It's me, mike hillebrecht

I must confess to you that I haven’t been to any “western” church since 2019. The last church I was a part of disbanded due to a change in beliefs with the orthodoxy required by the denominational group overseeing the people. The entire ordeal (perfectly orchestrated by the Father) left a few of us who had eyes to see and ears to hear with a passion for truth which the remainder felt too hard to follow.

Since the day of our dissolution, we few have continued to meet weekly in the same building we occupied all the previous years (a story in itself) determined to walk out our spiritual journey together. To try to describe all the insights and changes which have followed each of us on this journey would take far too long to tell you. You can probably fathom many of those changes in myself simply by reading my posts from that year up to now.

Some organizations might recognize us merely as a home group, while others would claim that our actions are simply a book club. Frankly, it matters not what others think or feel. We know that we are the same church which Jesus spoke of to Simon Peter.

Mat 16:18
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

I recognize how there will be push back on this posting from those who believe that their church is the true definition of what a church is. I, however, would ask them to tell me how “their” church is exactly like the church which Jesus said he would build.

The Looming Question

Before I explain my position on what a church should look like, allow me to describe the model of the western church which is prevalent today. I have had a lot of time to reflect on this because the looming thought I have been wrestling with is, “If I had a church, what would it look like?” This question had to address who would be attending; what they would be a part of; what would be its purpose in their lives and its impact within their community; what would be the structure of the gathering, and many other functions which define a church setting.

Consider this as the demographic issue of today’s church consumer. There is a wide population base of churched people who have left the confines of the church. Young families, who often remain, do so until their last child reaches the final year of high school. They then begin the transition of moving away from the formal environment of the church seeking a less stringent atmosphere to practice their faith.

Then there are the more mature adherents found within the church who will begin transitioning away from the church simply due to their age. Many who have spent decades in the pews are finding the message and the priorities more tailored for the young families than those who have been the die-hards of the organization.

Notice this demographic doesn’t address the rest of the community who never has entered a church or whose regular church attendance is only at Easter and/or Christmas. Church leaders recognize that there are not enough resources (people and finances) to entertain this great group of the “unbelieving.” Rarely do these leaders even consider how their model of the church message doesn’t draw people into their establishment and actually is what repels most.

The Western Model

I recognize that many, if not most, who are reading this are “churched” people. So, you have a particular bias as to what the church is like. But for a moment, try to suspend your perceptions and look at this from the perspective of the who are the unchurched, those who Jesus refers to as those from the highways and byways. What follows are their perceptions of the nature of how church appears to be.

The prevalent depiction across all denominations is that mankind is a wretch wallowing in sin seeking to hide from a divine being who is intent on eternally punishing them. There is the slightest chance of favor allowed to mankind only if they accept how the son of this divine being came to earth and endured all the trials and tribulations of being human while attempting to preach a message of peace and forgiveness to a people who beat him and subsequently crucified him.

The favor hinges on the mechanism of the spilt blood of the son being the ransom payment to the wrathful divine being for all the sins of humanity across all time and the acknowledgment that this son is now the Lord of the life of only those who confess their sins have been redeemed by the son’s actions. Only this sincere confession, and living a moral and just lifestyle, changes a wrathful God into a loving God who will still judge humanity, living and the dead, at the end of times and select those who will spend eternity in heaven or hell.

It is possible that I might have missed certain elements in this description which being a “churched” person you may have noticed or even taken an exception to. However, this is their perception of what you belong to, and since you belong, it also means you believe – maybe not all of it – but enough to stay committed to the whole of it. As shocking as it might seem, the unchurched don’t believe this is a healthy way to have a relationship with God. Do you?

The Church of Jesus

Jesus said he would build his church. But just what is he building it on that the western church seems to have missed? Let me provide the context behind the verse from Matthew using the Message translation.

Mat 16:13-20 MSG
(13) When Jesus arrived in the villages of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “What are people saying about who the Son of Man is?”
(14) They replied, “Some think he is John the Baptizer, some say Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
(15) He pressed them, “And how about you? Who do you say I am?”
(16) Simon Peter said, “You’re the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
(17) Jesus came back, “God bless you, Simon, son of Jonah! You didn’t get that answer out of books or from teachers. My Father in heaven, God himself, let you in on this secret of who I really am.
(18) And now I’m going to tell you who you are, really are. You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out.
(19) “And that’s not all. You will have complete and free access to God’s kingdom, keys to open any and every door: no more barriers between heaven and earth, earth and heaven. A yes on earth is yes in heaven. A no on earth is no in heaven.”
(20) He swore the disciples to secrecy. He made them promise they would tell no one that he was the Messiah.

So let me explain to you just how I would explain this passage to an unchurched person. Understand, this is rather novel for churched people to see how Jesus doesn’t have anything near the requirements which the religious people of the western church think need to be accomplished for a church to exist.

Jesus and his gang of twelve are traveling through the countryside. Jesus has performed many amazing fetes and people are talking about him wherever he goes. Jesus asks his disciples who do these people say they think he is. Because of the works he has performed the people think that Jesus must be one of the prophets of old, or even his outspoken cousin.

Jesus directs his attention to who the disciples think he is by asking Simon the same question. What Simon blurts out has up until this point in the entirety of Jesus’ ministry never been spoken. The people haven’t even gone as far as what Peter will announce. “You’re the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

The response which Jesus then gives is the secret to the church which Jesus will build. “God bless you, Simon, son of Jonah! You didn’t get that answer out of books or from teachers. My Father in heaven, God himself, let you in on this secret of who I really am.”

Jesus didn’t say how Simon had to say a prayer of repentance or attend a series of beginner’s classes to belong to a church. He did not mention anything about acknowledging Jesus as Lord and savior of mankind or about his blood being the ransom price for the deliverance of all humanity from their sins. No, what Jesus declares breaks away from every tradition known to mankind then, and still these days. God, the Father, revealed something to a human without an intermediary there to interpret it!

This fact that God can reveal himself to every person regardless of the time of day or day of the week was as shocking then as it seems to be today. Yet this is what Jesus claims to be the only entry point to his church; and it is so important that it is foundational to recognizing why his church is so powerful.

I have already written about the explanation to the phrase “gates of hell” here, so I’m not going to go down that road today. It is the final claim which Jesus offers which is indicative of a powerful church: Unhindered access to the kingdom of God where heaven and earth are one and the same. With this as the yardstick to what a church should look like, the question which begs to be asked is, “Does this sound like your church?” I’m fairly certain that you lack a response favorable to the model of Jesus.

My Church

I recall some time ago when my wife kept asking our son to come to church with us, he would refuse saying that his church was better. When she asked him where his church was, he said that his church was in the great outdoors. How were we to deny, “Creation declares the glory of the Lord,” from a son who grew up in the church?

I offer that insight as a means to advance what my church would be like. The primary thing which must be stressed is how everyone can hear from the Father on their own no matter when or where they are. This is the one thing which the western church seems to intentionally ignore simply because to proclaim it and welcome it into a congregation means the control the leadership possess must be forfeited to any claim made by anyone that, “God said to me…” is valid. This attitude, however founded, misses the greater understanding of the grace of an omni-God which I have written about extensively.

