Goodbye and Hello!
Drum Roll please…..
This is my last blog post.
ON THIS SITE! HERETICS IS MAKING A MOVE! We are moving and we want you to join us at www.hereticsblog.com.
I’m so PUMPED about the move and I want you to join us! Today’s post is already up over on the site so jump on over and take a look.
A couple of quick notes… if you subscribe to my blog via rss feed or via email feed you’ll need to hop over there and sign up for the new feed (sorry one minor convenience of the switch).
With the updated blog will hopefully come consistently updated blog posts (using all my faith).
And to find out more you’ll have to check it out for yourself. So join us at www.hereticsblog.com and see what you can find for yourself!
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Why I’ve been quiet.
If you follow me much you know the occasional hiatus is normal for heretics… but there is a better reason this time for why we haven’t been seen or heard from in a week or two. We are getting a face-lift. I’m working with an awesome designer for a whole new look, a whole new site, and a whole new thought process for heretics and I can’t wait to unveil it to you… but i have to … because it isn’t quite finished yet. But I wanted to let you know why I’ve been quiet…that awesome things are just around the corner. So hold on just a tad longer and I’ll let you in on the whole kit and kaboodle! Thanks for being such awesome readers!
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Imitation will break Limitation
People tend to make following the anointing very personal. Everyone is trying to “give their supply”… the only problem is that most of us don’t start out with any clue of what that actually means.
Here’s a simple way to learn how to flow in the anointing and eventually discover how to give your supply.
1. Follow your leader. It’s that simple… follow them as they follow Christ. Assume that you are a moron and that they know more than you (after all God did put them in charge of you). If they question something, assume there is a reason they are questioning it…
I learned to follow the anointing in my life by imitating the leaders ahead of me. If Apostle David or my mom or dad had an unction to do something (especially something that seemed “wrong” to me) rather than fighting it I finally learned to question it. Not in the sense of “they shouldn’t be doing that… why are they doing that…” but in the sense of really wondering “why are they doing that?” what is it that they are picking up on that I’m not, or what are they seeing that I’m not. It was in those places that I learned to flow in the anointing.
Often our first response to these interjections by these people is to think “that’s not right” … or “that doesn’t fit the way I would do it… so it must be wrong”… or “if you’re gonna do it … you just do it… I’ll get out of the way”. There is this offense that comes because we are mad that we were “corrected”. When in actuality it had to do with my own pride, my own desire to “please”, my own insecurities of trying to always be perfect. Anyway, until I get past being offended and learn to pursue after why my leader was questioning or changing or doing something different. So that I changed my thinking to be like theirs, not so their thinking would change to be like mine. I had to learn to value the leaders over me. By doing that I became an imitator of them. As I began to imitate them, I would discover what it was that they were actually seeing. As I began to discover that it changed how I gave my supply. See the anointing is not going to conform to your skills, instead your skills must conform to the anointing. It’s not about this great knowledge of how to speak, or how to create music, or how pray… instead it’s about finding what He’s seeing and making my knowledge of how to speak, or how to play music, or how to pray conform to the anointing. This is the trap… we conform God’s anointing to our image instead of conforming our image to His anointing.
So it starts this simple. How do I know the anointing? I follow my leader. In following the anointed leader over me and valuing them more than my knowledge, my wisdom, and my way of doing things… I will discover the heart of the anointing and I will be transformed from my natural ability into a realm of supernatural that aligns my natural ability with His supernatural ability and the anointing will flow. It’s only in the crushing of our will, our wisdom, and our desires and exchanging them for His that we will see the anointing.
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Tags: anointing, change, following, heretic, imitation, imitator, Leadership, transformation
Ash Trays
I hate cigarettes. The smell just drives me crazy. Have you ever had to wait at a restaurant and been stuck next to the ash tray outside. Oh gosh… it has to be the worst place ever. Every cheap cigarette in the world and a few that look like they are from some other world ends up shoved in the same place… and the odor tends to waft across your nostrils and violently invade your clothing.
I passionately abhor those few moments of waiting next to the ever smoking cigarette parking spaces.
What’s the point… The question is what do you do when you’re burning out? Where do you rub out the burn out?
Let’s take a quick look at some typical ash trays that we use during burnout. (at least I’ve used them).
