My Eyes Are On You

I am still dealing with the swirling emotions inside related to a number of situations. But what I am aware of is that the real issue has little to do with the current situations and much more to do with deep, unresolved issues from long ago that still haunt me and dictate far too much of my current feelings and reactions.

Much of the information that I have been blessed with over the past years about healing of damaged emotions, freedom from internal embedded lies and the real truth about forgiveness and about God's feelings toward me are all coming into play in addressing my sensations of current re-ignition of old fires. But at the same time I am feeling somewhat a sense of confusion, or maybe more along the lines of a loss of perspective. I feel the increasing need for others to remind me of who I really am – except that I have serious doubts as to whether anyone really does know who I really am.

One thing that keeps coming back to my attention is the issue of forgiveness. As I was thinking about forgiveness a couple days ago in reference to my current repeated temptations to indulge in feelings of anger and bitterness toward those who are acting wickedly, the distinct realization came to me that forgiveness is very much like dying. The more that I sense the real truth about forgiveness the more it resembles in many respects a choice to die. I suspect that this is maybe why Jesus talked so much about dying to self if we ever want to enjoy real life as it was designed for us.

This also confirms for me that the typical notions about forgiveness are seriously off track. Most of peoples assumptions about forgiveness do not go anywhere near causing one to feel like they are dying. Many of them feel much more like engaging in a very long-term intense effort to suppress feelings of resentment, rage and desires for revenge. Because pseudo-forgiveness does not get rid of the original cause for the internal pain we suffer emotionally, we end up having to continue to deal with that pain over and over again and get very discouraged thinking that this whole notion of forgiveness may be just a mistaken idea that doesn't really change anything.

But I have been exposed to much clearer insights about the real truth of forgiveness that have caused me to shudder at its intensity to its similarity to death. Real forgiveness is far more sobering than the false concepts of forgiveness and makes a person reevaluate and take stock if they really want to do this or not. It forces a person to tally up the pros and cons of whether this is going to be worth the risk involved, whether this is going to produce a decent return on the investment made in ways that we often don't take into account.

This accounting and evaluation of whether real forgiveness is worth investing in will be heavily weighted and influenced by what we believe about the value and truthfulness of Jesus' assessments of the factors involved. If we come to decide that forgiveness is worth the high risk involved, it is only going to happen if we can come to believe that we can trust God's viewpoint about the risks and benefits that He says play into the decision long-term. Because in our own experience the benefits are sometimes not seen at all in some situations and are delayed uncomfortably in many others.

So it seems from this perspective that to take the risk of choosing to forgive someone that we first have to have a certain amount of trust in the integrity of the God who tells us that this is the only real option we have if we want to live in true freedom and enjoy life. Of course this is the same God who also tells us that if we want to save our life we have to be willing to let go of it; all those who try to keep their life will end up losing it. This all sort of has a similar ring to it as the issues I am starting to see in forgiveness.

I keep finding myself going back to the parable of the debtor in Matthew 18 where I learned the most stunning truth about forgiveness a number of years ago. I keep reflecting on the implications embedded in this story and consider how they relate to other stories by Jesus about forgiveness and related issues.

The original creditor in this story chose to forgive the astoundingly enormous debt by the first debtor – 150,000 years of normal wages! We tend to focus on the size of the debt as well as the cluelessness of the debtor to seemingly comprehend the gravity of his situation as demonstrated by his actions soon afterward. But I am drawn to consider the situation of the first person in this story, the master who forgave this enormous debt to start with because, it says, he had compassion.

It occurs to me that the loss that was incurred by the master is seldom very seriously considered in this story. We almost take for granted that it should have been somehow easy for him to just offer this forgiveness. Maybe we think that we was so incredibly rich that he might not really be affected by this write-off of this incredible debt. But that is not necessarily true. Because the size of this debt is so staggering, I think that we tend to gloss over the cost that was involved for the master to simply write it off and give up his right to collect on this debt.

It is this point right here where I am beginning to see the connection with death being closely linked with forgiveness. By relinquishing his right to collect on the debt, this master had to of experienced something very similar to death himself. If someone owed me that kind of money – well, I really can't even relate to how much money that really means. I guess this would somehow need to be put in a context that would make more sense emotionally to me.

This is the part of the story that I sense I must connect with for it to have its intended effect. Until I can begin to really sense and appreciate how much it really cost the master to forgive this level of debt that was legitimately owed to him, I cannot begin to really appreciate the intensity of that kind of forgiveness.

I suppose that the reason Jesus used this figure and put it into monetary language was to attempt to make it relevant so that we could begin to sense the value that God gave up in order to offer forgiveness to us. Saying that the debt was this size in terms of wages is trying to connect us to the fact that it is something extremely valuable involved here, something of unimaginable worth, something very costly to the original owner that had to be relinquished in exchange for settling the account that prevented these two people from being able to have a good relationship.

This master did not just temporarily suspend the debt for this debtor and then later re-institute it as most people assume when they read this story. There is not the slightest hint that the debt was ever re-imposed by the master. In fact, in the story it states very clearly twice that the debt was forgiven. This infers that the master had officially given up all rights permanently to ever collect on this debt again; he had literally died, so to speak, to his rights to collect or hold this account open against the debtor. This was an irreversible decision on his part but was taken by his own free choice with full knowledge of the enormous risk and loss that would be involved.

Compassion is the key element here that maybe lies at the root of part of my problem struggling with my own need to forgive. And I suspect that it also betrays the real reason that the debtor in this story seemed to have such a problem himself learning how to properly relate to those who were in debt to him. This element of compassion somehow baffles me and even frightens me in a way. I used to think that I had a lot of compassion inside of me, but now I sense that my compassion may actually be something else, more of a self-serving sympathy for only selected people whom I think may deserve getting a break from me. Or worse yet, it may be subconscious manipulative way for me to get others to appreciate and love me more.

The deeper I get into pondering this problem the more uneasy I am feeling. If what I am sensing is true, I am finding myself closer and closer to having to identify myself in this story with the ungrateful debtor who seemed unable to feel real compassion for those who owed him instead of being able to identify with the master who was able to so apparently quickly forgive a debt that I can't even wrap my mind around.

And that is really where I am starting to see that my own problem lies. I really am too much like the debtor who seemed clueless as to the enormity of his debt. Just like Simon at the feast where Mary anointed Jesus' feet, I find myself unable to see myself as the greater debtor weighted under an unthinkable debt toward God needing enormous amounts of forgiveness. To be really honest, I have never been able to identify very well with people who talk about our immense level of debt toward a God who provides us with life and blessings and grace all the time with very little in return. Yes, intellectually I can assent to that theory, but my heart does not buy into it yet. I really am an ungrateful debtor and I am getting more exposed as such all the time.

Maybe this is part of my rage problem. Oh no. Here we go on another discomforting insight that I wasn't expecting. It just became obvious to me that this debtor who was clueless about the size and impossibility of paying off his own debt displayed these very symptoms of rage and resentment against those who owed him. I suspect that these two things go together inseparably. My ignorance of just how much debt I owe is betrayed by how much struggle I find myself in trying to forgive someone else who has created a debt in me.

But I really don't see the answer for my problem very well yet. And that itself is quite frightening to me. I have always been amazed in this story of how this debtor could act so callously toward another person after just having such an enormous debt paid off from his account. But now I find myself in that very situation and am amazed at my own lack of ability to sense the same thing that I feel critical about in this debtor. That insight certainly doesn't leave me with warm fuzzies. That means that if I can't figure out how to have my perception changed about my own situation and whatever debt I have incurred that is so big, I am very likely to continue to live and relate to others the way this debtor did. And after reading the end of the story I really don't like that option in the least.

So far I can't detect any clues in this story as to how this ungrateful debtor was supposed to be able to change his perception of his own attitude and situation other than living under torture and in prison until he was willing to wake up to the option of freedom implied in the directions given to him near the end. But I really don't like that part of the story either, especially as I am seeing myself very much in his shoes right now. I don't know of anyone who thinks that being tortured in prison is something to look forward to. In fact, I rather suspect that this would only cause me to become even more angry, resentful and bitter. Given treatment like that I am afraid that I would melt into a ball of uncontrollable rage and hatred – which is generally the fuel that torturers love to feed off of and intensifies their delight. I really don't like where this story is taking me now.

I must find freedom from this rage and bitterness and hatred that is holding my soul hostage. It has affected me for most of my life, and even though it has not been very noticeable, at least not very often publicly, it has remained hidden deep in my subconscious memories and emotional psyche. I have felt its flames emerge at different times to torture me and cause me embarrassment occasionally and have had to be very careful to not burn others with its acid bitterness. But I am becoming increasingly aware of it over the past few days and sense that God is wanting to take me on a healing journey that is going to be way out of my comfort zone very soon.

