I am just beginning a series on knowing who we are in Christ. An accurate sense of our self-image or our identity is a critical element in our walk with Christ.  God has gone to great lengths to reveal who we are in his Son and so that knowledge must be essential. The very first thing God reveals about us in his written word is that we are made in the image of God.

As Genesis unfolds, we soon discover that God not only had a burning desire to create a universe but, at least on one planet, he had a desire to create living beings made in his own image. Since God is love (1 Jn.4:8), I believe his very nature prompted him to create man so that he could multiply his expressions of love and receive love as well. A mother’s yearnings to have children must be slightly akin to the yearning that God felt to create us.

I must admit that the idea of being made in the image of God is a bit mind-boggling. Theologians have debated exactly what that means for millennia.  Whatever it means to be made in God’s image, it certainly means that we have enough characteristics in common with the Creator to communicate with him, to give and receive love from him, for his Spirit to take up residence within us, for deity to put on flesh and live as one of us, to think as the Father thinks, and to be called his children and his friends …not his pets.

The Psalmist declared, “What is man that you are mindful of him…you made him just a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps.8:4-5). Of all creation, including powerful and majestic angels, only man is said to bemade in God’s image. Scripture implies that we have even greater standing in heaven than his awe-inspiring angels. Although we were made a little lower than the heavenly beings, Paul reveals that those of us who are in Christ will actually sit in judgment over angels (I Cor. 6:3).  In addition, the writer of Hebrews tells us that the angels were created to minister to or serve those who will inherit salvation (Heb.1:14). That includes you.

This blog will come out on Christmas Day.  It is a day for reflecting on the amazing truth that God has made us in his own image and, in doing so, values each of us enough to give us the gift of his Son, wrapped in flesh and destined to be a sacrifice. We tend to view Christmas through the lens of Hallmark movies and Christmas cards that depict the nativity as clean, bright, and serene. You know… a peaceful Mary and Joseph with contented cows lowing in the manger and antiseptic, bright sheep bleating in the background.  The shepherds are there along with the three wise men in clean, royal robes looking as they just caught a limo from the Bethlehem Hilton.  Our view of the birth of Jesus is quite sanitized.  As we do that, the cost of God, putting on flesh and being born to a virgin in a small village in Israel is often overlooked.

The cost of his entry into this world began nine months earlier. It began with fearful encounters with angels who had to calm Mary and encourage Joseph.  The birth of the great King began with scandal as this unwed virgin first had to break the news to her fiancé that she was pregnant and later face her family and friends who were “surprised” at how quickly she became pregnant after a hurried wedding.  Joseph’s first response was a plan to divorce her since she had clearly violated her vows with him.  It took the visitation of an angel in a dream to convince him that she might have been telling the truth when she shared her outlandish story of being impregnated by the Holy Spirit. I suspect Joseph questioned his dream from time to time in the following years that they were married. In her ninth month, Joseph was called from Galilee to Bethlehem to register in a census. It seems that things back home must not have been that good for her to feel compelled to take that journey with her husband.  Most probably, the birth of Christ was in Spring rather than the winter since shepherds would not be in the fields at night with their sheep, except in the lambing season of March and April.  Still it was a hard trip and even a dangerous trip for the little couple  nine months pregnant.  There is no evidence that any family members from Nazareth travelled with them, which again suggests that the pregnancy of Mary had not been celebrated back home.  After the birth, they remained in Bethlehem instead of returning to their hometown which again points at a scandal back home that they did not want to try to explain away once more.

The wise men showed up two years after the birth, when they had first seen the “King’s star.”  Mary and Joseph were in a home in Bethlehem by then, not a stable. The wise men’s visit with Herod was not very wise and their audience with him set in motion the death of many innocent Hebrew boys as a result.  Before Herod acted to protect his throne from the threat of this rival king, Joseph was warned in a dream to pull up stakes and disappear into the nation of Egypt.   God had funded the trip with gold, frankincense, and myrrh but they were still a hunted couple on the run in a foreign land where Hebrews were not particularly welcome.  There was more, but I want you to think of the cost of God coming into this world on our behalf… even on the front end. Thirty years later, the ultimate price would be paid for our ransom but this who entry into the world of man came at a great cost to one who had sat on a throne in glory hearing only his praises sung by angles before entering into a world of insult, danger, poverty, and pain.

Jesus not only died for you, but was born for you. Born into scandal he became a political refugee before his second birthday and his parents feared discovery by Herod for years after his birth.  Mary and Joseph did return to Nazareth after their stint in Egypt, but I’m certain that questions still remained about Mary’s pregnancy, the birth of this child, and where they had been for two years.  First century Palestine was not as relaxed about pregnancy outside of marriage as we are.

The only conclusion is that you are of amazing and extreme value in the eyes of God. Made in his image might mean many things, but it certainly means that you have great significance, even greater than the angels themselves. Not only did God make you, but he redeemed you even after we, as a race, had rebelled against the king.  So, this Christmas celebrate Jesus, but also celebrate who you are in him…crowned with glory and honor and made just a little lower than the heavenly beings.

As we begin this series, I want to start fleshing out our identity in Christ by talking more about the importance of identity. As I have said before, there is probably nothing that impacts us more than our identity or our sense of self.  Most of us spend our entire lives trying to determine who we are and whether we really matter – whether our lives really matter.   We are born into this world without a notion of who we are or what we are. We develop ideas about those critical issues mostly from the way others respond to us.