When I state, as Jesus did, that the Father and I are one, I am declaring truth just as you are when you do the same thing. If we stand beside each other and testify of the same truth, we are required to deny the illusion of separation between each other as well as between us and the Father. This is difficult! You and I clearly are not one. We are…

Therein lies the strength of the western model church: Difference. The simple fact of the multitude of denominations across the globe is testimony to this situation. If two denominations can’t declare they are one with each other as they are to the Father, then how can either expect to see the promise Jesus offered to the church? If any denomination cannot see and defend the oneness of all creation with themselves as with the Father, how can heaven and earth be the same?

Lastly, and this is a big one, this church model I am offering needs to stress that there will be no believers allowed to express their projections of how people should believe. Beliefs, rather than truth, have been the greatest downfall to the western church. Beliefs are man-made. Truth is eternal. Beliefs by their very existence create division. Truth is always one. Beliefs create an “other” out of thin air. There is no “other” but God.

I recognize how this might appear as some lofty pipe dream to many of you. Yet, what if it is doable and aligns with the church Jesus says he will build? I’m not going to ask if you believe it can be done simply because of what I just said about beliefs. I am asking you to consider the possibility. Jesus declared that with God all things are possible. IF you want to see something different, you can’t go through the same motions of the past expecting to get a different result. That is the mentality of a gambler. Albert Einstein said, “God does not play dice with the universe.” Why should you?

I would like you to consider the following scenarios as I delve into this matter.

Scene 1
A sizeable group of college age people are waving signs and shouting loudly outside of a government building demanding the withdrawal of all military forces from the Middle East.
Scene 2
You are traveling down the road behind a dilapidated RV with out of state plates. The vehicle is swerving to-and-fro causing the items strapped down on the back to jostle violently.
Scene 3
You are standing in the checkout line of your grocery store listening to the wailing of two small waiting in front of you as the woman with the children is talking on her cell phone.
Scene 4
You are stopped at a light waiting to make a right turn. A unkept man is attempting to cross the street and stops in front of your vehicle and begins yelling profanities and flailing his arms violently while looking at you.

These scenes are just a taste of the circumstances many encounter daily. One, or possibly two, of these very scenes have happened to you during the previous week. So, while the memory of this is still fresh let me ask you to do a little experiment. What was your first belief as you read each of these scenes? What other beliefs came up after reading them? If you have experienced one of these scenes recently, what was your first belief when you encountered it? Has that belief changed since the event? If so, how has it changed?

Chained to Traditions

I wrote about the difference between belief and truth recently. In that message I relayed how there are universal beliefs which every society holds. Many of these beliefs have become called “traditions” by those who adhere to them. Any attempt to change them is often met with contempt, scorn, and hatred.

Jesus said our traditions make the word of God to have no effect. This is because as long as your traditional beliefs are being place before you when you face a person or situation, you have eliminated any means for the Kingdom of God to operate through you.

The spiritual truth of every matter is that God does not work by your belief. He does not work by your faith if it is based on your belief. He does not work on matter – God is Spirit – He only works by the Spirit in the spiritual realm of His Kingdom.

Jesus is approached by a man who is seeking healing for his son. Jesus asks him if he believes he can heal the boy. The man responds, “Yes, but help my unbelief.” Unbelief is still a belief.

In my last post I introduced the term “a pair of opposites.” I stated how all beliefs are based on a pair of opposites such as good/bad or light/dark or right/wrong. In each of the scenes I offered above there are a pair of opposites underlying each of them which only you have defined by your belief about them. Can you identify the pair of opposites from what you believe?

Jesus said it is the truth you know which sets you free. However, when circumstances arise in our lives, we default to our past limiting beliefs to navigate through the mess. The freedom of truth flies out the window because the “belief” of unbelief is more addictive than Truth.

Just the Truth

With each scene presented there is one truth for all of them. This truth applies to every person and/or situation you encounter every minute of every day. You need to meditate on this truth every day until it becomes an integral part of your life. Yes, you will have to work at this. Reading it once will not do you any good trying to fix things. What is this truth?

God is. The omnipresent God is One and there is no other. God is eternal and knows all things, is ALL in ALL. There is only one power, and that power is God, there is no other. God sees All as very good (without opposite). God is Spirit and His kingdom is a spiritual kingdom which is within you, me, and everyone in His creation. God cannot give you anything because He can’t give more than what He is. His kingdom is whole, abundant, eternal, overflowing. Each of us is the vessel of God which He pours out His spiritual influence into the material realm. God does not believe in you because you and Him are one, not two. God is love (without opposite).

Part 1 found here.

The root of a pair opposites is a continuum between extremes. Light and dark; good and bad; truth and falsehood; life and death, and so many others. The first pair of opposites in the bible is associated with knowledge, specifically the knowledge of mankind.

God is omniscient, all knowing. All knowledge is God. Yet, mankind, like God, has the ability to think, to obtain and act upon knowledge. When mankind is one with God, all knowledge flows in the spiritual realm from God to His creation. However, when mankind’s knowledge is founded upon a sense-based pair of opposites, it becomes the product of God “and” thinking which results in death.

We often fail to notice many things in the Genesis 2:17 account of the birth of a pair of opposites. Foremost, the incorporeal God, Spirit, Love, Consciousness is speaking to man who is both corporeal (made from the dust of the ground) and incorporeal (in the image and likeness of God). The fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil introduces the concept and perception of death to immortal beings. This is in contradiction to the other prominent tree in the Garden, the tree of Life, whose fruit is stated to impart healing to all the nations.

The Consequence of a Pair of Opposites

I have written in previous posts (here, here, and here just to name a few) about the subject of desire. While I might potentially repeat myself in what follows, I hope to provide a rounder perspective of this topic while emphasizing the role of a pair of opposites.

The actions depicted in the third chapter of Genesis are well known by every believer. For the moment, I am going to ask you to suspend whatever you were taught in Miss Jones Sunday morning bible class about the characters in the narrative. Consider how today we live over 3,000 years from when the original manuscript was crafted. Our understanding and vocabulary far exceeds any of the people in the book at the time of its writing. Concepts not wholly understood then, now have people who are specialist who write or teach in this field of endeavor and professionally administer clinical treatment to many.

In order to proceed I am with this I am going to need you to recognize how the “talking snake” in Genesis 3 is more than like a concept which the original writer could not explain. Allow me to offer an option which will better fit our discussion: The Ego.

Your Ego is Not your Amigo

I don’t intend to get all Freudian here and take this down a long dark psychiatric path. I am merely inputting a term and its associated concepts into the narrative to give it a clearer representation of the events.

We have been instructed in a number of ways that the ego is the basis of our pride, which leads to our downfall when it is not constrained properly. We have been indoctrinated how the ego influences the mind which becomes enmity with God.

The ego is a survival mechanism. It keeps us alive in a number of situations where competing forces try to extract a part of our life from us. The ego uses the application of desires to promote our well-being within a mind-filled competition of a pair of opposites.

Consider how the “talking snake” speaks to the woman using words which craft desires for the fruit. This “self-talk” of the ego is the inner battle of the survival skill to eat. The weighing of varying aspects to determine the viability of a substance, product, endeavor, relationship, or any of a number of other occurrences is what the ego is designed to do.

