Note to self: remember to bless others.

Another lie

They've been the same from the very beginning, but what they all come down to is:

It's okay to decide for yourself (or, to all of humanity, among yourselves) what is right and what is wrong. 

Isn't that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? But what is the true, long-term fruit of that tree? Isn't it relativism?

I prefer to trust in my loving Father, who both knows and truly wants what is best for me, rather than in the mass of humanity whose chief interest lies in each of ourselves.

So when humanity insists that my sin is not so bad, a normal part of human nature, or even laudable and beneficial, it might appeal to my natural - and, I should be honest: selfish - inclinations. But it will not ultimately result in my becoming the person my loving Father dreams for me to become: the image and bodily presence of His beloved Son.

The arrogance of self-determinism underlies all the deadly sins and undermines all virtue.

Lies which the evil one uses

All of his lies are intended to make us disbelieve either our identity as God's children or our destiny in living in His love. In the broadest sense, they include:

• God's blessings are burdens.
• The things and actions from which God tells us to abstain are blessings.
• The remarkable things God has done in others' lives are beyond us.
• We are incapable of that to which God calls us.
• God's timeless truth is outdated ignorance.
• We have plenty of time to be obedient and trust Him. "It can wait."
• Living for the moment means putting off God's will for later.
• My sins are greater than others'.
• The particular way that I am disregarding God is not that important.
• A small and understandable disobedience is no big deal.
• Other's sins are greater than mine (or mine isn't really a sin).

(The critical reader may note that there is significant overlap among these.) Now, the specifics to which our adversary applies these lies vary greatly from one person to the next. But the general theme of them is the same in all of our lives, and they are all intended to keep us from embracing our identity and our destiny of beloved sons and daughters of a Father who knows what is truly best for us and reveals it through His Word and His Church.

So whether the thing with which we compromise be connected to lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, or pride, let us renounce the lie beneath it and embrace God's greater plan for us as sons and daughters destined for eternal holiness.

Disturbing dream

The dream was graphic. I'm not including the details, but still, you should stop reading if you don't want to know this about me.

In it, I was visiting my uncle, who was still alive. In my dream, he shared the long-term obsession from which I've felt the Lord has been delivering me for the last month or so. In my dream, I shared with him where I think that obsession came from and why it was so hurtful to me.

At first he was patient with me, understanding that I didn't want to give in to this desire. But eventually he tempted me anyway. I resisted by saying that I would feel like a piece of defecatory material if I did. He replied that this was the purpose of it. Then I woke up.

The first thing I realized was that my uncle is still dead. I miss him so much, and he would never have done anything like this to me.

The second thing I remembered was to interpret dreams as if every element represents me in some way. That actually fit, especially the reminder at the end, which is very important for me to remember!

The third thing I remembered was to ask God to help me in my weakness.

(Added: The aftermath of this dream is that this temptation that had been so far removed from my thoughts for the last month has been in the forefront of my mind all day. Failure feels inevitable again.)

Measuring progress - days become weeks

21, so 3.

I don't expect I'll post about this on a weekly basis, at least not for long. But for now, it's good to keep reminding myself how God continues to provide grace. I'm still weak, but am trying to trust Him each day. 

If there's a next time I post about this, I'll have to drop the label "Lent" . . . 

Today's words

First, a new WOTD:

apodictic /ap-uh-DIK-tik/ - expressing or of the nature of necessary truth or absolute certainty

The Five Keys of spiritual freedom in the Unbound model of deliverance ministry have a highly apodictic quality about them. 

 Then, a couple new words in today's Dictionary Devil puzzle:

hypogeum /'high-puh-GEE-um/ - the subterranean part of an ancient building; also : an ancient underground burial chamber

I suppose this word applies to the undercroft of York Minster (or, more formally, the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York), one of the most fascinating places I've ever visited because of the multiple prior buildings on the site. 

 prothalamion /'pro-thuh-LAY-mee-uhn/ - a song in celebration of a marriage

This one applies to one of my favorite pieces to self-accompany and sing or harmonize on, which was also a part of our wedding ceremony. 

Both of these words have strong hints of their meanings in their roots.

I have a great idea

Why don't you tell your kids, who already have multiple layers of abandonment issues, that they're a bunch of spoiled brats and you're going to leave and never come back?

