Today our culture seems bent on removing all personal responsibility for individual choices in the name of science and social tolerance. That path leads to some extremely negative consequences. First of all, it is a rejection of God’s Word which clearly declares that God will hold us personally responsible for our choices and our actions. God makes a clear distinction between sin and righteousness. He then deals with the problem of sin through the blood of Christ, confession, and repentance rather than excuses and the claims of science that men and women are controlled by physiological processes over which they have no control. Much of the current thinking comes from recent research in genetics and brain science.

Caroline Leaf, a leading researcher in these areas and a believer, has some very helpful things to say about this “scientific trend.” I would like to quote her. “Today there is a massive split in the world of neuroscience. Many scientists believe that the mind is a result of firing neurons: they see the mind as an emergent property of the brain. On the other hand, many scientists (myself included) are mind-body dualists: we argue that the mind changes the brain. The neurocentric perspective of the former argument arises out of humankind’s desire to worship the created brain instead of the Creator…why is this neurocentric vein of thought so dangerous? Essentially, the ‘oversimplification, interpretive license, and premature application of brain science in the legal, commercial, clinical and philosophical domains’ can lead us into murky waters when it comes to taking responsibility for our actions. Are you a murderer or did the different activity seen in the brain scan make you do it? Are you addicted to food because your brain is wired that way…or because you have made choices? Once you start down this path, you will ultimately have to question your belief in free will, since a predominant focus on the brain takes the control away from the individual and places the blame squarely on the brain” (Carline Leaf, Think and Eat Yourself Smart, Baker Books, p.129-130).

The amazing thing that science is now discovering is that although a tremendous amount of genetic predispositions is passed down from generation to generation, the predispositions are essentially turned on or off by external influences. This phenomenon is called epigenetics. What we choose to think, see, listen to, and surround ourselves with actually shapes the brain which then influences our thinking. Although neural pathways that form in the brain because of our repetitive choices push us back to those choices, we still have free will and can begin to prune old pathways by our choices to think differently and involve ourselves in a different environment.

The word of God tells us to mediate on the Word day and night. What is understood through that command is that our choice of filling our days and nights with focus on the Word also precludes the worldly reinforcement we used to open ourselves up to on a daily basis. Through consistent meditation, memorization, writing the word, etc., we can lay in new, godly pathways empowered by the Spirit while we prune the old pathways of toxic thinking and sin. Paul instructed the church to make a consistent choice to think on “whatsoever is true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil.4:8-9). In doing so, these believers were laying in neural pathways that would automatically produce thoughts in line with the Word of God rather than leading us back to thoughts opposed to God’s word.. This is part of the process of renewing the mind.

Many believers are still dominated by toxic thinking because they have not done the work required to renew the mind. The newest brain research demonstrates that our choices – what we say, what we do, what we read, who we spend time with, what we eat, what we hear, etc. all impact and create either healthy or toxic cellular environments for physical, spiritual, and emotional health or toxicity. God has made us so that every choice contributes powerfully to our brain, our genetics, our physiology, our health, and emotions, and our spirit. Our free will is a powerful tool and God will hold us responsible for our choices despite the cries of a fallen culture.

The good news in this is that personal responsibility empowers us to make choices that can make a huge difference in every part of our life and well-being. We are not helpless, powerless pawns doomed to a destiny over which we have no control. Alcoholic parents do not doom us to alcoholism. Generations of depression do not guarantee that we will be depressed. The genetics of depraved ancestors do not lock us into the depravity. God has given us a way out through taking personal responsibility, repenting, confessing, and by contact with the blood of Christ. He has given us divine weapons of the Word, worship, prayer, fellowship, even fasting and solitude that help rewrite our very DNA and create plasticity in the brain so that our brain begins to default to God’s thoughts rather than man’s.

