Counterfeit Integrity

I woke up quite early this morning from a rather vivid dream with thoughts so compelling that I couldn't remain in bed for fear of forgetting them. I had to get up and write them down before they became lost in the clutter of others thoughts and ideas that cause dreams to quickly evaporate in the light of day. (It has turned into a very long writing and needs to be condensed at some time)

I had a dream of being caught in the largest pile up on a freeway that I can ever imagine. It involved almost exclusively semi-trucks that were crashed into various buildings, each other or just caught in the tangle at all sorts of angles and various degrees of damage. Some of them were crushed quite badly and others were not damaged very much at all. There were at least dozens of them if not hundreds, but I could not tell from where I was because the area in which I found myself on the roadway was completely blocked in by trucks all around me and I could not see anything beyond them except maybe some of the surrounding buildings.

As usual, I don't remember some of the details of what happened early on in the dream but I do remember how the dream evolved in my perceptions over time. In particular, I remember one trailer that was broken open and there being containers of food lying on the truck-bed such as yogurt and cans of juice. (Nothing to do with buying several containers of yogurt a couple nights ago?) I remember there being a strong insistence by the driver of the truck that everyone should respect the rules of honesty and should not open or utilize the containers for themselves but should help transfer them to a cold room nearby for better storage. A number of us were involved in helping him out with this transfer.

I also remember looking around with awe at all the damage and beginning to wonder how long it was going to take us to get out of this mess. It was becoming increasingly clear that it might take days to unravel the gigantic pile-up enough to even reach us and open a way for us to get out from amid all the wrecks. But for awhile I was more interested in just gawking at the wrecked vehicles than I was worried about our long-term prospects.

But later in the dream I began to realize that the people who were trapped here with us were going to need to eat and that this rule about respecting the ownership of this food was in direct conflict with the needs of people to survive. This tension became very intense in my mind in a very short time so much so that it woke me up and I lay wide awake wondering why I again had to wake up so early after going to be late after a long road trip home. I lay there and pondered to possible purpose of this intense dream and suddenly more things began coming sharply clear to my mind. I felt so compelled by them that I could no longer feel safe to sleep longer without losing important things that I wanted to remember.

What suddenly became crystal clear to me was the sharp tension between the priority of rules above that of relationships. I remembered the many illustrations of this from stories that occur in war-times by those we later consider to be heroes. But at the time they are seldom viewed as such. They are usually considered to be traitors and violators of the law by the people in control and they are usually threatened with severe punishments for breaking the law.

Then another word came to my mind and I realized that this word has sharply different meanings dependent on what one believes about what is proper priorities in life. That word is “integrity”. In my dream the cold food laying in the truck became to issue around which conflicting concepts of integrity came to a head. While the driver was trying to keep others from eating so it could be repacked in the name of honesty and integrity, others were becoming hungry and the reality of the situation (depending on what one views as reality) pointed to the need for something at odds with what appeared to be honest. At first it seemed the right thing to do to respect the private ownership of the food, but then it was becoming obvious that likely the food would go to waste before it could ever be moved on and in the meantime many might become very hungry while being denied access to food right in front of them – all in the name of honesty and integrity.

It began to dawn on me that rules were being made more important than lives, that the food would spoil anyway and the people that were trapped in here needed to eat. There was an emerging clarity to the tension between integrity being defined under the false definition of keeping rules or integrity being that of looking out for others in humane way.

This has been the tension that has always emerged in crisis situations and creates confusion in the minds of many and long, heated debates about what constitutes proper ethics. What became clear to me was that it is really the titanic clash between the world's system of control and governance and heaven's methods of looking out for others ahead of one's self or even of keeping rules. The latter is the model that Jesus demonstrated and that riled all those who considered rules as more important to God than relationships. These kind of people may believe that relationships are important but that rules always trump relationships. If there is a problem in relationships then the rules just need to be tweaked some more because at root it is believed that somehow we can achieve just the right formula of rules to make everything work out right for relationships.

But rules are too artificial and inflexible and completely lack the ingredient of spirit. So rules can never accommodate to new and unforeseen situations in a crisis because the “right” thing to do will always vary from one situation to the next. The only real rules that really work are rules – really principles – concerning the spirit, not the externals.

When rules are oriented toward the externals they nearly always reflect the counterfeit government that is set up in opposition to God's government. The two systems are incompatible though it often is attempted to make them mesh. This is due to the deceptive nature of the counterfeit system which has always led us to believe that if tweaked enough the rule of law will achieve better results than God's ways. Rule-based living is really a false god that we worship and give allegiance to in preference to trusting the Spirit of the real God to lead us in right ways in every situation.