I am not sure how to prepare myself for this trip. I have been feeding my mind with large doses of truth about God's love over the past few weeks and I wonder if that is not part of what is precipitating some of this happening right now. I wonder if I have been given enough soul training for the past few years that I am now prepared subconsciously to engage in an experience that will max out my ability to cope with old traumas so big that they will require a very large joy-bucket to handle them. Those familiar with some of the things I have been learning about the brain from James Wilder will know what this means.

Whatever is happening, I have to cling very hard to what I have been learning about the goodness and faithfulness of God to get through what I sense is starting to happen in my life. I am feeling more and more out of control and that is frightening to me. At the same time I almost feel a little sense of relief that maybe I am finally starting to really grow in some areas that have been deeply stuck nearly all of my life. One thing is very certain – I do not feel capable of facing this alone. I feel very inadequate to survive the trauma that I fear I am going to have to face as I experience eruptions from this deep cauldron deep in my psyche that has simmered for many years out of sight.

Part of my deep fears about this is that my reputation is likely to be seriously damaged at best. I am frightened at what people will think about me when they see feelings and attitudes and outbursts that are totally unlike anything they have ever seen before if they happen to occur during my healing process. I am also afraid that if this were to happen then God's reputation could be seriously damaged as well after all the things I have talked about. People may assume that I am supposed to be a demonstration of all the good things that I have been learning about what God is like. People might feel good reason to question whether God is really capable of changing a person who suddenly seems to be falling apart in the wrong directions as old garbage begins to spill out into the open. And even though that may or may not be part of what is seen in public, I suspect that at least part of this is going to be required for me to get the deep healing that must take place if I am to really move on from this wilderness I have been circling in for about forty years.

Now isn't that uncanny. I never thought of that before. I have spent very close to forty years stuck in this trap of internal, unresolved rage about things I have never even understood myself. Just like the children of Israel in the wilderness I have been learning and practicing and processing all sorts of things about truth and principles and experiences with God, but I still feel like I have not crossed over into a better land yet.

And maybe that is the best news about this that I have detected yet. Maybe God is about to show me a much better land flowing with good things that I have only hoped to imagine before. Maybe as I die to self and pass through a flooded obstacle, a river full of danger, hopelessness and fear, that through the miracle of God's providence and His resurrection power I may come out the other side to begin a life of miracles and conquests in which I can watch God knock down invincible walls of resistance and allow Him to drive out all the enemies in a land that He has promised for me.

I am choosing to trust Him in this. I really don't know how to progress from here. I do sense that I must make daily choices that will align me with His impressions about forgiveness to the best of my ability. He will have to provide the motivations, the feelings, the awareness of my enormous incurred debt with Him and the compassion that I need toward those who have incurred debt with me. He is the only source for all of these things that I so desperately need. So, like Jehoshaphat who was faced with overwhelming odds and very real threats to his very existence, I say with him – I don't know what to do but my eyes are on You.

Rage and Healing

I woke up before 3 A.M. this morning and couldn't go back to sleep for awhile because my brain wanted to think about the events happening currently in the life of someone I care about deeply. The amount of abuse and injustice that he has been suffering for nearly a year now has taken him close to the point of death until he felt he could take it no longer. As a result he felt compelled to cave in to the demands of the corrupt judges who were instigating and promoting his physical and psychological torture just so he could continue to have some semblance of life left.

As I have watched this situation intensify over the past few months I have repeatedly struggled with feelings of anger, resentment, rage and deep desires for revenge against the evil men and even women involved in this case. But at the same time I also felt strong warnings from the Holy Spirit in my mind reminding me of the consequences of indulging in those kinds of feelings and imaginations. There have been many times that I have simply had to force myself to stop thinking about it to avoid become overcome with rage and hatred that I knew would become a source of regret and weakness for me very quickly.

Over the past two weeks the persecution has intensified for my friend. Even though he had not even so much as had a trial and had been refused opportunity to even be heard properly in a court of so-called law, he was thrown into a cell designed for the most hardened and dangerous criminals without any spare clothes. He had been stripped of even the bare necessities that he have been able to acquire through his long stay in prison and was only able to grab his Bible before they put him into solitary confinement under the highest level of security. And this is a gentle man who was not long ago voted as the teacher of the year and nominated for the national title as well. Nothing has changed about him except that he found himself the object of focus by a system so full of corruption that it feels threatened by any revelations of truth.

While held in this new oppression for the past two weeks he was harshly interrogated at length even though he was not even accused of any crimes remotely related to such treatment. He was fed through a slot in the door as if he were a dangerous wild beast and was even being deprived of many things he needed to survive physically without the outright taking of his life by execution. And all of this is taking place in this land that we call free and just.

Because of all these prolonged and deliberate intense attacks on his life by people claiming to supposedly uphold and protect the freedoms of all Americans, he finally gave in yesterday to let them have whatever they wanted in a plea bargain arrangement. He realized that there was no hope of them ever facing the truth that he has been insisting on over the past year and that all they wanted to do was to protect their cover of deception keeping the truth about their own corruption from becoming public even if it might cost the life of an innocent man.

There is much more to this story that I don't even know about myself yet – the horrors of prison life, the screaming guards who insulted him daily at times about things totally out of his control, the nutritional starvation imposed on him, the psychological abuse focused on him to force compliance with their desires. I am afraid that if I knew too much about this case that it might be too overwhelming for me emotionally at this point. I am actually very thankful that God protects all of us from knowing most of the horrors that go on all the time around the world because none of us have the capacity to survive such awareness.

But that is not to say we are to ignore abuse of authority or open cruelty whenever we become aware of it. What I have been struggling with is to know just how God wants me to relate to such revelations. And one thing that I am becoming increasingly aware of is that this is forcing me to face some of my own deep triggers that are set off each time I hear more of the details about the horrors of injustice going on. Whenever I feel that deep anger welling up inside of me I realize that my real fight is to face my own rage from that deep reservoir inside of me that has not yet been properly drained and refilled with grace and truth.

I have become more aware of this hidden cesspool of rage over the past few years. One time I saw a picture in my imagination of my heart of where this was located inside of me. I saw a scene that looked like a peaceful lake with nice grassy lawns along its shore and tall trees here and there. The water looked clean and it all looked like a good place to swim and boat and have fun and picnic with no sign of danger anywhere obvious.

But leaking up from deep beneath the floor of that lake were occasional bubbles of methane gas that would sometimes break the surface of the water and give off a foul stench into the air. I began to realize that deep under the bottom of that lake there was a giant container like a heavily reinforced concrete bunker very full of resentment, anger, rage and unresolved issues from all of my past history. Much of it was siphoned into that bunker when I was young and being filled with hostility by the abuses and dysfunction of those around me. As I grew older I learned how to manage it more effectively and thus the reinforcement around the container to keep it from coming out into the open and destroying all my relationships.

But the problem has been all along that I did not learn the importance of getting healing for all of this garbage being compressed deep inside of me. The religion that I grew up with taught me to simply repress all the feelings that didn't line up properly with the appearance-oriented religion so popular among Christians. So, like most of those around me, I learned to stuff my anger, my hurts, my pain and all the other garbage created by life and people's treatment of me into this deep hole in the ground and then trying to make stronger and stronger lids to keep it all contained. I was learning to use ever stronger garbage compactors to hide my waste and pain instead of getting rid of it properly and sending it away to the real landfill.

But just like the problem in landfills that we can see all around this country, the results of concentrating garbage into an enclosed area underground always produces dangerous and flammable gases that can become a real hazard to health and public safety. The same is true in my emotional life. What I have been learning over recent years is that anything that I have not faced and dealt with honestly and openly in my emotions has never really gone away even though I may think it has because it is no longer in sight. All these things simply accumulate deep inside to become a source of confusion, of explosive triggers that can be set off causing eruptions that come as a total surprise to everyone including myself.

The problem is even worse however. That is because, unlike physical explosives, these hidden reservoirs of ignition are not really disarmed by repeated detonations. They remain just as potent as ever to be detonated again and again and may even become more potent with time until the root causes are exposed and the embedded false beliefs are replaced with grace and truth only found in the face of Jesus and the real truth about God.

