Poured

Every marriage has its quirky side to it.   Ours is no exception.  When I throw something out, either in the garbage or into a recycling bin, it invariably returns, rises from the dead so to speak.  Sometimes this little dance between my wife and I will go through three or four cycles.  I throw something out, it shows up on the counter, I throw it out again, it is back on the table.  We are not always on the same page when it comes to what to keep and what to “recycle”.   A growing number of us are becoming increasingly conscious of the evils of wastefulness.  You are probably like me.  You recycle, you reuse, you repurpose.  You try not to buy items without having a legitimate reason for getting them.  This way of thinking filters down to other areas of life.  You don’t want to waste your time so when stuck in traffic you listen to podcasts, books or informational radio programs and you avoid areas where you know there will be backups and delays.  You count your calories and the minutes you waste waiting in line.  You probably were cut off by someone recently who was not wanting to lose a second by being behind you in traffic.  If someone in my family leaves a glass of milk on the counter, I am tempted to pour it back into the milk container rather than throw it out.  Maybe, you are like that too!

In an age of recycling and repurposing, there are two accounts in the Bible that come across as ridiculous. One is in the Old Testament and the second is in the New Testament.  David was a hero king.  He fought numerous battles, expanded the borders of Israel and forced several kings into subjugation.  It was not always easy; many times, he fought superior forces who had the upper hand.  In one such military endeavor, he found himself and his army surrounded by the Philistines who were bent on his destruction. Holed up in a cave, he had a craving. At that time David was in the stronghold, and the Philistine garrison was at Bethlehem.  David longed for water and said, "Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!" (2 Samuel 23: 15) Bethlehem was his hometown and the water from the well there was more precious to him than the finest of wines.  Three of his mightiest soldiers decided to break through the Philistine lines and grab some of the water and bring it to their beloved king.  When they arrived back with the water, David refused to drink any of it. … instead, he poured it out before the Lord.  "Far be it from me, O Lord, to do this!" he said. "Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?" And David would not drink it.  (2 Samuel 23: 15-17 NIV)

This was of course a colossal waste of time and effort and no one would begrudge these three men for being furious with their king for not drinking the water they risked their lives delivering to him.  Yet that is the point.  We all are heading to dust and ashes and everything we gain, hold, make, earn, save or grab will slip from our hands and either be a treasure of Satan’s or an offering to Christ.  We decide the fate of everything that comes to us; we are the judge and jury.  David realized, and perhaps you have too, that love, and courage and loyalty and devotion are bigger than this world.  They are the fabric of Heaven and no human being can hold any of them as his own.  That water was not H20, it was supernatural and could not be “bottoms up”.  It belonged to God because it came from Him.  A Christian cannot measure the worth of her life by what she possesses but only in what she gives over to Christ.  It is astounding, the emptiness that so many accept as normal.  They hold onto all sorts of things: their talents, their time, their social skills, their money and their relationships all the while failing to see what wonderful things our Lord might do with them if He had them.

In the New Testament we have the oft discussed account of Mary, a follower of Jesus, who poured out an entire bottle of expensive perfume on Jesus.  While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste of perfume?” (Mark 14:3-4 NIV) Indeed, what a great waste!  And yet the Lord’s reply reveals what God thinks of such actions.  "Leave her alone," said Jesus. "Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.” (Mark 14:6 NIV) He went so far as to declare that what Mary did would always be remembered and honored!  Have you ever done anything that could be categorized as eternally unforgettable?

The very nature of God is to pour out His life for those who love Him and those who hate Him, to die for the foulest of sinners and the most indifferent of unbelievers.  His life was the ultimate waste.  He was smart, holy, good, creative, beloved and a leader.  He had every reason to live and do something with His life and He threw it away for you and me.  You might argue that the salvation of the world was worth His life but that is because you are on this end of it.  If you were on the other side of the Cross, you would have seen it much differently.  The disciples did.  Peter rebuked Jesus for insisting He would soon die.  For what?

If the nature of Christ is in you, then it is a part of your personality to give up to God indiscriminately anything and everything just because you love Him.  There is no career, no home, no retirement, no friendship or prized possession that is so big you must grasp it tightly and keep to yourself.  Whenever you hold something and tell God that He can’t have it, you shrink spiritually and become a smaller person.  But when you open your hands to Christ and offer Him anything and everything you have, the size of your life grows into a supernatural one.  God takes everything you give Him and makes them is God-sized and God transformed.  We look at some of the things we do as menial, as trivial, insignificant and unnoticed.  When Christ is a part of them, He sees them another way.  He considers them sacred.  You have the opportunity at each moment to become one with God, to live in the vastness of the Holy Spirit.  Open your hands and offer Him whatever you have there.  Christ who is holy will make it holy and you will have joy in exchange.

One or the Other

2 Corinthians 4:5 NIV

 For we do not preach ourselves,

but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.

Who Runs The Show?

A few years ago a little Chihuahua mix showed up in our yard without tags.  Two of the kids were the first ones to spot the little dog and they thought they noticed someone in a parked car watching to see what happened to the dog and when they picked her up, the woman drove away.  Pretty soon it was clear the puppy was a part of our family and I cannot say which is true: we adopted her or she adopted us.  Early on, Salsa, as we named her, responded to me as the alpha male.  She quickly came when I called her and although others in the family might give her a command, it was hit or miss whether she would obey.  Our daughter taught her cute tricks and Salsa loved everyone in the home and everyone loved her but my voice always brought her obedience even if others might find her stubbornly resistant to doing what they said.  Even now, when someone must get her back, it is me that can push her to obey if no one else can.

