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Spirit Talk

November 22, 2011 by Irmgarde Brown

It’s so much easier to speak of the spirit world in different contexts, fantasy for instance. In those circles, it’s the norm to speak of spirits, magic, miracles, powers, spiritual enemies and spiritual good guys. But we have lost our ability in this age to speak of the Spirit World.

I John 4:4
You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

Despite the fact that numerous references are made to this spirit world in scripture; I am particularly thinking of Ephesians 6:12 as a good example, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms,” we hesitate to claim it as our own. It’s all woohoo stuff! And so, most folks shrug off spirit talk.

But I cannot. The epistle of I John speaks at length about spirit relationships: our own spirits, those of the “anti-christ” opposed to all Christ spirit, the spirits of the world, the spirits of believers, and the spirits of God followers. This is the unseen world and yet, more and more, I do believe it is the most important part of our existence.

We are multi-dimensional for a reason. And there are enough people, even in modern times, who have had significant experiences with Spirit that it seems foolish to disregard this aspect of our humanity, our spirituality, our essence.

I guess the big question is in the tension that arises when we refer to “good” and “evil” spirits. And I understand that hesitancy, but there is simply too much evidence to deny them. For me, the truth of evil places human depravity at the feet of its source: the realm within.

Do we really think that the battles we carry on in the flesh will change the spirit? Will our wars block the power of evil’s presence and influence? Will our gun laws prevent their distribution on the streets of our cities? Will our capture of kilos of cocaine prevent the fields of poppies from being grown again?

We are back to the single word that explains the Way of the Spirit realm: paradox. It’s not the very reasonable approaches to problems of our world that will change it, but the opposite. If not, if it’s all Pollyanna, then why did Jesus bother to say any of it? I know things are bad now, but things were bad then too: almost everyone was poor or under the iron fist of a dictator or slave owner, violence was the norm and so was hunger. There was no “upward mobility,” there was no middle class. Back then, it wasn’t just the 99% but 99.9% of the people who suffered under human indignity and loss.

They had good reason to look and wait for a revolution. Instead, Jesus proclaimed a victory for the interior life as the starting point for change. Do we follow? Do we believe?

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Anti-Christ = No Christ

November 21, 2011 by Irmgarde Brown

For years, I have always thought of the “Anti-Christ” as a person. I supposed it’s all that Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins stuff, pre-tribulation, pre-millenialism, and the rapture. Those folks have an entire time line for the appearance of the Anti-Christ. But John sheds a different light on the concept in his letter.

I John 4:2-3
By this you may know (perceive and recognize) the Spirit of God: every spirit which acknowledges and confesses [the fact] that Jesus Christ (the Messiah) [actually] has become man and has come in the flesh is of God [has God for its source]; And every spirit which does not acknowledge and confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh [but would annul, destroy, sever, disunite Him] is not of God [does not proceed from Him]. This [nonconfession] is the [spirit] of the antichrist, [of] which you heard that it was coming, and now it is already in the world. [Amplified]

If John is to be believed, a simple litmus test is the willingness of the spirit to confess that Christ is indeed, the long-awaited Messiah. In biblical times, maybe this was easier to do. After all, the Jewish people had been waiting for the Messiah for centuries, his coming foretold by prophet after prophet. They expected and even longed for that day, anticipating a revolution of epic size that would, once and for all, free Israel from its enemies and usurpers.

Immediately after Christ’s appearance, ministry, execution, and resurrection, the guidelines were clear-cut: a person accepted Christ as the Messiah or not. If there was no Messiah, then there was no Christ, and Jesus was a nice guy who turned their world topsy turvy for for no good cause.

So, anti-Christ is not necessarily an individual per se, but a belief, or rather, a disbelief. And I think it’s called a spirit because belief happens within. It is my spirit that chooses, that part of me that works with my mind and soul, to unify the interior life and direct my actions & choices.

In modern times, this confession or lack of confession, is less understood or accepted. We have more relativism and few people (outside the circles of denominational Christianity) like the “black and white” feel of this mandate. Plus, other requirements have been added such as a verbal confession or attendance in church or getting splashed/dunked with water, just to name a few.

But, I remember vividly, my spirit confessed the Christ, because of statements like these written as the word of Jesus, “If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” [John 8:46b-47] I could not call Jesus the lie. And I wanted to hear God. I wanted to be part of the God equation, the interaction, the indwelling of Messiah through the Holy Spirit.

And so, this is the one confession: I believe the source of Christ was and is God. And as a result, the Holy Spirit dwells within me.

My primary responsibility as a result of this confession is to love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love my neighbor as myself. The rest is human confusion.

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Greater Than My Heart

November 18, 2011 by Irmgarde Brown

Anyone want comfort or rest? Then it is right here: God is greater than our hearts–my heart. God’s spirit occupies more of me than myself, if I so allow. Where many of today’s protest encampments are full of angst and anger, this occupation is mutually agreed upon and full of promise.

