Saturday, I took time to work through a good third of Jonathan Welton's School of the Seers. I was struck by this: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God from Matthew 5:8. Jonathan's point is that exercising our senses of sight/other spiritual senses is good, but for true efficacy, we've got to have purity as well as intimacy with God. Like gold, we don't become more pure by becoming more gold, we become more pure by eliminating the dross that is not gold from ourselves.
I'd been on this bender all week; determining to eliminate distractions from my time/mindset, especially electronic ones. There was a little activation for this element of purity at the chapter's end in the book, and I did it - basically just praying and asking for improved purity.
I was struck that some what-might-seem-insignificant distractions needed to go; I deleted Clash of Clans and Boom Beach and Kingdom Rush from my phone ( - again. I had deleted them during the summer, but reloaded them, telling myself recently that I had latitude to play - which I do, I do have latitude to play, these games aren't sinful - but I do not have time to waste on distraction. A few minutes attacking someone's virtual town could always have been a few minutes invested attacking my enemy's spiritual stronghold, right? Or just worshipping, or just meditating, or, for sure, opening up the Bible app and seeing what God's saying in that moment). I also deleted the Facebook app, which I hadn't deleted before, but which had been showing itself to be a far worse time vampire. Check in on FB and scroll through 30 minutes of fluff, and political invective, and self-aggrandizement. For what? I was avoiding FB because I would leave there unsatisfied that my time was ever spent well. So, that got deleted, too.
I'm not hammering anyone else's use of these apps. Even for me, they're not evil, not base, but they're simply not gold. Let's keep to the gold standard, shall we? In this, and in more to come, I hope to refine myself.
Sunday, the message at HP was one about "dullness of hearing" from Hebrews 5:11: Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. In order to avoid the irony of a sermon about dullness-of-hearing-falling-on-ears-too-dull-of-hearing-to-hear-it, my prayer was that during the preliminary singing time, ears and hearts would be opened.
So. Once the songtime started, I hung out along the back wall and tried to help things along, adding my bit of fuel to the room. I was asking for ministering angels to take part, for the Holy Spirit to do work, open people up, open ears up. I was being moved and touched. Near the end, I took a moment to ping the room with my spiritual sonar. Eyes closed, seeking to use spiritual sight.
Where are you working here God? I expected something in the grouping of people before me, where I was kinda focusing my concentration and energies.
Is there anything here to see? Any angels?
An impression that yes, there are two. Large ones, like 12 feet tall, here in the back ...on either side of me.
What are they up to? What's going on? Fire. Flames.
What's burning? The angels aren't. … What's that? I am. I am standing between the angels, flames licking up all over me into the air, like, 15 feet high. Do I feel hot? No. Cool flames, I'm not feeling heat at all.
What's happening?
You are being made pure. These flames are consuming your impurities.
Wow, I was hoping that God would do something special for someone today, and here it is, happening to me.
I'll take that. Let it burn! Take away the stuff that's deep inside that I can't cleanse. I'm righteous, but anything that's not right, make clean. Wash my feet and hands and heart and mind. I did a self check, and offered up any of those impurities that still needed to be removed.
A fine moment for me, unexpected. I think this happened today because I was obedient yesterday. And this bottom line: Faithful physical actions release spiritual realities.
1 comment:
What a great post! Thanks for sharing.
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