A Step in the Right Direction
Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, but happy is he who keeps the law. Proverbs 29:18 NASB
No vision – Maybe, not yet. Maybe we aren’t quite ready for total abandonment to the directions of the Lord. Maybe we’re scared that if we actually let go of everything we have used to prop us up during those emotional rollercoaster rides, we will fall—hard! More than fall. Die! Emotionally. Yes, we have all the promises—in words—but maybe that isn’t quite enough. After all, words are not feelings. Words are part of the cyber-cognitive rationalization world that refused to provide the touchy-feely relief that we needed from “words.” Words can be a tool of the enemy, convincing us that we can somehow manage in a world controlled by thought. Words betrayed us. They said, “We will tell you the secret,” but instead they led us into a dark corner where we found ourselves imprisoned by our own rationalizations. Words gave us doctrine. We needed kisses.
Oswald Chambers writes, “When once we lose sight of God, we begin to be reckless, we cast off certain restraints, we cast off praying, we cast off the vision of God in little things, and begin to act on our own initiative. If we are eating what we have out of our own hand, doing things on our own initiative without expecting God to come in, we are on the downward path, we have lost the vision.”[1]
Some translations of this verse would have us believe that “vision” is about prophecy. The Hebrew hazon certainly contains that possibility. With this in mind, we assume that what is missing is the voice of the prophet or the clear understanding of the prophetic word. We are back to cognitive transmission. But hazon is more than a description of the “seer” or his message. Hazon is used to describe virtually any form of received sensation or perception. I’m guessing that the author didn’t have email or sermons or even “a word of prophecy” in mind. Chambers is much closer to the truth. When we fail to feel the awe of YHVH, we are no longer compelled to live before Him. Heschel suggests that the first step is awe. The first sensory awareness is majesty. The first impact on my oh-so-self-involved fearful and shame-bound life is to be struck down by His glory. It’s not words that will save me. It’s His presence!
Maybe we aren’t quite ready to jump off the cliff of reckless trust because we lack the sensory impact of who He is. Maybe we are like Peter who suggested altars on the mountaintop rather than dirt in his face. Yes, we need those promises, but they are just more words in the battle with the words of the yetzer ha’ra. And the yetzer ha’ra knows we must feel. What we need in order to let go of all those tiny little indiscretions that keep us sane are kisses. Day 19.
“Lord, oh Lord. If I take a step toward You, will You still run to meet me with a kiss?”
Topical Index: vision, hazon, Proverbs 29:18
[1] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, May 9.
What the world needs is love. We are afraid of all our needs. I would not need love if I had it. I am afraid because I do NOT have it. “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way…” (Ps. 2:12″) “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love (is) better than wine…” (Prov. 1:2) I need to be touched: I need the touch that electrifies; wounds; paralyzes and heals: the touch that makes me forget what I was going to say, or think. ‘Teched’, in hill parlance, where I came from, referred to being just a little crazy; a teched person did not quite have it all together; they didn’t know who they were any more. We all want the transmission scrambled; we all want to be touched; we all want to start over.
Ok, this is going to date me. Remember when we thought the newest, best idea was to develop a way to completely ‘bliss out’; a way that removed all distracting sensory perception? We thought that if we could only achieve that, we would perhaps have found the shortcut to nirvana. So the sensory deprivation tanks were conceived. I remember how people were so excited: they were lining up for the chance to experience what was proving so hard, by regular means – like chanting or meditating, say – to reach ‘oneness’; to get to peace. So we all held our breaths while the first people hung in tanks of lukewarm water, with no sight or sound or anything to TOUCH to distract them from peace. And what did we find? That we had actually found a way to drive ourselves crazy in very short order. Sensory deprivation, in fact, is torture of the first magnitude. NO one was able to last in those tanks. They came flying out of there and said “don’t ever do that to me again!” I remember the disappointment. It was a big shock and a letdown. So much for peace the ‘nothingness’ route!
