Running the Race

I’ve experienced two special people leaving this world for heaven in less than a month. One had a massive heart failure and the other a rare cancer. Both had numerous people praying for healing and yet both left this life much too young. Both lived lives that influenced hundreds of people and did so with great passion for Jesus. One I knew for only a year and the other for almost two decades.

In their absence we experience loss, grief, questions, desires to speak with them, to see them, to have them experience more life with us. My thoughts flit and float between memories, desires, emotions, and questions. Emerging from all of these is a desire to be proactive in honoring them. I want to pull on the wealth of their contributions to me and live it to the fullest.

A common saying in the Church today is to make one person’s ceiling another person’s floor. To take all that is learned and gained from the life we are honoring, whether they have gone on before us or not, and use it as a launching point to go farther. If they accessed 10% of the treasures of heaven, go for 30% so that the next person can launch from 30% towards 50%. In honoring, we take our spiritual inheritance and we expand it throughout our lifetime so that the inheritance we give is greater than the one we received. This is true stewardship.

This may seem impossible when the life was lived so fully. But I think that those we are missing would want us not to set their level of maturity in Christ as our goal. Instead they would want us to believe that that has already been deposited into us by them so that we could go so much farther. Every father or mother wants their child to go beyond them, and we honor them by doing so.

The key is that we do not do so by our own strength for we will wear ourselves out in a week if not sooner. Our strength comes from the same source as their strength, and that is in Christ. We go farther by resting in Christ. We live by the strength of Christ in us, not by our flesh, but by His Spirit. We find our hope, our joy, and our peace in Christ for this is how we honor those who have gone before us.

In so doing, I want to be careful to not determine truth by experiences, but to view experiences through the lens of truth, which are the eyes of Jesus. Jesus told us we are to pray that the reality of heaven be made present upon the earth. That is the mission of the Christian life to bring heaven to earth. Thus, I want to walk in boldness to not set those experiences as a stopping point, but instead a launching pad to grab hold of those truths of heaven and pull them to earth.

In the spirit of honoring, I want to go after healing more. I don’t have the answers as to why healing doesn't happen sometimes, but I do know that in Jesus I can find the keys to the Kingdom. I will trust in the goodness of God. I will remember that for the believer, death is swallowed up in victory. I will remember the lives lived and the lessons learned, but I will not memorialize them into the past, but pull them with me into my future as I grow in Christ. Those I influence, those I lead, those I teach will be learning also from those I learned from as I honor them by continuing to move forward.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. Hebrews 12:1-2a

  

This post is in honor of:

         Pastor Rob Stevenson of Acts 2 Church

         Sharon Shirrell (Remnant Ministries) 

Passover to Pentecost

The feast of Pentecost was originally celebrated as commemoration of the day Moses received the law from God on Mount Sinai. It was 50 days after the feast of Passover where the nation of Israel prepared to pull out of Egypt. Fast forward to the New Testament and we have the Passion Week of Jesus coinciding with the feast of Passover. Then, 50 days later, we have the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the 120 waiting in the upper room. 

The seasons of the Lord often mirror the Jewish calendar and feasts. On the anniversary of the day the law was given, the Holy Spirit comes as our guide into all truth. Jesus fulfilled the law, and the Holy Spirit comes to link us to Him, Spirit to spirit.

We are now in the season between Passover and Pentecost. It is especially notable that the year is 2012 because 2012 is chocked full of manifested prophetic destiny. We need to watch carefully for the invitations into the promises of God. May 27, 2012 is the anniversary of Pentecost. The season is prophetically pregnant and we shall see the prophetic is being birthed into the natural. We should be seeing the activity being stored up in heaven finally manifesting upon the earth in the areas in which we have sown faithfully.

God is on the move. He is moving forward. If we are current with Him we are also moving. We are entering new things, new phases of continuing things, and we will have to let go of the old things that are holding us from experiencing this new season. If we keep the old, we cannot embrace the new. If we do not let go, we cannot let God.  At this juncture, we shouldn’t have old things left tying us to last year. We must jettison them if it is in our power.

There are things that remain that the Lord must bring the change for He has positioned us so that only He can bring the deliverance. But there are other things that we know we can leave behind and it is time to do so. We cannot deliver ourselves; we have to let him do that part. But we can prepare for the deliverance by not holding on to anything, but Jesus. The Lord had the Hebrew people pack up and prepare only unleavened bread so that they could move out in an instant with nothing holding them back from obeying the call of the Lord to move forward.

Likewise we need to be ready in every way possible to accept the invitations and deliverance of the Lord. We know 2012 is the year for the beginning of something great. Don’t miss it by being out of season with the Lord. As long as you are current with Him, you will move with Him into the new season. Some have moved into it, some are moving into it portion by portion, and others will suddenly enter it having been fully prepared to move at once. Be ready and wait on the Lord, just as the 120 waited in the upper room from the time the Lord ascended until the Spirit descended so that we could live from ascension. 

Chaordic

Creative people can look at something chaotic and find order. They can bring unity to diversity without suffocating the diversity. I’ve been watching the new hit series, Touch, with Keifer Sutherland. It is a fascinating show where Sutherland plays the part of an autistic child’s father. The child’s mother died in the towers on 9/11. The young boy never speaks audibly, but begins to communicate through numbers and patterns. His dad quickly discovers that by following the numbers he becomes interweaved into a story that links lives and events the world over to bring help to one or more people with painful problems. Sometimes the scope of the help that comes through the result of his following the numbers remains unbeknownst to Keifer’s character.

