Feasting on God

Matthew 26:26-28 NIV

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."  Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Why Have the Lord’s Supper?

Perhaps you have wondered why we have the Lord’s Supper.  Of course Jesus commanded us to hold the Lord’s Supper and so we do it but that does not explain why He wants us participating in it.  Christian and quasi Christian groups have a variety of explanations for its regular practice.  Some believe that we literally eat the physical body of Christ when we take the bread.  Others say it is just a symbolic ritual that helps us reflect on Christ and what He did for us.  Many think that you gain salvation by eating the bread and drinking the grape juice.  So is it just a religious ritual without any real benefit to us other than getting us to think about God or does its practice have eternal consequences for those who do or don’t participate?

Let us for a moment reflect on the actual words Jesus used when He told His disciples to eat the bread he offered them and drink from the cup.  "Take and eat; this is my body."  Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  Consider the two parts to this: 1. Take and eat.  This is my body.  2. Drink from it all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.  In the supper, it is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ that is at the center of it.  What are we told to take into ourselves?  It is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ.

Lest we get confused in this, we are not physically eating Jesus’ flesh or swallowing His blood.  That would be a grotesque violation of God’s law as even after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the Church is commanded not to drink blood.  Eating human flesh is just as revolting.  Yet consider what the body and blood are.  The body is the substance of Christ; what makes Him who He is.  It is Jesus Himself…His personality, His character, His way of life.  If you want to know how that looks, what His personality and lifestyle is, go no further than the Sermon on the Mount.  There you find how He thinks, the way He does things, His habits and approach to every relationship and task He undertakes. 

The blood is the life of Jesus.  When God commanded His people not to drink the blood of any creature, He insisted, "You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off."  (Leviticus 17:14 NIV)  It is the blood that keeps you alive, what makes you alive.  Without the blood, there is no sustaining force to empower you.  The blood is how you are able to live and thrive.

So what does Christ give us with His body and blood?  We have Him: His personality, His character and the force of His life.  Consider this statement of the Bible.  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20 NIV)  What an amazing assertion!  Christ can actually live in us.  Not figuratively or symbolically but in reality He becomes a part of you when in faith you accept His entrance into your life.  Jesus made the promise that, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23 NIV)  We have here the spectacular declaration by Jesus that as close as the Father and the Son are, so are the Father, Son and any of us who love Christ and obey Him.  This is a real union within the Christian; all God possesses in His nature, His holiness, goodness, faithfulness and love becomes the believer’s.  Remember what Jesus taught in John 15?  He is the vine and we are His branches.  His life flows through ours and empowers us in every way.  Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5 NIV)

Jesus made the promise that His people would do the same kinds of things He did.  I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. (John 14:12 NIV)  He was not pushing for imitation.  He was describing how we would look if we are connected to Him as branches are attached to a vine.  He is comingled with us so that it results in the impossible circumstance of in any way being able to separate where we end and He begins.  We become one.  Consider this declaration in the Bible.  But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:17 NIV)  Could this be any clearer?  Much like how bread and grape juice become inseparable from the body once it is digested, so too, when we unite ourselves with the Lord, we become one new being that cannot split into two.  One in spirit is much more than just some sort of fraternal partnership, it is the actual joining of Christ and you into a new creation.

Consider carefully this insistence in the Bible of just how profound is your union with Christ.  It is because of him (God) that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God — that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1: 30 NIV)  Let us look closely at this statement for a moment.  It is because of God’s decision that we are put into Christ and made a part of Him.  Because of that, each Christian has His wisdom and not only that, His righteousness and His holiness and His deliverance or redemption.  The union of you and Jesus Christ is complete.  It results in all His perfection becoming yours.  And how can this be?  It is by faith in Christ, that simple acceptance that He truly did die for your sins and raise you up into a new life with Him joined to you.  When you eat the bread and drink the grape juice, you do so with the same faith that saves you from your sins.  You eat it and it becomes a part of you just like the love and holiness and goodness and rightness of Jesus is a part of you.  We do take God into us when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  Not in reality but in actuality.  The bread does not become His earthy flesh and the juice does not become His gooey blood but better than that, He actually becomes a part of us because by faith we take the bread and the grape juice and make it ours in a union between us and Christ that truly make us one.

