Miracles for Launching

Stories of miracles and personally experienced miracles may be only the ground-based apparatus that is designed to launch us into the realm of living a life in joyful flight through the air. The enormous thrill that one can experience in uninhibited, unencumbered flight, soaring and swooping through the air with the new-found ability to see things from a far greater perspective and to rise high above all problems and confusion is the experience that God desires for us to live in as being normal. But fear keeps most of us grounded and satisfied with simply walking around slowly in our extremely limited little world, thinking that this is all there is to life.

The difference between living life limited by our assumptions about the restrictions of gravity stuck on the surface of the land, and living the abundant, thrilling life of soaring flight that enables us to rise above the depressing clouds of doubt and fear into the sunshine of glory and love and true freedom – this difference is analogous to living life trapped in the world's way of thinking and reasoning and heaven's reality of freedom, joy and love.

Too many times I suspect that we believe that our version of Christianity has opened up to us most of the basic insights and experiences that we will ever need to know. Oh, we believe that throughout eternity we will be adding to our database of knowledge, but somehow we often come to think that our understanding of what it means to be a Christian and to live life in righteousness is sometimes pretty much outlined in our thinking now and we become very resistant to anything that challenges our narrow paradigms.

Some of us also tend to hanker toward wanting to see miracles of some kind in our lives, though many times this desire is held in secret. If we are really honest about this I think we would notice that we like to use miracles to justify our insistence that our system of doctrines and standards are the right ones. Of course we then have to rationalize that if other people are experiencing miracles who do not believe like we do that their miracles must likely be counterfeit and are therefore from the enemy. Or we may move toward an attitude of apathy about miracles because of the obvious problems they raise about who's beliefs they are used to justify.

While it is very true that miracles can originate from both God and from His enemy Satan who uses them to deceive many into believing his false ideas, I think we have some other general misconceptions about miracles that tend to confuse and mislead all of us.

It has been observed by many that it seems to be a pattern in the lives of some Christians that early in their experience they sometimes see many more miracles than they do later in their walk with God. This pattern also seems to fit evangelism in certain regions of the world. Whole groups of people sometimes experience many miracles in their midst when missionaries first begin working with them bringing light and truth about God into their darkened cultures. But the more mature and settled they become in living life in the truth it seems that the cutting edge miracles tend to taper off or may be replaced with counterfeit miracles designed to draw them away from the truth. This tends to work most effectively for those who have become addicted to miracles.

Miracles themselves are generally considered to be events, healings and interventions that cannot be explained through natural means and are thus considered supernatural. I certainly believe that miracles are often supernatural, though not always. I also believe that miracles are very much within the bounds of natural laws of nature but laws at are now still beyond our awareness. A thoughtful person will realize that there are still yet many aspects and principles about the physical world that we have yet to know about, and so anything that operates outside of our present understandings but still within the principles we do not yet understand is generally considered a miracle or an unexplained phenomenon.

But what is the purpose of genuine miracles performed by God in our lives? I suppose there may be many answers to that question that could all be correct. But one thing I am sensing is that one of the main reasons for true miracles is to radically challenge our paradigms and stimulate us into viewing God in a totally different light than we have before. In fact, that may be one of the most important reasons for every genuine miracle. That might also help to explain the reasons for counterfeit miraculous events because they will be designed to convey or reinforce false ideas about God to keep us confused and distant from Him.

One way they accomplish this is to feed into our addiction and lust for continuous miraculous signs that we falsely believe will motivate us or others to live righteously. This can be seen in the interaction between Jesus, one of the world's greatest miracle workers, and many in Israel who became more interested in His miracles than in the real message He had come to reveal to them about His Father. Jesus only performed miracles for the purpose of conveying truths about God that had been so buried that people had lost consciousness of them. Their perceptions of God were dark and foreboding and full of fear and intimidation. They saw God as something of a tyrant or as an unconcerned, apathetic onlooker to their suffering and pain Who chose to do nothing to help them. They did not believe God really cared about their hearts, their lives or their problems except maybe to make demands that only seemed to exacerbate their frustrations. Things are not any different today.

Jesus came to smash the world's paradigms about how God feels about us and relates to us. Jesus declared that He was a perfect demonstration of what God was like without any variation. And in that role He entered into a life of reaching out to people's hearts, identifying with their problems and pain and offering a radically different paradigm of God that aroused intense interest. But it also aroused equally intense bitterness, alarm and opposition by everyone who chose to resist His love. He exposed the fallacy of power and control people use as the means of attempting to live in successful relationships with each other. He exposed that most of our thinking and assumptions about life and about God were pretty much completely upside down from what is real. And He used many miracles to effect dramatic changes in the lives of those who chose to believe, even a little bit, in the message He had brought about how God wanted to relate to them.

But fallen human nature is insistent on living life oriented in the externals and so it soon became evident that many were becoming addicted to the emotional rush and excitement of seeing miracles and were desiring that “high” more than they were willing to believe the truth about the God who was performing these miracles. The very things that God was trying to use to launch them into a completely different way of thinking and living – a way of life analogous to flying freely through the air and soaring high above the clouds – these miracles were becoming objects of attention and focus more than the loving Father who was providing these miracles.

God ways are always being subverted by Satan to become means of distorting our picture of God and thus believing lies about Him circulated by the father of lies. Everything that God tries to do or has put into place to reveal the real truth about Him is counterfeited by Satan so subtly as to make these falsehoods look legitimate and to convince us that God is not as good as He claims to be. The counterfeits are designed to appeal to the externalistic focus of our fallen natures and to make false gods out of many of the things God has provided to point us toward Himself. In this way miracles too, can become a kind of false god that we crave and come to worship instead of allowing them to launch us into the air and begin to live a life of trust and faith in the character of God. I believe this may help explain why God tends to use more miracles early in the experience of some Christians and not as many later on.

