Synchronizing Without Pride

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. (Romans 12:15-18)

Last time I touched on the fact that the right brain learns how to return to its natural state of joy/peace by someone synchronizing emotionally with it and then demonstrating how to do it. The right brain learns primarily by imitation and so it is important to have others involved in our lives who care about us that we can imitate. The body of Christ is made up of people who are desiring to imitate Jesus in their spirit and actions and relationships and are being used by Him in turn to be mentors that can be imitated by those He puts into their sphere of love and influence. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another.

What I also see in this passage is a caveat to being of the same mind with others. While it is important for mentoring to synchronize emotions with one who is less mature in order to help them learn how to respond and act like themselves, we are not to extend that concept to reflecting negative emotions and attitudes with people who are mistreating us. There is a big difference between emotional synchronization for mentoring purposes and indulging in the temptation to react in kind when we are confronted with a wrong spirit.

I have observed over the past few years that it seems like the essence of temptation is to take on or react with the same kind of spirit with which we are confronted. This is probably due to the natural tendency of the mind to want to synchronize with others that is part of God's design for us. But with sin in the picture it is no longer safe or right to synchronize with others all of the time when it means getting out of sync with our Creator's Spirit. Thus the warning here to not return evil for evil.

It is the natural urging of our fallen nature to want to get even, to become defensive and to not allow others to hurt us. Our flesh is very much into protecting ourselves from pain, shame and blame. But the way we naturally want to do that is always going to be at the expense of others because of our deep-rooted selfishness. We will often have very plausible and even religious-sounding excuses to justify our self-protection and desires to reflect back what others are doing to us, but it never makes it right. We may be able to restrain or restrict the degree to which we act out our desires for returning evil, but in God's eyes our real condition (not our identity) is the motives of our heart, not just the outward actions that can be seen by others. If we allow desires to remain in our hearts or imaginations for others to experience evil who have done evil to us, we are secretly giving a place to the enemy, a handle that he can use at most unexpected times to expose us, a point of vulnerability for the enemy to defeat us. There are no exceptions to this principle, not even at the deepest hidden levels of our heart. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone, not even secretly in our hearts.

The next part of this instruction can be a little confusing. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. I have looked at this verse in several translations but it comes up with the same ambiguity in every one I have looked at. This phrase can be taken in two different ways. My question is about which side of the sentence defines the meaning of right in the center. Does this mean that we are to respect right independently of what others think is right, but publicly so that it is obvious to everyone, or does it mean that we are to respect what it considered right in the opinion of those around us? I think I would lean toward believing that the first assumption is the correct one, but as I said that does not come clearly through the way this is worded.

I also wonder why this comes directly after the instruction about not returning evil for evil. I suspect there is an important relationship here and that they did not just happen to be back to back. But right now I don't see a real clear connection. I want to think about this some more.

The last part of this passage is clearly connected to respecting what is right. While we are to give preference to living at peace with all men, that will not always be possible while at the same time respecting what is right. Clearly there are going to be times when publicly taking a stand for what is right is going to put us at odds and out of peace with all men. But I think the main point of this is the other aspect to this instruction. That is, we should not ignore being at peace with others while taking pride in asserting our independence from them by trying to be different with no regard for peace and harmony around us.

I am quite familiar with this sort of personality. Some people think it is something of a trademark to be different than those around them. They take pride in not fitting in or in feeling that their differences from others somehow make them more important or more religious. They sometimes mistake stubbornness as conscientiousness and have little regard for living at peace with others. While there will be times when standing for right will put us at serious odds with others, it is not necessary to be at odds just to be unique. Being different is not equivalent to being righteous though at times some people believe that.

The core problem that must be faced in each of these things is our problem of pride. This is addressed head-on in the center of this section, do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. This is the basic problem that interferes with aligning our lives with each of these instructions. And it must always be viewed within the context of verse two – the transformation of our lives through the renewing of our minds. This transformation involves the removal of the pride that infects every area of our mind and heart. Pride is the greatest obstacle to the work of God in our lives and is the greatest threat to our peace and joy.

