Tag Archives: Christianity

Confidence with God

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Who is your worst critic? Who runs you down the most?  It’s you isn’t it?  Most people tell themselves things that, if spoken to others, would qualify as emotional abuse.  That is why John talked about how to “set our hearts at rest… whenever our hearts condemn us.”  

Because we start life disconnected from God’s Spirit, we adapt; we learn to trust our feelings instead, to assess our situation.  But feelings are notoriously unreliable guides.  You can be surrounded by people who love you and still feel insecure.  You can have a problem at work and drag your feelings (anger, frutration, etc.) back home with you.  But when we trust Jesus, He connects us to His Spirit.  Now we can listen to His input and wean ourselves off trusting our feelings.  We still have feelings, but we understand how subjective and unreliable they are.  Jesus called His Spirit “the Spirit of Truth.” (John 14:17)  As Jesus says, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

Freedom from having to trust our feelings, having access to the Spirit of Truth, comes with significant advantages:

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask, because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him.  (1 John 3:21-22)

Marlon Brando played The Godfather with such skill, we could easily understand why people feared “the Don.”  People in his presence acted with great reserve and an exaggerated show of respect.  But there was one scene that showed him out in his garden, with his little grandson fooling around, trying to tackle him at the knees, laughing and playing.  Perhaps it is wrong to illustrate anything about God with a movie about the Mafia.  But can you see the freedom that comes when we know we can be confident in God’s presence, freely asking Him for things that we know will please Him?  Can you picture yourself in short pants, tackling God about the knees?  Laughing with Him in His garden?

Here is how:

And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us. Those who obey His commands live in Him, and He in them. And this is how we know that He lives in us: We know it by the Spirit He gave us.  (1 John 3:23-24 )

Dead or Alive?

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If you get trained in CPR, they frequently say things like, “Don’t worry about tearing their clothes or breaking a rib; they are dead; they won’t care – that is, unless you can bring them back to life!   Puts the whole deal into perspective.  It really matters when you go from death to life.

Jesus knew that humans were not connected to the Holy Spirit and were dead – “dead” like a cell phone is dead without a cell signal. (For another analogy, see Who Can Fix It?)  But Jesus came with spiritual CPR.  He said,

“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. (John 5:24)

Notice, that “eternal life” is not something given once a person dies, but is given at the moment of belief.  The crossover from death to life has already happened for those who believe. It is the Holy Spirit, living in their souls.  But this “new life” is given to people who had always assumed they were already alive!  But how can we be sure this new life is real?  How can we check?  On a phone, you make a call: if it goes through, you know your phone isn’t dead.  How can we know about eternal life?

John says:

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.  (1 John 3:14)

But what is “love?”  Anybody who has ever exchanged valentines in 3rd Grade knows that the word, love, is pretty loosey-goosey.  And everybody loves somebody in some kind of way.  But John doesn’t leave us wondering: He is talking about the kind of love that is the exact opposite of hate.

Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.   This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.  (1 John 3:15-16)

Hate is a response designed to protect myself from someone who I think wants to take something away from me (could be money, girlfriend, fame, prestige, an aisle seat…).  Love, John says, is a response motivating me to give myself to someone because they have a need.  This isn’t 3rd Grade valentine love.  It’s not “I love you, I need you, I wa-aaaa-nt you…”  Not even close.  This is, “I will give myself up for you.”  Even if you hate me.

But let’s face it: we are not often in a situation where laying down our lives would make any difference for someone else.  So, John makes it practical, …  and threatening.  He says:

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?  Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.  (1 John 3:17-18)

Are you dead or alive?  John says, consider your response when you see someone in need.  If we turn away, hoping someone else takes care of the need, or perhaps rationalizing why it would be wrong for us to help, then “how can the love of God be in [us]?”  Whose love?  God’s!  Where?  In us! This kind of self-sacrificial love is so contrary to our ordinary human impulse that, when we see it in ourselves, we know God is doing it, we know God’s Spirit lives in us.   God’s love doesn’t just say, “I love you;” it puts that love into action!