So we looked for peace by flooding all our receptor sites.with drugs and experiential practices that sent us in overdrive; that pushed our sensory perception to the point that we could believe we ‘connected’ to everything and everybody. Shortcuts to righteousness. So, were we REALLY connected? Did we achieve world peace with our music-a-thons and rallies: did we really get all the way up that stairway to heaven: was Lucy really in the sky with diamonds?
What keeps me from His Presence? What keeps from my Lover? What insulates me from the electrical connection with reality and its Source? He created an entire universe designed to overwhelm me with awe; gave me five senses and then surrounded me with an unending stream of ways to tell me that He is love, and that He loves me, so why cannot I FEEL that?
I find I don’t need His Presence as the thing I EARN; as my reward for being good; I need His Presence to be able to move at all! I am lost; lost in trespasses and sins; frozen in my iniquity and the iniquity of those who trespassed against me, all of which destroyed my ability to trust. In fact, what I suffer from is a profound lack of trust, and to the extent I cannot trust, I have no spiritual connection; no way to EXPERIENCE love. What I need most, I am fractured from. Oh, who shall deliver me from this body of death – this torturous inability to feel – this inability to reach out and touch?
I need deliverance. I need Someone to get me out of the tank RIGHT NOW. I need deliverance from every rock I shoved my need for love under – every practice of death that I use to insulate me from the intolerable fracture of the trust I need: the faith I must have to take even as much as one step into the arms of love. Where there is no experience of trust in my life, I am perishing. The biggest sin in my life – the biggest fracture that keeps me from connection, from relationship, from the sensory experience of love, is the surfeit of faith. One of the most useful prayers for me to emulate is that of the father who cried “help thou my unbelief”. Fear is what shows up when I break trust. To get trust back, I must be delivered from my fear.
Fear, in fact, is a sin that must be repented of, but that is good news. There is all the difference in the world between choosing to face fear and wade back through it to find the cause for it, and choosing all the practices of death the world offers to shove that fear under rocks. Fear is not the thing I have to endure: fear is what I can repent for as soon as it shows its slimy face! Fear is the closest the yetzer ha-ra comes to the experience of awe, but it is a poor substitute! No wonder we get them confused! Fear floods the receptor sites that were designed to receive love. Trust is what opens the door to love. When I face my fears, I find that they are all caused by putting my faith in things that are not true. When I repent for fear, I re-open my heart to believe the Truth instead. It is fear that keeps me from the awe I experience in the Presence of that Truth.
This post nails it for me. I tend to be so intellectual and crave the feeling side of things. I don’t truly trust the intellectual side. Sure, I know that YHVH loves me, but until I feel that inside, I struggle to believe it. Yet, He made me like this, or at least is aware of my need/desire to feel, and so I keep hoping for a hug or a kiss or something to take my head knowledge and make it heart knowledge. Some days I miss Him, but other days He surrounds me with His arms and songs of love and deliverance. And I smile. And tuck it away so I can remember, for the next time I’m waiting for Him to hold me.
Thanks for this one, Skip. 🙂
OK, this is completely off the current topic, but it relates to the early ‘days’ of Skip’s current series. I am confused and hope that someone out there can shed some light on what for me is a poorly-lit and circuitous tunnel:
While I am intellectually convinced (mostly) that Skip is right regarding the 1800 years of dogma and false teaching that ‘the church’ has superimposed on Messianic Judaism, to put it bluntly I still find the latter strange and uncomfortable. So while I am increasingly uncomfortable in a church setting, I see and hear all the wonderful testimonies, both personal and corporate, of what God is doing with individuals and groups (in particular, how, in the words of many missionaries, ‘Jesus’ is appearing to many Muslims in dreams and they are (put your favorite evangelical phrase here) ‘accepting Him’. So if the church is on the wrong track, how come God is pouring out so much blessing on it?
I guess that’s His grace, and who am I to ask why!
