“If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find we have lost the future.”   – Winston Churchill

I knew there was something I liked about him!  A great statesman and historian like Winston Churchill understood the tie between the past and the future.  He studied the patterns of human behavior over time and his view was immense.  His emotional strength and perspective were sorely needed in the midst of one of the ugliest wars of modern times.

Progress is coming along on the book, and the chapter I am working on currently is about the effects we experience when we disconnect from time.  One of them is not being able to envision for the future.  Here is a small excerpt:

“If you have no past, you will have no future.  Where are you going if you haven’t been anywhere?  The very words in the question assume motion, and if you can’t say where you’ve been, then you must not be moving.”

It has been (and continues to be!) a fascinating and stretching journey to articulate in written words the things that have been so deep in my spirit, but not necessarily expressed.  I am so grateful for the work that has already been done through the experience of teaching the material.  That took me far in learning how to express the abstract concepts.  Now we are taking it to another level, and God is growing and unpacking me in the process.

One of the things I am doing this year that fills me with anticipation is writing on some specific pieces of land.  I have two trips planned so far where I will spend several days away from work and the world and immerse myself in writing.  One of the trips is “under the radar” so to speak, but I am going to a place where I connect deeply with the stars, and the awe of God flows.  I am going there specifically to work on the chapter about the Ancient.  Another trip is to my beloved England, and my spirit is just on tiptoes about what that will do to the book.  I don’t know yet which chapter or chapters will flow there, but I am excited to find out.  And I hope that sometime in late summer or fall, I will make it up to my trees for a weekend and give the book that flavor of immensity.

So, when the time comes for the pages to leave my hands and come into yours, it will be a well seasoned story, with flavors from around the globe!

This morning was devoted to writing.  It went pretty well, even though it got off to a rocky start.  I am quickly learning that serious writing involves a whole lot more than skill with words.  There are these things called emotions.  Sometimes they are all on the same page at the same time.  These are the moments when a shaft of sunlight breaks through the clouds and the angels sing.  Magical.  Other times most of them are on the same page and the rest have gone off shopping for the day and can’t be found, no matter how many times you try the cell phone.  Other times there are so many emotions on so many different pages, you have no idea if you are even in the same library any more.  And then, of course, there are the times when some emotion somewhere has gotten miffed at another and a good old-fashioned brawl breaks out and you are watching from the sidelines, wondering if you should just get a bowl of popcorn and call it a day.  It’s like herding cats.  I was on the phone with my brother the other day and told him that my muse was like a spoiled child.  The key was to find as many ways as possible to bribe it into behaving.

So, I have an increasing level of respect for the challenge of being right-brained.  I enjoy it, I crave the beauty and the exhilaration, I was made to function there.  But goodness me, is it finicky.  And as with any craft, there are the countless times when you do because you have to, and that little spoiled brat is going to perform whether it wants to or not.  Sometimes a little left brained discipline is needed.

Well, anyway, I ended on a good note with the writing.  I had closure on a particular piece.  So, I headed out to run some errands, planning to do more writing into the afternoon.  One of the things I have discovered is that incorporating some physical work or movement into a writing day helps keep things flowing.  As I was driving in the car, I suddenly realized what I had really done that morning.

I had completed the first draft of the first chapter of the very first book I will ever write.

WHOA.

I started getting a little emotional.  The emotions were ready at my beck and call for this one.  In fact, a little more ready than I was planning.  It started to slowly sink in.  I ran my errands in a bit of a daze and started my project.  I decided that I wasn’t going to write any more today.  I needed to savor and celebrate this milestone.

This chapter isn’t much to brag about (yet).  You’ll never see it in its current condition!  But it IS.  It exists.  It’s a start.  Writing a book has been a dream since junior high and probably before that.  I have fought hard to be where I am.  The enemy tried desperately to kill the love and replace it with fear, and it has taken me years to offload the toxicity and repair the damage.  God is amazing and He has overseen this whole thing, that even now, I know I don’t fully comprehend.

It’s a milestone day.

