I went to Atlanta, and got to meet some amazing people at the Identity Echange Catalyst meet up. I am 72, so I didn’t bust my hump to try to meet as many people as possible. I trusted God. I also believed the Winship’s message on worldview, I didn’t have to self promote. I would meet the people that The Lord intended me to meet there. I may meet more on Zoom calls, or through the Kajabi group lists.
But all of this points to my identities, which was a major topic of discussion, especially at meal times. And so, as far as God has taken me – internally, He calls me two things, one is “Specially crafted – Limited Edition”. This name is something that He gave me and enhanced as a response to my own label of “weird”. But, I find that when you allow God to get you “close enough” on things [again with the worldviews, no scarcity, and no need for certainty or perfection] He can bring me up against my own limits. Sometimes, language has limits. Sometimes, I need experience.
With my internal identity, “weird”, and the better description of “Limited Edition – specially crafted” carry some truth but not the whole truth. “Weird” carries a connotation that is not from Jesus, part of a false identity of being rejectable, scary, or intimidating, or maybe just a puzzle piece that just has a very weird shape, and the first 1000 places that you tried to put it didn’t even come close to working (think gear shaped, with a couple of dozen teeth, when everything else seems to have the normal bulbs and cavities). So, there is truth that I am specialized, and that has come with a pricetag of isolation and loneliness. But, God wants me to be connected, especially when it is just Us (I will capitalize Us, when it is a “He” and “i’). He so wants to validate that neither one of us is going crazy. All of the non-neurotypical / non-psychotypical / non-typical aspects of me were not accidents. Well, some of them may have been the results of my accidents / mistakes when I didn’t know what to do with my non-typical aspects. But, from His side, He needed every non-typical thing that He gave me. And His design also carried with it a desire to bless, and to serve me. His heart is for me.
So, the rest, that can’t be carried in the “Specially crafted – Limited Edition” moniker comes clearly through an experience. This was something that The Lord added to, in one of the sessions with the identity coach assigned to me. Two things came together. We were talking about times where I felt especially close to God, and when He communicated with me. I also have had “don’t filter” drilled into me by friend and mentor Bobby Alston. “Don’t filter” is basically an exhortation to let Jesus lead, and to not overrule it if we don’t understand something. So, in meeting with my identity coach, a memory came to mind. It was a powerful time of hearing God (in words), at the end of a time of not hearing God (any way).
It was at a workshop led by Ellel ministries, hosted at a church in Smiths Falls, Ontario Canada. I don’t remember the title of the workshop, but it was near the end of their Modular C series on prayer ministry. The format was a Friday evening and an all day Saturday (9am – 8pm). The workshop was designed to increase our listening to God. The final piece started an hour or 2 before dinner, with a sharing and debrief time after dinner. The task was simple, connect with God somehow, and write down or hold on to what He gave you.
I thought this was going to be a slam dunk. I owned the domain name jesusdaybyday.org afterall. I heard (usually words in my mind and/or heart) at times in every day life, at times that were not particularly spiritual (as I was looking to see if I had already shared this, I found that God had touched me through my dental hygenist – weird, huh 😉 Anyway, I sat down and waited. And waited. And then took a walk out in nature as the sun was setting. And waited. And had dinner with some other participants (though my son, and the family hosting us couldn’t attend). And listened for some annointed words coming through the other people. And waited. You get the picture. They announced that the sharing time would be in 15 minutes, and then 5 minutes. And there I was, domain name owner, and fully expecting to have the shame of not hearing, when that was the whole point of the exercise.
Then I heard it “Rest in My love”. Woohoo. I will take it. I don’t have to go in with nothing. I was so happy.
Then I heard, even more clearly “No, That is not what I said.”
“I said ‘Rest, My love’ “
I was completely undone. That hit me hard. It wasn’t just the words. It was another waiting that added to the impact of the words. My wife and I separated when our son was 3. Our son was about 17 or 18 at this time. My wife and I had been in counseling for a couple of years before we separated, and so tenderness was not that spontaneous. I probably hadn’t heard ‘Rest, My love’ in 15 or 16 years. And all of a sudden it is the Lord saying it. I could say that I also have an internal identity of “His love”. But you can see that wouldn’t hold a small fraction of what the experience really contained. It was years before I could relate it without crying. And I may have cried with my identity coach, as I told him.
