Resisting Truth and Catching Fire

We react with the feelings and intensity that reflects what we really believe about the God we imagine Him to be.

Watch the reaction of a person when confronted with concepts about God that challenges what they already believe. If they become hostile, then what they reveal is that they want their God to be hostile toward those who disagree with Him. If they become intrigued, then there is a good possibility that deep in their heart they have been secretly hoping that God was much better than how He has been misrepresented by religion. These are the ones who are more likely to respond positively to the true gospel.

I am still struggling with my own gut-level false views of God that run counter to what I am learning and teaching about Him. Very often I sense an intensity of irritation whenever people resist thoughts on what God is really like. But then almost immediately I realize that my spirit and my words are incongruent and I have to cry out to God to do much more work at my heart level. I want my heart and spirit to reflect what I am learning with my mind about God, but I cannot force myself to believe these things just because I can logically perceive them and observe them more clearly in the Word. What is being exposed at times is my real gut-level beliefs that are still entrenched in old patterns and familiar routines reflective of the lies that are believed all around me. I want to become completely free of all of these lies but that is a goal that is far more difficult to reach than just accepting new facts. What I really need is to be mentored and exposed and healed.

Most of the lies still embedded in my life remain out of sight for me though I can see the symptoms at times. My lack of real love and compassion for others betrays heart-based lies about God's compassion and love for me. My lack of gratitude betrays some other lies that I still am not even sure what they are. My anger and lack of respect for authority at times betrays deep roots of bitterness which are also based on lies about God that are systemic in my nature.

I am starting to realize that sometimes when I am confronted with lies in others people's reactions to me that those same types of lies are triggered inside myself. Ironically I am trying to counter those lies in other people's minds with my words, and when they resist what I am saying their very resistance awakens sympathetic reactions in me which tends to justify that their lies are actually true and my words are wrong. Because I become resistant and my voice takes on an edge, I am actually giving a mixed message that can be confusing and self-defeating. I am acting as a false witness about God with my spirit while attempting to be a truthful witness with my words. This sounds a little like the description found in Romans 7 and 8.

When I find myself giving an inconsistent witness for God I am immediately assaulted with strong temptations to just give up and accept that maybe these new truths about God are not really factual after all. But I know the source of those kind of thoughts – the same source that implanted all the other lies in my heart that I am struggling to become free of. Instead of giving up my attempts to embrace fully the truth about God's goodness I have to throw myself onto God's mercy and grace and power to transform me more completely into the likeness of His character that He is revealing to me. Instead of caving into fear and feeling condemned by the false pictures of God that I have grown up with, I must steer my thoughts into dwelling on what I have heard from God and what He has shown me from His indisputable Word about how He really feels and acts toward me. I have to exercise the little faith that is growing inside of me so that it will stretch and grow and deepen its hold in my own heart.

Why is it that we are so resistant to believing the truth about God and accepting that He never will torture people with fire in revenge for not trusting in Him? This is the question that keeps coming to my mind at times.

What seems to keep coming up in answer to this question is that we are loathe to give up our current concepts of God that we have embraced for so long in exchange for a God who just might not satisfy our deep cravings for revenge against those who have hurt us deeply. That is such a horrifying thought that it is easier to insist that God will indeed run out of patience and will resort to force and human-like anger to satisfy our warped sense of justice by lashing out at those who have wreaked so much damage on the earth in the lives of others.

We want an angry God when we feel angry.

We want a God who uses force when we are feeling helpless.

We want a God to torture our enemies whenever we are being abused and mistreated.

We desperately want a God to do all the things that we want to do

if we just had access to the power of the Almighty.

Inherently – at least when it applies to others – we like the idea of condemnation, of revenge, of getting even, of settling the score by hurting others at least as deeply as they have hurt us. And anything that challenges those assumptions about what constitutes justice is reprehensible to our way of thinking and our inner picture of God. So we often become very defensive of our own beliefs about God and insist that the problem lies in the ones who are seeing something new in the Scriptures about God that challenges centuries of settled doctrines built on our images of God that are reflective of our own sinful desires. But when it really comes down to it, more often than not we believe in a God who is shaped more in our own image than the other way around. And when we choose to continue to believe in a God who indulges at times in hateful anger against people and even plans to ultimately torture them with fire for displeasing Him, we are actually reinforcing the image of Satan in our own hearts and then projecting those concepts onto our false image of God. Thus Satan succeeds in painting God with the distorted, twisted, depraved character that he himself possesses while causing humanity to sympathize more with Satan and believing that he is not nearly so bad as he has been made out to be.

But the truth is that all of the false notions we have about God are actually reflective of the character of God's archenemy, Satan. Originally we cannot help it that we think this way about God because we were born in a world controlled and saturated with lies about God that influenced our minds and hearts as we grew up. Our concepts of God are inevitably formed by the way adults treated us as young children. God understands this far better than we do and does not condemn us. But the true gospel about God is becoming more and more clear today and when we are faced with the real truth about God's perfect love, His never-failing compassion and goodness, His unconditional forgiveness and the fierce protection that He exercises over the freedom of each person to choose for themselves, then the natural consequences of rejecting this true gospel results in all the tragic “punishments” that we have previously thought were imposed by an angry, offended Deity.

But the truth is that it is sin itself that pays out the wages of death, not God. The real truth is that there are universal principles in place that cannot be ignored or defied without terrible consequences ensuing except as intercepted by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ taking the hit for us so that we can have another chance to synchronize with reality.

Yes, God takes full responsibility for all the bad things that happen as a result of sin that we call punishments. But where we get confused is that the consequences are built into the forces of reality and the principles of creation that God set up originally, not imposed arbitrarily and directly from the hand of an offended Deity. Because God created the universe and set up all the principles and forces that are so powerful and potentially dangerous when ignored, He accepts full responsibility for setting it up that way. But just because a person can suffer enormous pain and even death when ignoring the principle of gravity does not mean that God is personally imposing those consequences as an arbitrary punishment for “disobedience” to that particular law. And this same concept applies to all the principles and laws that govern the universe in every aspect of reality – physical, spiritual, emotional and any other dimension that may exist.

The real gospel brings to light the this very truth about God's consistency and the truth of His unconditional, unchanging attitude toward all of His creation. What we should be afraid of is not an angry God who is desiring revenge on His enemies but a loving, compassionate God who is so pure and undiluted in His passion for our hearts that to come close to Him while harboring lies about Him results in sheer torture of a magnitude far worse than any fire could ever produce in our minds or bodies. It is far easier for us to believe in a God who is more like us and wants revenge at some point in time because we can respond with hatred and resentment and feel justified in our resistance. But to face the fact that God is so unselfish and passionate to save us that He stops short of nothing to accomplish that purpose except to refuse to use force against our will, this is a situation that exposes our own sinful desires that causes our selfish hearts to become exposed and frightened.

God knows that the inherent principle that must be satisfied to experience real love is absolute freedom to reject love if one chooses to do so. Whenever freedom is not present mutual love can never be present in a relationship. When we maintain false notions of God that paint Him in any way as one who violates our freedom or forces our will through intimidation or threats, we are trying to shape Him into our image and try to reject the far more potent reality of the dangerous potency of pure love.

What is now coming to light is that love itself is so powerful and full of energy and inherent “force” that it is lethally dangerous whenever it is resisted by lies about it. That is precisely why God has to veil Himself so much from our view until we are free of all the lethal seeds of sin that would act like land-mines in our heart if we were to see His face fully in our fallen condition. Whenever a person is faced with unconditional love, forgiveness and compassion they are forced to either embrace it and be embraced by it or they face the prospect of inner torture of extreme magnitudes due to their own resistance to that kind of love.

But key to this understanding is the fact that it is not true love's intention to torture the resistant heart but it is just the natural consequence of resistance itself. Just as a resistor in an electrical circuit will overheat and catch fire when faced with more current than it can handle, so it is with a heart that resistants the current of love that powers the whole universe; it will heat up with resentment and anger and fear and will eventually experience the same sort of pain that it imagines might come from an angry, vengeful God that reflects its own characteristics even though that is not what is really going on.