Rule-worshipers accuse those of being led by the Spirit of believing in “situation ethics”. By this they imply that it is immoral to perceive right and wrong based on flexible guidelines. In fact, the very notion of flexibility in definitions of right and wrong is horrifying and blasphemous to them. It strikes at the very foundation of their god of law and can never be tolerated. Any talk of such notion is considered very dangerous and heretical at best and is ultimately considered so dangerous as to sometimes deserve the elimination of those who promote such thinking so as to not contaminate the rest of the world with their dangerous heresies.

Think about the many stories that emerge from times of chaos, war and calamities. The one recurring theme is the increased tension between the definitions of what is “right”. But often rules are deliberately put into place to increasingly impose an atmosphere designed to dismantle relationships and separate people from bonding correctly. I wonder if that is not one of the subtle, deceptive problems of rule-based thinking fundamentally. Rules are inherently designed to promote fear and bond people together by the use of fear. Law, economics and kingship are primarily aimed at disassembling love bonded relationships and establishing relationships based on fear. Fear-based relationships can sometimes look positive and very deceiving and appear to create real unity, joy and peace. But they will always be counterfeit because of the underlying bond used to keep people in that unity. And these relationships will always be in tension opposed to the kind of relationships God intends for us to enjoy.

This also emerges in the definitions we give to words like “heroes”, “winners”, “champions” and even “overcomers”. Today's media is devoted to filling our minds with false and mixed illustrations of what the lives of these kind of people should look like. It is believed that our heroes must always mix some degree of selfish motives and sinful activities in with noble and loving relationships to come up with something so emotionally compelling that we are led to believe that our lives will be fulfilled if we make similar choices based on similar mixed motives and activities. Very seldom is a person portrayed in movies as being desirable based on completely selfless choices in view of heaven's definition of integrity.

But here it becomes even more murky. For in a crisis the false system switches tactics and employs situational ethics (as the world designed them) and appears to make relationships more important than rules in order “to deceive the very elect”. Rules of morality are then abandoned and whatever feels good at the moment is indulged in for the sake of following lust – for power, for sexual pleasure, for personal survival, etc. – and fulfilling relationships are portrayed as the indulgence of romantic attractions that seldom have any negative consequences. Selfish exploitation of others for pleasure or power (which is usually portrayed as pleasing to everyone involved) is romanticized and glorified in most of the media and this false god is exalted as the superior model to that of God's ways of selfless servant relationships. But the consequences can always be massaged in the pretend world of movies and music and even the news and so the real results of sin are masked under the guise of pleasure and endings of “living happily ever after”. These kind of relationships are touted as the model for others to follow but they do not work out that way in real life because they are based on selfish desires instead of selfless love for others in a context of keeping heaven's perspective of reality.

There is a time when rules must have apparent priority over “relationships” in heaven's model of governance. But it is not really as it appears at first, for when more carefully examined it still puts true, love-based relationships above arbitrary law. For the rules that take priority in heaven's kingdom are principles that reinforce true relationships, not preempt them. The kind of laws that govern heaven are spirit-oriented laws that external in their results, not in their foundations. Heaven's laws are far more flexible than we believe they are from our human, distorted perspective confused by the deceptions of human legal mentality. Because heaven's laws are not externally based they do not attempt to define or micromanage every situation from an external perspective but are designed to govern the heart and the motives so that the heart and motives will then be free and empowered to interpret the best way to externalize those principles in any given situation.

In reality, God's system is something like situational ethics, but is not the counterfeit that Satan invented that discredits that phrase. The counterfeit principle makes morality the variable and selfish pleasure or exploitation the fixed standards. God's true principle of “situational ethics” makes moral integrity in the heart and loyalty to God and selfless love the fixed, inflexible factors and external behavior the variable.

This is why so many teachings of Jesus sometimes seem baffling and cause many Christians to try to rationalize and explain away some of His statements. Because some of the things Jesus taught are in tension with rule-based religion people feel compelled to explain them away or reinterpret them turning them into even more rules according to the world's model of externalized religion. We talk about internalizing the rules as if that is God's plan but what we are really often saying is more along the line of forcing ourselves and others to memorize rules so that they will govern our behavior through internalized fear, guilt and shame. There is no freedom in this kind of living though from the world's viewpoint there appears to be great freedom. For freedom is yet another word with two definitions.

