The Big Squeeze
Be gracious to me, O God, for man has trampled upon me; fighting all day long he oppresses me. Psalm 56:1 NASB
He oppresses me – Are you oppressed? Before you say, “Not at all,” consider the Hebrew word lahats. It is a picture of being squeezed into a space too small to fit. Balaam’s donkey injures Balaam’s foot in the process of squeezing next to the wall. That’s lahats. Forced into a small space. The opposite, of course, is wide-open places where we can freely move about. That is the picture of hen (grace).
Let’s ask again, this time in the Hebrew metaphor. “Are you hemmed in? Are you squeezed? Are you being forced into a space too small for you?” Now you might answer the question differently. Do obligations and expectations impinge on your life in ways that make you feel like you are squeezed? Do you long for some kind of liberation? Are you wrestling with other’s requirements of you? And, perhaps worst of all, do you find that you demand of yourself things that make you actually feel squeezed into a box?
Maybe the man who tramples you, who fights with you all day long, is you!
YHVH brings us into the wide-open spaces. He leads us into open pastures. He restores us. Far too often the enemy that seeks to constrict who we are is us. We are the ones trampling the grace of El Shaddai with all of our expectations and self-imposed restrictions. YHVH has given us a playbook for living. It’s call Torah. Everything in it is designed to provide us freedom; to allow us to live in the wide-open spaces of His grace. And what do we do with this marvelous playbook of room to grow? We chop in down into little pieces and convert those into a list of do’s and don’ts. We take some and throw out the rest. We build fences and then find we have no room to move. We add and subtract according to our cultural expectations. Pretty soon we discover that we are living out a book that has no freedom in it, so we throw away the book and pretend that we can draw the fence line wherever we wish.
And we feel squeezed all the time.
Now take twenty minutes to see this. It just might save you from too-small places.
Topical Index: oppress, lahats, space, freedom, vulnerability, Psalm 56:1
For all those, like me, who are somewhat “tech challenged” when at the end of this teaching Skip adds: “Now take 20 minutes to see this” thought he meant we should meditate on what he wrote or mull it over for awhile. He didn’t. It is a link to a TED talk by Brene’ Brown- a good one I might add. The secret was it is in RED print and that is not for emphasis- it signifies a LINK. Touch on it and it takes you to another Web page. I may have to go back through the 4,000+ teachings by Skip to see where I missed a hyperlink thinking it was an editorial tool used for emphasis!
Glad you found the link. Bree Brown’s comments and insight are delicious.
Skip, You have been able to capture in four small paragraphs what I have been trying to verbalize in months of teachings at “my” Fellowship!
I keep coming to this place of, “Why are we doing what we are doing?” What are we doing with all this learning? If we are learning just to be learning, we are missing the point! We need to be ACTING on what we are learning! But as we learn, we put up fences; we look at others and make determinations that they aren’t “doing it right.”
And how did Yeshua say to do this? Love YHVH, and love your neighbor. That is easy to do, right? We can’t do this if we are busy building fences and pressing ourselves and others!
We need to learn how to stop the pressing — both internally and externally! Learn how to live freely in YHVH’s instruction [Torah].
Thanks again, for the timely writing!
Careful Choosing
#notthatbutthis
~ And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God ~ (Romans 12.2)
~ Listen, my sons, to a Father’s instruction; PAY ATTENTION and gain understanding/discernment ~
Short story?
(#notetoself:)
A.) Listen.
B.) Pay attention
Mother Knows Best
~ His mother said to the servants, – “Do whatever He tells you.” ~ (John 2.5)
#whatshesaid
#awisemanwillhear
“Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage
Minds innocent and quiet take that for an hermitage
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.”
TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON
Freedom is an interior job. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, in The Gulag Archipelago, wrote about his time in prison as the happiest, most freeing time of his life. He described the daily beatings, the uncertainty of whether he was going to live to see tomorrow, the worry for his friends, the multiple times that his manuscript for his book got confiscated and he had to start it over again from memory, but he then wrote about the joys of prison: the precious times that he got with his fellow inmates, the clubs they started where they diligently taught each other every scrap of everything anybody had to share, the exquisite cameraderie that only the damned can truly know, and how precious each moment was. The happiness there, he said, was something that he never found outside the Gulag. He said he realized that freedom was a description of the lack of care about the unessential, and if there is one thing designed to systematically strip a person of the unessential, it was the Gulag. Only when everything gets taken from you can you see what the real prison was. Further, and this was the one pivotal thing I found and took away from the books (I found the unabridged version in the library, and it was 3 huge tomes!); he described being arrested for the crime of being too suspiciously fervent of a young idealistic communist. For years he got beaten and accused of subversion: the powers that be simply could not understand his enthusiasm for socialism! After defending himself, feeling sorry for himself, being angry at not being understood, he then despaired, and then he hated. I think when he wrote One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich he may have been doing homage to the example of the Christians he saw there that showed him what he needed to do to survive. He needed to forgive. At that moment, he says, he realized that the line between good and evil did not pass down BETWEEN one person and another: it was drawn down the MIDDLE of each person. At any given point in life in any of us, that line may be further to one side or the other, depending on many things. None of us, therefore, are in a position to judge any of us. He says he saw that, if he had not been arrested, he would have been as enthusiastic an oppressor as any of his captors: there but for the grace of God, would have gone he. He saw himself in them, and that set him free.
Expectations, which are those unholy laws from the pit of hell, are what oppress and enslave us. The Orient, which recognizes the impediment that those expectations cause, is better at recognizing what ails us, I believe, than we are in the West. I think they still do not have the correct thing to do about it, however, but their diagnosis that it is expectation that snows us is about spot on, I would have to say. We build our own walls with the stones of expectation, and, if we happen to momentarily escape those walls, we pick up those stones again to stone ourselves and those around us. Worst of all, I think we then put those unholy expectations in the very mind and mouth of G-d, and imagine that it is He that commands them, and then punishes accordingly. Lost in a prison of our own making, we attempt to drag Him in with us, like the drowning souls we are. And then we cry for the loneliness, when it is we who have built a wall for Him.
