Hypocrisy is called yeast. I have to ask myself: what does yeast do? It leavens, rises. What does it look like? infuse, suffuse, imbue, ingrain, inoculate, leaven means to introduce one thing into another so as to affect it throughout. What does it affect? The whole.

Hypocrisy means wearing a mask. I think we sincerely make sure we are not wearing the mask of hypocrisy and would hate to be called a hypocrit. But we should look closely at the Lord’s explanation of it (Lk 12:1-3). The same person we are smiling towards WILL one day hear loudly proclaimed what we have said about them in the secret, safe place. “Nothing will be hidden…secret” (vs 2). How devastating when people learn how we really felt about them! That alone should be a deterrent to our hypocrisy.

Then who should we vent to? Even here nothing is exempted. Listen…”What you have said in the dark WILL be heard in the daytime; and what you have whispered In the ear IN the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the housetop” (vs 3). Even the most intimate setting in our house is “bugged.”

Shouldn’t we have the freedom to express ourselves? have a confidante? at least one? If we could see this clearly, we have abused such relationships. Knowing there is a listening ear can diffuse the drive to pray. It also puts the listener in the precarious position of hearing what only God should hear.

Hypocrisy affects the whole. Our hypocrisy infects and can harm our listener (Prov 18:8, 26:22). The Ear who hears what we speak to another is telling us it will be broadcasted over the air waves some day.

Let’s resolve to change this and ask Him to help us! David wisely said, Psalms 39:1 “I said to myself, ‘I will watch what I do and not sin in what I say. I will hold my tongue when the ungodly are around me.’”

“​It used to be for awhile that the river flowed right to my door. ​Making me just a little too free, but ​now the river doesn’t seem to stop here anymore” – Carly Simon.

I am sorry, but the first day without the phone carried a morose feeling. I was crimped. Nothing in my pocket. Nothing to reach to. ​Nothing to check. ​Unavailable. Inaccessible.​ In isolation.​

Several friends ​helped me clarify this opportunity and to​​ rise to what can be a revolutionary moment.

Am I truly Present? Ever? 100% to God, to people? The ​first and ​greatest ​Commandment speaks to ALL. All my mind, all my soul, all my strength. Is “all” ever experienced while I reach, I​ check…

In this recess​ there is​​ profound speaking​, Luke ​7:3​1:​ “To what then should I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 7:32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to one another,
‘We played the flute for you, yet you did not dance;
we wailed in mourning, yet you did not weep.’ ”

Wh​en a full dance or​ a full​ mourning​ is deserved​​, ​my inattentiveness cuts off the edge of dancing OR wailing​ and leaves me always muddled in the middle.

​Can I ever come out into the clearing with this continual distraction?​
Song of Solomon 6 describes someone who has come into the clearing. She is fully beholding and others are asking to follow her gaze.​ ​​She is fully engaged. She is dynamic. The others say: ​”​Tell us, that we may seek him with you (v 1).​”​
​We would want that.​
​
​By verse 5, it is full-fledged engagement. In the fully-present clearing (I believe this ​can be where we can​ stand and say straight to Him: “Jesus, You are the Son of God” [see 1 John 4:15]​)​ He says to her: “Turn away your eyes from Me, for they overwhelm Me.”

​This intensity is for being Present, fully present. Isn’t this more than a suggestion or momentary invitation to step into the clearing?

“Our Lord is above all these things,” Abedini said. “And when you just come on your knees, you can see He is there.”
“When we put ourselves in a situation to love people, God is going to open the door,” he said.
He shared that there is power in faith: “You can see Satan step back when you stand firm in your faith.”
These realizations came with a great price to him, and all beg to be explored by those of us hearing, but the third one exists for this moment.

Though I am not a bird enthusiast in the least, a bird feeder in our yard is in view at breakfast. I am starting to see patterns of bird behavior that are quite interesting. The piercing dark bluish-black of the grackle sweep down in an instant, putting all smaller variety of birds to flight. They come as bullies, swinging the bird feeder by their momentum in landing and pushing off. They take over, no compromise, no sharing. There seems no hope at this point for the smaller birds…BUT, we have made a discovery. In their heavy swarming presence while feasting, the grackle are very flighty, even timid. The slightest tap on the window or even pulling the curtain sends them away in fright as quickly as they came…almost as if they know they are guilty, not supposed to be there, not wanted, and your slightest challenge to them is enough to send them. (They do come back, or their relatives do, shortly.)