Consider a glider aircraft that needs to be launched into the air in a very small area too small to accommodate a runway for it to take off on. Suppose that something like a giant rubber band or other such launching apparatus was arranged to aim the glider upward and propel it up away from the earth giving it time and speed to begin to interact with the atmosphere in ways that enabled it to fly.

Now suppose that the glider somehow decides that the launching apparatus is more to be desired than flying freely through the sky. Maybe the glider is afraid of heights or of the clouds that shadow its visibility of the sun. What would happen if the glider decided to stay attached to the launching apparatus and refused to disconnect from it after being launched? Well, it would then look more like inverse bungy-jumping than it would soaring through the air with the greatest of ease. And ultimately the end results would look something very much like death and destruction.

I think we should not be afraid of miracles or be eager to discredit them. At the same time I believe that we need to shift our focus from the immediate pleasure and joy that we experience in either personal miracles experienced or in hearing about the miracles of others and seek to find out the real reason why these miracles were given. Instead of becoming addicted to stories and experiences of the miraculous, we need to learn how to go far past them and live life in the spirit realm with the Spirit of God beneath our wings. We must allow ourselves to be launched into the real truth about the character and feelings of God and enter into the thrill of personal, intimate fellowship with Him in the joy of flying.

So here's a sound-bite for another analogy that might possibly be developed. Are the wings that keep us airborne called faith and hope and is the fuel for our aircraft love?

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

Getting Closer to Real Identity

A couple nights ago I attended the Monday night young adult group that I have been enjoying for a few months now. The discussion that evening revolved around asking the men (the women left earlier for their own private discussions) about who they perceived themselves to be. The answers that began to emerge also began to trigger more and more memories in my own mind and I decided to write them down to observe what was happening inside.

This issue of discovering my real identity has been very prominent in my life over the past few years as anyone who has read much of my blog might realize. The comments that these young men were making highlighted many of the aspects that I have been working through for some time. I shared briefly some of what I observed but then sensed that the time was not ripe to go too deeply. But I still want to revisit this myself and unpack it a little more thoroughly for my own benefit.

One thing that has become clear to me over the past few years is that there is a significant difference between my perceived identity and my true, God-given identity. Confusion over this matter at the heart level has been the source of possible over 90% of my problems for much of my life. Because I have believed lies about myself imparted to me through many various ways, I have often acted out of those false, assumed perceptions about myself and consequently have lived in defeat and discouragement much of the time. I have been challenging those assumptions far more frequently and aggressively over the past few years and have also sensed an increasing and correlating level of freedom and peace inside.

As I sat there listening to these men speak of who they thought they were and sometimes struggling to know if what they were saying was really true or just performance-based identity, I began writing down key words that resonated distinctly from my own past, words that described how I have often perceived myself or the feelings that swirled around inside of me.

What condensed out of this stimulating discussion were these descriptions:

Rebellious – Bitter – Sarcastic – Cynical. I'm sure I could add a lot more, but that was a pretty accurate assessment of what I have often felt inside and sometimes still do. There were many reasons for this and there were also many incentives to intensify these attitudes, but generally this was my self-perception and was also what many others believed me to be.

Some other interesting things emerged that I had not connected to this issue from some of the comments the men were making. I can remember a number of occasions that internally I would be contemplating the idea that somehow many of my internal problems and feelings of rebellion and resistance would disappear after my father would die. But then my logical mind would immediately kick in and remind me that contrary to setting me free I would more likely feel hopelessly trapped in my ruts of thinking and feeling because there would no longer be any hope of resolving my tensions with my father after he was gone. It was logically very clear that becoming free of one of the main sources of my bitterness and rebellion would do nothing to set me free from the internal chains that tortured my spirit so many years, but still my heart wanted to imagine that this would be true anyway.

What I now realize more clearly is that many of my problems have been because I believed my identity was based on my performance, good and bad. My identity was assumed to be the sum of my actions and attitudes and I'm sure that was directly reinforced by much of the teaching that I received while growing up and even later. This is all very typical in the formation of a counterfeit identity that is founded in the flesh, the part of me that is pride-based and believes that value only comes from achievements. This style of identity and belief about value is the way that all the world operates and so it comes as no surprise that I was caught up in the deceptive strands of this kind of thinking. But it still had its destructive effects on my life as it does for everyone caught in this trap.

This problem became much more clear to me a few years ago when we had some very insightful friends spend a few weeks with us. They specialize in ministering with people to help them get past their emotional and spiritual blocks to begin discovering their true value and bring healing to their dysfunctional relationships. One of the most important insights they shared with me was that they saw me as an image manager. During that time I wrote about this a number of times as God impressed me that indeed this was very true and that I needed to become aware of the damage it was causing my life and how it was inhibiting most of my relationships.

My image management skills were always ready and active to manipulate what others thought about me since my sense of personal value largely came from what others thought. I have always been a rather independent person, a loner of sorts, so this realization came as a bit of a shock to me. But as I was willing to be more honest to see what was at much deeper levels of my heart than I was used to looking, sure enough there was intense concern about keeping a good image and projecting the kind of person that I wanted to be. That also meant withholding information about myself even from close friends because of intense fear of rejection. I also discovered a great amount of shame that I had never been aware of before and realized that I have never learned emotionally how to become free of shame.

I began to work to unlock this problem in my life but have struggled to know how to do that properly. I have many times disclosed myself to people who later used what I shared with them in trust to attack me publicly and sometimes even tried to deliberately discredit me to others. I still wonder how wise it was to open myself to them and need to learn that there is also the issue of maturity that needs to be taken into account when choosing who to trust and who to refrain from disclosure. But neither do I want to adopt the common assumptions that pervade the heavily guarded nature of most relationships for that leads me right back into the image management trap once again.

