The freight train to heart led.

[IainH]

Abbreviations: wc= western christianity & WC=Western Civilization. OT=Old Testament & NT= New Testament (in case, someone reading this is new to this forum and Christianity)

     I thought I'd experiment a little and give the Reader's Digest version of how I became heart-led, along with a brief jaunt into why everything is screwed up. It is also parabolic in that my writing is indicative not literal, objective, propositional because reality is not built that way and the latter are constructs of a fallen mind. I'm hoping that others will share their stories. The experiment is to find out if there are any commonalities to what is a God tuned just for you.... "Thing". 
   WC at this juncture has two foundational principles;
   Rationalism and Empiricism, the love children of this unholy union is Humanism and Science, the latter being WC's religion. wc is the faith of the OT and NT washed, filtered and freeze dried through WC.
Before you continue, if you are not familiar with Radix Fidem; STOP and go read the posts that define the tenets of RF, because to get the rest, you should familiarize yourself with it. Indulge me for a moment, I am going into "silliness withdrawal". If I stay serious too long, I get the jones........zoiks!!!
   

  Better, that should filter out those who take our temporary condition too seriously. 
  God created the Heavens and Earth perfectly, it remains so, sinless and unfallen. The original first couple couldn't keep one simple rule and fell, whatever the curse is it altered their genetics and so passed on down to us. We cause creation to groan, cough and sneeze because we are like a virus infecting a healthy body. In a sense, it's one thing environmentalists get right although it comes from a malignant source. "Worshipping the creature rather than Creator" St Paul in Romans 1. 
  The farther we become removed from the Garden, the more detached we are from our natural state of oneness with Creation and the deeper we fall into the pit of reliance on our on reason and intellectual abilities.
  As far as recorded history is concerned; WC is founded on the statement of the ancient Greek Sophist Protagoras "Of all things the measure is Man..." If you wish to go to the Bible, it would be The Tower of Babel and it you're appealing to the convictions of an adherent of wc, it's a good starting point whether it actually happened or is a parable of humans replacing divine revelation with reason, I  say "whatever floats your boat".
    If not for my love of history and questioning nature I would probably still be what I call a "white knuckle" Christian man grimacing my way to sanctification by sheer force of will. "Nietzsche, you got a lot to answer for, PAL!" That typical approach wore me out. The "better man, husband and father" philosophy of the likes of Promisekeepers, inevitably leads to hypocrisy because it is impossible for wc'n men to maintain such standards within the context of WC. Every man I knew who was involved, no longer are. I'm not sure PK is still around. Eventually, wc & WC became bizarre to me.
   One day I picked up my Bible, closed my eyes and flipped back and forth enough times to be truly unsure of where I was. I had stopped in Ecclesiastes and thought "Wisest man who ever lived mmm, good enough" after reading it two or three times it dawned on me "where's the mind?" In twenty-five years of flopping around trying to please God through the mind, following every twist and turn of wc I come to find Solomon the wise, son of the man after God's own "heart"(say whaaat?) writings on Supreme, Holy hard earned Wisdom kept referring to "my heart". I started digging and it was almost like physically being on an archaeological dig. My first assumption, quite natural considering wc, the heart was the OT version of WC mind. That idea got shot full of holes and went down in flames as I dug into the meaning in the original languages. 
End of Part One. More to follow whenever.
Same Bat time* Same Bat Channel   POW! SZLASPLAT!
* Anytime. Excuse typos andand bad punctuation/grammar.

[Ed Hurst]

If you change Iain, I hope it's more of the same. I love your style.

[IainH]

If you change Iain, I hope it's more of the same. I love your style.

Quote "Aren't you kind" Malcolm Merriweather.

[forrealone]

Oh, Iain.  You are such a bless-ed soul!  Me thinks you could/should write a book.  Not a particular topic necessarily but little snippets that pour out just as you do here at RF.

