00:00
[Music]
Welcome to the CWA Radio Network. 
You are listening to A Musing hosted by me, Heather Randall.

What if every thought is deeper than a daydream. What if it's a
seedling from our Heavenly Father, our one true muse, pointing us to something we need to know? Let's embrace the freedom to wonder, take the invitation to explore, and learn everything He has to teach us in this amazing journey of life. 

Hello and Happy Friday! You are listening to episode 5 of A Musing.

Today we’re mulling over the Biblical concept of a mantle. Some questions we’ll ask are “What is a spiritual mantle? What examples do we have of mantles in scripture? How does one wear a mantle? Can we still receive a mantle today?”

We finished episode 4 by talking about crowns so let’s start with that same imagery. Have you ever seen a beauty Pageant? The winner from the previous year is always present and their authority as beauty queen does not end until the new queen is crowned. The one to crown the new Miss Universe is always the former Miss Universe. It’s like passing a baton. Their power and influence in that arena is now resting on the head of the new queen.

For a more sophisticated example, we could say the same of our presidential elections. The new president may be voted in on election day but does not take the position of President until the former president leaves the White House and the new President is sworn in. The authority of President is no longer possessed by the former president. He may be remembered and respected but He is not in charge.

A spiritual mantle occurs the same way.

02:05
God has work to accomplish and since he is no respecter of persons, meaning he has no favorites, He works with the gifts we all possess to bring forth His work here on earth.  He also frequently bestows power and authority on ones he knows are worthy. These mantles of authority designate a person for a task or mission in the kingdom. They wear them until the job is done or their life ends.

Before we go any farther, let’s identify the meanings of the word mantle within scripture. According to strong’s concordance the English word mantle has four possible Hebrew words or meanings attached to it.

02:49
Judges 4:13 Let's start there. It reads:
Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, "Come, my lord, come right in. Don't be afraid." So he entered her tent, and she covered him with a blanket.

I’m reading in NiV today and that word "blanket" has also been translated as rug or mantle. Rug comes closest to the Hebrew meaning. In this case, Scripturally we can see that this is not a spiritual covering she is laying on him. She certainly isn’t laying power or authority on a man she’s about to literally nail to the ground. This covering is not an anointing, but a strategic tool to make Sisera gain trust, relax and show vulnerability. This example is #8063 in Strong’s and just means rug. It’s not the meaning we’re searching out today.

03:52
So let's move on . . .
Next up we have #4598 in Strong's which is the most frequently used version of mantle. It means a covering, robe, coat, cloak (an outer and upper garment). An example in scripture could be Job.

04:10
In chapter 1:20, upon hearing of the death of his children it says: At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship.

{He of course is tearing a literal robe, a sign of grief and repentance in those times. He isn’t shredding his authority or destroying his Godly mission but tearing an actual physical garment. #4595 in strong’s is very similar in meaning. It also points to a coat or cloak style clothing.}
Then there is the meaning we’re talking about and that’s #155 in Strong’s and means

04:56
splendor, glory, garment, goodness, robe, ample (enough). It’s still a physical literal robe, but with it comes a spiritual anointing of splendor, glory and goodness and the wearer is gifted with ample ability to accomplish a mission, not lacking anything.

Let’s read

05:17
1 Kings 19:19-21: 
So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him. Elisha then left his oxen and ran after Elijah. “Let me kiss my father and mother goodbye,” he said, “and then I will come with you.”
“Go back,” Elijah replied. “What have I done to you?” So Elisha left him and went back. He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his servant.
​
Elijah knew his season was winding down and he needed to create a disciple, someone to carry his mantle and complete the mission in his absence. We’ve touched on the importance of discipleship in other episodes, but a key principle in discipleship is submission. Here we can see that Elisha had to leave something to follow Elijah. He had to surrender the life he knew and be willing to be a servant to a new way. As he walked under Elijah he learned much.

07:06
Let’s jump forward to 2 Kings 2. Warning, I’m going to stop and start a lot so be sure to listen and jot down scriptures so you don’t get lost. Starting in verse 1:
When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.  Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; the Lord has sent me to Bethel.”
But Elisha said, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel.
The company of the prophets at Bethel came out to Elisha and asked, “Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?”
“Yes, I know,” Elisha replied, “so be quiet.”

I want to stop here. We’re about to witness a huge shift and a transition of leadership and I want to compare this to the shift from Moses’s leadership to Joshua’s earlier in scripture.
Let’s hop to Numbers 27

08:07
Starting in verse 12:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go up this mountain in the Abarim Range and see the land I have given the Israelites. After you have seen it, you too will be gathered to your people, as your brother Aaron was, for when the community rebelled at the waters in the Desert of Zin, both of you disobeyed my command to honor me as holy before their eyes.” (These were the waters of Meribah Kadesh, in the Desert of Zin.)
Moses said to the Lord, “May the Lord, the God who gives breath to all living things, appoint someone over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the Lord’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.”
So the Lord said to Moses, “Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit of leadership,a and lay your hand on him.  Have him stand before Eleazar the priest and the entire assembly and commission him in their presence. Give him some of your authority so the whole Israelite community will obey him. He is to stand before Eleazar the priest, who will obtain decisions for him by inquiring of the Urim before the Lord. At his command he and the entire community of the Israelites will go out, and at his command they will come in.”
Moses did as the Lord commanded him. He took Joshua and had him stand before Eleazar the priest and the whole assembly. Then he laid his hands on him and commissioned him, as the Lord instructed through Moses.

We can draw similarities here in that Moses
1. Knew his time had come.
2. Was sent to the place of his death.
3. First he had to appoint an heir to carry on the mission, he had to pass the mantle.
Though there was no physical cloak there was a formal commissioning shifting the power and authority off of Moses and onto Joshua.

10:09
In chapter 1 of Joshua we can read of his acceptance of the call and he instructs the Israelites with all the authority of Moses and then some. Chapter 2 begins with these words:

Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. “Go, look over the land,” he said, “especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.

Highlight in your mind the words Especially Jericho. Now lets return to 2nd Kings Chapter 2 and pick back up in verse 4.
 
4 Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here, Elisha; the Lord has sent me to Jericho.”

Stop. Of all places, Jericho. Elijah is like, stay here I was sent, you weren’t .

11:02
He knows he’s facing death at some point in this day and he gives Elisha an out. He doesn’t have to come. But look at Elisha’s reply and see if it reminds you of anyone.

And he replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So they went to Jericho.

Can you hear Ruth in that? Later in the book of Ruth Chapter 1 we can read that Naomi is trying to release Ruth from any obligations of following her but Ruth says in verse 16: 16: 

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”

She parrots the heart of Elisha here.
Let’s go back to 2 Kings 2 verse 5:
The company of the prophets at Jericho went up to Elisha and asked him, “Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?”
“Yes, I know,” he replied, “so be quiet.”

12:20
{I mean, he’s about to lose his mentor and friend and everybody keeps asking him if he knows and is ready? I’d probably tell them to be quiet too.}

Verse 6:
Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.”
And he replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them walked on.
Fifty men from the company of the prophets went and stood at a distance, facing the place where Elijah and Elisha had stopped at the Jordan. Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up and struck the water with it. The water divided to the right and to the left, and the two of them crossed over on dry ground.

{See? That’s not some ordinary coat.}

13:10
Verse 9:
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?”

“Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied.

“You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours—otherwise, it will not.”