A culture that declares that our identity, lifestyle, response to life, mental health and morality are all predetermined by genetics and brain chemistry takes away man’s power to choose good and become good. It is a strict secular doctrine of predestination in which the physical brain has total sovereignty over your life rather than a God in heaven. When I feel no responsibility for my choices and at the same time feel powerless to overcome my genetics and physiology, then Satan has won the day. This view is a current “big lie” of the enemy that we must push back on rather than caving in to pseudoscience. There is some good stuff our there by world class researchers who are also dedicated believers. I encourage you to read some in this area. Caroline Leaf’s books would be a great start. Blessings in Him and choose to have a good day.

Many of us distrust God or hold an offense against God because we are victims of misinformation. We believe that God sovereignly determines all things and, therefore, when bad things happen he is the cause or, at least, is at fault because he didn’t prevent the tragedy. We often hold God responsible for things he never promised and for things he has made clear he will not do. This all falls into the conundrum of free will and is worth considering as we attempt to understand the goodness of God.

In the very beginning, God determined to grant man free will – the ability to make choices that God would neither prevent nor force on man. God placed two trees in the Garden and gave Adam and Eve a clear choice concerning those trees. They could eat of every tree in the Garden, including the tree of life and live forever or they could eat of the one tree of the knowledge of good and evil and become subject to death and expulsion from the Garden.

When Satan entered the Garden and began to dialogue with Eve, God let her choose and let Adam choose their course of action even though the consequences were catastrophic for them, their descendants, and the universe. Their actions released pain and suffering on a fallen world. So why did God simply not rush in and sweep Satan from the Garden or freeze Eve’s mouth in place so that she could not continue her discussion with the serpent? Why did he not intervene to prevent the sin and the far ranging consequences?

I think there are, perhaps, two reasons. First of all, our actions are the true measure of love. I have counseled with any number of abused wives whose husbands continually declare their love for them. Physical and verbal abuse year in and year out suggests something else. How had God expressed his love for Adam and Eve? He had created them with his own hands, given them life, placed them in a phenomenal garden that met every need, and had granted them authority over his creation and the significance that came with that position. He met with them daily to build a relationship and impart his word and his ways to them. He treated them as a son and a daughter. And…he gave them the ability to think and choose rather than simply being puppets on the stage of creation. Being made in the image of God suggests that since God is sovereign, man must have some measure of sovereignty over his own life to reflect that image.

In the same vein, God is love and love is not satisfied unless love is willingly returned. Love that is forced or contrived can hardly be love. Love that is given must be a true choice and a true choice requires free will. Free will is risky but it is the price of love. Adam and Eve chose not to love God that day when they trusted the words of a stranger over the clear commands of the Father. Free will and the actions that flow out of our decisions are measures of our love for others, including God. Free will is the ultimate evidence of love.

Secondly, God was not interested in having eternal children. He wanted Adam and Eve to mature and become adults operating in love and wisdom. Free will is the context in which maturity occurs. Have you ever been around a child whose hovering parents make every decision for him or her in the name of protecting that child? You can easily project the disastrous “adulthood” that is coming for that boy or girl. We mature by making decisions and learning from the consequences. We learn and mature by sowing and reaping the consequences. There is also great risk in that because my free will choices can bring pain and destruction on others – even on innocents. Free will gives every person the potential to bless or harm others. If God controls every person’s heart and intervenes in every situation so that no tragedies occur, no divorces happen, no war breaks out – then free will is out the window.

Free will nailed Jesus to a cross, but the Father, Son and Spirit believed from the beginning that is was worth it. Revelation 13 speaks of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. That phrase assures us that in the mind of God, the cost of free will was clear even before man was created and the price for redemption needed by those who chose poorly was already agreed upon.

God does not prevent our pain but neither does he abandon us to it. He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” When the hurt comes, God is there to begin to heal our broken hearts and set us free from the bondage we often choose (Isa.61: 1-4). God is there to direct, restore, renew and, when we allow it, to rescue.

