Lovers

It seems that love is ubiquitous.  Even Adolf Hitler had his loves.  But like him I can only love you so much and no more and that is how it is with you too.  There are limits to our loving...it does not in actuality go beyond our liking.  Love is for us an ebb and flow of sensibilities.   There is a reasonableness to love that is perpetuated by the myth of the straightness of our thinking and evaluating.  When it comes to love, we make decisions on it based on how we determine the rightness and wrongness of each other.  Fairness of love is evaluated constantly.  We love but only so far...so far as we think is best.  Love was never intended to be reasonable though.  It is as chaotic as a hurricane when it gets in the hands of God.  The swirl of crashing wants and desires wrecks our love at every turn.  But God's love is determined; a bulldog that won't be budged.  He loves the adulterer, the molester, the perverter of justice, the liar, the racist and the despot.  The miracle of God is that He somehow turns the sins of the many into the Sin of the One and through Christ, Love is unleashed into the unreasonable world.  I cannot love a single person I don't like yet in the boundless mercy of God, I have the capacity to love where love is not found in me.   No Christian with the Love of Christ in him or her can say, "I cannot love that far!"  We can.  And we must.  If God has worked His way in us, then His love must work its way out of us or we will be the most miserable of creatures.  Love withheld becomes a stench within.  But when we let His love flow from us wherever He chooses to take it, a swelling joy takes it place so that it too spills out like Mary's perfume...which she poured out onto Christ in love.

 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 1 John 4: 7-8 NIV

Will of Man

The assumption that we have somehow given our best to God is an absurdity.  What we have to give is His already and what we think is a form of best is so riddled by sin and vanity that we cannot in any way assess its quality.  We do have something to offer though...it is our will.  Our Lord will never forcibly retrieve our will once He has given it to us.  It is ours for eternity...a gift of God that makes us in His image.  Belief is not our will but rather a function of our will.  Why is it that hell is a gaping abyss for those who deny God His devotion?  To not give the abyss would be to deny us our will and destroy the basis of our humanity.  We take our will with us wherever we are sent and a will that refuses God and the humanization of His love, His Son, cannot be pushed or squeezed or manipulated into Heaven no matter how great the goodness and mercy of our Savior.  We truly choose our life, whether that life is redeemed from Sin or wrecked by it.  The devil cannot break your will either...he can make a scramble of your mind but he cannot kidnap your will.  You may hand it to him and then he has the free run of your head as seen in Judas and Herod.   The obstinate unbeliever is no more or less willful than the most saintly of believers.  What separates the two is the throne at which the will has been placed.  When Peter and the other disciples handed Christ the will each of them possessed, they found themselves at once beside a lake, next within a temple and finally upon a hill.  It all seemed a whirlwind of following, following, following.  But as they went with Christ in the full power and depth of their individual wills, they became transformed by Him and His crucified and resurrected life into His actual presence so who they were was merged with who He is and their wills became His...bearing much fruit.

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: 5 NIV

The Psychology of Pain

Psychology of Pain

Job 16:6 NIV

"Yet if I speak, my pain is not relieved; and if I refrain, it does not go away.”

Why Do We Have To Face Pain?

I can’t make up my mind.  What is the worst form of pain to face?  Unconscious pain, manifested in nightmares and unexplained depression and anxiety is debilitating.  Conscious pain, brought on by clear and obvious events that make us miserable and breed anger and despair.  Physical pain which can be excruciating or more or less just tolerable is terrible too.  When I was in high school, I separated my shoulder playing goalie for our soccer team.  We didn’t have anyone else to play goalie so I finished the first half and then the second half.  I could not lift my hand above my shoulder which made it pretty tough diving to stop shots and that night I could not sleep because of the pain.  In fact it hurt to even breathe for two weeks.  The pain prevented many of my favorite activities…I could not play basketball, couldn’t practice with my softball team and could barely take notes in class.  I often prayed during the next few weeks that God would take the pain away, that He would help me get to sleep and that He would (I thought this somehow was needed) forgive me of whatever sins I had been committed that led Him to push such pain upon me.

When we are pain free, we are also many times carefree.  We can think about anything we want, daydream, put plans into place and take on whatever projects we care to start.  But when we are suffering from pain, we get swept away by it.  If you have lost your job and you are dumbfounded by your bills, the pain of your circumstance clogs your mind and makes it so you can think of nothing else.  When you have suffered a great trauma in childhood, the pain of it never really leaves you and it bubbles up in your dreams, your relationships and in your handling of problems and trying times.  Physical pain numbs your brain to everything else.  A broken finger, a bad back, an upset stomach and it takes a tremendous act of the will to think about something other than the pain.  You have done it and so have I, tried to get rid of pain with aspirin, Motrin, or perhaps illegal drugs or heavy drinking.  We go to counselors when our psychological pain is too much to bear and to chiropractors for the physical pain.  But why do we have to suffer pain at all?  What is the good of pain?  Why would God let us face pain if He could stop it?

There is nothing speculative about pain…we all face pain and some of us experience it every single day.  At the risk of being misunderstood and misinterpreted, it would be worthwhile to consider the point at which pain became a part of the human experience.  When Adam and Eve first sinned, the outcome was that Eve would suffer pain in childbirth and Adam pain in trying to get his work done.  To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.  Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (Genesis 3:16 NIV)  That is both physical pain and tremendous potential for psychological pain for the woman.  To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. (Genesis 3:17 NIV)  Again, we have for Adam physical pain and psychological pain built into the struggle to make a living.   Pain, in its most raw sense is the result of sin, of Adam and Eve deciding to be the master of their souls, to live as if God is absent.  That is the essence of all sin, the declaration of independence from God.  Sin is the force behind all that is wrong in our world and all that is wrong in us.  Both the sins we commit and the sins of others warp our personalities and our thinking.  Enough sin and God becomes an enemy and a prison guard rather than our joy and freedom.  Sin wrecks us from top to bottom and we often don’t even know it.

Pain knocks the legs out from under our independence.  If I have come to think that I am the boss, pain makes a fool of the thought.  Pain makes itself king and it refuses to be carelessly cast aside.  Try to ignore pain and if it continues, you cannot.  You can medicate pain but it comes back up and rules over you as a fierce tyrant.  You can go to Disneyland, hang out at a jazz bar, watch your favorite team on TV or start a new relationship but pain won’t let go of you and you cannot just shake it off.