Keifer finds help from a doctor who also has this ability to see numerically. The doctor’s controversial research indicates that this boy is picking up on the mathematical order in the cosmos and communicating it to help end the pain of others.

I can’t help but be reminded of the prophetic when I see the boy notice a number and write it down and that number reappear as an address, phone number, apartment number, receipt number, or the number of a bus or taxi. It is exciting to watch seemingly unconnected people and events converge into a unified story.

In doing so, I contemplate the chaordic – the order in chaos. I become fascinated by the unity in diversity. Human nature attempts to unify by removing diversity, but the real artistic beauty of creation comes when order and chaos coalesce without sacrificing one to the other.

I tend to lean towards being neat and orderly at the expense of freedom and yet my way of thinking creates a tension pulling me towards greater and greater freedom. My first instinct is to keep messes from happening by preparing for all the variables in advance. But freedom, messes included, produces much more life than keeping messes at bay. 

I think religion often tries to ignore or protect against the contamination of messy life. Jesus did it so differently. He intentionally placed himself in the thick of the messiness of life. He hung out with the prostitutes and tax collectors. He spent time talking with a Samaritan woman. He was born in a stable, slept in a manger, rode a donkey, and hung out with smelly fishermen. He washed the feet of his disciples and touched lepers.

I was once listening to a couple who pastor overseas. They were amused by how American churches are so bent on keeping clean sanctuaries. They said where they pastor; everyone knows you don’t put carpets in the sanctuary. Here we are concerned about someone spilling coffee, but there people get real messy. When they get healed or delivered things happen that cause big messes. Between bodily functions and tumors falling off, there is no concern for the place getting messy. Sometimes I think we are too focused on keeping things neat and clean that we think clean hands makes a clean heart. Jesus warned against washing the outside of the cup to make the inside clean. It doesn’t work that way. Outward appearances of a saintly community fool no one. 

We often cannot get to the inside because we are focused on the outside. Religion keeps us looking at how good we look. It blinds us to how empty we are. Jesus cleans the inside of us and draws us out into freedom so that we can make messes and learn how to clean them up. Moreover a healthy Jesus culture doesn’t look cookie cutter, but has a beautiful diversity of each person being who he or she is to be in Christ rather than just like the next clone. Religion births clones, Jesus births people.  

2012 -- Deliverance is Coming

Some are concerned that time is running out. Legend would have it that we are nearing the day of the world’s demise, December 21, 2012. It would seem, regardless of one’s view on the Mayan prediction instigated by a calendar that abruptly ends on this now ominous day, that 2012 is noteworthy year. 

Many in Christendom are filled with expectation for the Lord to show His glory this year in a manner never before experienced in the Church. Some have experienced a foreshadowing of this greater glory, but the fullness is still yet to come.

Many delays, distractions, and destructive forces have been at work in previous years, especially in 2011. Some have been betrayed, trampled, attacked, forsaken, and walked all over by a number of injustices. We strain to see beyond into this new season with hope gently rising forth from its deep seeded burial place. It is like the crocus that peaks its stem above the ground as spring approaches, looking around to see if winter truly has abated. 

It feels unusual to have this hope, as if it ought to have died after such an arid dry season, and yet instead we find it had hibernated and grown strong during our adversity to now rise stronger than we thought possible. This is not yet the experience of everyone in 2012, for some are still struggling with 2011. Just the same, despite what things feel like and look like, a new season has dawned. What would have been a delay last year, will be a deliberate positioning this year. The nature of what is going on has changed even when we feel the effects and fear of more of the same.  It is not the same.

The Lord is doing a new thing, and it starts with us and in us.  When we find that we are stable despite the shaking going on around us, we will find that we have come out into the new season even when it hasn’t manifested into our circumstances yet.  We haven’t much longer to wait. Where the tension is mounting, the Lord is preparing a launching point for victory.  For each this will feel and look different, but at the same time it is the same thing happening in many lives and organizations across the spectrum. 

Everywhere one looks one should see or hear of things changing. Right now it is like things are all aligning from a variety of different points – all transitioning to come to a head. For those following the Lord this is going to be a great deliverance. It is not a far off as it may feel. It is just around the corner. We only have to hold on a little while longer, if we are holding on to Jesus. If we are holding on to something else, that something else will have to be shaken first, because God is not going to harm you by this deliverance, but bring you into the fullness of authority, power, and victory that this season holds for you. If there is still a shaking, rejoice for the Lord will make it all for your good.

For those who are not in Christ, this shaking will look different. It will be different. Things are still coming to a head for those not in Christ – this is happening the world over. This is why this year is so crucial – it is not just a Church thing, it is a world thing. The whole world is shifting into a new season. The old ways cannot remain. Things are going to change. People will be reaping what they have sown and some have not sown well and they will see the fruit of that – so that they will come to repentance.  This shift is good even when it does not look favorable.

