We have muddled through the crises of the past couple weeks. The DSL has been repaired so I can publish again. The work related stress has been eliminated. Life is good. In fact, life is better than good. The reason for that is exciting things are happening at the mission. Telling you about current events in the lives of two of the program men there should amply demonstrate what I mean.
Tony is at the mission for a second go around. He only spent six months there the first time when the program was a full year for most men. He has come back to do six more months and has been promised a graduation certificate when he completes that time. What you need to know about Tony is that he originally came to the mission as a committed Catholic. Ok, maybe not very committed, but definitely Catholic. He also did not know anything about the Bible. He learned quite a bit the first time through, but it was mostly information and not much revelation to speak of.
Pastor Bill Winston, whom we have mentioned before in these posts, says that the fall of man was a fall from revelation to information. What he means by that is that, man, being in perfect fellowship with God before the fall, received his understanding about God via direct revelation from God. However, after the fall, man became dependent on gathering information about God and the world he lived in. Believe it or not, there are actually some theologians who believe it is not possible for us to receive direct revelation any longer. (I think that is because if they admit it is possible, they would have to explain why they do not receive any.)
Watchman Nee explains that when man fell, his soul came between his spirit and God so that revelation is inhibited because now we have to decide how we think and feel so we can decide how to act rather than simply acting on what God says to us. Both men are saying the same thing in a little different way, placing the emphasis on different aspects of what happened.
Tony returned to the mission with much more knowledge than the first time. Part of his return was precipitated by the death of his mother. Now his sister is trying to settle the estate and that sometimes causes a little stress in his life.
He was walking up the stairs earlier this week and he said, "Deuteronomy." That was it, just Deuteronomy. He did not even know it was a book in the Bible so he asked our chaplain who told him that much. He came to my office and asked me to explain what was going on. Like I would know right? We sat in my office and I began reading him the passage headings from the the NIV Bible and give a brief description of what each passage was about. He kept saying things like, "That is exactly what is happening right now. " We did that through about 26 chapters and he seemed to get something out of most of them. Then he asked me why he said Deuteronomy in the first place. I suggested he might have just given himself a word of knowledge or perhaps a prophecy. Granted it was only one word, but assuredly Tony was hearing from the Holy Spirit. That is huge.
Jon came into the program a little over six months ago. Under normal circumstances (whatever those are) he would have started his second phase last week--except that he was in jail for 37 days. It is not important why he was in jail except to say he was never arrested, only detained. The problem was being detained alerted the parole department and his parole agent placed a hold on him until everything could be sorted out.
You have to understand that Jon is a very intelligent man. There is nothing he could not have already accomplished in his life had he not been distracted by methamphetamine. So he went to jail for 37 days. It was an uneventful 37 days except that he prayed with five fellow inmates to receive Jesus as Lord while he was there. Hey, I would have to take off my shoes and borrow some other fingers and toes to count how many pastors have not lead five people to the Lord in the past 37 days. Of course I guess it helps to be around unsaved people if one is going to do the work of an evangelist. (2 Timothy 2:5) I am thankful it was Jon in jail doing that and not me.
Oh yes, make no mistake, things are going on at the mission. I only chose the most dramatic things, certainly not all the things that have happened recently. Oh, by the way, the mighty men count is up to five. One of them is really a rapscallion, but then such were some of us. Still, he chose to be a mighty man and, although haltingly at times, he is trying to walk worthy of his calling. (Ephesians 4:1) If he is going to follow, I am going to make sure he has the best example possible to follow. See you next time. God bless.
Showing posts with label soul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soul. Show all posts
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Home Again, Home Again
There is nothing quite like a vacation to restore, renew, and refresh the soul. Over the years, I have become known to family and friends for taking one and two day vacations where I simply take off alone in the car and just drive until I feel like I want to be home again. The last time we had a whole week off work was 2006 when our children sent us to the Hawaiian Islands as a gift for our 30th wedding anniversary. This time as then, we managed to get away, both mentally and geographically, from the day to day routine. We were 3,000 miles away geographically, but, and, well, is New England still part of the United States? Maybe it's California that really does not belong. In any event we decided we would have a lot of trouble with the city sales taxes in addition to the state sales tax, no honking zones, and cities whose streets follow old cow paths--just to mention a few. Oh, and cities that even the Garmin Nuvi does not understand.
I would love to tell you all that I had some outstanding revelations I could write about here, but that did not happen. What did happen is that I realized everyone needs a break from the battle. I know the battle has not even become that intense yet, but a break is always nice. I am also thinking about the "rest of God" that is mentioned in Hebrews chapter 4. I must admit, that is a concept that has always confounded me. I have never understood how one could be doing things and also be resting. Perhaps the most valuable thing about writing this blog is that the Holy Spirit teaches me things as I write and struggle to understand Biblical concepts. Even this moment, the anticipation is building that we are all about to learn something about the rest of God.
When I was younger, I had many different jobs. I was a good worker. It seems that as I got older I also became a good rester. I have a tendency to be just a little bit lazy. Maybe that's why my ideal vacation includes more driving than slogging around New York or Boston, walking up and down subway stairs, and running to catch the Staten Island Ferry. I was a little winded after that last one, but this old man kept up with his 25 year old daughter and we made it.
I would love to tell you all that I had some outstanding revelations I could write about here, but that did not happen. What did happen is that I realized everyone needs a break from the battle. I know the battle has not even become that intense yet, but a break is always nice. I am also thinking about the "rest of God" that is mentioned in Hebrews chapter 4. I must admit, that is a concept that has always confounded me. I have never understood how one could be doing things and also be resting. Perhaps the most valuable thing about writing this blog is that the Holy Spirit teaches me things as I write and struggle to understand Biblical concepts. Even this moment, the anticipation is building that we are all about to learn something about the rest of God.