In the world's system freedom is viewed from an external perspective as is everything else in the counterfeit world in which we live. So if a person is not forced into a prison and has relative freedom of physical autonomy they are considered to have freedom. Notice what is implied in all the talk about freedom from our political leaders today. As long as you comply with the myriads of rules (that are ever expanding, conflicting and restrictive), you will supposedly be left relatively free to make personal choices within those ever-tightening borders – and that is labeled as freedom. But we sense that there is something inherently no right about this definition but we cannot seem to figure it out until nearly all of our freedoms have been stolen away from us by the very ones claiming to protect them for us, and it is too late to then get them back. Freedom is supposedly “defended” by the use of force which itself is the very opposite of true freedom. But freedom achieved by fear and force is not real freedom but is an illusion that leads into ultimately the most abject slavery while blindly marching its followers in time to the songs of “freedom” drummed out by our culture and its leaders.

God's freedom does include external freedom of movement, choice and autonomy. But it is a freedom that is based on unselfishness and a total absence of coercion, threats or intimidation. God's freedom is based on the internalization, not of external-oriented rules and formulas but the principles of thinking and motivation on which all of true reality is based and in which were were designed to thrive and bond with others. These principles are not left-brain based definitions and restrictions by which we are to formulate controlled behavior but are cause and effect principles of the heart that only function correctly while staying in vital connection with its Source of guidance and joy.

The Holy Ghost is the greatest promoter of situational ethics and as such is likely the greatest source of irritation to religious people everywhere, even many of those who claim to be filled with the Holy Ghost. God's Spirit is the only reliable source of knowing what the “right” thing to do is in any given situation and that may look very different for different people or different circumstances. But it will always be in perfect harmony with the fundamental principles described in God's Word and the foundational characteristics of God Himself. But these principles are impossible to condense into external formulas that can then be used in place of continual guidance by the Holy Spirit. For formulas can never replace the function of the Spirit in guiding us into all truth.

That word too, is another word with double meanings. Truth in the realm of external religion is considered primarily “correct” facts, doctrines and refined formulas and theological propositions designed to create “correct” outward conformance to externalized descriptions of what a “good” person should look like. And a “good” person will always be one who, above all keeps the law and obeys the (external) commandments of God. While it is true that a good person will indeed keep the commandments of God, the way that behavior is produced is vastly different than the path laid out and prescribed by most people claiming to understand religion and the Bible. It is a classic case of making the symptoms the driving priority instead of giving priority to the causes which are impossible to regulate through external methods. Because of the inability for external controls to regulate the heart motivations Christianity as devolved into primarily an externally defined system of working very hard to achieve lives that approximate the descriptions given in the Bible of what is righteous. We fall for trust in control. We fall deep into the deceptive trap of trying to live our life backwards, focusing more on the externals and then living in increasing frustration because the externals are so difficult to manage and control with the tools we are trying to use.

In the kingdom of heaven truth has a very different meaning than used in external religion. While it is true that truth can be somewhat described in the results seen in the external life of a true Christian, those manifestations and descriptions (what others view as obedience to law) are only externalized symptoms of a much deeper – I can't even find an appropriate word for this – element, ingredient, character motivation, than anything known by external religion. Real truth is not abstract and left-brain based but is a vibrant, interactive, dynamic, vital and flexible relationship with the Source of real truth, life and freedom. Truth might better be analogized by the idea of a flexible power cord that connects a computer into its source of electricity – but even more than that. Truth requires something of a data flow through that cable, and yet even more than data because data again implies left-brain, cognitive facts, and truth is far more than facts. Our connection with the Spirit is like a virus checker as well as a constant source of wisdom to test all spirits. Truth is fundamentally a relationship far more than it is a collection of ideas.

During the life of Jesus this issue of how to define truth was a constant source of tension and conflict that swirled around the presence of Jesus wherever He went. It culminated in the famous question by Pilate, “What is truth?”, very near the end of His life shortly before He was crucified. Jesus was crucified because of people who just like us claimed to know and have more truth than anyone else on earth. Externalized truth will always ultimately set itself up against God because God will never be able to fit into the parameters of how we define truth as based on external measurements. Any box we create claiming to use the restrictions we often call truth will sooner or later have to be shattered by the God who is too big to fit in any such containers.