Thus the fires of hell are really of our own making. And the real reason we are so resistant to embracing the truth about God today is because if we are unwilling to let go of our own desires for revenge against others and truly forgive them from our heart, we will begin to experience the fire of hell right now. For to be unwilling to forgive another person while trying to draw close to a God of unconditional forgiveness and love is a recipe for producing hell in the heart. It is a small foretaste of what all will experience who ultimately reject the revelation of God's heart of passionate, unrelenting love for sinners.

Jesus as a Mirror

Jesus became a human because it was necessary in order for Him to be incarnated into a mirror like we are. All of God's intelligent creatures are only capable of reflecting life and light, not originating it. So for the Son of God who is the originator of light and life to demonstrate how His created beings are to live in proper relationship to their true Source, He had to take on the essence of the nature of humans in order to have the credibility with us that is needed to change our minds about God.

After sin entered this world we had no way of knowing how to live in proper relationship to our only Source of life except the rules and guidelines given over the years. But rules cannot transform us, partly because they only address half the brain – the half that is far less effective over the roots of our natural behavior. We need much more than simply descriptions of what righteousness is supposed to look like, we need a real live example of what all of this business God talks about actually looks like. For the most important and powerful part of our brain, our right hemisphere, can only learn primarily by imitation, not by instruction.

So Jesus had to become a mirror like we are in order to give us an example of how to live successfully as a mirror in proper alignment with the real Source of life and light. But He went beyond that and also demonstrated the consequences of what happens when a mirror with dirt on it encounters the fiery presence of God's passion. All of the suffering and agony that finally killed the human life of the Son of Man was due to His taking onto Himself all of the guilt and condemnation, the pain and sins of every person who has ever existed. It was like piling all the mud and filth of the whole world onto the surface of His mirror and then allowing it to be exposed to a lethal dose of the laser light of God's purity and holiness.

But there was one very significant difference between Jesus' human nature and the rest of us. The sin that Jesus took upon Himself was all on the surface of His mirror creating the distortion and dissonance that killed Him as He encountered God's presence. But the sin and filth that is in our lives is within the glass and is deeply embedded in the reflective part of our psyche. Jesus did not have our propensities to evil like we experience them, but He did understand the results encountered from having those tendencies vicariously.

But in taking on our condemnation and experiencing those natural consequences so that we would understand the danger of sin more clearly, He also earned the right and authority to replace our faulty systems and reflectors with new systems designed to once again reflect the glory of God properly. He is able and eager to also engage us in a lifelong process of thoroughly cleaning and polishing our mirrors so that we will more and more perfectly reflect His face and disposition if we will allow Him permission.

Our mirrors have imperfections both on the surface and in the substrates. We have deep roots of bitterness and lies buried in our reflective layers that distort the light and creates ugliness. We also have habits, addictions and false notions that smear the surface of our mirrors that likewise distort and confuse the reflections that we emanate. We also have problems with focusing on the things of darkness and turning away from light that might expose our weakness and imperfections.

But God is in the repair and cleaning business for all who give Him permission to do so. He even works behind the scenes with those who do not yet know Him properly or who are filled with many lies about Him that keep them afraid and at a great distance from Him. There are many I believe, who cannot tolerate engaging with the God that they have heard about through the misrepresentation of those who raised them or who claim to represent Him currently in their lives. But that is not the real God who passionately loves them, it is a fictional deity that has been created by the enemy who stops at nothing to slander and distort His true image in our hearts.

So when a person claims that they want nothing to do with God or Jesus or reject the Holy Spirit as they have perceived Him through the distortions of others, He knows that they are not really talking about Him but about the caricature of Him imposed on them by their surroundings and by religious impostors. So He works quietly in the background and in their conscience sometimes for many years to untangle their many lies about Him until the day when they are ready to let down their defenses and give Him more open permission to actively engage in their restoration and repair. This is the experience I believe happened to Saul of Tarsus.

If I want to know how to live in freedom, joy and peace as a good mirror like I was created to live, then the best way to do this is to immerse myself in an emotional and deeply spiritual journey into a heart-oriented study of the example in the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus demonstrated throughout His whole life what it looks like to live as a mirror with a constant focus on the face of God while interacting with sinful humanity like we may do. He laid aside His inherent natural tendencies to always living perfectly and choose every moment to live only as a mirror in order that we might have an example to follow. It was not so much the consequent perfection of His outward actions that was our example as many have supposed, but it was the orientation of His spirit/heart mirror that was the most important aspect of His example that we need to emulate.

The very greatest temptation of Jesus while living on earth as a mirror was to allow His own natural tendencies to support or supplement Him in His life interacting with others. And His natural divine tendencies are to always do what is kind and perfect and loving and graceful. But we make a huge mistake when we believe or teach that Jesus' life was good because He was God in human form. That is precisely where His greatest temptation actually lay. He never once accessed His divinity in order to supplement His needs as a human mirror, and He did that precisely because He needed to show us how to live in total dependence on an outside source for our identity and power.

But in doing this He placed Himself in a situation far more severe than any human will ever face. For to have infinite power and natural desire to be good constantly right at your fingertips so to speak, and never access it for your advantage is the greatest temptation one could ever face. Satan knew that and did everything he could think of to amplify and exploit that vulnerability in Jesus' life.

On the other hand, we humans who have nothing but natural tendencies toward selfishness, the very opposite of Jesus' divine natural tendencies, somehow feel that we can use our own strength and abilities at times to produce what we think is a good life or to make good decisions. We have all manner of variations on this with many versions claiming we just need a little more assistance from God to accomplish it. But the message of the Bible and the example of Jesus shows us that we must come to a point of total abstinence from all dependence on our own natural tendencies whether they appear to be good or otherwise. We must follow the example of Jesus in learning to live in constant and intimate vital communion with the only Source of life and light if we are to live in righteousness as mirrors. We must live a life led by the Spirit of God if we are to be true children of God.

Jesus made it very clear that only God is righteous. Since that is a fact, then for us to be righteous while existing only as mirrors, we have to align ourselves properly with the Source of righteousness so that we can reflect that righteousness and light effectively. And when that same light exposes the filth and distortions on our own mirrors, instead of turning away from the light we need to accept His provisions for cleaning our mirrors and healing us from all the embedded flaws and cracks and brokenness so that we will reflect His light and face more accurately.

This is not an optional idea for us, it is a matter of life and death, of survival itself. For there is coming a day when the laser light of God's glory is going to be unveiled and will permeate every place of the whole universe. All who have allowed God to bring healing and wholeness to their hearts and minds and have been realigned with His perfect character and law will become an integral part of the new creation He is planning. All who are prepared will become reflectors of that powerfully dangerous but glorious light that will fill the whole world and even the universe with the dazzling light and color and love and our Creator.

But those who resent or reject His offer of repair and realignment will, upon exposure to that same laser light, find that the intensity of passionate love is far too much for their little damaged hearts to handle and all the dirt and filth and imperfections they clung to in their mirrors will become painful liabilities that resist the light. When intense, overwhelming light meets distortions and flaws in the glass or mirror, those imperfections create resistance which becomes fatal to the very existence of the mirror itself.

So we all have an individual choice to make right now. We can ask God and continue to ask Him to clean us and grow us in maturity and reveal to us what needs to be removed from our hearts and minds, or we can resist His offers of sanctification and end up self-destructing in the day when we should be glowing with the passion from the heart of God.

I want to cooperate with this process while I have been given time in this day of grace. Jesus has postponed the natural consequences of my sin by taking them on Himself at Calvary. But that does not exempt me from ignoring His provision and ending up suffering the consequences myself in that final day of revealing (judgment). I want my spirit to be perfectly aligned with the sweet spirit of Jesus and my life to become the fragrance of love that fills the courts of heaven and earth. I give my permission for God to continue His work of grace in me so that I can participate and enjoy and walk in the fire when everyone is exposed to what is currently veiled deep in the heart of God.

37 Years Ago Today...

It may appear that I have quit writing so much recently. Actually that is not the case. It is just that I am processing something very much in writing that is still a little too personal to post for all the world to see at this point. I suspect that maybe soon I will go back and bring much of it out and post it as another inductive study, probably on my other site, Deeperword.

