Resisting Truth and Catching Fire

We react with the feelings and intensity that reflects what we really believe about the God we imagine Him to be.

Watch the reaction of a person when confronted with concepts about God that challenges what they already believe. If they become hostile, then what they reveal is that they want their God to be hostile toward those who disagree with Him. If they become intrigued, then there is a good possibility that deep in their heart they have been secretly hoping that God was much better than how He has been misrepresented by religion. These are the ones who are more likely to respond positively to the true gospel.

I am still struggling with my own gut-level false views of God that run counter to what I am learning and teaching about Him. Very often I sense an intensity of irritation whenever people resist thoughts on what God is really like. But then almost immediately I realize that my spirit and my words are incongruent and I have to cry out to God to do much more work at my heart level. I want my heart and spirit to reflect what I am learning with my mind about God, but I cannot force myself to believe these things just because I can logically perceive them and observe them more clearly in the Word. What is being exposed at times is my real gut-level beliefs that are still entrenched in old patterns and familiar routines reflective of the lies that are believed all around me. I want to become completely free of all of these lies but that is a goal that is far more difficult to reach than just accepting new facts. What I really need is to be mentored and exposed and healed.

Most of the lies still embedded in my life remain out of sight for me though I can see the symptoms at times. My lack of real love and compassion for others betrays heart-based lies about God's compassion and love for me. My lack of gratitude betrays some other lies that I still am not even sure what they are. My anger and lack of respect for authority at times betrays deep roots of bitterness which are also based on lies about God that are systemic in my nature.

I am starting to realize that sometimes when I am confronted with lies in others people's reactions to me that those same types of lies are triggered inside myself. Ironically I am trying to counter those lies in other people's minds with my words, and when they resist what I am saying their very resistance awakens sympathetic reactions in me which tends to justify that their lies are actually true and my words are wrong. Because I become resistant and my voice takes on an edge, I am actually giving a mixed message that can be confusing and self-defeating. I am acting as a false witness about God with my spirit while attempting to be a truthful witness with my words. This sounds a little like the description found in Romans 7 and 8.

When I find myself giving an inconsistent witness for God I am immediately assaulted with strong temptations to just give up and accept that maybe these new truths about God are not really factual after all. But I know the source of those kind of thoughts – the same source that implanted all the other lies in my heart that I am struggling to become free of. Instead of giving up my attempts to embrace fully the truth about God's goodness I have to throw myself onto God's mercy and grace and power to transform me more completely into the likeness of His character that He is revealing to me. Instead of caving into fear and feeling condemned by the false pictures of God that I have grown up with, I must steer my thoughts into dwelling on what I have heard from God and what He has shown me from His indisputable Word about how He really feels and acts toward me. I have to exercise the little faith that is growing inside of me so that it will stretch and grow and deepen its hold in my own heart.

Why is it that we are so resistant to believing the truth about God and accepting that He never will torture people with fire in revenge for not trusting in Him? This is the question that keeps coming to my mind at times.

What seems to keep coming up in answer to this question is that we are loathe to give up our current concepts of God that we have embraced for so long in exchange for a God who just might not satisfy our deep cravings for revenge against those who have hurt us deeply. That is such a horrifying thought that it is easier to insist that God will indeed run out of patience and will resort to force and human-like anger to satisfy our warped sense of justice by lashing out at those who have wreaked so much damage on the earth in the lives of others.

We want an angry God when we feel angry.

We want a God who uses force when we are feeling helpless.

We want a God to torture our enemies whenever we are being abused and mistreated.

We desperately want a God to do all the things that we want to do

if we just had access to the power of the Almighty.

Inherently – at least when it applies to others – we like the idea of condemnation, of revenge, of getting even, of settling the score by hurting others at least as deeply as they have hurt us. And anything that challenges those assumptions about what constitutes justice is reprehensible to our way of thinking and our inner picture of God. So we often become very defensive of our own beliefs about God and insist that the problem lies in the ones who are seeing something new in the Scriptures about God that challenges centuries of settled doctrines built on our images of God that are reflective of our own sinful desires. But when it really comes down to it, more often than not we believe in a God who is shaped more in our own image than the other way around. And when we choose to continue to believe in a God who indulges at times in hateful anger against people and even plans to ultimately torture them with fire for displeasing Him, we are actually reinforcing the image of Satan in our own hearts and then projecting those concepts onto our false image of God. Thus Satan succeeds in painting God with the distorted, twisted, depraved character that he himself possesses while causing humanity to sympathize more with Satan and believing that he is not nearly so bad as he has been made out to be.

But the truth is that all of the false notions we have about God are actually reflective of the character of God's archenemy, Satan. Originally we cannot help it that we think this way about God because we were born in a world controlled and saturated with lies about God that influenced our minds and hearts as we grew up. Our concepts of God are inevitably formed by the way adults treated us as young children. God understands this far better than we do and does not condemn us. But the true gospel about God is becoming more and more clear today and when we are faced with the real truth about God's perfect love, His never-failing compassion and goodness, His unconditional forgiveness and the fierce protection that He exercises over the freedom of each person to choose for themselves, then the natural consequences of rejecting this true gospel results in all the tragic “punishments” that we have previously thought were imposed by an angry, offended Deity.

But the truth is that it is sin itself that pays out the wages of death, not God. The real truth is that there are universal principles in place that cannot be ignored or defied without terrible consequences ensuing except as intercepted by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ taking the hit for us so that we can have another chance to synchronize with reality.

Yes, God takes full responsibility for all the bad things that happen as a result of sin that we call punishments. But where we get confused is that the consequences are built into the forces of reality and the principles of creation that God set up originally, not imposed arbitrarily and directly from the hand of an offended Deity. Because God created the universe and set up all the principles and forces that are so powerful and potentially dangerous when ignored, He accepts full responsibility for setting it up that way. But just because a person can suffer enormous pain and even death when ignoring the principle of gravity does not mean that God is personally imposing those consequences as an arbitrary punishment for “disobedience” to that particular law. And this same concept applies to all the principles and laws that govern the universe in every aspect of reality – physical, spiritual, emotional and any other dimension that may exist.

The real gospel brings to light the this very truth about God's consistency and the truth of His unconditional, unchanging attitude toward all of His creation. What we should be afraid of is not an angry God who is desiring revenge on His enemies but a loving, compassionate God who is so pure and undiluted in His passion for our hearts that to come close to Him while harboring lies about Him results in sheer torture of a magnitude far worse than any fire could ever produce in our minds or bodies. It is far easier for us to believe in a God who is more like us and wants revenge at some point in time because we can respond with hatred and resentment and feel justified in our resistance. But to face the fact that God is so unselfish and passionate to save us that He stops short of nothing to accomplish that purpose except to refuse to use force against our will, this is a situation that exposes our own sinful desires that causes our selfish hearts to become exposed and frightened.

God knows that the inherent principle that must be satisfied to experience real love is absolute freedom to reject love if one chooses to do so. Whenever freedom is not present mutual love can never be present in a relationship. When we maintain false notions of God that paint Him in any way as one who violates our freedom or forces our will through intimidation or threats, we are trying to shape Him into our image and try to reject the far more potent reality of the dangerous potency of pure love.

