The More Things Change

There is an old saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." It is Saturday, just after 5:00 AM and here I am blogging. That is not a problem. I have been mostly awake for about three hours already. I am pretty sure I am going to need a nap later on, but for now God bless Charles Alderton. Oh, he invented Dr. Pepper.

The more things change comes up because I got word of a scheduling change at work which I believe was intended to start next week. In my opinion it is never a good idea to unilaterally and indiscriminately change a person's schedule without considering all the ramifications. The new schedule is certainly less convenient for me, but it is not even about convenience. I have to rework the whole class schedule. It is not even about that though. I recently looked over our success rate to get the big picture overview. When we had to change from one class a day to two our success rate went way down. It probably was not the class schedule per se that caused it, but rather the fact that twice as much teaching left us with much less time to give the program participants nearly as much personal attention. We teach more, but disciple less. We are not able to pour as much of Jesus' life and love into the men. That leaves me sad. Another schedule change is only going to make that worse. I am not sure at this point what I can do to mitigate that.

I am doing some good work at the mission. At least a lot of people seem to think so. If I have to deal with some things I just do not understand I guess I will do that as long as Jesus is pleased to have me do it. I cannot help anyone if I am not there. Still, there comes a time when enough is too much. Not to worry, that time is not yet.

By now you are probably asking if I am just venting or if there is really a reason for all this. There is always a reason--if it is only me venting and processing my emotions in print. You all would probably be gracious with me and finish reading anyway. I am constantly amazed at what you all get out of the things I write when I am not the least bit impressed.

There are life lessons to be learned in any situation we may encounter. By the way, now Saturday has turned into Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We have been having internet problems for over a week here at home. I had finished this post. When I went to print a copy Monday, the last half was not there. Apparently it got lost Sunday somewhere between my computer and the Google server when I tried to publish it. I do apologize to those of you who might have read the half a post before I found out what had happened. The repairman for the DSL was here yesterday afternoon. Now I can finish it.

Sunday morning as I was almost awake I was kind of complaining to the Lord. I was saying "This guy is a pain in the..." That was exactly as far as I got when the Holy Spirit reminded me of something I have taught over the years about Paul's thorn in the flesh. (2 Corinthians 12:7) Most people want to spiritualize the thorn or say it was a physical illness that Paul could not get rid of. Some even claim this passage is proof Jesus does not want to heal everyone. I doubt Paul would have agreed. In fact, he said his thorn was a messenger of Satan sent to buffet him and keep him humble. What he was saying is he had a spirit following him, stirring up trouble for him and it was a pain in the neck. Of course with the decay of society nowadays we tend to use a lower part of the anatomy in that expression.

R.T. Kenyon, a pastor and author from a previous generation, believes everyone has a thorn in the flesh. I am not sure I agree with that hypothesis. I have never thought myself to need one. I can keep myself pretty humble with my own mistakes. I think that is all I will say about that.


Whether I have a thorn or not, I have been keep off balance for a couple weeks now by one thing after another. I need a vacation. Lord, I need a long vacation--with pay please. You have seen what happens when I am off balance. It has been over two weeks since I published a post. I know most of you are accustomed to me being a more prolific writer than that. I usually am.

Make no mistake, the devil does not want me to succeed in any area of my life. (Pssstttt...he does not want you to succeed either.) I have been getting dangerous to the kingdom of darkness after all these years. I beat on the serpent's head every day at the mission. Men are coming out of jail, being born again, and turning their lives toward more beneficial pursuits. I blog. Some people read my blog. Some of them find a little help, comfort, instruction or solace in what they read. I am dangerous.

"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28) Some of the newer translations add the causative to this verse so it reads, "...God causes all things to work..." or "...in all things, God works..." As Christians we know regardless of how the verse is translated, God is the one who works and causes all things to work. To finish this post and publish it, let me say that God worked in every situation that was causing me stress over the past week and they have all been resolved. It is possible that not everyone is happy with the way things were resolved, but that undoubtedly means their life lessons in those situations are not yet complete. God is doing good work everywhere I look. I am kind of excited. I had to finish this post so I could get on to the next one. If you are not excited by the time you finish reading it, check your pulse. God bless.

The Workings of a Religious Spirit, Part 2

They speak lies in hypocrisy and their consciences are seared. (1 Timothy 4:2) As you may have already noticed, the further we delve into the workings of a religious spirit, the more nuances we discover. The people who manifest these particular symptoms are not by nature this way. That is, by the new nature given to them by Jesus Christ they are not this way. They have been seduced into believing a lie themselves. In some cases it was as simple as believing their own press. They become legends in their own minds (read as soul). They likely minister to lots of people or lots and lots of people and are loved by the people to whom they minister. Perhaps the most charitable thing we can say about them is, had they not been influenced by a religious spirit, they would be practically perfect in every way. It occurs to me there is a corollary between a minister so affected and the apostle Paul in dealing with his thorn in the flesh. He says plainly that the thorn was a "messenger of Satan". (2 Corinthians ) That is a digression we will certainly deal with in a future post. Here is the rub. These men and women so affected are intelligent, attractive, charismatic, schooled, and principled individuals who want nothing more than to do their best work for God in extending his kingdom. However, they have been deceived into speaking lies and becoming hypocrites whose consciences have been seared by continuing in the lies.


