Legal Tender

I got up this morning to capture another one of those unexpected ideas that was presented to me before I lost it. It is insights regarding the nature of debt, sin and salvation that have puzzled me for most of my life and keeps me looking for more answers that make sense and line up with the principles I have been learning from the Bible. This increased understanding is helping me to further sort out some of the troublesome questions that have haunted me for years. As I have spent time listening to others who have excellent insights into this subject and put that together with what God has been showing me over the years, the puzzle just keeps getting more filled in and the picture becomes clearer. If you would care to read it, I posted it at another of my blogs where the subject matter fits in with the theme of the site quite well. You can read it by clicking here. But be aware, it is not a real short post. Enjoy and have a great day. And I welcome any comments or ideas to enhance my own understanding even further.

Without an Intercessor - 4

The only reason we will ever be without an intercessor is because there is no longer any need for intercession. That point in time will occur when every person has made a final decision about the relationship offered them by God and when that relationship has been sealed or rejected. If they choose to reject God's offer to transform their heart in covenant bonds with Him, they are sealed in the service of Satan. Then there is no longer any need or use for an intercessor, for there is no one to intercede with any longer, no one left to enter into a relationship different than the one they have chosen.

Yes, truth is lacking; And he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey. Now the LORD saw, And it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, And was astonished that there was no one to intercede; Then His own arm brought salvation to Him, And His righteousness upheld Him. He put on righteousness like a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; And He put on garments of vengeance for clothing And wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle. (Isaiah 59:15-17)

As long as there are individuals who have not finalized their choice of which master to render their loyalty and service to, Jesus will continue to intercede with them, seeking to draw them in by any means possible to the side of truth and loyalty to the God of heaven. But there does come a time when people have so hardened their hearts that it is no longer possible whatsoever for them to change their minds. At this point they have destroyed their capacity and ability to choose differently by repeated rejections of the voice of the Holy Spirit. At this time God respects that choice by letting them have the consequences of their own persistent demands. He gives them over – which is the Bible's definition of the wrath of God. (Romans 2:24, 26, 28)

As for you, do not pray for this people, and do not lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with Me; for I do not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me. (Jeremiah 7:16-18)

When an intercessor pleads for God to show mercy to those who have completely rejected His mercy, that is an attempt to get God to reverse His decision to respect their final choice in regards to His offers of mercy and grace. There is no point in God continuing to offer mercy and forgiveness to those who have destroyed all their ability to accept it. The only thing left is to release them to their choices.

Some are confused when they read that everyone will bow in willing worship before God. They assume that because everyone will worship that must mean they will be saved as well. But the two are not the same thing.

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

At the same time, many take this to believe that because every knee will bow that God will resort to the use of force in the end to get unrepentant sinners to worship Him. But that is equally false because it pictures God as one willing to stoop to the methods of His arch-enemy to accomplish securing worship for Himself. This idea is reflective of the spirit of Satan, not that of our wise, loving heavenly Father. This is something that many of us think is only logical because we cannot perceive of any other way that this could be accomplished. But our own ignorance should not be the basis for our beliefs about God's character.

God values freedom more than anything else. This is because true love can only thrive in an atmosphere free of all coercion. So it simply would be illogical and counter-productive for God to resort to removing people's freedom in order to secure worship for Himself. That is a demonstration of selfishness, not the Spirit of selfless love and compassion that marks the acts of God. It is crucial that we clear away the clouds of deception and lies that still fog our vision so that we can see the real truth about the way God relates to sinners. When that begins to take place it will become much easier for us to perceive the real truth and the motivation that will finally cause everyone, both saved and lost alike, to bow before God in willing worship and acquiescence without any coercion whatsoever.

But while all will be in full agreement that God is absolutely fair in every respect and that He is just in the way He has chosen to resolve the problems that sin brought into the universe, it does not follow that all will then be ready to surrender to His authority or be able to thrive in His presence. In fact, ironically it is their very act of willing worship and recognition of His total lack of coercion that plunges the lost into the emotional agonies described as the fires of hell. For to stand in the presence of anyone who loves you so purely and passionately and has endured your rejection of their advances without the slightest trace of evil or resentment or hostility is to self-induce an emotional torment that is on a scale equal with or more intense than the worst possible torture anyone could inflict on you from the outside. This is the true condition that creates the torments of hell.

He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. (Revelation 3:5)

Jesus is currently our intercessor and friend. But that is not for the purpose of changing God's heart about us but to change our hearts about God. When we overcome the lies about God in our hearts and minds through the intercession of Jesus on His behalf, then Jesus, God and ourselves will be in perfect agreement. And the true meaning of the word confess simply means to agree.

And that is the final goal of everything the Godhead and all of heaven has been trying to achieve all throughout this long trial and controversy with Satan's rebellion. God wants to restore fully the atmosphere of full agreement without resorting to any of Satan's false techniques of force, deception or fear. God will finally win this war and He is going to be vindicated using only the truth and the methods consistent with both truth and unfailing love. It is love that is going to overcome in the end, not fear, not force, not deception.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 12-13)

Without an Intercessor - 3

I just woke up from a very strange, and at the last a very emotionally intense dream. Upon awakening I pondered the significance of this dream and began to realize that very possibly God was drawing my attention to keeping focused on His perspective about a very dicey situation in which I have been sharing counsel and prayer with a friend of mine.

The dream involved this friend, but the situation and the other people involved were altered enough from the real-life version that it did not look very familiar to me. The offended parties in my dream were different than in real life so it caught me by surprise. I think it was intended that way.

Without divulging details that should probably remain private at this point in time about the real situation, I now see that the dream was not so much a parallel to the real-life situation as it was a reminder to allow God full access to the situation even though to all human appearances it seems totally impossible to bring about reconciliation at this point. For at the end of my very strange dream, I suddenly watched God reach into the heart of a very hardened person and draw out of them a confession of His ability to turn their heart back toward their wife that they had rejected for so long.

In my dream I was standing in the next room listening to this amazing confession and see resolution to a problem that I had been trying to work out in a much less satisfactory way that was full of compromise and potential future problems. It suddenly struck me that God's ways of resolving problems was so far superior to anything I can ever come up with that I needed to trust Him implicitly instead of trying to arrange things myself on His behalf. As the amazement overwhelmed me in my dream I began to feel an intense emotion welling up inside of me. As my wife slowly walked into the room where I was standing I just wanted to cry though I found it very difficult to do so for some reason.