But that does not mean it is right for us to shatter the containers that God creates for us and defines as truth. Because our minds operate far more in the logical realm and perceive reality – at least this side of eternity – from our limited abilities and definitions, God uses intellectual means of defining truth using legal terms and restrictions that we need to respect and utilize to keep us in proper relationship with Him until we are mature enough and safe enough to synchronize more fully with His heart.

But this does not mean that this is the goal of God for our lives or that we are to deify the restrictions that He has given to keep us safe until we are grown up. Paul makes it very clear in Romans and many other places that the law was only given as a stop-gap slave-master to keep us out of undo trouble until we could mature enough to live in proper relationship to the Source of all truth. That relationship itself is the real truth that trumps the somewhat artificial “truth” perceived in the law, and we are to always be moving toward the relationship much more than toward the law which is being superseded. To continue to keep ourselves bound to rules and formulas as the ideal life God designed for us is to insist on remaining in infant maturity and demanding that anything beyond that is heresy and is against God's will.

We utilize rules and silly restrictions for our babies and small children to protect them from dangers beyond their understanding and to help them learn basic concepts of how to live life in self-control when they have more capacity. But if they were to refuse to ever grow past their simplistic, rule-based, infant-relationship with us and were to forever remain dependent on us like that for the rest of their lives we would be failures as parents (although I know of parents who continue to relate to their children into adulthood using this model). Parents who do keep their children in total dependency on them are usually those who have personally bought into the religion of externals taught by many conservatives and have carried it out to its logical extremes.

God, thank-you again for making this a little bit more clear to me. I know that I am very slow to grow and embrace the flexible, dynamic life of continuous interaction with You that You so much desire for me. I still have so many fear bonds created by rule-based religion. That is almost all I have ever known and it seems so difficult to shift my many paradigms to live the way You are revealing to me. It is also in direct conflict with what many around me insist is true who claim to know truth much better than I, and so there is always tension between what You are showing me and what others insist that I believe.

Father, continue to teach me Your ways and fill me with Your ever-current presence. You are the God who can live simultaneously in the past, future and present with complete ease, but I must remember to live more consistently in the present in constant awareness of Your presence for guidance. I know from the past that when I live this way You are faithful to guide my spirit and impress me with Your wisdom in every situation. As I fill my mind and heart more thoroughly with Your Word and allow more access to Your Spirit I become more clear in my perceptions and more easily sense Your voice. Fill me today with Your Spirit and empower me to be a clear channel of encouragement, strength, hope and faithful love to those You have waiting for me today. Make me an efficient conduit of Your power into other lives today for Your reputation's sake. Reveal Your glory more fully today through my life so that others will be compellingly attracted to Your beauty and allurements and will release the lies about You that prevent their hearts from trusting You fully.

Growing Awareness of Judgment

We are staying for the weekend with one of our daughter's on the way to the memorial service for our recently lost daughter Julie tomorrow. This morning I felt compelled to write a couple pieces about judgment which has been a recurring occupation in my thoughts for the past few weeks. I have written several times about this but have not yet posted any of them. I am not sure how to arrange them to make sense but then I wonder if I am supposed to do that or simply lay them out as is. I think that when I do post them that I will likely place them on the Deeper Word blog site as a collection maybe rather than a series.

What I did find interesting was after writing and thinking about the issue of identity in judgment that the sermon we heard this morning was about the very same issue in many ways. Another one of those times when it looks suspiciously coordinated I think.

I am getting increased practice in refraining from engaging in counterfeit judgment so that real judgment can take place naturally. This is a paradigm shift for me that I feel like I am just starting to become more clearly aware of in my life. These truths about judgment are very different from what I am used to but I also believe that it is the kind of life that is far more effective for attracting others to the truth about God.

My Prayer

Father, fill me with life today and make me a life-giving presence everywhere I go today. Influence my thoughts and attitudes and keep me in hope, grace and positive energy. Surround me with Your atmosphere of love and life that will quench every negative temptation and suggestion. Fill me with love to banish all fear from my mind and heart. Fill me with confidence and boldness and assurance as I rest underneath Your protection and trust in Your covenant provisions for me.

Dwell in me by Your Spirit and motivate me with Your suggestions. Fill me with Your peace so real it can be felt by others. Fill my mind and heart with real truth that energizes, guides and reminds me of who You are and who I am designed to be. Permeate me with Your grace, fill my heart with instant forgiveness and keep me very close to You. Keep me from all evil that interferes with my recognition of Your quiet voice within me. Teach my heart to rest in Your strength.