This activity is continually going on throughout our daily lives. What must be recognized is that the outcome from this activity is not always beneficial to our survival.

Ego – Judge, Jury, and Executioner

At all times, remain aware that the real you is not the ego. Refuse to identify with it.
David R. Hawkins. M.D., Ph. D., The Ego is not the Real You

As a survival mechanism the ego develops into a proponent of duality. Each of us must make decisions which insure our survival on a minute-by-minute basis. These decisions are always founded on perceptions of what is best (good) or worst (bad) case scenarios which we play out in our mind. Because our perceptions are continually evolving the scenarios we play out are constantly changing too. This is emotionally and psychologically draining.

To circumvent this interplay, we often establish a benchmark or ideal which every situation must measure up to. If it can’t, it is immediately discounted and relegated to a “lost” thought. When a situation meets or exceeds the standard, it fortifies our ego as being righteous, able to secure our survival. When this is taken to an extreme, the belief structure it establishes has generally been characterized as being “self-righteous.”

Belief structures are essentially a duality based on a pair of opposites. As I’ve said previously, many of the beliefs which each of us presently operate from are ones which we never developed but adopted from previous generations. Somewhere in time someone made a judgement call which supported the survival of an individual or community and a jury of peers deemed the action to be vital to their continued well-being. Anyone who disagreed with the choice was subject to ridicule, banishment, imprisonment, or even possible death. Because beliefs hold such power over a person, community, state, or nation it is very difficult to revise, amend, or even remove an outdated belief.

Here are the scriptures I referenced in Part 1 which will be addressed in this section:

Mat 7:1-5  Judge not, that ye be not judged.  (2)  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.  (3)  And why beholds thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considers not the beam that is in thine own eye?  (4)  Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?  (5)  Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

Joh 7:24  Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

Joh 8:15  Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.

Joh 12:47  And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

Righteous Judgment

Everyone thinks that they are capable of judging a matter righteously. Claiming a dependence on all moral upbringing, we rely on the spectrum defined by a pair of opposites to decree a matter to be justifiable. Unfortunately, we then come into awareness of the passage from Matthew 7:1-5 where the Master, Jesus, teaches that we are not to judge anything or anyone lest we be judged also. He clearly demonstrates that our own judgements are impeded by the “beam in our eye” indicating that our perception about a matter is clearly diminished.

The passages from the book of John establish how Jesus viewed judgment as a sense-based matter founded upon the survival mechanism of the ego. In John 12 he clearly was not concerned whether people believed him since he never came to judge people but to save the world. Herein lies the novel message of his ministry: Salvation does not involve beliefs on a pair of opposites; it is recognizing the oneness of All with the Father.

You may need to read that last sentence again. Religion has indoctrinated all of us about how we are a “fallen” being needing a “savior” to “redeem” us from an entity who is responsible for the eternal damnation of our soul. This entire narrative is loaded with a pair of opposites competing with true harmony in this life. There is not an ounce of truth to it when it is faced with the kingdom of God’s righteousness which has already decreed that ALL is very good – without opposite.

Religion cannot fathom how it is possible that anything can be good, without opposite, when there is so much in the world which is evidently the opposite in a multitude of situations. This has led many societies to craft beliefs which explain the existence of the opposite while defending the communal perception of “good.” These belief structures became the responsibility of a class of people who were committed to seeing that any belief which was contrary to the socially acceptable belief was suppressed and even eradicated. Such are the social norms of judgement – good for me, not for thee.

One for ALL as ALL in ALL

The vast majority of people I speak to about this issue of Jesus teaching how we are not supposed to judge is met with the same set of questions. “How is this even practical? I’m not Jesus, so how could he even suggest it is possible for me? Am I not supposed to judge anything or anyone even if I have never seen or heard of them?” The response to these questions is never what people think simply because they operate from a platform where they are thinking dualistically. In other words, they believe in an “other.”

Jesus declared in the book of John that he and the Father are one. This claim sent shockwave throughout the religious community of his day. They had placed major restrictions and punishments for anyone who identified themselves to be equal with GOD. Jesus never made this claim. There is a great deal of difference between claiming to be equal with God and stating that you are one with God.

Being one with God means there is no “other.” One is one, right? Equal is a product of two or more who never lose their distinction. Now I recognize how some of you might claim that I am playing a game of semantics, however, consider these two claims from Isaiah, “…I am God, and there is none else…” If God says there is none else, there clearly cannot be an “other.”

Now obviously this poses a dilemma if you have always considered God “and” you to be separate and distinct. (It also explains the primary reason why your prayer life sucks. But that comes later.) Whenever you throw an “and” into a discussion you are creating a judgeable situation around a pair of opposites. You, me, those around you, even those you have no knowledge of are ALL one with the Father. God is. The omnipresent God is in ALL. There is none else. In ALL as ALL.

Being one with and as ALL clearly means that there is no “other.” If there is no other, there can be no platform for judgement. I’ll say it again: There is no platform for judgement when there is no “other.”
This is difficult to accept when your entire life has been founded upon the belief in an “other.” Even to look about you and see situations which are not harmonious, loving, or abundant creates an internal tension to speak against it. But it is ALL one with God. Yes, appearances can tell you the opposite of this, but God is – not God was, or God will be – God is. Appearances are not what they seem to be.

What about you? Yes, “what about you?” is a good (without opposite) question. How do you think God would answer this? It might be time to go find out for “yourself.”

This writing is going to start with the time-honored tradition of cherry-picking scriptures to support my point. (Actually, I don’t have a point needing support. The topic speaks for itself.)

Gen 1:26-27 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. (27) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Gen 1:31 And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eat thereof thou shalt surely die.
Gen 3:9-11 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? (10) And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. (11) And he said, Who told thee that thou was naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
Mat 7:1-5 Judge not, that ye be not judged. (2) For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. (3) And why beholds thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considers not the beam that is in thine own eye? (4) Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? (5) Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
Joh 7:24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
Joh 8:15 Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.
Joh 12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

The Foundation

Man was, and is, created in the image and likeness of his Creator, God, Awareness, Consciousness, Love. This confounds many simply because no one has seen God. The Master, Jesus, clarified this for us when he stated how the Father is Spirit and if you have seen him (Jesus), then you have seen the Father. Within these two claims we come to understand Genesis’ terms of image and likeness.

Image is what the form appears as. Think of what a mirror offers to all who look at it. They see an image. This image is exactly a portrayal of the object which is before it. The image is based on the physical ability to see a material substance, object, or form. The image is therefore sense based. For those individuals who don’t have the sense of sight, the image can be assessed through any of the other four senses.

Likeness is the nature and characteristics of the form, substance, or object. Likeness is not based on material sense. Likeness is just as God is. Likeness is the innate interior property of form, substance, or object. We perceive likeness as it is demonstrated. We often claim how a child is like their parent within the context of a particular action. This, however, is only a singular aspect of likeness since it is only viable through the senses. Since God is spirit, mankind too is spirit. This is the likeness beyond the senses.

The Birth of a Pair of Opposites

In the beginning of all creation there were no opposites. God is one. God is All in All. God is omnipresent. God is. We like to say that God is love, or God is good, or a whole treasure trove of adjectives based upon our thoughts. Truth declares God is. Every characteristic springs from there.