But enough on my counterfeit identity and problems. What I also wrote down that night was my ongoing pursuit of finding my true identity and beginning to live life in a more positive, fulfilling way as I move into living from the true heart that Jesus has already implanted within me. I still do not know very much about this real identity but interestingly I had just a day or two before this meeting asked God to begin to show me my true identity. And something had happened that I might nearly have forgotten if this discussion had not brought it back to my attention.

I remember sensing something of a communication one morning, a reminder that for many years my heart had admired the stories of Barnabas in the New Testament. It seemed that there was little chance that I would ever be known as a “Son of Encouragement”, which is what his name meant, but I really wanted to be that kind of person. Suddenly, as I was thinking about that it struck me – the bitterness and negativity that has plagued me for so many years is Satan's strategic attempt to attack and block the most important part of my identity. These problems that have been the hallmark of my counterfeit identity are the exact opposite of the characteristics of Barnabas and what he was known for. Maybe God was now beginning to reveal to me that this admiration of Barnabas and longing to be like him that has been inside of me for so many years are indeed strong clues as to my true identity, the part of me that uniquely reflects a certain facet of what God is like.

As I sat there listening to the men continue to discuss this issue my curiosity was aroused. I wanted to know how this fit in with the Scripture that twice had been given to me by small group leaders at the end of some group ministry sessions received during Ancient Paths seminars. I wanted to know if there was a correlation between this new revelation about myself and the verses that had deeply impressed me back then.

And the spirit of the Lord will come on you with power, and you will be acting like a prophet with them, and will be changed into another man. And when these signs come to you, see that you take the chance which is offered you; for God is with you. (1 Samuel 10:6-7 BBE)

I have felt that this was an indication of something that is going to happen to me that will dramatically alter the way I perceive myself as well as my whole life experience. I have no idea of how or when it will take place, but I do believe God is slowly preparing me internally for this outward experience to simply reveal what He has been doing internally for a very long time.

What is also interesting is that Barnabas was apparently the first and only person in Jerusalem who had enough faith and love and boldness to approach Saul of Tarsus and act as an intercessor and mediator to bring him into the fellowship of the other believers who were too bound by fear to think that far outside the box. Saul of Tarsus interestingly, was very likely named after the first king of Israel, Saul of the tribe of Benjamin that the above verses refer to originally. Saul of Tarsus was also of the tribe of Benjamin and soon became the world-famous Paul who ended up writing most of the New Testament and helped to turn the whole world upside down according to the reports of his enemies. But it was Barnabas that had enough courage to be a channel of the grace of God to bring Paul into the confidence of the church.

Barnabas seemed to always being doing those sorts of things. Pretty much every time he shows up in the Bible he is sticking up for an under-dog of some sort and trying to encourage and change the thinking of the more powerful and influential to perceive things differently. This even prompted him to have to stand up to Paul himself with a tenacity that would not allow John-Mark to be marginalized after pulling off a dismal first performance on a missionary trip.

I personally believe that Barnabas was a prayer-warrior that took the instructions of Jesus very literally when He taught us to pray for our enemies and those who persecute us. I believe that Barnabas had been specifically praying for Saul for some time and had targeted Saul so intently in his prayers of faith that to him Saul's dramatic conversion was almost a given; it was something he was expecting and so he had no problem being the first to embrace Saul and invite him into the fellowship of believers who were also learning to trust the love and grace of God more fully.

Like Barnabas, I have definitely been the type of person to challenge the status quo at times and desire to think outside the box on a regular basis. I do not do this just to be controversial but I feel it is important to challenge beliefs and assumptions if we are ever to grow into more complete truth. I continually challenge myself to find out what words really mean and how they really fit together, not just what people say or have always taught. This has been very rewarding and life-changing for me and I have grown tremendously over the past few years as a result.

In my research on the history of Barnabas I was also surprised to find that Barnabas was only a nickname given to him, it was not his original name. That to me was significant because I too want to have a new name that is not the description that I have too long assumed about myself and my identity. I want to have the name that God has known me by since long before my parents ever thought of me. I think I am starting to get a little clearer picture of the real identity that God implanted in me and wants to foster and mature into full revelation.

My old identity was based on performance, much of it dysfunctional and very performance-based.

My new identity must be found in what my heart was designed to do with passion.

My old identity sought to grasp for recognition and a sense of value by extracting it from others.

My new identity must learn to only look at God's face to know my real value – nowhere else.

My old identity is hopelessly entrenched in doubts and refuses to accept God's words to my heart in faith.

My new identity is a gift of grace and will always trust in the Giver of that grace to finish the work He has begun in me.

My old identity falls short of the grace that I need and consequently fosters roots of bitterness to poison not only my own life but all those around me.

My true identity knows that only grace can save and transform me and that God's faithfulness is the most important part of my salvation and I can only reflect faithfulness as I keep focused on Him.

Enslaved by Straw

I had an extended dream last night of trying to figure out a way to attach my picture to a driver's license that was older and didn't have a picture on it instead of getting a new driver's license. I wanted to avoid going through all the security hassle that getting a new license would entail, so most of my dream involved trying to glue a new picture onto an expired license. But then I kept realizing that this would be considered forgery of a government document. But the dream kept repeating itself in spite of that.

But then something unusual interrupted the flow of this repetitive dream that caused me to wake up a little bit. It was like a message from heaven, though I also realize that it was linked to something I heard Shane Claiborne say from the recording of a fascinating discussion I recently downloaded from Amercian Public Media. The message was that I should not be so obsessed with wanting a license with my picture on it issued by the government because what it really is in heaven's eyes is the badge of a stolen identity.

