not the result of

There’s a song that says
“Enter His gates with thanksgiving in your heart.”

This is read by most as being “free entry to the stadium” and when you come to the entrance try to put thanks for something for which you are grateful in your heart. There is no prerequisite here.

What this is actually saying is that the thankfulness IS the ticket price to the stadium, not the result of free entry plus maybe. The interesting swing on it is that it is thankfulness on the lips of ‘others’ that gains you access to those premium seats right behind the opponent’s goal posts where you can see every goal scored right before you eyes.

His action was so that we could be thankful. Our action is so that other people can be thankful. So next time you’re at church and you’re singing your own thanks you better be hoping there’s other folk, in whatever rooms, singing their thanks, grateful that you exist.

Thanks because it is the ticket, not the result of having the ticket. Thanks on the lips of other people for the change your life has made in their lives.

a different place

I’m sorry if you think it’s something you’ve done. It’s not about you.

You say you hate pills and want nothing to do with them: it is easy to dislike something until you have to be on it life or death.

You didn’t fail. As I said, it is nothing you’ve done.

I did wish someone had prayed when I shared about it two months back, but it was an unrealistic straw to hang on. I wish it wasn’t an oversight that no-one prayed last Thursday when I said my pills had been changed the day before. I knew that a real big down was coming. When I realise it is inevitable, I seek to pad myself with things I know will carry me through it. People who will be ok if I have nothing to say, access to animals to sit with, cos I know when I get there it will be all consuming.

These are not intended to be guilt items for you. You don’t need to tell me that you are set free of having to live up to people’s expectations. You don’t have to flood me with verses. This is my reality as I see it now.

Romans 2-6 this AM was about how we all cannot make it by law. I know that. One has one’s own laws to live by (they are not your laws, nor do you have to live by them. Its not about you, or whether you failed), and one can become all bogged down in trying to reach one’s own impossibilities. It was good to remember that this needn’t be so.

It’s just that in a down one has to face reality. It hard to look around and realise this is going to be a long haul, with mountains to smile at.

A bipolar down is one thing, something the internal chemicals and hormones arrange, like diabetes. It cannot be brought on by things done or experiences had, but some things almost make it a definite.  Long hours, exhaustion, no relaxation points.

An emo down is where things, events,  get bigger than  one can cope with. Stressed and exhausted and unable to comprehend.

I’m in a bipo down, and I am in an emo down. I’m told by the shrink that it’s a very bad place. I don’t know, I’m what he called dispassionate.

The strange thing is that this is not a bad place to be in. I am hibernating, like a bear does. It is quite comfortable.

I guess I wanted to believe I had been heard, and I wanted the being heard to be a lifeline to hang on, a warm place I knew where I can just be. I don’t know what it is I would like from the group, maybe to be real. I know we know each other, and I know we share a common bond in Jesus, but somehow we are not ..

I don’t know if you understand. It is so outside of your realm of being, you’re so confident in what you know.

I haven’t been to bipo group recently, (I believed I was in permanent remission) but I remain good friends, instantly accepted. Saw the folk who run it on Sunday evening in Malmesbury, and we just talked. The chap is also bipo, and recently dx’d depressed. When we talk, its real talk, about the realities of living in this syrup. The hello, how you, uncaringness of a plastic hug, is just not there.

It’s not you, as believer, I cannot face. It’s that there is no place to hurt or not have answers or to express failing to meet standards – my world just does not fit into your name and claim.

Yes, it is about me, right now. I cannot see further, and I find comfort in silence. Anything false has no place here, to be hugged, or to have someone press their shoulder against mine, and yet not even know what plants grow in my house is pointless. I know modern life has pressures. I know all the reasons why one cannot care, and I know that really caring for other people as one would/does care for one’s own brood is an impossible dream, but my doctor once said one needs physical lithium, and one needs social lithium, and that both are ineffective alone.

I am having physical lithium, there are pills I have become used to, but (despite having put an effort in whilst up, ) I do not have social lithium. I do have a bike however. It’s like “the up times” are times when one attempts to make contact with people. One hopes that the effort in trying to make friends will pay off in people who will care enough to be there when the down comes. It seems to be that people who will have visited by their own choice in times when things were well are the people who will continue to visit, and all the others will fade away to where it is comfortable.

I guess I have felt invincible, as if another down was not ever going to come. I have invested in some people in the hope that they would be folk  who would also reach into my life by their own choice. Care seems to be important to me.

