There is unanimous agreement among evangelical theologians that the “the Kingdom of God” was the central, foundational message of Jesus.  Speaking to His followers He said; “I came to preach the good news of the Kingdom of God…”  (Lk 4:43)  Then after his apostles had been with Him for a while He sent them out; “To Preach the Kingdom of God…” (Lk 9:2)  And there is even more evidence, in fact, the Kingdom of God, Kingdom of Heaven or their equivalents occur more than a hundred times in the four Gospels alone and a hundred sixty-two times in the entire New Testament.  If the Bible says something once, it’s important, but if it says it over and over and over again, it’s supremely important.

Despite its significance, most followers of Jesus have not given much thought to the Kingdom of God.  Maybe it’s because they speak, sing, and pray about the kingdom so often, they assume they know what it means.  In fact they do not, at least that’s my experience after dialoguing with people about the Kingdom of God for more than forty years.  Example: People who have faithfully prayed the Lord’s Prayer their whole life, do not know what they are asking when they pray; “Thy Kingdom Come…on earth as it is in heaven”?  I’ve found that even mature believers are unable to explain it to me.

It’s the same with the phrase, “Seek first the Kingdom of God.” (Mat. 6:33)  Most believers acknowledge they want to live like that, but ask them, “How do you do it,” or, “what does that phrase means,” and the usual answer is, “I’m not sure.”  When people aren’t sure, it makes them vulnerable to erroneous teaching.  Currently, the “Kingdom of God” has numerous aberrant interpretations like; “Kingdom Now Theology” also known as “Dominion Theology” which is promoted by the movement known as the “New Apostolic Reformation.” For more information about it, see my paper about the NAR, on my web page; “glennmurray.net”

Jesus told parables and stories about the Kingdom of God, but never gave a precise definition.  One might ask why, but the people He was speaking to would not have asked that question, because they knew what He meant.  He didn’t need to explain it to them any more than a speaker today would need to explain what a “State” is if he used the term, “All Fifty States.”  Later, I will give two stories from the Bible to prove that point.

Believers acknowledge Jesus as King but ask them to explain what the Kingdom means, and most will have a similar definition as the dictionary.  “a state or government having a king or queen as its head.” (Dictionary.com)  It’s unfortunate, that people understand the Kingdom of God that way, because that is not what Jesus meant when He spoke about the Kingdom of God.  He was not speaking about an area or group of people like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, or the United Kingdom.  There is always a group of people over which a King reigns but it’s a secondary derived meaning. We need to return to the way the first-century believers understood the Kingdom of God.

The challenge of language is that the meaning of some words change over time, and some do not.  “Kingdom” is a word that has changed because it had a uniquely different meaning in the first century.  An illustration of how words change is found in the word “Charity” in the King James Version of the Bible, which was translated in 1611.  The vocabulary of that day caused them to translate the Biblical word “Love” as “Charity.”  You see it in Chapter Thirteen of First Corinthians, which is known as the love chapter.  It uses the phrase; “Now abide these, Faith Hope and Charity.”  Today, “I charity you,” would not be understood to mean, “I love you.”  So, let’s return the meaning of the word, “Kingdom,” in the days of Jesus.

We’ll start with the original words used in the Scriptures for our English word “Kingdom.”  The Old Testament used the Hebrew word, “Malkuth” and the New Testament uses the Greek word, “Basileia.”  The primary meaning of each of those words is, “Authority to rule.”  As is common in the English language, Kingdom had a number of synonyms that were used to describe it.  Depending on the context of the passage, the Biblical translators use one of these synonyms; Authority, Rulership, Sovereignty, Dominion, or Power.  I will leave it for others to write a deeper more complete theology of the Kingdom of God but a simple description would be; “It is the Rule or Reign of God.”  We celebrate it with the song, “Our God Reigns.”

That means that when you see the word kingdom in the Scriptures, you can substitute one of those words, and you have the true meaning.  Try it the next time you pray the Lord’s Prayer.  When you come to the line that says, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  In your mind and heart, say; “May your Authority be accepted on earth like it is in heaven” or personalize it by saying; “May you rule in my heart as you do in heaven.”  For the phrase; “For Thine is the Kingdom,” recognize that it literally means; “You have all authority.”  When you desire to “Seek first the Kingdom of God” (Matt. 6:33) you do so by, “Allowing God to rule in your life.”

Let’s revisit two scenarios in the Bible that illustrate what the writers of Scripture had in mind when they used the Hebrew and Greek words for Kingdom.  Authority, Right to Rule, Sovereignty, and Dominion are the literal meaning of the word Kingdom, but the context of the stories also confirm that meaning.

In the Old Testament: You will remember that the Babylonian’s took Israel into captivity and they also brought back the golden cups from the temple in Jerusalem.  One night King Belshazzar had those cups brought in so he could drink a toast to the idols of Babylon.  God was really upset by this and sent him a message.  In a drunken stupor, Belshazzar saw the fingers of a hand writing something on the wall.  It was in a language that he or his wise men could not interpret. (Dan. 5:26-31)  Daniel was brought in and he interpreted the message as follows; “God has numbered the days of your Kingdom (Malkuth) and brought it to an end.”  It’s obvious that the nation and people of Babylon did not end that night but Belshazzar’s rulership did. (Malkuth) The Bible says he was killed that very night and his kingdom (Authority/Rulership) was terminated, and given to Darius the Mede. (Dan. 5:31)

In the New Testament:  Jesus told a very short parable about the Kingdom of God.  When the people were perplexed about the Kingdom, He said, “A nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom (Basileia) and then return.” (Luke 19:12)  That doesn’t help those of us in the twenty-first century to understand the Kingdom, however, it was the perfect metaphor for His audience.  That very situation had happened a few years earlier, so the people had the following context for what Jesus was talking about.  In 63 BC, the Romans conquered Israel but could not subdue it.  For twenty-three years, they controlled it by day but not by night, in the city but not the country, in the streets but not the alleys.  So as Jesus stated, a nobleman who was a descendant of “Esau”, and a convert to Judaism had an idea.   He had met the Cesar once so he went to Rome and proposed to the Roman Senate that they give him the Kingdom. (Basileia/Right to rule)  Mark Antony, the Roman General/politician helped him convince them that he could end the chaos, subdue the country, and bring stability.  The territory and people over which he wanted to rule was the place he left, so “Kingdom” could not have meant, an area or group of people.  This man’s name was Herod and he literally went into a far country (Italy) to receive the right to rule his region.  He was given that authority by Rome so he was the ruthless King of Judea when Jesus was born.

CONCLUSION

You now have indisputable evidence that the primary message of Jesus was the Kingdom of God and that the people understood Him to mean, “God has a Right to Rule.”  Israel already knew that because God had given them the Mosaic Covenant but they had repeatedly ignored his rulership and violated this covenant. They were no different than we are today because every person is born with the desire to be autonomous.  Even three-year-olds want to be in charge of themselves when they say; “I can do it myself.”  Each of us inherited that in our DNA from our great-great grand-father Adam who was the first to say by his actions, I don’t want anyone to rule over me.

You may ask, why does God have the right to rule everything?  If you agree that God is the creator, sustainer and highest authority in the universe, then it’s easy to answer.  If you don’t then my answer will not satisfy you.  I believe He has a right to rule because He owns everything, and like a landlord, He has authority over his property.  God doesn’t just own the “Cattle on a thousand hills,” everything on earth and in heaven belongs to Him. (Psa. 50:10)  He owns everything we possess, even our next breath.  We are merely stewards or managers of what He gives us, death proves that conclusively.  Oh yes, you can pass it on to your heirs but they will merely be stewards until they die.

God knew we were incapable of meeting His standard of righteousness, so He sent His Son Jesus to do it for us.  First He preached the Kingdom of God, then went to the cross to pay the penalty for our sin which was death.  Death in the Scripture is always, separation from God who is life.  So He suffered death on our behalf and was separated from His Father so that we don’t have to ever be separated from God.  He then instituted a “New Covenant” (Mat. 26:28) which allowed anyone who receives Jesus to become a Son of God and inherit the eternal life of Jesus.

Before Jesus went back to heaven He told His disciples; “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.” (Mat. 28:18)  Therefore, since the Kingdom of God is defined as, “Authority, Rulership, Sovereignty, and Dominion, it means that, Jesus and the “Kingdom of God” are synonymous.  In fact, He is the embodiment of the “Kingdom of God” which can also be stated as; Authority of God, Rulership of God, Sovereignty of God, Dominion of God.  Or you could just say Jesus, and correctly understood you have spoken about the Kingdom of God.

After Jesus ascended into Heaven, the early church leaders continued His teaching about the Kingdom of God but began to associate it with the name of Jesus.  Philip, the first evangelist, went to Samaria preaching the “the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12)  Everywhere in Scripture, Jesus is portrayed as the authority of God so everyone who receives Jesus receives the Kingdom of God.  Salvation is a one-time event but those of us who are “Born again, Saved, Regenerate,” need to continue to daily receive the Kingdom, meaning Gods rulership in our lives.

God has graciously given mankind free will, so we can decide whether or not we want to give our allegiance to Him.  I have chosen to let Jesus be the Lord of my life and I pray that the Good News of the Kingdom of God will be returned to its rightful place in the body of Christ.  (Luke 4:43)

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

Some think the Kingdom of God is the church or all the believers in the world.  It’s true that the church is the Church of God, (1 Cor 1:2), and the kingdom is the Kingdom of God, but they are not synonymous?  The Church is a fellowship of believers who have received the Kingdom of God. (His Rulership)  People received or rejected the Kingdom of God long before the church was instituted in the Book of Acts.  Adam and Eve rejected the Kingdom of God, (Rulership of God) and we have original sin.  In fact, sin is rejecting the Kingdom of God, i.e.; Rejecting God’s right to rule.  Noah received the Kingdom of God and built an ark.  Abraham received the Kingdom of God and went into another country.  Moses received the Kingdom of God and went back to Egypt.  Mary received the Kingdom of God and said to the angel; “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” (Lk 1:38)   Scripture teaches that the Kingdom of God is actually, “From before the foundation of the world.” (Mat. 25:34)  Again, speaking of God, the Bible says; “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations” (Psa. 145:13)

A phrase often heard in some churches is; “Building the Kingdom of God.”  They think they are building the kingdom by adding new believers to the body of Christ, starting new churches or other missionary efforts.  However, if you understand the true meaning of the word kingdom, that is a ridiculous idea.  How can we build, add too or extend; the Sovereignty, Authority, Rulership, or Power of God?  The idea of laboring to establish the Kingdom of God is completely inconsistent with the language of scripture.  The kingdom is a divine fact, not a human accomplishment.  We are not asked to “build the Kingdom,” but we are asked to receive it and proclaim it.

Some think the Kingdom of God was the message of Jesus for the period before the cross, but the first chapter of Acts refutes that.  This was after His resurrection but His message had not changed, because, for forty days Jesus continued to teach His disciples about the Kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3).  Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles also continued to teach the Kingdom of God.  Scripture says that he; “entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the Kingdom of God.” (Acts 19:8)  Later he went to Rome and preached first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles, the Kingdom of God. (Acts 28:23,31)  He lived for two years in Rome and “Boldly proclaimed the Kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Acts 28:31)  These early disciples knew that kingdom meant authority and sovereignty so by preaching the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus; they were claiming that all authority in heaven and on earth reside in Him.

Dear Son,
I am writing to tell you what took place when you joined my family. Do you remember when I offered you forgiveness, and by faith you accepted it? (1)  At that very moment, you were placed into Christ, and your sin was completely forgiven, and you were made righteous. (2)  I mean all sin, past, present, and future.  As a matter of fact, I removed your sin from you as far as the east is from the west, and that’s infinity by any standard. (3)  Your feelings will tell you something different, but I’m asking you to believe Me, not your feelings.

Now that you have the life of my beloved Son, I view you as holy as He is. (4)  When you received His life, you became a brand new creation and were given a totally new identity. (5)  My child, you are now one of my “Saints.” (6)  I know that you will make many more mistakes in your life, but if that could disqualify you, then no human being would have a chance.  No one lives a sin free life, so it is a lie straight from the enemy that if you are less than perfect, you will be rejected by me.  That is not true; when you accepted Jesus, you received His eternal life, and there is nothing you can do that will nullify my forgiveness, or change how I view you.  So let me say it again; nothing you will ever do can make me love you less or cause me to abandon you. (7)  My continuing acceptance of you is not based on your performance just as it wasn’t your good behavior that qualified you in the first place. (8)  Your salvation is based solely on My Sons’ death and resurrection, and in fact, now every time you sin, Jesus reminds me that it was also covered by His sacrifice. (9)

Either from yourself or the enemy, you will frequently be tempted to feel that you are not good enough.  But those are lies from the father of lies, and he will do his best to convince you that you are unworthy of my love and grace. (10)   Now that you are “In Christ,” you are permanently free from all condemnation.  You are not now or ever will be condemned by Me, so don’t let Satan hold you captive to his lies. (11)  I long for you to know at the deepest levels that you are truly free from the penalty of sin.  In fact, it is for freedom that I have set you free, so refuse to let anyone take away your freedom. (12)

Whether you came to Me early or late in life, you still ended up as My child, and I don’t have any second-class children. (13)  Are you starting to get it?  I love you, delight in you, and as a matter of fact would have sent my Son to pay the penalty for your sin, even if you were the only person on earth.  I know it’s difficult to believe these things because they are faith issues, but my word is trustworthy and true.  You can count on it.

Since you now have my Spirit within you, let me love you, teach you, mold you and use you. The best way for this to happen is to follow Jesus and walk in my Spirit. (14)  However, you should know that I am excited about you even if you never do anything for me.  But if you will cooperate, I have prepared many good things for you to do every day of your life. (15)  After that, you will come home to be with me forever. (16)

Till we are together in heaven,

Your loving Father

(1) Rom. 4                             (5) 2 Cor. 5:17                          (9) 1 Jn 2:1                              (13) Mat. 20:1-16

(2) Rom. 4: 5-8                     (6) 1 Cor. 1:2                            (10) Jn. 8: 44                            (14) Gal. 5:16

(3) Ps. 103:12                       (7) Rom. 8:38-39                     (11) Rom. 8:1                           (15) Eph. 2: 10

(4) Eph. 1:4-5                       (8) Eph. 2: 8-9                          (12) Gal. 5:1                              (16) Jn. 14: 2-3

From time to time, it’s important to revisit and reevaluate our theological beliefs.  A myriad of books, tapes, sermons, Sunday School classes, Bible studies, and retreats, can have the unfortunate effect of encumbering our faith.  The sheer volume of information from well-meaning, but fallible human sources, inevitably leads to a mixture of truth and error.  While this is not intentional, it never the less happens so we must be constantly vigilant.  In Acts 17:11 the Bereans are commended because “They received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”  This paper is about my experience as I examined the Scriptures daily, to see if what I was taught is true.

Before I share what I found, a short personal history might help the reader understand the context of these thoughts.  My father pastored several evangelical churches for more than 45 years, so I spent my childhood in that environment.  At 16, I rejected that way of life, dropped out of school, and left home to follow my dreams.  After achieving success in everything I chose to do, I was still unfulfilled and empty.  At age 26, I surrendered my life to Christ and reentered the community of faith.  I quickly became an avid student of the Bible and eventually held numerous leadership positions in a large evangelical church.  Concurrent with being an Elder and Sunday School teacher, I was active with several Para-church organizations that emphasized evangelism and discipleship.  My knowledge of Scripture, along with being asked to give leadership to these ministry opportunities, caused me to consider myself spiritually mature.  I was as committed, disciplined and dedicated as anyone I knew, but was unaware that it had produced in me a prideful spirit.  Thank God, He chose to intervene in my life through a series of circumstances and conversations.

One was a statement by Dick Halverson, a significant mentor, that shook me to the core and motivated me to take stock of my spiritual condition.  In a discussion about theology, he confronted me with, “I think you know more theology than the Apostles knew.”  For a milisecond I thought he was afirming my Scriptural knowledge but then it hit me hard that he had identified that ugly condition known as pride and even worse, spiritual pride.  I was devastated because I held him in such high esteem.  A few hours later I had a passing thought, I do know more theology than the Apostles knew.  They didn’t have the inspired teaching of Paul about salvation by grace, spiritual gifts, or the Second Coming of Christ, etc.  Even though all that is true, I quickly recognized that they had something that was more vital and dynamic than I was experiencing.  My salvation wasn’t in doubt, but I knew instinctively that even though I knew more information than they did, they knew Jesus in a way that I had not yet discovered.  A few months later, I remembered a statement that Paul the Apostle made, “Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ,” and “I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ.”  (Phil 3:7-8)  The instant that verse came to mind, it became very personal and very real to me.  So I told God that like Paul, this is my hearts cry.  Then at that moment and without any previous thought I involuntarily held out my cupped hands, and in a symbolic and metaphorical sense, they contained every doctrinal conviction I had, including the virgin birth, salvation by grace, etc.  I lifted my cupped hands to heaven, started to weep, and said out loud; “I will trade all of these for a heart connection with Jesus like the Apostles had.”  It seems clear to me now that the Lord took me at my word and began a process that continues until the present.  As I look back on that time, I realize that this was a major turning point in my spiritual journey.

Soon an idea began to develop that brought an answer to my prayer.  The idea was simple; I would spend an extended time in the four Gospels only plus the first chapter of Acts, and try to experience Jesus the way the Apostles did.  I was prepared to give this experiment three years like those who spent time with Him but committed to starting with at least one year.  I knew that the Hebrew culture was built on a tradition of verbal transmission of knowledge, and since Jesus had spoken to the Apostles, it seemed important for me to listen to His words instead of reading them.  This led me to purchase the Bible on tape (Cassette at that time) and to listen to it daily as I drove my car.  The method I adopted was to listen to the entire book of Matthew every day for one month, then all of Mark every day for one month, then Luke every day for one month, then John every day for one month.  Repeating this cycle allowed me to hear each of the gospels more than 60 times that first year.

To closely simulate the experience of the Apostles, I decided to avoid commentaries and simply listen to Jesus.  Even though He was not physically present, the indwelling Holy Spirit would be the one to help me understand and assimilate the Gospels.  Listening to large quantities of scripture caused me to hear things I had never read.  That was in spite of the fact that for years, I had studied the Bible by topics, doctrines, and word studies.  After listening for a while, I realized that I had been studying the music note for note, and had missed the melody.  It’s nice to hear the violin part by itself, but when all the other instruments join in, one hears the symphony.  It soon got exciting because a new thought or insight came almost every time I listened…Jesus was talking to me!  This has been going on for more than forty years now, and I can report that my doctrinal convictions haven’t changed much, but I have developed the intimacy with Jesus that I longed for.

It would take a book or two to explain all I’ve discovered, but this treatise is meant to address only one or two ideas that were generated in that first year of listening to the gospels.  One startling new insight came when I heard Jesus say to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” (Jn. 3:3)  I was quite knowledgeable about the Gospels and knew this verse better than most, and yet a new thought occurred to me.  Of all the people Jesus talked to, this was the only time He told someone they must be born again.  I didn’t make too much of that until later on when I heard Him talking to the rich man who asked, “Good teacher, how can I obtain eternal life?”  (Mat. 19:16)  I immediately thought Jesus would tell him he must be born again, but instead, He told him to keep the law.  He went on to say, “Sell all you have and give it to the poor.”  I thought why haven’t we evangelicals picked up this idea and preached it as the way to have eternal life.  The rich man was certainly more specific than Nicodemus was; he asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  The answer that Jesus gave him was straightforward and unequivocal.  In fact, I don’t know of a clearer question and answer on eternal life in all of Scripture.  In spite of this, if someone asked me how to have eternal life I would never tell them to keep the law and sell all they have and give it to the poor.  However, this is exactly what Jesus did, so it made me question my understanding of how one is saved.

As I continued to listen with new ears, the evidence mounted daily that Jesus dealt differently with each individual.  He was able to look into a person’s heart and see what barriers prevented them from responding to Him.  Nicodemus more than likely felt proud of being born a Jew and thought it automatically made him acceptable to God.  In effect, Jesus told him that being born a Jew was not enough, “You need to be born again.”  It seemed that Jesus would identify what a person had built his or her life on and then would custom fit His message to his or her situation by a direct statement or parable.  He knew what the primary loyalty of each person was, and then would ask for a greater loyalty.  For the rich man, wealth was the issue, and for others, it was a relationship with parents or a career, etc.  To another, He said, one must hate his own life.  The kingdom of self is still one of the greatest obstacles to following Jesus.

It hit me with real impact that being “born again” was a term that I used often but it was not prominent when Jesus spoke to individuals or groups.  Please understand that I am not depreciating being “born again” because I believe wholeheartedly that one must be spiritually reborn, or one cannot enter the Kingdom of God.  However, a thorough look at Scripture reveals that it was not the emphasis of Jesus, so it can’t be ours.  We have a lot of books and sermons explaining how to be born again, but Jesus told us in one verse. (John 3:8)  He said it’s a mystery; no one knows how it happens.  It’s like the wind, we hear and see its effects, but we can’t tell where it came from or where it is going.  We shouldn’t try to be more definitive than He was.  Giving special attention to “When were you born again” is like emphasizing, “When were you baptized into the body of Christ” or focusing on, “When was your name written in the Lamb’s book of life?”  These are both objective realities if we are “In Christ,” but using tennis terms, they are on God’s side of the net, and they are something He does.  We rejoice that they are true of us, but we don’t preach, “You must be baptized into the body of Christ.”  Again, I affirm that one cannot enter the Kingdom without being born again, but Jesus didn’t mention it to everyone, so neither do I.

I believe that if one asked Peter, James, or John when they were born again, they would probably answer, “I don’t know!”  That answer might have kept them from being accepted as a member of most churches.  However, if someone took the time to hear them out, they likely would have heard, “Jesus came down to the Sea of Galilee and asked us to follow Him.  As we did our hearts were captured, and now we believe He is the Messiah.”  Their part was to respond and follow; His part was to see that they were born from above and given new hearts.

Of course, there are conversion experiences like Paul’s, but they are the exception, not the rule.  The majority of present-day believers feel somewhat self-conscious about how they met Jesus because it doesn’t measure up to what we have promoted.  When asked to share their story, the vast majority of believers try to defer to someone else because their story doesn’t seem very exciting.  We have done them a real disservice by glorifying the dramatic conversion without telling them about the experience of the Apostles.

We recruit people to speak at our gatherings who have had an exciting experience.  Example: “I used to be an alcoholic or on drugs, but I gave my life to Jesus, and now I’m clean and sober, or I was headed for bankruptcy, and after I gave my life to Jesus, he restored my business, etc., etc.”  It is rarely communicated that while these experiences are genuine, they are the exception, not the norm.  The more prevalent conversion experience seems to be just opening one’s heart.  That can be instantaneous or over a period of time, using almost any set of words or no words at all.  Jesus hears the cry of the heart and responds by giving eternal life.

Thank God, for the “road to Damascus” conversion that some people experience, including me, but it doesn’t change the fact that Peter, James, and John are the norm for most people today.  These thoughts caused me to give deliberate attention to how people who followed Jesus got into the Kingdom.  It was a mild surprise to discover that it never happened the same way twice.  A prostitute washed the feet of Jesus with her tears, dried them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.  Even though she apparently said nothing, Jesus told her, “Daughter, your sins are forgiven, your faith has saved you.”(Lk 7:36-50)  A tax collector beat on his chest and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  Jesus said, “That man went home justified.” (Lk. 18:13-14)  The thief on the cross said to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom, and Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” (Lk. 23:42-43)  Zacchaeus said to the Lord, “Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”  Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to your house.”  (Lk. 19:8-9)  One man didn’t say anything; he was a paralytic on a stretcher, brought by his four friends.  Again, there is no “sinner’s prayer,” but Jesus said to him, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”  (Mk. 2:3-5)  As each of these folks received their salvation, they must have been born again at the same time, but Jesus didn’t mention it.  What I learned from this random pattern of interactions is that, while we want to systematize the gospel, Jesus never did.