John is not claiming that everyone who believes in Jesus is  immediately transformed into the person Mother Teresa wished she could be.  John knows that receiving the Spirit does not make us suddenly perfect in every way.  However, if you habitually harbor an attitude of hatred toward someone, or if you habitually turn away with indifference from someone else’s need, you have good reason to question whether you have “passed from death to life.”

But, if you notice a change in your heart, and find yourself acting with self-sacrificial concern for others, the costly kind of love Jesus extended to us,

This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence  whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:19-20)

Changing the Rules

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Did you know it is a sin to love the world?  That’s what John said:

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  (1 John 2:15)

But how can that be true, if “God so loved the world…”? (John 3:16a)

Someone once asked me if it was ethical  to keep a valuable guitar. He had been hiking in the wilderness and found it in an old, abandoned house, a home that was evidently abandoned.  He let himself in, looked around and found this rare and beautiful guitar.  Could he keep it?  Was it right?

If you had found that guitar, what would you have decided?   Wouldn’t your “rules” change, depending upon whether or not you thought someone else currently owned the home?  If someone had died and left no heirs, perhaps you would think:  “finders keepers.”  But, if you knew he was still alive but just away on a trip, then taking the guitar would be stealing. What you think it is right to do, would change if you realized you were in someone else’s home.

The same principle is at work when people fail to realize that we live in God’s “home.”   God created this world; it’s His.  Therefore He gets to make the rules.  The rules about what is right and wrong change substantially when you take God out of the equation.   Without God, we assume that we can do whatever seems right to us.  Do you remember in the 60’s when people decided “if it feels good, do it”?  It wasn’t long before we began to discover that that idea wasn’t necessarily accurate.

The “rules” that have been developed since people lost their connection to God, the mindset that assumes that we are in charge of what is right and wrong, is what John calls “the world.”  Jesus coined that term.  The mindset of “the world” is very different from the mindset of Jesus’ “logos.”  If you understand what “the world” means, then this verse that sounds so outrageous begins to make more sense:

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15)

We’ll poke and prod this idea next time…

The Light You Shine

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John wrote in a confusing way about an “old command” that is a “new command.”  (For more about that, see: John vs. John Lennon)  The “old command” (Love your neighbor) is made new, by Jesus redefining what love is.  Jesus’ kind of love, the “new command” He gave, is simple to describe but impossible to do.  Love, He taught, is a choice to put aside what I want in order to minister to what you need.   Sounds simple, but it is impossible on our own, because we are wired by our experiences in this world to “take care of number one” as a number one priority.  Jesus’ kind of love doesn’t make sense in our world; it only makes sense when you see the world through His lenses, His “logos.”  That Greek word, weakly translated in English as “word,” really goes way deeper.  It describes a whole mindset and understanding of reality.

When you read a book, and are observed doing so by your dog, your “logos” of what you are doing is very different from your dog’s “logos” of what is happening.  See that?

Jesus’ commands fit beautifully when you understand His “logos.”  In a very real sense, His commands are a part of His way of seeing reality.  That is why, in 1 John 2:7, John wrote, “This old command is the message (that’s the word, “logos”) you have heard.”

When you live in Jesus’ logos, His kind of love emerges in what you do, not from self-effort but from the Holy Spirit, living within you.   (See: Who Can Fix It?)  That is why John wrote about this “new command”:

…its truth is seen in him (Jesus) and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.  (1 John 2:8)

John said that the light of Jesus shines in those who have come to Him by faith.  Already.

You are probably thinking, “If this means I must perfectly resemble Jesus in every way, I’m so far off that mark it’s hopeless…”  Don’t freak out.  Instead, look carefully at the verbs in verse 8 above:

… its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness  is passing and the true light is already shining.  (1 John 2:8)

When someone surrenders to Jesus by faith, receiving His gift of forgiveness and fellowship with God, the Holy Spirit begins to live within his or her soul, as God always intended.  (See: Who Can Fix It?)  In John’s words, “the true light is already shining.”  However, that person is still profoundly shaped by all of life’s experiences and illusions.  Those habits, personality traits and outright addictions don’t simply vanish.  John says “the darkness is passing.”  

Picture a bright light shining in a room full of smoke so thick you can hardly see it.  A window is raised for fresh air to blow through the room.  The smoke is passing, but the light is already shining.