What is now coming to light is that love itself is so powerful and full of energy and inherent “force” that it is lethally dangerous whenever it is resisted by lies about it. That is precisely why God has to veil Himself so much from our view until we are free of all the lethal seeds of sin that would act like land-mines in our heart if we were to see His face fully in our fallen condition. Whenever a person is faced with unconditional love, forgiveness and compassion they are forced to either embrace it and be embraced by it or they face the prospect of inner torture of extreme magnitudes due to their own resistance to that kind of love.

But key to this understanding is the fact that it is not true love's intention to torture the resistant heart but it is just the natural consequence of resistance itself. Just as a resistor in an electrical circuit will overheat and catch fire when faced with more current than it can handle, so it is with a heart that resistants the current of love that powers the whole universe; it will heat up with resentment and anger and fear and will eventually experience the same sort of pain that it imagines might come from an angry, vengeful God that reflects its own characteristics even though that is not what is really going on.

Thus the fires of hell are really of our own making. And the real reason we are so resistant to embracing the truth about God today is because if we are unwilling to let go of our own desires for revenge against others and truly forgive them from our heart, we will begin to experience the fire of hell right now. For to be unwilling to forgive another person while trying to draw close to a God of unconditional forgiveness and love is a recipe for producing hell in the heart. It is a small foretaste of what all will experience who ultimately reject the revelation of God's heart of passionate, unrelenting love for sinners.

Resistance and Forgiveness Revisited

I have been pondering the issue of resistance for quite some time and the effect that it has on our relationship with God. Ever since I started becoming aware of the truth about God's wrath it began to become increasingly obvious to me that the real problem is not God's lack of patience or His supposed anger but our resistance to His love and passion.

But this morning I became aware of another dimension to this problem of resistance. I was reading a story about a terrible injustice committed against a black person in South Africa years ago and how he later was able to engage in a life of compassion because of his choice to let go of his bitterness and forgive the one who had tortured him and ruined years of his life.

This is a typical story in many respects of things that go on in this world, at least the first part of the story is very typical. Injustice has become the norm in this world and true justice has almost become extinct. I myself am struggling right now to have a proper attitude about a very corrupt judge that is playing the system to unjustly keep a dear loved one of mine in an extremely abusive prison month after month without any trial or conviction. It is taking a heavy toll on the one receiving this abuse along with all who are close to him. And the greatest temptation for all of us is to give in to anger, bitterness, evil thoughts and desires for vengeance against the corrupt officials who so selfishly are abusing their positions of power and using people's lives like pawns to be played on with impunity.

But this is just the normal attitudes of the heart of flesh. And tragically the temptations that are assaulting each of us who are aware of this terrible situation of injustice is the intense attraction to become just as hateful, selfish and abusive as the corrupt people we are tempted to hate. My natural reactions of the flesh is to wish that I was in a position of power over them so that I could inflict at least as much pain and abuse on those judges, officers and wardens as what they are doing to my friend. But when I face those internal impulses honestly and confess them to God I have to admit that morally I am just as bankrupt as those that I desire to get revenge against.

So I am brought face to face repeatedly each time this situation stirs up my emotions, with my own very real need to receive and embrace the spirit that comes from Jesus, the spirit of complete and comprehensive forgiveness. Now I am not talking about the mistaken notions of forgiveness that most people have in their minds and that I grew up with and had until recently myself. I am talking about the true attitude of forgiveness that I have only learned about recently in the past few years that has challenged me to move far beyond my old habits and attitudes as a typical kind of generic Christian.

But it is precisely at this point that I am now becoming aware of one of the most important factors about this issue of resistance. For what I am now realizing is the true nature of those feelings that surge up in my mind when even the suggestion of forgiveness is presented under such obvious conditions of injustice as I am facing now and that millions face every day. Those feelings inside cause resentment at even the suggestion of relinquishing my rights or my independence and freedoms and are full of this very attitude of resistance.

The core ingredient that motivates most if not all of the sinful desires that surge around within me are driven by my resistance to the ways and will of God. When I face the convictions of the Word of God and the promptings of the Spirit to accept His grace and extend that same kind of grace to others, it is my resistance that causes me to even hesitate and struggle with turning in that direction. It is resistance that attempts to prevent me from accepting the invitation of Jesus to come to Him to receive rest and peace. It is resistance that causes me to rebel when someone tries to point out my faults. It is resistance that fuels my intense and fierce emotions and reactions whenever someone uses fear and intimidation to force me into compliance with their rules or their immediate control over my life. Nearly everywhere I look I am becoming aware that there is an element of resistance present to some degree or another.

Even as I write these things I am feeling that sense of mixed emotions that arouses intense questions and even confusion of identity in my own heart. I feel an urge to defend myself and to justify these desires. Part of me screams out for fairness and justice and to be treated right but at the same time another part of me warns that to demand my rights and crave revenge against those who treat me abusively plays into the deceptions of the flesh and actually moves me into becoming more and more like those whom I despise. And right at the center of that whole struggle is my inner core of intense resistance that appears to be working for my good while actually acting as a traitor to my own soul.

Resistance is possibly the main element within me that the Bible calls my sinful flesh. It is resistance to believing that God's ways are superior to my ways and is the only way that I can continue to enjoy real life. It is resistance that inverts sinful humanities perceptions of reality and causes us to believe the opposite of what God declares is real and for our best good. It is the spirit of resistance that was the original infection that poisoned the mind and heart of Lucifer and that he intentionally spread throughout the universe that started this whole messy situation of sin. And most importantly of all, it is resistance that will tragically produce the very fire that will ultimately bring the final end to sin forever.

So to bring it back to me personally and to get things into proper perspective, my resistance to forgiving those who mistreat me, abuse me, commit any amount of injustices against me or others whom I love is infusing me with lethal explosive ingredients that may detonate at any time whenever intense passion becomes present. It does not even have to be the final day of judgment when sin is forever exposed in the great explosive meltdown when it encounters the passion of God's perfect love. My resistance can produce the same kind of lethal effects internally on a smaller scale whenever it is expose to passion from other sources such as abusive authorities or religious fanatics or from any number of directions.

As I consider this it seems to be emerging that the lethal mixture here is something like nitro and glycerin getting together. It is also analogous to epoxy ingredients that create intense hardness after being combined. When resistance and passion are mingled in the same heart then the results are going to be a hardening of the heart and destructive heat that will destroy the soul.

Wow! I have never looked at it this way before, especially in relation to forgiveness. Of course, just because I now see this a little better does not mean that my flesh will cease to crave revenge or give up its practice of constant resistance. My sinful nature is unfixable and unchangeable. No amount of knowledge or truth will ever change the opinions and desires of my flesh. The only solution for dealing with this internal source of sin in my life is to continue to crucify it, to die daily as Paul talked about, to be crucified with Christ so that His life and Spirit can produce His fruit in my life by His resurrection power.