Shane was referring to the story when Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees about paying taxes to Caesar. The answer He gave was that Caesar could have his money back that had Caesar's picture stamped on it but that he had no ownership over people because they were created with the image of God imprinted in them. In my dream I sensed that this issue went even deeper but along the same line of reasoning.

Society today is all astir and agitated about identity theft and many people are becoming somewhat paranoid and obsessive about trying to hide or destroy anything that might be used to find out any details about themselves. The media keeps this fear very much alive by pushing stories of people's lives “ruined” because of identity thieves finding their social security number, credit card numbers etc. So people are buying paper shredders and sharing stories of phone cameras taking pictures of their credit cards and generally increasing the level of stress in people's hearts to an even higher level of worry. Sometimes I wonder if the identity that they are trying to hide from everyone else is really all that much worth protecting. But that is partly another but related issue.

Identity theft is really a situation where a person gets enough information about another person to convince a business or public service to extend credit to them or sell them goods based on the numbers and names they provide. It can certainly have a devastating effect on a persons credit history which seems rather difficult to reverse even though it was quite easy to accept false charges in the first place. It seems a little baffling that credit agencies have little trouble adding problems to a person's credit history but seem rather resistant to just as easily believe the truth from the actual person trying to rectify the situation.

Identity theft does certainly create a great deal of frustration and problems for people who are victimized by it and many times the long-term effects are never completely erased. There always seems to be a cloud of doubt left over a person's reputation even though they had nothing to do with the original problem. But what does all this have to do with the identity theft that I am referring to as seen from heaven's eyes?

God is extremely protective about the “currency” called humans that He created with His picture on them. In addition, and quite unlike our currency which is not backed up by anything whatsoever of worth, the currency that God created has infinite value that is very real and tangible. The pledged value of every human being is literally backed by the life of the Son of God and He was willing to put it on the table when the value of His “currency” was called into question. Because of this, God and all of heaven is very keen to protect the identity of the people that bear the stamp of heaven.

But Satan has invented a very complex and massive counterfeit currency system along with a counterfeit of God's government and this can easily be seen in the way earthly governments operate. This is not just some theory or a religious notion that is irrelevant to our life right now. This is very real and presents a problem that most people are completely unaware of but affects their lives pervasively. One of the big issues in Satan's counterfeit system reflects his desire to literally steal the identities that God gave us and to replace them with counterfeit identities that we have come to believe is our real identity.

Think carefully about these words of Jehovah spoken from the flames and smoke and thunder on Mount Sinai thousands of years ago revealing the fundamental truths about God and reality.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: (Exodus 20:4 KJV)

You are not to make an image or picture of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters under the earth: (Exodus 20:4 BBE)

I understand that some people have taken this to mean that we should never engage in photography of any kind because this might be breaking the Law of God. I am not going to tackle that issue because I believe that God is far more concerned with issues of the heart. On the other hand, the things we do externally usually reflect the realities that are believed at the heart level and so the things we consider important and give great value to reveal what we actually believe about our own identity.

I am just starting to sense after this dream that quite possibly our society's belief, being intensified lately by increasing pressure from the government, that we have to be obsessed with our external identity and are fully responsible for it in some way. This notion itself is a means of making us participates in the theft of our own true identity. We may actually be discovered to be co-conspirators in the attempt by the world to set up an alternative identity in order to obliterate our awareness of our true and far more valuable identity entrusted to us by our original Creator. And part of this identity theft is the use of an identity card carrying a requisite image of our faces on it as an attempt to give a face to this false identity.

Some have learned that this false identity is well known in higher government circles and the fraud is strongly promoted there but not revealed to the average person. Millions are led to believe that this is just that way we have to cooperate in order to get along in this society. That may be true if we are willing to be a cooperative accomplice in our own identity theft. But I am beginning to see that this may not be viewed with favor from heaven's perspective.

In some circles this false image fabricated to replace us is called our “straw man”. For those of you not yet familiar with this term and still uneducated as to what is going on behind the scenes, your straw man is the composite identity that is created by the government at the time of your birth and introduced by your birth certificate. It's name is usually spelled in all capital letters on government records and increasingly more and more of your personal information is being collected to add to the government database being compiled on you.

But what is often seriously misunderstood is that this straw man identity is not the same person as the “human flesh and blood you” that God created in His image. It is a fictional entity that is also classified as a corporation so that the IRS can then claim that “you” owe them taxes. The IRS has absolutely no jurisdiction over sentient human flesh and blood beings in the various States of the united States of America – no one has ever been able to produce the law requiring humans to pay taxes on the money they earn from their labor. (If you can find it you can collect a $10,000 dollar reward) But the IRS does have the ability to tax corporations. Therefore it is imperative that they deceive everyone into believing that they are the fictional corporate “person” created by the government at their birth so that all their life they will assume that they are required to return taxes.

There are many elements that go into making up this fictional straw man that goes by the same-sounding name as that given to you by your parents. The Social Security number assigned to your fictional person is a key element in tracking and compiling all the information possible to add to the identity and value of this fictional straw man. And now it has been enacted by Congress that every person must procure a high security I.D. card, generally in the form of a driver's license, that will soon become the control point for the government to manipulate all of your behavior and access to most anything a person wants to do to interrelate with others around them.

The false, counterfeit governments of earth are doing everything possible to obliterate our perception of our true identity in order to keep us fixated with our fictional identity and believe that our straw man is our real identity. Very many people have already been quite convinced of this ruse and are even ready to commit suicide against their God-given body and soul whenever their fictional person gets into deep trouble. Tragically, what they do not realize is that the fictional person has very little to do with their real identity and their belief that it does is only a false belief, not a fact. But a falsehood believed has the same effect internally as if it were true if it is not exposed and rejected.