When I was younger, I had many different jobs. I was a good worker. It seems that as I got older I also became a good rester. I have a tendency to be just a little bit lazy. Maybe that's why my ideal vacation includes more driving than slogging around New York or Boston, walking up and down subway stairs, and running to catch the Staten Island Ferry. I was a little winded after that last one, but this old man kept up with his 25 year old daughter and we made it.
As you can tell, I am something of a wordsmith, a word cobbler if you will. That makes blogging a relatively easy task for me. I have had more than one person express admiration at the quality and quantity of this blog. That is gratifying, but not all that important. I have been training for such a time as this at least for the past 20+ years. If you have been following this blog, you know it has really been much longer, but I had no idea until just a few months ago.
In the past several months I have gone from utter frustration about my life and ministry to apathy to rest. I had been frustrated since the middle of 1987 when it looked like we had heard the Holy Spirit wrong. Nothing seemed to be working out. Granted, that frustration was often simmering just under the surface as the things of life took the front burner. Very few other people knew the frustration was there and I did a reasonably good job of pretending it was not. That period ended about a year ago and I moved into a period of apathy, I just did not care what happened. I put a spiritual kind of face on that and would have told you God had everything under control and was working things out, had you asked. I think I believed that, but I was apathetic so it did not even matter what I believed. Confronting the religious spirit face to face snapped me right out of my apathetic period and set me on the path toward rest. Now all I have to do is remember I am in that period.
Make no mistake, I am a spiritual man, created in the image of God. I understand something about living in the spirit even though I am not very adept at staying there for long. The challenge is that the rest is a soulical rest, but if we are not living spirit led lives, we will never enter into it. The physical world tugs too hard to let us rest in this world absent the work of the Holy Spirit in and through our spirit. Jesus promised us rest for our souls. (Matthew 11:29) He did not promise us physical rest. Rest is not the absence of physical labor. If you can understand it, rest is really the embracing of physical, or perhaps mental, labor as what God has given us individually to do. Let me see if I can explain. As I said earlier, I am a little bit lazy. However, anyone who knows me will tell you, not much gets by me. I do not see and hear everything, but apparently I do a better job at it than most people do. The point is, I am doing something even when I do not appear to be doing anything.
I know automobile and aircraft mechanics, plumbers, and welders, and even doctors who work harder than I probably ever wanted to. They are constantly in motion. I sit here and move my fingers in orderly movements to put words into a computer and shape them into semi-coherent thoughts. (I hope.) The movements are quick and clean and not too terribly taxing on my body. I do not expect to make a lot of money at it, but my support is not my problem. God's grace has already given me more than I ever expected to have. So much for keeping one's expectations low. Anyway, I have now entered into a small corner of God's rest. I do not worry about finances. I just do what God gives me to do. When I look back, I see that I actually entered into that corner several years ago, almost by accident. I guess you could say I backed into the corner.
Like most people we knew, there were lots of times, when the kids were little especially, that we ran out of money before we ran out of month. However, unlike a lot of those people, we never missed a meal and we never missed a payment on anything. One day it dawned on us that God had been quietly taking care of all our needs, albeit at a lower level than we might have liked. Remember, we kept our expectations low so as to not be too disappointed. (And if you are missing that, it is tongue in cheek.) Through all that, we believed God had better things for us. That was something we could rest in.
The lesson is: Find your rest wherever you can. Once you enter into rest in any area of life, you will find it easier to find rest in another and another and another. I am not much of a formula buff when it comes to spiritual things, but it is not an entirely bad idea to find out where you have trouble in your life--where you have not yet entered into rest. Through prayer, meditation and perhaps some counsel, find out why you do not seem to be able to find rest in that area. Do this for each area where rest eludes you, one at a time. It is a spiritual exercise you will find well worth the effort.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The Greatest of These
There is an amazing temptation, when we are confronted by spiritual challenges, to "shoot" the messenger, so to speak. Although, demonic spirits can independently inflict all manner of havoc on human beings, from physical illness to mental and emotional distress, they usually work through other people.
When we are attacked by a person, we tend to think we are simply the victim of a mean-spirited attack by a someone who has something against us. Perhaps there are such attacks, but the very fact we are being attacked demonstrates there is something going on behind the scenes we do not understand. We are assuming here that we have done nothing deserving of being attacked. People just do not attack other people for no reason. That sounds like a ridiculous statement until we think about all the reasons one person might attack another. When we break the reasons down to their essence we find there are really only a couple reasons for the attack. Either the person being attacked has something the attacker wants, or the attacker feels threatened in some way. Sometimes the threat can be a perception of loss of status as when one is insulted in the presence of a friend and feels the need to save face.
The apostle Paul said he had a thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan sent to buffet him. (2 Corinthians 12:7) He correctly discerned where the attack originated. Satan sent a messenger to attack Paul. Satan is still in the business of sending messengers to attack people.
Pay close attention now. This is a critical point. Many of those messengers are demonically inspired people. Although we say they are demonically inspired, these people have no idea they are being manipulated into those attacks. In fact they are good, God fearing, church going, tithe giving Christians. They may even think they are doing God's work. If they, themselves realized what they were doing, they would not do it. Again, we are seeing the very definition of spiritual deception.
Long time readers of this blog will not be the least bit surprised to hear me say the problem is the people who attack others are operating from their soul rather than their spirit. The human soul is the playground of demonic spirits, messengers of Satan. Again, read carefully. We are not talking about demonic possession or even oppression (the scriptural term for either of those conditions is really demonization). What we are saying is that demonic spirits can impress upon our mind and emotions, ideas that we may act on contrary to what we might otherwise do. As a result, we become angry and give full vent to those impressions--then we wonder how we could have done that. It is interesting that we see other people do those things and think they are just hateful people. We wonder what is wrong with them. However, when we do those things, we allow for the fact that we are simply human beings who sometimes have those problems. A friend of mine, Pastor Dennis Easter, is quoted as saying, "Isn't it amazing that we fail to see the grace of God working in others the way we know it is working in us?" Is that the sound of our common conviction I hear? Maybe it was just me.