Too often, we have packaged the Gospel into a simple formula so it can be used for mass evangelism.  Some people use the formula; “If you believe in your heart that Jesus was raised from the dead and confess with your mouth that he is your Lord, you will be saved.” (Rom. 10:9-10)  Special emphasis is frequently placed on public confession, but what does one do with John 1:12, which says, “To as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God.”  There is no confession in that verse, simply the receiving of Jesus.  So, to believe in one’s heart and confess with one’s mouth or beat on one’s chest and cry for mercy are two ways to be reconciled to God, but with Jesus, there were many, many ways for this to happen.  If we base our theology on a single encounter with Jesus, it could lead us to tell people that to have eternal life one must “stand on the street, beat on one’s chest and say, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”  The rule seems to be that there is no rule or pattern at all.  People enter in as many different ways as there are personalities.  Most of us struggle with this because we want others to come the way we did or in some other measurable way.

Too often, we expect people to say, “I receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior” or “I have a personal relationship with Christ.”  These phrases have become so important in our evangelical vocabulary that without knowing it, we often judge people based on their use or non-use of them.  Church history tells us that about 200 years ago, the prominent phrase was, “Have you been seized by the power of a great affection?”  I choose not to make phrases more important than Jesus did.

These new insights caused me to listen with an even greater interest and a profound desire to discover the central message of Jesus.  Although I am part of the conservative wing of the evangelical church, I became painfully aware that I might have missed it.  I said to myself, if “you must be born again” was not the focus of Jesus, then what was?  Then it dawned on me; He only said that one time but used two other phrases over and over and over again.  Therefore, it is indisputable that His central message was “The Kingdom of God,” and His primary call was “Follow Me.”  In fact, the words “follow me” and “the Kingdom of God” in their various forms each appears more than 100 times in the Gospels alone.  I will leave the Kingdom of God for another paper but will now compare His call to, “follow me” with our focus on “making a decision.”

It doesn’t take much research to find that decisionism was unheard of in the early church and is a relatively new phenomenon.  In fact, it was the American evangelist, Charles Finney who started it in 1825, and regrettably, it has received widespread acceptance.  Over the last 192 years, the evangelical church has become more and more decision oriented, but Jesus didn’t ask people to make a decision about Him; He asked them to follow Him.  Of course, He knew a decision was necessary in order to follow, but He didn’t want us to focus on a static decision but rather on an active following.  He didn’t say to Peter, “Make a decision about whether or not you will follow me.”  He simply said, “Follow me.”  We claim to stay true to the Bible so why do we stick to our evangelical traditions.  By concentrating on the decision approach, we have produced millions worldwide who have decided they need salvation and therefore Jesus, but most of them are not following Him.  I am not disputing the salvation of all of them, but the decision approach doesn’t seem to produce very many authentic disciples.

A couple of illustrations may show how far we have gone with decision-oriented evangelism.  Several years ago, Dick Halverson, one of my mentors, told me of a survey that was sent to churches, para-church organizations, and TV ministries all over the country.  It was pretty complete, covering the size of the budget, number of staff, areas covered, etc.  One question was, “How many decisions for Christ have been made in the United States through your ministry over the last ten years?”  They were astounded when they tabulated the results because the number was over 600 million.  It would be laughable if it were not so tragic because this means that the entire population of the country has each been saved twice.  If the question had been, “How many people are following Jesus as a result of your ministry,” it would have been a completely different result, because they could not answer that question accurately.  It is readily assumed that none of the reporting entities intentionally misreported, but that they did so, makes the joke about “I saw that hand,” seem like reality.

I know that polls are notoriously unreliable, but a Gallup poll reported that 74% (3 out of 4 people) say they have made a decision for Jesus Christ.  If the survey is correct, our current evangelistic methods are working quite well.  However, something must be drastically wrong with both the poll and our approach when the majority of the U.S. says they have made decisions for Christ, and we continue to see the problems of our society.  Decisions for Christ aren’t making much difference, and it seems to be an indictment on our presentation of Jesus.  Those who are active followers of Jesus do make a difference in their world.

Many people worship Jesus on Sunday but don’t take up their cross daily, and follow Him.  Worshipping is important and part of following but too often; it is the only part that many people take seriously.  The Bible bookstores are full of books on leadership and worship but not many on following.  That may be because only about five to ten percent of all believers are following Jesus.  Billy Graham says; “Ninety percent of all believers live carnal lives.”  He did not mean immoral lives, but rather, if they do not know how to walk in the Spirit, then they are living fleshly lives.  My experience is broad, and I’ve found that also includes many pastors.  They are saved, name in the lambs’ book of life but not following Jesus daily.  So let’s stay true to the Scripture that says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author, and perfector of our faith.”  (Heb. 12:2)

After recognizing the primacy Jesus gave to “follow me,” it dawned on me that it was also a primary metaphor throughout Scripture.  “Those that are LED by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” (Rom. 8:14)  “WALK in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” (Gal 5:16)  “Let us RUN with perseverance the race marked out for us.” (Heb 12:1)  “I PRESS ON to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” (Phil 3:12)  The early believers were called “FOLLOWERS of the Way.” (Acts 24:14)  Please notice, the words, “Led,” “Walk,” “Run,” “Press On” and “Followers” are all descriptions of a relationship with movement in it.  We are encouraged to stay on the go, so to speak, in our walk with Christ.  That is fundamentally different from a static decision.

We can learn a lot from several interactions Jesus had with Peter.  While he was still a fisherman, Jesus said to him, “Come follow me.” (Mat. 4:19)  This first following was an external following, but later Jesus gave Peter the Holy Spirit, and it became an internal following.  At the trial of Jesus, Peter stopped following for a while and even denied Him. (Lk. 22:56-62)  After His resurrection, Jesus met with him on the seashore and asked, “Do you love me?”  (Three times, because he had denied Him three times)  After Peter gave his answer, Jesus predicted his death as a martyr, and then said, “Follow me.”  Peter asked, “What about John?”  Jesus answered, never mind about John; “You follow me.” (Jn. 21:18-22)

My conclusion from the three years of dialogue between Jesus and Peter is that the message of Jesus for the non-believer is “Follow Me.”  For the believer, it’s, “Follow Me.”  For the believer who has stopped following it is, “Follow Me.”  For when you’re wondering why this is happening to you and not to others, its still “Never mind, Follow Me.”

“Follow Me” was and continues to be His primary call.  I pray that an emphasis on following Jesus will be restored as the essence of our message.

When you can’t remember, the twenty-two characteristics of a good husband or wife, the five love languages, the seven steps of appeal to authority, the eight things to do when you are worried, the four spiritual laws or the eight spiritual flaws, it’s time to get back to Jesus alone.

When you don’t know if you should sit at His feet, walk in a manner worthy of His call, stand in the time of battle, or run the race with diligence, it’s time to get back to Jesus alone.

When you’re told you should hear the Word, read the Word, mark the Word, memorize the Word, study the Word, and meditate on the Word, and you’re lost somewhere in the middle of Leviticus, it’s time to get back to Jesus alone.

When you hear Bible teachers say, it’s pre, mid, post, a, or pan, don’t take the “mark”, or the key is “times, time and half a time” and you’re having trouble getting through the week, it’s time to get back to Jesus alone.

When you’re confused by hymns like, “Fill my Cup Lord” and the next one they sing is, “I’ve Got a River of Life Flowing Out of Me” and you don’t know what it means to “raise your Ebenezer,” it’s time to get back to Jesus alone.

When you have gone to your fifth conference this year that claimed, “This is It” and you tried “It” and “It” didn’t work, it’s time to get back to Jesus alone.

When you just heard someone say, “Thus saith the Lord” and that contradicted the last, “A word from the Lord” which was contrary to the previous, “The Lord told me” and you finally get the picture that maybe the Lord isn’t saying all those things, it’s time to get back to Jesus alone.

It’s past time to separate His commands from Christian demands. It’s time to return to the “simplicity that’s in Christ” and to consider some lilies and birds. It’s time to just be with Jesus alone and hear Him say, “I love you.” That’s the Jesus you want to get back too.

Adapted by: Glenn Murray
Sept. 1973

Following Jesus is a dominant theme in the Gospels, so you hear a lot about it in church, and we even have a song titled; “I have decided to follow Jesus.”  I’ve read books, searched the internet and heard sermons about following Jesus, but they rarely have any practical help about this most important task of a believer.  Most people remain unclear about what it means for their daily life.  I frequently get comments like; “Following Jesus is important to me, but I’m not sure I know how.”  I usually say something like, following implies there is a leader and believers state that the leader they’ve chosen is Jesus.  Therefore, if you want to follow Jesus, you start by asking, “Where is he?”  As a believer, your answer is, He lives inside me.  (“The one who has been with you shall be in you.”  John 14:17)  So following is simply to BE RESPONSIVE TO JESUS WHO IS IN YOU.  That’s all it is, does it seem too simple?  (2 Corth. 11:3)  It has to be possible for the ordinary person, a child, or a new believer.  So now the question is, how do you follow an invisible internal Jesus?  I’m not an expert on the subject, but I’ll share a few things I’ve learned about following Jesus.  However, be assured that you don’t need to be a theologian, just responsive.

I live my life on this basis, and my experience is that God has led me through my normal faculties, that is by my thoughts and feelings.  I’ve never heard Him speak audibly, seen writing on the wall, or received a text or an email.  I’ve noticed that people use various terms to express how they hear God.  Some say “I felt led to do so I so,” others say, “I felt a nudge of the Spirit,” and some even say, “God spoke to me, or God told me.”  For me, I use the term, the “Check or Prompt” of the Holy Spirit, and it is the primary way I follow Jesus.  I live by an internal, “Check and Prompt” of the Holy Spirit, and people seem to know instinctively what I mean.  I act on what I believe is from God, and it’s always by faith.  That’s okay because “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 11:6)  Jesus hasn’t given me a roadmap for the journey He’s taking me on.  He’s more like a GPS that gives directions turn by turn.  And when I miss a turn, He recalculates and continues to give directions from that point forward.  For me, following Jesus is a matter of His applying impressions on my mind or feelings.  I’ve asked some of the greatest saints I know, including Billy Graham’s favorite Bible teacher, how they hear God?  They all confirm that this is also the way they hear God.  If it sounds too simple, remember it must be possible for a new believer or even a child.  Of course, He speaks through the Scriptures and other people but what we are talking about here is the inner awareness of God’s personal guidance.  Now for a few practical thoughts that guide me as I try to respond to the “Check and Prompt” of the Holy Spirit.

Illustrations and metaphors that speak of everyday situations often help me have a mental image of a spiritual truth.  For me following Jesus and walking in the Spirit is similar to walking physically.  The definition of walking is a series of interrupted falls.  Every step is an act of faith in which I trust my legs to support me.  Normally they do, but there have been times that I stumbled and skinned my knee and a couple of times when it was more serious.  No matter which it is, my goal is to get up and continue walking as soon as possible.  Babies learning to walk are a good model for anyone trying to walk in the Spirit.  They fall more often than adults, but they never seem to give up.  Even though I have been following Jesus for 55 years, I think I’m still in the toddler phase.  So just like a toddler, with every fall I get up and try again.

If I have an important decision to make, I pray for guidance and many times, I feel certain that the Lord has given me an answer.  However, sometimes I don’t have a clear sense of direction.  At those times and they happen more than I would have thought, I say; “Lord I don’t hear you saying anything to me about my concern.  You know I want to stay in your will, so would you please turn up the volume.  If you don’t, I will assume that you want me to have freedom of choice regarding this subject and that I should act according to wisdom and good counsel.”  Then if there are no serious consequences, I make a decision and act on it.  If on the other hand, the decision is consequential, I will make the decision internally, but not act on it.  I will wait a period of time to see if the Lord confirms it, or causes me to change my decision.

If you ask me, “Are you following Jesus right now,” I’ll do a heart check.  If I’m resisting God about anything, then I must say no, I’ve stopped following.  However, if I don’t sense that He’s convicting me about anything, then my answer is yes.  Actually, it would be a confident yes because it’s His responsibility to lead me.  God is the initiator, and I am the responder, so if my decision is wrong, or if I’m fooling myself, it’s the job of the Holy Spirit to let me know.  “God tests our hearts.”  (1st Thessalonians 2:4) And; “If our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God.” (1st John 3:21)

Some say we can’t live like this, and quote the Old Testament verse that says; “The heart is desperately wicked how can we trust it.” (Jer. 17:9)  Well, my heart isn’t desperately wicked, and yours isn’t either if you are, “In Christ.”  That verse is for unbelievers.  The verse for the believer is; “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them…”  (Ezekiel 11:19)  That verse is an Old Testament metaphor for the new birth that God gives us by His Spirit.

Many people say they don’t hear the Holy Spirit, but I’m convinced that they hear more than they care to admit.  Soldiers report that God was talking to them when the noise of battle was breaking eardrums.  The guidance is there, but we often resist it or block it out as just a thought.  Some people try to make their mind blank in order to hear the Lord, but this brings frustration because turning off your mind while awake is impossible.  Guidance is not a substitute for thinking, so we should think, and ask God to direct our thoughts.  We need to check our thoughts of course, and if they ever violate Scripture, then we know that the thought is not from God.

Try for one day to listen for the “Prompt and Check” of the Spirit, then act on it.  The Bible calls this obedience.  The goal is to develop a lifelong habit of living like this but start by trying it for a day then a week, etc.  Of course, there’s a possibility of license or self-delusion, but this is what the Bible teaches.  We can trust God to correct our mistakes.

“Whoever serves me must follow me…”  (John 12:26)

“Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfil the lusts of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16)

History has proven that sexuality is one of the most powerful motivations within us.  But that is not a negative because the Bible tells us that God intentionally created us with a sexual nature.  On the sixth day, God created them male and female and commanded them to “be fruitful and multiply.”  Here is a paraphrase of what He said to them on that very first day; “He blessed them, and said now go have sex, and produce some children.” (Gen. 1:27-28)  They were obedient and; “Adam had sexual relations with his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant.” (Gen. 4:1 NLT)  Significant pleasure was part of that experience, because it is God’s plan that marriage is the place for sexual love.  However, after sin entered the world, humanity is free to express their sexuality, morally or immorally.  As followers of Jesus we should; “Flee from sexual immorality” (1st Cor. 6:18)

However, even though one is a committed believer it can be a challenge to do so, because the sexual drive in most men is so strong.  Nevertheless, by the power of the Holy Spirit it is possible to live a life that is pleasing to God.  A good example comes from the oldest book in the Bible.  “There once was a man named Job who lived in the land of Uz.  He was blameless–a man of complete integrity.  He feared God and stayed away from evil.” (Job 1:1)  Even though God affirms that Job is a righteous man, he struggled with the temptation to have unrighteous sex.  That obviously caused him to make the following statement.  “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look with lust at a young woman.”(Job 31:1)  He motivated me to make the same covenant with my eyes.

In the two verses that followed God creating them “male and female,” and therefore the potential for sex, He gave them a variety of food to eat. (Gen. 1:29-30)  Food and sex are wonderful, but they both require us to use self-discipline.  If we eat unhealthy food, we can become sick, and if we eat too much, we can become obese.  Likewise, we must exercise self-control over our sex drive, or this wonderful gift will damage our human relationships as well as our spiritual life.  I believe that and choose to live my life within the boundaries that God has ordained.  Here are a couple of verses that address that; “For it is the will of God…that you abstain from sexual immorality.” (1st Thes. 4:3) “The works of the flesh are evident; sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality.” (Gal. 5:19)

This issue affects both male and female, but since my ministry has been to men for more than fifty years, this paper is primarily for them.  Guys, we have to get serious about this because we’re becoming like the Corinthian Church.  The Apostle Paul wrote to them; “it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you…”  (1st Cor 5:1)  He wrote that two thousand years ago, but it could have been written today.  It could be called “The First Letter to the Californians” because immorality may be more prevalent now than at the time of the Corinthians.  Today’s church tends to address it when a crisis develops, but we must become more proactive and address this head-on.

While speaking at a weeklong Pastor’s conference, they asked me to address the topic of sexual purity.  I intentionally started that session with the following statement.  “I’m not sure I’m the right person to talk to you about sexual purity.  I confess that on my desk I have pictures of a couple having sex, another one of men having sex with each other, and there are also pictures of three women having sex, and I’m tempted to look at them….(Pause for impact)  It’s called the internet, and it’s on your desk too.  Now that I’ve got your attention, I want to address male sexuality in a way you probably don’t speak about at your Church.”

In the modern era, America has had at least two periods of radical changes regarding attitudes about sex.  The 1920’s were a time of loose morals and sexual liberation, but it did not affect the majority, and certainly not the church.  However, the 1960’s sexual revolution profoundly changed everything, not only in America but also the entire western world.  It was so pervasive that it eventually invaded every aspect of our culture.  I could write a lot about the cost to society, and it is enormous, but my primary concern is the spiritual health of my brothers in Christ.  At first, the body of Christ resisted it, but we did not resist enough, so the erosion of our values was inevitable.  In my view, it is because we left the entertainment/media door wide open.  Erosion is the right word because no serious follower of Jesus would make a conscious decision to lower their moral standards.  However, over time, they did as they accepted the Movies, Music, and TV, which is saturated with sex and produced by a God-less entertainment industry.  It’s common for many believers to recommend a movie with this caveat; “There’s a little too much nudity and sex, and the language is pretty rough, but the acting is phenomenal.”  That is a self-indicting statement, but sadly, they are unaware that while their salvation is intact, their moral values are compromised.

The last few years have seen an epidemic of moral failure in the body of Christ.  Sadly, it involved many of our spiritual leaders.  There are the well-publicized cases like Ted Haggard, a pastor in Colorado Springs who was President of the National Association of Evangelicals.  When confronted, he confessed that he was involved in homosexuality and drugs.  However, there are hundreds of others who are not as well known.  A highly placed Para-Church leader I know ruined his life with porn addiction, and it started while doing research about porn.  A few years ago, my former pastor fell while counseling a 17-year-old girl.  Each of these were Godly men who yielded to the subtle or not so subtle temptation they face daily.  It wasn’t the only cause, but pornography by way of the internet was on each one’s computer.  However, the eye gate doesn’t need the internet for sexual temptation to confront us.  Job and the Corinthian Church are good examples of that.  This paragraph could become a complete book if I presented all the details of the moral failures I am aware of, and it wouldn’t include those you know.

I was only mildly surprised when I learned the results of an anonymous survey of evangelical pastors by a well know seminary.  It revealed that a third of them report they have been involved in inappropriate sexual behavior.  That prompted me to raise the issue while speaking at another retreat with thirty-three pastors.  I told them, “I would bet that at least ten percent of you are involved with pornography.”  That would be three men, but two days later, five admitted to the group that they were struggling with porn.  I believe they were the brave ones and the true percentage is actually higher.  Regrettably, pastors are not immune to the sexual culture of the day.  A pastor wouldn’t deliberately rent an “X” rated DVD, but the same thing is on his desk constantly.  Additionally, many of them have HBO that presents “X” rated material in the privacy of their home.  Pray for your pastor.

Before you condemn the pastors, what do you think the situation is in the pew?  After meeting with men for more than fifty years, I know that a higher percentage of men in the pew are losing the moral battle.  In private meetings, many men have confided to me that porn and masturbation are habits they can’t defeat.  One man told me, “I yield to a certain habit way too often as I fantasize about one particular woman.”  My response was, “I don’t think that’s a problem.  Of course, that shocked him, but then I said; “I believe it’s a symptom of a problem, are you willing to look for the problem?”  He was, and of course, we quickly got to his internet habits.

A man in one of our small groups recently said; “Nudity in the movies doesn’t bother me anymore.”  He thought it was a victory and that it is a good thing, but he was unaware of what it is doing to his psyche as well as his soul.  It’s telling that our exposure to raw sexuality and over stimulation has led to men spending billions of dollars on Viagra and Cialis.  Those were never necessary before the sexual revolution.

For nearly every male, sex without boundaries would bring them great pleasure.  God is not against us having pleasure, even sexual pleasure, but He wants it to be moral.  Pleasure is actually His idea, in fact, He invented it.  King David said; “At the throne of God there are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11)  Since He created us, He knows that some pleasures are uplifting and others are destructive.  Solomon who Jesus said was the wisest man who ever lived, was also incredibly rich.  He had the potential to have any pleasure he desired, but he also knew the consequences that his father David reaped for adultery with Bathsheba, and it led him to pray; “God help me understand the end of these pleasures.”  The Lord gave me a very practical example to help me think the same way.  One senior executive, I meet with was using marijuana, had experimented with cocaine, and was very open with me about that.  One day he told me that he went to a party and tried heroin, and it was amazing, but he would never do it again.  Then a month later, he tried it again, so I asked him why?  His explanation was; Glenn think of the best sex you ever had or could imagine.  Heroin is ten times better than that because the pleasure is so much more intense, it hits every part of your body; even your toes feel good.  I like pleasure, so why don’t I try heroin?  That’s easy to answer because I am convinced that it is destructive.  As a follower of Jesus, I let the Bible inform my view of sexuality, and it says that sex outside the boundaries is destructive to everything I hold dear.

While I’m speaking about sexuality, I will comment briefly on homosexuality.  I’ve met with numerous homosexuals and they usually tell me, “I was born with the desire for sex with men.  God wouldn’t have made me this way if it is wrong.”  I disagree that they were born with that desire, but to move the discussion to another level, I don’t debate it.  Instead, I ask, so you think that everyone should yield to the desires they find within themselves?  What about people with the natural predisposition towards alcoholism, obesity, or anger?  The Bible and reality say that some areas of natural inclinations must be resisted because they are destructive to ourselves and others.  I tell them that I was born with a desire to have sex with any woman I find attractive.  Do you think I should act on that desire?  Most say no, but one man said yes.  In order to shock him into reality, I very brazenly asked, would you want your daughter to know me?  That did get his attention, and it opened a very productive conversation.  I have a little more about homosexuality on my web page at:  “glennmurray.net”

Let me remind you that being tempted does not equal sexual immorality.  I have the same response that most men have when an attractive woman walks by.  In the past, that temptation always brought me self-condemnation, because I wondered, how can I have a thought like that if I am a new creation in Christ. (More about this on my web page; See, “Thoughts about an important Bible verse”)  However, I now know that yielding to the temptation is the problem, NOT the fact that I am tempted.  Remember; Jesus was tempted in every way that we are, and yet without sin.

Even though temptation is not a sin, I’ve decided to limit the temptations I choose to bring into my life.  Because I know that I’m not as strong as I would like to believe.  In the battle between my imagination and my will, the imagination always seems to win.  Also, I have decided that I don’t want to be entertained by what God calls sin.  Therefore, I skip most movies and TV that I wouldn’t invite Jesus to watch with me.  Actually He does whether I invite Him or not.  If I can’t say to my wife, mother, children, or grandchildren, “You must see this movie,” then I don’t go.  Of course, that limits me to “G” rated movies.  You may think of this as prudish, but to me, it has proved to be wisdom.  My life has been full and meaningful without those movies or TV, and I am thankful that I prevented their harmful influence on my soul.  In so doing, I avoided the proverbial frog in the hot water metaphor.