So I am starting to see that the urgency of my mind during my dream to think that I must have a driver's license with an image (idol) of my face on it in order to live a normal life is really in opposition to the second commandment in the Law of God. For me to buy into the belief that my identity is composed of my license, my credit records, my bank statements, my work history etc. is to accept the assertion that the false identity created in my image is in fact the real me. This is, in fact, another revelation of my false belief that my value is determined by my performance and my reputation in contradiction to the opinion of my Maker. It is to confirm what Satan is hoping I will believe and to subject myself to all the manipulations that correspond to being the slave that the straw men was created to be for the use of the state.

A most important verse precedes what we usually think of as the Ten Commandments and if it is overlooked we completely miss the context and power of those Revelations of God. Then God spoke all these words, saying, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me." (Exodus 20:1-3) If I do not believe in my heart that I am not a slave, that my real identity is not tied to a fictional person created by the State; if I do not truly believe in my heart that I have been set free from the godlessness represented by Egypt and am no longer a slave to be manipulated and controlled by those slave-masters, then I will be vulnerable to the stresses and fears, terrors and intimidations promoted and rehearsed by those masters and will remain a slave to be continually abused by them. And I will not be free to obey the perfect Law of Liberty. (James 1:25)

If I accept the assumptions about my identity by the media and the government in their communications to me as fact, then I will believe their assertion that I am still a slave and will continue to act like one. In doing so I will have accepted the replacement of my true, God-imparted identity (which I may have never even known) with the false, stolen identity that has usurped my position in life and robbed God of His purchased property. I will live in fear under the threats and intimidations of these earthly slave-masters and will be controlled by other's false assertions about me instead of living in the freedom purchased for me by Jesus Christ.

Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. (Hebrews 2:14-15)

What is the Law?

Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men... (Matt. 15:9 and Mark 7:7)

Jesus here addressed a very serious problem that was certainly not exclusive to the leaders in His day. They were doing what we struggle with in religion today, taking all kinds of man-invented ideas, rules and notions and giving them the same weight and importance as the laws of God. They were making men's ideas and rules on a par with God's ways and principles and at times making their own rules even more important.

But I see another aspect of this problem that is not so clearly focused on here but is parallel. Many have a great deal of confusion in their minds and hearts about God's laws. Billions of people are taught that God's law has been “fulfilled” which is implied to mean that it no longer need apply to their life. This leads to a most pernicious deception that causes them to believe they can be “saved” while ignoring the fundamental principles of reality – the very reality of the heaven they believe they will soon enter with the smiling approval of God.

I think much of the confusion about God's law and the reason it is so easy to despise it in the heart is because most people do not understand that men's laws, indeed their whole system of law, is actually a counterfeit of the principles that make up God's reality and way of family bonding. I hesitate to call it a government because the implications of that word have too much inherent meaning involving the counterfeit system law here on earth. But the fact is that what we label God's laws are simply descriptions of reality whereas men's laws are arbitrary, fickle decisions, rules made up to dictate and control what others are supposed to do. Then artificial punishments are necessarily attached in order to strike fear into people's hearts as the motivation to observe these artificial rules. In addition, other people are then assigned and equipped to enforce these rules and punishments.

Putting other people in charge of forcing people to keep rules puts insulation between the rule-makers and their responsibility for the inherent depravity and selfish nature of many of these rules. In fact, it is generally viewed that legislators of rules as well as enforcers of rules are often exempt many times from the severity of enforcement that is applied to the “other” people who are thus considered somewhat less important. This is really thinly veiled (if at all) hypocrisy that is worn as a badge of superiority. The more a person is considered exempt from keeping the rules the more they feel a sense of being important or aloof in society in comparison to everyone else. This of course, reinforces the second leg of the false system of civilation, hierarchy.

The problem in all of this that I am starting to see is not just that this counterfeit system of rules exists, but even more dangerous, this problem occurs when religious people immersed in this way of thinking derived from the world teach the true principles of God's system in a way that makes them appear to have the same origins and attributes of men's artificial rules. People are subtly led to believe that God's rules are just as changeable as men's laws because of the arbitrary nature and selfish origins of mens' laws. Therefore, just like men's rules can be faulty, bigoted or even used to impose injustice on others but can be overturned by a different group of lawmakers, then it stands to reason that God's “laws” could likewise be revoked or replaced with a different set of rules that would be better than the previous.

The reason this seems so plausible is because, failing to distinguish the difference between the very nature of men's laws and God's laws, we do not see any problem with God changing and upgrading His laws to fit changing times or circumstances. Furthermore, we point to the way God has adjusted His dealings with men over the ages and claim that this is proof that He can change His laws whenever it is convenient for Him just like men do on a regular basis. But this ignores the most serious nature of God's fundamental laws – that God' laws are descriptive, not prescriptive in nature.

We would think it absolutely absurd (though it has been actually tried at times) to try to legislate overturning the natural laws of nature, physics or other principles of reality in which we live. And yet we fail to realize that the moral laws of God are exactly the same and come from the same Author as the other laws of creation. The God who put into place the powerful forces of nature that are guided and counterbalanced by other natural forces to provide us an environment in which to live and thrive, reveals to us the equally powerful forces of the spirit realm of which we are a part. And just like what we term “natural law” has unavoidable consequences whenever ignored or violated, so too the “natural” laws which make up the spirit realm have unavoidable consequences that are not arbitrary in nature but are nonetheless very real and devastating when violated or ignored.

