Our Jewish Roots - Who will be Saved?

...for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29)

I have noticed over time that whenever it becomes clear that something I am reading has a spin put on it by religious people that is incorrect, then I am at a place, an opportunity to listen to what God wants to reveal as to what it really does mean. For many years I was trained in a culture that often remained stuck in a defensive posture about many texts but failed to move on to explore the deeper truth lying beneath the surface. That is what fear-bonded thinking usually does; it remains fixated on proving someone else wrong but is not nearly as interested in seeing what real truth could be applied to our own heart.

That is one reason God is so repeatedly insistent all throughout the Bible that we should not live in fear. Fear blinds our minds to so many things and keeps us stymied from maturing very much. Fear is antagonistic to joy and freedom and experimenting and exploration. Fear is enslaving and keeps one under tight restrictions and ever-increasing rules to prevent something wrong from entering in. Fear inhibits thriving. Fear is at the heart of all false religion and is the power of the false gospels. Fear is the primary motivation of legalism and turns our attention to externals and away from the true condition of our heart. Increasing fear moves us from the front part of our brain where our logic, reason and creativity originate (utilizing both halves of the brain) to the mid or back part of the brain where our baser emotions lacking moral restrictions churn and tend to overwhelm us.

Well, I didn't intend to get off on that topic. What I want to explore is the idea of looking deeper into thoughts in Scripture that on the surface do not seem to fit with other more clear revelations about God. The opening text here from Romans strikes me as one of those opportunities. Most of my life this text has been only addressed from a defensive position with explanations about why it is not teaching that all Jews will end up being saved somehow as some Christians often try to claim. From my own study I agree with that conclusion, not because I was taught to believe it but because from the context it is becoming clear to me independent of external teachings. All Jews is not synonymous with all Israel.

But I want to move beyond just defending a position in resistance to what others may be propounding and explore what this passage may be really saying. I want to have a spirit of anticipation free of fear so that I can think outside of any box put around this by someone else and see what the text has to reveal on its own with the guidance of the original Author. That is the nature of inductive study which I am finding to be so rewarding and nourishing.

I can see that it is clear in the passage context that Paul is referring to biological Jews in this verse; the previous verse makes it reasonably clear that the group he refers to are enemies when it comes to the gospel. Most of the Jews in Paul's day and ever since then have generally been enemies of the gospel. Unfortunately, after Paul's time the gospel has become so distorted and misunderstood by those promoting it that the Jews often have good reason for being repulsed by its presentation. I have heard sad stories of professed Christians working to convert Jews to “Christianity” insisting that Jews profane key elements of their beliefs like eating pork and rejecting the true Sabbath as proof that they are now “true Christians”.

With false ideas of the gospel like that circulating around among Jews it is no wonder that they remain intensely hostile toward all Christians. Most versions of the “gospel” being espoused today have little resemblance to the real “good news” about God that is the real essence of the true gospel. For the truth about God does not negate the truth that God entrusted to the Jewish people throughout all of history. Real Christianity is not a separate and new religion from Judaism, and I think that is made clear here in Romans. True Christianity is an extension, an outgrowth, a metamorphosis of the true religion founded upon the fundamental truths established for centuries in the Jewish faith.

While it is true that some of the symbols and ceremonies came to fulfillment and therefore concluded at the death of Jesus, much of what God entrusted to the Jewish nation is still valid and unchanging. Christianity in general has made a tragic mistake in assuming that anything Jewish must be wrong and that God started all over again with the early Christian believers. That is not the view taught by the apostles and is not supported in the Bible. Their understanding and teachings assumed that the Christian church was simply the true continuation of the body of believers originating and founded on all those from the Jews were willing to accept the unveiling of expanded truth beyond their present perceptions.

