My wife Susan and I recently went to see Overcomer, which is the newest movie out from the Kendrick Brothers who also produced War Room, Fireproo,fand Courageous. This is a movie about a young black girl who became the single member of a cross country track team for a Christian School.  Of course, she overcomes all odds to excel in her sport and discovers herself and a family member she thought was dead. In some ways, the plot is predictable but in the end you still shed a tear and want to applaud as she overcomes an immense amount of  brokenness.

Although the movie is based on a formula, I highly recommend it. The formula works time and again because it develops the theme of redemption.  A person loses his way, makes terrible mistakes, hurts others, burns bridges, finally receives a second chance to do it right…and does it. Something in us wants to stand and cheer.  If you think about it, a number of great movies through the years have developed that theme including the classic Ben-Hur, Les Miserables, the Rocky series, the redemption of Darth Vader in Star Wars, etc.  I believe these work and we cheer the formula decade after decade because we all know deep within, that we personally need our own redemption.

The Word of God says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Eccl.3:11). The idea of setting eternity in the hearts of men can mean many things, but more than anything, I think it confirms that God has deposited within each man the sense that something lies beyond this life and beyond the physical realm. Within each of us there is a sneaking suspicion that when I take my last breath, a door is opened to another realm.  I know that there are self-proclaimed atheists who argue that there is nothing beyond that moment of death, but I believe they had to convince themselves of that view…it did not come naturally.

With an inherent sense of eternity and the longing and even certainty of life after death, the next logical question is, “What does life after this life look like?” Historically, every culture has developed some answer to that in the form of religion and each one has imagined some kind of reward for righteous living and some form of punishment for the wicked…however that was defined by the culture.  It is fascinating that every people group through the ages has struggled with their own mortality and has been concerned with their eventual destination after death.  I believe that is confirmation that God has indeed placed eternity in the hearts of men.

I also believe that we have inherited a sense of defectiveness from our ancestors – Adam and Eve.  After they both sinned against God, they were overcome with a sense of fear and shame…a sense that they were no longer acceptable to God. That sense of defectiveness haunts us all at some level.  One response is to construct a system of good works, courageous exploits, self-sacrifice, or special knowledge that will earn us entry into the blessed realm of the next life.  Every form of this option has us trying to earn our salvation, but men are still haunted by the fear that they have never done enough.  Another option is to simply deny life after death and the threat of judgment through a disciplined mindset of atheism. If I can’t earn my way to God, I will simply deny  his existence. The third option is found only in Jesus and that option believes that God is good and that he loved us enough to personally pay the price for our defectiveness.  We cannot earn salvation but can only accept it through the sacrifice of Jesus.  In a works religion, man keeps trying to get to God. In Jesus, God has come to man.  In him and him alone is the redemption we all long for because we know we need it.  Maybe we can’t verbalize it, but we sense it – we feel it.

When movies or stories hit that nerve, it resonates with our deepest need.  We identify with the character who finds redemption and we experience the hope of redemption in that moment.  Of course, it is only a movie or a book and that hope fades unless we have the abiding hope of Jesus.  One reason the gospel is so powerful, is because it hits that nerve.  As followers of Jesus, we have the story that meets the need.  We should be eager to tell it and the truth of it will resonate in the hearts of men. Jesus is the redeemer and the hero of every story.

The goodness of God is an essential theological truth that affects everything we do and everything for which we pray. When we consider the goodness of God, however, it is hard not to keep shifting between the fearful God of the Old Testament and the God of grace revealed in the New Testament. When hardship comes and stays for a while, most of us immediately think that the judgment of God has landed on us because that is what we see in the Old Testament – you know…global flood, fire consuming Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt, Miriam being struck with leprosy, and so on. If we are not careful, we see God as a God of vengeance and wrath rather than a loving father, and when we see him that way, it is almost impossible to reconcile that view with the Heavenly Father that Jesus talks about who knows and cares if even one sparrow falls to the ground. When we see God that way we are uncertain that he always wants to bless us or we redefine blessing so that it can contain hardship, persecution, loss, death, and illness. If we believe that God may visit those kinds of things on us because they are good for us in the long run, we will not be able to pray against those things with much faith. If we are not clear on what constitutes the works of God and the works of the devil, we will not know how to pray. John defined the works of the devil as everything Jesus attacked in his ministry – sickness, premature death, demonic affliction, condemnation, hunger, shame, etc.

What we need to recognize is that the cross has made all the difference and that the cross was in the heart of God from the foundation of the world (Rev.13:8). God’s revelation of himself and kingdom truths has always been a progressive revelation revealing some things now and some things later. Even Jesus told his disciples, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come” (Jn.16:12-13).