Just like God is not in the business of acting as an enforcer of artificial punishments against those who may violate the law of gravity, so too He is not the kind of God that is waiting with fierce threatenings and “artificial” judgments against those who “offend” His way of thinking and living in the moral or spiritual arena. God's laws are descriptions of reality, not artificial and arbitrary rules like our laws are. And as such, God's fundamental laws do not need to have artificial punishments attached or enforcers put in place to impose those punishments. They have their own natural consequences that will be devastating to our lives if He withdraws His protecting grace that has been covering us for millenia

What is seen throughout history many times is the use of men's laws and artificial systems such as warfare and punishments as tools or object lessons to try to get humans to understand the far superior principles that govern spiritual realities. And just because God is willing to utilize men's methods and means as teaching tools so that men can begin to grasp something beyond the tools of the immediate lesson does not mean that the simplistic lessons constitute the reality that God is trying to reveal to our minds. God has always had to stoop very low to meet men on the intellectual and spiritual level where they are currently to begin His lessons as He tries to draw them to a higher level of reasoning and spirit thinking. We do the same with our small children today and should realize that God has something far greater to teach us than the “sandbox illustrations” using men's artificial, counterfeit systems. These human inventions only attempt to create the imitation reality developed by Satan that we try to live within.

The grace of God has not been given to the human race to somehow make them exempt from needing to observe the natural laws of morality and righteousness any more than grace is given to make us exempt from the laws of physics. In fact, if we were to somehow become free of all the laws of nature we would no longer have an organized environment in which to have bodies or any other meaningful existence. The laws of nature keep our bodies held together and functioning and meaningful and the same is true of the natural laws of the spirit realm. Whenever we try to pretend that God's laws governing the spirit realm are somehow done away with or suspended due to the sacrifice of Jesus for us on the cross, we are trying to believe that the fundamental principles that make up the environment of the spirit realm are no longer in place. That is just as ridiculous as believing that we could exist outside of the laws of physics. And it also makes a mockery of the real reason Jesus did come and die on the cross.

All of God's laws are simply descriptive of realities that He has created in which we live and grow and have our existence. Any time we equate the nature of God's laws with the fickle nature of men's counterfeit system of law we are in danger of tragic deceptions and are headed for terrible consequences. This is not because of an offended God who is waiting to punish because someone crossed His path or rejected His loving advances like humans are liable to do. We are headed for terrible consequences just the same way we are headed for trouble while hurtling at high speed in a car toward the edge of a very high cliff ignoring all the warning signs to go another direction or to stop. Gravity is not subject to being suspended (except through miraculous intervention for reasons of grace on the part of God) and whenever we defy gravity, whether intentionally or ignorantly, we will usually discover that gravity is a very permanent type of law that has its own natural effects.

I don't know of anyone who realistically believes that it would be a good thing to eliminate the law of gravity altogether. Life as we know it would cease to be possible if that were somehow done. In the very same way, the principles of reality that are revealed in the fundamental laws of God – including the Ten Commandments – cannot be somehow changed or revoked or replaced with some alternate laws. That would be an attempt to create a whole new definition of reality which is what we are doing whenever we think we can change the laws of God; for God's laws are simply the fundamental principles of the reality in which we actually exist. If we try to change God's laws through reason, arguments or simply arbitrary human declarations, we are in fact claiming to be more powerful and wise than that Creator of the reality in which we now exist. That sounds like treason of the highest order.

Whenever religious teachers and leaders promote the idea that the Old Testament is a period of time in which people were saved by keeping strict laws and that we are now free from the laws of God through redemption, they are in essence trying to teach that the fundamental principles of reality have somehow been discarded and we live in some sort of freedom outside of that reality. Excuse me, but we would be laughed out of town if we tried to claim that about the laws of nature and physics. But because the laws of the spirit realm are not “provable” in the physical laboratory like physical laws can be, then we too often get away for a period of time believing this nonsense. But it does not make it any more true or safe.

I think it is very helpful to have a clearer understanding of the difference between the system of artificial laws instituted by men in contrast to the fundamental and descriptive nature of the principles of reality which are the laws of God. This clarification in our mind of the stark difference between the two systems will make it much easier to see the truth about God, about reality and about God's dealings with men over the centuries. It gives us a new frame of reference, a new pair of glasses through which to view more clearly what is real and what is deceptive. For deceptions, no matter how compelling or plausible, will always end in tragedy, loss, pain and death.

Sin is the transgression of the law – cutting crosswise to the principles described in natural law. God's law is not arbitrary so it needs no artificial punishments attached to it to induce obedience through intimidation. Natural law is followed by natural consequences, either good or bad depending on how you relate to them. Spiritual law is no different than physical law except that it operates in a different realm of our being just as electricity has different descriptions of operations than the principles that govern fluids.

When it becomes settled in our minds and hearts (the latter being where more of the spirit principles operate) that we have to be in alignment with spiritual laws if we want to live and thrive as a human, and that those laws can never be altered or abrogated, then we will be able to cooperate with God's desire to work in us and transform us into conformity with His image. For the laws of nature and spiritual realities are in fact simply descriptions of different aspects of the essence of God Himself. And if we are going to live in His presence and interact with Him for eternity, we must be in harmony with the truths that make up that environment.

Instead of spending enormous amounts of wasted time and energy trying to figure out how God's laws do not apply to our lives today or, conversely worrying over how to “keep” them in our own strength (like a computer worrying about how to stay functioning without a source of electrical energy), we should focus our attention on embracing God's principles and staying closely connected to His Spirit which is like our power supply cord or like an umbilical cord that provides us both life and nurture in order to help us grow.

God's laws are descriptions of what a fully matured “adult” looks like in all the aspects of human reality. As infants spiritually we cannot fully comprehend or achieve those accomplishments or responsibilities at this time. But neither is it sane to deny that God's descriptions of adulthood are no longer God's desire for our lives and insist that we must remain babies, or even worse some other life-form that we imagine for ourselves. God wants us to grow up into His image and has provided everything we need to move in that direction. If we deny His stated goal for us and refuse the provisions that He has made for our nourishment and protection and growth, then we have set ourselves up to wither and die just as an unborn infant will not survive without remaining connected to its umbilical cord.

