Denial Cuts Both Ways

My current occupation is program coordinator of a residential, substance abuse, treatment program for men. As you might imagine, I am confronted with some form of denial at least a few times a week. The most common of those, of course, is that the addict is not addicted. They are not addicted to street drugs, prescription drugs, or alcohol. I am currently working with one man who unabashadely tells me the only addiction he has is to women. Of course he uses a different term. Our larger organization inplemented a tobacco free policy for all our facilities and program participants effective January 1, 2010. When that policy was announced around December 1, 2009, there were very few complaints. Maybe it is the addictive mentality, I do not know, but not a one of our smokers seemed to even consider quitting before January 1. Then a few of them hurried to find nicotine substitutes to help them quit or just went underground, so to speak, with their addictions. Yes, that word is carefully chosen. The primary way one can tell if he or she is addicted is to turn away from the addiction and see what happens. In an addiction, the addictive substance will be constantly in the forefront of the mind.


We do not talk too much about addiction in our program. It is our belief that the only way to really overcome an addiction is to have our minds renewed toward addictions. It is not really an oversimplification to say God can take away any addictions we have. We generally have no problem identifying some addictions as bad. The aforementioned drugs and alcohol are considered to be bad things to do. Of course, we have just lumped illegal substances together with one which the law considers legal until it is abused and/or causes the person using it to perform illegal acts, such as driving a car while intoxicated.


There is, however, a totally different sort of denial we can fall victim too. Again, we are choosing our words carefully here. A person who becomes addicted to any substance is not a victim. He or she is a willing participant in the addiction, at least in the beginning. We do have a propensity as human beings, to inadvertently fall into the other sort of denial. This one occurs when the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is watered down or diluted. One of my former pastors, Jack Hayford, wrote, "A diluted gospel, produces deluded Christians." A deluded Christian is one who is in denial about how the Christian life is to be lived. (I think I just heard a few people get smacked in the forehead with that one.)


There is absolutely no way to justify being unloving toward anyone. Period. My current pastor, Rob Litzinger, often says, "We have to move from the idea that it is all about me to the idea that it is not about me at all." Is there anything more selfish than spending God's resources on substances to abuse? We are simply trying to broad-brush stroke the idea that we are permitted to do anything we think we would like to do. That concept does not apply if we have made Jesus Lord of our lives. Lordship means He is the boss and we do what He says.

I have mentioned the opposite of love is selfishness (or self-centeredness if you like) have I not? It is still amazing to me how many Christians do not understand that concept. When asked what the opposite of love is, the almost universal answer is "hate". That would be true if love were an emotion. (Incidentally we once heard the pastor of a large, local church say exactly that.) Hate is an emotion. Love is a fruit of the spirit. They cannot be opposites. To be sure, there are forms of love that are emotional. Is it any wonder that we are in denial about being able to walk in love when we do not even know what love is? Wait! What did I just say? We are in denial about being able to walk in love. You may remember that one of the symptoms of a religious spirit is that people have a form of godliness, but deny its power. (2 Timothy 3:5)

I cannot is simply not acceptable, but it is a place to start because it is true. At least we are being honest. We cannot. God can. Is it not amazing how those two, two word sentences clear away the fog? Knowing we cannot is the place to start to leave that denial behind.

I know people who are in denial about being able to walk in freedom from addictive substances. Frequently I see hope start to grow in some of them, as in, I hope I never go back to abusing (fill in the blank). We all have to start somewhere. Any spark of hope will help us at least see the right direction to go. The way to start loving is to act lovingly. The door to acting lovingly is to quit acting selfishly. That is probably enough of that for now.

The Workings of a Religious Spirit, Part 7

So I was making the bed a couple days ago (yes, Judi was out of town) and the Holy Spirit spoke into my spirit, "It is time to get back on task." There was obviously nothing I could say to that except, "Ok." I had no more than said that when I was aware that something I had been turning over and over in my mind for months (call it meditation if you like) is a working of a religious spirit we had not previously discussed here. The reason we have not is this is something we are inclined to take for granted.

You may remember me saying there was a period in my life when I could offend people simply by walking into a room. I never did understand how that happened. I had even asked a older, wiser brother in the faith about that once. His explanation was that I exuded an air of confidence most people did not have. I never really understood that either. Shortly after we returned to Santa Maria, we had the opportunity to do some ministry in a local church. We discovered that in simply reporting facts of experiences we had with God, people twisted and distorted our reports into some kind of braggadocio about what amazing people we are. To set the record straight for those of you who do not know us very well, we are not extraordinary people. There really is nothing remarkable about us. The prophet Micah asks, "He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8) I am not sure we have ever tried to do much other than that. Sometimes it feels as though we have not accomplished much at all to this point in life. However, God is true to His promises and He has given us some favor with men recently.