Here’s what I practice and recommend when overcome by a temptation of any kind.  I remind myself that God still loves me and that I am still his son, then I confess and repent quickly. (Repent means to live life in the opposite direction)  Even though David fell into temptation, he was called, “A man after God’s own heart.” (Acts 13:22)  I believe one of the reasons was that after he committed adultery with Bathsheba, the Prophet Nathan confronted him, and he was quick to repent.  I also try to be quick to repent, then I pray something like; “Lord I agree with you that I’ve sinned and I’m truly sorry.  I don’t want to live like that; please help me be more consistent in my behavior.  Thank you that when I received Jesus, you forgave even my future sins and that you’re not mad at me because on the cross you took out all your anger on your Son Jesus.  I believe what you say about me: That I am completely forgiven, and You’ve made me as spotless a new snow.  Once again I surrender and ask you to continue to live your life through me.”  Then I move on and live like a person whose sins were forgiven and hopefully a bit wiser about the temptations of this world.

In dealing with temptation, I have several different methods and apply them as needed.  The first is avoidance and the seventh chapter of Proverbs, and several others are full of warnings.  Another is; Like Job, I’ve made a covenant with my eyes not to look at a woman lustfully. (Job 31:1)  It also helps me to watch other men as they watch the ladies walk by.  It is so disgusting how some of them leer at women that it motivates me to avoid looking like that.  Additionally, I use the well-known “Bounce Technique.”  It is impossible not to notice a woman who is provocatively dressed but then I immediately bounce to another person and often it is to other men who are looking at her.  One other thing is useful.  When traveling, I block the adult TV stations at the registration desk.  All of these are useful, but two other things have been the most helpful for me.

The first is accountability.  I believe one of the main reasons good men fall is because most of them were living unaccountable lives.  In fact, the only reason for personal or public morality is accountability.  We wouldn’t stop at red lights if we weren’t afraid of getting a ticket or having an accident.  Of course, we are accountable to God, but without human accountability, we can slip without being aware of it.  For me, accountability to a few close brothers has been super helpful.  Each of us has permission and the responsibility to guard each other’s blind spots.  I meet regularly with a small group of men, and we hold each other accountable.  My definition of accountability is; “Living life with the help of a few friends.

I think it’s telling that the Seminary survey about pastors who failed morally also showed that 70% of them said they did not have a close friend.  The enemy will ultimately win this battle if men continue to face it alone.  Isolated we are vulnerable, but the strength that comes from men that are together is empowering.  King Solomon in his old age gave us this wisdom; “A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer.  Three are even better…”  (Ecc. 4:12)  I am very grateful for the brothers who for years have been on this journey with me, and who give me encouragement, counsel, and accountability.

However, the most helpful and practical has been to fill my life with Jesus.  Whatever gets your attention, gets you…it’s a law of the mind, so I concentrate on Jesus.  At a number of men’s retreats, I have used an illustration to help them understand this principle.  I use a small bowl or glass filled with Rice Krispies.  I explain that for this illustration each Rice Krispie represents something that should not be in my life.  I can begin by removing one Rice Krispie at a time, but there is a better way.  If I slowly pour in milk or even water, the Rice Krispies are pushed out of the bowl and when the bowl is completely filled with milk, very few Rice Krispies are left.  The power of displacement is the reason they are pushed out.  I then explain that as we fill our lives with Jesus, there is less room for those things that are offensive to Him.  It’s a perfect illustration because every time I do it, there is always some Rice Krispies still floating on top.  So even when we fill our life with Jesus, we never reach a sinless state.

Until we decide to address sexual purity head on, both personally and corporately, good men are going to keep losing this battle.  I pray that our leaders will wake up and provide classes “for men only,” on how to resist the lust for forbidden pleasures.  The class would have teaching and discussions about the material in books like“; Every Mans Battle” by Stephen Arterburn, “Wild At Heart,” by John Eldredge, or “When Good Men Are Tempted,” by Bill Perkins.  There are others, but these three are very helpful.  This paper is simply meant to speak about the elephant in the room that everyone knows is there but we don’t address it directly.  For some definitive content about this subject, I encourage you to order any or all of these books from Amazon.

These thoughts were written with a spirit of humility and without any sense of finger-pointing.  I fully understand the difficulty of living for Jesus in a world that is constantly pulling us the other way.  I am in the battle with them because it could not be said of me, “he faced all the temptations that are common to man and yet without sin.”  So, I thank God for his total forgiveness and the grace of His daily sustaining power to follow Jesus, however imperfectly.

During the early years of my life in Christ, I memorized the Bible verse that says; “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”  (2 Cor. 5:17)  I accepted it as true because I believe the Bible is true.  However, inside I didn’t feel like a new creation, a new person, so it made me wonder; am I really saved?  After receiving Christ, I saw changes in external things like my language, personal habits, etc., however, it was troubling that the internal attitudes like pride, lust, and materialism were only partially affected.  I wondered if something was wrong with me because it didn’t seem like that verse was true in my life.  I was told that it would take some time, but that is not what the verse says.  By faith, I believed that I was now In Christ, so why wasn’t I “a new creation” with the old having “passed away?”  Either I was not In Christ, or I needed a better understanding of what that verse meant.  So over the next few months, it became a priority to resolve this dilemma.  God graciously led me in a surprising way because things unexpectedly started to make sense after I was prompted to re-read the Genesis creation story.  It was a story that I knew well, but this time new insights were revealed which gave me a direction to pursue.

As I started to gain some clarity, there were other implications, but this paper is only addressing a couple of them.  First, it helped me understand how God can declare me to be a new creation, which I now accept as fact.  Second, it helped me reconcile a number of other verses that seemed to be conflicting.  They will be covered in some detail in part two of this paper.  For now, I’m eager to share the journey that caused me to become firmly convinced that I am truly a new creation, a new person in Christ.

The Bible says in Genesis chapter 2 that God created Adam by forming his body from the dirt.  Then He breathed His Spirit into that lifeless body and Adam became a living soul, created in the image of God.  Since God is a triune being, Adam became a tri-unity comprised of a body, soul, and spirit.  It follows then that since we are the children of Adam, we also are tripartite beings with a body, soul, and spirit.  We are definitely an integrated whole person, but each has a unique role to play.  So let’s examine the function of each part of us.  Our body gives us consciousness of the physical world through our five senses.  The soul and spirit are not as easily distinguishable, but Scripture makes it clear that they are distinct and different.  Our soul is the realm of self-consciousness or self-awareness and consists of our mind, emotions, and will and is what gives us personhood.  Before salvation, our human spirit gave us God consciousness, but when it is regenerated, it’s the place where God lives in us.  So now, we have the first glimpse of what part of me became a new creation, namely, my spirit.  However, let’s unpack it a little more by taking a closer look at this multifaceted being we call our self.

Before I go on, let me acknowledge that some theologians believe that the soul and spirit are the same thing.  I respectfully disagree with their conclusion and will explain why I don’t hold that view.  In the late 1960’s, prayer, the study of the Scriptures, and what the early Church fathers taught formed my view of this subject.  Additionally, Ray Stedman confirmed my conclusions because he was a Bible teacher that I trusted.  As mentioned earlier, the soul and spirit are closely related, but the Bible makes an explicit distinction between them.  In 1 Thes.  5:23, it’s very specific.  “May your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.”  (NLT)  But Scripture also acknowledges that at times it’s difficult to discern the difference between the soul and spirit.  However, it does identify each and says that the Word of God will help us differentiate between them.    “For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit…”  (Heb. 4:12…HCB)

So now, let’s return to the question that was troubling me.  The issue was not what happens eventually, but rather what happens the instant we accept Jesus as our Savior.  The Scripture uses a number of terms to describe what takes place at that moment, but the one we are exploring here is that we become, “a new creation.”  The following thoughts are an overview of my journey to discover if that was actually true for me.

BODY: It didn’t take prayer and Bible study for me to know that it was not my body that became new.  That was obvious and undebatable.  However, I am looking forward to the new body I’ll receive when I see Jesus.  (1 Jn 3:2)

SOUL:  So next, I evaluated my soul to see if it had become new.  Romans 8:29 gave me hope because it declares that the purpose of God for every believer is that they are conformed to the image of Jesus.  The question then is, when does this happen, when I was baptized into Christ or when I get to heaven?  I knew that the soul consists of the mind, emotions and will so I needed to look at each of them.

MIND: The Apostle Paul made it clear in Romans 12:2 that my mind was not made new at salvation.  That verse tells born-again believers (new creations in Christ) that they need to have their minds renewed.  That would not be necessary if they were made new at salvation.  By the way, our mind is not our brain.  That’s because the brain is part of our physical body and our mind is something that can’t be found with an autopsy.

EMOTIONS:  So next, I evaluated my emotions to see if they were made new when I received Jesus.  My personal experience plus knowledge of a multitude of dedicated believers tells me that the answer is a definite no.  It would be wonderful if receiving Jesus meant that a person whose emotions have been damaged would experience immediate and total healing.  That does happen sometimes but only in very rare cases.

WILL:  Our soul has one more very important component, but it also was not made new.  At birth, God gave each person free will, and He doesn’t remove it when we’re placed into Christ.  He leaves us with the privilege as well as the responsibility of making decisions about our life.  His desire is for our will to be subject to the Holy Spirit who now resides in us.  Life works best when our will is surrendered to His best intentions for us, but He allows us to make decisions that we think best.  That’s wonderful, but we can’t escape the fact that every choice has consequences.  Our will, (our decider), gets input from the appetites of our body as well as our mind and emotions.  But it’s also influenced by external sources as well.  God’s will for every believer is that the leading of the Holy Spirit will take precedence over other influences.

SPIRIT:  So if it wasn’t my body or soul (mind, emotions, and will) that passed away and was made new, that leaves just one possibility, my spirit.  (Gal 2:20)  I am confident that it is my spirit that is a “new creation” and to explain why I believe that I’ll start with a bit of history.  The soul and spirit of Adam were created in the image of God.  However, the consequence of original sin created a totally self-centered soul and a spirit that is separated from God.  That is the soul and spirit that I inherited at birth.  However, when I received Jesus, Scripture tells me that my spirit was reborn, but my soul was not.  My human spirit was replaced by the Holy Spirit of God,and the result is that my spirit was re-created/regenerated.  (2 Tim 1:14)  Now, He tells me to; “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Phil. 2:12-13)  My understanding of that verse is that we are to cooperate with God as He works to make our soul congruent with our spirit.  The key word is “cooperate” with God as He does the work of transforming our soul by a process called “sanctification.”  I must remain soft and pliable so God can continue His work within me, but my primary focus is my new identity in Christ.

By faith, I believe this.  But too often I subconsciously revert to thinking that the real me is my soul and body, which has not yet been renewed.  My tendency is to let my mind and emotions tell me that since I still have wrong motives, thoughts, and actions, I am not a new creation.  The solution for this is to trust my feelings less and to believe by faith what God says about me.  So it’s completely a faith issue.  And that’s a good thing because the Bible tells us, “Without faith it’s impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6)  Over time I have come to strongly believe that in my spirit I’m a new creation while my body and soul retain the human frailties that resulted from the disobedience of my grandparents, Adam and Eve.  (Eph. 1:13-14)

Even believers with a working knowledge of Scripture often find it difficult to reconcile some Bible verses. For example, various verses raise questions because they emphasize different aspects of our salvation.  For me, the breakthrough came when I determined that each verse was relating to either my body, my soul or my spirit.  The following topics will illustrate how I think that works.  For a more detailed view, use the table below.

Salvation: In some verses, the Bible is clear that salvation is a one-time event and is accomplished by God without human effort.  (Jn  5:24; Acts 16:30-31)  The salvation here is referring to our spirit and is called “justification.”  But the Bible also says we have a role to play in our salvation and gives us something to do when it says, “put on your new self”  (Eph 4:24)  and “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”(Phil 2:12)  This verse is asking us to cooperate with God and allow our soul to become congruent with our spirit.  This salvation is referring to our soul, and it’s called “sanctification.”  The Bible also teaches that our salvation is a future event, which is called “glorification,” referring to the time when we will get a new glorified body.  (Rom 8)  Therefore, it’s crucial to understand the three phases of salvation.  We’re saved, we’re being saved, and someday we will be saved.  These three statements are speaking of our spirit, soul, or body.  People often incorrectly interpret some verses because they don’t discern which part of us is spoken of.  Our spirit is saved, our soul is being saved, and our body will be saved someday.

The Holy Spirit: The Bible says that at salvation our human spirit is replaced by the Holy Spirit.  (1 Cor 3:16)   But then it tells us that we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  (Eph 5:18)  The indwelling is in our spirit, the filling refers to our soul, and the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.  (1 Cor 6:19)

Our mind:  The Bible says that believers have the mind of Christ.  (1 Cor 2:16)  However, it also says we must have our minds renewed.  (Rom 12:2)  We know that Christ doesn’t need His mind renewed and we have His mind.  So which is it?  In our regenerated spirit, we do have the mind of Christ.  But in our soul, we need to have our mind renewed.  One way is; “…taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5)

Truth:  The Bible says the believer has a knowledge of all truth.  (John 14:17)  However, in a later verse, it says that we lack understanding.  (1 Cor 13:12)  Again, we need to understand our essential makeup to understand that it is both.  In our spirit, we have a knowledge of all truth, but our soul (mind, emotions, and will) does not presently have knowledge of all truth.

These thoughts and the table on the next page will illustrate how I reconcile questions about verses that seem to contradict each other.

SPIRIT – SOUL – BODY

1 Thes. 5:23 and Heb. 4:12

Sociologists tell us that every known people group worships something or someone.  It may be ancestors, invisible spirits, or a god, as they understand him.  As believers, we’re not surprised by that because we know that based on Scripture, every person on earth is aware of God.  In the mid-1600’s the French mathematician Blasé Pascal famously said; “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person.”  I’m sure he got it from the Bible because it says; “…God has planted eternity in the human heart…” (Ec 3:11)  This means that every person has an innate sense of something greater than themselves. In another verse, it says, “… In the past he permitted all the nations to go their own ways, but he never left them without evidence of himself and his goodness.  (Acts 14:16-17 NLT)

There are a multitude of stories from all over the globe that illustrate the truth of those Scriptures.  I’ve chosen a few examples some of which are well documented and at least one comes from personal observation.  The details of others are believed to be true but cannot be authenticated.  Those from the distant past are based on stories told from one generation to next.  They are included here because each has a common theme even though they originate in a different culture, time, and geography.

With more than fifty visits to Korea, it’s like a second home to me, so I’ll start with a bit of their history.  After several earlier attempts, Protestant Missionaries first landed in North Korea in the mid-1800’s.  At that time, it was known as the “Hermit Kingdom” whose people worshiped numerous unseen gods, demons, and ancestral sprits. (Shamanism)  The missionaries discovered that the people had many lesser gods but one they considered all powerful.  They knew nothing about him but gave this god above all other gods the name, “Hanulnim,” which means “God of the heavens.”  The missionaries were wise and told them that the highest God which was unknown to them had made himself known by sending his son Jesus.  Over the years, the people increasingly embraced Jesus so when you hear them pray today the word they use for God is “Hananim.”  It’s a slight variation and means, One true God.  Today, the majority of denominations have their largest churches in South Korea.  I believe that the story of the Apostle Paul in Athens (details later) was the inspiration for the first missionaries in Korea.

China had its own version of an Unknown God, which they called, “Shang Di” which means, “The Heavenly ruler” or “Supreme Deity.”  He’s mentioned 175 times in the Chinese Classics, and the first reference was 2600 years before Jesus.  This is long before Confucianism or Buddhism influenced China.  Annually the emperors sacrificed a bull to “Shang Di” on the Altar Mound in the “Temple of Heaven.”  It is still well preserved in Beijing, but the practice ended in 1911 when the last emperor was deposed.  I have visited the place where this sacrifice took place and pondered, “What might have been?”  There were various developments over the years with missionaries arriving in 1807, but Marxist ideas started to take root in 1919.  When World War II ended, a civil war began which allowed Mao Zedong and his Communist Party to take control of the nation.  He expelled all missionaries in 1953, persecuted existing believers, and established atheism as the government’s official position.  In spite of this and at great personal risk, an evangelical house church movement developed and today is believed to number more than one hundred million members.

In the early 13th century, the Inca’s created the largest empire in the Americas.  Beginning in 1438 it was ruled by King Pachacuti who built the famous and majestic Machu Picchu fortress in what is now the nation of Peru.  It had a very violent culture and their worship of “Inti” the sun god, involved human sacrifices, including children.  At some point, King Pachacuti began to have doubts whether or not “Inti” was the true god.  He told the Council of Coricancha that the Sun God could not be all-powerful if a cloud or a man’s hand could block his light.  He asked his priests to research whether they had ever worshiped a God other than “Inti.”  After months of research, they returned with the following report.  In the distant past, they had worshiped Viracocha, a god who existed as three persons in one. (Trinity)  Pachacuti ruled that he and the other leaders would worship Viracocha from that day forward, but the people should continue to worship the Sun God.  In 1532, the Spanish conquered the lands of the Inca’s, and by 1618, they had ceased to exist because of a smallpox epidemic.

I was told the following story by The Honorable Preeda Pathanathurbur and verified it through research.  Preeda was born as one of the Karen people, but when I first met him twenty-five years ago, he was a Minister in the Cabinet of Thailand.  The word “Karen” was originally a derogatory term referring to non-Buddhist ethnic groups.  The Karen people do not have their own country but number about six million people on both sides of the border of Thailand and Myanmar. (Burma)  The Karen people had a tradition that their ancestors had lost the book that told them about “Y’wa,” the supreme God. (Awfully close to Yahweh) They believed that someday a white brother would come, return it to them and explain what was in it.  In 1795, an English diplomat visited the Karen people, and they thought he was the white brother they had been waiting for.  The Englishman said he knew nothing of the book or the God “Y,wa” and left.  In 1815, another traveler visited, and he had a book.  We don’t know what the book was but seeing the fascination of the people for his book; he gave it to them and left.  They put someone in charge of the book and later that person became a priest, and the people worshiped the book.  They couldn’t read it but were sure that eventually someone would come and tell them what was in it.  In 1817, a Baptist missionary named Adoniram Judson came to Rangoon, Burma, 800 miles southeast of the Karen people.  One day a fugitive from the Karen came to Judson’s door looking for work.  They became friends; he responded to the gospel and was discipled by Judson.  This man returned to his people and became the evangelist that explained the book and saw several hundred thousand people come to Christ.  Today approximately 35% of the Karen people are Christian.

Now for one of the most interesting stories.  Socrates and Plato describe a major plague in Athens that happened six hundred years before the birth of Jesus.  It was in the category of the Bubonic or Black plague with hundreds dying daily.  They called a meeting of the Council Leaders and discussed what to do.  Someone suggested that they send for Epimenides, a prophet from the island of Crete because he was the wisest man that anyone knew.  When he arrived in Athens, he was amazed that the approach road was lined with the images of hundreds of gods.  They told him the situation and that they had sacrificed to all their gods, but the plague continued.  When they asked him what to do, he said, “I’m very tired and need to go to bed so meet me at sunrise tomorrow morning with Sheep, Stones, and  Stone Masons.”  The next morning a large group of people was waiting on the hillside below the Acropolis, and the preparations he requested had been made.

Epimenides addressed them as follows; “I am not certain what to do so I am going to make three assumptions.  The first is that there must be a god that you do not know.  The second is that this unknown god is powerful enough to stop this plague if he wants to.  The third assumption is, if we acknowledge our ignorance of his name and ask for his mercy, he may stop the plague.  Now release the sheep on the hillside and mark the spot wherever one lies down.”  They protested again, people are dying, and the sheep had been penned up all night, they’re hungry and won’t lie down until the afternoon.  He was not dissuaded from his plan, so they released the sheep, and within minutes, sheep started to lie down on the hillside.  They came back to him and said, what do we do now?  He instructed them to send the Masons and stones to build an altar where each sheep laid down.  In those days, an altar was similar to a coffee table.  After they had built a number of these altars on the hillside, they returned and asked, what name shall we put on each altar?  He replied, “That would be the height of arrogance because we said, we do not know his name, Just label each altar with, Agnosto Theo,” which means, “Unknown god.”  They did so, and each sheep that laid down was sacrificed to this “Unknown god.”  Within a week the plague had stopped.  Six hundred years later Paul addressed the Athenians.  You can read the full account of Paul’s message in Acts 17:22-32, but a short version is; Paul acknowledged that they were a very religious people because while he was walking around the city, he had seen many objects of worship.  One of them was an altar to an unknown god, and he used it to tell them that the unknown God had made Himself known by sending His Son Jesus.  You might wonder if he knew that Epimenides was involved with the altars to the “Unknown god.”  I believe that he probably did because he had obviously read his writings and quoted him in Titus 1:12; “…Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons.”

It’s an established fact that even the most remote tribes develop superstitions about the invisible.  Their desire to ward off evil spirits and appease a deity that brings good things is itself proof of a residual awareness of a higher being.  Additionally, they all have a moral code, which considers some things acceptable and other things unacceptable, so one must ask, where did that come from?  The answer is that God put it in the heart of every person as far back as the Garden of Eden when He created mankind with the ability to know right from wrong.  Even though our grandfather Adam made the wrong choice, humanity retains a moral nature, and every culture, however distorted, has moral standards.

These stories are proof that God has imprinted His existence on the human heart.  That makes me expect to find that God has been active in people’s lives before I meet them.  I’ll share one example of how that has been fleshed out in my life.  On my first or second visit to Seoul, South Korea, I met a wonderful Buddhist politician.  Over several years, he became a very dear and trusted friend.  We had many dinners and informal times together.  Early on, I knew that God had given me a love for him because while we didn’t have much in common, we forged an enduring friendship and as the years passed, we became increasing close.  We both knew that each of us was serious about our faith, but it wasn’t a topic we dialogued about.  I felt certain that the Holy Spirit would prompt me when He had prepared my friend to hear about Jesus.  One evening in one of the private rooms that are so common in Korean restaurants, I sensed God’s prompt that this was the night.  I asked his permission to ask him a personal question.  Not knowing what the subject would be he said, “I thought we already knew very personal things about each other.”  I agreed but said this one involves spiritual things and he quickly said, “No problem.”

Now a little background before I share the question I asked.  Buddhist theology is impossible to define because they have so many divergent views.  However, Buddha was very clear on one issue; “It is impossible to know if there is a god, so forget about the question.”  Buddhism is at best agnostic about the question of God, but it works out practically to be atheism.  So my friend had lived his life as if there is no god.  Knowing that and also knowing that God has put eternity in the heart of every person on earth (including Buddha), I asked; “At any point in your life have you ever had the sense that you needed to talk to God or that God was trying to talk to you?”  He thought for a minute and then said, “yes twice, once when I was a child and once during the Korea war.”  I responded by saying I was very comfortable asking you that because I believe that every person on earth has had that experience.  Then I told him about Pascal’s statement that; “In every heart, there is a God-shaped vacuum.”  I reminded him that a vacuum abhors a vacuum and longs to be filled.  Mankind has tried to fill it with power, success, money, pleasure, relationships, etc., but this vacuum is in the shape of God, and only God can fill it.  I kept tapping my chest trying to indicate the God-shaped vacuum in our heart.  It must have given him the impression that it is a little place in every person.  His response was; “Glenn I have very big one.”  I shared the good news of salvation in Christ, answered a few questions, and gave him the opportunity to receive Jesus.  He did and became my brother in Christ moving from agnostic to a believer because the impulse to respond was already there.  The important thing is to get in sync with God’s timing.

