Certain times in life just seem ripe for reflection… especially as I find myself stirred to a new and refreshed place of growth.
The majority of my adult life has been given to the idea that spiritual growth is the central value in life, and then exploring what that means and how to share that value and the path itself as I discover my own way to growth.
Early, (my mid-teen years) I found myself surrounded by young men and healthy leaders in a Baptist church, awakening to a fresh experience of God in the person of the Holy Spirit.
My path was filled with stimulating relationships, new adventures and opportunities to discover that I was more than I thought I was…I overcame fears, developed a much stronger sense of my identity, and begin to uncover a path to my personal mission; helping others become the God-Created version of themselves.
Marriage and parenting young kids was a fertile ground to explore what this looked life in practical, real-life practice.
My early experiences both stirred and proved a belief that we are all much more than our current picture of ourselves and that the pathway to discover and become that person was one of cultivating a real connection to our Creator, and learning how to gracefully break the power of past circumstance and present day destructive patterns.
In that process I found myself working both within, and occasionally against the church.
I worked within, because I believed the church was the intended way for God to reach people and cultivate the healthy connections and processes that would foster spiritual growth.
I worked against (even from within) because I saw again and again how the calcification of processes, rigidity of belief systems, and material interpretation of truth institutionalized processes that opposed and in many cases undermined healthy connections and healthy processes.
It seems to me that we are living in a time of great shift in every human system.
Today, I still believe that the church is God’s intended way to reach the world but I am coming to define “the church” very differently. Just because an organization calls itself a church does not necessarily mean that it fosters connection to God and a growing engagement with the Spiritual realm.
We have learned how to stir people but I am not sure we have learned how to grow people. I am not sure that we have learned how to truly set people free and move them toward maturity. Central to real growth is a degree of personal autonomy that institutions defined by membership may not be able to foster.
The forceful and gentle presence of true Life and God’s Presence on the earth and in His people has not and never will bow to all the material processes that grow around us. I am convinced, that His gentle but firm presence will never bow to fossilizing process. New wine will always put pressure on and eventually burst all wineskins that are themselves not becoming new. Those trying to hold onto both the old and embrace the new will feel the tension.
Yield to the ever-renewing Breath of God and you will always find yourself surfing an invigorating but terrifying wave of constancy and change.
Put your stakes down, stop moving forward, demand that things remain the same and eventually the Breath will move on past, like a storm that passes. It may leave rain soaked ground, and a few limbs down, but the wind moves on and is not stopped by the those who will not uproot and follow the wind.
Over the years, I have been all of these things.
I have experimented with new ideas, and communication of truth. I have put my foot down and tried to hold on to my way of doing things. I have been overwhelmed by the circumstances of the material world and allowed my self to set up camp and hide. I have shut down and grown weary of moving forward. I have tried to revive “my way” of doing things, and I have eventually come back around to paddling into the wave of the never-changing but never-the-same move of God.
I find myself holding on to less and less dogma and asking the question; what do I really believe….
I really believe that:
God’s Kingdom is an all surrounding Presence that is always near and always available and soaked with power and love God loves us more than we are likely to believe God reached out to us through Jesus in a way that we could not have reached Him…uniquely becoming His (living and active) Word to us. “The Kingdom is near…think in a new way to access it and be born into it”
The spiritual world (the Kingdom) is SO much different than our material world and SO much different than we think, because our thinking and ways of thinking are formed in the crucible of the material world. We learn to define and understand reality based solely on what we can see and touch…
That reality is better understood looking from the kingdom toward the material world, but we all began our lives looking from the material into the kingdom.
That spiritual growth is about developing connection to, familiarity with and fluency in this reality that is “God-Around-and-in-us” and that disciplines are only valuable to the degree they actually foster these experiences.
That the enemies of true spirituality and not misbehavior but materialism and logic based solely on our experience of material reality. This includes rule-based religion, works based “relationship” transactional relationship with our Creator, and all the ways we urge people to “Try Harder” based on material belief systems. Our drive to perform works against our need to connect and surrender.
That hanging onto old language and communication is part of the calcifying process of truth, so that words, reaching their shelf-life lose the ability to freshly communicate the never-changing reality of an always-new God and His initiating love towards us.
That each of us is responsible for our own decision to grow and connect, and that each of us has equal access to the Divine. No title or education gives one person more standing than another in His Presence.
Today I find my practices look very different… my faith looks much simpler and yet much deeper. I find that I have much less interest in the conversations I used to have about various doctrines, or limiting religious beliefs. I am much more interested in simply helping people find life than in “convincing” people of a position or a heresy.
Conversations about religious stances or superstitions feel less fruitful than ever.
In a time when almost everything can be taken away from us, I find myself searching for those things that no one and no circumstance can ever take away. I hope you are too.