I am not sure exactly where that last paragraph came from, but it serves to introduce the fact that a vast portion of The Church does not understand the power given by Jesus as he ascended back into heaven. You may remember the term is "all power". Do not be misled by those who would say that applies only to Jesus because He said "all power has been given to me." The next words are, "therefore go." You can look that up in Matthew 28 if you are not willing to take my word for it. The power given to Him is our authority to go. God is a trinity. We cannot understand exactly how that works. What we do know is that it means God grants the power to Jesus who operated through the power of the Holy Spirit just as we are to operate. The "all power" definitely does apply to us.

This problem in the The Church can actually be answered with a principle from psychology. I know some people are going to object to me even saying that, but bear with me. If you still think I have it wrong after your careful consideration, make a comment. I post them all. The psychological term is "self-actualized". If one were to look at a self-actualized person from the perspective of Biblical knowledge, that person would look very much like someone who lives Romans 12:1-2. Specifically, that person would be seen to have had his mind transformed by the Holy Spirit so that he understands his calling in life is to prove the good and acceptable and perfect will of God in his life. A truly self-actualized person does that on a daily basis. He or she knows where their strength and ability lies--in God. Unfortunately, often all it takes to get into a leadership position in any kind of ministry organization is one's ability to impress or please someone a little farther up the food chain. We see today, many insecure leaders perpetuating insecure leadership by disallowing anyone who is more self-actualized than themselves to be in leadership.

I do not often quote my father in these pages, mostly because he is not a Christian and so he lives, works, and thinks from a different perspective. However, despite a lack of formal education, he became one of the elite managers in our little corner of the aerospace industry, often advising Air Force Generals on how to organize and facilitate projects. One thing he told me about his management style is that he never wanted people on his team who were not smarter and better at their jobs than he was. He said he would assemble the best people he could find, organize them into a team, and give them the tools they needed to accomplish their task. When he left them alone to do that, he was perceived as a brilliant manager because his team produced the desired results.

A religious spirit has to keep the cream from rising to the top. It depends on poor to mediocre leadership to keep a lid on those who are passionate about seeing the Kingdom of God come in all its power and glory. The leaders in place have to be less dangerous to the enemy than the rank and file members.

I told the men at the mission during devotions a few days ago, they were led into substance abuse because it was one way the devil had of neutralizing them and keeping them from becoming the men they should be. It was a new concept to many of them. If I can encourage you to do any one thing here, please seek the Lord about what is keeping you from doing great things in and for the Kingdom of God. Then change that. Be one of those people who are not held back by anyone or anything. "...work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." (Philippians 2:12-13)

By the way, if you feel there is any value in being more self-actualized than you are, you might enjoy a trip to http://www.selfcounseling.com/help/personalsuccess/selfactualization.html

Big Footprints

Every so often we see someone who comes seemingly out of nowhere and vaults onto a large stage. This person was heretofore unknown or known in a very limited realm or area. Suddenly, he or she becomes a celebrity (in the most general sense of the term) and becomes a household name practically overnight. We say that person "made a splash". This has happened, by my count, at least three times in American politics over the past couple years. You might guess whom I am talking about, but no names please, because any one, or all of them might become more than a splash. Any one of them may leave big footprints, for better or for worse. Time will tell. Am I being to cryptic? Here is a hint. The most recent one was this week. The newly elected, junior senator from Massachusetts made a very big splash onto the national scene. If you insist, the others I was thinking of are a former senator from Illinois, the previous Governor of Alaska, and perhaps even a former Governor of Arkansas who, in spite of being impeached by the United States Congress, just will not seem to go away. (Kind of gave my political views away there I guess.)

Sometimes people splash and no one even notices until the ripples get so far away that the person who started them can scarcely be remembered. For instance, I embrace and practice the teachings that came out of the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in 1906. I just found out last weekend who started that. William J. Seymour was a black man in Los Angeles when that was not very popular. It is reported there were churches that would not let him into their services for that reason. Nevertheless, he persevered and became known as the father of that revival. He left some pretty big footprints in my life and the lives of many others.