Unconscious Thought Part 2

Psychological Effect of Redemption

Ephesians 1: 7 NIV

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins…

What Does God Have “in Mind” For You?

For perhaps several hundred years, many involved in creative arts such as painting, sculpting, storytelling and songwriting have been aware of some unseen force within them that affects their ingenuity.  Even mechanics and mathematicians have been intrigued by the surprising insight they mysteriously develop as they try to solve a problem.  The author Tom Clancy has this to say about the effect his subconscious thinking has upon his writing.  “I think about the characters I've created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did.”    We use the expression, “I need to sleep on it” to indicate the need to wait before making a decision but also because we realize that something mysterious happens to how we think about things when we actually do sleep. 

One of the most unattended difficulties we face is our complete ignorance in regard to the effect of our unconscious thinking upon our daily activities.  Does it impact your decisions?  What role does it play on your moods?  Is it influential in the sorts of relationships you develop and maintain?  Is it possible to control and direct your unconscious thoughts to your advantage?  One of the rarely considered aspects to thinking fully through Christ as part of you is the impact that has upon the unconscious world.  Later we shall discuss the supernatural forces working within us but for today we will consider only what role Christ plays in impacting our unconscious thoughts.

Who doesn’t like the potential of a special degree of insight and understanding buried within unconscious thinking if Christ is part of the heart?  It must be reminded however that for every person, unconscious thinking is corrupted by Sin.  Degenerate and volatile forces of evil  work below the surface of our conscious thinking and that has caused us all sorts of problems and even pain.  Paul the Apostle described this perfectly in Romans 7.  I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.  And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.  As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.  I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. (Romans 7:15-20 NIV)

This unseen force, the work of Sin within our unconscious that fights against even our best intentions is so familiar to us that when we read what Paul has to say, it almost feels like he is reporting on our own minds.  But this is universal, the inability to live according to our highest values and principles.  What our conscious thinking attempts, our corrupted unconscious undermines.  There is hope though and it is a real and trustworthy hope.  Redemption, a technical term in the Bible that speaks of the work Christ did for us by being crucified and raised from the dead is how God takes out of us the Sin that corrupts our inner being.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. (Ephesians 1:7-8 NIV)  To understand just how crucial this is in regard to the unconscious, we must remember that the term here which is translated “forgiveness”  has as its primary meaning, “to put away”.  What Christ did by dying for us is to take away from us the Sin that is within us.  This brings us a real freedom to our unconscious thinking, not just to our conscious decision making.

Before Jesus Christ died for us, Psalm 51: 6 was a far off dream.  Now it is possible for you.  Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Psalm 51:6 NIV)  As we learned earlier, truth is the translation of a Hebrew word that describes firmness, stability.  God is now free to take the chaos out of our unconscious thinking and remove the corruption from it.  How does He straighten out our unconscious inner world?  He puts into it His wisdom, or to use the Psalmist’s expression, teaches “wisdom in the inmost place.”  What once was a combustible combination of bitter memories, warped patterns of thinking and a corrupted manner of perceiving what you are encountering, your heart, for once has the potential of bringing you peace, joy and encouragement in a supernatural form.

