Two Inspirations of Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preach It, Brother!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Poor in Spirit Advantage

As I was showering this morning my thoughts wandered to my feelings of isolation that part of me has felt for pretty much all of my life. I remembered the feelings that sometimes cause me to try to connect with people emotionally so quickly that typically they withdraw in alarm which only adds to the weight of “evidence” used against me by those who want to judge me as an imbalanced and untrustworthy man.

As I was contemplating this pattern that seems to be a mark of my life, the words of Jesus suddenly popped into my head, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3) In the context of what I was feeling and thinking about, these words suddenly took on a whole new dimension that I had never been able to perceive before.

I thought about my own inability to form deep relationships compared to others that I have either observed or heard about who seemed to have satisfying soul-mates, those with whom they could bare their hearts without fear of being judged or misunderstood. It seems that every time I have tried to do something like that that sooner of later the result was some sort of betrayal. It was almost like I was destined to live under the influence of the Miranda warning, “everything you say can and will be used against you...”

But the more I thought about this the more I realized how much this just might be a genuine blessing in disguise, except for the first time I was getting a peek behind the disguise. I sensed that maybe it is actually a handicap for a person to have wonderful friends who care about them deeply, people in one's life who seem to be able to connect in some way to deep needs. Because the deepest cravings of the heart can simply never be satisfied by any mere human and to the degree that I believe they can bring lasting satisfaction is the same degree that I will not be hungry for the companionship and intimacy of my Savior.

In reality all of us are poor spiritually. But what I am starting to see is that Jesus was touching a deep sore spot in the hearts of anyone who was not blinded by the counterfeits offered by the alternative system invented by Satan. When a person is keenly aware and conscious that nothing is really meeting their hunger, that no one is coming close to fulfilling their deepest cravings for intimacy and deep fellowship and trust – that person is actually in a position of great advantage from heaven's perspective. And while they may not yet know that their condition is an advantage or even yet know that God is the one who is ready and eager to fulfill those deepest cravings of the heart, Jesus' words are clarifying reality, and He states unequivocally that these people are really the one's who are more fortunate.

One of the greatest hindrances to living a life of freedom for an addict is the intense feelings of temporary satisfaction they get from indulging in their drug of choice. While they intellectually may acknowledge that their real needs are not being met by the substance or activity that gives them such a rush, the attraction of feeling relief from their inner cravings even for a few seconds can be overwhelming and is their greatest hindrance to staying clean long enough to return to a “normal” life where they can learn to find more legitimate means of addressing their deep longings.

Maybe Jesus is talking to people here who are not living in denial or depending on a counterfeit fix to meet their deepest longings and numb their pain. While their lives may appear to be quite messed up by others who look down on them, these people are keenly aware of their poverty of spirit and they are longing for an intimacy at the spirit level that nothing has come close to satisfying yet. Jesus wants them to know that, far from being a curse or a terrible liability, their poverty of spirit is their greatest asset because it is a powerful motivation to come to Him and find the peace and joy that their heart is craving the most.

Those who know they are hungry and also know that nothing they have yet tasted addresses that hunger are the most likely to recognize the perfect object of their desires when they come to really perceive it. Those are the ones who are keen to be skeptical of every imitation and sometimes have a sharper awareness when a relationship or activity is not addressing or relieving their sense of emptiness. They are actually much closer to being willing to embrace the real riches found in the true kingdom being set up by Jesus than those who are still bottom-feeding in the illusions promoted by typical religion or humanism or any other counterfeit system promoted by this world. It is the poor in spirit who's very awareness of their poverty are the most ready and eager to latch on to real riches and cling to them with a tenacity stronger than the desire for life itself.

Some people who are not yet aware that they are actually poor in spirit are like those described in Revelation 3. You say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked... (Revelation 3:17)

As I thought about these things my heart began to warm. I realized that these words that had been brought to my mind were something of a compliment, an assurance by Jesus that, far from viewing my situation as a terrible curse I should see it from heaven's perspective.

Being poor in spirit should cause me to sharpen my focus on finding what really satisfies.

Being poor in spirit means more quickly turning away from cheap imitations that fail to bond me to other hearts with the proper adhesive.

Being poor in spirit, according to Jesus, is to be part of a group of people who are actually the citizens of the kingdom that will supersede all the kingdoms and political powers of this world.

Does that mean that I should relax and embrace my poverty of spirit and deep relationships with others? Somehow I don't think so. But while I still seek to discover points of connection with others who are also poor and starving in spirit under the guidance of my heart by the Spirit of God who is carefully knitting together the various elements of the body of Christ, I do not have to feel that my poverty is something to be ashamed of or despised. Being poor in counterfeit relationships, being poor in addictive substitutes is not a bad position to be in.

I must learn to see my poverty of spirit as the motivational engine that propels me toward living in openness and honesty with others, with myself and most of all with God. I must learn to focus my feelings of emptiness on narrowing my attentions and affections to that which really brings faith, hope and love into my life and exclude everything which only distracts or confuses me. I need to avoid more and more the things which neutralize or numb my awareness of my real poverty of spirit and instead fill my mind more and more with a true awareness of what is really valuable, what has eternal value and what will genuinely satisfy my heart and make me truly wealthy in my soul.

I Want to Fly

I woke up a while ago from a kaleidoscopic of dreams involving various emotions, desires and problems that swirl around from my past. After I woke up, a thought began to condense that was amplified by the reading I enjoyed a few minutes later. I need to capture it before I lose it.

In my dream I was riding along a highway and saw a small group of people laying on top of a large kite-type wing riding it like a hang-glider. Then I saw other various similar flying contraptions, some without people on them and some being towed by boats or cars. Immediately an intense desire welled up within me to be able to fly on one of those. My desire to fly has been one of the deepest longings all of my life and when I was younger I used to have frequent dreams about flying, though many of them included great difficulty and inhibitions.