2012 is different. There is no going back. There is only going forward. This is a year of advancing into the next season of the journey. Do not despair. The Lord is near and He is drawing nearer. He is our steadfast anchor, our only hope. The bounty of our seed well sown comes from Jesus. It cannot come from any other source and do us any good. This is why we cannot make it happen, we cannot circumnavigate His process. We have to be obedient and steadfast and He will bring His promises about. For first and foremost He is the promise. We have to realize it is all about Jesus. Our only mandate is to do what He is doing and nothing more, and nothing less. He, and He alone, is our deliverance.  

Experiencing Heaven

Life lived by the Spirit is an incredible journey full of adventure and intrigue. When you exercise your spirit to connect to His Spirit to hear by spirit or see by spirit or know by spirit you open a whole new world of knowledge. This knowledge takes deep root in one’s soul and the spirit renews the mind to new understanding and paradigms of thinking that produce creative freedom. 

Often times we do not know we are bound until we are unbound. We don’t know we cannot see well until someone offers to clean the lenses of our glasses for us. I was once strolling through a mall with my sister when she saw the jewelry store chain from which her wedding ring was purchased.  She wanted to step inside to have it cleaned. The gentlemen offered to clean my ring as well. I gave it to him, not really thinking it needed it.  When he returned a few minutes later I could not believe the difference. It was stunning to look at how brilliantly it shined. I was taken aback at how dirty it must have truly been to now shine so noticeably. 

Before we first start experiencing the awakening of our spirit-person we do not know that our outlook is inhibited and limited. We think we see quiet clearly, in fact, even more clearly than those contaminated with overly spiritual minded thinking.  That is, until we step through the door and find a wonderful world of color and 3D experience we never knew was behind the door we carefully kept shut. 

Behind the door is a world that makes our natural world have a deeper purpose and meaning. It does not remove meaning, but enhances it.  It does not distort our sight, but removes the distortions. We truly step through the Wardrobe to find a world that looks a lot like our own, but this one has more substance and carries a brighter reality.  It also provides a contrast to show where our world does not line up with what is possible and true, but it also provides the way to bring the true about.

That Door Way to this world is Jesus. When we step into Him we step into a whole new world for this alternate reality of which I speak is found in Him for it is an extension of Jesus. Heaven is its name, or the Kingdom of God. However, heaven has been errantly taught to be a paradise only entered upon death when in reality it is a Kingdom entered first in life.  The reason some go to heaven when they die is because they were born again of heaven in Christ when they lived.  It isn’t the destination decided by God upon our death, but the home chosen while upon the earth. 

When we live by spirit we live from above, rather than from earth. Doing so causes a manifestation of our home upon the earth – every time we prophesy, heal the sick, raise the dead, set the captives free, or release the peace of the Lord.    

The Christian life is a life lived by the spirit in the Spirit and when we do that heaven is released to be tangibly experienced by those who live by their natural five senses so that we can help them find Jesus who will in turn awaken their spirits by His Spirit. 

Yes, Jesus Loves Me . . .

Many are familiar with the popular children’s song “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  .  .”   I have come to realize that I must take issue with this line in the song, because the way I know Jesus loves me is because I know His love and that is why I also believe the Bible.  The Bible testifies about Him and tells us what He did for us, but the way we truly know He loves us is because we experience His loving us.  We do not need to settle for reading that He loves us. 

It is by His Spirit awakening our spirits that we know He is real.  I hold the Bible in high regard as it is fully inspired by the Living God.  But I think the Church has often elevated the Bible beyond its intended position.  We treat it as if it were Jesus instead of the book that tells all about Him.  It is a book that points beyond itself to the heavenly One who gives it meaning. 

I don’t know that Jesus loves me because the Bible tells me so. I do not know it because I can give reasoned evidences of its veracity. I simply know the Lord loves me because I know the love of the Lord.  My heart is alive to His presence and I hear His voice.  This is why I love His Word, not vice versa.

The way to know His love is to know Him. The Bible is a great place to start learning about Him, but Jesus is the Way and there is no substitute for Him.  The way to Jesus is Jesus.  This is why we are to seek the Lord with all our heart. This is why those that seek truth shall find Him.  It is the heart that seeks and the mind is renewed by what the heart encounters.

Seeking the proof sometimes sends us in the wrong direction because we are looking for intellectual reasons when what we need is a God encounter.  Often no reason will suffice until one experiences Him for him or herself.  I think that is why most reasons only satisfy believers, because unbelief is not a condition of the mind, but of the heart. Only when the heart has found God do the intellectual answers make much sense. It really all boils down to Jesus. 

More on God's Goodness

I was recently asked to expound on the nature of the goodness of God in a manner that describes what is meant by goodness, rather than what is not meant.

There is nothing one can point to other than God to illustrate what is absolutely good.  The reason stating what is not meant is easier than stating what is meant, is that we can point to things that are not God for an example, but to speak of what is meant, I can only point to God. 

Many would dismiss this as circular reasoning. What is good? God.  How do we know God is good? God.  To be true, it is something that cannot be proven by another measure. If God were not the supreme good, then if there is such a thing, something else would have to be that self-referencing standard. 

Humans certainly aren’t absolute references for ultimate good. This is a fact we know too well. And yet, if we know it, how do we explain that we know it? How do we have a sense that we aren’t doing what is right all the time? And yet, we do know this. We know we fail to be good even though most of us want to be good and beat ourselves up internally when we are not.  If we reject the Biblical reason for this conflict between our desire to be good and our failure to be thus, what are we left with?