Many things happen in this world that are not God’s will and that do not represent his heart. “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet.3:9). God wants all men to be saved, but not all men will be saved. Disease and suffering is not God’s heart for people. We know that because Jesus came to show us the Father and he constantly healed people out of compassion for their condition. We are also told that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 Jn.3:8). Therefore, disease and disability are the work of Satan not God and the cost of free will.

When a little girl suffers at the hands of satanists, a marriage crumbles, a child is born with birth defects, or a teenager commits suicide, these are not events ordained or approved of by God. These are the expressions of free will and sin in this world, which God is in the process of eradicating through the cross, the preaching of the Gospel, and the ministries of his church for healing, reconciliation, and freedom from all kinds of bondage in this world. There is a place where God’s heart is perfectly reflected in every way. That place is heaven and we are taught to pray for that will be expressed on earth as it is in heaven. God’s will is for his goodness to be felt everywhere but it will first be expressed through our choices.

When we take offense at God, we misunderstand the source of our pain. Why do we never take offense at Satan, when he is the source of all that is bad? God is good and wants good things for his children. How often he must show restraint and reserve judgment so that more have an opportunity to repent and be saved? God has sovereignly chosen to let man have a measure of sovereignty over his own life. God has paid the ultimate price for that decision but believes it is worth it in the end. In the meantime, he directs, comforts, heals, and protects more than we know and has sent his son to heal broken hearts and set captives free. He can be trusted and, truly, only wants the best for you.

In my last blog I quoted extensively from Dr. Caroline Leaf’s recent book, Switch On Your Brain (Baker Books), from a chapter in which she talked about the myth of genetic determinism in our choices. In another section, she raised an interesting question about the intergenerational dysfunctions (or sin) in families.

There has always been a challenging scripture in Exodus that this may speak to. “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” (Ex.20:5-6, emphasis added).

I have always puzzled somewhat about the meaning of “punishing the children to third and fourth generation” – especially when God says in another place, “The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him…The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son” (Ezek.18:18-20). So…in light of this passage what does Exodus 20 mean?

I have always understood Exodus 20 to mean that the consequences of the Father’s sins will effect the children through four generations if they are not dealt with spiritually. For instance, unrepented sin by a father (especially idolatry) might give Satan a legal right to afflict a family and that right will continue through four generations unless it is dealt with by the children acknowledging and renouncing those sins and serving God. Also, we know that unrepented sins establish behavioral patterns in families that can be passed on from generation to generation.

In her recent book, Dr. Leaf says, “Science has demonstrated how the thought networks pass through the sperm and the ova via DNA to the next four generations” (p.57). That got my attention. She went on to describe the scientific explanation for that but essentially science is discovering that the thought patterns we choose to follow are written in our very DNA like a program on a computer chip. Those may be uploaded into the mind of the next four generations as genetic tendencies or predispositions that can be turned on and become operative if the mind of that generation comes into agreement with the predisposition. Leaf says, “the sins of the parents create a predisposition not a destiny” (p.59). Free will is always at play.

That agreement turns on the program and so the program may be duplicated, along with the consequences, generation after generation. That “genetic expression” can pass on, at a DNA level, both positive and negative results. However our mind (thought patterns that we choose) can turn on that genetic tendency or turn it off. We have power over the genes, not the genes over us. She sums it up this way, “Our choices (the epigenetic signals) alter the expression of genes (the epigenetic markers) which can then be passed on to our children and grandchildren, ready to predispose them before they are even conceived. So our bad choices become their predispositions.”

This reality does not negate the spiritual dimension but adds a dimension to it and gives us even more reason to make good choices – not just for us but also for generations to come. This presents an additional dimension of cursing ourselves and our children when we ignore the truths of God’s word about guarding our hearts, taking every thought captive to Christ, and being those who speak blessings rather than curses. The thought patterns we choose that are contrary to the word of God get written into our very DNA and effect us spiritually, emotionally and physically in very negative ways. Aligning our thoughts and words to God’s truth, however, writes blessings into our very DNA and can be passed on to generations. Think and speak the good things of God today.

