Over the past month I've been teaching on the subject of recovering from abuse and trauma. This incredible capability of neuroplasticity and learning gives people the capability to literally "change their mind," and the way it sorts and organizes memory. But what about spiritual plasticity? You see when some smell or sound or something in another's behavior triggers inordinate fear in the present, a person can feel stuck in a pattern that was once survival related, but is now disabling. Overcoming trauma and abuse includes recognizing where those stuck points are, what the triggers are, and it involves learning the creation of new pathways so that we become less like a button that can be pushed any time someone brushes against a trigger point. God provides these avenues through spirit, mind and brain, but they involve choice, as does overcoming religious stuck places and trigger points.
What about the body of Christ? Do we have spiritual plasticity in terms of being free to live according to love and the Spirit of God, instead of trying to make each other into the image of our idea of the "letter of the law." Who defines what churches and ministries and teachers are okay for us? Do we experience our faith through looking to man, or is there a time we shift gears and go to God as our primary source? That human point of reference puts us in a lot of Jeremiah 17:5-8. We can error by shutting down or shutting out the information and help that would free us to be responsive to God instead of stuck pleasing people and going into works and performance for a sense of safety.
When a person is triggered into fear or panic, they go into old survival techniques and defense mechanisms to shut it down or flee or freeze the suspected source of danger.
I find that we have an opportunity to move beyond habits and patterns of what church is and should be. The Pharisees were in this place of trying to perform themselves right while also policing everyone around them. It caused a whole bunch of other problems, like feeling superior and eventually getting envious, jealous, even murderous to claim, guard and preserve their perceived territory. The really sad thing is that they totally missed Christ.
If Jesus' Israelite contemporaries, the established normative mainstream religionists of the day, could miss the vital, loving, living God standing right in front of them, don't you think it is possible that we, in our sense of self righteousness, could miss the boat, too, if we stay stuck in our sets of rules and regulations that give us a false sense of spiritual safety?
The Spirit of God would tell you that the excellency is in Christ, not in man. The ownership of all there is, is God's. When you think about it, people fighting over church territory or ministry superiority or gender dominance or biblical property are truly being led down the dissipation path by the other kingdom.
There must be a willingness to recognize where we are shut down or glued to a set of thoughts and behaviors that we try to hold other people to because they seem religiously right. We are falling into a works trap, when we do. Even worse, we are playing out an old song and dance which is attempting the occult mastery of other individuals, and this is steering us away from our purpose.
Build the church, don't tear other people down.
Most of us can think of places where religiously, our thinking feels right, but it truly violates love, and therefore we lack the spiritual plasticity in that moment to respond to God, and we are stuck in our religious ways. I pray that God release His spiritual flexibility to respond to Him, and appropriate spiritual plasticity that allows us to be truly part of the body of Christ, building each other up in love. I fall out of agreement with phariseeism, respect of persons, people lording it over others, delegitimizing other believers and their ministries or false pretense of being mediators between God and man. I release the blessings of a fully functioning, loving and encouraging body of Christ and the freedom to relate with God in spirit and in truth, not in bondage to traditions of men, no matter how "biblical" they sound.
What about the body of Christ? Do we have spiritual plasticity in terms of being free to live according to love and the Spirit of God, instead of trying to make each other into the image of our idea of the "letter of the law." Who defines what churches and ministries and teachers are okay for us? Do we experience our faith through looking to man, or is there a time we shift gears and go to God as our primary source? That human point of reference puts us in a lot of Jeremiah 17:5-8. We can error by shutting down or shutting out the information and help that would free us to be responsive to God instead of stuck pleasing people and going into works and performance for a sense of safety.
When a person is triggered into fear or panic, they go into old survival techniques and defense mechanisms to shut it down or flee or freeze the suspected source of danger.
I find that we have an opportunity to move beyond habits and patterns of what church is and should be. The Pharisees were in this place of trying to perform themselves right while also policing everyone around them. It caused a whole bunch of other problems, like feeling superior and eventually getting envious, jealous, even murderous to claim, guard and preserve their perceived territory. The really sad thing is that they totally missed Christ.
If Jesus' Israelite contemporaries, the established normative mainstream religionists of the day, could miss the vital, loving, living God standing right in front of them, don't you think it is possible that we, in our sense of self righteousness, could miss the boat, too, if we stay stuck in our sets of rules and regulations that give us a false sense of spiritual safety?
The Spirit of God would tell you that the excellency is in Christ, not in man. The ownership of all there is, is God's. When you think about it, people fighting over church territory or ministry superiority or gender dominance or biblical property are truly being led down the dissipation path by the other kingdom.
There must be a willingness to recognize where we are shut down or glued to a set of thoughts and behaviors that we try to hold other people to because they seem religiously right. We are falling into a works trap, when we do. Even worse, we are playing out an old song and dance which is attempting the occult mastery of other individuals, and this is steering us away from our purpose.
Build the church, don't tear other people down.
Most of us can think of places where religiously, our thinking feels right, but it truly violates love, and therefore we lack the spiritual plasticity in that moment to respond to God, and we are stuck in our religious ways. I pray that God release His spiritual flexibility to respond to Him, and appropriate spiritual plasticity that allows us to be truly part of the body of Christ, building each other up in love. I fall out of agreement with phariseeism, respect of persons, people lording it over others, delegitimizing other believers and their ministries or false pretense of being mediators between God and man. I release the blessings of a fully functioning, loving and encouraging body of Christ and the freedom to relate with God in spirit and in truth, not in bondage to traditions of men, no matter how "biblical" they sound.