Keep me from defensiveness and self-justification today. Cleanse me from all bitter roots and flush the poison of criticism and fault-finding from my bloodstream thoroughly. Infuse me with faith, hope and love to energize me with desire to see good behind other's unloveliness. I choose to look for You today in whatever ways You choose to reveal Yourself to me.

You are merciful, gracious, life-giving and untainted by my confusion and darkness. You are totally committed to sticking close to me tighter than skin no matter how I feel, act or react. Your love lifts my head when it is pulled down by sorrow, shame or fear. God, I look to You as my Daddy who protects me and provides all of my needs. I choose to cooperate with Your plans for me today whatever that means. I do not claim to be Your most loyal friend, but I want You to grow me into that kind of person. Fill me with loyalty and total, undivided devotion to You.

Thank-you for the many reminders all around me of Your grace, Your provision and Your wisdom. Most of them go unnoticed because I am so used to only dwelling on the dark things in and around me. Please remind me constantly throughout this day of the good things, the life-producing things, the reflections of You that can be detected in each and every person I meet or converse with, the lessons of life and hope and beauty in nature and the touches of love and compassion you have placed in Your creatures. Thank-you for expressing important things about Yourself even in the animals that bless our lives.

Thank-you for the wife You have appointed for me to love, to nourish and to cherish. You have designed our relationship to teach me how to bond and synchronize and enjoy life through compassion, sympathy and shared joys in preparation for the much richer intimacy You have waiting for each of us with You. Forgive me for failing to have Your kind of spirit towards her most of the time. Please transform me into the husband that she needs and that You intended for her.

Thank-you for the children You have brought into our family through various means and for various reasons. Forgive me for failing to live Your love and grace toward them most of the time. Please take them into Your own hands and supply the nurturing, discipline and unmistakable love that I have failed to relay to them. I am being raised as a child not far ahead of where most of them are and I thank-you for Your discipline and training and patience in my own life as well as theirs.

Father, You know we are planning to travel soon to the memorial service for one of the children You entrusted us with for a few years. This is going to be a very sad time for all of us, but more than that it has high potential for igniting and intensifying feelings and triggers that lie unresolved in the hearts of many of the people who will be present there. I especially plead for an abundance of grace, healing and forgiveness to fill all of our souls, minds and hearts. Remove the bitterness that poisons so many of our hearts in this situation and keeps us from loving each other. Much of this poison is fed by many other unrelated issues or people that still remain buried in our hearts and memories that most of us have been unwilling to face. Father, I give You permission to access every heart involved in this time of mourning to reveal the real truth about forgiveness, about Your kind of love and to bring hope and life and joy into the dark places our lives and relationships.

Father, this requires power and healing and repentance of immense proportions that can only be miraculous. I especially ask that You permeate and flood my own heart with forgiveness, kindness and true compassion. Keep me very close to You as I go through unexpected emotions and unpredictable reactions. Prepare me to be a more efficient channel of Your healing grace to others. Please open my ears, my eyes, my voice and my heart to perceive others only through Your perspective and completely lay aside my prejudices, resentments and misconceptions about others.

Father, while this service and this weekend hold much potential for pain and conflict within our hearts and minds, that means it also holds even more potential for reconciliation, for bonding, for major breakthroughs and for massive progress in the lives of everyone willing to be touched by Your presence. I ask You to show up intensely so that Your presence will be unavoidably noticeable and Your transformational grace will be obvious. Overwhelm our shame with Your assurances of our value to You. Heal our brokenness with assurances of Your comfort and love. Banish all of our fears with the intense light of Your all-powerfulness and Your desires and plans to accomplish our full restoration to joy and wholeness. Father, Daddy, reveal Yourself to all of us in ways that we have never dreamed of or even know how to ask for. Father, show us Your glory for Your reputation's sake. Amen.

What Are You Reflecting?

I have been thinking more about this mirror analogy lately and was discussing it with my sister today when some more thoughts came to me. It is helping me have an internal image for when I find myself in situations that tend to trigger unwanted reactions within me.

I have observed and noted a number of times how our spirit is like a mirror that reflects the spirit of whomever we are focusing on. That is why it is so typical that when someone gets angry at us we most often immediately feel like getting angry ourselves. If someone shames us we often desire to shame them in return. If a group of people start gossiping we feel pressure to join in ourselves. Temptation in general is seen in the natural function of our mind to respond in kind to whatever is coming our direction.

