Mark Marshall

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Divine Purpose

Purpose for your pain…

The definition for pain according to Wikipedia:

Pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.”It is the feeling common to such experiences as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the “funny bone”.

Pain motivates us to withdraw from potentially damaging situations, protect a damaged body part while it heals, and avoid those situations in the future. Most pain resolves promptly once the painful stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but sometimes pain persists despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body; and sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or disease.

I was teaching at Triumphant Church in Detroit yesterday morning when this concept became very clear to me. My very best friend in Oklahoma had an accident while cutting trees that had fallen during a storm. The tree suddenly fell on him, and broke his L-1 Lumbar, actually shattered it to pieces. It was horrific, but God was even faithful through all of it. The first couple of nights in the hospital were some of the roughest. His surgeon that was one of the best in the nation was out of the country. So in the mean time my friend had to wait two days for surgery with the fragments of the vertebrae everywhere. The calls from his wife were heart wrenching because of the pain and suffering he was going through.

Here is what I learned about the pain management. On the second night he was in so much pain, we were all praying but couldn’t understand why they couldn’t give him enough pain medication to keep him comfortable. His wife told me that night that one of the bone fragments was like a hair-line away from his spinal cord. If that fragment would have punctured or cut his spinal cord he would most assuredly been paralyzed. She told me that they didn’t want all of the pain to go away, so that he would not move around too much and take a chance of paralyzing himself. He of course at the time didn’t know this, but knew his pain was excruciating. So the pain was actual and potential damage. It was left in place to keep him from hurting himself even more than he already was!

The third day was the four-hour surgery. It went successful as planned. He is a proud owner of a titanium vertebrae and some hardware. All the while he has totally feeling and used of his extremities and even without any numbing or tingling. You see after the surgery he seemed relieved from the pain, he felt great. Talking to him on the phone was just like old times. So after the surgery the doctors gave him this new medicine that actually blocks the pain receptors. So now being pain-free for the most part he was able to move around and do his therapy and exercises! If the pain had not been managed, then his recovery most certainly would have been a slower process. Within a week in the hospital, he was walking on his own, and actually went home a day early. He is still recovering miraculously. I know for a fact it is by the mercy and power of God’s grace, the prayers of the saints. But I think today the pain management and the way it was handled had a lot to do with my friends positive attitude. You see this kind of faith is unstoppable. He is supposed to remain home bound for six weeks, at this rate I highly doubt it. After being home just a couple of days from a most traumatic accident, he was at one of his son’s baseball games. It’s hard to keep this man down, he has more faith than anyone else I have ever met.

Let’s bring this idea closer to home. No one wants to suffer or experience any kind of pain. But pain is result of injury and designed to keep you from further damage. You learn lessons from pain. I remember the old school way of teaching a child not to touch the stove, guess what they will only touch it once in their lives! So in a real sense pain can be a teacher to keep you out of harms way. What I realized yesterday morning while I was teaching was it might be quite possible that your current pain via be relational, emotional, etc. could be keeping you from hurting yourself even more permanently. Like as if my friend would have moved around too much, he might have paralyzed himself without knowing. In the same fashion, if you have a relational breakdown with a spouse don’t compound the pain by going out and doing something stupid. This action may result in doing irreversible damage to your relationship.

One thing for sure pain and suffering is a part of the transformation process from the carnal to the spiritual. Until we become totally free in our minds we will suffer. Suffering and going through things in this life is inevitable. Even Jesus said, in the world we would have tribulation, but be of good courage. And again St. Paul says God will make a way of escape, that you might endure the process. St Peter talked a lot about suffering in so much that he said it was a necessary element in establishing you. He says in First Peter that the God of all grace after you have suffered a while, God will strengthen, establish, and settle you. He will not allow you to suffer above that which you can take. The crazy thing is the thing you are going through that you don’t think you can, but you still are, because you CAN!

Pain is relative to each person’s threshold. If you ever visit a doctor for any kind of pain you will be asked to give a number between 1 and 10 to describe your pain. Also the length of your pain will be relative to which stage of the process you are in. If you are in the protective stage, your pain will remain to keep you from moving and further risking damaging yourself. If you are coming out of the process, then your pain will slowly dissipate as you learn to walk through and past it.

Just know for certainty today. Your ego and carnal mind is the source of all of your pain and suffering. So as you slowly become enlightened you will experience this pain of letting go and exercising your ‘new’ eyes, and muscles.