1. ESCAPE.
Our tendency is that when we feel that we are wanting to burnout that we need to “step back from it all”. We think that we have too much on our plate, that we are “too involved”, or that we are taxing ourselves too much. If there is one thing I’ve discovered it’s that escaping our pressure is not the solution to burnout. I don’t care who wrote a book on it or who told you it worked… escaping doesn’t fix burnout… it just gets you away from the flame. I’ve discovered that increasing the pressure, upping the intensity, and throwing more of myself into the fire will solve burnout every time. Think of it this way, a fire will burnout without wood, so you need to up the parts of your life that it is burning, not pull the logs out that you have. Perspective doesn’t come from distance, it comes from orientation. Stepping back may give you a different look, but not necessarily a better one. When you start to see the signs of burnout (see yesterday’s blog)… up the ante… don’t bail out. (ps. everyone needs a vacation from time to time… I’m talking about more than one week off … even I need a week away from time to time… but I was referencing taking more than just a few days).
2. CLIQUING.
It’s the oldest cliche in the book, but birds of a feather flock together. People who are experiencing burnout look for other people who are burnt out. None of us want to be challenged by impassioned people while we are feeling burned out. It reminds us of our inadequacies and our insecurity flames up instead of the rest of us! We seek out other people who are disgruntled, we become their champions, their defenders, and we find a tiny flame in defending them and we think… wow I must be getting my spark back… when really you are just blowing on dead embers and getting a tiny rise out of them as they float away. This is one of those times to do the opposite of what you are thinking. Run to the people who make your burnout show up the most. Yeah it doesn’t make sense… but it’s this simple. Getting around people who are on fire will help you get on fire… if you draw out of them what gets them fired up. I think it’s like I have this natural aversion to those people a lot of times because I’m afraid they will judge my lack of fire… but that’s actually exactly what I need! I need them to judge my fire and why it’s not burning brighter. I need their help!
3. BURNT LIPS
The funniest thing ever is to see a smoker with a burnt lip. I want to say “serves you right dufus”. But how often do we pretend that we aren’t burning out and end up with a burned lip. I mean some part of us ends up in pain and scarred because we refused to admit we were burning out and we responded the wrong way. Don’t ignore burnout and pretend it’s not happening to you. That’s actually more harmful than isolating… because one day you will suddenly be gone and not even know why. It’s the subtle silent killer. It will just wipe you out! You’ll be left confused … wondering why something happened and why you didn’t see it coming… etc etc…. and bridges will be burned and you’ll have a hard time going back. IF YOU ARE BURNED OUT …. GET HELP FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE ON FIRE! TODAY! Don’t wait. If you have a problem with those people, if you are having symptoms from yesterday’s blog… get help. I have to, you need to, we all do. It’s part of life to burnout from time to time…. but it doesn’t have to snuff you out completely!
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Tags: burnout, challenge, change, cliquing, heretic, Leadership, smoking
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
I love that song. John Mayer does a terrific job with it.
Yet, I wonder how many of us are actually slow dancing in a burning room.
Burnout is hell. Really it is. In burnout you find yourself truly separated from God, from people, and usually from hope. If there is one thing I have seen take out hundreds (literally) of leaders… it would be burnout.
Here’s the problem with burnout… most people never knew they were burning until it was too late. And then when they finally realized they were burning they thought that something recent had caused it.
Let me give you a few tips for NEVER BURNING OUT! I’ve burned out a time or two in my life, and there is one thing I know… it doesn’t have to happen. You don’t have to burn out. Every time I burned out… there was a reason.
Early Warning Signs
1. SHARP CURVE AHEAD. Anytime life takes an unexpected turn, a variance from expectation, a twist from what you wanted. Burnout can start. See it’s in those times that you have to operate on the reserves of previous faith built. Those aren’t moments that faith is built, those are moments that faith is used. A ton of people try to say that faith is built in the hard times, but it’s not … faith is built in the day to day little things. It’s used in the twists and turns and in the unexpected moments.
