Stupid Mammals Learning the Spirit: Lucid Suffering

9/26/2025

“Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously.” And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” But they did not understand the statement which He spoke to them.

Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them, but His mother kept all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. (Luke 2:48-52)

Jesus GREW in grace and wisdom and stature? How is that POSSIBLE—if He was always and is always perfect and never sinned? He was and is GOD! Soooo... What is the “grow” part? I’ve always wondered.

The simple explanation in the Scriptures certainly resonated with me, but it didn’t fully satisfy me because it seemed like there had to be something else going on. Here was the way I’ve thought of it and appropriately so:

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace...” (Hebrews 4:15-16)

“...We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1)

And while it is a totally compatible absolute Truth, still, this has left a tiny level of incompleteness in my heart and mind about how this could be:

“Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:8)

Here’s what I think I’ve learned in my human experience, so very slowly, that puts the above descriptions of our Messiah, our Christ, our Anointing, our Deliverer, our God in perhaps a tiny bit better focus—At least for me.

Before that last meal with His friends on earth, what exactly did Jesus suffer? “He learned obedience by what He suffered”—so what did He suffer before He washed the feet of His friends and started up the final journey, Gethsemane and the lashings, the humiliation, the cross, and the spear?

Was the “obedience He learned through suffering” prior to that night—simply fatigue, blisters, and hunger, with a little bit of the sting of insults hurled at Him, His disciples barely paying attention to Him and applying what He said, and scuffles with the religious people?

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Matthew 8:20, Luke 9:58)

Everyone knows, after a long trip, the feeling of, “I can hardly wait to sleep in my own bed, and have the comforts of my own things and schedules around me again!”

Jesus, Yesu, after starting His active, aggressive, final push to save the human race, never again got to “sleep in His own bed” and have the predictability or “comfort things” around him—or predictable meals for that matter.

But, I don’t think that was primarily His priestly Hebrews 5:8 “suffering” He went through prior to that dramatic night and what followed. Of course, those last few days, His unspeakable suffering happened to FORGIVE the gap between His Life and Love and Character and OBEDIENCE—and our often low human existence, no matter how well-intentioned and purposely submitted to Him.

So WHAT “suffering” happened through the whole course of His life, every day, from the time He was a little boy, living totally without sin from the manger to being nailed to a tree?

And what does that have to do with us and our lives that are being rolled out “now” in “real time”—even as you read this?

Jesus experienced what it’s like to be inside of our stupid mammal skin, with moral authority to make decisions, to open our eyes or to blind ourselves, to learn or to excuse, created in God’s image.

Jesus was totally LUCID at all times, and never once let His Father down—by letting His guard down, or giving in to sin.

Jesus learned obedience through the course of a lifetime, via the SUFFERING of being LUCID while battling the X/Y axis1, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the want to know, the desire to be important, the obsession to be happy or entertained or “understood” or liked or loved, or contented by hormones and other vices. Jesus was lucid and aware of all of these things, and the magnetic draw of mammal flesh to these things and more. He didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t close His eyes, make excuses, or let His guard down to the passions of blind mammal life. HE SUFFERED because He cared, and He knew, while clothed in mammal skin. From the time He was a child.

He set the standard of how to live the Right life—the Z-axis Zoe Heaven Life, we are now CAPABLE of—as we are now entangled with Him, living continuously from the Vine rather than as foolish, self-blinding mammals, on again—off again. He felt every day the SUFFERING of staying lucid, while wearing mammal skin, on this gravity-bound, entropic planet of mud.

He intentionally became like us so He could experience, with daily suffering, even imagining it, how it was theoretically “possible” to get caught up in things stupidly and look back repulsed and shocked at how we fell into it.

Have you ever done that?! Got caught up in things stupidly—and looked back repulsed, confused, and shocked at how you fell into that trap, or that pattern, or that obviously stupid thing? Have you ever gotten caught up in something that you had blinded yourself to, and barely remember how you got into it? And now you realize it is not God’s way, and you were only playing the part of a self-blinding, stupid mammal?

The proof of the Covenant with God through the spilled blood of the fully-innocent Jesus that FORGIVES your sins... is not having been without sin in your own life from early youth until this day.

