwen used to wonder at my lack of response to both of these types of circumstances. I was the type that would minimize when God would work a miracle in my life and take it for granted that the same old #@!*&* was going to happen again and again. I was that numb man that I described previously. I didn't even know that I had a spirit that was being affected. Before, I couldn't name any emotions other that angry, frustrated and impatient.

I'll give you a couple of recent examples of things that have never or rarely happened before. First, we have planted some ivys in our garden. In a matter of a week, one of them went from looking great to the leaves looking like lace. It was infested by a caterpillar-like bug that quickly ate the leaves and made the ivy look dead. Second, someone came into our home, while my son was still sleeping and my wife was out walking her dog, and went to the master bedroom closet and stole most of Gwen's jewelry. Both of these circumstances caused me to feel "robbed," "threatened," "concerned," "violated," "loss," on some level "inconvenienced," "worried," about my wife and son and then "relief" that no permanent damage had occurred, no lives threatened.

You might still be wondering why it's important to identify and express these feelings. Two reasons:

1. To identify with Christ. Two millennia ago, He walked the earth and lived among us. He was a spiritual leader and felt what we felt and experienced what we experience. If I can identify in Scripture times when He might have felt the way I'm feeling I can connect with Him and Him with me in an amazing way.

2. To empathize with others. Scripture tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. This means that I have to pay attention to my feelings so that I can empathize with others and understand their spirits. So when you tell me that you feel "robbed," I REALLY DO know what you mean and can "go there" with you. Then, hopefully, I can encourage you to a better place than "robbed."

Next time we talk more about paying attention to other people's spirits.

Peace, Kim

P4E.175 Now What? - Part 5

AS (Ante-Script): Please be reminded that the target audience of this blog is married men who consider themselves "Christians." Of course, women are most welcome as well as singles, but just know that my writing is specifically aimed at Christian husbands. With that in mind, read on!

I recently heard a pastor give his definition of a spiritually mature man as one who reads his Bible, prays, makes sure to take his family to church every Sunday, and is going to a mid-week men's study. This is the man he considers ready to advance from getting the milky fundamentals of The Faith to eat the solid food that a more spiritually mature man needs. I know from personal experience that you can do all of those things and much more without being more than a babe in Christ. See the first part of "Now What?" for the checklist.

Having been in a spiritually barren place myself, my wife would describe me using certain words and phrases that we have since heard other wives describe their husbands with:

Distant, disconnected, disengaged,

callous, numb, disinterested,

far-away, there but not there, uncommunicative,

vacant, unaware, ignorant,

out of it, missing, empty,

distracted, numb, oblivious.

When we are in a spiritually barren place, we men can also be inconsistent and can come out of our spiritual slumber long enough to be explosively angry, impatient and frustrated. This can make our wives and children feel mostly ignored and then really want to be invisible, or want us to just go away. I know this because I lived it.

I went to the dentist recently and had the right side of my face numbed. The dental assistant warned me that since I couldn't feel my lips I needed to be extra cautious because I could damage them without knowing it, because I couldn't feel them. Within a day the numbness wore off and I could feel again. If my spirit is numb I can cause it damage and I won't know if I'm causing damage to others, either.

So, on a day-to-day basis, the practice of my re-born spirit is to become more and more aware of and sensitive to my own spirit and the spirits of those close to me. That means I pay attention to other's spirits to see what I can discern in them and I pay attention to the physical circumstances that come into my life and how they make me feel and affect my spirit. If I make a study of spiritual things, I will become familiar with them, comfortable with them, knowledgeable about them and sensitive enough to become a "spiritual leader."

God help me.

Blessings, Kim

P4E.174 Now What? - Part 4

In Now What? - Part 3, I said that I have a problem with the current church/Christian culture because of its instruction to ignore feelings. The Fact Faith Feeling train illustration is the graphic equivalent. What I think the church culture is trying to convey with the Fact Faith Feeling train is that we mustn't allow our feelings to shape or shake our faith. The feelings brought about by our circumstances are trumped by the fact of God's sovereignty and His Word.