As a baby looks to its loving parents as the model toward which it is growing, we must accept that God's laws are simply descriptions of God and as such are descriptions of what we shall look more and more like as we grow up. The law of Creation in Genesis 1 and 2 was that everything would produce after its own kind. We were created in the line of God and that is the kind of creature we are to become as we grow up. So there is no reason to deny the very descriptions of that model provided through the descriptions known as the “laws of God”.

Passion and Holiness

Passion is a threat to those who want to be in control of others. It is commonly believed that passion must always be under control, and that is true to a certain extent. But this is often extended to imply that passion must be under the control of those “in charge”. Whenever a person becomes passionate about something, those in charge begin to often feel uneasy and keep a wary eye to see if the passion may become an infection that might spread and threaten their influence and dominance over those they have spent so much time and effort putting under their influence.

Passion is an intensifier, not really an emotion of its own. Passion can intensify sexual desires as nearly everyone is well aware. Passion can intensify hunger when some food or drink that one likes is presented in a very tantalizing way, especially when one is already very hungry or thirsty. Passion can energize a person's imagination and animation when they are sharing an interest or describing an experience to a trusted friend. People have passion for art, for music, for beautiful scenery, for exercise, for sports, and even sometimes for work.

Passion is connected to our need to feel satisfied. Sometimes our passion is very misunderstood or misapplied because we or others don't really know what deeper need is feeding our passion. The surface desires often mask the much deeper needs for fulfillment that cause us to engage in passion, and those deeper needs often are very different in appearance than the surface desires. This is the problem with addictions.

Though passion is often misunderstood and even thought by some to never be legitimate, passion is a very important part of our created nature. Our experience of passion is actually just a very small reflection of the enormous reservoir of passion that animates the very heart of our Creator God. But because we are often so afraid of passion we have tended to discount and even deny that God might be full of passion Himself in spite of many revelations of His passion throughout the Bible and history.

The closer we allow our hearts to come into sympathy with the heart of God the more unavoidable will be our exposure to His passions. And the more familiar and affected we become by exposure to God's passions the more our own hearts will become supercharged with sympathetic passions. We will be like transformers that inductively pick up the atmosphere of power by simply being in proximity to the heart of God and will transmit those feelings through our own lives at reduced levels.

But passion threatens the rigidness and structures carefully constructed by men's religious ideas and so Godly passion will always be viewed with suspicion and fear. Nearly every prophet of God has experienced this problem as they conveyed the various messages of God to His people with His passion, but that always ended up inviting trouble for themselves. God's prophets are seldom popular with God's people for very long because God's passions always upset and challenge our religious paradigms and habits. Exposure to the realities of heaven cause conflict with the counterfeit notions of religion that always grow in the heart of humans and it takes humility and repentance to allow the passion of God to melt away our prejudices, fears and false ideas about Him.

Think about whenever you have been around a person who starts to become passionate as they share about some insight or experience they have had in their personal growth journey with God. If you are synchronized with them to some extent in your own pursuit of God you will find their passion to be hopeful and energizing to your soul. But there are also times when you may feel threatened or uncomfortable and want to tone down the passionate expressions a bit. You may start having thoughts that these people are getting too carried away in their ideas about God and need to get back to more practical reality where the rest of us live. But what I think is really happening many times is that we are afraid of our own mediocrity being exposed and may be unwilling to admit that we ourselves are resisting the influence of the Holy Spirit tugging on our own hearts to become conduits of more passion flowing from God.

It might be true that a person can get carried away with passion while trying to relay their own encounters with God. Or maybe that is simply my cautious opinion at this point in my own journey and it may not really be correct. I don't know for sure. I have seen times when my own enthusiasm has tended to blind me to the fact that I have lost the interest of those listening to me and they are simply being polite but have switched off inwardly. I know I am not very good at picking up social clues as to how to relate to people that I try to engage with about spiritual things. But I also believe that much of what holds me back is fear of what others will think about me and so I limit the passion of God flowing through my life in favor of managing my image so others will approve of me.

I suspect that if the true passion of God's love, the passion of the Holy Spirit for God's glory and reputation, begins to break through our rigid lives, and the light and beauty and the attractions of God begin to leak out of our hearts at more intense levels than what we are used to seeing, there is going to be an outcry of warning from people who are afraid of upsetting the status quo and see their religious influence threatened by this new power. Imitation religion has a very strong grip on many hearts and has spent centuries building up networks of structures and control in an effort to satisfy the hungers of the soul while keeping the lid on passion. So when the real God of our soul begins to break into our tidy plans and organizations with displays of passion and power that are very unfamiliar to us many are going to cry, “fanaticism” and declare that all of this enthusiasm is of Satan.

I am also aware that there are movements that engage in much emotionalism while believing it is the real passion of God. It is often supernatural in origin and because of that is assumed to be of God. But just because there is much energy and excitement and religion involved does not mean that we are encountering the authentic passion of the true God. Jesus referred to this problem when He spoke to the woman at the well saying, “The Father is seeking those who will worship Him in both truth and spirit.”

Isn't it strange that passions that promote evil tendencies are so easily accepted and tolerated and even encouraged by the world, but whenever Godly passion begins to transform lives and animate hearts everyone seems to conclude that passion is an evil thing that must be curbed, managed and come under the control of human authorities. Even Christians have little problem engaging in great passion while watching sports or being mesmerized by popular entertainment but are afraid to become exposed to the passion of God. There is actually a very valid reason for this.

