Proverbs 14:10
No one else can know your sadness, and strangers cannot share your joy.
We cannot fully know or understand or comprehend another person’s pain or joy. We just can’t. May we never forget this basic truth which remembrance will keep us in non-judgement.
But I do believe in Christ, in meditation, in diligence, we can enter into a person’s sadness and joy on a level that is beyond human…at a higher consciousness if you will. We may, through intentionality, enter into a solidarity with others that ushers in the peace of Christ experientially.
John 7:45-46
The Temple guards went back to the leading priests and the Pharisees, who asked, “Why didn’t you bring Jesus?” The guards answered, “The words He says are greater than the words of any other person who has ever spoken!”
No one ever spoke like this!
No one ever spoke like this because no one except Jesus was LOGOS* enfleshed. No other person ever embodied the pure Word of God.
Jesus did.
Therefore His words held the authority of YHWH, the Creator of all things. They have weight and meaning beyond human thinking. And this is why we should give attention and adherence to His words well above anyone else’s. This is why we live much more at peace when we listen to and for Jesus speaking to us thru every and all mediums. Thru every person. When listening to a sermon or reading a book, do not focus on the preacher or author, but rather center your attention on Jesus, the Word incarnated, and what He is saying to you. And not messages for yourself only, but also for others and even the world. I can hardly explain the peace and higher consciousness I experience when doing this–when listening to and for God in every moment, in every thing. (And this is also the path to becoming unoffendable.)
So here’s a little example: Just this morning, while meditating on this passage, listening to YHWH, I had the Frozen song “Let It Go” stuck in my head. Probably because my girls listen to it and sing it about every nine minutes. So I started to calmly pray to God that He would remove this distraction from me. But before I could even finish asking, I felt Him stop me and encourage me to practice the very thing He was teaching me thru His word right then. Instead of pushing the song away, I began to listen to and for Jesus thru it. The specific words to the song (as I heard them in my head) I kept hearing were “Let it go, let it go, this perfect girl is gone” as well as “It’s funny how some distance makes everything seem small, and the fears that once controlled me can’t get to me at all.” And I reflected on the truth of these words and what Jesus had to say.
Pretty obvious I’m guessing, but I’ll state it anyway. Letting go of having to be perfect is about as freeing as it gets. We are not perfect and we screw up everyday. Get over it. Quit beating yourself up. Quit being surprised by it. It does you no good. It does those around you no good. We’ve said before that self-loathing is simply laziness wrapped in a blanket of false humility. It keeps you stagnant and ineffective because you’re not working on growing or helping anyone else. You’re sitting there focused on yourself doing nothing. It’s very easy to do:
1) sit
2) self-loathe
3) keep doing for as long as you want
Is this what God wants? Is this the life Jesus paid for for us? Does He want us to strive to be perfect? Or does He want us to know and love Him? Once we accept that we are accepted in Christ, we are free indeed. And then we gain distance from what we’ve feared and the fear loses its grip on us. We’ve all experienced this I’m sure to varying degrees. Look back on things that once controlled you. You are no longer controlled by them. How? Distance. Distance from it. In your mind and in your heart. The sure way is to get so close to Jesus that you automatically distance yourself from what was controlling you.
Constant two-way communication with our ever present Papa in everything.
Some questions to ever keep asking ourselves:
Am I reading for information, or am I reading in order to know God more deeply?
Am I reading the Bible to hear God speak?
Do I go to church to encounter Jesus?
*Logos is the transliteration of a common Greek word that generally means “word,” “speech,” “account,” “story,” or “message.” Around 500 B.C. Greek philosophers began to adopt the word and use it to signify that which gives shape, form or life to the material universe. In the NT era this special use was operative alongside the more general use.
…[John’s] use of logos…seems to imply that the word he is speaking of is that prophetic word which goes forth from God’s mouth to accomplish creation, judgement, redemption and renewal. John uses logos because it is the natural word for expressing the meaning of the Hebrew word dabar when that word was used in the context of God’s revelation. Beginning with its first sentences the Gospel asserts that Jesus is God’s final Revelator (Heb.1:1-2).
-From Dictionary Of Jesus And The Gospels