All of creation is determined and declared to be very good on the sixth day. That proclamation is the decisive act of grace upon ALL. Good is the likeness of grace.

Opposites are two or more. This puts a real chink in the thought realm of mankind. It creates God “and” thinking. Since God is one there can be no God “and.” However, there is still the belief of it being so. Every belief is based solely upon a pair of opposites, but I’ll address this later.

We have been instructed how the creation of the man and the woman made the first pair of opposites. This is not so. It is clearly stated that the man and woman shall be one. This might lead some to say then mankind and God are opposites. The Master, Jesus, clearly dismissed this when he proclaimed that he and his Father are one.

Consider this: God is good (without opposite); all creation is very good (without opposite). To make the distinction of “without opposite” is rather jarring to your sensibilities. It forces you to take out of the narrative the opposite you naturally assume is lurking in the shadows.

Judging: A Pair of Opposites Part 2

In my early religious upbringing, there was a great emphasis placed on understanding the Kingdom of God. The teachers I followed all expounded on the works offered by the late Dr. Myles Munroe who set the standard for breaking down the various components of the kingdom. I have a number of Dr. Munroe’s books and sermon sets sitting on my library shelves still. And yet there is even something missing for me in these materials – something which doesn’t quite fulfill the whole message.

Often the opening of a revelation is given in a simple thought or word. My recent revelation on the kingdom came through the word “incorporeal.” You wouldn’t think much of it since by its very nature it defines something which isn’t tangible, something not seen, touched, heard, smelt, or tasted. But this concept is vital to truly understanding all scripture. Allow me to demonstrate with the foundational teaching presented by the Master, Jesus.

Mat 6:24-33
(24) No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
(25) Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
(26) Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
(27) Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
(28) And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
(29) And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
(30) Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
(31) Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
(32) (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
(33) But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Joh 4:24
(24) God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

According to my past kingdom teachings the most important item to remember is wherever the King is, His kingdom is also. A king can never be separated from His kingdom. When we historically look about our world this truth is evident in the many kingdoms there have been. Remnants of some of these kingdoms, and the royalty which defines them, still abide throughout parts of the world.

This brings us to the second item to remember: The character of the King defines the atmosphere of His kingdom. We have seen kingdoms of this world rise and fall based upon this simple truth. There are several examples of this principle even recorded in the biblical narrative.

Now none of this is earth-shaking new. And the reason is simple: All of us have physical evidence we can reference. This evidence is “corporeal.” It is sense-based. We can touch, see, smell, hear, or taste it. The entirety of our experiences in this world is sense-based. This poses a problem when Jesus tells us to, “…seek ye first the kingdom of God.”

How? What does seeking imply? Using our senses to discover. Is the kingdom of God corporeal? Can you touch, see, smell, hear, or taste it? No. Why? Because God is Spirit, incorporeal. To think otherwise is not Truth and a failure to recognize His righteousness.

Take note how Jesus conveys to the people what their deepest needs are. Money, food, drink, and clothing are our everyday concerns. We spend the vast majority of our waking hours trying to secure these things in some fashion. We are so focused on the corporeal that we miss the whole purpose of what Jesus said was the most important thing: Seek the incorporeal.

God knows you need the corporeal, sense-based items you are expending all your energies upon. How could an omniscient being not know? Yet we don’t think He does. Jesus says that we are doing it all wrong. Search out the incorporeal kingdom of the Spirit and the truth of this incorporeal kingdom and all the corporeal “things” we desire will be added to us. “You have not because you ask amiss.”

This is not the only time Jesus attempted to focus the people on the incorporeal kingdom of God. Consider this passage:

Luk 17:20-21
(20) And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
(21) Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Notice again how Jesus is clearly saying that the sense-based methods of this world are not going to help you locate the kingdom of God. This kingdom is within you. This King is within you. The throne of grace this kingdom functions from is within you. You are incorporeal first and foremost then corporeal only as a manifestation of this kingdom within you. How is this possible? Do you not know you have the Spirit of God within you?

Trying to make sense of it all

I recognize how this is a difficult matter to adjust to. Our entire life has been at the mercy of a sense-based world with a language conformed to this system. Our religious institutions and dogmas are confined to the sense-based arena. They find it impossible to usher in the incorporeal and must utilize crude corporeal representations to depict incorporeal divine truth.

When you begin to try to discuss this truth with people, words often fail to accurately convey the truth we have been so ignorant of. Even when those (Jesus, Moses, David, Solomon, Elijah, Abraham) who understood the truth tried to express it to others, it was often couched in the phrase, “He who has ears to hear…” This confounds sense-based people because they can obviously see that everyone has ears to hear with. This, however, is not a call to be sense-based. It is an appeal to a deeper life found within. A life only discovered through meditation and contemplation.

Therein lies the wrinkle in an otherwise original theological discourse. Seeking the incorporeal requires a sustained effort to still the mind of all the senses which invade the thought life. Notice I didn’t say you had to eradicate random thoughts. That feat is impossible! The effort in meditation is to learn to still the mind.

Almost everyone who starts a meditation cycle is bombarded by thoughts, which if followed, leads down a rabbit trail until at the end of the session, nothing appears to have been accomplished. The key is learning to allow thoughts to come and pass over you without engaging them. Doing this for thirty seconds an hour several times during the day will develop your meditative skill quickly.

Once you have mastered stilling your mind for extended periods of time you can then begin the art of contemplation. This will offer you the opportunity to reflect on the incorporeal realm within and all about you. As you develop your flair for contemplation you will begin to witness how things begin to be super-naturally added to you just as Jesus said they would be.

I hope that I do not need to tell you how this is a lifestyle and not just a one-time event. Most people are looking for something to immediately improve a condition in in their health, relationships, finances, business, or community. They simply want a miracle. By their very nature miracles are rare. And as big as a shock as this might seem, God is not Santa – He doesn’t give things because you want it. You are seriously going to need to ask yourself if you want things or you want God.

Jesus said you can’t serve two masters. You are either going to continue relying on the sense-based world of things which are constantly just beyond your reach; or you’re going to step into the incorporeal realm, and how it is accessed, to see the world super-naturally open up to you. As always, the choice is solely yours. Choose wisely.

I’ve stated previously how language is the lowest form of communication. Fr. Richard Rohr gives an example of this in his book The Naked Now. He describes how the term “non -violence” never appeared in our language until the 1950’s. The reason is because we didn’t have the language to express it until then! How is this even possible, you might be asking. Fr. Rohr states how all language is based on experience. In other words, the entire corpus of human language up until that time only had a language which could describe violence, but never had any verifiable experience with non-violence. That is a pretty crazy thought to ponder.

The apostle Paul writes in the twelfth chapter of 2 Corinthians of an incident of an individual caught up into the third heaven how hears unspeakable words which are not lawful to utter. Paul over the next five verses will speak about how his desire for glory needed to be suppressed or else being thought of as a fool because he sought the Lord three times about his infirmity and not wanting to be exalted above measure. Then he hears the Lord say to him, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

The Connection

This passage from Paul is a foundational example of what Fr Rohr is describing about language. Paul has an encounter with the Divine which rocks his concept of reality. He has no words to describe it and feels that his weaknesses don’t even allow him to be in the Presence to begin with. Even though he admits having a great deal of revelation, somehow the intensity of this encounter has humbled him down to his weaknesses. And yet, grace…

Encounters with the Divine do this to you. I’ve experienced it several times. Every time though, there are no words available to me to describe what I had encountered. Speaking becomes like a game of darts with the Encounter in the middle and darts of words of varying degrees spread out all around it trying to point to the spot in the middle that I hit on accident.