But the emotion was so intense in my dream that, as is usually the case in a dream of intense emotions, I woke up and then began to try to figure out what in the world it must mean. The circumstances were so bizarre in my dream that it would make no sense at all in real life which made it very difficult to figure out at first. But then I began to sense as I prayed about it that it was not the details in the dream that were the answer but the understanding that God's solutions would be far better to trust than anything I might come up with for the nearly impossible circumstances that my friend finds himself in at this very moment. If I am to be a true intercessor, an effective friend of the Bridegroom, then I must trust His heart to bring about His desires and to listen very carefully to His Spirit as to how to cooperate with His plans instead of trying coming up with any of my own.

It is very true that God is seeking people to act in the role of friends of the Bridegroom. As I have understood the true purpose of that position over the past few years it has become very clear that this is a very exciting position to fill. Now I am beginning to see how this role is very closely blended with the idea of intercession and the true purpose and function and motives of an intercessor.

In the past two posts I have been examining some background and peripheral issues surrounding intercession as well as touching on the subject of an Investigative Judgment that many believe is happening right now. I have usually thought of this from the perspective of fear which is almost always how it has been couched by those promoting it. But the more I am shedding my context of fear in coming to know the truth about God, the more things like this begin to take on a whole different perspective and understanding. When fear is taken out of the picture then it becomes so much easier to begin to see things differently under the light of real truth. Many things can be brought to view and exciting insights begin to explode everywhere when reality is perceived in the light of a God of pure, unconditional love.

Because I have been spending a lot of time the past few weeks filling my mind with real truth about God by taking every opportunity I have to listen to speakers who have a clear perspective of the gospel much better than mine, I have been feeling a transformation taking place more quickly at my own heart level. I am sometimes amazed at how backward my own heart still is in its opinions about God compared to all the wonderful information my intellect has been exposed to over the past few years. But I also notice that the more I saturate the atmosphere of my soul with the real truth about God the easier it is for the lies about God to begin to float to the surface and be exposed for what they really are. This process is crucial for me if I am to become an effective channel of grace to attract others to want to know God more intimately.

What I am beginning to realize is that I am in training to become an intercessor for God just as Jesus is. A number of years ago it started to become evident to me that the ministry of intercession on the part of Jesus was radically different than what it had been represented to me most of my life. I had always assumed that Jesus was trying to change God's mind about me so that I could go to heaven. But now I am seeing that that kind of thinking is riddled full of all sorts of false assumptions about God, about Jesus and even about myself and my relationship with Him.

As I pointed out last time, since Jesus and the Father are very clearly on the same page in their feelings about me, there is no need for Jesus to try to change anything about God in order to save me. That would be totally superfluous. It is never God's mind that needs changing in any way as I had always thought, it is my mind and heart and opinions about God that need radical updating if I am ever to be reconciled and be able to enjoy His company for eternity. It is the myriads of lies in my own thinking about how God feels towards me that must be exposed as false and let go of if I am ever to be prepared to encounter the immense power and intensity of God's pure, passionate love and to be able to thrive in that fiery presence.

So it becomes crystal clear in this context that any interceding that may be going on between God the Father and us has to be focused entirely on altering our opinions about God, never on changing God's opinions about us in spite of all the religious talk to the contrary. God is not angry at sinners and in need of calming down, sinners are angry and hateful toward God because of their misconceptions about Him that Satan has implanted and reinforces in all the human race. It is us that needs to have our hearts cleansed from the many lies and misconceptions about God before we will be able to receive and embrace His grace and live safely in His presence.

Many parts of this puzzle have been coming together for me for many years now. My new and radically updated understanding of hell and the fire of God was a massive shift for me in freeing me to be able to love God from the heart for the first time in my life. But there are still many more lies about God that keep surfacing all the time and that need exposure and replacement with real truth. My induced fears about the judgment and my confusion about the purpose of Jesus' intercession have also been sources of confusion over the years keeping me from being more fully reconciled with God.

Some of the clearest texts concerning the intercessory role of Jesus are found in Isaiah. This is highly symbolic language and is very easily misunderstood if one does not have a corrected picture of God and His passion. But when it is viewed from a proper perspective it contains very amazing insights about the true role of an intercessor.

Yes, truth is lacking; and he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey. Now the Lord saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no one to intercede; then His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. (Isaiah 59:15-16)

I have trodden the wine press alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their juice spattered on my garments, and stained all my robes. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year for my redeeming work had come. I looked, but there was no helper; I stared, but there was no one to sustain me; so my own arm brought me victory, and my wrath sustained me. (Isaiah 63:3-5 NRSV)

What I see clearly in these verses is that God was appalled that there was no one to be found anywhere that would be able to effectively stand up and defend His reputation. So He sent His son to reveal to the whole universe the real truth about God by living and dying as a human. The whole purpose of Jesus coming to live life as a human and to suffer the wrath of humans and demons alike while they tortured and killed Him and covered him with blood was to expose the real truth about the passion of God's love that we so often mistake for anger. But I have learned that when the Bible refers to the wrath of God it is almost always referring to the concept of passion itself which does not necessarily equate with the kind of wrath or hateful anger that we always suppose it does. It is far too easy to project our perspective of wrath onto God instead of seeking to grasp the real truth about God's passionate love for us.

These verses make it very clear that Jesus came to take things into His own hands as far as changing minds and hearts about the real truth about God. Since no one else could stand up for Him and no one was even willing to stand with Him during this process, He had to do it all alone. This became very evident during the events that transpired during the last hours of His life before He was killed on the cross. Not even His closest disciples took the time or effort to pray alongside Him for even one hour while He was in His greatest distress. He had to take on the job all alone.

But far from coming to suffer the punishments from an angry God up in heaven, Jesus came to reveal the passionate love that fills the heart of our Father in heaven by contrasting it with the effects that sin has wrought in our own psyche. When real love appeared on earth in the form of a man it was immediately met with resistance, fear and animosity on every hand. It finally came to the grand climax of a fatal collision between the lies about God contained in the hearts of all humanity and the truth about God as revealed in the life and willing death of the Son of God. Jesus has always been in the role of seeking to change our minds and hearts and opinions about how God feels towards us and His true character. This is the core of what Jesus continually referred to when He repeatedly asked people to believe all throughout His life on earth.

Over the past month or so I have been privileged to be used by God to “intercede” on His behalf to someone who had all their life been under the delusions of the enemy about Him and has been very openly hostile toward God and anything to do with Him. Because of a great emotional crisis in his life he has decided to take a new look at what might be true about God as I have shared with him what I have been learning about God myself. As I have shared the real truth about God and prayed with this person, I have been thrilled to see him open up and entertain new ideas and feelings toward God that few would have imagined even possible before.