Kingdom Community

Belonging and Fitting In

I may have missed my calling just a bit, I am fascinated in my older age by the behavior and thinking among humans. I find myself studying, doing hours and hours of research on the subject. I came across this idea of belonging versus fitting in. They are not the same thing. Belonging and connection are at the core of every person alive. Fitting in is an external or internal adjustment on someone’s part to belong artificially.

Teenagers master this skill because it is inherited in our DNA. Because of our need to belong, the inability to be authentic and courageous leaves us no choice but to fit in or conform. Fitting in is about changing my authentic self, in my looks, desires, attitudes etc to conform into the desired crowd or relationship. We have done it so long that honestly people have mistaken this for their real self!

My friend Toby told the basic needs of all humans
1. To be fully known
2. To be fully loved
3. To be fully connected (I added this one)

All of the driving forces within us cause us to seek these things through our human strengths. Brene Brown Ph.D. says,” Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued: when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derived sustenance and strength from the relationship.” You see to be connected in this sense requires you to be authentic and vulnerable. It’s definitely a learned process. If you think about your first date that you have with your potential mate, the fear and anxiety of fitting in and finding approval. Now think of the authenticity of the relationship after you are married for 20 years!

Daniel Goleman wrote a book called, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. Daniel proves through neuroscience that we are hardwired for connection and that our relationships shape our biology as well as our experiences. He writes,”Even our most routine encounters act as regulators in the brain priming our emotions, some desirable, others not. The more strongly connected we are with someone emotionally the greater the mutual force.”

One of the biggest problems is our culture. We are driven to succeed and are identified by what we have. It’s sad to say but most people in our country have an identity crisis. Our self-worth is affected by our net worth, and we base our worthiness upon our productivity. Meaning we feel better about ourselves in a worth sense based upon how far we got down our to-do-list for the day! Another huge problem in our society is we have now handed out busyness, and exhaustion as badges of honor! We are way too busy to even know what we are about anymore. Our children are way too busy, we are creating the same world for them that we hate about our own!

If connecting requires me to be authentic then it’s quite the opposite for ‘fitting in’. The idea of fitting in requires me to begin a comparison process to determine my level of fitting in, and which crowd or friends I will have. Unfortunately comparison is all about conformity and competition. If we are not careful we will find ourselves only feeling adequate or enough when we are doing better than. Better than is a myth that the carnal minds plays on you to get you to connect without authenticity. Technology has connected people but not so much in a heart to heart fashion, but sort of in a plastic way!

I remember last year I was in a funk. I just couldn’t shake it. My birthday rolled around and to see all of the posts on my Facebook really gave me a charge. My feelings of worth and value shot up. Well this year the same thing happened. I think in those two days I received over 350 well wishes and emails. While I was basking in the ‘love’, I heard my self say, “how would you be feeling if you would have only received 5 well wishes instead of 350?” So then I realized the people I have true connections with are enough to sustain me. I have to learn to enough without adding the ____________ at the end of the sentence.

Answer this question, “I will feel better about myself and my life when ________________________(happens, or gets done….ie: lose weight, make more money, etc etc….) You have to fill in the blank and be honest to yourself. The challenge that I am working on is to be enough already. And learn to accept and love the person God has already made me to be at my core!

Personal Growth

Shame: The Swamp Land of the Soul

Today I was reading and came across this idea of shame being like a swamp. I have been contemplating the whole Adam and Eve story for years, and very intensely the last year or so. I can not seem to shake the idea that we are still dealing with the effects of that fatal day. Misty Edwards is an amazing prophetic psalmist. In one of her songs the line is, “If Grace is an ocean then we’re all drowning.” I truly believe this statement, I also recall Stevie Nicks had a line in a song that said, “Drowning in the sea of love, where everyone would love to drown.”

Well if grace is like the ocean, and love like a sea; then shame has to be like a swamp of the soul!  Lets take a look at the swampland first shall we.

A swamp is a wetland with some flooding of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a large number of hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation.  A common feature of swamps is water stagnation.

Swamps are characterized by very slow-moving waters. They are usually associated with adjacent rivers or lakes. In some cases, rivers become swamps for a distance. Swamps are features of areas with very low topographic relief.