I spent some time trying to draw a crude illustration of this today. It took awhile since I had never used the program before and it did not seem easy to learn intuitively and I couldn't find any instructions for dummies with it. But I finally got it finished and then managed to figure out how to convert it into a picture that I could use elsewhere.

While there may be many times when we may seem to have an opposite reaction to what is coming toward us, like fear in response to anger, I think that if we look deeper into our hearts that we will discover that many of the initial emotions that don't seem to be similar to what is coming toward us are often secondary emotions because of our feeling overwhelmed or vulnerable. But after awhile the real emotions reflecting the ones directed at us begin to emerge and our desires for revenge or for indulgence, depending on the situation, will begin to become apparent and the mirror effect becomes more evident.

Many of the ways we try to deal with this mirror tendency is to suppress our natural reactions so as to try to be a nicer person, a better Christian or whatever standard we have set up for ourselves. Very often we engage in patterns that are really nothing more than fancy ways of being a hypocrite without admitting the label. We try to mask over what we are really feeling inside with trained behaviors and calculated maneuvers to fit the model we want to project for our image. But underneath, the mirror is still functioning and all the painting and decorations that we arrange on the front of our mirrors has little effect on what is going on in our heart and with our spirit.

As I thought more about this analogy I realized that though God designed us as mirrors He did it for a much better purpose that how we normally live. We are designed in such a way so that we are supposed to be reflecting the glory of God just as Jesus did during His whole life on earth. But because we are thinking much more about how other people are treating us and are almost totally oblivious to the truth about what God thinks about us we end up reflecting the things that we were not designed to thrive on but that tend to dismantle us.

What can we do about this problem of reflecting the evil that is so real all around us? Since we cannot do anything about the fact that we are not originators but only mirrors, how can we avoid the consequences of reflecting the wrong things? In addition, if we try to confront others head-on about situations or attitudes the results are usually much less that God's design for our lives. In fact the very word “confront” when looked at carefully in this analogy reveals the problem of this approach. “Con” denotes a negative state of mind and “front” is to face directly. So when we decide to confront someone we are often assaulting them head-on with a negative spirit and will likely create a negative reaction in return because they too are mirrors reflecting what they are perceiving from our spirit.

As I thought about this I realized that when we are faced with a situation that tempts us to reflect someone else's attitudes and spirit we have a choice as to what direction we face our spirit. We may not have much choice in the moment about whose presence we are living with but we can choose who we focus our spirit attention on at anytime. In essence, if we turn our spirit mirrors away from directly facing others who may be the source of our temptations and look to see what God is thinking, something very interesting happens. Not only can we avoid the reactionary tendency to respond in kind to others but as we pay more attention to God others will begin to see in our mirror a reflection of God instead of the spirit they are projecting.

There are a number of interesting effects of adopting this posture besides the fact that we can avoid reflecting back what is being directed toward us. This angle of viewing others while focusing on God actually allows us to take the things coming at us and reflecting them on to God instead of absorbing them ourselves. In this way we can simply pass along all the anger, the bitterness, the shame and all the other evil that people intend to harm us with and allow Jesus to take it all onto Him as He has arranged for us to do. Then in exchange, because we are linked into relationship with God we can receive the grace, the forgiveness and the love coming from Him and bounce it off our mirror back toward the person we are interacting with.

Even more than all of this, God will also help us to view the other person the way He sees them instead of through our human way of perceiving others. God can see their heart which is hidden behind their mirror and if we will stay tuned to His face He can relay to our spirit what is really going on in their life and heart behind the outward appearances and fill us with His compassion and love in the midst of what otherwise may appear to be a hopeless situation. As we turn our focus onto heaven's perspective we will be more empowered to see as God sees and feel as God feels. We will begin to become real-life reflectors of the image of God which is His ultimate desire for every one of us.

The Counterfeit of Forgiveness

When we refuse to forgive, we are actually attempting to replace the role of the Holy Spirit in someone else's life. We subconsciously believe that our resentment, anger and coldness toward them along with all of our ways of trying to make them feel ashamed and terrible for the offenses that they have done will somehow force them to repent and restore our peace or maybe our relationship. It is our indulgence in the counterfeit spirit of conviction. We want to convict them through condemnation instead of kindness. We believe we might be able to force them into repentance. But the actual result is that we ourselves suffer the consequences of condemnation more than they do. Whatever we carry around in our container to dispense to others will permeate the container itself.