What then should our response be when we are attacked? There is only one possible response to that question for the Christian. We must absolutely, unequivocally, respond in love. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second, He said, is like the first. We are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. (Matthew 22:37-39) We used to receive a church newsletter from a church we had never attended. We had become aquainted with the interim pastor and he decided to send us the newsletter. He routinely included in the newsletter, what he called "Scripture without comment." Following his lead, no brilliant analysis of those verses. Read them and do them. If you do, you will have fulfilled all the law and the prophets. (verse 40) "And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13)
When we are attacked by a person, we tend to think we are simply the victim of a mean-spirited attack by a someone who has something against us. Perhaps there are such attacks, but the very fact we are being attacked demonstrates there is something going on behind the scenes we do not understand. We are assuming here that we have done nothing deserving of being attacked. People just do not attack other people for no reason. That sounds like a ridiculous statement until we think about all the reasons one person might attack another. When we break the reasons down to their essence we find there are really only a couple reasons for the attack. Either the person being attacked has something the attacker wants, or the attacker feels threatened in some way. Sometimes the threat can be a perception of loss of status as when one is insulted in the presence of a friend and feels the need to save face.
The apostle Paul said he had a thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan sent to buffet him. (2 Corinthians 12:7) He correctly discerned where the attack originated. Satan sent a messenger to attack Paul. Satan is still in the business of sending messengers to attack people.
Pay close attention now. This is a critical point. Many of those messengers are demonically inspired people. Although we say they are demonically inspired, these people have no idea they are being manipulated into those attacks. In fact they are good, God fearing, church going, tithe giving Christians. They may even think they are doing God's work. If they, themselves realized what they were doing, they would not do it. Again, we are seeing the very definition of spiritual deception.
Long time readers of this blog will not be the least bit surprised to hear me say the problem is the people who attack others are operating from their soul rather than their spirit. The human soul is the playground of demonic spirits, messengers of Satan. Again, read carefully. We are not talking about demonic possession or even oppression (the scriptural term for either of those conditions is really demonization). What we are saying is that demonic spirits can impress upon our mind and emotions, ideas that we may act on contrary to what we might otherwise do. As a result, we become angry and give full vent to those impressions--then we wonder how we could have done that. It is interesting that we see other people do those things and think they are just hateful people. We wonder what is wrong with them. However, when we do those things, we allow for the fact that we are simply human beings who sometimes have those problems. A friend of mine, Pastor Dennis Easter, is quoted as saying, "Isn't it amazing that we fail to see the grace of God working in others the way we know it is working in us?" Is that the sound of our common conviction I hear? Maybe it was just me.
What then should our response be when we are attacked? There is only one possible response to that question for the Christian. We must absolutely, unequivocally, respond in love. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second, He said, is like the first. We are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. (Matthew 22:37-39) We used to receive a church newsletter from a church we had never attended. We had become aquainted with the interim pastor and he decided to send us the newsletter. He routinely included in the newsletter, what he called "Scripture without comment." Following his lead, no brilliant analysis of those verses. Read them and do them. If you do, you will have fulfilled all the law and the prophets. (verse 40) "And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13)
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The Weapons of Our Warfare, Part 1
"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)
We may be biting off a little more than we can chew with all three of these verses at once, but if it gets to be too long we will just go to a part two. There is a lot of information in these verses about how we do battle as opposed to how the world does it. We know worldly warfare. We are so accustomed to how battle is waged in the physical world that to think otherwise is baffling. We have fists, feet, elbows, knives, guns, artillery, bombs, etc. to inflict damage on our enemies in the world. Did I mention I qualified "expert" with an M1 Garand? Of course that was forty years ago. Who even knows what an M1 Garand is anymore? The M1 Garand is a very outdated weapon for worldly warfare now, but it is totally useless in spiritual warfare.
There is a second, huge problem we deal with in spiritual warfare. We cannot see the enemy casualties unless we can see into the spiritual realm. Back to the M1 Garand for a minute if we may. Sergeant James F. Baxter, a World War II and Korea Marine and a good friend of mine reportedly fired at a North Korean soldier at a distance estimated to be 1,500 yards. At that distance, in those days, both the distance and aim were guesses. Shortly after he squeezed off the round, he and those with him watched the enemy soldier tumble down the hill he had been sitting on. That does not happen in spiritual warfare. We often do not even know whether we are winning or losing until the battle is over and we sense a release from the Holy Spirit that we no longer need to fight. There are equally potent spiritual weapons. We must learn what they are and how to use them if we are to be effective against demonic spirits. Now I'm sure we have bitten off more than we can chew so I am going to re-title this Part 1.
Even though we live in flesh and blood, we do not do battle as flesh and blood beings. We do battle as spiritual beings. That is what we are. That is also where the real battle is going on. Spiritual battle calls for spiritual weaponry. We have to get our minds around this concept of spiritual warfare using spiritual weapons if we are to be effective in this battle.
Let us not forget we are tripartite beings. Not only must we overcome the temptation to wage warfare in the flesh, we must also not use our souls. Our natural inclination is to think that if we are not physically fighting we are using spiritual weapons. It is hard to imagine anything being further from the truth. When we are making a persuasive argument or verbally putting someone in his place we are fighting in the soul. As one who can make great arguments on almost any subject, I have had more than my share of frustrations in making those arguments and not seeing any results. Frequently this happens because we are not discerning the battle as being spiritual so we fight it soulically, with our soul. We think we can convince a spiritually dead, blind or deceived person simply with the power of eloquent words and cogent points. That never works. They have been blinded, scripture says, by the god of this age. (2 Corinthians 4:4) The religious spirit we have set ourselves to defeat works for the god of this age. His work is blinding and deceiving people so the light of the Gospel is hidden from them.