The Civil War in the United States was not about slavery although that was the spiritual issue.  The Civil War was fought over authority.  Who would make the decisions for the entire country?  That was the question at hand and it is the chief issue for each person today and from the beginning of time.  Who directs the soul?  We make religion unnecessarily complicated.  Most intuitively comprehend its essence but it is a ball of tangled twine when put in human hands.  The question we face today and since the first humans walked the earth is, “Who runs the show for you?”  We have lots of possible candidates.  Science.  Political figures.  Celebrities and You-tube stars.  Parents.  Spouses.  Employers.  Allah.  Shiva.  Fame.  Fortune.  Yourself.  Christ.

The very first sin in the world was initiated not by lust or even desire but by a question as to who runs the show.  Pay careful attention to the interaction between Satan and Eve.  It begins with a rather innocuous question.  Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1 NIV)  Essentially Satan was asking Eve if she was sure what God said.  Eve replied without hesitation. The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'" (Genesis 3:2-3 NIV)  There was no fumbling for an answer.  She stated precisely what the Lord told her husband Adam before she was made.  And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17 NIV)

So Eve was not unaware of the command of God.  She knew exactly what the Lord’s instruction was.  Quickly Satan came back with the most devious of insinuations.   "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."  (Genesis 3:4-5 NIV)  It was subtle, this intimation.  “You can’t count on God to tell you everything.  I know what I am talking about and I can help you enjoy life better.  Trust me in this!”  Eve fell for the trap.  Her loyalty shifted and Satan gained her trust.  Most are like Eve.  They don’t even realize what they have done before its too late.  Rather than be God’s through and through they take up some other lord for a bit and then as they go along, it is not God at all but Satan who is trusted.  Nothing about this transaction seemed weird or devious to Eve.  It was not premeditated or spiteful.  Satan gained Eve’s confidence and off she went like a child chasing the ice cream truck down the street

Most of us don’t decide that Satan is our great friend and advisor.  We aren’t a part of some devilish cult!  Yet we give ground to Satan in our hearts and without knowing what we have done, great tracts of our reasoning and decision making become Satan’s.  It killed Eve and it kills us too.  Not immediately and never grotesquely but comfortably, casually.  Nothing illustrates this quite so eloquently as the brief comment the Apostle Paul makes at the end of his life.  Writing to his good friend Timothy, Paul sadly tells of how his once faithful co-worker Demas gave ground to Satan and changed his mind on God.  Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica.  (2 Timothy 4:9-10 NIV)  “Loved this world” is code in the Bible for taking up with Satan.  It sounds rather comfy though.  “Loved this world.”  Warm and cozy like sitting in front of the fireplace as a toasty fire burns brightly, loving the world seems reasonable when put before you by Satan.  It just means that you like to be comfortable, you want to enjoy life.  Do what makes you happy.  Yet, dogging our steps as we slip through the door and into the world is that what was true for Eve and then for Adam is true for all of us.  “The wages of sin is death…”

If you knew Demas, you probably would say that he was a good guy.  He may have been witty, smart, talented, working for good causes.  Yet, there was something terribly wrong with him and it was that Jesus was not Lord of all for him.  Christ was a companion, a great source of insight and important to him but not Lord and that is the dividing line in life.  Either, Christ is Lord and King over you or Satan is reasonable and makes sense to you.  It is fascinating the account of Joseph and his unyielding allegiance to God.  We cannot say how Joseph acquired such persistent loyalty to the Lord.  It probably was not his mother who pushed him along there because she famously stole away from her father his household idols.  Joseph was firm in his commitment to God and it manifested itself in his response to temptation.  When Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and came to be a servant of the Egyptian Potiphar, Potiphar’s wife tried her best to seduce him.  Joseph’s response to her revealed his fidelity.  How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?"  And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.  (Genesis 39:9-10 NIV)  This was real commitment to God that transcended cool interests and enticing opportunities.  It was loyalty.

When Jesus gave the summons to James, John, Peter and Andrew to come follow Him, it was not about what most stress.  Nearly every teacher of the passage emphasizes the wrong aspect of it.  Read Jesus’ invitation in its entirety. "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." (Matthew 4:19 NIV)  When you follow Jesus and really do follow Him, not just when it is convenient or necessary or reasonable, He remakes you.  What is so damaged and wrecked by sin becomes His to heal and make perfect.  In the disciples’s case, Jesus said He would make them into fishers of men.  What might He do with you if you choose Him over Satan at the moment there is a choice between the two?  It is impossible to know just now but you will find that He will do this.  He will remake you and could there be a more wonderful and desirable gift you could ever receive?  Depression and discouragement will be taken out of you when you are fiercely loyal to Jesus.  Anger and addiction will be removed also.  Even the hurts and brokenness caused by sin will be carefully and tenderly done away with in you if you are loyal to Jesus.  So many Christian people struggle to be free of the damaging effects of sin in them and they could be made right by ceaseless loyalty to Christ.