At this point all I can do is confess my sinful resistance that permeates nearly every part of my mind. I am frightened at how pervasive this dangerous influence is within my psyche, but I am starting to see the connections it has to what has happened to me many times in the past. I wish I could say I will just stop resisting and let God have His way in me from now on. And I can choose that direction consciously but I am all too aware that the fight is going to be much deeper than just a one-time conscious decision. If God does not keep daily working His miracle of transformation and grace in my heart there is no hope for me of becoming free of this fatal element.

God, deliver me from all my fears. And even more importantly, cleanse me of this terrible but most familiar attitude of resistance. Teach me and mentor me in Your ways and wash my inner parts with Your healing grace and Your lubricating oil of the Holy Spirit. Fill me with Your oil today so that all resistance is eliminated and I can grow more quickly into the fullness of Your kind of maturity.

Reason for Resistance

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. (1 John 4:15-19)

After I wrote the previous post in which I used these verses as the end, I began to wonder all day what it is inside of all of us that resists believing the truth about God's unconditional, unthreatening love for us. What is it deep down inside of us, myself included, that rises up to resist any assertion that God does not use force, does not rely on threats of torturing punishment delivered directly from His hand to push us into obedience? What is it that causes us to doubt and disbelieve that God's love is as God has said it is? Why is it that we feel compelled to justify our darker views about God and immediately rush to supposed examples in the Old Testament to vindicate our entrenched beliefs that God is somehow bi-polar? Why are we so obsessed with insisting on an angry God and discounting the notion that His grace and mercy and forgiveness are all-pervasive and His love really does endure forever? Why do we feel so compelled to rationalize away the real truths about God that conflict with the beliefs promoted by religion?

This question hung over my mind like a heavy cloud for part of the day and I even shared it with my wife who also immediately brought up the issues of what to do with the Old Testament stories. I did not get an answer as to what lies at the root of this penchant but certainly got a typical demonstration of how we normally react to such assertions. I myself struggle sometimes with believing in the total goodness of God even though I have been revamping my whole belief system and revising nearly everything I think about God over the past few years. I have written hundreds of pages on this subject and have been thrilled with many fresh revelations of God's goodness and true glory as I unpack this. And yet, in spite of all that my mind is learning and accepting about the real truth about God, there are still deep pockets of resistance to this truth lurking in the recesses of my heart that react strongly whenever I am faced with situations that elicit strong emotions and questions about the real goodness of God just like everyone else struggles with.

Later in the day I sensed something that seemed to be an answer from God to this question of what lies inside resisting the real truth about God. But it was an answer that almost sounded too classic for me to accept. It sounded more like the clichés that I have heard all my life instead of the ringing truth that I sense when I receive fresh insights from the Spirit. But at the same time I could not deny that this answer did have the ring of truth to it and that it is likely the real answer that many of us would prefer to deny, at least when it comes to admitting it for our own hearts.

The answer I heard was that the part of me that resists the revelations of real love and the real truth about God is the core demonic, lying, sinful nature and the false gods that thrive in that part of my mind that are irreconcilably opposed to the truth about God. Because of this it is impossible to ever change the opinions in that part of my psyche no matter how much proof or evidence or even experience I may have to the contrary. And that is precisely why I have to die to self if I am ever to live successfully in the Kingdom of Heaven, either here on earth or throughout eternity.

While it may be true that there are real misunderstandings and false intellectual beliefs that can be countered and flushed out and replaced with truth that will enable me to embrace the truth about God's love, there will always remain a core of sinful flesh inside of me that will resolutely resist the conviction of God's Spirit in me and this inner resistance is impossible to escape until I am given a new body and more complete emotional freedom at the Second Coming of Jesus. But that does not mean that I must succumb to the lying assertions of this sinful flesh. I am to actively pursue its demise and surrender its control to the authority of Jesus Christ in my life every day and resist its resistance to the work of God in my heart.

This is likely what James was thinking about when he wrote, Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. (James 4:7-8) Resisting the devil is much more likely an activity carried out in the mind and heart than externally as many have supposed. It is in my own heart where the devil has the greatest influence to counteract God's convictions about the real truth about Himself and is the place where the devil is most urgent to stop that process.

In this case, submitting to God is to believe in the goodness and love of God instead of the lies the devil has implanted in my sinful core. The more I surrender to love and the real truth about love – which is the very same thing as drawing near to God who is love – the more I will find that His presence of love is close to me – which is the same as Him drawing near to me. The process of purifying my heart is urgently needed because I am double-minded about my opinions about God and this is due to the influences of the lying spirits, the false gods that contradict the truths about God in my soul. These lying spirits cannot be converted, they can only be resisted. But resistance can only be successful as I submit to the influence of the true Spirit of the Source of all love.

So the mysterious, changeable belief that lies hidden in the minds of people that causes them to compulsively resist the truths about God's love may not even exist in some aspect. That is because at the core of us all there lies an unchangeable, unfixable element of rebellion that we cannot escape but must be exposed by God for what it really is and submitted to the cross that each of us is invited to carry. Maybe that is why Jesus asked each of us to pick up our cross and follow Him – so that we would all have a cross very handy to crucify the lying, subversive nature, the selfish inner being inside of us that rises up repeatedly to defy the truth about God's unconditional love for us.

Musings on Resistance

I am starting to become more aware of the subtle ways in which resistance resides in my spirit and heart. I am sure there are many more ways than what I am aware of currently, but just the fact that I am capable of being more aware of them personally seems to be progress right now. I am quite certain also, that there are those around me who would be more than happy to point out what they think I have problems with in this arena. But that does not have the same usefulness for my heart for it usually tends to cause my fears and deceptions to run for hiding places instead of coming out into the light. Of course, the same principle applies to me trying to expose other people's issues in my desires to fix them. I am slowly learning to give more room for the Spirit to do what He does best instead of trying to play God in other people's lives. I have enough to cooperate with what He is trying to do inside of me.

In fact, it is starting to become more clear that anytime I am feeling tension inside of me that there is likely some sort of resistance going on. It may not be nearly so easy to correctly identify the true source or reason for that resistance, but I am getting much closer to being able to do so simply by acknowledging that resistance is present. I also notice that if I can observe this going on internally without having a sense of condemnation and guilt associated with it, then it is much easier to get closer to the real source without it hiding under some sort of camouflage.

One reason that it may have been so much more difficult in the past is because resistance has often taken on other labels and thus has been able to hide from detection. Another obvious reason is that to be honest about my feelings and fears has often invited unwanted analysis and “fixes” from others who thought it their job to point out my faults and then somehow shame or condemn me into being a better person. For some reason this approach has never had the intended effect that people expected it to have in me if they thought they could make me a better person by such methods. Again, I am painfully aware that this approach has been my own record with many of my loved ones and I deeply regret this habit.

I guess my left brain is getting its curiosity activated by wanting to know the different kinds and reasons for the resistance going on inside. And that may indeed be useful in a way, for I notice that when something makes more sense that my mind is more likely to embrace and believe it. And believing the truth is always a good thing, though intellectual belief cannot replace the more important functions of embracing relationships with the heart. This is where the left and right brain need to work in tandem to have a truly balanced life as God designed for us to experience. At least that is my observation that comes from what I have been learning.