In the late 80’s there was a blockbuster trilogy called “Back to the Future”; complete with a time-traveling DeLorean and puffy red vest coats.  The story’s hero, Marty McFly, gets sent back to 1955 by his friend “Doc” Brown.  This is when his parents are in high school – how weird would it to meet a high school version of your parents? – and they are supposed to meet, fall in love, and the rest is history … in the future.  Well, anyway, Marty gets all in the middle of everything and does a fine job of making a muddle of it.  His Mom ends up falling in love with him (Ewww) instead of his dad.  The most poignant scene of the whole movie is when he is up on the stage at the high school prom and he starts feeling funny.  He looks at his hand and it is beginning to disappear.  He had a family picture from the future.  The rest of the family had already disappeared and he was beginning to.  In other words, his parents better fall in love PRONTO or he would no longer be.  And lucky for him, they did.

We know so little about how time really works.  So many stories and movies are made about going into the past or the future.  We have some sort of sense that if we were to go into the past, we might have the same effect that Marty was having.  We could change what happened back then and the whole course of the future would change.  I suspect that one way or the other, we’d do a jolly good job of screwing it up.

I marvel at the God who does time travel with ease and perfection.

Have you ever thought about what you are really asking when you pray for generational healing?  Let’s say, for example, you discovered that your great-great grandfather on your father’s side was the crookedest politician the city had ever seen.  Just about every critter he could get into covenant with he did.  Well, you don’t want his junk coming downstream to you, so you go to the Lord and ask Him to do what?  You ask Him to go back to that time in history, to that particular person’s life and break all the unrighteous covenants that he spoke into real-time (like as in some real day of his life).  You repent for his sin, ask God to forgive, and then remove all the effects from your present life.  We have all done it on many occasions, but I invite you to stop and think what it really means.

You are asking God to fiddle with the past so that you don’t experience the consequences in the future.  How amazing is that?  Marty was in the past for about five minutes before he was causing problems.  God went back and removed all the toxicity of the deeds of your ancestor, and YOU are still here.  You didn’t suddenly disappear or wake up one morning on an entirely different continent.  He didn’t report back to you and say, “well, sorry, I kinda botched this one.  You don’t mind having different parents do you?”  All of the people before you may have made life decisions based on the defilement that you are removing from the family line now.  Yet, God can go in like a master surgeon and change the effect on you without changing the whole of your existence.  WOW.  When you think of all the things that are interwoven into the paths that lead to our lives, this is a staggering accomplishment.

All of us know what it is like to experience the literal, sometimes quite physical difference of generational cleansing.  It’s real.  It’s not just a warm fuzzy that we can comfort ourselves with knowing.  There are people who see overnight changes in their finances, relationships, connection to God, and physical well-being.  One of the most common physical changes happens when there is freemasonry in the family line.  Let’s say you have a choking feeling that comes on you from time to time, or is always present to a certain degree.  You go through the renunciations for freemasonry and mysteriously the symptoms disappear … but you do not.  Nor do your parents or your children or your nationality or family history.  God travels to the past without marring the present.  In fact, He leaves you with a better one than you had!

Sorry Doc and Marty.  You ain’t got nothing on the God of time!

It was on October 31st that my study program officially ended and it is somehow already the end of November.  If you give me a few more hours (or days) to think about it, I might come up with a good excuse for the delay in this post.  I am as quick with excuses as I am with comebackers.  Don’t hold your breath.

This past weekend I spent some time savoring a few of the highlights of the four months.  There were many, but one that was a delightfully unexpected surprise is one that God set into motion years ago.  I was visiting a friend’s house and we discovered that we both like detective stories.  So she sent me home with a new one for my library called “Have His Carcase” by Dorothy Sayers, with an additional recommendation that I read “Murder Must Advertise”.  Well, by the second one I was hooked and proceeded to buy Amazon’s entire supply of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.  My friend had told me that Sayers was Christian, though the mysteries were secular.  Somewhere along the way I discovered that she had written some Christian teaching books as well.  I bought one and never got around to reading it.  Towards the second half of the study program, I came across another of her books called “The Mind of the Maker” and decided I wanted to give it a try.  I thought it would be fascinating to see what she thought about God as Creator, especially since I connect so deeply to that facet of His nature.  But I didn’t know that it was a spectacular God set up!

One of the major themes of the whole study program was the Trinity.  There is a sense that exploring more of the Godhead as a whole would bring a richness to the flavor of my writing.  I wasn’t even into the book a chapter before I made two glorious discoveries – she was writing ALL about the Trinity, and she was doing it in the context of a writer!  In a nutshell, she compared the process a writer goes through to write and deliver a book and the effect of the reader’s interaction with it to the function of each Person of the Trinity.  So cool!  God tailored that one like a well made suit.  I devoured it, and am almost through for my second time.  I suspect there will be a third and maybe a fourth.