2. ISOLATION. Anytime you find yourself getting away from the faithful voices in your life and justifying it. There have been times that I’ve been starting to burnout and because I’m not man enough to blame myself and not brave enough to blame God, then my blame shifts to the next closest thing… those who love and care for me. I begin to twist their motives, paranoia creeps in, and before you know it I’ve separated myself from the very hope I have in the people around me. I box myself into a tiny room with my own thoughts, my own problems, and my own fears … before long I’m tormented by non existent enemies and threatened by acts of love and grace. All of that soon turns to blame and finger pointing and before long I’ve built walls between me and my way of escape.
3. WRONG VOICES. Exposure … affects us. You can’t go hang out in a -60 degree snowstorm and not expect it to change you. In the same way, you can’t listen to disgruntled voices or impassioned disbelievers without being affected by it. There may be times that I need a limited exposure to the other side to be aware of where someone is… but if I spend more than a few seconds in that place I will begin to be warped by the very atmosphere around them. Especially if 1 and 2 are already going on in my life. There are places that the church builds a safe covering for me to reach out to others without being affected by the environment, but that is always done through spiritual oversight and God’s wisdom… not through my own self improvised tactics for “restoration”.
4. IGNORING. The number one warning sign of burnout (and I saved it for last cause it’s the one I want you to remember) is ignoring God. Oh you think you aren’t… that’s why it’s so hard. Simple test for ignoring God… take at least 2 weeks after you see any warning signs for 1-3 and spend every morning waking up at 5:30am and worshiping for an hour, then pray in tongues every day for at least 3 hours during that time. Then meditate at least one book of the bible during that same time. Then make sure you get your butt into every church opportunity available during that time. If you come out the other side and are still burned out… email me. See … It’s not possible to be CLOSE TO GOD and burned out at the same time. If so you’re close to the wrong god. Every time I draw near to the divine creator of the universe my burnout disappears and my energy is renewed… more pursuit equals greater grace.
Are you burning out… and weren’t aware? Are you slow dancing in a burning room and not aware of it?
Tomorrow we will look at ways we try to solve burnout that only make it worse. (Once again I’ve tried them all 
)
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Tags: burnout, change, committiment, heretic, Leadership, thinking right, transformation
A great friend of mine is doing a terrific set with an almost identical title over at his blog www.rickypatrick.com/blog
So I thought in the spirit of things I am going to write a piece that parallels the antithesis of his blog for a few days. Read his first… it’s much better than mine. Do his first… it’s more effective than mine. Then read mine… somewhere in the future … and think of the downside to getting it right. (PS. I THINK WE SHOULD ALL DO MORE OF WHAT HE SAYS… this isn’t a rebuttal to his blog… it’s an addendum).
So without further adieu I begin my list of how to lose influence and frustrate leaders.
1. Become a good listener.
If there is one thing I’ve found about people who are good listeners. They are just that GOOD LISTENERS! I love to work with good listeners (usually). The only problem is that most people have no idea what a listener is. Most people think that listening is shutting up, never interrupting, and taking good notes on what people say. (AHEM >>> THIS IS A GREAT PLACE TO START IF YOU STINK AT LISTENING). However, truly GREAT listeners… don’t act like GOOD listeners. The people in my life that I think of us some of the people who listen to me the best are people who are semi-rude with their interruptions, they actively argue and engage me with their own thoughts and ideas, and they wrestle about and never take notes without wanting me to take the same notes .
Now just because you do all of those things, doesn’t mean you are great listener… you might just be an obnoxious pain in the rear. However, I don’t think those are the things that make you a bad listener either. Ricky, in his blog, really nailed down 2 things that I think make GREAT LISTENERS! (NEITHER ARE A SPECIFIC ACTION).
A. GENUINE INTEREST. Genuine interest can be expressed a ton of ways. If I’m really interested in a new movie coming out… I go seek out more information about it, I engage friends in conversations about it, I spend time finding out more about it, I change my schedule to plan for it. However, I think in our prim and proper “listening” society that we’ve taken away the strength of truly listening. Genuine listeners seek to verify communication, they seek to confirm their own thoughts and feelings about the communication, they engage to draw out more from the person by asking questions and even making “provocative” statements to determine more about the person’s thoughts. The point is though… it’s not about their great revelation or information… it’s about focusing on GENUINELY drawing out of the person… not just being a good listener.
