February 20, 2009
Message Received
Whether it’s an email, a voice mail or dialog with your teenager – most of us want some sort of a response that the intended recipient actually got our message. Spiritually speaking, the Spirit within us knows whether or not we got the message, but I think that He too wants to hear us acknowledge that fact. After eating the forbidden fruit in the garden Adam and Eve tried to play a game of Hide-n-go-Seek. God knew exactly where they were (both physically and spiritually), but He asked the rhetorical question, “Where are you?”
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Gail;
-----I just can’t express how profound and to the point you are. Acknowledging the message is the beginning of everything. I think Jesus meant this when saying, “…eyes to see and ears to hear…” And you have appropriately incorporated it into the name of your blog site. The beginning of my discovery of acknowledgment’s importance was that August evening of 1977, when I pulled the muzzle of my rifle away from my head and decided I must live. The failure to acknowledge is what makes fools foolish. It is why foolishness is so baffling. The fool knows what is right, and he hears the message; he even gets it. And he can speak it. But he has not acknowledged it, and therefore, in his subconscious, at the depths of his soul, the message is attacked as a virus, a malicious foreign body.
-----Saying, “I heard,” or “I see,” is no more acknowledgement than simply hearing or seeing is getting it. We talk about taking something to heart. And that comes closer to getting the message, but it is still far from acknowledging it. When the message is acknowledged there is a change in the soul. Although it involves a decision, it is more than the decision itself. It is sort of a re-shading of the being, an affect upon the tone of character which interprets all else the soul experiences. Hopes, ambitions, plans, efforts, and actions are all effected by the message and are together its acknowledgement. Words carry far less than growth and repentance.
-----I spent my childhood looking up to my Dad and the moral principles he advocated. And I have spent my adult life looking up to my Dad and the moral principles I learned from him. But I spent my adolescence as a fool. I knew well what my Dad taught me, and I agreed with it, and I wanted it. I even held it up and honored it. But I had bitterness. I had regret and shame and a need to cover it all up. I did not place my hopes, ambitions, and efforts into the principles I learned and held. I placed them into fallacies. So what I had learned and honored and held went unacknowledged, until I felt hollow as a bell and twice as senselessly noisy, until I hung my head over the barrel of a rifle. It got that bad. Acknowledgment is important.
-----I don’t acknowledge everything even today. But that is ok. I would be perfect if I did, which would render Jesus to be useless, and I wouldn’t want to do that to Him. All has come to be well with my soul because I have been set free from the fact that I am yet imperfect, and I acknowledge this first. Then I work on the rest of the stuff.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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