LLI Fellowship

Without Emotion…

Are you one of those analytical personalities that will examine a decision from every possible angle? Do you trust your mind to make the best decision?

If you struggle succumbing to a religious mindset, do you know what you are fighting? Do you fight internally with your tendency to be religious?  We assume that if one places a high emphasis on the mind to discern truth than you are prone to side with a church or group of people that defends their view of the faith with sound doctrine through an accurate articulation of very clear and historically correct facts.

You fear the idea of releasing yourself to an emotionally-based system of faith, that kind of approach to understanding truth would open the door to deception. An invisible God, in the Spirit, showing up in your life in the abstract, that idea is scary. 

You would most likely challenge any new teaching or way of presenting the Gospel once for all delivered to the saints, your response would most likely be a simple grutteral request, "please, give me the plain truth as it has been written by the ancients!"

Connecting with heaven is all about emotion and heaven’s intent is to blow apart the rationale nature of the human mind. PERIOD.

To one whose normal way of solving a problem is through a close examination of the facts, good counsel, and by a clearly vetted critical analysis of a matter, I ask you to consider the central place of your emotions in decision making. How radical changes in your emotions move a person in a new direction. 

If I have described you than I would ask you to consider this fact – that nothing happens to you or the world around you without emotional pressure on your mind. This emotional pressure comes from the heart and soul of your personhood.

Let’s agree that it is by means of a supernatural encounter that any person really comes to a sense of God's presence. God Himself initiates a "call" or summons a human to action on His terms, this intrusion of Heaven happens every time at the emotional level of a man woman or child. Scriptural examples abound: Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, Samson and his parents, Joshua, David, Elijah, Elisha, Zechariah, Mary the mother of Yahshua, just to name a few.

Whether through a radical supernatural vision of a future event, a mysterious emotional surge in your gut caused by a site of something so big that it causes you to fall to your knees, or a crazy dream that overwhelms you and causes you to wake up and soberly consider what you just experienced on your bed. 

These grace-filled very dramatic encounters with Heaven form the foundation of life changing decisions that move out of a place of spiritual sloth and stupor and bring us into a wildly new way of living.  

You would have to agree that in your entire life that when you have ascertained the facts in your head that your heart is what ultimately moves you to make the decision to purchase an item, date a woman or man, take a job, choose a church or fraternity to hang with, or cause you to move to a new place.

What I hope we all can agree on today is that most people make decisions this way -- after your head is convinced of the rightness of a matter your heart is what ultimately drives you to make the decision to move forward in the direction your emotions are seemingly leading you to pursue.

Upon the premise of humans making decisions based on "emotion" I will seek to build a case today that your thoughts and your ways are determined by your heart.  

My basis for this point is that every decision comes from the heart; decisions which ultimately dictate what your brain intellectually wires you to do. The thoughts are you thinking right now and the words that are coming out of your mouth and the place of your body today reveals what is going on in your heart?

This point clearly established by the proven reality that when you gaze upon anything that you perceive is amazingly beautiful your mind stops and your heart takes over. For many the very sight of beauty stops their intellect from working and many times can even short circuit your ability to even utter a coherent word. Usually a simply “wow” or a mouth wide open “awesome” is the best you can muster. 

If you read the passage written in the book of Revelation Chapter 5 the text says that there continually are the twenty-four elders bowing down surrounded by the hosts of 10,000 times 10,000 of the redeemed and the angelic hosts created for the sole purpose to sing over and over again before the face of the Great throne the same refrain, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain To receive power and riches and wisdom, And strength and honor and glory and blessing!"

Life changing experiences happen in the lives of every person who has lived a few days on this planet, the question is, “what will we do with these potentially life altering experiences”?

If we can agree with the premise I established thus far, that our emotions dictate what we ultimately “do” in life, we can hopefully take the next logical step toward a greater comprehension of how we can rid ourselves of wrongly developed mindsets and emotions that limit us from realizing our fullest potential as one of God’s children.

