Moments that have helped me walk humbly with my God...

One of the ways in which I often sum up what being a Christian means/does/is is to quote an ancient prophet Micah, who summarised what God had commanded thus:

But he's already made it plain how to live, what to do,
   what God is looking for in men and women.
It's quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor,
   be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don't take yourself too seriously—
   take God seriously.

I admit that I have often taken myself far too seriously, that I have acted as God's protector and argued out of fear of my own faith being undermined, of some sort of domino theory with be being the guardian of orthodoxy.  I have been proud, boastful, arrogant - quick to anger and ridicule anyone who I thought was in dangering themselves or anyone else with a different view other than my own particular conservative take on God.   It was something that was a proud tradition in the church I attended, we knew so much about the bible, knew clearly were everyone else was in error, were so confident that we as the faithful were pure.  Our theology...

was concrete, are orthodox was tight and spotless and it was our right to point out where everyone else was wrong...for the good of their own salvation of course.    If anyone was assured of our salvation we were and didn't we know it, we were biggest self congratulating cosy insider club that I knew and mostly we didn't want that challenged, changed or otherwise tainted .  Somewhere a long the way we had missed this bit of challenging wisdom from Jesus:

That night Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to be his dinner guests, along with his fellow tax collectors and many other notorious sinners. The Pharisees were indignant. "Why does your teacher eat with such scum?" they asked his disciples.

    When he heard this, Jesus replied, "Healthy people don't need a doctor--sick people do." Then he added, "Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: `I want you to be merciful; I don't want your sacrifices. For I have come to call sinners, not those who think they are already good enough."

For the last 13 years I have been unlearning a lot of what I once thought was truth, mainly by discovering how wrong I am about so many things.  I have been on a terrorfying adventure of realising that truth without love is nothing and that a gospel without grace is not the gospel. Some one asked me the other day to write about what has challenged me to change, what has helped be more humble, more open, less defensive, more gracious and generous?  I still think i have a long way to go but i look back and see that it I can identify some of the encounters with God where he has graciously shown me my own limitations.

Adrian Plass: As a 16 yr old I heard the poem 'when I became a Christian" by Adrian Plass poem read out by the Religious Education teacher in school assembly.  It was a life changing moment - so any teachers who read this please be encouraged.  It was both funny and profound, clever yet simple, challenging in a way that I had never heard before - it created a longing in me for something deeper, bigger, broader than I had experienced, a realisation that there was something more... 

With a bit of digging in the school library I found a copy of the book "the sacred diary of Adrian Plass" (a spoof title on: the secret diary of Adrian Mole which I had lovd) and devoured it.  It was funny, it was honest, it was questioning, it was easy for me to laugh at these funny cuddly charismatics (afterall things weren't like that in my church) but after awhile of reading all the Plass books I could and going to see him live (on one of my first dates with my wife back when 'we were just good friends') I realised that I was laughing at being a christian, i was laughing at me.  Religious people can and often are funny, what we say, what we do, how we think... I was beginning to learn to laugh, to relax rather than get defensive...

Surprised by the power of the holy spirt by Jack Deere was a book that I read which helped me immensely when i found myself equally as surprised.  From growing up with a cessionist belief (the holy spirit isn't very active today) I found myself undergoing unnevering experiences of encountering a rather active God.  Unnerving as a major plank of my theology had been unlodged and I found myself facing the uncomfortable truth that my cessionist views had more to do with explaining why I had never seen God do anything rather than actually being what the bible taught about spitual gifts and the work of the holy spirit.  This book gave someone like me a real eye opener from scripture into the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit today, in areas like healing, prophecy, speaking and interpreting tongues.  This of course was very humbling as it made we realise that maybe a lot of my other views may well be a reflection of my circumstances and experiences rather than what was actually contained in the bible - just that nothing had ever challenged them or given me an alternative perspective.  If I could have been so wrong about the Holy Spirit, what ele had was I so wrong about too?

Extreme Rightousness  - seeing ourselves in the pharisees was a book that again turned my bible world view upside down.  I had always written the pharisees out as the bad guys but actually they were good intentioned people, zealous for the scruptures, scrupulous in their giving, dedicated in living untainted by the world, ferverent in anticipating God's deliverance and conscientious in obeying God's commands - everything that I so aspired to be... rather than being bad people they would have been welcomed in my church and I would have loved hanging out with them - suddenly my reading of the bible changed - when Jesus talked with the pharisees he could well have been talking to me.  I suddenly got to see myself from a whole new angle - i realised that if Jesus were to show up I am sure I would have hated him too and dismissed hin as a heretic, character assinated him at every opportunity and dismissed his views as wishy washy watered down white wash - ouch!  I was definately one person who needed to heed Jesus' words I quoted about and learn about mercy rather than spirtual duty...