The ancient book of Job located in the middle of the Bible is a sort of case study on pain.  It gives us a fresh understanding of what pain is and why God lets it continue for now.  Job lived a pretty care-free life up to the moment God and Satan had their monumental meeting in the heavens.  God pointed out just how good Job was and Satan contended that he was only good because God kept him from pain.  God insisted that Job would still be loyal to Him if he faced pain and Satan replied, “Let’s see!”  However, God only let Satan bring Job psychological pain.  This is not to belittle Job’s pain!  What he faced was horrific.  In one day all his kids died and he lost his wealth.  It is fascinating though to see that this psychological pain did not knock him off his feet.  At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised."  In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.  (Job 1:20-22 NIV)

For many, psychological pain is the worst sort of pain and it renders them unable to function practically.  The loss of a loved one, the abuse suffered as a child, the devastation caused by financial ruin, the experience of rejection all create a level of pain that can be unbearable.  But Job was not brought to his knees by psychological pain and so Satan demanded (if one can demand anything of God) that the Lord let Job suffer physical pain…and that did the trick.  The sores Satan used to afflict Job knocked Job off his feet.  He was wrecked by his pain.  He wished he had never been born.  "May the day of my birth perish, and the night it was said, 'A boy is born!'” (Job 3:3 NIV)  He wished he could just die. "If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed!” (Job 14:13 NIV) The pain was so intense that Job was forced by it to turn to his friends to help him cope with it.  But his friends did not have the capacity nor the will to really help him in his pain, and so Job did what pain is intended to stir in us, Job turned to the only one left to him.  God!

Before the pain, Job was carefree and unperturbed by what he faced.  When pain attacked him though, Job had only two categories of thought…pain and God.  Now we must admit Job’s thoughts about God were not civilized as we think of religiously civilized thought.  He said God was unfair.  "As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of soul, as long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will not speak wickedness, and my tongue will utter no deceit.  I will never admit you are in the right; (Job 27:2-5 NIV) He thought God didn’t care.  “…then know that God has wronged me and drawn his net around me.  "Though I cry, 'I've been wronged!' I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice.” (Job 19:6-7 NIV) He decided God was his enemy.  “God assails me and tears me in his anger and gnashes his teeth at me; my opponent fastens on me his piercing eyes.” (Job 16:9 NIV)

Something happened though with Job as his pain continued.  He began to think of God in a new way…as the one He needed, as his redeemer.  The Hebrew word translated redeemer is a fascinating term.  It describes one who is a relative that has the means to get you out of debt when you sold your land because you were too poor to keep it or a relative who marries you as a widow to protect your family or one who buys you out of slavery.  The redeemer was a savior who paid the price for your rescue.  When pain comes upon you and when it is deep pain, you can only think seriously of two matters: your pain and the hope of someone saving you from your pain.  Job voiced this well as his pain had evolved from psychological pain to physical pain and then to spiritual pain.  “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes — I, and not another.  How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27 NIV)  If you read closely the last parts of Job’s comments before God intervenes, all he can think about is God…His mind is on nothing else; not his marriage, not his friendships, not his finances; he is laser focused on God.  He does not need a tasty dinner, a new flock of sheep, a house with more rooms, an upgrade on his computer, a better smart phone, a wife who listens to him or friends who respect him.  He needs, and really needs a redeemer…he needs God.

Pain is the psychological button God uses to awaken us so that we will not waste our life with Him.  Imagine someone brilliantly talented at singing never developing her voice, a savant mathematician never bothering to study math, a greatly gifted inventor never working out one of her ideas.  The absurdity of unfulfilled talent is a terrible tragedy and yet there is not a talent we possess that compares to the opportunity before us to live our lives with Jesus Christ.  To cast our time with Him away is the greatest mistake of our lives and when we risk doing so, God pushes the button and pain erupts.  Suddenly we are thrown off our game, disoriented and like a driver trying desperately to get his car straightened when it begins to spin in a patch of black ice, we find pain shutting down every single concern we have but these two…our pain and our God.

Job’s story is about two matters only:  pain and the need for God.  Your life is the story of one matter…your life with God.  If you get distracted from this; if you lose your mind on something other than Jesus Christ saving you, it is a terrible tragedy for you.  Set your mind on Christ again and again and again.  When your mind is set on Christ and fully upon Him, then your mind is aligned with the mind of God and every thought you have has the power of God working in it and through it.  Why waste that great and glorious opportunity?  Why wait for pain to snap you back to reality?  God is present, God loves you, and God will work through you if you give Him the opportunity to do so!

Confounded By Grace

Nothing is more confounding to the world than the life hidden with Christ in God.  It is the most absurd of all determinations and cannot be explained on rational grounds it seems.  Such a person seems stubborn, obtuse; any reasonable soul would go ahead and "break the rules", "take a break", "bend a bit".  It certainly seems that something is mixed up in the mind of the poor one not fitting in with the crowd.  The nonsense of it though is not to be located in the mind of the life hidden with Christ in God...it is in the mind of Christ joining with that other mind.  The mind of Christ breaks out in unexpected ways...love for an enemy, the forgiving of a grievance, an integrity that can't be bent, a standard of purity that is "quirky".  Jesus asked what good it did to gain the world and lose one's soul.  That thought dominates the life hidden with Christ in God and it is manifested in real ways that become unreasonable to the watching world of lost souls.  Don't fight the determination of Christ to work His way out of you...not if you want to possess His peace and joy!  Give in to the urge of God to be holy and pure and full of love and compassion.  Settle in your heart that you are joined to Christ in a wonderful and glorious adventure of holiness and purity.    Let the world say and think as it wishes.  You love the God who saved you and it is your great privilege for Him to work His way out of you in the nooks and crannies of each day He gives you.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  Colossians 3:2-3 NIV

Anger

James 1:19-20 NIV

 My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.

Do You Ever Get “Too” Angry?

A few years ago I was driving and someone without warning cut in front of me and nearly hit my car, and flew ahead of me, switched lanes again and then had to screech to a stop when the signal light turned red.  I was steamed.  I think I would have been sickly happy if the guy’s tires had blown out and he had flipped his car a thousand times because he would have “deserved it.”  At least that is how my anger perceived things at that moment.  Ironically, the two of us ended up side by side at the stop light and I had my opportunity to flash the guy my great wrath.  I turned my head as I pulled beside the guy and stared disdainfully at him, hoping he would look back and catch my ire.  Oh boy, he sure did.  The other driver turned to me and we locked eyes and he felt the fullness of my rage.  Then he did something that caught me off-guard.  He gave me the one fingered hand-signal of contempt and made motions that he was ready to fight me on the side of the road.  I was not ready for that.  I sized him up and felt pretty confident that I could handle myself ok with him but was I really going to let my anger take me that far?

Is anger helpful to us?  Does it make us better people, more capable of getting our work done, better able to parent our kids, give us what we need to be good husbands and wives?  Has anger saved marriages or enhanced friendships?  Should we be grateful for our anger and proud of the times we lost our tempers?  We all have known people who had “bad” tempers and most of these people we try to avoid but some we can’t because they are a part of our families or authorities at work or school.  Perhaps there is a “Tempers Anonymous” somewhere that has already been organized for those who get mad easily.   Maybe we know someone who should register with the group.  Should we be concerned about anger and those times when we lose our temper?  How should we evaluate our own anger?

Anger is one of the rawest of all emotions and is mentioned often in the Bible.  I remember how surprised I was to discover that God Himself gets angry.  Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses… (Exodus 4: 14 NIV)  The Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:7 NIV)  Even Jesus, “meek and mild” flashed a temper.  He (Jesus) looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. (Mark 3:5 NIV)  Anger is a part of our divine nature, not something to be thought of as a curse but rather one of the ways we see God in us.  Yet anger, like every other part of the human personality has been warped by sin and we have lost its holiness. 