I wear a size 9, narrow width shoe. I am probably not ever going to leave very big footprints. What I am going to do is combine those size 9 feet with a lot of other people's feet. God made a promise to Moses which He reaffirmed and transferred to Joshua. Remember, Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land because of his disobedience. That is a whole teaching in itself. The promise was that they would possess every place the soles of their feet would tread. (Deuteronomy 11:24; Joshua 1:3) It is interesting that this is one of the first things God told Joshua when he assumed the leadership of Israel from Moses.


By and large, The Church today does not have a very good concept of possessing our inheritance. We do not have time or space to do the complete teaching on that inheritance or who is entitled to it. May it suffice to say it belongs to everyone who has made Jesus Lord of his or her life. In so doing we become the children of God and the seed of Abraham who was the first man to put his faith in the one, true, almighty God. "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." (Galatians 3:29) You may recall that when Abraham originally entered the promised land, God had him walk the entire length and breadth of the land and build altars at strategic places. In doing that, Abraham was putting God's mark on His land. We have the same authority. (Do not give up yet. Read the next paragraph.)

In the Old Testament we see physical representations of the spiritual truths in the New Testament. When Abraham and Joshua walked the physical ground of the promised land their literal feet were possessing the literal land. When we walk by faith now, we are dispossessing the spiritual forces that cover the land. In Santa Maria, those spiritual forces have blanketed the area with their diabolical schemes and have convinced most of The Church that this is as good as it gets. Oh please. The best estimate is that about 8% of the population in the Santa Maria Valley attends church, any church, on any given Sunday. That is as good as it gets? I think not. I think there is something keeping a lid on The Church in Santa Maria. That has to be obvious to anyone who has had his or her eyes opened to the real situation. It is time to do something about that. This is the time. We are the people. This stinking, religious spirit has had his way around here for much too long.

We have mentioned the Pentecost Walk ministry in these pages before. As far as we know, they are still planning to walk in the Santa Maria valley sometime this year. We plan to be there with them. We may even be doing something additional either before or after that event. We are waiting on the Lord for direction. In the meantime you will not want to miss the next couple posts.

Flashes of Brilliance in a Wasted Life

I really have no idea at this point why I am writing this post. It almost seems to me to be less useful than other things that could be written in this space. However, I do know when the Holy Spirit speaks something into my spirit and He definitely did this time.

I received a little distressing news today. You may remember Jon. He is one of the mighty men. (Sometimes Things Do Change, October 22, 2009). In fact, I used to print out the new posts after I had published them and Jon would proofread them. There were a lot of errors you never saw because he was very good at that. He was also a living testimony of how a person can change when confronted by Jesus. Jon is back in jail. I am not really sure of all the facts, but from what I have heard, he earned his way back. In fact, the word is that he is probably going back to state prison for some number of years. Jon originally came to the mission to avoid making what now seems like an inevitable trip to prison in the first place. He had already been there three times before, if I remember correctly. He had some flashes of brilliance while he was at the mission. He likely took more notes than anyone who has ever been in the program. He is a very intelligent man, probably more intelligent than this writer. He knows the right answers. So what happened?

I hammer and hammer and hammer the teaching about the tripartite nature of man into the men in my classes. It is of seminal importance we recognize how we gather and process information. We receive information from the world through our five senses, from God through our spirit, and from the devil directly into our minds. Then we have to process all that information and decide what to do with it.

The information we hear from the world is, by and large, what we want to hear. Seeing is not really believing either. We see what we want to see. I cannot remember who said, "Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see." It seems to be true. The devil is very good at telling us exactly what we want to hear. In Jon's case, I am imagining it was something like, "You certainly have a lot of stress in your life. You just need a good fix to take care of all that." Of course he would say it in the first person so we would think it was our own idea.

Jon had possibly the longest flash of brilliance in his life heretofore while he was in the program. His closest friends commented on the substantive changes in his lifestyle and way of thinking. He was doing the things he needed to do until he was not doing them anymore.

The thing about Jon is that he does have a good heart. To be sure, that good heart does lead him astray at times. He knows better. Then again, if we all did what we knew to do, the world would be a much better place. When you think about it, pray for Jon. He will inevitably have another chance to get it right. It is my considered opinion the devil targets the people who have the potential to do the greatest things for God. The end of Jon's story has not been written yet. The Holy Spirit suggested this title, but we have the opportunity to pray there will not be many more wasted years in Jon's life and the flashes of brilliance will come one after the other.

The Winter of My Discontent

Some people think God only speaks in scripture. In fact, if pressed, they may even admit they believe He only speaks in the words of the Authorized Version (King James Version). After all, it is authorized and none of the others are. In case you are confused about that, the King James Version of the Holy Bible was authorized by, you guessed it, King James of England in the wee, morning hours of the 17th century.