My study began earlier this week when I came under strong conviction of the presence of bitterness in my life that I need to face more decidedly and find freedom from. The following text came to my mind from Hebrews 12, See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and through it many become defiled. (Hebrews 12:15 NRSV) As a result I decided to spend whatever time was needed to explore the context of this verse to see if God would show me some of the reasons, the roots for the bitterness that is poisoning my life and my relationships.

Most of this bitterness is so ever-present and feels so normal that I cannot even recognize it as bitterness. To me I guess that it just seems to be what I consider normal because that is all I have ever known as the context for life. It is only when I begin to get a glimpse of what life might be like outside my own paradigms that I begin to sense that maybe what I always assumed was normal is maybe very warped perceptions of reality. As I get more acquainted with the feelings that my heart has had for most of my life, as it begins to feel safe enough to slowly allow my left brain to catch a glimpse of it here and there, I am sickened at all the confused ideas and assumptions about God that are drawn from much of my painful past.

The right brain, what I consider the seat or processing center of the heart, does not work logically like the left brain and so its conclusions are not easily understood by a left-brain dominant thinker. But the Spirit of God has been working for quite awhile to awaken some of the very dark places of my heart and my past in order to bring light and healing and life into the dead places within me. As I have spent the past few days meditating and writing what I am learning from Hebrews 12, I can see that this whole chapter has a wealth of resources for uncovering many places from which bitterness can spring up. It also has a lot of things to say about how to counteract and receive healing for those roots. I am carefully working my way through this chapter each day listening for whatever God wants to show me and trying to not let my head get too far ahead of my heart. That means that I need to stop at times and just listen to both my heart and for anything the Spirit wants to show me that cannot come from logic or exegesis.

Soon after I woke up this morning I began to thank God for what He is doing in my life. As I felt the surge of strength from the act of gratitude beginning to lift my spirit, I remembered that exactly 42 years ago this morning I had one of the major turning points in my personal relationship with God just after I woke up. I will never forget it for it marked a sharp turning point for me to reject a life of suffocating false religion that had by that time very nearly driven me to literal insanity.

It would likely take too long to explain it all, but I will give just a little background. Over the previous few years leading up to my 16^th birthday I had become increasingly what I would perceive as paranoid-schizophrenic. I had a very intense hatred toward God that was fueled by my increasing hatred toward my Dad who was at a loss as to how to force me to be a good boy and a Christian. But overriding that, and again reflective of my relationship with my Dad, I was even more terrified of admitting that I hated God or my Dad for fear of unimaginably dire consequences. I could not even allow my thoughts to entertain an awareness of my hatred for very long for fear that I would be punished even more severely, so I worked incessantly to be what I now see as the perfect hypocrite.

While I writhed with resentment and bitterness on the inside against the lack of love and nurture and the abusive “discipline” I experienced, at the same time I spent increasingly nearly every waking moment trying to eradicate “sin” from my conscious mind and heart in an attempt to appease a threatening deity who was keeping close watch on me in order to discover any excuse to keep me out of heaven and fry me in the fires of hell for the slightest infraction.

And when I say every waking moment I mean that quite literally. By the time I was around 12 or 13 the intensity of these opposing forces within me had become agonizing and ever-present. On the one hand I was increasingly desiring to rebel, to enjoy the alluring pleasures of sin, sex and “rock” music. I would sneak out my window at night, crawl across the length of our steep roof and slide down the porch posts to go the the neighbors house to watch television until late at night. This allowed me to have feelings of relief or escape from my inner turmoil but at the same time added to my increasing sense of guilt and fear. When my sister finked on me one night and got me in trouble with my Mom who put a stop to my escape outlet (that is a whole other story full of emotions) I was left with an even more closed heart filling up with explosive resentment.

My mind was always under rigid control from my religious training that was deeply ingrained in my psych and kept me from indulging in many things that my flesh increasingly craved to do. This battle was considered by most all the religious people around me to be just the normal struggle of being a Christian, at least that what I assumed. But I now realize that what I was experiencing was completely unknown to anyone else and was far more severe than anyone imagined. Of course it was fueled by the legal approach to living the Christian life. Almost no one understood the importance of having an intimate relationship with a loving God as the foundation of the Christian life before trying to work on behavior. That was considered to be a dangerous heresy by my father and probably many others in the church, so I was left with a battle between two false gods inside of my soul that nearly caused me to lose my sanity.

The symptoms of this duel inside of me was that every time a thought would come to my mind that I felt might be considered wrong by God that I was required to confess it and beg for forgiveness from God. If I did not deal with every potential sin, as well as dig up every past mistake and sin and extract forgiveness for all of those too, then I would lose all hope of salvation. Of course, there was also the constant threat that at any moment my life could be snuffed out by an accident and I would face my eternal fate based on my “standing” with God at that particular moment. Hence, the intense need to keep up to date to that very second with all my confession and forgiveness routine. It became almost a game of life and death, a duel between me trying to perfect myself through “contrition” and confessions and God on the other side always looking for that one little sin that would give Him excuse to nail me to the wall and justify Him keeping me out of heaven. This was the agony of mind that kept me occupied for literally maybe 4 years or so of my life.

(Ironically, this type of thinking and view of God is almost identical to that of the great church that was so derided as the epitome of false religion by most members of my own church. I had become just like those I was taught to despise.)

I can remember driving my bicycle in traffic and repeatedly closing my eyes and making very fast confession/begging-forgiveness prayers hopefully fast enough to get my eyes open again before getting creamed by a car or running into something. This may sound hilarious, but to me it was deadly serious. And why did I close my eyes while riding my bike? Because God would be upset if I didn't close my eyes when I prayed. And that would give Him yet another excuse to accuse me.

There are many others things I could describe about that time in my life, but I think you can get the gist of what I was going on inside of me. As the guilt and fear and terror extended their tentacles within me, my heart continued to seethe with more and more anger and rage at the unfairness and oppression of it all. But then I would try to suppress my anger for fear of God's wrath and the internal conflict continued to escalate. There was no one that I could trust to share what was going on inside and I felt very isolated. In my frustration I longed to be free of this conflict and just enjoy sin and the seeming relief that it promised to give me, but my religious brain was so strong with fear that it prevented me from acting out what my heart desperately wanted to indulge in. I suppose that result was considered a success by those who believed that fear was the right motive for preventing sin in our lives.

This brings me to my 16^th birthday and what happened that cold morning when I woke up on the top bunk in a dormitory in Tennessee. I had been thinking about all of this inner activity and had begun musing that maybe there was something wrong with my Christian experience. I didn't really notice anyone else going through what I was experiencing and my paranoia was keeping me from having any healthy relationships. In the back of my mind the idea began to grow, though very, very small, that maybe, just maybe God did not intend for me to live this way all of my life.

That thought had all the hallmarks of a dangerous heresy and I dismissed it many times in fear of Divine punishment, but it continued to resurface. Finally that morning I decided to face myself square on and make a determined decision as to how I was going to continue to live.

I have always been a rather pragmatic, left-brain dominant person and as such I believed that a birthday was really an arbitrary assignment, and event only meaningful by artificial designation. A person really is no different on their birthday than they would be waking up on any other day – that simply makes sense. But that morning something else woke up inside of me and began to question my logical mind and ask, “What if I am wrong? What if turning 16 really is significant and I am just too pragmatic to admit it? What if that popular saying, 'turning 16 and never been kissed' actually had some hidden meaning in it that most of us don't know about? What if 16 was an important number in people's lives?What if I do have the option today to actually become a completely different person? What if I really have the option to make a radical decision that violates everything my tyrannical mind insists is true?”

These thoughts were terrifying to me but at the same time very appealing. I was exhausted from all the years of fighting inside and I had come to the point where I felt that maybe hell would not be much worse than living life as I was. If this is what it took to get into heaven then maybe it was just too much work, too high a price to pay. But that other thought that had been lurking in the dark shadows of my mind trying to escape extermination by my dogmatism was starting to glow brighter. What if, by some outside chance that I didn't know about yet, God actually had a better way to live that was not so exhausting and debilitating? What if He would actually allow me to make some mistakes without viciously attacking me or abandoning me altogether? What if He was actually different than everything my mind had assembled together in fear and dread?