On the other hand, when the tap on the window happens, their smaller, colorful fellow varieties of birds come right in and take their place! They are not flighty. Though less robust, they appear very confident to go right where the crows were feeding. They seem to resemble the righteous. The drama seems a visual of Pro 28:28 When the wicked gain control, people hide themselves, but when they perish, the righteous increase.

I have a dearest friend who went through not only the grief of her tiny-framed mother brutally killed by a relative, but the following torment of the Tormenter. To this day, she can share her testimony of finally have a showdown with him on the beach and drew her line in the stand. She was surprised. He whimpered away. She saw cowardice that she did not expect. She came to learn something.

Jam 4:7 So submit to God. But resist the devil and he will flee from you.

1Pe 5:9 Resist him, strong in your faith, because you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are enduring the same kinds of suffering.

The evil and this present darkness are incalculable. We are not looking to take all this head-on without a call of faith from the Lord to do so. But, we can know with a confidence when the day comes that this all becomes personally toe-to-toe with the one of darkness that we have Him, Jesus the Son of God, Who is unquenchable in us and on our side.

1Jo 4:4 You are from God, little children, and have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

With so much combative clatter overhead in an election year and being disillusioned by ones of would-be virtue getting caught into the web of justifications and attacks, we sometimes have to ask ourselves: “Who really is the enemy?”

“We are brothers…” Deep down Abram(ham) and Lot embraced this. But they realized they were having a difficulty…it is with each other! Looking back, Lot had left his homeland next to Abram without even the call of God to do so. With Abram he had relocated, faced a famine, endured risks in Egypt. Together they had worshiped God. Thoroughly bonded, Abram had expressed “…we are brothers” (Gen 13:6).

Because of inner tension arising between themselves and their people, something must be done. In light of the fact that they were brothers, they would both need to cooperate to preserve the priority of their relationship. Wisely this meant separation in order to keep honoring one another. They would still defend each other as Abram did later. In recollection, Gordon MacDonald has said that separation is better than hatred. These two brethren believed this to be so.

But there was another driving force toward a unified blessing between them. Threat.”The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land” (Gen 13:7). How could they possibly have a front before the REAL enemy when they were at odds with each other? Inward rotting while enemies loomed made it expedient to begin solving the inner conflict.

“Judgment begins in the house of God.” “A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.” Do we see the “Canaanites and Perizzites”?

We as His people want to sincerely exemplify a standard for the world hungering more than ever to see and hear “we are brothers/sisters” wherever our part can zealously find the necessary means of resolution. There is too much at stake right now to spend our lives in battle, but never with the real enemy.

But does it take long until we try to reproduce or put into a jar of our own such a magnificent moment or experience?

For some reason, this puts in mind the finger-finger coordination test done in school in my era which involved taking both arms, sweeping them around full circle until they were in front of us. With eyes closed we were bringing them together hopefully meeting one index fingertip squarely on the index of the opposite hand. We landed! But what happens with this landing? We close the circle and conclude this is God and His current presence and work. It is now enclosed in our grasp, our church, our movement. It’s been apprehended, comprehended, summed up. It boils down to a thing of control…with us at the center.

Some years ago, M Robert Mulholland wrote an article about DECENTERING as God’s movements continually bring His center to another place while we assume our structures have Him right at the middle. It is ourselves at the middle; He has moved! “The God who had become the maintainer and sustainer of our status quo…is suddenly eclipsed by the troubling, disturbing, uncontrolled God who decenters our life by coming to us from the margins and beyond to call us to an often unimagined center…God will encounter us in ever more marginalized ways until we …learn to live comfortably in the ever moving center of God’s presence and action in our world.”

So it seems our fingertips that try to find their complementary partner do best to remain in suspension, not enclosing or confining Him into a box. As Jesus’ Disciples realized the “over and above” of Jesus’ acts in the collection of excess fragments from the miraculous feeding (Mt 15:37), so His ways go “exceedingly above all we ask or think” (Eph 3:20). If we give Him the freedom of ever moving, it sounds like we can come into the universe’s room of “comprehending…the depth” (vs 18), “dimensions and sphere of activities of God’s counsels and Christ’s love that occupies that sphere.”

And what will happen when we live in the midst of these exceeding dimensions, rather than attempting to surround them? “To Him be glory in the Church…” (Eph 3:21), “glorifying the God of Israel” (Mt 15:31) at “the revelation and manifestation of all He has and does…”