Coffee and Conversations

In depths of one’s lonely soul there is an abyss that seems endless and cold. The rope that leads to the bottom is an unforgiving drop to a cold slab where the only friend you have is self. Broken and torn in the soul is where God finds the rich soil to plant His strength in you. Francis MacNutt says, “If the Lord Jesus Christ has washed you in his own blood and forgiven you all your sins, how dare you refuse to forgive yourself?”


At the lonely bottom, self-hatred shows its ugly head out of the shadows and renders you guilty and shamed by the lack of forgiving yourself. Learning about self-hatred will cripple the soul and damage the heart unrecognizable until you forget about the reality of your identity. Identity is the major crisis of our nation’s Christian population and its cure is found at the end of the rope.

The end of the rope strategy takes its shape by you giving up on everything you know to be true and wiping the slate clean. If your concern is worship, then stop worshipping until the only thing in life you can do is worship. If your concern is prayer, then stop praying until the only thing you can do is pray. If your concern is Bible study, then stop Bible study until all you can do is study you’re Bible.

When the slab at the bottom is too hard to bear spiritually, take comfort in knowing that the idols in your heart are being destroyed. Worship, prayer, and bible study are all forms of idols. Idols such as worship, prayer, and bible study are never recognized as idols because those who have such idols have never tasted the goodness of God on the cold hard slab. 2 Timothy 3:5 describes these idol worshippers as having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power…then it says, avoid such people.

By our own fault, we lye at the bottom of the abyss trying to work out godliness in the attempt to show God the fruit of our labor and to no avail the arrow continues to miss the mark.

If you are mucking around in the pit of despair with no hope out of self-hatred, then take the pill and swallow the bitter truth that your only hope is in seeing the unseen. Paul Tillich defines the unseen as “the courage to accept acceptance.” What religious idols have a form of godliness in your life, but lack the power of God? Is your self-hatred to the point that you are ready to give the idol of “self” up? Join the journey with us in walking through the end of self and listen to our weekly podcast “Coffee and Conversations” found at www.teleoridge.com/podcast or on itunes under Teleo Ridge Ministries. Later, From Jason.

Today is July 4th, and I'm sitting on the front porch of this enormous home/lodge/envious spot I'd like to live...and I'm working on my opening session for FBC Oloh in the second week of December...I know I know, I'm on vacation.  You can't just sit here where I'm sitting and not think about God and His glorious creation...here is the view from my post

by the way...worst pot of coffee I've ever made...highly embarressing look you can see right through it...


also, this was the first sign we saw when we walked into the house...hilarious and unnerving!

Travel Day 2  (Arrival at South Fork, Colorado)


here are many random pics of the Mountains, we've been studying the Hebrew language and it's pictograph's and the word for Mount in Hebrew is SaR,  samech Aleph resh (lean on God's humble servant) interesting one of ranges we drove through today is known as Sangria de Cristo (The Blood of Christ).  Here they are...



Random Pic of the day in Alta Mesa:



Here is a pic of us today at Raton pass, my girls are sitting on the same wagon that April, Brent, and I sat on in '81 or '82 or ever earlier...30 years later we found the same wagon, it brought a tear to my eye, here is this pic:



Here is the humble abode that we are living in for the week, it is quite spectacular and here is the view around the cabin:


As we embark on this week,  I look forward to hearing from God and what He is going to do in directing my life and walking in His grace.  I'm learning to trust in his voice alone and not make a move unless he directs it...and my selfish nature does not always respond, yet I find myself right in the middle of what he has for me.

more tomorrow!

1st Travel Day:

Preparing to leave on a trip is always somewhat stressful, yet, the anticipation of leaving the norm is  welcomed and timely. 

We sat out today for the goal of making it to Amarillo, of course, the trip on map-quest said it would "only" take 71/2 hrs...ha ha ha!   This is our first official Jason Goodson family road trip...every time I think about going on vacation...Chevy Chase and the family truckster from National Lampoons "Vacation" comes to mind.  You just pray that there is no uneeded adventure other than gazing upon my girls pretty faces as they look at the Rocky Mountains for the first time.  "I can't wait to see their response..."  

This morning as we were pulling away from Mineola in family car and the Hainesville Aires trailer as if we were a traveling family band, we've had several strange looks today.



Exo 14:14 The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent."

What an encouraging truth in the midst of the junk we live in, I want to with my family this trip, is to be silent so that we do not miss seeing His salvation, that He will work for us as we glory in Him who is Adonai, EL-Roi.