I'm writing this here rather than confronting you with it because I'm sure you're already hurting over having said this to them. But girl, hug them. Heal them. Help them renounce the spirit of rejection, the spirit of failure, the spirit of self-judgment, the fear of abandonment. And renounce whatever spirit of inadequacy in you led you to tell them such an awful lie.

I love you.

Unbound seminar

I love this ministry. I love helping people walk in the freedom which Christ has won for us. I love helping them recognize that they can kick out the negative spiritual influences which have taken root in their lives, for one reason or another. I love helping people see forgiveness of others as a gift that God longs to give us and complete in us.

We had close to 50 new people come from at least six states (Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois; possibly Indiana) to receive new freedom in Christ. I got to pray with a dear friend and help him receive forgiveness. It is such a privilege and blessing to be a part of this ministry!

Unbound!

A very tangled web

Ironically, one of my mother's favorite expressions was from a Sir Walter Scott poem: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." I could spend a few paragraphs on the first word of this post, but it really isn't at all about mom. Last night I was awake a considerable period of time after realizing the ongoing presence of a quite complicated web in my life. It's no wonder that Dayton Unbound uses the Mary, Undoer of Knots devotion. I think I need to pray that novena.

The Five Keys to spiritual freedom are faith and repentance (which form one key, based on the Gospel: repent and believe), forgiveness, renunciation, authority, and the Father's blessing. I find myself struggling with several of them in an area which either the Holy Spirit or my mind brought to my attention during the night. I have been feeling resentment toward a couple people - maybe several, now that I think about it. And resentment means there is unforgiveness present, but not always toward the person you resent. Sometimes it can be unforgiveness toward another person who is more responsible for your resentment, but it can also be tied up with something of which we need to repent. In this case, I feel I need to repent of a decades-old lie. The genesis of this untruth was related to a sin of which I have already repented. The lie itself was not of my making, but I was the one to figure it out and am the only one involved who seems to know that it is an untruth. But to repent of something means turning away from it, and I must not turn away from this lie, or others will bear far worse hurt than I do. So I must find a way to forgive the others who were involved in this lie to which I must adhere, not merely for their involvement in the original untruth, but for my current status as someone who is dishonest, which I detest.

It seems like a situation for a therapist, but I have been down that road multiple times already, and I'm already maintaining the path upon which we have agreed. 

If you're my friend, dear reader, I would find it most helpful if you could find a way to let me know that you are praying for me in this. I feel so alone with it, and the person to whom I would otherwise turn is a part of this web, and discussion with that person on this topic has repeatedly proven unhelpful. 

Today's word

tristful /TRIST-ful/ - sad, melancholy

This quotation cited in the article has felt true for me, at least at times, in my life: "I've been dreading the moment I wake. Waking is a tristful business for the man who reflects." — Howard Jacobson, The Independent (London), 27 Nov. 2010

But this underscores something that Neal Lozano talks about in his Unbound videos: even though our society places a high value on introspection, it is actually a negative thing. It transfers our attention from God's abundant love for us onto ourselves. That isn't to say we shouldn't be self-aware, but being introspective puts too much emphasis on ourselves, and the quote above illustrates exactly what's wrong with that.

It's a fine distinction, but an important one. 

The most effective lie . . .

. . . that our adversary uses to keep us bound to the spirits who torment us is that these things are a part of ourselves.

For instance, I am not, by my spiritual nature, bisexual, any more than any of us are by our spiritual nature promiscuous or insatiable. But by getting us to believe that this is a central part of who we are, our adversary gets us to embrace and cling to things from which Christ has set us free. The more we accept these things as part of our own nature, reinforcing them by choices and behavior, the more we become enslaved to them and, in a vicious cycle, the more we tend to see them as part of ourselves. In a case like mine, this can be true even if I remain very careful not to ever commit adultery because of this misconception. As long as I continued to hunger for sexual experiences which are not God's revealed will for me, I remained bound to the effects of this spiritual influence. (In this case, it is easy for anyone with spiritual discernment who knows my story to see how this spiritual influence entered by life. Sometimes we are completely aware of this, so we keep our story to ourselves, for a variety of reasons. This keeps us in isolation, darkness, and bondage.)

I believe the same thing can be true of physical and psychological manifestations of spiritual influences. It may be important to obtain the medical or psychological help we need, for a couple reasons. We may need to deal with our thought and behavior patterns, or the chemical effects that they have had in our bodies. We also need to keep the manifestation from pushing us to grow more unhealthy or to participate with worse, more destructive influences. In the latter case, these may also appear psychological in manifestation but have a spiritual influence or root. To completely get rid of them, eventually we are going to have to renounce the lie that this thing is a part of ourselves. 

