God’s love

Who’s Responsible?

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I’m struggling with something. It’s not a sin that is a thorn in my side, or some problem of epic proportions. No, it’s theological, I guess.

I’m struggling with something I’m calling “My Responsibility vs. God’s Responsibility.” It’s related to faith versus works, but’s more all-encompassing. First, here’s how I got here. Here’s the backstory.

There was a Scripture that my former pastor was clinging to throughout his year and a half at my former church. It was John 11:40, which reads:

“Did I not tell that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

That’s Jesus speaking. It’s written in red in my Bible. I pay special attention to the passages written in red because they are coming from the lips of the Son of God.

In this context, Jesus is speaking to Mary and Martha, whose brother has died while Jesus took his time in coming to see his friends. He didn’t rush to the bedside while Lazarus was sick and his sisters are miffed.

And we know the rest of the story. The stone was rolled away and Lazarus was resurrected from the dead. It may have been the second-most dramatic miracle by Jesus. And because of the words of Jesus in John 11:40, (and because of the “baggage” I carry from my former church and probably my own past) I see a cause and effect. Am I the only one who processes this Scripture this way?

My thinking is: Because of the sisters’ “belief” or faith, God’s glory was shown in the resurrection of Lazarus. If you believe enough, therefore, you will see God’s glory. If you have enough faith, God will show Himself, God will breakthrough, God will work His miracles. Right??

And if God doesn’t breakthrough… if that miracle doesn’t happen… then I guess you don’t have enough faith. That was I processed through that Scripture and that teaching.

I left the church in August of 2013. Then I discovered freedom. I found freedom in the message of God’s one-way love. I found new freedom in the Gospel. Here’s what I wrote in my journal and blog on May 25th:

I know some of you think I’ve “gone ’round the bend”, because I keep posting about this “new” or “fresh” encounter I’ve had with God’s love. It is an encounter with the finished work on the Cross by Jesus. It is the love of Jesus that has changed me.

But some of you think I’ve gone crazy. You think I’m nuts because I keep posting stuff like:

Because Jesus won, I’m free to lose.
… because Jesus was strong, I’m free to be weak.
… because Jesus was someone, I’m free to be no one.
… because Jesus was the ultimate leader, I’m free and content to be a follower.
… because Jesus was (is) extraordinary, I’m free and content to be ordinary.
… because Jesus succeeded, I am free to fail.
… because ‘It is finished’, the work is done.

There is such freedom in those words, but there’s more.

I’ve said it before but I have to say it again and again because it is such Good News: There’s nothing I can do to make God love me more and nothing I can do to make God love me less. There is nothing I can do to repay God. There is nothing I can do to curry God’s favor, including surrendering more.

All of us so easily fall into a trap of measuring our own righteousness. We measure it by how much we pray. We measure it by how much we read our Bibles. We measure it by our behavior day-by-day. We measure how we talk, what we drink, and even by how much or what we eat. We measure ourselves against others. But when we measure, by definition, we are self-righteous. We become legalists. We become like the Pharisees in Jesus’ day.

I don’t want to keep falling back into a trap thinking that IT depends on me. “IT” may be salvation, favor, answers to prayers, miracles, or God’s glory manifesting itself among us in some way. My job is to remain faithful. God will always be faithful, even when I’m not.

The only time or the only way IT depends on me is when I receive a fresh revelation of God’s one-way, unconditional love found in Christ Jesus. When I finally understand… REALLY understand… then I am changed. I am compelled by the love of God (the Holy Spirit) inside me to live my life differently.

That’s Good News.

Nothing Else Matters

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Pastor Brandon delivered a great sermon yesterday about the requirements and rewards of following Jesus. Wholehearted devotion to Jesus has tremendous rewards… God Himself being the most wonderful… but it doesn’t come without counting the cost.

He quoted great Scripture to validate his points…

1) Acknowledge His Kingdom as more valuable than His gifts:

Luke 14:26: Love Him more, compared to everything else.
Mark 12:29-31: The Great Commandment – love God with all that we are.

2) Acknowledge His Kingdom as more valuable than yours:

Luke 14:27: Carry your cross, the instrument and of death. In our case, the symbol of death of self.
Mark 8:34-38: The paradox of hanging on to our lives in this world system causes us to actually lose what’s really important.