Familarity is meant to breed contempt and I think for me reading the bible had become a jaded experience.  Discovering the Message a powefully poetic paraphrase helped me reconnect with the bible again in a fresh and refreshing way.  I found that as I read it was often like encountering something new yet old, familiar yet mysterious, inviting yet challenging, life changing yet ancient... it rekindled my love of loosing myself in God thoughts and reinspired me to live God actions.  It was another fresh perspective that made me realise how stale I had got and as God spoke some powerful yet simple things to me from its pages I was once again humbled...

What' so amazing about grace was a book I read a couple of years ago. It reminded me really of just the amazing amount of grace I have experienced.  The sort of grace that Bono reflects on here.  I have so often been ungracious and yet lived a life myself that was far from anything resembling perfection apart from maybe the image projecting spin part of me that was very good at making me look and sound a lot better than I am.  Funnily enough i would often believe the spin and seldom the honest truth - this book reminded me that God knows the honest truth and loves me - and that in turn has inspired me to try and love people like God loves me, not for saying, or doing right things, our spiritual soundbites, but because God loves, values and showers his grace on us...  something that echoes so strongly in Paul's thoughts on the life of freedom

"I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ's hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law. I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love...

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?"

  I have not read many books by Brian McLaren but Finding faith was a profoundone.  It is written more for people of no faith and is not so much about what to believe about God but how to.  For me it contains seeds of faith, and as part of the deconstruction and reconstruction of my faith this book was a beautiful companion.  It made me think what is the good news, the gospel about - is it good news for only me and people like me?  One of the things that humbled me was the realisation about rather than just saying a once for all prayer of faith just how often i recommit my life back to Jesus, how often I choose him again, how often rather than living out a good faith I am exhibiting a bad one.  It showed me again that being intellictually and personally honest, asking questions, seeking, experiencing mystery are all a reality of a life of faith in God... It is a book that has encouraged me to seek, ask, discover, adventure, question, long for, encounter and love.

Hmmm I guess there are plenty of other books, talks, conversations, people etc that have also impacted me in profound ways but i guess this needs to end somewhere.  So maybe I'll hand over to you, what experiences/encounters have you had, what resources would you recomend for me and others?

Comments

[molly]

Paul, I was searching around for your definitions post and foudn this and...wow. It is such a great post! (I had a similar experience with what I *thought* about the Holy Spirit versus what I later *experienced* Him to be [and, whaddyaknow, it lines up with Scripture a lot better than my cessasionalist idea did--lol]). :)

Anyways, that's neither here nor there at this point, just that I could relate with much of what you shared. Adrian Plass has been used of God more times that most people might think! :)

[the apostolic truth ministries]

I found your post quite disturbing. Either you have no knowledge of scripture or no knowledge of Christianity. Cessionist . . . does not mean a less active Holy spirit. The gifts of the Holy Spirit/Ghost are clearly laid out in scripture. Cessionist . . . means someone who knows 'tongues' ceased in the first century with destruction of the temple. The sign gifts were given to unbelieving Jews. God will not deal with the Jews until his one thousand year reign.

All of that does not change the activity or lack thereof, by the Holy spirit/Ghost. You may feel free to contact me by email if you want to know what the gifts of the Holy spirit/Ghost really are.

[Melanie Stefien]

Correction: to the meaning of First is Last and Last is First. It means that Birth is Last and Birth is First, In that order.

It also means that you haven't been Born yet.

[Melanie Steffen]

God sees everything, doesn't he?

This is one small piece of proof that God talked to me:

Like I said earlier, the Holy Spirit talked to me, besides his message about First is Last and Last is First, he had something to say about “Who Killed JFK”. Christ tells me that the man who shot JFK is a policeman. He also tells me the name of the shooter, but it is in a jumbled word. The word is “Fritters”. I see the name F. Ritter right off so I think that is the name of the killer. Now God has lots of other messages for me to figure out, so I put “who Killed JFK” on the back burner for over a year. A year or more later , just recently, I have more time to look for F. Ritter. I can’t find a policeman with that name who lived in Dallas, Texas in 1963. So I am searching for information about who killed JFK and there is a picture of a policeman by the name of J D Tippit. Now Tippit kind of looks like Ritter. Now I unjumble the letters of Ritter to get TIRRET. Now TIRRET looks more like TIPPIT. Now I make the R’s stand at attention, I get TIPPET. One problem is that the I and the E are not the same. So I do some research on the family name TIPPIT. Turns out that in the late 1800’s JD Tippit’s grandfather changed their name from Tippett to Tippit. So the next step I change the E to I. So Tippet is now Tippit.
Now I have FS Tippit and JD Tippit. The first two initials are not the same. Next I go to Wikipedia, there I find; "Some thought that J D stood for "Jefferson Davis" however JD does not stand for anything". That means his name is just J D. So the initials F S , do not stand for anything. I just have two initials that do not stand for anything. Are you following me?