I’ve learned that the universal knowledge of God is especially evident in times of trouble.  When life and death issues confront people, a famous saying is usually true, “There are no atheists in foxholes.”  There are exceptions of course, but it is generally true.  My dear friend Dr. Scott Kellermann had a patient who tried to convert everyone he met to his atheistic worldview.  One day his daughter while riding her bicycle was struck by a car and seriously injured.  As Scott worked on her in the emergency room he heard the father say; “Oh God don’t let my little girl die.”  That spontaneous heart cry of a father, even though he was an avowed atheist proved what he instinctively knew but had spent his life trying to convince himself wasn’t true.

Scripture tells us that God also uses His creation to confirm the innate knowledge that He placed in every human heart.  Romans 1:19-20 says; “For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.  So they are without excuse.”  (ESV)

Many years ago, I led Young Life clubs in several Sacramento high schools and often used stories and metaphors to make Scripture more understandable.  One night I read them these verses from Romans 1 and said, I made up a story to help you see how creation can reveal the existence of God.  To set the stage I tried to describe the ancient tribal culture of Australia 5,000 years ago.  Then introduced two 10-year-old Aborigine boys as the main characters of the story.  Their nightly activity of sitting around the campfire gave them a lot of time to look at the stars and talk.  One night one of the boys said to the other, “I asked my dad if he made the stars, and he said he didn’t, why don’t you ask your dad if he did.”  The second boy checked with his dad but came back the next night and said his dad did not make the stars.  They decide to ask their grandfathers, and when that didn’t provide the answer, they asked their great grandfathers.

You can imagine that the lack of an answer made them even more curious so on many nights they talked about the question, “who made the stars?”  One night they agreed that there must be something bigger than them so they asked their folks if that could be true.  The adults began a conversation among themselves and eventually conclude that it must be true, so they designed an activity to honor this unknown being.

When I meet people who tell me they don’t believe in God, I don’t believe them.  I don’t argue or debate, but I know that they know there is something greater than themselves and pray that they will eventually acknowledge it.  Sadly, there are numerous examples of people who live and die in rebellion to God.  Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana wrote that she was with him during the atheistic Russian dictator’s last moments.  She said that on his deathbed, “He rose up on one elbow and shook his fist towards heaven.”  He didn’t believe in God, so you have to ask, what was that about?  The answer is that God put an awareness of Himself in his heart, but he refused to submit to Him and was defiant even in death.  Another example was Bertrand Russell, the famous atheist philosopher.  He said: “Life is like a bottle of very nasty wine and all one can do is hold on to unyielding despair.”  I am certain that his rejection of God led him to this kind of cynicism.

We started with the statement; “All people groups worship something,” and even though it’s been a cursory overview, we’ve shown some examples of that.  For some, that internal something that God put in every human heart has been dormant, but it’s still there.  Others have acknowledged it and made the only response they know how to make.  Still, others knew but rejected the prompting to acknowledge the existence of God.  These are still the responses of natives in the jungle, your next-door neighbor, your children, or the most educated person you know.  You might be asking the question, what difference does all this make to me?  Only you can answer that, but at a minimum, you now know that every person you meet has some level of awareness of God’s existence.

Most of us have both the innate knowledge of the existence of God, but we also know the good news about Jesus.  That good news is that God sent Jesus to tell us that He loves us and wants to forgive us and give us Eternal Life.  The gospel of John tells us that, “whoever has the Son, has life; whoever rejects the Son, rejects life.” (Jn. 1:12)  There are only two options; Eternal Life or Eternal Death.  Moses said in Deut. 30:19 “I set before you life and death, choose life.”  God gave us free will; I pray you have made the right choice.

Many people ask; “What will happen to the people who haven’t heard about Jesus and likely never will?”  Theologians say: “They will be judged based on the light they’ve been given.”  They get that from Romans 2:11-16, which says; “For God does not show favoritism.  All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.  For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.  Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.  This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.” (ESV)  God judges men, not according to what they do not know, but according to what they do know.  That means that you and I will be judged based on our response to our knowledge of Jesus.

The following allegory illustrates a fundamental truth.  An extremely wealthy man passed away, and his attorney called the man’’s son to come to his office to hear the last will and testament read.

The son had been on speaking terms with his father, but they weren’’t very close.  So he knew it was a waste of time but to honor his father, he reluctantly went.  He was certain that dad hadn’’t left him anything, and he knew why.  He had never lived up to the high standards of his Godly father.  He had tried but didn’’t seem to have the willpower, so he hadn’’t become the kind of person his father wanted him to be.  He went on to make a life for himself, but it never measured up to his father’s values.  For many years, he hadn’’t spent much time with his dad because it was uncomfortable for him.  He knew what a great man his father was but his own life wasn’t all his father had hoped for.

However, as the lawyer read the will it said his dad had left him everything he owned; “the business, his stock portfolio, bank account, all his real estate, the art collection, and the antique sports car that he always liked.

The son was incredulous and asked, “Are you sure that’’s my dads will?  Several years ago I read his will, and I wasn’’t included because I wasn’t the son he hoped for.””

The lawyer responded, ““Oh that was your father’’s old will, but he loved you so much that he made a new will.””

Then the attorney went on to say; your dad talked to me often about how disappointed he was that you didn’t know that he loved and accepted you.  Even though you didn’t’ achieve all the desires he had for you, his love was greater than you thought.  He said he told you this, but you either weren’’t listening or couldn’’t believe it was true.  If you had believed it, you could have had a much more satisfying relationship with him.

For many believers, our understanding of God is much like this son’’s relationship with his dad.  We’ve read and in many cases have been taught God’’s old will (Old Covenant) and we’’ve tried to keep its standards. We knew the standards were right, but we just couldn’t live up to them.  Oh, we’’ve tried many times, but we just haven’t been able to keep his commandments perfectly.

God knew that, so He made a new will.  Under the old will, we had to keep the law perfectly to receive His blessing.  However, under the new will, His acceptance is not based on our performance.

The new will is called the New Covenant or New Testament, and when we fully believe it, we can live a life of joy and freedom.

Here is the bottom line:

Let me say it a second time, God’s acceptance is not based on our performance.  However, since God’s requirement for perfection is unchanged, Jesus kept his laws perfectly on our behalf.  Therefore, the new covenant means that when we receive His Son, we become joint heirs with Him and inherit everything he owns.

The purpose of this paper is to answer a question that I’ve encountered numerous times.  In private discussions, I’m often asked; “What’s your opinion about tithing?”  Like many of those who ask, I was taught that the Bible requires all believers to give a tithe (10%) of their income to God.  During my early years of following Jesus, I accepted that and was careful to give a tithe on my income.  However, within a few years, the example of the Bereans inspired me to see if the Bible supported what I’d been taught.  Acts 17:11 says they received the Apostle Paul’s teaching and then; “examined the Scriptures daily to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth.”  My examination of the Scriptures led me to a different conclusion about tithing, and I will give you my reasons.  Some people, in fact, many of them my friends, will disagree with me because they have a sincere and strongly held conviction about tithing.  I respect that and make no judgment about their belief, but there are others, who like me, simply accepted it because it’s so frequently expressed in the church.  I encourage them to search the Scriptures and come to their own independent decision.  I’ve done that, so this will be a short overview of my thoughts on Stewardship versus Tithing.

The Tithe:  The law of Moses also known as the Old Covenant, required people to give a tithe (10%) to God.  However, as believers, it’s crucial for us to remember that the Old Covenant was canceled when Jesus fulfilled it and instituted the New Covenant.  Hebrews 8:13 says that the New Covenant made the Old Covenant obsolete.  Therefore, it’s totally inconsistent to proclaim the grace of the New Covenant while reminding people of the requirement to tithe from the Old Covenant.  Those who teach this often support their position by quoting Malachi 3:8-10.  “Will a man rob God?  Yet you are robbing me.  But you say, How have we robbed you?  In your tithes and contributions.  You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you.  Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.  And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.”  They use these verses to show that God owns 10% of your income and you own 90%, so you are robbing Him if you don’t give Him His 10%.  If you choose to live by this interpretation, you had better give the entire 10% plus offerings, or according to the Prophet Malachi, you are under the curse of God.  That’s a scary thought for the church at large because if those verses do apply to believers (I don’t think they do), then it means that 94% of them are under the curse of God.  (George Barna reports that only 6% are faithful Tithers)  His and other religious surveys confirm that even after years of emphasis on tithing, the vast majority of believers do not comply.  That tells me that privately they hold a different view of tithing than their leadership.  Actually, that’s a good thing if it means that most of them are not living by a legalistic view of giving.  However, I wish they could be released from the guilt that many of them live with.  To be consistent, those who promote tithing should also promote the other Old Testament concepts about money, and there are many.  It would mean another 10% every third year, and every seventh year you must cancel the debt of those who owe you money.  Additionally, there are many other things that are mandatory under the law, but those who advocate “tithing” are selective in which Old Covenant laws they endorse.

Here is some additional support from two early church fathers who considered the tithe to be canceled by the New Covenant.  1. The first is Justin Martyr, (100-165 AD) a first-century theologian.  He said; “Every Sunday those who prosper and so wish, contribute, each one as much as he chooses.”  2. The second is Irenaeus (130-202 AD) the most important theologian of the second century.  He said; “Tithing is a Jewish law NOT required of believers because they have received liberty and should give without external constraint.”  In spite of what the Church fathers were saying, Constantine the first Christian Emperor reintroduced tithing in the third century, to support the priesthood and build cathedrals.  However, people didn’t fully comply so in the 8th century Charlemagne, King of the Holy Roman Empire made it a law, which meant that if you did not tithe, you went to jail.  The average believer should thank God that is no longer in effect.

Financial Stewardship:  Churches often use the word “Stewardship” as a synonym for “Tithing,” but that is incorrect.  The dictionary defines a steward as; “a person who manages another person’s property or affairs.”  That correctly defines the believer’s relationship to money because, under the New Covenant, God owns 100%, not just 10%.  He doesn’t just own the “cattle on a thousand hills,” He owns everything, including our next breath.  In the world of investments, some people are known as “good money managers,” and that should describe the believer.  As a steward of God’s assets we manage not only His money but also everything, He’s entrusted to us, like our time, talents, health, etc.  It’s as if everything is “held in trust” for someone we respect very much and to whom we must give an account.

As beneficiaries of the New Covenant, the following verses and others instruct us how to think about our giving.  1. On the first day of every week let each one of you put aside and save, as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come.”(1 Cor. 16:2)  2. “For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability they gave of their own accord”(2 Cor. 8:3); 3.  “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.  (2 Cor. 9:7)  So you can see, Paul the Apostle taught that giving is voluntary, not based on a fixed percentage, and should be what we have “decided in our heart to give.”  We should consider how God has prospered us, but in the end, we like the Corinthians are free to give the amount we choose, “of our own accord.”  For our regular giving, we don’t know how much God wants us to give until we ask Him.  Then based on what we believe He’s saying, we give the amount He’s prompted us to give.  When a special need is presented, Scripture calls us to live as Jesus did. (1 John 2:6)  Jesus himself did not meet every need but only did the will of the Father.  That meant not every paralytic was healed, or every person who died was raised to life.  With Jesus as our example, we should not give based on an emotional appeal.  We should ask God if He wants us to be part of meeting the presented need and then respond as He directs.

It’s true that the New Testament does not require a believer to give 10% of their income, but it does have a lot to say about giving and giving generously.  Most people are surprised to learn how much the Scriptures have to say about it.  Money and possessions are mentioned four times more than prayer and faith combined.  (500 verses on prayer and faith but over 2,000 about money and possessions.)  There’s more said about money in the New Testament than about heaven and hell combined.  So you can see that money is a very important subject, in fact almost half of the parables Jesus told, dealt with money. (42%)  By the way, He never taught what the prosperity gospel preachers teach.  They promote the un-Biblical idea that “Seed Faith” will bring you financial success or will cause God to answer your prayers.  This is a twisted and perverted use of Scripture in order to persuade people to give to their organization.

Conclusion:  God knows our current financial situation and future better than we do and has our best interest at heart.  Therefore, we can trust His guidance if He prompts us to give less than 10% or if He asks us to give more.  Whatever the amount, it’s likely to change from time to time so stay close to Jesus and be ready to respond to His leading.  God is fully aware of our personal circumstances and at times asks us to give sacrificially but not always.  There was a time in my life when we felt that 3% was the appropriate amount and then in other periods it was 30%.  During the last 60 years, our giving has varied but never our inner peace and joy.  Each person must come to their own conscientious decision about giving, by asking The Lord to guide them.  If the body of Christ was motivated by the idea of stewardship, there would be enough money for what God wants to accomplish.  If it produced more than needed, I’m sure He would let us know what to do with it.

Caveat:  The Bible is our only standard, and my prayer is that everyone would use Acts 17:11 as a guide to evaluate the teaching of any man and that includes this one.

The traditional way to think about priorities is to make a list of your responsibilities and tasks, then rank them from the most important to the least important.  For years, this method has been useful in my personal and business life.  It’s still useful for daily tasks, but as believers, we need a larger and more comprehensive view of priorities.  We need to include our relational and spiritual life, and our view of priorities must be compatible with Scripture.  As believers, Scripture instructs us to let the Holy Spirit order our life on a moment-by-moment basis.  It’s called “walking in the Spirit”(Gal. 5:16), and while a task list can be helpful, the Holy Spirit knows better when one thing should take precedence over another.  The following is a bit of personal history and a brief summary of my current view of priorities.

In my early years of following Jesus, I was challenged to establish my priorities based on questions like, “Does God have first place in your life or have you let lesser things creep in?”  Some teachers used “the great commandment” as the basis of a correct priority list.  Example: God first, neighbor second and your spouse and children are your closest neighbors. (Mat. 22:37-39)  This sounded right, so I accepted it as the correct Biblical approach to priorities and decided to do whatever it takes to “put God first” in my life.  So I used the following exercise and taught others to do it as well.  Using two sheets of paper, I tore one of them into ten pieces and left the other one intact.  On it, I created a list with numbers from 1 to 10.  Then I wrote on each of the small pieces an important person, possession or activity in my life.  I wound up with ten pieces of paper, each representing an important relationship, intent, or purpose in my life.  Then I told myself, circumstances dictate that you must eliminate one of them from your life.  At that point, it wasn’t too difficult to choose which one to eliminate.  As I tore up that piece, I wrote its contents on the second piece of paper as number ten.  Then I repeated the exercise by tearing up one piece of paper after another, creating a list in reverse order.  The first few were relatively easy, but it became increasingly difficult as I got down to the last few.  Like most people, this exercise produced a list that consisted of God 1st, wife, 2nd, children, 3rd, work, 4th, etc.  It felt good to have God in first place above all of my other priorities.  However, a nagging question remained; “That looks good on a list but how is it going to work in daily life?”

For me as well as most people, “putting God first” was a nebulous, vague cliché, so I tried to think about all the possibilities.  Maybe it’s enough that I put Him first by having Him at the top of my priority list.  Alternatively, it could mean the first thing I do daily is read the Bible and pray.  How much time is enough to put Him first; 30 minutes…All day?  Maybe it means that I think about God before any activity, like when I brush my teeth or answer emails.  On the other hand, perhaps I’m supposed to think about God before every activity at work.  Or could it mean, I shouldn’t talk to my wife until I’ve talked with God, or I can’t talk to my kids until I’ve talked with my wife?  Then again, maybe it’s the amount of time we give God, but that’s problematic, because most people work at least eight hours and sleep eight hours, and that’s more time than we give God and family combined.  Perhaps we need to sleep less and work fewer hours.  That’s pretty silly because we must provide for the family.  Some say it’s the quality of time that matters, but how does one accomplish that?  Do you give your highest quality time to God and then a little less quality time with your spouse, then less to the family, then a little less to work, etc.?  Or lastly, does it mean that I give myself time if there is any left over?  These are all a bit absurd, but they illustrate how difficult it is to understand what it means to put God first.

As I wrestled with this question, I began to be conflicted by the fact that I used the term “Christ-centered” quite often while being a proponent of a sequential priority list.  Then one day it dawned on me that my list of priorities was an acknowledgment that while God is the most important, He is simply one of my priorities.  I immediately knew that wasn’t right so after a thorough investigation; I discovered that the Bible does not give a list of priorities.  That caused me to give up on a static sequential priority list of first, second, third, etc.  Now I think of myself as having God at the center of my life, which to me is what “Christ Centered” really means.  This puts me more in harmony with reality because everyday life is dynamic, not linear.  It can change dramatically in the blink of the eye.  So let me share a different way to think about the important things in our life.

First a very condensed overview of how my view of priorities changed when I discovered how we’re designed to function.  Every human being is made in the image of God, which means we are personal, self-determining, and have the ability to discern right from wrong, etc.  Each of us was created as a unique unified whole person consisting of a body, soul, and spirit with each having a distinct function.  Of course, our body is the home of our five senses through which we relate to the material world.  Our soul is what we call our self, and the home of our personality.  It consists of our mind, will, and emotions, and interacts with our body and spirit.  The way that works is; our mind and emotions along with the body give input to our will, which is the decision maker about actions that we take.

At birth, our human spirit is at the center of our being and interacts with our soul.  It gives input to our soul without overriding our will, but its influence leads us to live a self-directed life.  At the same time, God’s Holy Spirit also speaks to our soul about our need for redemption.  We are free to accept or reject His offer of forgiveness, but when a person does receive Jesus as Savior, their spirit is regenerated, and it becomes the dwelling place of God. (Col 1:27, Gal. 2:20)  At conversion, our spirit is made new, but our soul and body are not yet redeemed.  However, if we chose to cooperate with Him, He will begin a process called sanctification with the purpose of renewing our mind and emotions to be more like Jesus.  And someday at the end of our human life, we will get a new body.  God’s original design was that we would voluntarily surrender our spirit, soul, and body to Him because as our creator, He is the only one who knows what is best for us.  Remember, both before and after salvation, God in His love gave us free will and allowed us to make decisions without overruling them. (Rev. 3:20)

Therefore, with this as background, we have a practical way to live with God at the center rather than giving him the top position among our many priorities.  A mental picture might be useful for understanding how this can work.  Visualize a circle similar to a wagon wheel.  The exterior or edge of the circle can represent any given period of time, and from the center of the circle spokes go out to the edge.  The area between each spoke represents an area of our life, like our occupation, spouse, children, friends, recreation, personal time, etc.  Since we are at the center of this time circle, our will is responsible for decisions about the numerous possibilities.  Our will has the possibility of being influenced by our mind, emotions or external input.  Since God now resides at the very center of your life, it’s His desire for our will to choose to be directed by His Holy Spirit.  When we cooperate, we exchange a static external list of priorities for a dynamic way of living, with the potential of God directing our decisions about every area of our life.

Living a perfectly balanced life is a myth because daily we face a multitude of options, responsibilities, and unexpected events.  No one but God has the wisdom and foreknowledge to manage them, and even though we don’t do it perfectly, our goal is to let Him guide our choices and decisions.  Each area of our life has periods when it takes precedence over others, and only God knows when an individual part of our life needs extra attention.  Example:  There are times when one child requires more attention than another, or a person’s health takes precedence over their marriage.  At other times, it’s our work that takes an atypical amount of time and focus.  Think of an accountant around tax time or a businessman starting a new business, and the following verse takes on new meaning.  “For everything, there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.”  (Ec. 3:1)  Let me say it again for emphasis; each area of our life has periods when it takes precedence over other areas, so a static list simply won’t do.  When God leads you to give an unusual amount of time to something, you are not neglecting Him because He is still at the center of your life, and your obedience is proof of that.  He cares for your life and loved ones more than you do, so trust Him to lead you correctly.

What I am proposing is that we live each day with a moment-by-moment response to the CHECK and PROMPT of the Holy Spirit.  It is helpful to use a list for small daily chores but we no longer need a list of life priorities, like we no longer need a list of laws, because we live under the new covenant, and are free to let Jesus direct our life.  Living like this is so much more congruent with Scripture, that I’m convinced it’s the right way, and I encourage you to give it a try.

There are numerous wonderful things that take place when we are spiritually born again. However, the focus of this paper will be on just one of them.  The moment we are placed into Christ, we become one with Him and are assigned a new identity.  This is what I want to explore because understanding our new identity is necessary for us to fully appreciate our union with Christ.  At salvation, we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, and from Sinner to Saint.

The true meaning of those two words is not well understood so let me start by defining them.  A Sinner is not just anyone who sins; it is the condition and therefore, identity, of a person that is alienated from God.  On the other hand, a Saint is not a person who has reached perfection and is therefore sinless.  It is a person who has been reconciled to God by having their sin forgiven.  As you probably know, the New Testament was originally written in Greek, and “hagios” which means “morally blameless” is the word they used for saint.  It’s the word the Scriptures use to designate those who are; “In Christ,” regenerate, saved, born again, and adopted into the family of God.  The Bible refers to these folks as saints sixty-seven times.

Here are a few of those references as the Apostle Paul writes to believers.  To the “Saints” in Rome (Rom. 1:7); To the “saints” in Ephesus (Eph. 1:1);  To the Corinthians, “Saints by Calling” (1.Cor. 1:2);  To the Philippians, “Greet every “saint” in Christ Jesus…”  (Phil. 4:21); To the “Saints” in Colossae” (Col. 1:2); “Peter visited the “saints” in Lydda.  (Acts 9:32)  None of these people were deceased individuals who had been canonized and assigned sainthood.  They were living individuals who were born again by the Holy Spirit of God.

If you are “In Christ,” God views you as holy and blameless, and therefore one of His saints.  So how can we explain the gap between what God says about us and what we experience daily?  The answer is in understanding what part of us became a new creation, therefore, a saint.  It wasn’t our body or soul that died and was given new life, so that leaves just one possibility.  (Gal 2:20)  Our spirit is the part of us that became a “new creation” and is what God views as saintly.  (See my article, “Thoughts about an important Bible verse”; Its on my web page: glennmurray.net)  When we receive Jesus, Scripture tells us that we are given His life, which means our human spirit is replaced by the Holy Spirit of God.  (Titus 3:5)  God no longer views us as a sinner, He sees us as one of His saints, so that is why Paul uses that word for the early believers.

Therefore, when I hear a person begin a talk with, “I’m just a sinner saved by grace,” I know they don’t understand their new identity in Christ.  It’s a Christian cliché, and it may be an attempt to be humble, but it’s misplaced.  If well taught, that same person believes that at salvation, they are by faith, placed into Christ, made one with Christ, receive the life of Christ and become part of His body.  So why would you call any part of His body, a sinner?  To be more Biblically accurate we should say, “I was a sinner, but I’ve been saved by His grace, and I am now one of His saints.”

Does that mean that a person who is saved, will never sin again?  No, but it does mean that when we sin, it doesn’t switch our identity from saint back to sinner.  Our identity was permanently sealed when we were reconciled to God.  (Eph. 1:13-14)  Unless you believe you lose your salvation everytime you sin, we are saints who can still sin.

