Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits— who forgives all your sins

and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s…The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103:1-5, 8-14

This section of the Psalms should be a great encouragement to every believer because it reveals the heart of God towards his people. Too many of us doubt the answers to our prayers and godly desires because we feel as if we don’t measure up or because some failing from our past haunts us. On top of that, many of us still see God as a distant father whom we must somehow beg or persuade to answer a prayer.   Too many of us imagine that God hasn’t immediately answered a prayer because our ‘spiritual performance” has not been up to par and, therefore, quickly give up on the prayer. Too often we focus on our performance rather than the heart of God and the all-sufficient sacrifice of Jesus.   When we do that, our faith easily gives way to discouragement.

Notice that David says nothing about his spiritual prowess or personal righteousness in this section. Even when David failed catastrophically in his sin with Bathsheba, he trusted in the heart of God for forgiveness and restoration. Real faith rests on our confidence in the character and faithfulness of God, not on our own righteousness. It stands on our belief that God is always good and always wants good things for his children. If David was confident of that goodness, how much more confident should we be as we live under a better covenant, drenched in the blood of Christ, as well as hosting the Holy Spirit within us.

According to this Psalm, here are some things in which we can have complete confidence. God is always ready and willing to forgive and heal. It is his nature. When we trust in his love rather than our own righteousness, we can easily own our weaknesses and sins and confess them – which brings immediate forgiveness and blessings. We can also trust in the heart of God to pull us out of the pits we so often dig for ourselves and to be eager to restore us to full standing in his house. The prodigal comes to mind.

David also declares that it is the heart of God to fulfill the desires of his children with good things. When God isn’t answering our desire for a certain relationship or for a big lottery win, we can be assured that that those would not produce good things in our lives in the long run. Trusting God to sort through our desires and grant us only those that will ultimately bless us may be the ultimate test of our faith. Contentment is the fruit of that trust as we ask for our desires but then take no offense at God when he does not say yes to every desire of our heart.

Finally, David sums up the most amazing thing about God when he declares that God does not treat us as our sins deserve. He recognizes our inherit weaknesses. James wrote that mercy triumphs over judgment (Ja.2:13) and that was David’s hope. Remember, David wrote these words hundreds of years before the cross but still received a revelation that God’s immense love for us prompts him to remove our transgressions from us. David’s claim to this grace of God reveals that the blood of Christ must have flowed backward as well as forward from the cross for those who had faith even under a covenant of law. Although David had only a prophetic glimpse of God’s answer for sin, he was convinced that the love of God and the goodness of God would find a solution to the problem of our alienation. Even after his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, David found hope in the heart of God. Psalm 51 is his lament after that sin and he begins with, “Have mercy on me O God, according to your unfailing love.” His hope was never in his ability to do enough good to cover his sin or in convincing God that someone else actually had caused him to sin. He made no attempt to rationalize or minimize his sin or to declare that he just wasn’t himself that day. His trust was in the unfailing love of God for his people and a belief that somehow God would be willing to forgive his worst sins and take away his transgressions.

We need to live by that same confident expectation. Too many of us doubt that God’s blessings are for us because of past mistakes or present stumbles. Too many of us doubt that God will work through us because we are still trying to unravel the issues in our lives. James tells us that we “have not because we ask not.” We ask not because we do not live with an assurance of God’s unfailing love, his relentless desire to bless his children, and his eternal willingness to remove our sins as far as the east is from the west through the perfect sacrifice of his Son.

Satan fuels those doubts in each of us because doubt prevents is from moving in the power and provision of heaven. As long as we feel that we don’t qualify for the best of heaven, we will have no faith for those things. We must remember that God has qualified us through his Son. We will never qualify ourselves except through a simple faith in God’s unwavering love for us, his constant goodness, and his desire to bless us in every way through Jesus. That was the foundation of David’s life and must be the foundation of ours as well. If you struggle with that assurance, spending time soaking in Psalm 103 on a regular basis would be well spent as you focus on the unwavering heart of the Father for you.

I was previewing a DVD on parenting by Kara Powell a few days ago and I was struck by something she said. The DVD series is entitled Sticky Faith. It is a series about helping children maintain their faith after they leave home and go to school, the military, or the workplace.

She had interviewed a number of college students who had actively been part of their church’s youth group while growing up. Statistically, nearly half of all young adults who are active in their church will leave their faith after leaving home. Powell and her team were looking for answers to the “why?” of such an exodus. One thing really stood out to her from the interviews. When asked what Christianity meant to them, a very large percentage of those college students gave an answer that never once mentioned the name of Jesus. What the interviewers discovered was that many of the students defined their faith as a set of behaviors rather than as a relationship with God.

When they were thrust into a new setting where their Christian behaviors were not valued and in which their behaviors did not win them acceptance with the “in crowd,” they jettisoned those behaviors like taking off a vest and tossing it into the corner. More importantly, when they had pursued the behaviors of the world long enough to be broken and ashamed by what they had done, they did not know how to come back to Jesus.

They didn’t know how to come back to Jesus because they didn’t know who Jesus was or what his heart was toward them. They had been immersed in rules growing up but not in relationship. They thought the behaviors were there to buy them acceptance and to please their parents. When acceptance didn’t come and when parents weren’t around, then the reason for the behaviors was gone. They didn’t know about the love of Jesus and did not have an overriding desire in their hearts to please their heavenly Father above men.