Though I have learned these things in principle over the past few years, I am now finding myself more and more in positions of opportunity to put them into practice. And in fact I have been practicing on many triggers that have been eliminated over the years and have enjoyed a great deal more authentic peace than I ever had during the first half of my life. But now I am becoming more aware that the real big stuff, the really volatile stash may still be full of even more deadly caches of ammunition just waiting to go off if it is not dismantled very carefully by a trained and sincere expert.

I am becoming aware that the only real expert that I currently know of is the promptings of Jesus sent through His Spirit to speak to me and mentor me as to how to deal with these issues as they become exposed. At times I wish that I could also work to disarm these munition dumps with other experts who have been trained by Jesus to do this kind of work, but so far that has not been available to me. So I accept the fact that God is faithful enough to work with me directly and in the process may even be training me to be His assistant in possibly helping others to disarm their emotional ammunition dumps in the future.

As I faced these intense feelings stirring up from deep in my cesspool of old ammunition yesterday, and especially as I was thinking about it very early this morning once again as I lay in bed not being able to sleep, I was impressed that another important lesson of disarmament that I have learned was also needed to be effective in the current danger that I find myself in now. I became aware that not only do I have to face my anger squarely and look for its underlying triggers, but that one of the most effective methods of disarming this overwhelming rage that threatens to destroy me is to implement the principle of real forgiveness that I have also been learning over the past few years.

I have felt so enriched and blessed as I have been learning the real truth about what forgiveness really is recently. But that insight has continued to deepen each time that I revisit it, and this time is no exception. It seems that time after time God brings me into new situations and then reminds me of my lessons from the past that He has taught me separately and asks me to view the pieces put together in the present. And each time I get the distinct sensation that the puzzle picture just keeps getting clearer and more obvious. This is always a source of encouragement for me and causes me to want to know even more of the ways that God has designed reality and how to live in a way that causes me to thrive and live from my heart in peace and joy.

What I am becoming acutely aware of now is that I need to apply the principle of authentic forgiveness that I have learned alongside the principles of exposure and healing that I have also been learning in order to more effectively deal with my current exposure of this hidden rage. Anger is a warning that something else much deeper is lurking behind it that needs attention if I am to ever resolve the cause of that symptom. I have been learning to be more intentional and observant in discerning what might be hiding behind various emotions like anger and find out what it has been trying to mask for so long. There is almost always a different emotion hiding behind anger that is very fearful of exposure but that needs to be identified and dealt with directly before the anger trigger can ever be dissipated.

Over the past few years as I have sought to practice this new skill, I am finding that it is becoming easier to spot these hiding background emotions and coax them out into the open as long as I make my mind safe for them to disclose themselves. It is as if they are like little hurt children terrified of being abused or misunderstood yet again and simply need time and caring attention to make them feel safe enough to disclose their secret fears and feelings. As I cultivate an internal atmosphere of kindness, honesty and freedom from all condemnation in my own heart, these quivering “little people” inside of me feel more safe to come out of hiding and trust me with their secrets in hopes that they can be released from their cells and grow up into full maturity and wholeness like other parts of me have been able to do.

Many times these “little people” are living in very old memories from my past that are long forgotten by my conscious memory. But nevertheless they are just as real and powerful as the day that they were forced into their little prison cells by the legalistic guards of condemnation and false religion long ago.

Oh my! As I just wrote that last line it hit me very forcefully how close this analogy is to the situation that my friend has been experiencing over the past year. Maybe that is why this situation is stirring up so much intense feeling inside of me besides the fact of the obvious abuse he has been suffering. What I may be feeling is resonance with a lifetime of similar feelings but from very different sources. I do not imply in the slightest that what I have experienced could be anywhere near as traumatic as what he has gone through. But the resonance remains and serves as an opportunity for me to discover some hidden prison cells inside of myself that contain prisoners kept in darkness far too long just as he has been.

One reason that I did not get up early this morning and begin writing all of this down sooner as I often do is because I wanted to focus more on experiencing it at the heart level instead of capturing it with my left brain, as stimulating as that may be. I am trying to move more into learning how to apply the many things I have been learning about healing and wholeness to my own heart to have more balance in my own experience and also become more authentic. So I just laid there in bed and talked with God about what I was thinking and feeling and focused on practicing the kind of forgiveness that He was prompting me to do. I found that as I did the peace that had been lost began to return and to fill my heart once again.

The more I focused on intentional forgiveness and taking ownership of my bitterness and resentment, the more I felt in real time the presence and love of God coming back into my emotions and internal atmosphere. I realized in amazement that all of these theoretical things God has been teaching me recently really do work in real-life difficult situations if I am willing to humble myself and choose to practice them against my natural feelings and reactions. I also realized that I need to be consistent in keeping my mind focused on that path and not allowing myself to indulge in even little feelings of resentment or I may be jerked off the road to real freedom quite quickly and have to make my way back all over again.

I am beginning to experience the awareness of the difference between knowing how to come to healing and actually choosing to go into it myself. I suppose this is the process of de-hypocritizing my life if I can make up a word here. The more I choose to practice with my heart what I am learning in my left brain the more real these things will become inside of me. I am very aware of how easy it is to learn and learn and learn but to continue to avoid submitting to the needed repairs in ones own self. But I want to come closer to having authentic balance in my soul where my left brain knowledge library is used to assist my right brain real-time applications of the principles I have been so privileged to learn over recent years.

In this case I am faced with the need to directly focus my attention on the rage that I am tempted to feel toward this judge in particular who is so obviously despotic and cruel. I remind myself of the destructive effects that my own anger will have on me if I allow myself to indulge in desires of revenge against him. I am then reminded forcefully of how God feels toward everyone who has sinned against Him and how much grace and forgiveness He has already unconditionally provided for everyone whether they want it or not.

God reminded me of the study that I did for several months on the roots of bitterness. Part of that study included facing my need for taking very seriously the command to let go of my desires for vengeance. This time God also reminded me while I was facing that choice again that He has been showing me the importance and benefits of obeying that command. The more that I have learned about how God feels toward me and toward all sinners, the more acutely aware I become of the truth that God's ways are not my ways and that His methods for retribution are very foreign to the way most of us want to see it carried out.

Then, in case I still have doubts about the validity of viewing this evil person from heaven's perspective, God reminds me of the consequences of not choosing this path of receiving His attitude of unconditional forgiveness and compassion. From the parable of the debtor I am forcefully reminded that I will only put myself in the hands of torturers and will keep myself in prison if I think I can get away with remaining angry and bitter toward anyone who makes themselves an enemy of truth and right. This thinking is totally contrary to my natural assumptions and perceptions of the right way to relate to evil people, but it has been clearly shown me through many lessons and revelations from the Word of God for a number of years now. It is just that now I am faced more intensely with actually practicing it at the heart level and applying to myself all the things that God has been making clearer to my head over the past few years.

What amazes me is the sudden and unexpected new feelings and perceptions and thoughts that appear in my mind and heart after I choose to act on what I know is the right way to respond in spite of my human logic and feelings. The impossible begins to happen very suddenly inside of me and I actually find myself becoming free of the very animosity that so recently was tormenting my heart and keeping me in chains of bitterness and even rage at times. But these new feelings and impulses are like tender little plants showing up that I need to protect, nurture and cultivate if they are to have time to take deeper root and grow up into stronger maturity in my own life. I cannot just assume that because I am enjoying their sudden appearance right now that I am safe to relax. I find myself repeatedly needing to make the choice to let go of my right to justice and fairness and to take full ownership of my pain without indulging in cravings for revenge. Otherwise the enemy will have more access once again to my heart and will fill it very quickly with the old chains and lies that have keep me from thriving for most of my life.

God, I want to praise you for the incredible things you have been teaching me over the past few years. I want to praise you for your faithfulness and goodness and kindness that leads me to want to live your way instead of the familiar ways of revenge and retaliation. I thank you so much for how you have been leading me all of my life toward real freedom from fear, guilt, shame and especially condemnation. I still want to feel completely safe in your arms, but I also know that this is more about you than it is about me. I choose to believe that you are going to continue to do what you say you can do in my life.

Thank-you for your unconditional forgiveness, your unconditional love, your unconditional grace. Continue to live inside of me, to display your character through my life, to make me a successful experiment of your powerful grace to transform a legalistic, condemning religion addict into a loving, humble, trusting child learning to reflect your beauty. Father, I am so painfully aware of how very little of your beauty can yet be seen in my life. I claim your forgiveness and simply trust you to continue your work in me until I fully grow up into the likeness of Jesus your Son.

Two Inspirations of Love

I came across the following statements this morning and it really stimulated my thinking. Allow me to share the thoughts that came as a result of these new insights for me.