Interestingly, the title of this post comes from the same historical period. It is, of course, a take off from the opening line of Shakesphere's Play, "Richard The Third." When the line came up in my spirit the other morning I thought I was going to write about having a bad month starting around Thanksgiving. Judi asked me last night if it were true I had not written a post in a month. It is. I was even surprised it had been quite that long. I thought when Richard spoke this line he was talking about a winter of discontent. Now you know how well Shakesphere and I are aquainted. Of course that is only half the line. The remainder of the line is, "Made glorious summer..."


I did have something of a winter of discontent. Thankfully it only lasted about a month. For those of you who do not know, I am not really a fan of winter. No offense to those of you who are. I simply prefer the sunshine and warm days. I would rather wear shorts and flip flops than parkas and boots. Anyway, I am proclaiming today that my winter of discontent is now past and my glorious summer has begun. What does that mean? Let me try to explain.

Sometime around January 1 of this year, I felt I needed to fulfill another part of my anointing and, "...proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:19 NIV) I am only about two weeks behind on that. Two weeks behind really is not that bad lately. I had a fever about three degrees above normal on New Year's Day. It only lasted about fifteen hours. My last fever was two years ago and lasted over a week. Things have changed. Things have improved. This is the beginning of OUR glorious summer. It is the year of the Lord's favor. As with everything else in the Kingdom of God, we have a part to play in that as surely as someone had to bring Shakesphere's words to life by playing the part of Richard and speaking those lines.


Last Sunday I listened to my pastor give his "State of the Church Address" to the assembled body. One of the things that caught my attention is that he said God wants to do great things in the church. How he said that also struck me. He said God not only wanted to do great things at Church for Life, but also in "the church in Santa Maria." That phrase kind of sounded familiar to me.


Indeed, God does want to do great things in the church in Santa Maria in 2010. It is to be our glorious summer. It will be the year of the Lord's favor on all who believe and work to make it happen. Have we talked about the works of God? I will have to go back and look. I barely remember last December. I have no idea what all this blog contains without looking. Let me at least give you a teaser, "God works". That is from Romans 8:28 in the NIV. But wait, you get more. God works and we work. See Philippians 2:12-13. Oh great, now we have to discuss what salvation really includes. My guys at the mission do this to me too. Just as I am making a cogent point or trying to wrap up a class someone asks a question that requires a more detailed explanation than I have time to give. If we do not get back to that sometime soon, remind me. (Ok, I looked and we did already discuss salvation. Check out the post from 9/6/09. Those last couple sentences were just too good to delete so I am just adding a little to the end here.)

Eureka!

Maybe a better title for this post would be Ah ha! Eureka literally means "I have found it" or figuratively "I figured it out" which is not true in this case since as we all know all too well, I am just not that smart. As you know from the last post, I have been out of sync for awhile--at least I thought I was. The way out of that feeling is a good lesson for me and maybe a good lesson for you as well. I am still processing, but I know that period is almost over. I can still use a vacation for sure, but now I know I can wait at least until after the first of the year. Christmas is not my favorite holiday, (I love Easter) but having the family around for a few days is one of my favorite things. I am looking forward to that.

I made a serious error when I realized I was out of sync. Yes, it happens to the best of us. I guess it does. Perhaps some of the best of you can confirm that for me? Anyway, I lost my focus for a few weeks. I was focusing on being out of sync. You know that because I wrote about it. I was hoping that by processing what was happening I could get out of it. That was a serious error. I know better. There is only one place for our focus to be and it is not on the circumstances. The author of Hebrews encourages us saying, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith..." (NIV) For those of you old enough to remember Keith Green, he penned a line in a song that said, "It's so hard to see when my eyes are on me."

If you read the previous post you remember me saying that experience leads me to believe getting out of sync is nearly always a spiritual attack. I am chuckling here as I think about having written that without understanding it was the solution in my situation. In fact, as I evaluate what the Holy Spirit revealed to me this morning I realize it might have been a spiritual attack, but I let it get a little out of control. I realized I was out of sync so I focused on being out of sync rather than on Jesus.

I woke up too early today and was not sure I even wanted to go to church. I showered and dressed and sat down to watch a sermon on television. I did not make it quite all the way through the sermon before I fell asleep. I regained consciousness in time to get to the church up on the corner just as they were starting. In truth I probably could have made it to the church I usually attend, but I decided to visit a different one. I am not even sure what the pastor said that sparked the thought--maybe nothing--but I know I heard the word "plateau" in my spirit. So as I listened to the pastor exhort the congregation about the things we need to do to make the Christmas season even more of a blessing in our corporate lives, I was also hearing this post in my spirit.