Elijah put it to the people of his time this way.  "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him." (1 Kings 18:21 NIV)  Either it is God or it is Satan.  Waffling between the two leads to every plague of the heart.  Consider just how badly warped both Adam and Eve were psychologically after only one time choosing Satan over God.  They were afraid of God, disconnected from each other and self-loathing.  Imagine the complexity of brokenness hundreds and thousands of times choosing Satan over Christ brings.  Jesus put it another way.  "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”  (Matthew 6:24 NIV)    It is either Christ or Satan at any moment and you must decide who it will be that runs the show.  You can always tell when someone has let Satan lead them around and be the one guiding them.  They lack the supernatural peace only Christ can give those who follow Him.  Remember just what Jesus says to each of us who come to Him.  "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 NIV)

The Breakthrough

Micah 2:13 NIV

One who breaks open the way will go up before them;

they will break through the gate and go out.

Their king will pass through before them,

the Lord at their head."

  

Are You Stuck In A Rut?

Years ago, not long after we moved to California, Mary Jo and I decided to take a trip back to see her family in New Orleans.   The road trip is forty hours of driving plus whatever stops you might take along the way.  We had two foster children with us and it felt like a great adventure for us all.  Our car was an old Chevy Malibu that the kids in the church called a “hooptie”.  The cloth lining to the roof was hanging down because the oldest boy had poked at it and stabbed it with a pencil.  Carved on the outside of the door he had put his name.  The Malibu had a rebuilt engine and new tires but the air conditioner was shot and it had nearly two hundred thousand miles on it.  We thought our hooptie could make it all the way and back but we weren’t sure and so with a bit of trepidation we took off down the highway.  I always drove whenever we went anywhere together; I guess I had learned that from my dad who never let my mom drive when the two of them went places together.  Our plan was to drive all night after the first day of driving and it had worked until it started raining buckets and we could barely see the road in front of us.  Not only that I got the flu and a fever began to rage through my body.  A few hours later my back went out and I could not stand when we stopped to get gas.  Mary Jo tried to take over the driving but it was clear she was too tired to go any further and so we gave up the fight and checked into a hotel.

There are times when life gets too big for us to handle.  We try our best to keep going but we have nothing left in the tank.  Maybe you have never hit that low spot when things seemed hopeless; when it felt like if you did not get some help you might fall apart.  The world is filled with people who have, who face trials and difficulties that are too big for them, too painful and too long lasting to manage on their own.  You certainly aren’t alone if what is before you is daunting, maybe even frightening.  Some have cancer and haven’t told anyone.  Others have a son who won’t try to find a job or who drinks too much.  You might know someone who has a mother with Alzheimer’s or a daughter battling depression a grandchild who is autistic or a husband who no longer can work.  The bright sunshine of the morning may cheer the hearts of many as they climb out of bed but not all of us.  You might be one who just wishes you could pull the covers over your face and stay in bed for the day…or the week…or the month.

The Bible has a number of case studies of those who came to the end of the rope.  One in particular brought most of his difficulties on himself.  Those of course are the worst kind, the ones that have years of guilt and regret attached to them.  Famous for his other name, Israel, Jacob might be described as a momma’s boy by some.  He had somehow got his twin brother Esau to trade his family right as the firstborn for a bowl of his brother’s lentil soup.  It must have been pretty good or Esau was unfathomably hungry to let go of such an important privilege but he did.  The problem with a birthright is that it doesn’t do much for you until your parents die.  It might mean you don’t have to do the dishes as often or clean out the latrine but it is a pretty inconsequential honor for the majority of your life.  Jacob had it but what was he to do with it?

His mother had an idea.  When her husband Isaac announced that he was going to bestow a special blessing on Esau which would be binding and supernaturally inspired.  Jacob tricked his blind father into thinking he was Esau and dad unwittingly gave the blessing to Jacob instead of his favorite son Esau.  Imagine what sort of fireworks this generated.  Isaac’s wife Rebekah had put Jacob up to the plan.  Isaac could not have been very pleased by that.  Esau became enraged and promised to kill his brother Jacob after his father died.  One can only guess how Isaac felt about Jacob.  The family became a boiling cauldron of fury, disgust, jealousy, distrust and fear.  Out of it jumped Jacob when he realized he had no future there.  His mom told him he needed to leave; he needed to get as far away from his brother and his steaming hatred as he could.  “Move north and move in with your uncle and see if there is someone in the family you can marry”, he was told.  He was after all forty years old.  It was time to stop being a momma’s boy and make a life for himself. 

Not all changes of course are depressing.  Some are exhilarating.  This one could not have been.  It was for Jacob the end of his world.  He had to hike over four hundred miles with the fear of his brother’s wrath nipping at his heels.  The safety of his home, the help of his servants, the doting of his mom…not to mention the wealth his family enjoyed now in his rear view mirror as he trudged along.  What a forlorn sight he must have been.  Perhaps there were tears trickling down his cheeks as he thought gloomily of the mistakes he had made, the fool he had become.  He had hiked somewhere around fifty miles when Jacob came to the outskirts of a village closed for the night.  It was out beneath the open sky housing the stars of the universe that Jacob’s life took a new turn.

