Category: Truth/lie

Why the iniquities of the Fathers matter

4/1/2016

This is long. I have had a lot of questions about generational sin and whether it is scriptural. Hopefully, this article will clear up some of those concerns.

Introduction: This paper is not about original sin in any way. I am not advocating the despicable doctrine propagated by the likes of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, which is still a major tenet of many denominations today. We are not conceived as sinful beings. We are born into a world ruled by sin and sinful people. We are fearfully and wonderfully made by YHVH. Yet, from the moment of conception we are governed by both the physical genetics of our parents and also their spiritual history.

Throughout the Word of Elohim, we are instructed to teach our children the ways of YHVH. We are also instructed about the consequences of not doing so. “I, YHVH your elohim am a jealous el, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the third and fourth generation.” (Ex 20:5; Ex 34:7; Deut 5:9; Num 14:18)

The word translated “visiting” in English is the Hebrew word poqad - from the root paqad (פָקָד) meaning to number, visit, muster, appoint. It is the same word used twice in Numbers 4:49 for appointing as well as numbering or counting. Perhaps if we use the term counting or numbering instead of visiting, we would see a different picture. Is it possible YHVH is saying that He will number or count the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation? If so how is this different than what we normally associate with this verse?

Separate But Equal

7/30/2014

Really?

Some may bristle with my comparisons today and that is ok. Bristling means to me that I am about to find out something about myself. Usually, it’s because I am holding onto a need to be right. Once in a great while, a very great while, it is because I am coming up against something that is not good. I pray that today’s post causes a bristling against something that is not good.

Separate but equal. The same but different. You can have input (as a woman), but I (as the man) have the final say. Hmm. I have heard these phrases used in church settings to cut the sharp edge of genderism, to placate a woman who is having problems being casted as second class. Problem is that these terms have been repeatedly used in other situations where people were considered second class.

I will never forget the shockwave that went through me as I watched the movie, The Help, the first time.There is a scene where Hilly (a white affluent female in 1960’s Mississippi) is having an outside toilet installed for her black maid. She says something to the effect: “Now isn’t this nice? Your own bathroom. Separate but equal.”

WoW! I thought. That’s me in church. This is where the bristling may occur. How can I compare women in church to the problem of black suppression? Easy. In my last post (read through it if you haven’t), you will see that church has for the last 2000 years portrayed women as subhuman or at best less than. This is exactly how black people were treated in this country for years. Do you think for a minute that being told they were equal when everything about them had to be separate, when everything about them was seen as inferior, when they were not considered capable of thinking for themselves, made them believe it? Of course not. Human beings are human beings created in the image of YHVH, regardless of their skin color, their eye shape, or their sex.

Domination over another human being is not scriptural. It is part of what we have inherited from the church fathers where women are concerned. It may seem unrelated but when a people group is singled out as needing to be controlled or dominated in the sense that they cannot function without being told what to do or even worse, do not have the right to function without being told what to do (given permission/covering) by the powers that be, we will end up with an abused/hated group of people - all justified with Scripture! The Jews did it to the Samaritans, Hitler did it to the Jews, Muslims do it to the world, and church leaders do it to women - and also men who cannot further their agenda.

Where in Scripture is injustice ever tolerated? Where in Scripture are we told 1/2 of humanity is to be accused, abused, and berated? “ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Um. I may be missing something here, but does that include men and women? Ahhh, but what about Paul? Yes, what about Paul?

and the band plays on . . . .

If you tell a big enough lie often enough . . .

7/24/2014

I have spent the first few postings on this predicament trying to discover what is meant by the Hebrew term ezer k’negdo. I want to know what it means to me as a woman. What was I brought into creation for?

My struggle is largely the part of me that will not accept that I am nothing more to YHVH than a slave laborer and baby maker; that my purpose must always remain inferior to that of a man. I know there are women out there who say they have not been treated like this. I am happy for you. The traditional church has definitely made some headway with respect to women and how they are viewed and this is good. I am not convinced, however, that the roots of the misogyny tree have been pulled up and cast into the fire. These roots go deep and their fruit is still in evidence today. We are subjected to it by misguided men whom I have watched disrespect women by walking out on them when they speak, using them sexually and when it goes south, blaming the ‘Jezebel’, and banging their chests like Tarzan and yelling, “You will not usurp my authority!”

