Father God be with me right now as I put these words here, in Jesus name amen.
In the book of Hebrews 5:11-14 the writer seems to interrupt themselves. In verse 11, you see these words and I’ve always heard them as frustration. I have so much to tell you, but you no longer try to listen another. Translation says that they had become “dull of hearing” another one says they “no longer try to understand.” Whenever this happens, a difference in wording from one translation to the next, it’s a sign that the translators had difficulty in putting across what is clear in the original language, into our English idioms and common usage.
- In most cases the translators are actually whole committees of folks who have dedicated their lives to accurately rendering the original manuscripts into English
- Greek is that original language of the book of Hebrews.
- The other languages of the scripture are Hebrew and Aramaic
So the trick is to read regularly in one translation so that you get the rhythm of that Translation, and I’m kind of struggling for what I mean by that, it’s like when you regularly go out for coffee with the particular person say when I go for a bike ride with my neighbor, Derek, I know his way of talking. He’ll interrupt me for things like tangent of humor, or to point out golf balls in the ditch or a rabbit, he’s constantly noticing little details. I’ve actually been spending a lot of time with him, and this is a very interesting aspect of his personality. And I wonder if it’s because of what he did for a living before he retired. He was a person who sorted the mail. So he had to have a quick eye for things like missing postal codes, or proper postage things like that. And also at a high speed. So I’ve learned his rhythm of speaking, for example, when he interrupts me that it’s for a specific purpose, sometimes humorous, and sometimes serious, but it’s best not to push on without pausing to hear what he had to say, and it’s always rewarding whatever it is. Whether I get to see golf balls in the ditch beside a golf course or little bunny, rabbits and gophers that I otherwise would’ve missed. I think I’ll let him ride ahead of us from now on because I was so distracted by talking to I found myself not noticing traffic as well as I could have so it is also when we read in particular Translation, we understand things innately. But then, when the Holy Spirit has given us reason to pause on a particular scripture, such as the case right now as I ponder this passage in Hebrews.
It’s interesting is that the writer of Hebrews doesn’t stop trying to get the message across he just points out the stubborn lack of participation of their listeners in what is being said to them.
Let me put that another way.
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town… John 4:28 NIV
My pastor, in a recent sermon, here’s a summary and here is a raw transcript of that…
But God is saying I want to meet with you. I want to meet you at the well, wherever the place is that you constantly bring your buckets to fill you to quench your thirst. Jesus is waiting for you at the well, and he wants to speak to you and he wants to connect with you on that real deep cut in your life.
It’s not our job to convict each other of our sins and stuff like that. The Bible says that do confess your sins to one another, and he is rightful and just to forgive you of that we help each other through. But man, oh, man, the Holy Spirit will reveal things in you, like no man can.
Henrik Bischcoff
The title of this post here, is “no more bottle” which is an allusion to a time in my past, when one of my children didn’t want to let go of being a baby, he was stuck drinking his milk from a baby bottle. I thought of a creative solution,
- We had a “last bottle” party, and his last bottle was the one we drew on his the cake in icing. We sang a song, “no more Bottle for ….” And it was a celebration! An advancement into maturity.
The writer of Hebrews seems to scold, but perhaps was just being emphatic. Getting their attention, albeit gently. They are reminded that it’s ok to be a baby, until it’s time to grow up into maturity.
How do we know when it’s time to move up?
Then in the final verse there in that context, but lets look at the whole passage now:
- NIV:
Warning Against Falling Away
11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. 12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
- ESV
Warning Against Apostasy
11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
- Amplified Classic Version:
11 Concerning this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull in your [spiritual] hearing and sluggish [even slothful in achieving spiritual insight]. 12 For even though by this time you ought to be teaching others, you actually need someone to teach you over again the very first principles of God’s Word. You have come to need milk, not solid food. 13 For everyone who continues to feed on milk is obviously inexperienced and unskilled in the doctrine of righteousness (of conformity to the divine will in purpose, thought, and action), for he is a mere infant [not able to talk yet]!14 But solid food is for full-grown men, for those whose senses and mental faculties are trained by practice to discriminate and distinguish between what is morally good and noble and what is evil and contrary either to divine or human law.
In my own personal experience, I have been learning for many years about this. Its been a process of what I’ve come to refer to as listening-obedience. As I listen, and put into practice aka obedience… I find my listener honed like a knife blade.
Pay attention to those words “constant practice” because there is an error I fell into. I would make sure I behaved myself when others were watching. I didn’t tell dirty jokes in church.