Let’s call these Unspeakable Truths: Divine encounters where past experiences have not formed the words to express them. Marshall Davis in his book The Tao of Christ, a Christian version of the Tao Te Ching, provides the following example,

“The God who can be described
is not the true God.

The name that can be spoken
is not the name of God.

God is unnamable.
Naming God is the beginning
of religion.

Let go and you find God.
Hold on, and you get theology.

Knowing God and not knowing God are
ultimately the same.
Their source is Unknowing.”

The Strength to Encounter

This is going to sound flippant to many of you who are seeking an encounter with the Divine, but you do not have the strength to endure it. You never leave the same way you entered. The bible warns repeatedly that to see God is to die. You will. Every. Single. Time. That death forces a recalibration of what is know of as Life and how you are going to live it.

You will know grace on a level never encountered in these moments. What you thought was grace prior to the Encounter is fly ash afterwards. Yet, grace remains your strength in the weakness of being human before the Creator. This becomes one of your unspeakable truths.

With all the encounters that I have had, the one constant with them all is my inability to accurately describe what they were like and how they transformed me. I have been around others who confess the same result. We each sit in the peaceful tension that such an encounter has created within us. Satiated in the moment yet ravenous for more.

There are others who can intimately articulate their encounters with the Divine as though it were a trophy in their big game room. I always wonder if they are playing Paul’s fool in their recollection.

I offer this to you in your journey. If you can’t express the terrain in words, you’ve entered; keep going. If you can express it in words, even one word, keep going. Unknowing is the source.

Duality is the blight of mortals. It affects all that we see, do, touch, taste, smell, and hear. It permeates every institution developed for the advancement of humanity. It has so stained our lives that any attempt to call attention to its trickery is often met with ridicule. I am not here to rail either way about the pros or cons of this matter. No, this is simply a finger pointing at where it all began. And…

This is rather a simple innocuous word you might think, however, this is where the whole debacle of duality beings. Back in the day when they used to teach grammar in an English class, teachers could be found instructing children how this word, “and,” is what is known as a “conjunction.” The purpose of this type of word is to join elements together into the same grouping or take two thoughts and join them together. (You know what they call two or more thoughts of anything? I’m not going there.)

You might think that this is not a big deal, right? Consider what occurs when you connect two subject matters which are opposites with this little word. Hard pressed to do such a task? Let me help you. Sweet and sour. Fire and water. Rich and poor. There is a plethora of examples but let’s not neglect the most important of all: Good and evil.

And it Begins

Have you recently read the first chapter of Genesis? In the 31 verses of that chapter, “and” appears in every single verse, often as the first word, followed by “God.” Furthermore, the commission which God assigns to the man is peppered with “and.” What is interesting also is how in this chapter of the creation narrative, “good” seems to be the standard for all things created. What can we gather from this?

The writer/interpreter seems pretty certain that all the events described were joined together as One cause conducted by One Person, namely God. The entirety of creation, including the animals and man, are seen as being One in, and with, God in this description. God determined how all the works done were “good” and “very good” at the conclusion of the chapter.

Even into the first three verses in the second chapter, “and” plays a prominent role following the same format from the previous chapter joining the seventh day to the prior days; sanctifying it as a day of rest for God and all creation. At no point does the appearance of an “opposite” or “another” enter into creation. Then comes the fourth verse of the second chapter where the entire narrative takes a turn.

In theological circle there are those who will expound on the opinion of how the writer of the first 34 verses in Genesis was written by someone different than the writer(s) who penned the remaining story line. There are those who will also claim that the second chapter is merely an expanded version of the sixth day of creation. Honestly, I don’t care because once you start going down any of these roads, you soon find how you’re more than lost in the land of “And” it’s more like lost in “And 2.0” on steroids.

What I want to bring out from this point is how the “new” writer is the first to form the conjunction between good and evil. Now this might not seem like a big deal until you consider how prior to the development of this association found in the seventeenth verse, everything was “good,” there was no opposite present (this includes the woman). It seems this “new” writer is shifting the reader from an OMNI-God to a God who is up-there and out-there somewhere during the day and can somehow be influenced by this new association of opposites.

Lost in the Land

We all know the story of how the woman is enticed by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit and then the man partakes of it also. This confers upon them the knowledge of good “and” evil. Since all things prior to the bite were in the complete state of “good,” it is probably safe to assume that they already had this knowledge established in their consciousness. In my opinion it was “evil” that became the new knowledge. This evil was simply the recognition of doing the opposite of what they had been told not to do, or in other words, not listening to and following what God said.

This very simple act of self-rule required God to place both the man and the woman out of the garden created by God and into land of wilderness. They were now lost in the land of “and” knowing that they once inhabited a place which was the opposite of their present habitat. Seared into their consciousness was the dichotomy of “good” and the effects of self-rule.

Generation after generation would be told a dimmer and dimmer story about the land of “good” as a foil to the hardships each generation faced in the wilderness of the multiplicity of self-rule. The deeper humanity succumbed to self-rule in the land of “and” the farther it appeared God departed from the very creation He founded. Eventually humanity would be deemed “lost” needing to be “found” and “saved.” (Notice the “and” there.) Yet are they truly lost?

The Peek-a-Boo Syndrome.

I find it interesting how adults will play peek-a-boo with an infant for no reason than to try to set up the child into thinking somehow they can disappear. The infant is lying down or sitting up with the adult closely right in front it. The adult takes its hands and places them over their eyes for a brief moment and then quickly removes them while saying, “Peek-a-boo, I see you!” This may also be done with a cloth being placed over the eyes of the infant and then quickly being removed while exclaiming the same line, “Peek-a-boo, I see you!” This ritual will continue for several minutes much to the delight of the adult who is joyful how the infant laughed during the matter.

This same scenario is played out with God in the land of “and.” We treat God as the infant while we “hide” ourselves behind anything we believe God can’t see us. Then we go to some weekly religious service and for the briefest of moments exclaim joyously how God showed up. “Peek-a-boo, I see you!” But is God laughing with us or at us?

All of Thee

In the fourth gospel Jesus broke through the land of “and” when he exclaimed, “The Father and I are one. . .If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” How, you might ask, does this “break through” the land of “and?”

The purpose of a conjunction is to join two or more parts together. In the land of “and” the parts come together but retain their individuality, their own self-rule. In the land of “and” there is me and, you and, they and, we and, not me and, nor you and, nor us and.

To the religious leaders present when Jesus said that he and the Father are one, they believed that Jesus was saying he was equal with the Father. This is a typical reaction in the land of “and” where self-rule is the predominate belief. Each person is equal to another in every characteristic and capacity. “Equal” is the result of “and” just like in math. But that is not what Jesus was proclaiming.