Since even as believers we will still sin, how should we respond when the Holy Spirit convicts us?  Be quick to repent and say something like; “Lord I agree with you that I have sinned and I am truly sorry.  I don’t want to live like that; please help me be more consistent in my behavior.  Thank you that you have already forgiven me for this sin and you’re not mad at me because Jesus bore all your anger for my sin on the cross.  Once again I present myself as a living sacrifice and recommit to letting You live your life through me.”  Then get up and act like a saint whose sins were totally forgiven on the cross.  (See my article; God’s forgiveness, partial or total)

An experience that helped me understand and accept how God views me, took place while visiting a museum in Florence, Italy.  It houses Michelangelo’s magnificent statue of David, and even though I am not a connoisseur of art, I was mesmerized by it.  When one of the docents noticed my interest in the stature, he volunteered to give me its history.  He said that two other sculptors of equal talent tried to work on that block of marble but rejected it as being, “uncooperative.”  Then Michelangelo employed his artistry, and we have David.  Since everyone knew that two other sculptors of renown said that piece of marble was worthless, Michelangelo was asked, “How did you do that?”  His answer was simple but oh so profound; he said, “I just saw David inside and took away everything that wasn’t David. 

If we had been there while Michelangelo was chiseling away on the nondescript block of marble, we would not have recognized it as a masterpiece.  Nevertheless, even while it was unfinished, dusty, and messy, in Michelangelo’s mind, it was complete.  Others would have called it a work in progress, he saw only the finished statue of David inside.  That is a perfect illustration of how God sees believers.  When He looks at any person, who is “In Christ,” He sees His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased.  (Mat. 3:17)  He doesn’t see our faults or sins; He sees only the righteousness of Jesus.  We see ourselves and others as unfinished projects in the same way as we would have seen David in the studio.  However, God sees us as already perfectly conformed to the image of His Son and on display in heaven.  (Rom. 8:29-30)

The story of Levi, the tax collector, also helped me understand how God can view me differently than I view myself.  (Lk. 5:27-32)  The gospel of Luke says that Jesus saw Levi sitting at the tax booth, so let’s start there and see what we can learn.  Levi did not have “multiple personality disorder,” but he did have three identities.  The one that everyone knew we will call the public Levi.  He was despised because as a Jew he betrayed his own people and worked for the Romans collecting taxes.  Then there was the private Levi, the internal person whose thoughts are unknown to others.  One can only guess at what kind of person he had become on the inside in order to betray his people.  Then there was the Levi that Jesus saw because Scripture tells us there was also an Apostle sitting at that tax booth.  Jesus knew well the reputation of tax collectors, and He knew what was in Levi’s heart because he could understand his thoughts.  (Mat. 9:4…Ps. 94:11)  In spite of this, he chose to focus on the Apostle in Levi and called it out.  As you know Levi became Matthew, the apostle of Jesus, who gave us the gospel of Matthew.

In a certain way, we are all like Levi; we also have three identities.  The public persona our friends know, the internal person only we know but we are also the redeemed person who Jesus knows.  If you are “In Christ,” that’s the real you, and everything depends on which identity you focus on.  If you focus on the one your friends see, you will become plastic and make decisions based on what they will think of you.  If you focus on the person you know, you will be discouraged, defeated, and maybe even depressed.  Who doesn’t have some things currently or in their past that they would not want to be known?  However, if you believe and focus on what Jesus says about you, you’ll experience the abundant life.  (Jn. 10:10)

Levi had to wonder why Jesus would choose him.  He must have thought, Jesus you don’t know who I am or what I’ve done.  Of course He did, but Jesus is in the redeeming and transforming business.  If you are reading this, you are likely one of those he redeemed and transformed.  If you had been a member of the church in Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, or Corinth, the Apostle Paul would have called you a saint.  In the same manner, I believe if Paul wrote to the church of which you are currently a member, he would address the letter; to the saints at, ____.  If they read that letter on Sunday morning in your church, would you now feel that it applies to you?

Remember, if you are “In Christ,” God has given you a new identity and views you as righteous as His son Jesus. (2 Cor. 5:21)  We call ourselves believers, so by faith, let’s start believing what God says about us.

Now that you are one of His saints, God wants to make your mind, will, and emotions (soul) congruent with your regenerated spirit and conform you to the image of Jesus, by a process called sanctification.  This is also an important topic, which is covered in another article.

Ministry is one of the most commonly used words we hear in the church world.  Check the web page of any evangelical church, and they list; children’s ministry, women’s ministry, high school ministry, music ministry, men’s ministry, etc.  They are indeed ministry, but the way we’ve used that term has caused most believers to misunderstand its true meaning.  The leaders of the Reformation were intentional about restoring the Biblical understanding, and we would do well to revisit their teaching.  They explicitly established that a believer’s occupation is a ministry.  Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to help people understand that their vocation is not just a place for ministry but rather, the actual work they accomplish, is ministry.  Helping people understand that is a priority for me, so when asked to speak at a men’s conference, I began with the following statement.

“Let me start by giving you a little personal history.  I was formerly a layman like most of you, but in 1980, the Lord led me into the ministry.  I had always taught Sunday School, led Bible studies and worked with a  high school ministry called, “Young Life.”  But now it’s so rewarding to have all my efforts count for Jesus rather than most of my time being taken up with secular work.  I truly wish that all of you could experience the joy of being in full-time ministry.  Over the years, many have said to me if income weren’t an issue they would love to be in full-time ministry.  I pray that will happen to some of you but until then, at least by your prayers and finances you can support someone who is in the ministry.”

After a slight pause I said; “As arrogant and obnoxious as that sounds it’s very close to the way our church culture has taught us to think, but it’s, stinking thinking.”  The church has allowed and at times knowingly promoted a two-tier community of clergy and laity.  I strongly disagree with this because the clergy-laity distinction isn’t in the New Testament.  Hellenized believers (Those influenced by Greek thought) introduced it to the church in the third century.  Then it was handed down to us by way of tradition, but Jesus warned us about that.  “You nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.  (Mark 7:13)  There’s nothing wrong with traditions unless they violate the Word of God.  I love many traditions because they’ve played a major role in developing family unity.  So there are many good traditions, but there are others that we need to abandon.  Many of our spiritual forefathers taught that the clergy-laity distinction is one of those bad traditions.  Here are a couple of examples.

Martin Luther initiated the Protestant Reformation in 1517 and famously declared that justification is by faith alone.  It’s less known that he also strongly rejected the dichotomy between spiritual and secular occupations.  Luther more than any other person challenged this idea as harmful to the body of Christ.  Today’s evangelical church exists because of the reformation but often fosters the very thing that Luther rejected.  To him, “all work from the blacksmith who shod mules, to the priest who administered the sacraments was a divine assignment.”

Luther quotes:

1. “Therefore I advise no one to enter any religious order or the priesthood, indeed, I advise everyone against it unless he is fore-armed with this knowledge and understands that the works of monks and priests, however, holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks, but that all works are measured before God, by faith alone.” 
2. “…The same is true for shoemaker, tailor, scribe, or reader.  If he is a Christian tailor, he will say: I make these clothes because God has bidden me do so, so that I can earn a living, so that I can help and serve my neighbor…”

William Tyndale, (1526) another Reformation leader is known as the Father of our English Bible.  His knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures led him to oppose the hierarchal structure of the Church of England.  They taught that only the Clergy could read and interpret the Bible.  The church convicted him of heresy for opposing that view, and he was burned at the stake for making statements like these:  “If we look externally there appears to be a difference between washing dishes and preaching a sermon but to God, none at all.”  He also said, “there is no work better than another to please God; to wash dishes, be a cobbler or an apostle, all are one.”

These men and others believed and taught this because they understood what the Bible means when it speaks of ministry.  In the New Testament, the primary word for ministry is “Diakonia“ (dee-ak-on-ee’-ah). The literal meaning of that word is, “one who serves.”  (As waiting on tables)  So to serve is to minister.  Since we claim to serve God, our goal is to find out where and in what capacity He wants us to serve Him.  With that attitude, one can be a minister as a banker, homemaker, plumber, doctor, farmer, mechanic, executive, police officer, garbage collector, builder, or pastor.  Your daily work is your ministry if you believe that God has led you into your current occupation.

This isn’t the way most believers think today, and you can prove it to yourself.  When you hear the word “ministry,” what comes to your mind?  You probably will not think about the believing mechanic that fixes your car.  Or ask this question of your friends, “Do you know anyone in the ministry?”  They will most likely mention a pastor, missionary or Para-church leader, etc.  Or ask your pastor or anyone on staff or even the average member about the ministries in their church.  They will mention those that happen at the church but will not think to tell you about a member who serves Jesus and the community as a businessperson. For that reason, it’s regrettable, that most believers do not consider themselves to be ministers.  Even worse, some pastors don’t consider them ministers either and sadly, that’s true even in the best of churches.  I’m confident that many Pastors would disagree with that, but I was present when the following incident took place.  It reveals an unrecognized commonly held thought process.  A young man was planning to go to medical school after his undergraduate studies.  He took a job as a summer intern in his home church and later decided to forego medical school and join the high school staff.  In announcing this to the church, they said; “We are so pleased that God has led Doug away from medicine and into the ministry.” Using the metaphor of an airplane flight, it’s as if they said; we’re glad that God moved Doug from “economy” into “first class.”  I felt like standing up to protest, but I didn’t because I can’t change the culture with a statement.  What I will do is use every opportunity to educate believers about the true meaning of ministry.

God’s desire is for all believers to be His ministers and that includes pastors.  The Holy Spirit appoints them and gives them the role of equipping the church to do the work of the ministry. (Eph 4:12-13)  Their specific ministry is to serve those who serve, so that might be one of the reasons the Bible says they are worthy of double honor.  (1 Tim. 5:17)

Conclusion

Scripture says that Jesus is the creator and sustainer of the visible and invisible and holds all things together. (Col. 1:16-17)  God’s desire is for every believer to be His junior partner in His ongoing work of sustaining creation, and meeting the needs of society.  This paper is written with the hope that you will come to believe that however grand or trivial your work is, it’s ministry and is valuable to God.  If you think, God is calling you to do something else, then respond to His call.  However, if not then you’re job is your ministry until He moves you.  Preaching a sermon or teaching first graders in the public school is of equal importance to God IF both people can say, “To the best of my knowledge I am doing what God wants me to do.”  When any work is done with that attitude, it’s ministry.

Approximately,  forty years ago, I started a non-scientific, but very enlightening survey.  I first asked my pastor and later dozens of evangelical pastors some version of the following question: “What percentage of your church is experiencing intimacy with Jesus?”  After finding the right vocabulary for their denomination, such as “walk in the Spirit,” “sold out,” “on fire,” etc., every Pastor answered somewhere between 5 and 10 percent.  In one setting, I was speaking to 850 Pastors and asked them to please let me know if their church refuted those statistics.  Only eight spoke with me afterwards, and each said that the percentage was about right.  By the way, they would likely have reported upwards of ninety percent if I had asked; “what percentage of your church is committed to Jesus.”  However, commitment is simply a matter of the will and doesn’t nurture the soul.  I’m pleased that people are committed to Jesus, but the reason He gave us His Spirit is so we could have intimate fellowship with Him.

Billy Graham has observed the body of Christ for decades, and he confirms my informal survey.  He states that 90 percent of the Church live carnal lives.  He was not saying that they live immoral lives but rather, they are not living lives controlled by the Spirit.  This even happens in good churches where the Bible is taught, and correct doctrine is emphasized.  Oswald Chambers framed the issue well when he said; “The soul is in danger when knowledge of doctrine gets ahead of intimacy with Jesus.”  Good Biblical teaching is crucial and produces people who believe correctly but does not automatically produce people who have intimate fellowship with Jesus.  That motivates me to write about what I have learned about intimacy.

There are numerous types of intimacy including relational, emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual.  I do not profess to be an expert on any of them, but I do feel comfortable writing about is my own personal discoveries, regarding intimacy with Jesus.  I’m talking about a spiritual oneness that God designed us to have with Him.  Intimacy is intrinsic to the very nature of God who exists as a triune being.  From a heart of love, He created humanity in His image and gave us the capacity and desire for intimacy with Himself.

It’s important to state that I am not speaking about an emotional experience or a warm fuzzy feeling.  In fact, it’s not a feeling at all; it’s a condition that does or does not exist.  The root word for intimacy in Latin is “intimus” which means “innermost,” so the dictionary defines intimacy as, “to make known,” but I believe that’s only half of its actual meaning.  I say that because Jesus defined intimacy for me when He said; “As the Father knows me, so I know the Father.” (Jn. 10:15)  Since theirs is the most intimate relationship conceivable, I would amend the dictionary definition of intimacy to read: “Knowing and being Known.”  One person can share their innermost thoughts, but if the other person does not, you do not have intimacy.  You have the potential for intimacy but it takes two who open their hearts to one another to achieve it.  One should not expect perfect continuous intimacy because that is only possible within the Godhead.  However, we can experience periods of intimacy, which last as long as we keep the door to our heart open.  Since God is always ready for intimacy with us, we are the limiting factor.  If we don’t feel close to God, guess who moved?  Like the Laodicean’s we often close our spirits, but He continues to knock on our door.  I’m confident that many Scriptures support my definition for intimacy as “knowing and being known.”  I’ll begin with one that most people have not associated with intimacy.

John 3:16 may be the best-known verse in the Bible but not too far behind it is Revelation 3:20.  It says; “…I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in…”  (NIV)  It’s in every evangelistic tool I’ve ever seen but used entirely out of context.  We castigate cults who use verses out of context and yet the evangelical church continues to do so itself.  We quote this verse as a salvation verse in spite of the fact that the context clearly states that it’s spoken to the church.  Twice in just nine verses, it says that this offer is to the church and ends with, “…anyone who is willing to hear should listen to the Spirit and understand what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”  (NLT)  Given our continued misuse of this verse, it’s obvious that we didn’t listen and I confess that it was formerly true of me.  Early on, I was heavily involved with several Para-Church ministries and became tremendously evangelistic.  I quoted this verse hundreds of times but eventually woke up to its true meaning and became interested in the intimacy that it offered.  Revelation 3:20 is a verse about God’s desire for intimacy with His people, and importantly I believe it also reveals the method of how to achieve it.

The metaphor of knocking on a person’s door requesting to be invited into their home was in the culture of that day.  My personal experience in the Middle East is that people will express their hospitality by inviting you to dinner at the finest restaurant.  However, if they ever invite you to have a meal in their home with their family, they are expressing a desire for a more intimate friendship.  Understanding this, Jesus says to a spiritually lukewarm body of people that His knocking is an offer of a return to an intimate fellowship with them.  Since lukewarm could describe many of today’s believers, this verse has great relevance.  Maybe the greatest tragedy of misapplying this verse to unbelievers is that believers have missed the opportunity for self-examination.

Actually, there is a multitude of Biblical references about the subject of intimacy.  Paul speaking of Christ in Philippians 3:10 says, “That I may know Him.”  Then in verse 15, he says that the spiritually mature should have the same goal.  You may or may not be aware that in the original text, the word Paul uses for “know” is the same one used in the Old Testament about sexual relations. (Gen. 4:1, Mat. 1:25)  “Adam knew his wife Eve, and she became pregnant.”  Paul’s decision to use this word for “Knowing Christ” shows that he intended to make it clear that he does not mean he desires to have correct information about Jesus but rather an intimate experiential knowing.  The closest human parallel to “Knowing Christ” is the physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy experienced in marriage.  In fact, Scriptures use the metaphor of marriage to express His relationship to His people.  Jesus is the Bridegroom, and we are His bride.  This metaphor is just one more place where intimacy is not only encouraged; Paul says it should be our primary goal.

I have read a dozen or more of the best-known books about “Knowing God,” and they helped me know more about God, but they didn’t help me “Know God” experientially.  For me, the answer came by focusing on, “Knowing and being Known.”  The importance of, “Knowing Christ” is indisputable but how to know Him is often the missing link.  My experience is that God allows us to know Him in direct proportion to how much we let Him know us.  I am quite confident that this is one of the most important lessons I have learned in my spiritual journey.  Someone should write a book entitled, “How to let God know you.”  Maybe these thoughts are my attempt at doing that because I firmly believe that the prerequisite for knowing Christ is letting Him know me.

In my opinion, this is confirmed by numerous Biblical stories and begins right in the Garden of Eden.  God came daily to have intimate fellowship with Adam and Eve, and we can only guess what that was like for them.  However, a clue comes after they ate of the forbidden fruit.  After they had disobeyed God, there was an immediate recognition that something had changed, so they hid from Him.  That afternoon God came to spend His usual time with them but didn’t find them waiting, so He called out, “Adam where are you?”  Using the Laodicean metaphor, they wanted to live behind closed doors, but God came knocking.  I had read and heard this hundreds of times, but one day it caused me to ponder it in depth.  Parenthetically, I wonder how often I missed what God wanted to say to me because I was so familiar with a text that I didn’t take the time to consider its true meaning.  However, on this occasion, I thought, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here?  I thought God knew everything.”  As I pondered the situation, a new thought pattern in the form of a metaphor began to develop.  Four of my grandchildren lived a few houses away when they were younger, so they were at our house at least daily.  Almost every time I returned home, my wife would say, Sarah heard your car, and she’s hiding.  So I would move noisily around the house opening and closing doors and declare loudly, Wow, you sure are hiding good today!  Now Sarah had only three places she hid, but I would pretend that I didn’t know where she was.  After what seemed like the appropriate length of time, I would locate her, but more often than not, she couldn’t stand the suspense, so she would jump out and say, “Here I am!”  Even though she was hiding, she was anxious to be found because hugs and lots of laughter always followed it.  She loved playing this game and truth be known; I loved it too.  So with that image in mind, I wondered, was God playing this kind of game with Adam?  Did He really know where Adam was but was playing a game with him?  Given the import of the situation, I am certain He was not.

I believe when God said, “Adam, where are you,” that He actually did not know where he was, (pause for impact)…….Relationally.  Of course, He knew the facts, even to the point of exactly what Bush they were hiding behind.  However, this was not a question about facts; it was a different kind of question.  I believe God asked a relational question to Adam, so the central point of this story is; God was giving him an opportunity to allow himself to be known.  Adam chose to let God know him relationally and answered, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid.  I was afraid because I was naked.” (Gen. 3:10)  There were consequences for disobedience, but because he allowed himself to be known, intimate fellowship was restored.

Later God asked this same type of question when He said to Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?” (Gen. 4:9) Here it’s clear that God knew the facts about Abel because he said, “your brother’s blood cries to me from the ground.”  It’s obvious God was not asking a question of fact, so why did He ask this question?  I believe He was giving Cain an opportunity to allow himself to be known.  He refused and reaped terrible consequences.

God continued this kind of interaction with Elijah.  After a victorious triumph over the prophets of Baal, he was discouraged and running for his life. (1st Kings 19)  As he hid in a cave, the Lord came to him and asked, “What are you doing here?”

God knew the answer to this question, but He wanted Elijah to allow himself to be known.  So Elijah vented his frustration and fear and unburdened his heart.  Then God said; “Go stand on the mountain for the Lord is going to pass by.”  He did so and saw something like a strong tornado, then an earthquake and then fire but the Lord was not in any of these.  Finally, he felt a gentle breeze and God was in it, which is another metaphor for God speaking in a “still small voice.”  However, Elijah did not recognize it, so he went back to the cave.  The Lord was extremely gracious and asked him a second time, “What are you doing here?”  Elijah gave the same answer again, “I’m here because I’m scared, and Jezebel said she wanted me dead.”  After this second time of allowing himself to be known, his heart connection with God was revitalized, and he was restored to his former role of speaking and acting for the Lord.  I believe the gentle breeze in which the Lord was present was also a metaphor for the intimate fellowship with God that Elijah had lost because he had let fear and discouragement steal it from him.  I think the important point of the story is that God strengthened and restored Elijah because, as in the other examples, Elijah had allowed the Lord to know him with vulnerable honesty.  Elijah’s life from that point on appears to have been one of calm communion with his God.  Elijah is just another illustration of the restoration of intimate fellowship that comes when we allow God to know us.

We have yet another Biblical example in Jacob’s experience of wrestling with an angel all night. (Gen. 32:24)  He kept asking for a blessing and near dawn, the angel asked: “What is your name?” Since the angel is the “pre-incarnate Christ,” of course, he already knew his name, so why did he ask?  I maintain that He was giving Jacob an opportunity to let himself be known so he could bless him.  Jacob replied, “My name is Jacob,” which means “one who supplants” or “usurper.”  (One who improperly took something from someone.)  In his case, he had lied to his father and had stolen his brother’s blessing.  When he stated his name, he was admitting his character flaw, and therefore was, allowing himself to be known at the deepest level.  Then the angel gave him a new name, which is another metaphor for intimacy bestowed.  His new name was Israel, and he became the first of God’s chosen people called the Israelites.

In Genesis, the question is, “where are you” and in The Revelation, it’s “open the door,” but both are intended to give an opportunity for people to allow themselves be known.  God doesn’t need information because He is omniscient.  However, His desire for intimacy with us requires us to cooperate by allowing ourselves to be known.  Remember the definition of intimacy is both “knowing and being known.”  God wants to know us in order to have an intimate connection with us, but he never forces it on us, He waits for our consent.  If He forced it on us, it would be considered spiritual rape.  Rape is defined, as intimately knowing another person without their permission and God doesn’t do that.  He knocks at the door and waits for us to let Him in, or He asks us by way of conviction, where are you or what are you doing here?

God had been knocking on my door for years, asking those and similar questions but I had not answered because I was too busy doing things for God.  I was hoping for, even longing for intimacy, but had not achieved it.  I had not yet learned that letting God know me was my side of the equation.  These and other scriptures helped me understand that it was as simple as telling God things He already knew about me.  He always knows the facts, even the details of the facts, but He doesn’t know them relationally.  When I did that, the Lord graciously began to let me know Him at a deeper level than I had ever experienced and that produced the intimacy that I longed for.

Here’s a homemade story that illustrates the point that when we choose to let someone know us, it opens the door to intimacy.  Let’s say a father has given his son a curfew of midnight.  One night the son returns home at three o’clock in the morning, and since the house is dark, he assumes that everyone is asleep.  He thinks maybe dad won’t know he broke curfew, but in fact, his father did hear him come home.  The next morning at the breakfast table, they are both aware of the situation, but Dad says nothing.  Can you imagine how their relationship was repaired when the son voluntarily said, “Dad, I know you don’t know, but I came home three hours late last night.”  Of course, dad knew the facts, but he did not know them relationally until the son told him. Even though there were probably consequences, there was never a question of whether or not he would remain a son.  However, the boy’s honesty restored a healthy father-son relationship because they were now both on the same page regarding that issue.

I experienced intimacy first with a small group of men that I met with for years.  A high level of trust had developed, and incrementally I had become very vulnerable with them.  We eventually knew each other very well and in many ways better than anyone outside the group did.  We had developed a high level of trust and trust is foundational for intimacy.  The more we trust someone, the closer we let them get to us.  Only then will we share our inner-world with another person.  When one of the men had a heart attack, I visited him in the hospital and met his mother for the first time.  She didn’t know I was part of it, but she told me how much her son loved his group.  She said when he describes his group to her; it reminds her of an ancient Proverb.  “Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts or measure your words, just pour them all out, chaff and grain together, sure that a faithful hand will sift them, keep what is worth keeping and with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”  That described exactly how I felt about the guys in the group and it helped me understand what had produced our intimacy.  When I realized this, I began telling God things He already knows.

Again, my experience is that God lets us know Him in direct proportion to how much we let Him know us.  Intimacy with God has been the most rewarding and life-changing thing I have ever experienced.  After I began to experience it with God, I eventually did so with my wife, and our marriage reached a deeper level.  I am not sure that is the correct order, but it’s the way it happened with me.