As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two.

Elisha then picked up Elijah’s cloak that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and struck the water with it. “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.

Where did he learn this? He saw his mentor just demonstrated how to do this and, not that it was any power in the cloak. Elisha recognized that it wasn't just a magical cloak. Elijah wasn't Superman and Elisha knew this. He'd followed him. He knew all his faults all his little idiosyncrasies. He knew who Elijah was and he knew that he wasn't just some magical man who had this special power to part water and perform this act with his cloak.


14:52
Elisha knew that he had no power apart from what God Himself gave and so Elisha knows the source of the power and he calls on God to transfer that authority that mantle onto him. He follows the example of his leader doing the same exact act with the same tool, but he isn't putting all the credit in the tool (or in his former leader). He knows all of the power and all of the recognition goes directly to God because he knows that God is the source of that
anointing and that power and he wants it for himself.

15:24
Verse 15: 
The company of the prophets from Jericho, who were watching, said, “The spirit of Elijah is resting on Elisha.” And they went to meet him and bowed to the ground before him. “Look,” they said, “we your servants have fifty able men. Let them go and look for your master. Perhaps the Spirit of the Lord has picked him up and set him down on some mountain or in some valley.”
“No,” Elisha replied, “do not send them.”
But they persisted until he was too embarrassed to refuse. So he said, “Send them.” And they sent fifty men, who searched for three days but did not find him. When they returned to Elisha, who was staying in Jericho, he said to them, “Didn’t I tell you not to go?”

The places God takes Elijah before he leaves is just as important as the mantle. They are all places of promise. Bethel is where Jacob slept and had his dream of the latter coming down from heaven it's where he had the promise of Canaan the land of Canaan and then you have the Jordan where God tells them you know walk around and do what I'm telling you to do and through your obedience those walls are gonna crumble.

16:45
You're gonna have this. It's a promise of conquering this people. Yet another promise. And then we have the final promise of right at the banks of the Jordan, right? Crossing over into   . . . into the what? Into into the Promised Land! They're all places of promise that he took Elijah.

It’s like God was walking him through the past, showing him the places God had promised and delivered to His people as a reassurance that Elijah would soon partake in his own special promise of eternal life. At the river, at the point of crossing over, as his feet hit ground in the promised land the chariot arrives.
mantle that was one of our questions

17:30
How does one wear a mantle? That was one of our questions, right? How does one wear mantle? easy you You accept it. You put it on. You carry the mission forward and get the job done. How? Through God's power and authority.

17:44 
Elisha took the mantle and ran with it. He operated in authority for every task that God gave him. He held to the mission. 
Will you?

Can we still receive a mantle today?”

Absolutely. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He still uses ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things and he wants to use you.

When your teachers are gone, what will you have you learned? Would you willingly pick up the mantle and advance the kingdom or would you run from the call and deny the appointment? What is God asking you to do? Are you doing it? What mantle, what authority is God giving you and what purpose is it meant to serve? If you don’t know, you need to get with the commander and hear his voice. 

18:40
Ask to understand the blueprint, the Word of God, from which your assignment will come. Let His word impact you and focus on the mission of advancing His kingdom in whatever role you play. Then, mentor another and prepare to pass it on.

I hope you have a wonderful week and I’ll see you back here next Friday. Be blessed.

19:05
[Outro Music]

00:00
[Music]
Welcome to the CWA Radio Network. 
You are listening to A Musing hosted by me, Heather Randall.

What if every thought is deeper than a daydream. What if it's a
seedling from our Heavenly Father, our one true muse, pointing us to something we need to know? Let's embrace the freedom to wonder, take the invitation to explore, and learn everything He has to teach us in this amazing journey of life. 

Happy Friday! You’re listening to episode four of A Musing.

Over the last two weeks I have been pondering the layers and depth from a comment a friend made. It really hit me. She said “We put on our old nature like a familiar armor. We process in the flesh out of habit, but God is like "change your clothes". 

From that we got the title of today’s lesson, Change Your Clothes. I’ll be sharing a lot of scripture today so you may want to keep a notebook handy to jot down locations.

But first, let’s break down this quote from my friend. “We put on our old nature like a familiar armor.”

01:19
What is your familiar armor? My first defense is anger. I seriously skip all emotions which make me feel vulnerable. I’m aware and working on this. It’s tough. Trust was risky business in my past and any emotions that lead to vulnerability feel dangerous to my old nature. Anger feels strong and therefore safe, but it really isn’t. Anger has wreaked havoc in my life and this familiar armor often leaves me (and others) emotionally wounded. But that’s me.

01:58
Your old nature could be a habit, an emotion, a familiar response that gives the illusion of control.

2:07
Familiarity always leads to expected outcomes, lowered standards, and complacency. Think about your family. They feel very familiar. You probably can imagine their reaction to one of a number of situations because you know them. When holidays roll around we know exactly what that family member is going to say about this thing or that thing. We form expectations because of their past responses and truly believe we can guess the response. Add to that the common reality that we don’t always try as hard with family because of the increased comfort level. We can trust their responses and that they’ll always love us so we loosen our personal standard and display character flaws to them that we would never let another person see. We often treat our family the worst because that familiarity seems like permission to be raw and ugly. If we indulge that familiarity long enough and fail to treat our family like the treasures they are then our love grows complacent and apathy abounds. Commitment drifts and those people we thought we knew so well become like strangers. Why? Because we got stuck in a broken routine and failed to grow. We stayed the same, stagnant and poisoned relationships with the stench of our dirty clothes. 

Let’s look at

3:36 
Colossians 3. In this chapter we’ll learn how scripture defines our old clothes and what our new clothes look like.

Let’s start in verse 5.
Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.  Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.  Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, 

04:28
Okay, let’s stop for a second and sort some laundry. I sort laundry in piles darks, reds, lights and delicate.

Our spiritual dirty laundry is categorized in piles of Fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and idolatry. In these piles are garments of anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language, lies and disobedience.

We are better than these filthy rags and we don’t have to wear them anymore. Yes, you can trash the whole pile of laundry. Here’s a hard thought: maybe you don’t wear these yucky clothes anymore, but have you donated them “to charity”. Has the damage been done on your children, your friends? Have you passed these nasty clothes on through past influence? Destroy the clothes. Kill the old nature. Let nothing of it stand.

05:27
If you are free of them, commit to war for the freedom of your family and friends so they don’t have to wear this garbage either. So I have a funny story here. My best friend probably wouldn’t love me sharing it, but I can laugh about it now so she should too. And it illustrates this point really, really well. 

We were in High School and went on a double date to the movies. At some point during the movie I dropped a milk dud and in all my wiggling in the seat the candy had melted and affixed itself to the back of my pants making it look like I’d messed myself. My friend spotted it after the movie and enjoyed laughing to herself about it for the entire rest of our double date. We went to dinner after and I was oblivious. As we exited the car to leave after the whole night had ended, I finally realized there was something on my pants. She burst out laughing and all I could think was “why didn’t she tell me?”

Again, this is my bestie. I love her so she got a pass and we can both laugh about it now, but this story deals with physical clothes. Spiritual clothes are another matter entirely.

06:41
Imagine your friend walking through life with a big messy spiritual stain making her look gross.

Wouldn’t you tell her?

But how often do we try to turn a blind eye?

How often do we fear hurting feelings or embarrassing people and opt not to point out errors in love and choose instead to leave them in a mess of their own ignorance?