We see the very first flash of human anger described in the ancient book of Genesis.  The third person of recorded history, Cain became angry when his brother Abel was honored by God for the quality of his offering.  In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. (Genesis 4:3-5 NIV)  This anger of Cain’s is important to study because it provides a glimpse into the immediate effect of sin upon one part of our divine nature.  Most of us have learned to control our anger because we have grown accustomed to the sin damaged personalities we possess.  We are sophisticated in our approach to our lusts and rebellion.  Cain was not.  He was a novice to the damage his own sin was doing to his personality.  Like a baby just learning to walk, Cain had not adjusted to being a sinful person and when faced with for perhaps the first time God’s unwillingness to accept his bad behavior, something many of us would just slough off and perhaps ignore, Cain became unglued.   Anger, which God built in Cain for his protection against sin and temptation, became his undoing when it teamed up with sin.

God warned Cain about his warped anger.  Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (Genesis 4:6-7 NIV)  This is a most interesting set of statements God makes to Cain and it gives us much to consider when it comes to anger.  First, the anger at its pioneer stage as a union with sin was linked to something specific.  Cain was angry that his offering to God was not accepted.  Abel and what Abel did was not the reason Cain was mad.  Cain was angry because his sacrifice was insufficient.  We almost never consider this when it comes to our own anger.  Nearly always we decide that we are angry because someone else did something or thinks something or won’t do something.  We are wrong here though.  Our anger starts with us and what we have done, what we have thought or with what we have not done. 

Now, those of us familiar with what happened next understand God’s warning about sin crouching at his door.  At this point Cain had sin merely at his door; it had not come inside his house.  His anger was not the sin but it was the warning bell of sin. We all, including Cain, can be angry and not sin.  The Apostle Paul, who was an expert on anger, knew that was so.  "In your anger do not sin":  (Ephesians 4:26 NIV) But Paul was quoting a slightly longer statement found in an older book than his, the Psalms.  In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. (Psalm 4:4 NIV)  Anger is the alarm that something is not right with us and if the alarm is to do us any good, we must get away and silently figure out what sin is crouching at our door.  For Cain, it was murder.  He was about to murder his brother Abel.  For me, it could be greed or selfishness or rebellion.  For you it could be lust or idolatry.  For someone else it might be stubborn pride or a lack of gratitude.  We all have our sins that come crouching at our door.  We should never be surprised by them.

Many of us have been embarrassed by our anger but for the wrong reasons.  Cain clearly wasn’t but we have been humbled by anger.  When it is public and we yell at someone or snarl or pound our fist in anger, we can be humiliated by our anger.  Our mistake is that we think it is the anger that is embarrassing when it isn’t.  It is the sin that we have let get too close to us that should make us red in the face.  Although it may not be clear to the waiter or our husband or the kid who ran into our car, it is to God and it should be to us.  Anger has sounded the alarm.  We have sin at our door.  We have either done something that has corrupted us or we are about to do something that will soon corrupt us.  We must never think that the other person has angered us or the trying circumstance has angered us.  It is the sin within us that has stimulated our anger and we must be silent and consider what sin it is that we have.

I had a friend who had a huge problem with anger and he used to get mad at me quite often.  I could always tell when his anger was starting to rise because his neck and cheeks would become red and although he might be smiling, I knew he was furious about something.  I had a warning sign that this man was angry.  Well, we have a warning sign about sin.  It is our anger.  When we become angry, we must, if we are to live closely with Christ and have His power guiding us rather than our sin, get off to ourselves and consider what sin has been exposed by our anger.  Then with the cruelty and compassion of a surgeon, cut it out.  Confess it and cut it out.  We should never take too seriously someone else’s anger but always with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice take seriously our own.  We never know how far the sin our anger uncovers will take us.  For Cain it was the destruction of his family line for they never recovered from his sin.  We though can chart a different course.  We can be holy.  And, if Jesus is being forthright with us (see Luke 19:17), we could be kings.

Operating With Heaven In Mind

The great object of our life is to be brought into a perfect union with Christ and that does not happen along a straight line.  It comes in fits and bursts as we allow God's Word to conform us to God Himself. The universal law is that we are stubborn brutes and we fight tooth and nail to maintain our independence of God.  It is painful to let Him have a reaction, an attitude or a desire.  All of our stretch is corrupted by sin and because it has such hold of us, it is like separating our blood and flesh...it comes at great cost.  We think we are so very good and ready to live holy lives and yet let God take just one small object of love from us and we are cracking with frustration and confusion.  "How can God love me if He ruined that plan?"  "How can He be here if He is not reasonable in this?"  We do not recognize the sin strangling our faith and love but can see it plainly in others.  The Cross of Christ redeems our totality and God will not cease in re-working us until it is just as finished as Calvary is finished.  Our sin corrupted interests and desires and hopes must be crucified as well if we are to have pure and undimmed fellowship with God and one another.  It was painful for Paul and Peter and John and Abraham and all the rest of the "heroes of the faith" to be crucified with Christ.  Why would we think it should be less so for us.  We read the account of Abraham taking his boy up to Mt. Moriah as if it is some sort of fairy tale.  Was it not psychologically as devastating for Abraham and then for Isaac and for Sarah as our own "misfortunes" are?  Did not Sarah weep with bitter sorrow at the sight of Abraham leaving with Isaac?  Should we think sin is less treacherous for us than it was for Abraham and Sarah?  Do we really believe that God must be less the surgeon with us than He was with His finest saints?  God's scalpel comes without warning but the sin that makes us limp believers will be cut out of us and the health of Heaven will make us as lively as the greatest Christians the world has ever seen!

Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered … Hebrews 5: 8 NIV

Association of Habits

Hebrews 10:25 NIV

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

What Smell Do You Always Associate With God?

When I was in high school I joined the “Ecology Club”.  The care and protection of the earth was just beginning to be popular and although I did not have any deep thoughts about the preservation of the Rain Forrest, there were a few cute girls in the Ecology Club and the Ecology Club used to go on cool hikes and so I became an “Environmentalist”.  Our club sponsor was a shy, unassuming biology teacher who was not the most exciting of lecturers but had great ideas for hiking excursions.  One time we went to Point Reyes and one of my good friends went into the outhouse to take care of his business.  The biology teacher with all of us standing nearby snuck up to the outhouse and opened a little hatch, pointing to everyone to be quiet.  We all gathered about and he took one pebble, then another and dropped them down the hatch.  If you listened carefully, you could hear them make a splash.  Of course, the splash had a particular direction to it…right up the opening where the toilet seat rested.  Before long we heard my friend screaming…”stop it!”  “What are you doing?”  “Whoever is doing that, stop it now!”  We all were laughing so hard tears were streaming down our cheeks!  Another of our trips was to Sunol Regional Park where we, using shovels and picks, helped create part of the haystack trail.  The memory of those trips brought such warm feelings even after high school that when I bought a car while in college I used to drive up to the park with the top of my car down blaring out my latest 8-track, “Running on Empty” by Jackson Brown.  The result is that I cannot hear “Running on Empty” without immediately thinking of Sunol Park and the hikes through the hills with the ecology club.