The dream moved on to other unrelated but strange and unexpected events involving pets, estranged family members and the collapse of a trailer house with our things in it after being hit by the wing of an old fighter aircraft taxiing past. I have no idea if any of these things have any meaning for me or they were just a collage created from the process of filing away yesterday's batch of memories. But the intense desire to fly continued into my waking consciousness and linked with the verse I read from one of the devotionals I read.

And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people; (Revelation 14:6)

I have heard this text espoused and expostulated all of my life, but I never linked it with my own personal craving to be able to fly like the angels do even though that is exactly what I have always wanted. One of the conditions that I always had associated with my desire to fly was to have as little props as possible while enjoying the freedom of flight. In other words, gliding would be better than motorized flight and hang-gliding even better. Better yet, I heard about para-gliding in which a person could catch an updraft with nothing more than a carefully designed parachute type outfit and could soar around in the air under a giant canopy with very little apparatus involved while enjoying the thrills of seeming weightlessness and seeing the world from high above the ground.

At one point in my life I did manage to earn a private pilot's license but I have not been able to afford to fly for many years now in that capacity. But my desire to fly has not diminished much and I think that maybe it goes beyond just a fancy of my own and is rooted in a primordial function for which humans were originally destined to enjoy and has been stymied by the entrance of sin.

But there was another little element of my dreams that alerted me to something that I believe might be very significant in this context. As I watched some of the flying contraptions I noticed that some didn't have anyone on them and the reason was because it was against the local laws. This stirred up a bit of resentment in me that laws can be so limiting to restrict the natural desires of the heart that are implanted by God.

Upon reflection after I woke up I sensed that there was more to this than simply being prevented from having a good time for a few minutes riding around on something similar to a hang-glider. In fact, the more I consider this in the light of the messages from the three free-flying angels in Revelation 14 I think there is something here that may be very significant. For the longings and desires that have been slowly awakening in my damaged heart currently under reconstruction by the Spirit of God includes an intense desire to be free of the inhibitions that have suffocated my spirit for all of my life and prevented me from thriving and growing and really celebrating life with joy and abandon. And that is the same feeling that I begin to experience when I am allowed to really fly.

One thing that seemed drawn to my attention was the artificial restrictions imposed on those who fail to conform to the ways that the world demands they must live just a few verses earlier.

And he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name. (Revelation 13:17)

This is accomplished by the means of rules, part of the counterfeit system of control that has been invented by Satan to mimic the true ways that God relates to His created beings. I have explored this at some length before, but to put it simply, God operates on principles but the world follows the lead of the great deceiver and imposes artificial rules, laws and commands to accomplish its goals. The counterfeit system is based on force and fear and coercion while God's form of “government” is rooted in relationships linked with bonds of real love, selfless service and joyful community. The principles that “govern” all the universe far transcend just the spiritual dimension. What we have labeled as laws delivered by God throughout the ages are often simply revelations of innate principles of reality that have natural consequences both good and bad depending on how we cooperate or try to violate those principles.

But men's laws are based on the artificial system of government developed and refined by Satan, originally Lucifer who once was the closest created being in the whole universe to the throne and the mind of God. This angel is so well acquainted with the ways and truths about God that he is able to counterfeit them extremely convincingly and deceive many throughout the universe into thinking that his new ideas are superior to the ways of God that he considers too weak and too restricting.

In this context it is interesting to see the basic elements that will be involved in one of the final confrontations between the ways of God and the inventions of men following Satan's lead. One of the core beliefs promoted by the world is that community and success must be based on creating rules and laws that force everyone into conformity for the good of all. Law is considered the solution for nearly every problem in this world. But laws and regulations must be backed up by the threat of force through artificial means of enforcement in order to induce fear which is the primary emotion utilized to motivate all who are under the domination of Satan and his agents.

One thing I have noticed about the counterfeit system of law-dependence in this world is the ease with which laws can be enacted and changed on a whim. Laws are almost always created to promote the selfish interests of those in power and whenever another group of people achieve power they immediately follow the same pattern and use their position to impose their own will through laws on those around them.

Sadly, religious people have bought into this counterfeit way of thinking and viewing reality and are too ready with a great deal of condemnation and contempt for anyone who dares to challenge the whole concept of artificial law itself. As a result many people have come under criticism or have had their reputations maligned and destroyed by religious leaders and followers alike simply because they were trying to follow their conscience and the Spirit's leading in their life in contraflow to the imposed restrictions of laws and man-made rules. Religious people often have mistakenly believed that men's laws somehow carry a certain amount of divine weight and must be considered somewhat equal with the far greater principles of reality often referred to as God's laws.

Great wrongs have been committed and excused by following this kind of thinking. Christians under the reign of Hitler demanded that everyone should go along with his ideas and the laws he instituted because they were the rule of government and God commanded us to obey earthly authorities. This sort of logic has been repeatedly used all throughout history and is still very much in vogue today. However, the more I have contemplated and considered the ways and methods of God in relationship to His people the more I see the fallacy of this line of reasoning. On the surface it first appears to be very compelling, but upon closer examination I see that it is a very diabolical deception designed to control and suppress the true people of God by inducing fear and false guilt within their hearts to secure their compliance to men's artificial rule system of control.

So what does this have to do with flying? I think it has a great deal to do with it. For if my heart was designed to experience the thrill of uninhibited flight in dimensions far more important than just my physical body, and if that is God's real plan for my life, then I can be sure that the world's system is going to set itself up against the plans of God for His children and will employ anything and everything possible to prevent God's people from enjoying the freedom of the sons of God. And one of the methods that will be employed most is the full use of the artificial system of law with all its associated guilt, fear, condemnation and intimidation. It will culminate in the use of laws that will prevent God's people from participating at all in the economic system of the world which is another aspect of the counterfeit government that we live under.

Just as men create laws that prevent us from enjoying physical flight with freedom, so too are many of men's laws calculated to prevent us from flying in other dimensions of our life. So if I have a mindset that is controlled by the idea that men's laws are on a par with God's principles of creation and reality, then I am very vulnerable to the manipulation and inhibitions of the world designed to prevent me from following my heart in the ways God desires for me to do. I not only will be prevented from enjoying the thrill of physical flight on this earth but far more importantly I will remain grounded in my spirit and soul from following the lead of the Spirit of God in many other areas of my life.