In this one statement Jesus rips the veil from the land of “and” revealing how all along there has not been a multitude of beings lost in the land of “and.” Being “one” is not a declaration of self-rule but a broadcast of the reveal of a kingdom established by an omnipresent God. There is no God “and” in this kingdom. There never has been or will be. Omnipresence insures this. The moment there is an “and” there is no God.

Believing Truth

Herein lies the horror of the land of “and.” Self-rule negates God’s ability to function through the mechanism of one or more “beliefs.” The primary belief is that there is “me and” God. From this belief springs forth a multitude of other beliefs about the relationship of “me and” God; “me and” my ability to see, hear, touch or know God; “me and” my walk with God versus those around me; “me and” how I get God to heal me, feed me, cloth me, prosper me, keep me in peace; and whole host of “beliefs” about the nature of God crafted on the “belief” that we are created in His image so He must act just like we do.

All of these beliefs, and those not mentioned, stem from our experiences in the land of “and.” There is not a single truth found in any of them. How can I make such a claim? Simply because in the land of “and” we failed to comprehend the magnitude of omnipresence. Missing this crucial element required us to “make up” beliefs on how it always appears that God is up-there, out-there, while focusing on the physical realm with all of its difficulties and the dichotomies of good “and evil.”

Jesus said that we need to worship the Father “…in spirit and truth.” Never did he say in spirit and “belief.” Yet every religious institution since those words were uttered has maintained that their “belief” is truth. How lost we have become in the circle logic of such thinking! In this we wrestle with the thought of an Omnipresent spiritual Creator which still asks, “…WHO told you…”

The truth is, “. . . for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me.” Until you can remove your self-governing belief in and on “and,” this truth will evade you. Omnipresence demands you to be one. However, it will not force you into it, this action must be undertaken in the quiet desperation of needing ALL of Him more than any of you “and” what you’ve clothed yourself in.

If you are someone who is following a spiritual journey leading to the unfolding of enlightenment there will come a point where you suddenly are thankful that God does not believe. Truth doesn’t have the innate need to believe. Each of us have this need to believe within us – God doesn’t.

Have you ever considered what it means to “believe?” You’re a “believer” but just what does it mean to believe? Have you ever wondered if Jesus was a “believer” like you or was he a different “believer”? If Jesus is the son of God, did he even have an innate need to believe like we do?

Do you believe in gravity? I know this is a rather silly question to ask but bear with me for a moment as I attempt to shine a light on this subject. To believe in/on something means to choose between two or more options which have been offered to you and then select the “best.” The “best” is often the one which continues or maintains your survival with the least amount of risk. This is how most of our “beliefs” have been developed. Then comes gravity.

None of us were ever offered an alternative. This is because gravity is a truth. If something goes up, eventually it comes down. You might think well if we were in space we wouldn’t have to deal with gravity, but even up there everything is being pulled to something somewhere. So there really isn’t a belief in gravity – it just IS. Just like God.

“God is good.” How many times have you ever said or heard this phrase? Do you believe it? Seriously think about what it means to “believe” this claim. You need to have another option presented to you that is either opposite to this claim or is more favorable to your survival. Some people live a life where this claim is a hazard to their well-being so there is no way they would believe anyone who might profess such a harmful expression. But then a “believer” enters their life, and the struggle ensues. Faith versus Truth.

“God is love.” This is the New Testament revelation. How did this become considered a “new” belief? Was there another alternative prior which “everyone” seemed to believe? What were the survival barriers the older belief presented which this new belief overcame? As a “New Testament believer,” did you have this old belief before an opposite belief became open for you to adopt it?

“God is omnipresent.” The alternative to this is that He isn’t, right? And yet there are moments in our lives when we “need” to believe He is because the gravity of our reality is hopelessness. And there is the rub: Our perception of reality is always a series of alternatives we face trying to survive the hopelessness of living through past wrong decisions where God wasn’t even there for us. Unbelievable, right? Far from it for most. Beliefs can be so entrenched that truth can’t break through its desperately clutching grip.

“My Father and I are one.” Jesus made this claim not as his belief but as a truth. Regrettably, even up to today we don’t recognize the gravity of this declaration. There are those who “believe” how Jesus was able to make this claim was because he is (believed to be) the Son of God. Jesus never said this about his relationship to the Father; he often called himself the Son of Man. This title creates issues for believers because it places Jesus back in the fold of humanity with all of its warts and failures. This is not a very appealing alternative to base a “belief” upon.

Isn’t it fortunate how a Truth completely disregards every belief? Wouldn’t it seem better to let Truth be the compass on a spiritual journey rather than belief? It seems that most of what is Truth has been hijacked by institutional beliefs intended to keep the masses blindfolded through life. So how do you overcome this and get back on track?

Start with the Truths I have offered to you in this work. They are as follows:

1. God IS.
2. God is Good.
3. God is Love.
4. God is Omnipresent.
5. My Father and I are ONE.

Right now, you have a “belief” about each of these. Many of these beliefs aren’t even yours – you adopted them. This doesn’t matter. What you must do is remove the belief. How? Realize that what you believe is the “opposite” to Truth and as long as you can lay claim to the opposite, the belief remains. Consider how Adam told God that he was naked. God asked him who told him he was naked. Adam’s “belief” founded on the knowledge of good and evil (opposites) couldn’t surrender to the Truth God knew about the man and woman.

There are many more truths to uncover but the process will be the same for each one. You must submit every belief you hold up to the light of Truth. Then you can begin the process of integrating Truth back into your life. This process will involve meditation and contemplation on the Truths and how they influence your life activities.

Understand that this is not a one-time deal. This is a lifestyle. I’m not going to tell you it will be easy to accomplish because it takes tenacity to cut through all the tangled webs of beliefs which permeate our lives. But there is always grace to do the job. I’ve come to a point where I realize grace is possibly the best gift given to us to bust out of the grave clothes of our limiting beliefs and robed in the Truths of the kingdom of God. I might have said in the past that I believe you can do this; however, today, I will merely say do it with no opposite intended or offered.

“Father, in the name of your son Jesus, heal my daughter.”

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve got over three decades of unanswered prayers. It’s frustrating and at times a test of my faith in an omnipresent God. Healing, wholeness, abundance, provision, and a bevy of other requests sincerely sought for, not just for me, but friends and family members. Nothing I’ve asked or pleaded for has materialized. If it has happened to me, I know that it is happening to you too.

Sure, I know the passage which claims that you have not because you ask amiss. But honestly, no one over the years has had the fortitude to demonstrate what that passage means and how to rectify my senseless prayers. Even you, while you read this, are overcome with the hesitation which permeates the unanswered prayer. This is hallowed ground that all walk over but no one wants to acknowledge.

When I first began my walk in this realm, I was schooled in the craft of prayer by a woman who was acknowledged throughout the town as a “prayer warrior.” From her I received my “prayer language” and began an intense internship in the prayer ministry of my church. Our voices were the underpinnings of every Sunday sermon, of the monthly baptismal service, and the yearly rededication to service for the members of our community of believers.

When our church moved into cell groups and my wife and I became leaders over other groups, praying was the requirement for dealing with the unknown which would weekly confront us. Direction and wisdom were the staples sought after during this time. Yes, I prayed for others to be led to us who needed the care we offered within the special space of our church group, but honestly, a “prayer language” prayer can cover a lot of ground you never knew you were walking I was told.