The law and the gospel are interwoven as warp and woof. Here mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and peace have kissed each other. We want to come to God's standard. He has a law governing human intelligences and it is for our happiness to observe it. We are to love God. Love leading to disobedience is the inspiration of the devil; love leading to obedience is the inspiration of Heaven....

Carry the light of Jesus. Carry it to your neighbors. When we bring Christ into our experience, there will be a loving of one another, there will be an unlocking of the hardest hearts. God can take a worm and thrash a mountain. If we humble ourselves and have His converting power every moment, His righteousness will be our covering. {2SAT 97, 98}

This really surprised me. I have never thought of another love being available to our minds. But now that I think of it the Bible certainly talks a lot about other loves: love of money, love of the world, love of evil.

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-17)

So, here is what I am starting to see. Obedience is impossible without being a symptom of love, and love itself is inadequate without its fruits of obedience being allowed to grow. But now I am seeing that part of our confusion may be coming from our lack of awareness of what both love and obedience really is. I have suspected this most of my life, but now it is becoming even more clear.

I am starting to sense that love is very close to, if not the same thing as, worship. I suspect that the words are simply describing two facets of the same thing but from slightly different directions. But at the same time there are authentic diamonds and there are fake diamonds. Both of these will have dazzling properties and will have various facets to examine, but only one will hold up when the hot light of God's presence is unleashed. At that time the fake diamonds will melt down in shame and disgrace while the true diamonds will glow with brilliancy never before imagined possible.

Like worship, love may be something that our hearts simply are going to do because that is just what hearts are designed to do. Maybe it is time to challenge our paradigms about love and our hearts and think more outside our old boxes in this area. For a heart to have reason to love is much like the reason that a fish will swim. It is not something you have to train, it is what it is going to do simply by its design.

The problem comes when the affections of the heart become attached in the wrong directions. Because sin at its core is selfishness, our hearts have been short-circuited by this counterfeit wiring pattern and we are naturally filled with self-love from birth. But self-love and love of everything designed to promote this model of thinking in our world removes us further and further from the source of life. God designed us to be part of the much greater circuit of life where we are to receive to give. This can be clearly seen in nature. Lakes that receive and give freely can thrive and remain healthy. Lakes that refuse to give begin to stagnate and eventually become dead and repulsive.

All true obedience comes from the heart. The heart by design is a loving machine so to speak – that's just what it is going to do if it has any life at all. Attempts at producing obedience in any other way only create fake obedience no matter how externally proper it may appear. Obedience that is forced is nothing but a sham. But it is really much worse than that because it keeps our minds deceived into believing that we are safe to encounter the presence of God.

God is the only power source of life and love in the whole existence of reality. Any belief that leads us to think that we can depend on any other source to get life for ourselves is conceived of deception and will eventually prove fatal to our very existence. But God has not just designed us to get life directly from Him, though that is part of the arrangement. God has ordained that we should function within a whole, complex circuit of life which means that we are to receive life both directly from Him and indirectly through other sources in many ways.

We are to receive life through good food, through breathing healthy air, through clean water, through our eyes by dwelling on beautiful things and enriching our hearts. We are to receive life through our ears by hearing inspiring things such as words of life and especially stirring, heaven-inspired music. We are even to receive life through our sense of touch even though this may be one of the most neglected sources for many of us. All of our physical senses and capabilities are designed by which we can intake life for our souls and synchronize our lives with the life of God.

We are also to learn to receive life through our contacts and connections with others that God has put into our lives. This is a much more hazardous source for us because other people have varying degrees of confusion about their roles in imparting life-giving nourishment to us. With their attempts to share life with us they are likely to also pass along confusion about life and love and false implications about how we are to interact and nurture each other. In so doing we can often become very confused about the nature of love itself and may become afraid of allowing others to pass along life to us.

This is where it is so important to have a deepening relationship directly with God for ourselves. His Spirit can buffer the problematic aspects of the life that we are to receive from others as well as teach us how to better pass along life to others ourselves in ways that more accurately reflect the true heart of our heavenly Father. While God intends for us to become bonded more closely with others in our position within His circuit of life, we must not allow their mistakes and confusion about God to define our own beliefs about the real truth of our Father's heart. We must listen carefully to our Father directly as He communicates more clearly to us through His Word and His Spirit the real nature of true love. We must give Him total access to our hearts and minds so that He can accomplish all the healing and repairs necessary to restore us into healthy, functioning components of His vibrant circuit of life.

But it is critically important that we live in constant expressions of out-giving as well or we will soon become diseased and begin to die. Just as it is extremely unhealthy and even eventually fatal to try to eat and eat without eliminating naturally, it is fatal to think that we can take and take of life-giving blessings from heaven without properly fulfilling our role of giving out life in the great circuit where God has placed us. In fact, our willingness to cooperate with the design for our lives, to receive to give of the life and love that is flowing all through God's circuit of life – that cooperation is itself the obedience necessary for us to thrive and remain as a viable part of the great circuit of life.

The real problem with artificial or forced obedience to God is that it deceives us into thinking that obedience is something we have to produce to satisfy some artificial rules imposed on us by God. This mentality in itself removes us from even being able to understand the reality in which we are supposed to be able to live and thrive. It views obedience only as the external descriptions of how a healthy person will appear when they are properly functioning in the circuit of life. It is more focused on appearances than on the condition of the heart and the spirit. It fails to understand that it is completely impossible to give without first receiving. Likewise it is impossible to receive and remain healthy without passing on all of God's input for healthy life.

Artificial obedience leads people to try to produce fruit without paying attention to the real causes of fruit. It attempts to force fruit to appear on the tree of our life while paying little attention to the things necessary to making the tree itself healthy. Self-righteousness leads people to think that God is primarily interested in performance rather than in blessing us and mentoring us into living within His circuit of life. False ideas about righteousness lead us to work very hard at trying to live a life of supposed obedience while failing to allow our hearts to receive the very nurturing ingredients necessary for it to thrive and be healthy. This is like trying to force prisoners to work ever harder while cutting back their food rations, their rest times and all the other things necessary for healthy bodies. You may for a while get more compliance and output from them through the use of increasing levels of fear and intimidation, but it will someday become evident that forced obedience is a dead-end proposal – quite literally.

Both love and obedience, like all the other religious words that we are familiar with, need to be carefully reexamined and understood in their proper perspective and in the light of the real truth about God. We have such distorted ideas of what these words really mean that it becomes nearly impossible to even talk about truth using words such as this because of the false conceptions inherent in people's thinking about what they mean. I have been discovering that the more I understand the real meaning of words and shed my false ideas associated with them, the easier it becomes to make sense out of life and the Word of God. But this is not just a good intellectual exercise necessary for us to decipher reality, it requires an engagement of the heart in order for our intellect to properly perceive the much deeper meanings of all of the language used to convey to us snapshots of reality as God designed it.

From the above statements it becomes very clear that there are alternative kinds of love that can be inspired. That tells me that just because my sensations of love feel inspired that it is not enough to lead me to believe that they constitute authentic love. There are deceptive forces all around us designed to create a great deal of inspiration in everyone thirsting for love and for life. I think most everyone is quite familiar with the fact that the entertainment industry has honed inspiration to a fine art. But that does not mean that the resulting feelings produced inside of our hearts are going to be the kind of love needed to deepen our proper connections in the circuit of life. Most of these inspirations are designed to embed us more deeply into the counterfeit circuit designed by the enemy of our souls to make us feel temporarily excited or to give us pleasure. This kind of love is the current that flows through and empowers the counterfeit circuit set up to imitate the original circuit enjoyed by the rest of the universe.

Pleasure is the great counterfeit of real satisfaction. Pride is the counterfeit of a self-confidence that comes from being genuinely loved, valued and cherished. Everything in Satan's system of reality is designed to mimic to a great extent the real elements in the circuit designed by God. But the counterfeits generally focus on appearing good on the outside but fail to meet the much deeper needs of the heart. That is because only the One who created our hearts to start with, who designed those deep cravings is the only one that can give us the ingredients needed to make our hearts truly thrive and enjoy peace and bond together in healthy joy bonds.

Forced obedience is one of the most deceptive counterfeits that religion has to offer us. Self-induced obedience is extremely misleading because it uses so much religious terminology, quotes so prolifically from the Bible and uses the name of God so liberally. It leads people to think that God has promised to help them in their efforts to obey His laws but that they have to invest as much effort as possible and God will make up the difference. Their mantra is the often quoted phrase, “God helps those who help themselves.” This sounds so logical, but then every counterfeit appears to be authentic on the surface or it wouldn't be a very effective counterfeit.