This blog is not hurting the religious spirit at all. It has the potential to do some damage if it is motivating someone to action. That is, of course, the goal, but we are not quite there as a group yet. We do think we hear the demonic laughter subsiding a bit as they realize we are serious about this battle, but they are not ducking for cover just yet. Once we understand how to pursue this battle, that will change.
We may be biting off a little more than we can chew with all three of these verses at once, but if it gets to be too long we will just go to a part two. There is a lot of information in these verses about how we do battle as opposed to how the world does it. We know worldly warfare. We are so accustomed to how battle is waged in the physical world that to think otherwise is baffling. We have fists, feet, elbows, knives, guns, artillery, bombs, etc. to inflict damage on our enemies in the world. Did I mention I qualified "expert" with an M1 Garand? Of course that was forty years ago. Who even knows what an M1 Garand is anymore? The M1 Garand is a very outdated weapon for worldly warfare now, but it is totally useless in spiritual warfare.
There is a second, huge problem we deal with in spiritual warfare. We cannot see the enemy casualties unless we can see into the spiritual realm. Back to the M1 Garand for a minute if we may. Sergeant James F. Baxter, a World War II and Korea Marine and a good friend of mine reportedly fired at a North Korean soldier at a distance estimated to be 1,500 yards. At that distance, in those days, both the distance and aim were guesses. Shortly after he squeezed off the round, he and those with him watched the enemy soldier tumble down the hill he had been sitting on. That does not happen in spiritual warfare. We often do not even know whether we are winning or losing until the battle is over and we sense a release from the Holy Spirit that we no longer need to fight. There are equally potent spiritual weapons. We must learn what they are and how to use them if we are to be effective against demonic spirits. Now I'm sure we have bitten off more than we can chew so I am going to re-title this Part 1.
Even though we live in flesh and blood, we do not do battle as flesh and blood beings. We do battle as spiritual beings. That is what we are. That is also where the real battle is going on. Spiritual battle calls for spiritual weaponry. We have to get our minds around this concept of spiritual warfare using spiritual weapons if we are to be effective in this battle.
Let us not forget we are tripartite beings. Not only must we overcome the temptation to wage warfare in the flesh, we must also not use our souls. Our natural inclination is to think that if we are not physically fighting we are using spiritual weapons. It is hard to imagine anything being further from the truth. When we are making a persuasive argument or verbally putting someone in his place we are fighting in the soul. As one who can make great arguments on almost any subject, I have had more than my share of frustrations in making those arguments and not seeing any results. Frequently this happens because we are not discerning the battle as being spiritual so we fight it soulically, with our soul. We think we can convince a spiritually dead, blind or deceived person simply with the power of eloquent words and cogent points. That never works. They have been blinded, scripture says, by the god of this age. (2 Corinthians 4:4) The religious spirit we have set ourselves to defeat works for the god of this age. His work is blinding and deceiving people so the light of the Gospel is hidden from them.
This blog is not hurting the religious spirit at all. It has the potential to do some damage if it is motivating someone to action. That is, of course, the goal, but we are not quite there as a group yet. We do think we hear the demonic laughter subsiding a bit as they realize we are serious about this battle, but they are not ducking for cover just yet. Once we understand how to pursue this battle, that will change.
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Idols In Our Hearts
Now some of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, "Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts, and put before them that which causes them to stumble into iniquity. Should I let Myself be inquired of at all by them? Therefore speak to them, and say to them, 'Thus says the Lord God: "Everyone of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart, and puts before him what causes him to stumble into iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him who comes, according to the multitude of his idols."'" (Ezekiel 14:1-4)
This is a scary passage of scripture when you understand what God is saying here. Ezekiel was the voice of God to the nation of Israel at this time in history. The elders (government officials) came to him to find out what God was saying to them. Before they could say anything, God told Ezekiel these men had set up idols in their hearts. They had caused themselves to stumble into sin by doing so. Then God asked a rhetorical question. He asked if He should let them inquire of Him at all when they have done that. Then He told Ezekiel what to say to the elders. He said to tell them, "Everyone...who sets up idols in his heart, and puts before him what causes him to stumble into iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him...according to the multitude of his idols." God is going to answer him as his idols would. That is scary.
Generally when we think of idols, the first things that come to mind are physical things or fleshly desires. Many people think first of money or things money can buy. Some people have made education or position idols that God must not touch. We even sometimes prize relationships with other humans above our relationship with God. These could all be idols, but idols in our hearts are often much more insidious than we have thought.
My pastor recently wrote to me in an email reminding me that our hearts are deceptively wicked. (Jeremiah 17:9) His reminder goes right along with this passage. God is saying that if we come to Him looking for the answer we want, He will answer us according to our desires. To say it another way, if we have put something between us and Him when we come to ask Him anything, He will tell us what we already want to hear. That being the case, we would be in jeopardy of not knowing whether an answer we receive in prayer is what God wants us to hear or what we want to hear. How then would we know if anything we hear from God is really what he wants us to hear and not the product of our own desires?
Thankfully and graciously, we have two things the elders of Israel did not have at the time of Ezekiel. We have the completed cannon of scripture, the Bible, and we have the Holy Spirit. Jesus said of the Holy Spirit, that he would lead us into all truth. (John 16:13) Unfortunately, that does not make us error proof. It should, but we often operate in our souls rather than in our spirits. You remember the soul, our mind, emotions, and will. The soul is, in fact, the greatest idol most of us have to deal with when coming to God regardless of whether we are born again or not.
Some people think whatever God says to them has to make sense. Let us go by the numbers. Sense is the domain of the mind. The mind is part of the soul. When we say what God tells us has to make sense, we have made our mind an idol. It is something that we value more than God. God will answer us according to what makes sense to us. We could tell story after story of God directing something that did not make sense until we saw the final result. Then we understand why He directed it. These are not only our stories, but are corroborated by many people who have passed through our lives. God's will does not always make sense initially, but it will always make sense ultimately.