As I have been used by the Spirit to influence this man's opinions about God and have watched God work in his life and heart, I am reminded frequently that it is not my responsibility to fix his problems but is completely God's responsibility. My role is to keep sharing with him the real truth about God in ways that are relevant to his situation and to encourage him to rethink the antagonism that he has held due to his misconceptions about God from his past.

Last night I received a phone call from him relating to me a terribly devastating turn of events in his situation which could potentially threaten to undo all the progress that he has made in his thinking. At least that was the temptation that I was faced with as I heard what was happening. But I was reminded again that this is not my problem and that I have no business taking on his burden for myself or trying to fix his situation with my ideas. I have simply been sharing with him whatever the Spirit has prompted me to do and I can relax and rest in the knowledge that God is still the same and nothing has changed at all in reality. I am learning more about what it really means to be an intercessor for God.

Intercession is for the purpose of reconciliation, whether it is in a marriage, between friends or with God Himself. This is accomplished by seeking to expose the lies and false assumptions about one party held by another and replacing those lies with truth, especially when it comes to God. To do this effectively the interceder must maintain a correct understanding of the character and feelings of the one on who's behalf they are interceding. If they allow themselves to become entangled in the triangle improperly, if they allow their own viewpoints or emotions to distract them from focusing full attention on keeping a proper perspective and communication with the one whom they are representing, their effectiveness can quickly be diminished.

This means that I must have a great deal of trust in the one in who's behalf I am interceding. I have to have total and implicit faith that God is going to be consistently and intensely interested in the reconciliation and that He is always going to prove faithful to being the way that I am representing Him to be to the other person with whom I am interceding. In fact, I myself have to be very in tune with the feelings and desires of the One I am trying to represent so that I become an accurate reflection of His heart to attract others to change their minds about my Friend.

But again, I remind myself that I must let go of all self interest if I am to be a successful intercessor. If there is anything else expected from this process for me besides joy in seeing the other two parties reconciled and united in hearts with each other, then there is a seed of betrayal present that will sooner or later spring up and cause great complications. The heart of the intercessor must be fiercely loyal to the one on who's behalf we are interceding if we are to be a true “friend of the bridegroom”.

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21 NRSV)

Father, I choose to be reconciled to you because of the intercession of Jesus to change my mind and heart about what you are really like. I cannot change my own heart but I trust you to do that within me as the real truth about you soaks in deeper and deeper. I also praise you and thank you for using me to be a co-intercessor with Jesus in seeking to change other people's false opinions and feelings about you. I ask that you fill me with your Spirit so that I can experience the joy of watching others be reconciled with you and with each other. This is the joy that John the Baptist shared as he watched others become more attracted to Jesus than to himself. Fill me with the spirit of a true and loyal friend of the Bridegroom like John was. Teach me and mentor me in this ministry of reconciliation for your name's sake.

Without an Intercessor - 2

Is Jesus interceding on our behalf to the Father doing everything possible to convince Him to love us enough to save us? ...to forgive us? ...to avert punishments for us?

Is there an Investigative Judgment going on right now in which every detail of our lives come up before some sort of heavenly Grand Jury or maybe before the Father in order to figure out if we are good enough to be allowed into heaven? Wouldn't this tend to imply that God is somehow not all-knowing? Does He really have to conduct an investigation to figure out what I am really like? Or is this for the purpose of convincing someone else?

If these things are really true or even partially true, then what role does Jesus have in this process? Is He trying to manipulate the facts to make me look better than I really am to get my name on the right list? Does Jesus love me more than the Father does?

These kinds of honest and disturbing questions have caused thousands of people to reject all notion of the existence of an Investigative Judgment taking place at all. But does our confusion and misunderstandings about the nature of such a potential activity give us enough reason to reject it outright? Or is it our skewed pictures of God and our mistaken applications of revealed facts from the wrong spirit the real problem that needs to be corrected instead of throwing out the whole concept of such a judgment process?

We need to keep in mind that just because we don't like the sounds of certain ideas, that does not qualify us to pass judgment ourselves or allow us to determine what should be true or false. It is far too easy to begin to form a picture of God into our own image instead of seeking to know more clearly the real truths about reality as God designed it to start with. As soon as we begin moving down the road of formulating religion based on our preferences or preconceptions, we have inverted our proper relationship with God and are trying to create religion on our own. But it is important to understand that this can happen just as easily with conservatives as it can with liberals.

I believe that it is important to grapple with truth and not be afraid to continually reexamine our assumptions. In fact, I think it is much more than just important – it is vital to having an honest relationship with the God of all truth. It is only from a position of humility and willingness to admit that our most cherished doctrines may be in need of re-visitation at times that we will be capable of embracing extended truths as God brings them within our reach. I know of many who feel very threatened by new ideas or challenges to their assumptions and take such a defensive stance that not even God can break through their stubbornness. But instead of becoming “rooted and grounded” in real truth as they suppose they are doing, they are simply becoming stuck in truth as it has been perceived at a certain point in time while refusing to move along with the ever transforming revelations of truth as God designed we should.

When we become entrenched in a certain philosophy of what we insist is truth and refuse to see it in any new ways, we then turn facts and assumptions into traditions and become cemented in our opinions instead of being willing to grow up into the full measure of Christ. Christianity is made up of many just such demonstrations of this mentality. It is so easy to become inflexible in our opinions about truth and turn them into traditions instead of taking steps beyond our comfort zones to a deeper understanding of the truth about reality. But this is primarily due to the fear that fills our minds.

We are far too dependent on fear to protect us from being deceived. There certainly is a great danger from deception for we live in a world filled with the atmosphere of deadly deceptions produced by the myriad lies of Satan. But depending on fear to keep us from deceptions is a deception itself. God never instructed us to depend on fear to help us come to a greater knowledge of truth. This is a very dangerous assumption on our part but is very pervasive in our thinking. But the Bible very clearly declares that love and fear are exclusive opposites. And since God is love, then to live dependent on fear to keep us in truth or even guide us to truth becomes an oxymoron.

The reason I bring this up is because this teaching of an Investigative Judgment as well as common teachings about the intercession of Jesus for us has been intensely shrouded with an atmosphere of fear for most people. And because this fear itself is seldom identified as the real root of our problems in understanding these things, it has been allowed to remain in place which in turn has distorted very seriously our ability to comprehend the real purpose and nature of Christ's intercession. Until this fear itself is addressed and exposed for the fraud that it really is, we will not be able to have our eyes opened sufficiently to perceive the real purpose and role of Jesus' intercession for us.

As I pointed out last time, some very fundamental beliefs must be set into place as a foundation if we are to approach these subjects in a clearer way and see their true beauty and importance for us. One of those foundational truths is that Jesus and the Father are one in spirit, opinion and perspective towards us. Therefore, anything that in any way attempts to undermine that clear fact must immediately become suspect and be challenged vigorously.

As a result, if this fact is viewed as foundational, then any notion or activity assumed to be taking place where Jesus needs to change God's mind about anything becomes a mute point. Jesus cannot be in the business of changing God's mind if the mind of God is already perfectly in harmony with each member of the Godhead which includes Jesus. But as soon as this truth is embraced it creates serious problems about many other assumptions that have gone unchallenged in our typical notions about an Investigative Judgment as well as the role of Jesus in dying for us on the cross. For it is not only those who are trying to defend the idea of an Investigative Judgment that need to rethink their assumptions but nearly all Christians have to reexamine their popular ideas of Jesus dying in our place to protect us from an angry God eager to punish those who have sinned.

These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; an hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but will tell you plainly of the Father. In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father. (John 16:25-27)

Without an Intercessor - 1

So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows. Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 10:31-33)

For a number of years now I have been revising my thinking about the role of Jesus as our intercessor. There is a statement that has been the source of deep terror for many people that states that there is coming a time when we must live without an intercessor before the Father. And this is to take place before the Second Coming of Jesus.

This statement has been one of the most solid foundation blocks of those who insist on the doctrine and philosophy of perfectionism. I grew up in this ideology and this perception of religion was a deep source of fear and apprehension for me for many years. It fueled my terror of the last day events which were often dwelt upon by others for that very purpose. It was assumed by many that dwelling on this kind of fearful foreboding of the future would inspire enough terror in the heart to cause people to let go of all the sins in their lives and thus achieve absolute perfection somehow so that they would not be lost when Jesus comes.

This belief system is all too alive and well right now in various forms and its proponents are becoming even more vocal and strident in their broadcasting of this false gospel. The reason that I call this a false gospel is because the very word “gospel” literally means good news. But in all the years that I lived under this illusion of believing that it was my job to perfect myself in order to please God and get into heaven, I could never figure out what part of this ideology was supposed to be good news. Everywhere I turned and everything I heard sounded like warnings and fear and terror, not good news that would make me feel excited or even loving toward God as I was supposed to feel.

Over the past few years it has become very plain to me that nearly every aspect of these kinds of teachings are fraught with subtle but dangerous assumptions and paradigms that lend them ineffective for changing the heart in the way that needs to happen to prepare us to live in the presence of God. I could spend a great deal of time covering each item of this that is mistaken, but the most blatant and damaging part of it all is that it is based fundamentally on fear itself as the primary motivation for serving God. To suggest that somehow love was supposed to emerge from this miasma of confused thinking about God only added to my frustration, but that was also supposed to be somewhere there in the mix as well. That too confused me deeply as I was keenly aware of my inability to really love God while at the same time being increasingly terrified of the consequences of not doing so perfectly – and from the heart no less.

But I still believe that the basic facts buried underneath all these false teachings based on fear are still valid. Just because legalists and extremists and even liberals have hijacked and misappropriated nearly every religious word and phrase does not mean that they are no longer applicable for our lives. It simply means that we need the presence of the Holy Spirit and humility and patience to begin to untangle all the lies and fears that have blinded us for so long and we need to begin to discern the amazing beauty of real truth buried deep under the rubbish of false perceptions of God that fill our imaginations.

I have spent enough years now having my lies unlocked, exposed and slowly replaced with valid truth that I feel I am entering a new phase of life, a very exciting and energizing phase where I can begin to experience the strength of the joy of the Lord. As the truth about God becomes more and more clear to my heart I come into more awe and can feel genuine responses of spontaneous love emerging from my heart and emotions, something that was unimaginable only a few years ago.

There are still many pockets of residual misconceptions that keep emerging in my thinking that I need to address each time they show up. But I do not do this in a spirit of hostility as I have sensed in many people who have left my church and become deeply embittered against everything they formerly believed. I find that spirit to be just as dangerous and lethal to my relationship with God as the legalism from which I am slowly emerging. I have to guard myself from much exposure to either kind of thinking and keep my imagination focused on the real truth about God that He has been revealing to me over the past few years and continues to do daily. But as this increasing light exposes yet more of my pain and confusion embedded from false teachings and assumptions about Him, I am eager to have Him show me the real truth about the original basic facts that remain unaffected by the false assumptions and teachings that so long darkened my understanding about their implications.

I still strongly believe that there are urgent warnings that need to be heeded in preparing us to meet our God. The fanatics on the one hand try to frighten us with dark views of a God waiting and eager to punish all who fail to measure up to certain performance standards. The extremists on the other side of the fence usually push people to think that God is so loving and fickle and full of so-called grace that all we have to do is immerse ourselves in a feel-good religion and say some “magic” words in a sinners prayer and “accept Jesus into our heart” (whatever that happens to mean) and we have nothing more to be concerned about.

But what I am starting to see more clearly in this issue of living with or without an intercessor is not so much fear or cheap grace either one; what I am now seeing is the reality of the fundamental purpose and function of the intercession of Jesus in the first place. And as I perceive the true nature of intercession itself I find it is one of those areas that is very liberating for my heart.

My new and growing awareness about the immense danger of God's passionate love for us precludes me from believing in such dangerous philosophies as proposed by many protestants even as the legalism of my past was equally dangerous. It will be fatal to believe that we can be safe in the day of judgment (full revelation of God's power and passion) while failing to have our hearts in perfect synchronization with the pure and unselfish love of the Father. But this is precisely where both sides of the debate fail miserably. They both fail to comprehend in the slightest both the real truth about love and the real feelings that God has for us. They do not perceive the enormous potential of both life and death in the presence of unspeakable glory and power because of the lies that skew their perceptions of the real attitude and passion of God, and particularly on the part of the Father.

Because of the many misunderstandings and false teachings about God from both sides of the isle, it is nearly impossible to approach the subject of intercession and carry on an intelligent, useful conversation about the subject without first addressing the many false beliefs about God that drive the agendas of those involved. But once the fog begins to clear away to some degree about God's real attitude and disposition towards His children, then real progress can start to be made in understanding the true purpose of Jesus' work of intercession before the Father in relation to us.

I believe that the most important fact to establish before anything else about this issue can even begin to make real sense is Jesus explicit statement, "I and the Father are one." (John 10:30) Jesus made this even more clear when He was sharing the same truth with the disciples just before He died for us.

If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.... He who has seen Me has seen the Father... "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.... (John 14:7, 9-11)

This is one belief that seems to me to be irreconcilable with the assumptions underlying the fear-based teachings about Jesus as our intercessor before God. I was never able to make sense of these two ideas until my picture of the Father was radically transformed and replaced by the real truth about Him only in the past few years. Then it began to dawn on me that my confusion was rooted in my long-held concepts of God the Father as one who really didn't like me and wasn't real keen on my getting into heaven. At the same time, Jesus was supposedly working very hard to convince Him that I could be trusted to behave if He would let me in – that is, if I was able to perfect my character enough with a lot of help from God. That involved stopping all sinning and getting all past sins forgiven as well. I know it was never stated in those terms, but that was the general gist of the beliefs. This perception in one form or another with slight variations lies at the heart of most conservative Christianity today and even permeates most all other religions as well to some degree.

But this scenario becomes impossible when it is established that Jesus actually meant what He said in the above verses. If the attitude and beliefs and thinking of Jesus are exactly the same as the Father's, it simply becomes ludicrous to try to think that Jesus has to somehow change God's mind about us. That point must become very clear and must be accepted as solid truth or the discussion cannot proceed any further with any reasonable expectation of making sense. This is the foundation upon which everything else about this subject must rest if it is to bring us out of darkness.

Very closely parallel to this is the intense fear and agitation surrounding the teaching about an Investigative Judgment that is believed by many to be taking place right now in the courts of heaven. This hotly debated concept is believed to be a prerequisite before Jesus can be allowed to return to this earth and reclaim the saved who are waiting for Him. This judgment is assumed to be for the purpose of determining who is good enough to be saved and who is going to be lost. Again, the underlying assumptions and beliefs that distort every aspect of these doctrines cause confusion and fear in millions of hearts unnecessarily. But at the same time there are core truths that are usually discarded and ignored by those who vehemently oppose such teachings. Both sides are clouded in false assumptions about God that endanger their souls from being properly aligned with the Spirit of God in preparation to encounter the dangerous revelation of God's passionate love.

As I began thinking about this and praying for clearer insight, a number of texts came to my mind. I want to ponder them carefully to discover the real meanings and significance of their relevance to this subject that has tortured me for so long, but is now becoming a source of real hope for me. But since this is getting too long already I am going to leave that for another installment while I listen to what God may have to say to my heart about these things.

Is Truth in the Middle?

I have grappled all of my life over trying to understand where the truth lies between legalism and what is sometimes termed “cheap grace” or the “only believe” syndrome. While I have not had much exposure to the second philosophy and so am not nearly so fluent in explaining it, I have certainly been steeped in the arguments against it that have caused me great confusion when I am exposed to the real truth about the gospel.

Since legalism is very frightened by the true gospel, it always paints anyone teaching it into the “cheap grace” category and then fiercely opposes their messages and impugns their motives. I have slowly been overcoming my fears of the gospel deeply ingrained in me by my legalistic upbringing, but I still have a great many embedded automatic arguments that continue to rebut nearly every step of my growth in this direction. I still remain very confused at times and bewildered as to how to effectively answer the accusations and assertions made by the legalistic, argumentative part of my mind against what are clearly ongoing revelations about God and the real truth of the gospel.

At the same time, it is quite evident to me that the avid claims of both camps are equally invalid in their claims to be teaching the true gospel. Legalists paint anyone not subscribing to their rigid beliefs as being people who are only looking for excuses to sin without restraint. Conversely, it seems that while they live largely in reactive opposition to legalism, the second camp's version of what the gospel is avoids accountability to the principles of reality reflected in the laws of God. It is very clear that these two opposing belief systems feed much more off of their fierce antagonism to each other than they do from a careful, thoughtful study of the Word of God and the leading of the Spirit. But their arguments and teachings still have a great attraction logically speaking – and that includes arguments from both sides. Thus the enormous potential for ongoing confusion.

I am sitting here trying to understand if it is even valid to try to clarify the differences between the two camps in order to unmask the truth more clearly. That sounds very appealing and natural for me to do, but at the same time something else warns me that spending a lot of time investigating what I know may be deceptive and false will only perpetuate my confusion. Trying to understand a counterfeit does not contribute very much to knowing what the true really looks like, it only makes you more familiar with the counterfeit. But my mind is wired to want to expose the falsivity of the opposition. Maybe this is due to years of training and mentoring for arguing our way to truth. Arguments generally try to expose what is wrong with other people's thinking and attempt to prove through proof-texting the validity of our own positions. But it is becoming more and more clear to me that these methods themselves are at best suspect and maybe even fatally distracting.

While collecting various texts to help understand a truth can be extremely helpful and instructive, the difference between proof-texting and careful study of a number of texts is a very fine line it seems. But as I think about it now, I begin to sense that the difference is much more distinct when the motives and spirit are examined much more than simply the methods in which it is presented. As I think back on most of the training that I received through proof-texting I remember clearly that the conclusions were definitely foregone and that the texts were simply used to reinforce a belief already deeply entrenched. There was almost never a discovery process experienced whereby the student was allowed freedom to come to their own conclusions and affirmed for that. Almost always there was a careful micromanagement of their logic and reasoning process to produce the intended outcome and usually the conclusion was provided already.

As I think back about that style of training, it is no wonder I experienced so much excitement and enthusiasm when I was first exposed to real inductive Bible study. This was a method of study that was explicitly discovery oriented quite intentionally. The way that I was taught it was the exact opposite of the methods and motives of the teachers I had generally encountered previously. And while the facilitator usually had a good idea of what the students would likely discover after they allowed their minds and hearts to soak up the real truth from the Word, they avoided providing any foregone answers whatsoever. What they did to was to ask questions designed to lead others to that discovery, there was seldom the sense of agenda or coercion that I had always sensed in typical Bible study before.

I have to say that after that initial exposure I met a number of people who have attempted to conduct inductive Bible studies but failed quite badly because they didn't realize the need to leave out all preconceived agendas. They didn't realize how much they were trying to mingle in the attitudes and methods from the old way of study into the new. They were trying to force the participants to arrive at only the conclusions that they had already determined were the “right” answers, but in the process they tended to ignore or sometimes even repress other insights that could have come out of the study. As a result of this spirit in immature faciliators, inductive Bible study began to get a bad reputation as nothing more than another clever method of indoctrination just like all the other studies had been. I was very disappointed in these later encounters with poorly conducted study groups and usually didn't attend very long when it became evident that the leaders hadn't really grasped the true concepts and skills of leading properly without any coercion.

As a result I also became very aware that my own background of training in the counterfeit methods of coercive Bible study prevented me from being very effective myself in being able to conduct true, exciting inductive study. I realized that I had the same weaknesses because of the pervasive nature of everything I had been trained to do all of my life previously. It would take a great deal more time to train my mind and heart to be more open, less controlling and more trusting of the Spirit of Jesus to lead others to discover truth in a group setting without my trying to over-control their discovery process.

That is not to say that I haven't been blessed tremendously by learning how to think inductively myself. In my own study ever since I first learned how to do this, I have challenged myself fiercely to remain open-minded, to question all of my own assumptions and previous beliefs and to expose myself to be willing to flush out all prejudice and allow the Spirit to have freer access to teach me new things about reality and truth. This, of course, has had the effect of moving me farther and farther outside of the mainstream of beliefs and methods of teaching in the church. It causes some to become very suspicions and even afraid of me. I even learned that some leaders had instituted a ban on allowing me to participate in any significant way within the local church, evidently because of their fear that I might infect others with my untypical ways of thinking.

But my own box has been so shattered that I was released from that there is no going back for me now. That does not mean that I cannot find a place in the body of believers in the local church. But it does mean that I am forced to rethink the way I relate to others, especially those who are still trapped in strong chains of fear, tradition and mindless obedience to deference to others in positions of authority to decide what they should believe. I was raised on stories of the reformers and how they were forced into conflict with their established churches because they dared to think outside of tradition and listen to the Word of God more than the long-established teachings of the establishment. These people were later hailed as heroes for daring to follow God rather than the teachings of men. Yet some of the very same people who hail them as heroes will today heap disdain and reproach on anyone daring to follow a similar example today.

I don't believe that having a spirit of independent exploration of the real truth about God has to be coupled with a spirit of hostility toward the established church. I realize that can be a very strong temptation, but that is because the devil will push that temptation on anyone who is starting to move closer to truth in order to discredit what they may present to others. The devil's kingdom is not just threatened by new facts but is even more frightened by a spirit reflective of Jesus. The Pharisees and rulers in Jesus' day were more resistant to His influence with the people because of His spirit and disposition than they were by the facts that He was teaching. Yes, they were threatened by those radical new teachings to a great extent, but those teachings would not have had much power at all to disturb the status quo if they had not been exemplified in the spirit of the One who was presenting them.

This is where I need much more training. I have been and continue to learn amazing new truths about the real gospel. But these truths will only backfire and become attacked and discredited if I do not have the spirit surrounding me that is reflective of the nature of these new discoveries. And having a new attitude and disposition is far more slippery to experience than simply hammering out new lines of reasoning and figuring out the correct logic for explaining Bible texts.

What I am coming to realize more and more is that both my left hemisphere and my right brain/heart must be cooperatively engaged in my discovery of expanding truth about the gospel. This is the only way in which my life and messages can be used by God to be truly effective and dangerous to the establishment of darkness. It is not enough for me to just present exciting new discoveries in truth, my life must also be growing and transforming my spirit through those same principles of reality if they are to have any credibility and power to attract others to believe them experientially.

But back to the reason that I started writing this in the first place. I am still pondering how to effectively disarm the inner voices that pop up frequently to argue against new insights that the Spirit of God is presenting to me. To ignore them does little to put them away. To try to figure out what is wrong with their arguments may or may not be the right approach. I guess that is the core of what I am grappling with – how to relate to the inner voices of accusation that claim I am in danger of straying from traditional truth.

It still seems to me that there is validity in taking time to examine these arguments that defend past beliefs so that they can be exposed for the fraud that they may be. Many times this process of sifting through, carefully examining opposing ideas and working through the conflicting concepts both prove to strengthen what I am now learning and also permanently disarm the power of the old beliefs so that they can no longer assert themselves in my mind. I believe there is even more value in exposing the false assumptions that prop up old beliefs, and in the process there is also the potential to strengthen and maybe even correct or refine to some extent the emerging ideas that are trying to take their place.

This inner process of sorting, examining, critical analysis and careful heart-examination all taking place together is actually the process of maturing. It also prepares me to be both more effective and less threatened when other people raise those same objections from the outside. If I have already grappled with and resolved some of these arguments and objections from the inside, then I will not feel triggered or threatened when those arguments are raised by others. That sounds very valid. Now, I would just like to know the best way of doing that.

One thing that I have observed over the years that has helped me a great deal is this: truth is almost never found in trying to find the middle ground between two opposing opinions. Whenever I hear anyone talking about trying to find the center place between polar opposites in order to discover truth, I become a bit wary. For time and time I have found that real truth is in a completely different context and is based on realities and foundational assumptions which neither side takes into account. The real problem almost always lies in the underlying assumptions on both sides. And those assumptions are very often quite similar in nature to each other. Both sides have very mistaken views of God's character and His attitudes towards sinners. So the real problems and contentions will never be resolved and truth cannot be discovered by simply arguing about the differences or attempting to come up with more convincing logic.

I don't think I am going to conclusively figure out the full answer to this right now. This is something that is going to become more clear to me over time as I grow in maturity and experience. In fact, I suspect that if I were to settle on a single answer for this right now that I might be setting up yet another pillar of bigotry in my own mind that would later have to be disassembled and revisited. It seems the better part of wisdom to present these kinds of dilemmas to God and then trust Him to grow me into a better understanding of how to relate to these issues and perplexities.

Confession or Faithfulness?

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9 KJV) This verse is one of the most used references in my dialog with God. I memorized it as a young boy as part of my religious upbringing, but the significance of this passage has not really impacted me until the past few years as my understanding of how true religion really works has been coalescing in my mind and heart. I think the main reason that its importance has become so much more clear to me lately is because my perception about my relationship to God has so radically shifted in the past few years. It is certainly not because I think I am finally “arriving”, finally accomplishing what I was attempting to do throughout my early years of attempting to become “good” and trying to be obedient enough to appease God and those around me. Nor is it because I have finally amassed enough spiritual knowledge and experience or have gotten rid of enough sin in my life that I now can feel safe to confidently believe I am on my way to heaven. These were all unspoken goals that were assumed in my heart to be the way to live out religion when I was growing up. But these are also the main components of one version of counterfeit religion that has produced a huge crop of bitter, angry people who today reject God openly and are looking elsewhere for satisfaction and fulfillment. They are angry about the lost years that they spent growing up in a system that robbed them of joy and instead only offered impossible demands for perfection. They are resentful that the God they were taught about let them down and only seemed to provide lists of overly-strict rules to follow while their heart languished inside longing for someone to just care for their deepest needs and pains. I can identify with many of their frustrations and reasons for turning away from God altogether or seeking out alternative religious philosophies. But I chose a different path early on that has caused my life to go in a different direction from nearly all of my friends. I realized when I was a teenager that there was something inherently wrong with the religion of my culture and the legalism in which I was raised. One of my great temptations was to throw it all overboard and just go out and plunge into a life of open sin and self-indulgence so that I could return to God later as one of those people that had such glowing conversion stories that entertained us so much during testimony meetings. But something else inside warned me that making such a choice might well result in my never returning at all and only causing me to loose everything in the end. I had no guarantee that I would be able to repent at a later date and find what I was really longing for as a Christian. Something told me that Satan was sinister enough to allure me into indulging in a life of sin and then finishing me off before I would have a chance to return to God and find what I was looking for. After weighing the options many times I finally chose to take what looked to be the longest possible route to finding true religion, to finding out the real truth about God. I would choose to stay within the system reluctantly while trying to figure out what was wrong with it and seek to discover truth for myself in the meantime. During many years of living under the influences of the teachings of the fathers and traditional religion, this verse was not much of an encouragement for me. It was more along the lines of yet another demand or requirement of God that had to be satisfied before He would ever accept me or forgive me. It was this huge obstacle at the very beginning of this verse that tended to always stump me from finding much comfort or solace in the rest of the verse. It was the nearly impossible precondition that I seemed to run into everywhere I turned in religion that prevented me from ever finding assurance and peace with God. IF!!! IF I would confess my sins... IF I could just confess enough of my sins to please a very nit-picky, all-knowing God who could always find sins in me that I could not recall myself... IF I could just make myself feel sorry enough or grovel enough when I admitted my sins to God... IF I could even be capable enough mentally to dredge up every single unconfessed wrong act I might have ever committed at any time in my whole life, and then somehow do whatever it was that God demanded of me in some elusive act of repentance, confession and begging endlessly for Him to forgive me... The main focus of my life for many, many years was an attempt to figure out how to fulfill this enormous precondition to receiving the grace and forgiveness of God that my heart so longed for. But no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many times a day I confessed sins over and over – even the same ones many times – I could never find peace inside of me. It always seemed to come down to a sensation that I could never quite achieve the perfect confession or figure out just what would satisfy God in repentance that would bring me the inner rest that I so desperately needed in my heart. So over time this verse lost much of my attention. Since it seemed impossible for me to meet its nearly impossible demand for my perfect confessions I gave up trying to follow this route to God and simply let this verse sink into the background for a number of years. Sometimes it would come up to haunt me again and I would wonder just what this text really meant, but mostly I just tried to live a good enough life to stay out of much trouble with God, try to get along with others as best I could and look reasonably good in the church. I became busy with raising a family and just trying to survive financially which I didn't do too well at either. Even in those arenas I found myself frustrated, angry and confused much of the time. It seemed that God was so out of touch with the problems of my life. At times He might throw a few crumbs of blessings or rescue me in desperate situations occasionally, but most of the time I felt somewhat on my own trying to figure out what was wrong with the religion that I had and why it didn't seem to work for me like it did for a few others who seemed to be close to God and happy as well. About twelve years ago God began to work in my mind and heart in a more direct way that I had ever encountered Him before. As I reread a book that had previously been nothing much more than a written description of the life of Christ, this time I sensed something very different going on in my heart as I read each day. I sensed an inner voice pointing out many inconsistencies between what I was reading and what I had grown up assuming about God from the teaching and examples of those around me. I began to see a Man who cared about people's hearts instead of making impossible demands and preconditions for coming to God. I began to feel stirrings of a deeply wounded heart beginning to wake up and ask disturbing questions about the religion of my childhood that almost no one seemed able to answer. I began to see myself in the stories of Jesus' interactions with people and was stunned at times to perceive that He usually treated them very differently than how I expected He would or that I had been treated by most religious people. Over time I was forced to make a conscious choice about the direction of my own spiritual life. I found myself confronted by the Holy Spirit to choose between staying in the comfort zone of my beliefs about God that I had assumed all of my life, or embracing the radical new truths about Him that I was beginning to see and feel whenever I read about the life of Jesus. The two belief systems were clearly incompatable with each other. I could either accept the offer of the Holy Spirit to retrain me and challenge everything I thought I knew about God or I could remain in my current belief system and not face my fear of change. The choice was up to me. I am glad that I chose to release my grip on the traditions of my past and gave God permission to reveal Himself to me in brand new ways that I had never allowed myself to consider before. But like the last time I faced a fork in my spiritual journey, I chose not to simply toss everything out immediately but to allow the Spirit to deal with each aspect of my old religion over time and open my mind and heart to the reality of what God was really like, replacing the false notions about Him that have kept me in discouragement and fear for nearly all of my life. This has been a very long and slow process for me, but it has also been very effective in building a stronger foundation for my spiritual experience as I have examined and revised one thing after another in my search for the real truth. What I have noticed maybe more than anything else in my pursuit of what is real and true is that the most important aspect that has to change is my feelings and beliefs about how God looks at me. This has been the core issue that has taken longer than anything else to change inside of me and continues to be challenged. But it has also been the basis by which I am coming to measure every other claim or assertion about what is true and real. As a result of my complete shift of emphasis about what is important in spirituality and in life altogether, I now have a completely different paradigm in place whenever I come back to look at anything I read in the Bible. Instead of starting with the assumption of a God who is looking for reasons to keep me out of heaven, I am now living in relationship with a God who is passionately devoted to doing everything possible to attract me into an intimacy with Him in every part of my life. He is working behind the scenes and through all the circumstances of my life to allure me into trusting Him more fully, urging me to let go of the lies about Him that have frightened me all of my life and to allow Him to have more access to the deep, wounded places of my fearful, timid, wounded heart. Now He is bringing me back to take another fresh look at this verse and show me the incredible power in it that I could never see before in this text. Now, instead of getting stumped at the supposed precondition of perfectly confessing every sin before God will accept or forgive me, I see that the focal point of this verse is really on the faithfulness and fairness of God. This verse is not about what I have to do to change God's mind about me but is a window through which I can glimpse a God who is eager to save and transform me if I will just give Him permission and believe in the truth of how He feels about me. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9 NAS95) If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9 NRSV)

Rightousness of Christ Revisited

Why is it said that the righteousness of Christ is the only safe foundation on which we can build our spiritual experience?

What does it really mean anyway? It can't simply mean to just believe that Jesus was perfect and righteous, can it? I am sure that the demons believe that Jesus was righteous as far as His behavior went, but that belief is not going to save them.

What are the alternatives to believing in the righteousness of Jesus alone that are so dangerous?

What does it really look like for a person to believe this truth? How would it affect their life and their thinking?

What parts of a person's psyche need to be involved in this belief?

One thing that I have been slowly learning over the past few years is that at least part believing in the righteousness of Christ alone for salvation means to reject all open or secret ideas that involve thinking that somehow I can contribute to the righteousness that earns me a right to enter into heaven. In the qualifying robe (which in the Bible represents righteousness) that is needed for each person to enter into the joy of the wedding feast, there cannot be even one thread of human devising or that person will be disqualified from participating in the feast.

Is this an arbitrary rule by a nit-picking God looking to keep as many people out of heaven as possible? Or is this kind of thinking itself a clue of the presence of a lack of belief in the righteousness of Jesus?

Our assumptions about what this teaching means really is greatly dependent on the angle from which a person chooses to view all of these things. And the angle of perception is determined by what our preconceptions are about how good and fair God is, especially what we believe deep in our hearts that may often be heavily masked by our professed beliefs or our church's organized and predigested doctrines. We may have convinced ourselves through years of professing belief and outward practice of saying the right answers to please those around us, that we think we really believe that God is righteous. But our motive for saying these things may be more from fear of saying the wrong answer, not because the answer resonates in agreement with how our heart feels deep inside.

But one thing I have been coming more and more aware of over the past few years is that the belief that is needed for me to be saved is definitely not primarily an intellectual assent or acknowledgment of factual truths about God but is much more involved in having my heart and mind congruent and synchronized together in their beliefs about God. And I am observing more and more that there are millions of people who are secret believers in the real truth about God who don't even know yet that they are believers. Outwardly they may even seem hostile to religion, but that is because the religion they have seen is so mis-representative of the truth about God, and in their heart they know He must be much better.

Now I am also beginning to perceive that this issue of believing in the righteousness of Christ alone is also subject to update just as my perceptions of why Jesus died are being radically updated and revised. If Jesus did not come to appease an angry God and run interference between us and the Father to keep Him from being mad at us, as most Christians assume and teach so widely, then most all the assumptions about the cross as taught in popular Christianity fall in disarray on the ground and I have to discover for myself the real reasons that Jesus came to earth to live and die and be resurrected.

And parallel to this I also have to discover for myself the real issues involved in this doctrine of the righteousness of Christ alone. Just as Jesus was not here to change the Father's heart about us but to change our hearts about the Father, I am now starting to see that my heart's opinions along with my intellectual ones about how authentically righteous both Jesus and God really are lies along the very same path of reforming my opinions about religion, the Bible and what is really truth.

Since it is clear that Jesus came to reveal the heart of the Father to humanity, not to change the heart of the Father toward humanity, then Jesus and the Father both feel exactly the same way toward us and have all along. When I choose to fully embrace that fact and to change my opinions, especially at the heart level, about how God feels about me and how radical He is in trying to bring me back into safe harmony with His dangerous and passionate presence of love, then I am actually believing in the righteousness of Jesus. For the righteousness of Jesus implies by association the righteousness of God as well.

So what does this really mean anyway? What does it mean to believe that both Jesus and God are righteous? What really is righteousness?

One thing that is becoming more and more clear to me is that righteousness is not based on behavior and performance. Those are symptoms of righteousness, fruits of righteousness, not righteousness itself. So to focus on the acts and performance of Jesus while living on this earth as a human and thinking that those things constitute righteousness is to miss the main point and to view reality through skewed lenses. It also creates the atmosphere that promotes legalism which is the counterfeit and enemy of real righteousness. Trying to be righteous enough to get into heaven is based on a secret belief that God in some way is not totally righteous Himself, even though that is very difficult to understand. But it implies many things about salvation that are perversions of the real truth.

That righteousness is a precondition for any person to enter heaven is a solid fact of reality. No one can ever enter into the presence of God and survive if they are not totally cleansed of all sin. But a proper understanding of the true meaning of each of these words is essential or the counterfeit ideas are quick to creep in and distort our thinking and reinforce the many false assumptions about God and about salvation that we have been immersed in for all of our lives and that permeate almost all of religion.

Sin, like righteousness, is not performance oriented but is a condition or attitude of the heart. The “sins” that we typically believe are the definition of what we think sin is are only symptoms of an underlying condition of sin in the heart. Sin is an attitude of independence from God, a desire and choices based on that desire, to live apart in any way from the perfect design on which all the universe was created. It is choosing to resist living in total dependence on God for everything.

So when I believe in the righteousness of Christ alone as the basis for my salvation, I also need to accept the fact that I am completely incapable of having a pure motive of any kind untainted with selfishness (which is the essential core of sin). Only Christ exemplified a nature completely free of all selfishness in every detail. And the opposite of selfishness is pure love.

So the only way I will ever be prepared to enter into heaven is to have the presence of Jesus and His Spirit of totally selfless love living so thoroughly inside of my heart that it will displace all of the selfishness of my flesh that wars against the impulses that Jesus inspires within me.

Believing in the righteousness of Jesus alone will also mean that I will let go of all the lies about how I think the Father views me that are contrary to the reality that Jesus came to show me about the Father and His attitude towards me. It is an acknowledgment that only Jesus is capable of revealing the total fairness, justice, mercy, love, forgiveness, compassion and perfection that is the identity of both Him and His Father. And when I allow Him full access to every part of my own heart and life, His perfect righteousness has the power to displace every lie that has been embedded in my mind, heart and soul due to the sinfulness of my human nature.

What I am slowly learning is that this is the real reason Jesus came to die on the cross. It was not to change God's heart toward us in the slightest, for God's heart was already in Christ reconciling us to Him. No, this glorious revelation on the cross was completely designed to change my mind and heart about the Father and to embrace the fact that only God is really righteous, totally unselfish and is not arbitrary, vindictive or lacking in patience, mercy or anything else He has revealed about His goodness. And embracing this truth will force us to rethink what really happens in hell when all of creation will finally meet its Maker. For our beliefs about what really happens in hell are some of the surest indicators of what we really believe about the righteousness of God.

If we believe that God executes sinners using force and vengeance as we think of it, then that belief will be incongruent with our claim that God alone is righteous. Instead of testing our doctrines against the righteousness of God, we change our interpretation of the word righteousness to fit our theology and our doctrines of hell and then call that the mystery of God, His strange work. But what we are really doing is hiding all sorts of terrible implications just under the surface of our teachings.

But when we really understand and embrace the real truth about righteousness and then understand how that reveals the real heart of the Father through Jesus Christ, then our ideas about what happens in hell as well as many other interactions we have with God here in this life will be radically altered, updated and will become congruent will all the other truths that are more plain to us even now.

What we need is a revival of true godliness in its original sense. We must have a revelation of the true glory of God, His perfect, selfless and consistent character of love, mercy, grace and justice that are never out of harmony or in conflict with each other. We need to understand the real truth about what righteousness really means so that its attractiveness will become so obvious that every honest, sincere heart will embrace it with enthusiasm and eagerness.

God, send us the light!

Some other time I want to explore what 1 John 1:9 really means in relation to understanding the truth about the righteousness of Christ.

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)

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.