If I am nurtured, loved, celebrated, supported, and valued when I am young, I will grow up believing that I am significant, competent, and worthy of love because I was treated that way. I will expect others to value me because I was valued by my family and I was told over and over that I was significant, capable, and that I belonged. I will be open, confident, and secure in who I am.  Because of that, most people will respond positively to me so my beliefs about myself will be reinforced and my confidence will be a catalyst in doing well in school, sports and career.  I won’t be perfect, but I will have a foundation for believing that I matter and that I have worth.  Because of that, I will be able to give and receive love at a reasonable level and will have some resilience when I am criticized. In short I will believe that if others knew me, they would probably love or appreciate me.  I will also believe that God can love me.

On the other hand, if I am born into an environment of neglect, abuse, criticism, or perfectionism, I will typically feel that there something defective in me that others can’t love.  Why else would the people in my life treat me so badly? I will feel that I can never measure up and I will live with a sense of shame – a sense that there is something unacceptable about me.  I will expect rejection and will often act in ways that invite the rejection I fear.  I may be withdrawn or always critical of others as I try to level the playing field by bringing others down to my level. I may cover up with a false arrogance or bravado and may try to cover up my mistakes by always blaming others for my miscues.  Eventually, my behaviors will push people away and my negative self-image will be reinforced.  Ultimately, I will believe that if people really knew me, they would reject me. I will also doubt that God loves me.

My identity affects my emotional health, my performance, my relationships, and even my spiritual life.  My experience tells me that most of us live on the negative end of the self-esteem continuum and build all kinds of defense mechanisms into our lives to cover our sense of defectiveness. Remember, before sin, Adam and Eve felt no shame and walked in the Garden with God in an intimate relationship while naked.  But after their sin, they tried desperately to hide, cover up, and blame others for their own decision.   To Satan’s delight, shame had crept in. Adam and Eve no longer felt acceptable.  They felt fear for the first time…fear of rejection and fear of punishment.  Our own sense of defectiveness and rejection causes us to do the same things and we pay the price at every level.

Satan loves to reinforce our fear of unworthiness, insignificance, and rejection at every turn. Spirits of condemnation, rejection, and accusation move us to take offense easily at anything that has the slightest aroma of criticism. He tries hard to convince us that even God can’t love us and so we pray with little faith and even less expectation. We see ourselves as messed up and insignificant and cannot see ourselves doing anything great in the kingdom of God.

As a result, believers continue to be angry, depressed, easily offended, fearful, doubting and medicated even after they are saved.  I am convinced that many believers stay that way because they believe they are the same inadequate, broken, insignificant, defective person they always were except they are forgiven. It is not enough to know that we are forgiven, but we need to truly know that we are new creations with an amazing position in the kingdom of God. We will not be transformed until we believe who we are in Christ.  Next week, we will begin to consider who we are in Jesus in detail.  We will begin with the amazing fact that we are made in the image of God.  Blessings.

If you listen to much Christian music and pay attention to the themes, you will have noticed lately, how many songs have risen to the top of the charts that carry the theme ofiIdentityor who we are in Christ.  Hillsong’s Who You Say I Am, Jason Gray’s Remind Me who I Am, Bethel’s No Longer Slaves, etc. are just a few that focus on who the Father has made us to be in Christ.

If you reflect on Christian music through the years, certain themes rise to the surface at different times.  I believe the Holy Spirit directs much of the Christian music that is born in each decade or generation and that music undergirds foundations that need to be laid in believers for his upcoming purposes and events in the world.  Right now, identityis on the front burner. It’s not that it hasn’t always been important.  God has always gone to extreme lengths throughout history to affirm who we are in Jesus as his new creations.  But in this current culture of fading family identity, compromised truths in the church, shifting definitions of gender and marriage, and a heightened war against Christianity, it is especially critical that we know who we are…not as it is defined by self, culture, or government…but by God who operates from eternal truths and values.

David wrote, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Ps.139:13-16).

This Psalm reveals God’s involvement and sovereignty in the lives of individuals.  From the point of conception, God’s hand is upon each person. He creates that individual’s inmost being (his or her temperament, gifts, abilities, etc.) as well as some physical characteristics. Then, he says that every day has been ordained for us and written in his book.  I believe that God ordains opportunities for us which are the good worksprepared in advance for us in Ephesians 2:10. When the opportunity arises, we can still say “yes” or “no” to the moment, but God ordained the opportunity.

Concerning our identity, God has set an identity within us that coincides with the purposes he has ordained for our lives. Biblically, it is not me, culture, government, or science that determines who I should be, but rather God. Knowing who God has made me to be, anchors me in who I am and the call he has placed on my life.  We need to actively be speaking identity over our children, ourselves, and one another in a world where nothing seems certain or absolute any more.

In our Free Indeed ministry, we emphasize identity a great deal and even ask our participants to read out loud a declaration of their identity in Christ at least once a day for 60 days to renew their mind in God’s truth about them.  It is one of the most transformative activations we do in our eight-week series.

Because of the cultural (demonic) assault on our identity in this generation, beginning next week, I want to spend several blogs discussing who we are in Christ, the amazing value he has given each of us, and why it is so important to know that.  I hope you will join me for this important series.

