Ride that Two Wheeler, just let go of your chains

This will likely be a heartfelt rather mushy message. If you are the squeamish type, be forewarned. I’ve not planned this ahead of time, it just feels right.

It is late, again. Sitting in front of a computer screen studying, again. Hating everything that is Babylon, again. Oh what a rut. Bemoaning however briefly (very briefly) that I don’t live closer to the action in Happy Valley, where the repentance and instruction are. It kinda feels like I did before and during Hurricane Katrina.

I honestly wanted to be there, in the Big Easy, to see it. I mean, who gets to see a Hurricane first hand? That’s what you all are witnessing and are about to feel there in happy valley, the Hurricane. And I kinda wish I could be there to witness it, amongst those who profess to know his name but do not. As a result, there are prophets and watchmen in your midst warning you like weathermen to wake up, get your tired and numb butts out of your comfortable and aptly named La-Z-Boys and get yourself and your families out of Babylon before the flood is too much. At that point swimming and treading water will not be enough.

You see, that is what I see now. People swimming, doing the Vomiting-Drunk and Slumbering-Doggy paddle, barely keeping their heads above water, and sometimes not, just because they love the view at the beach. They didn’t hear and are not now hearing the warnings of the lifeguards on the beach. “THE Tide is Coming in! A wave is here!” Instead they hear their tour guide, with his back to the water, telling them of all the beauty around them and how good the sand feels between their toes.

So it goes back to that word, Shuv, Turn around, get up and get moving, repent. Get yourself out of Babylon, touch not their unclean things. No longer is it time to swim, its time to run.

Back to this Telestial Urim and Thummim in front of me my mind wanders and eventually settles on a triumph I saw today. One of those irrepressible moments of human joy that we so rarely see. Generally our self imposed chains and shackles are too much for us and we can’t see past what we can’t be.  But in a child who finally buried his hopelessness, I saw limitless potential and the voice of God in Power.

MY wife and I have been struggling with our second son in accomplishing one of life’s real accomplishments, to ride a bike on his own, without artificial attachments or over bearing helpful hands. His Older brother didn’t help matters, having picked it up remarkably quickly, kinda killing the drama, at the age of three. He’s been riding now for over three years. Meanwhile, his little brother just couldn’t get over the hump. While riding he was very afraid to wreck, and as a result wrecked every time as he over corrected and freaked out a bit. HE leaned heavily on my arm as we ran up and down the sidewalk, leaning hard so as to know that I was there supporting him. He relied on that hand to be there, that shadow running ever so close and providing the help. As soon as the hand was gone though, crash. If the hand let go at just the right time, he’d ride on for awhile until suddenly, like wile e coyote after running over the cliff, frantically realizing there is no support there and falling hard.

Today though, we tried it in the backyard on the grass. First time in about 5 months we’ve seen grass. A welcome sight no matter how brown. That brown grass provided just the right amount of padding to lessen the blow. At some point he realized the crashing was no big deal, a means to an end. Then, not long after, he rode, by himself, for many yards. Having realized this, he got back on and did it again, and again. slowly easing into the idea. He began to trust my instruction, realizing that he did need to peddle, that he could go faster.

Still wrecking a bunch and not going very far, we moved back to the front walk, were riding was easier and faster, but the crashes harder. Here he could go very FAR but if he wrecked, those falls would be more spectacular too. Alas though, he was no longer afraid to fall. He now trusted that voice and that hand, that when it spoke it was in trust and when the hand let go, that was a good thing. A relationship was there and that’s all it took. HE was Gone!!!

Peddling that little bike as hard as his smallish legs could peddle those tiny tires, shaking back and forth like the Tasmanian devil on a mission. Finally the realization hit him, as his parents were raising their arms in ecstasy, he jumped off that bike wreck-lessly (finally) and ran full speed, hair flowing behind him with a grin big enough to swallow the sky.  He yelled, “I ride a Two-wheeler!!!”  This was a moment that was all his own. He was born again. He owned the world, he was God and God was him. And he fell in love with that dirty old thing that had hurt him so many times.

He now loves to ride and I predict he will quickly be taking the streets and air by storm with his new found power. What did it take? What can we learn from this beautiful little boy?

• Leaning heavily on another only barely keeps our head above water
• not trusting the voice, not heeding it, keeps us drowning in a world of water
• practice is key
• Lessening the blow for a time while we get our feet wet can be helpful, but won’t put us over the top
• to swim with the big fish, to really run on the beach, we half to let go of our fear, let go of our reliance and just be
• this process of letting go can truly make us free of the bondage and system of fear and able to Hear and trust

Perhaps now a tie into my own life. Letting go can be so hard. The everything behind us is killing us. Though all those held thoughts and habits are chaining us, we don’t let go. IT is Idolatry, and lets count the ways.