Perhaps you are one who has to feel something passionately to overcome inertia and get started with it. Feelings are emotions and are, once again, the domain of the soul. We probably do not need to go into any more detail on that. If it feels good do it would not be the guiding rule here.
Of course, we also have our will to deal with when God tells us to do something. Yes, soul again. We may actually know beyond all reason or feeling what it is God wants us to do and the will can still veto any action on our part.
The idols in our hearts can keep us from hearing from God. We are hesitant to give concrete examples of things we have seen because to do so might offend some readers now or in the future. However, throwing caution to the wind in this case for the sake of illustration, let us tell of the pastor who stood in front of his church on a Sunday morning and, mistaking a move of the Holy Spirit for emotionalism, quenched the Spirit that day. It is a mystery as to what he was thinking. We might also tell of the pastor who for fear of financial difficulty spent eighteen months preparing the sale of a portion of the church property only to find out when the transaction was completed, there was not enough land left to build the facilities the church needed. Another example that comes quickly to mind is the pastor whose church was floundering due to his own lack of spiritual perception. He blamed another for the problem on what he thought was good evidence. As of this writing there has been no perceptible change.
Whenever we operate in the soul rather than the spirit we have placed an idol between us and God. He will answer us according to what we think, how we feel or what we have determined beforehand we want to do. The result will be the best we can do, far less than what God would do were we able to stay out of his way.
We are not sure our will would have allowed us to take on the task of exposing and fighting the religious spirit over Santa Maria had we considered our feelings or thought twice about it. Sometimes it works to fly by the seat of one's pants. God uses all kinds of people. Let him use you. You will find the peace beginning to rule in your heart as you find your place in His kingdom. God bless you.
This is a scary passage of scripture when you understand what God is saying here. Ezekiel was the voice of God to the nation of Israel at this time in history. The elders (government officials) came to him to find out what God was saying to them. Before they could say anything, God told Ezekiel these men had set up idols in their hearts. They had caused themselves to stumble into sin by doing so. Then God asked a rhetorical question. He asked if He should let them inquire of Him at all when they have done that. Then He told Ezekiel what to say to the elders. He said to tell them, "Everyone...who sets up idols in his heart, and puts before him what causes him to stumble into iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him...according to the multitude of his idols." God is going to answer him as his idols would. That is scary.
Generally when we think of idols, the first things that come to mind are physical things or fleshly desires. Many people think first of money or things money can buy. Some people have made education or position idols that God must not touch. We even sometimes prize relationships with other humans above our relationship with God. These could all be idols, but idols in our hearts are often much more insidious than we have thought.
My pastor recently wrote to me in an email reminding me that our hearts are deceptively wicked. (Jeremiah 17:9) His reminder goes right along with this passage. God is saying that if we come to Him looking for the answer we want, He will answer us according to our desires. To say it another way, if we have put something between us and Him when we come to ask Him anything, He will tell us what we already want to hear. That being the case, we would be in jeopardy of not knowing whether an answer we receive in prayer is what God wants us to hear or what we want to hear. How then would we know if anything we hear from God is really what he wants us to hear and not the product of our own desires?
Thankfully and graciously, we have two things the elders of Israel did not have at the time of Ezekiel. We have the completed cannon of scripture, the Bible, and we have the Holy Spirit. Jesus said of the Holy Spirit, that he would lead us into all truth. (John 16:13) Unfortunately, that does not make us error proof. It should, but we often operate in our souls rather than in our spirits. You remember the soul, our mind, emotions, and will. The soul is, in fact, the greatest idol most of us have to deal with when coming to God regardless of whether we are born again or not.
Some people think whatever God says to them has to make sense. Let us go by the numbers. Sense is the domain of the mind. The mind is part of the soul. When we say what God tells us has to make sense, we have made our mind an idol. It is something that we value more than God. God will answer us according to what makes sense to us. We could tell story after story of God directing something that did not make sense until we saw the final result. Then we understand why He directed it. These are not only our stories, but are corroborated by many people who have passed through our lives. God's will does not always make sense initially, but it will always make sense ultimately.
Perhaps you are one who has to feel something passionately to overcome inertia and get started with it. Feelings are emotions and are, once again, the domain of the soul. We probably do not need to go into any more detail on that. If it feels good do it would not be the guiding rule here.
Of course, we also have our will to deal with when God tells us to do something. Yes, soul again. We may actually know beyond all reason or feeling what it is God wants us to do and the will can still veto any action on our part.
The idols in our hearts can keep us from hearing from God. We are hesitant to give concrete examples of things we have seen because to do so might offend some readers now or in the future. However, throwing caution to the wind in this case for the sake of illustration, let us tell of the pastor who stood in front of his church on a Sunday morning and, mistaking a move of the Holy Spirit for emotionalism, quenched the Spirit that day. It is a mystery as to what he was thinking. We might also tell of the pastor who for fear of financial difficulty spent eighteen months preparing the sale of a portion of the church property only to find out when the transaction was completed, there was not enough land left to build the facilities the church needed. Another example that comes quickly to mind is the pastor whose church was floundering due to his own lack of spiritual perception. He blamed another for the problem on what he thought was good evidence. As of this writing there has been no perceptible change.
Whenever we operate in the soul rather than the spirit we have placed an idol between us and God. He will answer us according to what we think, how we feel or what we have determined beforehand we want to do. The result will be the best we can do, far less than what God would do were we able to stay out of his way.