When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.  He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.  I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south.  All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." (Genesis 28:11-15 NIV)

If you come to grips with the fact that God is behind every event of your life and that nothing happens to you that He is not turning into your benefit, you can take great comfort in what happened to Jacob.  God let his life explode so that something completely new could be made out of him.  It is clear that was what He was doing with Jacob…blowing up everything that made Jacob who he was and remaking him.  There is such mercy and generosity in God’s words here.  “I am with you”.  “I will watch over you.”  “I will give you…”  “Your descendants will be…”  “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.”  God doesn’t blow up your life to wreck you.  He does it so that something lovely and good can come out of it that wasn’t possible before He did so.  When you are content and pleased with yourself and comfortable it is hard to do anything with you.  You become disengaged from God, you lose your urgency to hear from Him, lack motivation to give Him room to work His way through you and often are resistant to do what He commands.  That is what it is like to have the nature of Adam.  We all are like that.  You aren’t alone in this.

Would Jacob have been able to believe it was really God coming to him in his dream if he was living comfortably at home, pleased with himself in his successful plundering of his brother’s fortune and standing?  It is hard to say but we do know that he was this night, destitute, on the run, shattered.  He was eager to have God come to him and comfort him.  Finally, Jacob was ready for the Lord to truly be a part of His li…the most important part.  It is interesting, the choice of words used to describe how Jacob was the next day.  Certain that God was with him and that the Lord “had his back”, Jacob started off with a new way of seeing this adventure he was entering.  Then Jacob continued on his journey and came to the land of the eastern peoples. (Genesis 29:1 NIV)  Literally the Hebrew of the verse reads, “Then Jacob lifted up his feet…”  There is a joyfulness in this description.  We would use the expression, “He had a bounce to his step.”  For the first time in days, maybe even weeks or months or even years, Jacob was ready to trust God with his life and not make a mess of things.

God almost always blows up things for us before He takes hold of us and makes us new.  It was not going to be easy for Jacob.  He would work like a slave for fourteen years just to get his wife.  He would be cheated and humiliated by his father-in-law and have to bear the blazing sun and the miserable nights sleeping on the ground out in pasture lands just to keep his sheep safe but in it all, he became a man of God with great strength and faith.  It is so frequent that it is almost an axiom of life that before God can build His life in you and give you peace and joy and freedom from lust and worry, He must break you apart and take away every crutch you have propping up your life.   But then, slowly yet surely you will become the sort of person you hoped you would be when you realized you needed Christ to fulfill you.

The Bible is filled with case studies of those who first had to be wrecked before they could be bright stars in God’s universe:  Daniel, Moses, Job, Peter, James, Paul.  Jesus might not come to you in a dream or with a bright light or a great voice but He will come to you.  You will have to decide if you trust Him to remake you, to start over with you and take all the damage to your personality brought on by sin out of you and make you free to be loving and full of hope and peace.  It takes faith to believe that every experience you face has God in it and that each person who aggravates you is used by the Lord to make you good and holy but through Christ you can have that faith and be ready to be transformed by your Savior in every part of your day.  Take a deep breath and thank God He cares enough for you to save you from you sin and make you completely new.

Deep Cleansing

1 Thessalonians 5:23 NIV

 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

How Clean Do You Want To Be?

When I was in high school I had a pretty severe case of acne.  I used to lay out in the sun for hours trying to dry out my back and face and sometimes was in serious pain from sunburn.  My mom brought me to a dermatologist and I got a prescription for a topical skin lotion as well as pills that were supposed to reduce the oiliness of my skin.  I must say it did work.  If you look at my senior picture, you can see the effect it had on me.  It caused my face to tan and for two or three weeks I had dark brown skin and my pimples faded.  But then, like something from a fairy tale, my skin started peeling, small sections coming off at a time so that part of my face was like the girl from Ipanema and the rest like the Riddler.  Then I was back to my normal blotchy complexion until the combination of the sun and my medication began to interact again.  The pills used to turn my skin so dry that my hands inside the knuckles would split open and I had to put band aids around my fingers to be able to play basketball.  I endured this because  I was desperate to get rid of my acne.  What I needed was some sort of deep cleaning treatment that would clear my pores but I never found anyone who could do that for me.

Have you thought about the possibility that you might need a deep cleansing of your soul?  You may contend that you don’t need any radical work done in you.  Perhaps you just have a few issues that you could use fixing but nothing really critical, nothing very important.  If that is how you see things, then you are like most people who feel like they could use a little tweaking but nothing dramatic like psychological counseling or psychiatric care.  Perhaps there is a gnawing sense of inadequacy in you or a slight throbbing that something is not quite right.  At the risk of sounding melodramatic, most alcoholics never go to an AA meeting and how many commit suicide without ever attending a session with a counselor.  It is the natural tendency for nearly all of us to ignore what is wrong with us for as long as possible  and this may be true of you too.  Perhaps there is something of great value God could do in you, something necessary that you would one day be most grateful for Him to have done.   You would not be the first person to be thankful for God doing something new in you, that He brought changes to you that you did not realize you needed.  Consider the possibility that there is more to having Christ build His life in you than you expected.

Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote out a most enlightening prayer in 1 Thessalonians 5: 23.  May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NIV)  This prayer stretches across the centuries to you and it is just as valid now as it was in Thessalonica in 55 AD.  He is asking God to sanctify you through and through.  The Greek term translated “sanctify” is a tricky word to translate.  It could be rendered “make holy” which is perfectly fine except many misunderstand what the term holy means.  The second important term is one Greek word that is rendered here “through and through”.  It means to be completely or all the way or the whole of you made something.  A picture of this is a sponge that is so completely saturated that there is no room in it for anything else.  It is what you see in John 2 when Jesus tells the servants at the wedding to fill the water pots all the way to the top so that not another drop could be put in them or they would spill over on the ground.

There is built within the curse of sin in you and me a certain disdain for too much God in us.  It is as if there is a tolerance level fixed by the spiritual and even psychological damage done to us when sin entered our lives that makes it almost painful to have Christ get deeply involved in us.  We see this manifested in common activities.  There is only so much Bible we can read before we need something more entertaining.  There is only so much Christian music we can play before it gets old, only so much preaching we can hear before we are bored, only so far we can go with forgiveness or kindness or generosity or goodness or praying before we grow weary of it.  It is strange but we all seem to have a holiness fill line which if we go past it results in us growing uncomfortable with God and God activities.

There are parts of you, which you aren’t even aware exist, that are wrecked by sin.  Your spirit, which is who you are forever, is in need of a total transformation if you are going to be completely healthy and happy.  The Bible speaks of your spirit needing to be sanctified through and through.  Sanctified, at least when the Bible talks about it, means that God gets worked into every part of you.  You become saturated with Christ.  All of Christ’s personality traits, whether they are His courage, His peace, His loving kindness or His moral purity, become in sanctification your personality traits.  This is much different than trying hard to be like Jesus.  That is impossible anyway if you have nothing in you that Christ has in Him to live like He does!  Imagine a turtle trying to do calculus like a math professor or a walrus trying to make an apple pie like your grandmother.  It is impossible because these creatures have none of the mental tools necessary to undertake the effort.   Without Christ in you, it is impossible to copy His behaviors or imitate His way of dealing with life.

The problem we face is that we have so much damage to us that we are impossibly separated from real goodness and holiness on a consistent basis.  In spurts we are good or at peace or full of faith but without warning it all falls apart.  The ruin is in hidden places that are buried within us.  Just consider the strange case of Saul, king of Israel.  His best and most successful general drove him crazy…literally crazy.  Although David was crucial to Saul’s success and thoroughly loyal to him, Saul could not bear David’s popularity and tried a number of times to kill him. There was nothing logical about Saul’s jealousy.  It wasn’t David’s fault.  The root of Saul’s bitterness was all within his spirit somewhere.  It may have confused Saul and tormented him, this irrational hatred for David but it could not be denied.  Something was very wrong with Saul and he could not fix it.

The same could be said of David himself.  When he sent his servants to fetch Bathsheba so that he could sleep with her, it was irrational what he did.  There were plenty of beautiful single women that David could have had.  He had numerous lovely wives and concubines; so why did he need Bathsheba, who was married to one of his most loyal and courageous officers?  It isn’t like he did not know wrong when he saw it.  When Nathan the prophet confronted David about his sin of sleeping with Bathsheba and having her husband murdered, he did so by telling David a story about lust.  "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.  Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him." (2 Samuel 12:1-4 NIV)

David’s reaction to hearing of this terrible act was appropriate rage.  David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity." (2 Samuel 12:5-6 NIV)  Yet the evil David could see in another, he could not find in himself until that evil bore fruit.  This is a universal trait of sin wrecked humanity.  We easily see as Jesus put it, the splinter in the eye of someone else but do not realize there is a beam of wood in our own eye.  Why is that?  It is because the power of evil in us is hidden in deep places of our spirit.  It surprises us when the ugly ungodliness comes to the surface, confuses us and we react to it with the defense mechanism parents use when they hear about the evil acts of their children: denial and befuddlement.  “How could this happen?  She wouldn’t have done that?  She must have been provoked.”

The absurd pockets of evil in your spirit and in my spirit contradict what we think we are.  We get fooled by the initial positive results of becoming Christian into thinking that everything is right in us when it isn’t.  We need a complete reworking, or to put it another way, a deep cleansing of the spirit.  The Bible insists there is much wrong with us that only Christ can fix.  We must face this squarely if we want to be perfect.   This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.  If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. (1 John 1:5-6 NIV)  The difference between the evil we have in us and the absolute goodness found in Christ is a great abyss…an uncrossable chasm.  Yet God Himself can get at those deep places of evil that sin has wrecked in us and cleanse them, or to be precise, purify them.  Consider the immensity of the promise found in1 John 1: 7.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7 NIV)  Examine this closely.  The tiny word “if” makes clear that we might not walk in the light.  This is not automatic; it is up to us to do.  Walk is a metaphor that means to live and the verse is saying it is possible for us to continually live in the light, to always do what we do with God in charge showing us the way.  We do not have to abandon God or go on our own, we can at every moment walk hand in hand with Him, guided by Him, enabled by Him to live like Christ lives.  There is a second part to the verse. As we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus purifies us continually from all sin.  The term translated “purifies” means to cleanse constantly, to rework every moment of every day.  It is the Greek word from which we get our English word “cauterize.   It is used to describe what happened when Jesus removed the leprosy from those He healed.  When we are in tune with God and giving Him authority over what and how we do things, a miracle occurs during these times.  The blood of Christ works out of us the damage sin has worked in us. 

