Neutral Ground: To Hear and Experience God

We must find neutral ground to hear God. This means that we must not base decisions according to principles or our opinions, we must discern the body, and we must get rid of the garbage in our hearts and minds in order to really hear Him. When we yield to God the Word becomes flesh, and it flows!

2/21/2004

(an excerpt, a few minutes, from a time the church was together….)

As I was considering the story of Abraham it kind of dawned on me that God didn’t want Isaac dead. It wasn’t His long-term goal or His short-term goal. He had no desire to see Isaac dead. He did, however, have a strong desire to see Abraham on neutral ground—because that’s the only ground that God is God.

“God, it’s not my decision; it’s your decision. If you want him dead, then that’s fine with me.”

That’s an example of a good thing. Isaac was a gift from God to Abraham. That was a good thing. There was nothing wrong with Isaac. But Abraham would have to get through any potential baggage that he may have had… “What does this mean about God’s character that He wants me to kill my son? That can’t be God; that’s gotta be the devil. God would never do that! What kind of God is that anyway that would ask me to do something like that?” Abraham had to get past his theology. He had to get past, perhaps, his own inordinate attachment to the boy—his own “loving” Isaac more. That’s the thing that made Abraham the father of our faith. He was able to let go—to take his hands and his opinions off of it. He had to leave it in God’s lap, and let God be God. “God, if You want him dead I’ll bring the knife up in the air and do it.”

If Jesus is going to be our Lord (and that’s going to have more than a theoretical application used for the next convenient song), then it’s going to be because we and the people around us help each other to live on neutral ground, where we’re available for God.

If we’re not available to turn over tables on an afternoon… I mean think about it, how willing would you realistically be at noon at the cafeteria to go start turning people’s tables over? Is your heart that neutral? Not that we’re supposed to turn into Rambos—that’s not the issue. But are we really that neutral? What would it take to get us there?

And that’s the whole issue with Peter and Jesus giving him the vision of the sheet being laid down.

“No! No! No! This is a test! No! No! No! This is a test!”

“NO, NO, NO, this is getting your heart to neutral ground because I’m God and you’re not God.”

There are millions of applications to that. What about the example of political things: “This candidate is more moral than this candidate. So God would want me to vote for him.” “And I’m sure that I should vote because that’s what I ought to do.” Guess what? If you are a follower of Jesus it’s NOT your decision. We don’t have rights with Jesus as our Lord; it’s His decision.

Do I vote, do I not vote? Those who are politically inclined have to get to neutral ground if they are going to hear God. If their default is; “I’m going to vote because I might as well; bad triumphs if good does nothing.” There are real principles in all of that that I don’t want to belittle, but there’s also another principle that overrides it and that is are we TRULY neutral? Can we get to neutral ground? Now, the guy who’s on the other end of the spectrum, who is totally indifferent towards politics, would he be available to run for office? Not only to vote but to run for office? Neutrality goes both directions. That we’re not God, and we’re available. We’ll do whatever He wants in any direction that He wants us to.

Apart from living that way and it really being True, then our ability to hear God is so tiny compared to what it ought to be because we’ve got this narrow band of what we consider acceptable. “I’ll hear God’s voice if it falls within this band. If it gets outside of this band to the left or right then He can forget it.” And we just bankrupt ourselves spiritually from having any future of knowing God or walking with Him because we’ve put Him in a box. Our opinions! Our bible knowledge! Our other “things”! We’ve put Him in a box! That is just another application of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Its application has to do with our daily lives—our decisions that we make, what we do, and how we live.

God didn’t want Isaac dead. He didn’t want him dead in the short term. But what He said when Abraham raised the knife was, “Now I know you’ll do whatever I want you to do, whenever I want you to do it.” That was the issue! “This is the person who will do whatever I want, whenever I want.” And to the degree that is not true inside of us—we’re not sons and daughters of Abraham. We’re sons and daughters of Abraham when that’s true… we’ll do whatever, whenever. We’re neutral. Truly in our hearts, we’re neutral. That doesn’t mean Abraham liked it. He didn’t get a kick out of taking Isaac up to the mountains and going through all of that. He didn’t get a kick out of it, but he was neutral.

Jesus wasn’t looking forward to Gethsemane. “If there’s a plan ‘B’, I’m all ears. If we can do this a different way, I’m very open to that. I want You to know I’m open to plan ‘B.’ Nevertheless, NOT My will, but Yours be done.” We need to be able to somehow insert a true “nevertheless,” not just an added cliché on the end, but a “nevertheless” that is TRUE in our heart, where our knuckles aren’t white and our hands are off of it. We’ve got a preference, and we let our preference be known to God if it’s something on that level, but our hands are off of it. “Nevertheless, what do YOU want me to do? I am your servant! I’ll do whatever You want. I’ll have this conversation. I won’t buy this thing. I will buy this thing even though I don’t know how I’ll pay the rent if I buy this thing….” Whatever! All those issues are thrown aside. And we’re letting God be God and truly responding to Him as His servants, not as the interpreters of His will within our narrow band, where ultimately we’re still the one on the throne applying Christian principles as we see fit and as it makes sense to us. We’re still our own god. We’re NOT serving God, we’re not in connection and fellowship with God, we’re god. We interpret truth and we apply it as we see fit—as we “understand” it, or as we desire it.

