As promised in the last post, I will give some of the background for developing the concept of living in appointed times by faith. For starters, when I was younger, although I did have my fair share of deep thoughts, I never really developed any of them, and so most went to waste. I wasn’t really living for anything, per se. I enjoyed games and reading novels, but of course this was not what I was living for (even if I was passionate about them frequently). I mostly just wanted to be normal, safe, and get as much entertainment as I could while being respectable.
In the Summer of 2008 I attended a Journey to the Heart, which is basically a Christian retreat sponsored by the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). The focus of this journey was on discovering your true self – your heart. While there, I discovered the extreme shallowness of what I called my heart beliefs and convictions; I confessed to a lot of failures in my own life and asked forgiveness of many people I had offended. I returned from this experience a changed person, incredibly more focused on what I wanted to achieve and maintain in my life. I had a new sense of freedom and drive and did not want to lose that to the daily grind of life again. I maintained this new level of consciousness I had achieved fairly consistently over the next few years. However, though I did develop greater awareness, I was still limited by the world in which I had grown up, and the presuppositions that I had never challenged.
Over Thanksgiving break of 2010, I started having symptoms of tendonitis and carpal tunnel. The following summer I underwent massive physical therapy to try and correct the postural compromises I had allowed over the years that had led to the condition in which I found myself. During this time, I was forced to lay off practicing violin and piano almost entirely, something I usually did 6-8 hours every day during summers. This gave me an enormous amount of time to think. I questioned whether I would ever be able to play music again, whether I would have to change my whole career focus, which had been pretty stable up to that point. I had goals of getting a Ph.D. in Violin Performance and teaching violin at the university level. I questioned my purpose in life and started making existential inquiries. I even doubted my assurance of what I viewed as my salvation in the Christ of the Bible. This is something I had done constantly when I was younger, but had not even thought about the last couple of years since attending the Journey to the Heart.
I came out of this experience with a new desire, not just for genuineness but for truth. Old ideas, beliefs, and traditions did not impress me any more. My philosophical roller-coaster ride only increased when I decided in January not to finish my degree that semester, as my condition, though improved in the fall, had gotten worse over the holidays. This decision was made just days prior to when I would have started classes. In April of that year (2012) I underwent carpal tunnel surgery after having a battery of tests. The entire first quarter of that year I again had massive time to think and rehash some of the questions that had plagued me the past summer. I decided to really find and commit myself to a definite purpose so I had something to live for, since the things I had given my heart and time to in the past (my music especially) seemed to be taken away from me. I started to intensely study Scripture, because though I had “believed” in my mind since I was a child that the Bible had all the answers for the problems humans face in life, I had never truly entertained this belief in my heart; it had only been an intellectual exercise.
This desire for meaning and value led me to literally apply every Scriptural commandment, instruction, and even proverb that I could. I had been exposed to the possibility that YHVH’s torah (the commandments found in the first five books of the Bible) was valid for today and dove into keeping that passionately. I stopped eating unclean meat, and then meat in general, started fervently observing weekly and annual sabbath days, starting wearing tzitzit (tassels), bought a shofar, and devoted more and more of my time to studying this portion of Scripture especially. In December of 2012 I graduated with my Bachelor’s of Music in Orchestral Instrument Performance. I employed myself in submitting an application for graduate school, but my heart was not in that at all. I had become infatuated with the Biblical thought that my body was the temple of the Holy Spirit. This lead me on a path to what I believed was total health. I almost overnight went from a semi-regular diet to eating all raw foods, fasting a couple days per week, making fruit and vegetable juices, and eschewing any “unnatural” hair or body products.
In February of 2013, I started what I believed to be the ultimate in physical cleansing – a 40-day water-only fast. One of my brothers and a friend of mine had recently completed such a fast just a month before. I hooked up with someone I knew only through my brother and traveled out to New Mexico for this exciting experiment in body purification. I kept a detailed blog during the entire nearly-six-week period. Some day I hope to summarize and post some of the amazing experiences and discoveries I had during this memorable time, but I will save that for a future post. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) for me, I developed a bowel obstruction shortly after breaking the fast, and underwent emergency intestinal surgery to correct the problem. I stayed in the hospital for about a week and then was home for about 2 months recovering from my surgery and utilizing feeding tubes for all my nutrition since I was still unable to pass food through my stomach to my intestines. This was the worst time in my life, and probably will remain so for a long time. I am thankful to be alive and healthy now, except for the scars.
The world I had imagined and built up for myself completely crumbled to the ground during this humiliating time. I tried to find something to hold on to but everything seemed like an illusion. I went through a period of deep depression for several months, but finally emerged with a new, powerful, albeit simple paradigm for my existence. This was developed through 3 key passages of Scripture as well as tidbits of self-help blogs I had begun to read. The first Bible passage was Ecclesiastes 3:1 in The Scriptures which states, “For every matter there is an appointed time, even a time for every pursuit under the heavens.” The next two passages are from the Restored Name King James Version. Exodus 20:8-11 states, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. (9) Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: (10) But the seventh day is the sabbath of YHVH thy Elohim: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: (11) For in six days YHVH made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore YHVH blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Galatians 6:9 states, “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” These passages, some insight from the blog zenhabits.net, and much thought later, I developed my paradigm of ‘Living in Appointed Times by Faith.’
Ever since I began using this paradigm toward the end of Summer 2013, I cannot imagine living without it! It has changed my world significantly for the better and is inherently sustainable.