Of course, there are many postulations by many different belief systems, but all religion puts forth the need for striving to be more moral, better people.  Prayers, petitions, penance, and priest are all a part of our attempt to be better than we are and to somehow qualify for something greater than we deserve.  Christianity is not exempt. In many people, churches, and cultures, Christianity is about doing the same thing – striving to be better on their own merit to earn God’s acceptance. 

It’s not really debatable any longer that across the board we know we fail to be what we feel we ought to be.  But where is this invisible standard that makes it impossible to do whatever we want without any guilt? Why are we guilt ridden?  Why do we call those who cannot distinguish right from wrong, insane?

The Bible says the truth of God is written all around us in nature so that we are without excuse. We all know we have fallen short. We all know there is a good that we do not measure up to.  Jesus came to show us the way out of our sins and guilt.  He came not to condemn us for we were in that place of condemnation already. We knew full well the guilt and He came not to heap more rules and condemnation upon us, but to remove it. He came to do all the “work” to qualify for us, because work would never get us there.  But He can get us there and He who was pure because impure (became sin) for us and took the wages of sin upon Himself.  He took it all to the grave and He rose again leaving it all buried so that we no longer have to strive to burry our sins, for He came to bring life to whosoever will step into Him and experience His life. 

The reason we fail to be good, is because we are separated from the good God.  Jesus dealt with the sin so that we could be transformed in Him and know the Father just as we know Him. For if we have seen Jesus we have seen the Father.  The good life is not something we can work for, but something we can be given by the good Father. 

This is the essence of the goodness of God.  His heart is turned towards us while we were yet sinners. We were unable to make ourselves good, because goodness was not something that is separate from God. So the only way to become good is for God to take us into Himself again and He did this through Jesus.  There is no other name, no other way, and no other life that will do it for us.  We have a full history from the beginning of time of man trying and failing to be good on their own.  We know this full well. 

Goodness is not definable because a definition denotes limitation and His goodness knows no bounds.  Goodness can only be known by personal experiential connection with God directly or indirectly. Sometimes the indirect experience precedes the direct. We see the goodness of God by seeing a supernatural love demonstrated by a follower of Jesus, or we hear testimony of a miracle that opens our heart towards Him.  Sometimes it is a direct experience where God covers us in His presence and we feel and know His amazing goodness and love.  There are many ways to witness the goodness of God, and once our eyes are open to recognize Him we see that He was there all along and His goodness never failed us.  

Following God

The nature of following God grows deeper in meaning the more one knows Him.  For many, following God is about believing and doing all the right things and not doing bad things.  It means reading your Bible, praying, and going to church on Sunday.  All the while there seems to be something missing, something that doing these things does not fulfill.

We try to circumvent that feeling of lack by heaping more spiritual activities into our lives.  We increase prayer, evangelism, reading the Bible. We attend more conferences, or serve more in our churches.  Still there seems like something ought to be different.  If anyone asked us if we were following God, we would vehemently affirm that we are.  The question offends us, but awakens an internal desire to know what is meant by this question. 

Too often, we equate following God with being a good church going Christian.  The thing is most of the Christian life as we commonly see it exemplified can be done without any supernatural strength.  Much can be done by natural effort. We do not need to have a supernatural relationship with Jesus to read our Bible, go to church, serve in the church, do moral things, and avoid immoral behavior.  The world is teeming with religions that do this quiet well. 

What then is the difference that comes from life with Jesus? If doing all these things is not the summation or even the essence of Christianity, how then do we follow God? 

Click Here to Read This Article at Helium.com. Thank you.

Jesus Is Salvation

The essence of salvation is Jesus. It truly is that simple. All debatable topics concerning salvation are solved with this simple truth.

“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jesus said emphatically that He is the Way the Truth and the Life. It is not that believing is the way, but He is the way.

Yes, we believe in Him, but that is not a matter of intellectually adhering to true doctrines concerning Him. It is more correct to say that we believe into Him. We enter Him by experience with our spirit entering His Spirit and having the fullness of the Godhead living inside of us.

Many will debate whether or not all roads lead to salvation, but they cannot. Jesus is both the salvation and the road. We cannot separate the two. It is not a matter of sincerely believing some path will take us to the good life. It is that the good life is Jesus and to have that we must have Him.

Click Here for the Full Article.

By clicking above you will go to Helium.com where my article was originally posted. 

The Bible

The Bible is not THE Truth. How’s that for an opening statement? Let me explain, before some get upset and others get excited that I’ve finally seen the light.

The Bible is not, by itself, the essence of Truth. It is only bound paper with words on the pages that speaks of something greater than itself. When people believe that its words are the highest revelation of Truth they hold them so high that God and their neighbors come second to the words and the readers’ interpretation of them. Even in the day of Jesus, this was happening with the Torah. Jesus told them, “You search the Scriptures because you think in them you will find life, but it is I who these Scriptures are speaking about.”

Jesus is the One who is the full presence of Truth. It is He, not the Scriptures about Him that is life. Some may argue that the way we know what is true about Him is via the Scriptures that speak about who He is. However, this is not fully correct. It is true that the Scriptures are valuable and have an important role in revealing truth. The Bible does tell us true things, but it points beyond itself to the Truth itself which is not itself.