I hope this makes some sense. Church politics and having to speak some things in front of some and not others – well that is so purposeless, so unfunctional. One might have thought that being well liked (greeted by many when at church) in a church of two thousand would filter down into one or two that could become one of those people one would call a friend. It hasn’t happened.

I am not alone.
I am accepted where I am at.
God is here.

It is said about bipo’s that we lose friends when we change, cos people expect consistency. It is an unfortunate reality. Some come through for me, as in sit by the fire with me, and some remain in their busy-ness. It doesn’t make the other people wrong, it just makes the continuing people that much more special.

One changes lives not because one cannot face the people again, but because one realises there is no point in continuing to invest in there because nothing is likely to change. There are people that have stuck by me through the years, and they still there, only they are sprinkled all over South Africa, and they are not here to sit with. The bipo group itself as a whole is not my friend, in the sense that I would have it, but there are gems in it who understand and accept. I was there when it started 13 years ago, and I am accepted as being one of them.

Right now, one needs real people, people who visit, who want to spend time together. We, that group of people who meet weekly to theoretically share God – we, myself included,  are not like that. It doesn’t make the cell group wrong. It just makes it not right for me.

a different place.

[note: I was reluctant to put this post up, a post I sent to someone, as it showed that I have this in my life right now. In some circles it isn't something you would want the world to know, but one cannot hide oneself, and the more real I am in all that I am, the easier it is to put all that I write into context.]

the key to great power

Compassion is the key to miracles. Compassion for another’s pain to the point of personal identification sets the stage for a miracle. Combined with complete denial of self benefit the play can begin. This is the key to the initiation of and ongoing flow of miracles.

In the book of Mark, chapter 8 we meet Jesus feeling sorry for the people at a depth of really identifying with their pain
>they have been here 3 days, (Mark 8.2)
>they have nothing left to eat, (Mark 8.2)
>If I send them away hungry (Mark 8.3)
>they will faint (Mark 8.3),
> some have a long way to go (Mark 8.3)

Two verses and a whole lot of valid, realistic reasons exhibits an accelerating flow of compassion, more than a passing whim, reminiscent of the rationalisations that flood our own minds when we see some bauble that we lust for, can’t afford, but really just have to have. Only this time it is 100% for others, and very definitely 100% NOT for self.

One could almost describe it as a reverse lust, a manner of being opposite in spirit,. A manner of being holy as God is holy.

How?

Note that in Mark 8.1 a fact was stated (“and the people ran out of food again”). In Mark 8.2-3 Jesus’ compassion flows. In Mark 8.4-8 Jesus blessed the food, gave it to his disciples (Mark 8.1), and the disciples distributed the food. Mention is then made of how much was left over.

Mark’s typical urgency shows as we are told in Mark 8.10 that Jesus and the disciples immediately got into a boat and left the area.

In the manner of most modern Bibles, we then move into a new section, entitled in the NLT bible as “Leaders Demand A Miracle”, which is quite ironic given that the Scripture is trying to tell us the key to all miracles, but which impact is hidden in the change of gears necessary to approach the new section.

The original Scripture had no such break. Mark 8.11-12 are very much a continuation of the same story in that the concept of the miraculous is brought in from the human perspective, where ‘miraculous’ has to be seen in the physical, and to be understandable cognitively.

Mark 8.14 returns our attention to the subject of food and bread. (“but the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread”). Now surely if the disciples had partaken of either the seven loaves or of the twelve baskets collected afterwards, there would be no need to mention a lack of bread. Surely, in the wisdom of ‘waste not, want not’, they would have taken at least one of the twelve baskets in the boat with them. Instead we are presented with yet another new section, entitled “Jesus Warns Against Wrong Teaching”, and a further disengaging with the lesson of loaves.

Again the helpfulness of modern Bible writers steps in to distract the reader from the real reason for the story – the “how?” of miracles so lacking in the church today.

Mark 8, verses 12 through 16 center on the subject of miracles, with the extent of Jesus’ exasperation evident in verse 21 “Do you still not understand?”.

What is there to understand? Verses 17 and 18 enumerate the reasons Jesus thought most applicable in the situation. “why are you arguing, do you not [yet] know nor understand?”

Leading up to this we see his incredulation: “Are your hearts too hard to take it in? Can’t you see? Can’t you hear? Don’t you remember anything? Don’t you understand yet?”

