Direct speech OR SUBTLE SPEECH DEPENDS ON US  1/04/08

PIX:  I saw an orange rescue boat in the sea. There were angels sent to rescue people and there was only so much room on the boat.

HEARD:  Repentance.  A search party never gets in the way.  So that next time, there is more room, please repent.

INTERP:  Angels are available to help us, but they will not violate our free will. If we are not in the right position with God through repentance, then sometimes we must wait another time to be rescued.

HEARD:  Making the issue the issue.  The way I fed her without being direct.  It is called being polite.  To draw into a performance.   As to obey.  Really dangerous. 

Ask Me what and I will tell you.  My gift to you is understanding.  Purpose, I should have told you.  I am in agreement with you.  To let you know if you are ever off the page.  Immediately, if not sooner. 

If we had only shared.  The way was very clear, had I known.  It would have been so much easier.  Relationship.

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INTERPRETATION AND TEACHING:  In other cultures, it is common to speak in carefully chosen words that are not direct speech.  It takes a humble and listening hearer to pick up the nuances of the language and understand the fullness of what is being said.  I have noticed many times in the terminology and flavor of the things that I see and hear, that when the Lord is wanting me to be obedient about something, He is very gracious and doesnt come out and tell me directly that I am being strong willed and stubborn.  He shows me motives and the right way and then lets me see in subtle ways where I am not lining up.  It is His way of being gracious and not so directly confrontational. 

However there are other times when He is very direct and when I hear those things I know He has spoken to me about them many times and I have ignored them and He is stepping up the “heat.”  I have been chewing on the above dark speech as to how it relates to obedience and suddenly saw a deeper understanding as to why He speaks to me more subtly in the areas that I resist Him.  It has to do with honoring free will and wanting our volunteer loving relationship.  God doesnt want puppets and slaves or servants and Master type relationship where we “perform” well; He wants to win us through His love so that He can call us friends.

However when we resist Him over and over again, there are times when He hooks us like a fish and we are kicking and wrestling Him the whole way as He unrelentingly draws us back to Him.  He lets us struggle the fight out of us and then finally when we see His love as it really is, we relent and melt before His loving gaze. 

Obedience without love is not to understand the heart of God.  To obey Him is to be His friend.  In His loving kindness He gives good gifts.  But some good gifts without the character to steward them can ultimately corrupt the receiver.  Obedience trains our character and matures the fruits of the Spirit within our lives so that we are prepared for greater gifts in greater measure.  Obedience, for obedience sake is like going to school as children until we learn how to live in self discipline.  When parents use control in raising their children to obey, it produces rebellion and slaves with defiant and resentful hearts.  But when parents through reciprocal relationship, lovingly teach their children through wisdom and understanding the consequences of their decisions, it helps the children grow up to became self disciplined instead of God disciplined. 

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.  To obey Him is to hold His Word in great reverence for the truth that it is.  The fear of God is accepting the laws He placed within the earth, and abiding accordingly.  It is walking in the fear that we reap what we sow and that we truly are accountable for everything we say and do.  To walk in the fear of God is to choose to walk in maturity.

God spoke to Moses face to face and not with parables and riddles as He did with other prophets.  That is something I have always wanted and it is the strongest passion I have is to live in that place with God.  I am not there yet and I still wrestle, fight and kick, although my fight is remarkably less than it used to be.  The intimacy of face to face and direct speech is won through a relationship of mutual love, trust and communion where 2 hearts are one.  Until we are walking in the maturity of obedience to His Word through volunteer love, we simply are not one. 

Jer 16:16-18 NKJV

"Behold, I will send for many fishermen," says the LORD, "and they shall fish them; and afterward I will send for many hunters , and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks. For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes.

Hos 2:14-16 NKJV

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her. I will give her her vineyards from there, and the Valley of Achor as a door of hope; She shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.  "And it shall be, in that day," Says the LORD, "That you will call Me 'My Husband,'  and no longer call Me 'My Master.'  

John 15:14-17 NKJV

You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.  15 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.  16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.  17 These things I command you, that you love one another. 

Ex 33:11 NKJV

So the LORD spoke to Moses face to face , as a man speaks to his friend.

Num 12:6-8 NKJV

"Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream.  Not so with My servant Moses; He is faithful in all My house. I speak with him face to face, Even plainly, and not in dark sayings; And he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?"

Update HEARD 1/05/08 As I was thinking about the above teaching on obedience through love:

HEARD: It’s My loving restrictions on your life that gives you safe boundaries.

Rom 7:4-6 NLT
When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced sinful deeds, resulting in death. 6 But now we have been released from the law, for we died with Christ, and we are no longer captive to its power. Now we can really serve God, not in the old way by obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way, by the Spirit.

Rom 8:13-15 NKJV
For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out,"Abba, Father."