Swamps were historically often drained to provide additional land for agriculture, and to reduce the threat of diseases borne by swamp insects and similar animals. Swamps were generally seen as useless and even dangerous. This practice of swamp draining is nowadays seen as a destruction of a very valuable ecological habitat type of which large tracts have already disappeared in many countries. However, the generally messy nature of swamps, with their diffuse boundaries and lack of enclosure, prevents humans from being able to collect and capitalize on their precious natural resources. Generally swamps are assessed as having low land value even while they are being protected from damage. [Wikipedia]

Shame is definitely like a stagnation to our souls, the life and flow of it. It is also uninhabitable for the most part by humans. So it’s definitely not a good place to live! We know there are many insects, and predators that lark in the hidden terrain. Most of I see metamorphically speaking, a very low-lying place. To our souls with shame is exactly all of these things. It is a terrible and dangerous environment for the soul.

Dr. Rene Brown says in her book, “The Gifts of Imperfections: Let go of who you thing you’re supposed to be and embrace who are”, That Shame is the ‘fear of disconnection and belonging due to my own feeling of unworthiness.’ In other words we are all hard-wired for connection and belonging, but somehow we get to a place to where our own feelings of unworthiness for whatever reason creates a disconnected mindset. We somehow feel that if you knew the internal struggles I have with in me, and my own knowledge of unworthiness you would reject me. This creates the shame.

She also rights in her book about Shame.

1. We all have it…..
2. We are all afraid to talk about it…..
3. The less we talk about it, the more power it has over our lives…..

Dr. Brown is a researcher / storyteller by profession. Over 10 years of shame, vulnerability, and fear research was done by her. I find the information very insightful into the human soul and mindset. I can easily see how this is such a huge issue in all of our lives. I believe with all of my heart that the Facebook and MySpace phenomenon is marker for what is going on in people’s lives and minds. Aside from the obvious narcissistic  tendencies, and the  voyeuristic curiosity of us all; The message that I hear from Facebook over all to me is the basic needs of humans at its finest.

1. The need to be Fully Loved
2. The need to be Fully Known (heard, seen, perceived)
3. The need to Belong

Of course Facebook has become a wonderful in communicating, promoting, and even was paramount in the Egyptian Revolution! This tool can also be a very dangerous tool in the hands of those that carry shame in the dark crevasses of their being. I poke fun sometimes when I say, Facebook can be a tool for creeping, snooping, and stalking. As a matter of fact the California legal community has said through its findings that 1 in every 5 divorces are because of Facebook’s ability to communicate. Facebook has become a very great tool for lawyers.

http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2011/03/facebook-to-blame-for-1-in-5-divorces-lawyers-say.html

To navigate these swampy areas in our minds and souls, we are going to have to build deep trusting relationships with others who can listen without a judgmental spirit. If we can find these people the grip of shame will begin to erode and dry up as it were. And much like farmers we can drain the swampy waters of shame and despair, and once again plant productive fields of love and acceptance.

My Good friend Toby once told me the difference between shame and guilt.

Guilt: I DID something bad
Shame: I AM something bad

I will never forget this as long as I live. I realize guilt is a blessing from God to help nudge you to reconcile the offenses you may have occurred along the path of life so that you can live free and with an open heart. If we ignore the nudging then the inevitable consequence is shame. You will begin to identify a part of you AS the bad thing, instead of a slip up, it becomes your identity.

God help us to identify with the greatness within each and every one of us! As I watch the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan unfold, I am so amazed at the spirit of the people. There hasn’t been one single report of looting and violence, and they wait for over 3 hours to get water and some don’t even get it. Let us not even discuss what would happen in America if anything remotely like that happened? Just think New Orleans, and Katrina, or the fires in the riot in Downtown L.A.

Consider and pray about finding a trusted friend that sticks closer than and brother to navigate and dry up your Swampland of the Soul. This is your year to get it done! One thing I am 100% sure of…..

It will NEVER get fixed by ignoring it!  That is what your carnal mind is trying to convince you of!

Kingdom Tales

The Tribe of ‘ouda’ and ‘ida’

This is an excerpt I ran across from a book that I am writing. This brought back a flood of memories. I would like to encourage you with the same encouragement that I received from the experience. I hope you are strengthened in your path, and resolved to not only desire an Outcome, but rather an Opportunity to Overcome! If this is a blessing to you please share!