As I lay there that morning waiting to get out of bed and pondering what I should do about this problem, I finally made up my mind that I was going to take what felt like the highest gamble of my life and not reflexively pray, confess and beg forgiveness for every “wrong” impulse that might cross my mind that day. I had actually come to the point that I included every temptation as something that had to be confessed as well as known sins because I was not sure where God drew the line between an impulse toward an evil thought and entertaining that evil thought, so I treated them all the same just to play it safe. You can imagine how many things that could involve for an early teenager with hormones beginning to fill his system and an equal amount of guilt for every feeling or desire for love or sex. I was about ready to either change the way I related to God or begin to consider suicide to escape the pain. And suicide was not an option either because God would punish me even more for that too.

So I made my fateful decision with a great deal of trepidation and that whole day I resisted every impulse to compulsively “pray”. I began to notice how much extra time I had to actually interact with other people and how much relief I began to feel inside. And most importantly, I sensed at some deeper level a feeling of confirmation from somewhere outside myself that I had made a right decision and that indeed, God had something much better for me than the hell I had been experiencing for so many years. I had turned a corner in my life the day I turned 16 and had begun to reject the false image of God that had been painted in such terrifying colors in my heart.

I wish I could say that I saw a much clearer picture of a loving God and my life was dramatically transformed, but that did not happen. I spent many more years in a legalistic relationship with God, though not to the extent that I had up to that point. There were millions of lies about God that still blackened His face that took many years to slowly unmask and address, but the process had started and the progress began.

I am still in the process of unmasking many of those early lies that still cause me trouble and confusion. I am sure many who read what I write or listen to me very long can pick up on the intensity with which I address certain issues. That comes from my anger about all the lies that have kept me away for so long from the One who could have made so many years of my life so much sweeter if I had not been so darkened in my heart and mind. I still resent the fact that it is so difficult for me to become free of many lies yet today that remain hidden in my heart and damage my relationships. I am ever seeking any means or ministry that shows promise of effectively exposing and bringing healing to these lies and their resultant dysfunction in my life. Some have even called me a “ministry junkie”. That is the journey that I am still on today, learning to reject the distorted images of God and seeking to see the real truth in His face.

So now you know what happened 37 years ago today, for what its worth.

Diabolical Manipulator or Merciful God?

So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy. (Romans 9:16 NRSV)

As we get into the troubling story of Pharaoh and the extended arguments as to who hardened his heart during the plagues of Egypt, it needs to be remembered that it was God's attributes of mercy and compassion that are highlighted in this story, not His supposed forcing of Pharaoh to resist God's wrath. Again this story drives home the point that it is not human actions or events that determine God's plans or influence how He acts toward us but it is the character of God Himself coupled with His foreknowledge that determines His actions and attitudes towards us.

I believe that if we looked at this story about Pharaoh through the eyes of heaven instead of our twisted misconceptions about God that we could see a very different picture with very different conclusions about God. God loved Pharaoh just as much as he loved Moses. That has to be the starting point and the reference point from which to read the rest of the story or everything begins to fall apart very quickly. However it is very clear that Pharaoh was one of those people who were determined to have nothing but a hateful relationship with God. God actually offered Pharaoh repeatedly chance after change to be a vessel of mercy and glorify God's name in the earth by responding in repentance and assisting God's chosen people instead of resisting them.

The hardening of Pharaoh was not a description of his choice to resist God but was a result of that choice. We too often confuse the two things. In God's government of absolute freedom of choice for every being, Pharaoh made the choices to stay in his pride and rebellion against all odds, resisting the kindness of God that could have led him to repentance instead of surrendering to overwhelming evidence of God's mercy and compassion. In fact, this story should really be a strong warning to us of the dangers of our own hearts becoming hardened when we refuse to believe in God's mercy and compassion and instead try to paint a picture of Him as a mix of both good and evil. If you may remember, that was part of the original lie that the serpent told to Eve from the tree."For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:5)

So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?" On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? (Romans 9:18-21)

If a fire hardens a distorted lump of clay is it fair to tell the fire that it should not have that effect on clay?

Likewise, is it fair to demand that the One who knows everything should not see problems inside the people who are suffering from their resistance to His love for them?

Is it fair to think that God should not use His foreknowledge of a person's decisions in His planning for the lives of those people and those around them? We would say that a person was negligent and derelict if they ignore their knowledge of important facts in making life and death decisions, and yet we think God should not do the same?

Just because God decides to allow a person's resistant choices to wreak havoc on their life or their nation does not make God to blame for those choices that they make. If He decides to arrange circumstances so that those very choices of resistance end up in highlighting His own mercy, does that give us grounds for accusing Him of inducing the behavior of the impenitent?

If we honestly believe that God is the cause behind someone's bad choices, or forces a person to resist His goodness; if we believe that God preordains some, irregardless of their own will, to be used as instruments and containers through which to demonstrate His hostility, spite and meanness, then it would follow that maybe we should wake up one day and pray, “God, make me an instrument of your wrath today. Harden my heart against your love and cause me to be resistant and stubborn today to glorify your name.”

As absurd as that sounds, would it not be in harmony with the “will of God”? To be consistent in our beliefs we would have to say that if it is God's predetermined intention to use certain people through which to demonstrate His negative, dark side, and that somehow this returns glory back to God's reputation, then it would also seem right to pray for this part of His will to be done as well. And since it would be wrong for us to judge that someone else should be the object of His “wrath”, then maybe when we feel hopeless and all so full of evil inside we should offer up ourselves as objects of His fury so that we can do Him a favor by demonstrating the alleged dark side of His character through our messed up lives.

We do not need God's help to live out a life of sin and rebellion. Of course, all of this nonsense is absolutely absurd and even worse than it sounds and I hope nobody is seriously considering doing it. But it is the kind of thinking that follows from settling for a simplistic surface understanding of this passage according to the way it is often believed to read. I believe it is useful sometimes to follow an idea to its logical next step to see what direction it may be leading us so we can see if we are working with reasonable assumptions or if our beliefs need some serious re-thinking and divine modification. But sometimes this kind of reasoning is useful to enhance the brightness of the real truth about God by contrast when we begin to see it in its true beauty and perfect consistency.

What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, "I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION." So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. (Romans 9:14-16)

We may secretly think that the injustice of God is in forcing certain people to be the fall guy for Him. According to what we might conclude from this passage we may think that God simply overwhelms the resistance of anyone whom He has arbitrarily chosen to be the “bad guy”, to be a vessel of His wrath.

But in fact, God turns it around and shows us that the real injustice we are accusing Him of is being too merciful and compassionate. For ever since sin entered the universe this has been one of the lies of Satan that he plays off against his other lies about God to keep us in confusion. Either we believe that God is harsh and judgmental and arbitrary or we might believe He is too lenient and soft on those that in our opinion deserve to be punished severely. Of course, it is usually ourselves that we think are being treated too harshly and others that are treated too softly.

But look at what these verses are really saying. What is the “it” that is referred to in verse 16? What is not dependent on human will or exertion? The “it” refers to the active mercy and compassion of God toward sinful human beings. What this text is actually saying is that God's mercy and compassion is not dependent on anything we do or choices we make but on the purpose and desires of God toward those He has created. God's mercy is not predicated on human will or exertion but on God who has mercy. I see God here insisting that He will be merciful and compassionate whether we like it or not, because that is a part of who He is.

I find this rather fascinating. Here is Paul defending God for choosing to show compassion and mercy. I don't see God here trying to defend Himself against charges of punishing someone or abusing them but only about things in His true character. Even in the following verses it could be legitimately said that the hardness that takes place is not because God forced it on someone but was a result of resistance to His very presence. It is the same issue that we see in the pervasive misunderstandings about the fire of God and what happens in hell. (For insights on that visit Surprise Ending and Heavenly Sanctuary)

It is also interesting that the analogy of a potter and clay is used in this passage. Adam was made from the clay of the earth, but what happened when God breathed into him (kissed him really)? Did he suddenly become very hard – a porcelain doll? No, he became a living soul with a soft body of flesh and a heart wide open to love and be loved. God's presence and life, the very essence of who He is, was breathed into the clay body of Adam and Adam took on those characteristics so much that he was very similar to God. What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty! (Psalms 8:4-5) He was created in the image of God, in His likeness. (By the way, the concept of Adam at that point was both male and female. Eve was, in a way, still inside of him and just needed to be drawn out and given a separate identity. But the Bible says “man” was male and female. See Gen. 1:26,27.