The Bible does tell us many things about Jesus, but a book illustrating a few years of His life, teachings, miracles, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension does little for us if we do not connect tangibly with the One it speaks about. The Bible is there to draw us away from natural earthly existence to open our awareness of Someone who can open our heart and spirit to a new world; a world we where we were always meant to have access.

The Bible does tell us true things about history, living, the future, and God Himself. But it was never meant to be idolized and revered over God Himself. This is why the words of Scripture without the Spirit of the Lord can be death rather than life. This is why someone can quote a Scripture that is supposed to be full of life and love and it feel like venom.

The Bible says that man without the Spirit cannot understand things that are spiritually discerned. There is a veil of sorts upon the wisdom of Scripture that only becomes unlocked when seen through ones relationship with Jesus. The Kingdom of God is then revealed and able to be experienced and released in a way that does bring life and love to others.

However, if people could access these things without the Spirit of God they would not be in a place where the things they find would help anyone because without the Spirit it would all be corrupt and damaging to the person and the world around them. Just the same, there is an understanding that comes from reading things at face value that can lead one to the path that unlocks the deeper understanding.

Sometimes, even believers, live from a place of naturally reading Scripture and by their own power and strength trying to live it out and that usually ends up hurting themselves and other people.

The Kingdom of God cannot be lived out by natural strength. It is impossible. Only by being in relationship with God, experiencing His Spirit, and in turn His power and love can the Kingdom of God be demonstrated. When this is happening the deaf hear, the blind see, the dead come to life, the crippled walk, and the love of God is experienced. When this happens people can speak and release peace to calm storms or freedom from bondages. Emotional wounds are healed. Dreams are realized and achieved. Heaven becomes a place on earth when a community of believers walks out the supernatural Kingdom of God in their lives.

My Thoughts On Mosque At Ground Zero Controversy

Until yesterday I had not really been paying much attention to the Mosque being built at Ground Zero controversy. I knew it was in the works. I had thoughts about it, but did not realize the scope of the details concerning it.

My primary thought was that the same rights that protect any religion from building anything protected them as well and to forbid one risks forbidding all. However, I now see that there is more to the story.

Apparently, according to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, it is possible that funding for this project is coming from terrorist groups in the Middle East. Moreover, New York officials have asked in an effort to promote healing and good will for the Imam to come to the negotiation table regarding the placement of this Mosque. The request has been met with silence.

Moreover, this Imam stated in a 60 Minutes interview that while he could not say that America was responsible for the events of 9/11, we were an accessory to the tragedy. On Sean Hannity’s show, last night, Giuliani and the Attorney General of New York expressed great concern about this project continuing at the designated location.

They agreed that unless there was proof of illegal activity in the funding of this building that it was well within their rights. However, just because you have the right to do something legally, it doesn’t make it ethically right. Respect for the families who lost people on that infamous day ought to lend to renegotiation of the location of this building.

Just the same, the actions of one Imam and those associated with him, ought not cause anger towards other Muslim people who would not think of trying to build there. Giuliani even said, if it was any other Muslim group from the many who have Mosques in New York, he would not be as concerned. There seems to be something peculiar in the spirit behind this choice that has Americans across the political spectrum quiet disturbed.

At the same time, Jesus said to love your enemy and to do good to those who persecute you. So if this is a strategic placement to further unsettle Americans, then while there is a place for publicly expressing our dismay and, for some, even anger, there is also a greater place to do so with respect and love. That does seem to be the ultimate paradox, to love your enemy and to do good to those who do wrong to you. What would that look like in this situation? How does a nation, not just an individual, practice this wisely?

True Hope

True hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is a product of faith in God. The first verse of Hebrews chapter eleven elaborates that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. Scripture also records that Jesus is our hope of glory. All these eternal things are not ethereal concepts, but substances of the nature of God personified in Christ. Hope, faith, love, truth, life all of these are in Christ.

When I say these things are in Christ, substance of His substance, I am not referring to wishing, blind acceptance when there is no evidence, emotions of romance or affection, doctrines, or biology. I am talking about eternal substantial hope, faith, love, truth, and life. I am talking about them in their true form. A form that is available for us to experience tangibly in Christ.

We do this when we encounter Him. Each encounter with Him reproduces what He is eternally into us. Thus, we have hope because we connect with His substantive reality of being. Our hope is not wishful thinking, but something so real it resonates within us and awakens us to the eternal reality.

Christians believe with such tenacity because we have been made alive on the inside and our inner man knows the reality of that which we profess.

It's All About Jesus

I just read an article on Helium.com by an atheist on the topic of how atheists view apologetics. I agreed with the writer’s assessment for the most part of the failure of at least the majority of what is classified as apologetics.

Apologetics is typically a method of addressing philosophies and religions of the world from a Christian perspective with an attempt to overcome the arguments with Christian arguments. One of the good things about Christian apologetics is that it shows that Christianity is open to being challenged and has thinkers who want to address the challenge. Instead of meeting someone’s questions with violence or condemnation, we meet them with reason and explanation.

This is not to say that you will not find Christians ill equipped to give any reason for what they believe and emotionally angry and unreceptive to any criticism. This certainly happens way too often. Some will act like the questioner has mocked or blasphemed their God just by asking an honest question.