I strongly hope to remove from my heart and from your heart the sentiment that we a bound to heed the banal thoughts that can spin around in our heads sometimes. We can remove these thoughts through girding up of the loins of our mind but what will inspire us to depart from living continually in the cesspool of foolish thoughts? 

An emotional connection with new thoughts derived from reading the Word of God or recalling from memory passages retained in your mind through a lifetime of wrestling with negative thoughts can turn your heart around. Or through the mercy of God some other power using means of heavenly communication that wakes us up from a stuck place and a place of stupor and brings you back to sanity.
 
We need to avoid what I will call “imagined obstacles” that are demonically intended to be falsely created obstacles that block our blessings, and many times are the product of our flesh speaking to us a lie which was slowly developed over years of bad thinking.

Most of these negative or wrong mindsets form the basis of a very limited life experiences. For not one of us has seen it all or can say has investigated every principal found in matters of the human heart.

None of us or very few can say they seen what lies beyond the night sky, yet there it is, the incredible expanse of the night sky, just asking us to communicate with the unknown and ask that basic question we all want to ask,“do you really want to know (commune) and see what lies beyond what your eyes can"t see”?

In applying my words to you today we will take the negative example of a very common mindset we often encounter today in our culture is the sad case of the unmotivated depressed young person. They are specialists at the ancient art of excuse making to do convince they do not have to change. Completely demotivated these unpeople seem unaffected by the penalty of laziness. Did you ever ask yourself what motivates a person to do nothing?  

We can guess at a few common excuses -- maybe they are confused about what to do next, maybe they have a fear to try anything because they have a lack confidence in their ability to do anything, or they suffer from a complete loss of confidence.

Or maybe they know what to do but are too weak to perform what they know they are supposed to do.  Or maybe they are depressed under the weight of the pressure of a million horrible thoughts about their self-worth.

Or maybe someone hurt them so bad in their past they just can’t get over the pain of that hurt, or maybe they are so sad because they lost someone very close to them like a mom or dad they just can’t function as a normal human anymore.

Whatever the case is for this struggling person, the physical reality is that they are stuck in laziness, depression, and sloth. They have in every way thrown in the towel and given up on life!

If you are in the business of fixing this variety of physiologically detrimental behavior than I ask you what method of information gathering will you attempt to uncover first as you begin the process of peeling back the layers of their emotional twistedness?   

If you really want to help the person discover the source of their problems you will seek to discover their mindset, right?

You are trying to figure out what the mind of the depressed and lazy person is telling them about reality and what thoughts are keeping that depressed person stuck in the art of doing nothing. Nothing but sitting on the couch and watching television day after day. Why are they are stuck in this state of inactivity with barely enough energy to get up off the couch and go outside and enjoy a simple sight of a perfectly beautiful spring day?

In most cases their mind is constantly being fed a strain of bad feelings and tortured emotions that emanate from their broken heart that constantly feed their active mind with a series of negative thoughts that breed hopelessness.

What is that something that is keeping this sad person from experiencing new thoughts that will motivate them to move forward with fresh optimism and hope and cause them to summon the energy to get up and out of their place of physical and emotional stuck-ness?

This person has indeed lost the fear of loss or death! They simply don’t care what happens to them. They don’t fear God enough to obey His command to labor six days in a week for their food and sustenance. If they were homeless they would find a way to a shelter and there they would sit day in day out. If they were able to get incarcerated they would be content to stay there and wallow in their negative emotional baggage and misery.

What if they were absolutely afraid to step outside for fear of being infected with a horrible disease? What if they thought a boulder would drop down on their head as soon as they stepped out of the front door? What if they had filled their mind and heart with so much negativity that they could not believe for one second that they would be successful at anything that they sought to do outside of the couch, bathroom, refrigerator, and the television?

All of these possibilities are false but that doesn't matter in this case. What will it take to get this very static person off the couch? From my analytic perspective they must be introduced to a force stronger than the force keeping that person from moving off the couch so they can move on to a life filled with meaning and value.