Sin and transgression are prevalent in our lives. We are bound to it in grotesque manner, some more than others. Like the king to Ammon, are we truly ready to face those things and give up every sin? When they come, do we fall to them, because we always have? Or do we face them and laugh in their face? And not only that, are we ready to hear of the other sins we have? This is the path of the disciple, it is a path of losing yourself, every whit. The Self you now have leans on hands all around you and falls to pits of culture and habit. That is the self that must be killed. You gotta hearken to the voice that you know and just do. This path is not easy. The falls can be tremendous. It will take you away from what you know, on purpose. IT will turn you into what you didn’t think you were. It will cleanse you of weaknesses you thought were strengths and make your weak things strong.

When the Savior told his Disciples that the temple would be destroyed, with not one brick left on top of another, he gave us powerful imagery of rebirth. Our bodies, this life we have, are our temples, and they must be remade. The process of removing Idolatry (distraction from God) from your life will do exactly that by removing all the things you once relied on to make you, you. MY advice, if you would seek to be a power tool capable of acting and being acted upon, is to recognize those things and remove them. Then find more, find them in the scriptures, find them in revelation or promptings, find them in your peers, wherever they are. That is my point, look for them. Seek them out, those stumbling blocks to your progression called idolatry. Strip yourself of them in the name of the Lord and he will be with you in the process.  Become converted every day to this process of change and hold onto nothing that you think is you.  Let the Lord decide who you are.  Create a Man in Gods image rather than a Man in a Man’s image.

As you do this you will increasingly here His voice. Continue to act in power and you will be changed. That’s what you want after all, isn’t it?

These idols are that hand which once held your bike. it checked your speed it ‘corrected’ your falls it ‘protected’ you from injury. But really, in the end, reliance on that hand is holding you back. That reliance on past mistakes is keeping you away, reliance on another power is doing the same. You glory in the story of your brother, in the scripture or in history, but what of your own? Let go, you too are Gods, as he said, and were also born of Mother earth.

Finally, removing these walls between you and God will get you to a point where you have Heard the word, rather then simply feeling its prompting.  A point where living by every word that proceedeth from his mouth becomes a reality.

MY son’s fear of crashing, his reliance on that hand, did not allow him to truly hear my voice when I told him to pedal, to just ride straight and fast. However, his experience in the backyard allowed him to tear down those Idolatrous natures born into him. This moment of soft landing is like that moment of ours where we rid ourselves of the obvious forms of idolatry, the plain walls in front of our view. A few of these soft things are, reliance on manuals, reliance on others testimonies, reliance on rules and man-made order, reliance on babylonian style, reliance on the knowledge of men, etc… we could list almost anything. But these are simply the things that are plain to you. The things that you know and have known you need to drop in order to be better, the sins you know are plaguing your mind, the actions you know are tied to Babylonian desires.

The true moment of release doesn’t come in finding those though. All we gain from that moment is some hope, some trust, that perhaps that voice is real and that hand is there to support us, even though it sometimes lets go.

There’s something funny about that Mountain that the bear climbed to get to the other side of, it had another side.

That other side too must be crossed, though at first you only see the initial goal.  Concurring that first goal is a vital step, removing that initial dead fall,  but only the beginning of your change in position.  The true growth comes in the keeping the secret of sacredness, in listening to the spirits instruction on new and startling forms of idolatry that plague your growth. You will be shown walls and mountians to climb that you didn’t know existed.  When you begin conquering those now unknown barriers at the spirits prompting, that prompting will seem louder and that voice more real. Finally, at some point, your chains will mean nothing to you. You will finally be as the King who was willing to give it all, the explorer who would go to all ends of the earth for the sake of going. You’ll finally be like my precious son who eyes grew large when he felt the power of peddling and just let go! Without those fears, those sins, which Babylon has given you, the voice is finally audible. It is trusted and can be understood.

This I believe to be our Goal, to Come out from Babylon and touch not her unclean things, in all facets of our life, be they literal and physical and/or spiritually in knowledge. I know I have felt the scales fall from my eyes as I have recognized and removed them. I too have felt the sting of remorse as I tripped and stumbled on the same block repeatedly. I can tell you that He lives, and that His voice is audible. that we can hear it and know, beyond prompting. I can tell you that that voice will change you, will make you into something you never planned, for your good. He’ll say things you never thought you’d hear, give you great knowledge and tell you to keep it bottled up (to become a sacred temple for Gods truth).  He’ll make you poor when you wanted to be rich, make you loathsome when you sought to be adored, make you meek when you wanted to be heard. And know that once you hear it you are merely Finally, finally, on the path, that straight sidewalk, where growth is faster but the spills more painful.

Coming on us now is the flood of Babylon.  Only those who have previously rid themselves of Babylonian reliance and consequently gained a relationship with the one saving power in the universe will keep their feet dry when the world is wet.