But that renunciation won't take hold in us unless we are using all the keys Jesus has given us to spiritual freedom. Those spiritual influences entered our lives through decisions we made, sometimes in response to terrible things that were done to us and sometimes simply in sin. They come in, and they lock the door behind them, and they set up house and make us think they are a part of us.

It is a lie.

We must often discover the door through which we gave them access, so that we can renounce the decision we made or the lie we believed, or repent of the sin that let them in or kept us bound to them. ("It's okay for me to not forgive so-and-so, because what they did was terrible and hurt me deeply." And the accompanying lie that forgiveness is an additional burden rather than a gift God gives us once we trust that He will do in us what we can't for ourselves.) Once we do, in Christ Jesus' authority we can kick them out, and they have to leave. And we can take back the freedom we have yielded to them in our ignorance of our adversary's schemes. 

Once we are in Christ Jesus, the adversary has no power over us anymore except what we continue to yield to him. 

One of the other tricks he uses is to keep us from those who can help us see clearly. If we resent them for some offense that we perceive (even if they haven't actually done anything wrong), or if we think they're off base by attributing spiritual influences for stuff that can easily be explained without anything so mystical, then instead of turning to their help we are isolated in our battle. This is another of the adversary's schemes.

I'm preaching to myself here, btw. My own bondage can seem so attractive, and even when it doesn't it can seem like a natural part of me. God, please help me to always see it as You do.

I will not fellowship with you . . .

I will not use this current disappointment and self anger as an excuse to engage in habitual sin.

An exciting opportunity

I'm so pleased that I'm going to be giving a talk at our next Unbound seminar on Forgiveness. One of the Five Keys with which people often struggle considerably in their lives, it's also a topic on which I've written quite a lot. One of my previous posts even focuses on forgiveness in the context of the Five Keys, and others address what forgiveness isn't and what it is.

Of course, this talk won't be mostly my thoughts. There's a well-developed outline I will follow. But there will be room to share a few insights I have learned along the way, too.

Resisted temptation grows stronger

I've observed before that yielding to a temptation reduces its apparent strength. Once the adversary has us, there's no need to keep us uncomfortable; he'd rather let us settle snugly into our sin. I've also pointed out that therefore no one has ever known the full power of temptation like Jesus, who never yielded to it. In my best periods, I have never managed to resist temptation for very long; my former sinfulness was so devastating that everything I deal with since seems almost trivial by comparison, and therefore almost not worth battling against. Having been set free, now I'm basically just clinging to Jesus, and feel like I'm doomed to fail anyway.

Yet I know that these last two sentences contain lies of my adversary that I have believed. I renounce them In the Name of Jesus, and repent of the sin I have used them - indeed, cultivated and embraced them - to commit. I forgive those who have instilled them in me.

Through the decades of my life, I've repeatedly seen with discouraging clarity what I was made of. Lord, please show me what You've remade me of, and let me know the strength You bring to those who rely on You in our weakness.

Resisted temptation may grow stronger, at least for a time . . . but so do we!

Finding His strength in my weakness

Every time I repent, forgive, and renounce in Jesus' authority, and receive the Father's blessing - hey, there's all Five Keys! - I feel free. But I'm still weak in the areas in which I've had to repent, just in the flesh rather than in spiritual bondage. And to the degree that I don't lean on Jesus' strength, my weakness will continue to trip me up. But when I know I'm weak, and renounce the lie that this weakness is something other than what it really is, and ask Jesus to supply the strength that I lack, I find a better answer than just continuing to fall.

It was pretty easy to do this when it was obviously a big deal. It's when we believe the lie that some sins are really no big deal that we fail to be transformed the way that He wants for us, in His perfect Love.

Prayer by the light of the wreath again this morning

First time this week, but for better reason. Was glad for the opportunity to help a friend see the light of God's love pierce through the perceived darkness, and a short night of sleep followed by a night of catch-up was a small price to pay for it.

Had a quote from St. Augustine I wanted to share, but online I can only get the St. Ambrose reading. Except for big exceptions, I focus on the Advent season over the saints' feast days, and at home with my breviary I can do that. Maybe I'll get a chance to post later . . .