Our mind is wonderfully designed to link associations together.  The brain connects good and bad memories with certain smells, sounds or tastes and whenever we taste certain tastes or smell certain smells, specific events almost always come to mind.  We all have certain associations etched in our mind.  I cannot hear the song “In-A Godda-Da-Vida” without thinking of typing class my sophomore year in high school and the smell of fresh bread cooking always reminds me of camping trips into the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Do you have a certain memory associated with the sunset?  What comes to mind when you smell bacon cooking or bite into a ripe peach?  Does the smell of hot coffee brewing wring out of you a certain memory or bring to mind a particular person?  Perhaps the sound of a siren blaring or the screech of tires or the purring of a cat awakens a long lost memory for you.  Have you ever been jarred into the past by certain songs, foods and perfumes that are tied to key moments in your life?

Some associations are intentional, most are unplanned and sometimes even unwanted.  Many of us do not pay particular attention to the associations fixed in our minds but perhaps we should.  Maybe there are some connections that we would love taken out of our memory banks and some that are helpful to us.  What if we could create useful memory associations that could help us build better lives?  What if every time we smelled a certain smell, it led to us acting kindly or when we taste a certain food we became calm and full of joy?  Is it possible to organize the associations we have so that they help us become more godly and patient and full of love?  It seems clear that God’s people in the Bible often understood the value of being in control of associations they developed.  In 2 Kings 4 is the most interesting case study of Elisha and a Shunammite woman who was apparently barren or perhaps her husband was infertile.  The couple kindly built an upstairs bedroom for the prophet Elisha to stay whenever he came through town and it became a regular resting spot for him.  One day, as Elisha was relaxing on the bed in that upper room, he thought about how kind this couple had been to him so he asked his servant to go get the Shunammite woman and bring her upstairs.  While she stood in the doorway, Elisha announced to her that she and her husband would have a son within the next year.  This childless woman could not believe what he told her.  Was this God’s promise to her?  She feared it was too good to be true but it turned out just as the prophet said it would.  God gave the couple a son and he was the joy of her life.  Periodically Elisha would return to the upper room and stay there in that upper room and the bed where Elisha slept became for the Shunammite woman associated with God and his love and power.  When her precious son suddenly died, what did she do?  She placed his dead body on Elisha’s bed in the upper room.  She did not set him down anywhere else but on Elisha’s bed because it was in her mind connected with God and it was God she needed most.  And of course, God further cemented that association between the Lord’s grace and the upper room and Elisha’s bed when after getting the prophet to return with her to her home, God through Elisha raised the dead boy from the dead on that very bed.  Why of all places did the woman leave her son’s dead body on Elisha’s bed?  It is because there was a clear connection in the Shunammite woman’s mind between faith in God and that specific place in her house.

So too it was with the fisherman disciples, and we have evidence of it, that Jesus Christ formed a deeply etched association for them.  One of their earliest encounters with Him and perhaps it was the earliest, was at the shore of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was teaching a small group of people.  It got to be too many crowding around him though so he picked one of the boats at the edge of the water and stood in it and gave the rest of His sermon.  When Jesus finished speaking, He told Peter, the owner of one of the boats, "Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch."  (Luke 5:4 NIV)  Peter’s reply was much like ours might have been if we already had been trying to catch fish all night without success.  "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets." (Luke 5:5 NIV)  What happened next forever became etched in the minds of all the fishermen gathered about Jesus.  They all did go out into the deep water, put down their nets and shockingly, the nets quickly filled with fish.  When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.  When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!"  For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken… (Luke 5:6-9 NIV)

If we fast-forward three years to just after the resurrection, we find many of these same fisherman-disciples gathered once more at the Sea of Galilee and they were in some ways perplexed with Jesus since He had been raised from the dead.  Curiously, He wasn’t always recognizable to them even when in plain sight.  But then something would happen and they could see who He was.  They could never plan ahead when He would come to them and they didn’t know what to make of His several appearances.  Was He going to keep doing this the rest of their lives?  They didn’t know and it must have bothered them…this constant uncertainty about Jesus.  The men had been fishing all night to no avail and they were tired and frustrated and making their way back to shore when somebody at the water’s edge called out to them to throw their nets on the right side of the boat.  They took the recommendation seriously and when they did throw their net on the right side of the boat, there was such a large number of fish in the nets that they could not haul them into the boat.  It was then, when the association of the great number of fish and Jesus clicked in John’s mind that John immediately recognized the man on the shore.  It was Christ Himself.  The association that Jesus placed in him the day he met Christ the first time on the shore of Galilee had its effect.  Nets full of fish and Jesus Christ were connected in John’s mind; perhaps even for all of them there and the association was used by God to make Jesus recognizable.  Never again could the disciples see a net full of fish and not recall how great Jesus Christ was and how wonderful was His love for them.

Jesus used the law of association to remind us of God’s personal care for us by telling how little flowers of the desert rise up in the morning and then are gone the next day.  He said that they are beautifully clothed by God and it is obvious they are.  If God treats little flowers that lovingly, how much more does He care for you and me and give thought to our needs.  So why would we ever begin to worry about things.  God will take care of us regardless how our circumstances look.  "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? (Matthew 6: 28-30 NIV) Every time we see little flowers, we can and ought to associate them with the provision of God and remember never to worry. 

The psalmist applied the law of association and habit to prayer by building a practice of praying in the morning.  In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. (Psalm 5:3 NIV)  By putting into habit praying in the morning he began to associate the presence of God with the first breath of morning.  Every morning for at least that time when the sun was creeping up above the horizon, he thought about God, and trusted God and committed himself to holy living. More than that, the morning light reminded him to pray.

What if we did something like this…what if we forced associations into our habits so that we might become alert to God and what He is saying to us and what He is doing through us?  What if every time we brushed our teeth, we said the Lord’s Prayer?  We would begin to associate our toothbrush with God’s protection and love.  What if we read a bit of scripture before we turned the key to our ignition?  Our car would become a place we associate with God’s presence.  What if on our computer we put a verse that proclaims God’s wisdom about the day?  When we go to our internet sites, there will be an association linking our computer to the Lord’s holy direction.  Could we, whenever we first sit in our office chair whisper a word of praise for all the good God is going to do through us?  Soon we will see that chair as our meeting place with Jesus and it will come to mind that when we sit in that chair, we are on mission for God there.  What if we lit a scented candle in our house that smells of apple pie or strawberries and when we do so we pray for God’s peace to rest in our house?  Every time we smell that smell somewhere else it will bring us to God and His calmness will be restored to our chaotic day.  Perhaps every Thursday we could pour a glass of grape juice and pause a moment and think with a short burst of concentrated effort upon Christ’s blood poured out from His body on the Cross and how great His love is for us. Every time we see grape juice or taste it, we will be comforted to know God is merciful toward us and no matter what others think of us or how badly they criticize us, we are treasured and loved by Christ.  The common parts of our day can become switches that flip on for us in our minds God’s joy and peace and they can encourage us that if Jesus Christ is for us and really for us, what reason is there for us to worry about anything we face.  Our habits can become the most holy of habits that fill us with the joy of Jesus Christ during the common parts of our day.