Then, we must realize when they stand before the groom on judgement day it will be us who left them in those rags. We have to do better.

07:15
That doesn’t mean tearing people apart when they are in error or judging in the condemning hate-filled manner that the church has become synonymous for. It means loving enough to speak gently, privately, to restore your friend’s image and provide them with some new, shiny, clean attire. In the moment we can’t offer brand spanking new clothes.

07:44
We aren’t God, but we can lend a “sweater of love” to cover it. Because love covers a multitude of sins. We can point them to truth so they can study and learn for themselves and bit by bit take off the old attire and be cleaned. Let’s go back to the word. We’re getting ready to learn about and define these new clothes.  Verse 11.
 
where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.  And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
   
Our new laundry only comes in two piles: Holy and beloved. It includes mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, love, long suffering, patience and forgiveness. If that’s not enough we get to accessorize with even more love

09:33
and gratitude and wisdom and grace and music. Oh how beautiful we become! And you don’t have to buy laundry soap. You wash it all with water from the Word, renewing your mind through the washing of the word.   

Ephesians 5:25-27 says: 
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

Romans 13:14 says:  
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.

Here’s another question for self-examination: Are you leaving any provision, any doorway for the flesh to linger?

10:29
If so, close it, remove it and put an end to the flesh once and for all.

As my friend said, “We process in the flesh out of habit, but God is like "change your clothes".  Is it time to break some habits in your life? I’m certainly working on breaking some in mine. It’s like waging war with yourself. It’s not easy to change. There is always the temptation to fell back into old routines and old thought patterns. It’s a choice to be and stay made new.

Isaiah 64:6 acknowledges the truth it says:
But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;
We all fade as a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind,
Have taken us away.
We must repent for those unclean ways and return to our first love.

Isaiah 61:10 says:

11:32
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
My soul shall be joyful in my God;
For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
He has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments,
And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
 
Through salvation, we can wear those garments of restoration but those are not the only clothes we’re given. He opens up the wardrobe and lays it all out. He has us covered through every celebration and every storm. 

When we remove that old rusty armor we’ve been so quick to pick up, we can instead put on tools of warfare that can actually serve us well and improve our spiritual balance.

12:43
Ephesians 6:10-17 explains the armor. Let’s read:
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.  And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;
 
So again, you were once wearing anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language, lies and disobedience but as a new creation redeemed by the blood and bought with a price you get to wear mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, love, patience, forgiveness, peace, wisdom, salvation, righteousness, holiness, truth, joy and faith. When you walk with him and wear the clothes he offers you are stylin’.

Now let’s look at Matthew 22 because there is a warning there I don’t

14:26
want you to miss. It says:
And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said: “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come. Again, he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding.” ’ But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants, treated them [a]spitefully, and killed them. But when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.  Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy.  Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
“For many are called, but few are chosen.”

16:10
You see the man committed more than a fashion faux pau. He had arrived wearing the wrong closes when he had the ability to come dressed to party. See, God supplied the clothes. He wasn’t lacking the option, he just chose not to put them on.  The risks of staying in your own old clothing is not small. These patterns and ways, this flesh could cost you eternity. You have to change or you will be cast out. I don’t want that for you, for myself or for anybody. We have to take this seriously.

Because we serve an extravagant God he doesn’t just offer us his mantle, an armor to protect us and garments of praise, but crowns of righteousness, victory, life, rejoicing and glory. He adorns us like his bride.

We’re nearing the end of our time together today and I’ve only scratched the surface of these thoughts rumbling in my head.

17:19
I'm sure there's more that I'll be talking about concerning clothing and from a scriptural sense, but before I leave, let me read the lyrics to the hymn titled Will there be stars in My Crown?:

I am thinking today of that beautiful land
I shall reach when the sun goeth down;
When through wonderful grace by my Savior I stand,
Will there be any stars in my crown?

Refrain: Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown
When at evening the sun goeth down?
When I wake with the blessed in the mansions of rest
Will there be any stars in my crown? 

In the strength of the Lord let me labor and pray,
Let me watch as a winner of souls,
That bright stars may be mine in the glorious day,
When His praise like the sea billow rolls.

Refrain : Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown
When at evening the sun goeth down?
When I wake with the blessed in the mansions of rest
Will there be any stars in my crown? 

O what joy it will be when His face I behold,
Living gems at his feet to lay down!
It would sweeten my bliss in the city of gold,
Should there be any stars in my crown.

18:37
I encourage you to change your clothes, earn a crown and plan to lay it at His feet.

Until next Friday, Be blessed!

[Outro Music]

00:00
[Music]
Welcome to the CWA Radio Network. 
You are listening to A Musing hosted by me, Heather Randall.

What if every thought is deeper than a daydream. What if it's a
seedling from our Heavenly Father, our one true muse, pointing us to something we need to know? Let's embrace the freedom to wonder, take the invitation to explore, and learn everything He has to teach us in this amazing journey of life. 

00:35
Today I am talking about judgment and criticism and I can tell you that, even as I'm airing right now, I am feeling so much of it inside me, outside me, all around me.

00:47
Maybe you are too. Maybe that's why God brought you here at this moment at this time. Before we go too far, let's just go ahead and pray. I'm gonna be speaking from the heart today. There's no planned agenda. I have some scriptures, but this is just me and I hope that this time will just touch your heart. So,

01:08
let's pray.
Abba Father, I pray that you would just give me your words today.
keep me in your plan and in step with your will. Guard my tongue and take control. Teach us what you need us to know about judgment and criticism today. Father, block off fear at the door. Fill us with knowledge of your presence and stop anything that would impede the success you have orchestrated for us from the very beginning of our existence. Whether it's put there by ourselves or others, Lord, I just pray that you would remove any obstacles. Let nothing set us off course for our purpose. Father,
revived us with a fresh anointing today. Do a new work in us and bring joy onto the scene so that we can exhale others opinions and breathe in your truth, Father, without your truth we can't experience true peace. So, Father, I just pray that you would fill us with it today. In your name I pray. 
02:12
Amen.
Now, when we talk about judging and criticism I'm saying specifically that it can hinder success. Not all judgment can hinder success. Not all criticism can hinder success.

Let me give you some examples of some positive judgments and positive criticism and where they could could lead to success. Now we know, of course, with the court of law in physical judgments (as in a case with a judge in a jury) there are times when that judgment or that ruling is going to protect us. That would make it a good judgment.

02:59
Sometimes it's calling a spade a spade. It's telling the truth about a situation.

03:05
God didn't call us to be liars. He didn't want us to mask sin with acceptance, but He wants us to be  . . . He wants us to know the truth. But judgment is this balancing act. You see, we have to be
careful with it. The same for criticism.

03:25
Now. I'm a writer and I I like to put my books through critique. A critique group will help me to improve my craft. They tell me where I'm consistently making errors so that I can work on those skills, develop them, and improve. 

03:43
Some critique, when it's done with the heart of compassion and to improve us, not to put us down  . . .  some judgments, when they're meant to bring safety and protection and provision for people versus hurting them, are good.

When the intent shifts, when judgments become a way of pointing the finger and criticism becomes a way of blame they're no longer positive. They're no longer good. They can lead to negative speech, gossip, Lashon Hara (which is a topic I've covered before which means evil speech).