At this point, let me say a few words about what I do not mean by intimacy with Jesus.  It is not a greater commitment to Jesus, which is a good thing, but no matter how serious you are, it’s a poor substitute for intimacy.  The value of commitment is that it’s the glue that keeps us together until we experience intimacy.  There is also an imitation intimacy which is an emotional experience often created by a worship team that encourages it.  It’s transitory but feels so right while it lasts because it can be a deeply spiritual experience, but that is not intimacy.  Millions of people who have that kind of worship experience week after week are the same ones who answer the surveys that their spiritual experience is less than fulfilling.  While it feeds the emotions, it doesn’t produce the kind of intimate heart connection with Jesus that people consciously or unconsciously desire.

Believers who have never experienced genuine intimacy with Jesus might ask, “Isn’t fellowship with God the same as intimacy with God?”  I think the answer is yes if we rightly understand the true meaning of fellowship.  However, what most people mean when they think fellowship with God is the condition of being, “In fellowship or out of fellowship.”  They typically think of themselves as being out of fellowship when they deliberately sin and are back in fellowship when they confess their sin.  That’s a good thing, but it does not produce the abundant life of John 10:10.  Asking a spouse to forgive us for something is a good thing and may even restore harmony, but it does not produce intimacy in a marriage.  It’s true that confession of sin means we are allowing ourselves to be known by God but only for an isolated segment of our life and it does not produce the intimacy I’m talking about.  True intimacy involves so much more than getting back in God’s good graces; it means letting Him know all of our thoughts and feelings.  There isn’t anything you can’t say to God because He already knows the details, but He wants us to be like the son who told his Dad something he already knew.  David is a good person to study because he tells God exactly how he feels about things and especially his frustration with God.  Take a leap of faith and pour out your heart then be ready to experience intimacy with Jesus.

Today God is still speaking to us as He did in Scripture.  “Where are you?”  (What is your true spiritual condition?)  “Where is your brother?”  (Any un-reconciled issues in your relationships?  How about your marriage?)  “What are you doing here?”  (Do you find yourself defeated or on the run in some area of your life?)  “If you will open the door, I will come in.”  (Do you have any doors that are closed to Jesus?)  For more thoughts like this, I highly recommend the timeless classic written by Robert Boyd Munger called; “My Heart-Christ’s Home” (It’s a small pamphlet, available on Amazon)

Is your desire for intimacy with God strong enough to make you move towards it?  If not, take some tiny baby steps and see if the results don’t cause you to want more.  We all know our own heart.  The question is, “Will we allow ourselves to be known?”  It’s past time to get honest with ourselves, others and God, and experience the intimacy that we’re created for.  Intimacy takes two, who want it, and God is ready when we are, in fact, He’s knocking at your door.

We enthusiastically tell the world that if they receive Jesus, all their sin will be forgiven and God will remember it no more.  In fact, scripture goes further when it says if we surrender our life to Jesus, the record that would have condemned us is completely erased.  Our heavenly Father can do that because of the substitutionary death of Jesus on the cross.  Some people even proclaim it with a bumper sticker that reads; “Christians are not perfect, just forgiven.”  However, if you listen to their prayers, they continue to ask for forgiveness over and over and over again.  Asking forgiveness may make a person feel better but doing so is a contradiction of what they profess.  Additionally, by asking for forgiveness after one has been forgiven is an act of unbelief.  Most would not agree with that conclusion, but their actions confirm that it’s true.  After much study and prayer, the following is what I believe about God’s forgiveness.  In the spirit of Acts 17:11 I urge you to search the Scriptures and come to your own belief because the Bible is our only standard, not someone’s opinion.

I believe that ALL my sin, past, present, and future has been completely forgiven.  I am confident of that based a large number of scriptures including what Jesus Christ Himself said; He said, ”Those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me HAVE eternal life.  They will NEVER be condemned for their sins but have already passed from death to life.”  (Jn. 5:24)  The Apostle Paul amplifies it by saying; “You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away.  Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave ALL our sins.  He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.”  (Col. 2:13-14)  And in the Book of Hebrews, we read: ”I will NEVER again remember their sins and lawless deeds.”  (Heb. 10:17)  The cross is the only basis for the forgiveness of sin, and since it is a one-time event, all sin, the past, present, and future was dealt with there.

The majority of believers agree with those verses so why do they continue to ask God for forgiveness on a regular basis.  It must be because of the patterns they have observed in their church culture.  It’s common to hear people ask for forgiveness in the prayers of their pastor, Sunday School teacher, Bible Studies, etc. It might also be because many people find it hard to believe that God can forgive our future sins.  If that is an issue for you, ask yourself these questions; How many of your sins did Jesus bear on the cross.  (Answer, all of them)  How many of your sins had been committed at that time?  (Answer none).  All your sins were future sins, so it’s obvious that God doesn’t have a problem forgiving future sins.  If you agree with that, you can trust that all your sins have been forgiven; past, present, and future.

There are only a couple of Scriptures that cause people to think they must continue to ask God for forgiveness.  One is the Lord’s Prayer in which we ask God to, “forgive us our sins as we forgive others.”  (Matt. 6:12)  It very clearly states that we are inviting God to forgive us in the same way that we forgive others.  In addition, Jesus states this principle even more forcefully when He says; “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you.  But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.”  (Matt. 6:14-15)  That’s a pretty sweeping statement, and if that’s the standard for God’s forgiveness, no one has a chance.  It leaves no room for being less than perfect in forgiving others.  Thank God that the New Covenant supersedes this way of having our sins forgiven.  Jesus instituted it in the upper room and confirmed it by sending the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.  The New Covenant of grace makes forgiveness a free gift, and it’s straightforwardly declared; “God saved you by his grace when you believed.  And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.  Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”  (Eph. 2:8-9)  For me, it’s clear that the verses before the cross, which say God’s forgiveness is based on my performance, were applicable only under the “Old Covenant.”

It’s a new thought for some that Jesus was born under the law, which means He was subject to it.  It fact Scripture says He fulfilled it perfectly.  So, therefore, He taught many old covenant principals, especially by example.  (Gal. 4:4-5)  He kept the Mosaic law, Made animal sacrifices, Worshiped on Saturday, Ceremonial washings, etc.  He also taught his hearers some strict standards of perfection like, “anger equals murder, looking with lust equals adultery, cut off your hand, pluck out your eye, be perfect, forgive others in order to be forgiven by God, etc..  Everything Jesus said was true, but it’s critical to understand that these demands of the Old Covenant law could only be fulfilled perfectly, by a perfect person.  Jesus was that perfect, sinless person and He fulfilled them so if a person is “In Christ,” God sees them as having done so as well.  The word hallelujah leaps to my lips.

Believing that I am completely forgiven has changed the way that I pray.  As a new covenant believer, I pray the Lord’s Prayer like this.  Rather than, “Forgive me the way I forgive others,” I affirm what I believe by saying, “Lord help me forgive others as you have forgiven me.”  Even though I am totally forgiven I still sin, so as I become aware of a sin my prayer is something like; “Lord I agree with you that I have sinned and I am truly sorry.  I don’t want to live like that so would you please help me be more consistent in my behavior.  Thank you that you forgave all my sins when you placed me into Christ.  I know you’re not mad at me because when Jesus was on the cross, you placed all your anger for my sin upon Him.  Thank you that I am completely forgiven, and you see me as spotless as new snow.  Once again I surrender and ask you to continue to live your life through me.”  Then I go forward, live without condemnation, and continue to follow Jesus.

The second reference that confuses people about forgiveness says: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and will cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness.”  (1st Jn 1:9) As a non-believer, I did that, and I was forgiven and cleansed from ALL unrighteousness.  I believe that a careful study of this chapter will reveal that as in most churches, there were unsaved folks in that local church who claimed that they had not sinned.  One of the reasons John wrote this letter was to deal with those who believed the Gnostic teaching that Jesus had not come in the flesh – that He was an illusion, in fact, sin was an illusion.  We cannot develop this thoroughly here, so I will leave it to you, but I urge you to study 1^st John carefully.  Some teachers say that this verse is like a bar of spiritual soap and we need to faithfully apply it to stay clean.  When a person agrees with that, it moves them back into the legalistic camp, meaning our efforts are what keep us acceptable to God.  That is not only unbiblical; it is unrealistic as well because it is impossible to apply that verse for every sin, every improper thought, etc.  We should always be ready to confess sin and repent (i.e. live life in the opposite direction) but not to be forgiven.

While speaking at a Pastor’s conference, one pastor said he agreed we don’t need to continually ask forgiveness for salvation.  Then he explained relationship vs. fellowship and in fellowship vs. out of fellowship.  He said when we sin we break fellowship, so we need to ask forgiveness to get back in fellowship.  I asked him if a person dies when they are “OUT” of fellowship, do they go to hell?  He said no, so I asked, on what basis can they go to heaven if not for the complete and total forgiveness they received at the moment, they received Jesus?  I also asked him if one unconfessed sin will cause a person to miss heaven.  He also said no, so I reminded him that the Bible says the penalty of sin is death not getting out of fellowship and that it sounded like he and I were in more agreement than he first thought.  (Rom. 6:23)  I asked him to remember that all the prodigal son had to do was repent (live in the opposite direction) and go home.  He tried to ask forgiveness, but the Father wouldn’t listen to him but rather said, let’s throw a party, my son has come home.  Jesus did not name this parable; it was the translators that named it, the parable of the prodigal son.  If Jesus had given it a name, it would most likely have been the parable of the loving waiting forgiving father.  It’s an illustration of how God views His sons.

Another illustration that’s helpful is the Laodicean Church in Revelation Chapter 3.  It had grown lukewarm which might be called “out of fellowship.”  At any rate, Jesus was very upset with their condition, but they were not required to ask for forgiveness but rather to simply to open the door and fellowship would be restored.  That is all that is needed when we have grown lukewarm.  I think these two illustrations show us what to do when we have sinned?  We should repent and go home or open a door that has been closed to Jesus.

You may fear that believing themselves to be totally forgiven will cause people to live careless lives, but for me, the exact opposite has been true.  It is possible that after hearing that God has removed all our sin as far as the east is from the west, (that’s infinity) someone will either misunderstand or distort what it means.  In Romans 6:1 Paul anticipates that, so he asks the question; “does that mean we can continue to sin” and then he gives an emphatic, “may it never be.”  Again in verse 12; “Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires.”  And in verse 15; “Well then, since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning?  Of course not!”  But what if I do sin?  1^st John 2:1 has the answer, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.  But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”  (Another term for an advocate is defense attorney.)  The penalty for my sin, past, present, and future has been paid, and I have been freely forgiven.  Therefore, the picture in my mind when I sin is that Jesus is my defense attorney and He reminds the Father; Remember that one was paid for also.  A sin does not cause me to stop being a son of God, but I do not take lightly Gods potential response.  In both Proverbs 3:12 and Hebrews 12:6, it says, those he loves he disciplines as a father disciplines a son.

Let me give you two homemade parables.  First:  Two men are walking down a road, one in very dirty clothes, and the other in a white Tux.  As they approach a mud puddle, which one is most likely to avoid the mud puddle?  I think you will agree; it’s the one with the white Tux on.  Secondly: Think of a country that’s ruled by a King.  In this country, the punishment for prostitution is death.  However, the king decides to give a blanket pardon to all prostitutes.  It would be good news but would it motivate a change in lifestyle, Maybe, maybe not.  However, let’s say that one prostitute was not only pardoned but the King asked her to be his wife and therefore become the queen.  Do you think she would be motivated to leave her old life?  Scripture says: If you are in Christ, you are now His Bride.

If we don’t understand, appropriate, and teach Gods TOTAL and COMPLETE forgiveness, We’re going to continue to produce believers who are thankful they’re going to heaven but who live lives that lack the freedom and joy we are meant to have.

Here are some of the things we say we believe,  We are: In Christ; Spiritually Reborn; Redeemed; Saved; Name is written in the Lambs Book of life; Forgiven; We’re a new creation.  Look at those again; THEY ARE ALL PAST TENSE.  It is very important to understand this because what we believe about our standing with God affects our entire life.

We call ourselves believers: Let’s start believing what we say we believe.

 Freedom is a treasured concept and an important word in our vocabulary.  We use it in a variety of ways including; freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, political freedom, financial freedom, etc., etc.  Each of these is wonderful, but history shows us they can be diminished or even lost if one does not remain vigilant.  However, there is a freedom that cannot be lost because it is the birthright of every person who is, “In Christ.”  Jesus says; “If the Son sets you free you will be free indeed.”  (Jn. 8:36)  The Apostle Paul confirms that but adds a warning.  “…Christ has truly set us free.  Now make sure that you stay free…”  (Gal. 5:1)  It’s important to recognize he does not warn us to; “make sure you retain your salvation,” because salvation was guaranteed when Jesus gave us his Holy Spirit.  (Eph. 1:13-14).  Instead, Paul’s warning to, “make sure that you stay free,” alerts us to be watchful because we have a tendency to drift or be led into a performance-oriented faith, which is the opposite of spiritual freedom.  Most believers would not accept teaching that is explicitly legalistic, but it often happens unknowingly.  That’s because it’s frequently cloaked in language that sounds spiritual but promotes condemnation rather than freedom.  And Scripture is clear that condemnation is never from Christ.  (Rom. 8:1)

Regrettably, I didn’t pay attention to Paul’s admonishment to, “make sure that you stay free,” and there were consequences.  I will explain later why I believed and taught new covenant grace but was slowly losing my spiritual freedom.  Now, after more than fifty-five years of church and Para-church leadership, I’m convinced that a significant number of Christians have a similar experience.  It’s sad, but like me, most of them are unaware that it has happened to them.  This motivates me to share a bit of my personal journey in the hope that it will help believers recognize and experience the freedom they already possess.  I will share with you some of the roadblocks, dead ends, and religious cul-de-sacs that I encountered before God graciously taught me how to live a life of freedom in Jesus.

In every area of my life, education, sports, business and even the church, I learned that “acceptance is based on performance.”  Even though I knew and believed in the doctrine of grace, I unconsciously allowed this concept to influence my spiritual life.  This was in spite of the fact that I was in a great church with a Pastor who was an excellent Bible teacher.  He taught that under the new covenant, salvation is obtained by grace through faith and that Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death. (Rom. 8:2)  He often spoke about avoiding any form of legalism because our acceptance is not based on our efforts but rather on the finished work of Christ on the cross.  In spite of the fact that I strongly believed “salvation is not by works,” (Eph. 2:8-9) something caused me to subconsciously develop the view that it was by my efforts that “sanctification” was accomplished.  I think it was because “spiritual disciplines” and living by Biblical principles were promoted as the way to spiritual growth and Godliness.  This caused me to be more concerned with the external than the internal, with “doing” vs. “being.”  Many who read this have had a similar church experience, and they like me turned out to be less than free.  Since many of our churches have correct doctrine and the best of intentions, why did this happen to so many of us?  Each church and each individual have their own story, but there are some experiences that are common to all believers.

It’s my considered opinion that one of the most significant is the sheer volume of input we receive over time.  The commonly used phrase “information overload” comes to mind.  Every story in the Bible contains several spiritual principles, and they become material for sermons.  Every sermon has either a new list or an old list of Godly principles to live by, backed up by scripture.  These ideas are also reinforced in most of the places we receive spiritual input.  Like, Pastors, Sunday School teachers, guest speakers, retreats, books, Bible studies, etc.  They explain the scriptures and normally end with an application or two.

I acknowledge that it isn’t intentional, but we are led to believe that a serious follower of Jesus should be living by ALL those Biblical Principles and spiritual disciplines.  After we’ve been a believer for a few years, this can amount to thousands of Biblical principles that we have been urged to incorporate into our lives. Each person has a different response, but the typical result is that his or her spiritual freedom begins to slip away.

My response was to take copious notes, read books, go to conferences, and try to live by all that was taught.  I had a quiet time every morning, kept a prayer list and prayed often, fasted one day a week for several years, memorized lots of Scripture and never missed Sunday school or church.  Our church was quite large with a wide array of activities, and I was encouraged to get involved, so I did.  The following is a partial list of my activities over those years.  They had an emphasis on evangelism and discipleship, so after I was discipled by a man on the staff of the Navigators, I discipled 84 men…By the book.  The church had a class on “Life Style Evangelism” so I took it and eventually taught the class using a book by that name written by Joe Aldrich.  Additionally, I taught a large adult Sunday School class, led the Sunday evening High School group of a hundred and fifty kids, had a couple’s home Bible Study, and a small men’s group.  Our church had several ministries to the homeless, so once a month I spent a day with the Union Gospel Mission in the inner city.  Eventually, I became an elder of that church, and later, Chairman of the Board of Elders.  During the 60’s and 70’s, I was very involved with the activities of Campus Crusade for Christ, The Navigators, and for ten years, led a weekly Young Life club at a local high school.

There must be people who can retain spiritual freedom while having this amount of ministry.  However, I believe their numbers are few.  That’s my conclusion after conversations with hundreds of people including many pastors and senior leaders of large international ministries.  I mention all my activities to illustrate that even though I diligently followed all the teaching I received, it slowly took away my spiritual freedom. This happened even though I enjoyed the activities and received lots of affirmation and by most people’s standards, was highly successful with great results.  That may be your experience as well, but I wonder if like me, you occasionally have a sense that something is not quite right.  In a series of conversations with Dick Halverson, one of my mentors, his questions changed my life.  They made me realize that Jesus was not the center of my life, “Ministry for Jesus” was.  When that hit me, I was shocked that ministry had become the central focus of my life, because that was never my intention.  This and several situations caused me to rethink the motivation for my spiritual activities.

After a few months of prayer and reflection, I concluded that I had neglected to nurture my heart connection with Jesus and had focused on outreach and discipleship, Bible study and correct interpretation of the Bible.  I also enthusiastically encouraged these activities for those I was influencing.  At the time, I would have been defensive if I had been accused of promoting a structured (legalistic) approach to following Jesus.  However, I now believe that is exactly what I was doing.  Over the years, I had unintentionally allowed myself to place an inordinate focus on correct doctrine and activities for Jesus.  The result was that the freedom I’m writing about was missing.  I now know that the focus of a “Christ centered life” is not ministry.  The focus of a “Christ centered life” is a “Christ centered life.”  Jesus didn’t ask us to devote ourselves to ministry; He asks us to devote ourselves to Him.  For the serious, committed believer, the greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is often, service for Him.

Others and I think they are in the majority, have a different reaction to drinking from a fire hose of spiritual input.  They give mental assent to what is taught but don’t try to incorporate every point into their life.  Since they agree with the teaching but don’t act on all of it, the majority of Christians live their lives with a constant low-level sense of guilt.  Most of this low-grade guilt falls under the ambiguous category of “not doing enough” or “not doing it right.”  Both the Harris and Gallup polls indicate that this represents around ninety percent of the church.  Even though I was more involved in ministry than my peers were, I still had the thought once in awhile, “am I doing enough.”  You know you are not free spiritually if you feel like you don’t quite measure up.  (i.e., not reading the Bible, praying, witnessing, giving or serving enough, etc.)

I’ve discovered that some pastors and teachers in their most honest moments have a little guilt because they are not living all they teach.  Some years ago, I was meeting with a friend who is a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas.  He and his church have a strong emphasis on personal evangelism, and he gives an altar call in every service.  His people are regularly challenged that the “Great Commission” is a personal mandate for every believer, and they should be winning their neighbors to Christ.  (Mat. 28:16-20)  When that subject came up in our conversation, I casually asked him if he had ever led anyone to Christ outside the pulpit.  He got very quiet, tears filled his eyes, and he said; “no, and I have felt guilty about that for years.”  That led to quite a discussion about my own experience of feeling guilty about not living all that I had been taught.

I shared how my heart had yearned for some resolution even before I knew that this internal longing was to experience the reality of my spiritual freedom.  As I prayed about this, I was hoping for an immediate answer, but it came slowly over time.  It was a series of little aha-moments instead of a big aha-moment. One was when a friend of mine returned after spending three weeks with Mother Teresa in Calcutta.  He said that as he was leaving, he asked, “How can we pray for you.”  Her answer was; “Please pray that my ministry to the poor won’t hinder my intimacy with Jesus.”  Another was when she spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. where I heard her twice introduced as; “A woman who has devoted her life to the poor.”  Her response each time was, “Sir, you completely misunderstand me, I am not devoted to the poor, I’m devoted to Jesus, and He asked me to help the poor.”  At the time, I felt confident that God would approve of everything I was doing, but after hearing that, it made me wonder if the Lord would have the same evaluation.

One of the bigger aha-moments was in the middle of a sermon when the Lord dropped a thought into my head; “You should listen to spiritual input and the Holy Spirit at the same time.”  I now know that this is crucial in order to retain spiritual freedom.  The change that this brought was not that I stopped studying the Bible, listening to preaching, teaching, etc.  It was that I needed to respond to the Holy Spirit, not the speaker’s list of Biblical principles or Godly things to do.  What I had to learn is that not everything taught is meant for me, at that point in time.

Therefore, I have learned to use the metaphor of a tuning fork to help me evaluate spiritual input.  If you strike a 440 cycle tuning fork (Musical note A) and hold another un-struck 440 cycle tuning fork next to it, without touching, resonance will cause the second one to vibrate in sympathetic vibrations.  However, if you hold a tuning fork of a different frequency next to it, it will not vibrate.  I believe that sermons, books, Bible studies, retreats, etc., are simply people striking tuning forks.  They can be proclaiming the truth, but I am to be obedient only when the Holy Spirit causes a specific point to resonate with my spirit.  Like the tuning fork, they are emitting a true signal, but my response is to be led by the Holy Spirit rather than take notes, and try to incorporate them into my life.  My job is to listen with a desire to be obedient to what the Holy Spirit impresses on my heart.

Now when I hear a passionate, inspiring teaching or sermon, I don’t assume that I must respond to every challenge.  That is especially true when the emphasis is on the heartbreaking stories of people in distress or difficulty around the world.  My thought at those times is to listen with an open spirit expecting that if God wants me to respond to something, He will speak to me.  My experience is, sometimes He does, and often He does not.  I believe this is the way Jesus lived, so I take 1st John 2:6 seriously, “Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.”  I can’t do that perfectly but thinking about how He responded to his surroundings has helped me immensely.  Let me give a couple of illustrations.  He must have felt compassion for the multitude of people at the pool of Bethesda, but he only healed one and left.  He must have walked by hundreds of lepers and blind people but only healed a few.  Many people went to bed hungry when He had the power to make bread out of nothing.  Or how many people died during His three years of ministry.  We obviously don’t know the answer to that question, but we know more died than He raised from the dead.  Point……Major Point; Need did not drive Jesus, he responded only to the will of the Father.  (Jn 5:30)  Scripture calls us to live like this, but it’s only possible when we learn to “walk in the Spirit.”  (Gal 5:16)

Let me bring this to a close with a couple of cautions.  We live in America that is known as the “land of the free.”  However, we know that if our freedom is not used responsibly, it will be destructive to society, and it’s the same for spiritual freedom.  That’s why Scripture encourages us to embrace our freedom in Christ, but use it wisely and for the good of others. 

“Be careful that you exercise your freedom, so it does not become a stumbling block for others.”  (1 Cor. 8:9) 

“Live as people who are free, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil” (1 Pet. 2:16)

“For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”  (Gal. 5:13)

My prayer is that these thoughts will help someone begin the process of responsibly embracing their freedom in Christ.  Ask God to help you understand and appropriate your freedom, then RELAX; “For it is God who works in you, to will and to act according to His good pleasure.  (Phil 2:12-13)  Whatever captures your attention captures you, so concentrate on Jesus, not a list of things to do.  He will tell you what the first step is, then, be obedient to that and He will give the next step.  It’s called walking in the Spirit, which brings the abundant life that the Apostle speaks of in John 10:10.

