Our Spiritual Lives - Relate to God??

I have been working through a book of my wife's, actually. Going slowly. One of those books that you can only chew little pieces of at a time. Its title is Listening to Love, written by Jan Meyers. I read a passage today that just kind of summed up what I have been stewing over for the last quite a while and, with full acknowledgement of her work, her insight and her courage to share these thoughts, I would like to reproduce excerpts of one section of it here.

This grave [she is speaking of self-righteousness; I apply it to my spirituality in general - J] is often the hardest to break out of because it looks so, well, good, moral, and honest. It is a shell of great-looking appearances, even friend to friend. But thankfully, as Canon Barnett's billboard said of our spiritual life, "It is buried, but not dead. When it really hears God's voice it will rise. Men will live spiritual as well as honest lives. They will rest on Some One greater than themselves and have peace."¹

She goes on to relate a conversation with a couple who were having a struggle and she had just wondered out loud about how sad God must feel about that. One responded condescendingly, "how can you possibly think of God in that way?" The other echoed in disbelief, "How can a sovereign God possibly be moved by us?"

This couple sat with me, incredulous that I would suggest God might actually be impacted -- stirred, moved -- by them. Displeased, maybe, but not sad, not impacted. They were defending God and all they had come to know intellectually about his immovable attributes, and as they did so, it was clear they felt obedient. So why did they sound so smug?

Here is the dilemma of true listening: are we listening in order to respond with our hearts, or are we robotically rattling off what we "know" to be true? ...like George MacDonald...wrote to his niece, "The whole mischief has come of people setting themselves to understand rather than to do, to arrange God's business for him, and tell other people what the Father meant, instead of doing what the Father tells them, and then teaching others to do the same." ² Something dry happens when we stop listening and start to presumptuously instruct. For [them] [and us?? - J.], God had become so impersonal in his sovereign holiness that considering his heart for them was no longer relevant; all they had to do was salute him and defend him. Their hearts were not involved in listening to his voice, because they were preoccupied with defending a tightly held theological position about him. Always an irony, isn't it? God gets lost in the process of our trying to defend him. [emphasis added - J]

.....The sovereignty of God opens up greater depths of freedom and intimacy than we could ever imagine. But that was just it. [I/We are] not looking for intimacy; [I/we are] looking for a God [I/We can] defend and outline.

.....true listening obedience asks everything of us because it is responsible. Explaining God asks only that we be good students of facts.

.....It is hard to ask with the needy heart of a child -- to be loved, to be given to, to stay responisve to God's care. And it's humbling to admit all our talk and labor and work for God are worth [nothing]. Larry Crabb reminds us that infants don't just sit around sweetly longing. No, they fill their diapers and squawk and scream until they get what they cannot provide for themselves.³ Their middle-of-the-night bellowing is a picture of what Jesus...says must be true of us in order to receive the kingdom of heaven.

Think about it. How often in the past week have you known the freedom in your soul to pitch a fit -- a screaming desperation that says, "I don't know how you are going to do it, but I cannot do anything for myself here, and I am starving, so you had better come through for me!".....

The words of Scripture can be managed and manipulated and explained. The Word made Flesh must be encountered and responded to -- with desperate, middle-of-the-night cries.

---Excerpted from Jan Meyers, Listening to Love, (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2004, 59-61.

Pretty blunt. Pretty right on. Let's have the freedom to respond to God, to "pitch our fit" with needy and open hearts. And, I might add, let's have the freedom and the courage to be flesh for and respond to each other as well.


¹Barnett, quoted in Steve Brinn, The BootJack Ranch Devotional, 4
²George MacDonald, The Heart of George MacDonald: A One-Volume Collection of His Most Important Fiction, Essays, Sermons, Drama, Poetry, Letters, ed. Rolland Hein (Wheaton, IL: Shaw, 1994), 14.
³Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams: God's Unexpected Pathway to Joy (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2001, 17.

Who are you? A Marketer?

I have spent 4 or 5 years in the marketing world trying to run one or more home based businesses. Like most, I have been unsuccessful - that is, I have spent lots of money without earning any.

During this time I have been taught - and tried to learn, with some success - skills and techniques such as:

writing copy

writing attention-getting headlines

using, reading phone scripts that require little or no thought

setting goals

taking action, daily, to reach those goals

being persistent

finding a market

picking a product

acquiring and using tools and software to automate the process

developing a system

advertising hows and wheres, media, etc.

duplicating one's self

getting a coach and a mastermind team

etc.

All of these are helpful, important, and certainly generate income for the proponent and purveyor of each.

However, there is a fatal flaw. None of them address the key to all activity, and that is, "Who am I? How do I define myself? How does the 'I' relate to all of the tools? In doing any of these activities, do they enhance or detract from who I perceive myself to be?"

So the first question we must ask a potential marketer is: "Who are you? Do you know who you are? (And are you OK with that?)"

The second question then becomes: "Are you willing to change your definintion of yourself to become someone who can do what it takes (above?!) to become a marketer?" Or, perhaps better, "Are you willing to let go all of the lies and false perceptions about yourself that you allow to be your definition of yourself and discover who you really, truly are? And having done that, will you be willing to let yourself be open and seen and attractive to other people who need and want what you have to offer?"

So to become a marketer, first know who you are and embrace that. Acknowledge that. Love that.

Next, know that What you market is YOU! That will reflect as some product to which you are drawn: a nutritional product, or a service or whatever; something that resonates with you based on you, not because of the product itself.

At some point you well begin to measure results. Earning extra income is, after all, the purpose. Here again, though, keep the focus on the right place. Results are not best measured on reaching goals or counting the number of dollars brought to the bank account (my apologies to Dan Kennedy, a man I consider a mentor, who makes carts full more than I do). Rather, results should first be measured in terms of how much closer I (you) have moved today toward affirming, confirming, more deeply manifesting, who I am and am becoming.

Personally, these last "unsuccessful" years have reflected my confusion about who I truly am, confusion about my definite chief purpose in life (a "Napoleon Hillism"). In that mindset I could barely attract and could certainly not keep clients or dollars. I wanted not their money but their approval. Now, in accepting and approving myself, by living in and from the strength of who I am, I not only attract peole who want and need what I have to offer them, but they also leave dollars on the table on the way out. More than that. I can now easily accept those dollars as a reflection in their minds of my value to them.

As T. Harv Eker says, "my outer world reflects my inner world". We need to spend less time on technique and more time on the inner world.