04:21
It can create hard feelings-- hurt. It can wound us. But here's the thing, so often when we're judging, it starts out with self-criticism. Usually, the people who judge others are finding something lacking in themselves.

And I'll be truthful in that, when I have found myself being critical of others, there has been a component of of my own self-doubt. My own insecurities kind of bleed into---
-- Not that criticism is a lie necessarily, but that sometimes it doesn't need to be said.

The Bible puts it this way: This is Philippians 4:8-9

05:18
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
 
05:46
I want peace. I don't know about you, but I want peace. In my opening prayer, I asked for joy at the end of this episode.

05:54
I want joy. I want peace. I want to move forward without feeling hindered. 

06:00
Sometimes I'm my worst enemy. I'm the one hindering my success because I'm critical of myself. I can hurt myself worse than anybody else can. I can tell myself lies about myself that bring me
down. Can you do that? Do you do that? I talk hatefully against myself.

You know, just the other day (and I thought I was being silly and I thought I was being-- you know, goofy and light-hearted with my
children) I said "Oh boy, I wish I had my son's ears and my daughter's chin and my other daughter's cute little pixie nose. It
actually does look like a pixie nose. It's just like a perfect fairy nose. I'd want my other daughter's lips and and another daughter's hair color and basically what I was saying out loud (in front of my children) thinking that I'm building up then to tell them the things of themselves I admire physically.

Of course I often tell them all the things that I admire of them in their character, in their spiritual walk, the things that I admire in them. But I was physically pointing out areas of them that I loved, and so I thought (you know in my head) I'm thinking oh I'm being so encouraging to them right now.

07:25
And my daughter looked at me and she was just so irritated with me and I didn't understand why at first. And then I started to think about what I just said.

07:32
I had just verbally reconstructed myself in front of my children.
I had verbally attacked my entire face. I had torn it to pieces and tried to make it something it wasn't in my head. I had said that the way that God created me, with this itty bitty chin that is
turning into a wattle isn't okay. And you know what? God loves me warts and all. God loves every part of me, the outside, the
inside, and the upside down. And so, by tearing myself down, I only hindered my success at what I was trying to accomplish --which was building up their self-esteem. I was tearing down my own and I didn't even see it.

08:20
Sometimes we can attack ourselves in subtle ways that we don't see.  Sometimes we can do it deliberately, telling ourselves that we're not good enough; that we're not worthy.

Sometimes we criticize ourselves by comparing ourselves to others. You know, I'm in a writers group and frequently we hear other writers saying "I'm not a real writer because I haven't
published yet" or "I'm not . . ." and discounting their efforts by comparing themselves with others who have maybe found more current success.

09:01
They can't see the future tough. We can't see the future. We can't know what God is going to do in us and we don't know what
that other person has been through to get them where they are. Maybe we don't want that struggle. Maybe God is gonna make our path smoother. It just takes a little longer.

Comparing ourselves to others is very dangerous for our success
because God didn't want us to be other people. He wanted us for a specific calling and a specific purpose. He placed us right where he wanted us to be, in a place where no one else could meet that need. When were telling ourselves lies, we need to remember to tell ourselves "whatever is true . . . to think on the truth. Think about what's right." 

09:55
When I'm operating in self criticism I'm thinking about what's wrong with me. "I can't do this right" or "I can't do that right" or "somebody else is better".  I need to be focused on what I can do right and work those skills however God leads me. I need to focus on whatever is pure in me, the essence, the core of my being, that that inward man that God has put there-- that's what I need to be focusing on.

It's hard. When I read this scripture and I think about criticism and the ways that I put myself down, you know I can maybe  . .. 
"whatever's true" okay.
"whatever is noble, whatever is right" okay.
"whatever is pure. Whatever is lovely" yeah, I got it. I got it. And then we get to "whatever is admirable" and sometimes, when you're criticizing yourself, you don't feel like there's anything admirable in you. You don't feel like there's anything praiseworthy. Those are the times that we really need to get
in step with God's feet and ask Him to remind us who we are in
Him. You see, He had a purpose and a design for us. He knit us together in our mother's womb, not so that we could sit on the
other side of the womb and tell ourselves we're not enough, but so that we could walk out His purpose and plan. 

11:21
When we do that, God's peace floods the scene. His joy fills us up. So, if you're criticizing yourself today, I want to encourage you to examine. Go through scriptures. Open the Word dive into God's
Word and fill yourself up with His presence. Find your identity in Him, not in yourself. Not in your skills. Not in -- sometimes I do that-- sometimes I find my identity in my skill set. Oh, I'm a good
Mommy or I'm a good Business Owner or I'm a good . . . whatever it may be that day. He wants me to be a good child of the King of Kings. That's all he's worried about so that needs to be my focus.

This year my one-word goal is to abide. I want to abide in His presence and I hope that you will too. Just abide in His presence.

12:19
Soak in His love because, I promise you, you are enough.

12:27
Now, I want to tell you also that hurt people hurt people. Sometimes, when we're hurting ourselves we can tend to hurt others. The way that we do that, when we're judging ourselves, is to bleed over into other relationships where we're judging others.

James 4 verse 11-12 says
Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister[a] or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.  

There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

So, if you're judging somebody else, be careful. I don't know
about you but I want to be law abiding.

13:24
I want to look at the law of God and I want to be matching it as
closely as humanly possible. I care about His law. I'm passionate about it. I'm teaching it to my children and I'm walking in it as best as I can.

But, when I'm judging somebody else, I'm not keeping the law. I'm breaking it. One person is given the power and the right to judge. We can observe sin in others. We can notice things in others. We
can give caution to our neighbor, in love. See, love covers a multitude of sins. The fact of love, when we live it out, judgment
won't look like judgment. In fact, judgment won't be judgment. It will be compassion.

14:24
Without love, judgment is judgment and it wounds and it destroys. See, the Judge, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, our Father God in Heaven, He is the only Judge. He's the only one who's able to save and destroy. See, judgment carries a weight
with it. It has power the power to save someone. Just as I said with our legal system -- the Judges who sit on the bench have the power to save someone, but they also have the power to destroy
someone. How many people have been falsely accused, have had to go to prison for things they did not do, for crimes they did not commit? See, our Father God in Heaven never gets it wrong. He knows exactly every man's heart. He knows what makes us tick. He knows what makes your neighbor tick. He knows what makes your brothers and your sisters tick. He knows the truth of the matter and he is worthy to judge us. Because He can save us, He
can also destroy us.

15:43
I don't want to be destroyed. I don't want my relationship with God to be hindered. I don't want to fall short of His glory. I want
to be who He made me to be.

16:04
I want to read another scripture here. It says, um let me find it . . . 
Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 
Okay, judgment is disputing. When you're in a judgment situation, if you go to court, if you're in a case and you're meeting the judge,
it's because you're having a dispute. 

Philippians 2: 14- 16 is what I'm reading. It says:
Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, 

Would you say we're in a crooked and perverse generation now? I
would. I want to be above reproach. let's keep reading. It says:

among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

I want to not be grumbling and disputing. I don't want to fight
anymore. The fight in me has got up and left. I've been doing it too long. I've fought myself. I've fought others. I've sat in the judgment seat on myself and others and I found everyone around me lacking. It's time to get off the bench. Only one person has the right to that seat, and that's the Father God. I want to be proven blameless and innocent before Him. We're in a perverse generation. It's a fact. We're in a crooked time and, I believe, it's going back to the "as in the days of Noah."

