For God is a Spirit, and he longs to have sincere worshippers who worship and adore him in the realm of the Spirit and in truth. John 4:24 (TPT)
Realm of the Spirit – Live In the Movement Series – Part 5
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
There’s a constant tension between making things happen and letting things happen. It's hard to know which one you need to flow with at any given moment. Surrender or stand?
There’s movement between the two.
I think at any given moment, we surrender to Spirit, and stand up to our ego. It’s not so much about choosing which way to go, as understanding the motivation and intent behind the choices and the reasons to choose in the first place.
That’s why speaking truth to power and protesting about policies and governments can be a holy thing.
That’s why prayer and non-violence is a holy thing.
That’s why accepting your diagnoses, but choosing to fight the prognosis is a holy thing.
That’s why forgiving those that have hurt you and also seeking justice is a holy thing.
But how do we know when to fight our way to the front of the line, like the woman who pressed through the crowd to touch Jesus robe (Luke 8); or when to give up our place in line for someone else, like the woman who gave all she had at the temple (Matt 12)?
How do we know which things to let happen, and which things to make happen?
John chapter four records a conversation Jesus had with a Samaritan woman (FYI highly controversial), in which he said to her:
“For God is a Spirit, and he longs to have sincere worshippers who worship and adore him in the realm of the Spirit and in truth.” John 4:24 (TPT).
We don’t need to know all the right things to do and all the right decisions to make and who God is exactly, definitively, and in his entirety to live in truth. That doesn’t make sense.
How can we KNOW the complete TRUTH about God and life?
The Greek word for truth used here is Aletheia, and subjectively it means, truth as a personal experience. Objectively, Alethia is the truth and/or reality that is taught. In other words, it’s something that we learn. In Jesus day, a Rabbi would teach his disciple by taking him on the road so he could learn in the living. It’s the experience, the journey, the life we’ve lived; our truth.
Truth is lived into.
And yes, there is such a thing as your truth. You have your own personal truth about your experiences with God. It’s not a one size fits all when it comes to the movement of letting things happen and making things happen.
You worship The Divine, you open your life up to God, through prayer and experience – they go hand in hand. Learning in real time how to flow between surrender and determination. And – just to throw a spanner in the works – when the two things co-exist. Spirit guides you, prayer connects you, and your experience reveals the truth about God in your life.
This way, everything and everyone becomes your teacher. You learn how to move in real time between surrender and agency and how they often dance together. Everything that happens to you can be used to bring about some good in your life, no matter how difficult and crazy and obscene that sounds. When you live in the flow of God, of love pouring from The Divine into you, and from you.
As Richard Rohr says:
“Thus, everything is holy, for those who have learned how to see.” (1.) The surrender, the fight, and everything in between.
Go to Sin is No Match for Grace – Live In the Movement Series – Part 6
Written by Liz Milani
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1). Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation. SPCK. Kindle Edition.
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