I am part of a church that recognizes the reality of the spiritual realm…both angelic and demonic.  We talk about it, pray about it, and exercise spiritual gifts that touch the unseen realm.  Because of that, I often forget that a large portion of the American and western European church still gives little thought to the reality of the spiritual realm or spiritual warfare. These churches do seem to be comfortable with the idea of angels … especially, guardian angels watching over our children.  However, I wonder how many actually believe in the constant activity of angels or just think of angels in vague ways as a nice sentiment or a comforting thought with little reality behind the notion…kind of like Santa Claus?

In his book, Deliverance from Evil Spirits. Francis MacNutt wrote a chapter entitled, “Do Demons Really Exist?”  Let me quote a little from that chapter.  “Two hundred years ago few Christians questioned whether Satan and the demonic realm were real. Then there would have been no need to write a chapter like this. Even as recently as 1972, Pope Paul VI, reaffirming the age-old understanding of scripture (and human experience) wrote:  ‘It is contrary to the teaching of the Bible or the Church to refuse to recognize the existence of such a reality…or to explain it as a pseudo-reality, a conceptual and fanciful personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes…’” The Pope would not have written that unless many were trying to write off the teachings of scripture about the kingdom of darkness as mythology and quaint stories told to explain why bad things happen in this world.

MacNutt goes on to say, “As we read through the Gospels, we cannot help but be struck by the extraordinary numbers of references to Jesus confronting Satan and the whole realm of demons. A major theme in the New Testament is the clash between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan. The climax of human history, in fact, occurs when God, in Jesus, overpowers Satan and frees the human race from Satan’s dominion. Nor do I propose that the ministry of deliverance is simply one minor ministry among many that need to be resurrected in today’s Church, but that Jesus’ ministry of deliverance is central to an understanding of the gospel. ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work’ (1 Jn.3:8).”

Paul clearly states that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces of evil (Eph.6).  He then discusses the necessity of implementing divine weapons in 2 Corinthians 10 because our enemy must be faced in the spiritual realm with spiritual weapons if we are to overcome him.  Currently, the activity of the demonic is raging in America because our national leaders have opened the door for him by declaring evil things got be good and good things to be evil. Many believers are being hammered and are unaware of the source of that oppression and torment,

Charismatic churches are exploding in third world countries because they bring the power of God into the battle against the demonic forces these people recognize and deal with through witch doctors and shamans. It is in the west that Satan has become invisible.  I didn’t say inactive, but invisible. He is invisible because our material, technological culture denies his existence. Many of us have a world view that simply filters out any recognition of his reality or activity. We see the same symptoms in people that were diagnosed as demonic affliction in the Bible, but diagnose them as psychiatric or physiological conditions that can hopefully be managed with medications.  Most Christian counselors will recommend medications for emotional torment but would never suggest deliverance.  The Biblical model demands that we seriously consider both forms of healing when ministering to the illness, torment, and bondage of people.

During the Civil War in America, we are told that more men died from infections than from actual gunshot wounds. The enemy was unseen bacteria. There was little understanding of the cause of infection and the care of wounds, so bacteria thrived and infections went untreated.  What was unseen and unrecognized caused thousands of deaths and amputations.  In the west, Satan seems to operate unseen and unrecognized because we have placed the demonic realm in the category of fiction or superstition.   Satan, then, has free reign to do as he wants as long as he can masquerade as mental illness or some rare physiological condition that is yet to respond to treatment. All the drugs in the world will not expel a demon and so mental health facilities cannot keep up with demand.  I know that Covid is a real thing but I also believe there are spiritual dimensions to Covid that have made the reality much more destructive than it has to be…especially spirits of fear, suicide, depression, distrust, isolation, and so forth.

I am not saying that all depression, suicidal thoughts, gender confusion, rage, violence, and so forth is demonic. But some of it or much of it is or is magnified by demonic spirits.  When Paul said that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual entities and forces of evil, he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.

The western world has enthroned science and “reason” above revelation.  Many Christians have done the same and are even embarrassed to talk about things like demons and supernatural healing as if those are vestiges of some ignorant superstition that used to infect the church.  Many Christians often exhaust all natural healing possibilities before even beginning to pray for healing because they believe more in science than the promises of God.  However, Satan is very real and is still very active. I can’t list all the people we have ministered to over the past twenty years or so that were set free by Jesus in a few minutes while their therapists and medications had only been able to take the edge off their pain, fear, depression, or despair for years. They were delivered because someone believed the Bible and that biblical realities don’t go away as technology advances.

Doctors can help a great deal when the issue is rooted in the natural realm and I am very thankful for the grace if medicine.   But Jesus is the only physician that can provide a cure when the issue is rooted in the spiritual realm.  Wise people will consider both realms when someone needs help and discern where the root lies.  In many cases, both realms will need to be engaged, because all of us are both physical and spiritual and are touched by both realms.  To deny the demonic realm because it makes us uncomfortable or because it doesn’t fit the cultural view of reality is like a person who refuses to get a checkup for cancer because they are afraid of what they might find. In both cases, early diagnosis and treatment is the best approach.  Both cancer and Satan produce devastating results when they go unnoticed and untreated.

The gospel of Jesus Christ will never meet its full potential in the lives of God’s people until his church universally accepts biblical realities and goes to war with an unseen, but very real enemy.  The victory is already ours, but it still must be enforced because demons tend to be non-compliant types who won’t get out just because an eviction notice came in the mail.