From the Book…..I am Joseph:

My father was a great man of God. He had more kindness and character than any man I know up to this point. He was a man that I always wanted to grow up and be like. He was just, caring, and always looking out for others. He always put others needs before his own. In 2005 my father had a challenge of prostrate cancer. He was a tough old bird. He was one of those old school guys that would never go to the doctor until he was about dead. This was one of those times. Unfortunately he battled for a couple of years and finally went home to be with the Lord in July 2007.

In the last stages of his journey for the last four months I would come and just spend time with him and we would talk. Now you have to understand in the final stages of his life he was still cheerful and upbeat. One thing I noticed though he was having visitations of angels and the Lord himself! I remember talking to him at times and he would be staring up and the ceiling behind me just smiling. I would ask him what he was seeing, and he would say it was the angels of God. I will never forget on my last visit before he passed on we had a conversation that really changed my life. I never thought it would be the last time I ever talked to him but I’m grateful to God that we had that time together for the last few months of his life. Even on his death bed my dad was still sharing the mysteries of the Kingdom for all who would hear him. I am forever grateful to the Father for allowing me to be so blessed to have him as my earthly father.

I was talking to my dad that July afternoon. I asked him, “Dad I thank God that sometimes He allows us to circle back around in our lives and redo the bad choices we’ve made in our lives. And I think it’s His grace that allows us to sometimes undo the wrong choices we’ve made as well.” I was not prepared for the wisdom that proceeded out of his mouth. I was expecting the patented Christian response of the power and grace of God to allow us some sense of redemption and redo the wrong in our lives. What came out his mouth by way of the Holy One just shocked me and awakened me to another depth in God’s ways that I had not known until that point.

He said, “Son you have got to stop worrying over the choices you made in your life. The choices you made were the only choices you could have made at that time in your life. As a matter of fact God knew the choice you were going to make in that certain situation and made a plan for you according to the choice you had to make. So the choices that you made that you somehow think now were the wrong choices were actually the only choice for you to make. But what you must do is overcome the tribe of ‘ouda’ and ‘ida’. You know the tribe of woulda, shoulda, coulda, and if ida! More people get tripped up by those enemies than any other thing in their lives! If you live your whole life wondering if ida only said this, or I wished I coulda done something different here. And also if I wished now I woulda or I shoulda made a better choice in my life. If you don’t overcome these things you will never enter into the life that God has intended for you!”

Wow such wisdom pouring out of this man; it was like it was straight from heaven. I could sense a holy sensation fill the room as I listen to this great wisdom. I realized as I meditated on these words on the plane ride home that he was absolutely right. We have to overcome the tribe of the ‘ouda’ and ‘ida’. We must not spend wasted time and energy focusing on these enemies of our souls. These enemies keep us locked into the past. We spend tremendous amount of our lives trying to redo and change the effects of our past.

Personal Growth

Paradoxical Ascent 2

The paradoxical ascent to God is not easily explained to the logical mind.  In simple terms the early Fathers of the faith would use these terms to describe the spiritual ‘feeling’. The Paradox here is the reality of what’s really going on in the hearts and minds of God’s people at certain times in their lives.

‘The more I know about God, it seems the less I really know’, and ‘The closer I get to Him and His Essence, the further away He seems.’ This could be some really great knowledge to know in some of our uncertain times. To actually learn by faith and through experience that in those times where I think God is a million miles away He might actually be the closest. I have found that Knowing God is more fitted to my experience than just my learning ability. St Symeon said that, ‘God can only be known by experiencing Him.’  My finite mind can not contain or formulate the nature and Person of the Godhead, but I truly enjoy learning and trying. But it seems like every time I go back to certain scriptures that I thought I knew one way, have now changed or added, in the meaning.  What I know have learned over the years is that He hasn’t changed but I have been moving ‘IN HIM’, and now I have a different perspective on the same scriptures I thought I knew by heart a few years back.

The Paradoxical Ascent can be described in this way. We are from Oklahoma originally, and every year we would take a trip to Colorado to the mountains. It’s a drive that for most part is very flat and boring. But there is a point that you get in New Mexico, I’m not sure where exactly, but you can see the whole Rocky Mountain range. And when you get to that point in the trip it changes to excitement because you can see everything.  The closer you get into Colorado and actually beginning to go through the mountains, there is a series of descending and ascending. The thing you will notice is you no longer see the whole range just a few mountains. But the closer you get to your destination, for us it was always Mount Crested Butte, you can’t see anything but what’s in front of you. So it is much like the Paradoxical Ascent, the closer I get the further away I seem, and the more I know, the less I know.