But sin soon entered into this creation made in the image of God and caused an alienation of resistance due to a breakdown of trust between the Creator and His beloved creation. Adam and Eve's choice to believe “The Lie” about God put them out of synchronization with their Source of power and introduced the deadly element of resistance into the relationship. What does a resistor produce when power passes through it? Ask any electronics person and they will tell you – it produces heat. And what happens when heat is applied to clay instead of the life-giving breath of God? You have a hardening of the heart.

So we see then that there are two very different reactions to the same presence of God. When one is in harmony with the way things are created and synchronized with their Creator they are energized and come alive the more they experience His power and presence. But when they choose to believe lies about God and try to live outside of the harmony and principles that they were designed to live within, they experience dysfunction, pain and all sorts of symptoms that eventually lead to death if no intervention is received. Nothing has changed really since Adam and Eve chose to embrace mistrust in their loving Father; we still distrust Him due to the same lies about Him that they embraced and God is still intervening with His grace and mercy to allow us time to be reconciled to Him.

You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?" (Romans 9:19)

There is yet another ironic turning of a question on its head. We may think at first reading that this verse means God is looking for an excuse to punish someone after He Himself caused them to be vessels of His wrath. That seems grossly unfair to us and it rightly should – if it was true! But once again the question can be found to be saying something quite different than at first thought, actually incriminating us instead of God.

If the question is looked at from a different angle it can be seen as a complaint that God is not qualified to be our Judge. “Why does God have the right to see any faults in us? It's not fair for Him to say that we are at fault when we resist His love, mercy and compassion towards us when it actually works out to be for His glory.”

In essence, it can be seen that we are demanding the right to resist God and all the principles of reality and even the very design for which we are created but still not suffer any of the natural consequences. That makes as much sense as filing a lawsuit because gravity causes us to fall to the ground when we step off a cliff and receive serious injuries or death as a result.

For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH." (Romans 9:17)

Isn't it just as possible that if Pharaoh had surrendered to God's mercy and compassion that he could have demonstrated God's power and name throughout the whole earth through his cooperation with God and Moses? Was it absolutely necessary that Pharaoh be a resistant “vessel of wrath” for God's power to be seen in him? As Paul would say – God forbid! God does not need evil people through which to display some hidden evil part of His own nature. That thinking comes straight from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil inhabited by the enemy of God. God does not have a dark side as most suppose Him to have. God is all light and God is love. Any darkness that we see about Him is due to our misapprehensions about Him and residual lies that still cloud our thinking and darken our own vision. And where we see darkness we need to ask for more light of truth to dispel that darkness, not simply attribute the darkness to the nature of God.

The end of chapter 9 begins to make these points even more clear. I will explore that more when I get into those verses.

(next in series)

Concealing Sin

Romans 4:7 ...whose sins have been covered (epikalupto).

To conceal, i.e. (figuratively) forgive:--cover.

Sync with God.

I cannot forgive my own sins without first letting God forgive them.

To forgive, from the Greek, means to conceal and cover. If I conceal my sins before I accept the forgiveness of God then I incorporate them into myself as part of my identity. Then they will show up when the light comes unavoidably and I cannot separate myself from them and then I experience hell.

Sin has to be forgiven to be neutralized. Jesus neutralized all sin on the cross by experiencing the full force of the effects of desynchronization from God. But each person must accept that neutralization provide for us or else they will experience the results of pain and death that are the natural and unavoidable results of sin when truth and light increase in intensity.

Everything will come to the light sooner or later. The only choice we really have is whether we will submit to agreeing with the light and synchronizing with truth now or denying and concealing our sin and having it exposed later after sin has destroyed our capacity to let go of it.

When we conceal our sin without confession and repentance we are attempting to forgive our own sin without synchronizing with God and the redemption He has provided. We are trying to forgive our sin apart from accepting Jesus' death and suffering for our sin. In reality we are trying to be our own savior. It is a lethal trap that will result in our experiencing the same suffering and death that Jesus already experienced on our behalf so that we would not have to experience it.

Why do we try to conceal our sins and trust ourself? There are many reasons put out there but if they are condensed down to their roots I believe it is because of the lies and deceptions that we firmly believe about God. We are immersed and surrounded with false ideas and beliefs about God, about salvation, about spirituality and especially about religion. Anything that detracts from the truth about God's consistent and never-ending kindness, compassion and love will introduce the element of fear which will lead us to draw away from God instead of turning toward Him.

What is very interesting is that the same thing that doesn't work for us when we attempt to do it ourself is the very thing that God desires to do for us. While it is impossible for me to permanently cover up my own sins and succeed at becoming my own savior, God promises to do that very thing if I will agree with His revelations about myself and trust Him implicitly with my guilt. Forgiveness means to cover and to conceal. If I try to cover and conceal my sins myself, I only stay out of sync with reality and set myself up to experience the painful and ultimately fatal results of sin in myself. But when God forgives me through Jesus Christ, He then covers and conceals my sins in Christ and nothing can really expose them again. My heart is protected from my accusers even though they may continue to hound me about my past. The responsibility for those sins has been taken over by Jesus and He will never allow them to oppress my heart again. The only thing that can bring them back onto my head is if I reject totally the redemption provided for me and turn back to believing the lies about God, and once again start trusting in myself and resist the Spirit of God permanently. (see 2 Peter 2:15-22)

When I confess my sins (agree with the Holy Spirit's conviction inside my heart of what reality is), I allow the light of truth (about God) to expose them and begin to see how much I am unlike Him. The light of truth is not so much the truth about how bad I am (or a list of doctrines or facts) as it is the truth of how lovely, good, kind and perfect God is. The truth about me is only exposed – can only be seen proportionally – to the degree that I perceive the beauty and perfection of God's goodness and kindness. It is the kindness of God that leads me to repentance (Rom. 2:4). God is not threatening me with judgment to get me to repent (John 3:17). He is revealing His loveliness, His passion for intimacy with me, His desire for my friendship and companionship with Him for eternity. His kindness and total lack of bitterness, resentment, threats or ill-will toward me is what awakens and empowers me to stop concealing my sin in fear. Perfect love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18).

God does not use fear to lead me to repentance. Men use fear in their distortion of religion to intimidate others and themselves into supposed repentance. But this is all an illusion of true spirituality designed by the master of fear himself, Satan the accuser. Fear inherently torments us (1 John 4:18). When we believe we have to use fear to bring us to repentance we subscribe to a twisted picture of God who wants to torment us until we cave in and repent. This is part of the Big Lie that God is on trial for right now. God is not the ultimate torturer who is extracting confessions from suspects in His kingdom or venting His anger on rejectors of His mercy. That is the work of diabolical despots who reflect the character of Satan. God only uses the attraction of love to draw hearts to Himself. To do anything else would be to undermine in the hearts of the redeemed the very motives necessary for devotion and loyalty to preserve freedom from a re-occurrence of sin for the rest of eternity.

God loves the world so much that He gave Himself in the life of His Son Who took upon Himself all the pain and effects of every single sin every committed, so that anyone who believed that God was right and that He loved them, if they trusted His arrangement to take away from them the results of their specific sins, they could escape the awful consequences of being out of sync with the Source of life itself and will enjoy eternity living in the presence of love and joy and peace without any fear. (John 3:16 paraphrased)

For all of my life this text has meant very little to me because of the shallowness of its use and abuse. It was just a string of words that many people memorized, glazed over with many layers of religious piety without any depth of meaning. I wanted to understand its true meaning but have spent years chipping away at the layers of religious lacquer preventing it from coming alive. As I contemplated about forgiveness this morning and dialogged with God while I wrote down what came to my mind, I didn't realize I would end up at that text. Now it is taking on more meaning and life for me.

I do not want to cover up any of my sins and try to conceal them from God or live in denial. I want to be transparent and open about anything He convicts me of that needs to be released so that I can be synchronized with reality and receive His forgiveness and character in its place.