The gall of bitterness is one of the counterfeits of the oil of the Holy Spirit. It is a caustic acid that will eat away from the inside any soul container in which it is held. Jesus took into Himself all of this acid bitterness in the last three days of His life and it finally ate a hole in His heart and killed Him. If we refuse to allow Him to remove it from our hearts we too shall suffer the same agonizing death that He suffered. That is one reason that Jesus demonstrated that death, to reveal to us the true consequences of holding onto sin in our hearts. In the meantime we will suffer all of the pain from the etching and agitation in our own spirit and soul from this caustic poison inside of us. We cannot afford to try to keep this most malignant poison in us. It seems to promise to be a useful weapon against others to get even for their infliction of pain on us but it always ends up hurting us far more than it hurts them.

We may dilute this acid by mingling in the salve of the true Spirit and filling our minds with healing truths. But if we do not allow the convictions and gentle pleas of the Spirit of Jesus to access every chamber of our heart and give it permission to completely neutralize the springs of poison still buried in our memories, eventually the acid will continue to damage our insides and it will ruin our lives both now and for eternity.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and bitterness and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, which is the bitterness, anger and pain that causes dissonance and damage to our insides and our relationships. But we must first respond to the gentle promptings and invitations of the Spirit to agree with God's assessment of our real condition (confession) and allow Him permission and access to infuse us with the healing antidote of forgiveness and grace.

When we begin to truly understand the real nature of forgiveness we will be even more amazed at what God does in forgiving us. Forgiveness means taking full responsibility for the pain that someone else has caused us and not holding it against them in our heart any longer. It is true that God forgives us for all of the pain that we have caused His heart and does not hold our sins against us – ever. But even beyond that He does something far more amazing. He not only takes into His own heart full accountability and responsibility for the pain of His own heart, but in Jesus Christ He took into His heart every single effect of sin that ever touched the life of any human who ever exists, whether they want Him to do it or not.

This creates the situation where He can now offer us the opportunity to release this pain from our own hearts as soon as we are willing to release those who have sinned against us from responsibility for our pain. As long as we refuse to forgive we account the other person as the owner of our own pain. Since only the owner of anything has the right to give it away, we cannot be free to give Jesus our pain if we refuse to acknowledge full ownership of it. Only as we take back ownership of the pain that others have caused our hearts and minds can we move to the next step and give Jesus permission to assume ownership of it and release our hearts of that pain with His grace and love. Only then can the caustic acid of bitterness be completely removed from our insides and we can begin the healing journey to complete wholeness and freedom and joy.

We think secretly that if we forgive those who have wounded our hearts deeply that this will leave us defenseless and vulnerable to be hurt again. In a way that is true and we certainly can be hurt again. But this supposed defense is yet another counterfeit that is a false promise of safety for our hearts. The only real protection we can have against destructive pain in the heart is not a hardened wall around our hearts to keep us from feeling pain again but to be filled with so much grace and forgiveness that any pain that does occur will be swallowed up and neutralized in the healing presence of the grace of God filling our minds and hearts with instant forgiveness. We will learn that as we immediately take ownership of any pain we experience from others instead of holding it against them and making them accountable as the owners, then we can just as immediately turn ownership of that pain over to Jesus and in exchange receive His peace, His love, His healing grace that will transform us on the inside in totally unexpected ways. We will begin to really experience the life that Jesus offers, the abundant life.

The world's belief about survival and living life successfully is to protect ourselves against being hurt using whatever means necessary. Most of our lives revolve around the avoidance of pain which is rooted in fear. But God's method's are very different and must be exercised by faith in His ways and wisdom, not because they make sense to us, because He knows what is best for us. What feels sensible to us is what the flesh believes and it will always direct us toward the world's wisdom and logic and solutions that are deeply embedded in our logic and our natural reasoning. God's ways often appear irrational and unreasonable but are the ways that will bring true healing, wholeness and will restore us to our original design that presently makes very little sense to our ways of thinking.

When someone has violated us or someone we care for deeply, our natural instinct is to shut them off from our hearts, treat them with disdain, coldness and hostility. We may even wish them ill and hope that they will suffer intensely for the sins that they have perpetrated against us or our loved ones. This makes us feel a little more powerful, a little more in control. And control is something we somehow believe will make us safe again. Control is a way of building or maintaining the hardened wall around our heart to keep others from hurting us very much.