All true obedience comes from the heart. But it can only come from a heart that is receiving love and life and is also dispensing it to others as it receives. It is very important to notice that you can never give what you have not received. To attempt to do so will only lead to frustration, discouragement, emptiness and eventually lose of life. This is the destiny of all false obedience because it does not acknowledge our total bankruptcy of the heart. It tries to achieve an external obedience while trying to suppress the deepening hunger pangs of a starving heart devoid of love. This kind of person finds themselves struggling ever harder to satisfy increasing demands for perfection while facing equally increasing emptiness deep in their soul. They don't dare to admit their inner growing feelings of emptiness because it would discredit the claims of authenticity for their beliefs, so they steel themselves against all appeals to reconsider their assumptions and end up hardening their hearts in an attempt to satisfy the requirements of a stern, holy God.

Isn't it interesting that the analogy of a hard heart is so relevant to the situation we find ourselves in when we try to obey instead of living in a circuit of love. Our heart is our love organ. It is designed to receive and to dispense love just as our physical heart's primary function is to circulate life-giving blood throughout our body. When our attention gets fixed on obedience and performance instead of receiving love and life into our heart in order to pass it on, then our heart becomes more and more hardened from misuse and from starvation. We may engage in alternative forms of love such as that described above, but all forms of counterfeit love fail to nourish the heart effectively just as junk food cannot sustain a healthy body for very long.

True obedience is not created by focusing on the external symptoms and behavior as we are so often prone to think. True obedience, like so many other things in the healthy circuit of life, is simply the synchronization of our hearts and lives with the design of the circuit of life as purposed for us by our Creator. Real obedience is simply cooperating with whatever it is God designed for us to do in our role of receiving and giving life with our heart as a functioning component in the great circuit of life. Obedience is letting go of our resistance to the basic principles of reality that define how everything works together properly to enhance life.

Intellectually we need to understand increasingly the basic principles of reality that are sometimes called laws. But that intellectual pursuit can never be allowed to be substituted for the function which our heart was designed to do within us. It is our heart that only can produce real obedience which is simply cooperation with God's design for our life in conjunction with the rest of creation around us. Compliance through any other method will always be along the lines of counterfeit obedience which always leads to dysfunction.

And because the heart is designed to be loved and to share love, then the authentic obedience that naturally emerges from a thriving heart will itself be seen as encouraging and inspiring. The very word itself will begin to lose its false implications and associations as we begin to see that true love is the real current of life that is used to power all of the universe. It is not obedience that should be so much the focus of our attention because real obedience is simply the natural result of a heart that is learning to function as it was originally intended to function within God's circuit of life.

Heart Talk and Worship

I just had a discussion with someone that opened my eyes a little bit more as to how much I am still influenced by my old problem of image management – living in such a way as to influence what others think about me. As I thought about it more this morning I also realized that this is one of the greatest inhibitions preventing me from being able to worship God freely as my heart desires to do.

In the culture in which I grew up and am still a part of to a great extent, there are some things about expressive worship that by many people in my culture are considered too far outside the box to be acceptable. Oh, they may or may not say something about it to me, but it is sufficient that inside my own mind the accusations and subtle feelings of condemnation are very present and effective. So generally, I don't feel the freedom to worship as my heart needs to unless I am in a completely different culture – which then presents its own different set of inhibitions – or more likely when I am totally alone.

Actually I am very resentful in a way, of this state of affairs. And I suspect God is not real pleased about it either. For if the worship that is due Him and that connects our hearts to each other is being short-circuited by the false gods of image management and men-pleasing, then in fact I am being controlled and am serving false gods in violation of the second commandment.

I became aware of this sinful condition in my life a couple years ago and wrote extensively about it then. I also think that my awareness of this state of my heart has at least help me to make some progress toward freedom, but I still have a long way to go. And it will not help to simply try to lay a guilt trip on myself in an attempt to shame or frighten me into changing the way I act and think. That is the counterfeit religious practice of my past that I am determined to turn away from. But at the same time I must be willing to accept both the attractions and convictions of the Holy Spirit and also the warnings that alert me to the tragic consequences that are inevitable if I refuse to submit to coming into harmony with the principles of reality as revealed by God.

I, like everyone else, am designed and wired at the deepest level of my psyche to worship. And I, like everyone else, will worship quite frequently even though it is not generally labeled with that term. But the more I understand the truth and substance of what makes up worship, the more I become aware that far too much of my worship is going to the wrong places. I am giving too much authority to false gods in my life, and as a result I have no room to view critically or harshly those in the Old Testament who worshiped idols and think how silly they were. When the light of truth begins to expose my own futile practices of living in fear of what others think of me instead of living in joyful service to my Creator and Savior, then I have joined them in their disloyalty and idol worship and am in need of repentance just as much as they were.

I do not want to keep hiding from this problem. I (at least a part of me) do not want to keep resisting the promptings of the Holy Spirit to be more open and honest in all areas of my life. I realize that I have some very intense areas of blindness in my thinking, but I continue to ask God to open my eyes and show me what I normally cannot see. I believe that this is just one of those blind spots that He is trying to get me to face more directly.

I actually feel very encouraged by this conversation I just had that helped me remember and see better this problem in my life. I feel encouraged in a strange sort of way when I see some of my faults because I know that God is showing them to me because He cares enough to offer me healing and restoration in that area if I am willing to accept and apply His grace to my heart.

During the discussion I was able to actually peek into some of the feelings behind my actions and inhibitions and realize that what I am doing much of the time is trying to avoid shame. Shame and fear are two of the greatest inhibitors in my life and are some of the worst slave-masters that keep me from enjoying the true freedom of the sons of God. Even many of my diversionary temptations are targeted at helping me to avoid facing the shame and fears that still lurk in the background and affect so much of my thinking and my relationships with others. My desires to watch movies are deeply rooted in trying to use pleasure produced vicariously through artificial emotional stimulation as a means of masking my real need to address the much deeper roots of shame and fear that haunt me from the background atmosphere of my soul.

But it is up to me to exercise my power of choice to face these things and to fast from anything that I may be using to avoid facing them. As long as I resort to anything that may help me procrastinate facing the inner pain of my past, the resentment that I carry toward others, the shame that is still so prevalent from my childhood and the fears that haunt me from the residual lies about God in my heart – as long as I allow those diversions to satisfy my hunger for real freedom I will remain in the slavery of bondage to those things even though I may feel like I am free on the surface.

The symptoms of that bondage can be seen in the inhibitions at the gut level that still bind me to the manipulation of what others think of me. I may be ever so independent in many ways and believe that what others think about me has little influence over my choice to live outside the box that others are trapped within. But in deeper ways that is still a mirage in many respects. At the heart level I still crave acceptance and affirmation and to be valued and appreciated by others. I suppose in some ways there is nothing wrong with those desires except when they cause me to subtly seek satisfaction for these needs from others above seeking God's face and believing in how He truly feels about me.

As I was sharing in my conversation, shame is one of the primary emotions that I still don't have very much skill in dealing with effectively yet. When I first became aware of the enormous influence and presence of shame in my life some time ago I was shocked at how much it controlled my thinking and my relationships with others. That is still true today, but it is very difficult to perceive it most of the time because it stays under the surface of my conscious awareness. So because I am not conscious of the presence and strong influence of shame's control over me I too often fail to take action to face it more directly and learn how to deal with it effectively.

During our discussion we both agreed that fear and shame are the primary problems that we both have to deal with and that strongly influence how we relate to others and inhibit our relationship with each other. We also realized that we really desire a mentor in our lives who could show us how to face this problem effectively and learn to live in the freedom and peace that our hearts crave so much. But the problem seems to remain that there are extremely few people around who are mature enough and willing enough to mentor others in the ways of God, and whoever they are they don't seem to be anywhere near our lives right now.

As a result it appears to me like God is going to have to mentor us directly without using any humans to be His agents unless He has someone in mind that we are totally unaware of at this point. Many times in my life when I felt totally alone going through intense struggles and wishing for someone to join me and emotionally guide me through those times, I wondered if maybe God was allowing me to go it alone in order to be trained to help others whom I would encounter later who felt totally alone. I can distinctly remember situations where I nearly felt like screaming out, longing for someone to be with me in my problems and frustrations to overcome problems in my life. But the only answer that seemed to come was that when I learned this lesson I would be better situated to have compassion and sympathy for others in similar circumstances.

