Articles

The three step recovery program

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 10:35:16 +1000

There are times when we need to recover from a stressful experience. It could be because of an error of judgment on our part, or something unexpected that has been done to us by someone else, or just plain accidental misfortune. There is a three step process that will work in any situation. These are found in the following Scripture;
1 Peter 1:13 ‘ So get your mind into gear and be alert, then re-gather the affirmative and optimistic hope that you are meant to have in God, then confidently wait for the inspiration that comes into your spirit that puts you into partnership with Jesus.’
Let us take these steps one by one.
1. Get your mind into gear and be alert.
2. Re-gather lost hope.
3. Wait for and expect inspiration from the Holy Spirit.
Step One – Getting your mind into gear and being alert is always the first step. Getting your mind into gear means organizing your thinking and taking a good look at the realities so that you can be honest with yourself about what has happened. Sometimes it helps to try seeing things from another person’s point of view. Is there anything you could have learned from that experience that will help you in the future?
If it would have been in your power to act or respond differently, what would you have done if you could have the time over again?
Being alert means now turning from the past and stepping into the present and being ready for the future. This also means accepting the reality of what has happened and knowing that there is always a way to go forward with your life while you are still breathing.
Step Two – Re-gathering lost hope. After being thorough in step one you should now have a better understanding of what you can expect from yourself and also from other people. That is the biggest lesson we ever learn in a challenging experience. Hope is all about expectations. We all need to know our limitations but we also need to know our capabilities and our capacity to be creative. Don’t be too proud to ask for input from someone you trust and talk over any ideas you might feel good about putting into action. Listen to the feedback. No good solution has ever been put into action without a certain amount of faith, and faith is a function of hope. This means you can see the possibility of something and then you believe it can happen, then you do it.
Step Three – Getting inspiration. With your hope set you now wait for inspiration from the Holy Spirit. This is not a passive sitting around kind of waiting. This is a proactive expectation that God wants you to not only find the right way forward, but to be empowered by him as you go forward. This happens when you see yourself doing what has to be done with him. He has designed us to be partners with him in life. It is his desire to accompany us in the steps we take forward in our life. He wants to order our steps, not by controlling us but by getting our willing partnership. You will be inspired to expect some kind of supernatural intervention from God to make the way ahead clear for you. These interventions are the micro miracles that God wants us to experience every day of our lives. But to see them you have to prepare your mind as in step one above, then prepare your heart as in step two above. As you wait the unseen world of God working supernaturally behind the scenes on your behalf will unfold, and step three will, become a reality.
Spiritcode articles are designed to help you to get spiritual understanding. If this article has helped you or stimulated your thinking you might like to leave a comment. I would be happy to discuss with anybody a spiritual approach to life that can be of great benefit....Paul

Emotions - A signal to faith

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:51:40 +1000

EMOTIONS – A SIGNAL TO FAITH
Where did emotions originate?

There is something that we all share together as human beings, and which we also share with God. That is our emotions. Emotions move us into action. However, if emotions are not managed properly then all they do is move us into RE-action. So emotions always result in a behavior of some kind. As far as human experience is concerned, the Holy Spirit is the originator and the expression of all the godly emotions that are felt on the earth. All of the human joy and laughter, sadness and grief, love and peace, is a shadow of God’s heavenly heart. Emotions did not evolve from the instincts of lower forms of life; they come directly to humanity because we are made in God’s image and likeness.

Depending on how we manage our emotions, will result in behavior that is either negative and destructive, or positive and productive. This is because darkness has impacted the human condition and given it a self serving spin. Darkness is the spin that comes from the Prince of darkness which seeks to alienate our minds from the life of God, and this is a battle we are in constantly. Darkness poisons our emotions with toxic fear and this unhealthy fear gives rise to all the destructive forces that bring pain and hurt into the world. These fears are not the ordinary built in survival fears of heights and spiders and snakes. These fears are tormenting emotional fears of rejection and failure and injustice etc. There is no fear in God and there is no darkness in God so his behavior flows from a perfect emotional state of light and love filled being. (James 1:17f)
If we believe in what Jesus has done for humanity in giving us his life to share we are able to let God’s emotions flow through our lives. The Holy Spirit is working not only in our minds to lead us into truth, he is working with our emotions to lead us into faith. Emotions can be a signal to faith.