I John 3:19-20
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

But, as I tell my children, over and over again, “Ya gotta want it.” We all know, whether we are in our twenties or in our sixties, life is difficult. There are brick walls that rise up along the way and, in our own strength, we can either choose to climb over, break through, or walk away. Within the presence of God however, these life choices can be different. Why? Because living in the Presence, is walking out an enormous set of paradoxes, one after the other. The brick walls can shift before our very eyes, the pathways re-orient, the solutions morph, the night become day, the sorrow become joy.

In the presence of a Holy God, anything can happen. In the presence of a Holy God, I transform and I can stop the old games, the old scripts, the old desires. I can because I want, I desire to participate in this interior life.

OK, a lot of this is still theory. I mean, I am so sure that this is what can happen within, but I have not quite gotten the hang of it yet. I have not quite surrendered to that Holy Spirit. There are glimpses though, and that’s why I know it’s real. But then, like Peter walking on the water, I become fearful: it’s not the norm, it’s a different “matrix.”

This is where some of the “new age” folks are closer to the truth that the Christ-followers. We keep putting God in a box, as they say, or confine God to our limited understanding. We keep putting a white-haired, long-bearded man on the “throne of heaven” and teach our kids that God is like this – some white-robed Santa or friendly Zeus.

It is my own heart that limits the wonder of God in my life, that constrains the grace of Christ, that distrusts the benevolence of the Holy Spirit.

Lord, forgive me. I want to walk on water in your Presence.

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Hate as a Weapon

November 16, 2011 by Irmgarde Brown

Here’s a picture for you, hate as a knife; hate as a gun; hate as a club; hate as a poison dart. They are all tools that a person can use to unleash a violence on someone else and it does damage, sometimes permanent. Hate is potent. Who am I kidding? It’s always within my grasp.

I John 3:15
Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

Over the years, I have engaged many people about my faith. And, in particular, my desperate need for forgiveness, for my own sins as well as a willingness to forgive others. So often, their comeback to me is that they haven’t done anything so bad: they haven’t murdered anyone or stolen anything or taken lethal drugs. They speak as though there is such a thing as an “ordinary” life of niceness, their “good person” syndrome, a whitewash.

But I say they have murdered, at one time or another, with hate. And, unfortunately, in the paradoxical world of God, that hate might have appeared justified, the object being a mean, cruel, even evil-seeming person, or an adulterer, a child abuser, a wife beater, a liar, a betrayer. Do any of these descriptions make your blood boil?

That’s different, you say. They deserve to be hated; they broke the laws of humankind. They are “Cain: who slew Abel” [Genesis 4]. Instead of casting them out of the garden, you cast them out of your life. It’s a way to soften the feelings, to put blanks in the pistol, to dull the edge of hate.

There were years I hated my own mother for the emotional damages she brought into my life. There were times I hated my brother out of sheer jealousy for his abilities, for his “position” in our family, for his successes that perpetually outshone my own. There were intervals I hated my husbands (in certain seasons of our shared lives), for their disdain of me as a woman, for their disregard, for their isolations. There were girls I hated who were prettier than me, smarter than me, “in” while I was “out,” or acknowledged while I was invisible. There were lovers who bruised my heart and cast me aside. There were neighbors who crossed the line of decency. There were . . . there are . . . enemies of the state, terrorists, and many, many, unnamed villains.

Oh yes, plenty of people to hate. And yet, none of my hate effective in relieving my own soul, heart or mind of injury. What has been done to me, I cannot re-write, I cannot change my past with the weapons of hate, nor can I pay them forward. Hate perpetuates hate. It feeds upon itself.

Back to the paradox: there is a reason that Jesus taught us to love our enemies [Matthew 12:44]. I think we have mistakenly relegated this command to an ideal, something nice to work toward. But I have come to believe it’s a weapon in its own right, not just as powerful as hate, but more powerful. It’s a neutralizer, a transformer. If hate is a weapon, love is a bomb that changes the landscape completely.

It’s not a suggestion: it’s a guarantee.

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Pick Out a Child of God

November 14, 2011 by Irmgarde Brown

Go ahead. I dare you. What criteria will you use? There are lots to choose from: kindness, selflessness, sacrifice, humility, and so on. Who do you know? Who’s on the list? Am I? Are you?

I John 3:10
This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

All right, I admit it, I’m being cantankerous. I keep thinking about all the times people say, “Remember who you are, remember that you are a Child of God.” And I wonder, am I only this child positionally (that is, as a result of my belief in the Christ) or is there evidence of my family affiliation? Is there a family resemblance?

Standing in a line-up, do I look any different than I did before Christ?

I am a follower of Christ but have I embraced being a child of God, or as the Amplified translation states, “…by this it is made clear who take their nature from God and are His children. . .”? Am I assimilating the very nature of God?