Mind

Romans 12: 2 NIV

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Are You Fully Utilizing Your Mind?

If you are like me, thinking comes in fits and starts.  The other day I was working on a sermon and I went on line to look at a couple of articles completely unrelated to what I was doing.  Then I worked on the sermon.  Then I started thinking about the weather forecast the next day.  I was hoping it would be cooler and so I went on line to find out what was predicted.  I went back to the sermon and thought about the sweet tea I had in the refrigerator.  I quickly gave up on studying and went to get some sweet tea.  I sat back down and immediately began to wonder who would start for the Raiders at cornerback.  Would D J Hayden or someone else?  I thought about that for a while and then considered the possibility that the Raiders would trade a draft pick to get someone.  I knew though that did not seem to be the way the general manager operated…he liked those draft picks… but then the cornerbacks were the weak link of the team and something had to be done.  This was perplexing.  I started working on the sermon again and really concentrated on the topic.  But then I thought about someone I needed to call and once again the “cow was out of the barn”.

When you and I think, and we are at some level thinking all the time, what dominates our thinking?  Is it sex?  Is it work?  Is it the text messages we have received?  Is our mind on our children, our marriage, our plans for dinner, are we reliving conversations and correcting them in our head?  Do we think about a date we have planned or one we hope to have, about an argument we just had, a terrifying task we must undertake, the messiness of our child’s room, an important document we have lost, the headache we have developed, some movie we just saw, a blouse we saw on sale?  Most of us probably think about all sorts of things over the course of an hour and if our minds are undisciplined, we think without purpose or direction.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Bible has much to say about our thinking.  How we think is quite important to God and to Christianity.  The Bible makes two categories of thinking.  One sort comes out of the “sinful mind” and the other form of thinking is generated by the “mind of Christ”.  The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. (Romans 8:6-7 NIV)  The sinful mind might be quite disciplined in its thinking.  It may have quite effective methods of accomplishing tasks, making sense of things and solving problems.  There are great scientists, philosophers and CEOs of corporations who have this sort of mind and they are successful at what they do.  There are two skill sets though that the sinful mind is unable to develop.  It cannot get past the great barrier of death.  There is nothing the sinful mind can do to stop the dying it has entered. Regardless of what it thinks should or will happen to it, the sinful mind shall die.  It cannot live forever.  The second skill set the sinful mind lacks is the ability to connect with God as God actually is.  It can think about God, develop theories of God, create wild, unfounded proposals of what God is but the sinful mind is hostile and disconnected from who God is as a person.

The sinful mind may be quite proud of its accomplishments, satisfied with its values and priorities but it is dying and it cannot stop that dying and it has no love for the real God who exists.  This mind has a ceiling and it can only go so far when it comes to thinking.  The other day I heard a famous atheist talking about the universe and he clearly is brilliant but his thinking can only go so far and no farther.  He cannot think with God and he cannot gain the knowledge God possesses of what is happening.  The book of Ecclesiastes calls every form of intellect without God a vanity of vanities, a puff of smoke that disappears and is in the end meaningless.  You can think of atoms and stars and black holes and all sorts of matters that seem important and valuable but you lack the very beginning of wisdom and insight if the mind of sinful man is all you have to work with.  You cannot think your way into what is most crucial to your life because it is all hidden to you by your inability to get there with the mind you have.

The second sort of mind is the one that is “the mind of Christ.”    The Bible speaks of it as a sort of treasure or something precious to possess because of its connection with God.  For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him?  In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.  This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.  The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment: "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?"  But we have the mind of Christ.  (1 Corinthians 2:11-16 NIV)

The psychology of the mind of Christ is different from the sinful mind much like a car is different from a lioness.  One is alive mechanically, the other is fully alive.  The topic for discussion is not the sinful mind so we must abandon it for now but we turn our complete attention to the mind of Christ.  There are two scriptures that at a casual first glance seem to contradict each other.  The first is what we have before us.  The person who has been made new by the Spirit of God has the mind of Christ.  It is a fact declared by Scripture.  When we are born again and the Spirit of God is in us and joined to our spirit, we have the Mind of Christ.  But why is it that we don’t seem to think with His mind.  Why are we so confused and perplexed, easily offended, frustrated by circumstances, worried about things, angry with people, discouraged and depressed, bitter, apathetic toward the scriptures, holiness and purity?  It is really quite simple.  Our second scripture passage explains our difficulty thinking through the Mind of Christ we have when we are truly Christian.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12: 2a NIV)

We must be transformed by the renewing of our mind if the Mind of Christ is to join our thinking.  But here is where we can be completely off on our approach toward this.  The natural assumption is that to think with the Mind of Christ, we must study more or become more Biblically astute.  If we just could understand better key doctrines that are confusing like predestination, the Trinity or eschatology…if we even knew what that was…we would gain access to the Mind of Christ but that is not the case.  We do not think with the Mind of Christ by studying God ideas or God principles.  We are in fact transformed by the renewing of our minds when we stop conforming to the pattern of this world.  That sounds so simple.  Do not conform to the pattern of living found in the world and you will think with the Mind of Christ.  Your mind will be transformed.

The Mind of Christ becomes operational for us when we think long and hard about what God wants us to do or how Scripture tells us He thinks about the matters of life.  Once we know a single thing the Lord is directing, then we do that thing whatever it is.  He might tell you to ignore an insult.  He might tell you to forgive a wrong done you.  He might tell you to respond to an enemy with real love.  He might tell you to turn off a certain movie that is not good for your mind or the minds of your family.  He might tell you to help someone.  He might tell you to take a step of faith.  He might tell you to apologize for your bad language, your judgmental attitude, your lazy effort, your self-pity.  Whatever God tells you to do as you see it in Scripture, you do it and immediately you begin to think with the Mind of Christ.  You see things His way.  You understand God’s perspective.  You see how He is working with different people and how you can join Him in His work.  The love that comes from God becomes the love you possess.  You know in a supernatural way when to go forward and when to hesitate.   The Mind of Christ is worked out in you as you submit to the direction He gives you.