Jesus’ suffering, learning obedience as He did, was being lucid in the daily battle. Unlike us, with self-inflicted blindness or a spiritually uneducated stupor that, “drawn away by our own lusts,” we are “so easily beset” by stupidity, and barely remember how we entered in through the broad gate via the broad road, instead of through the narrow gate.

The proof of the Covenant with God that FORGIVES your sins is not having been without sin in your own life. We get caught up blindly and in stupidity because we are not lucid often, particularly in the early days of Training in the Spirit. We could’ve been. But we chose the “safe place” for human flesh and hid from lucidity. Or we did not have yet the spiritual training to recognize the wind of the Spirit, the whisper of God in the Garden. Or maybe we just didn’t have a heart yet for the Only thing that’s important, or the experience yet of “my God, my God why have You forsaken me”—and the lost Fellowship that sin imposes on us...

IF the Spirit of God IS living within us, the “down payment” Promise, proving we are in Covenant, and proving that our sins are actually forgiven, and we are “in Christ”—we will have the humility to start today fresh with Him and others who are in him, acknowledging the absolute insanity and craziness of our previous blindness.

It happens. It happened to even “a man after God’s own heart.” We don’t know what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was, because apparently God thought it was none of our business. Moses, John, Elijah, Abraham, James, Luke, Peter—name your guy or gal—and there were plenty of things in the process of growth from childhood to teen to young man or young woman, all the way to old age... that were painfully questionable and they didn’t even know how they got there. You just don’t know about it. Because without the Spirit, you or someone would use it as an excuse. “See?! No one’s perfect, so I’m going to live however I want. Grace, Grace, greasy Grace.”

And yet, Jesus suffered as he learned obedience. He cared! And so must we!

As the TRUE Biblical grace of God teaches us to say “No!” to ungodliness; as our eyes are opened and we continue to shed mammal skin by the Spirit of God and the shared Life from Heaven—learning obedience by the things we suffer, as we too resist everything that is not in Jesus’ character, with love and strength and faith, not excuses—This is where the power lies. Greater works than these shall you do.

We, too, with sins forgiven and the Spirit living inside, are by definition and Old Testament prophecy, willing to suffer in humility, and lay down without excuse the things that are the gap between us and the full measure of the stature of Christ, His daily Life and priorities. Everyone who actually KNOWS God, experiences God, worships God, wants God with all of their heart, hates compromise, hates excuses, talks to God as a way of life (not “say a little prayer” as an exercise)... will look deep into, and cast off their selfish, prideful, escapism motives of their past, scraping off the residue of their childhood, their previous home life, bad influences and bad habits, and every form of excuse that is a reason to not be like Jesus—conforming to the life of the Son.

We all get caught up in things. We can be blind for years. The test of salvation is: do we care, or do we make excuses? When the scales fall off, are we embarrassed—2 Corinthians 7—at just how stupid it was to be stupid? How did we get here?! And now what will we do about it as we learn obedience by the things we suffer, and GROW in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men as we too shed the mammal skin.

“The Angels long to look into these things” because the fallen angels feel JUDGED by our willingness to bow our knee and make things right when we were blind and blinded, previously in our lives. Moses, John, Elijah, Abraham, James, Luke, Peter, David, Phoebe, Aquila and Priscilla, and every last one of us at some point in our lives, perhaps for most of our lives, were blind and stupid and look back with amazement at how we could’ve got sucked up into something so obvious, seeking a “safe place” for mammals—instead of seeking the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—which is our natural Habitat in the Garden.

No bad guys, no good guys—just guys.

If you are truly His, forgiven and with HIS Spirit inside, “the Spirit of power and love and sound mind,” you are NOT a quitter, or excuse maker, nor will you run to human mammal “safe places” any longer. You are an Overcomer. And of course, that means you have something to overcome. Big deal. DO SO, by His blood and His Spirit and His indestructible Life.

Therefore, put aside the shame, the sloppiness, the self-inflicted blindness—“nearsighted and blind” as Peter said, and increase in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

Do it. Now.

No bad guys, no good guys—just guys.

L.U.C.I.D. — Living Under Christ, Ignoring Distractions

1In this conversation, the XY-axis versus the Z-axis is being used as an illustration of the difference between eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil vs. eating of the Tree of Life. XY-axis living is a “flat,” natural living of good vs. evil. Z-axis is a supernatural Zoe life in Jesus. Back

•  Real-Time Example of Being Lucid