Romans 8 tells me that those who are the real children of God will be led by the Spirit of God. But that leading will often put them at odds with the artificial restrictions of this world that are subtly designed to force us in a different direction. The tension between the world's system and the gentle, quiet leading of the Spirit will intensify until there will be a complete break between the two and the world will forcibly expel from society those who refuse to comply, they will be completely shut out of the world's sphere of privileges.

Those who have all their life served God from a spirit of fear, have tried to follow His “laws” from a spirit of duty and obligation rather than from a passion induced by and responding to His love for them, these will find it foreign to their thinking to break with their habit of obedience based on fear and will be overcome by the greater fear induced by the world's increasing threats against those who refuse to comply. But those who have been weaning themselves away from the counterfeit model of life on this earth and have instead invested their efforts toward intertwining their hearts with bonds of love and joy with the very heart of God will have a faith that will be found to be their vital link to the salvation provided for them by Jesus Christ. As Revelation puts it, they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. (Revelation 12:11)

Like the angels that they are listening to, they will have learned how to truly fly. For it is not just the words of the angels in Revelation that are significant to God's children but the example and demonstration of how to live life with joy, with fullness of heart, with loud shouts of praise and honor for their God - this is the example that those in tune with the heart and mind of God will learn to emulate. And as we learn to align our thinking and affections with the true ways of heaven we will find that we are in the midst of the greatest flying lessons we could ever imagine even right now. We will learn to fly so well that we will be prepared to fly away from this earth and join the angels in their joyful abandon of praise and song in devotion to the greatest Lover in the whole universe.

Cults and Leadership

I spent some time on the internet this morning researching some things about cults and specifically about one that I know about. I looked at a number of links from a very large collection put together by a self-proclaimed cult-exposer and even talked with him on the phone for a few minutes. As I browsed through the hundreds of names listed on his site I was surprised by the number of entries that he had listed – things like MLM groups and even ministries that I have heard nothing but good things about previously.

As I looked around on his and some related sites I was also surprised and even baffled for a few minutes by the proud display on the margin of one of them of an award for being so negative. I wondered that we have come to the point where we can be proud of our negativity. What does that tell others about us? And I also wondered just how much of this kind of atmosphere is reflected in many of the things that I say and write. I am aware that this is one of my great weaknesses and I am praying for grace and awareness to weed out more and more of my penchant for dwelling on the negative.

I thought about this more as I began to realize that I did not notice anything on these people's web pages that promoted anything positive or uplifting. It seemed only to be a collection of everything they could find wrong with everyone possible along the lines of their favorite soapbox subject. And while I realize that this was the reason for this particular web page I also sensed that focusing on all the bad things about others tends to reproduce those very same attributes in our own lives. I also noticed that “hard edge” in some of the comments and strong opinions that this person shared with me in our conversation on the phone. It was pretty clear to me that he had very little interest in hearing anything from me that might disagree with his opinions about the people he wrote about.

One thing that bothered me in his comments was his insistence that certain people were just intrinsically bad and, as he put it, were just wired to be evil. I cannot share that sentiment about anyone no matter how reprehensible their life and actions may have become. People are born with the image of God still to some degree intact in their hearts and most of the evil that they engage in throughout their life comes as a result of the evils committed against them in their early upbringing along with the progressive maturing of evil resulting from many of their own choices in life. Just as people can mature and grow as Christians, so too people mature and worsen in evil the longer they indulge in selfish desires and exploit others for their own pleasure.

One of the articles that I came across from this web site really resonated with me. It was written by an alumnus of Bob Jones University but could just as easily apply to any number of institutions or organizations that carry out similar practices and methods. It was very well written and I found it very sobering – a real wakeup call to return to the authentic teachings and example of the real Jesus instead of the polished, self-serving version of Jesus so popular in religion today.

One of the verses that he quoted in his post reminded me of what I have been learning in my study of Romans 14 over the past few weeks. As I thought it about it more I decided to look up this passage and review the context and message God may have for me there. I find that it is very rich with meaning and relevance to what God has been teaching me in Romans.

Matthew 20:25-28, Mark 10:42-45 and Luke 22:25-27 are all parallel passages that have a very important message to me about relationships and attitudes particularly in the body of Christ. They talk about the way that the world achieves order through control, force, intimidation and domination. This is the common method used in all relationships throughout the kingdom of Satan and the governments of men. But Jesus states unequivocally that in His kingdom this is not to be the way things happen. We must have the exact opposite attitude towards each other and to be great we must be the most devoted in service to others.

The bottom line problem that I have observed in all the dysfunction seen in religious groups whether they be cults or mainline churches is this penchant for domination and control by the leaders. It is a fierce temptation that seems to take down many aspiring leaders that try to start up a new movement of genuine Christ-followers. And the more they use intimidation and control of others to manage their image and produce good appearances for their organization, the more the reputation of God is blasphemed and the hearts of millions of followers are wounded.

In Romans 14 I am learning that the real problem behind judging and viewing others with contempt occurs when I fail to stay true to this command of Jesus to watch the condition of my spirit. And it is not so much a command by Jesus but really more of a description of what those will look like who accept His transformational work in their hearts and lives. Instead of working very hard to produce similar results to that described in the early church of Acts, if we allow the spirit of humility and love to permeate our hearts and emotions we will see a spontaneous outbreak of true primitive godliness in its natural form.

Something very important about this has come to me recently in my study of Romans 14. I noticed that the problem arises when we begin acting like a lord in someone else's life instead of treating them respectfully and with love like a good sibling. As soon as we begin to lord it over someone with judgment and contempt we run counter to this clear teaching of Jesus to achieve greatness through humility and service to one another. This is the core problem that I believe derails every cult gone awry and is the problem underlying the weakness of all Christian churches today to really be effective in changing the world around them.