In our own lives, we hear and understand the truths of the scriptures bit by bit rather than getting a full download the moment we come to faith in Jesus. Even to the apostles, the New Covenant was unlocked bit by bit. On the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell on the church, the leaders were totally unaware that God was going to open the door to Gentile believers. According to scholars, it was nearly seven to ten years after Pentecost when Peter received a vision that God had accepted Gentiles into the church without the need to become proselyted Jews before they were saved (Acts 10). It was such a hidden part of the gospel that it took a major conference in Jerusalem to affirm that Gentiles were welcome in the church (Acts 15). That truth was embedded in scripture all along but no one read the texts with that understanding until the Holy Spirit granted them that understanding.

Since God works through progressive revelation, we need to understand that certain things were emphasized in the Old Testament in order to prepare God’s people for a the Messiah. It has been said that the Old Testament revealed the power of sin, while the New Testament reveals the power of righteousness. In the Old Testament, if a man touched a leper he became unclean. In the New Testament, when Jesus touched a leper, the leper was made clean.

Another way to view the progressive revelation of scripture is to see that the holiness of God was emphasized before the cross while the mercy and grace of God has been emphasized since the cross. God’s mercy, grace, and goodness were always there but holiness was center stage. His holiness and judgment is still there, but in Jesus his mercy and grace took center stage. As parents, we love our children from day one and go to great lengths to protect and provide for them. However, we also begin to discipline our children at an early age to teach them right from wrong and to instill in them a healthy respect for their parents. As children, we all learned to obey our parents first through fear of punishment and only later through love and trust. Children function best by rules (law), while adults live by principles (spiritual wisdom). In a sense, parents emphasize their holiness first before they begin to emphasize love and trust. Perhaps, that is what God had to do for the whole human race.

You might say that God went to unreasonable extremes to demonstrate his holiness before the cross – a global flood, entire cities or tribes being wiped out, etc. However, we forget that the thread of salvation that runs through the entire Bible includes the preservation of the bloodline what would finally bring the Savior into the world. We have no awareness of the level of spiritual warfare that went on through the cultures that God removed in an effort to insure the arrival of our Savior. All you need to do is to look at the efforts of Hitler and the Nazi’s to totally remove the Jewish nation from the face of the earth to know the extent that Satan would go through to prevent Messiah from being born. The allies had to “carpet bomb” Germany to overcome the demonic evil that drove Hitler. Tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children, died in those raids. It was the cost of overcoming evil and the consequences of Germany’s refusal to surrender. God faced the same evils in the past and was forced to pour out judgment himself on cities and tribes even though he would have preferred peace.

Another reality exists in the Old Testament as well as we consider the goodness of God. We often forget the lengths that God went to in order to avoid bringing judgment on those nations. Noah preached for 120 years before the flood came trying to get the world around him to repent. God agreed to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if he could find just ten righteous men in the city. He sent his prophets time and again to turn not just Israel but other nations (Jonah and Nineveh, for instance) from evil before sending judgment. If you read the Old Testament carefully you will discover that pain and destruction has never been the heart of God for anyone. “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)?

However, the unrelenting wickedness of some men and nations requires judgment. Is a good that does not resist evil really good? Good must resist evil and if evil will not relent then good must destroy it. No one criticized the allies for standing up against Nazi Germany in World War II because evil, like cancer, has to be opposed. But men have sometimes been quick to judge God for the same opposition to unrelenting evil through the centuries.

Having said all that, the cross has changed the landscape of heaven’s dealing with men. Whereas in the Old Testament, the holiness of God was emphasized, the cross now allows God to highlight his mercy and grace. Jesus came not only to save us but also to point out and demonstrate the goodness of God. Jesus was very clear that he was the revelation of the Father among us. Remember that Jesus is Emmanuel or God with us. Secondly, Jesus said that if we have seen him, we have seen the Father (Jn.14). Whenever we ask God to empower us to do what Jesus did, we don’t have to question whether it is God’s will or not. Whatever Jesus did, the Father wants to do all the time. In order for the church to be the church that God envisions, we must define good and evil as Jesus defined it. Bill Johnson says that our skewed definition of good when we say God is good, keeps us from pushing back against the devil. “Instead of creating doctrines that explain away our weakness and anemic faith, we’ll actually have to find out why ‘the greater works than these’ (Jn.14:12) have not been happening in and around us.”

His point is that our faith for doing the works that Jesus did has been so watered down that we have incorporated unhealed sickness, premature death, birth defects, gender confusion, natural disasters, etc. as part of God’s will that we accept and live with rather than seeing those things as works of the devil that we should triumph over by faith. Jesus said that whoever believed in him would not only do what he did but would do even greater things than he had done. The goodness of God was expressed through the works of Jesus and should still be expressed through those who follow Jesus. The goodness of God and our definition of that goodness guides our prayers and our actions. It is essential that we are clear that God wants to do good to his people and even to the lost and that the good he wants to do is not some strange theological definition that visits suffering on his children to purify the soul.