God, I crave a deeper, broader revelation of the truth about Your character, Your feelings and thoughts toward me, Your ways of relating to us. My heart is still in deep darkness even though my mind has seen much light and tries to believe it. I have to trust You to continue Your transformation of my heart to be more and more synchronized with Your heart and Your ways. Bring healing to the pain and the lies that still torment me and sabotage my relationship with You and with others. Help me to truly embrace the truth of Your everlasting kindness and unchanging love with my heart and soul and mind. Make me a messenger of the truth about You so that love can be awakened in others who are likewise suffering under similar delusions about You. Cause me to be a faithful friend of the Bridegroom.

(next in series)

Romans 3 Paraphrased

Romans 3:1-8 paraphrased.

What advantage has the Jew (or enlightened Christian)? Or what benefit is there in being circumcised (or baptized)?

The advantages are great in every respect. First and most of all, these people have been entrusted by God with insights and revelations about Himself and His ways of dealing in the Law, the Bible and the Testimonies of prophets.

If that is true but the result is that some (many) have not believed with their heart the real message of love and the truth about God intended to be communicated to them in these revelations, does that mean that God made a mistake in trusting them and having faith in them?

Absolutely not! Rather, you must realize that God will ultimately be found to be right in His choice to trust them, even though the majority – even everyone – might be discovered to be lying. Because the Word of God (which is always true) declares in Psalm 5,1:4, “so that You are justified when You speak and will be found innocent of all blame when You judge and bring everything into the full light of reality.”

But you might object that if our being exposed as wrong accentuates the rightness of God, you might be led to think that it is unfair for God to expose sinners to the painful consequences of their sins in the Day of Judgment casting doubt on His integrity. But this is a problem only because you are thinking about God from a sinful human standpoint thinking that He thinks like you do.

This is absolutely false also! If it was true God would not be qualified to judge the whole world.

But you still may insist that if the exposure of our deceptions only exposes the integrity and truth about God causing everyone to honor Him and bring Him glory, it is somehow not fair that the very ones bringing all that glory to Him should experience condemnation as sinners. You may even carry this silly argument even further by reasoning that since our sins end up ultimately bringing glory to God that we should sin even more so that He will be honored even more.

When you indulge in that kind of twisted reasoning, the condemnation that you will end up experiencing will be only fair and right, for you have created it within and for yourself – God is not really the one condemning you.

(Romans 3:9-18) What then? Are we (converted Christians) any better off? No, not at all; for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: "There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one." "Their throats are opened graves; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of vipers is under their lips." "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known." "There is no fear of God before their eyes." (NRSV)

Romans 3:19-26 paraphrased.

These statements come from the Law, the Old Testament, and we know that whatever the Law says, it addresses those who are trusting in the Law, so that no one can argue with it and everyone in the world will be accountable to God; because by working to keep the inflexible requirements found in the Law (which is simply a limited description of God's character) it is impossible for anyone to be found to be just and perfect in the exposing light of God's presence; for the only thing accomplished by knowing all about the Law and what it takes to be perfect is the realization of our helpless condition of sinfulness. (And that is the problem with your previously discussed faulty reasoning.)

But what I am talking about now does not operate inside the mentality of achieving perfection through a keeping of all the rules. What the gospel does is to reveal the truth about God's goodness and the real truth about His character that the Law and the Prophets were actually testifying about originally. This truth about what God is really like – what is called the righteousness of God – is brought to light where it can be seen by the faith that Jesus has in all those who believe – who believe the truth about God and believe in the redemption that Jesus has accomplished for everyone; for in reality there is no longer any artificial distinctions. Those distinctions have been rendered mute by the Law revealing that everyone, without distinction, are sinners and fall short of the glory and perfection of God's character. In the gospel everyone has been made right with God as a free gift by His grace through the redemption which is found by being in Christ Jesus.

God publicly displayed Jesus as the real counterpart and fulfillment of the symbol of the Mercy Seat that covered the Law in the Ark of the Covenant in the Sanctuary. This was accomplished when Jesus, in faith, gave His life-blood to demonstrate what God was really like – full of redeeming love, compassion and forgiveness, because in the forbearance and tolerance of God He passed over all the sins previously committed. He did all this to demonstrate His righteousness – to again entrust His children – at the present time, so that He would be not only just and fair but could also bring into right relationship to Him everyone who accepts the faith of Jesus in them.

Romans 3:27-31 paraphrased.

Now you who have been boasting in the Law (2:23), when you understand this reality do you any longer have reason to boast? That is now excluded from reason. But by what kind of “law” or rule is your boasting disallowed? By the method and Law that you have been using to try to attain righteousness and perfect character to qualify yourself for heaven? No, but by a law, a principle, called faith. For in our teaching of the good news about God and salvation we maintain that a man is made right in God's estimation (justified) by faith completely apart from performance of rule-keeping and working to conform the the Law.

Do you really think that the God of the universe is the exclusive God who only relates to Jews and not to anyone else? Get real! He is the God of everyone, Jews, non-Jews and even non-Christians alike. It is the very same God who has redeemed and will justify the circumcised in their grudging faith and the uncircumcised through their faith – He is the One and same God.

So are all the things the Law teaches about God and truth neutralized or nullified through this act of faith? Absolutely, positively not!. The exact opposite is accomplished, we actually establish and vindicate the teachings and revelations in the Law.

(next in series)

