Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.  Philippians 2:14-16

As we continue to minister freedom and healing in our area, I am constantly confronted with the reality that a great number of people who are saved and forgiven are still bound up in addictions, depression, anger, fear, suicidal thoughts, condemnation, and more. Even without any real reflection, that seems wrong. As we minister to believers in other parts of the country, we see and hear the same thing, so it is not just a West Texas anomaly. 

These Christians have a sense that their struggles are simply to be their unchanging lot in life. Their experience has been that “their church” is powerless to help them other than with prayers that seem to make little difference and encouragement that is appreciated but fades away.  Their churches have sent them into the community to find professional counselors or twelve-step groups and they have not experienced any lasting transformation. They often live in broken relationships or have left a solid trail of those relationships behind them. In a sense, they fear the future because it may even be worse than today.

In many ways, these men and women are no more free than the unsaved men and women in their community. If you put them in a room with an equal number of unbelievers and had them talk honestly about their struggles, you might not be able to tell God’s children from the lost.  That is not God’s intention nor is it what Jesus died for. In the passage from Philippians at the beginning of this blog, Paul clearly is making a case that those who follow Jesus, who have been born again, and have the Spirit of Elohim living in them should stand out in the world like stars against the night.  He declared to the church at Corinth that, “the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.”  Power is needed to defeat the agents of darkness that torment and to heal deep, gaping wounds from the past before we can become the light of the world. When we say all the right things but display no power, we are not reflecting the kingdom of God.

Through the years, I have talked to several individuals who had been part of witches’ covens or satanic cults.  When I asked them what had drawn them to the “dark side,” the answer was that their lives had been out of control and they were looking for something that could give them a sense of power, control, and security.  They had not found that in Christian churches, so they looked for it in darkness.  These men and women had not failed us, we had failed them.

Of course, we always hear that Christians should not be chasing the miracles but should be chasing Jesus.  Certainly, we can get caught up in the power gifts and supernatural manifestations, but miracles were part of the fabric of Jesus’ ministry and the early church.  Wherever Jesus was, miracles were also present.  Why should it be different today?

A gospel that only gets us to a place of forgiveness but does not radically free us and change us so that we stand out in contrast to our culture is not the gospel that Jesus preached nor demonstrated. If you are part of a church that preaches the Bible, but never displays the power of Jesus Christ in healings, deliverance, prophetic words, and radically transformed lives, then the Bible may be preached but is not being understood.  Stars stand out in stark contrast to the darkness around them. That is the Savior’s desire for his people.  I see it daily in the lives of those who have experienced his power.  So let me encourage you to not accept a powerless gospel.  Seek what you see on the pages of the New Testament.  Those pages were recorded to show what the Christian life should look like, not what it only looked like for a few…long., long ago.

Inevitably, people who have no clear sense of purpose in their lives succumb to depression, restlessness, vague feelings of anxiety, and fatigue.  The fatigue is typically caused by emotional emptiness. Nothing excites them.  Nothing gets them up in the morning.  Life and even relationships become monotonous and each day seems to lose its brightness.

Several years ago, I heard a leading marriage and family therapist say that, in order to be happy and fulfilled, couples must be part of something bigger than themselves and bigger than their marriage.  The same is true for individuals.  Self-focus is a dead end.  At some point, we realize that all the applause, all the purchases, all the trips, all the award shows, and even all the sex and romance, are only drugs that make us feel high and significant for a few hours.  We eventually discover that all that drains away overnight.  In the morning we feel insignificant again. 

Too many Americans are part of nothing bigger than themselves.  The selfie-tsunami on social media is indicative of that.  How many are promoting the smallest details of their lives in some effort to feel significant – week after week?  Again…self-focus is a dead end. It’s counterintuitive, but the key to feeling good about life and about yourself is to shift your focus from self to others and to something bigger than yourself.   One of my favorite authors through the years has been Philip Yancey.  There are a couple of paragraphs in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, that caught my attention years ago and I roll it out every now and then on this blog because I think his point is so important.  Let me share it with you now.

 “My career as a journalist has afforded me opportunities to interview ‘stars,’ including NFL football greats, movie actors, music performers, best-selling authors, politicians, and TV personalities. These are the people who dominate the media. We fawn over them, pouring over the minutiae of their lives: the clothes they wear, the food they eat, the aerobic routines they follow, the people they love, the toothpaste they use.  Yet I must tell you that, in my limited experience, I have found…our ‘idols’ are as miserable a group of people as I have ever met.  

Most have troubled or broken marriages. Nearly all are incurably dependent on psychotherapy.  In a heavy irony, these larger-than-life heroes seem tormented by self-doubt.

I have also spent time with people I call ‘servants.’ Doctors and nurses who work among the ultimate outcasts, leprosy patients in rural India. A Princeton graduate who runs a hotel for the homeless in Chicago. Health workers who have left high-paying jobs to serve in a backwater town of Mississippi, relief workers in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and other repositories of human suffering. The Ph. D’s I met in Arizona, who are now scattered throughout jungles of South America translating the bible into obscure languages. 

I was prepared to honor and admire these servants, to hold them up as inspiring examples.  I was not prepared to envy them. Yet as I now reflect on the two groups side by side, stars and servants, the servants clearly immerge as the favored ones, the graced ones. Without question, I would rather spend time among the servants than among the stars: they possess qualities of depth and richness and even joy that I have not found elsewhere. Servants work for low pay, long hours, and no applause, ‘wasting’ their talents and skills among the poor and uneducated. Somehow, though, in the process of losing their lives they find them.”

