Eat Heartily. Digest. Do the Work

Maximize your opportunity and minimize your risks by building with Kingdom Principles. The primary goal is to please Him. The purpose of the living and active Word is to calibrate us. The only acceptable outcome of my life is a supernatural life.

11/30/2004

 This excerpt takes place at a pizza house over lunch one day in Ohio. The conversation began with, “I just read this fabulous book about the Blood of Christ. It’s great! That’s what I’ve needed all along. Everything’s going to be different now that I understand the Blood better.” The question was asked about how to hold on to the things that you’ve learned and be just as alive and excited about them as when you first heard them. This is part of the response:

To be like Him, to know Him, to love Him, to be utterly dependent on Him, isn’t in any way related to having a secret understanding, or the long lost understanding, of some topic. “If we’d only had this or that.” We didn’t get anything out of it if we got a “thing” out of it. In the end it all has to point back to Him as sufficient in and of itself. The “topic” is exciting for a time if it’s true, but in the end everything is going to let you down—except the Person. Later, you will wonder, “Why don’t I feel the same way I did when I first heard this?” In the end it goes back to just saying, “I’m His.”

Paul said in Galatians, “Now that you know God or rather are known by God.” Paul said, “Correction!” Notice the essence of Paul’s remark, by the Spirit. Will I ever know God as I ought to know Him? Not in this lifetime. Only “as in a foggy mirror.” “Will I ever perform as I ought to?” Not entirely, until we see Him “face to face.” No matter how much I understand about what it says in Galatians, or any other single “topic”, past, present, or future—in the end because He’s a Person, I don’t have to worry about it. I can thoroughly enjoy the Journey and in the meantime there’s no striving to understand freeing truths, but rather we enjoy them as food from Heaven. He stands as He is as a Person regardless of what we know, or what we’ve done or not done, between now and then. There are a lot of flowers along the Journey, but the Destination is always going to be Him as a Person—not as all the flowers He planted to lead us down the path to Him.

By all means keep going, dig and enjoy! However, three months from now it’ll be something different that frees you, some other topic that excites you. You’ll be digesting the current excitement. It’ll become a part of you. It won’t be any less real or any less exciting—in reality—once you digest the meal. We’re sitting here now at this restaurant eating food with taste. You’re also tasting Truth with the taste buds of your spirit, as you’re ingesting this feast you’re reading. That’s good. But Truth is not any less real three months from now just because you’ve digested the “exciting topic” and you can’t “taste” it anymore. Later, you can only remember what it tasted like. But now it’s even more real, because it’s PART of you, you’ve digested it: You just don’t think about that particular “meal” anymore. It’s not something that’s on the tip of your tongue anymore. It is important that you eat the right “foods” though. You can even enjoy the taste of those right “foods” as they’re going down. Enjoy the Truths of God He feeds you! But don’t keep thinking constantly about that delicious food you just ate over the past three months.

You don’t do that with the “shadow” of physical food—continuing to drool over some meal you ate three months ago. You eat, enjoy, digest—and it becomes an invisible part of who you are, giving you strength for what you must do. But drooling is idolatry and lust.

Peaks and Valleys

One of the good things about seeing Life and Truth properly as FOOD (“eat the scrolls!”), is it takes away some of the peaks and automatically, therefore, some of the valleys. If while I’m reading something and it becomes clear, “Ahhh, yea, yea.” That’s different then, “YES!” If I get too “exuberant” over a meal, a topic, I will fail at some later point no matter how “true” it was. Because God won’t let us be sustained by anything other than Him, as a Person. No truth about Him can ever replace Him. No understanding of Him can ever replace the invisible quiet unspeakable love of a relationship. So, when you understand all of that, then you can learn and grow His way.

To celebrate the taste of a meal is great. To enjoy a “topic” such as the Truths of the Blood of Christ, or His Armor, or any “topic” of His is great. But, understand that when you digest a meal it ceases to have a taste when you’ve digested it. And yet, it’s even more real once you have digested it. It’s not less real. It’s more real. Compliment the Chef for the taste. No problem there. But just understand that the Reality is past that. It doesn’t stop there. It’s the thing that’s past that where you can’t taste it anymore. That’s the most important stuff.

Hear, receive, persevere, and bear fruit. Digest the Truths of Yahweh and His Son, don’t just read the cook book, or drool over types and shadows. Live it!