Jesus shines through the life of those who have fully trusted Him.  They are not perfect; they may not even be aware of how He is doing so at any one moment.  However, “the truth is seen,” John says, in Jesus and in you, too.    That’s how we know we know Jesus.  That’s how they know, too.

Why Bother?

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When someone forwards me an email, if that thing has a guilt trip in it, telling me what a terrible person I am if I don’t forward it to 12 friends in the next 15 minutes, even if I really liked it, I delete it.  I hate the way they try to manipulate you in those things.  Hate it!   No, the only time I’ll forward something, or share it on Facebook is when it has brought me pleasure and I can’t wait for my friends to experience that same pleasure.  Even better is being there when they watch it.  I love watching what happens on their face.

When I experience something really cool, I look for chances to tell somebody else.  (“Hey! you’re not going to believe what they do to a shrimp po’ boy in this place…”)   Why?  It feels good; it increases the joy of having found it in the first place.  I’m just guessing you feel the same way, right?

Well then, you won’t be surprised to read why John decided to write the letter included in the Bible, called 1 John. (We’ve been going through 1 John here.  The first post about it is “Been There, Done That“)   He said:

We write this to make our joy complete.  (1 John 1:4)

A lot of people think the writers in the Bible are going to be shouting at them and scolding them.  That’s why they don’t read it.  They assume it will be about as much fun as going to the principal’s office in grade school.  Or getting chewed out by a cop after they blew through a stop sign.

But that’s not why John wrote.  He’s experienced something with Jesus and he can’t wait to tell you about it.   He wants to see your face light up like his did.  When you read through 1 John, make sure you hear it in that tone of voice.

By the way, if you don’t forward this to 12 people in the next 15 minutes, or share it with all your friends on Facebook, you are a worthless slimeball and all your toenails will turn black.

The Holy Spirit in a Flood

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If you have wondered why these posts have been more intermittent lately, it is because our church in Lyons, Colorado, has been greatly affected by the horrendous flooding.  There is much to be done.

Here is a first-hand account from one of the women in that church, a vivid example of how it looks when the Holy Spirit lives inside us.

http://www.therivercolorado.blogspot.com/

If you would like to help with flood relief, please visit this home page for The River Church:

http://www.therivercolorado.org

Thank you.

The Good/Bad Meter

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There is an old electronic meter, hanging on the wall of a recording studio near here.  It’s just for decoration; kind of looks like something out of Frankenstein.  Big old needle that swings back and forth – one side says “Good” and the other says “Bad.”  Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a meter like that in life?

We’ve been talking about what we can expect when we put our faith in Jesus and He installs His Holy Spirit in our souls.  We now have an “online” communication with God, causing us to live more in line with the way He designed us to operate.  Trouble is, we also have years and years of old, deeply ingrained habits, that compete with the Spirit.  Good and Bad, Spirit and Flesh (See: “Can I Do New Stuff?”).  Question is: how do we know when we are operating by the Spirit and when we are operating by our old habits?

The Bible has a “Good/Bad” meter of sorts in the book of Galatians.  Basically, it says you will know whether you are living by the Spirit’s direction or by the Flesh (they call it “sinful nature”), by looking at the end results of our behavior.

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures,  idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division,  envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. …

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.   (Excerpts from Galatians 5:19-23 New Living Translation)

Yeah, But What Can I Really Expect?

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The friend I mentioned in the last post, who wanted to know what to expect from the Holy Spirit, is an engineer. He’s a practical guy, more comfortable with hand tools than he is with theology. “What’s going to happen to me with the Spirit,” he wants to know, “am I going to foam at the mouth; are my eyes going to roll around in my head? What?” He’s kind of like the guys Jesus hung out with. Some of them were fishermen. Probably had rock hard muscles, scarred and calloused hands. Jesus had just told them, “Guess what? I’m going to install my Spirit in you.” (John 14:15-21) Can you imagine saying something like that to your fishing buddies? If they didn’t just toss you into the lake, they would want you to speak plainly and tell them something they could understand.