I am very concerned about our nation. I’m sure you are as well.  I’m not just concerned about the teetering economy, the decline in morality, or the continuing holocaust of abortions in America. I’m not just concerned about God being pushed out of our schools or a culture that is calling evil good and good evil. I’m not just concerned about the blatant corruption in government and lack of truth telling at all levels. If we had to live in the midst of that it would be difficult enough.  What I am most concerned about are the curses that these behaviors and attitudes are about to unleash on America.

A strong thread runs through scripture that is summarized in Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia.  “Do not be deceived.  God cannot be mocked.  A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life” (Gal.6:7-8).  In the Old Testament there are huge sections on “blessing and cursing.”  In Deuteronomy 28, God gives an extensive list of blessings that will come upon Israel if they faithfully serve God and an extensive list of curses that will be released if they reject God.  Nations reap what they sow as well as individuals.

Those curses listed in Deuteronomy include economic disaster, sickly children and blighted crops. They include failure in everything they attempt, diseases that ravage the nation, drought or destructive weather patterns, defeat from enemies, confusion, a man’s hard work being harvested by strangers, oppression of all kinds, and aliens in the land rising up and ruling over native born citizens. These curses sound like the six o’clock news.

In the book of Job, Satan complained to God that he had put a hedge around Job so that Satan could not get at him (Job 1:9). What we see in that chapter is Satan wanting to destroy Job and his family.  God, however, in his goodness and mercy had been restraining the devil because Job was faithful.  When men or nations sow to the flesh long enough, God is compelled by his holiness and our free will (which also chooses our consequences) to turn these men or nations over to their own choices.  When that point is reached, God lifts the restraints and Satan has access to individuals or nations because they have aligned themselves with the enemy.

When curses flood into a person’s life or over a nation, these curses are not something God has conjured up but they are simply what Satan has been wanting to release on that nation, family, or person all along.  Because of God’s love for all men, he restrains the enemy and these disasters until man has sown so much destruction that it must be harvested.  The law of sowing and reaping then kicks in. Here is the sobering part.  The harvest is always greater than the planting.  An acorn produces much more than itself.  A kernel of corn produces dozens of ears of corn.  A man gets back even more than he put in.

That’s good news if you are sowing to the Spirit for God will give you more good things than you sowed.  But if you have been sowing to the flesh, the destruction will far outweigh the evil you have planted.  Many times the destructive results will affect generations.  Children will reap what their fathers sowed. The biblical principle is that the consequences of the sins of the fathers will be passed down to the third and fourth generations of children (Ex. 20:5).

Our nation is mocking God and sowing to the flesh in abundance.  Jesus said, “To whom much is given much is required” (Luke 12:48).  God has given much to America over the last 300 years.  America has not been ignorant of God, his Word, and his ways.  He has blessed us abundantly in our faithfulness but will discipline us abundantly in our rejection of him, his Word, and his ways.

Our hope is in the grace of God and his willingness to forgive and restore when godly sorrow and sincere repentance come from the heart of a man or a nation. But rather than righteousness and repentance flowing out of the church in America I am seeing compromise, going along to get along, a desire to be more acceptable to man in a perverse culture than to God in his holiness.  A few are declaring God’s truth and absorbing the ridicule and accusations of culture but more are being silent.

God’s judgment, which is the release of the enemy to have his way with men who have partnered with Satan, usually comes first in a slow stream giving men the opportunity to recognize what is happening and turn again to God.  Then the stream widens – disasters are greater and more frequent, and then if no repentance comes, God is forced by our own decisions to open the floodgate and let the enemy come in without restraint.  History is full of such lessons.  Curses are not vicious acts by a vengeful God, but rather the harvest of what we have insisted on planting year after year. God takes no pleasure in judging nations or men. His heart for us is to repent so that he can bless us again.  But it is still our choice.