Or, am I still in the “terrible two’s,”? Investigative three’s? Adventuresome school years? Rebellious teens?

A child, in a happy and secure family, trusts the parent, looks up to the parent, finds comfort in those arms, and is encouraged by the looks and words from the parent. But a child must also grow up. A child must learn to walk in the world and become a parent as well. What is the relationship of an adult child to a healthy parent: respect, appreciation, admiration even, and thankfulness for the gifts of life, love, and wisdom.

I want to grow up.

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In Him–No Sin

November 13, 2011 by Irmgarde Brown

In Him, that would be Christ, no sin abides. So what does that mean? I love asking such questions, particularly with familiar verses. And what is “sin” really? The Amplified translation gives some extra hints:

I John 3:5b-6
And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who abides in Him [who lives and remains in communion with and in obedience to Him–deliberately, knowingly, and habitually] commits (practices) sin. No one who [habitually] sins has either seen or known Him [recognized, perceived, or understood Him, or has had an experiential acquaintance with Him]. [Amplified]

To be “in Christ,” then is to be in relationship or communion with Christ–it means, having such an intimate knowledge of Christ that I would know what would displease Christ’s Spirit within me. I would recognize what is often called “a check in the Spirit,” that still small voice that says, “not that way, this way,” or “eat this, not that,” or even more simply, “let go of that thought.”

This relationship is nurtured in personal prayer, devotion, worship, and ideally, fellowship with like-minded people who are also “in Christ.”

It’s like being in a swimming pool together: everyone is wet, sharing the water, but we’re all doing different activities, we’re all in various depths. The more experienced ones know how to swim while others merely wade or stand around. Some love it so much, they can swim underwater the whole distance of the pool.

Sin is a buzz word that has gotten a bad rap. I have actually seen people roll their eyes when the word, sin, comes into the conversation. I’m not sure how this has happened. Perhaps it’s the growing relativity of our actions. It’s become more and more difficult to identify sinful behavior. Truly. And I’m not saying I can be the one who draws that particular line in the sand either. Most will say the Bible itself identifies sin, but in a post-modern world, that may not be so black and white. Oh, there are entire groups of people, denominations or sects, or whatever, who believe they have it down, but I’m not so sure anymore. After all, whether we like it or not, there are many modern behaviors and practices that were clearly sin in the past but which society, in general, has embraced (divorce being the most prevalent).

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Bible and all that it has to teach me. And there are some clear parameters that humans have accepted over the test of time: murder, for instance. But few people would acknowledge that coveting (a popular American sport), is truly a sin anymore.

All right, sin is a huge topic and cannot have a full discussion here. But I did want to make one point that I learned from Joyce Meyer, that sin is birthed in the mind (see her series on Battlefield of the Mind). And this is the key to the whole thing.

If I am in deep relationship with the Christ spirit within (in Christ, Christ in me), then the inklings of sin, the desires, the intentions, the motives, the impetuses, will not germinate. That is part of the role of the Holy Spirit, to mirror my thoughts, to cleanse, to reveal the implications, to heal, to winnow the seeds of actions that will harm me and others. Sin usually dies on the vine if it is never watered or fertilized in the mind and heart. Selah.

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The Anointing

November 11, 2011 by Irmgarde Brown

I know there are people who claim an anointing, a powerful experience or presence of power, usually attributed to the Holy Spirit who then manifests miracles, signs, and wonders. And I’m not debunking these exploits. Instead, I am more intrigued today by John’s insistence on authenticity.


I John 2:27
As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.

The anointing is a direct reference to the Holy Spirit. But John’s emphasis is on the Spirit’s authentic presence–not a counterfeit one.

In several of Paul’s passages (Romans 9:1; II Corinthians 11:31; I Timothy 2:7), he specifically states that he is not lying. I remember, as a young Christian, reading those words for the first time and how deeply they struck in my heart. I don’t really know why, but there was something true that resonated in those simple words: I am not lying. I believed.

Many times in a life, we must decide between a truth and a lie. To accept the Christ Spirit is no different. In that moment, it is a decision for truth: I believe God is real, Christ is real, and the Spirit can indwell. And from that point on, the inherited Truth (the anointing) is working to crowd out the lie.

The indwelling cannot be taught, not by human. It is personal and intimate and unique to me. And from that point forward, the path is different as well. For some, the path is a straight line, for others, it’s hilly or even mountainous, and for still others, it’s an ancient meandering river, twisting and turning through the landscape of the heart.

To remain “in” Christ is to remain “in” the Spirit. I in Christ and Christ in me. I in Spirit and Spirit in me.

Of course, I can make things more difficult. I can give power to the lie, give it root and nurture it: the lie can emerge in the form of unforgiveness, bitterness, judging, anxiety, fear, and even doubt. Truth cannot live inside any of these manifestations.

The Anointing is real. I am not lying.

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