I believe it's happening as scripture says. It's heading that way more and more and we see it in our world every day. But in our world, were supposed to be a light.

We're supposed to be different. We're supposed to be holding fast to the Word of Life which is Him-- His entire Word-- front to back back to front. That even includes the law that I'm breaking when I'm judging somebody else. I need to be holding fast to all of it: His grace, His mercy, and His law, which is instruction for my life. 

18:56
I have to hold on to all of it and I can't hold on to it if I'm judging
someone else. I can't be that light if I'm judging myself. When I do, when I can't think on those things that are true and those things that are worthy and beautiful, then Christ will have all
the reason to glory in me. I'll give Him glory just by being.

19:39
I want to give Him glory just by being.

19:47
If you're judging somebody else, stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. You're hurting yourself you're weakening your witness. You're harming another person and you're harming yourself. You're stepping into a position that is not yours. You're being less than what you were made to be.

If you're judging yourself, stop it.  Stop it. Stop it. You're precious in God's eyes. He calls you the apple of His eye. He has your name engraved in the palm of His hand. He dances in Heaven when He
thinks about you!

The scripture is full of all the ways that prove that you matter to him just as you are.

20:40
Don't let judgment and criticism hinder your success. Don't let them be obstacles that block the path to your purpose. Use them wisely. Take criticism from others with a grain of salt. Examine them. Pray about them. Dismiss what God doesn't want you to hear and make changes where he meets you.

21:18
When another judges you, let it take you to your knees. Ask God if there's anything in you, daily. Ask God "is there anything in me that you want to remove? You be my Judge, Father."

Give Him that power to speak life and death to you, to bring awareness to you when you're not on the right path. Give Him the power.

21:51
Don't give anyone else that right. They don't have it. No one has the right to judge you but God Himself. Exhale their opinions. Everybody has an opinion on what you can do better. You can ask
anyone around you what's wrong with you and they'll probably all have something to contribute. We can never please everyone and we don't have to.

Your mission in life is to please the Father God. He's the only one that matters.

22:33
You know how many times He asked His followers to leave behind? Leave your family behind. Let the dead bury the dead. Come with me. Don't worry about what other people think. Don't worry about that relationship. Don't worry about the person who's gonna talk you out of following me, that person who's gonna criticize your decision to just leave it all and follow. Put them aside. I mean what matters now? That's what God is saying. I'm what matters now. No other voice should be stronger than His today.

23:10
Today I did something I didn't want to do. Just to be honest, I have marks all over my hands to prove that I did something I didn't
want to do, but I did it because God asked me to. God told me to, not even just asked, He told me to. I will obey Him even when I don't want to. Will you? Have you given Him the ability and the right to be your judge? I hope that you have and I hope that you let Him be the only one in your life in that position.

23:47
[Outro Music]

00:00
[Music]
Welcome to the CWA Radio Network. 
You are listening to A Musing hosted by me, Heather Randall.

What if every thought is deeper than a daydream. What if it's a
seedling from our Heavenly Father, our one true muse, pointing us to something we need to know? Let's embrace the freedom to wonder, take the invitation to explore, and learn everything He has to teach us in this amazing journey of life. 

Let's get this show started. 

00:37
You're listening to Episode 2 of A Musing.
Today, before we start, I'm going to do some foundation. I want to give you some behind the scenes information that will help you to better understand me and the intent that I have for this show.

00:52
So, as expressed in my intro, I'm a compulsive dreamer and thought chaser. I thirst for ideas and I quench my thirst with truth through God's Word. I truly believe that God is talking to us all
the time, but we are sometimes too busy, too tired, too something to listen. It's not some grandiose booming voice I'm talking about. For me, it's a simple whisper to my heart and it usually starts out in the strangest way. Some would probably call it a distraction or
a daydream, but I think it's more. It's from these"distractions" that I get my episode teachings. So first, let me give you some personal background. I've

01:33
been married for 17 years to my hubby, Stan.
We have four children ages 16, 14, 12, and our youngest is almost 11. I'm a sold out, unashamed follower of Jesus. I was saved at age 8 in Sunday school.

01:49
I grew up Assemblies of God and, though I'm not in that denomination anymore, I have great respect for my religious
heritage and anyone who spoke Biblical truth to me through the years is gold to me.

02:02
I'm Spirit filled. I'm also Torah observant. That basically means that I respect Biblical law, our Hebraic heritage and the Biblical feasts and festivals, not out of legalism, but out of obedience. If you don't, I won't judge you.

02:19
I'm not here to condemn anyone, and honestly, I just want to serve my King. One of the ways that I do this is through my company, Christian Women Affiliate. The CWA Radio Network is a
product of that company. You see, though I'm not "mainstream" as some might say, I still consider myself Christian. Doesn't it simply mean Christ follower? I will always be that, and I hope that that can be the foundation that we both agree on.

02:45
Anyway, you need to know all this because as you listen to my show you may sometimes hear me say "Yeshua" which is just the Hebrew name of Jesus, or "Yahweh" which is God's holy name. I also say "Abba" sometimes which just means Daddy. I'm an only child and my earthly father and my Heavenly Father are together now, so calling God "Daddy" is an honor I give, not a disrespect. He has taken on the role of father in my life and that's just the
relationship that we have. So now, to the story: My husband has a ministry to children and our family is very active in it. He's also an elder in our church and he teaches the children a brief lesson before the congregation every week. This last week, he was teaching the children about how Yeshua/Jesus is above all else. He explained that there are shadows of him (creation, the Bible,
even we can be like a shadow of Him), but He will always be greater. Now, my husband said more I'm sure, but that . . . that's where the seed was planted.

That idea was the first whisper in my heart and in my mind and it was already taking root and growing and taking on shape from that moment.

Later, during the main service the Rabbi (that's just what we call our main teacher or pastor) said "Humanity has one tie to the earth because Adam is formed from the dust of the ground, but there is another tie that tie is to Yahweh's image and likeness." He went on to explain that the Hebrew words for image and likeness refer to stature, shadow and form.

There was that word again, shadow.

Now, when God is trying to speak to you in any way, He will use more than one opportunity. So that was my second confirmation that God is trying to get my attention about something and that word "shadow" was almost highlighted to me. It sounds funny that a shadow was highlighted, but you get what I'm saying.

04:51
So that was the seed that has germinated into this lesson.

Sometimes it's a teaching I hear, sometimes it's a song, sometimes it's a thought that I just know is divine. Wherever that seed originates, it's God that grows it up in my mind and develops it into a personal lesson or public teaching.

You probably have this happen to you all the time. You might not be as hyper aware of it as I am, but I hope through listening to this show week after week, that this will become a habit that you have in your own life where you hear God and then you apply those hints that He gives you; those little-- those little teasing words or ideas. As you study, you learn, and you grow personally through that.

So, here's what happens: He stirs this up in my mind and in my memory. He pairs it with imagery and He lures me to His Word
for confirmation and depth.

05:48
I always need confirmation and so do you, because ideas don't always come from God and we understand this, right? But those
God ideas, they're always rooted in Scripture and so, I can find them there and I can confirm what He's already showing me.

Now, I said imagery. He gives me imagery. So let's play some word games, okay?

06:11
If I say "peanut butter" you think . . . probably jelly, right? What do you imagine when you hear the word shadow?