3) Acknowledge the eternal as more valuable than the temporal.

Luke 14:33, Matt 13:44-46, Phil 3:18-20: The kingdom of heaven has tremendous rewards, both in the life to come and in the here and now.

But as a believer, I never knew how to get there. I never knew how to get to that level of commitment. I thought I knew. I tried harder. I worked harder. I even prayed more and read my Bible more. But somehow I knew there was more to it than that.

After making these great points, Pastor Brandon stressed that this was not a “works” message. He stressed that it is “the intention of the heart” that matters, and he asked us to think about and pray the Scripture found in Ephesians 3:16-19:

When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. (NLT)

To me, this was the key. Not actually the verse or the prayer, but what’s contained within. You see, all the good intentions in the world won’t make it happen. All the thought that humanity can conjure up won’t help us make that leap from merely a churchgoer to a authentic follower of Jesus. All the acknowledgement and commitment (or re-commitment) that I can muster will not help me follow-through and be victorious. It is the “intention of the heart.”

It is a fresh revelation of the love of God. It is knowing IN MY HEART OF HEARTS that God loves and accepts me as I am that produces undying devotion and compels me to live my life wholeHEARTedly for Jesus. It’s not perfect behavior, to be sure, but I am compelled by something I can’t fully verbalize, to live a life for the One who lived and died for me. It is a freedom to be “me”, knowing that will be enough.

That sounds like a resignation to stagnation, but what it produces instead is a freedom to grow, blossom and fly. It is a freedom to risk. It is a freedom to try (and fail, possibly) because I am walking with the One who succeeded and is ultimately victorious.

In essence, I am BEGINNING to understand how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. That is how I get from head knowledge to heart knowledge. That is how my commitment moves the eighteen inches from my head to my heart. A fresh revelation of the love of God. That is Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians because it makes all the difference in the world… literally.

I don’t need to move Jesus up on my priority list. I don’t even need to count the cost. Once I realize and internalize how much God loves and accepts me, I don’t need to evaluate my commitment. It automatically occurs. It just happens. There’s nothing else on my list. The costs become immaterial.

Nothing else matters.

All that really matters…

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“What really matters is what God says about us. What would it matter if a thousand people bowed before us and praised our name if God condemned us? What would it matter if ten thousand people reviled and cursed us if God accepted us and loved us? We have already been accepted by the one whose acceptance is all that really matters.”
— James Bryan Smith, Embracing the Love of God

I find myself dependent on the approval and acceptance of others, from my friends and co-workers to my wonderful wife, Sharon. I may say outwardly that I don’t care what others think, but my thoughts and actions say otherwise. Approval addiction is what some would call it. I’m not sure where this comes from… early childhood probably.

But what James Bryan Smith is getting at in this passage and in this book is that knowing — really knowing — that God loves you and me and accepts you and me, JUST AS WE ARE (before we shape up, improve, get our act together, kick our bad habits, or clean up)… this love and acceptance can (and should) profoundly transform us. When it really gets deep down inside us that you and I are truly God’s “beloved” as His Word says over and over, we are changed. This is all that matters.

We then can accept ourselves as we are. We no longer are perfectionists, aggravated and disturbed by our weaknesses and flaws, our shortcomings and warts, and our repeated failures. We are loved and accepted. That’s all that really matters. We all want to be loved and accepted by others, but we are no longer ruled by it. Whatever we lack from others, God gladly, freely, and overwhelmingly makes up for. His love is all that really matters.

Knowing that God loves and accepts us, as we are right now, allows us to love and accept others, with all their flaws and failures. We don’t have to accept their behavior, but God’s love for us allows us to accept and love others as they are right now. We are able to give grace to others because we have received it so abundantly.

Lastly, God’s nearly unbelievable acceptance produces in me and in you an unexplainable desire for holiness. It is not a matter of being more pious, but a desire for more of God. The former leads to self-righteousness; the latter to His righteousness. This wonderful love, acceptance, and grace does not lead to loose living as a license to sin, but it is a springboard to the life of love and freedom that God desires for each one of us.