A few examples should help us here.  When the Lord blinded Paul and He spoke to him with a voice Paul’s companions could not understand, He was given orders.  God told Paul to go to Damascus.  It was only after he went to Damascus that Paul would be told further what to do.  “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.  “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.  “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” (Acts 9: 5-6 NIV)  First he had to go at the Lord’s orders, then Paul would learn more.  When the Disciples were saying their good-byes to the resurrected Lord Jesus just before He went back to Heaven, Christ told them all to stay in Jerusalem.  Only if they stayed in Jerusalem would the Holy Spirit come upon them and the Mind of Christ would then become more known to them.  If they went back to their homes in Galilee, they might have discovered all sorts of things but never would they have had the Mind of Christ made known to them in the way that they did on Pentecost.  When Peter, who had a very natural and rational dislike for non-Jewish people, was told by Jesus to go with some very non Jewish people to a non-Jewish home, Peter had to go if he was to gain more of the Mind of Christ directing his thoughts.  …Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people.  He said to them: "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection… (Acts 10:27-29 NIV)  Peter could not stay where he was if God was going to think through him.

Our Lord will stop thinking through us the minute we refuse to do what He has told us to do.  We immediately become on our own.  We still have the sinful mind to use to plan and decide, calculate and choose but the Mind of Christ becomes dim and silent to us.  Jesus asked the most important question we face.  “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”  (Mark 8:36 NIV) We must ask a second question that is very close to it in substance.  What good is it to do anything if the Mind of Christ is not directing your actions?  What do you hope to gain without the wisdom of Jesus Christ processing everything before you?  It is so very simple to have the Mind of Christ thinking through you if you have become Christian.  You just do what God tells you to do when He tells you to do it and then His thoughts start flowing freely through you.  What good is it to think without God thinking with us?  We might as well be atheists if that is the case.  But since we aren’t, and we have the Lord of the Universe longing to think through us as we think, why wouldn’t we want Him guiding our thoughts and pointing out the way for us as we work through all the difficulties, big choices and opportunities that are awaiting us today.  We face a big world.  Why not have a big God to guide us in it!

The Mind Fully Alive

The Mind Fully Aware

Joshua 1:8 NIV

Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Are You Alert Right Now?

Several years ago my wife gave me a gift certificate for a massage at a local spa.  It is a spacious, clean, popular, legitimate spa with a good reputation so I was happy to go down and get my hour massage.  As I sat in the waiting room with several others, I rehearsed in my mind the determination to have a man give my massage.  After about ten minutes, I was ushered in through the walk-way and into the large central room where there were perhaps twenty cubicles and I was brought to one of them.  A young woman came in and gave me a towel and said that I was to undress and then place the towel over my waist area.  I asked her if a man was going to give me my massage and she said there weren’t any male masseuses available.  With that she left, giving me the opportunity to privately take off my clothes.  Now if this were some dimly lit room with a closed door and no one else around, I would have immediately gotten up and walked away but this was a public setting and a reputable spa.  I sat on the massage bed for what seemed like hours, trying to decide what I would do.  Was I going to take off my pants and underwear and let a young woman give me a massage with just a towel to cover me, would I leave on my pants and just take off my shirt, would I get up and walk away from the spa?  My conscience was working at full speed, evaluating this situation and trying its best to come to the right decision.  Should I as a Christian man and a pastor have a woman give me a full massage with only a towel covering me?

Is it possible that some of us spend too much time fussing over moral and ethical issues?  Are we sometimes overwhelmed by a super stimulated conscience?  When everyone else says something is fine to do and we don’t think it is fine to do it, do we go along with the crowd?  Do others make us feel guilty or are we alone responsible for any guilt we feel?  How much guilt should we let get hold of us?  Is guilt good for the soul or just a trouble maker?  Does your conscience ever crush you?

Sigmund Freud is universally given credit for dramatically developing and energizing the field of psychology.  It is easy to come up with a large list of his significant contributions…some would even speak of them as inventions.  He brought us the concept of carefully listening to patients and encouraging free association as they rambled on about whatever they wished.  He popularized the analysis of dreams, the concept of psycho-sexual forces within the personality, the importance of early childhood experiences and the oedipal complex.  However, by far his most critical and influential impact upon Western society and culture was his dismantling of conscience as a critical component of a healthy personality.  He coined a term, the super-ego, to discredit the conscience and render it ineffectual.  The super-ego was essentially what we call the conscience but over reaching.  He claimed that many if not most people suffer from too much guilt, silly, frivolous guilt that sickens us and makes us neurotic.  The enlarged conscience he treated like an enlarged thyroid or an enlarged heart, as something needing treatment.  Much of western culture became convinced that Freud was right, a functioning conscience was not good for people; we need to have less of a conscience, we don’t need its guilt and the bad feelings it produces.  Many in the Christian community agreed with Freud…even many pastors and so it became almost “anti-godish” to give the conscience credence or encourage feelings of guilt.  We are generally thought to be doing Christendom a disservice to incite guilt and support the functioning of the conscience.

Suppose however the conscience is more like a muscle that needs to be exercised and developed rather than a vestigial organ that sophisticated and healthy people let shrivel until it no longer functions.  Most of us have been raised to believe that what used to be called sin is actually just a minor mistake, a slip-up or maybe something to ignore.  We have given Freud the store so to speak and let him define God for us.  God (although he actually had no theology of god) thinks it is ok if you don’t get things right, struggle with your decisions, don’t live up to other’s expectations.  God is comfortable with whatever choices you make because after all, it’s all fine in the end.  What though if God is not like that?  What if He does expect us to be holy and pure and to live lives of righteousness?  What if it is not ok to sleep with your girlfriend, gossip about your boss or hold grudges?  What if God really does hate sin and it is truly unbearable for Him when we sin?  What if we have been wrong all along about what sin really is?

A typical example of the modern approach to conscience and guilt and sin is found in John 5.  A man who had been crippled thirty-eight years was healed by Jesus but seemingly did not appreciate what had been done for him nor show any loyalty toward the healer.  Later, Jesus found him in the crowd and spoke harshly to him.  "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." (John 5: 14 NIV)  How this man responded to this strong rebuke is fascinating.  He gave it not a moment’s notice.  He instead went to Jesus’ enemies to betray Him.  Surely he knew it was wrong to turn Jesus over to the authorities and we would think his conscience would have warned him against it, especially after he had just been healed of his thirty-eight years of misery by the very Savior he now was rejecting.  The point though is that Jesus defined sinning as something to stop doing or something worse may come your way.  Sin, to Jesus, is not just a mistake or a learning opportunity or a throwing off of the constraints of an over reaching super-ego.  Sin that continues is worse than being crippled thirty-eight years.

We all laud Jesus’ kindness in rescuing the woman caught in adultery from certain death by stoning but rarely do we ponder deeply Jesus’ strict admonishment to her when the crowd of accusers had left.  “Go and leave your life of sin!” (John 8: 11)  To leave a “life of sin” you must realize you have a life of sin and have begun to abhor it.  This means you have thought about it, turned over what you have done in your mind and grown to hate it.  Otherwise you just continue doing what you are doing because it brings you some desired pleasure, some comfort from your difficulties, some relief from your pain.  We sin because it does something for us we want and the only way to break away from sin is when something has converted our thinking about it…our conscience has concentrated on the sin and become its enemy.  It is only then that someone like the woman caught in adultery has the will and determination to leave her “life of sin”.