When we first started out in our journey to God there is a point that you think or perceive to see the whole picture. But as you journey on further the closer you get and the less you think you know! Enjoy the journey friends His ways are past finding out, but its fun trying to learn everything we can!

Personal Growth

Paradoxical Ascent 1

When you think about the thought of ambiguity, it brings to mind an ancient thought of the ‘Paradoxical Ascent’.  The very term seems to be inline with ambiguity and in many ways it is, but in a much deeper mystery. The usage of the word paradox in our society is the polar opposite, it actually means disambiguation.

A paradox is a true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition. The term is also used for an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth (cf. kōan, Catuskoti). Typically, the statements in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together. The word paradox is often used interchangeably with contradiction. It is also used to describe situations that are ironic.

Paradoxical Ascent is an early fathers term from their mystical perspective. In the early 1700’s some early fathers of the Jewish mystical faith called it coincidentia oppositorum. Every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed elements.  Consequently to know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations. The coincidence of opposites that characterizes God, humanity and the world can be approximately understood by the simultaneous adoption of two points of view.

While this may seem like a contradiction of polar opposites, it is really that the opposites are all in HIM and complement each other. One makes the other what it is! In more simpler terms we can look at the Kingdom of God as inverted. I say inverted because it seems to be the opposite of what we think and the way we view life. In the Kingdom up is down meaning if you want to ascend you must first descend. If you want to receive you must first give. If you want and desire love you must first love. From our finite perspective it is hard to contain and satisfy a definition of our infinite God and His essence.

For example we say the sun rises in the east every morning and sets in the west every evening. And that is what is so difficult for us because it really does seem that way, our eyes actually see, and we perceive it to be so. But until you are enlightened with other truths on a bigger scale you would never know the truth. The reality being; the sun never MOVES, but rather the earth is turning and rotating around the sun!

This is the beauty of the mystery of the paradoxical ascent to God, that quite possibly what we see and are experiencing is the polar opposite of the truth?

Kingdom Community

In My Shoes

In my shoes, just to see what it’s like to be me
I’ll be you, let’s trade shoes
Just to see what it’d be like to feel your pain
You feel mine, go inside each other’s minds
Just to see what we find
Look at life through each other’s eyes
But don’t let em say you ain’t beautiful
They can all get lost, just stay true to you
Don’t let em say you ain’t beautiful

They can all get lost, just stay true to you

Eminem

The process of love goes in stages I believe. Its a total process. You have to go from ‘Having Love, to Showing Love, to Being love!’

Each one is a step, and its a practice that many have gone before us and have conquered. Having love is the first step of the process. It usually happens when you have been amazingly touched by Love in your being.  So the beginning process is that you respond by just having love and grace for others around you! This first phase if you will is more of a response.  No one can have love that hasn’t first experienced it. It is like the ripple effect or wave after the initial splash in a pool of water. So those that ‘Have’ love towards others have experienced love! You can not share and give what you do not have or experienced.  If you do it will not possess the true content of substance.  Your having love towards others will be nothing more than another concept, not substance.

Showing love is nothing more than a choice to align myself to the power of love that was shown unto me.  Love on this level is a choice, a daily, minute by minute decision to choose to remember the power of the love that abides in you!  Choices like these chip away at the core of your self life.  In every situation in your life, weigh it in light of  I Corinthians chapter 13.  If you read that chapter, there is pretty much not anything else to say.

Being love is a total surrender! When you choose you still are in control, because you might still choose not to show love.  When you surrender then you  have given up the right to choose. This is the ultimate level, then God Himself can BE Himself through you. You surrender your choice to love or not love, and eventually you become Love.

Practicing this process in real life goes like this. For the record in the old concept of God’s grace or man’s will, I say God’s grace abounds and definitely came before mans ability to choose. When I think about this journey and process of becoming Love, I think it goes in these ascetic practices.