I don't know what God has in mind for the process of my healing and I am cautious to try to second-guess how He plans to accomplish that in me. But I do know that what I am learning about Him from the Bible in my own personal encounters with Him each day is full of encouragement and is awakening more hope and love in my own heart. I ultimately have to come back to throwing myself on the promises and words of God that I find written there and trust His heart to guide me through the confusing maze of inner mysteries and outer temptations to the freedom and joy and security that my heart was designed to thrive on in His presence.

Digging Past the Sand

I began to think about something this morning that I want to unpack more. As I thought about the motivations that we seem to wait for before most of us get serious about drawing close to God or obeying His will, I noticed that most of those motivations are rooted in fear. It is a pattern that is very pervasive in most of our lives and I see it in mine just as much. We tend to procrastinate doing the truly important things we should do until dangers are so imminent that we feel we must get serious about God or it may be too late.

There are variations on this pattern but it seems to be rather consistent. Sometimes we might decide to move closer to God for other reasons, but much of the time we tend to prefer to maintain the status quo or maybe we want to continue to indulge in a few pleasures first before we feel that we have to give up what we enjoy and begin to follow God's ways more closely.

But as I thought about the results of this kind of thinking something alarming came to my attention. And it is not the fact that we might not have enough time to finish getting close to God before we may die or be killed as many people might warn. No, there is a much greater danger than even death itself that can preclude or at least greatly inhibit our ability and desire to get serious about our relationship with God. This hidden danger has to do with the very nature of fear itself.

I am coming to realize that what God desires and what we really need in order to be properly aligned with Him and strengthened during a time of crisis and intense pressure is not more information or just facts of truth. What we must have if we are to be ultimately found on the right side of the great spiritual battle about to explode on this earth is an intimate and unbreakable love relationship with our Creator, Lover and Redeemer. We need a confidence that goes far deeper than just head knowledge or emotional good feelings.

This is something that I am afraid most Christians know very little about though they may talk about it a great deal. And I include myself in that class. The problem is that most religion is so oriented for the left brain or is just based on emotions alone that an intimate and obedient relationship with Jesus at the depth and intensity needed to carry us through the intense times just before us is outside of our present abilities to even comprehend.

This intimacy with God that we need so desperately is very similar to the relationship seen in very healthy and dynamic marriages which are also rather in short supply today. It is a relationship that is filled with real romance, real devotion to the other person and total commitment to the relationship no matter what may come or how one may feel. This is a covenant relationship that ultimately supersedes even our instincts for life itself which is also something very unfamiliar to most western minds.

But there is something very important about developing the many tendrils, like little silk threads, needed to have a strong love relationship with another heart. Cultivating this kind of deep heart-level relationship usually does not happen very effectively if at all in an atmosphere electric with fear. While fear may be a very powerful motivator, fear is also a very unstable and ultimately unreliable foundation upon which to build a relationship.

Fear and love are pretty much total opposites to each other. The Bible clearly says that perfect love casts out all fear. But the opposite is equally true as well. Fear seems to be designed to preempt and undermine the very essence of what makes up love. So now as we begin to see the tension here between these two principles we can also begin to realize the serious problem that emerges when we put off embracing an intimate love relationship with God until there is more fear present in the atmosphere around us.

We really are living in relatively peaceful times though we may not realize or believe it very much. Because of our tendency to dwell on our problems more than our blessings and opportunities we may think that we are already being severely oppressed and persecuted. But I have no doubt whatsoever that very shortly we will look back on these present days and would then give anything to return to the circumstances we are living in now to take advantage of the opportunities that will soon be gone forever. We will realize too late that in our current situation today it is far easier to pursue a deep, solid heart relationship with God than it will ever be when fear is forcing itself into our minds and hearts with an intensity that we have never known before in our whole life.

The book of Daniel prophecies that at the end of this world's history there will be a time of trouble worse than has ever been imagined in the whole history of this world. (Dan. 12:1) We know it is coming because God's Word cannot lie and every prophecy always finds fulfillment. But I also believe that we make a potentially fatal mistake when we try to use fear of this impending time of trouble to be the foundation of our relationship with God. God is not looking for a fear-based relationship with His children but a loving parent/child relationship and ultimately a marriage relationship that is full of love and trust and mutual intimacy at the heart level. This is the only kind of connection with the heart of God that will qualify us to be ready to meet Jesus when He comes again to take His children home with Him to heaven.

Fear is the worst possible motivator that we can rely upon to connect us with God and prepare us for the coming times ahead of us. Yes, God will make use our fears in the initial stages of our movement toward Him because that is all we are paying attention to at first. But God wants to wean us away from the false motivations rooted in fear as soon as possible and replace those unstable motives with a solid foundation of love, trust and saving faith that is best cultivated and nurtured in spending intimate time with Him in an environment free of all the coercion and distractions and stress that fear always produces.

Real love is free of all the counterfeit elements of Satan's kingdom, and this especially means that it is free of fear. We will learn to have a healthy respect for the tremendous awesomeness of God and the dangers of not being synchronized with God when approaching His presence. But this is not the same kind of fear that our flesh uses for motivating us. It is unfortunate that the two emotions even use the same word in English because it causes so much confusion in people's minds. It also has the problem of allowing many people to justify their use of the wrong kind of fear to motivate others to come to God for salvation.

A religion rooted and founded upon fear is like building a house upon the sand. (Matt. 7:26) Fear is very much like sand as a foundation for the life. Remember that sand is really just a lot of little rocks. It is not really different material from foundation rock that we need to build our Christian experience on except for at least one very major difference. The rocks that make up sand are unstable and easily shift position whenever it encounters wind, water and other shifting elements. On the other hand, a single solid bedrock is not vulnerable to those elements of crisis and keeps the house of our experience built upon it stable and secure when a crisis comes.

But we must not wait until we see the storm clouds looming on the horizon before we begin on securing our life on a more sure foundation of faith rooted in love. We need to spend every effort now while times are good in intimate interaction with the goodness and kindness of God's heart so that our own hearts will be filled to overflowing with all the positive attributes of God and there will be no room left for Satan's counterfeits.

I need this counsel and advice just as much as anyone. I want to take seriously my present circumstances to do everything possible to cultivate a solid connection with the heart of God to prepare me for the coming crisis that is coming very quickly. I do not want to be so distracted by thinking about the fears that try to impose themselves on me repeatedly that I fail to engage in real worship, in real passionate devotion encounters with Jesus that will teach me the tough lessons of faith that I need to secure me to the only true Rock. Neither do I want to waste away precious time in relatively meaningless distractions like news, entertainment or anything that will draw me away from keeping in tune with heaven. This is my prayer for myself today and for you as well.

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, 'Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise replied, 'No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.' And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to us.' But he replied, 'Truly I tell you, I do not know you.' Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. (Matthew 25:1-13 NRSV)

Preach It, Brother!

I have started listening to some stories and talks by a very faith-filled missionary that is having significant influence on my thinking. But at the same time I also feel uncomfortable about some of the things he says. Maybe I should say I am uncomfortable with some of the feelings that are aroused inside of me as a result of the way he says some things. For what I am noticing is that my discomfort is very often connected to things I experienced when I was much younger more than what I am hearing today. And it would be very easy to assume based on emotions that what someone says today is with the same intent or spirit as those who tried to use fear and intimidation to motivate me in the past.

One thing this man says is that he does not want to make people comfortable. As I continued to think about that this morning I remembered that the Bible seldom has positive things to say about being comfortable. This is partly understandable because, as this missionary says, when we are comfortable we are not likely to grow. It is usually only when we get out of our comfort zone that we are challenged to change the way we think and to take decided steps to move in a different direction.

But as I stop to think about this word “comfortable”, I also think that some of the problem may be with language itself. For to believe that God does not believe in comfort would be to imply that He would refuse to comfort us when we are hurting, and I will not fall into buying that lie. So there seems to be a wide variety of meanings attached to this word “comfort” or “comfortable” and I believe we must be careful not to be too dogmatic about God's intentions as relating to these words.

What I have seen at times is that religious agitators who like to promote their radical brand of religion often seize upon this issue of being comfortable and use it abusively in ways that I don't believe God ever intended and that misrepresent Him. They confuse peace with comfort and thus promote an atmosphere in the soul where a person feels guilty if they are not in a constant state of fear and agitation thus robbing them of peace. But this is completely incongruent with the inner peace that God has promised to all who live in close connection with Him. Again, this is another classic case of a counterfeit supplanting what is supposed to be an important part of our experience.