That is the problem with the Holy Spirit. Even though we have all been designed to have Him living inside us, none of us start out that way. Trying to imagine what we can expect is kind of like a man born blind trying to imagine a sunset. So, when Jesus tried to explain what they could expect, he said it like this:

“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 )

Something is lost in translation. The word “remains” means to live in, permanently. “If a man lives in Me and I in him… he will bear much fruit.”

Grapevine

Grapevine (Photo credit: Wikipedia

Jesus’ fishing buddies would all have been able to “see it” when He talked about the vine (in this picture, the part growing straight up) and the branch (in this picture, the part that is attached to the vine and grows out to the right). Because that branch has the “life” of the vine flowing through it, it has lush, green leaves. When the season is right, it produces a couple of clusters of grapes. You can imagine how different the branch would look if you cut the connection to the vine, right? When we want to know what to expect from the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, “Picture what happens to a branch when it is attached to a vine.” When we are attached to Jesus, when we surrender in faith to Him and allow Him to do so, His life will flow through us and transform our lives, producing “fruit.”

But what do we have to do? How does the grape branch manage to produce the grapes? How hard does it have to work? How much does it have to know so it will do the right thing? Nothing! The fruit emerges naturally because it has the life of the vine flowing through it. Jesus said, “When you make your life in Me (His metaphor for believing fully in Him), My life will flow through you (His metaphor for the Holy Spirit.) And, He said, “you WILL bear much fruit.” How will you do so? By doing what a branch does.

But what does this “fruit” look like? Is this the part where I become the church lady? For a branch of grapes, the fruit looks like grapes. For a branch of pumpkins it looks very different. That’s because the design of the branches is different. Your fruit probably will not look like mine. But fruit from the Holy Spirit, like fruit from a branch, tastes good, feels good and refreshes those it is given to. When the life of Jesus flows through a person who has come to live in Him, Jesus causes that person to produce good things that restore and refresh others.

That’s what you can expect. Next time we’ll go deeper on what the fruit looks like.

Keep the Faith – Summary

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All followers of Jesus will experience tough challenges that will tempt them to abandon what they believe.  All of us.  All followers will wonder if following Jesus is worth it, whether they have been gullible.  All of us.  Jesus promised us that following Him would be tough, painful at times and would cost some of us our lives.  The key to enduring these trials is the same thing that connected us with Jesus in the first place: Faith.   He is the Author (the Inventor and Giver) of our faith and He is the Perfecter of it.

When – not if but when – you go through these challenging times, it will serve you well to read Hebrews 11 and 12, letting the truths contained in those chapters soak into your heart and encourage you.  That is why they are there!

A friend of mine blessed my heart the other day, when he said: “Worry is the fear that God won’t get it right.  Bitterness is the belief that God got it wrong.”  Nice.  And between worry and bitterness, in the place of peace, lies faith, the faith that knows, despite circumstances that seem to deny it, that, of course God will get it right!  

Keep the Faith – Good Question

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Somebody who has been reading these posts on faith asked a good question: “What if my suffering is God punishing me?” When we are tempted to turn back from our faith, is it always because we are experiencing some kind of attack? What if God is doing it to us? Let’s sort this out.

The last post, about keeping our eye on Jesus (See “Keep the Faith – Part 5“) did not go far enough. Here’s the next line from Hebrews:

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Heb 12:3)

Much of the suffering one experiences in following Jesus, comes from opposition from sinful men. Jesus clearly said:

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. (John 15:18)

But there is another Source of some of the hardship we face as followers of Jesus. Some of it comes from God. But it’s not punishment, it’s discipline. Punishment is a penalty that is due for something wrong. Jesus took the punishment for all our sins; there is no further punishment due. Discipline, on the other hand, is correction for a tendency we have formed that is wrong. Discipline shapes us and steers us in a positive direction.

And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.” (Hebrews 12:5-6)

Discipline is given to encourage us because we are loved. True, he uses the word, punishes, in that quote from Proverbs, but does so with the meaning of working to produce good in us. This whole passage is well worth chewing over, but here is another quote from it that makes the same point:

Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:10-11)

See the difference? Hope that helps. My sense is that this is a question we all ask ourselves from time to time and it is good to get the truth of it, stated clearly, right from Scripture.