And He said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called 'Benefactors.' "But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. (Luke 22:25-26)

Learning to Learn

How do I learn? I mean, really learn, not just with my head, though that is an important aspect of it, but learn in a balanced, effective, thorough way so that it becomes a fully integrated part of my very being, my real, gut-level beliefs, my core identity? What are the attitudes and choices that might help me to learn more easily? What are the things that inhibit or block me from learning?

One problem I have in knowing the answers to these questions is my lack of learning already. For what I already know about this subject, like any other subject, I have already learned, at least to some extent. So I have to take what I have already learned about learning and trust that it is correct or at least useful enough to practice so that I can learn more. But if the skills or methods that I am currently using to learn are faulty or misleading or too restrictive, then the very means by which I am attempting to learn become the inhibitors that keep me from learning. That's a little scary.

Since I can only speak from my own experience and what I already think I know, I may not have the best answers at this time for these questions. But I have been sensing through my previous experience that it is better to ask questions and not insist on immediate answers if one wants to learn more effectively. Sometimes answers do appear rather quickly and are very useful and helpful. But other answers are blocked from coming to me or may be cut short if I have the habit of wanting a full or conclusive answer immediately. Unfortunately this is the model that I have seen in far too many teaching situations, whether in church or in school.

I remember years ago someone explaining to me how a highly effective teacher usually operates in relationship to their students. They told me that a really good teacher does not often give their students answers but instead induces a deep hunger and curiosity in their minds to know things they don't presently understand. Then the teacher provides the resources and opportunities for the students to themselves delve into the information provided or even seek out more resources to satisfy that deep hunger that the teacher has helped induce in their hearts. So according to this example, the greater the curiosity the more likely real learning is going to take place.

But one of the most important ingredients needed for that scenario to happen I believe, is that the relationship between the teacher and the student be a positive one of trust and admiration. The student's emotions must be activated to some extent and they need to have some level of admiration, respect and even awe for their teacher. They need to see their teacher as someone they would aspire to become like and be attracted to their inner qualities as well as their knowledge. There must be some sort of magnetic pull in the life of the teacher before the information he/she wants to instill in them becomes something they hunger for deeply.

If a hunger is always immediately satisfied, then it never has a chance to intensify. (That is also a symptom of addictions) And if a person is never very hungry they will never have that much deeper appreciation of things that really satisfy like those who have experienced deep hunger know about. A person who has endured very intense experiences of deprivation in any area of life and then received what they were craving and have known the immense relief and happiness and fulfillment that satisfaction can bring is a much bigger person inside as a result of that experience. They have greater emotional capacity which is important for growth in maturity. They are also much more qualified to be an effective teacher than those who have simply had their head filled with lots of facts but have never experienced the intensity of need to highlight the importance of those facts in their own experience.

But is it necessary that all answers need to be waited for and must be delayed in order to be more deeply appreciated? I don't know the answer to that question either. But I do know from my experience that it seems to be necessary to have at least a certain level of both skepticism and patience in order to avoid easy, glib and generally misleading answers to very difficult questions. Patience is always a very important virtue to have in most situations, but skepticism is something that must be handled very carefully or it can become more of a liability instead of an asset for us.

It seems that a certain level of skepticism is necessary to avoid falling into the trap of simplistic answers, of accepting the first thing that comes along claiming to be truth, of avoiding heavy use of the brain without the heart to uncover deeper truth or relying on others to spoon-feed us mentally and emotionally. There is far too much dependence on others these days and far too little real thinking and searching going on that produces real answers to real problems. It is not just mindless people flocking to popular religion that have this symptom. There are millions of “unbelievers” who tend to scoff and sneer at religious people and jeer at their hypocrisy and mindless solutions. But these very same people have their own forms of mindless thinking and reflective reactions and tend to follow their own leaders and depend on others to do their hard thinking for them instead of being open to sensing truth from an outside source in their spirit.

I firmly believe that truth is not something we are capable of knowing by simply trying to uncover it. I realize that this is the foundational presumption of the scientific method that is the most pervasive religion of our world today. And while it is certainly true that we may be able to discover many facts through research and observation, the scientific model carefully excludes some of the most important elements necessary to experiencing true life and a wholeness-based existence in proper relationship with all of our surroundings.

The root issue in this aspect is whether reality can be determined by the sum of our own discoveries and conclusions or whether real truth can only be received from an outside provider of truth that is the only source of it. This is where science-addicts and unbelievers begin to roll their eyes in scorn and turn away from the conversation to return to their favorite toys of self-based religion. For all religion or philosophy that is not a revelation from the only Source of truth and reality is false religion of self-worship and self-dependence. There is no third option in this case. We either trust in ourselves and our own abilities to provide us with knowledge and a true perspective of reality, or we must trust in God and believe that we cannot really know reality and truth without His self-revelation and provisions for us. And even when we claim to be listening to God as our source of truth, our deceitful minds may still be depending on self and the world around us while believing that we are following God. But the god we are following is most often a god that we have created in our image instead of the other way around.

But I still want to explore a little more these questions about how I learn effectively. I want to flush out more clearly into the open some of the things I am learning myself about the process of learning. Maybe it is because the way I have learned is changing so much in the past few years. And since it feels like it is much easier to learn and grow and mature and perceive more clearly than it was for me for the first forty plus years of my life, I would like to know what the difference is and how to amplify what works and minimize what inhibits so I can grow even more.

One thing I am noticing is that I feel more need to lay aside my own opinions, beliefs and pre-conceived ideas and open my mind to the Spirit of God in my own spirit and literally pause at times to see what might come to my mind that was not already there. It is not that what I already think is necessarily wrong. The problem lies in that, if I am unwilling to challenge, reexamine or temporarily lay aside my own opinions there is not enough room for my mind to consider something I am unfamiliar with up to this point.