At the end of the day, there are certainly things I could do better next time, but there is no doubt that I am a different person because of this investment.  My thinking has improved in many areas of my life, and I have a deeper reverence for the depth of Scripture than I ever had before.  Last weekend I also spent some time savoring with a friend and was given the gift of a huge piece of insight for the future.  It is a dynamic of writing that I have marveled at in others and believe I have the capacity to develop.  But I have never had language for it before, and now I have something to sink my teeth into.  It will take some work and practice to get there, but I am SO on it!

In the meantime there are a backlog of blogs and articles waiting impatiently for their turn.  One principle in particular I was going to write as a blog when it took on a life of its own.  It may even appear as an audio recording instead.

Looking forward, my big rock in the jar is the zero draft.  I have already done the work of transferring my spoken notes to chapter bullet points.  They form a forest of Post-it notes on the wall in my office, and have already been re-arranged a couple of times.  I am looking forward to incorporating different land dynamics into the writing process.  There are already two trips planned, and I am certain I will make at least one trip up north to visit my trees.  They have a lot to say about things that are older than time.  The only question is which chapters to write where?  This will be a fun process of synchronizing with the King.

Many times I marvel at my audacity in choosing this topic as my first book.  But every time I have pulled away from the idea to consider doing something else first, my spirit has conniptions.  I know, before I even begin, that I will fall far short of communicating the depth of the God before time.  But I also know that I could write 100 books on the topic and fall short on every one.  It is simply too big of a topic.  But God can still transform, even through the meanest of methods, and sometimes we must just begin!

I was recently forced to upgrade to a new cell phone.  My trusty Blackberry Torch went to its grave when I sent it skidding across the floor at Subway.  Expensive lunch.  I have now, or so I have been told, entered the world of “real smartphones” with a Samsung Galaxy.  I must admit that it is capable of doing some pretty cool stuff.  The software system on it is complex and I can do anything from calendars to messaging, apps, videos, pictures, music, and believe it or not, phone calls.  Yep.  I am techy now.  Or at least in my imagination.  Figuring out how to use it is a whole ‘nother story.

My cell phone woes aside, this scenario provides a modern-day illustration for an important Biblical concept.  There is a huge amount of potential in the system of principles (software) in my phone, and in my knowing that they exist.  But knowing about the features of the phone is not the same as being able to use them.  This picture illustrates the difference between wisdom and understanding.

The Hebrew word that we often translate as “wisdom” is essentially the complex network of principles that God has woven into the universe.  Principles appear everywhere around us, whether in the forces of nature, our relationships, or my new cell phone (who is named Liddy).  Principles are universal, non-optional, cause and effect relationships.  Gravity is one of those non-optional relationships.  The Hebrew word that we often translate as “understanding” means knowing how to USE the principles.  This is where you take what you know and put it into practice.  You try it.  You take the principle beyond mere head knowledge.  My knowledge of Liddy’s features is necessary, but it does little real benefit unless I learn how to use them.  She will just placidly blink her little blue eye at me and chirp at all odd hours of the night if I don’t convince her that some of us need to sleep.

The difference between the two words is crucial, and even more so, the reality that knowing the principles does not automatically produce fruit.  Many times we get caught up in the idea of having wisdom and we assume that it also means we will know how to use it.  According to Scripture, that is not the case.

To further illustrate this point, let’s look at the imbalances that can happen between the two concepts.

If I chose to go on simply knowing about Liddy’s features, I am never going to experience the actual benefits in my life.  She will keep all her resources locked up inside her touch screen.  The same kind of thing is true for us.  The fruit in our lives is directly impacted by the principles we actually use.  There are many people who have a great wealth of wisdom but never take the time, the energy, or the risk to practice using it.  An extreme would be the genre we often refer to as “the ivory tower” – those who are locked away thinking great thoughts that never get tried by the fires of reality.  In my work I often encounter people who want everything I know, but their lifestyle and maturity reveals that they are not actually using many of the principles they gain.

What I described above are examples of people having more wisdom than they have understanding.  Generally speaking, the American church falls into this kind of imbalance.  We often chase after the next new thing before the last has even had time to cool, let alone be eaten and digested.  Heaven forbid we miss something!  But we just end up with a storehouse of truths we don’t know how to use, and the world is no better off for our having them.