Something else came to my attention while I was listening to these talks. Every once in awhile there was a noticeable outburst in the audience by someone who would enthusiastically say “preach it” whenever the speaker said something particularly discomforting. I have observed this kind of spirit and behavior a number of times in my life and almost every time I encountered it I had the same feeling of uneasiness. As I now try to analyze just what this produces inside of me I would describe it as a mixture of guilt and intimidation. I sense that these kind of people want opportunities to impose forcefully on others what they believe is sharp truth that they perceive as coming from the speaker. I have to admit that there have been times when I myself have felt that same spirit inside of me, and now I wonder about its legitimacy and my own motives.

What suddenly came to my mind as I thought about this today was the experience of Paul and Silas as described in Acts 16 when they were followed by a slave girl who was saying apparently only positive things about their message. She was strongly affirming that they were preaching the gospel, and yet they eventually were not comfortable with her public affirmations and support. After a number of days of this experience Paul finally turned around and ordered the spirit within this girl to leave and she was delivered. But the results of that miracle were anything but pleasant for Paul and Silas over the next few hours.

I have often wondered about this situation each time I read this story in Acts. Now it makes a lot more sense to me. When I put this together with the spirit that I sense in people who typically urge a speaker on, supposing that stern, fear-oriented messages are what people need the most while appearing to be strongly promoting the spread of “truth”, I am beginning to sense that the spirit in both situations may be very similar. Just because a person is enthusiastic about some presentation of truth because it is sharp and convicting does not necessarily mean that they are in tune with the real Spirit of God. And it is also true that just because a person indulges in this spirit while someone else is speaking that it does not necessarily follow that the speaker shares that same spirit.

I often wondered about this story with Paul and Silas. Why did they wait for a number of days before doing anything about this situation with the slave girl? And why did they feel the need to do anything at all since she was not saying anything bad about them?

I believe that they probably struggled with these questions themselves which is why it took so long to decide what to do about it. I can imagine that they may have had long and intense discussions at night about how to relate to this unusual situation and did a lot of praying and soul-searching to figure out what the right thing was to do. It was an extremely clever ploy by the enemy of souls to come up with this unique circumstance and it was not really clear as to how they should relate to it.

I believe that the other situation that I have described with enthusiastic extremists eager to broker fear into other people's hearts may be even more difficult for a speaker to know how to deal with. For it is not nearly so clear to others that this person may have a spirit out of tune with God's Spirit because they are so enthusiastic about religion already. For a speaker to confront them like Paul did with the slave girl would likely be highly offensive to the person unless they first came to realize that the spirit they possessed was not from God as they had believed so strongly for so long.

And as I think about the times when I myself feel motivated to be enthusiastic about some strong message I hear I wonder how much of my enthusiasm is really God-inspired or how much is from my flesh being influenced by a spirit from a more diabolical source.

What I do sense is that I do not want to judge another person who is clearly being led by God in their life. I must remember that they are growing still, that they are God's responsibility and that there may be blind spots or weaknesses that God is still working on in their life that may trigger past unresolved issues in me. I have no responsibility for taking care of their growth but I do have full responsibility to cooperate with God in resolving my own triggers and in guarding the condition of my own spirit. I am accountable 100% to God for myself and I must answer to Him first before anyone else.

Father, I want to learn Your gentleness. You have also given me the shield of Your salvation, and Your right hand upholds me; and Your gentleness makes me great. (Psalms 18:35)

Motivating the Will

I read an article in a newsletter recently that I found very interesting and enlightening. It had to do with the role of our will which has been a favorite topic of discussion among my people for very many years. However, it has also been at the center of a great deal of misunderstanding about how to properly relate to God, how to live as a “successful” Christian and is also at the center of the practice of legalism. Most people assume that we have to fulfill certain requirements in order to get God to save us and these requirements entail exercising enough will-power to fulfill them correctly. Of course this also sets one up for a great deal of discouragement as well as feeding into the cultivation of a lot of hidden pride.

As I read this article I remembered many of the typical assertions and quotations bantered about during many discussions of this subject. But suddenly the author took an unexpected turn and began to explain something that I myself have been discovering over the past few years in my own experience. When these two subjects were put together I was amazed at the perfect fit that could be seen. And it also got me to thinking about it subconsciously which is often the case after learning about something very compelling.

What came to my mind a couple nights ago (quite inconveniently just after I had gotten into bed) shortly after reading this was the thought that there are two ways to motivate our will to make decisions. As with pretty much everything in this life, there is an authentic way to live and think and believe that we were designed for by God and then there is a compelling counterfeit that is usually much more familiar to us that we often assume is the right way. Of course this would definitely be the case with something so important and central to our life and our well-being as our will.

What came to my mind were these two ways to motivate my will. First and most common, I can be induced to make decisions based on fear. This mode of motivation is a driving kind of force from behind me that intimidates my will to make decisions in a certain direction. Whenever I am using my will from this basis the resulting decisions will also take on a certain flavor in the process, a certain hue that will be incorporated into all of my life and thinking and the atmosphere that surrounds me.

Secondly, there is a less-known alternative for this kind of living but one that I am coming to believe is the truly authentic way that God intends for His children to live. This is where the will operates by the principle of attraction instead of being driven. A will that makes decisions under the influence of attraction involving the affections instead of fear and avoidance will also take on a certain atmosphere that will color and flavor the whole life with its influence.

These two principles can both be very strong motivations but are opposite in their relationship to our will. Being driven and being attracted conjure up mental pictures of something being pushed from behind by force verses something being pulled from in front by something more magnetic in nature rather than brute force from behind. I hope I am explaining this adequately since it is difficult at times to reduce into words things that seem much more clear internally.

What I have observed over the years is that many people believe that we need a mixture of these two motivations in order to have all the incentive possible in order to get ourselves into heaven. This is why the carrot and stick approach has so much credibility. Of course, to most people it appears that fear is the far more powerful motivator and so we tend to dwell on things that frighten ourselves and each other in order to compel right action of the will, or at least what we think it will be right action. I believe that if we can get honest enough to discover what really motivates us inside most of the time that we will discover that most all of us rely largely on fear to get us to make difficult decisions.

I know that I have discovered even recently upon careful reflection that I too often wait until the fear factor rises to a high enough level of discomfort before I am willing to face a tough decision or make a hard choice. This is so common that it is accepted as the way we are supposed to live. But now I am seriously beginning to question that premise. Just because it has always been that way does not necessarily make it right.

Living a life dependent on fear motivation is to live a life comfortable with being enslaved. People who have been slaves all of their life many times have no concept of what freedom might look and feel like and so sometimes they come to believe that they are not really under slavery at all. Because the status quo feels so familiar it is difficult to believe that God has something radically better for us to experience and so we tend to morph the words of God to fit our current assumptions and embrace a religion that is more in our own image than reflective of the true character of our Father in heaven.

But as I begin to get a taste of the better wine offered by Jesus and as my understanding of the real truth about God has begun to change radically over the past few years, I have been forced to challenge all of my assumptions about what I think is real and how to live life in true freedom. And one of the conclusions that I am coming to is that God does not want me to continue living dependent on the driving force of fear as the compulsion for my will. God's ways are not man's ways, and when I begin to experience the superior power and results of exercising my will from a motivation of attraction, the attraction of my affections toward a God whom I am beginning to really perceive with my heart actually loves me with unconditional love, I am starting to see more clearly the danger of continuing to depend on fear to be the fuel for my will.

I will not assert that God never utilizes our fears to initiate our movement toward serving Him and experiencing His passion for us. But what I have learned is that while God may often start our relationship with Him from where we are currently in fear, He never wants us to remain in that enslaved condition as the norm for our new life in Christ. We may start out making choices to accept God's grace, forgiveness and power in our lives from reasons motivated largely by fear. But if we do not learn to soon move past those elementary and selfish motivations we will find that our experience will become stunted and dwarfed and stagnant. For the Christian life will always lead us toward true freedom and that freedom is mainly the freedom from all fear. Perfect love casts out all fear.

I want to not only learn more about this new way of thinking, living and motivation for my will, but much more importantly I want to experience from the heart this new way of making decisions based purely on attraction instead of on fear. I want my affections and thoughts and heart to feel the magnetic power of being drawn to the powerful passion that emanates from God's heart for me that I am now only dimly starting to perceive. I am tired of depending on fear to keep me moving forward. And I am tired of the debilitating effects that fear has to drain my energies and leave me feeling tired and exhausted from trying to fight against evil in my life.

I believe that as I find how to exercise my will using the correct motivations that attract me toward God that I will find myself maybe actually being energized in fighting the good fight of faith. Somehow I sense that the closer I draw to the Source of all energy and life and as my will is attracted to His beauties and amazing attributes that my chains of fear and apprehension and even depression will lose their power over me and I will experience more and more fully the abundant life that Jesus promised for all who would come to Him.