Here is my $0.02 – I have wondered the same thing, about both the Christians and the Jews (throughout history). Both groups are not without their persecutions, but they each have also enjoyed repeated blessings. My guess is that each of them is “sincerely” trying to follow “the Word”, as it has been presented to them. Just as I suspect that each of us has arrived at our current Walk through a tarnished past, why should we think that the path for anyone else will be (or should be) any different. In the end, the goal is not to find Christ or Torah. Both are a path to the other, and both lead to the ultimate destination, fellowship with YHWH. The actions of Christ are the goal of the Torah, and the goal of acting like Christ is be obedient to the ways of the Father (Torah), and the goal of obedience is to be one with the Father as Y’shua and the Father are one.
Hi John;
I’ve had some of the same questions and I finally had to consider that perhaps “blessing” is not being poured out on the church. Once a paradigm is in motion, we tend to interpret everything in its light — including what might seem to be blessings. But, if we believe that the path is wrong-headed, why would we assume that anything which seems to perpetuate it, is a blessing? Is it a blessing if Muslims are being led to accept the Jesus of traditional Christianity? I don’t know — I no longer have a dogmatic answer for that.
Yet, I must say there is a peace that also comes from not being dogmatic. If my heart is simply to align myself with G-d’s kingdom, I can trust that He will direct my steps, as well as the steps of others. I’m not compelled to spout words to “unbelievers” or entertain fear that I will lose heaven, or go to hell, because I ask questions or considered answers that might still be called heresy by the church. Moshe Kempinski said it well in The Teacher and the Preacher: “G-d is less concerned with our history of sin and more with the direction of our hearts.” Yes — that is not compliant with historical Christian thinking, but that alone does not make it untrue. Something to ponder.
I am convinced that what He wants is our contrite hearts turned toward Him — without that, all else is no more than window dressing, including the sinner’s prayer, no matter who says it.
John, You Sir, are not the only person confused! Yes, we are to be Seekers of the Old Testament. But on Torah,=. 630 commandments , and which ones are for us today? MANY YEARS AGO, SKIP WROTE THAT ONLY A HANDFUL Of those Commandments, APPLIED TO US TODAY. AND YET WHEN SOMEONE NEW TO THIS GROUP recently ASKED Skip ABOUT THEM, HE GAVE THE MAN A LIST WHERE TO FIND THEM ALL on line. I recalled I ached for the man,
So we use our lives studying the commandments, and find out that most of them were not even for us today! We are still in the world with limited everything, including time and resources.
In my opinion from many years of reading Skip’s materials, He IS A SEARCHER, HE thrives on STUDYING LANGUAGES, AND INTERPRETATING THEM., writing, and going around the world teaching new groups, and being the great photographer that he is. THAT IS WHY I HAVE STAYED WITH HIM ALL these years. I appreciate those things.
John, I have also heard and read recently many seemingly authentic things that the Heavenly Father is doing in the name of Jesus The Christ, the Messiah, taking place in the World today. Many people writing/speaking of these movements are with people that have been traveling in ministry of many different denominations for years, often previously wondering why God wasn’t allowing them to see His Hand moving. Now they are blown away.
As we cautiously listen to what we hear, but not dismiss it because of things that do not add up to us,, we must remember that GOD’S Word states, starting in three places in the Old Covenant, and then again in the New Covenant, that when we search for Him with all our hearts, minds, and souls ( our entire being) WE WILL FIND HIM. I THINK THAT IS WHAT HE IS ALLOWING. THROUGHOUT HISTORY THERE HAVE BEEN MANY OUTPOURINGS OF GOD IN THE SUPERNATURAL POWER OF HIS HOLY SPIRIT.
OUR NATION IS TOTAL CHAOS IN MORALS, WORK, FINANACES, FAMILIES, I AM SO THANKFUL THAT PEOPLE ARE SEEKING HIS FACE WITH THEIR ENTIRE BEING. and He is rewarding those who diligent seek Him!
WE SHOULD Rejoice that GOD, WHO SPOKE THE WORLD IN EXISTENCE, IS REWARDING &, FINDING HIM! LET US ALL REJOICE, AND LEAVE IT TO THE LORD TO DO THE DISCERNING IF THEIR BEHAVIOR IS NOT TOTALLY OFF THE WORD. “.LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER’ – THE SIMPLE GOSPEL MESSAGE.!