I’m afraid that many adult believers suffer from the same perception of their faith – that it is a set of behaviors that makes them acceptable to those around them rather than a life long relationship that takes priority over every other relationship they will ever have. When those behaviors don’t win them acceptance and approval at work, they compartmentalize and live out one set of values and behaviors at work and another set at church. They have the feeling that “Jesus doesn’t work for them” in the market place, at school, or in politics. When our prayers aren’t answered as we outlined them, we assume it is about behaviors or not doing enough to get God to give us our reward for good behavior. When we feel like we have been “doing all the right things” and God doesn’t “pay off” with our hearts desire, we feel betrayed. When we focus primarily on a set of behaviors rather than on a living, breathing relationship with Jesus, we will never know him because we only see him as the scorekeeper or an employer rather than a friend or father who always wants what is best for us.

It’s easy and very human to fall into the trap of viewing our faith as a set of behaviors, a list of do’s and don’ts, or rituals that we carry out to earn the approval and favor of God. When we slip into that mode we begin to slip into the school of the Pharisees who had a “form of godliness but missed the power” of a relationship with the creator of the universe. If we have a love relationship with the God who is love, then nothing is out of our reach – not because of our performance, but because of His desire to bless those he cares for. Our confidence in his love rather than our performance is the foundation of faith for all things.

So… if we ever start feeling distant from our God or catch ourselves feeling resentment because we think God hasn’t given us what we have earned by all our prayer, sacrifice, or moral living, then we have probably slipped into the “behavior’s mindset” rather than a relationship. If our children leave home thinking that their faith is a set of behaviors, they will probably wander away. If we teach them nothing else, we must teach them that Christianity is an eternal relationship with the Father through his Son Jesus Christ with both of them residing in our hearts through the Spirit.

Are there behavioral standards in that relationship? Of course there are, just as in any family or marriage. The standards exist to bless the relationship but are not the relationships in themselves. The relationship began in love and endures through love. We live up the Father’s standards because of love not to earn the love. We desperately need to teach our children that truth and we may need to remember it as well from time to time.

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. Exodus 33:18-19

In the book of Exodus, a poignant moment between Moses and the God of Israel is recorded. Moses, in a very bold moment, asks the Lord to see his glory. The implication is that Moses was asking to see the face of God. The Lord responded by agreeing to show Moses his goodness. In one sense, the text tells us that God’s response was for Moses’ protection. God tells him that no mortal can see the face of God and live. And yet, I believe seeing the goodness of God is even more revealing than seeing his face.

Seeing the goodness of God first is instructive for us. This passage in Exodus reveals that the goodness of God is his glory. For us to truly know God or understand God we must see his goodness first and then understand everything else in that context. God mentions two aspects of his goodness right away with Moses – mercy and compassion. Those both flow out of his basic nature of love. John tells us that God is love. His goodness is the constant expression of that love. When you love someone you always do good to that person.

If we were to see God’s holiness first, we might understand all of God’s actions in terms of holiness and his rejection of sin. Every act of God then would seem like the actions of a harsh judge or an angry God. Most people filter the activity of God in the Old Testament through his holiness only and see his judgments as expressions of that. Holiness is undoubtedly a major characteristic of God, but if all we see is his holiness then all we will see is judgment. He will be a God easy to fear but not easy to love.

If we see the goodness of God first, then we will understand his judgments in the context of discipline as a loving Father disciplines his children or in the context of his judgment being the last thing he wanted to do.   Man’s persistent and unrepentant sin sometimes gives him no choice but it is never his first thought or his heart for us. In our personal relationship with the Father, we need to focus on his love and goodness and give thanks for that before we look at anything else. His goodness and love assure us that he is for us, not against us. They assure us that he always wants what’s best for us and is always working on our behalf. They assure us that we are welcome into his presence and that he is eager to answer prayers that will bless us and bring about good because he is good.

Many believers have much to overcome in this arena…especially if they were raised in a “hell fire and brimstone” church that preached the judgments of God and the fury of hell every week as a motivation for righteous living. One of the most famous sermons in American history was preached by Jonathan Edwards during the Great Awakening (1700’s) and was entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” That was not a podcast you wanted to listen to just before going to sleep. It pictured all of us suspended above the fires of hell by a thin thread and suggested that God was just waiting to severe the line with his celestial scissors.

If you grew up with that view of God, then a warm, loving relationship with the Father is a monumental task. Everything that goes wrong in our lives will probably be understood as an expression of God’s anger toward us and we will see him as our adversary rather than our loving Savior. Jesus will seem like the antithesis of the Father and the statement of Jesus that if we have seen him we have seen the Father will simply be confusing. Moses was shown the goodness of God first. That is why he was able to stand before God and plead for mercy on Israel’s behalf on several occasions. He was able to plead for mercy because he knew God was merciful and that in heaven, mercy triumphs over judgment. Moses even knew that Jehovah was searching for someone to ask for that expression of who he is.