My child-like heart goes straight to Peter Pan. For me, there's no other association. I just see that goofy fairy boy and poor Wendy trying to sew his stubborn shadow to his little brown shoes.

That shadow may have very well be the first example of a shadow that exists. It runs away, fights its master, and is desperate for detachment. It's rebellious, opportunistic -- a polluted picture of Peter Pan's character-- kind of like us.

If we are meant to be God's shadow or likeness (which we are because Scripture says we are) then wouldn't you agree that
many of us would look a lot like that wild shadow of Peter Pan's?

Let's look at some Scripture:

07:10
Genesis 1:26 says:
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 creepeth upon the earth.

Humanity was made to reflect the likeness of God for the purpose of ruling over creation. We were destined to be Kings and Queens.

07:40
Unfortunately, sin killed that plan and now Satan himself rules over the earth.

2nd Corinthians 4:4 confirms this saying:
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 

Through sin, that rebel nature creeped into humanity and humankind began to fight to be free of the beautiful gift of being God's shadow.

08:14
In case we aren't stubborn enough, the enemy steps in and tries actively to blind us to God's love in an attempt to distort our likeness.

08:24
There was another line my Rabbi said this past week and that's worth noting. Here he said "the problem is the paradigm not the relationship."

I could apply this to a million different topics, but in talking about this topic, let's think about how that applies you.

See, here on Earth, we think about shadows. When we think about shadows what do we think about? What's that association? It's usually the Sun. The shadow moves in front or behind us based on our position in relation to the Sun.

9:01
So, the Sun is something natural to think about when you think of a shadow.

Peter Pan's shadow. the image of our shadow, always connects at our feet-- the ground-- the end of us.

That is the physical connection point, not the spiritual connection point. Alright, buckle up. I'm gonna get deep. Can you go with me?

When we come to the end of ourselves we surrender our need for control and are willing to follow after God. At this point, we take on His likeness. We don't fight the role of shadow and, through
this, our paradigm shifts. Now see, the paradigm was the problem not the relationship so (when that paradigm shifts) that gives the better opportunity to understand and connect. So, when we don't fight the role of shadow, our paradigm shifts and it corrects and then our spiritual connection point takes place.

The Light of the World at that point [at the point of our decision, in our submission to just be His shadow], at that moment. . .  the Light of the World is at our right side. Now, this changes everything in how we present to the world. Yes, we are tied physically in the natural at our feet (as is all mankind whether they fight it or not). Interesting to note that, Scripturally speaking, feet represent direction and the path. Our path is tied
to wherever He goes. We can reject him and His likeness. We can sever the tie and go our own way as a rebellious shadow, but he will do everything he can to hunt us down and reconnect because it is His desire that none should perish.

But that's the physical, the promise available to all humanity
should we accept it.

10:57
Spiritually though, He longs for a deeper connection. When we accept Him, we become aware of another point of connection.

11:06
Scripture shows that we are also tied at our right hand so let me read some scripture to cement that in.  Psalm 121:5 says:
The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

Psalm 16:8 says: 
I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

11:35
Psalm 110 verse 5 says: 
The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.

Now, in these first three scriptures we see God at our right hand. Then, let's go on to Psalm 63 verse 8. That says:
My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.

11:59
Now, we're talking about His right hand. Let's keep going.
Isaiah 41:13 says:
For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.

Now in this Scripture, He's holding our right hand with His right hand. How was this possible that he would hold our right hand and be at our right hand? We'll get there in a moment.

12:30
First, Isaiah 49:2:
And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me;

 Psalm 36: 7 says: 
How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.

Think about this. Where are wings? At the arm or hand on the right. So, if you are under his wing, you are wrapped in His arm, under his hand.

13:03
Let's go back to the question that I asked because there is a confusing point here. If He is at our right hand and we are connected, it's natural to think of holding hands. I can't hold my husband's right hand with my right hand. It's unnatural. The fingers don't line up and we'd be a tangled mess. So how can we be under His right hand and at our right side or at a right hand at the same time?

That goes back to my husband's lesson: Yeshua is above all. My right hand is a shadow of His right hand. So try this:

13:40
Hold your spouse's right hand to right hand. There are three directions that it works.

Face to face shaking hands. That's the introduction.

Him in front of me with me holding his hand from behind in a following position or me in front and him holding my hand from behind a protective position.

There is no side-by-side equal position with God. If you try for this you will be tangled up in deception.

Philippians 2:5-7 says:
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.

Instead of trying to be side by side in some kind of equality with God, throw that idea out. Instead, simply face Him in humility. Agree to follow and allow Him to protect you. When the trials come, then the problem of your paradigm will be corrected and you can be positioned for right relationship.

This is all kind of philosophical and heavy, but I want to dig even deeper. Let's look at the crucifixion.

15:14
Imagine Yeshua on the stake. There He is with the crown of thorns on His head; thorns being a symbol of the consequences of sin. He's beaten and torn. He's pierced where his hands and His
feet . . . this is no coincidence. His hands and feet, the point of our
connection, is the point of his piercing.

15:41
Why? So He could fulfill Scripture, honor covenant, and restore our likeness by killing death's hold on us and redeeming us from the curses of sin that we brought upon ourselves.

This piercing was yet another attempt of the enemy to separate us from His likeness and to destroy our hope through His brutal death, but he is above all. Nothing could hold Him. Not even death. And His love is so vast that it will go on and on, to any lengths, to preserve our connection.

16:17
We must still be his shadow, but I think we must also become His Wendy. We must purpose to restore those rebel shadows, affixing them to the path of God, holding them in place through faith in
prayer so that they too can have Him at their right hand and know Him in a personal way through submission.

Oh no. Whoop. Stop the show. I just said that dirty word: submission. It felt like an ugly word 17 years ago when it came up
in my pre-marriage counseling and it seems (by worldly standards) even uglier today. Yet, it is necessary and life-changing and an ultimate act of love that can't be faked or forced.

17:05
Submission is a choice. Either you submit to Him or you don't. There's no middle ground.

17:10
James 4:7 says Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

17:19
So at this point, I want to ask you to consider some things and I'll pray that He uses this seed and finishes out this teaching within you, directing you towards personal application.

I want you to ask yourself "Am I walking in His shadow? Am I
struggling to submit to Him? Am I fighting Him?"

17:39
I imagine God using Peter Pan's line "Stop playing and help me find my shadow. Oh, shadow." 

Our Heavenly Father is seeking out the lost. Can you hear Him? He wants restoration. He wants your family, your friends, your co-workers, you. Ask yourself "Am I actively attempting to restore those lost shadows that have strayed away from God? This is so heavy on my heart. You see, someday Yeshua will return and I hope that I can answer him just like Wendy did Peter Pan she said
"I knew you'd come back. I saved your shadow for you. Oh, I do hope it isn't rumpled. You know, you look exactly the way I thought you would. A little taller perhaps."

And that brings our episode to a close, but as J.M. Barrie wrote, Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.

May you never forget the beautiful way our Savior has pursued you.
​
See you next week. Be blessed

18:52
[Music]

00:00
[Intro Music]

00:03
Welcome to the CWA Radio Network. 
You are listening to A Musing hosted by me, Heather Randall.

What if every thought is deeper than a daydream. What if it's a
seedling from our Heavenly Father, our one true muse, pointing us to something we need to know? Let's embrace the freedom to wonder, take the invitation to explore, and learn everything He has to teach us in this amazing journey of life. 