Additional unconnected thoughts about maintaining your freedom in Christ.

Here’s a verse to help you chose the right setting for your spiritual input.  “For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”  (2 Cor. 3:17)  If spiritual freedom isn’t emphasized where you worship, you should find a place where it is.  Your pastor/teacher may be called to focus on the poor, evangelism or missions, and may with passion, challenge you to do the same.  However, unless the Lord leads you to do so, don’t respond to the challenge.  We follow Jesus, not men.

Jesus said; “…You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free”(Jn 8:32) Secular people use that phrase often, by which they mean information that is true.  Let me state emphatically that facts even though true, will not set you free, and that also applies to the Bible.  Since the words of the Bible are true, many people act as if it means; “you shall know the Bible, and the Bible shall set you free.”  The Bible is meant to lead you to Jesus who said; “I am the way, the truth, and the life…”  (Jn. 14:6)  Truth is a person not information about Him.  Only Jesus can set us free, not correct doctrine or even the trustworthy words in the Bible about Him.

Another contributing factor to the loss of our freedom happens when we compare ourselves with others in our church, small group, books or TV.  The Apostle Paul says; “why are you so foolish as to compare yourselves one with another.”  (2 Cor. 10:12)  If you come out unfavorable, it usually doesn’t inspire new heights of faithfulness.  Instead, it makes you feel that you aren’t as valuable to God as the others are.  Ironically, if your comparison causes you to see yourself as living by a higher standard, it usually leads to spiritual pride, so avoid comparisons at all costs.

One of the greatest threats to spiritual freedom is mixing the old and new covenant, which the Bible calls, Spiritual Adultery.  This is as old as the First Century Church, which struggled with this.  In his letter to the Galatians, Paul addressed it in verse six of the first chapter.  “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the …grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.”  He goes on to tell us that the “different gospel” is the mixing of “Works and Grace,” and God uses some very harsh words about this.  As believers, we are the bride of Christ, which means that we’re married to Jesus and He’s very jealous.  Therefore, when we have an affair with the law (Works), God calls it Spiritual Adultery.  (Rom. 7)  “Whatever the Law says, it says to those who are under the Law, but we are not under the Law, but under grace”(Rom. 6:14)  Many believers are suffering the negative consequences of committing spiritual adultery.  (I.e., Mixing the old and the new covenants)

My father was a pastor, so I was raised in a good evangelical church that valued prayer.  We prayed to start and end everything, and our language included phrases like “prayer warrior,” “fasting and prayer” and “Wednesday night prayer meeting.”  We were often reminded that Godly people spend much time in prayer with quotes like; “Every Christian needs a half-hour of prayer each day, except when he is busy, then he needs an hour,” and Martin Luther said; “He tried to spend two hours every day in prayer, but if he was really busy, he would spend three.”  We learned that James the Apostle was called, “Old Camel Knees” because he prayed so much he had calluses on his knees.  None of this motivated me; in fact, it was a bit disheartening because if that’s the standard, I didn’t measure up.  However, I wanted to be a man of God so I took what I was taught seriously and did the best I could.  I kept a “prayer list,” “led family devotions” and fasted and prayed every Monday for several years.  Many do some or all the above with great benefit, but that was not my experience.  I did these things and others faithfully, but if I’m honest, my private prayer life was about as routine as my automatic prayer before meals.  Of course, my prayers were sincere, but with exceptions, they were more habit than heartfelt.

I thought maybe I had not correctly understood prayer or how to pray, so I read some well-known books about prayer.  Among others they included; “With Christ in the school of Prayer”by Andrew Murray, “Power Through Prayer” by E.M. Bounds, “Conversational Prayer” and “Conversing with God” by Rosalind Rinker.  They were interesting but also a bit disheartening because even though I accepted what they said, it did not produce a satisfying heart connection with my Lord.  At one point, I wondered if I was expecting too much from my private prayer life, but at the same time, I knew that there had to be more than I was experiencing.  I agree with the emphasis they placed on prayer, but the practices they promoted were not working for me.  I now know that I received a distorted view of prayer.  God knew my condition and over a period of several weeks prompted me to simply be open to what He wants.

During that period, I asked Him to teach me how to have a more intimate heart connection with Jesus.  He answered my request by leading me to re-visit my understanding of prayer.  As I did, new insights transformed my prayer life from anemic to life giving.  So my purpose is to document my experience plus share some thoughts about my current prayer life.  I will leave it to others to write a dissertation on prayer.  My goal is to simply share a part of my story, which requires me to speak candidly, but with the caveat that it is my journey and it might not be yours.

 One day an idea came to me, so I decided to try an experiment.  As I was driving my wife to see our grandkids, she was doing a crossword puzzle.  I got her attention by saying,

“Mary Ann,” and when she responded I said,

“Isn’t that a beautiful sunset?”

“Wow, that’s awesome.”

“I thought you would want to see it, Goodbye.”

A few minutes later, I said,

“Mary Ann” and waited for her to look up.

“Do you want to go to that party next week at the Larson’s?”

“Yes, I think we have to go.”

“I agree, I’ll RSVP for us, Goodbye.”

Several minutes later, I said,

“Mary Ann,” and she immediately said,

“What’s going on?”

“I think I’ve discovered how I’ve been praying.  I get God’s attention by saying ‘Heavenly Father’ then tell Him about a concern or praise then say Amen.  It feels like a phone call to heaven, and when I finish, I say goodbye.

I told her, that doesn’t sound right because Paul in 1st Thess. 5:17 encourages us to “pray without ceasing.” That’s not how I pray so I need to find out how a person can pray without ceasing.”

Acts 17:11 says that the Bereans, “…examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true,” so  I looked at everything I had been taught about prayer to see if it was supported by the Scriptures.  I looked at all the prayers in the New Testament and was surprised to see that they were quite different from the way I prayed.

Starting with the Lord’s Prayer and other verses in Matthew 6, I noticed that Jesus encouraged short prayers and gave specific instructions to pray in secret.  However, my biggest discovery was that the Lord’s Prayer doesn’t end with, “In Jesus Name.”  Of course, I must have known that because I had prayed it for years, but apparently, it hadn’t registered.  How I ended my prayers wasn’t the place I expected to start, but it was this thought that ignited an even greater desire to truly understand prayer.

I felt this insight was God beginning to answer my request for more clarity about prayer, so I needed to pursue it.  It seemed almost heretical to ask the question, why do we end our prayers with, “in Jesus Name?”  Nevertheless, I was committed to finding out if it was Biblical.  I couldn’t find any verses that specifically supported the practice, but did remember that Jesus said,”Ask anything in my name.”  (John 14:13‑14)  However, that didn’t seem to support adding the phrase, “In the name of Jesus” to every prayer, so I continued to search for Biblical support.  I was confident that the Apostle Paul knew how to pray, so I checked all of his prayers.  A couple ended with “Amen,” but all the rest ended with nothing at all.  You would expect that the prayers in the Bible would be examples of how to pray and in fact, they are.  It was surprising to find that not even one prayer ends with the phrase, “in the name of Jesus.”  So what are we suppose to do with that?  The only conclusion one can draw is that the way we pray is based on tradition, not a Biblical mandate.  However, the verse that confirmed my present position was, “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”  (Col. 3:17)  This was the only place I found that gave specific instructions to do something, “in the name of Jesus.”  I knew instinctively that this verse could not mean that I should add “in the name of Jesus” after everything, I say or do.  It would sound silly and maybe even be sacrilegious to say, “Honey, I’m going to work now, In the name of Jesus.”; “I got the car washed today, In the name of Jesus.” or, “I picked up the mail on my way home, In the name of Jesus.”  That would be a weird way to talk, but Scripture does say, “whether in word or deed, do everything (including pray) in the name of Jesus.”  So Colossians 3:17 took on new meaning for me and motivated me to learn more about what “in the name of Jesus” really means.

Shortly after that, I was reading “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers, which I have done every morning for years.  However, this time I saw something about prayer that I had managed to overlook.  He said, “You shall ask in My name, that is, in my nature.  Not, you shall use My name as some magic word.”  (May 29th  in classic edition.)

Immediately I knew what he meant because we have so ritualized the term “in Jesus Name” that for the majority of believers, it is almost like a magic phrase that makes a prayer acceptable or without it, unacceptable.  At the annual National Prayer Breakfast, which I’ve attended for forty-four years, I hear people make negative comments if someone ends a prayer with a simple amen.  Do they really think that God does not or will not hear a prayer if it doesn’t end with the right words?  I do have some sympathy for them because it’s part of my own history and I’m not completely free from my past.  Sometimes out of habit, I end a public prayer with, “in Jesus Name.”  At other times, I do so deliberately, in order not to offend people, but when I do, I feel hypocritical because I don’t end my private prayers that way.

I will try, to sum up, what I’ve learned about praying In the Name of Jesus.  It means we recognize that Jesus has opened the way for us to have access to the Father.  It’s an acknowledgment that our own righteousness is not sufficient but clothed in the righteousness of Jesus; we can boldly approach the throne of God.  Praying in Jesus’ name is praying for things that will honor and bring glory to His name.  It’s praying in and by the authority of Jesus Christ; it’s consistent with His character, His desire, and His will.  If this is our attitude, we are praying in the name of Jesus, so it doesn’t matter what we say at the end of the prayer.

Here are some additional thoughts about my discoveries relating to prayer.  Ask a thousand people to define prayer and the majority will say in one form or another, “It’s talking to God.”  Webster’s Dictionary agrees with that and defines the verb “pray” as “to Speak to God.”  That was also my view, but I might have said, speaking and listening to God.  I now know they are both are only partially correct because while prayer does involve speaking and listening to God, it’s so much more.  This traditional view of prayer is wonderful, but it doesn’t help us understand the fundamental nature of prayer.  Prayer is primarily communion with God or said another way; it’s having an open heart towards God.  The only time I break the communion (i.e., stop praying) is when I purposefully live in resistance to God.  We call that, “being out of fellowship.”

Brother Lawrence in his book, “The Practice of the Presence of God” says”; Prayer is nothing else than a sense of being in God’s presence.”  By far that’s the most important aspect of my prayer life whether alone or in a crowd.  I desire to maintain that “sense of God’s presence” so I will quickly respond to the prompt and check of the Holy Spirit which is called walking in the Spirit.  (Gal. 5:16)  I have also intentionally turned my thought life into prayer, so if you could hear my prayers, you would probably say, you’re just thinking.  That’s true, but I am thinking in communion with God, and that is prayer.  When I do use words, my prayer life is an open-ended conversation without saying Heavenly Father or Amen because I want my communion with Jesus to be unceasing.

Additionally, the majority of my active prayers are with my eyes open as I go about daily tasks.  Closing our eyes to pray doesn’t make it spiritual.  In fact, I can’t find one example in the Bible of anyone closing their eyes to pray.  Of course, it’s all right to do so if we want to and it may keep you from being distracted.  When I’m involved in a discussion with believers, I often quote the following verse to help them understand that our entire conversation has been a prayer.  “Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard.  A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.”  (Mal 3:16)

For me, prayer has become as natural as breathing, and it happens to be a great metaphor.  My lungs bring oxygen into my bloodstream, which sustains my life.  As long as I am alive, it continues without ceasing even when I am not consciously thinking about it.  Likewise, even though I’m not consciously thinking about God or having a conversation with Him, I remain in communion with Him, which is the essence of prayer.  I will use that conversation in the car with my wife for one more metaphor.  If we’re traveling for hours, we can constantly talk about the kids or our vacation plans, but we can also ride in total silence and our “union/communion” is uninterrupted.

Let me share a verse that was important to me as I searched for a more meaningful prayer life.  The Psalmist said, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”  (Psalm. 37:4)  I once heard a sermon that explained that verse this way.  If you have a desire for something, start delighting yourself in the Lord, and He might give it to you.  I think it means the exact opposite of that.  It means, if we are “delighting” ourselves in the Lord, He puts desires into our hearts.  So the question might be, how do we “delight” ourselves in the Lord?  If I ask people if they are “delighting” themselves in the Lord, they usually respond with, “Probably not, I don’t pray or read the Bible enough.”  However, that verse is more about surrender than faithfully performing an activity.  The Hebrew word for delight in that verse is (“Aw-nag”) which means, “To be soft and pliable.”  As we choose to have a soft and pliable heart towards the Lord, He puts desires into our hearts.  In addition, the desire He gave me was for a more satisfying prayer life.  I fully believe that the prayer life I now experience is because God fulfilled the desire He gave me.

In summary, my life in Christ has been revolutionized by experiencing the possibility that my prayer can be unceasing.  Of course, it includes speaking and or listening, but now there is a dimension that I was missing.  This is one man’s journey, but I believe there are parts of it that apply to everyone.  Whether or not you agree, my hope is that these thoughts have motivated you to seek a more meaningful prayer life.

Caveat:  The Bible is our only standard, and my prayer is that everyone would use Acts 17:11 as a guide to evaluate the teaching of any man and that includes this one.

Over the years the vast majority of believers have come to think of “witnessing and evangelism” as synonymous.  A recent Google search confirms this with more than 99.9% of the sites expressing this view.  It’s the natural consequence of Churches, Para-Church organizations as well as Christian TV and Radio, using the terms interchangeably.  The purpose of this paper is two-fold; to propose that evangelism and witness are distinctly different and that while all believers are witnesses, not all are called to personal evangelism.  I fully realize that this is a minority view, but I hope you will hear me out.  Witness will be covered in Part Two, but first, we will examine the prominence given to evangelism in many evangelical circles.

For some, the terms “evangelism” and “evangelicalism” are also indistinguishable, and it’s important that you know the difference, so you will know which one I’m writing about.  Evangelical or Evangelicalism refers to theology.  A short list of its beliefs are; The inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture.  That the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, exist as one unity within the Trinity.  That every human being is born alienated from God and needs to be “born-again” spiritually, by grace through faith.  That Jesus’ death on the cross paid the penalty for our sin.  That His Resurrection guarantees eternal life for those, who are, “In Christ.”

Evangelism is our expression for the activities of an evangelist.  (Eph. 4:11)  It is defined by Webster’s dictionary as; “The winning of personal commitments to Christ.”  Therefore, evangelism is proclaiming Jesus Christ as Savior and trying to persuade people to become His disciple.  It may surprise you to learn that the words “evangelize” and “evangelism” while often used by the church, are not in the Bible.  “Evangelist” is in the Bible three times, and will be covered later.

Like many who will read this, I was taught that the “great commission” (Mat. 28:16-20) is a personal mandate for every disciple of Jesus.  I wanted to be a whole-hearted disciple, so I read numerous books, and took classes on evangelism.  I became deeply involved in and gave leadership to three organizations that emphasized evangelism and discipleship.  Because of my bold personality, and my love for the Lord, it was easy for me to be evangelistic and I recruited others to do so as well.  However, after many years of success in the eyes of my peers, I had several God ordained encounters that caused me to wonder if the Holy Spirit had led me to be evangelistic, or if it was the influence of several Godly men that I respected.  After several weeks of prayer and study, I became convinced it was the latter, so this paper is about some of my thoughts that led to that conclusion.  I pray that my journey will be useful to others.

Before we begin, let me recommend a verse that will protect us from unsound conclusions.  In Acts 17:11 the Bereans are commended because “they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”  This verse is confirmation that the Bible is our only standard, not someone’s opinion.  May I suggest that you read this paper in the spirit of that verse.

Let me also give a short disclaimer before continuing.  Some who read these thoughts will find themselves on the defensive because they have a heart for the lost.  That’s wonderful, and I praise God for you, so please understand that these thoughts are not intended to devalue what God has put in your heart.  If you were given to the church as an evangelist, then don’t let me dissuade you from your mission.  Do your work with skill and enthusiasm; we need you.  However, this is a plea for you to exercise your gift without producing guilt in those who have received a different spiritual gift.  (Rom. 12:6-8; 1st Cor. 12:4-11; Pet 4:10‑11)

Unfortunately, our emphasis on missions and evangelistic efforts has caused the majority of believers to think of those on the so-called “front lines” as the ones who are most valuable to God.  By giving them prominence, we have made missionaries and evangelists our heroes and the more we celebrate them, the less valuable the rest of us feel.  It has the same effect on the body of Christ as a father of several children who praises the academic ability of one and neglects the athletic or creative ability of the others.  The role of a good father or spiritual leader is to discover the gifts of each person and help them excel in that area.

This is not the first time the body of Christ has suffered negative consequences from an emphasis on evangelism.  Church historians trace many of the major divisions in today’s church to the late 1800’s when some evangelical leaders, convinced of the imminent return of Jesus, vigorously promoted evangelism.  Others saw this emphasis as indifference to human suffering, so they concentrated on social causes.  When we emphasize one part of the Body of Christ over another, we are in error.  The Bible teaches that every believer is a part of the body with no part being more important than another.  (Rom. 12:4, 1 Cor. 12:12)  I rejoice in the efforts of the gifted evangelists among us but know that God sees and approves of the smallest acts of service in His name.  (Widow who gave two mites Luke 21:1-4)  I also love the rich heritage of the reformers.  Evangelicals are often at the forefront of social reforms, i.e., abolishing slavery, public education, hospitals, child labor laws, orphanages, etc.  I urge the church to give more than lip service to the fact that every believer has a unique, valuable and God ordained role to play.

This plus several other motivating factors caused me to re-evaluate my thinking about evangelism, and one of them was especially powerful.  It was the fact that I knew so many exceptionally devoted followers of Jesus who were not evangelistic.  They included Bible teachers, pastors, seminary professors, many of my friends at church, and my own wife and believing children.  I even learned that many pastors feel ashamed that they are not more evangelistic because its emphasis has also affected them.  One time without intending to, I asked an embarrassing question to the pastor of a Southern Baptist Church.  He had an altar call every Sunday and frequently encouraged his people to do personal evangelism.  It was promoted from the pulpit, Sunday School classes, and guest speakers.  I asked if he had ever led anyone to the Lord without being in his role as a pastor?  He got tears in his eyes, and said, “no, and for years, I have felt guilty about that.”  It’s sad that pastors who love Jesus and have the heart of a shepherd have to feel guilty that they are “just” Bible teachers, and not evangelistic in their private lives.

How did this happen?  The causes must be numerous, but one of the leading reasons is that the God-given, evangelistic calling of a few is often held up as the norm within the body of Christ.  Verify this for yourself by asking other believers you know to explain the primary purpose of a Jesus-centered life.  You will get a variety of answers, but the majority of them will revolve around spreading the gospel.  (i.e., fulfilling the great commission)  Because it has been underemphasized, they won’t think to mention what Jesus said should be primary for His disciples;  1. A person who puts Him before self.  (Luke 14:26b)  2. A person who puts Him before others.  (Luke 14:26a)  3. A person who puts Him before possessions.  (Luke 14:33)  4.  A person who takes up their cross and follows Him.  (Luke 14:27)  There are numerous others, but it’s obvious that outreach is not a believer’s top priority.

The following is a real life example that provides a good illustration of how many people have been hindered from fulfilling God’s purpose for their individual lives.  I am confident this story has been repeated many times, but I have personally witnessed it in the lives of two men.  It goes like this.  After a successful high school and college athletic career, a man marries and eventually has a son.  His dream is that his boy will also be an outstanding athlete and maybe even surpass his records.  Of course, on the boys’ first or second birthday, he gets a football, baseball glove, hockey stick or some other piece of athletic equipment.  As the young man grows he has a strong desire to please his dad and makes a valiant effort to fulfill his expectations, but there is a problem.  God designed this boy to be an artist, a musician, or a writer, and after a few years, the son is a major disappointment to himself, and his father.  With his best efforts, he just cannot meet the expectations of his father.  This kind of father produces a son who feels like a failure and too often is unable to reach his potential.  However, without these misplaced expectations the son could have excelled in the area of his own gifts and talents.

Even though well meaning the dad gave an incorrect vision to his son.  In my opinion, many evangelical churches and most Para-church organizations have done this to their members.  They have either explicitly or subliminally caused their members to think that fulfilling the “great commission” is the top priority of a believer.  In this example, the father represents the Local Church and Para-Church ministries, not our Heavenly Father.  God has given all believers both natural and spiritual gifts and desires that we exercise them in accordance with His purpose.  That’s the only way we can be effective witnesses of His love and grace.  Hopefully, this paper will help to liberate a few who have been under the burden of trying to be something they weren’t created to be.

In most evangelical churches, the emphasis on evangelism starts early.  We indoctrinate our children with cute little songs like; “I will make you fishers of men if you only follow me.”  (Mat. 4:19)  This song clearly tells young minds that true followers of Jesus will be fishers of men.  (i.e., soul winners.)  Then we reaffirm that in a hundred different ways as they grow up.  You may feel this is an innocuous little child’s song and that I am making too much of it.  However, in my opinion, it is this very type of thing that starts small but eventually causes us to have unrealistic and un-Biblical expectations of ourselves.

Jesus did say He would make Peter and Andrew “fishers of men,” and he obviously did since on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 believed after hearing Peter’s message.  However, I was taught in subtle and not so subtle ways that those words apply to all of us.  The Bible and my personal experience confirm that not all Godly people become “fishers of men.”  Shouldn’t we stop teaching or implying that they will?  Besides, the persistent emphasis that every believer should be evangelistic has produced the exact opposite of what those who promote it desire.

Some years ago I heard the President of Canon, the Japanese electronics firm, make the following statement; “Your systems are perfectly designed to give you the results you are getting.”  He was speaking to a secular audience of business executives, but I believe his challenge can help the Church do some self-evaluation.  A good place to start would be to examine the results of almost two hundred years of an emphasis on the “great commission.

With evangelism as the focus, we have unfortunately let our entrepreneurial oriented western culture invade the body of Christ.  This has caused us to use nearly every known method of sales and marketing techniques to spread the gospel.  It seems to be working because a Gallup national poll found that 74%… 3 out of 4 people say they have made a commitment to Jesus Christ.  Another Gallup poll surveyed Atlanta and found that 62 % report they are born again.  The most recent George Barna survey reports that 85% of Americans self-identify as Christians.  I know that polls are often unreliable, but this is frankly unbelievable.

Why is it that we have such massive numbers of people who claim that they have responded to our evangelistic efforts, and yet we are experiencing the accelerating decline of morality in our culture?  The answer is, our systems are perfectly designed to produce these results.  However well meaning, they must be viewed as a stunning indictment of our evangelistic focus.  Maybe we should question the methodology that produced this situation.

Dick Halverson, one of my mentors, told me about a survey that was sent to churches, Para-church organizations, and TV and Radio ministries all over the country.  It was pretty complete, covering the size of the budget, number of staff, areas covered, etc.  One question was, “How many decisions for Christ have been made in the United States through your ministry over the last ten years?”  They were astounded when they tabulated the results because the number was over 600 million.  It would be laughable if it were not so tragic because this means that the entire population of the country has been saved two times.  Even if we allow for those who believe you can lose your salvation and be saved again, it still doesn’t account for such an extraordinarily incorrect result.  This survey demonstrates what many people joke about when they say; “I saw that hand.”  It’s a play on words to show that many evangelists will count it a decision for Christ even if a person is just scratching their head.  It would have been a completely different result if the question had been; “How many people are following Jesus as a result of your ministry.”  It can be readily assumed that none of the reporting entities intentionally misreported, but since they so obviously did, we must look for an answer.  For the first 1800 years of the church, there was no such thing as decisionism when it concerned salvation.  So the emphasis on making a decision and counting those who do is a relatively new phenomenon started by Revivalist Charles Finney in 1820.