When Thomas the disciple doubted the reports that Jesus had been raised from the dead and questioned the evidence brought him by eyewitness accounts, he was left with seven days of pondering his reaction.  Of course it was logical at some level that he not believe Jesus actually was alive because He really had been dead.  There was no question Jesus died.  And yet He was wrong to doubt that Christ was alive.  Jesus had already promised He would live again after dying.  For a week Thomas had to process with his conscience his lack of faith in Jesus to actually come alive again after the crucifixion.  When that next Sunday Thomas was in the upper room with the other disciples and Jesus indeed did return and approach Thomas, the disciple was left with the realization that he had been wrong and his wrongness was sinful.  He had doubted not the resurrection but Christ Himself…He had not believed in Him.  The words of Jesus make sense to us then.  “Stop doubting!”  It was not stop doubting resurrection but stop doubting me.  “Believe!”

We want to encourage Thomas.  You had every right to doubt.  The crucifixion of Jesus was brutal.  You were traumatized by it.  Any one of us would have questioned the resurrection accounts.  Doubting is normal.  Not everyone is honest and sometimes people think they see something but are mistaken.  Of course you would have questioned the resurrection.  Jesus did not give Thomas wiggle room on this sin though.  Just as forcefully as He confronted the sin of the woman caught in adultery and the sin of the man who turned on Jesus, so He confronted Thomas.  Stop doubting.

There is a strong urge in us to make excuses for sin and ignore them altogether.  By doing this, we wreck our conscience.   We make it powerless to stop us from the evil at our door.  Before Cain’s anger blew up, he had a conscience that we must guess was warning him against the direction he was going.  God Himself spoke to him.  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (Genesis 4:7 NIV)  We mustn’t believe Cain is the only one of us given warning before he sinned.  We are warned moment by moment.  We have the conscience God has given us to send the alarm.

We have a tremendous picture in the Old Testament of the Conscience of God given to man.  When the Law was being presented on Mt. Sinai, a miraculous event occurred.  The Cloud of God descended upon the mountain and rested upon the Law being poured out of the Mind of God.  For forty days the Cloud brooded upon the mountain with the Law word by word coming forth.  This was the original Cloud, before the Silicon Valley invented its own much, much smaller version.   Like our conscience broods over our sins and the decisions we make, the Lord brooded over the giving of the Law to man.  It is normal and wise for us to follow the Scripture that tells us,  “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” (Joshua 1: 8 NIV) 

If you meditate upon the rights and wrongs of God’s structure of the universe, you will naturally with your conscience think long and hard about the rights and wrongs of you.  It is the most normal part of life…to evaluate your deeds through God’s eyes.  “I drank too much last night.”  “I was judgmental and critical.”  “My gossip was hateful and destructive.”  “I looked at her too long because I was lusting.”  “I trusted myself rather than pray.”  “I am not reading the Bible enough.”  “I gave my wife grief.”  “I did not respect my husband.”  “I was mean to my mom.”  I was bitter and took out my problems on my children.”  “I have not been patient.”  This is not a super-ego gone manic; this is a healthy conscience taking seriously sin and its consequences.

Jesus told us without reservation and with all His faculties in place that we are to be “perfect”.  This doesn’t mean He expects us to never trip over the clothes in the house or never misspell a word we send out in a text.  But it does mean that God expects us to do what He has told us to do and never make excuses for not doing it and never pretend as if it doesn’t matter.  The person who wants her prayers answered by God and wants His blessings upon His life must do what He says to do.  We gripe and complain that God doesn’t care about us, God isn’t real because our prayers aren’t answered; God is cruel because of the difficulties we face.  God is waiting for us to take seriously our lives and do what He tells us to do.  This means we must listen to our conscience and think about the sins we have committed and hate our sins.  When we look at our sins and hate them with enough hatred to really love God and love the people God has given us, the Lord will unleash His power and give us the desires of our heart.  Because only when we truly hate our own sins will our heart be ready for God to bless it through and through.

Young

There once was a little girl who loved to have her feet tickled.  She would cackle with joy whenever her father grabbed one of her bare feet.  As she grew older, she hated to have her feet tickled and would get angry if her father threatened to go after one of them.  Eventually the game ended between them and they were two adults with adult-like ideas of what fun and happiness were.  They fussed about their finances, their schedules and the vacations they planned.  One day the father died and the grown up little girl sat and reminisced about her dad.  She remembered with a touch of bemusement the times he tickled her and the happiness it once brought her.  Try as she might, the grown up little girl could not dam back the tears that trickled down her cheeks.  "Why did those days have to end", she wondered.  And then the revelation or perhaps just the silly little curiosity came to her.  "What other parts of me have vanished?"  "What other childish joys have I cast aside because I thought them beneath me and my dignity?"  The grown little girl looked over at the ancient picture of her dad that had been taken "just yesterday" sitting on the dresser and released a deep and weary sigh.   It was time to get back to work but she paused for just a moment…

And they had nothing to say.    Luke 14: 6 NIV

Conscience Reboot

Acts 24:16 NIV

So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.

Do You Have a Clear Conscience?

I don’t ever remember a time when I was taken to school by my parents.  It must have happened but my only memories of getting to school were walking or riding my bike. My mom at some point stopped walking with me to elementary school…I know this because I can’t think of a single time that she actually accompanied me.  Those trips to school have long ago all blended together into a single blur except for one particular morning that is perhaps forever etched in my mind.  As I always did each day on my treks to school, I came to a since closed mom and pop grocery store on E. 14^th Street that was a constant curiosity to me.  My mom as far as I knew never shopped in it and so I never had an occasion to see what was inside.  Each day I went to school and then returned home I went past the little store and wondered what it would be like to look around.  One morning, I was a bit early for school so I finally decided to see what deep magic the store held within.  I walked up and down each aisle like I belonged, as if I intended to buy milk or bread or green beans.  I did not have a penny in my pocket; I was only on a fact finding mission.  Eventually I came upon the candy aisle and now I had found nirvana.  I looked at each candy bar, at every ball of gum, at each wrapped piece of hard candy and thought long and hard about what it would be like to have one of those candies.  In the most split of split seconds, I had a most delicious idea.  Why don’t I just take one?  No one was looking.  I was perhaps nine years old…too young to realize how stupid that idea was since I was the son of a police officer and too old to blame my action on ignorance of right and wrong.  I glanced about, stuck my hand down, grabbed a single Jolly Rancher, shoved it in my pocket and hurriedly walked out the door and down the street.  I kept waiting for the clerk to come running after me, for the police to chase me down and frisk me, for my dad to pull up in his car and confront me…but nothing happened.  I had gotten away with stealing the little piece of candy.  I wasn’t arrested.  I did not get a spanking.  I was not pulled out of class and sent to the principal’s office.  No one ever discovered my crime…as far as I knew.  But, my conscience knew what had happened and it would not let me off the hook.  It attacked me with a vengeance and despite the success of my great crime, I never unwrapped the little candy because I felt too guilty to eat it.