Let's get this show started. 

Thank you for tuning in to episode 1 of A Musing. Today we'll be hanging out in Acts. We're going to be discussing Philosophy, the use of secular tools in evangelism, and emphasizing the importance God places on human experience in ministry. 

We have a lot to cover today so let's not delay.

00:59
Open your Bible with me to Acts 17.  We'll start in verse 16: 

While Paul was waiting for them (speaking of Silas and Timothy)
in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and god-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happen to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him.

Let's stop here for a moment so I can give some background.
Epicurean philosophy was founded around 307 BC and based on the teachings of a man named Epicurus.

To give you an idea of their beliefs I'll read a quote from Epicurus himself. He wrote: "Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting point of every choice and every aversion, and to it we always come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing."

02:05
Epicurean philosophy was not a new thing in Paul's day. The idea predated Christ and, I would say, that there are many in our modern society who unconsciously hold to these beliefs today.

How many people do you know who are ruled by emotions which they use as the ultimate parameter to test if something is good
or bad?

Again that quote is "we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.

On the other hand we have Stoicism, a branch of philosophy founded in 300 BC by Zeno of Cyprus and influenced by Socrates.

The stoic focuses on personal improvement, seeks to stay present and aims to avoid emotional extremes through self-control.  The virtues taught in stoicism have actually since been accepted by some Christian theologians.

03:03
While the stoic mindset of being calm and tranquil is also mirrored in Buddhism.

Stoicism encourages followers to use the use of willpower to change their negative thought patterns and empower them to overcome the most trying times. They look inwardly for peace rather than focusing on their circumstances or feelings which seems like a good thing on the surface. However, Stoicism also lends itself to nature worship. 

Now, self-control (we know) can be a fruit of spirit. It is a fruit of the Spirit, but the way that stoics think about it is not simply, you know, self-control through the Spirit. It's self-control independent of the Spirit of God and whenever we do things in our own power we run into problems, right? I mean, we know this as believers.

So this is the problem with stoicism. They try to fix their own problems.

04:06
Now again, Stoicism lends itself to nature worship. Ancient Stoics were known to build altars to geysers, worship rivers, ultimately elevating creation above the creator.  From this we get that Zen/ new-age vibe in our society today that says that they can fix problems without God (it's just mine over matter) and here's where the self-help movement enters the scene. You see, the truth is . . .

04:42
Stoics are what we would call good people that lean on their own
understanding and prioritize personal virtue over relationship with God. 

Yes, we still have these beliefs in our world and, honestly, they're even in our churches.  It's these two groups that Paul finds himself in the midst of so let's return back to verse 18. It says:

05:14
Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?"  Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods."  They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus. 

Now let's stop again. The Areopagus was a rock in the city where the high court of Athens would gather and hear cases. This, along
with the people's complaints in verse 18, might imply that Paul was actually on trial for teaching about a foreign God.

05:51
If this is the case, then that would mean that Paul's longest recorded sermon may have actually been a sort of legal defense.

Let's go back to verse 19. They took him. Oops, sorry. Hold on, I jumped my space. Okay. Alright, so let's return to verse 18 or
I'm sorry, 19:

Then they I took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean." (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.) Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "People of Athens! I see that in every way
you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with the this inscription: To An Unknown God. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship -- and this is what I'm going to proclaim to you.

Paul shows himself as a talented speaker in the way that he addresses his audience. He has taken time to recognize what's important to them (religion), to observe what they worship, and to quote their poets. As we'll see in verse 38, Paul understands who he is speaking to and how to reach them through the use of their own accepted knowledge. How did he learn this?

Well, I would say that he learned it from the very teachings of Jesus in Scripture.

07:47
Jesus quoted secular proverbs often. In Acts 26:14, Paul shares about his conversion writing: I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

Scholars and Theologians say that the phrase "kick against the pricks" was a phrase that originated in a Greek play. With Paul's
knowledge of Greek art history and philosophy, this phrase would have made sense to him.

God knew what would reach Saul. This shows us that Godly inspiration can come from secular knowledge because God is truth and truth is rooted in Him.

08:37
Personal story here: When I was a teenager my mom was overwhelmed by my moods and drama. Can't imagine that, right?

At one point, she was really crying out to God about what to do with me. She desperately wanted to be in God's will in her parenting.

So this one day, she was praying in the car when the lyrics to Hold on Loosely by 38 Special pushed through the speakers. As she listened, she begin to feel that (in that moment) God had used this secular song to provide her with tools to move forward with me. The song warned her to hold on loosely because if she clung too tight she was gonna lose the control she needed to maintain.

Then we find Biblical examples of this in Numbers 23. We can
see that Balaam is hired to curse Israel, but God won't let him. Instead, he spoke incredible blessings which are still spoken over Israel today. Truth has a way of making itself heard.

With God in charge, even on ungodly man sent to curse God's own people could be used to speak profound beauty, truth, and promise.

09:53
With Athens, the unknown God came out of a need for answers. During a horrible plague in Athens the leaders determined
that they must be under a curse, so they did what any place of that time would do in such a situation, and they began to offer sacrifices to their gods. But the plague continued, so then they started to really think about this and became convinced that there must be some other God that could fix their situation that they didn't know about yet. They wanted to learn about this God and they wanted to learn the right way to sacrifice to him and what to do, so they sent for Epimenides to help them figure out a way to set things right with this unknown god .

10:40
Epimenides no more knew the name of this other God than they did. He encouraged them to make sacrifices and built altars to this unknown God and, it is said, that within a week of honoring the
unknown God the plague was stopped. 

Well, when we think about this, we know that gods of stone and metal and, you know . . . false gods, have no power to affect change. So, one of two things is happening here with their plague stopping and that's either just an extraordinary coincidence, or the unknown God was God Himself responding to their ignorant cry for help and meeting them where they were at.

See, they didn't know his name or anything about him but they were recognizing (however small) the sovereignty of God and, even then, God shows up.

Any accidental truth that people stumble upon and accept is no
less from God. To illustrate this, I imagine the poor, the fatherless, the widows gathering grain. It's on the outside, peripheral, maybe it's broken or uprooted already. They don't know the owner of the field, but they can gather there.

The world may not know God, the owner of wisdom, but I have to believe that He scatters little seeds of Himself all over, to the point that some people trip over Him and don't notice.

This was the case for the people of Athens.  They were stumbling over truth they couldn't understand because they lacked a relationship with the Creator. That's why Paul had to start his teaching from the point of creation defining the Creator, for those who didn't know.

So let's go back to verse 24:

12:38
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far away from any of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring'.  "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone -- an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead".  When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said "We want to hear you again on this subject." At that, Paul left the council.

Some sneered, but others were curious

14:04
Paul whet their appetites, not by speaking over their heads, but by
appealing to what they already knew and building on it.

14:13
Hearing is great, but Paul was not just effective at getting them to hear. We learn in verse 34 that some who heard were led to believe. Starting in verse 34:

Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed among them was Dionysius a member of the Areopagus also a woman named Damaris and a number of others.

14:42
You see, the interesting thing is that, when Paul quoted Epimenides saying:

"For in him we live and move and have our being"

Paul was not advocating a lie, but unpacking accidental wisdom and explaining that the unknown God to which this quote was written was in fact Yahweh, to whom it can absolutely be said that we find life and purpose.