This perspective is critical. When a loved one is diagnosed with stage-four cancer, our first thought as believers is to try to make sense of what has happened. If the goodness of God is not our primary filter for the circumstance, then we will assume that either God has visited the cancer on us because he is angry about some sin or our lack of faith or that he is indifferent about our suffering because holiness is the only issue. In that moment with that perspective, we will have little hope and will either wait out the cancer with resignation or try to buy God off with some “righteous works” we can do.

If the goodness of God is our filter, we can assume that the cancer is not God’s will and begin to press in for healing with hope. Even if sin has opened the door for cancer or the activity of the enemy, we can know that repentance and forgiveness will shut that door and open the door for the goodness of God to still be the primary color of our lives.

I have seen believers face death or the death of a loved one with differing sets of glasses. Those who saw God primarily through the lenses of judgment, had no faith for healing and left the cemetery with a since of condemnation and bitterness. Those who looked at circumstances through the lenses of God’s goodness were able to pray with faith for healing and even if healing didn’t come they were able to see the love and compassion of God at the gravesite. They left closer to the Father than when they arrived knowing that God’s goodness would see them through the grief.

What do you see first when you look at God? The perspective is critical because it defines everything else. A God of goodness offered himself through his Son as a loving sacrifice for lost people. A God whose primary trait is judgment simply poured out his wrath on a Son who seemed more abused than loved. The way we see God first, will determine our view of everything, will totally affect our prayer life, and will totally define our faith. Spend time thanking God for his goodness, meditating on his goodness, and declaring his goodness over every circumstance of your life. It makes all the difference. Blessings today… because if his goodness.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God. Philippians 1:9-11

In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul penned the lines above in his opening statements. The apostle had a great affection for the church there and he wrote with an almost sentimental tone that we don’t always get from Paul. “It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart” (Phil.1:7). Paul is proud of this little church and writes, perhaps, the most positive letter in all of scripture to them. His heart for them is that their love for God and for others might abound more and more. Paul often speaks of that quality. He knows that abounding love will be a work of the Spirit on our lives because the natural man only loves those who loves him first and benefits him. He writes a whole chapter on love in 1 Corinthians 13. But here he adds a couple of interesting qualifiers.

Paul said that he wanted their love to abound more and more but also to be guided by knowledge and a depth of insight. In essence, Paul wants us not only to love, but to love wisely. What Paul prays for this church to receive, we should pray for ourselves as well. First of all, we should pray that the Spirit of God would increase our love. Jesus said that the two great commandments are to love God and to love our neighbors. He would say that all of the Law and the Prophets hung on those two commands. If you think about it, the entire Bible is simply a set of instructions teaching us how to love God and how to love others. John tells us that God is love (1 Jn. 4:8) and although a number of other attributes describe God in scripture, love seems to be his paramount and most striking quality.

If you scan the Old Testament to see what endures forever, that phrase comes up a frequently. We are told that God’s throne endures forever; his name endures forever; his works endure forever; his word endures forever; and his righteousness endures forever. But the descriptor that is quoted dozens of time more often that the ones just mentioned is his love endures forever. Everything else flows out of that. God is good because he loves. God is merciful because he loves. God hates sin, because he loves and sin destroys the people he loves. Jesus himself defined his mission by love. Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for a friend. The cross was the ultimate act of love and God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…to redeem us from the universal mess we are in.

If we are to become like the Father and like the Son, then we must grow in love to the point that we abound in it so that it drips off of us wherever we go and saturates our environment. But Paul attaches the conditions of knowledge and insight that are to guide our expressions of love. Knowledge, in this context, is the knowledge of God – his character, his will, and his ways. Insight is seeing to the heart of a matter.

Love can be misunderstood and misdirected. Biblically, love (agape) is not a feeling or the idea of doing everything we can to make someone happy. It is not just a heart that goes out to others. Instead, it is a constant decision to always act in the best interests of another person. That may include saying no, applying discipline, or a little loving confrontation at times. In our present church culture, love has, in many ways, been redefined to mean tolerant, non-judgmental, and accepting of everything and every lifestyle. The knowledge of God informs me that I can love a person without tolerating a sin that will eventually destroy him or her and infect others on the way. Depth of insight is spiritual discernment that helps me see to the heart of a matter so that I can apply love in constructive ways that touch the deepest need or issue rather than living like a permissive parent who never says no to the demands of immature believers.

Not only is my insight for understanding people and situations around me, but it is also for me to discover which things are best, so that I can live a pure and blameless life. Scripture often tells us that our guide for living should not be simply avoiding sin or staying away from bad things. That is certainly a start, but in numerous contexts we are told that our goal is to always discern and choose what is best – not just good, acceptable, or tolerable – but best.

God wants the best for his children. If you are investing for retirement, you are not looking for average investments or adequate mutual funds, you are looking for the best – the funds that are most stable and that pay the best dividends year after year. God want his children to invest in the things of life that pay the best dividends in heaven. Paul says that the fruit of love guided by knowledge and insight is righteousness. Righteousness is where true freedom is found because it means we have mastered the flesh and the enemy has no claim on us whatsoever. We are aligned with the Father in every part of our life. When we walk in righteousness, we constantly sow to the Spirit and we reap life in everything we do (Gal.6:8).