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.  Matthew 7:1-2

Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Luke 6:37

The two verses above come from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  Of course, we call it by that name, he didn’t.  The verses have been misused on many occasions to protest any admonition or rebuke levied against an individual’s sin.  We all know the phrase, “Don’t judge me!”   If “judging,” in the sense that Jesus used it, meant calling another person to repentance, then Paul sinned on numerous occasions in his letters to the churches, as well as Peter and James and other writers of the New Testament.  These writers often pointed out sins in the churches to whom they were writing as they called them to repentance and, on occasion, even called out people by  name.

So, if this is not a prohibition of pointing out the sins of others, what does it mean?  It’s an important question and one that needs to be seriously considered in the area of spiritual freedom and spiritual warfare.  Let’s again settle what it doesn’tmean. In his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul commanded, “I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you” (1 Cor. 5:9-13).

Jesus says, “Judge not…”  Paul says “Judge.”  Are these two teachings contradicting one another?  We believe that the Holy Spirit directed Paul’s writings and that Jesus spoke what he heard from the Father, so these cannot be contradictory commands because God does not contradict himself. What, then, do they mean?

Typically, the issue in spiritual matters is the heart and I believe that is the issue that settles the matter on judging.  When Paul commands us to judge those within the church, we are not making personal judgments but are submitting to the judgment of God’s word.  If a man or woman is living a life that is clearly contradictory to scripture and will not repent after leadership has gone to them, shown them what Jesus had to say about their lifestyle, and prayed with them, then some form of discipline is in order.  The key is that the “judgment” is out of concern for their salvation and the spiritual health of the body of Christ.  There is no self-righteous component in which church leaders are feeling morally superior to the person caught in sin.  Love is motivating the discipline in the same way that love motivates a parent to discipline a rebellious child.

The spirit of this “judgment” is revealed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians when he says, “Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each onelooking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” (Gal.6:11-3).  This verse describes the heart of proper judgment.  The Word is the standard rather than our own biases. We approach the individual with gentleness and a sense of our own weakness and vulnerability to sin. We typically judge the behavior rather than the heart or the person, because only God knows all the issues behind the sin.  We still deal with the sin, because unrepented sin puts the person’s eternal destination in jeopardy and eventually can lead others into sin as well. The goal of proper judgment is always redemption motivated by love.

The judgment Jesus speaks of is a personal judgment based on a feeling of superiority or a desire to hurt the other person. We tend to go past the behavior and simply label another person as if we know their thoughts and their heart.  Instead of saying that a young woman is involved in sexual immorality, we simply label her as a slut…verbally or in our own minds. At that point, we have made her “less than” us, although we probably have another variety of sin in our own life that we justify or don’t recognize.  That judgment exalts us and diminishes the other person.  We don’t feel concern, but rather contempt. We don’t love, but reject.  We judge the person’s worth and value, rather than letting God be the judge.

Here is the danger.  When we judge with that heart, we align ourselves with Satan who is the accuser of the brethren. Secondly, Jesus says that “with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged.”  When we judge others with a heart of moral superiority, we open ourselves up to the enemy.  We have not shown mercy or forgiveness.  When we judge another, in this context, we sin and the unrepented sin is an open door to the enemy.  Not only that, but once we have cast another person in a certain light through judgment, we typically dismiss all evidence to the contrary.

The most difficult thing in marriage counseling is to deal with judgment.  Once a spouse has judged their partner as selfish, hateful, manipulative, perverse, etc., it is difficult for them to see their spouse in any other light.  Even when that spouse is changing, the one who has made a judgment will not see the change or credit the change.  Eventually, the “judged” spouse will give up trying to be different because they sense that whatever they do will never be enough. The spouse who has made the judgment will always feel superior to the other and their disdain or disrespect will poison the relationship.  Believe me, Satan will work hard to justify and maintain that judgment in the mind of the spouse who has made it.

This kind of judgment, because it is sin, gives the devil a legal right to afflict us.  That is how our judgment comes back on us.  If we judge someone to be a perverse person, Satan can treat us as a perverse person. If we judge someone to be selfish, the enemy can deal with us as a selfish person. In finding freedom, people not only need to repent of active sin and unforgiveness, but of judgments as well. In the same way that we repent of sin and renounce it, we must also repent of judgments and renounce them before we can dismiss every demon. Again, this is not a denial of sin, but a change of heart toward the sinner.

Once again, identifying behavior as sinful, based on the word of God, is not the same as labeling a person and thinking less of them because of our personal agendas.  The kind of judgment the apostle Paul calls us to honors the word of God and humbly seeks restoration of a person caught in sin. The judgment Jesus warns us against, actually diminishes the chance for restoration because we feel no obligation to try to redeem that person we have labeled and often seek to have others join us in our judgment against him or her.  So, as we examine ourselves to see if we are in alignment with the Father’s will, we may want to scan our own hearts and history to see if judgment is opening a door for the enemy or is keeping us from reconciling a relationship.  If we are ministering freedom, to others, judgment is an area that needs to be explored.

When you get into the business of helping people deal with their brokenness through counseling, prayer, and deliverance, you are never more like Jesus.  However, there is a side effect to going down that road.  As you choose to help people deal with their wounds and their pasts, more and more broken folks will show up in your life. Broken people know broken people, and if you are caring and helpful, they will send others your way. Undoubtedly, God will be entrusting some of these individuals to you so that you can dispense his grace in their lives.

Let me warn you, however, that Satan will also deposit some of these folks in your life.  Those individuals will have the uncanny ability to suck the life out of you for months and months and distract you from some very important things that God has ordained for you.  Many of us that are drawn to healing ministries have a spiritual gift of mercy and compassion.  That’s the way it should be. But sometimes, that mercy gift morphs into a “rescuer” theme that develops in our lives and we can find ourselves in bondage to a mindset that feels responsible for the well-being of every victim or broken person we encounter.