His love and goodness for us is like that of a loving father who always wants to bless and provide. A loving father never enjoys or is indifferent to the injuries or illnesses of his children. He would never give his child cancer to grow his or her faith. He would never inflict his child with a birth defect to make that child more dependent on him. The heart of a loving and wise parent comes from God. We can know what God wants for us by the things we want for our children. As redeemed people, we know our deepest longings for our children and we can have confidence that those longings reflect the Father’s will for all of his children. So…know today that God is good and he wants to bless you and meet every need in a way that blesses as well. Pray for good things (healing, provision, salvation, reconciled relationships, protection, success, etc.) with confidence because God wants to express his goodness through you and for you today.

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.      I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:11-13

When Paul wrote his letter to the church at Philippi, he was writing from a Roman prison. The church at Philippi had sent him some supplies and Paul was thanking them for their concern and response to his needs. He was quick to say that he appreciated their gifts but that his needs had been met in Christ because he had learned to be content in every situation of life. In this letter, we learn that contentment, in the sense that Paul uses it, is an essential key to happiness.

The word translated “content” is a very strong word in ancient Greek philosophical circles. It was the state that all Greek philosophers aspired to as a state of being totally unaffected by the world around them and emotionally self-sufficient. You see this mindset of total, unquestioning acceptance in eastern religions. It is the idea of being self-contained so that nothing upsets a man’s inner world of peace. Eastern mystics often strive to reach that state of inner peace through total, unquestioning acceptance of their circumstances and a disregard for personal needs or comfort. It is ultimate expression of fatalism that says whatever happens, happens – so just accept it.

Paul did not mean “contentment” in the same sense because Christians are never to be indifferent to the needs of the world around them or to be self-contained and self-sufficient. We do not live a life of fatalistic acceptance because we are more than conquerors in Christ. However, Paul had discovered a Christ-sufficiency that guarded his heart and generated an internal contentment even in prison.

Paul experienced that internal contentment as peace and goes on in this same letter to say, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.        And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil.4:6-7). How many of us are in search of peace in our hearts? How many of us would be willing to give anything to alleviate our anxiousness, our angst, and our internal restlessness that never lets us enjoy the moment or find peace in the midst of the storm?

I believe Paul’s secret to contentment and peace was his strong conviction that God was in the midst of every storm with him. Paul did not believe that God caused his hardships because he knew who the enemy was. However, he did believe that God was with him and that God would insert his purposes into every situation. For Paul, every obvious victory and every seeming defeat offered an opportunity to discover more about the Father and more about Jesus. In the midst of crisis, Paul saw an opportunity to discover who God was going to be for him in that crisis. It was a chance to discover a new facet of the Father’s love and power that he had not known before.

He believed that both seasons of plenty and seasons of lack were opportunities for thanksgiving. In a season of plenty, thanksgiving was prompted by the harvest that had just occurred. In a season of lack, thanksgiving was prompted by the harvest that was on the way. Paul had learned to see God’s hand and feel his presence and his working in every situation.

In a circumstance where we might feel that God had abandoned us to injustice and hardship, Paul still saw the hand of God. Early in his letter he wrote, “Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly” (Phil.1:12-14).

Even in a prison cell, Paul saw the hand of God at work. God was working something in Paul as well as through Paul in his present circumstance. Because of that, Paul found a spiritual capacity to be content or at peace with life at any given moment because even the hard times had an eternal purpose for him. His thanksgiving was based on what he believed God was doing and would do in each moment. He said that prayer and thanksgiving in any crisis would guard our hearts and produce a peace that transcends or goes beyond our understanding.

The key is to know that God will work something good out of every circumstance in which we find ourselves. He is not absent, he is not indifferent, he is not powerless. He is working and a heart of thanksgiving opens up our spiritual eyes to see, first of all, who he is and then what he is doing.

We live in a world and a culture that works hard to produce a state of non-contentment. Every add you see in a magazine or on television tries to convince you that you need at least one more thing for happiness or fulfillment – a new car, a cruise, a new look, or the perfect house just beyond your budget. The devil also whispers that what you have is not enough – you deserve more or you deserve better – a more attentive or better looking spouse, more money, more power, more influence, or more fame. With each of those temptations he promises more significance, more happiness, and more contentment.

However, outside of God’s purposes, nothing will bring those things in any lasting way. Remember Adam and Eve. Satan convinced them that there was just one more thing they needed for happiness and that one bite from the tree would meet their need. To Satan’s delight, instead of peace and contentment, that next bite produced fear and shame.