One thing that is very necessary for me to be able to do this is a safe-feeling environment. If I am feeling coerced by someone to comply with their demands or conform to their opinions, then I simply do not have the desire to feel open and receptive. That is a very important point that I also need to apply to my own treatment of others. I need to be much more sensitive to how I come across when sharing what I believe and not cause others to feel threatened or intimidated into thinking that I am trying to force them to agree with me without their own time of quiet reflection on the things I am presenting to them. I need to respect not only where they are currently but also their personal accountability to God as their primary source of truth. I need to respect their right to take what I am saying with a grain of salt until they have had time to check it out themselves in their own heart on their own schedule and listen to what the Spirit wants to convict them of without my interference.

One of the things I am seeing in my study of Romans 14 is the importance of maintaining proper relationships with the proper partners in those relationships. Paul talks about the problems that arise when a person within the body of Christ tries to take God's place in another person's experience and in essence tries to be their Lord. That is really what judging and condemning is all about. When I judge someone else and view them with contempt as described in this chapter, I am in essence trying to set myself above them and insist that my opinions are better than theirs and they need to conform to mine or they are wrong.

But this passage reminds me bluntly that these people are my brothers and sisters and I am not their Lord. Furthermore, as one of the children myself, I am going to have to give an account of myself and my treatment of my siblings to my Parents in heaven in the day of Judgment and I had better keep that in mind now so it can temper the way I treat those around me. I don't want to have to try to explain to the only real Judge why I was trying to take His place in someone else's life and mess around with things in their heart that only He has the right to work with. That is too much like spiritual adultery, meddling with the intimacy that belongs to God, and God does not take kindly to that kind of treatment of His kids.

So part of the reason why I want to know the real methods of learning that are truly effective is so that I can also help others to learn without meddling in areas of their life that belongs only to God and them. As I better understand how God is working to grow me in grace and maturity and knowledge of Him, then I can better know how to relate to others and what to avoid so as not to cause damage instead of joy.

I have noticed, particularly in my private devotional times of meditation, but also more and more during my waking hours in spontaneous conversation with God, that if I lay out a question that comes up in my mind or heart and leave it with God trusting that He will bring me something in response, that very often if not always, I will encounter something or almost “hear” something in my head or heart that addresses this question in very surprising and satisfying ways. Sometimes it may come as an impression while I wait in expectant silence in His presence. Sometimes it will come in something I am reading or listening to. There have even been times when an answer came unexpectedly on a billboard along the road or in the words of something totally unrelated.

There are also many times when it seems that God takes things of science and nature and daily events and shapes them into profound nuggets of wisdom like parables that have deep subtle meanings very useful for life application in another arena. What I have noticed is that the more consistently I fill my head with things of the kingdom of heaven instead of the entertainment and music and thoughts all around me in the atmosphere of worldliness, that these insights come more frequently and more easily. It really does make simple sense but seems so easy to miss. The outcome of my mental activity is reflective of the ingredients that are available for its use. And my mental activity and choices about input greatly determine the atmosphere that inhibits or encourages my ability to hear the messages of the Spirit offering true wisdom, knowledge and revelations of reality.

To effectively learn in a balanced way, which means learning and growing both with the mind and in the heart, I need to pay attention to how much I am synchronized with the means and ways that God has provided for this purpose. The atmosphere that results from my choices that surrounds my mind and heart will act either as a receptive catalyst in which I can perceive the messages from God or will act as a filter that blocks those messages and impressions so that I do not notice them. This atmosphere is largely determined by my own choices in the little things, not so much in my professed desires for spirituality or holiness.

Father, give me the spirit of a learner today. Mentor me as a disciple and help me to more clearly focus on Your face, Your actions, Your attitudes and Your Spirit. Cleanse me of pride, of arrogance, of resistance, of blocking assumptions and lie-based beliefs that prevent me from hearing You more clearly. Teach me patience, joy and the art of resting in Your love as I receive Your wisdom.

To Sin or Not to Sin

I have had a question residing in the back of my mind that rumbles around frequently seeking resolution. However, it cannot be satisfied with easy, pat answers that tend to be the source of most arguments on the topic but rather I sense that it is something that I deeply desire to really know the truth about. That is partly because at the deepest level it can really be an issue of life or death for me.

The issue is about whether it is possible to stop sinning before Jesus comes. I am well aware of the explosive nature of this subject having been caught up at times in heated debates between people of differing opinions about this. But recently I have found myself in less heated discussions about this with people who tend to believe the opposite of those I usually find myself around and it has caused me to feel my need to revisit this subject much more thoroughly so that I am more settled in my own mind and heart on this issue. I need to feel settled on this, but not, however, for the purpose of winning some argument with an antagonist but because the issue is so central to understanding how to properly relate to salvation and to God Himself.

I am all too aware of the perils of perfectionism and legalism, having grown up very much immersed in those problems. I have spent most of my life trying to become disentangled from the built-in wiring that those beliefs left me with in my reactions to various situations. But I realize that I am also in need of understanding the pitfalls of the opposite extreme while keeping a careful eye on maintaining the right spirit while unraveling all of this. And that is the most important aspect of this whole issue that must always be kept paramount – the condition of my spirit. For if my spirit becomes contentious and argumentative while trying to discover truth, then any truth acquired in the process may become rather meaningless according to the words of Jesus Himself. But even though truth should not trump a right spirit and relationship with Jesus, He desires me to grow in my knowledge of truth while resting in a calm assurance of His love and grace over my life.

The core of the discussion usually revolves around the question of whether a Christian will continue to make mistakes and sin right up to the Second Coming of Jesus or whether it is possible or even safe to believe that a person can be really freed from the control of sin in their lives before that time. What I see as a large part of the problem of even talking about it most of the time is the ambiguity of the real meaning of many of the words used in the discussion. There are so many assumptions built right into the words that we use that it is difficult many times to know what words to choose without being misunderstood. Inherent in the meanings that we assign to words are the reflections of our beliefs about the subjects involved in those words. So when one person uses a word or phrase seemingly familiar to others they may not necessarily be intending or implying the same thing as the assumptions that others will make when hearing those same words or phrases. This is what makes talking about these things so hazardous and contentious many times.