In itself, being a rescuer is very Christ-like. After all, Jesus came to seek and save the lost.  That sounds like rescue work.  I would agree, but Jesus also set some very healthy boundaries around his rescue missions. You should as well. He displayed some of those when he went to the Pool of Bethesda and asked the lame man, “Do you want to be healed?”  Whenever we are working with broken people, that is a question we need to keep in mind. The truth is that not everyone wants to be healed, although everyone says they do.  Some do want to be healed but do not want to do any work to get to that place.  They want you to heal them and then want you to take up their mat and carry it for them.

Over the years, in our ministry at Mid-Cities, we have settled on a position that clearly states, “If you want to change, you have to do the work.”  Our belief is that when it comes to healing and freedom, God won’t do the work for us but he is more than happy to do it with us.  When Israel finally made it to Canaan, God could have cleared the land of Israel’s enemies with one sweep of his hand. He could have sent plagues, a band of destroying angels, or displayed any number of other supernatural acts to drive the tribes from the land.  Instead, he required Israel to go to battle.  He would lead them and assure their victories, but they still had to endure the hardships of warfare.  They had to face the enemy, check their faith, and swing the sword.  In doing so, their character was refined and their relationship with God was enhanced.

People who want their lives to be transformed have to fight some battles.  Our job is to equip them to fight and, at times, fight along with them. But our goal should be to equip them to engage with God and defeat the enemy on a daily basis or simply make better choices in the future.  Those who fall into the trap of becoming a rescuer tend to make the individuals they are rescuing dependent on them  – their wisdom, their gifts, and their resources. Part of the trap may be that the cycle may feel good to the rescuer because he or she see is making a difference in the life of a person and also because he or she enjoys the gratitude and admiration of those they are rescuing.  However, they are not teaching them to fight and they are not teaching them to depend on Jesus.  Everyone needs to be rescued from time to time, but when being rescued becomes a lifestyle for broken people, there is something wrong.

My wife Susan has a very wise saying when it comes to ministry to broken people. She says, “If you are doing more work than they are, something is wrong.” What you notice about Jesus is that his compassion met people where they were, but he did not leave them there.  He didn’t beg people to follow him or stay in one place long to make sure people followed through on his prescriptions for life. He pointed them to God, gave them godly counsel, got them started and then let them be responsible for their next steps.

There are those who truly want to change and are ready to do the work.  Invest in them.  There are others who want you to fix them and their life, but won’t do their part. They want God to magically change their hearts, their minds, and their circumstances while they sit and watch. God doesn’t work that way and neither should we. Let that person contact you when he or she is actually ready to do the work.  Others don’t really want to change, but simply love the attention and care they get as person after person pours into them without seeing much progress. That person needs to repent. And still others, want you to take away their pain but don’t want to give up some sin in their lives that has created the pain. They simply want you to rescue them from the consequences of their actions without changing their behaviors or choices. These too need to repent.

When you have begun to minister to a person who needs healing and freedom, you may have to carry most of the load initially. But that person should soon begin to make progress.  He should be engaged in the fight.   She should be in the word and in prayer.  That person should also make your appointments on time and consistently and must be willing to start aligning his or her life with God’s word and his commands.

Too often, our mercy gift kicks in and we keep meeting, keep rescuing, keep rescheduling for weeks and months because we feel responsible to “save the person.”  It is often necessary to remember that Jesus is their Savior, not us. Too often we enable irresponsible behavior and allow them to continue to see themselves as helpless victims who always need a hero to rescue them from the dragons in their lives.  Too often we keep them from experiencing the very consequences that would have been their best teachers.  God does not require that we fix broken people.  That is his job.  Our job is to give them godly counsel, point them to Jesus, and equip them to live as children of the king if they are motivated to do so.  We are to be responsible to them, but not for them.

As hard as it is, there are times when we just have to cut someone loose to whom we have tied ourselves because we realize we are trying to plant God’s seed in poor soil. No real fruit is being produced. The soil may improve over time, but for the moment, there are better investments for the wisdom, experience, mercy, and gifts God has entrusted to your stewardship.

I think we need to see ourselves as mentors or coaches rather than rescuers.  As we enter into a mentoring or coaching relationship with a broken person, we need to kindly and gently set expectations for growth and the work they need to be doing in order for authentic change to take place. That person should know that our goal is to make him/her dependent on Jesus, not on us and for them to become mature in their faith.  Growth and change will be an expectation in order for us to continue to disciple them. If it becomes apparent that you are working with a person who does not want to change or is not ready to change, you can still love them but you don’t have to pour into them.  We are certainly not requiring perfection.  After all, Jesus had to display a great deal of patience with the twelve who often seemed like spiritual knuckleheads, but they were on a growth trajectory and their hearts truly desired to be men who pleased the Master. I also suspect Jesus has had to be patient with us and give us second chances. But if the person you are pouring into is not displaying change or doing the work over a period of time, you may need to invest in someone else.

I’m not really writing this to instruct you in mentoring, as much as I am wanting to encourage you to avoid the rescuertrap and to even give you permission to cut yourself loose from unfruitful relationships that are keeping you from investing in other relationships that will bear great fruit and give you life rather than sucking life from you.  Remember, God sends some people your way, but so does Satan. A wise person will learn to discern who wants to be healed and who truly doesn’t.