It is abundant life. It is eternal living.

His love and acceptance… all that really matters.

In-Between…

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I haven’t written in a couple of days. I think the reason is that, simply, I don’t have anything to say. I’m sort of “dry”. I’m struggling, not spiritually, but… spiritually. I’m not steeped in sin and estranged from God. Hardly. I love God with all my heart. And He loves me with all of His.

I’m struggling to see the direction He is leading me. I am struggling to see the direction He is leading US – my wife and I. We been going to the same church for 10 months (after being at another church for 15 years), and we haven’t made one new friend. Not one (Except the pastor, who is a wonderful man who has helped me personally a great deal). It seems as though everyone is busy living their own lives. I understand.

I owe this pastor a great deal. He has helped me immensely after leaving my previous church and dealing with all the baggage that went along with it. I will forever be in his debt. He has helped me journey into the welcoming, ever-open arms of God’s love. He has helped me see that the Kingdom of God is unshakeable. I owe him… big-time.

However, neither Sharon nor I feel connected to the church. We come in, sit down, worship, shake hands with those around us, listen to a great sermon (always), and leave. We even come back during the week and are a part of a small group. Yet, there’s no connection.

“We were made to wait, to long for things unseen. This is the place from which dreams and desires come.” — Jeff Goins, The In-Between

I think that’s where we are: in-between. But in this place of waiting… of being “in-between”, a place of trust, Mr. Goins says, I find it difficult to dream or to desire. Instead, I am tempted to despair. He says it’s a place of change and the change happens in you and me as we wait. That is true. I am not the man I was 10 months ago. My outlook is fundamentally different. I am a child of God, in whom Christ dwells, and I reside in the unshakeable Kingdom of God. 10 months ago, I couldn’t say that. My theology has changed, too.

I no longer am striving, trying to be “good” enough so that God will look at me, hear me, or show his love to me. I no longer believe that I have to do something to be accepted by God. After all, I didn’t do anything for God to accept me to begin with. I have changed.

So, here I am. I am longing. Dreaming. Desiring. Waiting… in-between.

Consider…

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I just have to share what I just read:

“Out of love Jesus was conceived and out of love he chose to die. There is something in us that God finds lovable. It is certainly not our sanctity, nor is it our fidelity. When I look at my own baseness, my incredible ability to sin at a moment’s notice, I wonder what God sees in me.

“Just recently I experienced a wonderful hour of prayer. I felt all warm inside, centered on God’s love, and ready to share that love with everyone I met. While driving to work, someone cut me off on the freeway, and immediately I began screaming at him. Where did this anger come from? It was in me all along. It is a good thing that God does not wait for us to be perfect in order to accept us.

“‘But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). God’s love for us is amazing in that he loves us without much of a reason. If we doubt it, all we have to do is consider the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ. For centuries that has been the clearest sign of God’s radical acceptance. Too often we reduce the cross to a mere decoration when in fact it is the most glorious demonstration of love that has ever been.”

— Embracing the Love of God, James Bryan Smith

“While we were…”

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But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

I am constantly amazed at that verse. “While I was a sinner…” And I think back to my days B.C…. before Christ. I think of all the things I did in living to please myself. I was so selfish. I was despicable. I hurt many people in many ways. I did terrible things.

And yet Christ died for me… while I was a sinner. Yes, I know it was thousands of years before I was born, but since time is eternal to God and He can see the eternal past and the eternal future, he could see me getting drunk, forgetting where I parked my car, passing out with my clothes on, and yet He died for me! Amazing!

And because of time-eternal, He can see me now, still a sinner (although now not a slave to sin) desperate for His grace to even take another step. He sees me struggling and failing, time after time, in word, in thought, or in deed. “While I was a sinner…”, God demonstrated his love, Scripture says. He loved me first. And He still loves me first.

James Bryan Smith says in his book, Embracing the Love of God:

“God does not love. God IS love. (1 John 4:16) I am capable of loving but I am also capable of not loving. That cannot be said about God. God cannot stop loving, because love is God’s nature.”