Managing our emotions

Our emotions, especially the negative ones, can become overwhelming for our soul. So the first step in the management of our emotions is to take a step back. When we feel something strongly that compels us into some kind of action or reaction we can ask ourselves what gave rise to that feeling? What event or what word or behavior has just sparked us off and given us a jolt? Where is that jolt going? Is it going to explode us into destruct mode, or tug at our heart and release compassion? Maybe the whole event should be ignored and we just get on with life. For example, if we find ourselves getting angry about something, we need to check and see if our anger is actually warranted - We might have misread a situation completely. Here is an example of where anger could come from and where it could go;
We feel threatened, and that leads to a feeling of indignation, that something is wrong. That indignation presses the anger button and now there are two choices.
We either take the threat personally and act to destroy or remove that threat, and react unwisely against it (eg, in traffic), or we don’t take the threat personally and so we diffuse the threat and consequently protect both ourselves and everything and everyone around us. It depends on how secure we feel when the anger button is pressed.

a) Secure -> Assertive protection.
Threat -> Indignation -> ANGER ->
b) Insecure -> Aggressive destruction.

We can see from the example above that our anger can lead to protective action or destructive action. Jesus was indignant at the money changers in the temple and he may have become angry, but he acted assertively to protect his Father’s house.

So anger does not have to result in sin or devastation.
Eph 4:26,27 “ Don’t let your anger turn to sin. Deal with it quickly or you will let the darkness (Devil) take over.”

The work of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is waiting at the intersection of every emotional crossroad to help us take the high way and not the low way, to act protectively and not destructively.
We have the choice of absorbing that threat into the pit of all of the damage that everyone has ever hurt us with, or we can let the Holy Spirit absorb it into his experience of never being resentful or overcome by darkness in any way. This the subduing work of God over our damaged and distorted reactions.

Phil 4:21 “who will transform [us]… according to the working (dunamis – power) by which He is able even to subdue everything to make it like himself.”

The Bible tells us that the effect of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is seen in three very powerful emotions that lead to extremely protective and caring behavior.
The three powerful emotions are Love, Joy and Peace, and the resulting behaviors or dispositions are longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness…and finally self control.

We can appeal to the Holy Spirit who lives in us and who identifies with what we are feeling. He wants to absorb that threat and pull us out of the pit of our distortion about it. He then takes us into his arena, and shows us where he would go with that situation. He gives us his emotions to touch. This is called the witness of the Spirit. He detoxifies the negative thoughts and reactions and creates a zone of faith. This is how Jesus lived and overcame darkness.
The Bible calls this crucifying the flesh with its passions and harmful emotions.
(Gal 5:24-26.) Crucifying the flesh is simply the submission of our emotions to a higher way – the way of The Spirit. The outcome is that a new order of things flows into and through our lives into the world around us.

The Motivation of half time thinking

Thu, 1 Feb 2007 13:52:44 +1100

Football matches are won or lost in the second half. It does not matter what code of football is being played, and it does not only apply to football. It is how you finish that counts – in any sport or competition or campaign. It applies to your life. Look at your life as one complete match or look at your current circumstance and assess where you are in terms of the half time break and begin now to strategize the finish.

I saw this very clearly on one occasion when I was playing a game of top level Rugby.
The coach pulled us aside as a team at half time. This was now the quietest time of the match, not the time for noise and action. but the time for strategy for the next half.
We knew we could win, but we were behind at half time. We all felt we had something to say but the coach told us to shut up and listen. He reassured us that they had not penetrated our defense, they had just been lucky on penalties. He told us not to try and score points but to give them the ball and to run them down and then do our scoring.

That was when I learned that half time was the time to listen to that quiet inner voice, not the yells of the crowd or even your team mates. Let the coach talk. It is on the inside, in the locker room where you get the advice. It is on the inside, deep inside our hearts that most people either win or lose. It is on the inside that most organizations either fall apart or become strong, not from attacks from the outside. Usually we get stronger when we are attacked from the outside. I have never worried about that. It is the inside I want to keep safe from the attack of its own lack of faith and wisdom.