I was brought to faith in a fellowship that had a stated goal of reproducing the New Testament church in our day.  That was actually a thought that gained traction in the 1800’s long after the Reformation had opened the way for numerous denominations to spring up and splinter the body of Christ.  The idea was that unity could be restored in the body if we took the Bible as our only source of authority and reproduced the church as we saw it in the New Testament.  One of the things they looked for were patternsthat emerged in the way the church functioned.

A cornerstone passage for the goal was taken from Paul’s second letter to Timothy. “What you heard from me, keep as the patternof sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us (2 Tim.1:13-14).  The 1^stcentury church met on the first day of the week, so we must.  The church in the New Testament had evangelists, elders and deacons, so me must. The early churched immersed believers in water (baptism) so we must. You get the idea and it makes perfect sense. The problem was that we picked some patterns to follow and dismissed others that made us uncomfortable.

For instance, Jesus established a very discernible pattern in his ministry. In fact, it was a pattern that would mark the Messiah and his followers.  When John, the baptizer, found himself in prison, he began to doubt his own judgment about the Messiah.  He sent some of his followers to confirm that Jesus was who John believed him to be. “At that very time, Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor” (Lk.7:21-23). He not only preached the kingdom, but demonstrated the kingdom as well.

He instructed others to do the same. “These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons” (Matt. 10:5-8).  Later, he sent out seventy-two others with the same instructions. Then, in “The Great Commission,”  Jesus commanded his followers to go into all the world and to make disciples of all nations by teaching them to obey everythingthat he had commanded them to do.  Whatever Jesus had commanded his apostles and close circle of disciples to do, they were to teach others to do.  He doesn’t seem to make any exceptions in his teachings.  Therefore, the pattern for all believers was to preach the kingdom and then demonstrate it with signs and wonders.

When Jesus sent out the twelve and the seventy-two to represent him throughout Israel, they could not truly re-present Jesus without doing the works he did.  Neither can we re-present Jesus without doing those same works. There are some who believe such authority was given only to a few in the first century.  However, Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Son may bring glory to the Father” (Jn.14:12-14, emphasis added).

Jesus clearly stated that anyone who has faith in him will do what he had been doing and even greater things.  He posted no shelf life and no expiration date on his offer because it was a matter of bringing glory to the Father. In addition, Jesus gave gifts to the church through the Holy Spirit by which “the household of God” could exercise authority and demonstrate the Kingdom as well.  That is how the church is to represent Jesus. We can do so because Jesus was given all authority by the Father and we, as believers, share in that authority,

Remember that the Father raised Jesus from the dead and “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion” (Eph.1:20-21).  Then “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in heavenly realms” (Eph.2:6). In the same vein, Paul wrote, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority” (Col.2:9-10). If you can receive it, the truth is that we also are seated above all rule, authority, power, and dominion and have been given his fullness because we are seated with him.  We possess that authority now.

The church’s failure to push back the borders of darkness as Jesus did is not due to any lack in what Jesus has provided, but due to a lack of faith or understanding by God’s people, so that we don’t claim and operate in the power and authority reserved for us. Until we are committed to reproduce the New Testament Church in its fullness, we will never be all that Jesus wants us to be and his glory will not cover the earth until we demonstrate his glory through his authority and power.  No matter how many “patterns” we reproduce, we will not truly reproduce the church Jesus died for, without the exercise of his power and authority as we share the gospel.

I occasionally run into committed Christians who have no interest in politics and who stay at home on election nights without casting a vote.  Their feeling is that politics is of this sordid world and we are to be invested in spiritual enterprises rather than the mudslinging of American political parties. I certainly agree that current politics are worldly, fleshly, and even disturbing.  Media coverage is aggravating on both sides and seems to sow fear, discontent, and division at every level.  Watching it steals our peace.  There are seemingly many spiritual reasons to withdraw from the process and insulate ourselves from the shouting and the slander of our political system in America. The devil clearly has the upper hand in this arena. If want to stay away from all that, I get it. So do I.   The question, however, is not about our comfort and our emotional well-being as much as it is about living out God’s will in our lives.  What is his will concerning our involvement in the political process of America?

Jesus taught us that we are to be in the world but not of the world.  That doesn’t mean that we are to isolate ourselves from society like monks walled off in a desert monastery.  We are not to hide from the world, but to overcome it.  Neither are we to compromise with the world but to lift up a higher standard without an aroma of pride or self-righteousness.  Jesus is our model.  He certainly did not hide from the world but engaged with drunks and tax collectors and even had conversations with women whose lives were marked by sin without compromising his faith. Not only that, but he engaged the political system of his day on a regular basis as he spoke with and, sometimes against, the power structures of Israel and Rome. In each case, he was the influencer rather than the influenced. That is the key.

We tend to hide away so that we won’t be defiled by a fallen culture.  We take the Old Testament approach.  We avoid the lepers or the sinners so that contact with them won’t make us unclean. But the New Testament model is counter to that.  We touch the lepers and make them clean and we engage with the sinners to be salt and light in their darkness.

We all know the Lord’s Prayer and, especially, the part that goes, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  God’s kingdom comes to earth when his will is done here.  The Great Commission is another expression of that mandate.  We are to make disciples of nations, not just a few individuals within those nations.  His purposes will not be fulfilled here until we redeem culture because that is what defines nations. Redeeming culture and even politics is taking back from the enemy what he has stolen. To redeem it, we must first pray for it because Jesus was teaching us to pray. But after praying, we have to influence culture in order to redeem it.  To influence something we have to engage with it.  Salt changes the flavor and light changes the atmosphere. We are to be both in the nation where God has placed us.