Jesus references the very thing that the Pharisee’s had demanded: to ’see’ the miracle.

The message conveyed here is not just the miracle of bread being multiplied. Instead the concept of the ‘how’ of ALL miracles is taught.

The key?
Compassion to the level of cognitively feeling another person’s pain, then requesting a solution that in no way benefits oneself.

Remember how Solomon’s prayer for wisdom to judge the people rather than great riches for himself excited God? Remember how Elisha made brack water palatable or made iron float? Look back at all the miracles recorded in Scripture. Everytime a human gets involved in the miraculous it is entirely and solely for the benefit of others.

This, I believe, is what is meant by praying “in Jesus name” and this is why we see so little of the miraculous in the church today.

An interesting observation however, is that the principle is being worked out in both the Christian and non- Christian world’s humanitarian aid agencies that really get into their vocation passionately. One hears stories of a little food donation making a large impact and one cannot help wonder, just as the early disciples did, that God’s grace is poured out on all, even those that do not believe. A spiritual principle of sowing and reaping. Do this and that is guaranteed to happen.

Perhaps it’s time we knew or understood. Are our hearts to hard? Mark 8.18 has Jesus asking the disciples whether they can see, and then in 8.23 he is asking the blind man the same question.

We’re told that praying “in Jesus’ name” is the key. We see this done the world over and yet we see little response from God. Were the church a commercial organisation it would long ago have re-evaluated its strategies. Any action that did not produce the expected results would be revised until it did. We the church fail to do this. Why? What difference could we make?

Mark chapter 8 is a message in its entirety. From bread in need to bread in abundance to a total lack of bread to Pharisee’s demanding miracles to a blind man seeing. To pray in Jesus’ name one would have to understand who Jesus is and why he made the journey to being born a man destined to die. Mark 8 continues at verses 27-29 with this exact purpose “Who do the people say I am?” and who do you say I am?

The answer has to be the promised one sent from a compassionate Father who felt compassion for mankind to the point of total self denial. He entered a world engraved with sin knowing that He was its only hope to be released from the ever tightening bondage and ever widening chasm of sin.

Following this theme Mark turns the entire lesson back to the Pharisee’s question of human perspective in verse 33. “You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s”.

At the same time we are blatantly shown the author of such thoughts “Get away from me Satan”.

Jesus wraps up the entire lesson in the words of Mark 8.34-37’s “if anyone wants to do miracles like I do, you must turn from your selfish ways…” leaving the punchline at Mark 9.1 “I tell you the truth, some standing here [will grasp this message in all its fullness] and see the kingdom of God arrive in great power!”

Church, are you still looking for great power? Turn from your selfish ways, truly identify with the world’s pain, and expect the miracle. Great power is not found in Malachi 3.6’s poured out blessing, but rather in avoiding the lists of selfishness described elsewhere in the book. Great power is expected to be found and great power is expected to be seen 3.18 “then you will again see the difference between those who serve God and those who don’t.”

counter culture

“Be holy as I am holy”

Be opposite in spirit
Be glad when nothing to be glad about
Be confident when there’s no sign of victory
Be satisfied with what you have, not seeking that one more thing the mall has to offer
Be courageous when things are most fearful
Praise God when things go wrong and that deal fails to materialise.
Rejoice and be glad when all else shouts “be sad”

The “victory” is being able to be so different, to be this different, to be so opposite that you stand out, to be holy, just as He is holy.

Sin, a Greek word meaning missing the bulls-eye, is when you use your mouth to say you belong to the holy, but your life shows you to be craving that next wonder that will satisfy you. Truly missing the mark is failing to choose to rise above the instinct to run with the complaining herd.

“Your grace is sufficient for me” means that you are content with what He has provided, that your satisfaction with what you have does not lead you to steal, be it music or paper clips.

When you embrace the concept that what He has graciously given you in the land you find yourself is exactly what you need, then you are free to trust Him for the future. It is this trust that shines a light in the darkest night.

It is in rejoicing and being glad in the face of the storm that the storm will cease to matter. When the trials of life cease to matter, then you have a message the world will want to hear., a message that moves beyond having to prove God exists.

urgent notice to Pam Golding Property Management

09 November 2009

The flat complex I live at, namely Waikiki, at The Islands, in Parow, Cape Town, has removed the keypad that opens the gate on entry of a code number. They say it represents a security risk.

They have also disabled the remote I paid R100 for, as they say too many exist and that is a security risk.