We are not sure our will would have allowed us to take on the task of exposing and fighting the religious spirit over Santa Maria had we considered our feelings or thought twice about it. Sometimes it works to fly by the seat of one's pants. God uses all kinds of people. Let him use you. You will find the peace beginning to rule in your heart as you find your place in His kingdom. God bless you.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
More on Spirit vs. Soul
In The Church today we take for granted that if we are doing things that look spiritual they must be spiritual. Unfortunately soulical things look spiritual to the uninitiated, untrained or inexperienced. Those statements taken together may offend some. Should you be one who is offended by those simple facts, it is time for some introspection and perhaps some input from one who is farther along in spiritual life than you are. Just my thoughts on the matter. After all, that is the purpose of blogs in general. In this one, we answer to a higher authority. So while the thoughts may be ours, we hope they are directed by the Holy Spirit. Having said that, let us try and explain what we mean by the first two sentences.
Let us first examine our practice of worship. To give greater definition to that term, we are discussing the time during a church service when the primary activity is group singing, praise, and hopefully worship. Surely those are spiritual things? Wait a minute. Let us carefully consider our answer to that question.
We sing. People without Christ sing. Some of them sing very well. Are they performing a spiritual exercise when they sing? They cannot possibly be. Their spirits are yet dead in sin. Why then would we think our singing is a spiritual exercise when theirs is not? We would give you pause to think, but this format is not really conducive to that. You might want to consider the question before proceeding. The defining factor here is that when our singing comes out of our spirits, it is a spiritual activity. We cannot help you any more than that at this point.
Well then, what about praise? Surely praise is a spiritual activity? Let us answer that question with a question just for rhetorical effect. Have you ever given a compliment, or been complimented? That is the essence of praise. In praise we give glory, a compliment, to God for any of his various works that come to mind. The mind is part of the soul. We have likely all had people without Christ give us praise for something. They praise. We praise. One is not automatically a spiritual activity and the other not. Do not stop reading yet. It gets better--we hope.
Singing is not necessarily a spiritual activity and praise is not necessarily a spiritual activity. Worship, however, is always a spiritual activity. By definition, we can only worship in response to God calling forth worship from us, that is from our spirit. Our spirit links with God's Spirit and we communicate directly with Him. Sometimes this seems to be a random act of God, but we can learn to do it intentionally anytime we desire. A dear saint of God told me many years ago she was opposed to the idea that God was like a faucet we turn on when we want something. God is always on. We have to turn on our own spirit to commune with Him in worship.
The problem with saying that worship is always a spiritual exercise is that what passes for worship many times is really nothing more than us attempting, or wanting to worship. We never actually get past our soul into our spirit. Hence, we never actually worship. We do not accurately discern spiritual activities from soulical activities. We may think we are worshiping because someone has told us that what is going on is worship. We think we are doing what everyone else is doing so we must be worshipping. Most people do not understand that worship is one on one time with God, giving Him the glory due Him for being God. This can never be done corporately. We can sing and we can praise God together, but to move into real worship, we must come face to face with Almighty God and give voice to our spirit's yearning to worship. In worship we give glory to God for being God with all that incorporates. Of the items we are discussing, only worship incorporates spirit, soul, and body together in the same activity.
What we have been discussing so far is the vertical activity of worship. There is a horizontal, soulical activity we usually think of as being spiritual. We even often use the Greek word rather than the English word. Using the Greek word must make it spiritual. It is taken directly from the Bible after all. The word and the activity we are discussing is, of course, koinonia, the Greek word for fellowship. We have fellowship one with another. We do not really need to do the whole, people without Christ thing again do we?
Someone has defined koinonia as, "Any church gathering with food." That is a fanciful definition, but unfortunately not too far off the mark. Many churches consider any gathering outside the routine, scheduled services in the church building to be koinonia. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, our suspicion is that most believers have never experienced koinonia. Koinonia is one on one, face to face, spirit to spirit interaction with another believer. It gets interesting here because, unlike worship which is only one on one with the one God, we can have koinonia in groups. What passes for, and is usually called koinonia is often nothing more than friendly, soulical interaction. There is nothing wrong with friendly, soulical interaction. It just is not koinonia. When two or more people are gathered together in Jesus' name, He promised to be in their midst. (Matthew 18:20) When our spirits are tuned to Him, we are also linked to each other by the Holy Spirit. It is only at that point we have acheived koinonia.
Both worship and koinonia function as closed loops. The difference is that in worship the closed loop is God and each of us individually. In koinonia, the closed loop incorporates God and everyone else who is linked to him in the same place. The disciples in the upper room, waiting for the arrival on earth of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1) were said to be "in one accord". They were enjoying one another's fellowship in the presence of God. Think of the loop as coming from God, running through each of the believers in the room and returning to God. That is the essence of koinonia.
In summary, soulical activities often look like spiritual activities. We have given but two examples although those two incorporate our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with other people. In a sense, we might say those two activities include everything we can do. We need to be aware that simply because something may look spiritual does not necessarily mean it is. Of course we also need to learn to function in the spirit intentionally and often. The more our activities are spirit centered, the more abundant our life will be.
Let us first examine our practice of worship. To give greater definition to that term, we are discussing the time during a church service when the primary activity is group singing, praise, and hopefully worship. Surely those are spiritual things? Wait a minute. Let us carefully consider our answer to that question.
We sing. People without Christ sing. Some of them sing very well. Are they performing a spiritual exercise when they sing? They cannot possibly be. Their spirits are yet dead in sin. Why then would we think our singing is a spiritual exercise when theirs is not? We would give you pause to think, but this format is not really conducive to that. You might want to consider the question before proceeding. The defining factor here is that when our singing comes out of our spirits, it is a spiritual activity. We cannot help you any more than that at this point.
Well then, what about praise? Surely praise is a spiritual activity? Let us answer that question with a question just for rhetorical effect. Have you ever given a compliment, or been complimented? That is the essence of praise. In praise we give glory, a compliment, to God for any of his various works that come to mind. The mind is part of the soul. We have likely all had people without Christ give us praise for something. They praise. We praise. One is not automatically a spiritual activity and the other not. Do not stop reading yet. It gets better--we hope.