So I find it constantly necessary to provide explicit definitions for the words that I use in order to compile an available compendium with which to understand what I am really trying to convey. Of course, to complicate matters my own understanding of those words is constantly under review and is being updated each day as the Spirit leads me into clearer understandings of truth. That is another reason that it is so important to pay more attention to my spirit than to the accuracy of my knowledge on any given day.

I have felt the need for myself to compile some of these definitions in writing so that these questions can begin to clarify in my own mind and heart. The very fact that this issue continues to stir around inside of me lets me know that it is something I need to face squarely until I find more peace. It also has direct bearing on the condition of my relationship with God, for what I believe about sin and about the process of salvation to free me from sin has a very great deal to do with how I will perceive God's attitude and actions toward me and how I will interpret circumstances that surround me. It will also have a great deal to do with how I perceive the meaning of Scripture as I try to understand its true application to my life and for those around me.

What emerged in my mind very recently was along the problem of defining the word sin. This has been a real problematic issue in discussions on several hot topics and is core to understanding quite a number of related issues. My own beliefs about what constitutes sin has changed quite dramatically over a number of years but still continues to be open to revision as the Spirit tutors me. My recent discussions with friends has caused me to again ponder how this fits into my own questions of just how free we can become from sin without getting pulled into the whirlpool of arguments that this often generates.

The person that I have been discussing with tends to repeatedly go back to the insistent position that we will all make mistakes and will sin as long as we live on this earth. I have been mulling that statement over and over in my mind trying to figure out what is really behind it, trying to uncover the underlying beliefs that drive so many people to cling to this belief so much. One question that I have not asked them yet is, where in the Bible can I find support for this assertion? There is certainly a lot of support for the fact that we have all sinned, but where does it teach that we cannot become free from sin until the end of the world?

There is something about this assertion that conflicts with a number of very clear passages from the New Testament. But again, I don't want to approach this so much as to win an argument but in a way that pursues what is really going on inside and what the deeper beliefs are that cause this belief to show up so often. I want to get below the surface discussions to what is really going on at the heart level that is compelling people to cling so tenaciously to this kind of thinking.

These words often seem to be spoken in a spirit of defensiveness. People who say this often feel under attack from either real or perceived antagonists that they feel are too legalistic. They are usually very afraid that they might be sucked into legalistic thinking themselves and so they seem to be using this mantra as some sort of defense against getting too close to perfectionism. But as I have found a number of times, issues that only appear to have two options are often missing the real point altogether. And this may certainly be one of those issues I believe.

Recently I have decided to follow the assumed logic behind this statement without giving in to the temptation to paint someone in the extreme who thinks differently than I do. So if I were to believe that a person simply cannot stop sinning even though they claim to have Jesus in their heart and be born again, what would that really look like?

One problem that seems to jump out from the very beginning is that if I insist that I cannot quite sinning due to my fallen, human nature, then by logical implication I have to be also arguing that Jesus is not strong enough to accomplish this freedom in my life. I am claiming that the power of sin is greater than the power of God to transform my heart, my attitudes and the way I treat others completely. That seems like a rather hazardous conclusion to me.

Another issue that comes to mind is that sin fundamentally is disloyalty to God. So if I insist that I will not be able to stop sinning until Jesus comes I am also saying that I will continue to have a treasonous heart until that point in my life. On this point I will agree that everyone is handicapped with sinful flesh that is inescapable until we can be delivered on the day of resurrection. But on this point the Bible is very clear that I am to die to myself and my sinful “old man”, even on a daily basis. It is my flesh that stirs up all the desires to sin and rebel against the authority of God in my soul and I need to crucify that part of me every time it tries to assert itself.

But if I maintain the belief that it is impossible for me to stop sinning before Jesus comes, then it seems that I may be giving my flesh a loophole through which it can assert its defiance of Jesus' authority in my life. This kind of thinking seems to not only be very hazardous for my spiritual health but possibly could be a fatal flaw in my theology that could allow my flesh to eventually expel the presence of Jesus from my life altogether. And while this is certainly far from the desire of anyone using this argument, the enormous deceitfulness of sin may be able to utilize this belief as something of a Trojan Horse to deceive me into believing that I can tolerate some level of treason in my heart while still being safe for God to save me in heaven.

I can see where much of our conflict arises because it is still not clear at all what we mean by sin most of the time. If we are talking about behavior and acts of trespass against others or even mistakes, then it is easy to see why a person could have a difficult time believing that we will be “perfect” at some point in this life. But if sin is really much deeper than that, along the line of intentional resistance to the Spirit of God and His convictions in my heart, then it might be very dangerous to teach and promote that it is impossible to be free from sin before Jesus comes. So one of the biggest underlying problems in this discussion is to determine what we really mean by sin.

I have absolutely no desire to get back into the bondage of legalism again or to encourage anyone else to get sucked into that either. But neither do I want to get caught in the trap of subtle deceptions that will betray my heart to the evil one without my even realizing what I am doing. Sin is much more about what is going on at the heart level than it is about bad behavior or mistakes that I make. Those are really along the line of symptoms which will disappear on their own if the root causes are dealt with. At its core, the most accurate and pointed definitions of sin is selfishness and pride.

This is why I sense that we cannot be comfortable with the argument that no one can quit sinning until Jesus comes. For to subscribe to that belief is to leave a door open, no matter how small, for the enemy to enter and operate clandestinely in my heart. I realize that the typical alternatives to legalism and perfectionism are not the right answers to this issue, but that does not make us any more safe. The real solution is total submission to the radical transforming process of the Spirit in our lives to free us from all rebellion and treason against God's authority, all selfishness and all pride.