IF A PERSON REALLY WANTS TO KNOW CONFUSION, JUST GET ONE OF THE BOOKS THAT WAS RECOMMENDED TO ME YEARS AGO, IT IS ” EVERYMAN’S TALMUD, THE MAJOR TEACHINGS OF THE RABBINIC SAGES. BY ABRAHAM COHEN, WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY JACOB Neusner.
Read a few pages in front, if you are rushed for time, then skip to the back and read chapter X1 The Hereafter l. The Messiah p.346-389——- You will be blown away, and gladly return to your Bibles that give us all we need to KNOW WITH what God tells us,( ( YES, YOU MAY NEED TWO OR THREE TRANSLATIONS AND SOME STUDY GUIDES.).
With all the faults of Christianity, remember ( the majority of the world called Christianity is really what most people think of is the Catholic Church. And then Henry V111 came along and was ruler (made himself King of England) he wanted to do away with his wife Catherine of Spain because she had not given him a male heir, and he also wanted to she did give him a daughter, Elizabeth 1 who reigned longer than any other lady on the throne, with exception of current Queen Elizabeth. Not sure about that statement.
Henry V111 had total of six wives., and no live male heir. So today, whose fault would we say that was ?–Enough–L.B.
In Dec. 1990 I stood before dozens of sales people to teach them the basics of goal setting. I showed them how I had prioritized my life for the previous year and how I had achieved over 100% of what I’d had as my #1 goal which was a 100% increase in income.
At that point I explained how in arranging my priorities as I had suffered the loss of my real priorities my family.
Since I was finding no satisfaction in my achievements having lost the thing dearest to me,(for which I had supposedly acquired this new wealth) my teenage children, I explained that I was determined to pursue a different course in 1991 and make pursing God with all my might, my priority. I was no longer going to be as available as I had been in previous years.
Because I now had plenty of money streaming in and children that would only be inclined to destroy themselves with it, I decided to take God up on His promise that if I would seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, that all the other things would be added to me.
And so I set that as my first priority and began pursuing it with everything and more that I had put into my pursuit of wealth.
Within 2 months I was helplessly ill and learning how to pray. Every step in that process brought me to some form of obedience in something that I knew I was not conformed to. As I expressed these things to Ron and we complied, miracles began to flow, our hearts began to change, and our faith began to grow.
Within 6 months we were bankrupt and my poor husband spent days, weeks, and months, trying to pull it back together to no avail. Every time he would go out to drum up business he would feel the Lord telling him to stop and pray.
Finally We became aware of the Sabbath. As we carefully explored the idea that we needed to comply and change the day we set aside for God, our life REALLY began to change. Then we began practicing the festivals. Suddenly we were not welcome in the church. Our family who was just beginning to return to us pulled away again.
Oh no!!!
But we could not ignore God’s word so we pressed on determined to find the truth and again miracles began to flow.
Then we realized that seeking His righteousness meant practicing the whole counsel of God in the Torah. So we began to adjust our course yet again. More miracles!!!
Do we still need adjustments? YES!
Will He leave us or forsake us before we figure it out? NO!
Should we allow that to cause us to camp out thinking He is finished showing us more? God forbid!
Should I judge His other servants for not being told to walk in the same path that He designed for me?
The fear of Him causes me to recoil from such a temptation.
Thank you, Pam. Your testimony is very encouraging.
Thank you all for your helpful comments to my question. There is much to ponder in light of them, but also from Skip’s entry for today (June 9th).
“Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding” Proverbs 3:13
“Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but happy is he who keeps Torah.” Proverbs 29:18
Hence that means TORAH has Revelation and gives one Vision and understanding of the times! So what are you waiting for? Get Revelation! Get Vision! Get YOUR OWN OIL
Good Purim smile emoticon
Hine Bati: http://youtu.be/Z51QHo2C-yo
HINE BATI / HERE I COME (Tehillim Mem/Psalm 40) By Micha’el Ben David
Shot in the Qumran and at the Dead Sea, this latest Music Video invites the Viewer to experience…
https://youtu.be/Z51QHo2C-yo