What I learned that half time was that what had got us to where we were was not the thing that was going to get us any further. It was now time to apply a finishing strategy.
We had, as a team been doing things right. We were good at executing the elemental skills of the game. But doing things right is a lot different to doing the right things. Doing things right is efficiency, but doing the right things is effectiveness. The coach did not guarantee us success, but he guaranteed us we would fail if we gave up, or did not adopt the right approach.

Whatever you do, always play hard. There are no soft games. And the goal is not always the score on the scoreboard – it is to reach your full potential. That is called destiny – and everybody has one. Second half play begins with low cost probes. You don’t try to win recklessly and end up losing. You will win when you are well set. So slow down and be deliberate – this is the second half. You will make it.

Half time is the time for inner motivation to drive you, not just some external reward. It is like seeing it in terms of a career and saying 'I would do what I’m doing for no pay, rather than, 'as long as they pay me enough I’ll do what they want’. That is when you know you want to do it and reach your potential.

Macro Miracles and Micro Miracles

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 13:51:25 +1100

There are two kinds of miracles that God performs. One is the MACRO miracle, and the other is the MICRO miracle. The MACRO is the event that is outside of the natural order of things. This kind of miracle breaks or suspends the natural laws of the universe. Examples of these happening are when Jesus walked on water, and when God parted the Red Sea. God uses demonstrations of power like these to get our attention. There are certain significant times in history when God flags that moment with a special supernatural event, and if we were to be around at the time they happened we would be overawed and astonished at the greatness and power of God. We would likely be mere spectators and not taking centre stage. These events are part of his sovereign purpose in the timetable of his cosmic program.

However there is another order of miracle that involves our lives in a close and personal way and that is in the MICRO miracles that occur in the daily course of our lives. These events are the outworking of God’s intervention in arranging the amazingly coincidental and providential acts of mercy and goodness towards us that we will see and experience if we are expecting God to do them. These things are no less supernatural and require no less faith, but we are the immediate beneficiaries of all of these events. These occurrences may not break the natural laws of the universe, and in fact they work very neatly within the natural course of time and space. But when they happen we know it was not just coincidence.

If a person says they believe in God then they are saying that they believe that God created them, and that he loves them and that he wants to do good to them and for them. This is what I call REAL faith in God. In fact it is not just faith IN God but it is faith WITH God which is what he really wants us to have. Jesus came to earth to establish humanity in this kind of faith. It is actually the faith of Jesus that he shares with us from heaven. The Apostle Paul talks about it when he says ‘It’s not just me living anymore, it’s Christ living WITH me, and the life that I live, I live by the faith OF (with) the Son Of God…’ (Gal.2:20). There should be an expectation of the intervention of God into every circumstance.

You cannot isolate yourself from God in anything at all or you doom yourself to mere existence in the natural realm of life. When a person has REAL faith in and with God they have entered into a SUPERNATURAL REALM of life.

When we live this kind of life with God it does not mean that we are in CONTROL of the supernatural things that happen to us and around us, but it does mean that we are in COMMAND of the decision to believe and to respond. God wants to demonstrate his oneness with us. It is that faith RESPONSE that allows us to be in on these events. These are SUPERNATURAL events but they do not have to break the natural order of the laws of the universe. They interweave in and through the network of the people and events of life around us. This is where God says, ‘You are in center stage with me now in this event – This is about your life with me.’ You will see it in the way he organizes other people to phone you or connect with you, or you to them at just the right time. He can put these promptings to action into our minds and we don’t even realize he is doing it. These are events that are beyond our ability to control. These are MICRO miracles and our life can abound with them.

But it needs faith. The faith is simply that this is the way God deals with us. Without faith we are looking the other way all the time and we miss it. We walk out of the room and go into our cave just when God wants to share a moment of the supernatural with us. But we have left the room – we are looking the other way! How many times has God been waiting for us to have faith WITH him? But he is extremely patient and he does not penalize us for not paying attention. He just wants us to do ourselves a favor and partner him in a supernatural life. So ask The Holy Spirit to give you a nudge today. Extend the antennae of your faith – put things into God’s hands and let God surprise you.