From the text in Genesis, various other places in Scripture, and from many early to late Jewish writings, the intent and position of the woman is shown to be one of equality and honor. (Clearly, some Jewish writings and prayers do denigrate women, but by and large, that is not the case.) Yeshua, himself was especially attentive to women and related to them as he related to anyone else. Did the culture cause problems for women? Definitely! Was it ok with YHVH for women to be treated as property? No. Is our culture any different? Has context been sacrificed for a doctrine that says men are somehow better than and more capable than women?

What follows is not nice. But it must be brought to light if we are to understand where this way of thinking came from and why it persists today. I will start close to Yeshua’s day and move forward to today. Please, google and discover that I am not making this up. (See author's comments in purple)

160-225 CE: Church Father Tertullian: “You [woman] are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die.” So Yeshua, who died for all, died more for women and less for men?

150-215 CE: St. Clement of Alexandria (Greek Father of the Church) : "Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman...the consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame"

347-407 CE: St. John Chrysostom (Bishop of Constantinople) : "It does not profit a man to marry. For what is a woman but an enemy of friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a domestic danger, delectable mischief, a fault in nature, painted with beautiful colors?...The whole of her body is nothing less than phlegm, blood, bile, rheum and the fluid of digested food ... If you consider what is stored up behind those lovely eyes, the angle of the nose, the mouth and the cheeks you will agree that the well-proportioned body is only a whitened sepulchre."

347-420 CE: St. Jerome (well known scholar) : "Woman is the root of all evil.

354–430 CE: St. Augustine (Doctor of the Church and Bishop of Hippo) : "I don't see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes procreation. If woman is not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?" Augustine’s arrogance basically says that if YHVH were really smart he would not have created woman as his helper.

480 - 524 CE: Boethius (Christian Philosopher) : "Woman is a temple built upon a sewer.”

540-604 CE: Pope Gregory: "Woman is slow in understanding and her unstable and naive mind renders her by way of natural weakness to the necessity of a strong hand in her husband. Her 'use' is two fold; sex and motherhood."

1200-1280 CE: St. Albertus Magnus (Doctor of the Church) : "Woman is less qualified [than man] for moral behavior.
"Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his"

1225-1274 CE: Thomas Acquinas: "Woman was made only to assist with procreation."

1483-1586 CE: Martin Luther: "Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house and bear and bring up children"

"If a woman grows weary and at last dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing, she is there to do it."

"the wife should stay at home and look after the affairs of the household as one who has been deprived of the ability of administering those affairs that are outside and concern the state…."

"There is no gown or garment that worse becomes a woman than when she would be wise." Martin Luther’s vitriol against women is second only to his anti semitism.

1509 -1564 CE: John Calvin: "All women are born that they may acknowledge themselves as inferior to the male."

1703-1791 CE: John Wesley, founder of Methodist movement (1703-1791), letter to his wife, July 15, 1774: . . .of what importance is your character to mankind, if you was buried just now Or if you had never lived, what loss would it be to the cause of God.

1992 CE: Pat Robertson, Southern Baptist leader, fundraising letter July 1992: The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

1999 CE: James Fowler, Women in the Church, 1999: The Holiness of God is not evidenced in women when they are brash, brassy, boisterous, brazen, head-strong, strong-willed, loud-mouthed, overly-talkative, having to have the last word, challenging, controlling, manipulative, critical, conceited, arrogant, aggressive, assertive, strident, interruptive, undisciplined, insubordinate, disruptive, dominating, domineering, or clamoring for power. This is character unbecoming to ANY believer, not just women! Rather, women accept God’s holy order and character by being humbly and unobtrusively respectful and receptive in functional subordination to God, church leadership, and husbands.

This is where we are and it is not ok, beloved.

It Is Not Good . . .

7/13/2014

Adam has been given his job description and has named the animals. What happened between Genesis 1:31 when it was ‘very good’ and Genesis 2:18 that it had become ‘not good’? YHVH does not make mistakes, so what is going on here? There are any number of commentaries and speculations as to why this suitable helper had to be brought forth and some make sense while others are, in my opinion, products of fanciful imaginations. In some cases ideas that are generated out of myths and opinions have been forced backward into the narrative to prove specific doctrinal bias. May I propose an idea that is supported by the text but not generally talked about?