Not everyone is like me.  Many don’t feel guilty about all sorts of matters that are considered wrong.  They feel no qualms about stealing or lying or the use of swear words.  They don’t sweat it if they watch pornography or run through a red light or take too long of a shower.  They are unmoved by no trespassing signs, they are perfectly fine with cheating on their biology tests, don’t worry a bit about driving on a suspended license and will drink and drive without giving it a thought.  What are we supposed to do about such people who don’t seem to ever have a guilty conscience; who aren’t bothered by their bad behavior?  Are they hopelessly lost?  Should we try to make them see the error of their ways?

There is a mature, well thought through examination of the conscience in the Bible and it provides rich insight into the psychology of the conscience.  For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.  They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.  They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills.  Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.  From their callous hearts comes iniquity; the evil conceits of their minds know no limits. (Psalm 73:3-7 NIV)  “Hearts” in this verse is speaking of the conscience.  Who hasn’t had at least a little bit of jealousy that some people seem to feel no guilt over what they do.  They live wild lives with impunity and no one can get through to them that what they are doing is wrong.  It seems impossible to convince such people to change; their consciences are nearly immutable.

Consider the strange case of Jonah who had a profound hatred for Assyrians.  He refused to go to their capital city and warn them of God’s coming judgment because he did not want them to get out from under the destruction the Lord had planned for them.  Even after God had Jonah swallowed by a great fish and in its belly he stewed for three days, he still was unbending in his loathing of the Assyrians.  He did go and preach in the Assyrian city but nothing inside him changed even after the people repented   He was furious that God did not destroy Nineveh; his conscience felt no guilt over his hatred of the Assyrians whom the Lord clearly loved.  Not even three days in the gut of a great fish could rework Jonah’s conscience.

Likewise it is odd that the great Solomon who experienced several miraculous encounters with God did not seem to feel the least bit guilty about taxing the people excessively or dabbling in paganism.  His conscience was unmoved by the scriptures he read or the poverty he saw all around him.  Even while living in the golden age of the church when the pastors were Apostles like Peter, James and John, Ananias and Sapphira seemed to feel not the least twinge of guilt when they lied about the extent of their charity.  The great Paul seemed to feel no guilt over all the atrocities he committed against the Church even while facing the resurrected Jesus Christ in the middle of the road.  The conscience in many ways is as unbending as a steel bar and no amount of supernatural signs and wonders can force it to change its opinion of good and bad.   All of us have tried to talk someone into believing some action or attitude was morally wrong to no avail.  Just think of the times pro-life demonstrators have tried their best to convince abortion advocates of the horrors of abortion without success or how many have tried to get alcoholic family members to feel guilty for their actions.  We can wreck a conscience by our actions but rarely can we build up a conscience by our rhetoric.

We are thoroughly ineffective at trying to convince others of the wrongness of their wrongs.  We can try interventions, guilt-tripping and emotional pleas and rarely, if ever will we get far with another person’s conscience.  There is only one way for a conscience to be significantly altered.  It must be transformed by the presence of the Spirit of God.  Isaiah provides the perfect example of a converted conscience.  When He came up into the presence of God, he realized just how filthy and disgusting his speech had been before.   "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. (Isaiah 6:5 NIV)  Before this encounter with the Lord, Isaiah thought nothing of what sort of things he said…at least his conscience was unfazed by his words.  The moment he met the real God, he came undone with guilt for his conscience had been converted.  He knew that the sorts of things he had said before were ugly and wrong.  This did not come to him as an intellectual unearthing, it was a Spiritual revelation that not only uncovered the sin he did not before think was sinful but also brought deep remorse for what he realized he had been doing.

The Apostle Paul is a clear example of how the conscience is altered.  As mentioned before, Paul did not seem to feel guilty about his past persecution of Christians when he first met Jesus in a blazing manifestation of His glory.  It was much later that his conscience convicted him of the wrong he had done and he saw himself clearly as a sinner and really a sinner.  This is how he put it after the Spirit of God had changed Paul’s conscience.  What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24-25 NIV)  This is not false guilt…not like someone weeping over the death of a mosquito he killed; this was the guilt of having done rotten things that before he had never thought were wrong.  This is the guilt of an alcoholic who suddenly realizes what horrible consequences his drinking has brought his family but more importantly, how it has wrecked his life with God.  This is the guilt of a stockbroker who had merrily cheated his clients out of their savings but now saw clearly the evil of his actions.  This is the guilt of young mother who finally realizes how terrible it has been for her to abandon the church.  No one can make her see how truly bad her own sin is; only God can reveal it.  The Bible puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 10: 4.  The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. (NIV)  God alone can break through into a conscience that is unable to see its own sin and change the way the conscience interprets badness.  Divine power can accomplish what we are powerless to undertake.

There is a second way our conscience is awakened to real sin within and it is a terrible discovery.  Let the Apostle Paul explain.  Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith.  Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.  (1Timothy 1:18-20 NIV)  There are times when even a Christian has abandoned his conscience and it becomes wasted on him.  What does God do in those situations?  Honestly it is terrifying but it is the epitome of “tough love”.  The Lord turns over the person to Satan.  We know what happened when God let Job be in the hands of Satan.  It can feel like “hell” but it isn’t.  God lets the person who has turned off her conscience and given up on it be in the grip of Satan.  It happened to Nebuchadnezzar when he went crazy for a year.  It happened to David after he committed adultery with Bathsheba.  It happened to Jonah when he was cast into the raging sea and it happened to Peter after he denied Christ in Caiaphas’s courtyard (see Luke 22: 31).

The church is given authority to do this and it must happen for the good of those who are ruining their consciences by going against them.  The Bible says that it is strong medicine for the sick spirit that is reeling from sin.  When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 5:4-5 NIV)  In this instance it was a man who was sleeping with his father’s wife.  It could be someone cheating on her husband, another who is an angry man who won’t control his temper, it might be a person who is cheating God out of the tithe or someone destroying her family by her drug addiction.  But we have to be careful here.  This is an extreme measure and only to be done if someone has completely shut out the conscience.  When that happens and there is no remorse for sin, you just quit praying for the person and stop trying to change his behavior.  You let Satan have his way with the person and in the end, God will have freed him or her of the taste for sin.  All rebellion against God will be gone and a craving for the Lord’s presence will surface and dominate the personality.

It is most dreadful when God turns us over to Satan…the most horrible of turns.  That is why we must keep our conscience clear and let the Holy Spirit of God direct our actions.  You see misery and unmitigated corruption in the personality turned over to Satan, a complete blindness to the destruction that person faces and yet, when like Nebuchadnezzar, he turns back to God, when he gets free of Satan’s grip by praying and seeking the mercy of Christ, it is like a fresh and exciting new dawn, filled with promise and hope and the joy of God.  When we walk in the light and trust Jesus Christ to direct us in each and every way whether it is something we see to do or stop doing in Scripture or when the quiet prod of the Holy Spirit through our conscience guides us, we have the peace of God surrounding us and protecting us and keeping us safe.