If I blow it again… if I fail for the 23rd time (or the 93rd time) at the same thing… God does not stop loving me. In fact, God loved me first and continues to love me first (1 John 4:19). He loves me. He accepts me. He smiles when he looks at me (Numbers 6:26) and thinks about me. I am the apple of his eye. (Psalm 17:8) And as I’ve said so many times before, he takes great delight in me and even sings over me (Zephaniah 3:17).

But (obviously) it’s not just me. “While WE were still sinners…” the verse says, “God demonstrated his own love for us.”

It’s a promise for all of us.

The Power of Love

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Ephesians 3:18 NLT says:
“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.”

This is a prayer of Paul’s… that his readers would know and understand about God’s love. He knew that if we really – and I mean REALLY – understood the love and acceptance of God, we would be changed… we would be transformed… we would be made whole and complete.

For he goes on to say:

“May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” (v.19)

“Fullness of life.” “Power.”

The fullness of life Paul speaks of and the abundant life John talks about (John 10:10) are one in the same. Being loved by God makes us lovable. That understanding in itself is liberating for some who feel unloved. It is what the human heart was made for: to be loved and to love. Once we really understand that we are loved and embraced by God despite our flaws, shortcomings, sins, and failings, it enables us to love and serve others with the same kind of love. That is abundant life.

The power we then experience, knowing that we are loved, accepted, embraced, and even rejoiced over, is the power to live with abandon for God and God alone. We are able to then completely trust Him without needing to know the reason why certain things happen. We just trust. And it is the power to live above sin and temptation. In short, it is power to live victoriously.

May we all have the power to understand and experience God’s love today.

It is Good News. Go to church today. Chances are, you’ll hear more about it.

Eighteen inches…

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My former pastor used to (and probably still does) sign his correspondence — his letters, cards, emails — “You are loved, Pastor Jeff”. I always thought that was his way of saying “I love you.” But he might also have been trying to convey a profound truth that is the one thing that has the power to transform. It is the one thing all humans long for. To know…

You are loved.

Love is the one thing that can change everything. Love never fails, as Scripture says. (1 Cor 13:8) It is one thing to love something or someone, but quite another to know you are loved. To be loved is what makes life complete, and yet even if we are blessed with a relationship that conveys human love to us, there is still an emptiness… an incompleteness that only God can fill.

The most famous verse in the Bible is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, that whoever should believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” That verse tells us that God loves us. A lot. We get that. But do we really?

Until the knowledge of God’s love and acceptance of us travels the 18 inches from our heads down to our hearts, we remain the same. We may know Bible verses. We may know theology. We may be slightly smarter, but we don’t really know God’s love. Otherwise we would be changed. We wouldn’t yearn for more. We could be content in any circumstance (Phil 4:11). And most of all, we would love others differently. We wouldn’t be as hard or cold to those who are so different from us. We would be changed and it would be obvious.

In 1992, the former president of the American Psychiatric Association noted, “We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy — and the world’s getting worse.” There is an emptiness that lingers despite therapy, counselling, medication, exercise, alcohol and drugs, plastic surgery, support groups, psychic readings, and yes, Sunday school classes and sermons. The emptiness… the yearning for more… still persists for most people.

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love.” It’s more than a sleepy little Burt Bacharach song from the 1960s. It’s truth. And we need more than the love that we can provide one another. We need God’s love and we need it to penetrate our hearts.

The truth is that you and I are loved more than we can comprehend. It’s an unexplainable love because it’s other-worldly. It’s patient, kind, wanting-nothing-but-the-best-for-you, steadfast, never-wavering, passionate, deep love. When we receive it — fully receive it — it is fulfilling, healing, and transforming. It’s brings a completeness and wholeness that we’ve never known before and that we’ve been searching for our entire lives.

But even more than being loved, we are accepted. We are accepted as we are right now. We are accepted despite what we’ve done. We are accepted, and embraced, and God even sings over us. He smiles when he thinks of you. Is that hard for you to believe? It is for most of us. That’s why God’s love never moves that 18″ I mentioned, from our head to our heart. We somehow can’t accept it.

But believe it… because it is the truth. Just listen to the words of the prophet:

“The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”
(Zephaniah 3:17, NIV)

Loving someone or something is easy. Knowing that you are loved is difficult. But it is the truth.

