Words Are Seeds
My heart has been expanding with new faith;
faith to experience God in brand new ways (mystical union),
faith to engage the spiritual realm (you'd be weirded out),
faith to receive healing for myself and others (by His stripes),
faith to rise up in my God-given authority (not submitting),
faith to rest in Christ's finished-ness.
I feel I'm hoisted in a sort of limbo; my feet have left familiar ground but I'm not afraid. There's an expectancy to explore God anew and His wonder - even if it offends my mind.
As these new desires have come, I've felt a flipped switch. A loud siren rang alarming the importance of what I interact with each day and birthed a new, conscious hunger to actively engage LIFE. For defense? Wildly guard my heart from death. I saw all the words entering my ears and all the images casted on my eyes as seed. Each seed has the potential to plant, establish roots, and yield consequence. Picture fat, filled-to-the-brim burlap sacks being poured in all your face-hole receptors. The seeds I push aside as not true, hold no power whatsoever to grow. The seeds I agree with, begin to latch and bear fruit whether good or bad.
Proverbs 4:23
Guard the affections of your heart, for they affect all that you are. Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being, for from there flows the wellspring of life.
I couldn't help but notice in this new awareness that many of the seeds I had agreed with were bearing bad fruit. So many seed deemed responsible were patterned by a God-less thinking that is only wise to the unrenewed mind. Like fear-inducing, fake news I swallowed every doctor report, every status-quo, every expect-this-because-of-that social norm: hook, line, and sinker. These common, soul-ish brain-patterns are dominated by the 5-senses and render us powerless despite our co-Christness. Since when did it become acceptable, both socially and otherwise, for Christ to submit to defeat, sickness, addiction, depression and death?
This is ludicrous in light of our union with Christ; to betroth death and not life. Maybe the glorious body of Christ has been chewing the cud of death in our minds, giving place to the devil by our agreement with his virus seeds; submitting to faith-less, same-as-the-world mentalities and needlessly bearing a rotten harvest! Personally, I have had too many spoon-fulls of sour drink and am jumping in the pool of renewed thinking. In this reprogramming I see my mind basking in co-Christ-ness, my brain-treadmills running God-thoughts, and my tongue married to words of LIFE about myself, about my situations, and about others.
I've noticed a resistance to the renewed mind. Monday night, as I laid in bed, my heart started racing. I was doing holy things: praying in the Holy Spirit, dwelling on life-giving truth with fresh faith, and pressing into more of God and all His ooey-gooey-sweet-treats. And then a cocktail of emotions rushed on me like a violent wave; lust, anger, confusion. A black-tar was spreading over my mind and my flesh was crying for attention. The Holy Spirit whispered on the inside of me, "Rise up and speak from your spirit man." I commanded my body to submit and my emotions to come in line with God's Word. It was as if a King had decreed a law in the land of my body. There was a peace that entered as water fills a glass.
Once the calm entered a new storm came within minutes; multiple random people contacted me with offense-inducing information. "You've got to be kidding me." I could feel my heart-rate elevating as I waded through the facts. I had the right to become upset. I was the correct one after all (pride).
Then the Holy Spirit again whispered from within, "This is the spirit of offense." I could choose at this point. Do I let my emotions drink from the whiskey of offense or do I pour it out onto the Lord? Out of the most awkward and un-natural feeling, I started to bless my frustration-friends. I chose to be powerful; refusing anyone else the power to control my emotion and my stature.
pour it out
For the next hour, I put into focus every single person that had wronged me. And blessed them. Words of life for healing in their bodies, for new intimacy with God, blessing on their families and careers. I released any knife I had pressed on any necks and slipped into one of the sweetest sleeps I've ever had. The next morning I woke up to realize the situation for what it was; a spiritual stand-off. My view had become a bit more aerial: "Resist the devil and he will flee." I wonder how many advances into God's heart we've started only to allow offense to cut our achilles. It is, without a doubt, not worth harboring.
1 Peter 5:8-9
He raised us up with Christ, and we ascended with Him into the glorious perfection and authority of the heavenly realm, for we are now co-seated as one with Christ!
Two attacks: one requiring authority and the other forgiveness. If you won't submit to the devil, maybe you'll harden your heart. Both are attempts to snuff your life. After the experience, I felt I turned a corner. The Lord and all His love-treasures are the terrain. There is a world to be awed and wonders I've never seen. All the expenses have been paid in full and every inch of land is my inheritance.
Adventure-haters are salt-and-peppered on the journey into God's heart. Enticing-to-the-eye, fear-mongering landmarks. Cunningly architectured self-reliance, rivers of offense, stoic towers of responsibility. These little high-way goblins attempt to flatten God-exploring, faith-filled automobiles.
These weapons are only shadows; a mouse casting a lion's figure. The warfare waged on co-Christs is in the mind. Silhouette-arrows only injure when we agree with the lie and let trojan-seeds grow in our heart.
The more my mind is renewed, the more I see every single thing already won by Christ and me emphatically one with Him standing in His victory. I have His authority. I have His righteousness. I have His health. I have His wisdom. I have His love. I have His forgiveness. He is my all-in-all. As you have received, so you give! All our genetically-modified rotten-heart-trees are uprooted with the truth of our Co-Christness. We are seated far above all principalities and powers in perfect union with our King-husband. It is the resting in our Christ-truths that sets us and keeps us free. Believing it. Building our life around it. Camping in the warm glow of it. Dwelling on the caramel-glazed sweetness of God-realities. Agree with the truth and eat it's rich, tasty Eden fruit. Agree with the lie and bear down under harsh slavery as royalty in paupers clothing. Life and death have been set before us. Choose LIFE!