I must give a bit of anecdotal evidence here in hopes of adding some clarity. If you have followed this blog from the beginning or have caught up on past posts you know that we have dealt with various ministers who we finally realized were being affected by a religious spirit. In one particular instance, we had been asked to leave a church. Several years later, I was personally invited to return to fellowship there. I declined the invitation because I did not sense anything had really changed in the intervening years. Apparently, the pastor must have really wanted our family to return for whatever reason because he called my wife a few weeks later to reiterate to her that we would indeed be welcomed back. This pastor was also acquainted with my brother in law. At some point in or around that period of time, the pastor told my brother in law that he had opened the door for us to return. About six months later as I recall the time frame, I had occasion to speak with a denomination official who had some authority over that church. I told him the pastor and I had made our peace and that we had been welcomed back. In a follow up conversation, the official told me the pastor had said he had never said we would be allowed to return to that church. He actually said it three separate times to three different people. This could be a totally confounding situation unless one knows this pastor to be a pathological liar who cannot differentiate fact from fiction. I believe he honestly thought he had told everyone the truth. I cannot explain how that happened except to say he was blinded by a spirit into speaking a lie. That lie became a hypocritical display because he was saying one thing to one person and something different to another. I do not doubt that were he to read this post, he would not even recognize himself as the person who did what I have just described. In that case, it would be evident his conscience is seared to the point he could not accept the possibility these were actually his actions. I should add a caveat here. My best guess is the pastor will continue in this condition until the religious spirit is removed and his eyes are opened to see the truth. Why would I say that? I know this pastor. I do not believe him to be a liar. I think he would be as aghast as you are to be reading this and wondering how this kind of situation can take place in the household of God.

They will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy (vs. 2) unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good (vs 3) lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God (vs 4) having a form of godliness, but denying its power (vs 5).

Take a deep breath. Here we go. We have already dealt with people who become inflated with their accomplishments supposing they have worked them by their own abilities. They put themselves first place. Oh no, not before God certainly, at least that is what they think. There really is not any way I know of to soften this other than to tell you about my personal epiphany regarding this this truth. Perhaps I should simply call it what it was, a convicting event by the Holy Spirit. This was many years ago so I am long since finished beating myself up about the attitude I held. Besides, I have also decided I am not that much different in this regard than you are.

I teach. That's what I do. I love to teach. In order for me to teach, someone has to learn. I love to see people learn. I love it when the lights go on and those I am teaching really understand. One day (as I said, it has been awhile now) I was thinking about just how much I enjoyed being in front of a crowd teaching. If you have seen me teach live, you know I can add a little humor and occasionally a flourish of showmanship. As I was thinking about all this the Holy Spirit spoke to my spirit. He said, "You know you really enjoy being in the limelight and being the center of attention even more than you enjoy teaching anything of value." OUCH! Hey, I just realized I do not really enjoy that kind of limelight anymore at this point in my life. Perhaps that is progress?

Now that we have a little better idea of what this listing is all about, we can easily see the real problem. More is better and God becomes a means to an end. The end in this case is getting what is important to us regardless of how it might affect anyone else. It is all about us. We want more money, we want to be proud of ourselves and boast about our accomplishments. I am not all that good at math, but the way I add those things, it appears we are giving ourselves credit for what God has done. With one more mathematical function that might just add up to the definition of blasphemy, i.e., taking credit to oneself for something God has done.

I do not know about you, but I am almost feeling like I need a shower after reading the rest of the list. Nevertheless, if we press on we may be able to finish this message sometime before Jesus comes back. So what about "...unholy, (vs. 2). Sounds to me like all those are violations of the second greatest commandment, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." (Luke 10:27) Oh, but we were not talking about sin per se. We were talking about the affect of a religious spirit causing these kinds of things to be done. Unholy is obviously the opposite of holy which essentially means to "keep separate". There should be no discrimination of any sort in the church facilities. This is actually a federal law, by the way. Because virtually all churches have 501(c)(3) income tax exemptions from the federal government, they are required by law not to discriminate. Surely I am not the only person who has ever been told I am not welcome in a particular church. (Churches are exempt from having to become a 501(c)(3) corporation and they can still be tax exempt. Send an email or post a comment if you would like more information.) The point is, we let politics creep into the church in so many ways we do not even realize. When the church acts like a worldly institution have we not become unholy?

This post is quickly becoming unwieldy. On to Part 3.