Thoughts About a Small Group

(I believe I wrote this during the time we were starting up a men's small group and I wondered if it would continue or die)

I sense that God is impressing more and more people with a holy frustration and a deepening desire for a spiritual encounter that can bring meaning, purpose for living and a real change to their lives. I have watched with interest over the past few years and months God's providence and impressions in my own life. I too have a growing frustration with the disconnect between formal religion and the spiritual life I want to experience. The different areas of emphasis that God has led me through over the past few years seem to be coalescing into something much bigger than my own life. God seems to be strategically training and shaping all who are willing to be discipled for something I can't perceive yet and most likely don't want to know ahead of time.

But again, there is a growing intensity in friends I speak with lately for God to reveal Himself to us in a more tangible way. “Religion” just doesn't cut it anymore, though they are not ready to abandon the church. As for myself, I strongly urged Gil to help facilitate this group because of a deep personal need for a spiritual connection point, a time and place to assemble with other hungry and hurting people experiencing a growing desperation for God. I believe there are advantages to collective hunger. I have learned from recent reading that God is waiting for us to be hungry enough before He can reveal Himself. After all, He can't feed the full very easily.

Another reason I have hopes for this group is a very personal, vulnerable and somewhat terrifying one. I have been challenged by God to an impossible assignment, at least on my own. He has made it quite clear to me starting several months ago that I have to learn to understand my wife, be completely vulnerable to her and learn to be totally Christ-like starting in my home which seems to be the hardest place. The rewards are going to include unthinkable growth and a new intensity of worship and joy that I have never imagined before. But I don't seem to make any headway alone accept to become more familiar with some of the concepts and principles by reading and tapes.

Accountability Friends

I realize that I need a group of friends that are willing to stay close to God and help me be accountable for my personal growth. This is very frightening for me. I know many of you may knowingly smile because you have been there and done that and wonder whats taking me so long. Well, the issues as I see it involve several things – trust, opportunity and time investment.

There might be people around me that would be capable of being a support group but they have to be willing to make the investment of time to allow that to happen. If these people carve that time out of their hectic schedules all at the same time to meet together that could potentially create an opportunity. But even if all that happens, the most important element is trust, which is most expensive. It involves mutual vulnerability as well as confidentiality which I have never seen happen.

Over the last few hours the Lord again coordinated my study to impress me with something relevant and important Ps. 50:16,17 “To the wicked God says, 'What right have you to tell of my statutes and to take my covenant in your mouth? For you hate discipline and you cast my words behind you.'” I also read in My utmost for His Highest for October 22 “...we want the witness before we have done what God tells us to do. 'Why does not God reveal Himself to me?' He cannot, it is not that He will not, but He cannot, because you are in the road as long as you won't abandon absolutely to Him. Immediately you do, God witnesses to Himself. He cannot witness to you, but He witnesses instantly to His own nature in you. If you had the witness before the reality, it would end in sentimental emotion.... Stop the impertinence of debate.... As soon as you abandon reasoning and argument, God witnesses to what He has done, and we are amazed at our impertinence in having kept Him waiting.”

Rebellion Like Witchcraft

1 Samuel 15:23.

Rebellion is similar to witchcraft/divination.

Insubordination is similar to iniquity and idolatry.

I am trying to grasp the truth in this verse and flush out the lie that was deeply embedded in my mind associated with this text. My Dad would hurl this verse at me when he was upset with my behavior or when talking about others he didn't approve of. I sensed that he was trying to force me to change my attitude by condemning me with this text. But it always and only produced an immediate reaction of resentment and anger toward him and toward God who was behind it.

The use of force and condemnation produces discouragement and/or hostility. Using this text always produced the opposite result from what he was looking for. I believe my Dad was operating in a spirit of rebellion himself when he did this. He believed if he could make me afraid of being associated with the idea of witchcraft and idolatry I could be shamed into being righteous and submissive.

It seems like he was trying to break my spirit with threats and insinuations. Every time I hear or think of this text I have a similar negative reaction. There is an emotion attached to this that indicates there is a lie embedded in these memories that is distorting and twisting and miring the truth that must be in this text. I believe the process of Spirit-led inductive study could be a most invaluable tool for bringing the light of truth to shine on the lies that drive me and exposing them for what they are. Then God can embed His truth in place of the lies. And since truth is light in itself it will stay light and transform all the memories and feelings and behaviors associated and affected by that former lie.