Pride will prevent us from genuinely rejoicing with others who rejoice because we cannot selflessly synchronize our hearts with them. Instead we will secretly harbor jealousy in our hearts. Pride will prevent us from weeping with those who weep because we will be afraid of shame or of being vulnerable or of becoming entangled with their problems without being in control. Pride will cause us to react with less than noble feelings whenever we are faced with evil, pain and intimidation. It will become our liability that can threaten to undo what the Holy Spirit is trying to accomplish in our transformation. Pride will cause us to have little consideration for living at peace with others. Pride will even sometimes cause us to try to hide our decisions to stand for what is right in fear of what others may think about us.

The words in Greek translated into haughty in mind mean to not entertain a sentiment of a high opinion about yourself. It really strikes at the root of one of the three foundations of civilization that I have learned about, Kingship. This is the stratification of social value that we assign to ourselves and others based on comparison with others or arbitrary determinations. It is so much a part of our world and our thinking that we seldom even think about it consciously, but it undermines the body of Christ in which there is no place for differences in value. It is in direct opposition to the instruction to be of the same mind toward one another. In order for us to willingly associate with the lowly we must become freed from the pride that has artificially segregated people and caused us to view others as more or less valuable than ourselves.

This is very significant in the context of the gifts just listed in the body. It is far too easy to begin to evaluate others according to false estimations of the importance of different gifts and the people who exercise them. We may give lip service to the equal value of each person but in our interactions we betray the influence within our hearts of the spirit of the world, the separations created by artificial distinctions. We must constantly guard against allowing the influence of the world's way of thinking to infiltrate the new order of life within the true body of believers. We serve a different God with radically different tools of measurement. Be of the same mind toward one another.

Do not be wise in your own estimation is a restatement of our need to avoid being haughty in mind. This is such a deep-rooted problem that it is necessary to repeat it again in different words. This kind of pride is possibly the greatest danger to the success of the unity of the body as God works to bring us into harmony, love and humility. It is only as we become willing to lay aside our pride and recognize the enormous danger that pride poses to our spiritual life that we will be able to grow, to mature and to become more closely bonded and integrated within the body of fellow believers.

I have taken time to try to unpack mentally what these verses are saying to me here. But I also realize that I have barely touched the need for the truths of these words to sink deep into my own heart and thinking. That is not something that just happens by intellectually dissecting a passage but has to be impressed at a much deeper level by the Holy Spirit who knows how to get it to where it is needed. I desire for Him to do that in my life, to transform me into a person without pride, fear or shame. I want to be a person who is not hesitant to associate with those who are considered lowly by the world, for in God's eyes there is really no such thing as lowly. Everyone is of infinite worth so how can we say someone is lowly with the normal assumptions associated with that word? If lowly means of less value, then it is our system of measurement that seriously needs replacing.

I need to take some intense quiet time focusing with my heart on these insights and listening to the impressions of the Spirit. Otherwise all the expounding and wisdom and explanations become nothing but a sounding gong or a tinkling cymbal. There is a time to carefully analyze and there is also the need to take time to absorb and meditate.

God, please send the Holy Spirit to take these words, these messages, these crucial truths deep into the dark places in my heart where pride still clings tenaciously. Turn up the light in my soul and reveal the lies that I still believe about myself and others that prevent me from freely associating with some of the members of Your family. Give me the eyes of heaven, not only for others but for myself and help me to see the true ugliness of the pride that still prevents me from reflecting Your beauty, kindness and attractiveness in my life.

Continue Your work of mind renewal and transformation in my life. I trust in Your faithfulness, Your grace, Your patience and Your ability to accomplish everything You have promised to do. Cleanse me from every attitude, belief and confused idea that distorts Your image in my heart. Fill me with Your Spirit and make me a conductor of Your grace to others.

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Blessing, Cursing and Mentoring

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. (Romans 12:14-15)

There are some words here that I would like to unpack and clarify in my mind because they have been thrown around all my life without really grasping what they really imply. There are a great number of religious words like that that I have been investigating for some years now and my research has really helped transform my own personal experience.

The words in this verse are bless, curse and rejoice. I thought that weep would not need checking out but as I just now looked at the original Greek word for this I realized how important it is to even check out words that I assume I know. The word for weep means not only to sob and weep but it also does not mean quiet, internal weeping. It specifically means external expressions of sadness. I'm not sure how much to make of that distinction but it is interesting to observe.

