There is another way to listen to God. One day, when I was fatigued from travel, I was told to take a day to rest.
“But I have so much work to do, Lord.”
Always listen to your body—it is also My voice.
Listen to Your Body
September 19, 2024
Tag: divine encounter
“It Leaves Out the Most Interesting Part of the Story.”
September 12, 2024
“Lord, is the theory of evolution correct?”
It is not a bad theory. It is a short-hand that works, but it leaves out the most interesting part of the story. It is like behavioral psychology in this respect.
While Pavlov’s dog salivating tells you something about animal and human behavior, seeing people solely through the lens of stimulus-and-response conditioning leaves out what is really interesting about them. Similarly, the theory of evolution is okay as far as it goes, but leaves out the best part of the story.
“Death and the Hope of Immortality . . .”
July 4, 2024
“The next phase is what I wonder about. It looks to me as if You communicate some sense of moral order and hierarchy, reverence for life and death, a sense of the meaning of life … I am feeling that this is Your voice, not mine, Lord.”
Yes, it is. They were understanding Me well enough to understand that life has meaning—a beginning and an end and the sense of a meaningful movement from one to the other, summarized (judged, reckoned) at the end. Death and the hope of immortality, which isn’t merely the fear of death but the understanding that there is a vertical dimension to life and (that) its meaning does not stop with death, that there is a larger story the individual is part of, and his (and her) spiritual development is not limited to just one life.
Current Spiritual Transformations
May 16, 2024
“As You tell me things, am I supposed to ‘use my own intelligence,’ as Abigail urges, to interpret or reinterpret what You tell me?”
You have to use your intelligence, but you have a very direct line.
“Will we include the present age?”
No, the main goal is not to talk about some crisis or transformation in the current age. A new revelation about the past is relevant to current spiritual transformations.
“I Breathe Life Into Matter.”
May 12, 2024
God continued,
I breathe life into matter, and matter starts responding. As one translation of Genesis puts it, I “flutter over the waters” and nurture, incubate life. And I am filled with joy. It is like a child picking up a harp and being surprised to find that strumming it makes beautiful sounds—and delightedly playing with it.
At the beginning, the cosmos was My playpen, My garden of delights. It was beautiful, dazzling. I could play it like a vast organ, but one attached to laser shows and fireworks.
Do It as An Organic Flow
May 2, 2024
Organic flow:
“Lord, I know I should try to live each day in response to Your purposes.”
That is right. Not just to do it mechanically, like a soldier following orders, but to do it as an organic flow, wishing to be in touch with Me and to live in accord with My will, My love.
God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher – is the true story of a philosopher’s conversations with God. Dr. Jerry L. Martin, a lifelong agnostic. Dr. Martin served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Colorado philosophy department, is the founding chairman of the Theology Without Walls group at AAR, and editor of Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious Imperative. Dr. Martin’s work has prepared him to become a serious reporter of God’s narrative, experiences, evolution, and autobiography. In addition to scholarly publications, Dr. Martin has testified before Congress on educational policy. He has appeared on “World News Tonight,” and other television news programs.
________
Listen to this on God: An Autobiography, The Podcast– the dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.
He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.
Putting Me First Rather Than Last
February 15, 2024
I had now accepted the assignment, but God wanted more. He wanted me to “purify” myself.
You need purification. Transformation is a good word. It is obedience, which at its fullest is transformation.
“What does that involve, Lord?”
Putting Me first rather than last. Living every moment, making every decision, in response to My call.
“How do I go about doing that?”
You know this—start every day with prayer and let prayer guide you through the day.
“The Great Apes Are Wonderful Creatures . . . So Close But Yet So Far.”
February 1, 2024
“And so, Lord, You call forth the first human beings?”
Yes, the first inklings, forerunners, of man. The great apes are wonderful creatures, full of intelligence, energy, and drive. But it is frustrating to interact with them. They are so close and yet so far from having full interactive personalities. They have teleological urges but they are only effective, for the most part, at the biological level. Their social life is rudimentary and their spiritual awareness is diffuse and inarticulate. They lack a symbolic order. They can’t project ideals beyond the sensual. They can’t respond to Me either.
“But they evolved?”
The transition to early man is both slow and sudden. Remember what the first two years of a child’s life is like, and (then) imagine each day to be a century. In a sense, nothing is happening. One day looks much like the last, and there is no single great leap forward.
So imagine My excitement when the first protohumans arrived. At first, you couldn’t tell them from animals but I could see their potential. They didn’t have language but their sounds and marks had representative purposes. They could connect one thing to another, one thought to another. They could remember their past and replay it in their minds. They slowly developed a sense of the future.
Think in a different way.
January 25, 2024
“Lord, I have the feeling that you want me to read and think less, and to listen more and just write down your story.”
Don’t stop thinking, but think in a different way. Don’t work so hard to figure everything out, to make it rational, to make it fit your categories. Just listen and think through the implications of what I tell you.
“But, Lord, some of what I learn from You comes from worrying over what you say.”
Sometimes yes, but often no. Sometimes your questioning just gets in the way. The main point is to open your mind, to try to understand what I am saying on its own terms, and to see ways it might be true or understandable to you.
Read Chapter 114
November 30, 2023
A Proper Appreciation of Yourself Opens Your Heart.
An ego rush always broke my connection with God. So I tried to keep a cold watch on this ego of mine.
When I was still in Washington, D.C., a matter came up about which I needed the assistance of an eminent intellectual with whom I had a limited acquaintance. He was completely forthcoming, and I felt flattered by his response.
“Lord, how should I take this? Is it wrong for me to feel flattered?”
No, it is not. This is joy, the joy of being yourself, which is proper to (appropriate for) human beings. I want you to be happy, to feel the fullness of your own being, its bounty. I blessed you with certain gifts. Of course, you recognize them as gifts, as benefits, as talents. That is okay. It is not the same as ego.
Ego is destructive, separatist, defiant of My will, self-satisfied and self-lustful. A proper appreciation of yourself opens your heart, binds you to Me, to those you love.