Real freedom from sin is not something unattainable in this life. It is certainly not something we can accomplish by trying harder or focusing on our own perfection. And it is also true that the very people who are the most free of sin are the least likely to think that about themselves. For the closer one gets to the perfect example of Jesus, the ultimate demonstration of love, compassion, goodness, kindness and justice, the more one will see their own faults, weaknesses and imperfections. This will always lead them to doubt their own perfection and rightly so. But at the same time they must not get sucked into the trap of doubting the ability of God to transform them thoroughly in spite of what they think they see in themselves. They are to trust implicitly in the perfection of Jesus which includes His claim that He will completely save them from the power of sin in their lives.

So the real issue in this discussion appears to be not so much the point of sinning or not sinning itself but the dangerous underlying assumptions that it betrays. Are we willing to believe that God can do in us what appears to us to be impossible? According to the book of Hebrews that is the description of what is labeled faith and is what was demonstrated in Abraham's example. He believed that God could do what was humanly impossible and that belief was accounted to him as righteousness. And Abraham is given to us as one of the best examples of faith because of this.

A Warning From Solzhenitsyn

Upon listening to a radio report about the life and death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn yesterday, I heard something that reminded me too much of my own experience. Solzhenitsyn has been admired for many years as being a very bold proponent of exposing uncomfortable truth in the face of fierce opposition, slander and persecution. That is certainly a trait worth emulating and is in very scarce supply in our world today. But the reporter said something in her story that caught me by surprise and served as a warning to me.

She explained about his life in the U.S. after he was expelled from the Soviet Union and how he surprised Americans by being nearly as critical of Western society as he was of the brutal communist system for which he had become famous through his criticism and writings. He denounced the moral decadence of the West and the role of the media among other things. But when he finally returned back to his own country he also lost much of his appeal and influence with his own people because – as the reporter put it – he scolded too much. The younger generation felt annoyed about him dwelling so much on the mistakes of the past. They were not interested in hearing about the dangers of materialism and moral decadence that he harped on so much. They wanted to enjoy those things, not be scolded about them, so they lost respect for this man who, in their minds was just living in the past.

I realized instantly and intensely when I heard this that his problem is also one of my own greatest faults and blind spots. While many of the things that I say or communicate may be true and even very important, when I convey them with a spirit of scolding, that spirit permeates everything I represent with an “edge” that tends to turn people away and discredits the very things that they may indeed need to know about. This is another clear message to me again that the condition of my own spirit is of paramount importance, far more than the accuracy of my message or logic.

Evidently Solzhenitsyn had some of the same problems that I have and is an example for me to learn from. If I want my influence to have a deeper effect on the hearts of others I need to be transformed much more thoroughly by the sweetness and gentleness of the Saviour that I serve instead of the example of my earthly father. I want this warning to have its intended affect in my own life and I want to be much more alert to sensing the convictions of the Spirit to check my attitude and the tone of my communications. I want to learn how to speak the truth and not withhold anything for fear of consequences, but to do so in the spirit of genuine love like Jesus always did.

Hope or Love?

In a sermon I heard recently I heard comments about Christians through the ages being motivated primarily by the desire to hasten the Second Coming of Jesus. It was presented that this was the main desire that consumed their attention and compelled their reasons for witnessing.

As I thought about this I realized that we have been somewhat misguided in our zeal for promoting the Second Coming as the primary motivation for our Christian witness and the explanation for all Christian's activities in the past two thousand years. And while I certainly do not want to downplay the great importance of the Second Coming, I am convinced that we are making a serious mistake in overemphasizing it to the exclusion of other even more important elements in the plan of salvation.

It was pointed out to me some time ago that there are a number of denominations, of which mine is certainly one, that put great emphasis on the idea of hope. This emphasis is so strong in the culture of these churches that it often overshadows both faith and love in its influence on the lives and beliefs of most of its members. As a result there are significant problems that arise by procrastinating dealing with many issues as it is believed that we simply need to wait for the Second Coming to resolve all of our problems. I have noticed that it is even used sometimes as an escape mechanism to avoid facing difficult issues or emotional healing by simply assuming they cannot be dealt with and must be left to somehow evaporate mysteriously at the Second Coming of Jesus.

While hope is important, it should always be subservient to the passion of selfless love which Paul declares is even more important. (see 1 Corinthians 13) Looking to the Second Coming as our escape from pain and dysfunction is inherently selfish in nature in the way it is often taught. While the Second Coming is certainly a legitimate reason for hope, we need to examine our hearts and allow God to expose our mixed motives for looking forward to this great event.

The real motivation for all true Christian witness throughout all the ages is the compelling attractiveness of God, not a future time of escape when everything will suddenly be fixed. When once our heart is captured with the overwhelming truth of God's amazing love for us personally, we simply cannot refrain from desiring others to be able to experience this sense of aliveness, this compelling feeling of being valued that comes from experiencing the faith that Jesus has in us.

When understood correctly, the cross of Christ is really a demonstration of God's feelings about us and the lengths to which He will go to accept abuse from us to prove that we cannot extinguish His love no matter how hard we may try. The cross of Calvary is not about an angry God venting His wrath on His Son instead of wicked sinners but is about wicked sinners like us venting our wrath on a loving, forgiving God who refuses to stop loving us. If we can ever catch even a glimpse of the enormous passion that drives the love and kindness of God toward us, then faith and hope will simply be spontaneously present in our lives but will not inappropriately overshadow the place that love needs to have in our hearts.

But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Ambulance or Fence?

When I was growing up I remember a story that was a favorite of some teachers as well as my own Dad who used to like to tell it in defense of the validity of God's law. As the story goes, there was a high cliff near a town where people liked to go and hang out because the view was so striking. You could see the whole city and beyond from this high vantage point and it was often frequented by lovers who like to sit and watch the sunset while holding hands and savoring the beauty surrounding them. (O.K., maybe I made part of that last bit up.)

But there was also a problem with this high cliff. Every once in awhile someone would fall off the edge of this cliff and would sustain serious injuries or even death after striking the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Because of this a great debate developed among the people of this town over what should be done about this serious problem.