Passion is something like lightening. We stand in awe and fear of powerful bolts of lightening thundering in the elements and sometimes causing massive changes in our environment. We many times wish we could harness this enormous power and channel it into what we believe would be better uses by storing it and distributing it through our man-made electrical networks. But so far most attempts to harness the awesome power of lightening have failed to be very effective. We consider lightening very dangerous, and rightly so. But some people have also learned to enjoy these awesome demonstrations of raw power in a strong electrical storm while respecting its dangers.

I believe that God's passion may be something a little similar to a very powerful electrical storm. It is very clearly out of our control and yet demands our attention and respect. But even more amazing is that God is looking for people who are willing to become something like lightening rods willing to become conduits of awesome amounts of His passion. But instead of simply siphoning off all that power to the ground like typical lightening rods do, God wants these people to become glowing displays of His glory while being exposed to close encounters with His presence within their hearts. He want to make them experiments of the mighty power of His grace as examples to attract others who dare to enter the power zone of glory.

We are faced with a very serious choice when it comes to God's passion. We can continue to live in fear and avoidance of God's passion to give preference to our man-made religious apparatus that puts greater emphasis on intellectual truths and avoids emotions and heart-based transformation. Or we can take the terrifying risk of exposure to the presence of the most powerful, frightening, exhilarating encounter that is ever offered to human beings and become exhibitions of glory and grace completely out of control as far as men are concerned.

Being out of control is considered to be wrong by many religious people. But control is one of the biggest problems we have created with our false ideas about religion. We have misjudged God and the way He runs the universe and relates to all His created beings by believing He is into control. We like to believe in a God who is in control but what we really mean by that is that we want Him to force the will of others and control circumstances to make things work out good for our lives.

But control is anti-freedom and God values freedom far more than even obedience, as strange as that may sound. For if obedience is not offered in perfect freedom then it cannot be filled with love. And love-motivated obedience is the only kind of obedience that is really genuine. Every other motivation for obedience only produces counterfeits, and God is unwilling to accept any imitations.

Love is a far more powerful motivation of the heart than any of us can ever imagine. God is love. It is not something that He just does or something He can switch on and off. Love is the very description of God that is always there, always active and all-pervasive in everything He does, thinks and demonstrates. Passion is like the voltage behind love that empowers it to move throughout the circuit of the whole universe and return to its Source. So to avoid passion is to deny the very power that moves the very essence of God – love. That is not a very good choice in my opinion.

When we ask for the power of God to fill our lives, our churches and our world, I'm afraid most of us have little idea what we are really asking for. What I suspect is that too often our idea of power that we crave is a power to force others to agree with our ideas of truth. We want power to work miracles so that we will have more credibility, so that others will believe we have the right connection with God more than others do. We desire power mostly for very self-centered reasons to justify our claims to have the truth and pressure others to believe our claims. But very few people are passionate about bringing the real truth about God's character into a world where nearly everyone is afraid of Him based on all the lies promoted by religious people and non-religious alike.

I just listened to a very enlightening sermon by Craig Hill reviewing the subject of Holy verses Common that I received last month. He points out the great danger we are living in by not understanding the immense importance of separating what is holy and what is common in our lives before being exposed to the power of God. He rightly states that every time there has been an atmosphere of power among God's people there are also instances where people literally die from improper exposure to that power because they failed to respect the dangers inherent in power.

It is exactly like not respecting high voltage electrical lines either in our homes or elsewhere. Most people understand the “rules” for respecting electricity and so are able to enjoy its benefits without harm. But whenever we begin doing things like poking metal objects into power sockets while being grounded – mixing power (holy) with common – we suffer very drastic and sometimes fatal results. If this continues on a regular basis the only safe thing to do is either turn off the power or reduce it so low that people only get a little buzz whenever they improperly touch the wires.

I have sensed over the past few weeks a growing urgency to become more aware in my own life of how I am allowing the holy and common to intermingle improperly in my life and make me vulnerable to being “grounded”. If God cannot trust me with very much power it is most likely because I am too connected to ground in some areas of my life that would endanger me if I were exposed to the power I ask for. It is the mercy and grace of God that keeps me insulated from His power and passion, not His resistance to sharing Himself and His Spirit through me. I should be thankful that He has not yet sent the power and take it as a warning to listen more carefully and act more intentionally to separate myself from any connections to “ground”.

I do want the power of God to use me and make me an effective transformer for His glory. And I want to be prepared for that encounter by cooperating with the Holy Spirit sent to heal me and repair my wiring in preparation for higher current levels of His glory. I want to become free of all fear of what others think about me when they cannot understand the unusual passion flowing through me that may make many around me, or even myself, uncomfortable. There is sure to be suspicion, false assumptions and reminders of my many faults and mistakes in order to discourage me from getting any “hotter”. But I want to keep my focus on God, the true object of holiness, and become more holy and dedicated to Him.

The word holy has nothing to do with being better or more righteous or pious than others. The word has to do exclusively with being dedicated to a purpose or a person, just like a telephone line might be dedicated to a FAX machine. I highly recommend getting the series on Holy verses Common from Family Foundations Intl. for some real insights on this subject.

I too am afraid of passion many times and feel threatened by it. But when I analyze my motives for those fears I realize that it is usually tied to the issue of control and fear of the unknown. At the same time I yearn for more passion in my own life and am aware that it has been stifled largely by fear of what others might think of me. I am even sometimes jealous of others who have more freedom of expression and long for the day when I can feel free of the fears and inhibitions that enslave my heart. Yes, I want enormous passion in my life and I also want it under the guidance and influence of the Spirit of the ultimate Source of all passion. I sense inherently that experiencing that kind of encounter with the power Source of passion will be the most fulfilling moment of all my existence. And in those moments of total abandonment for the glory of the One worthy of all worship and praise, I will also begin to see the very face of God.