Jan 11
9
Reversing the Process of Aging
Brad Cullen
Part Seven…the alternatives
Some people, probably most people, feel that publisher and webmaster Ryan Bruce and I are fringe lunatics …are we? Do you feel that way?
The answer to the foregoing question depends wholly on perspective.
“It is an awesome responsibility to decide to be a spokesman for God.”
At the moment I first “heard” those words I really did think that they were audible and not just a thought expressing itself by firing across the synapses of my brain.
I was walking up to a podium to speak to an assembly of about three hundred students sitting and sprawled tightly together on the church-sponsored high school gymnasium floor covered with wrestling mats. I had worked and reworked the written presentation and was now stepping up the microphone to deliver it. Instead, and again, I heard, “IT IS AN AWESOME RESPONSIBILITY TO DECIDE TO BE A SPOKESMAN FOR GOD.”
Startled, I looked out around the group from up on the platform about 18” above the floor. I saw a teenage girl sitting cross-legged, bent over; she seemed to be intently focused on reading a New Testament, it was as if she were bathed in an eerie yet beautiful bright light. Most of the students seemed to be looking toward the podium and appeared to be expectant, ready to listen and perhaps hopeful that they weren’t going to be bored out of their minds.
I stood there, silently asking Dad what I should do. The girl’s mind was obviously fixed on something she was reading. I leaned into the microphone and asked her if she had something to share. She looked up as if being awakened, glanced quickly around and slowly came to the realization that I was talking to her and finally stammered that she had just been reading.
Without saying anything else, she stood and read the short passage aloud and abruptly sat back on the floor.
I do not remember the content of the passage she read, nor do I remember much of anything else that transpired over the next forty minutes or so, but all I did was to continually ask if anyone else felt they were being given anything to share. I never did say anything other than to facilitate what I later described as a mighty wave of SPIRIT presence and power flowing through several students, one at a time, without being asked or any preamble, each briefly standing, and telling whatever the previous student had said had meant to her or him.
Afterward, the Principal thanked me for coming and said it was the most orderly and attentive he had ever seen them …then he said, “You still owe us a talk, since you never did get to your message.”
I asked him why he would want any man or woman to deliver some prepared talk to a group of kids that were so clearly allowing God to speak through them. I repeated the words that had come to me, “It is an awesome responsibility to decide to be a spokesman for God.”
Ask before speaking for God, even when it seems right.
They seemed to go right over his head. Since that day I’ve realized more and more how it is not merely an awesome responsibility, but how utterly foolish it is to decide to be a spokesman for God …same, same with writing about spiritual topics. Either the speaker or author is anointed by SPIRIT for the task, which means he or she is tapping into a force that is beyond understanding and, therefore, what is being said is foolishness to those who do not have the ears to hear it.
Now that we are out on that limb, let’s see how much weight we can put on it before if breaks off …and if the limb is hanging out over a cliff, just how dangerous can it be?
Just who are Ryan Bruce and Brad Cullen to be sharing this crazy stuff about quantum mechanics, reversing the aging process and so on? The real question is, who are YOU to be reading this stuff and listening to us share our experiences as we go through them.
Surely you’ve heard the hackneyed old question and applied it to Ryan and Brad, that is, is what we have faith or is it presumption? Well, why are you here with us?
We can be free of all such useless, circular questions forever; the challenge, however, is that it takes faith to be free. Hopefully, in the process, we will be able to see that we have to get rid of another useless riddle; and perhaps, in the process we’ll be able to become aware that all riddles are basically useless in the spiritual realm because, like their cousins, conundrums, riddles engage the brain. The brain is a tremendously useful tool in the physical realm, but because of its close association with the ego the brain, along with brain exercises (such as riddles and puzzles, though amusing and useful in the physical realm) can lead us away from faith. Please note that I am not saying that the brain cannot be part of the faith process.
Sing with all your heart and mind!
To emphasize this point let’s look at what Paul, in his dissertation on a seemingly (therefore, perhaps not) obscure topic of speaking in languages not learned by supposedly natural education, said: “I thank God that I will speak with both my mind and my spirit, and I will sing with both my mind and my spirit.”
Unfortunately the topic of “speaking in tongues” has become so controversial that we miss what should be at least two of the most important parts of his thesis. Here they are (a worthy digression by the way):
“For anyone who speaks in a ‘tongue’ does not speak to men but to God” and “I thank God I speak in tongues more than you all.”
Note: Please remember that “tongues” in this particular passage is making a dual reference to real languages, with real syntax, and “angelic” languages which cannot be understood nor dissected. I was just given this double meaning by SPIRIT, so I refuse to argue about it. I was also told that it was a “worthy digression” which, if you question the worthiness, I, too, questioned “getting off the track,” so to speak. You see, just maybe, reversing the aging process isn’t so crazy after all!
Now then, back to the topic at hand, how can we know the difference between faith and presumption and what is being said by, “the challenge, however, is that it takes faith to be free.” (?)
Very often I just put what I get from SPIRIT in words with which I am comfortable without using any particular established English translation, but in this instance I was instructed to quote directly from the Amplified Bible what Jesus’ half-brother James had to say about “faith.”
“If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God [Who gives] to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproaching or faultfinding, and it will be given him.
“Only it must be in faith that he asks with no wavering (no hesitating, no doubting). For the one who wavers (hesitates, doubts) is like the billowing surge out at sea that is blown hither and thither and tossed by the wind.
“For truly, let not such a person imagine that he will receive anything [he asks for] from the Lord,
“[For being as he is] a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute), [he is] unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything [he thinks, feels, decides].”
Our lives can really be made to be so simple …the promise is that God will give you the information you want for you, for today, but you have to go to him in faith to get it. Therefore the answer to the title question, So …Which IS it? (faith or presumption) is available to you, but you are not going to get God’s wisdom by arguing …and I will suggest to you that you are not going to get God’s wisdom for TODAY, NOW, for THIS situation, necessarily, by reading something written as a corrective to somebody else thousands of years ago.
The above quote in James was written almost two thousand years ago …so we need to see the fallacy of taking my suggestion farther than how I intended it.
That’s it …I exercised my faith to go to our SPIRIT-PARENT SOURCE and received wisdom to quit now. That is, someone could argue, how I interpreted the message with my brain. So then, how will you interpret it for you? You can discuss the point with me, which only God knows whether that would be productive for you …to get God’s answer, go directly to the SOURCE.
Which is the bottom-line purpose for what Ryan and I do, now then, my dear friend and publisher, let’s talk about what on earth all this has to do with aging and reversing the process thereof.Podcast 51 Jan 8 2010 Reversing the aging process pt 7
In Freedom,
Brad