So, we find that increasing love directed by knowledge and a depth of insight is the door to increase – more of God, more of Jesus, more of the Spirit, more effective ministry, more righteousness, more freedom, and greater harvests. Paul prayed for God to grant that to the believers in Philippi. We should do the same. Paul offered a similar prayer for the church at Ephesus where he prayed that God would give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so they might know him better (Eph.1:7). I encourage you to add both of those prayers to your heavenly requests as well. It is God’s will for us to request those things and he is glad to give when we are hungry enough to ask. Be blessed today and may you abound more and more in love in knowledge and depth of insight.

This, then, is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen

Matthew 6:9-13

When his disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he began with a relatively revolutionary idea – Our Father in heaven. For the most part, Jewish theological thought viewed God as the one whose name should not be spoken and whose presence in the Holy of Holies was as dangerous as it was glorious. He was seen as the Holy Judge of all the earth and the destroyer of the enemies of Israel. He was the thunder and flame on Sinai and the earthquake swallowing up the sons of Korah.

But Jesus spoke to the Father in familiar and intimate terms and encouraged every believer to do the same. That must have been a difficult paradigm shift for most. It still is. One of the great hindrances to receiving the promises and the power of the Holy Spirit is our view of God. When we ask God for healing, deliverance, favor, provision, and protection we often ask with a qualified expectation. We hope he will answer our petitions, but many of us have no confidence at all that he will.

Many of us have a difficult time believing that our Heavenly Father is willing, able, and eager to bless us, heal us, and deliver us from the power of the enemy. We still view him as a God who keeps careful records and who weighs our good moments against our bad moments to see if we have earned enough points to merit an answered prayer. We see him as a Father whose love is conditional, who is beyond understanding, and who often feels like pain and suffering are ultimately in our best interest. Too often, we simply lay the template of our earthly father over our Heavenly Father and expect the same inconsistencies or even anger.  If you had a great father, your prayers are facilitated by your experience. If you had an angry or absent father, your prayers will be laced with doubt until you truly know your Heavenly Father.

So many of us pray, hoping for the best but not really expecting it. Many of us have no problem believing that God will act on behalf of everyone else in the room but struggle to have faith that he will answer ours. We know our imperfections and feel that we don’t meet the standard on God’s measuring stick for answered prayers.

When we are sick, we may pray for healing but wonder if God actually wants us to be ill so that our faith in suffering glorifies him, purifies our soul, or has a purpose beyond our understanding. When we live with emotional pain and brokenness from our own bad choices we may see God as the Father who sternly remarks, “You made your bed, now you can lie in it.” Myriads of believers simply view their Heavenly Father as a distant replica of an earthly father who made promises he couldn’t keep, whose primary emotion was anger, whose love was conditional, or who was loving one day while distant and unpredictable the next.

When we have a mixed view of our Heavenly Father it is difficult to pray with faith or to pray at all. But prayer is the very thing that opens the valve so that the promises and the power of heaven can flow to us and through us. If we view God as distant, angry, or conditional then we will not pray at all (there’s no point in asking) or we will pray as if we have to convince, coerce, or nag God into blessing us.

So how do we understand this God who seems angry and vengeful in the Old Testament but is called “Abba” in the New Testament? John goes so far as to say that God is love and God is light. They key is Jesus. No matter how we understand the Old Testament or what kind of father we had on earth, Jesus clearly stated that he is the way to understand the Father. “Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”(Jn.14:9). The heart of Jesus toward the weak, broken, and shameful is the heart of the Father.

If you want to know how much you are loved by the Father, look at the cross. If you want to know how God will deal with your sinful past, look at the Samaritan woman of John 4 and the woman caught in adultery in John 8. Ask yourself how many times Jesus turned down people who came to him for healing and how he dealt with Peter after Peter denied him three times and abandoned Jesus in his hour of suffering.

According to Hebrews, Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory (the part of God’s goodness we can see) and the exact representation of the Father’s being (Heb. 1:3). When you see the heart of Jesus toward the broken and the suffering you see the heart of the Father. When you see the compassion of Christ toward the spiritually clueless you see the Father. When you see the anger and frustration of Jesus toward those who would deny the healing of God for the sick or who would drive sinners away rather than embrace them, you have seen the Father as well. The cross has allowed the love of God to overpower the judgment of God. And God is glad.

When you pray for the power of heaven to be released on your behalf, remember that the heart of the Father toward you is the same as the heart of Jesus. As loving fathers and mothers, we are not always so different from our heavenly Father. I always want the best for my children. When they were young and tumbled off their bikes, I ran to pick them up and bandaged their wounds. When they were afraid I comforted them. When they were confused I taught them. When they were in danger I protected them. When they laughed I laughed with them and when they did wrong I corrected them. All those things were motivated by love and, like most parents, I would have died to save my children.

Our heavenly Father did just that and is much more the loving Father and Mother than we could ever hope to be. When you pray, you can be certain that your Father in heaven is hearing and acting on your behalf. We can’t always know why we have yet to see some prayers answered. There are mysteries yet to be understood. But we can always know the heart of our Heavenly Father toward us. If you have seen Jesus, you have seen the Father. If you have seen the cross you have seen his heart for you. And in this Easter season, you see your absolute hope in an empty tomb. All from the Father for you. Blessings today in Him.