Prep Day, Thursday July 1st:



I find such great pleasure in hanging out with my children; Zoe is 5, Lucy is 2, and Iris is 8 months old, each child unique in form and has personality to boot. I am on a mission today of clearing two of three girls out of the house, Zoe and Lucy. Removing the older girls out of the house allows Kathy to prep for packing the loads of junk we carry with us, especially, for our trip to Colorado.






No mountains yet, but who needs mountains when you have the glory of God in your midst in a little coffee shop in Mineola, TX.

 Not Understanding the Cross

The greatest misunderstanding of the church today is not understanding the cross.  In viewing the cross, we often fail to see the greatest task ever worked out "The Death of Jesus."  The death of Jesus gives us a marker for looking towards the deity of Christ and not our flesh.  The cross boldly stands as the death of self, when one is drawn by God to the cross, the ultimate result is death so that life may be shown.

2 Co 4:10  We always carry in our bodies the dying of Jesus, so that the life of  Jesus may be manifested in our bodies too.

oddly enough we do not believe that verse, because this verse is the interpretation of understanding the cross.  Without the death of Jesus their is no life for us.  Jesus' Death is the revealing life on our behalf within, the resurrection is the avenue by which Jesus gives another in the holy spirit by which we have union with God through Christ.

We do a great job as the body of Christ of missing the point, in Mark 8:34 we see a great example of not understanding the meaning of scripture:

Mar 8:34  When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, "Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.

Normally we hear the interpretation of this verse as a way of pointing others to "good works."  These good works are often translated in denying self as Spiritual work and  it has the face of religiosity.  The result of this is self-righteousness.  I grew believing that if I did not read my bible daily and pray that God would be upset with me!  This is a result of not understanding the cross; I turned the work back to self instead of resting in the finished work of Christ on the Cross and His righteousness.

Deny

The word of day is deny, the crucial part of understanding Mark 8:34 above; which is not found in what we see.  For instance, denying self is not looking to your flesh to find how you can rid yourself of sin.  Denying self is not looking to what the principles of the world says we should accomplish.  Denying self is not seeing and  listening to the voice of satan in temptation and fighting your way out. Denying self is not found in what we see in self and try to fix it.  The flesh, the world, satan, and what our eyes see is the deep meaning of self.  the description of denying self in its intended meaning is this ignoring what the flesh, what the world, what satan, and what our eyes see about self. 

This is the daily struggle, we can play the religious game and keep believing that our work for God will count in saving self.  On the other hand we can begin to ignore the false truths we have believed for so long and look at the cross as our final death stake.  Until we see the cross as final, we will never understand what it means to take it up. 

Taking Up the Cross

Taking up the cross is embracing its finished work, the finished work of the cross is embracing what we don't see about ourselves which equals faith.  Begin to practice the ignoring of religious self and you will understand what it means to embrace faith.  The cross finished the work, we carry around the death of Jesus in this flesh ignoring the details that cause sin because we can't fix sin.  Sin was fixed at the cross, you see the same cross that killed Christ killed our sin.  This verse in scripture just says it:

2Co 5:21  For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

We embrace all the cross says about us which is the hardest thing we do as Christians because it removes the onus on self and finds rest in work of God through the cross.

Not understanding the cross leaves us with the terrifying aspect of wondering if we did enough!  I love the movie Saving Private Ryan, but it is a terrible picture of redemption.  The main character at the end is left questioning whether or not he earned it because he was told to by the man who saved him, "to earn this."  Is this not the picture we walk around with went it comes to taking up the cross?   Earning life does not find its rest in making self better, but in understanding that through the death of one on the cross, life was given, not so we could keep earning merit with our efforts of righteousness to gain life.

To understand the cross we must understand intimacy in a relationship with a loving Father.  Let these verses resonate with you:

Eph 1:7  In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace
Eph 1:8  which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence,
Eph 1:9  having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself,
Eph 1:10  that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.

Jason.

We can never be hard enough on sin to affect change in the world or church. We will never quit sin simply because it is wrong. God never created the new man to quit anything, The new man is only capable of receiving life. Any time we try to quit sin, it is only our flesh trying to be religious. When the receiving of His life swallows up the desires of the flesh then sin starts to disappear because the life of Christ is manifest in our mortal body. Our mortal flesh can never serve God, it can only manifest His life.