The people Yancey speaks of are men and women who have chosen to be part of something greater than themselves because they count their cause as greater than themselves.  Their lives have purpose beyond the next selfie, the next purchase, and the next cruise.  Jesus points us to that same reality when he says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” and when he says. “Those who lose their life for my sake, will find it.”  There is no greater purpose than serving Jesus and fulfilling the call of the kingdom in your life.  We are called to share the good news, alleviate the suffering of the poor, correct injustice, heal the brokenhearted and set captives free. We are called to be servants. 

Again, the way to find happiness and fulfillment is counterintuitive…get your mind off yourself and onto  the needs of others.  Pursue the call of Jesus. Find your purpose in the destiny Jesus has written for you. Choose servanthood over self-indulgence.  Sacrificing for others is the heart of the gospel and actually is the foundation for the abundant life Jesus promised.   

Sometimes, I need a reminder.  Perhaps, you do too.

I’m reading through Deuteronomy again.  It’s been a while because I, like many Christians, tend to focus on New Testament writing.  However, Paul told Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). When Paul reminded Timothy of that truth, most of the “scripture” available was the Old Testament.  We should not neglect the Old Testament.  We are not bound to the Law of Moses but in the pages of the O.T. there is a huge amount of revelation about how God deals with men and nations and how he deals with his covenant children.  Those principles are extremely important to know since God is unchanging.

One of the things that my reading in Deuteronomy is reminding me of is the danger of thinking that a casual commitment to the things of God is “good enough.”  Certainly, grace covers our weaknesses and even failures, but the issue is found more in our attitude than in our actions.

God is looking for a people who are sold out to him.  Scripture is filled with promises and cautions for God’s people. These are often stated together and declare something like, “If you are careful to keep all my commandments, you will prosper in the land.”  Notice that the blessings of God are conditional on a heart that desires to be pleasing to God in everything.  I don’t think God is concerned about those who struggle with sin in their lives nearly as much as those who don’t struggle against the sin in their lives. We often walk in a sin that we somehow rationalize as something “God understands.” But God calls us to holiness or, at least, to a heart that sincerely desires it even though we fail from time to time. God calls us to carefully keep all his commandments.

That principle is not a legalistic approach to God or just the flavor of the Old Covenant.  Jesus made some pretty extreme demands on those who would be a disciple. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Lk.14:26-27). Jesus is not telling us to literally hate anyone because we are to love even our enemies.  But what he is saying is that if we have to choose between him and anything or anyone else, we must choose him and reject the other.  If we love anyone or anything more than Jesus, we have stepped into the realm of idolatry.

Idolatry was the great sin that God warned Israel about over and over. God declares, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Deut.5:8-10). 

We typically read that command and dismiss it because we don’t have shrines in our homes to foreign gods.  But if we pursue anything more than God, we are submitting to a form of idolatry.  If I consistently give more attention, more loyalty, more love, more thought, or more priority to anything other than God, I have become an idolator.  

Think of it this way.  Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment” (Matt.22:37).  When we love something or someone else more than God, we are functionally committing idolatry.  Love is not always an emotion.  It is often a choice. Simply put, do I choose God or something else that draws my affections away from God?

Again, this is a matter of the heart.   When couples first fall in love, they think about the relationship all the time.  They call.  They rearrange their schedule to spend time with one another.  They think about small gifts that express their affection.  They long to be in each other’s presence.  They put each other’s needs before their own.  They try hard to please the one they love and have no interest in the affections of another…if their love is genuine.  That is the kind of heart, God wants from his people.  If either of them begins to place their affections elsewhere, the relationship is in trouble.   So it is, with God.  His love never strays, but ours has a tendency to do so.

Here we come back to our aspirational values versus our actual values.  We may declare our love for God (aspirational), but the proof is in our choices (actual).  I can’t tell you how often I have heard believers profess their faith and love for God when their lifestyle is little different from the lifestyle of unbelievers except for occasional church attendance.  These believers often choose immoral relationships, partying with friends every weekend, their favorite recreation, etc. over time with God and their spiritual family.  Their Facebook page documents their choices every day.  If you ask them to serve, they just don’t have the time…but they have time for the things they really value.  Of course, somethings aren’t so obvious.  Our desires, our thought life, our choices of what we watch or listen to, etc. aren’t as apparent, but can be just as indicative of a heart that only chooses God when it is convenient and doesn’t cost us anything. 

Idolatry creates a throne in our hearts for Satan and neither he nor God is willing to share the throne.  The difference is that God asks, even pleads, and presents the truth for us to choose.  He always calls us to those things that bless and redeem. Satan, however, calls us to lies and deception and eventual destruction.  For those who profess Jesus, but withhold parts of their lives from his lordship, there is often a real delusion operating that they are loving and serving Jesus. Satan provides a perfect rationalization for everything in their lives outside of God’s will. 

That is why David wisely asked God to search his heart and show him if there (Ps. 139:24) were any things in his life or his heart that were misaligned with the will of God.

What I see in my own life, as well as the life of others, is a contemporary attitude that says if I’m giving God some of the things he asks for, that is good enough. Then I’m careful not to think about my obedience too much because I might find I am out of sync with his will in several areas that I’m not sure I want to surrender this week. That is simply foolishness on my part because an attitude like that keeps me from many of the things God wants to bless me with and open the door for the destroyer to come in like a cancer.

As Israel was preparing to enter the promise land after forty years of wandering in the desert, Moses admonished them when he said, “See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom andunderstanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise andunderstanding people.” What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?” (Duet. 4:5-8).

God is not interested in getting our left overs or an obedience that it is just “good enough.”  He wants our whole heart so we can receive all that he has for us and so that we can fully fulfill our destiny that he has written in his book (Ps. 139:16).  The truth is that when we shortchange God, we are really shortchanging ourselves.  

Lord give us a heart that loves you without reservation.