1. Empathy: the learned ability to to feel FOR someone and their struggles.  This is a conscience choice to feel for the suffering of others. This is what I call Having love. The ability to share in a commonality with others in their sufferings. My belief is that this only comes about by those who have been touched by Love Himself in some fashion or form.  Love on this level is the beginning, but it is a supernatural characteristic. When I feel empathy towards another I am striking a chord in my own life of my own suffering in the past or present. But it rarely moves anyone to real action that requires me to get involved.  It’s like I want to eliminate the suffering of others but I don’t know how to do it without conflicting with my own personal life.

2. Sympathy: the inability to no longer sit by as a bystander and watch others suffer. In this stage we possess the mindset to feel WITH you.  So now our motivation is to get up close and personal and be one with you. In this level of the process you actually suffer when others suffer, and rejoice when others are honored.

3. Compassion: is the surrendered path of life that live to feel AS you…..and seek to eliminate the suffering and injustice of others.

So don’t be discouraged, but rather keep cooperating with the process…

In the words of Eminem,

In my shoes, just to see what it’s like to be me
I’ll be you, let’s trade shoes
Just to see what it’d be like to feel your pain
You feel mine, go inside each other’s minds
Just to see what we find
Look at life through each other’s eyes
But don’t let em say you ain’t beautiful
They can all get lost, just stay true to you
Don’t let em say you ain’t beautiful

They can all get lost, just stay true to you

Eminem

Divine Purpose , Kingdom Community

Hearts that BURN!

There is an amazing description of how spiritual events take place in our lives. In Luke 24 the resurrected Christ is walking veiled to the disciples, and they did not even know HIM!

They said to each other, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” Luke 24:32

I wonder how many times we have stood in the presence of such greatness, and not really recognize the significance until later on.

I can tell you my story of a man that I heard of.  When I came to hear him speak. It totally changed my life forever.  As I heard him speak it made so much sense to my heart, but my mind and understanding could not connect the dots. These sayings of his created so much peace in my heart and chaos in my mind, to the point as to which I had never been before.  You have to understand, I am not a jump on the bandwagon guy.  But if I have experience in and belief, I’m going to annoy you with my bandwagoness… I don’t jump easily to something that is NEW just because it’s new. But I saw the effects in my own heart and those around me who heard.  These words offended my self righteous religiosity, but liberated the inside of me to no end. Very hard experience to describe to you.  It’s like me trying to tell you what water taste like!  Good luck with that one.

Hearing him over and over made so much sense to me. I was crushed by the fact that I had spent almost 20 years in the religious realm,  totally devoted to the God Realm and serving 110%! And I couldn’t believe that I had never heard any of this kind of truth!  And to hear him made me feel so blessed, like I can’t believe I’m hearing this! I saw the miracles and peoples’ response.

I remember eating dinner with him many times.  Every time without fail the wait staff were totally drawn to him. It was almost embarrassing, I mean every where we went, people just talked and talked and wanted to badly to be around him. It was so common, it was totally expected every where we went. We would have to peel him away from people. I remember him having a  2000.00 pair of shoes from some place in Italy, have no idea the name, but still ‘Hanging with the little people’. His heart was with the people, but his mission was to challenge the church leaders of the day. For that is the only way to create change overall.

As our relationship grew I would meet him on trips just to ‘hang out’ and serve in any way I could to make life easier on him. I learned through him not only the protocol of the church, and the Christianize, but also the deeper purpose of the mission.  I have never seen a place that wasn’t drawn to him. But I have to tell you, in the gathering of the elect there was a special presence. When you gather the spiritual, and those with perception of the anointing there was a very special Draw on the Presence.

And every single time this man opened his mouth whether in the pulpit, or at the dinner table, or in private; I was never ceased to amazed. I can say with full assurance that he changed my life forever. My mind, my spirit, my theology is all the better and more solid than ever before.

I can remember the bliss that filled me thinking about the great movement I was a part of.  Not in any prideful way but a sincere love and devotion to the path that was laid out before us by God. I mean it seemed so great and perfectly fit! Overwhelmingly blessed beyond measure.  But we slowly became a threat to the status quo and system of the day.  The gazing eyes of the lack of respect was stinging. Not realizing that we were not the enemy!  Many times we would have to leave abruptly after meetings because people did not ‘agree’ with him as he laid out the spiritual plan.  Many of those ‘spiritual leaders’ would have him come and hold meetings only to use his gift and difference to add monetary blessings to their own work. You see I have seen him so many times be tolerated and not celebrated.  I know most people don’t know this but many of those with gifts of the spirit can easily get prostituted for that gift!  I know many don’t want to think of this, but said leaders have many times brought people into their congregations to do one of several things:

1. Bring a stirring and commitment beyond the normal realm of commitment. (revival spirit)
2. To confirm, affirm, the current leaderships path
3. To create buzz about the mission of the church, and fund projects

You can see where this man clearly would and could not be a good candidate for some of these.