Some of the people insisted that an ambulance and a crew should be stationed at all times at the base of the cliff so that if anyone happened to fall that they would have immediate attention and could be rushed to the hospital in time to prevent them from dying if possible. But other people said that was a silly idea and that instead the city should build a strong fence along the top of the cliff so that people simply could not fall off the edge.

As the story goes, this debate became very intense and heated and caused a lot of strive and division among the people of this great town. Finally it was decided that the best thing to do was to station the ambulance and crew at the bottom of the cliff. Of course the story was told this way to illustrate the fallacy in the teachings of many denominations that all we need is grace and forgiveness and the law no longer applies to our lives today. Of course the assumption in the telling of this story was that the law acted like the fence at the top of the cliff to prevent people from hurting themselves.

This story certainly had its intended impact on many people's thinking including my own. But as I thought about it this evening something puzzling began to develop in my heart about this story and I realized that once again I have come across a tradition that has tended to mislead my thinking in regard to law and the principles of reality.

For instance, why did it never come up in the purported debates by the townspeople that the law of gravity should be suspended so that no one would get hurt if they happened too close to the edge of the cliff? After all, wasn't it really the fault of gravity that people got hurt in this way to start with? Yes, I realize that for humans this is not a realistic option and that is why it did not enter into their discussions. But as I think about it now I realize that the nature of true law is more along the line of principles like gravity instead of along the line of arbitrary rules and artificial restraints with attached punishments. Therefore, to use the analogy of the fence to prevent people from walking off the edge of a cliff as the thing to represent God's Law is to miss the main point that gravity itself is much more representative of God's Law than an arbitrary fence is.

But this is the nature of human thinking and we see the outgrowths of it everywhere we turn. We are forever coming up with more and more rules, restraints, barricades, walls and control mechanisms in our attempt to manipulate human behavior while largely ignoring the true problem which is usually immaturity. We are destroying the very beauty and freedoms placed in this earth by God for human enjoyment in the name of safety and security. We are selling our souls to those in power for the false promise of security and will wake up too late to find that we have only sold ourselves into abject slavery – and all in the name of law and order.

So let me go back to the fence and cliff idea. Let's just suppose that the argument was won by saner heads and the typical strong fence was installed keeping people well back from the edge of the cliff. Now since we are so used to seeing such installments nearly everywhere commercialization has invaded nature we don't think too much of this arrangement. But as a person who has enjoyed hiking in places where such restraints have not yet been imposed on the awesome scenes of wonder I can tell you that such barricades spoil to a very great extent the wonder and awe that such places tend to inspire when in the raw.

Most of the time these restraints are imposed on the public due to fear of lawsuits. As most people know our world is fast becoming shaped largely by the greed of lawyers who have more power to manipulate people's choices than nearly anyone else on earth. Our addiction to using laws and statutes and regulations to impose control over everyone around us and to fix every imaginable problem and many that don't even exist, is fast becoming not only ridiculous but suffocating. And unfortunately we believe that we are simply following the example of God who we suppose has imposed similar laws and punishments in order to manipulate and control His subjects. Thus we come up with illustrations like the one above to explain why God's laws are so necessary.

So the people have a barricade put up on the top of the cliff and everything is now just fine – right? Well, that depends on who you listen to. If you take the version put forth by the lawyers and the ones in power then you might come to that conclusion. But if you talk to the people who no longer can sit on the edge of the cliff arm and arm with their lover and watch the sun slip behind the horizon and listen to the birds and feel the warm breeze on their faces without artificial impositions obstructing their view; if you talk to the people who live more from their hearts than by a list of rules and enjoyed this special place but are forced by threat of arrest to stay away from this favorite spot, you might get quite a different story.

For you see, the real problem is not that there are not enough rules to prevent people from getting hurt but that there are people who have not been raised in a proper family that mentored them to use common sense and take reasonable precautions while learning to enjoy life to the max. You have people who are irresponsible and thoughtless and immature who are looking for attention or simply not paying attention who create these problems that society takes upon themselves to solve.

Now I'm not claiming that there is no need for rules or no place for artificial restraints. Paul makes it very clear in his writings that the “law” was given for those who are immature until they are grown enough to live in harmony with the underlying principles of the law. The problem is, in our world now there is very little maturing going on and a great deal of controlling going on instead. The way things are set up now actually works against encouraging people to mature and instead induces them to remain in very immature conditions while they blindly follow rules created by other quite immature people.

Maturity has to do with learning how to live in harmony with the natural principles of reality. We sometimes call some of these principles natural law and other ones we call spiritual laws. But really they are all one and the same thing, just showing up in different venues. All of God's principles are laws if you want to use that word and all of the external laws throughout the Scriptures are based on eternal principles although some of them were more localized to specific cultures or situations that no longer are useful today. But the underlying principles or laws are eternal and permanent in nature and cannot really be broken. Its like the “law” of gravity – you don't break that law but it certainly has the potential to break you if you violate it in the wrong way.

So I propose that neither the ambulance nor the fence is the ideal way to resolve the issue of people falling off a cliff. Neither is believing that all we have to do is believe that Jesus paid for our sins so we don't need to worry about quitting sin because that's impossible. That is certainly like depending on the ambulance at the bottom to make up for our foolishness committed at the top and if thought about honestly doesn't make sense either.

But likewise, I also no longer subscribe to the idea that the best solution is to impose artificial law with attached punishments like the fence and new regulations on the cliff as the longterm solution to resolving our problems. While that may appear to work in some respects it also robs us of much of the joy and freedom that we were designed to enjoy. Attempting to remove all risks from life is to remove all freedom, and freedom is something God values far more than we tend to.

I believe that God's real plan is to grow us up in maturity and allow us much more freedom so that we can return to sitting safely on the edge of the cliff and once again enjoy the love and fellowship and the stunning beauties that God created for us, not because we are forced to be safe by some imposed barricade but because we are living in harmony with the natural laws that govern all of nature and even the universe. Living in harmony is what love is all about and harmony brings peace and joy and satisfaction like no rules will ever be able to produce.