Now, remember, we have a role to play in each other’s lives in all of this. We’re NOT to make decisions for each other and control each other or any other nonsense, but if we see someone whose heart is clinging to something, we must realize that this will rob their ability to hear God. If they’re biased and already have a thing they want to do with energy and momentum, then they’ve got to get back to neutral ground so that they can know the God the Living, not do this thing instead of that thing. My goal and interaction with them is for them to be able to hear God.

There are any number of things that can get in our hearts and cloud us and keep us from being able to hear God, such as holding opinions or vantage points, the way we are wired, our perspective, or our past theology and present theology.

For instance, God wants us to be wise stewards of our money. Therefore, we tell ourselves, to spend “X” amount of dollars on “X” thing would be too much money and therefore outside of God’s will, so it’s not up for consideration. “I’m not going to do it, that would be a waste of money, that’s too much….” We have taken something that’s true—God wants us to be wise stewards of our money—and have filtered it through our own interpretation, our own opinion of finance and American economy, and the other things that have become a part of who we are. We have added these things to that vantage point, where it’s not exactly the same any more.

It’s our job, if Jesus is going to be our Lord, to find neutral ground so that we can hear Him. Despite what I think about finances, I have to get back to neutral ground. That’s the ground that we need to live on if we are going to hear God, case-by-case and day-by-day. We must somehow turn the volume down on our opinions, our perspectives, and our vantage points so that we can hear God. And if He wants me to spend $1,000 on parakeet food, then that’s His business because it’s His money! That’s not a license to be random and crazy. It’s a call to bring our hearts to neutral, and recognize that we are not the center of truth and the “experts” of truth and the “decider” of how things are—even though we are basing things on principles that are true and valid.

Do you remember the woman who broke open the alabaster jar of perfume and poured it on Jesus’ head? It was worth a year to a year and a half’s wages. Think about what that meant. Here we have $50,000 worth of perfume (in today’s money) and this woman, out of the blue, breaks this alabaster jar and dumps the perfume on His head! And Judas has a real problem with that (interesting that it’s Judas). Judas’ “opinion” is that the money would have been better spent on the poor. “We should have given that to the poor.” And Jesus shuts Judas down. Is it because Jesus is careless and has no concern with other things, like helping the poor? No, something else is the issue… God’s Lordship in our lives. If we don’t have the CAPACITY to take a jar of perfume worth $50,000 and break it and pour it over somebody’s head, then on that issue we cannot walk with God, and we cannot hear God.

But the converse is also true. Jesus takes a picnic basket lunch and multiplies it and turns it into gobs and gobs of food where it seems like plenty is everywhere. Then He instructs the disciples to take twelve baskets and go through and make sure nothing gets wasted. “What do you mean nothing gets wasted?!! How can you waste anything when you make things out of the air? Why is waste an issue!? What are we going to do with it!?….” So it’s not a careless, indifferent lifestyle towards the things that God gives us. You can’t make a new law into “just live carefree, spend what you want, and trust God to bail you out with a picnic basket lunch.” But it does require that somehow in our heart we are able to find neutral ground.

An essential element of this important stepping Stone in our growth of “finding neutral ground, that we might hear GOD”—is this Command and Prophecy from God:

“See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But admonish one another DAILY, encourage, warn, be called-alongside one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened and deceived by sin.”

And in terms of making decisions about buying a house, a car, or doing other things, one of the primary roles we play in each other’s lives is to help each other find neutral ground. The role we play in each other’s lives—its main value—is to dislodge us and bring us back to neutral. “Are you sure you need that car? Why is it that color? Why do you need a red car?…” Our role in each other’s lives is to make sure we are on neutral ground, because that’s the only ground where any one of us can hear God. It’s not that I need three people to “yes” my decision before I can buy a car or do whatever. It’s just that on our own, if we are not admonishing one another daily (it’s a COMMAND by GOD to do so, not an “optional extra” if you feel like it, by the way! Heb.3:12-14)… It’s just that on our own, if we are not “admonishing one another daily,” we will be “hardened and deceived” by sin (according to God), and not even be conscious that we are only looking at red cars. “Hardness” (which God prophesied for those who do not have “daily” input from other Saints) means we don’t “feel” the prick of conscience even when we are wounding Jesus (“conscience seared, as with a hot iron”) and “deceived” means that we think it’s “everyone else’s problem.” A true Disciple of Jesus, a Christian, wants ANYTHING other than to be “hardened and deceived” and “given over” to the control of their own flesh! We need the input of other people, not to tell us what to do—but to keep our hearts in check so that we LIVE on neutral ground….

THAT Place ALONE, Neutral Ground, is where we may find Jesus, in all of His Glory. Only in that Place—”neutral ground”, HOLY GROUND—are we truly Transformed into His likeness, and live in the “greater works than these shall YOU do” and 1Corinthians 12 Gifted Together-Life.

•  Neutral Ground: To Hear and Experience God