I wonder how much effect it would have on my growth and awareness if I could record the sources and reasons for resistance without judging them or trying to immediately draw conclusions from them? The last couple days as I just became more aware of this condition inside of me I was able to sometimes identify likely causes for the resistance that I was feeling inside. It felt refreshing actually. It felt in a sense liberating to finally be able to perceive the truth of reality instead of chasing or running from shadows of guilt and threats of condemnation. Just to be able to be honest about what I am feeling or desiring without fear of being attacked or shamed for it is like a breath of fresh air.

This is not to imply that the causes for my resistance are something to hang onto or to justify. Just because I can acknowledge something as existing and present in my life does not mean that it should or should not be there. But being able to identity what is current and what is, without immediately heaping shame or guilt upon it allows me much more access to observing what it really is without chasing it into hiding from my own consciousness. I realize that this may sound absurd to many people who have done this all their life already. But for me it is coming out of a closet that I was forced into for much of my life.

This is only a small step in a progression toward the ultimate experience of living in the fullness of reality that is only found in proper, life-receiving relationship with my Creator and source of all life. But God leads me from where I am to start with and the first step is to become of aware of what is, as well as some notion of where I am headed. For to live in denial of what my real condition is – which is where most of us often spend our time – I make myself incapable of escaping the slavery of sin that is contingent on my continued state of deception. In reality, the only power that sin has over anyone is the degree to which they continue to remain deceived about true reality.

I am becoming more and more certain that true reality involves far more heart “knowledge” than it does factual knowledge. That is the big difference between religion and spirituality in my opinion. Religion focuses more on either head knowledge as the ultimately important, or on emotional feelings disconnected from objective truth as found in the Word of God. Both paths involve self-deception and avoidance of anything that will expose problems with their preferences. But true spirituality involves living with reference to the spirit more than living for factual truth or emotional fixes. Jesus stated very clearly that God is a spirit and those who worship Him must do so in spirit and in truth. I think the real truth of that statement still eludes most of us to a very great degree.

I think I will be thinking about this more during the coming days. If I have opportunity I might try to jot down on a paper or pad the observations that I am able to detect about my deeper sources that cause resistance in my heart and mind. I am realizing that there are many more than I previously thought, but it is also exciting in a way to finally be able to expose many of them so that the light of truth from the Spirit of God can begin to resolve and dissolve many of them and replace them with... well, whatever it is that needs to replace them. Since He is the Spirit of Truth then He is best positioned to reveal to my heart the missing ingredients that I need to thrive and enjoy life and better relationships.

Inner Resistance

(For those wishing to follow my exploration of Romans follow my link to my newly inaugurated site exclusively for my inductive studies)

As I was waking up this morning my mind and heart were stirring around with questions and feelings trying to understand what is going on inside of me and trying to discover how to relate to life and to God. I sense at times like this that I can perceive vaguely a great deal of resistance deep inside of me. I cannot say specifically what most of it is about mostly because of the vagueness of it but it definitely feels like resistance.

As I pondered that and questioned how I can ever be free of it given that it seems so pervasive at the heart level, I began to also realize that it is one of the greatest obstacles to having real faith. The thought occurred to me that just my penchant for analyzing and trying to figure everything out is my attempt to condense life down to an understandable formula so I can follow that formula to freedom. That is not all that I do but it has to be admitted that I have that bent.

I realize from my study and observations that formulas are not conducive to faith. Formulas are generally the substitute of faith. The very question that comes so easily to my mind whenever I feel frustrated and stymied in my growth or relationship with God is, “What do I have to do?” That reminds me of the times people asked Jesus, “What must I do to be saved?” Invariably the response from Jesus seemed less than directly related to a simple repeatable formula. It is true that we have tried very hard to make His answers to these questions into a formula to apply broadly to everyone's life, but without a great deal of noticeable success.

It seems that the most direct and effective answer, but also maybe the hardest to understand, was when He would simply say, “Believe on the Son of Man”, or “Believe in me and you will be saved.” Then we are faced with trying to unpack what it really means to believe with all the multiple arguments and opinions about what that might mean. Now we are back to who's formula is the right one and who is deceived or trying to mislead others.

All of this confusion has made most of us quite weary over the years. Many have simply given up ever trying to solve this seeming mystery and have just abandoned the effort altogether. Others become dogmatic and deeply entrenched in a very rigid and narrow interpretation of carefully arranged passages and then try to impose their views on everyone else. Still others continue to listen to the questions and longings of their own heart and that of others around them and continue to seek answers that better satisfy the deeper needs of the heart.

Something that flashed into my mind as I thought about these things lying in bed was “faith comes from fellowship, not from formulas”. That certainly had the ring of truth and is consistent with what I am learning in my personal study. But as I think about it I also realize that when it comes to fellowship with other people I seem to get more frustration than I do faith. It is easy to believe that the more genuine fellowship I have with God that the more faith will result, but the problem comes when I hear that God insists that I have fellowship with the rest of His body at the same time. That is where the real questions begin to fly.

But I cannot deny that God will not settle for a single, isolated relationship just between Him and myself exclusive of everyone else. While that is very appealing and many try to go down that path, the Word makes it very clear that with God that is simply not a viable option. If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. (1 John 4:20-21)

I do not have the answers for all of this. I am simply recording the questions that are stirring around in my heart and the frustrations I feel at being so stuck in my experience. I feel that I am growing far too slowly and that at this rate I will never be fit to associate with the pure, unselfish inhabitants of heaven for many decades. I know that God has many ways to accelerate our growth, but frankly that also frightens me because I know that it will involve a great deal of discomfort and facing my fears.

That takes me right back to where I started. I sense a great deal of resistance inside of me to all sorts of things that I cannot even perceive yet. It is so pervasive that I often cannot get a decent night's sleep without waking up from strange dreams and fears crowding in to pester me and wake me up. Part of me wants to shake off all my fears and live in joyous freedom, but another much more controlling part of me will not release its silent grip on my life and refuses permission for me to abandon myself in the joys of real faith.

At the same time, I am aware very much from my study of the nature and eventual results of retaining resistance inside of me. To put it very bluntly, whatever resistance I am unwilling to release within me to the working of the Spirit of God, to that very same extent I am storing up wrath inside of myself to be unleashed in my own destruction if I am not freed from it. But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. (Romans 2:5)

This warning was directed not at unbelievers who were abandoned to living in open sin but to unbelieving (in the real truth) religious people who were sure that had a handle on knowing the right formulas and were firmly on the road as being the chosen and saved of God. I have to admit that I find myself much closer to this last group than I do to the first group. But either way, both groups are full of one kind or another of resistance toward God that will result in a revelation of wrath if they are not freed from it before that day. So it does not matter so much which group I find myself more aligned with as it does how much resistance I retain in my heart and mind to the work of grace that God wants to work within me.