When we were children, my brother and I thought it was pretty silly of a man we saw reading dirty magazines in the book store at the airport, just before his flight. I think it was our notion that the time to be on your best behaviour is of you have a fear of flying.
But built into that mindset… it’s picking and choosing when I’m going to be obedient.
That’s why the Dorthy story is so much of welcome kind of mystery to me.
Just now, listening to “Hearing God” by Dallas Willard, he mentioned Psalm 104 to be mediated upon. The thoughts that come out for me is that God is intimately involved in his creation. So far away from the idea that he created the world, wound it up and set it in motion. To watch what happens… like some inventor hoping his gadget works! But he is so much NOT like that!
It’s a constant interaction with the Holy Spirit so I’m going to quote another verse here,
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-22
I’ve graduated from simply saying, “there’s nothing wrong with ______” or “I’m perfectly within my rights to ______” from a simple black/white idea of right and wrong…
I’m in a constant conversation with God. His word upon my ear doesn’t come like a command, its a gentle, sweet, quiet voice ever nudging me. Sometimes I don’t realize it was HIM that gave me the bright idea, until after the fruit of it thrills me to the point of knowing, and saying, “thank you Lord”
31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
I’ve had interesting – to say the least – experiences in this realm. Like the time I was called upon to bring a poem to an elderly lady on my bus, Dorthy.
A saying attributed to Augustine, one of the church fathers, in 70 AD… see this for full info> click here < “Love God and do what ever you want”
I also think of myself as a submissive wife! Christ Jesus is the husband, and we the church are the bride. Eager to please our husband.
9 Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.
Proverbs 21:9 NIV
An idea comes to mind, and there is a quick
– quicker and quicker by the way –
scan of Galatians 5’s
- 19 The acts of the flesh are obvious:
- sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like…
- 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is
- love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
This is also seen in the secular realm in the habit of living according to a mission and value statement. My personal mission statement is “to be a safe place to be” That allows me to make it universal so that when I representing my employer, who is not necessarily a Christian organization, but also not an organization that compromises my faith either.
My profession is that of a bus driver. Everything I do reflects on my faith in Christ, even if folks don’t see it printed on my shirt, “Christ Dwells Here”. My prayer is that they’ll wonder what’s different about me. Maybe wonder enough to ask me, or to have their ears perked up when a reason is hinted at or declared.
As long as you’re still here… I drove for a bus company that serviced a large city. The route I was driving was a busy one, during rush hour. There were daily tough decisions between being nice, and staying on schedule. But when elderly folks were boarding, I took the time to lower my bus… I waited for them to find a seat before blasting off, I waited for people who would have just missed my bus, I spoke decently and politely to everyone, greeted them. And it didn’t take much to rise above a lot of my fellow operators. Though my goal was merely to treat my passengers in a way that honored the Lord Jesus. See Matthew 25:31-46… I treated everyone according to “…even as you’ve done it to the least of these, you have done it unto me”
One day, after many days in the exact same time slot, a young lady, spoke out loud from the middle of the bus, and kept saying, “you’re that pastor…” and explained I was a pastor from a local church, identifying the church. At first, I insisted on the fact that I was actually a bus driver. But I finally had to say, out loud, to them all, that being a pastor was my calling, not my profession, and explained the difference. As a believer in Christ Jesus, I am a shepherd to those who cross my path on a daily basis.
As I explore this thought on my heart today. My reason for sharing all of this, is that I’ve come to realize that following his lead, no longer is about right/wrong. Its never, “what’s in it for me?” Its always as above, and to the Glory of God in and through my life.
Finally, I am no longer in a state of “becoming” but rather I am… I am Abba’s child, to the praise of his glory. Here’s a long quote from “Life Together” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Because Christian community is founded solely on Jesus Christ, it is a spiritual and not a psychic reality.
In this it differs absolutely from all other communities. The Scriptures call pneumatic:
“spiritual” > that which is created only by the Holy Spirit, who puts Jesus Christ into our hearts as Lord and Saviour.
The Scriptures term psychic:
“human” > that which comes from the natural urges, powers, and capacities of the human spirit.
The basis of all spiritual reality is the clear, manifest Word of God in Jesus Christ. The basis of all human reality is the dark, turbid urges and desires of the human mind.The basis of the community of the Spirit is truth; the basis of human community of spirit is desire.
The essence of the community of the Spirit is light, for “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5) and “if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another” ( 1: 7). The essence of human community of spirit is darkness, “for from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts” (Mark 7:21). It is the deep night that hovers over the sources of all human action, even over all noble and devout impulses.