Hebrews 4: 12-13 tells insists that God is able to dig into the deepest parts of your soul where no psychologist or mental health worker can explore.  For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.  Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12-13 NIV) With no sinful act or sinful damage able to withstand the cleansing and healing work of Christ in the heart, the Lord searches, processes, evaluates and takes out of darkness everything that wrecks you, all through the Cross.  What is He unable to see in your heart?  What is impossible for Christ to heal in your heart?  What wrecked habit or painful memory can He not make right?  With humanity, it is impossible to clear up all this and make your heart right but as Jesus told the disciples, "What is impossible with men is possible with God." (Luke 18:27 NIV)

The Cross of Christ is the greatest miracle seen in history for through it, we are brought out of the wreck Sin has cost us and by it, God can work His way through the darkest and deepest parts of your heart and fix it all.  The Bible uses the metaphor of light to express what God does in us.  For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6 NIV)  You might question this.  Can Jesus Christ do what some of the greatest psychologists and psychiatrists in history haven’t been able to accomplish?  Well yes He can!  If you let Him have full access to you.    The work of Christ in the heart is quite simple.  He retakes it and remakes it for the glory of God in you.  By His light, Christ eliminates the darkness of your heart.  In other words, He heals all the damage caused by Sin in the inner parts of your life.

It does not take deep insight to realize that something is thoroughly wrong with the created order.  From top to bottom, our world is broken and we are broken too.  For too long we all lived with our brokenness.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:22-25 NIV)  Like the rest of creation, there is inward sighing in you, deep places where there is moaning at how it has been.  The damage caused by Sin is great and for some horrific.  Yet, you don’t have to be broken any longer.  God has a new way of life for you. 

There is a wonderful promise found in the Bible and it must be considered before you move on with what you are doing.  In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. (Romans 8:26-27 NIV)  Outwardly, you may not show any signs of damage or turmoil.  Nothing seems wrong but inwardly there is sighing and groaning.  At those spots, those secret spots, the Holy Spirit works in you.  In the deep places, He knows what hurts, what is traumatized and damaged and there He intercedes for you.  Where surgeons cannot enter and human machines cannot reach, our Lord heals, He calms, He soothes.  Without permission, the Spirit will leave you alone but at your call, He touches the angry, inflamed, lonely, infected, ruined places in your heart and He heals them.  The places of the heart where you have lost your childhood, your innocence, where the dreams you once had were stripped from you, God will heal too.  He will give you a new dream deep in your heart and new love to make your heart whole.  With your permission, the Holy Spirit will heal the damage in your heart.

Each evening, before you go to sleep, invite Christ to heal the parts of your mind you can’t explore.  Ask Him to be in charge of your dreaming and purify it.  Let your last thought before you fall asleep be of your Lord alive in you remaking your inner parts and repairing all the damage caused by the sins of the world.  Remember He won’t just come in and do whatever He wants.  Our Lord “stands at the door” of your heart and it is you who must let Him enter.

Unconscious Thought

Part 1

Jeremiah 17:10 NIV

"I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."

What Do You Know About Yourself?

The past few weeks I have been aware of long and elaborate dreams that seem to last through the night.  In them are people I can’t ever remember seeing but they impact me in some dramatic way as my dream progresses.  The dreams aren’t frightening but sometimes they are troubling.  I have difficulty in many trying to find my way somewhere or I get confused about what I need to do.  The plotlines within my dreams are complex and the characters speak and act in surprising ways that don’t remind me of any of my recent experiences.  I could not write stories that are as creative and interesting as my dreams and so I wonder how they come about and what the source of them is.  Of course they could be sent to me by God or they may simply be the product of unconscious thinking that is working even while I am asleep.  One thing is certain.  There is much about me that I do not understand, especially what is found deep in my heart.

Perhaps you are like me and find yourself wondering what to make of the hidden parts of your mind.  It seems so complex and strange, like a cave filled with mysterious creatures, indecipherable writings and strange pictures on the walls.  Unpredictable forces are at work within you that push you about like a bully on the playground.  Do you just let them have their way with you, impacting what you feel about things and how you react to situations?  Can you do something about the internal forces that affect your life in hidden ways?  Should you be concerned about them or live as if your unconscious thoughts don’t matter?  What does the Bible have to say about the unconscious world?