Sometimes we hit a plateau in the spiritual life. We feel we are not making any progress. You who read this blog are a cut above in the spiritual life or you would not continue reading so I am going to be plain here. Plateaus are very important, but can also be very dangerous places. Sometimes we need a rest. As human beings clothed in corruptible flesh, we can only maintain momentum for a certain period of time. Of course that period varies from person to person, but we all need to rest from time to time. That is the good part. The bad part comes in when we enjoy the rest on the plateau so much we decide to stay there. When we struggle to a plateau the rest and refreshing can be so comfortable we lose a bit of the vision we were working on as we climbed the hill. We forget what we were doing right that enabled us to reach that place of rest. Do not let that be your problem if you find yourself in a place of rest. Enjoy the rest, but listen for the time to move.

Plateaus are the places to rest and refresh. The irony here is that we often bring additional stress upon ourselves by becoming impatient that nothing seems to be happening. I was there. Everything was going so well in my life, I could not think of a thing to complain about. Oh sure, there are always things that I would have changed were I able, but even those things did not seem important. Then I realized I did not even know I had hit a plateau. I just thought nothing was going on. I started wondering if anyone were actually reading the blog. Two of my mighty men got wounded, one critically. (Maybe I can explain that another time.) I just had no idea what was going on. It seemed as thought there was always more to do than I could possibly get done. I was simply out of sync. I am back now. That is not to say anything is likely to change dramatically right away. I am guessing it will be after the first of the year before the Lord calls us to make a push. I am thinking there may be another few things to address before that time. Stay tuned.

Out of Sync

Some of you might remember watching films in school. If I am not mistaken they were 16mm films that were projected on a screen by a complicated piece of machinery that usually made way to much noise. That is not my point. Sometimes the loop of the film was formed incorrectly by the projector operator and the people on the film would be moving their lips slightly faster or slower than the sound was coming from them. I used to have to turn my face away from the screen when that happened. It made me nuts. You possibly have that situation to thank for me being the way I am today. That situation is referred to as the picture and the sound being "out of sync". They were not working together as they should have. That is not a good thing. Some of you may also remember that was sort of what caused Milli Vanilli to have their grammy revoked. You can google that if you want. Actually, they were too much in sync.

I have been out of sync for a few weeks now. You may have noticed. I was coming along just fine with the painting and I got the new blinds hung and suddenly it was the afternoon before Thanksgiving. Everything was put on hold. Yes, I pretty much mean everything. I have barely gotten anything done other than going to work for a full week. That, of course, means the carpet will be laid before the baseboards are finished. That, in turn, means more masking and taping to protect the new carpet.

Sometimes life just gets out of sync. I suppose there are other examples we could use, but as I have to constantly remind my guys at the mission, do not get bogged down in the illustration. When life does get out of sync, we often try in vain, using all our own abilities and resources, to get back where we should be. Sometimes this works better than others, but it never really solves the problem.

Of course this is purely anecdotal evidence, but my experience leads me to believe that getting out of sync is nearly always a spiritual attack. Normally I do not leave fill in spaces between the lines, but I did in the previous paragraph. Did you notice the phrase "our own abilities and resources"? Did you read that as operating in the soul? Spiritual battles can never be won in the power of the soul.

Scripture tell us, "...whatever is not from faith is sin." (Romans 14:23) This means any time we start in the soul we are going to be wrong. There is no way to redeem an incorrect start in this area. We have to go back to the beginning and start all over again.

I am really not sure why I am telling you all this. Well, maybe I do know. Sometimes when I write or say something seemingly at random, I end up hearing something I needed to know. So far I am just out of sync. I am not at all sure what it is going to take to change that, but I do know there is something I am supposed to ask all of you to do.

Today I was in church and you would have thought I had the plague. I was in the third row. In fact I was the only one in the first three rows in that section. Another couple did come and sit in the row behind me. I am not going to give you too much information, but sometimes it is good to be in the presence of God, alone, even in the presence of other people, if you know what I mean. Somewhere along the line I had a random thought which is now obviously not so random at all. The thought was, "Tell the people to pray." It came bubbling up from my spirit and I knew it was time to really begin softening up the spiritual atmosphere. So will you pray, please? If you get a chance let us know what it is you are led to pray? As I said, I am a little out of sync.