The community of the Spirit is the fellowship of those who are called by Christ; human community of spirit is the fellowship of devout souls.
In the community of the Spirit there burns the bright love of brotherly service, agape; in human community of spirit there glows the dark love of good and evil desire, eros.
In the former there is ordered, brotherly service, in the latter disordered desire for pleasure; in the former humble subjection to the brethren, in the latter humble yet haughty subjection of a brother to one’s own desire.
In the community of the Spirit the Word of God alone rules; in human community of spirit there rules, along with the Word, the man who is furnished with exceptional powers, experience, and magical, suggestive capacities.
There God’s Word alone is binding; here, besides the Word, men bind others to themselves.
There all power, honor, and dominionare surrendered to the Holy Spirit; here spheres of power and influence of a personal nature are sought and cultivated.
It is true, in so far as these are devout men, that they do this with the intention of serving the highest and the best, but in actuality the result is to dethrone the Holy Spirit, to negate Him to remote unreality.
In actuality, it is only the human that is operative here.
In the spiritual realm the Spirit governs; in human community, psychological techniques and methods.
In the former naive, unpsychological, unmethodical, helping love is extended toward one’s brother; in the latter psychological analysis and construction; in the one the service of one’s brother is simple and humble; in the other service consists of a searching, calculating analysis of a stranger.
Perhaps the contrast between spiritual and human reality can be made most clear in the following observation:
Within the spiritual community there is never, nor in any way, any “immediate” relationship of one to another, whereas human community expresses a profound, elemental, human desire for community, for immediate contact with other human souls, just as in the flesh there is the urge for physical merger with other flesh. Such desire of the human soul seeks a complete fusion of I and Thou, whether this occur in the union of love or, what is after all the same thing, in the forcing of another person into one’s sphere of power and influence.
Here is where the humanly strong person is in his element, securing for himself the admiration, the love, or the fear of the weak. Here human ties, suggestions, and bonds are everything, and in the immediate community of souls we have reflected the distorted image of everything that is originally and solely peculiar to community mediated through Christ.
Thus there is such a thing as human absorption. It appears in all the forms of conversion wherever the superior power of one person is consciously or unconsciously misused to influence profoundly and draw into his spell another individual or a whole community.
Here one soul operates directly upon another soul. The weak have been overcome by the strong, the resistance of the weak has broken down under the influence of another person. He has been overpowered, but not won over by the thing itself.
This becomes evident as soon as the demand is made that he throw himself into the cause itself, independently of the person to whom he is bound, or possibly in opposition to this person.
Here is where the humanly converted person breaks down and thus makes it evident that his conversion was effected, not by the Holy Spirit, but by a man, and therefore has no stability.
Bonhoeffer, “Life Together”
I asked ChatGPT to explain “Such desire of the human soul seeks a complete fusion of I and Thou” have a look see>
Bonhoeffer is contrasting two kinds of relationship:
1. Spiritual relationship (through Christ)
- You and I are connected through a third reality — Christ.
- There is always a kind of sacred space between us.
- I don’t own you, define you, or complete myself through you.
- I meet you as you are before God, not as something for me.
2. “Psychic” / human-driven relationship
- I relate to you directly, driven by my needs, desires, fears.
- I want closeness, yes—but often on my terms.
- I subtly try to:
- merge with you (“we are one” in an unhealthy way), or
- pull you into my orbit (influence, control, dependency)
That’s what he means by “fusion of I and Thou.”
Why he’s concerned
He’s not criticizing closeness itself.
He’s warning about losing distinction.When “I” and “you” fuse:
- I stop seeing you clearly
- You become tied to my needs
- Love turns into something that quietly says:
“Be who I need you to be.”Even noble forms—care, leadership, spiritual guidance—can slip into this.
The German nuance you’re sensing
You’re right—this echoes deeper philosophical language (like Buber’s I–Thou).
But Bonhoeffer flips it a bit:
- True “I–Thou” (in his view) is mediated by Christ
- False “I–Thou” is immediate, unmediated, and therefore unstable
So the danger isn’t intimacy—it’s intimacy without a grounding outside ourselves
A simple way to feel it
You might notice this difference inside yourself:
- Fusion impulse:
“I need this person close, aligned with me, understanding me… or I feel off.”- Spiritual posture:
“I care for this person deeply… and they belong to God, not to me.”
I promised that was it… so I’ll have to go take a nap, and muse myself to sleep… I’d love to talk this over with you some more.
Running Down Vimy 