However, I am trying to think of another belief system that utilizes a philosophical defense such as apologetics. The only one that comes to mind really is atheism. I know atheists don’t call their philosophy “belief.” The point is atheists have many books and teaching DVD’s giving reasons for why they are atheists. I can’t think of any group outside of Christians and Atheists who do this on any kind of large scale.

On one hand I think being able to give an answer about what a person maintains as truth is very important and thus this is a good reason for apologetics no matter what philosophy is being presented.

The term “apologetics” comes from the Greek word “apologia” meaning to give a legal defense. This is why Socrates gave his famous Apology. He wasn’t saying he was sorry, he was giving a reasoned defense for his actions and beliefs. Thus, any person can give an “apology” for what they hold to be true and this is a good thing.

However, the problem that arises with Christian Apologetics is that Apologists often spend so much time defending doctrine and theology about God we often lose sight of the Person that doctrine and theology points to. If it is mere argument without the Presence of God filling the words, it really matters not.

“The fundamental truth about reality is truth about a Person,” wrote Alvin Plantinga is a book I am reading. I would revise that statement to “The fundamental truth about reality is the Person of Truth.” The truth isn’t that which is about the Person, but the Person Himself, who is known by the name of Jesus.

You can memorize every verse in the Bible and believe in your head every one of them, but it profits you nothing. The essence, the nature of Truth is not the Bible, but the one the Bible points to.

I could spend decades giving a description, and defense about the truth of Jesus and it have no consequence as it gives the illusion that people need only to know the right things in their mind rather than connect with the Right Being Himself. Apologetics has limits for it is not the way to Christ. It is a method of reasoning about Him, but is not the path to Him. The path to Him is Him. Nothing can substitute for that.

Ravi Zacharias, a well-known apologists/Christian thinker, says that his ministry is to clear away some of the confusion and cobwebs about Christianity so that intellectual arguments do not stand in the way of someone’s heart connecting with Jesus. But he makes no claims for apologetics being a substitute for the Spirit of God. The only way to Jesus is Jesus.

Substantive Faith

(This article is designed for a Christian audience, but all are welcome to read and consider the content. It's something I composed because I saw something this past week about the nature of faith that I did not understand before and this article comes from that revelation, so to speak, but it is the first time I transposed it from my heart and mind to "pen and paper.")

We were created for a Kingdom of faith and belief not of doubt and fear. It wasn’t that Adam and Eve needed to doubt Satan, it was that they needed to believe God. Satan was presenting a false reality, if they were living the true reality and believing accordingly, the deceptive offer would have been inconsequential in comparison. The thing that got them into trouble was doubting God, rather than, believing Satan. They could not have believed the lie, if they had not doubted the truth.

Christians are often conditioned to be skeptics rather than believers. We are fearfully skeptical of being susceptible to anything false—so much so that we live according to that fear reality instead of the true reality. More than fear of being taken in by a false religion, we fear being taken in by a false doctrine or a false prophet.

It is the Holy Spirit that leads us into all truth. If we are living in a place of believing God and being led by His Spirit, His Spirit will witness to our spirit the truth in which we are to abide.

We ought to be able to see truth in all things in all forms because Satan cannot create anything, he can only distort what is already real. It’s like opening a clam and finding a pearl. It may need a little cleaning, but a real pearl is still there.

Bill Johnson often states that under the old covenant you touch a leper and you become unclean, but under the new covenant you touch a leper and the leper becomes clean. I think this principal holds true for other things as well. We can touch something false and the falsity will fall away to reveal the true glory of the thing.

Click here to read the full article at Helium.com.

Conforming to the Real

Man wants truth to bend to him, instead of him bending to truth. We want truth to be as we create it to be, rather than we being created by it. We want it to conform to us, instead of us conforming to it. However, truth is not an “it” that we can create, but a Him who created us.

We cannot have the world where truth is sacrificed on an altar of tolerance. That world will always be a false unattainable distortion rather than a true reality from which we can live. The true reality is exclusive of that which is not truth.

Francis Schaeffer writes, “There is that which is true God, and there is that which is no god. God is there as against His not being there. That’s the big antithesis.” Ultimate reality is an antithesis rather than a synthesis. God is not all things. There are things He is not and things that are separated from His good nature, hence the things that are not good.

For anyone to deviate from the goodness that is God, a separation has been caused in the very fabric of ones being setting one apart from God. We are to be set apart unto God, not from Him. Yet we enter this world separated from God and in need of a rejoining with Him.

That which is good can only be that which reflects or is aligned with His Truth as presented in the Person of Jesus.

All else is a distortion of that true reality and therefore false. Bill Johnson aptly stated “The devil is not the opposite of God! He's the opposite of Michael, God has no opposite!" The devil has no power to create truth; he can only distort the truth God created causing an untruth rather than a competing truth. He distorts something causing that path to lead away from God, not toward God.

We want that path to be the same as the path to God. We want to head whatever direction we choose and still be okay with God. If we cannot have our cake eat it too, we blame God for not doing His due diligence to accept our way instead of the way that is true.

We put God on trial instead of realizing we sit before the Judge. He takes off His robe and becomes our defense paying our debt to sin for us. We can receive that payment by receiving Him who is the payment. We can only bear what is true if the Truth is first born into us by Him who is Truth. This is the nature of the rebirth of the person into our new identity as Sons and Daughters of God fully adopted as heirs with Christ to the heavenly Kingdom of God.