Heavenly Commerce

“Our petitions to God should not proceed from hearts that are filled with selfish aspirations. God exhorts us to choose those gifts that will redound to His glory... He throws open before us the possibilities and advantages of a heavenly commerce. He gives encouragement to our loftiest aims, security to our choicest treasure.... “They might enter into the palaces of heaven, and associate on terms of freedom and equality with Christ and heavenly angels, and with the princes of God....” (SD 188) I think I caught just a little glimpse for a second of what this “heavenly commerce” really means. Because of my nearly total immersion in the context of worldly-oriented commerce it is extremely difficult to even comprehend how the heavenly commerce operates, especially in motive and incentives. But just a glimpse of the true commerce unleashes a whole raft of insights that have been waiting to take their proper place in relation to each other. The commerce of heaven can only operate effectively and efficiently in the atmosphere of heaven which is absolute, rarified selflessness and love for others. This is not just a nice option that we need to have as an asset to live in heaven, it is an absolute and fundamental prerequisite for survival in the presence of love so pure and passionate that it becomes destructive if experienced with any internal resistance of selfishness left in place. In the above statements I see references to these principles. When our prayers and relationship to God are based on selfish aspirations, we may seem very noble and religious in each others eyes but in heavens view we are still functioning with the wrong fuel that will only explode destructively inside of us when exposed to the fire of heaven. Maybe that is a better analogy than even resistance for what happens in hell. Flammable fuel is created within us from the fermenting process of sin in our heart. That is how we store up wrath for ourselves against the day of Judgment, by allowing the fermentation of sin to create flammable material inside of us. We may think we have it safely hidden or under control, but when our lives are exposed to the white heat of God's unveiled, selfless passionate love the volatile materials still residing in our hearts explode into literal flames of torture that burns painfully until it is all consumed and we are consumed with it. It appears in the above statements that the alternative to the motives of selfish aspirations is to live for the purpose of producing honor and glory for God. Even the gifts offered to us by God have different options that may lead us down different paths. It is implied here that we can choose to accept gifts from God that would seem to benefit ourselves more than would “redound to His glory”. Why would God offer us such gifts? Because He has to start where we are to establish enough of a relationship and trust in Him so that we can be led eventually to mature out of our selfishness and closer to learning the ways of operating in heaven's atmosphere. But we can accelerate that maturing and purifying process by not choosing the gifts for our selfish aspirations but choosing the gifts that will display before others the kindness and attractiveness of God. “He throws open before us the possibilities and advantages of a heavenly commerce. He gives encouragement to our loftiest aims, security to our choicest treasure....” Again, to relate to this correctly and understand its true implications, I must check my motives behind how I interpret what constitutes my loftiest aims and what really is my choice to treasure. These words can be used both in selfish terminology or in heaven's selfless commerce. Implied in these words is that any apparent possibilities and advantages of earthly commerce – that based on selfishness – is very short-lived and self-destructive in the end, whereas operating and living in the realm of heavenly commerce opens up possibilities and advantages of living forever in harmony with all unfallen creation under the principles of eternity. Further elaborated are hints of what these possibilities and advantages constitute. “They might enter into the palaces of heaven, and associate on terms of freedom and equality with Christ and heavenly angels, and with the princes of God....” The principles or motives that must be in place in our hearts are described as freedom and equality as well as unselfishness. The stunning possibilities of living in this atmosphere is to be treated in commerce as an equal, not only with angels and princes of God, but with Christ Himself who is God. The economy of heaven amazingly accomplishes the very thing that Lucifer claimed that he wanted for himself – equality with God. But by trying to employ the motive of selfishness to acquire that end he missed the very thing that he was designed to enjoy. Selfishness so permeates every aspect of our thinking that it is impossible for us to be free of it without massive divine intervention and radical death to self. It filters everything we read or hear about God and heaven or spiritual things and puts a twist, a spin on how we interpret what God is trying to communicate to us. Selfishness is the core of sin and is the most dangerous element in the universe. It is the bacteria in the fermentation process that turns the pure juice of love created by God to be the fuel of choice for our lives into the wine of Babylon that contains not only mind-altering and numbing properties but also fatal volatility when exposed to the fire of God's unprotected presence. This idea of fermentation and the bacteria underlying the fermentation process was illustrated in the Old Testament sanctuary system. This is why God was so urgent that the people preparing to experience His presence in the Day of Atonement purge their lives and their surroundings of all traces of leaven. Selfishness and pride are the main elements that constitute the bacteria that works on all the gifts and blessings we receive from God, turning them into decaying, death-producing, mind-altering drugs that we choose over the energizing, life-giving pure diet required to exist in the presence of God. If any amount of bacteria is left in our system when we tank up with pure fuel, like pure juice exposed to a tiny amount of impure bacteria it will quickly become contaminated, infected and transformed into a bubbling mass of wine that threatens to infect others with its impurity. This all takes place in our spirit being, in our heart. When we think that our head-based religion is all we need to satisfy the requirements of God and earn us a place in heaven, we are actually allowing the bacteria of selfishness to remain in our heart where it continues to thrive and feed on all the good things we are receiving daily from God. Our heart is the real source of our problem and also the place where God needs to accomplish the most radical transformation. We need His white-heat passion of selfless love to sterilize and pasteurize completely our hearts from all selfishness to prepare us to safely interact with others who are likewise made safe in the commerce of heaven. If we resist the pasteurization process and don't allow Him to keep us in the heat long enough to eradicate all the dangerous bacteria in our minds and hearts, we become a liability that makes us a fatal danger to ourselves, the family of God and all of the universe. This, like I said at the beginning, is just a tiny glimpse of what constitutes the atmosphere of heaven in which the commerce of heaven operates. It is frightening and overwhelming to my mind because I begin to see a little bit of how so unqualified and unfit I am right now to live in that atmosphere. It is like a fish who spent his whole life living at the bottom of the lake believing he could climb up on land anytime he wanted and function as a mammal breathing air out of water. He does not understand that he must be born again and take on a whole new way of thinking and living like a tadpole has to become a frog before leaving the water. If the tadpole tries to leave the water before his transformation it would be fatal for him. Likewise, if we believe we are ready to go home with Jesus while entertaining selfish aspirations and motives for wanting that very thing we are asking for something that would, in fact, expose us to the horrors of hell instead of the thrills of heaven. Because hell is simply the drying up of the waters and exposing everyone to the atmosphere of heaven without the proper preparation of receiving the internal equipment necessary to thrive in that atmosphere.

The commerce of heaven is so extremely delicate and sensitive that it is easily obscured by the bluntness of force, the blindness of bitterness or rage, or the numbness of self-pity. It can easily be lost site of in the midst of our seemingly most spectacular moments of spiritual triumph. It thrives on the fuel of humility and is lubricated by the oil of grace. But sugar in the gas tank can feed the bacteria and ruin the works designed to live in harmony with purity and integrity. Elijah got derailed while traveling at high speed on the right track and had to be taken back to his roots to remind him of what was really important in the economy of heaven. He approached Mt. Carmel in the spirit of humility and total dependence on God listening to the quiet inner voice of the Spirit and accelerating higher and higher into the atmosphere of heaven. But he got momentarily distracted by the blazing results of spectacular glory that is inherent in the atmosphere of heaven and became slightly infected with the bacteria of externalism which opened the door for fear to sneak in. He then reacted by running in terror from a threat that before would have not affected him in the slightest. But he ran in the right direction for he ran into the arms of God and received grace and comfort and assurance. After he calmed down enough God took him through the training program once again to remind him of one of the most crucial rules of heaven's commercial system – giving preference to the still small voice over any other modes of communication claiming to represent the voice of God. The apparent fragility required to live successfully in the economy of heaven is confusing because of our addiction to force. But to succeed in heaven requires our complete disavowal of all means of force and becoming familiar with the use of the sensitive ways of love and gentleness. We must get past the lies of religion that paint God with pictures of power, might and control, and realize that His real power lies in His abilities to work everything out for good through non-forceful means, that gentleness makes greatness, that humility is nobility, that surrendering control is to come into victory, that by dying we can enter into real living. I want to learn the ways of gentleness, to become sensitive to hearing more clearly the small voice inside prompting me to know which way to go without the interference of my own preferred emotions or clamorings for pleasure. I want to experience the metamorphosis required to become ready to live and thrive in the rarified, even dangerous atmosphere of heaven. I want to be cleansed of all hidden bacteria that keeps reinfecting and poisoning the good things that God gives me with selfishness. I want a total work of grace and conversion in my life so that God's reputation can be honored and glorified.

Judgment Day

For there is no partiality with God. (Romans 2:11 NAS95)

I am again looking very intently at the context surrounding this verse and seeing more clearly in the light of truth that is intensifying in this passage how much of our teachings and assumptions are in serious conflict with the reality of what God is like. The clear subject of the context here and all the way through chapter 3 is the Judgment Day of God Almighty. Also found in this context are amplifying descriptions of three parties involved in the judgment: the characteristics of those who are lost, descriptions of how the saved think and where their focus is, and most importantly the characteristics of God and, by implication, characteristics that He is not.

Our opinions and beliefs about the day of judgment and the related topics of heaven and hell lie at the very foundation of everything else that we think, do and perceive about reality and affect all of our relationships both with each other and with God. To think that it is not that important what we believe about this doctrine is to put our own souls in great danger of discovering too late that our mistaken beliefs about God, no matter how popular or supposedly supported by Scripture, have created a fatal liability in our souls that have resisted the light of truth that God so passionately is trying to reveal to us about Himself. What we believe about this subject betrays what we really believe about God and is at the center of what Jesus referred to when He repeatedly encouraged people to “believe in Me”. What we see in the life of Jesus and how He treated people is exactly the same as the character of God the Father without any variation whatsoever. (see John 14:9-11)

As I examined verse 3 and 4 it occurred to me that most of us would have written this very differently than Paul did due to our misconceptions of God. That is revealed by the many things we preach and teach about the day of judgment and the final results of sin. It is easy to see that if most of us had been trying to explain what motives should be in place in the hearts of those looking forward to the day of judgment we would, on the heels of verse 3 launch into a description of all the things we need to be afraid of in order to compel us to come into line with God's will and ways and be saved.

“Do you suppose ... that you will escape the judgment of God?” What kind of feelings are immediately stirred up in your mind initially upon the first hearing of these words? Those initial, reactionary feelings betray the real beliefs in your heart about God and what you think He is really like. And because of the nature and pervasiveness of sin throughout all of the human race, I would venture to say that possibly without exception, save in the hearts of those already being transformed by God's grace, every human heart recoils with fear and dread and feelings of expectation of pain and punishments associated with varying feelings of antagonism and resistance and anger. These are all rooted in THE LIE about God that was originally instigated in heaven by Lucifer and has been perpetrated throughout all of the universe and affects every aspect of our thinking and beliefs about life.