No Groveling!

On the practical side of that let’s take the issue of His Blood. When you first discovered the Incredible Power of His sacrifice the taste is still on your tongue. You try it and say, “Ahh! The Blood! Yea! Good, I don’t have to deal with all that other guilt and fear and garbage, The Blood.” That’s good when it’s still on the tip of your tongue. But when you’re digesting it and it has become a part of you, you don’t have to say, “The Blood, the Blood, the Blood, the Blood.” Those words might not even come to your mind, but you’ll remain totally at peace. Someone may say to you, “How dare you be at peace after what you’ve done?” And you say, “Well, it’s the Blood.” And you can draw out of that Reservoir and you live automatically in that Reservoir. It’s not the words that are on the tip of your tongue that you’re using to “battle” with. It has become who you are to the extent you’re not taking anything for granted. There’s a deep, deep peace that if someone forced you to explain it you could explain it in great detail. But it wasn’t the words you had read or memorized. It wasn’t the “taste” that you were using to move forward. It was the digested Material of who you’ve become that formed naturally.

Someone may say to you, “You don’t have any remorse.” Oh no! You have deeper remorse than they could imagine. But because you’re not groveling on the carpet crying, “Oh, I’ve failed!” They ask, “Why aren’t you crying about this or that?” Your reply may be, “Well, I don’t know how to explain this but I suspect I feel more grief for this than you’ve ever felt for anything in your life. But because I’m not groveling all over the carpet you may not see my grief. You may respond that way, but I don’t need to respond that way. I’ve digested the whole thing. The Cross, the Resurrection, the Blood, the New Covenant, the Life and the Spirit and I’m being taught through this. I don’t have time to grovel all over the place because there’s so much I’m learning right now about my own failure that I have to keep listening. My groveling would be all about me. I can’t let it be about me. I lose too much and I need to keep listening. So if you need me to be emotional I’m sorry. I’ll try to conjure up something for you.” (Don’t confuse this intimacy with God and “digestion” of Truth for an excuse-making light-hater and compromiser with no conscience. “You’ll know them by their FRUIT.”)

That doesn’t mean that Life is emotionless. But I’m trying to illustrate the point that a person that has digested all of these things isn’t bouncing off the walls all of the time. And not because they couldn’t care less. It’s because they care more, and it’s not about them at all. The nature of the Blood at work within them is the digested meal, which allows them to function through crisis in a peaceful sense. It’s not without thought. But it’s without all the peaks and valleys that you have to have if you’re living on ideas instead of that digested Person within you who allows you to deal thoroughly, and to catch things that others would never have seen or caught—but without all of the other drama and hype, and words, necessarily.

Don’t be Bulimic

Still you have to taste Truth first, before you can digest it (unless you just plug your nose while you’re swallowing). There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the taste and celebrating the taste and thanking the Chef. There’s nothing wrong with all of that. But what’s next? What happens three months from now? Should you be discouraged because it’s not as exciting now as it was three months earlier? “Why am I failing now? I’ve lost the edge.” Don’t worry about that. This isn’t about trying to stay excited about a concept as long as you possibly can and if you’ve failed it’s because it’s no longer exciting to you. If you couldn’t taste the food you just ate anymore you wouldn’t worry about that. Don’t be bulimic about it, if you can’t taste the “topic,” the “meal” anymore. Don’t try to regurgitate it up just so you can taste it more often.

Eat heartily, digest, do the Work!

It’s not necessarily important to even remember why you’re Freer now. If you can remember, you can. If you can’t, then you can’t. But that doesn’t mean you can’t Live in that Freedom. If you ate a steak today—there are all sorts of proteins and amino acids in that steak—you couldn’t tell me how long it’s going to take you to digest that steak. It might be three days, but you wouldn’t know. If six months from now you were doing some workout and got a little bit stronger (a year earlier you might have ripped a muscle doing what you’re doing today) you wouldn’t say, “Ahhh, that steak I had three months ago, that’s it!” Who would care about the steak they ate three months ago!? So, you’re stronger but you don’t even necessarily know why and what combination of things resulted in it, you just keep eating good food. Eat good food, eat your “spinach” and your proteins, eat “bread from Heaven” in its many forms DAILY. Be committed, and enjoy! “EAT the Scrolls”—don’t just look at them, salivating, or talk about them! : )

Eat heartily, digest, do the Work!