The sure awareness of the knowledge of God is a powerful force that has power to judge a wasted life, especially since we know a perfect God grades on an extremely high scale of perfection. Ultimately it is a external powerful force that has the right to eternally demote or promote the eternal destiny of that lazy and sad person and move them from a place of complete complacency.

The Lord speaks hard words to awaken His People, notice in Jeremiah 11:20, " But, O LORD of hosts, that judgest righteously, that triest the reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them..."

 Could this sad person, in God's mercy, also be forever changed by the sight of a force so beautiful, so elegant, so powerful, and so amazing that they are shocked into doing something way beyond what they ever thought that they could do. Whether a force that brings dread or a force that brings incredible joy both will move the person out of his or her funk and onto a new way of being. 

Both ideas are in view as I build the case for “Nothing Happens without Emotion”

Let’s take the opposite example of a very motivated and active person like Saul of Tarsus who lived back in the first century and who was the archenemy #1 of the Jesus People movement that took the Roman empire by storm around 33 AD.

Saul was very busy executing, imprisoning, and impoverishing as many Yahshua (Jesus) resurrection-believing citizens of the Roman Empire as he could. He believed if he invested his lifetime in keeping the Jewish faith pure he was worthy of a great heavenly reward from His Creator - El Elyon. All of Saul’s work was done within the framework of a positive religious mindset but yet was framed in a wrong way.

Little did Saul know that he was working against his personal blessing and the fortunes of the nation of Israel. Saul of Tarsus had access to all data on the life and times of Yahshua of Nazareth, the One who claimed to be Messiah of the Jews and was seen alive from the dead after His public execution. But facts notwithstanding, Saul’s continued commitment to a wrong interpretation of the data led him to build a lifestyle littered with piles and piles of wrong behavior.

Saul’s work was done in a religious way and with much emotion, with a developed mindset of being correct in every way as a faith-driven person.

The lazy couch-sitter and the Jesus Resurrection People hater both are acting out wrong mindsets; both have the same besetting problem -- the challenge of ridding their hearts of bad emotions that lead to bad thoughts that can lead each of us to perform terrible acts of inhuman behavior.

Both need the same kind of power in the supernatural realm; an encounter that releases them from the “stuck way” of living in negativity and wrong behavior that any bystander can believe is clearly contrary to God’s will for their lives.

Saul of Tarsus was knocked down to his face by an incredible Light from heaven on his way to Damascus to gather some rebellious Jesus followers to bring them back to Jerusalem to face justice, which would most likely be a death sentence that would usher them to the heavenly gates of Zion much earlier then expected. 

If not for a piercing laser light pouring down from heaven on this passionate pharisee zealot Saul that was able to stop this determined man he would have surely stayed deeply entrenched in his wrong viewpoint of God and His way of dealing with the sons of men.

A very intelligent man who thought he was right in every way including deep down in his heart emotions. What would or could have such an impact on a man of that nature? And what would have been future of the early church had not this light broke into his world? He was stopped and overwhelmed by incredible power that spoke through a humanly understandable Voice in the Hebrew language saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? 

How big of an impression did the Lord perform on this intensely driven Saul of Tarsus?  A religious zealot like Saul requires a major impact on the center seat of all his emotions to move him like this from walking out intensely wrong behavior to radically change over to a life given over to intensely right behavior. 

Why such a major knockdown? Because it is hits us in our emotional center - our heart. It was very emotional to be blown away by incredibly bright light, and the brightness caused Saul’s mouth to churn out words of submission, “who are you Lord?”  and “and what do you want me to do for You”?

The obvious response to a major heavenly knockdown was to change your course of action and to turn ones heart, which would lead them anyone having this dramatic an experience to now experience new thoughts and a brand new theology. In my view it is the discovery of a new sense of what is really true or a discovery of the immense glory of the majestic that will ultimately change the way a man feels and thinks. 