I touched a little on bless last time. This word is the same word as eulogize. Most people know what it means to eulogize someone's life at their funeral and how sad it is that we don't do it while they are still alive and can benefit from all the nice things people say about them. I remember the very powerful movie called Tuesday's with Morrie in which he arranged to have his funeral months before he died so that he could enjoy it along with everyone else. I believe God is challenging our social paradigms about this whole idea by telling us here that we need be practicing the art of eulogizing all the time, not just at funerals. If we are being transformed into the likeness of God we will see a radical difference in the way we talk and think about others, even those who persecute us according to these verses.

The word for curse, as far as I can decipher from the Greek, is just the opposite of bless or eulogize. It means to execrate, to put down, to shame or devalue others by speaking badly about them. This is the natural response that we have in our flesh against anyone who we feel is persecuting us, but God says emphatically here that we are not to do that. Earlier in Romans Paul made it very clear that if we follow the natural desires of our flesh we are headed for death. Indeed, we are already filling ourselves with death.

Just because it feels normal and natural does not justify it such a reaction. Just because someone seems to deserve our antipathy and resentment toward how they are treating us does not make cursing acceptable for a real Christian. God's ways are radically different than the ways of the world and the flesh, and we must increasingly become more aware of how we still mingle in habits formed in the flesh to the new ways of thinking brought to us by the Spirit. The surrounding verses in this passage amplify this injunction to bless and not curse and it seems that this verse is a main high point that is at the center of a chiastic structure that was a literary tool often used by Bible writers.

This strikes directly at the core of my own tendencies toward criticism, fault-finding and negative thinking. It seems so natural for my first reactions to a new situation to look for the problems, to assume negative intent on the part of others, to be suspicious and wary in order to protect myself. Even more subtle is to appear to be noble by being suspicious of others motives in religion in the name of protecting the purity of truth. I have seen this modeled by very many in my life and it is so easy to follow that pattern. But I strongly suspect that this mode of thinking is that described in verse 16 as being haughty in mind even though that word is definitely not complimentary. Having a critical attitude toward others who do not see things as I do may feel very righteous and I may think I am defending the truth, but it turns out that from heaven's viewpoint I am really engaging in cursing others while being wise in my own estimation. God have mercy on me and continue to transform me.

Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. (Romans 12:16)

My left brain wrestles against these verses and is eager to rationalize very plausible-sounding excuses as to why they should not apply to my defensiveness for “the truth”. But I am reminded that this passage must be understood from the viewpoint and context of the condition of my spirit much more than my relationship to intellectual truths. It is too easy to justify all sorts of dysfunction in my spirit by resorting to dogmatic stands for the truth that I am sure is truth and needs defending. But this is not the ways of God. Truth does not need defending but it does need exposure through the lives of people being transformed into beings of beauty, sweetness and attractiveness.

I noticed something very interesting the other day when I was meditating on these verses. This text talking about rejoicing and weeping with others in the body is really an explanation of what scientists today are learning about how the right brain functions. It is now being learned that the right brain, where most of our emotions and deeper beliefs about ourselves are based, is the part of our mind that takes charge whenever we find ourselves in trauma situations. An under-trained right brain (which applies to most of us) will often shut down the left brain temporarily and will take over control of our life until the intense part of the trauma is past and then allow the left brain to come back online.

This phenomenon is sometimes referred to in legal cases as temporary insanity. That is because a person often acts very uncharacteristically from that which they are typically know to act under great stress and it is assumed that somehow they have gone insane for a few minutes because they did not really know what they were doing.

This is partially true. And it may be so largely if they have made the mistake of living primarily from their left brain most of their life and so their perceived identity was that of the person created in the left brain while avoiding right brain functions. But it could also happen from living life following one's feelings without restraint which also leaves the mind very unbalanced and immature. This unbalanced state of mental function becomes very evident under times of stress when the right brain suddenly takes over, as it was designed by God to do, but does not have adequate training to know how to respond properly. Since all the facts and training and information about how to act may have been stored in the left brain alone for much of the life and the left brain is now unavailable with all of its facts and identity knowledge-base, the right brain will act very differently than the person usually does when they are living life heavily from the left brain. The right brain will always default back to the example stored in emotional memory of others and how they acted under similar emotions.