But control is another counterfeit that will let us down when the crunch times come. God never controls us in the way we imagine control most of the time and the way that we want to have it. Control is the enemy of freedom and perfect freedom is the environment in which we were designed to thrive. God will never destroy freedom with control and force for the sake of appearances, but we are ready to do that most of the time. God will allow natural consequences to affect our lives but He will not indulge in the enemies deceptive tactics of control for the sake of conformity. That is one of the core principles of the external-based world of Satan's government. God's empire is built securely on internal transformation and motivation based on the constant influence of grace, humility and perfect love – never control.

I am facing these issues in a very real way right now and want to learn these principles at the deepest levels of my own heart, not just in explanations and understanding the theory. I do find it helpful to work through the growing awareness of God's ways, but unless my heart also receives and experiences what I am perceiving I will lose the most important part of the lesson and will be eventually be exposed as a hypocrite. I already have plenty of that to deal with and want God to transform my heart and life to be more in line with the true reflection of His beauty and attractiveness.

As I look inside I see desires and fears and pain that are indications that the healing oil of forgiveness has not yet neutralized some of the acid of bitterness against those who have hurt me deeply or damaged the lives of those I love. I can easily justify my resentments but that path will never get me to true freedom and wholeness. It will only circle me around back into more misery and will keep me trapped in the vicious cycle of illogic, depression, increasing isolation and bitterness. If I choose to cling to my pain and believe the false logic of my flesh in my attempts to protect myself, I will remain circling around in the wilderness much like the Children of Israel did in the desert after Mount Sinai. I know this wilderness all too well and I want to be filled with the faith of Joshua to take bold action to follow the lead of God in a new and uncharted direction.

This bold new direction will involve facing impossible odds and terrifying obstacles that threaten to destroy me. They are designed to keep me securely in my old box thinking, but to stay in my “safe” box with all my bitterness and fears is to suffer even more caustic damage from the acid of bitterness. I want to get out of the box, to be filled with holy boldness to cross swollen Jordan Rivers, to face giants and high walls and overwhelming armies set against me and enter into the land of milk and honey where I can grow and thrive and enjoy new adventures.

But entering that land of abundant life requires that I embrace the presence of the One who knows how to get me there safely. It means giving Him my fears and allowing my heart to have its defensive walls collapse before His holy armies of love that sing and celebrate instead of threaten. I must allow Him to plunder my own heart and take possession of everything I consider valuable so that He can rebuild me into His holy temple and set up His throne of love within me. My flesh and all its logic and protection mechanisms are really the enemies in the promised land that must be conquered so that God's Spirit can make me safe to be His homeland. Then He can launch His campaigns from this home base to take down every stronghold that still resists His love and forgiveness. I will then be able to see those who have hurt me and those I fear through new eyes and realize that they are also victims of the enemy and not the enemy themselves.

If I refuse to forgive those who have hurt me deeply I am also labeling them in my mind as the enemy and am setting them up as having the character and motives of Satan. But it is a deadly risk to accuse others of having the character of Satan, for accusation itself is the essence of Satan's character and name. By refusing to forgive I not only determine in my heart that my enemy is much like Satan but I fall prey to becoming more like Satan myself through my own indulgence in accusing.

God never, ever accuses. God never, ever forces. It often appears that He does because of the many things He allows or even utilizes already in place in order to draw people away from the false to look to Him for life. But God does not initiate these false motivations, He only captures them in His secret, amazing ability to bring good out of any evil situation whenever He is allowed. God can take all things and all situations and work them out for good in the lives of those who respond to His invitation to abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He is trustworthy and all who choose to trust Him will not be disappointed in the end.

God, please continue to pour Your healing spirit of forgiveness into my heart and neutralize the poison of bitterness that intensifies my pains and my false illusions of safety. Show me Your face more clearly today. Be with all of us in our sorrow and grieving and fill us with the peace of heaven that transcends all logic or explanation. You have promised to always be close to us and never, ever leave us alone. But open our senses and our hearts to know and feel Your presence more clearly. We need Your comfort, Your perspective, Your compassion, Your forgiving love in our hearts.

Father, there are a lot of dynamics for potential conflict, bitterness and resentment in our current situation. Please pour out barrels of the oil of grace into our lives and overwhelm us with fresh revelations of Your awesomeness, Your beauty, Your compassion, Your perfect ways. Open our hearts to forgive each other and those we struggle to see without fear or anger. Give us new hearts, new minds and a completely new spirit to see others as You see them and be filled with Your compassion for them. Take this opportunity to advance Your desire and plans for reconciliation and bonding in all of our lives so that Your glory can be more clearly exposed before our eyes and the world will be more amazed at what You can accomplish.