In America, much of our influence will come through the people we place in positions of leadership.  We do that through the political system.  Our political system is a mess but it is not evil in itself.  It has become evil because we, as believers, to a large extent, have removed our involvement and our influence.  When light is removed, darkness appears.  Rather than abandoning the system, we should overwhelm the system by flooding it with prayer and believers who run on platforms that sincerely reflect God’s values. Scripture says that righteousness exalts a nation.  God, then, connects righteousness with the state of a nation and certainly it’s very destiny.  Our part is to be a leaven for righteousness in this country.  Leaven invades every part of the dough.  We cannot withdraw from those parts we consider worldly and still be leaven, rather we should direct more leaven to those areas.  We should not be defiled by the world, but it should be made clean by our touch. We should not be defiled by our politics, but our politics should be made clean by our involvement.

I know….sometimes you can’t seem to justify voting for either candidate.  But you are not voting for a candidate as much as the values he or she will imperfectly represent.  A vote can push back against the darkness. It can’t eradicate sin (only the gospel can do that), but it can restrain sin and that is a step in the right direction.  It is one way that good resists evil. God is neither Democrat nor Republican.  He is the standard, however, that will judge this nation if believers withdraw from the process. Our goal as believers should not be surrender and withdrawal, but to aggressively take back territory that the enemy has stolen.  We do that with prayer and engagement. We can do that immediately through our vote if we vote for kingdom interests.

Paul said, “I have become all things to all men, so that by all means some might be saved.”  In other words, Paul determined to use every tool available to advance the kingdom of God on this planet.  I believe a vote bathed in prayer is one of those tools.  So…I encourage you to pray diligently over this next week for God’s Spirit to direct the hearts of those entering voting booths so that they vote for kingdom values whether or not they understand what they are doing. I also pray that every believer will do the same so that his vote and her voice will be a leaven for the righteousness of God to once again permeate our culture.

Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death. “Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.” The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” Jesus replied, “You may go. Your son will live.” The man took Jesus at his word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour.” Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and all his household believed  (Jn.4:46-53).

This is a familiar story from the Gospel of John.  Jesus had grown up in Nazareth as the son of a carpenter.  Nazareth and was less than 20 miles from the Sea of Galilee and less than four miles from Cana. He performed hundreds of miracles in the region of Galilee, the northern province of Israel in which the Sea of Galilee rests.  Many of those were in Capernaum, a small city on the northwest shore of Galilee. Two notable miracles were seen in Cana. The story above describes the second notable miracle in Cana where Jesus had earlier turned water into wine.

The background is important here because in Mark 6 we are told that Jesus had returned to Nazareth after performing a number of miracles in Jerusalem and other towns in the region.  Even though they had heard about his miracles, we are told that he could do none in Nazareth because of their unbelief.  Familiarity was their problem.  They had watched Jesus grow up in the shop of his father Joseph and could not see him as a prophet or the Messiah, but only as the carpenter’s son. In their minds he could never be more than that.  Sometimes we need to get away from our old friends and family for us to take on our new identity in Christ because their inability to see us as a different person sometimes gets in the way of our ability to see ourselves as a different person.

In contrast, John tells us about a royal official whose son was sick in Capernaum and near death some 16 miles from Cana. Jesus had already performed miracles in Capernaum so we can assume that when the official’s son became gravely ill, hearing that Jesus was back in Galilee, he  went after Jesus.  Perhaps, he went on horseback or walked, but his mission was to find Jesus and take him back to Capernaum to heal his son.

After finding Jesus and pleading with him to return to Capernaum to heal his son. Jesus simply told him “You may go.  Your son will live.”  The remarkable statement in John is, “The man took Jesus at his word and departed.” That is the core of faith.  Faith is taking God as Father, Son, or Spirit at his word and acting on it. Too many of us, myself included, tend to analyze the words of Jesus and then add our own “except when” or “except for me.”  We tend to add footnotes that add qualifications to his words or his promises when he simply wants us to take him at his word.  The minute we qualify his statement or add a disclaimer, the enemy has won.

I’m not saying that we should not be honest about our struggles to believe. Most of us believe Jesus totally in some areas of our lives but in other areas we are the man who cried out, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” Perhaps, the dividing line is defined by those promises on which we take action and those on which we want to give it some more thought. The royal official didn’t continue to coax Jesus to come with him. When Jesus told him his son would live, he headed home.  The remaining question seemed to be whether Jesus was given a revelation as a prophet that his son would eventually overcome his illness or whether Jesus had the power and authority to direct healing from a distance. When the official heard that the fever left his son at the same time Jesus had declared that he would live, the question was answered.  Surely Jesus was more than a prophet because even the great prophets of the Old Testament had to be present for healing to occur.

What promises do we say we believe but hesitate to take action on?  Which promises do we believe for others, but not ourselves?  What promises do we say we believe but then add qualifiers for when the promise might be true?  Those are the questions we need to ask ourselves so we can address those areas of our lives for which we need more faith.   Then we can mediate more on the promise, pray for a greater gift of faith from the Holy Spirit, listen to the testimony of others, and choose to take action on the promise even while a small cloud of uncertainty may still hover above our heads. Our goal is to bring our requests to Jesus, take Jesus at his word when we receive a promise, and then depart believing that it is done. That is the faith that moves mountains.