The only means of getting the gate to open now is to call a cellphone number using only my cellphone, as the number to call is linked to my cellphone number.

I ride a motorbike.

I have a 3G PDA style cellphone, on which I conduct my life. I have this expensive device as the result of a Vodacom contract, a contract that states that should the phone “suffer liquid damage” it will no longer be covered under their repair scheme.

Liquid damage can only occur if the device is operated when it gets wet.

The expectation is that I stop the motorcycle outside the gate of the complex, retrieve the cellphone from it’s dry pocket, remove my dry gloves, locate the required number in Contacts, dial and wait for the gate to open.

Conditions in Cape Town over the last two days alone make this impossible to achieve.

The cellphone will cease to function if it gets wet. It will no longer be covered under the contract if it has liquid damage, and I cannot see any way to gain access otherwise!

My question is this: does your insurance, Pam Golding or the Body Corporate, cover the replacement of defunct communication devices, facing guaranteed destruction by adherence to your policies?

Should this not be the case, can I safely assume that your policy is therefore to serve notice to all residents who prefer two wheeled transport?

The situation is desperate. This is not a matter that can be referred to the next body corporate meeting. This involves the absolute disruption of my life and needs to be resolved immediately.

Yours sincerely

Dennis Bartlett

extremes

In the computer world experience counts. One would almost believe you can’t have enough of it. A habitual reader of adverts I thought I’d seen everything. I was wrong. There’s an ad in today’s Career pages that tops ‘em all:

“Use your 405 years SQL server 2005 skills and experience..”

Wow, I know Micro$oft predate their releases but . .

jobs and trees

In all that is happening to you, the job, the inability to find an alternative I must be honest and say it fits perfectly with the theory I have developed through my experience this year – that the time for just talking “faith” has come to an end – that it’s time to submit to God’s circumstance and face the world confident and not dismayed.

It has been easy to say this to myself, and to watch it all work out – that one’s provision is entirely from God and not in the numbers we earn, that we are called to wait for Him to arrange the next position for us, that we are to show that it is possible to willingly submit to whatever the world throws at us (even if they call themself Christian) and that this is what glorifies God.

Waiting for Him.
Trusting Him.
Knowing that He will provide all that we need, over and beyond the numbers.
Being able to be at peace in the knowledge He is doing this to ultimately train us to handle the future.
The theory says that if you can’t handle trusting Him on £3000/month you’re certainly not going to cope on the world order’s zero income allowed for enemies of the state.

The theory states that the key factor this training is meant to polish is “trust in Him”. Absolute trust. The kind of trust that says yes I see everything that is happening and yet I know that what I see is not what will happen, because I don’t see the full picture.

I have learnt this in my life. I have started writing books about it that have been easier to write on paper than to say to you, my friend, that we’re not supposed to be panicking, looking for jobs where jobs don’t exist, getting hung up on the waves that toss those who have no trust about. We are children of a LIVING God. He really lives, He really takes care, and He knows everything there needs to be known. The choices are His to make as to what job we get and who we are assigned to work with.

The choice we have to make is to submit willingly. The choice we have power in Him to make is to embrace wherever He puts us with enthusiasm. We’re not to get caught up in the looking around and falling over in the shock of not finding anything.

We’re to know that glory only goes completely to God when there is absolutely no possibility that it could have happened otherwise.

Remember the trust theory I had in Arniston? That it is only pure trust when it is beyond the outer fringes of what could happen, what might happen, what I might be able to do alone, what I could do with the contacts I know, what could be done in the community I’m in, what the government could do, what the world could do.

Our trust can only be said to be validly in Him when He is given complete outer darkness to work in and we allow Him to work in it, showing to the world that it is possible to trust.

Well, you,re in that situation now. Everything that is happening to YOU, is completely in accordance with the experiences I have gone thru, with the theories, and with the belief I have that it’s all a training and testing session to prove the faith you say you have.

It isn’t supposed to be easy in the world’s sense, it’s supposed to be miraculous. That you can trust while all things are boiling, bubbling and seething around you is the brightest light we can shine. We are to get our faith from Him, we are to trustingly and lovingly ask the Father for those missing attributes of trust and love to be seen in our lives. He is really the source of all things including the things He says we must have, like faith and trust.

It is humbling to have to ask for them yet ask we must. That it is His choice to give is wonderful yet it is our choice to show them when He provides them.