Crack the code of the Star of Bethlehem

Fri, 1 Dec 2006 13:52:13 +1100

How many times have you heard the story of the wise men who followed the star in the East to find the baby Jesus? It has become a favorite Christmas story and it is a true story. However sometimes the picture in our minds as we hear the story does not quite equate to the facts of the story and especially to the real significance of the story. Spiritcode.com likes to crack the code when it can, and look behind a story to find the meaning of the TRUE story. I asked several people imagine they were looking at a Christmas card and to name the characters they saw there. They all mentioned the three wise men from the East.
That fact is that the wise men from the East could not have been there according to the Bible account, and it is also a fact that the Bible never says that there were three wise men anyway. But there was a star that guided them, and we will get to all that in a moment.

I came across the background of this event when I was writing a book called ‘The Plan’ which is the story of how God created a new spirit species of humanity through Jesus. There is a point in the story where the wise men were summonsed by King Herod to tell him of the whereabouts of the baby Jesus. He had heard that these travelers were in town and that they were asking after the whereabouts of Jesus. There had been talk in Jerusalem about this birth because according to the Scriptures, the shepherds who were tending their sheep on the hills on the night that Jesus was born ran into the city and told people what they had seen. Their report went out about the city and there were rumors everywhere about a new king that was going to rule over the world.

Herod was an evil and ambitious king and he wanted to create a dynasty for himself. History shows that Herod was a former general who had done Mark Antony a favor during the Roman conflicts some years earlier, and this gave him the leg-up to become the Tetrarch over the Judean regions. If there was going to be a new king coming into power in this part of the world then it was going to be him and no one else. In no way was it going to be a Jewish peasant baby born in a stable. So we have some questions here. One question is what were the wise men following and why were they following it? Secondly, when did this happen, and were the wise men there at the birth of baby Jesus as the picture of the Christmas stories seems to depict?

The answer to question one is that the Wise Men were following a star – or I should say a planet. This was the planet Jupiter, or Nebera in the Babylonian language. The answer to the second question is that the Wise Men could not have been there at the birth of Jesus because the Scripture story has them clearly arriving in town well after the birth and hearing the rumors and asking around as to where the child was. Herod has also heard the rumors about the birth and wants to use the astrological and astronomical skills of the Wise Men to find the child. He wants Jesus killed. Later he orders all children less than TWO years of age to be killed so some time would have certainly elapsed.

Here is how the extraordinary facts came to light. In 1990 a man by the name of Professor Bradley Schaefer of Yale University purchased a bronze Roman coin, from the year 6B.C. in Antioch, Syria. This coin showed the zodiacal sign Aries the Ram. Schaefer looked for the meaning behind this coin, and found that Aries was the sign of the Jews. He realized that this is where ancient stargazers would have watched for the Star of Bethlehem. He embarked on a search for the celestial event that signified the birth of the Messiah in Judea.

What Schaefer found on the face of the coin was the goat sign of ‘Aries’ and a huge star shining above it. In 6 BC. Jupiter went through TWO major eclipse by the moon in Aries, which, according to the astrologers of the day, (of which the Wise Men were given notability and credence by the Scriptures), was the regal ‘star’ that conferred kingships. This power was amplified when Jupiter was in close conjunctions with the Moon. The second eclipse on April 17 coincided precisely with Jupiter being ‘in the east,’ and this was mentioned twice in the biblical account about the Star of Bethlehem. The magnitude of this event makes it plain to see why Herod was so worked up about it. He wanted that extraordinary sign to be a billboard announcement about his meteoric rise to ‘stardom’.

Personally I don’t go for horoscopes and astrology, but if God wants to use the stars and planets as He wishes, to give a sign for a mighty event like the birth of God-Man upon the earth then that’s fine by me. God is charge of the universe and created it. The stars and planets will line up the way He ordered them to and He will use all things He created to give mankind a sign that He is in charge of it all. I don’t believe in superstition but I do believe in the supernatural. In fact I believe our lives should ‘crackle’ with the supernatural because we all have the Holy Spirit with us to reveal the mind and the ways of God. All we have to do is ask Him.