Rocky Ground.

It is time to look again at what we are doing. What is our goal and what exactly are our lives producing. We follow and we lead but is the path shining brighter or does the way grow darker? This takes courage to answer honestly in a dysfunctional religious group.  

With such a heavy subject,let's lighten it a bit with some rock n' roll from Bruce Springsteen:

"We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground

Rise up shepherd, rise up
Your flock has roamed far from the hills
The stars have faded, the sky is still
The angels are shouting ,Glory Hallelujah"

Perhaps, it is time to take inventory. Here are some additional questions for you to ask:

• Given the importance and gravity of your choices, are you sure you are correct in all the actions you have taken—with the damage and pain your choices may have caused to others, this is a very important question.
• Is what you have lost worth the value of what you have believed you have gained?
• What is the general state of your mind? In  other words, What emotions dominate you feelings of: Peace, Happiness, Anger, Fear, Loathing, Depression? Do emotions have any real presence at all or do you go through life numb?
• When was the last time you have taken real initiative in a decision?
• How long has it been since you have seen the people you allege to care about and love? Is your relationship to them in anyway impacted by your decisions regarding the group to wit you have attached yourself.

What do you really resonate in your deepest self on these topics?

If in any sense, there is an un-comfortability regarding any of these questions, chances are you are repressing them and have decided to defer them to ones who really cannot make them and those that will not fully answer for your lack of addressing them. That is what children do not men and women. Time to put your big boy pants on and do some real hard looking at where you are bound.

"Forty days and nights of rain have washed this land
Jesus said the money changers in this temple will not stand
Find your flock, get them to higher ground
Flood waters rising and we're Caanan bound

We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground"

There is an old maxim: ‘work will fill up any slack time you have’ In other words, if you do not control what goes into your life and what you expend effort on, someone else will do it for you. In a dysfunctional religious group, this is standard operating procedure. What is their deception? To gild their imposed activity as Godly when the modus operandi is to keep you distracted from all the questions above. This is especially true from anyone who is under that age of 45. Why? There is much to do, work, raise and educate children, buy houses and all the while, life, real life slips away. One day you wake to raised children who are not so certain you really knew what you were doing. 

You find the relationships that should have been present are only memories and yet the temptation is to work harder and press further on the familiar path of entropy and fatigue. All the while the steps grow higher and the way that seemed within reach last year must be postponed two or three. Carrots are thrown to keep you focused in what should not be your priority. And your service to God lies in worse state than it did perhaps ten years prior. 

"Tend to your flock or they will stray
We'll be called for our service come Judgment Day
Before we cross that river wide
Blood on our hands will come back on us twice

Rise up shepherd, rise up
Your flock has roamed far from the hills
Stars have faded, the sky is still
Sun's in the heavens and a new day's rising"

Time for a pause: How would you assess your relationship to God? Is your quiet time a struggle and in your prayers does all seem hollow and no one seems to be listening.  You become and enforce being a creature of habit and deferment of your very lives to people who say they care but in essence one slip from you reveals their true nature…they are not with you, they are using you.

"You use your muscle and your mind and you pray your best
That your best is good enough, the Lord will do the rest
You raise your children and you teach 'them to walk straight and sure
You pray that hard times, hard times, come no more
You try to sleep, you toss and turn, the bottom's dropping out
Where you once had faith now there's only doubt
You pray for guidance, only silence now meets your prayers
The morning breaks, you awake but no one's there"

Don’t repress this thought and throw it out because it smacks of deception. I am asking you point blank to address it. It is easy to throw out truth as easy as deception. Think for yourself. Look at the Rocky Ground. You have sowed for years into it. Does it reap anything else than what you were promised or expected? If so, look at it because it is a prophecy for what will be for the future…unless you change it.

All I know is if one does not take responsibility for their lives and where they are going, they are not realizing their potential and if I might say so, their God-given right of self-determination. In other words, their Freedom. If you have done that, then the place you are living is a prison and in your heart you know what I say rings and resonates deep. I know, I had that feeling for the years I was on the wrong path and yet allowed myself to put off my decision – thinking the Lord will change it. I have a question for you in a lesson:

Jeremiah was a young man to whom God sent his word to a heretical nation. He was repressed and imprisoned and left for dead. When the Kings would come to him, he never wavered in what he said. So what was that message? “God will not relent of the destruction He will wreak. The people follow their own vision and their leaders have become hirelings. There is judgment coming and cannot be stopped”. What does your heart tell you? Do you trust yourself enough to value that? If not, they have already brought you in chains. As Jesus would say ‘Blind guides, leading the blind – they are whitwashed sepulchers full of dead man’s bones..’

Here is a thought: God seems to not think in years but in generations. Sea-changes happen in the passing of generations. How is your leadership set up? Has the line of succession now become  a question? Remember most movements historically fizzle after the passing of the founder. This is a precedent of history. How different from those movements that have remained after 100+ years compare with the teachings of your group? This indeed is a tell.

In my life, I ignored the Rocky Ground and got used to the pain and fatigue believing the lie that it was all for God when it was not for Him at all.

In the end you lose anyway. That is the reality, you cannot sow your life into something and not reap its fruit. You are only prolonging loss and when the time is expended and your fifty and the kids are grown, you will be alone with your thoughts, you will remember the people and voices now but memory. The photos if you have any are only ghosts that stare back at you to perhaps a time when you were a real person before you gave yourself to what you allowed to be imposed on you. You have lost it all. At that time standing on a vacant land and it will still be Rocky Ground.

There is time to change. There is time to take charge there is time to silence the voices that leech the very life from you and your family.

There is only one Life don’t let someone live it for you…look at the ground on which your life and your wife and children stand on? Do you wish what you are feeling on them? If you do not change, you have damned them to such a life. 

On the bright side, there is still time. You can change, you can do it. There is a new day coming. There is love you have forgotten but it has not forgotten. Muster your strength the journey is not long at all. You know they way back home. 

"We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground
There's a new day coming
We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground
(I'm a soldier!)

                       Bruce Springsteen.