Selfish Prayer

What I have revealed to you up to this point might sound noble, but it’s merely the influence of a mega-ministry. When you accept a position within any prayer ministry you lose yourself to the greater ideals of the ministry you’ve aligned yourself with. Soon you begin to realize that just like your own prayers, the ministry prayers hit the same wall of answerability.

Honestly, I’ve been part of large and small prayer groups all dedicated to seeing the kingdom of God poured out on the community we were supporting. While there was great thrashing about “in the spirit,” over a span of time there were minimal, if any, results from the efforts we exerted over long periods of time. Looking back on the entirety of my public prayer life it was more an exercise of expressing the selfish desires of those in a position of power rather than the divine influences of an everlasting kingdom.

The side effect to this lifestyle is how personal prayer time becomes infected with these outside demands which limit your “time” with the Father. Suddenly what should be a dialogue becomes a monologue where you air your grievances about the evils of the world and how they hinder you and your family from achieving all the promises given in the bible. You’re compelled to “remind” the Father of these promises, which you have written down on 3×5 cards and scan every moment your in “prayer mode.”

The Prayer Industry

When prayers do not get answered everyone turns to “experts” who have prayers which work. There are more than 1,000 books available to aid any novice in how to pray “the effectual fervent prayer” of those deemed to be righteous. There is even a book entitled “Christian Prayer for Dummies” which has a 4.3 out of 5 rating on Amazon!

Every ministry that I’ve encountered has a collection of prayer materials they refer their congregants to when the question of prayer is ever presented to them. Somehow it is believed that these books or pastoral teachings are the sole basis for dealing with the entire nature of prayer. If you doubt me on this, then maybe you need to go to a group prayer where everyone has a background founded from differing ministries and listen to how prayer is conducted. You will be amazed how anything is every effectively prayed for!

The Who, What and Where of Prayer

I am going to be direct with you here. I don’t pray anymore. I recognize how some of you will Immediately pass some form of religious judgement upon me and leave this writing without discovering the Truths which will be unveiled. Bye.

For those of you who remained, the ache in your heart to discover why praying is so hit and miss is what I hope to address herein. To do so, I am asking that for a moment you suspend all you have learned and been told about what prayer is. Let me just call your past undertakings your belief, but it is not Truth. All of us have a belief in what prayer is but only a few have a true use of it. So, let’s look at the basics.

First, who are you praying to and who is praying? Second, what are you praying for and how does it align with the kingdom of God? Lastly, where are you praying to or from? I understand how these three questions might appear different within the context of this writing; however, they are actually one and the same. Allow me to show you.

Begin with End in Mind

Prayer has been sold to us as our ability to talk to God about our condition and plead for His help in the midst of our calamity. Rarely does anyone talk to God when things are going great. However, when the stuff hits the fan, knees bleed.

So, let’s ask first off where do our prayers go? Most will respond that they go to heaven, the place where God resides. Regrettably, this is the belief of most of the people on this planet regardless of their faith. Heaven is that up-there, out-there realm where all the “goodness of God” resides. It is the hope of all who pray that their supplication will pierce the veil into the third heaven and be adjudicated through our Christological union with the divine. Again, this is simple a belief, not the Truth.

Jesus, the Master, stated the Truth when he said that the kingdom of God is within you. Many have sent their prayers up to a place that doesn’t even exist in the hopes that some deity would respond. No response is a response that we ask amiss. Every. Single. Time. If you’re going to beseech God, wouldn’t it be best to do it in front of the throne rather than from the linen closet upstairs?

“But what about the Lord’s prayer?” some of you might be asking. First thing to get straight is how this is actually the disciple’s prayer where Jesus is showing them how to pray. Yes, Jesus does say, “Our Father, which art in heaven…” Most would stop right here claiming if Jesus said it, it must be true; you’re a heretic believing otherwise. Yet, just go to the next line, “…thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” If you believe Jesus has always done the will of the Father then the kingdom of God, the seat of the eternal realm is in you and me now, this very moment, and every moment when you’ve prayed thinking it was up-there, out-there somewhere.

The Who of it All

What does Santa Claus, slot machines and roulette tables all have in common? The answer is that we’ve all treated God likes one of them in prayer mode.

The Creator of the universe; the One who knew your before you were formed in your mother’s womb; the All in All; the invisible eternal omnipresent being within everything is not someone who you gamble on with prayers or expect to wake up in the morning and see what goodies have been left in your living room.

If you think that God has favorites, you would be correct. The entirety of creation is filled with His goodness, His oneness. This is what is His favorite. He cares for, appreciates and approves of ALL simply because He is omnipresent to ALL, in ALL and therefore knows ALL.

Yet, sometimes when we least expect it, particularly when we’re in distress, we forget the principle thing revealed to us by Jesus: God is Spirit. I know that this isn’t new to any of us, but it has a huge impact on how you pray. Jesus said if you’re going to worship God it must be done in Spirit and in Truth. This brings us to the What issue.

What do You Want?

Here is Truth: God is Spirit. God’s kingdom is spirit. The goodness declared by God is spirit in essence first. All of creation, which came out of Him, is spirit manifesting itself into materiality. The kingdom of God, its wholeness, well-being, prosperity, peacefulness is spirit.

The mind which you operate daily from is founded upon the senses – feeling, hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing – and it is not spirit. You might “think” you’re being spiritual but the minute one of your senses gets triggered, spirituality is out the door.

To add further complications to this, each of us has been trained from our birth into this material world to evaluate everything, everyone, every condition on a scale of good and evil, best or worst, hit or miss. This duality of thought undergirds our every action in the effort to secure our survival. You’re even doing this now as you read these words.

In the kingdom of God, ALL is one in the eternal spirit. The love of your neighbor as yourself is the spiritual law of one. There is no “either, or” to consider. This means there is no sickness, disease, death, or scarcity. Any opposite you can consider is an “or” to the oneness of the kingdom.

Our prayers are not spiritual as much as they are material. We pray for a sick body to be healed; for a dying friend to live; a cancerous growth to be eradicated; a financial burden to removed; a lost family member to be reunited; for broken lives and broken homes to be made whole; for the money in the bank to last until the end of the month; and these are just for ourselves. I won’t even begin to go down the path of prayer against our fellow man.

Every prayer for a material situation disregards the fundamental nature of all things being spiritual. You can’t approach God from a material world view. Spirit and Truth. Nothing in the material world is the Truth if your senses or duality of thought has tinted it.

How to Pray Effectively

This is probably going to be the most counter-intuitive approach to prayer you have ever heard or tried. But that is to be expected by one who is ruled by a dual-material mind. The method is simple, but difficult to master. It is found in Psalms 46:10

Be still, and know that I am God.

Stillness. Knowing. Simply difficult to “do.”

Notice it doesn’t mention anything about talking, rehearsing your woes, or pleading. Why should you anyway? In the presence of the all-knowing Creator, what could you possibly have to say which isn’t already known? It’s difficult to remain still when the urge to speak about your issues is present. But seriously, who told you they were your issues? Does this passage from Isaiah even apply to your situation:

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusts in thee.