Now the imbalance can work the other way around as well.  You can have a high level of understanding that operates off of a limited supply of wisdom.  A friend of mine owns a shirt-tail relative of Liddy’s, a little flip-job with real buttons and Atari like icons.  The friend doesn’t know anything about Liddy’s bells and whistles, but she can work her little phone like a pro.  Her level of wisdom is minimal – she doesn’t know all the vast technology that is available (nor does she care) – but her understanding is higher than mine.  If we go to an extreme, we could look at the life of a street crook.  Generally speaking, he’s not overly educated nor does his lifestyle portray an abundance of wisdom.  But what he does know, he has to use, and use it well.  He has to keep himself alive and out of jail.  A life of crime requires you to deal with some unforgiving realities.

Clearly the imbalance in either direction is undesirable.  So, then, it would follow that our ideal is to have a high level of both.  We want to avail ourselves of as much of God’s wisdom as possible, and we want to practice what we know.  What does that look like in real life?  There are two descriptions I would like to explore.

The first is resourcefulness.  This is a person who has a broad supply of wisdom, and is also accustomed to putting that wisdom to work in different situations.  My Dad is resourceful.  I asked him to build me a 4 foot square oak tap dancing floor that I would bring back to California with me.  To solve the problem of size on the plane, he hinged the floor in the middle and put handles on it so I could carry it through the airport.  My boss, Arthur Burk, is resourceful.  He flies a LOT.  There were glitches on a recent flight and he called me at the office immediately to sort it out because the attendants at the airport were swamped.  In both cases, the men had knowledge of resources available, and understanding of how to weave them together to match the scenario.  Wisdom and understanding working together.

The second description is ingenuity.  This involves resourcefulness, but takes the idea to the next level.  Ingenuity means that you are creative and clever in your approach, creating some new kind of configuration.  One famous example in the office is when Arthur solved the problem of a missing part on a light we needed for the studio.  It was one of those big box lights and we couldn’t fasten it to the stand so that it would stay upright.  Arthur came into the room, looked at for a minute and disappeared.  He came back shortly with a broom.  He put the broom side up, supporting the box, and the handle on the ground to keep it stable.  Problem solved … and with a rather unique configuration of principles!  My Grandfather was a master of ingenuity.  He built all kinds of gadgets and could be depended upon to fix just about anything.  Perhaps one of his best creations was his set of home-made hearing aids.

In both of these descriptions I have used primarily hands on illustrations, but the concepts apply in all areas of life, whether you are talking about building a dance floor or ministering to someone’s spirit.  Your level of wisdom and how well you use it will have a direct effect on the results.

Since we generally find the imbalance on the side of wisdom, what are some tools for building our understanding?

One foundational tool is to relentlessly ask “why”.  This question will increase your wisdom and help you drill down to the root cause of a scenario.  Once you know the root cause, you are well positioned to practice what you have learned.  You will also gain knowledge of a principle that can be used in other situations.  Take the idea of generational defilement.  What are you doing and why does it work?  What is the spiritual structure involved?  In this case the principle is a legal one.  Somebody sinned somewhere, giving a legal right to the enemy, and it is through the legal act of repenting, renouncing, and restoring that the family line is cleansed.  So what else can you use that principle for?  You can use it with land.  Organizations.  Cities, nations, people groups, etc.  The “why” question is an invaluable tool, affording you more wisdom and applications for practice.

Use the tool of developing pictures.  Much of what we learn is given to us in abstract concepts.  So, take what you just learned in church and put it into a real life scenario, with real people.  How would it actually play out?  Where in history have you already seen it?  What Bible character lived it?  Put some flesh and bones on the wisdom you have gained so that you can more easily bridge the gap between knowledge and application.

A major tool is practice.  Practice, practice, practice.  Experiment with what you know.  Put some hours into it.  Liddy and I have spent some serious quality time together these last couple of days.  We even had a special session with the sales rep at Best Buy (one of the resources at my disposal) because Liddy and I weren’t quite seeing eye to eye on a certain matter.  Find someone or something you can use for a guinea pig.  Find out what it actually looks like on Monday morning to nurture the spirit, or cleanse the land, or unpack your redemptive gift.  Find out what it means to sanctify time every day, or to lead someone through generational healing.

The beautiful thing is that you will become part of a spiral of growth.  Practicing what you know will send you back to God for more wisdom.  Gaining more wisdom will give you more things to practice.  You will learn and grow and grow as you learn.  It’s an exquisite dance of discovery and implementation.