Sure. Look around at the job market. There will genuinely be an amazing event that will spring out of all hopelessness when it is time to move. If you’re not aware that the market is dead you’ll not be aware that it is a miracle.

The difference is that we are to know there is no hope of getting out of what seems to be the deepest pit but believe that it will happen. Until then we can choose to trust Him.

We can show a watching world that there is something in this faith. We can listen only to the voices of hope from other people who believe and we can choose to not ask or hear the dead ways of the unbeliever.

I believe you are where you are to learn to exhibit faith. You are particularly placed to be able to show skeptics that there is hope in Him. If you listen to those who don’t share the same hope, you have death telling you how to live. For all my words I too have succumbed to their way of thinking, but the fact is that is not how we think. How can we proclaim we have a faith and yet show fear to the world?

Where is faith in that? Is faith only for those times we’re sitting alone with our Bible?

You’re in the refiners fire. Choose to show that you really are pure gold. We do not take any advice from a world that sees no purpose in Jesus. We believe the words of the Bible, and we show those who do not believe that we do believe ESPECIALLY when it looks gloomiest.

This is the only food you need. Don’t talk faith and then not do it. That is the quickest way to say that it’s just a fairy tale.

So what do you believe? Are you prepared to go back in there saying you have seen the light and your hope is a real flame or are you choosing to be luke warm? Is this a real thing? If so, shake off the hopelessness that you have chosen to put on.

Embrace the fact that there aren’t jobs hanging on trees for the very purpose that you can show hope and faith with a spring in your step and an enthusiasm for life that only you can choose to wear. The more you accept that you are hard done by, that there is no hope, the more hopeless you will feel. It’s not about feeling, it’s about fact. It’s a decision.

It’s a decision to live the faith. Faith is only faith when it appears there is no hope and you show hope. So make this decision too – hope in God and show that faith lives.

It’ll radically change your life.

spring

For those who consider themselves normal, I can only apologise. For those who understand, by either personal experience or that of someone they know, what it is to be bipolar, I can explain my complete absence from adding to this blog only by saying I fell over.

In a normal world long hours bring on great fatigue that can take some time to recover from. In my world, the long hours of this year created a vacuum in which I still think and speak but from which it is so hard to communicate. This is a place devoid of feeling, as to even enquire of one’s own state of mind threatens to launch yet another boat rocking session spanning months.

The fact is that what takes a normal person weeks to recover from throws me into a boiling pot of emotions that takes months to even settle the voices of unreason that each urge one to make yet another rash move.

We are our own worst enemy.

In a normal world to completely abandon a blog is tantamount to signing it’s death warrant. Trambellings is not dead, it has just been hibernating, lying dormant waiting for spring.

They tell me that the first of September is the first day of spring.

what a swine

It happens in winter I’m told.

Warm offices. Unhealthy air. No ventilation.

For the last three weeks there has been a “flu” wandering around the office. Probably more like a cold, really. Whatever!

The inside of the office is overly hot, and each day one sees another version of sad face wandering by. Today it’s mine. I’ve been coughing most of the night, and to say I feel like a dog’s breakfast is being generous!To add insult to injury, we’ve hosted a delegation from Mozambique for three weeks; folk come to test some software we sell. Add the five of them to the five of us (in our office) and the permutations of “funny bug” can get interesting. We finally got rid of those five over the weekend, only to find a new set of three arrive yesterday. The mutations continue!

Speaking of that, I heard yesterday that the reason swine flu is so bad is that it triggers the body’s own immune system to attack itself, and thus, the more healthy a person the more dangerous it is. I don’t know how true that is.

Just imagine, all that will be left on planet earth is geeks! Move over, Orwell, 1984 ain’t gotten nothin’ on this!

Mene – a follow up

Lo! and behold, in my mail this morning there’s another reply from Indonesia, this time thanking me for the description, but, more urgently, a query as to why his grandmother would have used specifically that spelling of his name, “Menail”.

Once more I returned to the trusty google (verb, not adjective ) and discovered that in the Indonesian Bible those words that appear in the English Bible as MENE and TEKEL, are in fact translated into MENAI and TEKAIL.

I duly replied, and received this in return:

Thanks Dennis,
Thank you so much, I Believe that God Bless you for explaining me. Send my best regards to your family and all people that you meet with full hopes.

God Bless you.

My best regards

Menail Tekail Uparsin N
Indonesia

Thanks. I am blessed!