In his letters to the seven churches in Asia, Jesus affirmed many things but then called out five of the seven churches on issues that were hindering their relationship with Jesus. To the church at Pergamum, Jesus applauded their steadfast faith in the face of severe persecution. Even when one of the believers there had been put to death, they had not denied Jesus. And yet, even though they had never denied Jesus, he had some issues with the church.

Jesus said, “Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality. Likewise you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth” (Rev.2:14-16).

Pergamum was a church that had stood strong in the face of persecution but that had also compromised with the culture. They had begun to practice tolerance rather than holiness. Jesus declared that they were fellowshipping those in the church who practiced idolatry and sexual immorality and who were encouraging others to do the same. The Nicolaitans were a group who believed that since grace covered all sin, you could sin all you like. Jesus was not condemning those who struggle with sin. He was condemning those who don’t struggle against sin at all.

We are vulnerable to the same things in our culture. Perhaps, persecution had prompted them to be a little more tolerant of the culture and to not speak out so loudly against sin. Perhaps, they thought “fitting in” a little more might improve their outreach. The gospel of tolerance had taken over at Pergamum. That gospel declares that love is never judging others, never making them feel bad, never rejecting someone because they hold different views or understand God in a different way. The gospel of tolerance questions the clear meaning of scripture and makes the holiness of God take a back seat to his grace. What was once not tolerated in the church becomes tolerated, and then, at some point, is celebrated as proof of a love that doesn’t reject or judge sinners.

Jesus doesn’t reject sinners, but he does reject sin because sin degrades and eventually destroys. Being tolerant of weakness as people grow in the Lord is not the same as tolerating sinful lifestyles that are paraded about and that actively recruit others. Balaam’s strategy against Israel was simple. Draw them outside the will of God and let his judgment fall on them. I’m sure it began with the premise of practicing a little tolerance so that you don’t alienate your neighbors. One of Satan’s strategies is to draw churches and individuals out of the will of God so that they give Satan a legal right to really come after them while the sin blocks the blessings and move of God in their lives.

Even though the church at Pergamum had not denied the name of Jesus, they had compromised with the culture and invited idolatry and sexual immorality into the church. After all, that was standard operating procedure in pagan temples. The desire to be like those around us was not new to Pergamum. Israel wanted a king like the nations around them when Saul was chosen to rule. It took very little time for Israel to incorporate the idols of the surrounding nation into their worship of the one true God. In defiance of the Law of Moses, it wasn’t long until Israel made alliances with all kinds of unbelieving nations. Each of those compromises cost Israel dearly.

So what about us? Even though we wear the name of Jesus, have we compromised with the culture and brought the culture’s standards into the church rather than taking the church’s standards into our culture? Those who practice homosexuality are now welcomed into the leadership of mainline churches, even though scripture clearly calls it sin. Christians eagerly attend movies that only a few years ago were considered pornographic. But because culture is comfortable with what is portrayed, many Christians have become comfortable. Church discipline is almost extinct because we tolerate and do not judge anything, even though we are commanded to hold one another accountable to God’s standards. We could go on, but the church today is in danger of a rebuke from the Lord because we tolerate the active practice of sin – typically by our silence.

As a self-diagnostic, we need to ask ourselves if there are areas of compromise in our own lives because we have wanted to fit it with the world. What do we participate in so that we feel accepted at the office, at school, or with the team? What are we compromising for the sake of a relationship and has that relationship become an idol? What are we compromising for the sake of a career? What are we silent about that is wrong? When we choose not to speak out, we eventually rationalize our silence. That rationalization becomes tolerance and tolerance eventually becomes acceptance.

I’m not saying that we should go around condemning everyone we have contact with and point out his or her sins. Paul tells us that we are not to judge the world, but he is clear that we are to judge the church…not by our standards, but by God’s standards. We are not to judge self-righteously, but out of concern for a soul endangered by sin and the bondage or discipline it may bring. Love always acts in the best interest of another, and encouraging others to live holy lives is in their best interest.

The danger is that we begin to believe that whatever cultures calls good or acceptable, God will call good or acceptable. Culture does not establish the standards for righteousness and so culture is not the measure of our life in Christ. God sets the standards and Jesus, unapologetically, calls us to those standards.

In our own lives, compromise damages our relationship with God and creates open doors for the enemy. Jesus called on Pergamum to repent of tolerating sin and he would say the same to us. These may be the hardest things to identify in our lives because they creep in slowly. We rationalize our involvement, or at least our decision not to stand against something, and we usually spiritualize that decision by calling it non-judgmental or an effort to build relationships so that we can share Jesus with someone later.

This isn’t a call to isolate ourselves from culture or the lost otherwise we can never affect them for Jesus. Somehow Jesus was able to spend time with “sinners” without compromising and without offending them. In fact, broken sinners were drawn to him. I think he simply was who he was and didn’t change that in any context. He did not excuse sin but neither did he make sin the issue among the broken and the shamed. He affirmed what he could and pointed them to the love of the Father. He did not compromise his standards, but simply demonstrated the attractiveness of godliness when it is wrapped in love.