To avoid this many people believe that they must work even harder to suppress all right brain activities and emotions so as to hopefully prevent it from taking over during a time of crisis. They have very nice-sounding religious reasons for doing this and believe that it is equivalent to crucifying the flesh and all sorts of other religious-sounding ideas. But actually they are trying to defeat the very design that God built into our brains to live life the way we are supposed to live. We are not supposed to suppress our right brains but to respect and train them the way God designed us to do so that they can function properly in tandem with our left brains under times of testing and trauma. This is the real meaning of maturity. But this is another arena in which our false notions about religion have terribly distorted and stunted our lives while purporting to be God's will for us.

It is now becoming more clearly understood that the right brain learns primarily by imitation. The right brain, which is the most important part of our mind that has been abused and misused ever since sin entered into this world, is the primary receptacle for our true identity and the primary place that connects with our heart and our spirit. I also believe that it is the primary communication link for our ability to hear the Spirit of God. That does not mean that the left brain has no part to play in listening to God. But “religion” has so confused our thinking that we have often tried to replace the proper functions of the right brain in our relationship to God with the rational, logical, formula-based functions of the left brain with very sad results. An intellectually-based religion is not a relationship of the heart and is not acceptable to God. It is the religion that was practiced by the Pharisees and religious leaders in Jesus' day and is still very much in vogue today even though it is extremely difficult to detect in one's own self. But it is definitely not the true religion of heaven.

Since the right brain was designed by God to take control during times of crisis and will typically function that way, it is important that we learn what is involved in training the right brain properly so that we can experience the results that reflect the character of God being implanted into our souls instead of the dysfunction of our false ideas about religion. Since the right brain cannot understand spoken words it does very little good to employ teaching in the usual ways that we think of teaching.

The right brain pays attention to body language, tones of voice, facial expressions and even sensing of the spirit of other people. The right brain is extremely active in learning and being molded in the early years of life by observing how the people close the us act under various circumstances. All this information is stored permanently in the emotional memory banks of the right brain and is drawn on during times of similar circumstances to know how to act like one's self. Our sense of personal identity is largely acquired by observing how “our people” act under various times of intense emotion, not by lectures and sermons and other logical explanations or instructions.

Joy and peace is the natural state that our minds were designed to thrive in and return to from every other emotional state. The way our brains learn how to return to joy is by observing and sensing how others who are mentoring us act and react during times of similar emotional tension. It is very important to learn early in life how to properly return to our natural state of joy from all of the other six big negative emotions or we will have problems for the rest of our life. And the way we learn to return from those emotions is by having someone join us in our emotional state who is more mature than we are and then demonstrate to us how one returns to joy from that feeling.

What is exciting is that verse 15 here is stating this very principle that God designed into our brains. The only way we can learn how to return to joy from any emotion or trauma that may have us trapped is for someone who is “one of our people” to join us in that emotion and then carefully, lovingly guiding us emotionally back to a state of joy (which means someone is very glad to be with me). Whenever someone who is themselves experienced in recovering from that emotion comes to me when I am stuck in an emotion that I have not learned to recover from yet, and then joins me without criticism or shame or rebuke in my emotion, I am then empowered to learn by their example and sharing in my emotion how to return to joy with their assistance. This is one of the most important reasons that we need to live connected to the real body of Christ.

The way we learn our true identity is by right-brain training through the Spirit of God and the example of others more emotionally mature than us who are also learning to reflect the true character of God. It is impossible to grow and mature effectively apart from community – that is just the way the human mind is wired. Given this it is no wonder that Satan does everything possible to try to keep us at odds with each other so that real community cannot be experienced. For he knows that when we start mentoring and relating to each other the way God designs for us to do that his deceptions and dysfunctions in our lives will quickly come unraveled and his lies will be exposed for what they really are. If he can keep us locked in our intellectual religion or tied up in emotional dysfunction separated from each other, then he can keep manipulating us like puppets on a string while having us believe we are living in God's will.

It is very important that we learn how to act like ourself under stress. And for that to happen several things must be in place. First we need to fill our minds with the real truth about God, what He is like (and not like), how He feels about us and what His real desires are for us. Then we need to learn the real truth about ourselves and begin to discover not only our faults but more importantly the true identity implanted into our hearts by God at our conception. If we are to learn how to really act like our real selves, we need to discover the real self that was designed in the image of God, not the perceived self that we have assumed all our lives from what others have imposed on us, accused us of being or even our own conclusions.