"They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes." (Revelation 7:16-17)

Thank-you Jesus. I accept this truth from You and crave to drink from this water of life. Fill me with fresh revelations of Your truth, Your beauty and Your magnetic passion. And use me to be an agent of attraction to draw others to You as well.

The Biggest Lightening Rod

The following are insights that came to me in the middle of the night that I want to unwrap here further. Bear with me while I quickly jot them down and then unpack them further so that I can understand them more clearly myself.

Praise is the medium of conveyance by which pain and fear can be effectively transferred to Jesus.

So I thought about what praise really is and why I am subtly resistant to it still. I discovered that I have a residual gut-level belief that praise is something that has to be earned and if my feelings don't believe someone deserves it then I am resistant to doing it. It is partly for me an issue of honesty. (These are feeling-based beliefs, not conscious beliefs that I subscribe to. For another perspective read this post from last November.)

So my heart is really saying that if I don't feel blessed right now then God doesn't really deserve praise right now. That is likely because praise and affirmation toward me was always predicated on my performance and so I of course assumed the same principle applied to God. I felt that there were certainly times to praise God but that was generally when things were going well, I was feeling blessed and prayers were being answered etc. But when circumstances seemed very much against me it seemed much more real that God was likely upset with me and so praise simply did not make sense at those times except as a duty to be fulfilled.

After recently revisiting and reigniting the truth about God's unconditional forgiveness – that seems so hard to keep firmly in my mind and heart – I am more in a position to put these other pieces together properly so that they make more sense in the bigger picture. When one piece of the picture is misunderstood or misplaced it has a distorting effect on how I view many other pieces of the puzzle.

Pain is almost always very closely associated with fear. Nearly everyone is afraid of pain which is why it is so easy to manipulate everyone with fear. This is the grand strategy of Satan to control the whole world through fear. If he can use the threat of pain to frighten us into submission or motivate us in a certain direction then he can control our thoughts and actions. So the plan of salvation must somehow effectively address this problem of fear and pain.

Pain is also in essence closely linked with death. This is what is referred to in the plan that Jesus came to put into place described in these verses.

Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. (Hebrews 2:14-15)

But this is only part of the answer as to how the death of Jesus effected the liberation of our hearts from all fear. I have puzzled for years over what Jesus' death had to do with my problems and my daily experience. The way that it was presented was so convoluted religiously that it simply made very little real sense. This was largely because most religions believe in very dark views of God and most of Christianity pits Jesus and the Father against each other in counterfeit versions of the plan of salvation. Again, if one part of the puzzle is false it seriously affects many other pieces and makes them have a lot of tension when trying to put them together. Often typical solution that people have used is to simply force the pieces together illogically and then declare that the tension created is simply the mystery of God and dismiss all further questions about it.

But add to the above text the passage from Isaiah and it begins to make even more sense.

Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. (Isaiah 53:4-5)

Even as I just considered these two texts together right now I noticed this phrase for our well-being and realized that it is directly linked to the slavery in the previous passage. Our well-being from God's perspective is to be freed from our slavery which is our fear of death and all the things associated with death and that includes pain. It is significant that this passage in Isaiah is full of descriptions of pain that Jesus took upon Himself for the sole purpose of creating a way for us to become free from that very pain in our own lives.

So how does this work in practicality? What does the real plan of salvation look like with more of the pieces in proper position and understood more clearly? And just how, in very practical and useful terms, do I get my pain, guilt, shame etc. out of my own heart and where it belongs, on the cross of Jesus Christ?

I certainly am not going to make any claim as to having a complete understanding of the plan of salvation since it has been said that we will be trying to more clearly understand it throughout all of eternity. But on the other hand, it is definitely our privilege to have a much clearer perception of it and experience in it than what we have had up to this point. That is God's will and deep desire for us, and the more clearly we perceive the real truth about God's character and feelings toward us the easier it is going to be to get a clearer grasp of the true outline of the real plan of salvation as it is in Jesus.

As I lay awake around 1 AM this morning not being able to sleep, I listened to whatever God might want to have me think about. This issue of fear was one of the first things that came to my attention since it is often fear that wakes me up at odd times during the night and robs me too much of my sleep. So I have a vested interest in learning how to become free from all my fears. I also have a longstanding question as to what is really meant by the passage in Hebrews 3 about entering into His rest.

I chose to simply follow this thread of thought and slowly put together things that I have been learning recently from various sources and see where it might take me. As I did so I was praying for God to deliver me from all my fears. But I think part of God's answer to prayers like this involves also teaching me the process that He uses to deliver me from my fears so that I can more fully cooperate with the effective way He has in place to accomplish that.

I remembered previous lessons that I have learned about my need to transfer all my fears and emotional pain to Jesus since He already suffered all of of that very pain and fear on the cross. His death by this means qualified Him to bear it for me and receive it from me. I no longer believe that He died to appease a justice-hungry God full of wrath toward me, but He did it instead to reveal the heart of the Godhead that has been obscured by the myriads of lies produced and promoted by Satan about how He feels about me. It was for our sense of justice that He suffered all of the emotional consequences of our sins, not for God's satisfaction. It was to appease the wrath of all created beings who misinterpret the truth about God's heart that Jesus made Himself the lightening rod for our vengeance and wrath.

And furthermore, He has become the permanent lightening rod firmly in place onto which we must continue to unload our pain, fear, anger and negative emotions or we will not be able to be freed from our slavery to fear. And as I look back again at the verse from Hebrews I suddenly realize that this lightening rod was the secret resource that God unveiled to neutralize all the power that Satan had unleashed to keep us bound firmly in the slavery of fear. A lightening rod acts to “ground” electricity directed toward another object thus neutralizing its destructive potential. It does so by absorbing all of the powerful energy into itself that would otherwise cause fire and ruin if it were to reach its original target. But in our case, even though Jesus has already absorbed the full force of the evil that we experience we have to choose to transact with Him in order to enjoy the freedom of the sons of God.

Satan's power of slavery has always been based on force, intimidation and fear as well as deception. This evil control is even more real than the surging, destructive power of powerful lightening bolts that can wreak so much havoc in the natural world. Satan's emotional lightening has been used with impunity for centuries to tear apart relationships, to ignite fires of hatred, inflame evil passions and incite bloodshed throughout the history of this world. Satan's lightening represents his demonic passion that is actually the great counterfeit of God's pure passion. And this false passion has been at work to keep all humanity in slavery through the fear of pain and death since the days of Adam and Eve.

So how can we become free from this overwhelming fire of false passion that is rooted in fear and pain? How can we use the lightening rod of Jesus' death to become free of the slavery that has controlled us all of our lives? And what is the process of allowing Jesus to take all of this out of the heart?

These are questions I will not attempt to tender simple answers to at this time. I can only explore small aspects of the answers as my mind is simply not of large enough capacity to contain such enormous concepts all at once. But the more I learn about the true nature of the salvation brought to light in the life and death of Jesus and the real truths about the nature of God, the more excited I get and the more attracted I am to engaging more fully in my participation with it.

But something that is starting to emerge to my consciousness is the idea that praise itself is actually the vehicle by which we are to transfer our sins and the internal results of it onto the lightening rod of Jesus who earned the right to accept it from us. But as I thought more about this I noticed a subtle sense of resistance to this idea of unconditional praise. So I decided to focus on that emotion and find out why it is there to start with.

The epiphany that shocked me early this morning was the discovery of a lie deeply entrenched in my psyche about praise needing to be linked to someone earning it. It is simply not enough to insist that God deserves all of our praise. That may certainly be true, but for me it little effect except to irritate me to some extent. It is such a left-brain lopsided assertion that it fails to address the real underlying issue. And it also usually contains subtle false assumptions along this idea of needing to earn praise just like the assumptions behind all other performance-based religion. The reason I believe I have so much resistance to worshiping God is because my concepts of God are reflections of my false assumptions about what He expects from us.

If we believe we have to earn God's favor, beg for His forgiveness or earn anything in any way from Him when it comes to His love and salvation for us, those same root assumptions are going to poison and hinder our own ability to spontaneously worship and praise Him as we need to. And because praise is the very carrier that is needed to transfer our sins, our fears, our pain, guilt, shame and everything else into the death of Jesus – our lightening rod – in exchange for His life and everything opposite to what we are giving Him; because we do not know how to understand, use or relate to praise properly, we may remain stuck for years with little way to effectively unload all of this accumulating garbage that continues to poison our spirit and soul.