When I measure my current life with the Word of God, especially with the passage from 1 John, I have to confess that I have very little genuine love for those around me. I also realize that I cannot remember receiving love very much throughout my whole life, and I find it quite impossible to give what I have not received. That is not to say I cannot be friendly with people who respond to friendship and I cannot have some level of healthy bonding with like-minded people. But that is a very far cry from the kind of love I read about that I must have to participate realistically in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Just a few seconds ago as I discussed a painful situation with my wife I said something that I hadn't really thought about that way before. I have to trust God in faith without knowing how He is going to work things out, otherwise my faith is based on formulas. Like Thomas who insisted he could not believe until he physically touched the body of Jesus (very formula-based reasoning), I too often feel like waiting until I can compile enough viable proof, either external or logical, to convince myself that God can indeed work things out for good. But must I have some idea of a scenario by which God can resolve a problem before I simply leave it in His hands and live in an attitude of praise for the unknown outcome based solely on His goodness and not at all on my ability to figure out how He will do it or what it will look like?

It seems to me that real faith is based on my trust in His goodness that has been cultivated through a very personal experience of that goodness or at least a choice to believe in it based on His word. Real faith is not initiated by external evidence so much as it is a gift from the One who is faithful Himself. My faith can certainly flourish and grow through many experiences of evidence, but it still has to be based on the character and reliability of the One in whom my faith is placed, not on the formulas I create or the hard evidence that I accumulate. Real faith is rooted in relationship and cannot exist outside of that relationship.

So where does that put the issue of resistance? Is resistance preventing my relationship from producing real faith? It certainly seems suspiciously like that would be the case. Resistance and relationship seem like opposing forces pulling in two different directions.

As I think about this I wonder if resistance is not tied to the desire for having formulas or being in control. We naturally tend to resist feeling out of control. But real relationship cannot flourish between two hearts when either or both of them is trying to control the other. Relationship depends on the element of creativity and spontaneity and shared emotions to really deepen. These are all ingredients of the heart – internal realities. Formulas, control and predictability are more focused on the externals, on the appearances and the external fruit instead of on the causes and the roots. It feels much safer to maintain a certain amount of control and resist releasing my reservations to the uninhibited influence of another heart on mine. It makes sense (intellectual) and we can come up with all sorts of very right-sounding and plausible arguments why we must live this way. But how much of this is really truth and how much of this kind of thinking is a smokescreen behind which we hide our pain, our fears and our unbelief?

The frustrating thing about all of these questions is the gentleness and politeness of God to allow us to cling to our false notions and continue to live in bondage instead of enjoying a freedom that as yet we have never really tasted. That is not to suggest that He desires us to live in bondage for a single moment. It is just that He respects and values our freedom so strongly that He refuses to override our choices to remain in our ruts. That is foreign thinking to me and many times I wish He would just somehow force me to let go of my lies and enter into the joy of the Lord. But that very act in itself would destroy my capability to enjoy that freedom, for true freedom always has to be entered through the door of choice, not force. That is just the unavoidable fact of reality.

What do I do with all of this? I don't really know. I guess I am simply expressing where I am at right now and recording it for comparison to what may happen next. I am attempting to condense feelings and notions that defy expression but nevertheless need to be flushed out closer to consciousness where they can be more easily seen and dealt with. I need to expose the things that are causing the resistance in my heart that is preventing me from experiencing the freedom that my heart longs to enjoy. I want to let go of the lies and beliefs that prevent real faith from flourishing and strengthening in my heart.

This is necessarily a very personal journey that is not easily solved by pat answers and platitudes. I suspect however, that it is something that would be more effectively resolved by genuine fellowship and bonding with other hearts if I could just figure out how to get there from here. But then again, figuring it out is probably the wrong approach, a mistaken road to follow. It might be the long way around to a place that could be reached much more quickly if I used the right methods and lived more from my heart than from my head.

So, do you have any thoughts on this? Since I doubt I will solve this by myself I welcome others to join the journey and see what fellowship might produce.

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:5-7)

Resisting the Current

Wrath/power is revealed by the effects of resisting it.

Sin is transgression – resisting, living at cross-purposes with God's ways.

If you are enjoying white-water rapids flowing with the current you can have the thrill of being carried along with the powerful, surging water beneath you. But if you “dig in your heels” locking yourself to a rock or even trying to move cross-wise to the current, you will suddenly find yourself in realization of how intensely powerful and dangerous the water can be if you are not willing to move in synchronization with it.

The last half of Romans 1 is describing this very situation in contrast to the first half describing the very opposite. The identification of each is found in back to back verses 17 and 18 - “the righteousness of God is revealed”, and “the wrath of God is revealed”. Reading all the previous verses before 17 reveals the righteousness of God. Reading the following verses reveals the wrath of God.

But unlike the typical spin that most people assume by projecting their own feelings of wrath onto God's character, what in fact is revealed here is the natural consequences of resisting the powerful current of God's intense passion of love.

Just as trying to stop in the middle of a surging river or even move in a different direction suddenly and dramatically produces life-threatening danger, resistance to the power of God's love and His ways of relating produces life-destroying results. Why then do we blame God/the current for the dangerous consequences of our resistance when we could be enjoying the most exhilarating ride of our lives? In fact, this very penchant to blame God and accuse Him of arbitrarily imposing these “punishments” on those who resist Him in itself will put us in the path of resisting Him. If we chose to continue to blame God for sin's effects we will tragically find ourselves suffering those very effects. And the sad consequence will be that our conclusions will seem to be justified while in fact we are only living under the intense deception of sin and the lies that reinforce it.

Notice what Romans 1 really says about how God's “wrath” is revealed. I notice two important principles emerging here: (1) “they knew God” (v. 21), and (2) “God gave them over”, or released them. These are repeated in various ways throughout the rest of this chapter. What it is saying, to use our current analogy is that (1) they cannot help but notice that there is a strong current underneath their lives and that it is consistently urging them in a particular direction. But when they chose to “exchange” the real for the imitation (v. 23) and refused to “acknowledge God”, then in respect for their choice to resist the current of His love and passion for them God, in the intense anguish of His breaking heart for them “gives them over” to the terrible natural consequences of their stubborn resistance.

Just in case we glibly smile believing that we are safe from that problem, Paul goes on in chapter 2 to point out that when we harbor “judgment” in our hearts against others who are suffering these results of resisting the current we place ourselves in the same situation and will unwittingly find ourselves in the same danger as the ones we condemn.

I want to explore this much more but right now I want to sit in a raft and relish the sun and the spray in my face as the current of God's love surrounds me and carries me through this day.

(next in series)

Relating to Abuse of Power

I just had one of those “un-nice” dreams that woke me up from the intense emotion that it generated inside of me. After I woke up and wondered what it might mean I felt the Spirit explaining it to me more clearly and I knew I needed to get up and write it down for my own sake so I would not forget it. It is partly an answer to my pleadings with God to explain to me or clarify the real issues involved in my most vulnerable area of weakness.

My dream evolved out of some events and places in my dream that I cannot now remember as is usually the case. I can only remember the point where there was a cabin cruiser boat sitting alongside a street somewhere that for some reason evoked my curiosity. Another person and I decided to climb up on it and look around for a few minutes just to see what was there. It was dry-docked and I think it was nighttime with very few people around although there seemed to be something else involving a few others which I cannot now remember.