It is very important to understand that our true identity is not the sum of our mistakes or the description of our past performance, good or bad. This perception of identity is what the Bible refers to as viewing people according to the flesh. It is almost exclusively what we are most familiar with but it is not reflective of real reality. Part of the transformation process of verse two is learning to perceive our true identity as well as that of those around us through the eyes of heaven and not our own opinions or feelings. We have to be actively led by the Spirit of God as described in chapter eight if we are to live as real Christians and relate to each other properly in the body of Christ. This includes constantly listening to the Spirit of God with our open spirit to update our perceptions about true identity that is radically different than what we normally assume, both our own and others. As we learn to do this we will even find that our perceptions of the identity of Jesus will begin to change.

Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)

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How to Bless

...contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality. (Romans 12:13)

When I looked up the words for this first phrase, contributing to the needs of the saints, I found it to mean pretty close to how it reads in English. Other than confusion over what the word saints means on the part of some, it is telling us that we must make ourselves open and available to supply the needs of others in the body that we have ability to help. These needs not only involve physical things they may lack that we can supply, but just as importantly emotional and spiritual support. Remember, this is still very clearly in the context of a description of the gifts given to the various members of the body for the purpose of building up, strengthening and encouraging the body.

I believe one of our greatest problems, I know it has been mine for many years, is our penchant to segregate the spiritual aspects and activities of our lives from what we think is secular. We must learn to live in reference to the way heaven views reality and life instead of the artificial distinctions that cause so much confusion and dysfunction and keep us distracted from what is really true. While we must be aware of the difference between what is holy and what is common, we must also have a much better awareness that every moment of our life belongs to God and everything we think belongs to us, whether possessions or talents or gifts, all are God-gifted to us. Everything we have and enjoy are only loans, are entrusted to us for investment to see how we will use them to develop character in our hearts. The only thing we really own at all is our character and that is the only thing we can take with us to heaven. Everything else are just tools loaned to us to use in shaping and growing our character. This passage is describing how we should use the temporary gifts entrusted to us correctly to form a character that will be safe for Jesus to trust after transferring us to the next stage of development at the Second Coming.

All of these instructions are descriptions of what an unselfish life will look like in community with other believers. When we come into proper alignment at the heart level with the God who is the ultimate example of selfless love, we will naturally be looking out for any way possible that we can bless or assist others who are being hampered by inadequacies in their lives. It will not be something we have to force ourselves to do. And if we are forcing ourselves to be generous and unselfish (which is really an oxymoron), then we must go back to examine our deeper motivations and reconnect our hearts even closer to the heart of our Creator from which all unselfishness emanates. Working on managing our outward symptoms is a terrible waste of time and effort and does nothing to develop real character in us that fits us for eternity. It only tends to produce hypocrisy and self-deception.

I realize that examining this passage in the form of verses is an artificial way to look at it. Verse partitions were added much later by translators to make research and internal addressing easier. But verses and chapters also introduced a lot of confusion at times by breaking apart the flow of thoughts and concepts the author originally intended. But we still use them as a means for study though we must be careful to keep our minds alert that the surrounding words and ideas must not be divorced or disconnected in any way without danger of causing undue loss from the richness of the message.

These two phrases are both positive injunctions and are really similar in nature. I notice something about this whole passage that becomes more distinct in this verse. It seems that this passage is focused almost exclusively on how we are to relate to others in the body without referring to others outside the body. That is not to say we are not to treat others who are not yet part of Christ's body in the ways described here. But this passage has some specific descriptions of how we need to relate to those who are also choosing to follow Jesus and trust in His saving, transformational power in their lives. It seems clear here that there is a difference in the way we are to relate to those in the body from how we may relate to those outside the body.

One of the biggest dangers that I have noticed over the years is not just the fact that we don't follow these instructions in our internal relationships within “the church”, but that our sharply narrow definitions of who constitutes the body precludes us from relating properly with many who, in God's eyes may be much more a part of the body than many we assume are in it simply because they belong to our particular denomination or congregation. Our human, artificial discriminations are usually so far off base from how God views things that we conveniently exclude everyone that doesn't fit our narrow biases quite like the Pharisees and religious leaders did in Christ's day.