In my own self-diagnostic, I need to ask the Spirit to show me areas of compromise, rationalization, and “buying in” to what the world is peddling. I need to realign my thinking with the Father and determine to maintain godly standards while loving those who are bound up in sin. As a church, we need to love broken sinners but stand against those who willingly sin as a lifestyle and who try to draw others in with them. The praise and acceptance of the world cannot be our goal, only the praise and acceptance of Jesus. Be blessed today and be aware of where you stand.

In the book of Revelation, Jesus issued letters to seven churches in the province of Asia. To Smyrna and Philadelphia, Jesus sent his affirmations and approval of their endurance and faithfulness in the withering face of persecution with a promise that victory was coming if they would just continue to hold on.

To Ephesus, he gave a mixed report. He began by listing what seem to be stellar recommendations. “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men…you have persevered and endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary” (Rev.2:2-3). This seems like the ideal church and yet, in the midst of those admirable traits, Jesus held something against them. “Yet, I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first” (Rev. 2:4-5).

If you have been a believer very long, you might recognize the reality that the response once prompted by love can cool to a response of duty, obligation, or simply habit. After a few years, we can become good church members living moral lives, caring for the poor, coaching little league, attending church, and so forth. A good Buddhist would do the same. The thing that makes us different is our relationship with Jesus. Many couples marry with a great passion for one another, but after a few years the marriage simply becomes “going through the motions.” The behaviors may mimic what was done the first few years of marriage, but the heart behind it is gone.

God is love and love tends to remain unsatisfied until love is returned. In addition, love motivates us to do what nothing else will motivate us to do. Duty, obligation or habit did not motivate Jesus to endure the cross for us – only love pushed him to Golgatha.

Jesus then asked them to remember the height from which they had fallen. He was not asking them to measure how low they had sunk, but to remember what life was like when they were in love with him. He called them to remember the exhilaration found in a loving relationship with the Savior.

I have to ask how I am doing in maintaining “first love” status. Has my ministry become a job that I do like any other? Is my Bible study to discover new truths or just to get a coherent lesson together? Am I doing what I do out of love for Jesus or just the habits of a Christian life? How are you doing?

He then said to the Ephesians, “Repent and do the things you did at first.” What did you do when you first came to Jesus? Did you pour over his written word with expectation? Did you hungrily seek someone who could help you grow in the Lord? Were you willing to serve in any capacity because you were simply serving Jesus? Did you share Jesus with everyone around you? The truth is that you did those things because you loved Jesus, but you also loved Jesus because you did those things.

Going back to the basics is not a bad thing. We tend to think that basics are for the immature or the amateur, but doing the basics well is what wins championships. Remember the thanksgiving that used to issue from your heart in response to what he had done for you and in response to how much had been forgiven? Remember how you longed for his presence and his voice? Remember the excitement of answered prayers and seeing the hand of God in your life?

His counsel is to remember how rich those days were and return to them. Return to the heights of your first days in the presence of a loving Savior. Pour over his word against with the expectation of discovery. Find a mentor to rekindle the coals and to take you to another level of relationship with the Father. Serve in simplicity. Share your faith again. Keep doing the good you are doing but do it out of love for the Master, rather than from the habits of a moral life. That love makes our Christian walk rich again. Blessings in Him.

More Revelation on Friday.

I’ve always been fascinated by the focus of Jesus. His reference point for life was not found in the natural realm but in the spiritual. He didn’t make decisions based on natural logic but rather spiritual logic and those are diametrically opposed. The world says that the first shall be first and the last is a loser. But in the spiritual realm, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. In the natural realm, the rich and powerful will be remembered and venerated but in the spiritual realm, the servant of all will be considered the greatest. In the natural realm, the narcissist and the self-indulgent will get ahead but in the spiritual realm, he who gives up his life will save it. In the natural realm resources are finite. In the spiritual realm there is no lack. In the natural realm raw power and aggression get their way but in the spiritual realm the Spirit of God always carries the day. Jesus always lived by kingdom principles with the kingdom of heaven as his reference point.

The church in the past century has faithfully taught the gospel of Jesus Christ and has defined it as the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins – and that is definitely good news. But it is more than that. Jesus taught an amplified version of that gospel which was called the good news of the kingdom of God. John the Baptist preached that the kingdom of heaven was near (Mt.3:2) which is a phrase synonymous with the kingdom of God. Jesus preached over and over the good news of the kingdom of God. The good news was that the kingdom was suddenly within reach for those who would believe. After his resurrection, Jesus spent 40 days on earth showing himself to many people and talking about the most needed things. Luke tells us, “After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).

The gospel or good news of Jesus is that he died for our sins. But there is more. His death, burial, and resurrection not only purchased forgiveness but also opened up the kingdom of God to us and made us citizens of heaven now. Jesus even taught us to pray daily about the Kingdom. “They kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So what exactly is the kingdom of God?

The definition of the kingdom is the “king’s domain.”  It is the rule and reign of God and heaven is heaven because God’s will for his people is expressed perfectly there. When we think of heaven we usually think of majesty, joy, peace, eternal life, perfect health, lack of want, overwhelming love, angelic beings, etc. Those things are expressions of who God is and his will for his people. Jesus taught us to pray that experience down to earth – for God’s will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven.