Paul always approached the Jews first whenever he traveled to new places with the gospel. He did not do this to draw away from Judaism as many as he could but he did it because he understood that Judaism was still the group of people who had the gifts and calling of God and were the foundation for the truth of the gospel. A true understanding of real Israel entails seeing an unbroken line of truth throughout all of history from Adam to the end of time. Israel had been entrusted with most of the prophecies about Jesus as well as prophecies about events all the way to the end of the millenium and the wrap up of the whole Great War going on in the universe.

While it is clear from Paul that God did not reject His people, it is also true that as a nation they rejected Him and forced a divorce to take place in their relationship with Him. But even that did not neutralize the reality of the truths that Judaism still contains. They may as a people (nation) be enemies of the gospel because of lies about God entrenched in their hearts, but that does not change the love and passion of God for His chosen people. We are just beginning to realize that the deep mindset and traditions and culture found in Judaism is much closer to a true understanding of reality than any other culture on earth. And just because it is poisoned with prejudice and hardness of heart does not change that fact.

What I noticed in this verse this morning was the fact that what Paul says is irrevocable is not the salvation of all Jews but the gifts and the calling that they had. I think it is rather clear throughout history how gifted the Jews are as a people. They are so gifted that they have often become the object of intense jealousy and hatred by those who accuse them of being even diabolical. Antisemitism is all too accepted among many who claim to be Christians. But I believe that it is driven by a Satanic jealousy of the natural gifts that exists in the gene-pool of the Jewish race.

Of course these are not the only gifts that Paul was referring to here. The Jews were blessed above all nations on the earth as a means of revealing the kind of God who is trying to attract the attention of all people on the earth. God made it very clear in the Old Testament that His blessings on this nation were not due to anything they deserved or earned but wholly to the goodness of God. (see Deuteronomy 8 and 9) It is absurd to think that God suddenly decided to throw out all the truth revealed through His dealings with His chosen people to start over again with a new group under a “new Christian dispensation”. It seems even more bizarre to me how many Christians attempt to force Old Testament prophecies into strange contortions to prove that at the end of time God will have yet another “dispensation” in which the literal nation of Israel will again be reinstated so that God can fulfill through them all the conditional prophecies that they failed to inherit due to their unbelief and rejection of Him and His Son. As a nation they invoked a divorce from their unique relationship with God. But God's promises will still be fulfilled through a people identified as Israel but this time made up of all those from every nation who unite in faith as the bride of Christ.

Insisting on another round with a literal, political nation of Israel is a classic case of coming up with ideas and then forcing everything in the Word to fit and support those ideas. That is always a very dangerous way to read the Word of God and always leads to disaster in the end. We must allow the Word to speak for itself and not force our preconceived ideas to shape and distort the truths that are laid out in it. It is always very helpful to keep in mind the bigger picture of the universal War going on for the context from which to view things here on earth. Truth is not established by stringing convincing chains of texts together to prove a theory. Truth is only discovered by first having an honest, open heart and a humble, teachable spirit willing to listen to the Spirit of Truth and then immersing itself in the Word to seek the face and truth about God.

I believe that it is highly possible that in the last massive shake-up about to take place on this planet that many Jews will indeed accept the truth about Jesus when presented with more honest revelations about God that most Christians will not even accept. Whether every last one of them will do so or not I think is beyond what we can yet reasonably know. But this movement will actually create more jealousy than joy among most so-called Christians because they will insist that these believers in the real truth about salvation are being misled by a small group of non-mainstream Christians that are scorned by most of the world. But I still do not see in this passage justification for the idea that the Jews “as a nation” will be once again used by God as they were in Old Testament times. Paul makes it explicitly clear earlier in Romans that true Israel is composed of all those who enter into a faith intimacy with Jesus and are connected to the body of Christ, which body is really an extension that expanded from the true parts of Judaism that never changed.

There is a growing movement today among many Christians to research and take a closer look at our roots in Judaism. I believe that much of this is God-inspired though I also believe that it has false elements that have a wrong emphasis. But God is skillful in using all things and circumstances to work together for the good of those who love and serve Him and He will do the same with this. I believe this movement will awaken the attention of many people to the rejected truths in Judaism that many Christians have ignored for centuries. I am already seeing this happen in a number of people I have talked with recently and it is very exciting.

God is drawing the hearts of honest people to Himself through every means possible. But sooner or later they will all come together under the same convictions of the truthfulness of God's laws and a correct picture of the character of God. They will for the first time be overwhelmed with amazement at the perfect unity between the law and the gospel as they see the unbroken line of truth extending down to us through the “tree trunk” of authentic Judaism. As the life-giving sap of the Holy Spirit begins to fill all the grafted limbs and the alluring fruit naturally begins to mature on the branches, we will be very close to the time when Jesus will return to claim all those who are connected to Him in their hearts.

(next in series)

Diverted Conviction

I noticed something about a lying spirit inside of my head this morning that has pestered me for a long time. It shows up particularly when I am learning something very important that has the potential for deep, life-changing concepts and principles that need to be applied to the heart and mind. Very often when the importance of these things is sinking in my mind, immediately and strongly I begin to think about another person (usually one in particular who is often a source of annoyance to me) who really, really needs to hear and learn this thing. It is so obvious to me how it applies to their life, even much more clearly than to my situation and I begin to think about how much I wish I could get them to be open enough to listen to it. If they would just listen enough to realize how much this could help them they would have wonderful breakthroughs in their growth and relationship problems.

Of course, when put this way it sounds all too suspicious. My rational mind kicks in along with conviction from the Holy Spirit and I remember that every time I experience this line of reasoning that, based on the principle of reflection, most likely what I am seeing in that other person must somehow be resonating with something very similar inside my own heart, even if I cannot see it presently. In the popular phrase used in AA, “If you spot it, you got it”.

“But, but...” my mind insists. “That person obviously has this problem much deeper than I do and if only they could grasp this lesson their life would be so much better!” And of course, secretly I am hoping that they could learn it quite soon so that they would not irritate me so much with their abrasive treatment of our relationship. Yes, the unending ability of my mind to rationalize and avoid and excuse and justify...

What came to my mind when I again experienced this annoying habit of mine while reading My Utmost this morning and wanting yet again to apply it to this person was the realization that this kind of thinking is really a secret desire of my flesh to usurp the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of that other person. In actuality I think God is working too slow in their life for my liking and I think I can see better what they need to learn and want to apply it as soon as I can. That is pretty heady arrogance when exposed in those words, but really that is the nature of that lying spirit still lurking in my flesh wearing pious excuses to cloak its real identity. It is one of the roots of the terrible curse of criticism that has blighted my relationships for most of my life and has been passed on generationally both behind and ahead of me. It is the main curse that I need to be delivered from that infects nearly everything I think, say and do in some way or another.

God is certainly at work to heal me of this, and for that I am grateful, even though many times it is also painful. The reason that God allows me to see problems in others that could benefit from the new insights I am gaining is the same reason I look in a mirror to see what needs fixing on my own face. It never works to apply the needed applications to the mirror in an effort to fix the problems I see. And in the same way, it will never work for me to think that something I see in the Word or receive from the Spirit must be applied to someone else who obviously needs what I am hearing. God has not appointed me as His channel of conviction to that person; that job has been exclusively reserved for the Holy Spirit who is far more loving and patient than I and who has perfect timing and gentleness in His persuasiveness. He is the only effective way that will accomplish God's desire to draw them to His heart.

In my own life, when I allow my mind to run down the path of wanting to apply a conviction to another person it is very much like chasing down a false alley in a maze that always leads to a dead end. The sad part about that is that when I carry a hot coal from the presence of God down a dead-end alley and leave it there I fail to receive the benefit for myself that it was intended to bring to my own heart. Unfortunately there are probably a lot of cold ashes at dead-end corners in my brain from too many such forays. But I am also learning to be alert to this symptom and reign in my urges to apply conviction to someone else and instead realize that I must search my own heart for where this conviction was designed to fit.

If God cared enough about me to give me this conviction and even allowed me to see the reflection of it in another person's life, then the intensity of resonance that it produces in my feelings betrays the existence of something very similar hiding somewhere in my own soul. If I am willing to be honest and have the integrity to ask God to reveal the fault in my own mind where this conviction needs to do a work, He is faithful to help me see where I have a blind spot and how to accept the help He is offering me. For conviction from God is never designed to lay a guilt trip on me and leave me feeling hopeless. That is Satan's counterfeit of conviction. God only presses conviction on me when He also has abundant grace ready to provide healing and new life whenever I am willing to allow Him to perform the painful surgery needed to remove a pocket of death hiding in my heart.

I am also realizing that if I am willing to submit to the process of salvation (healing) that God wants to accomplish in this particular area in my own life that at some point He may use the evidences of my healing to attract that other person to want the same thing for their life. But that work has to be completely orchestrated and timed by the Holy Spirit and is not my responsibility. I have more than enough garbage and baggage to deal with in my own heart and do not need to waste God's valuable time trying to apply medicine intended for me to someone else's problems. Whenever I do that it always turns out to be toxic instead of healing. He is more than capable of bringing them into conviction and giving them their needed medicine and healing at the right time and does not need me meddling and messing up His skillful ongoing work in their heart.

This all sounds good on the external level, but applying it at the emotional heart level is a whole different story. But it is a start to confess openly what I see going on internally and maybe it also creates a certain amount of accountability (maybe more than I want).

Balancing the Brain

Sometimes I may give the impression that I think the left brain is nearly useless except for getting in the way of true spirituality. While it is true that it is in the way much of the time it is also true that it has a very important part to play in living a life in close connection with God.

As I observe, learn and try to put into practice the continually new things I am learning in this area, I try to understand and evaluate what is going on inside of my own head. I try to see what improves my relationships, not only with God but with others and what is a detriment to those relationships. That very process of analysis is a function of my left brain trying to understand my right brain better or learn what I should try to avoid.

As I ponder whether this is helpful in my experience or a hindrance I am coming to believe that my left brain needs updating just as much as my right brain needs healing so that they can both work together in perfect harmony and in support of each other. I believe this is God's goal in the plan of salvation, to restore us to a healthy state of balance and cooperation, not only within our own heads but by extension within the body of fellowship with others and with our Creator.

I think that one of the important roles of the left brain is to provide permissions so that other things are allowed to take place in the mind. When the left brain attempts to dominate and control everything that goes on in our life and does not allow the heart to be free to function as it is supposed to, then the heart and mind are in continual conflict and tension and we experience pain, turmoil and increasing levels of stress. The same can be true if the emotions are allowed to run rampant without any restrictions and there is no respect for the intellectual structures and mental understandings of the left brain. It is often seen as a severe swinging from one extreme to the other like a pendulum between very strict control of the life by rigid rules and fanatical conservatism followed by periods of wild abandon to anything that makes one feel good no matter what the consequences. I see this played out in more or less intensity in the lives of many people and realize that it is a problem of immaturity and failure of the left and right brain to come into mutual respect and cooperation under the guidance of the Spirit of God.

Some conclude from these observations that the answer is to suppress the heart and emotions altogether so that they will not mar the life and reputation. But that is one of Satan's logical-sounding lies that is easily snapped up by people who are afraid of suffering more pain and just want to hide and bury the pain they already carry. They harden their heart with an ever-thickening wall around it and end up trusting their wall to protect them instead of trusting Christ to heal them. Their heart becomes harder and harder in what they believe is firmness of resolution and determination to stand for right though the heavens fall. But hardness of heart is Satan's counterfeit for living under the shadow of the Almighty and resting in His love and learning to live from the heart of flesh that God wants to give us. (Eze. 36:26, 27)

What I am starting to realize in regards to the proper function of my left brain is that I need to continually update the beliefs held in that part of my mind as I observe and respect the things that both my own heart is trying to tell me and that I am learning from others and from God about the proper role of the heart in my life. But while the left brain needs constant updating and revision, it also has to resist using that information to seize the control of my life that properly needs to originate in the heart. Most of the problems in my relationships with others is caused by trying to figure out logically what to do without allowing a healed heart guided by the spirit to do what it can do so much better naturally.

Living from the head is very exhausting work and leaves me feeling very empty in the end. It also leaves my heart feeling very dissatisfied with the results but the left brain usually just ends up rationalizing and justifying itself as to why it should always remain in control. But this only betrays the addiction to power and control that is a legacy of sin in my life. It is the sinful flesh inside of me that is always offering a very plausible left-brain solution to every situation to fix every problem. But those solutions always end up being wrong, even if only slightly so. And that makes the deception all the more powerful, because then my left brain and flesh believe that with just a little more practice I can finally get the right answer in place and be able to figure out the right formulas to live successfully. This is the quicksand of the flesh that entraps us. We need to look to a power outside and beyond ourselves that will grasp us by the heart to lift us out of this desperate condition before we are consumed by the pride and independence the permeates every cell of our brains.

The problem that I am seeing is that if the left brain does not believe that the right brain, the heart, can be trusted in any given situation, it will usually wrest the controls away from it and try to live life from an independent, intellectual approach without regard to the suggestions or needs of the heart. For the heart to really function and thrive as God intended for it to do, the left brain has to relinquish its stranglehold on the control of the life and give conscious permission for the heart to experiment, make mistakes and begin to grow and mature. This is very frightening for most of us and as a result we often label it as heresy or any number of other labels designed to keep all control in the left brain.

But we are designed to live a balanced life where the left brain respects and submits to the proper role of the right brain by giving permission and freedom for it to fulfill its place while the right brain respects and utilizes the knowledge and resources of the left brain and respects its warnings when our emotions overwhelm our maturity level and capacity to remember who we really are.

As our heart receives more and more healing it can begin to mature and strengthen and flourish as the part of us where we can experience and enjoy the dynamic, enriching presence of God and the fellowship with others that we were designed to enjoy. And as our mind continually submits to new revelations of truth both from outside and from realities accepted from our own spirit, it will better work in tandem with the heart very much like an exciting, dynamic couple in a closely bonded love relationship.

James says that a double-minded person is unstable in all their ways. When our heart and left brain are constantly fighting for control of our life the results are always instability and inner pain. There is often a great deal of guilt felt in the life whether it is obvious or is repressed to subconsciousness. For guilt is simply a description of the tension naturally felt when the left and right brain are not in agreement and respectful cooperation with each other.

I am beginning to believe that the repeated injunctions given to us both in Ephesians and in 1 Peter to submit to each other in love is a direct parallel or maybe even a synonym for this idea of giving permission. Submission involves trusting and respecting another's abilities and intentions and relinquishing control in some way and giving them access to vulnerable areas of our heart. This is a crucial lesson that has to be learned at all levels of our existence, from the two halves of our brain learning to cooperate through our marriage relationships to our dealings with others in the body of Christ as well as our relationship with God.

God wants to heal us from all our dysfunction and bring us back into the perfect balance of the children of God. This involves the radical updating of our left-brain opinions and beliefs as well as the healing of our right-brain based lies embedded in many of our painful memories that cause us to have so many triggers for negative emotional reactions. God's work of salvation is the process of bringing both sides of our brain into submission and a state of humility so that they can begin to thrive and grow together into the proper functions for which they were originally designed to perform. And as we learn to experience more unity within our own minds we will likely begin to see a corresponding increase of unity in other relationships as well.

I am starting to experience hints of this in my own experience as I am going through various stages of healing and seeing some of my relationships improve correspondingly. It is encouraging though I wish it could speed up many times. But God is interested in doing a thorough work in me, not just a whitewash job, and so He takes all the time and trials necessary to finish the work He started in me to bring it to full maturity and completion. I'm glad He is the one in charge and I trust Him to keep me in His hands during the whole process.

Continuing

Continue in His kindness or continue in unbelief. We will either do one or the other. (Romans 11:22, 23)

This is parallel to Romans 2:1-11 where there is a fuller expansion of the same thought. There I find a more detailed description of both of these options and the results of each. It is also more clear there that it is us who passes judgment on ourselves and God simply affirms our decision impartially.

This also clarifies what it is that belief is invested in – the kindness, tolerance and patience of God that leads us to repentance, which is simply changing our minds about God and what He is like. Unbelief, which is refusing to believe that God treats us this way, causes stubbornness and a hard, unrepentant heart which in turn stores up wrath inside of it that will be exposed fully in the day when God's passionate love reveals our wrath. In that day God will be found to be completely innocent and righteous, not because He forces everyone to accept His version of truth but because all the lies will be exposed for what they are by the revelation of God's kindness, tolerance and patience. Every being in the universe in complete freedom and exposed to all the evidence will realize that everything God has said and done has been fair, truthful and always done with kindness, tolerance and patience. Our punishment will not be carried out by a God who finally loses His patience and tortures us for rejecting Him, it will be the natural result of the sin inside of us still resisting His love and we become totally inflamed and consumed by our resistance

If we continue in God's kindness we will remain connected to God's tree of Life for us. The results will be glory and honor and peace. If we continue in unbelief that God is kind and tolerant and patient we become increasingly judgmental, selfish, self-ambitious, disobedient except to unrighteousness and filled with wrath and indignation. And on top of that we project our own feelings and emotions onto God insisting that it is He who is full of wrath and indignation. In reality we create in our minds the God that in the end consumes us. Having this mindset cuts us off from the trunk which is the only source of real life for us.

There is no partiality with God. We are free to choose to discontinue our unbelief in the goodness of God and have faith in His kindness so that we can be led to repentance. It says here that if we do not continue in unbelief that God is able to graft us in again. It is not God's fault or choice that determines our destiny and fate but it is our determined choice, what we continue in, as to which way we will perceive God. The options are clear and the consequences are dramatic and opposite for eternity.

God, open my heart to see Your kindness more clearly and willingly. Fill my imagination with the real truths about You that lure my heart into Your affectionate presence. Ravish my heart with Your love and grace and expose the lies about You still triggering my fears. Continue Your healing of my mind and help me to continue in Your kindness for Your reputation's sake.

(next in series)

Continue in His Kindness

Do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you. (Romans 11:18)

Arrogant toward the branches. Have not Christians for centuries been arrogant toward the “natural branches”, the Jews? The intense hostility toward Jews through centuries of persecution and extermination are nothing less than arrogance at its worst. And this has been done by Christians who believed that they themselves were more favored by God than were the Jews whom they disdained. This attitude is not something just in the past but is still very much alive and thriving yet today.

They were broken off for unbelief – in what? What is real belief or faith?

We must not be so glib as to think we know what faith and belief are just because we are not Jews who were broken off. It may be very likely that much of what is purported to be faith is actually, in God's eyes, conceit and unbelief and arrogance, not genuine faith. We may have been grafted in to God's tree at some point but that does not prevent anyone from being broken off again. If God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you, either. This blows a major hole into the doctrine of once-saved-always-saved.

Behold then the kindness and severity of God. (Romans 11:22)

First of all, it is something we are instructed to behold, to focus and dwell on, to not ignore but to keep it in front of us to ponder and gain deeper understanding, to become more and more acquainted with it at a much deeper level than we are used to thinking about.

When God's kindness and severity are carefully observed it will begin to be seen that in reality they are one and the same thing. God does not change and does not feel differently in His love toward sinners than He does toward saints. This sounds like heresy to many people, believers and unbelievers alike, but it is true nonetheless. It is always the condition of the viewer, the perception and attitude and beliefs of the recipient that determines what they think they see when exposed to the presence of God's passionate love for them.

To those who refuse to believe in the reality of His unfailing, unconditional love they will only see severity in His countenance and will suffer more and more pain from the resistance that they cling to in their hearts and minds to the real truth about Him. But to those who believe the truth about His love, who confess with their mouth and submit to His Lordship and His rights over their life because they are His creation, they will find their hearts filling with real faith and responsive love. They will experience peace and joy that is beyond their ability to logically explain. They will live with an attitude of repentance and submission to the Sovereignty of God over their lives and increasingly enjoy the overwhelming power and joy and peace that comes from synchronization with the heart-beat of God Almighty.

Those who refuse to accept this truth about God's character are incorporating resistance into their heart that will create dangerous and eventually fatal reactions of heat when exposed to the presence of the One who loves them too intensely for their capacity or willingness to accept. To them the words of Paul in chapter 2 are so important to grasp. Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? (Romans 2:4)

The determination of whether we will be saved or lost is not up to God; He is not the one deciding that issue. His desire overwhelmingly is for everyone to be saved, to be completely healed and restored into the close intimacy with Him that His heart craves and bleeds for and that He gave His Son up to accomplish. It is not ever God's decision for anyone to be lost, He only respects their choice to cling to lies about Him that causes them to remain in a life-risking, soul-endangering condition. Right now He is protecting all of us from His glory so that we can stay alive during a time of probation until as many as possible will choose life instead of death, for that is the inevitable result from the embedded lies in our hearts when exposed to His unveiled glory. He offers all of us the means of salvation and offers to remove these dangerous lies at the heart level as well as in the mind so that we will be safe to receive greater exposure to His presence.

As every electrician knows all too well, power is not something to take lightly. For a person to ignore taking the right steps to be in right relationship to enormous amounts of electricity is a fatal choice whether made in ignorance or deliberately. What is very interesting in this analogy that is so close to the reality of God's power, is that the most dangerous and fatal choice a person can make when dealing with very high voltage lines is to allow oneself to remain connected in any way to earth ground. One has to completely disconnect or insulate themselves in every respect and be perfectly free from connection to anything that would ground them if they wish to survive connecting themselves with a high-tension power line. Otherwise, they had just better stay a good distance away from that source of power until they are prepared to separate from everything that would endanger their best good.

Behold the kindness of God to you, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you will be cut off.

I once watched a television airing that showed a man who inspects high power lines by sitting on them and moving along on them for inspection hundreds of feet up in the air over canyons and forests. He stated that he was afraid of heights and afraid of electricity and yet ended up with this job. They showed him sitting on the landing rail of a helicopter high in the air approaching the high-powered wires and reaching out with a metal rod to equalize the electrical difference between the helicopter and the wire. There was brilliant flashes of lightening arcing between the rod and the wire for a few seconds before he touched the wire and neutralized the craft with the cables. Then he placed a special rolling apparatus on the cable and climbed onto it to roll along great lengths of the cable to inspect it while the helicopter left him to his work.

If he had not known the dangers of electricity or had not respected the laws governing the workings of electrical power, then no matter how sincere or honest he was that electrical current would have fried him in an instant. He had to learn all the principles important to his safety and then carefully obey every one of them or he would have quickly become a piece of cooked meat. But when he did understand and comply with all the conditions he was able to accomplish things and live in the presence of enormous power without being hurt. The most important aspect of his safety was coming into perfect synchronization and harmony with the voltage that he wanted to live with. For him to live and thrive in the presence of such great power he had to disconnect from everything that was not in harmony with that power and commit himself totally in trust to the very thing that would otherwise destroy him.

This is a very close analogy to the problem God has in connecting with His people. God is the source of all power, but because of sin, which is desynchronization from His power, we are in a fatally dangerous relationship to Him at this point. God has removed most of His power from our presence for our protection for obvious reasons seen above. But His heart yearns to reconnect us with Him and he wants us to experience the exhilaration and joy of real life as it was meant to be lived. But for us to enter into eternal life we must become disconnected from everything that grounds us and endangers our safety.

God does not change the rules of the universe to protect us anymore than He changes the rules of electricity so we can touch high tension wires with impunity. He wants us to learn how to live in harmony with all the principles already in place in the universe so we can once again live in the life-giving presence of all power without danger of being hurt. But that requires not only instruction in how to live safely but requires that we be brought into proper alignment with those principles so that it will be safe for Him to release His glory and power into our lives without being grounded by lies in our hearts.

Given this context we can see that the kindness of God and the severity that we see in Him are really the passion of God and the inflexible principles of power that we must learn and respect. His passion is is pure, unfaltering love for every being He has created and His desire to be restored into full connection with them, especially at the heart level. But the apparent severity of God is the importance of remaining in proper relationship to this Source of dangerous power. That proper relationship requires the crucial ingredient of faith and the renouncement of unbelief in our hearts. The lies that we have about God are the root causes of unbelief that endanger our souls. The plan of salvation and the grace of God have been put in place to help us become free of these lies so that we can be safe to live in the presence of all Power. But it is completely in the realm of our personal choice as to whether we decide to be transformed by the renewing of our mind or we stay entrenched in unbelief and cling to our distorted, fearful views of a severe God who means to do us harm.

It is clear in these verses that arrogance, unbelief and conceit all participate to cause us to be disconnected from the only Source of life. It is also explicit here that if we do not continue in unbelief then it will be safe for God to reconnect us with our source of life. But there can be no compromise between the high-voltage power of God and any ground connection whatsoever to anything connected to any of Satan's lies about Him. We either choose to be all His or we endanger our very existence through violation of the principles that govern power.

The very same Power that can be so fatal to us is the same Power that shows us kindness, grace and causes us to thrive and become fully alive when we submit to His authority. This is the true meaning of the word “holy”. For holy simply means to be totally dedicated and committed to a single person or use. A dedicated telephone line for use only by a Fax machine is the illustration of what holy means. It is not to be used for any other use – it is holy unto the Fax machine. With that understanding it is easier to see why God insists that we be holy people. We must become totally committed to God and disconnected in our heart from all other sources from which we think we can get life. It is only those who are holy who will be able to survive the intense power inherent in the presence of God, only those who are totally committed unconditionally to glorifying Him and emulating His loveliness of character, only those who are filled with His Spirit and obsessed with His passion. Anything less than this is playing with electricity, and we all know what can happen when someone continues down that path.

Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God's kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. (Romans 11:22)

I know that I have a great deal of lies still buried in my own heart that create great liabilities and resistance to the power of God. But I also believe in the faithfulness of God to continue to completion the work that He started in me. One of the most important parts of that work is learning to believe and trust in the kindness of God. I want to learn better how to live and continue in His kindness and thus be filled with more and more faith and love for Him. I want the lies about God to be exposed and eradicated by the truth about God in every area of my own heart. I want all resistance to melt away in the presence of His kindness and love for me and those around me. I want a much clearer picture of God in my heart so that I can behold more clearly His kindness and not view it as severity as I have for most of my life. Severity is what those in unbelief see when they look at God. (see Rev. 6:16, 17) So when I perceive Him as severe I know that it betrays the presence of yet more lies in my heart that need to be expelled by the real truth about Him

God, continue to deepen Your healing presence in my heart. Make me an experiment of Your healing grace that even the angels will be astonished at. You have a lot of work left to do, but I give You permission to do whatever You need to do to finish duplicating Yourself in my life. I look forward to enjoying the thrill of more power and refreshment as I come more fully into alignment with Your heart and into fellowship with Your children. Use me as an agent of healing and invitation to others who are hungry for healing as well and keep me from unduly damaging Your children as I am so prone to do. I need more grace, more healing, more truth and a clearer view of Your face so I can behold You in Your beauty and continue in Your kindness.

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