At any rate, we clambered up onto the boat and just looked around in the nearly empty cabin for a few minutes when I noticed a police car pulling up at the end of the block nearby. The boat was parked next to some trees and beyond the trees was a more commercial area of stores and streets. I quickly alerted the other person that the authorities were about to come and get us into trouble and then jumped over the dark side of the boat and ran into the trees before the police had noticed me. The other man was still on top of the boat and I don't know what happened with him after that.

I decided to calmly walk out of the other side of the clump of trees into the shopping area as if nothing had happened. I did not feel particularly guilty except that I knew if I was caught on the boat I would be accused of something or other that would be false but would imply I was some sort of criminal with malicious intent. The quicker I could distance myself from the boat and be nonchalant about it the safer I would be. At this point the dream seemed to dramatically shift. The only tie-in from this part of the dream was my state of mind as I went into what happened next.

As I approached the street I noticed that suddenly quite a number of police cars raced into strategic positions around the area and a large contingent of riot police jumped out and quickly encircled a large area with a rope so that none of us inside the area would be able to escape. As I approached one of the officers I tried to innocently ask what was going on here and also told him that I was not from around here so whatever was going on with the others I was not involved in. He ignored my protestations as the police moved to corral everyone caught in their arbitrary net operation. As they tightened the circle around the people caught inside they began clubbing and beating everyone they came to in typical riot-suppression fashion. This outraged me with the injustice of it all to the point that I woke up with fear and intense anger wondering what was going on.

That seemed to suspend the dream to the point where I must have dreamed just a little more almost as a sequel. I remember asking someone or maybe more than one why this was happening this way. I was impressed that this is the way the world's system imposes submission. It uses overwhelming force against an arbitrarily picked group of people to make them an example so as to instill the same fear and terror in a much larger group of people who hear about or see what happened to them. It is sometimes not based on any reason or even excuse; it is simply an abusive assertion of brute force designed to enslave the minds of as many as possible into total submission to the complete control of the “authorities”.

The next obvious question I had was, “How am I supposed to relate to a situation like this?” I have found myself in situations all through my life where I felt somewhat similar feelings and it always produces an overwhelming amount of rage within me almost instantly which, if unchecked, will get me into a heap of trouble in a very short time. Most of my friends who are aware of this problem usually steer me toward the idea that I just need to submit to authority and I have to deal with my problem with rebellion and that I need to just get over it.

While there is no doubt that I struggle with explosive feelings of rebellion inside that threaten to sabotage me and betray me at any moment, the counsel I have usually received seems to lack something very important that I can't yet really identify. The very act of attacking my symptoms, pointing out my pride and telling me to just blindly submit to all authority usually triggers memories and intense feelings from my childhood when similar situations strengthened the rebellion within me originally. My father particularly tried to use beatings to force me into submission which at times may have produced outward conformity but inside only increased my hatred of him and further inflamed my feelings of anger and rebellion against authority. I am now left with the legacy of that method and trying to apply more of the same simply doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Looking back on my life when people now try to insist that I just get rid of my pride and submit seems to my heart to be saying, “Injustice doesn't matter. Just give in to it and accept it and stop resisting it.” But injustice does matter and ignoring or denying it in blind submission under its crushing force is a perversion of how we are created. I guess I have always had a very intense sense of justice and these kind of short-circuited answers just do not cut it for me. Yes, I know that rebellion and pride are involved in this problem, but the solution that most have offered me or tried to force on me so far seems nearly as bad as the problem itself if not worse. I have grappled with this inner threat for years and sometimes feel no closer to freedom than when I was a very angry little boy in the hands of an angry father whipping me with an army belt to force me to obey his rules. The only difference is that now I am old enough that most people do not try to force their will on me like he did – except, of course, the uniformed type who drive around looking for someone to intimidate and trigger.

That's where it gets dicey and potentially even very dangerous. For there are people and despotic, tyrannical forces out there that can easily trigger the same hatred and intense anger inside of me that could expose this unresolved weakness in me. After they play me to be a fool I will then be represented to be a massive spiritual fraud and a hypocrite. I cannot deny that these dark feelings of anger and resentment lurk inside of me waiting to explode in fury when the protective casing around them is breached. And it is also true that the demoniacally-inspired forces in this world would like nothing better than to brutalize me, triggering this reservoir of wrath stored up within me and then blaspheme the name of God through my catastrophic and spectacular meltdown. This is not just a naïve scenario; this is a constant and very present threat that always lies not far beneath the surface.

For me to even face this in such a direct way feels very frightening to me. It threatens my image to others of a well-behaved, self-possessed Christian and creates a great deal of discomfort not only within myself but in the minds of many others as well I suspect. I know that I must experience healing and freedom from this dragon that lives within and threatens to destroy me on frequent occasions. It is a frequent source of fear and apprehension for me. I realize from what I have been learning over the past few years that anything that causes me to be afraid, especially at this level, must be faced and dealt with at the root level or it continues to empower the control of a false god in my soul. It has been a subject of much prayer and pleading with God for deliverance and it seems this morning that I heard something in response.

As my mind ran through the options I would be faced with while being clubbed by riot police for no good reason, at first it seems there are only two responses. The first, which is the one that my inner dragon would precipitate very eagerly, would be to fight back in rage and try to defend myself against impossible odds. But one only has to briefly look at the news from nearly anywhere in the world to see what the outcome of that would be. The cruelty and exploitation that sin has brought reaches unthinkable levels as the depravity of humans approaches that of demons. To attempt to fight back only invites more cruelty and vicious treatment as the abusers employ greater force to overcome all resistance. Trying to overcome force with force is a dead end road and indeed will lead quickly to an end of death after much suffering.

The other apparent option which many seem to believe is the right alternative is to simply cave in and “submit” to whatever demands are imposed on you in the abuse, at least that is what their advice sounds like. But something smells very suspicious in this option that rings of character weakness and appeasement at the expense of integrity.

I believe that there is an important third and correct option that I have yet to understand more clearly. The “force” of the world is calculated to conform us to the thinking of this world either through our indulgence of force in resistance or the destruction of our souls and value in the violations perpetrated on us. I like Phillips rendition of Romans 12:2 “do not let the world squeeze you into its mold.” There must be a way to not fall for the temptation to indulge the same spirit of force in retaliation while still having a sense of unaffected value and identity that cannot be violated or stolen.

As I pondered this and questioned God about these things while still lying in bed, bits of the following verses began to flash across my mind.

Matthew 16:25 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (2 Corinthians 4:7-11)

He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed." (Matthew 21:44)

It is difficult to capture these things in writing as they are things that my heart needs to understand and assimilate more than my mind, and things of the heart are not readily describable in the realm of words. At the same time it seems that if I do not capture them and condense them into words as best I can within a reasonable amount of time then they are much more readily to be forgotten and not secured in place as effectively.

I try to understand the problem that pride presents. Pride is like a traitor within who represents himself to be my greatest ally and defender. Pride's main purpose is to give me a sense of worth, to feel that I have value and that I am important to someone – if no one else then at least to myself. I don't think I really understand pride as much as I need to so I can know how to effectively deal with what I am up against. I have a deep and legitimate need, as everyone does, to feel valued, respected and wanted. I want to be cherished and acknowledged and desired – that is how we are created.