If you just stay aligned with Jesus, just keep praying to Him as you go through the day and let Him lead you when you sense His guiding, the damage Sin has caused in your personality, your unconscious thinking and in the way you live your life will be removed and healed bit by bit.  There is no cure for certain broken and wrecked parts of you except what Jesus can do if you let Him get hold of you.  This week make a conscious effort to stay close to Jesus, to make Him the center of your concentration as often as possible…no, as often as you are willing to do so. 

Psychological Effect of Redemption The Will

Philippians 2:13 NIV

…for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

What Determines Your Actions?

When I asked Mary Jo to marry me, it was an important moment for her.  She had to make a decision that clearly would dramatically impact her life.  No one else could decide for her although others could influence her decision.  Her parents may not have been happy to have me as their son-in-law but they weren’t the ones given the responsibility of saying “yes” or “no” to my proposal.  Mary Jo might have had many factors weighing on her when I “popped the question”.  She could have thought about my extremely good looks and my hilarious sense of humor and that might have influenced her.  She might also have considered how poor I was, how limited my earning power was as well as all my quirky ideas and how skinny I was and been pushed the other way.  Unconscious forces within her might have impacted her opinion of me, determining factors that she could not explain.  Perhaps early childhood experiences with taller men influenced Mary Jo’s decision.  Maybe fears or lusts or angry feelings had an effect on how she responded.  In the end though, it was her will and hers alone that acted upon my question of marriage.

You have a will, the part of your personality that decides for you what you shall do.  It is what closes the deal.  All day you make decisions.  Your passions influence how your will acts.  You have done things simply because you were angry or broken-hearted or elated.  Your conscious thinking impacts how your will responds to what you face.  You think about things, weigh the evidence and ponder what is happening and how it affects what you might do.  Your unconscious thoughts influence your will.  Sometimes childhood trauma, a destructive forgotten relationship or a humiliating experience will without your conscious knowledge determine the direction your will takes.  Because your heart is poisoned by sin, the will you possess is also damaged by Sin.  For obvious reasons, a healthy and effective will is critical to your well-being because what you decide can have lasting ramifications for you and those you love.

Let us think of the will as the part of us that creates the outward push of self.  When you reach outside yourself and act upon what is percolating within you; that is the will making the determination. Your will drives your actions.  We see this in Philippians 2: 13 in which the Bible says,”…for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:13 NIV)  The will is linked to whatever you do or decide you won’t do.  The Lord’s intention for you is that your will would be free to do as it wishes.  You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. (Galatians 5:13 NIV)  However, with a free will, we can be wicked and cruel, selfish and filthy or loving and kind, truthful and generous.  It is our will that decides what we shall do.

What is amazing is that the God of the universe does not usurp your will.  Christ asked the two blind men who begged Him for help, "What do you want me to do for you?" (Matthew 20:32 NIV)  When two disciples of John the Baptist started tagging along behind Jesus, He asked them, "What do you want?" (John 1:38 NIV) The assumption underlying God’s relationship with us is that we are free to choose it or not.  “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15 NIV)  The very call of Jesus to Andrew and Peter was, “Come follow me”.  (Mark 1:17 NIV) It seems that they did not have to follow Jesus if they didn’t want to do so, if they weren’t interested in being “fishers of men”. Even when the Bible calls to us, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…", the will is left to decide how to respond.(Acts 16:31 NIV)

Consider the strange account of King David and his affair with Bathsheba.  The decision David made to sleep with her had disastrous ramifications for him.  It certainly impacted his family as well as those who saw him as a spiritual leader.  How did it affect God’s plans for David and the good He wanted David to accomplish?  The affair did not just hurt David’s reputation but God’s too.  What kind of God chooses men like David to lead His nation?  Given all the bad David’s act of Sin brought, it is interesting that God did not stop him somehow.  But David had a will that God was not willing to usurp even if it meant a disaster would be averted by doing so.  God has made us sovereign in the Will we have been given.  We are free to have Him as Lord or not, free to follow Him or not.

The will does not act in a vacuum however and in many ways it is a slave to forces beyond it.  Saul, the newly crowned king of Israel had been told by God through the prophet Samuel to wait seven days until Samuel returned before offering a sacrifice to God in preparation for the war that was about to begin.  He did wait for seven days but he did not wait long enough for Samuel to return and against God’s will, Saul and his soldiers offered a burnt offering to God.  Some of us have bought expensive presents for people we love even though they have told us not to do it and usually it works out well anyway.  In this case, it didn’t for Saul.  God punished Saul for his disobedience.