[jaybreak]

For those of you stumbling onto this, here's a rough character profile of Radix Fidem mainstays:

Ed Hurst - prolific patriarch and wise, huggable cynic who puts up with the rest of us
forrealone - the patient earth mother soul who also puts up with us
Iain - the crazy uncle who writes things as above, probably useful in a fight, would pray for hours on end for you
jaybreak - the punk elder-in-training who "tries his best," which is code for "figuring it out as he goes along," which is code for "screws stuff up a lot."

[IainH]

For those of you stumbling onto this, here's a rough character profile of Radix Fidem mainstays:

Ed Hurst - prolific patriarch and wise, huggable cynic who puts up with the rest of us
forrealone - the patient earth mother soul who also puts up with us
Iain - the crazy uncle who writes things as above, probably useful in a fight, would pray for hours on end for you
jaybreak - the punk elder-in-training who "tries his best," which is code for "figuring it out as he goes along," which is code for "screws stuff up a lot."

 1st Thessalonians 5:17, St Paul I like to put the St in front because he is the first elder of the Gentiles and as such deserves the honorific, especially seeing as how his descendents screwed up his teachings. Back to the verse, it's simple enough even I can remember it. PRAYWITHOUTCEASING. See all bunched together like the T church would have seen it, except of course in koine greek. Westernism has difficulty with this verse because we know they take it literally. Ha Ha Guffaw! Idiots! An "attitude" of prayer , it makes NO sense even by western standards. So for those still in the mire, here goes. Parable Warning! 
   Imagine you are me kicked back in my recliner.
   I look out my window and see the Blue Ridge, they are bursting with flora and fauna.
  Deep beneath them trapped in folds of rock is a lot of water.
  The water bubbles up and gives me clean water.
Say Whaaat? Well, that's how it works in a word picture, it's not a riddle. Jesus said often he who has ears let them hear, if you have an active spirit and a revived heart it's simple.
Explain later if needed.

[Ed Hurst]

Jay, "putting up with" works both ways. I'm grateful for every one of you. Further, you are already qualified as elder. I'm still figuring out and screwing up, too.

So Iain, it sounds like you're saying that "pray without ceasing" is the same as tapping into something fresh and ancient that God put there for us. That works for me; prayer is simply focusing your awareness on what God is doing and getting into the flow. It's always there.

[IainH]

Jay, "putting up with" works both ways. I'm grateful for every one of you. Further, you are already qualified as elder. I'm still figuring out and screwing up, too.

So Iain, it sounds like you're saying that "pray without ceasing" is the same as tapping into something fresh and ancient that God put there for us. That works for me; prayer is simply focusing your awareness on what God is doing and getting into the flow. It's always there.

Yes, that is a worthy interpretation and it adds depth to the parable, expanding it beyond the personal. That is a good thing.

[IainH]

My parable, explained.
I intentionally wrote my little parable to be cryptic and open to interpretation through the heart mystical. I shall quite possibly add a line as a guide.
 The Blue Ridge Mountains are teeming with life because of rain and water symbolizes blessing. One of our blessings is prayer. The living mountains are like our conscious awareness. After we consciously pray, like water they flow beneath our awareness and into our hearts where our communion with God is active, continuous and requires no effort because it a work of the Spirit. This is ceaseless prayer. My mountains have many springs. During our quiet times, as we praise our Lord his blessings spring forth as streams of living water and we just can't help ourselves we must freely share our joy with others. At least this is how it works in me. 
  It is such a privilege and an honor to be entrusted with the gift of giving God's blessings to the people I meet.

[jaybreak]

Wish I remembered the fellow's name, but I heard a preacher on the radio, must have been almost 17 years ago, do a sermon on what a genuine prayer life would be like. It's difficult to describe this certain part, but he ended up talking real low and fast, almost a murmur, describing the exact same thing you did, Iain, but with his word choice, etc. His style reminded me of a toned-down tent revivalist mixed with southern black sermonizing, but it was altogether different. If he wasn't black, he sure was trained or brought up in that tradition.

The thing of it was, he was demonstrating what he was describing: an constant undercurrent of communion with God that once in a while manifested sensually, like through out-loud prayer. The genius of it obviously stuck with me.