Stones of Conviction

There is no magic formula.

In your everyday life, you experience all kinds of influences pushing you in different directions. Some are internal, some are merely internalized, and many are external. If all you have is sensory data and reason, you are woefully ill equipped. With those tools, you cannot see even half of what’s really there, and you cannot grasp what you were designed for. We are designed to hear from the Creator how Creation works. That’s the basic proposition of faith. The whole point of a faith walk is to explore your own convictions and discover what they have to say about your choices.

This is what we do — we teach people to shift the focus of their attention to those convictions. Nobody can explain it in any kind of rational detail, but convictions exist whether you pay attention to them or not. They stand there ready to guide you into the truth of reality. The experience of discovering them is rather like archaeology, digging through rubble and layers of crap to see what ancient stonework lies underneath. Whatever is in your convictions is rooted in something that stood before you were born. However, they always present themselves in our awareness as something uniquely ours.

When I teach about my own convictions, there is a shared element. Given the nature of my mission and calling, some portion of humanity will always be able to recognize something in themselves when I share my testimony. Those who respond are those to whom I am called to minister. It doesn’t mean those who don’t respond are closed to God; they are simply closed to me. They aren’t part of my mission. I can’t really know enough to separate them out, so I just present my message to pretty much everyone I meet. It works the same on the Internet — whomever comes across my written output. In the real world, it’s a matter of whose attention I can get by how I act and speak.

That’s how it works with all of us. We strive to keep ourselves conscious of our convictions as we go about our day to day existence. The longer we stay at it, the more loudly our convictions speak. Our testimony includes how we strive to go back and correct things that our convictions say were done wrong. Hiding mistakes and corrections is hiding the truth. Granted, not everything is for everyone to see, but your convictions will eventually clarify that, as well.

Moral convictions are the language of the heart, the language of the Spirit Realm. This is the voice of God, insofar as we fallen humans can hear Him. It will always match what’s in the Bible, but we have a major mountain climbing expedition in learning to understand the Bible. Just because it’s translated into your native tongue doesn’t mean you can understand it without some study and guidance. Sadly, we have precious little written or human teaching about the Bible that reflects a biblical world view. I’ve started a project to fill in that void, but I’m hardly the best one for the job. We just haven’t had very many other folks doing that yet. As the Lord blesses our efforts, better and smarter heart-led writers will come along to improve on my feeble start.

The Lord will provide; give Him time. This stuff has been long forgotten. It’s not gone, but it will require some effort to rebuild a society on those ancient foundations. Take the long view, brothers and sisters. It’s been 2000 years since people thought like this. John saw the big darkness coming and wrote about it in Revelation and in his letters. We cannot pretend to understand why God chose to reveal it to us in these days, but we cannot afford to sit and wonder too long. Be grateful, but get to work.

The work is not what our current civilization would say it is. The work is just learning to live in the joy of communion with Creation. Build up a life based on that focus on convictions and pass it on to the next generation. Get involved in the community of those who are doing the same work. Let God worry about who and how many He brings to our community. Just be a shining light and let Him open eyes to see it.

It’s a long and hard job; stay faithful.