Real Righteousness

For not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. (Romans 10:3)

As I read this verse I asked God what it means to subject myself to the righteousness of God. Several things came to my attention from looking at the context.

First of all the beginning of this verse says that I first need to know about God's righteousness. That would make a lot of sense. How can I submit to something I know nothing about? I need to look around in Romans particularly and see what is explained about the truth of God's righteousness.

Secondly I need to avoid seeking to establish my own righteousness. That would be a very easy detour to get off on in seeking to understand God's righteousness. While trying to figure out what composes the righteousness of God it is so easy to forget that I cannot duplicate it by working hard at becoming like Him. The Law is a description of the righteousness of God. But if I focus on the Law instead of on the attractiveness of God I will end up in the same pit as all the religious addicts of all ages and my view of God will become terribly distorted.

The real focus that I need to have for my attention is explained in the next verse. I need to focus on the same thing the Law focuses on instead of the Law itself. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. (Romans 10:4) In my last post I pointed out that the word “end” here comes from the word “telos” in the Greek. If this is related to the word telescope as I suspect it may well be, then the Law is an instrument by which the perfection and righteousness of God is amplified. But if I focus my attention on the perfection that is needed in the construction and workings of a telescope to successfully focus properly on a very distant object, I will never have the ability or proper motivation to achieve that level of perfection myself. For my eyes, no matter how much work I do to improve my health or strain my eyes, will never be able to view a distant star with the clarity that a telescope can produce. Therefore I will become sidetracked into all sorts of useless diversions offered by Satan promising me “better eyesight” to become as perfect as a telescope when that simply cannot happen.

But as I choose to accept the invitation of Jesus to enter into a trusting, intimate relationship at the heart level with Him, I come to find out that in His presence my faith and trust in God will deepen as I learn more and more how attractive and loving He is. I will see the Law as an amplifier to view God better, but I must be careful not to become fixated on the Law itself as the object of my attention. I must enter into a relationship of faith and love that is a natural response of my heart to the Person who came to earth as the close-up example of what God is really like and how He wants to relate to us.

This brings up the issue of the importance of engaging both sides of our brain in this endeavor. When I only focus on the Law, which is the external description of God's character, I am utilizing predominantly only the left side of my brain and am not engaging my heart and emotions as God intended for me to do. God did not design us to live in this unbalanced way and He deeply desires an intimate heart connection with each one of His children. Relating to Him only in the restrictive environment of the intellectual while failing to engage our emotions and heart and feelings in the relationship is an insult to the Creator who designed us for intimacy.

How many marriages fail because one or the other feels empty in their heart or only used for the selfish exploits of the the other party but does not feel cherished at the heart level? If we can see this in the marriage relationship (but much of the time we can't) why can't we see that God designed us and craves the same relationship of intimacy with us? The fact is, God gave us marriage as a training tool for us to practice the very intimacy that He wants to enjoy with us Himself at an even deeper and more fulfilling level of joy. Our marriage problems are simply reflective of our confused concepts of what God desires for us Himself.

Paul goes on here to further explain the differences between these two ways of relating to God. Verse 5 states that whoever practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness. In other words, if I choose that method of trying to get right with God, which is the same as trying to align my life with all the principles of reality in the universe which God created, then I have committed myself to achieving absolute perfection and complete, undeviating compliance with every rule and principle, natural and spiritual, through the whole gamut of reality. The problem is, since there is no way to do this for beings who are corrupted with sin then I have taken on an impossible task. The only reason I would enter into this type of insane endeavor is because I have bought into the deceptions of the enemy who leads me to believe that I really can become like God without God's support. That's one of the first lies he presented to Eve in the garden and that is still deeply embedded in our minds.

Verses 6-11 of Romans 10 then reveals the only option by which we may successfully come into right relationship with God and be saved from our helpless condition. It talks repeatedly about the need to use our heart as well as our mind. In verse 10 our need to bring our heart, our right brain, into full partnership with our intellect really cannot get any clearer. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. (Romans 10:10 NRSV)

It seems clear to me in this verse that the heart, the right brain faculties of our being, must take the lead in our relationship with God. As our heart engages with the heart of God and we respond with a warming heart to the beauty and loveliness of God, then our left brain faculties can honestly connect and affirm through verbal expression what is going on at the heart level. This is called a testimony or confession. As this sequence takes place in the proper order the results are the evidence of the healing power of God in our lives, both emotionally and intellectually.

But anytime we try to reverse this process and attempt to achieve righteousness through the leading of our intellect without allowing our heart to take the lead we will find ourselves quickly being sucked back into the whirlpool of legalism, which is trying to achieve righteousness by focusing on formulas, rules and externals. That is like trying to craft a perfect testimony for a witness that uses all the right words and sounds most convincing but fails to have the first-hand experiential knowledge that is prerequisite for valid testimony.

True religion, what I prefer to call spirituality due to the vast distortions of the word “religion” today, is always of the heart, not a mind dominant exercise. I realize that this idea creates a great deal of controversy today, but then it always has. One of the most subtle aspects of sin is that it has deceived us into thinking that somehow we can figure this “righteousness” thing out with a little help from our Friend. But God says that unless you come to Him in the way we are designed and wired to function from creation, with our heart, we will always fail at forming a real saving relationship with Him. For He is not interested so much in what we know about truth but in how willing we are to allow Him into our deeper areas that are only accessed through our right brain and emotions.

Does that mean that what we believe intellectually makes no difference as I am sure some will accuse me of saying? No, that is not the point I am stressing, but for different reasons than what may first appear. The “facts” and doctrines that we fill our left brains with certainly have an effect on the directions that our heart moves. If we fill our minds with lies about God they will certainly affect our desires to get to know Him better negatively. Intellectual truth is important, but only because it is the raw material that is needed for the right brain to better use in its journey toward intimacy with God. It is the myriads of lies about God both intellectually and emotionally that keep us in confusion and doubt as to God's loving intentions toward us. But just pumping our minds (left brains) full of correct facts will not motivate the heart to change its opinions about God when the much deeper problem is the remaining lies that lay unseen and buried deep in our hearts and experiential memories that are completely unaccessible to our left brain logical abilities.

Salvation is much more a relation of the heart than it is a learning of didactic truths in the brain. I believe that an honest reading of this passage of Romans will make that more clear. Paul states in verses 9 and 10 that two distinct things are taking place which I see as parallel to the two sides of our being or brain. “Confessing” with our mouth requires a left brain function, for speech is supported from the left side of our brain. But believing, real believing at a deeper level than just acknowledgment of facts, requires a response of the heart or right brain that operates very differently than the left brain. But what I find very interesting here is that Paul states that righteousness proceeds from this kind of belief – a faith that can only be found in the response at the heart level to exposure to the beauty of God as revealed in the presence of Jesus.

For the Scripture says, "WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED." (Romans 10:11)

(next in series)

Telescope of the Law

Brothers and sisters, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. (Romans 10:1-4 NRSV)

I spent a little time looking up some of the words in these verses today and found some more interesting things. Here are a few of them.

The word translated “desire”, as in how Paul feels toward his “former church”, the Jews, conveys the idea of kindness, what would make him feel satisfied, his wish. Even though these are the very people who usually cause most of the trouble for him throughout all of his efforts to spread the gospel throughout the world he feels only a longing that they would come to see God through new eyes, to put down their defensiveness and embrace the truth about God's love for them as revealed in the life of Jesus. I am praying for God to implant that same kind spirit in my own heart toward those in my church and in Christianity who have unenlightened zeal for a form of Godliness without knowing God personally.

In my last post I stated the the “knowledge” (which is “enlightened” in this version) is the kind of knowledge used in intimacy, like when Adam “knew” Eve and she had a son. I need to back off of that statement a little after looking up the original word for it appears to not go quite that far, though it does move in that direction. This word is simply a lack of understanding, a failure to have the proper basis for doing something, a situation of ignorance. I believe that this lack of knowledge is both intellectual and heart knowledge. Their stubbornness in refusing to change their intellectual opinions about righteousness and the correct way to get in right relation to God was due largely to the heart remaining closed to the experiential knowledge that most religious people look upon with disdain.

The next phrase that is here quoted as being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God is not as clear to me and I would have to defer to someone more trained in reading Greek to see what the original might convey. Other translations simply refer to this as God's righteousness instead of the righteousness that comes from God. It is also quite possible that it could be stated both ways just as easily though it can mean two different things. Either way, the main point still remains that intensely religious-focused people all too often are ignorant of God's righteousness, the truth about how good God really is. For every religion that I know of on the face of the earth is riddled with lies about how God deals with sinners. We desperately need a fresh revelation of the true glory of God, a revealing of His true character of love. The Jews refused to believe that in their ignorance and most people are still doing the same today.

The next fascinating insight I ran across was when I looked at the word behind “establish”, as in seeking to establish their own (righteousness). Some of the words used to define this word are “stand, abide, appoint, bring, continue, covenant, establish, hold up, lay, present, set up”. This presents several things to my mind. The first comes from learning about the nature of covenants and all the implications that involves. I don't have time to go into all that here but it is a very fascinating and enlightening research well worth the time to look into it. The best resource I know right now is a teaching on CD called The Blood Covenant that can be purchased from Family Foundations International. You can find their contact information on my list of resources.

What I see Paul saying here in reference to the Jews is that they were insisting on either clinging to the covenant that had been set up with God at Mount Sinai (whatever you ask us to do we will do it), or they were trying to set up another covenant of their own devising. Either way, any covenant other than the one revealed through the death and resurrection of Christ cannot bring anyone into right relationship to God. This is borne out in the verses immediately following this.

Another reference that comes to mind when looking at this is the definition “to present”, as in one's own righteousness. That takes me back to the problems encountered by Cain when he attempted to present the f

ruits of his own labor, the best fruits that he could produce as an offering of sacrifice to God. I have little doubt that the gifts he brought were not the very best that could be produced, but it represented his own efforts to please God his own way and without submitting to a position of entrusting himself to the God who was providing the ultimate Lamb for all sinners.

Many people use this story to make a strong point about obedience and how Cain was cursed because he refused to obey. That may be true in a sense but ironically that type of spin of this story can also produce the very results that we think we are trying to avoid. The Jews themselves became prime examples of trying to please God enough through explicit obedience to get onto right terms with H

im. That is too often the implied (but not explicitly stated) goal of our rehearsing of the story of Cain. We are trying to intimidate ourselves into more perfect obedience which is often just a nice way of promoting performance. The failure of Cain's offering to bring him into harmony with God had much more to do with the condition of his heart than it had to do with the wrongness of his offering. In fact, the offering of improper gifts was simply a symptom of the condition of his spirit toward God. He was going about trying to establish his own righteousness just like the Jews and just like most of us are still doing today even though we try to deny it. For God makes it clear throughout the Bible that He is far more concerned with the offering of a humble heart that embraces and trusts in the covenant of God revealed in Jesus than in any amount or quality of supposed righteousness we may attempt

to perform and present to Him.

The next phrase I feel has much more embedded in it than I am yet seeing. They have not submitted to God's righteousness. I see at least two things here right away. First of all sin has caused us to resist being humble or being submissive. Submission in our world is also usually associated with force which is not part of God's way of dealing with His created intelligent beings. Therefore we start out with mixed ideas in the very concept of the words.

Secondly we have extremely twisted views of God's righteousness. As I have said before, righteousness is one of the most misunderstood words in religion. This is because the whole purpose of sin and Satan is to obscure the righteousness of God, His goodness, compassion, never-ceasing love etc. so it is no surprise that there is such ignorance about His righteousness because we are all living in the miasma of sin. And if we are ignorant as to the truth about God and what His righteousness really entails it makes it very difficult to submit our hearts and minds to something we don't understand or worse yet we are very afraid of.

I believe that possibly this is the sharpe

st point yet in this book where Paul is trying to make very plain what salvation is all about. This is where he is putting his finger on the most sensitive areas of our heart and trying to get us to see the truth of the gospel that he introduced in chapter one. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

The word “end” here does not mean at all that the law is no longer applicable or a description of reality. What the original word means is that Christ is the focal point of the law. The Greek word is “telos” which I suspect might be the root for our word telescope. If it is then that would make a lot of sense, for a telescope is used to

focus and amplify a particular point in the distance so that we can view it better and admire its beauty.

In that case this verse could read, Christ's beauty and character is the object of focus that the Law amplifies so that in viewing the perfect revelation of God's righteousness in the life of Christ we will be made righteous through believing and embracing His attractiveness.

By beholding we become changed. That is the method that the gospel uses to heal and save us. As I focus my attention on Jesus through the lenses of the telescope of the Scriptures I become drawn to be more like Him naturally. The effects of staring at His beauty is the growth of fruit in my own life that look more and more like His loveliness. This fruit is not something I work hard to produce but is a natural outgrowth of simply spending time soaking in His love and presence.

(next in series)

Gospel for the Heart

The verses through the end of chapter 9 and the beginning of chapter 10 of Romans are to me an increasingly clear description of living in relation to God from the heart verses living a religious life while suppressing the heart. I know that this may sound more like me jumping onto my favorite subject and trying to make everything fit or support it, but I don't think that is the case. I really do believe very deeply that the principles that I have been learning from all different sources over the past few years have been coordinated by God's Spirit to reveal this most important reality. There is a dramatic difference between living from our heart, properly engaging our right brain and relating properly to our emotions and our spirit, or living a life focused on external conformity to religious structures, formalities, restrictions and doctrines.

I have been discussing this recently with others and continue to see more insights in this. I believe that it is a mistake to claim that the “mind” and the “heart” are the same thing when referenced in inspired literature. They are not one and the same even though they may be located in very close proximity inside our cranial bones. And while it is very important to restore the proper function of our right brain, what is usually referred to as our heart, it is also not our true design to live controlled by our emotions and simply allowing our feelings to dictate our decisions and plans.

There is much controversy swirling around this subject and most of it seems to take one extreme or the other and paint everyone else as believing the extreme opposite. I believe that God originally created us to have our brains in perfect balance and cooperative relationship. The two sides of the brain have radically different functions and cannot replace the role of the other by being over-dominant. I believe that one of the most noticeable effects of sin is the imbalance and extremes that are seen in the operation of the brain and the problems that that causes.

I also observe that the cooperation and inter-dependence that is seen in a properly functioning brain may be illustrative (or the other way around) of a properly related marriage. When two people who are often leaning in opposite directions as far as personality and emotion/intellect preference get married, they have to learn to not only respect each other's strengths and abilities but they also have to learn to trust those abilities and realize that they do not have everything needed to be a complete whole. Humans were created in the image of God male AND female as a complete unit called human. When they are not united as one in marriage to a person of the opposite gender and learning to integrate their very different abilities and gifts, they cannot be a reflection of the more complete image of God as the unified experience of those who are in a healthy marriage.

I do not say this to in any way make married people seem better or more valuable than unmarried people. I say it to explain what the Bible teaches about the nature of our being created in the image of God. As individual people, male or female, it is completely outside our ability to reflect as fully the image of God as He desires to reveal about Himself in a healthy, dynamic, inter-dependent marriage seeking to reflect His likeness.

I believe that this principle plays out at many different levels, not just in the marriage relationship. As I said before, I believe that the marriage relationship is very similar to a properly functioning brain that has two very different sides that need to learn to relate to each other properly. In addition to the two sides of the brain and marriage there is also the unity that God seeks to bring about in the body of Christ. This is really the ultimate goal that God is working to achieve in the salvation process.

Many of the assumptions and doctrines in Christianity today are reflective of twisted views of that proper relationship and the resulting tensions and difficulties and unnecessary pain caused by these narrow views have caused very serious problems ever since Eve accepted the first lie about God. Typically we have looked at the unbalanced state of affairs throughout history and have used the cultural and Biblical descriptions of this imbalance to justify our own bigoted ideas of dominance and submission, thereby extending their ill effects for yet another generation. The tensions and wars over gender and what healthy roles and relationships are supposed to look like are also reflective of the internal tension between the two halves of our brains and the prejudiced ideas and teachings that we promote in religion as well as in society.

Anywhere you find a religion that is left-brain dominant with much emphasis on intellect over emotions and heart issues, you will also find typically a pattern of male dominance and a strong emphasis on female “submission” with a very biased redefinition of the real meaning of that word. And likewise, it is also possible that where you find a religion or culture with over-emphasis on emotionalism and feelings at the expense of objective truth, you may find more dominant involvement by females with strong influence and the same entrenched bigotry by supporters toward the other extreme as found in the intellectual religions.

As I said before, I believe that God designed the two sides of our brain to be very different. As such, they can only function as originally designed if they properly respect each other and relate to each other's strengths in full cooperation and perfect balance. The resulting health and happiness and peace that is seen as a result is not unlike that observed in very positive and dynamic marriages (which are so rare as to be almost of questionable existence by many).

In this section of Romans I am seeing this issue of imbalance addressed in the religious context by Paul who has been trying to get across the truth in different ways of the need for us to relate to God with our heart. The Christian religion has been perverted to almost exclusively favor left-brain dominance. As a result it has also promoted male dominance which is the natural effect of such thinking. And while God has often looked past the symptom of gender imbalance in favor of first dealing with the mind/heart imbalance, I believe we can see in Jesus' life the example of God's desire for His church, His family who are learning to look, feel and act like Him, to properly relate in this arena. But first He has to address the deeper, causitive problem of the extreme imbalance of a left-brain, intellectual-oriented, externally focused, behavior and performance obsessed concept of religion that most of us believe is what is expected from us. This is one of the main problems that I see being addressed in the book of Romans.

However, Paul has made it clear all throughout this book that it is not just religious addicts and left-brain junkies who are emotionally alienated from their loving Creator. Repeatedly he has addressed first one group and then the other as he points out the various problems and symptoms of both the openly God-rejecting “unbelievers” and the religious junkies. Both groups have very confused and misinformed ideas of what it looks like to live in right relationship to God and to those around them. Both have been infected with many lies and viruses that have deeply corrupted their internal “files” the beliefs that they hold deep in their hearts. And while the external choices they have made as a result of those internal lies may look very different, the real cause of all this dysfunction are lies about God and about ourselves that in both cases are nearly identical.

This is why Paul addresses both groups in this book. At the heart level everyone has very messed up ideas about God and about our own worth in His eyes. When it is more clearly seen what these root lies are and that they are embedded much more in the heart side of our being than the intellectual side, then the solution of salvation begins to make much more sense. For salvation is not a formula as many of us have been led to believe. Salvation is not a legal maneuver or slight of hand by which Jesus manages to get sinners into paradise. Salvation is not even a solution for a tension between the vengeful desires of an angry God-Father and a loving Son who is trying to placate and appease His wrath. Salvation is something radically different than nearly anyone as assumed or dared to believe.

In the book of Romans Paul is strenuously trying to get people to understand the truth about salvation, both classes of sinners. He makes this clear very early on the the book when he states unequivocally that the gospel – the good news, the real truth about God – is the real power that brings about what is known as salvation. Salvation is literally the results that naturally begin to appear in the lives of everyone who believes the good news and believes and embraces the truth that God is much better than anyone had ever dared to imagine. Salvation, as I have noted before, comes from the word which means to heal, to restore to an unbroken condition. It is the bringing back of humans to the original design and function of joy and intimacy for which they were created. And this happens as a result of experiencing the transformational power of the real truth about God IN THE HEART.

Intellectual religion has created a substitute for heart spirituality by attempting to achieve the external attributes of salvation while failing to engage the heart and emotions and spirit which were designed to be the real cause of those results. That is very much like trying to pin fake fruit and fake leaves on a tree and claiming success in agriculture. And while that is patently absurd to us in the physical realm we continue to hammer away at our silly attempts to approximate the fruits of the Spirit by using only our left brain and suppressing of the dysfunctional emotions that continue to warn us of unresolved problems in our right brain and heart. Religion as we commonly know it is very afraid and incapable of dealing with real heart issues and so we usually ignore, deny, repress or scorn these symptoms and apply more force and discipline or other formulas to try to deal with these natural symptoms.

God does not desire us to live with unresolved pain and internal conflicts, particularly from embedded lies in the right side of our brain which cause the most problems. He has provided ways for us to unmask those lies buried in past memories and receive complete healing, not intellectually but experientially at the heart and emotional level. In fact, every time we feel stirred up emotionally it is an open door through which we may enter into a healing opportunity and allow God to bring truth and light into a dark area of our past. Those who are willing to allow God to do this and participate in this process are finding amazing freedom from compulsive behaviors, complete peace and calm in formerly devastating and paralyzing memories, and freedom that is permanent. This freedom results in what some call maintenance-free victory where they no longer need to struggle against temptations associated with the effects of that memory. This is truly the freedom that the Son of God is eager to bring into our lives when we are willing to admit that the real problems preventing us from experiencing closeness to God (righteousness) lie in our heart/right brain and have to be dealt with very differently than intellectual lies that are found in our left brain.

Paul's deep passion, the intense desire of his heart was to see his own church, the Jews who were so set on pleasing God through performance and external piety, come to a realization of their tragic mistake and turn to God with their hearts instead of reliance on their intellect. Paul says, For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. (Romans 10:2 NIV) I like the way that another translation renders it. I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. (Romans 10:2 NRSV)

Did the Jews really lack knowledge about God? Come on, now, they had the most advanced “knowledge” about God in the whole world. But what I see here is not a reference to intellectual knowledge that was lacking but a heart knowledge, the kind of “knowing” that Adam had with his wife that made her pregnant. That kind of knowledge is an emotional intimacy, and right brain, heart bonding that can never be substituted on an intellectual level.

The very next verse reinforces this truth and refers us back to chapter one where Paul talks about the righteousness of God in relation to the power of the gospel. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God's righteousness. (Romans 10:3 NRSV)

Here it becomes even more clear upon taking a closer look again at Romans chapter 1 that both religious zealots and God-rejecting enthusiasts are motivated by the same root lies about God. Neither class is willing to believe the truth about the goodness of God or submit to the transformational power that that “knowledge” will have in their heart. The first class go about attempting to satisfy the cravings through increasing levels of rebellion and open sin and the second class go about trying to impress God and those around them with as counterfeit righteousness they try to fabricate with their formulas and performance.

When anyone is willing to accept that it is their heart that needs healing truth, that the real wall between humans and God is not just wrong information but embedded lies about God and themselves buried deep under their emotions in the right brain, then they will see that no amount of law-keeping or achievements on their part will have any use in restoring their hearts into relationship with their Creator. For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. (Romans 10:4 NRSV)

Again, it is not intellectual belief that Paul is talking about here so much as a belief that comes about when we engage our heart, our right brain and our spirit at an emotional level parallel to a proper intellectual understanding of the truth about God. It is embracing at the heart level the revelation about God as revealed not only in the life and death of Jesus but in a current revelation by His Spirit to us of the deep compassion and love that Jesus feels for us right now. When we experience that kind of bonding and healing in the presence of Jesus it will be the end of our focus on the law as a means of trying to get right with God. We will enjoy the righteousness that comes naturally as a result of experiencing the power that enters into our hearts upon believing the gospel, the truly good news about how God feels about us.

For I have no feeling of shame about the good news, because it is the power of God giving salvation to everyone who has faith... (Romans 1:16 BBE)

(next in series)

Cell Phone Opportunity

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4 NRSV)

Let it be all joy to you, my brothers, when you undergo tests of every sort; Because you have the knowledge that the testing of your faith gives you the power of going on in hope; But let this power have its full effect, so that you may be made complete, needing nothing. (James 1:2-4 BBE)

I am becoming more and more aware that God allows certain things to take place simply to get my attention and give me opportunity to practice things that maybe are slipping from my mind – like gratitude and total dependence on Him in faith. I have noticed over the past few years that it is not unusual for me to misplace something, say a tool while I am working, and begin to experience the frustration of desperately needing it but being unable to locate it, sometimes even right under my nose.

Now I'm sure many people would find it strange that I would consider that anything unusual at all. Many people lose things and get frustrated, especially when they start getting older. But God almost seems to hide things from me at times because, I am convinced, He wants to remind me of who I want to be in control or priority in my daily living. When I feel that intense impulse to become frustrated and increasingly angry over not being able to have and do what I want, I realize that I am facing a choice as to how I will relate to this situation, really a choice about who is going to be my God.

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, (NIV) speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; singing, and singing praises in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always concerning all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father. (Ephesians 5:18-20 WEB)

There have been any number of times when I am looking for something and it almost feels like it is being deliberately hidden from me in order to get me to reevaluate the condition of my spirit. What makes me think this is true is because quite often after I submit and cooperate with the gentle prompting of the Spirit in my heart to release my intensity, stop my frantic searching, let go of my anxiety and choose to relax in the care of my Father, that quite often I almost immediately find what I was looking for. That has happened so frequently that it makes me very suspicious that it is not simply a coincidence; Someone is behind these events who has my peace and growth as part of their concern for me.

I am learning to view these events from a different perspective, which is part of the training that I have asked God to do in my life. Of course there is always the temptation to fall into the trap of formula thinking which would lead me to believe that I can somehow manipulate the Almighty into getting me what I want if I just conform to what He wants. But what I try to remember is that He is much more interested in deepening His intimate relationship with me than He is in performing miracles for my convenience or comfort. And real relationships are never based on repeatable, predictable formulas.

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. (Colossians 3:12-17 NAS95)

These little exercises in faith have been helping reshape my perspective of reality, which I am sure there are intended to do. They also have a very helpful role in transforming my inner view of how God feels about me and how dependent I really am on Him for everything. In fact, whenever these opportunities occur I am learning to take them as a word of caution and quickly look inside to see how my unsettled feelings and anxious heart are clouding the truth about God's love for me. It is one thing to go around talking about God's care and concern for even the little things in my life and it is another to actually apply those ideas to real-life problems when my emotions begin clamoring in fear that I have to fix my own problems.

What I am learning is that succumbing to anxiety and fear without turning my emotions over to God while intellectually believing in Him, is a sign of atheism. It is exposing the effects of Satan's big Lie about God that is deeply ingrained in all of our hearts; that God does not really care about me as much as He says and that ultimately it is up to me to take care of myself. When I choose to allow worry to stay in my heart and entertain emotions of anxiety and fretting without challenging them in the light of God's presence, I am in essence denying that I have a loving Father who is interested in even the smallest details of my life. That includes all the little joys and delights that I experience as well as all the little or big problems and irritations. He wants me to share everything with Him and to share back and forth like real friends do.

Well, as you might suspect, I had another one of those opportunities the last couple days. We had the wonderful privilege of having friends and family at our house for Thanksgiving weekend. These were friends that we had barely met and were just getting to know but it was very enjoyable and nurturing for us. Of course we were very sad to see them leave as they could only stay for about a day and a half. The next day our daughters also had to leave and we were left with a big empty house again and feeling rather abandoned and alone. I know that this is normal but it still does not feel good.

The next day as I got ready to go into town I began to look around for my cell phone to take with me. As you can guess, I could not find it anywhere. I remembered placing it on the piano near the front door where I usually keep it so I can notice it on the way out, but it was nowhere to be found. I searched all around my bedroom, the living room, even the cars and the office but to no avail.

I then called our friends and asked them to look through their things to see if they might accidentally have picked it up in their things when they left but they assured me they had not seen it. Now the emotions of fear begin to pick up and the scenarios begin to play in my imagination. The fear about the expense of replacing a phone I have just recently purchased conjured up anxieties over finances and I even wondered if maybe someone might have found it and was running up high phone bills for me. It is amazing how elaborate our fears can fabricate all sorts of potential problems out of so few facts.

Last night after work I stopped by a little cafe´ to download some updates and large files onto my laptop. I ended up staying later than I expected and wished I had my phone to let my wife know why I was late. But there was no phone to use and my anxiety again began to assert itself. It was beginning to permeate all through my mind and heart as I drove home in spite of all my efforts to avoid those fears and discount those scenarios. I realized that I needed to face this issue head-on and deal much more firmly with my increasingly out-of-control emotions. I had a choice to handle this myself, even with a little help from the Supernatural, or I would have to turn it over completely to God to the point where I would let go completely of my ownership of the problem.

Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. (Hebrews 13:15 NAS95)

It was at this point as I discussed this problem with God while I was driving that I remembered what is so easy for me to forget – the power of thankfulness. At first it did not really come to my attention though. I just began focusing on the goodness of God and consciously choosing to thank God for His various characteristics and attributes. Over the past few years I have found this to be the only really effective solution for oppressive fear that threatens to suffocate me emotionally and drive me into despair. It feels almost irrational to just focus my attention on God and the good things about Him when I have enormous problems screaming in my head to be resolved; never mind that I do not have the wherewithal to fix them, they demand to be the center of my attention. Maybe that is one of the symptoms of idol worship – paying attention to what makes me afraid instead of deliberately refocusing on the One who is greater than all my fears.

At any rate, I continued to force my mind to dwell on the various things about God that I could think of and let my mind ponder each one of them and let them sink into my emotions. As I continued to keep myself in this state of mind I could not help but notice a very obvious change in my feelings, both emotionally and physically. I then began to remember how amazingly powerful the spirit of thanksgiving is to effect reality and that participating in this activity, which is the very atmosphere that fills the rest of the universe outside this polluted planet, allows the power of God to transform my spirit and gives Him permission to do things in my life that He has been eager to do all along.

As I filled my mind and heart with continuing praise and gratitude for God's goodness, His grace and mercy, His unfailing love and compassion as well as the blessings that I enjoy, I felt my fears fading away fast and I could release my anxiety in exchange for the peace that passes all understanding. It was no longer my problem to find my phone or pay potential expenses or... I told God these were His problems now and put them on Him completely. I chose to embrace His presence and simply soak in His care and love for me no matter what my circumstances looked like. I once again entered into His rest.

When I got home I told my wife that we needed to ask our daughter if she had seen the phone. She was the only one we had not asked yet who had been at our house. Immediately my wife said the phone had been found. When I asked her who had found it she sheepishly told me that she had found it in her own purse. She had picked it up and taken it with her when she went into town with the girls the last night they stayed here and then of course forgot all about it.

Of course that was good to hear. But it did not have the effect of relieving me of all my fear and anxiety as would be expected, for that had already been fully dealt with just a few minutes before. To me it seemed much more like a smile from God and an affirmation that I was growing in my trust and love for Him and that He knows what He is doing and can be trusted. It was not so much a reward for my trust as it was another lesson that my heart can remember when even bigger fears try to intimidate me and displace my faith which they are certain to attempt.

At times I become intensely aware of how little I indulge in real gratitude. I have written about it before and at times have been very aware that there is unlimited power at my fingertips (or more likely lips) that is just waiting to be unleashed in my life if I would just remember to live in the atmosphere of heaven which is gratitude and continuous praise. But I know how little I remember that and how easy it is to stay in my ruts which are so familiar. I want to live on a higher plane of existence than what is considered average. I want to learn to live in reference to what is considered “normal” in heaven instead of what is considered “normal” here on earth. But God is faithful and He is finishing the work that He started in me, for it is God who is at work in me, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13)

Spin or Insight?

As I continue to ponder over the last few paragraphs of Romans 9, I still feel that there is much to understand here. There are a number of very important and main points of enlightenment that Paul wants to convey to us and I don't want to be put off by the clutter that has gathered through centuries of wrong assumptions and repeated translations through filters of prejudice. The light is still in here even though it may have become more difficult to discern easily.

One thing that has made me look more carefully is when I compare Paul's “translation” of Isaiah 10:23 with how the Bible reads that same verse from the Old Testament. At first glance they hardly seem to be referring to the same concept. It is almost to the point where Paul could be accused of rewriting Isaiah to say what he wants it to say. Or is it a case where Paul perceived what God was really saying in Isaiah and the translators failed to carry its true meaning into the English words they used in our current Bibles? I find repeatedly that the pervasive assumptions about God being an angry deity needing to be placated and appeased leak into much of how translators interpret many of the texts in the Bible. There seem to be very few people willing to challenge those assumptions but instead spend much time and effort building complex rationalizations to explain why God is arbitrary or mad or supposedly does things inconsistent with His own character.

Here is the passage from Isaiah that Paul quoted from in Romans followed by how Paul phrased those same thoughts. I added an extra verse at the beginning of the Isaiah quote for some important context.

Now in that day the remnant of Israel, and those of the house of Jacob who have escaped, will never again rely on the one who struck them, but will truly rely on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel. A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people, O Israel, may be like the sand of the sea, Only a remnant within them will return; A destruction is determined, overflowing with righteousness. For a complete destruction, one that is decreed, the Lord GOD of hosts will execute in the midst of the whole land. (Isaiah 10:20-23)

Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, "THOUGH THE NUMBER OF THE SONS OF ISRAEL BE LIKE THE SAND OF THE SEA, IT IS THE REMNANT THAT WILL BE SAVED; FOR THE LORD WILL EXECUTE HIS WORD ON THE EARTH, THOROUGHLY AND QUICKLY." (Romans 9:27-28)

The way these two passages read seems to me to convey quite different concepts that are nearly unrecognizable to each other in the last verse quoted. Is Paul simply trying to put his spin on this text and forcing it to say something he wants to see there, or does he have a better version of Scripture than we have to work from? Or maybe the Holy Spirit that inspired Paul to write large portions of the Bible opened to his mind to what that same Spirit inspired Isaiah to convey originally and Paul simply made it clearer in his quoting of it.

I find today that whenever someone wants to go back and examine the “original” (as far as reasonably possible this far distant from the actual originals) text and “second-guess” the assumptions of the translators, there is sometimes a feeling of scorn on the part of some academia and a discounting of insights put forward by anyone daring to question the collective decisions of the “experts”. This is not to say that there is complete agreement among the translations or that good insights cannot be gained by checking out a number of translations on any given verse. But I have been more and more amazed at how much is simply dropped or glossed over in nearly every translation of the Bible due to apparent discomfort with either the intensity of intimacy revealed in the original languages, or the words the translators choose reflect too many of the deeply ingrained lies about God embedded in the psyche of the human race.

What is really amazing is that in spite of the inherent problems faced by the writers of the Bible of condensing the thoughts and feelings of God and men into words and then further muddling things by converting them into different languages with all the inherent pitfalls that that entails, God's light is so powerful and His love so intense that in spite of all these problems the Holy Spirit can still pull the truth out of these various versions and apply it to the hearts of anyone willing to be open and guided by the true Spirit of God.

I went back and looked up some of the original words from Isaiah that are quoted here to see what I might find. Again, I am working with an untrained mind that has never taken a day of Greek or Hebrew and that is relying wholly on using the somewhat faulty or at least limited resource of Strong's research. I freely admit that there is much more outside of my present ability to see here. But even with my very limited ability and resources I can see that there are always alternative ways of phrasing passages when I look at the definitions of each word from the earlier text. The various potential meanings of each word usually contain alternatives that if applied in the translating of the passage would give it quite a different flavor.

The one main criteria that I use for looking at the various options in a word's meaning is the growing knowledge I am gaining about the real truth about what God is like and how He feels toward us. I find that if I use that framework as a filter or paradigm from which to select which part of a definition to use in a text that there is always very exciting things to be learned and much clearer ways to express the thoughts contained in many verses. I believe that Paul's version of Isaiah 10:23 is a perfect example of this very thing.

There are a lot of things I notice in these verses that I don't have time right now to explore. I would like to point out that the original words used for “destruction” in the last two verses quoted from Isaiah are not the same word in Hebrew. The second reference especially seems to convey the idea of “completion” more than destruction and I think that is supported by Paul's version of this verse. He quotes that as “executing His word on the earth thoroughly”, which is how he sees the meaning of the word from Hebrew translated “destruction”. This is a classic case of the danger of our blindly accepting notions of an angry, destructive God that can so easily be deduced from reading certain passages of Scripture without exploring deeper. We need to look beyond the surface and compare what we are reading with the much clearer revelation about what God is like in the life and teachings of Jesus, the perfect demonstration of what God is really like.

There is one more thing I would like to note before I quit. The first verse in the Isaiah quote has a very interesting and insightful truth. We know that the emotional relationship between an abuse victim and the abuser after an extended period of time becomes one of dependency by the victim on the abuser. It seems bizarre and ridiculous, but it is how our brains are wired. Even when the victim becomes free physically from the abuser and may be angry and resentful about the previous abuse they experienced, they are ironically still enslaved to their own anger and bitterness if they do not embrace the healing power of real forgiveness.

This is a real but very controversial truth of the mind and the universe, just a real as gravity. If we refuse to forgive (and we really need to learn what that really means which is not very common) we are still in bondage to the one who holds a spell over our hearts and minds. But in this verse God is foretelling the truth that those who accept their role as His children and experience redemption will be free of that psychological phenomenon through their true reliance on the Almighty Redeemer Himself, the ultimate example of forgiveness. Unfortunately it is also true that only a small number, a remnant, will be willing to enter into this transformed relationship and enjoy the intimacy with God's heart that we were all designed to live in.

This is the context of what Paul is trying to get across in Romans 9 and the surrounding passages. In fact he tries to make it very clear in the last few verses of this chapter. He emphatically declares that we do not come into harmony with God (righteousness) by working hard on getting there but through a relationship with the One who came to reveal God to us – Jesus our Savior. If we refuse to see and believe the love of God in Jesus then He becomes the stumbling stone which blocks us from receiving real life and all the good things associated with eternal life in God's presence.

He who believes in Him will not be disappointed. (Romans 9:33)

(next in series)