Pride is the natural part of me, my flesh, that offers to fill that legitimate need, that vacuum within me that craves fulfillment so I can have a reason to live. Everything in our world is designed to nurture and supply the function of our pride while at the same time the suppliers are trying to feed their own pride. The problem with this model is that in being self-focused we am actually attempting to operate our mental machinery backwards from what it was designed to do and the result is all the effects of sin we see around us.

Another major factor that plays into this is my sense of identity. This is linked to the function of pride and is most often found to be closely tied to the dysfunction of my life as well as my supposed achievements. I find myself confused about who I really am but whatever that is I cling to my perceived identity tenaciously for my very survival. Pride's main function is to shore up my weak sense of identity so I can feel valuable. So to threaten my pride is to threaten to remove all my identity. And whether it is me removing the main supporter of my identity and value, or it is external abusive forces trying to rip away my identity, the same fear underlies both options.

Now I am well aware that great volumes of discussion are carried on about realizing our true identity in Christ. I believe that is very true and is crucial to entering into eternal life even now. But moving that from an intellectual belief system to a heart experience is far easier said than done. I know what the metaphors are – dying to self, surrendering etc. But implementing them into actual experience is a titanic struggle that is made infinitely more difficult because of the evasiveness of the false gods that have commandeered my mind. This realization takes me right back to Paul's very accurate description of this plight in his eloquent portrayal of his frustrations with his inner self in Romans 7. And with him I have to land hard on his transition declaration of emancipation in Romans 8:1, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1-2)

I still don't believe I have expressed very well what I wanted to capture this morning. But I guess I have taken another small step in my self-discovery, self-disclosure and reception of God's thoughts to me. I know I will be thinking about this more over the coming days and months and will continue to seek a deeper understanding and heart-realization of the truths that are beginning to emerge for me.

After I finished this post I opened my Bible “at random” to Isaiah 1 and read the following words.

"Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword." For the mouth of the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 1:18-20 NIV)

I then looked up the original word translated “willing” and found it very interesting. It means to breathe after, to rest content. It is presented in this text in a double parallel contrasted with “resist”. It seems clear that the contrasts may be defining each other. Willingness, or rest with contentment is the opposite of resistance. Obedience is the opposite of rebellion. What is also meaningful is the order of the words. Rest, giving up resistance, being content is placed ahead of obedience. It may even be a prerequisite for successful obedience. On the other side resistance lies at the foundation of rebellion.

However, I still believe that not all resistance is bad. We are instructed to resist certain things by God and resistance is an important part of a healthy life. What we need to pay attention to more than the resistance itself is what it is we are resisting.

Healthy resistance and pushing against resistance followed by periods of rest and quiet is the prescription for strong muscles as well as strong minds. But resisting the wrong things or without needed rest is a recipe for problems and pain. I guess a lot could be induced from this text, but what impressed me the most was how relevant it was to what I had just expressed and how God sometimes uses a “random” opening of my Bible to speak directly to what I am thinking about.

Abandonment or Force

Pastor John Abbott said something in his sermon today that got my mind going. He said that fear is a feeling of not being in control and anger is our attempt to regain control.

Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest talks persistently about abandonment. Jesus said if we want to follow after Him we have to deny ourself and take us our cross. When all the disciples forsook Jesus and Peter denied Him they were abandoning their public connection with Him. They could not control Him or what was happening so they abandoned Him in fear.

This is the very same thing Jesus insists we must do to follow Him, only to ourselves instead of to Him. Maybe this plays into a definition of the “fear of the Lord”. What we fear actually controls us. If we understand fear as lose of control and we abandon control of our lives to God, then the fear of God makes more sense. Satan's version of fear is always based on force and intimidation. God's version of fear is based on abandonment of control induced in a response to love and attraction to the beauty of His character.

Forgiveness is also abandonment. It is letting go of our craving for revenge, our hatred, our bitterness, our scorekeeping. It is releasing our attempt to control the other person both directly or indirectly through our comments about them to others.

The beast of Revelation and the image to the beast both represent the innate principle of the world's system of using force to conform and control others. God's system is not any variant of that principle but is totally different. God never uses force to control. His ways are so different that our language does not contain very many words to approximate or explain it. Most of our words reflect centuries of satanic principles and relationships.

The essence, the root concept underlying the beast and it's image is using political and physical force to achieve spiritual results. Religion is largely a very distorted imitation of real spirituality, an amalgamation of spiritual internal moral principles mixed with external performance-based behaviors designed to achieve value. When we personally or collectively appeal to civil authorities to settle any problems we have between believers we have ourselves set up an image to the beast. We are now worshiping power and force and have aligned our thinking with the world's principles of relating to one another. No matter how adamantly we believe we have the truth or worship on the right day, the motives we demonstrate in our relationships with each other betray the true character that will determine our choices when the real test comes.

The cross is a symbol of absolute control and complete loss of control. It was the epitome of control and intimidation by the Romans who were obsessed with the use of force. A person attached to a cross was stripped of all control over himself by sheer force. He even lost control of his ability to die quickly to avoid prolonged and excruciating pain - total control by the executioners and total lose of control by the executed.

But Jesus advocated and demonstrated something very different. Instead of resisting the torture and shame, He abandoned control voluntarily through continuous forgiveness and love. He abandoned Himself to God and did not resist evil done to Him. Resistance is the attempt to overcome force with force. This is the world's system and lies at the base of Satan's kingdom. Jesus demonstrated that evil cannot be so bad, so horrendous that goodness cannot outshine it. Darkness cannot destroy light, it ends up highlighting it. Lies cannot be assembled and rearranged long enough to create truth, they end up confirming it.

The Hardening From Resistance

There is a spiritual principle that I just learned about while reading a book. It makes a great deal of sense and fits very well with all the other principles I have been discovering over the past few years. It is also very frightening for I see its effects far too much in my own life. It has to do with resistance, a concept that has been the key for helping me understand the truth about hell.

But this new principle has opened my mind to another dimension of this issue. It even ties in to a dream I had a couple months ago and gives me new insight on that.

Imagine yourself maybe in a group of people, maybe enjoying yourself in animated conversation, or maybe more like myself you may be a little apart from the group just observing what others are doing and busy with your own thoughts.

Suddenly someone comes along and seizes you by the hand and tries to move you to another group while urging and pleading with you to, say, join a game that is about to start. Now for this illustration to work, you are really not nearly so interested in this new opportunity you are being urged to join as you are in what you are presently doing. There could be any number of reasons for not wanting to leave like fear, lack of interest, intensity of relationships etc. But you are very insistent on not leaving as much as the other person is insistent on trying to drag you to the next room.

Now here is the point of all this scenario as strange as it may sound at first. When someone is physically trying to pull you in a direction you do not want to go, you are required to use a number of various muscles to resist that pulling force on your body. Now we are well aware that when you use muscles they tend to be strengthened. Let's say that the above scenario happens on a very regular basis. Your friend tries to pull you and you are holding back.

After a few days of this insistent activity those muscles used for resisting would begin to get stronger and harder. At the same time the other muscles that you are not using that you could use to to actually go with that person are beginning to weaken from lack of use.