Many, if not most of us, have been part of a church where the accepted practice was for individuals, marriages, and families to project an image of relational health and spirituality that approximated the Christian idea.  The truth is that very few of those individuals or families were very close at all to the image they projected. In all fairness, they projected an image because they thought they would be rejected by their Christian community if they didn’t “have it all together.” Our fear of being judged and rejected is the very thing that often keeps us in bondage to the thing we won’t confess.  Whatever we won’t acknowledge and confess has power over us.

James tells us, “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed^” (James 5:13-16).  Not only physical healing but spiritual and emotional healing as well come through confession.  Confession of sin or weakness is simply choosing to be transparent with God, a mature believer, and even yourself.  It is simply agreeing with God about some part of your life that is misaligned with the Father’s will and acknowledging it to others.

Transparency allows healing for several reasons.  First of all, many illnesses – physical and emotional – are manifestations of demonic spirits.  It is amazing how many illnesses and infirmities in scripture were caused or, at least, maintained by unclean spirits. The list includes blindness, deafness, seizures, muteness, back problems, etc. All of those were healed immediately after a demon was cast out.  We also see individuals tormented by demons and the scriptures name spirits of fear, heaviness (depression), confusion, and a host of other spirits that affect our emotions. If we have sin in our lives that we haven’t dealt with through the cross, then that sin gives the enemy a legal right to afflict us until we have confessed the sin and repented.  Transparency through confession enables us to rid ourselves of those demons.

Secondly, I believe that everyone’s deepest fear is the fear of being unloved, i.e. rejection.  We avoid transparency because we fear that if others were to become aware of our shortcomings, they would no longer accept us or love us. The truth is that many of us have experienced the withdrawal of love because we didn’t live up to another person’s demands or unrealistic expectations.  We learn early to hide our failings or to blame others for them.  As long as we hide our failings, our fears, our weaknesses or our sins we will never overcome them.

Paul told the church at Galatia, “Brethren, if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each onelooking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal.6:1-2).  The sense of “being caught in a trespass” is not that someone discovered another person’s secret sin, but that someone has been entrapped or overtaken by a sin or a weakness. The wisdom here is that we should confess our sins to the spiritually mature because they will not reject us and they will maintain appropriate confidentiality.  The spiritually mature are all too aware of their own weaknesses and have long since stopped judging others.  They see themselves in a priestly role of hearing confession and dispensing grace to those who need it.  It is very healing to share your deepest shame with another person and discover they do not reject you but respond with love and compassion to your vulnerability.

Satan works in the dark.  When we hide our sins and our struggles, he will reinforce them and use them against us.  He will constantly blackmail us with the fear of discovery until we choose to bring our struggle into the light.  He then loses his power over us.  Both our acceptance by the spiritually mature and our choice to be transparent with our sins or weaknesses is healing.  I want to emphasize that ff you have something to confess, do so with people you can trust.  Ask around. People in a church tend to know who will dispense grace and healing rather than judgment.  It is usually those who have chosen transparency themselves.

A third transforming power in transparency is found in John’s first letter. “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn.1:8-9).  The word translated as “purify” in this verse is a word that means to remove a stain from cloth.  Sin leaves a stain – a residue in our hearts, our minds, and even in our genetic makeup. I believe that as we confess our sin and receive God’s forgiveness, the Spirit of God gets busy scrubbing out the stain so that it loses its influence.  It no longer remains addictive and has less and less power to draw us back.  It loses its power to produce shame in us and even them memories take on a different meaning for us. Confession or transparency also tends to broaden our own awareness of areas within us where the Spirit needs to do some work.  Just as important, sharing my fears and my failings with someone else is also an exercise in taking personal responsibility for my actions.  That is also a first giant step in spiritual maturity.

This decision to be transparent is a powerful step toward freedom and healing. In many cases, God requires it. Transparency and acceptance have been the power and attraction of twelve step programs for decades and the church in many places could take a page from their playbook. As essential as transparency is, I will admit that not every environment is safe for us to be open about our struggles. Because of that, I suggest that you ask the Lord to lead you to a safe place. Some churches are very transparent because their leaders are transparent. Perfection isn’t required and if someone pretends to be perfect they are not trusted in those churches. Small groups can be that place of safety.  If that is not available, ask around and find a spiritually mature person to mentor you. In that mentoring relationship you will find safety to be transparent.  Moments of transparency are transformative. Even Jesus, who was without sin, was transparent with his closest disciples. He didn’t try to be superman.  He acknowledged that he was tired. He expressed doubt and frustration at times. In the Garden, he shared that his soul was overcome with sorrow and dread asked them to stay with him and pray.

We need people with whom we can be totally transparent.  It is healing and it is a significant door to freedom.  But I also believe that we should not live life as an open book because many people can’t be trusted with our openness.  The gospels tell us that Jesus wouldn’t entrust himself to men because he knew what was in their hearts.  With those closest to him, he was totally transparent.  Our transparency must be guided by wisdom and not recklessness or a false sense of spirituality because we are totally open and totally frank.  Proverbs tells us to measure our words and speak them at just the right time and in just the right ways, rather than blurting out whatever comes to mind at any moment.  Having said that, however, we will not overcome some of our deepest wounds and most besetting sins until we openly talk to someone about them. Commit to it and ask God to provide that moment and the people you need.