Singing is not necessarily a spiritual activity and praise is not necessarily a spiritual activity. Worship, however, is always a spiritual activity. By definition, we can only worship in response to God calling forth worship from us, that is from our spirit. Our spirit links with God's Spirit and we communicate directly with Him. Sometimes this seems to be a random act of God, but we can learn to do it intentionally anytime we desire. A dear saint of God told me many years ago she was opposed to the idea that God was like a faucet we turn on when we want something. God is always on. We have to turn on our own spirit to commune with Him in worship.
The problem with saying that worship is always a spiritual exercise is that what passes for worship many times is really nothing more than us attempting, or wanting to worship. We never actually get past our soul into our spirit. Hence, we never actually worship. We do not accurately discern spiritual activities from soulical activities. We may think we are worshiping because someone has told us that what is going on is worship. We think we are doing what everyone else is doing so we must be worshipping. Most people do not understand that worship is one on one time with God, giving Him the glory due Him for being God. This can never be done corporately. We can sing and we can praise God together, but to move into real worship, we must come face to face with Almighty God and give voice to our spirit's yearning to worship. In worship we give glory to God for being God with all that incorporates. Of the items we are discussing, only worship incorporates spirit, soul, and body together in the same activity.
What we have been discussing so far is the vertical activity of worship. There is a horizontal, soulical activity we usually think of as being spiritual. We even often use the Greek word rather than the English word. Using the Greek word must make it spiritual. It is taken directly from the Bible after all. The word and the activity we are discussing is, of course, koinonia, the Greek word for fellowship. We have fellowship one with another. We do not really need to do the whole, people without Christ thing again do we?
Someone has defined koinonia as, "Any church gathering with food." That is a fanciful definition, but unfortunately not too far off the mark. Many churches consider any gathering outside the routine, scheduled services in the church building to be koinonia. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, our suspicion is that most believers have never experienced koinonia. Koinonia is one on one, face to face, spirit to spirit interaction with another believer. It gets interesting here because, unlike worship which is only one on one with the one God, we can have koinonia in groups. What passes for, and is usually called koinonia is often nothing more than friendly, soulical interaction. There is nothing wrong with friendly, soulical interaction. It just is not koinonia. When two or more people are gathered together in Jesus' name, He promised to be in their midst. (Matthew 18:20) When our spirits are tuned to Him, we are also linked to each other by the Holy Spirit. It is only at that point we have acheived koinonia.
Both worship and koinonia function as closed loops. The difference is that in worship the closed loop is God and each of us individually. In koinonia, the closed loop incorporates God and everyone else who is linked to him in the same place. The disciples in the upper room, waiting for the arrival on earth of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1) were said to be "in one accord". They were enjoying one another's fellowship in the presence of God. Think of the loop as coming from God, running through each of the believers in the room and returning to God. That is the essence of koinonia.
In summary, soulical activities often look like spiritual activities. We have given but two examples although those two incorporate our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with other people. In a sense, we might say those two activities include everything we can do. We need to be aware that simply because something may look spiritual does not necessarily mean it is. Of course we also need to learn to function in the spirit intentionally and often. The more our activities are spirit centered, the more abundant our life will be.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The Image of God--Spirit, Soul, Body
This could easily be part 5 of "The Workings of a Religious Spirit" because one of those workings is the inability to distinguish between the works of the spirit and the works of the soul. It seems better to use a couple posts to discuss what it means to be created in the image of God. Most of what we have learned about the distinctions between spirit and soul we learned from the great Chinese theologian, Nee Tu-sheng who ministered in China before and after that country's fall into communism. For greater detail and greater insight, we highly recommend his book, The Spiritual Man which is now available in one volume. The book is written under his more famous pen name of Watchman Nee.
There are whole segments of the evangelical church that believe man is bipartite (two parts), having a corporeal (flesh) part and an incorporeal (not flesh) part. This understanding is not incorrect, it is simply incomplete. Anyone who cannot understand this simple truth from 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12 will probably not understand our explanation either. Our incorporeal part is really two parts, spirit (the part of us that connects us to God) and soul (mind, emotions, and will). We really have three parts to us just as God has, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thus, this is at least a part of what it means to be created in the image of God. The reason for this misconception is largely historically, bad teaching, but there is more to it.
When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden, they chose their will over God's will. The result was their souls came between their spirits and God's spirit which effectively meant their spirits died. They were unable to connect properly with God's spirit due to interference from the soul. They passed that condition down to the rest of the human race. The end result for us is that we are born natural men who cannot understand the things of God. They are foolishness to us. (1 Corinthians 1:18) This is why Jesus told Nicodemus we must be born again in order to see (perceive, understand) the kingdom of God. (John 3:3) Being born again returns our spirits and souls to the proper attitude (double meaning intended) so that we are able once again to have individual, direct contact with God through our spirit. It is usually better to move from a known area to an unknown area when attempting to understand something, so before we discuss the spirit, let us detail the workings of its worldly counterpart, the body.
Our bodies really only have one primary function. While it is true they house the spirit and soul during our earthly pilgrimage, their real function is to give us contact with the world. By world, of course, we mean the physical world, everything that can be perceived with the physical senses. Our bodies were created to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell this world. Were we in a different world with a different atmosphere, different light spectrum, different gravity, etc., our bodies would be ideally suited to that world. We might say the body is situated so that it receives input from this world. This information is then relayed to the soul where we process it according to what we think (mind) about it, how we feel (emotions) about it, and what we will do (will) about it. We then send that information from the soul back to the body to act on it. This is the whole of what the natural man does. The man who has been born again, however, has another factor to consider when evaluating input from the world.