Two terms in the Bible, when combined, are what describe the place of our “inner world”.  The first Hebrew term, lev, is generally translated heart and is what modern culture thinks of as the mind.  The second, Kilya is difficult to translate but in older English Bibles is called the “reins” or “kidneys”.  It is the inner place of the self; the deep part of us that includes our thinking, our unconscious world, our passion and our will.  Jeremiah 17: 10 puts both these terms together and reminds us that God has access to all the hidden places of the inner being.  "I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve." (Jeremiah 17:10 NIV)

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You don’t need proof that there are depths to you that you cannot explore with just the mental skills available to you.  You have dreams you can’t explain.  You experience emotions that do not have a recognizable source.  Memories suddenly pop to the surface without warning.  A smell or a taste of something brings back to mind an experience you have long forgotten.  The Bible says that God has made that deep, unseen world.  For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. (Psalm 139:13 NIV)  “Inmost being” is the translation of our Hebrew word, “Kilya” or kidneys, the place where your thoughts are found.  The very next verse proclaims that the way God put together your inmost being is wonderful.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:14 NIV)  What Freud and many in the psychoanalytic field saw as the enemy of happiness, the unconscious world found in each person, the Bible says is a great benefit or even a tremendous treasure.

We do though face a great problem when it comes to our unconscious thought life.  It is corrupted.  Jeremiah 17:9 says this about the heart.  The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?  (Jeremiah 17:9 NIV)  The effect of Sin at every area of our thinking, both conscious as well as unconscious, is devastating.  It impacts us at every turn in life from how we feel about things to the way we make our decisions.  Our heart is wrecked and we cannot trust it to effectively take us through life.  No one, not Freud or Jung or Watson or any of the “thinkers” in the study of psychology understand fully the chaos found in the heart.

There is an interesting term the Bible uses to describe God’s plan for us.  Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Psalm 51:6 NIV)  The word translated “truth” is the Hebrew word “emeth” and means firmness, reliability, faithfulness.  As the heart is now, you cannot count on it.  The thoughts that are generated by the heart are at best unreliable; at worst destructive.  You cannot count on what comes out of your heart and have confidence that what comes out of it will be good.  God’s plan for you is to make your heart trustworthy and the thoughts in it productive and beneficial to your being.  The only way that is possible is if God gets at the root of the problem, the Sin that corrupts the heart.

We are reminded in Jeremiah 17: 10, that only God is the great psychologist because He is capable of seeing into the deepest and most broken parts of the heart and knowing what to do about it.  "I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind…”  The prayer of the Psalmist takes this ability of God into account.  Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. (Psalm 139:23 NIV)  Why is this important?   What does the psalmist really want?  We have no tools for figuring out the effect of our unconscious thinking upon what we do and how we react to things.  God though does and yet He will not simply take over your unconscious like some hypnotist if we don’t want Him there.  He waits for our praying to begin working in us at the unconscious level. 

Consider carefully God’s ability to do something about your unconscious mind.  Psalm 51: 6 insists, you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.  This is not just insight into how to fix a lawn mower.  You and I want much more than that in the inmost place, in the unconscious parts of the heart.  You want the supernatural thinking of God that combats the broken thinking of your unconscious mind.  "Where then does wisdom come from?  Where does understanding dwell? ... God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells, (Job 28:20, 23 NIV)  With your permission, God will reshape and remake your unconscious mind so that His wisdom rises up out of it.