Many believers agree with that prayer but assume that it refers to the millennial reign of Jesus or to a restored earth after the final judgment. Jesus, however, clearly taught that an experience of heaven is available now. “But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Lk.11:20). Both Jesus and John the Baptist declared over and over that the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven was near. They didn’t mean that the kingdom was near in the sense of “coming soon,” but rather that it was within reach of those who believed. In heaven there is no demonic affliction, no disease, no death, no bitterness, no fear, no turmoil, and no lack.

Jesus declared that, by faith, we can touch heaven now. Two essential qualities of the kingdom are love and power. God is both love and ultimate power. Both of those permeate the kingdom. The truth is that every believer needs both in his or her life now – the love of God and the power of God. Both are available through Jesus and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The love of God alleviates fear, bitterness, sorrow, anguish, rejection, and turmoil. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, etc. The power of God can set us free from the demonic, sickness, poverty, and every form of bondage. Those things are available now. That is God’s will on earth as it is in heaven.

If we live with our hearts and minds anchored in heaven as Jesus did, then we can anticipate the provision and protection of heaven in our lives. When Jesus was faced with feeding 5000 men plus even more women and children with only a few loaves of bread and a few fish, he wasn’t dismayed. The power and provision of heaven had come to earth and he was confident that he could draw on that reality to get the job done. By faith, heaven was expressed on earth. Every person had plenty to eat with twelve baskets full of bread and fish left over. God’s love approved of the provision and his power provided it.

Today we have the same God with the same love and the same power and it is available to those who believe. As we count on both, heaven comes to earth. Most Christians believe in the love of God but are uncertain about the power of God in their lives. However, from Genesis to Revelation, it is clear that God desires to express both in the lives of his people. If I love you, but have no power, I can sympathize with your dilemma and even weep with you but I cannot help you. If I have power but no love, I won’t care to help unless it increases my power. It takes both for good outcomes. Great love coupled with great power is the ticket out of every dilemma.

Power directed by love is the mark of the kingdom of God. Both are there for you today. In whatever circumstance you find yourself, God is willing and able to provide your solution. God is the same – yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus modeled the reality of the kingdom of God on earth. He died so that we might possess the kingdom. It is time for the church to anchor its thoughts and expectations in heaven rather than the natural world. It is time for each of us to do the same. Ask for it, expect it and wait for the love and power of heaven to be expressed in your life today. Blessings in Him!

What you think about God is the most important thought you are ever going to have about anything. – Graham Cooke

I believe the statement above is absolutely true. What you believe about God determines just about every decision you will ever make and those decisions will determine the accumulation of consequences in your life that will define it. Knowing what you believe about God is the first step to coming into alignment with his truth.

If I were to ask the average believer if he knows what he believes about God, the answer would most likely be “Of course!” Then that believer would begin to tell me everything he had ever learned in church about God and probably give me all the right answers. But knowing the right answers does not always mean that is what we believe. We typically believe that we believe the things we should believe. But our actions are more often the real indicators of what we truly believe.

For instance, if you are high on control in your life then you may actually believe that: (1) God does not always know what is best for you, or (2) God doesn’t always do what is best for you or (3) God is unable to accomplish the things in your life that would always be in your best interest. So…either God doesn’t know, he doesn’t care, or he can’t. Why else would you always have to be in the driver’s seat rather than letting God drive?   When we always have to be in control of the situation or always have to control the people around us it is, most likely, because we are afraid of being hurt or not having our needs met. We don’t trust God to meet our needs, protect us, or work things out for our ultimate benefit. If we don’t trust God it is because we believe he is either untrustworthy or incapable. Our actions are evidence of our actual beliefs.

If we are angry with God, then we must believe that he is uncaring, unfaithful, or incapable because we have taken up an offense against God believing that He betrayed us or wronged us in some way. Deep within, we believe that the Father does not always love, does not always keep his promises, and is not always righteous. Otherwise, how he could have wronged us?

If we are constantly driven by fear, then we hold similar beliefs about God or, at least, believe that God’s love is based on our performance and since we know our performance often falls short, we believe he doesn’t love us and, therefore, he will neither protect us nor provide for us. The world, then, becomes a frightening place.

We could go on but you get the drift. Most of us know what the Bible says about God but out actions reveal a deeper level of beliefs about God that are contrary to scripture. Taking a look at our actions and what they suggest about our view of God is the first step to correcting misbeliefs and is the first step to real faith.

Much of our disappointment with God, anger at him, or even “unbelief” comes from some experience in which we believe God let us down or wasn’t there for us. It is as if we have snapshots of God in our hearts through which we judge him even though the snapshots are taken in an isolated moment of time without regard for all the frames before that moment or after.

In my book, Born to Be Free, I tell a story that demonstrates that principle. Several years ago, I counseled a woman who was a survivor of satanic ritual abuse. When she was five years old she was taken to a “church” by her mother and left with some adult “church workers” who then took her to the basement of the building. In that dark basement, she became part of a satanic ritual complete with robes, candles, sexual molestation, incantations, threats and more. Terrified, this little girl cried out to God to have them stop … but they didn’t. Later, her mother picked her up and took her home. The little girl never told her mother thinking that she was part of what had happened to her or that the Satanists would kill her and her mother is she ever told anyone what had happened.