Heaven can change people just like a near death experience tends to sober people.

The discovery of divine truth overwhelms the heart first and then subsequently changes the mind to inspire our heart and will to move in a new direction. Inspiring fresh wellspring of feelings that instigate mental inspiration and the justification to maintain new direction all while your heart and mind are being filled with new thoughts and ideas that lead you to take risks and step out of your comfort zone.  

What kind of heavenly encounter wills that depressed person from lying on his couch to get up and to change his way? I would say that it will take a major emotional and supernatural impact that gets his attention and overhaul his thinking! 

Who is different or more broken then these two extremes? We all have or sins and our failings to overcome don't we?

Who then my friend is the author of such an encounter?

You or me? Or is it not our Maker, isn't He the only One that can get our attention? Is it not Our Lord who prepares any who would draw near to His Majestic Throne?

When I listen to sermons or public speeches that are intended to motivate people to change their way or change their vote I have to conclude that both efforts are intended to touch your emotions first, then your mind.

I write these thoughts today as a man who has made major adjustments in thought and has taken many risks because of divine encounters that radically touched my emotions first then my mind.

I still remember the first time I felt the power of the presence of God impressing His words on my heart.

I was reading the Bible as I was accustomed to do in the morning. On this particular morning I was reading John 10 in the section where Jesus instructed his followers with the directive that His sheep hear His voice and they follow Him.

As I continued to read on in the passage I found myself going back and rereading the same words over and over again. I looked up a few times and reflected on the words as they bounced around inside of my heart and mind. Mostly I felt the impact in my stomach and the words where mostly heard in my head.

The impression I felt was new. I had never felt anything like it before in my life. This was the very first time that I experienced what I would call, “a voice inside of my head” it was a whisper, but it was so loud and clear!

I started to speak back as the disciples of Jesus often did in their day, I questioned the voice in my heart with words like, “what do you mean?” “what are you trying to tell me?”

At this time I was not a lazy person, I was very active in my church, and I had just started a new business. So why now was I experiencing this new sense of God speaking to me?

I can’t answer that question, nor do I have to, all I can remember is that my experience in hearing the voice of God; it was very real and the encounter motivated me to do things that I had never done before.

Within a few months everything in my life began to turn radically in a new direction. Eventually I left the only church and system of theological thought I had ever known since the earliest days of my life.

Back in 2003 I moved my family from my wife's home town area located in Pompton Lakes, NJ, this was where all our family and friends were located, we were led to an unknown place Somerset, NJ. It was here we met some very nice people who loved on us for a season. But it was to be for a season and then we were on the move again two years later (May 2005) to another place where we knew nobody a small rural town in the North Carolina named Pilot Mountain. 

From the time (10 years) of my first hearing the voice of the Lord, the Lord has added to our quiver four more children, which remain the most amazing parts of our wild journey

The most exciting stuff which included the expansion and increase of the original business I had just started when I was sitting in my chair hearing the voice of God from the passage I discovered in the Gospel of John Chapter 10.

in the process of time, my wife and I also opened a real business we called Livin Lattes Cafe and a corresponding ministry we called LLI Fellowship which you are realizing the fruit of as you read this article. Our for profit café was a real outgrowth of an emotional Divine Encounter, you can visit at our website www.livinlattes.com  .  

These heavenly orchestrated business plans occurred without ever imaging such a business at a prior time 

Our move to NC was for a more extended time – yes indeed, an exciting six years filled with a vast array of completely new experiences highlighted by the increase of children, we were rewarded with three more children, a new expanded business, and a new ministry that has yet to be fully discovered.

In early 2010, after a time of emotional great struggle, came the added responsibility of a pregnant wife carrying our 8^th child, little Zoe, and a new move and season that was uniquely orchestrated by the Lord and required another level of distress in trying to discern the workings of the Divine Providence to find our way.

I remember telling my wife during the deepest time of our struggle that we could not screw the next move up because Our God will not let us miss out on His plan. How could I be so sure?  Because we are so far out of our own plans we have no choice but to follow His plan.