I really have a hard time with this train of thought (pun intended). It is counterproductive and dismissive of a whole area of our lives that is so important to our spiritual walk. This type of thinking is what hinders so many Christians from moving forward in their relationship with Christ, with others, and with themselves. Yes, I can robotically say to myself, "I will not pay any attention to my feelings" and will "choose to run to the cross" and "believe by faith in God's word" or I can try to examine why I'm feeling what I'm feeling and get to the root of my doubts and fears and CHANGE to become the person that God wants me to be.

If you lump all feelings together and dismiss them, then what do you do with positive feelings? You can't dismiss the negative ones and embrace the positive ones. Can't every one of the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5 be considered an emotion or feeling? God made us to feel and all of our feelings, positive and negative, give us an indication of where we're at in relation to God.

I recently heard a pastor tell his Believing congregation that their hearts were "wicked, deceitful and not to be trusted." If my Believing heart feels and shares love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control is it wicked, deceitful and not to be trusted?

We get in trouble when we just "pretend" we don't feel the way we do. The church culture would tell us that we have little control over feelings that circumstances bring about, as though we cannot exhibit self-control (a fruit of the Spirit) over our own feelings. Some say "what we feel is not who we are." This is dismissive of our feelings. The same people also say "our emotional life is not the same as our spiritual life." It's counterproductive to disconnect our feelings and emotions from our spiritual state. Our feelings/emotions are a good, reliable gauge as to where we are spiritually. We should not dismiss them. Ken Nair, author, lecturer and marriage counselor says that "emotions are the voice of the human spirit." Scripture says that "God is Spirit" and those who would worship Him must worship Him "in spirit and in truth."

On a day-to-day basis, then, we have to overcome our fear of feelings, to embrace them as an indication of where we are in relationship to God, others and ourselves. If we find ourselves in a bad place, our feelings will let us know that we need to move from there. If we have "fruit of the Spirit" feelings, then we know we're in a good place and can stay. Ken Nair says that if we become more aware of our own spirits, then we can ask ourselves if Jesus ever felt what we are feeling (and thereby connect with Him in a remarkable way). We can empathize with others when they tell us how they are feeling. We can ask if we've ever made another person feel what we're feeling. More to come...

Kim

P4E.173 Now What? - Part 3

Love, love, love...

In Part 1 of "Now What?" I laid down the premise of a man who considers himself "saved" and has the conventional checklist for Christianity dutifully checked off (I acknowledge that women are reading this blog (and are most welcome), but I repeat that my target audience is men, and especially Christian husbands). In Part 2, I reminded that, as Believers, we must exhibit evidence of salvation in our daily lives and asked the question "What does that evidence look like?" I said we could look to I Corinthians 13 and Matthew 22 for answers.

Once we have established our Belief, Christianity continues to be simple and complex. Simply put, our Belief can be reduced to relationships. A relationship with the Creator, relationships with others and a relationship with yourself (this last relationship is easily overlooked). According to Christ, these relationships are to be characterized by "love." This is complex, and my complaint against the Christian church culture is that it glosses over what "love" looks like on a day-to-day basis.

I am firmly convinced that men (myself included) naturally do not want to hear or live out what "love" is. Why? Because at its root, love is self-sacrificial and we don't want to die. In fact, our nature is self-preservation, not self-sacrifice. But love is not self-seeking. This means that I must die to my own motives, desires, dreams, opinions, talents, goals and objectives and, because I love God, replace mine with His. This means that I must die to my own motives, desires, dreams, opinions, talents, goals and objectives and, because I love others, replace mine with theirs (For those of us who are married, our wife comes first). It's not an easy sell, is it?

The tests (Scripture calls them "trials") of this type of love come in physical circumstances and how I handle them gives me an indication of how much I'm producing evidence of my salvation. By their nature, the trials tempt me to avoid self-denial and towards self-preservation.

So, on a day-to-day basis, I experience physical circumstances that result in temptations to lust, to lie, take advantage of, to compromise, to conceal, to withhold, to dishonor, to envy, to be angry and so many other un-Godly attitudes and behaviors. If I fall to these temptations, I harm my relationship with God, others and myself. These trials cause all sorts of feelings to well up inside me and others around me (husbands, read "wives"). But, if I'm not aware of my spirit, I am caught unprepared and will fall. I say that because relationships are interactions that produce feelings. This is another reason why men do not want to hear about or live out what "love" is. Because it has to do with "feelings." It's another point of conflict I have with current church culture: The instruction to ignore feelings. More to follow...

Peace, Kim