Have you ever been inspired?

Have you ever been inspired? Have you ever witnessed a great moment and felt something inside that pulled you beyond your own perceived limitations? Have you ever thought “I want to do that” or “what if I could do that?” How about an athlete that breaks a record or a baby that takes a first step or a work-of-art that moves you so deeply you just don’t have words? Have you ever been inspired?

I have and I bet you have. We have our heroes. We have our idols. We have our dreams. We have our hopes. We have thoughts of something so much bigger than ourselves. We daydream the great dreams and envision obstacles removed and challenges overcome. Don’t we do that? I have and I bet you have.

Do you think “what would I be if I could be anyone?” What could I accomplish if there were no road blocks? I could climb that mountain. I could fly that jet. I could get that degree. I could have that family. I could get that job. I could write that book. I could love that person. I could be loved by that person. I am sure you have thought “what would I be if I could be anyone?”

When we talk about inspiration, this is what we mean. When we say we were inspired, this is what we mean. When we want to inspire another, this is what we mean. We are bringing life to something that didn’t have life. We are bringing a fresh breath of invigorating air for a suffocating dream. We are in spiriting something that wanted to awake. We are letting our innermost being wake up from the slumber of inactivity. We are agreeing with who we really are and are coming alive in the process. We are taking a huge bite out of life and enjoying every moment. We are inspired.

The word “inspire” means to “in spirit” or “in breath.” The ancient Greek word for Spirit is pneuma which means to breath. You might recognize the word from some of our English terms like pneumatic for air powered. In the old English and Latin, the word “inspire” meant to “breath into.” The Jewish idiomatic application was “breath of life” like in the creation poem when God “breathed life into Adam.” Inspire means to give life to something, literally. I want to be inspired, don’t you?

Did you know there is a great book that has been very popular for centuries that was intended to inspire us? Christians call it the Bible. There is actually a verse in the Bible that says it was intended to inspire us.

2 Tim 3:16 All of the written word is inspiration and good for teaching and correcting and instructing and training in the way of right relationships (LLT)

In this year’s posts, I’ve spent some time developing the LJT characters. Check out their page here. Remember our Lena identity is our interaction with the world. She can be really broken when she lives in fear and is reacting to her circumstance to try to control the outcome of a situation. Judy is our internal judge that can get really critical and project condemnation and guilt when she isn’t safe and loved. Our true self, or innermost being, is Trudy. Trudy is the truth of love. She is our divine self. Trudy is what God looks like as us. Trudy is where inspiration ignites.

Here is where it gets messed up. If Lena is broken and Judy is running amok, Trudy inspiration, in Love and from Love, can be distorted by the time it reaches our consciousness. Seriously, when Judy and Lena know nothing but fear, they will take perfect love and distort it into something that looks nothing like true love, free love, no-fear love.

Say a mother has been abused her whole life. Say she never felt safe as a child. What if she was mugged just the other day which re-enforced her fears? Now this mother has a child. She is so afraid she won’t let the child out of their room or have contact with other children. She only feeds her one kind of food that she believes is the only safe kind of food. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Inspired loved from Trudy becomes imprisonment for her child.

Maybe that is extreme, but maybe it isn’t. I believe this is why you have stories like Samuel and Saul in the Bible. Samuel tells Saul to kill an entire race of people. Saul doesn’t do it. Samuel says God told him to tell Saul to do it. Samuel gets really mad when Saul doesn’t follow orders and hacks to death the leader of this race of people. Maybe Samuel was inspired in some way. Maybe he was just a huge jackass. Who knows? But what can we learn from the story? What inspires us? Maybe it is “how not to do stuff.” Maybe it is how not to have relationships. Maybe the story highlights how mankind can be incredibly selfish and horrible and stupid and blame it all on God. Maybe that’s it.

So the story is inspiring. It isn’t dictated. This is an important point to grasp. None of us can know the unknowable God. Even Jesus didn’t know everything but He was certain of His oneness with the Father. He knew the truth was from His innermost being. He knew His Trudy and had a very healthy Lena and Judy. This is what we can embrace. We can know that the truth is within us and we are the divine manifestation of God on Earth. We can embrace love and know we are loved and let that love heal our Judy and Lena.

We can listen to our innermost being and know that truth is emerging. If we feel fear, it isn’t love and isn’t Trudy. If we feel condemnation, it is a distorted Trudy by a broken Judy. If we sense judgment, Judy is not well. If we are playing pretend or putting up a facade, then Lena needs some attention. If we are living in offense, then Lena needs to be loved back into wholeness. The inspiration is trying to come from the deepest part of us. We need to trust that inspiration.

So for those out there that have avoided the Bible because of the horrific images of God, realize these were broken Lena’s and Judy’s that were not embracing their Trudy. They didn’t even know the truth of love before Jesus showed us how to live whole. They were certain that the God they manufactured in their minds was the God of the universe. Jesus shows us that wasn’t the case and reveals a God who is love and is in us and we are in Him and we are one with Him. Jesus showed us that Heaven is inside us and we have access to that heaven when we live in love. The kingdom of love is real and is within us.

Be inspired. Don’t let anything distract you with fear. It is time that we let our innermost Trudy inspire us and bring us back to life so we can live the full and fabulous life that Love intends.

Yay God!

Lance