In this move we were commissioned to go all the way to the other side of the US to find out how to get around Southern California only to lose our precious mother to cancer in June of 2011 which initiated another move back to Northern New Jersey six short months after we arrived in sunny CA in February of 2011.

So in August of 2011 we made our way back in Northern New Jersey, a move that challenged of ten members of the family as we were forced to squeeze into a very small two bedroom house with our large clan of eight children. Fortunately our two oldest girls moved in with their grandfather and provided some company to Sharon's lonely and grieving father.

Fortunately, the Lord’s mercy led us to move again in June 2012 to our very own home in northern New Jersey not far from the two bedroom house we packed our stuff into for nine months. 

What changed for me ten years ago when I was touched by a heavenly encounter is what I needed and it is what will have to happen in your life to bring change for you.

After reading this account you still want to step into a dynamic spirit-led walk, you will have to accept an emotional way of being led by Your Redeemer. You will have to accept His leading in your life.

Yes, we are led by Spirit and by Truth. Which is the right way for you, I have no idea, but I know that it is an ever changing dynamic in God’s way for you, the way of learning firsthand what our patriarchs learned at the behest of Our Creator what the essence of a faith walk is all about, and what it means to their heart… the absolute best way to live before Him! 

Look at all our Creator has done to save us! It was very emotional for the Father to release His only begotten Son to the womb of a flawed human.  And then to suffer as a humble servant of men in order to save man from their emotionally mixed up attitudes.  

Our Creator God is so very emotional indeed, His Word says, “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us”! This stated in our scriptures illustrates God’s emotional drive to save us is not based on our worthiness but His willingness!

We must know in the depths of our heart that we can also become the worst enemies of His will by allowing negative and wrong views of ourselves and of His Kingdom that hang around long enough to find root just long enough to keep us from our full potential in Him.

To finally end my effort to convince you that God’s typical way to move on your life is through the emotional connection to your heart. We all have to understand that if you haven’t had life-changing encounter with the Living God than you probably are finding you are stuck at some level wishing things are different.

Today you may not be excited about meeting Jesus in the glory of heavenly places. You may feel uninspired to do or try anything risky for yourself or for the King. You may find your job or business boring. You may see your current ministry is not having the impact you hoped.

And those of you who are parents are frustrated that your kids are not stepping out and attacking life, they afraid to take risks and seem to be aimless in their approach to life. Whatever you are facing you and I need an emotional connection with the Living God in order for change to happen! We need to feel something when we pray. We need the sense of destitution and emptiness for our God to hear, an emotional condition that matters to our God.

What must you do today to prepare your heart for the change?  Believe He has a perfect plan for your life. Don’t accept anything less, if you have confessed Jesus as Lord with your mouth and believed in your heart that He is the Christ…then believe that much more is available to you then what you have experienced thus far.

How can you be so sure, Jonathan?

Because you gave Him your life, your talents, your will, your children, and your money and He promised to give back to you more than what you gave Him!

Emotions of the heart are the cause behind a true change of mind. This move of the supernatural and mysterious is what makes the real change for any who will follow Jesus by giving their lives to Him.

Friends, Our Messiah is not found in a building or at a great historical site or any place you might assume houses Our God, but He will find you in your heart.  He delights to dwell in your heart, not your mind strictly… but your heart first!

Connecting with God emotionally is defined by love and loyal attachment to His name and His honor, the same components found in a great marriage.

He knows your musings and He knows where you want to go, where you were meant to go, the fulfillment of your dreams, your expectations of Him, and He knows what you could become after His discipline.

He wants you to partner with Him in fulfilling His Father’s mandate for our world. He chooses to use us not angels to preach the Good News at this time in human history.

Ask him to touch you, to reconnect you to Him, this is my prayer for me in my wanderings and I hope this is your prayer for your life and those around you.

May your future days be filled with heavenly excitement,

Jonathan David Keener