In parallel to this, your emotional muscles just happen to be experiencing the very same affects, but not as physically obvious. As you repeatedly practice resistance you r emotional habits become deeper and deeper ingrained. And all of the unused emotional “muscles” over time begin to atrophy and become enfeebled.

But I noticed something about this situation that easily crosses the boundaries between physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions of our lives. When certain muscles are used very much they become harder and harder. We may become very unbalanced because we focus so much on certain ones and ignore many others completely. This can happen in our spirit and mind just as easily if not more so than with our body. I wonder if the result of this process is the heart of stone that is talked about in Ezekiel 36?

When we are drawn and pulled by the beauty and truth about God and we cling to our old familiar beliefs and traditions that we are comfortable with, we have to exercise emotional and spiritual resistance to counteract that drawing power. We may assemble proof texts and compile enormous quantities of quotations to buttress our positions. But in the end we may be appalled to discover we were only turning our hearts into petrified stones that had only the appearance of a functional heart. The greater the revelation of glory, the more resistance is required to maintain our position. We may very sincerely believe we are “standing strong” in defense of “the truth”, but in actuality we are standing in resistance to growing into a deeper knowledge of God. In Jesus' comments about judgment day, God does argue or deny the claims of those who insist they have performed everything correctly. He simply states, “I never knew you”. (Matt. 7:21-23)

Sadly and ironically, it seems that the most effective tool that hardens a heart is religion itself. Religion has caused more havoc on this earth than anything else. Religion is used to justify wars, promote bigotry and prejudice, and repress emotional expression thereby causing untold damage and confusion. I am just beginning to see some of the damage in my own life and my family from years of emotional avoidance and self-deception. Much of it was conditioned by the atmosphere of my childhood but that has continued to deepen and harden throughout most of my life.

I am realizing now that my inability to receive and give love has shaped most of my personality and history. I have very seldom even allowed myself to acknowledge many of my emotions, much less share them with anyone else without fear or blame. But practicing this is one of the essential ingredients for living in reality and I am just now discovering I have hardly ever done it. In fact, I have noticed many times that now when I do try to share my real emotions with someone else that most of the physical muscles in my body will begin to harden, tense up and eventually lock up. The longer it continues I will begin to tremble and if I still continue to share occasionally it even becomes difficult to breath. I am beginning to wonder if this is an outward manifestation of a possible inward heart of stone.

What is frightening about this principle of hardening by resistance is that I see myself practicing it much of the time. It is a major part of my personality and my perceived identity. It is how I shield and protect myself, but it is also what isolates and quarantines me away from connecting with other hearts. In the end it will disqualify me for participation in the body of Christ if I am not freed from this mode of thinking.

The good news is also in Ezekiel 36. God says He will exchange my stone-hardened heart for one of flesh. As I understand it, a flesh heart is movable, soft and flexible. Flesh can experience feelings and a heart can be honest about emotions. A unique feature of real hearts is that they have the ability to literally synchronize themselves to another heart when they come into close proximity. And as I understand it, God has great plans to do just that very thing in ways I've never dreamed of.

Resist not Evil

I have been struggling for days, even weeks with a situation that remains unresolved and frustrating to my spirit. One of my closest friends has shut me out of his life and closed off all communication with me without any explanation whatsoever. I have made repeated attempts to contact him in various ways but without any response. This has left my mind open to running all kinds of scenarios to come up with possible reasons and explanations for why this is happening. A pain is deepening on the inside that I now realize is called attachment pain. This is the deepest level of pain known to humans and is the most difficult to remedy.

I have reason to believe from past communications that they may be doing this believing it is for my best good, to pressure me into a position of spending more time getting close to my wife. If I knew this to be true it would give me great relief, although I feel it is an extreme measure on their part to accomplish something that is already taking place without their withdrawal. But to simply stonewall every attempt on my part to seek a reason for the sudden disconnect of what has been a long and close friendship has caused me to analyze my deep pain and how I must come to terms with it.

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39 KJV)

I have realized for some time that resistance produces heat. That has helped open up my mind to the real truth about hell and has radically changed my picture of God over the past few years. But the resistance that produces hell is resistance to love. When Jesus says I should not resist evil it creates questions and conflicts in my mind as to what He really means.

James 4:7 says, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” So apparently I'm supposed to resist the devil but not resist evil. This is not a theological argument that I wish to engage in, this is a principle of Reality that I must come to understand if I am to be in harmony with Reality.

I looked up the original word for “evil” used in the verse from Matthew. I found it very interesting, as is often the case when checking closer to the original than what translators assume. In this case evil involves a number of possibilities that include; hurtful, calamitous, vicious, mischief, malice, anguish, pain. This kind of evil brings in the necessity of forgiveness as an antidote to preventing bitterness from taking root in my soul.

Forgiveness itself is a most misunderstood concept in most people's minds. It usually means something along the line of accepting excuses or trying to just forget an offense. It often means for many people trying hard to not feel anger and resentment toward someone who has hurt them which becomes very hard work with very little good result. None of these, of course, are a part of real forgiveness.

But without real forgiveness our hearts quickly begin to fill up with pain and unresolved issues left open to grow and torment us. Our minds resent the idea of forgiveness if we are honest about it. It seems majorly unfair and unjust. Why should people who cause us so much pain be forgiven and thus apparently get off without any consequences for the pain they have caused others? Something inside is rises up and demands that they should feel as much pain at least as what they have inflicted if not more. That takes us back to the issue of temptation. (see Reflective Temptation and Temptation and Worship)

Real forgiveness is very painful, even excruciating business. It involves coming to the point of taking full ownership of all the pain someone else has caused us, or is causing us even in real time. It means releasing all “rights” to retaliate or even desire to get any amount of revenge. That point is well beyond natural human ability. Forgiveness takes full responsibility for the pain and consequences I am suffering because of someone else's choices.

Responsibility does not mean that what they did to me was my fault. That is an issues that many struggle with in trying to understand this. Responsibility has to do with “ability to respond” instead of react. When I react to pain it will almost always be to return what I have received which only increases a vicious cycle and is rooted in the back of my brain that just wants to do anything to make the pain stop or the problem to go away. To respond means to accept what is dealt to me, take ownership of it without resentment (but not without pain), and then choose to act from the front of my brain under direction from my true heart as to what is best for our relationship. This takes maturity.

If I resist evil, the hurt from calamity or mischief, or maybe the anguish and pain from malice or just rudeness, or maybe even simple misunderstandings; if I resist then I am living in reaction instead of responding. Resistance amplifies the pain I am experiencing. And I have seen that in my own experience all my life, sometimes to other people's amazement. A heart that values justice is a heart that especially notices what is unfair and can be deeply hurt by those things. But in resisting those experiences it amplifies the pain beyond its original intensity. No wonder Jesus recommended not resisting evil. Evil is bad enough on its own without me amplifying its effects in my soul and emotions.

So I see my need for an antidote, a balm as some call it, some Oil-based lotion that can bring soothing and relief to my aching heart and return me back to joy and peace. Forgiveness is not fair, but it is indispensable if I am to grow and thrive. It is also impossible given the mental equipment I received growing up unless I receive it through grace. “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Heb. 4:16.