While I don't completely understand the implications of why we are instructed here to apparently treat those within the body somewhat differently than those outside the body, I believe there is a very good reason and it is likely quite different than the reasons we often assume. Between our largely false artificial distinctions that cause us to mis-identify who is part of the same body as us and then our neglect to take these instructions seriously, we are severely hampering the bonding and healthy growth of the body of Christ. If we want to really grow spiritually and come into serious intimacy with God we will have to realign many of our attitudes and practices that are not in harmony with this passage and allow the Spirit to convict and transform our live to reflect what is spelled out here as a description of what the true body should look like.

I think this verse is beginning to unpack what it looks like to bless others. The previous verse started us out with the attitudes that we need to cherish in our hearts while doing these things and now the external demonstrations are being described. The next verse instructs us to bless others. But what does that really mean and what does it look like in practical, everyday terms? Our notions of blessings are often so vague and usually economically oriented that we have very limited ideas of what real blessing might be.

I also wonder if this verse is an instruction of what to focus our minds on whenever we find ourselves faced with troubles. Instead of focusing on our problems and our discouragement we should turn our mental focus toward making life better for those who can benefit from our gifts to the body. This is a deliberate choice that, while not usually a natural reaction to tribulation, can make a huge difference in how those trials effect us. Because our hearts are like mirrors, it is far more growth-producing to focus our hearts on listening to God's directions as to how we can bless others even in the midst of our own problems rather than in focusing constantly on our own problems and becoming fixated with them. When we focus on problems directly we tend to absorb the flavor of those problems and take on the characteristics of those who are causing them rather than the characteristics of God.

This verse comes on the heels of instructions for fervency and diligence. It is also tied to the admonition for devotion to one another – the saints – in agape and brotherly love, giving preference to others. And again, this passage is focused primarily on helping those in the body without discussing so much how to relate to those outside the body. There seems to be a reason that we should direct our best efforts for relief toward those in the body of Christ.

...contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. (Romans 12:13-14)

Something very fascinating that I discovered when I looked at the original Greek for these verses was the fact that the very same Greek word is behind both practicing and persecute. This word conveys the idea of pursuing and implies an intentional state of mind toward others. In the first verse it is an instruction as to how to do hospitality; in the second verse it stands alone as a description of what others may be doing towards us. The original word means to pursue. Whenever we are on the receiving end of someone's attitude of pursuit, whether that aggressive attitude is full of good or bad intent toward us, we are to practice a response of blessing toward them and never cursing.

The word translated blessing here literally means to eulogize. I think that is a very good reference point to begin understanding the real nature of the word blessing. Most people know the internal feelings elicited about someone whenever they are eulogized at a funeral or memorial service. We invariably tend to dwell on their good characteristics and gloss over their faults and problems. We usually seek very hard to remember all the good things they did, their positive attributes, all the ways that they helped others, their cheerfulness or their quiet determination to just get through life successfully.

I am sometimes amazed at how creative people can be at digging up positive, encouraging memories and anecdotes about people who have just died to share at a memorial service. But what God is asking us to do is to literally and just as intentionally do that very same kind of thing while they are still very much alive and may even be making life a trial for us at the moment. This is a radical kind of Christianity that can only be lived through the means of internal transformation that implants the characteristics of heaven into our souls at a very deep level. It is reflecting the light of heaven into other darkened lives instead of reflecting their own darkness back onto them.

This is what I am seeing in these verses. I cannot claim that I practice these things very well. My flesh recoils at the radical nature of these revelations and I realize that it is impossible for me to fulfill them from the heart in my flesh. Like the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai, I am faced with descriptions of holiness that are far beyond the reach of my own abilities, but I do not want to make the mistake that they made and blithely respond by saying, “All that the Lord has said we will do!” Instead I have to admit my inability to live at this level of unselfishness unless God works a miracle of radical transformation within my heart. Only with an internal incarnation of the Son of God living within me can these descriptions ever become a viable reality for my life.

Father, I need to have Jesus born again, incarnated into my own heart. I need a renewed mind and a transformed spirit to empower me to feel and do what I see described in this chapter. I like what I see but it is far out of my own reach or sheer force of willpower. But Jesus demonstrated perfectly a human life that is just like this and He is eager to demonstrate it again through me. So I give You unlimited permission to do whatever it takes, whatever is needed to transform me into Your image and into Your likeness. Re-form me, cleanse me of all unrighteousness, of selfishness, of pride, of false ideas about You. Fill me with Your Spirit and surround me with the atmosphere of Your presence today so that my life will become a fiber-optic channel of Your light for others today.

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