At the risk of making it seem that Saul should not have been held accountable for his rebellious act, we must consider the forces working upon Saul’s will.  First, there were his conscious thoughts.  He looked about and saw a great army of Philistines before him who were battle tested and far superior in numbers and weaponry.  As the Bible puts it, they were “as numerous as the sand on the seashore.” (1 Samuel 13: 5) Not only that, his own soldiers were going off and hiding in caves and behind bushes and in cisterns.  It seemed unreasonable to Saul as he considered the situation, not to hurry and offer the sacrifice so that he might gain God’s favor because if he waited much longer, nearly his entire army would desert him and the Philistines would attack.  Saul’s passion was pressuring his will certainly as fear began to overwhelm him.  He may have been angry too with Samuel for taking so long.  Consider Saul’s unconscious thoughts that pushed up against his will.  It was not that long ago that Saul was made king and even though Samuel had told him that he was God’s choice to be king, when it was time to present him to the nation, Saul hid among the baggage gathered off to the side.  When originally informed of God’s plans for him, Saul referred to himself as from one of the most insignificant of all the families among the Israelites.  How this impacted Saul unconsciously, we cannot say but it had to have some effect.  From birth, he saw himself as not good enough, as inadequate and incapable of accomplishing much in life.  Even when assured that God believed he could be king, Saul couldn’t buy it.  This embedded way of seeing himself made it difficult for Saul to accept the challenge of courageously trusting God.

What our Lord did for us as Savior was to take out of us the corruption of our will.  The Sin that makes the will unstable and untrustworthy is removed from it through Christ crucified.  It can function as God intended when He gave Adam the challenge of rejecting the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  What is more, with Christ joined to us, we can have a will that agrees with God on everything.  Philippians 2: 13 reminds us that now, with Christ as part of us, it is God who works in you to will and to act in conjunction with what He wants.  In other words, God gives your will backbone to withstand the sort of pressures Saul faced. 

There is one powerful force that works on the will that must now be given its due consideration.  Our body, our physical desires can and have made the will a slave.  There is a supernatural component to the will that alters altogether the way we can live.  Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 NIV)  There is a tremendous promise here that we must take into account when we consider all those acts that it seems our bodies force us to perform.  It is seen, and we cannot say this strongly enough, that with Christ taking out of us our Sin and the Holy Spirit a part of us, the body cannot force our will into anything.  The will is altogether free in Christ to withstand even the most powerful urges of the body.  We must face this statement head on.  Either God is for us and we are able to fight off any addiction or behavior pattern that our will rejects or the Scripture is a mythology littered with colossal empty promises.

How can you ever know if your will, joined with Christ is strong enough to make free decisions that honor Christ and make your life good?  Jesus offers you an experiment to try.  Find out just how powerful Christ is and how effective His work is in you.  He says without pushing you, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV)  Impose your will upon every single desire that goes against what God is saying to do.  The will is like a great muscle. You must train it to follow God or it will be a slave to your passions, your body, your conscious or unconscious thoughts.  If you take your will in through the narrow gate you might find the way hard and uncomfortable and even some times unreasonable and maybe boring.  But as you train your will to follow Christ, something will happen to you that may surprise you.  God’s peace and contentment will begin to take over your heart and a joy that is supernatural will creep into you also.  The term the Bible uses for this experience is “life” and it is promised to those who bend their will to that of God.  Eventually as you train your will to follow Christ, God’s will becomes your will and you will be “the will of God”.

What Is Salvation?

 Romans 3:23 NIV

…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…

Why Does Salvation Matter?

One of the more fascinating developments in my lifetime has been the intellectual elimination of sin in our culture. It seems that very few want to acknowledge the category of sin as a real and definable set of behaviors and it rarely is discussed as a topic either in university classes, on daytime TV or in movies.  Yet the behaviors of sin are universally disliked.  If someone steps outside on a chilly Thursday morning and discovers the car he planned to take to work is stolen, he is upset.  If a mom brings her daughter to the emergency room and the child’s surgery is botched because the physician on duty was drunk, she is furious.  A drug dealer who has almost no scruples and seems to be devoid of a conscience will not tolerate for a minute a break-in to his apartment and the theft of his stash of money.  We may find few in our world who believe in sin but nearly everyone has some idea of what is wrong and what behaviors should not be tolerated.  There may not be consensus on what sins are sins but there is near universal acknowledgement that wrong is wrong and really wrong and that our world has lots of wrong in it.  The biggest question facing our world is, “How do you fix the wrong in our world?”

Salvation is equally disregarded and misunderstood in our culture.  Part of the problem is the way the term salvation is used.  Is salvation a winning touchdown or entrance into a prestigious college?  Would you be talking about the affection of a girl you like or getting the winning lotto ticket if you spoke of your “salvation”?  There is nothing like consensus of what salvation is!  You might not even see any reason for being saved if your life is going pretty well.  Salvation is one of the most important terms in Christianity however and even the name “Jesus” has built in it the idea of salvation.  What really is salvation though and why does it matter?