The most startling and revealing part about this passage is the seemingly incoherent emphasis by Paul directly after focusing on the fact that judgment is unavoidable. The basis that he declares will be the very thing we will all be judged on, and by implication the motives we should use in facing the judgment, is not the fearful expectation of retribution but the beauty and kindness and mercy of God. What we think will be revealed about God in the day of judgment determines the kind of repentance that we experience now. It also determines what assumed attributes about God we will use not only in our own experience but also what we employ in our efforts to bring others into preparation for the judgment. If we step back and take a very careful examination at the beliefs and assumptions underlying all of our preaching, teaching and conversation about Judgment Day we will start to see if our motivations are really in line with what will bring about true repentance or they are echoes of the lies of the enemy of God masquerading as religious truth and embedded in our theology. This is true whether of not a person claims to believe in God or is an avowed atheist; we all have theology that we believe about God that is colored by our experiences and perceptions about the supernatural and religion in general.

Paul reveals in this chapter that by clinging to false ideas about God's character we are placing ourselves among the stubborn and the unrepentant who are storing up wrath for themselves against the Day of Judgment. Why is it that we are the ones creating the wrath within ourselves and not God who is getting angrier at our unrepentance? The answer is in verse 11 – because there is no partiality with God.

We have mistakenly assumed that to mean that God cannot be bribed or unduly influenced in His determination of who will be saved and who will be lost. Again, that is based on our faulty assumptions about the nature of the Day of Judgment and many unchallenged beliefs behind it. Verse 5 gives us the correct understanding of what the Day of Judgment is really about, “the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.”

One of our biggest hurdles to overcome in arriving at a correct understanding of truth is the problem of words that have taken on incorrect or misleading meanings due to their long use in false assumptions about God. As I began to point out in a recent post, there are parallel meanings for identical words that lead to very different conclusions and create great confusion when intermingled even though they seem to sound the same. Judgment is one of those words heavy with false assumptions and dark with foreboding for most people. This is due in part to its association with very corrupt judicial systems here on earth that reflects much of the misapprehensions we have about God's judgment.

But the closer we get to the true meaning of the words that God uses by allowing the Bible to interpret itself the more beautiful and exciting and liberating truth becomes for us. And I believe there may not be another topic where this is more true than the undoing our misunderstandings about the day of judgment and its surrounding topics.

Judgment really means to reveal the way things really are including everything hidden such as thoughts, motives intents and feelings in the heart and mind that are impossible for anyone else to uncover. It means also a full revelation of the same counterparts that are in the mind and heart of God. When this becomes our understanding and our false, negative definitions of judgment are completely laid aside so as not to reinfect a proper understanding of this word, then it becomes possible to begin to see God in the proper light of truth and begin to appreciate the words Paul is using in verse 4.

Contrary to millenia of religious dogma and preaching, the only correct and truly effective motivation for repentance is an appreciation of the kindness of God, not fear of punishments, retribution or threats of an angry, offended deity. Those negative motivations come directly from the father of lies and the enemy of God who has done everything possible to destroy all knowledge of the real truth about God.

Sadly I have even listened to teachers and pastors of my own church who claim to believe the truth about God repeat similar lies about God that have so effectively turned away millions from responding to His love if they had only seen the truth about Him. These teachers claim that in the end, God's patience will finally run out and He will do His “strange work” and for a little while He will engage in anger and wrath to punish His “enemies” until they are finished being tortured and are finally annihilated. Then, apparently, He will return to His loving ways for the rest of eternity and the righteous saved will never want to repeat the experiment of sin due to the final display of God's “wrath” in the Day of Judgment.

When I hear this kind of teaching, especially coming from those who claim to know God and preach the truth about Him, I literally feel physically ill and sick to my stomach. This is a subtle mingling of error with truth that sounds so plausible in a way that many accept it as Bible truth, particularly because so many verses are lined up as proof texts to support their teachings. But this is NOT what is discovered in a careful and open-minded examination of the Word of God with a view to uncovering and maintaining the principle of consistency of the character of God. Instead, we are actually charging God with partiality. For to say that in the day of judgment God treats the saved differently than He treats the lost is, in fact, to insist that God is partial to the saved and contridicts in full face what Paul declares is the real truth about God.

God is not partial – period. And if any of our beliefs are found to be in contradiction to that truth then it is our beliefs that need reexamination, and we should not need to force the Word of God to fit our assumptions and preconceived beliefs. The system of truth is perfectly consistent as a whole and for us to come into line with it we must allow God's words to take priority over our beliefs and teachings no matter how many years people have believed them or how many texts can be construed to teach them or how many theologians subscribe to them. As Paul would say, “Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written: 'That You may be justified in Your words, And may overcome when You are judged.'” (Romans 3:4 NKJV)

This text further reveals the true nature of the day of judgment. In our self-focused obsession in religion we often come with the assumption that the judgment is all about God determining the guilt or innocence of human beings and meting out rewards and punishments accordingly. But this is far from the real truth about judgment and is reflective of the myriads of lies embedded in so much of our assumed beliefs about God and about life.

The reality of the day of judgment is that it is really the revelation of the honest truth about what God is like and His attitude toward all of His created beings without partiality. The day of judgment is, in fact, the day when the largest jury ever assembled – the whole universe including all humanity and all the angels, both good and bad, determines whether or not God was fair, honest and consistent with what He has always said about Himself. At that time the final determination will be made as to whether God could actually do what He said He could do in transforming sinners into saints without coercion, fear, force or manipulation of any kind. All the charges brought against God by the arch-deceiver and re-presented by millions of deceived minds including our own will be tested and weighed by every intelligent mind in the cosmos as all the evidence in every detail and in every circumstance is laid out by all the witnesses called to testify for or against God. The day of judgment is all about coming to a final determination of the consistency and character of no less than God Himself who, amazingly, has submitted Himself to be put on trial by His own created beings. What incredible humility demonstrated by the Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe, and very different than the control-hungry God so popular in religion today.

The day of Judgment really means the day of revealing as Paul points out here. Jesus declared explicitly that He did not come into the world to condemn the world but to save it. He does not change His motives by the time He comes again the second time and He will not change them on the Day of Judgment. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8) Condemnation does not proceed from the heart or mind of God but is something created in the heart of those who resist His drawing love and grace and reject the beauty of His character as being a lie. Condemnation is a natural consequence of clinging to the lies of sin in the heart and resisting the light of the truth about God until there is no longer a capacity to accept truth. Condemnation is the result of resistance to God, it accumulates in the soul and becomes the fuel for the fires of hell that all of the lost will experience. It is the way that wrath is stored up for ourselves internally for the Day of Judgment.

So is there a place in the judgment for the examination of the lives of humans? Yes there is, absolutely! But the grand trial, the mother of all trials, is not about putting us on the defense stand but, as far as our participation is concerned, is all about the examination of the witnesses to discover if they are truthful or they are found to be bearing false witness against God. Our lives, our words, our attitudes, our teachings, our prejudices and bigotry, our secret motives and cravings and deceptions – all will be flushed out into the open to be transparent and naked before every other person and being in the whole universe to be examined for its relationship to all the other evidence and especially to what truth we knew at the time in our conscience. All of the testimonies, which are the records of all of our responses in every situation to what we knew about God, are made public, and our integrity or lack of it in every area of our life becomes a public spectacle and common knowledge for all the universe to take into account in the deliberation of the great jury.

In this trial on the Great Day of Judgment, every jury member will also be called to testify as well. There are no exceptions in this trial; the testimony of every created being will be entered into the record and laid out in the open so that there is absolutely no possibility for any lingering doubts as to who God is and the integrity of His character and His Word. This is the day of “revelation of the righteous judgment of God”, the right way in which He has dealt with everyone of us that is forever consistent with His character of love and absence of force. (The day of judgment and its right understanding is also the main burden of chapter 3 in Romans which I have not begun to cover yet.)

This truth about the Day of Judgment dispels the negative fear that surrounds it in the typical presentations we hear. It unmasks the lies of Satan about the character of God represented as being angry, vengeful, arbitrary or even fickle. It allows the blazing light of glorious truth about God's consistent character of everlasting lovingkindness to accomplish its drawing work of bringing repentance to our hearts and filling us with transforming grace. It challenges us to reexamine all of our beliefs and doctrines and release our prejudices and pride in deference to the real truths about God revealed in a proper understanding of His Word and by His Spirit. It takes away our false fears and fills us with real love that is the basis of all true life.

We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. (1 John 4:16-19 NAS95)

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