Next what does "FRITTERS" mean. If your following my thinking here, God is going to tell you what happened to JD Tippit after he was shot. Fritters is a dough that is deep fried. Bread also means body, like in the last super Christ takes the bread and says this is my body. Look in the dictionary, PIT means HELL. TIP means money paid, gratuity. There are other meanings to. These meanings tell a story.

JD Tippits body (dough) is placed in the deep fryer (lake of fire). Now I think this clue (Fritters) was ingenius. After all God came up with it. I think he does have a sense of humor too. Kids now have a new game to play. They can play God. Pilsbury dough boy fry’s in the lake of fire. You get HELL! fry baby fry!

If you think this is just crazy. Remember I am just the messenger. Jesus is the one that had to talk about JFK. So he had a reason for doing that. Only God knows who the killer is. This is proof that Christ talked to me and that is the reason he told me "Who killed JFK". It is proof. I had forgotten about the case years ago. This is a cold case now, it been 45 years since the shooting.

I also read the part about giving false prophesy. God says false prophets go to Hell or something like that. I only repeat what God told me. Now what I wrote above is from God. He told me who killed JFK in 2006. The above is not a lie or a joke and I am going to HEAVEN without fear.

Before I forget. Gods messages usually have more than one meaning. F S could also stand for “Fence Shooter”.

Who are the co-conspirators? Turns out that there are two policemen named Tippit, and one Tippett working in the Dallas police Department that same year(1963). Back to the clue word Fritters. That is plural, you know about plural. We have two fritters. The co-conspirators name is Gayle M. Tippit.

Now the Dallas Police Departtment obviously covered up and framed Oswald. He was the Patsy. They did it cause it is very possible that one of the other police officers rushing to the scene saw Tippet fleeing the scene carrying a rifle. They covered it up because of the embarrassment of one of their own was the man that killed JFK? And the Warren commission must have also figured that out so they stuck with the Dallas Dept. story saying that it was Oswald. It could have been a National embarrassment. Now if you look at the evidence like I did. It is easy to see that the DAllas Police Dept tampered with the evidence over and over again. And they did a very bad job of it too.

Now this is my opinion, not Gods. I think God is behind the creation of the Internet. I could never have been able to figure out a lot of his messages without the use of the Internet. People on the Net have been a big help to me. God talks to other people too, they just don’t know it. God let me know it was him.

Now I just made solving the case of “Who shot JFK?”, look easy. I also gave you proof here. Did you see it? You ask where’s the proof. The proof is that it is impossible for anyone to repeat what I just did above. I mean try it. And I do that over and over again in all of God’s messages.
See if you can make up a word that is a fried food (like fritters). Unjumble the letters to reveal the name of the killer (Tippit). Then divide the word Tippit into words that describe what happened. Tip- means that JD Tippit was paid for the job and the presidency was over turned. Pit - means that he went to Hell for what he did. Pit means the worst Hell.

See if you can prove me wrong. Show me how easy it is to make up a name like “Fritters” that solves the crime. This clue is ingenious. God came up with the name “FRITTERS”. God is a genius, not me. I am only the messenger.

Then the two remaining letters F. S. stands for Fence Shooter. It's INGENIUS!

Then on top of that it just so happens that there are two Tippit’s working in the Dallas Police Department in 1963. Fritters (plural) means we have more than one Fritter going in the deep fryer . The other shooter is Gayle M. Tippit. He goes to Hell too. Now I did some research on Gayle M Tippit. There is very little information on him unlike JD Tippit. In my search I found two Gayle Tippit’s still in Dallas. One died in 1967 and the other is married and still lives in Texas. So the other conspirator could still be alive and has managed to avoid detection.

This is where it gets intesting. Does Gayle M. Tippit come forward and ask God to forgive him? I think he also has to ask the American people to forgive him for his part in the murder of the president or he gets the worst Hell just like JD did. God told me that waiting until the 11th hour is too late. God is forgiving, but you can’t wait until your on your death bed to ask to be forgiven.

Now if Gayle M. Tippit wants to save himself from the deep fryer. (This could be a long fry, not a quick dip.) He has to come forward and ask to be forgiven. He still gets death or Hell but it won’t be the worst Hell. Just like the worst death is being crucified. The Dallas Police Department also has to answer to God for their part in the cover-up and the arrest of an innocent man.