Let me start by addressing the ‘who sinned first’ issue. We are taught (or at least I was) from the time we can think that Eve ate first and therefore she brought the sinful state to mankind and had to be punished - or variations on that theme. Scripture is used, including creation and Genesis 3:16 to ‘prove’ that she is the problem and needs to be controlled. I propose that sin did not enter because of Adam and Chavah’s disobedience. It was already there. The rebellion of the angels had already established sin, which by definition is disobedience to YHVH. Let's look at the phrase in Romans 5:12 - for by one man sin entered. The word in the original Greek for entered is: eisdechomai which means to open to or enter in and does not carry the idea that this is where sin began; that if not for Eve and Adam’s disobedience there would be no sin. Perhaps a better way to say this would be “Adam opened the door to sin, which was already sitting outside and could be just as rightly be stated "for by one man the door was opened to sin,’ which correctly establishes sin as previously existing, as opposed to the biased translation that supports man and by extension, woman as the first sinner. This would be the first time humankind sinned, but according to Scripture's own definition, not how sin entered the world.

Next, I would like to point out that the Adam (humankind pre separation into man and woman) had been given instructions. One of those instructions was to guard or protect the garden. From what? The animals were content at this time to cohabit with one another. Abba and the Adam were in fellowship together. My question is this: What was Nachash (the shining or luminous one, translated as serpent) doing in the garden? Had the human already been less than attentive to the guard duties before the separation occurred? Was there a door that had been left unprotected, unguarded?

To understand this, the phrase- ezer kenegdo - needs to be defined. We will be looking at it from the original language and how Scripture itself uses these words and how they establish a purpose or function that could not be fully realized outside of the separation of the Adam into man and woman.

to be continued . . .

CONUNDRUM

7/3/2014

This post is the first of several looking at the doctrine of female submission. I have been told I am a glutton for punishment. It's probably true, otherwise, why would I be taking on this subject? I am going to try, to the best of my ability, to look at what Scripture says, and not what I have been told and/or taught it says. Please, bear with me. I do not claim to have it all figured out, but I do know from personal experience that there are enough problems and contradictions with this way of thinking to warrant a serious re-thinking of it. Let’s try real hard not to impose post creation paradigms to this. Just for the sake of humoring me, let’s pretend that all we have is what we are told in the first two chapters of Genesis. Here we go . . .

During the week of creation, YHVH separated. He separated the water from the water, the water from the land, and the light from the dark. YHVH finishes His creation work and pronounces it “very good.” He gave instruction to the Adam to cultivate the land, and to keep (shamar - to watch, preserve and guard over) the garden, and to not eat of a specific tree. In Gen 2:18 YHVH says, “It is not good for the Adam (humankind) to be alone.” What is meant by this? He was not “alone”. Adam had one-on-one intimate contact with YHVH. Adam had relationship with the Creator and they fellowshipped together. This word (alone) in the Hebrew is from the root 'bad' and means separation; a part. Hmmm. Interesting.

What most seem to dismiss is that the Adam was man/woman unseparated (Gen. 2:23). The “man/woman” became man and woman only when they were separated. Did YHVH make a mistake in creating one being with both attributes? The text says He created this being “in our image.” Based on this, what can we understand? The Adam (complete humankind) was created in the image of YHVH and included in the Adam was the possibility of separating the Adam into different manifestations - man and woman. I believe it can be logically observed from the text that when YHVH said it is not good for the Adam to be alone that it could also mean - it is not good for the Adam to be unseparated.

Just as YHVH has different manifestations in his Echad (oneness), he created the man in this likeness. The different manifestations of YHVH include His physical manifestation in Yeshua and the manifestation of His Ruach (Spirit) which dwells within His children. This is NOT three gods in one, it is One God with different manifestations.* I believe that at the time of the separating of the man/woman, there was a prophetic inkling of the possibility of YHVH separating Himself into humankind as The Messiah and a short time later as a way of putting His Spirit within us.

Did the separating make one manifestation less than the other? Are not both manifestations still the Image of YHVH? The idea of creation establishing a hierarchical order for men and women simply cannot be supported if we believe that Adam, literally humankind, inclusive of man and woman, was created in YHVH’s image. Either they both are the image of YHVH and as such equal bearers of that image or YHVH lied.

More to come . . .

*Semantics. Could be, but one of the things I am coming to terms with is the way language is used and abused. The three gods/persons-in-one concept is not Scriptural in relation to YHVH.

TRUTH or CONSEQUENCES

6/27/2014

I think I have mentioned this before. I am a live-in caregiver for my aunt, my dad’s sister. I love her dearly, but anyone who has done this job knows it comes with many challenges. A group of ladies meet here every friday for “bible study”. This is actually a misnomer as we do not actually study the bible. We get books and read them chapter by chapter and gather from week to week to discuss the material in the books.