But, when I was relating it to my identity coach, my “not filtering” allowed Jesus (or maybe Holy Spirit) to add something to it. Suddenly, Jesus was sitting by The Father, and they were watching me in my predicament, of all of my waiting. They were reading me. And Jesus was so proud of me. I was waiting. I wasn’t going to make something up. I wasn’t trying to anticipate. And all of that made the finale hit (in a good way) so much harder. Hitting really isn’t the right picture, but receiving fully isn’t something that we normally picture, much less put any sort of measure on. And yet that was what it was. And Jesus and The Father were both fully aware that it wasn’t just the current waiting, it was the waiting for kind words of love.
So, I am precious to Him. I am unique in the way that I was made, but loved into even more uniqueness of the how experiences with Him are cumulative, sometimes reaching undescribable heights.
So, though I didn’t get a chance to go into all of the detail of my inner identity in all ways, it was what enabled my external identity as well. This one is found in detail over at profoundlyignorant.com But, my external identity is that I am profoundly ignorant.
People usually started out a little taken aback, but also curious. Outside, Identity Exchange circles, I have had people say that it wasn’t God who told me that I was profoundly ignorant, but it was. And it was full of the same love that I spoke about with my internal identity. In fact, the chicken coop incident took place with the same friends who owned the horse rescue ranch in Merrickville, Ontario, where I had stayed the year or 2 before when The Lord said “Rest, My love.”
So, I am really profoundly ignorant. That makes me profoundly dependent on God to keep this world, and my world together because of His love for us. This does intersect some of the things that made me a “Limited Edition – specially crafted”. I both had to learn growing up, and was also amazed at how I learned, and how I didn’t. Suffice it to say that I confused recognition (for achievements / excellence ) with loving attention. But excelling had a price, communities were not safe, and I lost a best friend in middle school because I won a competition. And I decided to do some level of abandoning who I was created to be, in order to fit in, a little more. But that was hard. I had a low genius IQ, and a memory which was measured in the 99th percentile. The Lord also gave me courage, and integrity. But, I didn’t know Him other than religiously until I was 21. And by 21, I was so arrogant, and addicted to challenge and conquest, that for the first 7 years of my walk with Him, I tried to best Him in some ways, and look for loopholes in scripture. At about 28, I finally looked at my messed up life and decideed that I wanted Jesus as my Lord, in addition to being my Savior.
So, it took a long time to come to the place where I would know that I was both loved and profoundly ignorant. But, I didn’t know what to do with the giftings that the world celebrated. I couldn’t fix my marriage, or the adversity that came our way as a single parent family.
But, knowing in no uncertain terms that I was profoundly ignorant, while gifted, made me realize that everyone is profoundly ignorant. And just like I didn’t know to ask the most important question in building a chicken coup, we all live through who knows how many of those types of questions everyday. The concept of the “butterfly effect”, and the all too frequent “unintended consequences” write part of the story of our universal profound ignorance plainly. So, one time I asked God, “why doesn’t this world just fly apart”. His answer was simple and true “Because people don’t understand how much I intervene on their behalf every day out of love”. And I thought “Boy, isn’t that the truth”. Religion has us arguing if God’s direct intervention in the affairs of men stopped with the apostles. And among people who do believe that God intervenes today, we often want to see it more, find out the secret to asking for intervention, wait for revival, … We / I have greatly over-valued leaning on our own understanding, when it comes to His plan. We think we know it, but we don’t. We think that it is planned to the n th degree, and/or fragile, when He has all sorts of latitude built in for fellowship, and for our learning to work with Him (Ps 127:1 in so many common tasks of life).
So having an identity of being profoundly ignorant, means simply that I can be simple. Simply, child like. And children are not concerned with their own ignorance since they know that mom and dad know what they don’t.