Yesterday, a friend showed me a cartoon about the Law. It showed two men next to a fence. One man was telling the other that they should stay inside the fence, but the other, impatient at the restriction, growled “I HATE fences” as he vaulted over the top. “Wait”, his friend cried, “that is not a fence, that is a protecting barrier”, but his friend was already in free fall, hurtling down the side of a huge cliff.
Perhaps it is time for a paradigm shift!
That was very inspiring, Laurita, and the last paragraph is sobering.
Todah! Shalom and love.
Thanks Skip for the link to Brene’ Brown 20 minute sharing! It was extremely helpful and tied very well with this TW!
Yes shame loves to control & constrict your very person & presence into as little space as possible, so you no longer exist & are helpless ,a zombie living dead – but grace opens to love & value & worth & truth with new space to love share & live with God’s power 🙂
Maybe that’s why the Hebrew idea of grace is “open spaces”
Really!that is so cool!
Friends,
I desire to convey my appreciation of the sense of the Holy Spirit using Skip and the community to give guidance to us… I am excited! It seems evident that YHWH is ‘shouting’ since He’s determined to get our attention! Skip’s recent blogs from Divine Appointments (https://skipmoen.com/2015/04/02/divine-appointments/) to today’s, along with the community comments are RICH in the food offered for nourishment. Skip, your TWs and the community responses do cause us to sit ‘At God’s Table’. We are thankful.
When Passover celebration began a week ago I learnt that “Mitzrayim” name for “Egypt” in Hebrew, is from the Hebrew word “metzar” meaning “narrow,” or “constriction.” As such, Egypt was the ultimate place of constriction, and this Passover was another opportunity to address whatever is keeping us in enslavement. Your article Skip posted three days ago – “The Gray Life” – described what perhaps most characterizes constriction and enslavement, the absence of joy! At the time I followed the TED link you Rick supplied, in your response to Laurita. My eyes were drawn to Brene Brown’s “The power of vulnerability”. I viewed it then and again last night only to find its Skip’s recommendation to us today! Ditto!!
Another thing I learnt this season was that “There are seven basic emotions that make up the spectrum of human experience. At the root of all forms of enslavement, is a distortion of these emotions. Each of the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot is dedicated to examining and refining one of them.”
(http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/277116/jewish/Introduction.htm)
Isn’t this insightful?!
I would also like to share the quote that follows below as an added encouragement to us in view of the appointed season we are in and in light of our current deliberations in the community. To ward off Christian notions of ‘works righteousness’ let me hasten to say this approach is for those of us who are ALREADY rescued through Messiah and is now learning to address our ungodly traits as we walk with the Holy One, with each other and with ‘Jane/Joe’ out there.
“The commandments of the Torah are not meant merely as our history, but instead represent on ongoing life lesson for every Jew. We view the Torah as freshly received every day of our lives, and approach it and its commandments with appropriate vigor.
So too must we digest the lesson of the counting of the Omer. It is specifically during this time that we strive to grow and mature in our spiritual state. The Torah does not allow us to become satisfied with our current level of spirituality. Instead it tells us to set high goals for ourselves, and then methodically strive to reach that goal.
The growth that occurs during this time is akin to a marathon. We pace ourselves and seek to improve day by day until we reach the day that we again receive the Torah. In this process, we look deep within ourselves and work on all of our negative attributes. If we are challenged in the realm of acts of kindness, we go out of our way to do more charitable works. If we are lacking in the area of justice, we hold ourselves to the highest possible standards and are exacting and demanding in our personal behavior and habits. And so it goes for all of our traits.”
(http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/256073/jewish/Why-Do-We-Count-the-Omer.htm)
Finally, for some years now I have carried a particular awareness about this season – that after His resurrection, Yeshua walked many days with His disciples. Their hearts burned as He opened their eyes to the Scriptures (Tanach) and for 40 days He spoke with them of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of His Father. How altogether awesome it must have been!!
We all have need for Him to draw alongside us… It helps no doubt to know we are just like Peter; to be reminded to owe no man anything but love, while we judge only ourselves as we yield to the searchlight of the Spirit of the risen Messiah.
Let us press in community. Let us run the current marathon set before us looking toward Shavuot, keeping our eyes and heart on our Pace-Setter and faithful Messiah while encouraging each other!
Blessing and shalom upon you Skip and your family and upon you all in this wonderful community. Arnella
I had a vision everyone at my church was waiting at an airport terminal, many were waiting for their flights to be called ,but several came just to be there for support – my flight was one of the first to be called – I heard my number was flight# 455, I kept thinking of that number & when I looked it up in the strongs hebrew it’s meaning was “open” – I hope I am going to open spaces of grace !!!!
” Do obligations and expectations impinge on your life in ways that make you feel like you are squeezed?” This is oppression, for the other party not to be considerate of your time/feelings, nor are we obliged to cater to others’ selfish “needs” above our own. Not only is that oppressive, it’s hurtful, and not treating others with respect. Thoroughly not Torah.
” Are you wrestling with other’s requirements of you?” No! No way. I love the open spaces :- )
Only YHWH can demand such requirements, and that is to respect, love each other in His ways as Torah lovers, not as men-pleasers.
Shalom.
Well said, Ester! So hard learned for me! I thought it was righteousness to submit to the oppression of others. Not so! It was man-pleasing for sure, which was idolatry, and so did not convey the love of YHVH in saving ways. It hurt to learn it.