This new blog has quite a long introduction, but I had to set the stage to explain a nugget I have uncovered, which is critical for all of us as human being...especially as spiritual, human beings. Please hang in there to get to the bottom of this.
So, I began a new book the other day by Ted Dekker called, "Outlaw." It is a fictitious story about an American who goes on a journey with her two year old son to Thursday Island, which is by Australia. She comes from a prestigious family in Atlanta, Georgia, and while there, she began having very vivid dreams about a jungle with specific noises, and flying over the jungle to the mountain to meet a man; this is a reoccurring dream. After a series of events, she decided that she wanted to take her son and explore Thursday Island and get away from her life in Atlanta. While there, she decided that she wanted to go on a short ride on a sailboat with her son. She was caught in a storm, and the captain went overboard, and she was found by natives of New Guinea and taken captive. I won't tell you anymore of this book, but having an introduction of this book is important to what I have uncovered.
The purpose of this blog is to provide a framework of becoming an outlaw. I know this sounds rebellious, but I assure you, that this is an important and urging calling for everyone of us who live on this planet.
The boy in this book, Stephen, is raised by a man called the Nameless One or Shaka. He comes down from the mountain during very critical moments where two brothers, who are vying for their father's kingdom, are about to go to war with each other. It is suspected from the beginning, that he is a messenger from God, but they don't know this. They each have their fighting men, and they are all tribal people. Their entire survival is based on their upholding of specific laws and beliefs of living by these rules, otherwise, if they didn't follow these rules, they would be given over to evil spirits. One of the brother's supporters is the shaman, who is a very evil man. During one of these moments, Stephen was about to be killed to provide appeasement for not being the son of his mother's husband, who is the other brother. They are living under the wings of serious darkness.
Stephen is taken to live with Shaka, and this last half of this book talks about some very profound truths that have cut me to the core. Shaka has taught Stephen since he took him as a two year old child, that he is a soul who is loved by his powerful creator, God. He taught him that his identity was who he is as a child of God. He said that people are taught to wear costumes, which allow them to forget who their powerful creator is, and that when he and others stop believing that, that they were living in insanity.
Shaka taught him, "My true mind is peace, and because my true self is always at peace, I am dead to insanity. Only the insane mind offers any disturbance to the sound mind. " (229)
"And who gave you this sound mind?" "The One from whom I come." "What is his name?" "He is called the One. The Way. The Truth. The One who first defeated death and is life. The One who is perfect and whole, one with God, the atonement, having made right all that was wrong. He has been called the second Adam. Jeshua."
"My true self is now made whole, holy, without any further blame, condemnation, or need for correction. I am dead to the old and alive in him. I am my Father's child." "And what wars against this knowledge?" "The knowledge of good and evil. Insanity. Also the costume." "Can anything separate you?" "Nothing can separate me. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed any separation from him. I am blameless and nothing can remove me from my Master. It is impossible."
"Still, though dead, your insane mind speaks and causes suffering." "Like a madman. Jabbering always, his mouth moves to a different beat. He likes to hear himself speak." "And sometimes you listen, Shaka said." "Only when I forget he is dead." "And when you do listen?" "He temps me to feel threatened. Less than whole and therefore needing more than I already have. Love. Joy. Peace. States of being, not simple emotion." "And emotion is?" "Sometimes pleasurable, sometimes not, depending on if I listen to insanity." "The insane secretly crave suffering. It givens them an identity, however absurd."
"What is the past?" "The past is past. It no longer exists. Now it's never."
"In the place of knowing his true identity, there could be no more true loneliness, because Stephen was one with his Father."
Shaka taught Stephen how to spend quality time absorbing this truth as he was growing up.
The real meat in this book is found in the above paragraphs that I quoted..it is this idea of wearing costumes, and I will stretch a little further and say that it is wearing labels too. As I was contemplating these ideas yesterday, I became quite somber. I was quietly chewing on these thoughts in my head about the costumes I wear, and mostly, I was completely unaware that I wore any at all.
I have been going through a season of heaviness during the last 15 months, and it seems to have begun when we became foster parents, but if I am honest, it probably goes back to the first day I was born. I have gone through a longer season of not feeling like God loves me, that he has abandoned me, that I am forgotten, that I am so troubled and have so many issues, that there is no way he could love me, and that I will have to live with these issues and this life as I know it forever. I would also throw in that there exists a great big ball of hopelessness in there.
I have discovered that I wear many costumes, and that I have allowed my identity to be defined by what I have put on myself, and what I have allowed others to put on me. My identity costumes are many: my physical body, my physical illness, my education, my monetary status, my house, my vehicles, my desire to be successful, my dreams, my skin color, my sexuality, being a mother, being a foster mother, being a wife, daughter, sister, friend, my spiritual beliefs, political beliefs, my community, my talents, my children's talents, successes, and their failures, my failures, my personality, my weaknesses, and my drive to find my calling in life."
Under all of these, and I know there are mountains-high costumes that I am still unaware of, I find that no wonder I have felt such heaviness, worthlessness, and so far away from God's love. God has used this book to begin stripping these layers off of me. This is not an overnight deal, just like they did not suddenly come over me overnight either. In this book, Shaka tells Stephen that the natives in the valley could not hear what he had to say, and unless they could hear it, his attempts would fail. I think of this with me. I have felt broken down, and I am in a place where I can receive this, and I believe that it is God-ordained.
I want to get to the place like Stephen above, where I am fully living in the truth of who I am to God--that I am his daughter, and that he is my powerful Father, and there is nothing that can happen to me if I remember who I am. I realize that I haven't listened, and that I have lived in what was described above as insanity. If insanity is the opposite of living as my Father's child, then I have lived in insanity every day of my life. I'm ready to jump off of the cliffs of insanity and live in God's peace. As I take a step back from this, I know that I cannot live here anymore. The past is the past. It shouldn't even be a part of my life anymore. Today is truth. Today, I am being beckoned. Today, I must choose to trust. Today I must become an outlaw to this insanity. Today, I must know that my identity is found only in who my Father has created me to be--that it is not in the roles I have, the jobs I do, the dreams I have, or the dreams I think I want, nor anything else, because it is a counterfeit.
I would be remiss if I didn't uncover the reason why we as human beings wear costumes that bear our identity: it is a spiritual battle. I didn't decide that I wanted to wear these costumes, they were spoken to me as overt lies and covert lies. There is an enemy of our souls, and he is the one who wants us to believe that God is not real, that he doesn't love us, that he forgets and neglects us, that we are unlovable, and that we are stuck in the messiness of our lives forever. This enemy is called, Satan, and the Bible describes him as the great deceiver, a liar, and the father of all lies, who comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy. What does he want to destroy? He wants to destroy our identity, as the precious, created beings of God. By believing lies, we walk away from God and deem him cruel, heartless, uncaring, and unjust. As Believers, we are not out of harms way. This enemy desensitizes us too, and it is very subtle. The pastor of my church spoke last week about apostasy--when one walks away from his/her faith, and he spoke of how it occurs subtly, and we are broken down by people and events, and he gains victory over us. It is important that we realize that we live in a physical world with great, supernatural forces at work in our lives. There are powers of light/darkness that are waging war over each of our lives, and I pray that we are open and allow God to expose the darkness, so that we can live in his marvelous light and have our identity wrapped up in Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment