Love and Force

I could tell you but then I would have to kill you.

I could show you my glory but you could not survive the experience.

I could force you but that would destroy your heart's ability to love.

Force has a very important place in the workings of the principles of creation. God has set up natural laws that have unimaginable potential for force. We sometimes call them “forces of nature”. Likewise, there are principles in the spirit realm of intelligent beings (that includes us) that have tremendous forces in place that can either be powerful motivations for living and thriving or terrifying threats that induce fear and submission and suck away the life out of our bones.

As I have been thinking about this issue of force it seems to me that while God put in place all the counter-balancing forces in creation designed to perfectly function together, He intentionally carved out a sacred space in His creation design that was to be free of all force, where relationships could flourish and love could blossom. Force is a poison that prevents love from growing in the heart and it is extremely important that the atmosphere surrounding the heart be free of all coercion if it is to flourish and thrive. And because God operates only on the principle of love in all His dealings with the intelligent beings He has created, He fiercely defends each individual's freedom of will and choice so as to protect the potential for the plant of love to spring up and thrive in the heart.

But here on earth we have already experienced so much force and abuse of authority that our hearts are numb with pain and fear and are incapable of producing real love on our own. Often the thing which we do feel from others and that we think is love is only the selfish advances of people who may try to care about us but in the end are seeking to exploit us, even when that is not their conscious intention. And it works both ways. Even when we honestly believe we are motivated by genuine concern for others and try to bless them, our motives are always mixed and the selfishness that mingles in with our love contaminates it and confuses the heart.

Selfishness is always looking for ways to make us feel better, to have a sense of value, to draw attention to ourself in some way so we can feel more important. We legitimately do have a need to feel valuable and important to others. It is one of the most elemental needs of the brain to feel cherished and loved by another – that is the definition of joy. But trying to get it from others without first genuinely knowing we are valued and loved by God is an exercise in futility in the long run. We end up substituting pleasure for satisfaction and exploiting others more and more to try to fill our own emptiness. This is what sin is all about.

The suspicions aroused in the heart by repeated experiences like this have made us extremely skeptical of even the existence of genuine, selfless love. So when someone tries to describe to us a God who loves us with no selfish motives attached we find it nearly impossible to imagine it, much less believe it could be true for us individually.

Because we are so unfamiliar with the nature of real love but are intimately familiar with the workings of force, all of our beliefs about reality and the supernatural are distorted by our mistaken assumptions about the use of force. We do not cherish the fierce protectiveness that God has for personal freedoms. We are far more focused on performance, appearances and solutions to problems than we value intimacy of relationships. To us, putting healthy relationships ahead of looking good in our behavior appears to be weak-minded, maybe even fickle or sinful. We also assume that relationships must have some degree of force involved at least once in awhile to keep them on track. We simply can't imagine having “successful” relationships with others without having the option to resort to force “when necessary”.

What ends up happening is that we insist on mingling our addictions to force in with our assumptions about God and coming up with a formula that we believe He must use to solve the sin problem. We end up creating our own religion based on teachings about a loving God who tries as long as possible to reach people with gentleness, kindness and compassion but in the end is compelled to resort to force to get His way when all else fails. Depending on our own experience and upbringing, the point where we believe God switches from being nice to getting stern and resorting to force varies greatly. But the very fact that we insist that God cannot win this war against evil without resorting to our ways of dealing with problems through force betrays the immense unbelief we cherish about the true power of love operating free of all coercion.

One of the ways we convince others of the supremacy of force over love is to bring intense emotional pressure on those who are truly trying to imitate God's ways. If and when in their weakness they succumb to the fear of our intimidation and are overcome due to their immaturity, we then hold up their failure as an example of the inferiority of trusting in love alone. But is forcing someone else to fail a legitimate proof of the weakness of love to overcome all sin? How does this line up with the teachings of Jesus who came to reveal the heart of the Father to us?

Jesus told Paul that His strength was made perfect in weakness. (2 Cor. 12:9) So why do we as Christians continue to glorify the supposed virtues of force when repeatedly throughout Scripture God tells us that His ways are strikingly different than our assumptions? If we are ever to find the truth about reality we must be willing to release our vise-grip hold on our life-long assumptions about the use of force and allow the gentle Spirit of Jesus to retrain our thinking and rewire our reactions and fill our hearts and minds with the ways and will of the true God.

The more I have studied the story of Elijah on Mt. Carmel and the surrounding stories, the more clear it becomes to me that this was one of the main lessons that God had to reinforce in Elijah's mind and heart when He took him through the retraining session on Mt. Horeb some days later. Elijah had succumbed to the temptation to indulge in the use of force by killing the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel, and all the subsequent embarrassing choices made by Elijah flowed from that wrong decision. I believe Elijah realized this too late and is the reason why Elijah ran back to where he was sure he could sort things out with God and get his head on straight again. God lovingly but carefully took Elijah through a series of examples of things to avoid when trying to discern the voice of God in the soul. And pretty much all of them were typical reflections of force.

In the end it will be seen that the use of force to accomplish what we believe is God's will is never the right thing to do no matter how right it feels like at the moment or how much affirmation we get from those around us while doing it. Man's ways are not God's ways and until we learn to trust His ways and be constantly led by His Spirit, we will be vulnerable to falling into the trap of resorting to force on occasion to accomplish what God can easily do through other means and resources.

What God desires more than anything else – including perfection of performance and behavior – is a trusting heart that is humble, teachable, full of self-distrust but also full of confidence in God's love and ability to accomplish what He wants done in our lives. God wants a deep relationship with our heart far more that He wants what we think are good outward appearances. When the heart is changed and transformed first, then the outward life will begin to reflect the inward transformation without our having to work hard at it. This is natural righteousness by faith. And this is the life that trusts so fully in God's character and righteousness that it can release all desire to employ force to gets its own way.

Passion Continued...

For those interested in more thoughts on this issue of passion that I have been visiting for several days, I have posted more thoughts on another blog where I am studying the book of Romans currently. As this issue has been swirling around in my head I am seeing interesting implications in the passage that I am currently considering. The relevance of the effect of force on passion is what I am considering right now. Sorry for seeming to jump around between blogs, but generally I keep this blog for things not directly related to my current passage study. But sometimes the train of thought crosses back and forth between the two.

The Poor in Spirit Advantage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faith and Passion

I woke up early this morning with more thoughts about what was in my imagination yesterday about this issue of passion and electricity. As I pondered it more and listened to God's Spirit for what He had to say about it, I remembered my study of Jesus' answer to His disciple's request to increase their faith. It was one of the most surprising and enlightening studies that I have done and I continue to see more and more meaning in that passage found in Luke 17.

What came to me this morning with considerable force was the thought that it was the spirit of service and passionate devotion as portrayed in this story that was the secret enjoyed by the servants who had increased levels of faith. The distinctive attribute about their attitude was their unique devotion and selfless spirit in the service of their master.

Then I also remembered a quotation that was often quoted by the people and culture around which I grew up.

Our heavenly Father has a thousand ways to provide for us, of which we know nothing. Those who accept the one principle of making the service and honor of God supreme will find perplexities vanish, and a plain path before their feet. {DA 330}

Just like the servants in Jesus' story, people in His service serve Him first, not themselves. That is one of the main points that I realized when I first saw the true significance of the story that Jesus told. This story was not so much a formula to follow for getting more faith but was an illustration of the kind of relationship that people will be in who have ever-increasing faith.

But one of the questions that came up immediately in my mind was, how do we serve Him? In my mind, that is sort of like wondering how you are supposed to come up with a Christmas present for someone who already has everything they could ever need or want. If my duty and my desire is to serve my Master, my Father in heaven first before I attend to my own needs and desires, what does that really look like in practical application here and now?

The answer came to me again in the words of Jesus. The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.' (Matthew 25:40)

What I am learning from this passage in Luke 17:1-10 is that these servants are living in right relationship to God emotionally. They have actually become conductors of the power of His passion in the right direction. And the direction of passion is always extremely important. As I touched on yesterday, I am beginning to see more clearly that passion is the fuel that is needed for motivation. It is not bad in and of itself. The problem is the way and direction in which it is channeled.

To suppress or try to eliminate passion is to rob the soul of the energy it needs to thrive. Those robbed of passion live a stunted, dwarfed existence. Likewise, those who do allow outlet for passion but refuse to accept the healthy boundaries provided by God to properly channel their passion become drunk with the wine of fornication as seen in Revelation 17:2. This kind of passion is rooted in selfishness and will use and abuse others for its own pleasure at their expense.

True, God-like passion is not suppressed or perverted and does not exploit others for its own benefit. Real Godly passion is the spirit of blessing and uplifting others at any cost to one's self. That is what Jesus came to demonstrate first hand.

Jesus' life was a demonstration of the attitude and relationship described in the story of the devoted servants who had increased faith like the disciples wanted. When a person is in that state of mind and has that kind of orientation with the Master, they reflect the selfless passion of the Master in their determination to make sure His needs are met ahead of their own. But they do not do it merely from a sense of duty. If that were the case it would be impossible for them to enjoy the passionate kind of faith that is needed to thrive and live joyfully in the service of the King. They do it spontaneously from a passion that fires their heart to serve compulsively.

What is even more important is that they can easily confess that they are not the source of real worth, that their relationship with the Master is really one of reflective service. If they were not oriented to the Master with this kind of attitude it would be impossible for them to serve Him properly and selflessly. It is their state of mind that is the crucial point of this whole story, not so much the outward manifestations seen in their activities.

To think and function in any other way in the Master's service would actually be to live with a spirit of competition with the Master. To feel that the Master owes them something would be to subtly think of themselves as a master in some respect and God as their servant. Unfortunately that is the attitude of most Christians even though we don't realize it. But just take a look at many of the prayers that we pray asking God to serve us in some way. Where is the joyful eagerness to serve and bless our Master before we expect to be fed.

While it is true that Jesus came to reveal the servant spirit of God to us and relay to us that God has the same attitude toward us as the Son, it does not necessarily follow that we should assume that being served by God implies that we are somehow deserving of that service. To do so is to unconsciously invert our relationship which reverses the flow of passion. This is the trick of the enemy, to reverse the flow of current which always produces tension, unrest and ultimately resistance heat and finally death.

This story reveals that keeping the direction of the current always in the right orientation is one of the most important things we can ever learn if we ever hope to participate in the kingdom of God. It is more clear to me now that we need the current of passion to grow and thrive. Passion is not bad, it just needs to flow in the right direction.

So we need both the passion and the proper orientation to the true source of all passion in order to thrive as Christians. Getting those two things straight will result in producing the attitudes revealed in the lives of these servants and revealed in the attitude of Jesus while here on earth. That is the example that Jesus came to give that we are to follow. It is not the perfect outward symptoms of His life that we are to attempt to copy, it is His spirit of total abandonment to the will of His Father and the channeling of the Father's passion in selfless service to others and to God that is to be the prime object of our attention and imitation. That is the same spirit and motivation that is seen in the attitudes of the servants in the story that Jesus told in Luke 17.

Orientation of our relationship is everything.

Passion, Electricity and Integrity

Here are some thoughts that came to me about passion.

I have not found a better illustration for understanding the government of God than the way an electrical circuit operates. To me, passion is analogous to electrical current or voltage, I'm not sure which is more accurate or if that is really relevant. But passion is a power very similar in nature to electricity. And just like electricity, passion in and of itself is not the problem. The problem arises when passion is applied backwards to the original circuit designed by God that synchronizes with reality. When passion is run backwards, like misapplying electricity to a circuit, it changes appearance and produces results that looks like something very different than intended by the designer. The way you can know if it is running backwards is the degree to which selfishness is involved.

Selfishness transforms passion into exploitation and fornication. In Revelation the evil woman is represented as having a cup full of wine and elsewhere it is noted that this wine is the passion of immorality. Immorality certainly involves passion and often it is passion itself that is blamed for the problems of immorality. But passion is not the problem, it is the way in which passion is exercised and the direction of its orientation. Immorality is very selfish passion that is craving to exploit others for its own pleasure.

On the other hand, the passion of God is always totally selfless. This passion is even more intense than the passion of immorality but because it is totally selfless it is generally foreign to our way of thinking. In fact, the great confusion that has arisen about God's passion is because it is so foreign to our way of thinking that when we do perceive it we see it through the distorted assumptions of our own false passions, our backwards way of experiencing passion, and so we believe that God's passion is actually wrath. Because we believe it is wrath we even experience it as wrath and we are fully convinced that indeed it is wrath.

But what makes God's passion seem like wrath to some and glory to others is the amount of resistance that is in the heart to the ways and the motivations of God's heart. If I am resistant to the selflessness that always motivates the heart of the God of heaven then the heat generated by my resistance creates in me a sensation of wrath. But if I am completely freed from all resistance to the unselfishness and the real truths about God's character and if I have been completely transformed so that my heart synchronizes with His heart and motives, then instead of feeling the heat of resistance to His passion I am empowered to be fully alive and can live as a conductor of massive amounts of the current of passion that flows to and from the heart of the Father throughout the full circuit of all the universe.

So I think it is safe to say that those who will be safe to save are the ones who have released their resistance to the truth about God's goodness, grace and passionate love. For when the full measure of God's passion is revealed to all the universe on the final day of revelation called the day of Judgment, only those – humans and angels alike – who have accepted and freely chosen to embrace the real truth about God's fairness, kindness and perfect motives will be safe to be exposed to that awesome power of passionate love. Being safe to save means being free of all resistance to the current of selfless love and choosing to live life in sync with the spirit of service and other-centeredness that is the hallmark of heaven's pure atmosphere.

Sitting down, He called the twelve and said to them, "If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all." (Mark 9:35)

Looking unto Jesus we see that it is the glory of our God to give. "I do nothing of Myself," said Christ; "the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father." "I seek not Mine own glory," but the glory of Him that sent Me. John 8:28; 6:57; 8:50; 7:18. In these words is set forth the great principle which is the law of life for the universe. All things Christ received from God, but He took to give. So in the heavenly courts, in His ministry for all created beings: through the beloved Son, the Father's life flows out to all; through the Son it returns, in praise and joyous service, a tide of love, to the great Source of all. And thus through Christ the circuit of beneficence is complete, representing the character of the great Giver, the law of life. {DA 21}

If you understand anything about the way electricity works and the requirements for its distribution, you will know that the closer you get to the source of current the larger the capacity of the conductors is required. I believe that this correlates closely with the circuit that defines the universe. A spirit of selfless service, of passing on all credit and glory is the purity and capacity needed for being a larger conductor.

Jesus declared that John the Baptist was the greatest in the kingdom. I think this was partly because he was safe enough for enormous amounts of God's passion to flow through him without being embezzled for his self-interest. His life attitude that he expressed in the words “He must increase, but I must decrease” is the needed qualification for one who is closer to the throne which is the source of all passion, the current that powers the universe. That is getting very close to what Lucifer's job was originally.

The more selfishness and self-focus we have the smaller the wire we can be in God's circuits. It is too dangerous for very much current to flow through us because we will quickly overheat and be consumed.

God is working patiently to increase the size of our wires. But He can only increase our capacity according to the willingness and humility with which we are willing to open up and accept His spirit of selfless love and service. We must be cleansed of all resistance to love and selfishness which are fatal elements in the high voltage world of the electricity of heaven.

To convey the passion of God safely requires a higher level of selflessness that what we are used to. We must be transformed by that passion to be in sync with its motives which are pure, out-flowing love and self-sacrifice. But to resist the current of love is to endanger ones very existence by default.

The counterfeit form of passion is selfish and craves attention and recognition for self. Misdirected, selfish passion lives to exploit others for one's own pleasure and benefit at a cost to them. It is more interested in what I can get from others than what I can do to benefit others.

God's passion is always oriented to bless and uplift and impart life to others at any cost to one's self.

Another question came up in my mind relative to this. How does doubt, questions or unbelief fit into this picture?

As I pondered this I came to sense that there is a distinct difference between questions spawned by willful unbelief and questions arising out of a sincere discomfort with what is known. The first is the product of a self-centered heart that is becoming more and more skeptical, a heart of unbelief that resists evidence of the truth about God. The key active ingredient here is resistance, and resistance is the element that hardens the heart against the gentle promptings of the Holy Spirit.

The second kind of questioning is the product of a heart that has integrity and is willing to honestly consider evidence that disagrees with one's own feelings or assumptions. This is a mind that is not so self-focused that it only looks for the negative in everything or is looking to defend its own opinions in spite of evidence to the contrary. This is the kind of skeptical but honest questioning that even some of the angels in heaven have about God's approach to dealing with sin.

God respects this kind of honest questioning with integrity and will never force anyone to change their opinions. He is confident that the questions that have arisen out of the minds that He created will be fully satisfied in the end when enough evidence is presented. And those answers will always end in the vindication of God's ways and God's righteous intentions.

What man is there who will not have fear before you, O Lord, and give glory to your name? because you only are holy; for all the nations will come and give worship before you; for your righteousness has been made clear. (Revelation 15:4 BBE)