By This Shall All Men Know, part 2

    It's Christmas Eve, and even I don't like working on Christmas Eve! But I did want to keep my promise from last week's blog about sharing a few things Papa has brought into my life that have helped me learn to communicate in a way that leads to healthy relationships (i.e., in a way that loves others as He loves me). By the way, I did rewrite part of last week's entry to make it clearer. Sometimes I forget to edit my posts after I write them!
     Perhaps the most important ongoing thing that God has done in my life that helps me listen well and send messages in a more "other-centered" manner is to bring me even closer to Himself in experienced intimacy with Him. I hinted at this last week when I wrote about living in awareness of His presence. This intimacy has come into my life primarily through two things: by God's leading me away from performance-based living to grace-based living, and by my taking time as often as needed to "seek His face" until the Holy Spirit saturates me to the point of experienced awareness of His Presence. 
     The first part of this, living grace-based, is something most of us need ongoing refreshing in, especially when things rock our worlds (as mine has been). My most recent refresher for the grace life has come through reading The Cure, a wonderful rewrite of TrueFaced, by Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol and John Lynch (Kindle version). If you still tend to live a performance, behavior-oriented Christian life, I highly recommend that you read this book (I recommend it highly, anyway, but especially if you don't really get God's love for you.). Another good book for this is He Loves Me by Wayne Jacobsen, and the list could go on. And yes, I know that reading books won't change you--you need the Holy Spirit's work in you in a life-on-life community for that. But I can't write about that today. 
    The second part of this, seeking God's face until awareness of His Presence and His peace comes, I have written about many times before. I will take time over the next few weeks to see if I need to collect, condense and elaborate on this some more. All I know is that my experiential encounter with God 7.5 years ago, whereby He led me deeper and deeper into inner stillness and peace, is the key to everything else He has done in my life, and I find that this is true for most folks both historically and currently.
     There are other things, too, though, that God has done in my life that have helped me learn to communicate differently. I won't take time to elaborate on these today, but I will list them. If I get any response to this blog requesting further elaboration I will write more about them. :-) Some of these things are...

• Get healed up! Deal with your stuff! Many of us are very wounded and need some inner healing to break harmful patterns, change faulty paradigms, etc. I think this is self-evident, but just in case...
• Ask Holy Spirit to help you become more “self aware.” Ask Him to help you with the following.

      Ask Him to help you sense when anxiety is rising or your peace is leaving you. When that's the case, it's best to stop and allow Him to show you what's really happening in you. Then you can re-surrender to Him and invite Him to flood you again with His love. Obviously, when you are feeling anxious is not a good time to talk about hard and touchy subjects, but as God alerts you to what's happening inside of you, you can ask the other person to give you time to process, etc., and then take time to return to the place of peace. (And yes, I know some of you reading this don't have much peace, ever, but I am hoping to intrigue you into exploring a new way to live!).

      Ask Him, too, to  help you become more aware of your body language when you are talking! Most of you know that a very large percentage of our sending messages is not directly related to the words we use. Most of our communication to another is rather by means of vocal inflection, facial expressions, body position, gestures--you get the picture. So if Holy Spirit doesn't help us become aware of these other sending channels, we may be saying one thing with our mouths while denying it with the rest of our "communication devices."

• Listen far more than you talk but when you do talk, listen while you talk. 
• Communicate about communication! In your key relationships, talk about communication! It's amazing how that will help.
• Get help from a loving community, a wise and trusted friend, a counselor/coach, etc. I could write more about this, but maybe later. Again, The Cure, Bo's Cafe, et al. can help you grasp how this works.

Okay, enough said for today. I think I am rambling anyway, probably trying to stuff too much into too short a space! And who reads blogs on Christmas Eve anyway!! But I offer this in love to any who happen by.

Joyful, Wonder-filled Christmas to you,

Tom, one of Abba's kids