Our sincere and constant intercession for our nation, its leaders, its people, and the church is still our hope and can be a powerful weapon to push back the enemy.  The authority of believers needs to be exercised on behalf of a nation and our nation evangelized by the love and power of God once again.   Even this struggle is not against flesh and blood but spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. We are in a state of war and we have been promised the victory – but only if we stand, only if we fight. My prayer is that more than ever before believers in America will rise and fight against the enemy and drive him out of this nation so that the goodness and blessing of God can flourish here again. I hope you will make a decision to go to war today against the dominion of darkness and not stop until the victory is secure. Be blessed today knowing that God goes before those who go in his name.

One of the great hindrances to healing and freedom in the body of Christ is a view of God that defines his sovereignty as “his will being done in every situation of life”. He is certainly sovereign but in that sovereignty he has chosen to exercise limited control of his creation.  That limit is called free will and it opens both God and man up to the possibility of tragedy.  It was that limit that sent Jesus to the cross and it is that limit that allows drug dealers to prosper and drunk drivers to take out the innocent.

Our ability to choose love and righteousness also grants us the ability to choose sin and a destructive lifestyle – both for ourselves and others.  Unfortunately, many believers who have experienced the destructive side of free will have taken offense at God and have blamed him for their hurt or pain.  Their anger at God keeps them at arms length and prevents them from trusting him enough to discover the love, the healing and the freedom that are ours in Jesus.

There seem to be two basic categories of offense.  One is found in experiences where people feel as if justice has not been served. The offense is expressed in the statement that if God were just, bad things would not happen to good people and good things would not happen to bad people.  That struggle is not new to the hearts of righteous men.  Note a few excerpts from Ps. 73 below.

Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.  They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills.

This is what the wicked are like — always carefree, they increase in wealth. Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been plagued; I have been punished every morning. If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed your children. When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. (Psm.73:1-17).

This was a cry for justice from a man who served the Lord and struggled in life while those who gave God no thought seemed to prosper. In the end, the man realized that justice would be served when these men stood before the judgment seat of God. There are times when God’s kindness calls the wicked to repentance and times when the prince of this world grants success to those who serve him. Ultimately, however, every cry for justice by the people of God will be met for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God.

The second category of offense seems to lie in the arena of those who were victimized by hurtful or evil people.  Their cry is “If God is good, where was God when all that was being done to me?” Scripture also speaks to that question,

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Ps.34:18)

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Ps.147:3)

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. (Isa. 61:1)

You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry. (Ps.10:17)

God is not indifferent to the pain and victimization of his children. When hearts are broken and people are afflicted he is close and his purpose is to heal the hurts of those who have felt the sting of free will.  God did not introduce pain to this world. Man introduced pain when he said “yes” to Satan’s lies. Because of free will, God must stand aside in many cases while hurt and wrongs are inflicted.  But immediately, his heart is to bring healing and eventually justice.

Remember, Satan accused God in the Garden of Eden of withholding good from Adam and Eve when God was actually restraining sin and the inevitable consequences of rebellion.  Now Satan still accuses God of being the source of all pain and evil in the world even though Satan is that true source.  John tells us that Jesus came to “destroy the works of the devil.”  Jesus came to forgive and deliver us from eternal suffering.  He came to heal broken hearts and set captives free.  He came to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast our demons, grant peace to the tormented, and call for social justice.  The things he came to remedy are the works of the devil not the Father.

The key to finding healing and freedom in this life is a resolute commitment to the truth that God is good, he is good all the time, and his heart is to always bring about good for his children even when they have been afflicted and wounded by the enemy and those who serve him.

To believe that God is indifferent or that he visits disease and torment on the children he loves for some “sanctifying” motive takes the heart and faith out of our prayers. How can we pray for healing, deliverance from suffering, or release from a Chinese Re-education Camp if we think God may have willed that for our lives?