The spirit is the God part of man. When it is working properly, the spirit keeps us in constant and direct contact with God. Our spirit has only this one function, communion with God. Like the body, our spirit takes in information, but the only information it receives is from God. Do not be confused here. Evil spirits do not work in our spirit. Their playground is our soul. It is in the mind and emotions they do their evil work. In fact, one of their primary methods is to attempt to convince us the entire spiritual world is nothing more than a figment of our imagination. To be a little more complete, there are also demons that affect our bodies, but we are outside the scope of this teaching.
The information our spirit receives from God is then sent to the soul for processing. We determine what we think about it, how we feel about it, and what we are going to do about it. That sounds hauntingly familiar. The problem is, even after we are born again and our spirit is functioning properly, we do not always know whether the information in our soul came through our body or our spirit. We also cannot ever discount demonic influences in the soul. Once we have processed the information we have received we decide what we will do about it. Primarily there are two options--do something or do nothing. Doing nothing is the easiest of the two choices, unless the information truly came through our spirit to do something. Then doing nothing becomes a very uncomfortable choice. If we decide to do something, we formulate what it is we want to do and send that information from the soul to the body to take action.
We could almost call this next item a mystery since a mystery in the New Testament is something that was heretofore hidden, but has now been revealed to us who operate in the spirit. The mystery that has been revealed is that Jesus is the body part of God, if you will. His earthly body was just like ours, but his resurrection body is different. However, put your thinking cap on, because while Jesus is now in the heavenly throne room in his resurrection body, he also left his body behind to continue his work on earth. We are Jesus' body on earth. He works through us. Of course he can intercede in any circumstance at anytime without our help, but when he does that, on the earth side we call it a miracle. In heaven, God works the same way we work. Wait, reverse that. On earth, we work the same way God works in heaven. He receives information from the world, processes that information, and acts on it. When he chooses to act via his body, that is us. We do the work. That is our job. We were created in the image of God to be his body on earth, to do his works. If that does not make you want to treat yourself (and other Christians) will a great deal more respect, there is not much else we can say to you about it.
There are whole segments of the evangelical church that believe man is bipartite (two parts), having a corporeal (flesh) part and an incorporeal (not flesh) part. This understanding is not incorrect, it is simply incomplete. Anyone who cannot understand this simple truth from 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12 will probably not understand our explanation either. Our incorporeal part is really two parts, spirit (the part of us that connects us to God) and soul (mind, emotions, and will). We really have three parts to us just as God has, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thus, this is at least a part of what it means to be created in the image of God. The reason for this misconception is largely historically, bad teaching, but there is more to it.
When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden, they chose their will over God's will. The result was their souls came between their spirits and God's spirit which effectively meant their spirits died. They were unable to connect properly with God's spirit due to interference from the soul. They passed that condition down to the rest of the human race. The end result for us is that we are born natural men who cannot understand the things of God. They are foolishness to us. (1 Corinthians 1:18) This is why Jesus told Nicodemus we must be born again in order to see (perceive, understand) the kingdom of God. (John 3:3) Being born again returns our spirits and souls to the proper attitude (double meaning intended) so that we are able once again to have individual, direct contact with God through our spirit. It is usually better to move from a known area to an unknown area when attempting to understand something, so before we discuss the spirit, let us detail the workings of its worldly counterpart, the body.
Our bodies really only have one primary function. While it is true they house the spirit and soul during our earthly pilgrimage, their real function is to give us contact with the world. By world, of course, we mean the physical world, everything that can be perceived with the physical senses. Our bodies were created to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell this world. Were we in a different world with a different atmosphere, different light spectrum, different gravity, etc., our bodies would be ideally suited to that world. We might say the body is situated so that it receives input from this world. This information is then relayed to the soul where we process it according to what we think (mind) about it, how we feel (emotions) about it, and what we will do (will) about it. We then send that information from the soul back to the body to act on it. This is the whole of what the natural man does. The man who has been born again, however, has another factor to consider when evaluating input from the world.
The spirit is the God part of man. When it is working properly, the spirit keeps us in constant and direct contact with God. Our spirit has only this one function, communion with God. Like the body, our spirit takes in information, but the only information it receives is from God. Do not be confused here. Evil spirits do not work in our spirit. Their playground is our soul. It is in the mind and emotions they do their evil work. In fact, one of their primary methods is to attempt to convince us the entire spiritual world is nothing more than a figment of our imagination. To be a little more complete, there are also demons that affect our bodies, but we are outside the scope of this teaching.
The information our spirit receives from God is then sent to the soul for processing. We determine what we think about it, how we feel about it, and what we are going to do about it. That sounds hauntingly familiar. The problem is, even after we are born again and our spirit is functioning properly, we do not always know whether the information in our soul came through our body or our spirit. We also cannot ever discount demonic influences in the soul. Once we have processed the information we have received we decide what we will do about it. Primarily there are two options--do something or do nothing. Doing nothing is the easiest of the two choices, unless the information truly came through our spirit to do something. Then doing nothing becomes a very uncomfortable choice. If we decide to do something, we formulate what it is we want to do and send that information from the soul to the body to take action.
We could almost call this next item a mystery since a mystery in the New Testament is something that was heretofore hidden, but has now been revealed to us who operate in the spirit. The mystery that has been revealed is that Jesus is the body part of God, if you will. His earthly body was just like ours, but his resurrection body is different. However, put your thinking cap on, because while Jesus is now in the heavenly throne room in his resurrection body, he also left his body behind to continue his work on earth. We are Jesus' body on earth. He works through us. Of course he can intercede in any circumstance at anytime without our help, but when he does that, on the earth side we call it a miracle. In heaven, God works the same way we work. Wait, reverse that. On earth, we work the same way God works in heaven. He receives information from the world, processes that information, and acts on it. When he chooses to act via his body, that is us. We do the work. That is our job. We were created in the image of God to be his body on earth, to do his works. If that does not make you want to treat yourself (and other Christians) will a great deal more respect, there is not much else we can say to you about it.
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