It is key to understand that salvation is not something Jesus gives us, but something Jesus is. This is why it is not based on something we earn, but something we are given by being given Jesus Himself. He infuses us with Himself; therefore we gain His eternal life.

The Absolute Eternal Nature of God

God is absolute rather than relative. It is us who are relative to Him. He is the Subject, and we the object. God relates to man according to man’s relation to God. God’s action may be different in relation to one man versus another man, for it is men that vary and God that is stationary. God is constant, but we are not. Thus God responds consistently as Himself, but we being relative to Him are responded to according to our positional relation to Him.

Men change, God does not. Therefore if God still responded to man like man was yesterday, then God would be operating according to the past rather than the present. However, God is always the eternal now, having no past and no future. He doesn’t exist in time, but is the Creator of time. His existence is outside of time, distinct from time, separate and above that which is created. He only enters into time by choice, but does not have His habitation within time. This is why man being united with God has a new eternal home for our nature rises to have relationship with Him because He has already descended so that we may ascend. God doesn’t come and join us in time, but has us join Him in eternity releasing us from the bounds of time. This is why Jesus went to prepare a place for us in heaven for us to have our being in His Being in His home which is now also ours.

We were born eternal and were subjected to temporal existence when we fell from our relation to God. Peter Kreeft writes, “Being became a being, the Subject became an object, God became a man, I AM became He” expressly to release us from our fallen existence to a place of being sons and daughters of God.

Kreeft writes, “Jesus was not God represented, but God presented, God made maximally present, God known by sight and even touch as well as by faith. Heaven had come to earth. It was not a new concept of heaven but a new presence of Heaven.” Moreover he explains, “In all His encounters, He becomes in time what He is eternally.”

God does not manifest in time differently than He really is. He is always Himself weather as the Father or as the Son. He enters time to reveal Himself to us, for we could not know Him unless He manifested His identity in a way we can know. He has done this in creation, in the Incarnation, in the revelation of Scripture, and He does this forevermore through Christ.

Christ, now having habitation in us since we are lifted up to also be in Him, reflects through us to the world. We become the agents of His body manifesting His heavenly reality, where we have our being, to this earth where we live as foreigners. The cross is both horizontal and vertical. It bridges heaven and earth, but also distributes heaven to earth making the latter reflect the true glory of the former.

Goodness of God Revisited Again

From the time I started this blog, discussions on the question of God’s goodness have been of primary prevalence. Therefore I find myself thinking and writing on this topic far more often than any other topic.

The most common objections to God’s goodness are the actions recorded in the Old Testament, the existence of evil, and the doctrine of hell. The problem anyone encounters with the first two is that one has to have a different point of reference for good outside of God in order support an argument that God’s actions are not good. Not to mention, if God does not exist, and is not available as the point of reference for goodness, then there is nothing to contend in the first place, for there were no such actions by the hand of God.

To argue against His goodness rather than His existence allows, for the sake of argument, for Him to indeed exist. Now if the Bible God exists, the Bible God has certain attributes that describe His nature. God, being one, rather than a sum of parts, is not a collection of His attributes. We speak of His attributes separately at times, but they are one, just as He is one.

As discussed in the previous post, God is not just in one situation and merciful in another. He at all times is doing or saying the just and merciful thing. At the same time, His goodness is one with His justice and mercy. His actions come from His nature. They cannot be different than who He is. God is not like us in that He chooses to respond differently than He wants to. He always does that which He wants for His will is one with His nature. To use His doing all that He wants as a refutation that He is good is illogical. For His want is one with His nature which is good. Doing whatever He wants, is precisely doing that which is good. In contrast, we have a duplicitous nature and we often do the things we ought not to do because we want to do that rather than what we know is good and at times we do the good thing by choice even when we want something we ought not want. This is not so with God. He always does according to His nature which is good. There is nothing external governing Him. There is no authority greater than Him.

To move from the philosophical to the illustrative, the next common contention against the goodness of God is to point out particular actions of God as evidence that He is not really good for a good being would never do such and such. The problem in this is that we ourselves are not infinitely good and so we cannot be the point of reference for goodness. Thus we have nothing outside of God to declare something He did as wrong. If the Bible God is real, and the Old Testament records are true, we were created by this God. Thus our idea of what is good cannot supercede His.

Now as to the question of evil, if there is evil then there must be good. And if there is both good and evil then there must be a way to differentiate between the two. That way cannot come from those who are doing the evil and the good; it has to come from a good source that is not corrupted by evil. A source that is good infinitely or eternally. The evil then is that which is different from that good and the only way anyone can call something evil is to have some idea of something else being good and knowing that this evil thing is not that good thing. Hence, a point of reference outside of us is required. Now, that point of reference does not need a point of reference. Nor can that point of reference be an abstract theory of man or an abstract form in the cosmos, it needs being to have realness. A supernatural eternal being that is absolutely good and gains His existence from none outside of Himself is necessary to support a worldview that says there is good and evil.

However, if one is not maintaining such a worldview and there is no evil and no good, things only are amorally then this view would not need such a foundation. Naturalism will do nicely to support this view of things, but few are willing to abandon certain actions as being amoral rather than down right wrong, unjust, or evil. Such a worldview is difficult to live out for as soon as someone does something “wrong” to you the view ought to be quickly abandoned and a call of injustice issued.