Paul had definitely learned to look for more – but more of God rather than more of what the world offered. No circumstance could keep him from God so in every circumstance he could say, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil.4:4). Because of his relationship with the Father, Paul always anticipated good because God is good. He always anticipated victory, because God is victory. He always anticipated having enough because God is the God who provides. He always anticipated the ability to endure because he knew that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Contentment is great gain. Learn to find the hand of God in every circumstance and that contentment can be yours.

Shame is a powerful weapon of the enemy. I was part of a group a few evenings ago in which four or five believers were prayed for and received deliverance. In nearly every case, a spirit of shame was one of the tormentors in the life of those being ministered to.   Guilt is the sense or the feeling that I have done something wrong. Shame is the sense or feeling that there is something wrong with me that ultimately makes me unlovable and unacceptable.

Many of us carry a sense of shame from our childhood where we too often heard phrases such as: Shame on you!   What is the matter with you? What’s wrong with you? You little piece of trash! Etc. If we hear those kinds of words often enough we begin to feel as if something is broken and defective that makes us unacceptable. We also feel that the defectiveness is unalterable. Our self-image plummets and we are unable to carry a sense of goodness, worth, or acceptability around with us. The devil loves to move into those wounds and reinforce them with internal whispers of rejection, condemnation, and accusation.

When we carry shame or a sense of unworthiness we tend to believe that if anyone really knew us they wouldn’t love us. Authenticity and transparency are too risky for that individual who is always anticipating the next experience of rejection. On a spiritual level, those of us who carry shame doubt that even God can love us. We doubt his blessings and we doubt that he pays much attention to our prayers. As a result, we live with little expectation of good things coming our way and pray more with vague hope than with faith.

One of the women we ministered to this week asked for prayer because she didn’t feel welcome in the presence of God and believed that her prayers were not being heard. She had a checkered past and felt in her heart that her past failures disqualified her for the blessings and the privileges of the kingdom. The shame she carried from past mistakes was being reinforced daily by demons that had been assigned to her. After we cast our several demons (one being the spirit of shame, another rejection, and so forth) she said there was an instant shift in her heart. Before she felt that all she could do was stand outside the throne room of God and peek around the corner from time to time. After shame was driven out, she felt herself standing directly before the throne and being fully accepted by the Father.

She, of course, already knew what the Bible says about her forgiveness and the Father’s total acceptance of her but shame kept her from receiving that truth in her heart. If we don’t believe in our hearts that God loves us, delights in us, and quickly forgives our past failures we will never live up to the destiny God has ordained for us in Christ. What we believe about God’s response to our failings is very important.

Two apostles denied directly Christ on the night of his arrest. Judas denied him by betraying his location to the High Priest and Peter denied him verbally three times to witnesses who asked if he had been with Jesus. Both were overcome with shame. Both wept bitterly. One believed God would never release him from his failure and so he hung himself. The other clung to the little band of believers and the Lord in spite of his shame about what he had done. He returned to the Lord with some reason to hope that he would be forgiven because he had seen the love of the Father expressed in Jesus for the past three years.

God is not interested in shaming his children. Of course, he wants us to take responsibility for our failures, confess them, and then align our hearts with his, but then he wants to forgive our failures and forget them. Before his conversion, the apostle Paul made a career if blaspheming Jesus and arresting his followers, He put some to death. In his letter to the Roman church, Paul says confidently “those who trust in Jesus will never be put to shame” (Rom.10:11). I believe Paul leaned on that truth from time to time when Satan would remind him of his past. Paul also tells us that love keeps no record of wrongs (1 Cor13). Since God is love, he keeps no record of the failings in our lives that produced our shame and sent Jesus to heal broken hearts that have been shattered by shame. When God looks at us, he doesn’t see past failings; he sees future potential. He doesn’t see us as broken, defective unchangeable human beings but rather as born-again new creations in Christ.

The heart of God is revealed in Peter’s life in such clear ways. Other than Judas, Peter was the only apostle who directly denied his relationship with Jesus – not once but three times. And yet, less than two months later, the Holy Spirit chose Peter to deliver the very first gospel message on the day of Pentecost to launch the church of Jesus on the earth. He was enabled by the Spirit to preach that sermon to the same people before whom he had denied Christ. Jesus came to take away our shame and grant each of us a place of purpose and honor in the kingdom. Shame has no place in the kingdom because in Christ we are all loved, all worthy, and all significant. Any whisper to the contrary is a lie.

For those of us who struggle with a lingering sense of shame and unworthiness, we must choose daily to agree with God and say what he says about us while we reject the lies and taunts of the enemy. Remember….”Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom.8:1); “Because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb.10:14); and… “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame” (1 Peter 2:6). If you are in Christ, there is no shame. When the whispers come call them lies. Let the enemy know who you are in Christ and send him on his way. In Jesus, you have no past – not even yesterday – and you are glorious! Be blessed today.