Your mind is like a wild stallion on the open range running wherever it likes to travel. Trying to be still is nearly impossible in the depths of a situation where the material world is closing in on you. But focus your thoughts, all your thoughts on God and perfect peace will be your reward. You will then know God and trust God to show you what must be done. No pleading involved. No reciting numerous bible verses. No repentance. Just silence.

Now I recognize how some of you might claim that being still and silent isn’t really doing anything. However, anytime you allow the presence of God to come into a situation the fullness of His kingdom comes along. Lack, strife, sickness, and every other calamity you’ve created through your material mind is overrun by a kingdom where abundance, peace, and wholeness in oneness eternally operates.

This means that you can’t just choose to do this once and expect all your manifestations to be magically eradicated. It took you years of 24/7 material-mindedness to craft this perfect storm you’re in. You’re going to need to at least offer the same level of commitment to the spiritual remedy to take hold. Therein is the rub: Commitment. You’ll do it negligently to create a problem but stutter when real focus is essential.

Before you think that I’m some master here you need to put that thought on the shelf. I’m no different than you. I’ve taken the time to commit to this, but I still must wrestle with my thoughts to get still. I have a hoard of prayers from the past which haven’t been answered, but I am willing to allow them to fall to the ground. I find trickles of hope now in the silence as His presence enters my consciousness. But it takes effort on my part to achieve what is supposed to be effortless. So, I keep moving on towards the manifestation of the glory of my high calling.

To convince someone to do something is to “con” them out of their belief. I simply want to present to you a Truth not often acknowledged. The decision rests with you to apply it. Just give it your all – there is no alternative that has worked yet, right?

Within the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes this declaration, “…resist not evil.” His focus here is to redirect the generational notion that it is justifiable to return an egregious act against oneself upon those who committed the act. Jesus refers to it as “eye for an eye” which was defined in the Mosaic Law. The entire corpus of the Judeo-Christian justice system is built on this premise of retributive justice. The best that anyone can hope for is mercy – not grace – when confronted with a conflict.

Yet, there is an important principle here that many completely miss. A principle which underlies the entire understanding of the kingdom of God and His grace. Before I expound on this principle allow me to offer another verse which provides us with a similar condition which has been highjacked by the religious establishment too.

Jas 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

If you have been in any church service, there is the inevitable call to “fight the good fight of faith.” Many a pulpiteer will tell you that a “good fight” is a fight you win. There will be many a prodding to do just what the verse in James says by resisting the archenemy of every Christian. This will secure the victory during the long-term battle of faith. But isn’t the counsel in James a contradiction to the declaration of Jesus?

The Only Power

Every sermon preached today, across all denominations, will have relinquished our birthright to the influence of another power, the power of evil. Yes, many will extol the virtue of the power of God to restore and judge the unjust, but this is only because there is an acceptance that humanity has been captured and enslaved by an evil power and its kingdom, commonly depicted as the devil or satan. This avatar can cause any who cross its path to sin leading many to their destruction and eternal damnation. Hence, according to James, we are urged to resist the influence this avatar projects upon us.

But isn’t God omnipotent? I know that this is a big word, but omnipotent simply means all powerful. Not some power or a power limited to certain areas, but ALL. So just how much power does this “other” kingdom have? If it has any, then it would have had to have received it from the source of ALL power. Is that possible? Of course not! Then what is going on here?

The knowledge of good and evil is an invention of mankind. Jesus said that there is only one good, and it is the Father. This response came after someone tried to claim that Jesus was good, a value placed upon him by a human, possibly someone who would claim him to be evil enough to be crucified sometime later. Herein lies my reasoning for how good and evil is an invention of mankind: What is claimed to be good today can, and often is, be redefined as evil tomorrow.

This duality creates a power structure which people rally around attempting to defeat the opposing side which in their eyes is the “evil one.” Yet, there is no power in the illusion called evil unless we give it power over us. God is all the power in the universe. Jesus told Pilate that he would have no power over him unless it had been given to him from above. This could mean that Pilates power came from those over him, or Jesus meant by His Father. I’d bet that Jesus, knowing there is only one power in the universe, was representing the omnipotent nature of His Father which Pilate also recognized.

Enforcing an Illusion

To call out some item, some person, some event as being evil is to cast an illusion, a mental mirage over reality. Consider how all of creation, both seen and the unseen, was made, and is held together by and through the Word of God. This creation was then declared very good. There is not a single thing which has been created which hasn’t been declared good. Only mankind has the ability to assert a thing as evil. This assertion can in no manner override the divine nature of its being good. Evil is simply an illusion.

I know that many of you will balk at this claim and bring up any of a number of incidents or people who are “verifiable” evil. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, the concentration camps, the killing fields, child sex trafficking, your favorite political nemesis, on and on the list grows. I am not ignoring how any of these people, deeds, or things are abhorrent. I am simply stating that their original divine nature is good. Yes, ignorance about this nature will create a pathway in life which allows influences to shape and shift the character and actions of a person or thing diametrically opposite from its divine purpose, but evil is not what this is. It is wholly the ignorance of good.

Evil Among Us?

For most of my life I have been an enforcer of the illusion of evil just as you have. Generational and cultural traditions culled out certain stereotypes where evil was the only acceptable category available. As a novice adherent, I too labeled those whose lives and actions were against the status quo. Unknowingly and unwittingly, I pushed certain people and their actions into boxes without ever having to actually interact with them. The very notion that these groups were divinely good never once crossed my mind.

My introduction to my ignorance came during a political cycle where my prayer group and I were feverishly assailing the gates of heaven to rid the earth of the evil presented by a particular bevy of candidates. As we in unison zealously prayed for a move of God in this matter, I heard the Spirit of God reprimand me. “Shut up! You have no idea what you are doing or saying.” It was clear and concise as only a divine communication can be. I was thunderstruck and immediately stopped all of my praying, listening to the droning of my unaware compatriots. Thus began my introduction into a nature of grace I heretofore had never encountered.

You see, I had resisted evil like every person has been instructed to do in every religious setting. But ALL those teachings were not the TRUTH. They were the enforcement of an illusion, a mental mirage created generations ago designed to control the populace in some capacity. Where Jesus said, “Resist not evil,” my eyes missed completely the word “NOT.” I, like James, resisted the devil. In both cases of these directives, I had missed the point and it is possible that multitudes had missed it too.

Consider that while it may appear that both of these passages contradict each other, they are speaking truth that most have overlooked. As I stated previously, evil is a mental construct of mankind, not of God. That construct only exists when attention is focused upon it. Ignore it and it dissipates. Don’t put any effort into resisting it and it evaporates. IT only thrives when our mind is transfixed on an event or person which our perception deems to be outside of our norms.

I realize making this claim is easier said than done. So, what is the action step which must be undertaken to redirect our thoughts. Enter the passage from James. If your focus is on the resisting part, then you’re no further along than when you began reading this. The critical part is actually the first statement, “Submit to God.” Submit your thoughts to God, on God, about God and you’ll not have any desire to view things as evil. Here is the unique thing which happens when you do this small act: You are resisting the devil and it flees. Any time you focus your thoughts on God whatever was occupying you previously seems to just vanish just like the mirage that it is.

The next time you feel compelled to identify someone or something as evil, don’t take the knee-jerk reaction of fighting or resisting. Submit the thought to God. Goodness, secured with grace, simply returns.