As an adult, she attended church faithfully and served in several ministries there but suffered from clinical depression. As we talked about her depression we got around to her relationship with God. She told me her story. She left that childhood experience with several negative views of God deep in her soul. Either he didn’t exist or he wasn’t loving (or at least didn’t love her) or Satan was more powerful than God because he didn’t supernaturally rescue her from those people.

Even though she was extremely hungry for God she couldn’t trust him to protect her or provide for her and she wasn’t sure that the loved her. Some days she wasn’t sure that he existed. She was fearful, controlling, self-rejecting and often found ways to medicate her emotions. After all, from her childhood perspective, she was on her own in a dangerous world being run by a God she couldn’t count on.

Our first step was to talk about the concept God’s love and free will. It is a difficult concept and gets back to the question, “If there is a loving God, why is there so much evil in the world?” That is a great question and one we will tackle briefly in my next blog. In the meantime, make Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians your own prayer as you ask God for a revelation of his true nature for your heart and be blessed today.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. (Eph.1:17-19).

A number of years ago a young single woman named Cheree (not her real name) came to my office wanting to talk about some spiritual issues in her life. She was not a member of our congregation but had attended several events at our church and I had gotten to know her by name. She was a schoolteacher, very bright, and very faithful in her church.

I asked her what she wanted to talk about and she told me immediately that God didn’t seem to be answering her prayers anymore. She was frustrated and confused. Cheree told me that she had always had a powerful prayer life and was used to God answering her prayers in amazing ways but over the past few months she felt as if her prayers were just hitting the ceiling and falling to the floor. She was concerned about the shift in her spiritual life and hoped I had some insights that might help her get back on track.

I asked Cheree what she had been praying for lately that was seemingly not getting through to God. I was prepared to talk about God’s timing and his working behind the scenes and not to be discouraged but to keep asking, seeking, and knocking. But then Cheree told be what her prayer focus had been lately. Without hesitating she told me that she had been involved with a married man for several years. Her prayer had been that he would leave his wife and children and marry her so they could live happily ever after. Okay… for a moment I was grasping for a pastorally professional response. Cheree was bewildered with God and frustrated because he was not answering her heart-felt pleas.

After a moment, I asked Cherie why she thought God should answer that particular prayer. She then stated a theological position that I suspect many of us subscribe to from time to time. She said, “God should answer my prayer because he wants me to be happy and that would make me happy.” We talked about her theology and went on to explore the meaning of adultery and God’s unwillingness to participate in our sin while leaving a wife and three small children abandoned. It was interesting to watch the lights come on when we talked about her sin. It was as if Cheree had never considered the implications of her desires. For her it felt good so it must be good.

Cheree was also operating on an unstated premise that God’s sole commitment to us is to make us happy. In the kingdom of God, however, holy must come before happy and sanctified must come before satisfied. Paul tells us, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom.8:29). God’s primary commitment to us is not to make us happy, as we understand it in our immaturity, but to make us into the image of Jesus. Being “conformed” usually requires some bending, shaping, stretching, and sometimes hammering. Like diamonds it involves time, pressure, heat and often a Father’s discipline. Ultimately, the work of God in our lives will bring happiness but it rarely comes in the form we first imagined.

The idea that if God loves me he will give me everything I want is very childlike – not in the good sense of innocent and trusting, but in the self-centered sense of a two-year old demanding his way and being angry at his parent if he doesn’t get it. If we are honest, we all have a bit of a two-year old inside of us. God works on us with an eternal perspective while we tend to operate in the here and now and seek immediate gratification even in spiritual things. Sometimes we do get that immediate answer and an amazing miracle where God manifests his goodness for us in a singular event. But more often God manifests in a process that takes time and even effort on our part.

That is because process is usually more formative than an event or even an impartation because process develops character. I remember Renee, the wife of a former senior pastor at Mid-Cities, saying with a laugh, “ I don’t want to have to work for it, I just want an impartation.” We all laughed, but secretly I’m with her – I just want an impartation. But God is wiser than that. Too often, if God were to give us the desire of our heart as soon as we asked for it, we would not have the character to manage the gift or the blessing. We would mess it up or misuse it.

So, does God want us to be happy? Yes, God wants us to be happy but not just for a brief season until “the new” wears off of our latest toy. He wants us to possess joy and possess happiness but that comes after the shaping and the molding of our hearts. I’m not saying you shouldn’t ask for what you desire but first of all examine that desire of your heart to see if it lines up with God’s values and purposes. Ask him to reveal the areas of growth he wants to work on next in your life and invite him to do the work and cooperate when he does it.

God is a great coach. When I ran track in high school, what I wanted and what would make me happy on a daily basis was an easy workout, finishing early, and a pat on the back for a job not done. That would make me happy in the short run but that happiness would quickly fade. The coach had something else in mind – the joy that would come from winning the race at the next meet and the race after that and the race after that. The joy and satisfaction that would come from a career of winning with medals in the display case would far out weight the happiness of an easy workout. So…we didn’t get easy workouts. We went home late not early and there was always one more lap.

There is a cost to lasting happiness. So when God says no or not yet don’t despise him. When you face hardships that are not quickly settled but that you must endure, know that God is making you into a champion who will one day possess joy and happiness rather than always seeking it in the “next new thing” you desire. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (Heb.12:1).