We are presently reading Philip Yancy’s The Jesus You Never Knew. Throughout my time with my aunt, I have participated in these studies and have formed some interesting friendships with these lovely ladies. I appreciate that the ladies who come allow me to interject an ‘Hebraic’ understanding and yet I do not see that it has made much of an impact.

Case in point is the chapter we went through today. Chapter 9 titled: Death: the final week, dealing with the week just preceding Yeshua’s death on the stake. Sometimes, it is such a struggle. I mean the writing is from a totally ‘christian’ perspective without so much as a shred of context that has anything to do with why or how the events unfolded as they did.

There are speculation and opinion and statements made that cram the events into a “christian” paradigm which did not exist until the 4th century. Until that time followers of Yeshua were known as followers of The Way - a sect of Judaism that was recognized as Judaism. Now, there were leaders who didn’t like The Way, but never was there a question that those who believed that Yeshua was their Messiah were anything but Jewish in their practice and belief. Similarly today, we have Baptists and Methodists and Pentecostals, and although they have differences in the way they practice their belief, not one of these groups would state that the others were not christian.

I commented that the waving of palm branches at the triumphal entry into Jerusalem was not, nor has it ever been a Pesach tradition. It was customarily done at the Feast of Tabernacles and is laid out in Lev. 23:40. The people waving branches just before Yeshua’s death were under the impression that the kingdom of YHVH was being ushered in and Yeshua was the Messiah/King/Anointed One who was to rule; the time when YHVH would once again “tabernacle” among His people, a thoroughly “Jewish” concept!

Uncomfortable silence. Furtive glances back and forth. Here she goes again. One of the women said she did not know this and thought it was interesting. One wondered why the author would come from any other perspective than a christian one since he was a christian writing to christians. I open my mouth again. Why would you not want to see these events in the light of their original context instead of trying to force it into a paradigm established three to four hundred years after the fact?!?!

All the doors are shut, now. You can just hear the wheels turning - I like it the way I like it and am NOT going to listen to this. I am familiar with this place. I know that the Father uses me in a way that provides people with an opportunity to do the right thing.

Years ago, I was led to put together a challenge to a large Denver area school district. It dealt with the psychological teaching methods being used which had been proven to be damaging to the adults subjected to them let alone foisting them onto unsuspecting children. In the car on my way to the hearing, I heard the Ruach say, “This isn’t going to change anything.” In my calm and gentle way - NOT - I pounded on the steering wheel and asked rather rudely, “Then what am I doing it for?” The answer I got was to forever change the issue I had with the way Abba has chosen to use me. He said, “Because they will not ever be able to say again - I didn’t know.” From this point forward, they are not being led down the proverbial primrose path without knowledge. They now know that what they are doing is causing damage and they will be held accountable for their participation, if not by the “law”, most certainly by YHVH. The end result of this encounter was a letter from the district stating that they understood the potential risks but were not going to change anything because what they were doing was not against the law.

I will continue to allow the Father to speak through me, even though it means uncomfortable silences and eye rolling and even rejection. I remember how hard it was to come to terms with the fact that a lot of what I believed was a lie, but it never occurred to me to reject Truth to stay in the lie. This is what I struggle with: when the agenda of a school district is more important than the children’s lives, when your comfort level in what you currently believe is more important than the Truth. . .

the new tower of babel in reverse

6/23/2014

DECONSTRUCTION:

A linguistic theory that applies to techniques for reading texts developed by Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, and others; these techniques in turn are connected to a set of philosophical claims about language and meaning. The term has been used to describe what happens when texts are allowed to mean whatever a person wants them to mean. That is to say that a word or phrase can have as many definitions as the number of people reading it, thus making the word or phrase meaning-less.

We have seen what culture does to language in our lifetime. Certain terms have morphed into something not remotely resembling their original intent. A few days ago, I visited a website and scrolled down to read some comments. Now, I do not do this very often as it tends to make me cranky, and I suppose this case turned out to be pretty normal, as far as the crankiness goes, because here I am blogging about it!

apostasy: wikipedia: from the Greek word apostasia ("ἀποστασία") meaning defection, departure, revolt or rebellion. It has been described as "a willful falling away from, or rebellion against. "Apostasy is a theological category describing those who have voluntarily and consciously abandoned their faith in the God of the covenant, who manifests himself most completely in Jesus Christ."[3] Another way of saying this is: falling away from the Truth.