A widely held belief about salvation is that it is all about getting into heaven.  Heaven is popularly viewed as the “big ticket item” when God offers salvation to us.  Yet when the angel spoke with Joseph about Mary becoming pregnant with God’s Son, he was told that the child was to be called “Jesus” because he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21 NIV)  No mention is made of heaven; salvation is all about rescue from sins.  In explaining why they could not stop talking publicly about Jesus, the disciples proclaimed Christ’s mission.  The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead — whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. (Acts 5:30-31 NIV)  The Old Testament makes the same connection between salvation and sins.  Help us, O God our Savior, for the glory of your name; deliver us and forgive our sins for your name's sake. (Psalm 79:9 NIV)  The Savior, or to put it another way, the one who brings salvation, came to deliver humanity from the wreckage of sin because that is the great crisis of every human life.  It was not that we needed heaven that drove God to save us, it was that we needed deliverance from Sin.  Whenever salvation and heaven are linked in Scripture, heaven is not the object of salvation but rather the source of salvation.  But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. (Philippians 3:20-21 NIV)  Salvation comes from the God of Heaven.  Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12 NIV)

The great truth that no one ever discusses is that the most unifying factor within humanity, that which is more important than any other common link between us is the sin we all possess.  The Apostle Paul expresses this plainly.…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…(Romans 3:23 NIV)  Every one of us sins and every one of us is completely corrupted by Sin.  Psalm 38 presents the most complete picture found anywhere in literature of the impact Sin has upon each person.  O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.  For your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me.  Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin.  My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.  My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly.  I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning.  My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body.  I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.  All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you.  My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes.  My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away. (Psalm 38: 1-11 NIV)

Paul states emphatically that the worst result of Sin is that it brings us death.  For the wages of sin is death… (Romans 6: 23 NIV)  Sin in any shape and look, whether it is a “small sin” or a perverse “big sin”, results in death.  When the Bible speaks of death in the sense Paul uses it in Romans, it is ruin of life in every sense imaginable.  The culmination of death is the destruction of the physical body and the absolute absence of God’s presence.  Before that though, death through sin is exactly what Psalm 38 describes.  It is oppression of the heart…depression, anger, bitterness and animosity.  Death by Sin is the oppression of the body…illnesses, injuries, genetic diseases, congenital birth defects.  Death by Sin is the inability to be content, the loss of peace with what one has, the worry and stress over what may come to pass.  Death by Sin is the fractured relationships and loss of love.  Sin brings death and death is more than a corpse in a coffin, it is the debasing of life.   We see death by sin in hospitals, prisons, foster care systems, divorce courts and mental institutions.  Death by Sin is what we all face each and every day.

Humanity has searched in a million different places to mask the effect of death by Sin.  Alcohol and drugs have been used for centuries to cover the mess.  Entertainment can only hide what is there for a limited amount of time.  The rush for success and exchanging of one friendship or partner for another when death by Sin has run its course through relationships have worked for a while but every effort at shaking off death by Sin fails eventually.

It must remembered, and this point cannot be stressed enough if we are to take seriously enough death by Sin, that we are not just talking about the impact of our own sins upon ourselves but also the effect of the sins of others on us too.  The psychological component to death by Sin is illustrated perfectly in the ugly jealousy of Moses’ brother Aaron and sister Miriam.  They were enjoying tremendous prosperity.  Having come from a humble household, they were elevated to leaders in the Hebrew community when God made Moses the director and prophet of the entire nation.  They had escaped Egypt and now were making their way to the land God promised his people.  Moses trusted them and their counsel.  Miriam was the leader of the women of Israel and Aaron the high priest.  Yet something happened to them that made them crave more power.  Sin wrecked the personality of each of them so much that they initiated a rebellion against Moses.

Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite.  "Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?" they asked. "Hasn't he also spoken through us?" And the Lord heard this. (Numbers 12:1-2 NIV)  Aaron and Miriam were probably nice people who you would have liked having as friends.  It was Miriam who helped save her brother Moses when he was a new-born from being murdered by Pharaoh’s soldiers.  Perhaps they both thought they were protecting their country from Moses’ bad policies but God did not consider their rebellion justified.  In fact, He was so angry with their actions that Miriam was immediately struck with leprosy and Aaron could have been next.  What wreckage within could lead to such a colossal act of spite on Aaron’s and Miriam’s part?  We cannot say how their upbringing impacted them or what sorts of pain they suffered as adults but we do know that somewhere they accumulated a tremendous amount of damage to their personalities that they could with such ease turn on their brother who had done so much for them.  I have had people treat me pretty terribly who I have helped and encouraged and you probably have too.  Yet I too have been horrible and hurt those I have loved and I cannot blithely wave off the consequences of my actions.  I don’t look at myself as a troubled or demonic person but I have acted like one at times.  My personality is wrecked by sin too just as yours is and we cannot fix what is wrong with us.

Jesus Christ did not die on the Cross in order to move us from a bad location to a wonderful one.  He died to remake us in every single way.  Our personality is completely ruined by Sin and no amount of effort will make us right.  Being in Heaven cannot fix us and Earth certainly won’t.  We need a Savior to take our Sin from us and make us new; a Savior who was without Sin who could be punished for our Sin and not His own.  There are thousands upon thousands of ways Sin has to be removed from us.  Sin has to be taken out of our habits.  It has to be taken out of our emotions.  It has to be taken out of our memories and out of what makes us happy.  Sin has to be removed from the way we think about things and how we react to what we face.  Sin has to be taken out of our relationships and out of what motivates us.  As long as Sin is part of us, we are condemned to death by Sin.  But with a Savior, all of our Sin gets worked out of us and we are brought into perfection…perfection of how we act and how we think.  There is nothing we need more than our Sin taken out of us and no gift of God is greater than the removal of our Sin and His recreation of us into Sinless people who live forever in complete peace and untainted joy with God within a sin-free creation.