For those who have been angry with God and have kept their distance for a hurt or a loss they once experienced in this fallen world, I hope you will reconsider the source of that pain. Your Father in heaven is not that source and so wants to hold you close and heal your broken heart.  My hope is that you will soon lay down the anger and the offense you have felt and surrender to the love of God.

Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1Jn. 3:8). Whatever Jesus healed, cast out, or overcame were works that the enemy had constructed on the earth.  In the opening salvo of Christ’s war on the devil, he announced that he had come to preach good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, and to set captives free (Luke 4).  He then proceeded to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God, heal every kind of sickness and physical condition, cast our demons, raise the dead and break the power of sin over countless lives.

However, sometime in the last 2000 years, a few prominent theologians decided that the very things Jesus opposed on the earth did not come from Satan but from God himself.   Somewhere along the line, theologians decided that since God is sovereign, everything that happens on this planet is his will and has been ordained by heaven.  That kind of theology makes God the author of rape, abortion, famine, war, cancer, birth defects, and crib death. That kind of theology makes God a heartless manipulator of people and circumstances.  However, John definitively says that God is love.

The truth is that there are countless things that happen on this planet that do not reflect the heart or the will of God for his people.  For instance, in his first letter to Timothy, Paul says, “This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim.2: 4) Paul clearly states that God’s desire is for every soul to be saved.  Scripture also clearly says that not all will be saved. In the matter of the world’s salvation, God’s desire will not be completely fulfilled.

Even, when the persistent acts and sins of men demand God’s righteous judgment, that is not what God rejoices to do.  In the book of Ezekiel, God says, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” declares the sovereign Lord.  “Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live” (Ezek. 18:23)?  He also says, “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none.” (Ezek.22: 30). Sometimes, disaster comes because man leaves God no choice.  Like parents exercising tough love toward a rebellious child, God sometimes brings discipline or judgment.  But it is not his pleasure to do so.

The world is clearly full of tragedy.  In his sovereignty, God gave man free will and in doing so set limitations on himself in terms of how he would intercede in the affairs of men.  When mankind chooses violence over peace, adultery over faithfulness, abortion over parenthood, bitterness over forgiveness, deception over truth and rebellion over obedience, bad things happen and people are wounded in ways that were never in the heart of God for his people. When men act in such ways they open themselves and their families up to the work of Satan who comes to kill, steal, and destroy.

However we understand God and his heart for us, the clearest demonstration of his heart is found in Jesus. Jesus declared in John 14 that whoever has seen him (Jesus) has seen the Father.  Whatever Jesus did on the earth is an accurate reflection of the heart of God.  The heart of God, like the heart of God’s Son, is to heal, bless, set free, and eventually abolish death altogether.

When we blame God for the tragedies, the pain, the sorrows of life we misjudge his character and his heart for us.  That misconception is a great tool of the enemy to alienate people from a God who loves them and to limit our faith when we pray.  If we ever believe that God’s heart for his children is that they be raped, abused, murdered, ravaged by cancer, and stuck in crippling poverty, or die tragically then how will we pray against those things?  How will be believe that God is sitting on the edge of his throne waiting to arise and set his children free from the hate-filled works of the devil?  And yet, that is where he is.

The good news is that disease, disabilities, shattered emotions, broken families and all the rest of Satan’s work is not the heart of God for his people.  Jesus came to begin dismantling those works in individual lives and then in society as a whole.  The church has been commissioned to do what Jesus did and to continue to destroy those works with the love of God and the power of heaven.  God longs for us to call on him in faith to push back the borders of darkness through us.  He longs to display his power to heal, mend, and set free through us, just as he did through Jesus. Whenever we have it in our hearts to do the works that Jesus did then we can rest assured that heaven is ready to join us in the battle.  Be bold today.  Know that God is on your side when you push back in faith against the kingdom of darkness.