In the 1980s though these words were actually used in a praise song called In Him We Live and Move. Maybe you remember singing it. It was by Randy Spear with Integrity's Hosanna music.

I grew up singing it in my church and we sang "For in him we live and move and have our being".

As believers, we can recognize the truth in these words. Now this 
phrase is, again, speaking to the unknown God, so of course Paul could appropriate it and use it to explain God himself.

Now, I have less understanding about why Paul quoted Aratus the poet who originally said "we are his offspring". This line is taken from a poem titled Phenomena and I want to read the first five verses to you.  It says:

Let us begin with Zeus whom we mortals never leave unspoken.
For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus.
Even the sea and the harbor are full of this deity.
Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus.
For we are indeed his offspring.  

16:25
Clearly Aratus was not actually writing about an unknown God, but about Zeus himself.  So this verse is this verse that that Paul
uses. This part of this verse, "is Paul promoting Zeus?" is the question, and I would say no. Paul is not using the line as intended, or as a way of honoring Zeus.

16:47
What he's really doing here is using the quote as an example of a Greek thinker and writer who believed that God's were divine, (separate and different from humans).

This barb against anthropomorphic deism sets the ground for his attack on the idols that the people of Athens had made representing their gods with human appearances.

Now, you see, they thought that Zeus . . . you know, the people in Athens would have thought of Zeus as almost like a statue. Like right there in their midst looking human, something that
they could touch, something tangible. But this poet, Aratus, was was very clear that gods can't be contained. That they're bigger than, you know, an idol. That they're bigger than human comprehension. They go beyond. And so, this is what Paul was using to express the bigness of our God. That he, he goes
beyond, you know, an idol.  He's not. He's not a shape that man can make. He's not.  You know, He can't be controlled by human
hands.

So, with this argument, Paul was elevating Yahweh above humanity and using their own writer to soften the
blow and express that idea as not so outrageous.

18:06
He made it palatable so that they could accept that idea by using their own source. This proves that even mistakes teach. 

We all know that Aratus is wrong, right? As a believers, we understand that Zeus is not a real god. He made a mistake in his theology, but even his mistake was used to teach.

You see, God can use anything. God is holy, but he is also personal. He cares about forming relationship with us and is not
afraid to use unconventional means to reach us.

In the scriptures we read today we learned that God does not ignore the secular, but uses everything to bring himself glory.

Though Scripture is God-breathed there are secular elements
within it that's because God recognizes that inspiration is often birthed out of human experience.

19:08
We are influenced by our culture, both sides of it, the holy and the common. We are influenced by history and how we were raised. That unique perspective our experience shapes within us does not degrade God's influence, but directs it into the corners of our lives
that need him the most.

As a homeschooling mom, I don't want my children to separate their lives in two categories of school and non school knowledge. I want them to view all of life as an opportunity to learn.

Also, I don't think God wants us to separate "spiritual" and "real" life, but to carry the reality of our God into all environments throughout our lives.

20:01
There's no point that we put God on a shelf and carry on with our day. Whether directly or indirectly, everything we experience as believers should point us back to God for confirmation, encouragement, correction, direction and so on. Our experiences open a pathway for communication with God. They highlight our need for him and help us hear his voice.

As we learn to listen, these experiences shape our own voice and our authentic voice draws a specific audience that we are uniquely designed to reach.  l

Let's talk about Damaris for a minute. This was ancient Greece, remember?

20:46
To be a woman accepted into a circle for such discussions, she was clearly intelligent and respected in Athens. I read some reports that said, you know, perhaps she may have been a prostitute. This is one theory, and other theory says that she was a daughter of a
wealthy man. There's a whole bunch of ideas about who this character, Damaris, may have been.

She likely had a very specific upbringing and education that
would have made her unique to the kingdom of God. That allowed her to be placed in that that time period and in that setting (where women were not you know categorically allowed). For her to be respected in the community would likely have put her conversion in the spotlight and provided her with a platform to influence others. So, what doors were open there because she came to believe? Well, we may never know.  But here is a greater
question: What doors will be opened because of your belief? What experiences, education history or cultural practices can you draw on to reach the lost? 

22:06
You see, what happens a lot of times when we become saved, when we we come to the saving knowledge of Christ, is that we
reject everything of who we are.

Now, it is absolutely scriptural truth that we need to put off the old man. We need to renew our minds and our thinking 
(the way that we think and the way that we process ideas). We need to act differently. You know, we're going to behave differently. We're gonna make better choices. We're going to be a
different person and that's all truth, but our experiences and the core of our identity and the things that made us us will always remain. They should always remain.

Sometimes, what we do as believers, is we mask them. We hide them. We bury them. We stuff them and we pretend that they're not there, but what they really are are keys. They're opportunities that God wants to use within us. They're little, you know, little ideas. Little sparks that he's put in our learning, our education, in 
our past that he wants imparted in our future, that he wants us to use in a holy way to reach those who are deceived by possibly the same things that we were deceived by. There are things that  we
can speak to because we've been there and done that. If we forget where we've come from, if we forget our history, if we forget our culture, if we forget our past, if we forget those little experiences that shaped us, then we're limiting the impact that God has
designed for us to have in our culture.

23:44
We have opportunities to pull those experiences in and reach the lost through them. I want to encourage us all to do that. I want to  tell you that it's okay if God puts a secular thought in your head to communicate with an unsaved person. If you have this idea of reaching them, and you can relate God to something that they will understand, it does not mean that you are are settling or degrading the message of God.

24:25
Now, if you try to bend God's Word to fit into the culture . . . you know, that's what we run into with some seeker-sensitive stuff. 

Or where we try to shift culture to pack it into scripture, well we can't do that.  But, if our experiences can be applied through Scripture, then by all means.  This is what Paul did.  This is what
Yeshua himself did. This is what Jesus did. This is how we reach the lost.

So, today . . . absolutely secular tools can be used in evangelism when they emphasize God. When they they either expose error, expose a truth, or point to God -- use them.

25:25
Again, we've talked about philosophy and I hope that you learned
something new about those verses in Acts and what was really
going on behind the scenes in Paul's mind.

Now, you know, we're walking through a society that is filled with this religious mindset. And see he was in Athens and he was surrounded by people who he acknowledges have a religious
spirit.

I would say, that even though our world seems like it is completely absent of God, I would say that we truly have a lot of false gods at work and we need to acknowledge the religiosity,
however false it is within our culture, and we need to speak out as believers and address it.

We need to point out the unknown God that they have not discovered yet and help them discover. The path to that, the path to teaching about God, always starts at creation because it's in and  through creation that he's imparted himself. That's where he first gave that breath, inside of us. I believe that when we go back and we talk about creation, that that breath is ignited within the unbeliever. It sparks it. It comes to their mind and it feels like something worth listening to even if they can't agree in their spirit. Something inside of them is tugged because God's Spirit wants to be alive in all of us. So go ahead, don't hold back the creativity, the influence that God has given you. Don't be silent
when you have opportunity to speak. When you have opportunity to recognize (for an unbeliever) something that God has laid
on your heart to share, listen to God's voice when he speaks to you. If you're put in a position where you have influence, and God speaks to you . . . and he restores you use your influence for his glory . . . whatever you do, seek to live in him, to move by his leading, and to find your purpose tucked within his will. That's my prayer for you I hope to see you next week. God bless!

27:57
[Outro Music]