The posted comment stated: Apostasy is the mass rejection of christianity. Maybe I am nitpicking, but I think the things we say, how we say them, and the reasons we say them are critical. The power of life and death is in the tongue. Too many Scriptures dealing with this to list. The message is clear. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

The definition of apostasy is not mass rejection of christianity. It is the falling away from the Truth. In order to fall away from the Truth, you have to have known it. "christianity" is a religion. You can be a “christian” and have a relationship with the One True Living God, but you can also be a "christian" and not have one. Yeshua was not a christian and neither was Peter, John or Paul. As Believers in Messiah, we are the body of Messiah. It is not, nor has it ever been the world/enemy against christians. It is about The Lie masquerading as Truth to deceive if it were possible, even the elect, the body of Messiah.

Mt. Carmel: showdown of the gods

6/20/2014

Sea of Galillee 3.2014

In March of this year, I took a trip to Israel, the 2nd time I’ve been. My desire this time was to get a better feel for the lay of the land and Abba was good to do that. It is my hope to eventually go back to work for or minister in some way to the people there.

One of the places on our itinerary was Mt. Carmel. It wasn’t part of the tour my first time. I took the time to pray about the places we would be visiting wanting to hear if there was something specific the Father wanted me to know or understand. All I got about Mt. Carmel was that it was really important. I was to pay attention and focus on what had happened there during Elijah’s lifetime.

It wasn’t an especially noteworthy day the day we visited Mt. Carmel. There was a serious haze over the land for the first few days of the tour due to major dust storms in Lebanon and it prevented me from getting nice clear pictures. More on that later. I am not impressed with all the ‘religious’ trappings and hype surrounding many of the places tourists go to in Israel. Mostly, I am overwhelmed that serious God stuff happened where I am standing and I was waiting to hear or see what Abba wanted to show me about Mt. Carmel.

Nothing came while we were there, but in the bus traveling to our next destination, this is what I got: The original battle at Mt. Carmel - Elijah vs. the prophets of Baal - was not between believers and non-believers. It was between those who believed in the One True Living God, YHVH Elohim, and those who believed in another god.

The battle that is going to be fought again will not be a battle between believers and unbelievers, but this is the scenario that is played out for the religious in teachings and sermons and media. We are led to believe it is the ultimate battle between good and evil, the churchers and the atheists, the religious and the non-religious. No.

It will be like before, a battle between believers. There are believers who walk (halak) in the way (derech) of YHVH and there are those who SAY they do but worship only a god of their own making, a god that the Jews of history do not recognize as the God of the Tenakh. The Jesus of christianity has been so far removed from His Jewish roots in mainstream churches that he is literally ‘another Jesus’. This Jesus offers easy grace without repentance or he is the mean guy that will send you to hell for questioning the leaders. Many Jesuses. Many Baals. Just like before, there is going to be a showdown between the prophets of the false gods and those who walk (halak) in the Way (derech) of the One True Living Elohim. This is jihad - holy war - a war of gods fought by believers in those gods.

We see it all around us. I look at what is going on in the world and I feel as if a lead weight has been laid on my chest. Who doesn’t believe in something? Christians are tortured and murdered because they do not accept another belief. Hundreds of young girls are kidnapped in Nigeria because “western education is a sin” (translation of boko haram) and one can only imagine what they are being subjected to for the purpose of programming them into another belief system. Three young Israeli men are kidnapped because they are Jewish and can be used as bargaining chips for the other religion. We are no talking about prisoners of war, we are talking about innocent people being used and abused for the sake of advancing belief systems.

The earthly New World Order is not a secular movement. It is the religion of intellectual enlightenment of the few working to control the rest of the world. The programs and techniques that have been put into place to coerce and force compliance to their agenda are terrible and unimaginable to those of us who have been fortunate enough to have escaped the worst. There are survivors who have tried to tell their stories but they are so horrific our minds can’t get around the facts and so they are labeled lunatics not only by the very people who perpetrated the horrors, but also by us - who simply cannot believe human beings capable of such things. Is that because we have also been programmed at some level? Interesting question. Remember - the deception will be so good that even the very elect could be deceived if that were possible.

Let’s go back to the haze in Israel that prevented me from taking clear pictures. In my previous post, I mentioned that there is often an obvious correlation between the physical and the spiritual. The picture that I have included with this post is one I took of the sun over the Sea of Galilee, however, because of the haze, it actually looks more like the moon. Was this an indication of how the deception works? I certainly have more questions than answers today.