You are loved.

The deepest chasm…

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“Religion is the human search for God; Christianity is God’s search for humans.” — James Bryan Smith

Have you ever seen the ceiling of The Sistine Chapel? I haven’t either – personally – but I’ve seen pictures. One of the amazing paintings by Michelangelo is The Creation of Adam, depicting Adam reclining and reaching toward God. God, surrounded by angels, in turn is reaching down from heaven toward Adam. They reach and reach, seemingly straining toward each other and are only separated by what seems like an inch.image

Except that inch would later become a chasm of endless width, breadth, and depth. It is filled with my deepest, darkest thoughts. It is filled with my most wicked acts and deeds. It is filled with secrets. It is filled with sin. My sin. Your sin. Our sin.

In His great love for us, God gave us the gift of eternal living through the death and life of His Son, Jesus Christ. He came to us. He wanted us. He made a way. We owe it all to Him. We didn’t go looking for Him. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We were stuck drowning in our own chasm of darkness. It’s all His doing. We have tried reaching for Him for millenia. In one instant, He reached out for us and bridged the widest canyon in human history.

And He still is reaching for us today.

That’s why it’s called the Good News.

(Thanks to my friend Nancy Jo for posting in Facebook the short sentence at the top of this post. It’s from the book we’re all reading at church written by James Bryan Smith. Actually, over 250 people are reading from the same chapter of the same books each week for the past nine months, and that is a powerful thing. Lives have been changed… mine included. I highly recommend them. You can find them HERE.)

Grace Anew?

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I love to read. I generally read Christian non-fiction focused on spiritual growth. There are some very popular books out there on the subject and many of the more recent books focus on discipleship and its cost.

The authors eloquently write about self-denial and carrying your Cross as the pathway of discipleship. The assert that we need to crucify self daily. They state that the way of true discipleship is radical, crazy, sold-out devotion to Jesus.

Make no mistake, I agree. Wholeheartedly. Death of self is the way to true, abundant life.

I facilitated a men’s group which studied a couple of these books. They both had DVD curricula and were well-done. The books were very inspirational and motivational. They spurred us all to more. They encouraged us to examine our relatively plush lives and get our priorities straight. We wanted more Jesus. We wanted lives like we had heard about. But after roughly 16 weeks of striving after a higher calling, we were tired and discouraged. The bar had been set so high that it was unattainable. Was this kind of sold-out devotion really possible? We had tried. We had surrendered. Now we weren’t so sure. Looking back, I may have a hint as to the reason why.

The material focused on death of self. We were concentrating of self-denial, carrying our cross, self-discipline, and counting the cost of discipleship (and the cost of non-discipleship). What these books did… what this material did… was put the focus on self. It was designed to do the opposite, but in actuality, put all the impetus on each of us.

What I have experienced recently is a new revelation of God’s love and His grace. I have a new, fresh encounter with the Cross and all that was accomplished there. I am 55 years old and have been a Christian for nearly 20 years. But I am astounded by what I have found. I am amazed by this discovery. I am totally and completely overwhelmed by it. By focusing on Jesus and His finished work on the Cross, I have found that I am completely surrendered… completely devoted… radically sold-out in a crazy way.

Death of self has taken place, but not through any curriculum or book, not through studying more or praying more or fasting (although those are all good things), and not through trying to deny myself. IT JUST HAPPENED! It was a natural byproduct of this discovery of the supernatural, finished work of Jesus. It is an automatic response to His amazing love for me (and you). I didn’t have to try to surrender. There was no striving. I am just completely, totally in love with Jesus. He’s the first person I think of when I awaken. He consumes my thought during the day. He’s who I think of as I go to bed.

The apostle Paul says:

My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die. (Galatians 2:20-21)

I’m not sure Christians treat the grace of God as meaningless as Paul says in verse 21. We certainly sing about it enough and talk about it enough. We read about it and we know we are saved by it. But how is it that it can become fresh and new again to me? How is it that I can be totally changed by it all over again… and seemingly more deeply and profoundly!?! Could it be that each of us need to encounter grace all over again? Could it be that we need to see afresh all that was done on the Cross and experience His grace and love anew?