Consider the irony found in Isaiah 44. He (a carpenter) cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak.  He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.  It is man's fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread.  But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it.  Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill.  He also warms himself and says, "Ah! I am warm; I see the fire."  From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships.  He prays to it and says, "Save me; you are my god." (Isaiah 44: 14-17 NIV)  Of course this points out the ridiculous nature of idol construction!  With part of the wood the carpenter carves an idol and from the rest of the very same wood he builds a fire and warms his cold feet.  Your unconscious built within your heart is much like this.  Part of it generates lustful feelings.  “I want this and I want it now!”  It can incite bitter anger as well as deep depression.  Another part of the unconscious produces inspiring thoughts, actions and plans.  You might treat these ideas as if they come from God but they may not be from Him.  They may simply be a product of a corrupted unconscious.    The unconscious is the power behind many of our opinions, actions and creative ideas and tragically, you can treat them as the ruling force of your life, a god.  Some of the most horrifying people of history were ruled by an unconscious they neither understood nor could control.  They thought though that everything they did was good and right.  We too can be fooled by a heart that is not seen or understood.  Our unconscious is both a danger to us and a support.  Next week we shall look at what can be done to have an unconscious that works for us and not against us.

You Are Not Alone In This

The world is in desperate need of holy people.  It doesn't need any more sanctimonious prigs who make the world bristle at their rigid opinions.  Genuinely holy people who uphold righteousness in their personal affairs, who laugh joyously in trying times, who have confidence that God will see them through any painful circumstance, who hold the hands of the broken-hearted and forgive with genuine love and humility are the pivot upon which all radical movements of God turn.  When Elijah complained that he was the only faithful servant of God left, he did not realize how many others were walking along the same path he was.   You are not alone in your longing to have Christ built into every part of your day.  Others also want the Savior flowing out of them in contagious ways.  There is a growing desire to be truly good and the only way that is possible is if our Lord is living within us and His holiness is entering every nook and cranny of our hearts.  There are deep hidden places where we have resisted God and settled for a form of Christianity our Lord never intended when He saved us.  We have habits we have not let the Holy Spirit touch; memories we have kept in gilded cages so that the Savior cannot approach them.  Today, with your hands stretched to the heavens, surrender your life to God and give Him permission to invade every part of you and put His crucified life at work wherever He sees a need for redemption.  The atonement had one purpose, to make you so completely God's that it becomes nearly impossible to see where you end and the Lord begins.   Holiness is not what you do; it is who you are.  When you are made right with Christ, everything you do will become the fragrance of God in a world looking for evidence our Savior really does make a difference in those who join with Him!

Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. 1 Kings 18:22 NIV

Head to Toe Him

One of the great movements of God is the flattening of the ego.  We think we know exactly what God wants to do with us, we prepare ourselves for His great interventions and then everything falls apart.  We go through the crushing despair  that wrecks our preconceived ideas of how God should be; of how He must be.  We also lose our sense of who we are; we are not basically good and well arranged, we are instead rebellious children who want our way above all else.  As God flattens us, He also picks us up off the ground and grants us favor in His Kingdom.  We learn to trust Him unconditionally.  We obey Him with finality.  We stick to Him when others about us turn traitorous.  God will not let you off the hook if you have given Him your life.  He will complete what He started which is to make you His completely both in how you are and how you look.  The family resemblance will be unmistakable when the Lord finishes with you.  The patience of His grace, the courage of His will, the integrity of His personality will be what is found in you too.  Until you look and sound and taste just like the wine and bread of Christ, you will feel the firm working of His hands upon your soul.  You are not in God's hand being polished; you are being remade and that does not come easily or quickly.  Taste and see that the Lord is good.  Is that not where you too are approaching?  It is not an imitation of Christ that you are gaining so much as the reality of it; Christ in you, the hope of glory.  The day will come when it will be impossible to separate the Christ from the you just as it is impossible for the one who knew your mother to be able to separate you from your mother as you approach her age.  The resemblance will not be at just one level of personality but through and through Christ will be seen in you.  That is where you are being taken and eventually you will get there.  The Cross of Jesus Christ, the redemption He established through it is the certification that you are being perfected even now as you walk through the fires and crushing of day by day life.  Give up on your hope of having a comfortable and clear life.  It will not happen as long as you are still a step away from the endpoint of being fully Christ's from head to toe.

God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.   Colossians 1:27 NIV