But it is very important to explore and expose the full extent and existence of the lie before removing it. The larger and more complete the lie is exposed the more will be removed when the Word cuts it out. If we move to excise error too quickly we only cut out the small portion that was exposed and leave much of it untouched to continue to fester and trouble us.

Romans 8 - Fossils in the Heart

Romans 8. When the law tries to work out in the flesh the outcome is always condemnation of people. The law only works for untainted perfect beings. Because of the lies and distortions we are born with, becoming perfect by trying to keep the law is a fatal strategy. And asking God to help us keep the law is even worse. God will not help us do the impossible. He wants us to die to this idea entirely and let His power bring to us the life of His Son inside us.

When our focus is set on the Spirit of Jesus (v.6) it is sin (separation from God) that we will condemn, not people. God yearns intensely for the people He created and condemns the separation and lies that keep them away from Him.

To walk according to the flesh is to set our minds on believing the lies Satan has implanted in us. The inevitable result is hostility toward God at our gut level, even if we pile on mountains of piety, religion, good works and Biblical knowledge. It only buries the lies deeper. And like fossils in the ground, the more weight you pile on top of them the more they turn into fuel for fire. Sooner or later they will ignite in rebellion and hostility toward God and all who are like Him. We are storing up wrath for the day of wrath.

The only solution is to acknowledge our root lies through the ministration of the Spirit and let Him replace our foundations with truth. Truth, most of all, is truth about who God is, what He is like, how He feels about us. Every lie at its root attacks God's reputation and only God Himself can address and change those fossils in our heart.

Romans 7 - Salvation Math

Romans 7

10 Righteousness is appealing, drawing, attractive. But when I try to grasp it directly it turns to fire in my hands, condemnation, torture, death.

Why does something so good, so right – righteousness itself – produce in me the opposite? The law of mathematics. When multiplying numbers with opposite signs the result is always negative. The law is positive but I am negative. No matter what number I achieve I am still negative. So every time I have intercourse with the law to produce offspring (multiply) the outcome is negative.

24 Who will set me free from this formula that always results in death?

25 Jesus was a human who was not a negative number. When He has intercourse with the law (multiplication) He could produce righteousness. He entered a new factor into the equation whereby the result (I have just now been overcome with overpowering emotion and weeping at this revelation) could result in a positive. He became sin for me – a negative – so I could receive righteousness – a positive.

Although by nature and birth He is positive, sin was imputed/assigned to Him. He can somehow represent both depending on the function. As a positive He can multiply with the Father and produce positive. And as a negative, when we choose to have intimacy with Him (fellowship) the result is amazingly – POSITIVE. The mathematical law of multiplication says that two negatives result in a positive.

8:2 The law (of multiplication) of life in Jesus (with Him) sets me free, not from the laws of mathematics but from the wrong results always encountered by trying to produce righteousness directly. It is now produced indirectly through a third factor Who is both positive and negative.

Focus

Romans 3 shows a contrast between a focus on sin, or keeping the law, resulting in a knowledge of sin vs. a focus on God's revealed righteousness through Jesus resulting in knowing God and the truth about Him. What we focus on will result in intimacy with either sin or with God. This chapter is in the context of God on trial and His need to be justified. Repeatedly it is mentioned that evidence is being put forward of the truth about His character.

If we focus on keeping the law as righteousness we become intimate with sin and witness against God in His trial, bearing witness that He is a liar. In so doing however, it is exposed that I am the liar and God is not, ultimately exposing the truth about Him.

Verse 26 is the verdict of the trial – God is just and He justifies all those who choose to witness truthfully about both Him and themselves in His trial.

Faith is both produced and put to use by focusing on Jesus and the truth about God. By doing so we end up verifying the truth of the law (v. 31). But it is not by focusing on the law that we establish it. We have to focus on the truth about God's character as revealed in Jesus to establish the law.

Romans 7 and James 1. If I believe the lie that I can keep the law, then I am ripe for sin to use the law, the condemnation of my failure or the pride of my supposed success, to produce sin in me. James is more detailed. I am enticed, lured by the beauty of righteousness through perfectionism and the craving to have it now (lust) and have people think highly of me. If the lie in me responds to sin hiding in the clothing of LAW righteousness, sexual intercourse/intimacy/adultery will take place and sin will be conceived in me (produced in me). When sin matures – grows up – it bears the fruit of death/separation from life and the source of life.

Rom. 7:8 Apart from the law sin is dead. If I am disabused of the lie that I can be perfect by keeping the law, if I let Jesus take my focus off the law, then sin can't hide under those deceptive clothes and becomes powerless/dead in my life.