He is the simple man and woman’s guide; and every religious leaders nightmare.  You see when he speaks I could see the simple people freed into the presence, and the religious blinded.  Even by the same teachings, it would sear the heart of the religious and harden, and free and feed the hungry and called at the very same time!

Often imitated,
many times hated
never celebrated….

Mar Enoch Ashe
Beloved

Divine Purpose

3 Gifts of Spiritual Guides

(From Bishop Kalistos Ware)

Three gifts in particular distinguish the spiritual guide.

1. The first is insight and discernment (diakrisis), the ability to perceive intuitively the secrets of another’s heart, to understand the hidden depths of which the other does not speak and is usually unaware. The spiritual father or mother penetrates beneath the conventional gestures and subterfuges whereby we conceal our true personality from others and from ourselves;

Yet, for a word to possess power, it is necessary that there should be not only one who speaks with the genuine authority of personal experience, but also one who listens with attention and eagerness.

The elder’s gift of insight is exercised primarily through the practice known as the “disclosure of thoughts” (logismoi). In early Eastern monasticism the young monk used to go daily to his spiritual father and lay before him all the thoughts which had come to him during the day. This disclosure of thoughts includes far more than a confession of sins, since the novice also speaks of those ideas and impulses which may seem innocent to him, but in which the spiritual father may discern secret dangers or significant signs. Confession is retrospective, dealing with sins that have already occurred; the disclosure of thoughts, on the other hand, is prophylactic, for it lays bare our logismoi before they have led to sin and so deprives them of their power to harm. The purpose of the disclosure is not juridical, to secure absolution from guilt, but its aim is self-knowledge, that we may see ourselves as we truly are.

The principle underlying the disclosure of thoughts is clearly summed up in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers: “If unclean thoughts trouble you, do not hide them but tell them at once to your spiritual father and condemn them. The more we conceal our thoughts, the more they multiply and gain strength… [But] once an evil thought is revealed, it is immediately dissipated… Whoever discloses his thoughts is quickly healed.”[3]

If we cannot or will not bring out into the open a logismos, a secret fantasy or fear or temptation, then it possesses power over us. But if with God’s help and with the assistance of our spiritual guide, we bring the thought out from the darkness into the light, its influence begins to wither away. Having exposed the logismos, we are then in a position to deal with it, and the process of healing can begin. The method proposed here by the early monks has interesting similarities with the techniques of modern psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. But the early monks had worked out this method fifteen centuries before Freud and Jung! There is, of course, an important difference: the early monks did not employ the notion of the unconscious in the way that modern psychology does, even though they recognized that with our conscious understanding we are usually aware of only a small part of ourselves.

2. The second gift of the spiritual father or mother is the ability to love others and to make others’ sufferings their own. Of one elder mentioned in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, it is briefly and simply recorded: “He possessed love, and many came to him.”[6] He possessed love — this is indispensable in all spiritual motherhood and fatherhood. Insight into the secrets of people’s hearts, if devoid of loving compassion, would not be creative but destructive; if we cannot love others, we will have little power to heal them.

Loving others involves suffering with and for them; such is the literal sense of the word “compassion.” “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2): the spiritual father or mother is the one par excellence who bears the burdens of others.

Yet the relation between the spiritual father and his children is not one-sided. Though he takes the burden of their guilt upon himself and answers for them before God, he cannot do this effectively unless they themselves are struggling wholeheartedly on their own behalf. Once a brother came to St Antony of Egypt and said: “Pray for me.” But the old man replied: “Neither will I take pity on you nor will God, unless you make some effort of your own.”[11]

3. A third gift of the spiritual father and mother is the power to transform the human environment, both the material and the non-material. The gift of healing, possessed by so many of the startsi, is one aspect of this power. More generally, the starets helps his disciples to perceive the world as God created it and as God desires it once more to be. The true elder is one who discerns the universal presence of the Creator throughout creation, and assists others to discern it likewise. He brings to pass,

The lack of spiritual fathering and mothering is eroding our culture…