Lastly, there is the doctrine of hell. The argument is that a good God with such infinite power and love ought to have come up with something less revolting than an eternity in torment for those who do not have relationship with Him. However, God is the source of eternal life. Being outside of Him is being outside of that eternal good life. That is a tormenting existence when all is said and done and one has passed on into eternity. It cannot be otherwise, God’s life isn’t in that existence. His Presence is not manifested there. Therefore, it is tormenting, it is destructive, it is horrid. This is not a place where God wants any of us. He sent Jesus so that all would have the opportunity to be pulled out of the existence that leads to such perishing. The door to the good eternal life—the heavenly reality—is Jesus. It is in Jesus therefore He is the only way. Hell is then not something God is doing to us, but something He has made the way for us to avoid for it was never a place meant for mankind, but a place created for Satan and his demons to be bound for eternity. God does not send anyone to hell. He opens His to us to find life in Him as we are designed to, but gives us the freedom to continue in our own ways apart from Him which will sadly separate us forever from His life.

God’s goodness cannot be proven by weighing God’s actions and commands and finding them to fall short of Himself. There is not another standard worthy of being an instrument of measurement against God. He is the good authority. There is no authority greater than Him. God is always Himself. If He is, then He is good. If He is not, then the entire discussion is irrelevant for there is no one to judge.

Being v. Behaving

Most people generally live by some kind of moral code regardless of its believed origin. Most of the time Christians are also striving to do what we believe to be good and to not do that which we believe to be bad. The only difference between most Christians in this respect and non-Christians is that we claim to know Jesus and have His help in managing our behavior.

On the face of it, we are still striving to do the right thing even if we are truly striving to do it with the help of God. In addition, Christians often live in the place of having an increased list of what is right and of what is forbidden and sinful. Just the same, the evidence will usually show that the Christian is not achieving the doing of good things in any different strength than anyone else.

As long as Christians try to do what is right we are trying in the same way anyone else is trying. God then becomes more of a motivational reason to do right rather than being one who has made a difference in our ability to do what is right.

However, what is happening is the person who knows Jesus is still living in the same construct they were living in before they knew Jesus. This is the construct of laws. We say we are no longer under the law, but we live as if it really is all about behaving rightly by following laws. Some of those laws are truly good things like loving your neighbor as yourself. Laws, though, are not for those born of God, but are a temporary aide to point to the need for a new nature in God.

At the moment one’s life is given to Jesus, he or she is reborn as a son or daughter of God. Our nature is no longer the nature that did not know God and needed to strive to follow rules for our good. Our nature now bears a new identity as having His nature birthed on the inside. The only “work” of a Christian is to rest in that new identity. It is about being who we are in Christ. It’s about realignment with His nature on the outside that has already occurred on the inside.

“Good works” are produced because there is a good being, and not because one strives to live according to a good versus bad dichotomy. A good tree bears good fruit. If we have the nature of God on the inside we will exemplify that reality on the outside naturally with ease. This is why Scriptures says that people will know those who are in Christ by their love. If Christ love is inside it will overflow and be seen on the outside in such measure that it is obvious God is in that person’s life.

Yet we Christians live like we still have to try by our own efforts to behave in a pleasing way to God. In reality we please God when we wake up in the morning before we have done anything at all because we are His beloved children already.

I remember when my sister gave birth to her son and she said she was so proud of him. While he is a new born baby, never having done anything at all he pleased his mother and father. He only needed to be their son to do that. He never at any point had to try to be their son. He was born thus.

The Christian life is inherently supernatural. If we are not supernaturally reborn as a son or daughter of God we cannot do anything more than strive to be good by following rules no matter how noble we think those rules and traditions to be.

I think anyone who has asked Jesus to live in them, has truly received the life of Christ and the ability to live in such a manner. But just like a natural baby needs to learn how to live the human life, so does a supernatural baby need to learn to live the supernatural life. However, the learning process is in discovering who He is so that we discover who we are thereby being the fullness of who we are.

The Christian Claim of Truth

Christians, myself included, often make the statement that we know the truth. In a world of a multiplicity of competing truth claims that statement is incredibly and brazenly bold. However, what is meant by this statement, while still very bold, is not that we are deluded enough to believe we know the truth about every matter under the sun. We do not claim to have mastered such knowledge of the world. Though there are some who may act as if this were true. It is far from true.

What we mean when we say “we know the truth,” is that we know the Being of Truth. We mean precisely that we have relationship with Jesus. That He is the ultimate eternal absolute truth, being Himself God. We use the term “know” to mean “have relational experience of” not just “to know” something factually though that is included. You cannot have a relationship with Someone who does not exist. Included in the “know” is the intellectual assertion that this person of Truth does factually exist, but is more than a fact of life, but is Life Himself.

As my very first post to this blog explained, I use the term “Answer Bearer” as a name for my blog, not because I think I know all the answers, but because the one who is Truth dwells within me. And it is that Answer, the Answer of Life, of Truth, that is the one I bear forth. Therefore the title is not an arrogant claim, but a humble one. One that says that His Life is what it is all about.

I am just here to share what I have learned, and to learn what I have not yet learned by engaging in valuable and respectful conversation with people from various worldviews and experiences of life. I am thankful for each and every reader who uses their valuable time to read here and to converse with me here.