The Bridge or the River

5/17/2014

A while back, the under shepherd of our little congregation used this picture to emphasize a point he was making. I have been thinking about it ever since. Look at it carefully. It is a picture of a bridge and river. It is real and has not been photoshopped.

In 1998 Hurricane Mitch ravaged Central America. 5,600 people died in the storm and more than 12,300 were injured. Over 150 bridges in Honduras were destroyed but the Choluteca Bridge was engineered and constructed so well it survived intact. The Japanese company that built the Choluteca Bridge was so proud of their workmanship they put a photo of the bridge on their company brochure. The storm was so severe it actually shifted the river, which now flows around the bridge instead of under it. It is a very sturdy bridge to nowhere, without any useful function. A ton of applications could be made, but I will go the way I am led.

For years, I have studied to determine my purpose and function as a woman of YHVH according to Scripture. It is not meant to be disrespectful, although to some it seems that way. I am not trying to be a feminist, although I am often labeled so. It is not my intent to argue or convince anyone. I just want to know the truth. Am I, as a woman of Yah, bound to interpretation of Scripture that cannot sustain itself? Is the call on my life any less important than that of a man? And yet . . . I have often been confined to certain spheres of influence. I don’t mind these at all, but to say that because I am a woman I cannot exercise my influence beyond a specific point is unscriptural, unsupported from Jewish history, and doesn’t fit with Yeshua’s ministry. Contradictions within the very passages used to support this doctrine abound and must be reconciled for YHVH is not the author of confusion.

All ancient literature is read with an understanding of its original context, language, and type. The Scriptures must be read this way as well, if we are to get any kind of understanding of what it is trying to tell us. Lifting sentences or passages out of their defining context to support what it does not say is to violate the intent of the author - in this case - YHVH. Scripture must be read with an understanding of when it was written and what it was addressing for that time if we are to correctly apply it to our lives today.

This is an ongoing issue for me. I will continue to elaborate as I am led and hopefully bring some light into a situation that causes frustration for not only women, but men as well. Will we be the unmoving bridge of doctrine and tenets of faith with limited function as proscribed by tradition OR will we be the River of Life that flows unimpeded according to the will of the Father as He established in His word?

Getting it Right Day 6

2/19/2014

This poem was written ten years after the initial poems in this exchange. A long time, or so it used to seem. I did a study once on time and tried to understand the unusual concept that YHVH does not operate within the time/space continuum. A day is as a thousand years to Him, a thousand years as a day - at any rate put that way so we get, to some small degree, the differences between Him and us. As I understand it, YHVH doesn’t measure time, He measures progress, direction, obedience. We are the ones who make time limits - perhaps because we are so limited.

You will see that what began ten years before is still in progress. What has changed? I have moved from recognizing there is a problem, to identifying the problem, to applying truth to the problem, and now (2007) to a new paradigm of operating within my Father’s boundaries.

Discovering my intended function and purpose as a woman has been a difficult and sometimes terrifying task. Breaking out of the small, confining, and destructive image created in the minds of males (and sadly at times, other females) is no small feat. I heard at every turn that I was rebelling against God by refusing to accept that I was less than, second class, deficient somehow, the cause and continuation of the world’s ills, all because I was woman.

I am ezer kenegdo! I am eshet chayil! As a very special new friend confirmed recently - I am awake - not perfect - but definitely awake! I am in process, moving forward, and not looking back. I am becoming what my Creator intended. And I am in excellent company! Praise YHVH for sisters and brothers who are willing to recognize there is a problem, to identify the problem, to apply TRUTH to the problem, and accept a new paradigm of operating within the Father’s boundaries.

BECOMING by Sherri Rogers, 2007

Dissolving in my tears that flow unimpeded
from somewhere so deep I’ve never been,
The pain is excruciating.
I cry out in anguish as the chasm deepens
And the trickle becomes a raging torrent
Gushing from places I didn’t know existed,
Carrying with it flux and debris long entrenched
Like huge boulders mostly buried in mountain rivers.

Massive ideas and perceptions, abuses,
That shaped my soul into what I thought was me.
O, gentle eroding water-Word
O, insistent, persistent Spirit-wind
How frustrating, how uncomfortable,
how thorough, how welcome.

And I wonder how much my impatience increases my pain.
My inability to wait quietly
Accepting the process
Allowing it to do the work, and yet . . .
I have been told to seek, to push, to come up higher, to delve deeper.

Teach me O, Breath of God, Spirit that is my life
what is my work and what is Yours and
Who I am and what I am to become.