Not pushing the envelope (edited)

One of the ways that an abuser or other addict perpetuates their cycle is the fool's quest for the point of no return. (Sing it, Steve Walsh, though Kansas used a play on words.) "Where was it that I went wrong?" we ask, never learning (because, unlike WOPR, we can't set the number of players to 0) that the only winning move is to not play.

So the (substance- or behaviorally) addicted person convinces himself that the first step is harmless. We deprive ourselves of the gift of getting beyond the whole environment/dynamic because of the harmless part of it we don't want to give up. Or we don't recognize the earliest indicators, the first red flags (the tension at the base of my skull, the emotional triggers, the key aspects of our personality, the (even unavoidable) environmental factors) that form a key part of the cycle. And we keep playing the game and losing, over and over. Learning and breaking this pattern is what lets me put the word "recovered" in front of abuser, but the motivation for that was so strong: I never wanted to hurt anyone else like that ever again. I didn't hate my own remaining impurity, though, enough to address it with the same intensity, or maybe clarity.

Maybe I'm getting free from all of that now, but it's too early to be certain. In fact, it could well be that certainty is the enemy of freedom. If a benevolent king has brought me victory from my oppressor, I probably shouldn't be seeking to be out from under his influence! I've long been cognizant of a too-common approach to Christianity. It's objective is not to improve us to some point at which we no longer need a Savior because we have "arrived" at a sufficient level of wholeness. Rather, we need to recognize that we are only whole in relationship with Him, and our weakness then becomes a reminder to always stay close to Him.

Why I fail

First off, you probably don't want to know this about me. (Cowardly Lion slowly reads from sign: "I'd turn back if I were you." No, really, you should.)

Secondly, and very importantly to me, I've never used this as an excuse for my own actions, and I'm not starting now. But it can be important to know how patterns in our life became ingrained us. That said, this pattern belonged to me before he seared it into my being. I have already repented of and renounced the actions of my youth when it began, and forgiven my forebears for their choices which left me vulnerable.

I've written before about the weekend when he transitioned from grooming me to sexually abusing me. This first incident, on Thanksgiving weekend of 1977 at the YMCA in NYC - so pardon me for never agreeing that it's fun to stay there - was also the first time he prevented me from leaving. I resisted his entreaties for the longest time before eventually submitting to them - and to my own arousal. He was right, of course, that first time: he was only asking me to do in front of him what I already did privately. My own choices are an important part of what made me vulnerable to him. But the pattern I'm now dealing with began to be ingrained into me as he stood there, between me and the door, until my "no" began to yield to "I don't think so," and eventually, "I suppose," resulting in the overwhelming pleasure of the orgasm, and the crushing shame.

Later, in his secret apartment in Baltimore, on multiple occasions he would physically overcome me to impose his will on me, but it still resulted in my cooperation in the end, with its invariable physical and endorphic (if that's a word and not just a band name) payoff. I don't say that anymore to heap blame on myself for something that wasn't my fault. But it's important to really understand how the pattern of eventually giving in became a part of me. I gave in before him, so I'd already invited in that spiritual influence, but he bound me to it when he stole the power from me to be able to not give in when I didn't want to, no matter how determined I was not to.

I am still responsible for my own decisions, though, and that really is the point of dredging up these ugly memories.

So now I take that power back.

That's one of the things I love about Unbound: if something was taken from you spiritually, you can take it back!

Being honest with God

Dear Lord, my heavenly Papa, I'm weak and afraid. Even though I've renounced it as a lie before, I have a hard time fully believing that he wasn't right. Sometimes I'm more afraid of missing out on incredible pleasure than I am of not living according to Your plan for me. I know that's a lack in my faith, and I repent of it, and renounce doubt. But I'm not leaning on my faith, nor cowering in my weakness. I'm leaning on You, the only Daddy who has never let me down.

Exodus

In a time and place of repeated failure, I turn to You, Lord.  I place my desire to be with You ahead of my habit of not being able to make "no" last. He may have imposed that pattern in me against my will, long decades ago, but I long since accepted it as part of me. You've now set me free from the spirit of slavery; let me not, in the desert of my fear, look to return to my bondage, as Your people did in their Exodus. Help me through this desert. I will trust You to make a way for me through the sea. I will eat Your manna and quail without grumbling. I will trust You to draw water from the Rock. And I believe that You will lead me to the land of milk and honey, into which I will trust You to deliver me.