B. Lose Control. In speaking of his professor, he talked about how the man would never seek to “regain control” of the class or the conversation. He truly followed the conversation and not his own agenda. How many times do I find myself trying to manipulate a conversation back into safe realms of knowledge for me? Great listeners… FOLLOW THE CONVERSATION. And not just the conversation… they seek out the value. In other words, they dig out the nuggets asking more questions and kicking more dirt off with each and every interaction. Learning, development, and growth all happen outside of our comfort zones more than inside of them. So follow the conversation seeking to learn, grow, and develop and you’ll end up pursuing harder and further … faster. Interrupt to dig out more value, challenge stuff you don’t’ understand or aren’t sure you agree with… but be open to learn and change along the way. It’s not about you “winning” it’s about you filling in the gaps for both of you!
So don’t be a good listener. Be a great one. Of course if you are a crappy one… good is a great place to start .
Like I said… READ RICKY’S stuff first… it’s practical and it’s a great place to start, then frustrate the crap outta yourself by reading mine and trying to find that balance between the two HAPPY LISTENING!
Filed under: Leadership | 1 Comment
Tags: challenge, change, heretic, interrupting, Leadership, listening, pursue, Ricky Patrick, tradition
Zombies
Here’s a foretaste of my Easter series “what happened from the Cross to the throne” ….
We are all dead…
We finish dying in Jesus…
We are re-animated by Jehovah Incarnating Himself inside of us.
Therefore, it’s not I that live but Christ that lives in me.
Therefore, I daily mortify (remind my flesh of it’s death on the cross) and resurrect Jehovah as the living God inside of my life.
If He exits… I fall dead.
That’s real salvation.
I am not myself, for I have passed away, I am now Jehovah incarnate on earth (as are you if you are born again).
Just as Jesus was God and son … I am God and son.
PUT THAT IN YOUR RELIGIOUS PIPE AND SMOKE IT!
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Tags: change, easter, heretics, planning easter, Religion, transformation, zombies
The Reality of Rhema
Religion is so damning… to us all. It’s the quintessential enemy of the gospel as it was in the hour of Christ. It’s not a person or even a denomination, it’s a system of thought that we all become captured in. We become “stuck” in passively “knowing” the gospel instead of tangibly experiencing it. John said “those things which we saw, touched, tasted, and smelled of the beloved of the father”. They had literally experienced Christ.
The gospel sounds simple. It sounds good. It sounds “free”. Yet, I am consistently astounded at my passiveness, my lack of understanding of what I think I understand. When Rhema comes through meditation and revelation I am ever shocked the bomb that is the REALITY of the gospel. Something as simple as “what happened on the cross” explodes inside of me. It sounds so simple and so obvious and I think “HOW DID I NOT SEE IT THIS WAY BEFORE” … not because of the complexity of the revelation, but the simplicity of the reality of it. Somehow though, no matter how many times I have read it or heard it taught, I still have no clue what I actually believe. I think some of this is embodied in Moses when he asks of God “Look I KNOW YOUR ACTS, BUT I STILL DON’T KNOW WHY YOU DO WHAT YOU DO!” God showed him a tiny bit of just the past part and Moses comes down from the mountain literally growing with the brilliance of the reality of God. It was not that Moses didn’t know half of what he saw, he had heard tons about Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob, that was what made him a Hebrew. But on the mountain he saw the backstory, the big picture, the “glory” of the thing in it’s fullness.
I think that is the challenge for most of us, to break free from the partial understanding of “knowing” the story and digging into the roots of what does it mean to me. Most Christians run like rabbits from a beagle when they are faced with having to wrestle with a theological understanding of what they actually believe. The power available in the complete big picture understanding of the smallest pieces of our Biblical History can have everlasting repercussions.
When was the last time you were astounded by the REALITY of the word? Not in an intellectual “wow this is good” sense, but in the complete sensory immersion of a full awakening of what happened, and WHY IT HAPPENED!
If it hasn’t been recent, go meditate, dig, and meditate some more.
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Tags: awakening, change, heretic, Religion, rhema, transfromation, word
The Cost of Discipleship
I’m currently listening to “The Cost of Discipleship” by Deitrich Bonhoeffer. TERRIFIC SO FAR! I suggest you download it and listen to it to. It’s available for free right now on www.christianaudio.com (check out the link to the right on their home page).
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