Some of you will know and some will not, that Jesus did not call His words at the end of Matthew, “THE GREAT COMMISSION.”  That’s an extra-Biblical term but by constant use, what started out, as a paragraph heading inserted by the translators, has become part of the text for most people.  If we do not set this straight, we could be charged with adding to Scripture by our complicity.  We rightly castigate the cults for their use of extra-Biblical material while we pride ourselves on staying true to Scripture.  Unfortunately, when we speak about the “great commission,” we are vulnerable to the very same charge.  So, I no longer use the term “Great Commission” because it is more Biblically correct to say; the words at the end of Matthew.

Another thought on the so-called “Great Commission.”  We have given more importance to what WE call “Great” than what Jesus called “Great.”  He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Mat. 22:37-39)   How did the church exchange what Jesus called great, for what WE call great?  Unfortunately, history tells us that the Church has gone along with many things that don’t have a Biblical base.  They sound true and are eventually accepted because they are repeated so often.

It seems obvious to me that the so-called “Great Commission” is not the number one goal of every believer, but it is also not the number one goal of the church.  It is very important, but simply ONE of many commands by Jesus.  Remember the story Jesus told about the Samaritan traveler who found a man along the road who had been beaten by robbers and left for dead?  After the Samaritan had bound up his wounds and helped the injured man, Jesus told his questioners to “GO and do likewise.”

What makes this “GO” less important than the “GO” of the so-called, “great commission”?  It’s the same word “GO” and the same Jesus saying it.  To me, this “GO” has equal weight to “GO and make disciples” so where are the big organizations with the goal of loving God and loving their neighbor as themselves.  This raises an important question, how do we know which of Jesus’ commands should be given priority in our individual lives?  There isn’t a formula; we must each listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit and free others to do the same thing.

Some say those words at the end of Matthew are important because they are the last words of Jesus.  Even if they were the last thing, He said, what makes the last teaching more important than the first?  Everything that Jesus said was important.  However, Scripture refutes their claim that those were His last words.  We have the following in the book of Acts.  He appeared to more than 500 people and taught them for 40 days after His resurrection.  Here we read the actual last words of Jesus; “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”  (Acts 1:8)  And then Acts 1:9 gives us this definitive statement; “These were his last words.”

In this passage, He did not say we were to “DO” witnessing but that we would “BE” witnesses.  By the way, Acts 1:8 also does not say we will be evangelists.  Paul covered evangelists in Eph 4:11.  Clearly, he did not think everyone would be an evangelist because he said, “God gave SOME to be evangelists.”  My reading of this is that SOME are called as evangelists, but ALL are called to BE witnesses.  A couple of examples may help illustrate the difference between being an evangelist and being a witness.  On the day of Pentecost, Peter was an evangelist and thousands responded to his message.  When Jesus opened the eyes of a blind Man, his questioners wanted him to engage in a theological discussion, but he avoided that and was a witness when he simply stated; “One thing I do know is, I was blind, but now I can see…”  (Jn. 9:25)  He couldn’t answer all the questions that the Pharisees asked, but he could tell what had happened to him.  That is the essential role of a witness.  One way to sum up the difference is to say; “Telling what Jesus CAN DO FOR OTHERS is evangelism but telling what He HAS DONE FOR ME is to be a witness.”  Peter and Phillip were evangelists, but the blind man was a witness.  More on this in Part Two.

Some organizations, which concentrate on the “great commission,” use Matthew 28:19‑20 for evangelistic purposes and others to emphasize discipleship.  Since for them, this is their primary message; they try to convince everyone who is serious about Jesus that they must have the same calling.  I have asked the following question of many who are giving their life to, “fulfilling the great commission in our generation.”  “Are the words at the end of Matthew a personal mandate for every believer,” and their answer is always yes.  I think not!

If they are correct about this, then most of them are failures.  The command is “go, make disciples, and BAPTIZE them.”  If the “great commission” is a personal mandate for everyone who follows Jesus, then why don’t the Para-church groups baptize.  If each person does not baptize, then they are not fulfilling “the great commission.”  When I ask those involved in these movements, how many they have baptized this past year, they usually say none.  When I ask why, their answer is, “we leave that to the church.”  That answer makes my point; these words are not to individuals but were given to the church through the Apostles.  Eph. 2:19‑20 says that they are the foundation of the Church with Jesus being the cornerstone.  A careful reading of this Scripture indicates that only the eleven Apostles were there when Jesus spoke these words.  Since all believers are members of the universal church, we must diligently search for our role in fulfilling the total mission of the church.  We are each equipped and enabled based on our spiritual gifts plus individual calling.

If the “great commission” were the primary goal of every believer, then many pastors, Bible teachers, doctors, seminary professors, business people, homemakers, children, etc. are all giving their lives to secondary purposes.  Is their work really less valuable in God’s eyes than those who are out spreading the gospel?  The majority of those who promote evangelism would answer no, but they continue to call for everyone to be involved in winning the lost.  That is a duplicitous message and makes those who are not evangelizing feel like second-class citizens.

While evangelism and evangelize are not in the Bible, evangelist is, and it’s mentioned three times, so let’s look at each.  Firstly in Ephesians 4:11, it is a spiritual gift to the Church.  Note that the word Evangelists is plural, meaning that God gave more than one, and probably many.  Secondly, in Acts 21:8 Philip is called “the Evangelist,” so he must have been one of those spoken of in Ephesians four.  Lastly, in 2nd Timothy 4:5, Paul tells his young friend to do the work of an evangelist.  This was probably because Paul knew Timothy had been given to the Church as an evangelist as well as Pastor-Teacher.  In chapter four verse fourteen of his earlier letter to Timothy, Paul alludes to that when he said; “Do not neglect your gift, which was given you…”

But you might ask, how do we know this command to; “do the work of an evangelist,” was specifically to Timothy?  The answer is in the context of the letters Paul wrote to him.  In earlier verses, Paul predicts that some will move away from sound teaching, and then in verse five he speaks directly to Timothy; “BUT YOU, keep your head in all situations…and do the work of an evangelist.”  Then in the same verse, he says this is Timothy’s ministry.  We misinterpret scripture when we make general application of a verse that was spoken to a specific person or group of people.  We know that God told one man to build an ark, but we don’t apply this to everyone.  However, in our zeal to prove our point we often use other verses out of context.  It’s a good thing that all Paul’s admonitions to Timothy do not apply to every believer because that would mean that we would all be drinking “a little wine.”  (1st Tim. 5:23)

If we remove the call to spread the gospel from the backs of most believers, don’t be concerned about the future condition of the Church.  Down through the ages, God has made sure that His body has enough evangelists.  In the early days of the Church, He gave us Philip and Timothy, and in this era, we’ve had men like Billy Graham and Bill Bright plus many others, and we thank God for them.  The vast majority of people who have this gift are not as well known as those mentioned, but they are equally effective in a less visible way.  There are many types of evangelism; Crusade Evangelism, Personal Evangelism, Musical Evangelism, Apologetic Evangelism, Radio and TV Evangelism.  These are all legitimate if done by one who is an evangelist.

This re-examination of evangelism was my personal journey, and it was necessary for me to be liberated from the expectations of men.  Since to the best of my knowledge I haven’t been given to the church as an “evangelist,” I will leave it for others to write on this subject.  Following in Part Two are my thoughts on, “lifestyle witness” rather than “lifestyle evangelism.”

Part One of this paper started with the following statement.  “The purpose of this paper is two-fold; First, to assert that evangelism and witness are distinctly different and Secondly, to make the case that all believers are to be a witness for Jesus, but evangelism is not required of every believer.”  I pray that people will be released from the self-condemnation that results from frequently hearing that the “great commission” is a personal mandate for every believer.  Read “Part One” of this paper for thoughts that challenge that idea. Evangelism is presenting the Gospel and challenging people to receive Jesus and the salvation He offers.  A witness is a person whose words or actions reflect the meaning, which Christ gives to his or her life.

Let’s begin with the last words of Jesus before He ascended into heaven.  “…When the Holy Spirit comes upon you; you will BE my witnesses…”(Acts 1:8)  The Greek word for “Witness” in this passage is “Martus” (mar-toos).  It’s definition is; “one who by word or deed tells what he as seen or heard;” Webster’s Dictionary defines witness as; “Public affirmation by word or example of personal faith” or “one that gives evidence”  “You will BE my witness’s” was spoken by Jesus to those who were there on the day of Pentecost, but it applies to every believer because, at the moment of salvation, we too are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  So now, let’s examine the practical implications of what being a witness means.

The following hypothetical story describes the role of a witness.  Imagine with me a situation that develops right in front of you and ends with an automobile accident.  Let’s say you see a car stopped in the fast lane waiting to make a left turn.  A green car approaching in the same fast lane sees the light is turning yellow.  Trying to beat the red light, it speeds up and changes to the slow lane to pass the stopped car.  However, this was a last minute decision and causes a rather serious accident with another car traveling in the slow lane.  Being a good citizen, you stop to offer help and let the drivers and the police know that you saw the accident.  A few months later, you get a call from a lawyer and are subpoenaed to be a witness for the trial.  An attorney has worked for months gathering evidence and several other witnesses to support his charges.  He develops a strategy to present this evidence in such a way as to cause a judge or jury to discover the truth.  If you being one of the witnesses enter the courtroom, immediately point to a person, and began to shout, “He’s the one who caused the accident,” you can understand that even though you might be right, it would be detrimental to the case.  The attorney would quickly ask you to sit down and withhold your information until he asks you to take the witness stand.  He has several others who witnessed the accident, and you are the fifth person he will call.  He plans to call each witness in a specific order and will call on you when your information is most useful to the case.  When he does call on you, he wants you to say that you saw a green car changing lanes quickly and it hit the car in the slow lane.  He doesn’t want you to say more because he has others who will speak about the light turning red, etc.  Then the defense attorney will cross-examine you by asking you questions that are intended to prove that your statements are not true.  He may try to confuse you by asking questions you can’t answer, but not to worry, you can simply restate what you saw, experienced, and know to be true.  After the plaintiff’s attorney has called all his witnesses, he will make his closing statement, and a decision will be reached.  As a witness, you have no responsibility for the outcome of the case.  Your duty is simply to tell your personal experience as honestly and clearly as possible, but it’s important that you do this only when the attorney calls you to take the witness stand.

The attorney for this case will have presented the evidence in a very precise manner, and in fact similar to the methods of a bridge builder.  Bridge construction techniques for a particular type of a bridge can help us understand how God builds a bridge between Himself and an individual.  Many bridges start by pulling a very small nylon rope across the river or canyon.  Then a slightly larger rope is pulled across, then a small cable, then a stronger cable, after that, multiple cables.  This process continues until the cables are strong enough to support early work on the superstructure.  They are very methodical with the pace of construction because each phase must be done correctly and in the right order. Eventually, the bridge can help people safely cross from one side to the other.

God seems to work in the same way and understanding this helped me understand His activity in the first 26 years of my life.  It also led me to see how the Holy Spirit wants to use me as a witness for Jesus in the lives of others.  My experience is that the Holy Spirit has normally been active in people’s lives, long before he calls me to be a witness.  A good example; God was already at work in the life of Cornelius long before He asked Peter to speak to him.  (Acts 10)  Like Peter, I may be the first to witness to a person about Jesus, or there may have been several hundred before me.

It is God who orchestrates events and the witness of many people to accomplish His purpose in each person’s life.  He has a master plan for each life, and He executes it precisely.  When He invites me to participate with Him, He expects me to get on the witness stand, and only say what He prompts me to say.  In the same way as the overly zealous witness of the automobile accident, I can get ahead of God’s timing and hinder or even set back what He is doing in a person’s life.  Our role is simply to speak or act as He prompts us, and He adds our witness to those before us.  His earliest witness plants a thought, and each successive event or witness builds the case stronger.  When we live like this, it is impossible to fail as a witness.  When we respond to what He asks us to say or do, we have fully discharged our responsibility, and the results are up to the Holy Spirit.  Occasionally, our role is to be the last person in a chain of circumstances, and we see a person receive Jesus.  It brings us great joy, but it was not our input alone that caused a person to become a child of God.  It was a multitude of others, and God ordained events that caused that person to surrender their life to Jesus.  In addition, here is an important point, if someone earlier had not played their specific role, this person would not have been at the point I found him or her.  In fact, one of those who God used earlier in their life might have been an evangelist who presented the gospel to that person.

General thoughts about being a witness.

Many people think they lack knowledge and sufficient verbal skills to be a witness.  In fact, God seems to do nothing that he can delegate to people.  He allows us to do slowly and often poorly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.  It must bring Him joy, and it certainly produces growth in us when He allows us to be His witness.  He used a woman of low morals to win a whole town.  (Lk 4)  He once used a donkey, (Num. 22:21-39) and said He could even use rocks if He has to.  (Lk. 19:40)  God uses anyone who will make themselves available.  Being a witness for Jesus simply requires a heart that is responsive to His leading.

If you are “In Christ” you are a witness for Jesus, but its expression depends on many factors.  Our witness is shaped by, one’s age, personality type, spiritual maturity, spiritual gifting, the situation, etc.  We know that the witness of a 12-year-old believer will be very different from a 40-year-old spiritually mature individual.  Personality plays a huge role as well, but if God has given you an introverted personality, you can still be the kind of witness that He designed you to be.  If on the other hand, you are a committed disciple of Jesus and have a strong extroverted personality, your tendency could be to act in the “flesh” rather than wait on the Holy Spirit.  In either case, it’s important that you understand how to “walk in the Spirit.”  If you do not, then that should be priority one so you can live your life in sync with God.

Our words and actions will be part of either erecting a bridge or a barrier.  Bridges assist people to move from one side to the other but barriers, even small ones, stop, or at least inhibit movement.  Small barriers can cause people to stumble, and large barriers will stop them immediately.  Let’s think about what relational barriers might look like.  Most of us have difficulty understanding doctors if they use scientific medical language or in a similar way, a Rotarian at a Lyons convention or a Protestant at a Roman Catholic Church.  Therefore, if we use traditional church vocabulary or what is often called “Christianeze,” it is likely to confuse, or at best keep a person from engaging in comfortable dialogue.  We must be careful because we can make it really difficult for people to understand our witness.  Around the church, we often use terms like; “THE WORD…THE CAUSE OF CHRIST…  THE SAVIOR”…I’VE HAD A BURDEN for so and so…THE LORD TOLD ME or SPOKE TO ME!  I am sure you can think of more words and phrases that we should avoid.  This kind of language makes us sound super-spiritual, so it’s better if we talk about our faith using everyday words.

Scripture calls us to; “…Be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.(1 Pet. 3:15)  One of the greatest tragedies in the Church today is that not many people are asked for the hope that they have.  Read that verse again; it doesn’t say, be ready to give an answer to questions people have about God.  That was really freeing to me, and I hope it is for you as well.  We should simply be able to tell in our own words what gives us hope in a world that doesn’t make sense to most people.  We don’t have to know why bad things happen to good people or explain the Predestination of God and the free will of man.  It doesn’t need to be a coherent, comprehensive presentation.  (even Jesus didn’t do that)  As in a courtroom, we’re simply asked to say what we have seen and experienced.  (1^st Jn. 1:3)  That’s an authentic, effective witness.

My personal journey of learning to be a witness for Jesus.

To be this kind of a witness, I had to learn how to walk in the spirit.  (Gal. 5:16)  Only the Holy Spirit knows when I should get ON the witness stand and when I should get OFF.  (Read my article on Following Jesus)  Since I had such a great love for Jesus and knew the Bible fairly well, my biggest challenge was learning when I needed to get off the witness stand.  Over time, the Lord taught me that too much content that is not in harmony with what He is doing in a person’s life, will hinder His plan.  I now wait until I feel prompted by the Holy Spirit before I witness verbally.

Only God knows where people are and only He can design the correct spiritual timeline for each person.  Only the Holy Spirit can match where a person is on their spiritual journey with the correct witness at just the right moment.  This pattern matches the Scripture that says; Some prepare the ground, some plant, some water, some cultivate, some wait, some harvest.

There have been many instances when I was prepared to give a witness, and He didn’t call on me, but I have learned to trust the wisdom of God.  At other times, I’ve felt an internal prompting to cooperate with Him by “getting on the witness stand.”  He may want me to say a sentence or two, or He may open the door for an in-depth dialogue.  The most common experience, however, is that He wants me to say something very simple and move on.  That’s what the blind man did in John 9:25.  The Pharisee’s tried to draw him into a religious debate, but his response was; “One thing I know for sure, once I was blind, but now I can see.”  (Jn. 9:25)  To tell what Jesus CAN DO is evangelizing but to tell what He HAS DONE FOR ME is witnessing.

When God does lead me to speak to someone, I don’t confront their beliefs, lifestyle, or relationships, because that puts them on the defensive, and can easily lead to a heated debate.  That isn’t profitable, so I will usually just share a personal experience that involves my life with Jesus.  It isn’t hard to remember one that fits the current conversation because I have had so many in my life.

One Example:  Over a ten-year period, I developed a friendship with the Director of the “Ministry of State Security for one of the leading Communist countries.”  (Their CIA).  On one occasion, we were in the Capital City and were sharing a bit about our personal lives, and he asked about my family.  As I began to tell him about my family, I felt the prompt that I have become accustomed to, so I began to tell him about my marriage.  At that time, I had been married approximately fifty-five years, but as of this date, it will soon be sixty-six years.  He seemed amazed that I had been married that long so I said, “I can’t take credit for having one wife for all these years because, after nine years and two children, I asked her for a divorce.  But I am so fortunate that five weeks later, I surrendered my life to Jesus, and He gave me a new heart.”  That led to a forty-five-minute discussion about how Jesus had changed my life.  To my knowledge, my witness did not result in his conversion, but I felt certain that God had prompted me to say what I did, and I was equally certain that He will use my witness as He wills.

There have been other times when the Holy Spirit leads me to speak the name of Jesus, and it leads to a wonderful conversion.  One day my next-door neighbor called and asked if he could come over for a chat.  We had become friends, so I welcomed him to come over for a cup of coffee.  He brought with him a folder of papers and the issue he wanted to talk about was his financial condition.  He was facing foreclosure and knew that I had spent many years in the real estate business.  After going over his situation in some detail, I commented; “I hope you know how to pray because only Jesus has the wisdom to guide you through this.”  It wasn’t a conscious attempt to speak about Jesus, but rather my natural response to the mess he was in.  He didn’t verbally respond to my comment, but it was obvious that it struck a nerve.  He didn’t say much after that, and the conversation shifted to his kids and a family update.

About two hours after leaving he called and said, he wanted to come back and continue our conversation.  When he arrived, he wasted no time in telling me that he didn’t know how to pray and wanted to talk about that.  After a wide-ranging discussion about spiritual things, he said, “I want to surrender my life to Jesus like you have.”  I told him that was a good thing but receiving Jesus would not automatically make his financial problems disappear.  However, Jesus would give him the wisdom and strength to handle whatever the future holds.  He understood that, still wanted to have Jesus in his heart, and asked if I would tell his wife about Jesus.  Doug and Kathy are now walking in fellowship with Jesus and miracle of miracles they were able to keep their house.  They continued to be our neighbors for years and became members of our church.

Since I learned to be obedient to the check and prompt of the Holy Spirit, more people have come to know Christ than when I was looking for every opportunity to present the gospel.  In fact, many people think of me as an evangelist because, over the years, many people I’ve met with have become followers of Jesus.  Nevertheless, I am confident that I am not an evangelist.  I think of myself as a person with a strong extroverted personality who knows a bit about the Scriptures and has learned how to respond to the “Prompt and Check” of the Holy Spirit.

Please take special notice that I have not given any methods or formulas about how to be a witness.  If age, personality, spiritual maturity, spiritual gifting, etc., is taken into account, it means that every incident of witness is different, personalized, and specific to the situation.  If God has ordained the witness, it will be unique and customized by His Spirit.  Our goal is to be open and responsive to the leading of the Holy Spirit.  That’s all you need to know about being a witness for Jesus.

For many years, I used the words disciple and believer interchangeably.  However, I was always left wondering if Jesus believed in salvation by grace alone.  That’s because He continually put conditions on being His disciple.  So in the spirit of Acts 17:11, I searched the Scriptures to find out what the Bible had to say about being a disciple of Jesus.  Ephesians 2:8-9 states that we are “saved by grace through faith” which means my acceptance by God is not based on my performance.  The basis of my salvation is the blood of Jesus shed on the cross which is available to all those who receive Him.  So if my salvation is free, why did Jesus say that I should consider the cost of being His disciple?  (Luke 14:28-33)  There’s a huge difference between “free” and “cost,” so since the Bible states that both are true, I had to come to some resolution.  Because I was certain of my salvation, I came to believe that I had misunderstood what it means to be a disciple.

The actual meaning of the word disciple is a learner or a person who becomes an apprentice to a teacher.  Since Jesus is the true Master Teacher, how could I become His disciple?  My understanding of this is a work in progress, but my thoughts about discipleship have definitely evolved from what I was taught.  Like many people, my early experience with discipleship came because of my involvement with an evangelical Para-Church Ministry.  They had a strong emphasis on discipling, encouraged me to do so, and gave me a number of tools to help me.  So over a period of many years, I took eighty-four men through the discipleship books believing that I was creating disciples for Jesus.  The goal was to help them understand the Biblical view of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Sin, Nature of man, Salvation, etc..  I believe I did help them have a correct view of the Scriptures, and that’s important, but I now know that it didn’t produce very many authentic disciples.  It produced people who believed correctly about the essentials of the faith.  That’s very necessary, but Jesus calls us to become His disciples, not just people who are saved and believe right.

I once heard the CEO of Canon, the electronic firm, tell an audience of businessmen; “Your systems are perfectly designed to give you the results you’re getting”   He was saying, your current systems created your bottom line, so if you don’t like it, you must change your system.  That idea is also true for our methods.  While thousands upon thousands have gone through discipleship courses, the vast majority don’t become what Jesus calls a disciple.  I regret that it took me so long to understand that teaching people to have correct theology does not create disciples.  I’m now focusing on the definitive statements of Jesus about what He says makes a person His disciple.  Those words at the end of Matthew, “go and make disciples of all nations” (Mat 28:19) have to be viewed in light of what Jesus said were the characteristics of His disciples.  My understanding of, “make disciples” is to point people to what Jesus said.

Jesus said His disciple is:

1. A person who puts Him before others.  (Luke 14:26a)

2. A person who puts Him before self.  (Luke 14:26b)

3. A person who puts Him before possessions.  (Luke 14:33)

4. A person who takes up their cross and follows Him.  (Luke 14:27)

5. A person of prayer.  (Luke 11:1-13 and 18:1-8)

6. A person who abides in Him and produces fruit.  (John 15:7-8)

7. A person who has a special love for other believers.  (John 13:34-35)

8. A person who is unified in spirit with others in His family.  (John 17:20-23)

9. A person who lives His words.  (John 8:31)

Since I can’t accomplish these essential requirements for anyone but myself, I’ve changed the way I think about discipleship.  I will energetically continue to help people understand the Scriptures, but the primary goal is to encourage them to focus on the things that Jesus said are true of His disciples.  So now I ask people the question; Do you want to be a disciple of Jesus?  If so, then tell Jesus that you want to cooperate with Him as He accomplishes these things in your life.

A disciple of Jesus reminds him or herself daily; “I no longer have a right to myself.”

If you have a desire to be a disciple of Jesus, a good start might be to spend a week or a month reviewing the Scriptures listed below.  Ask the Holy Spirit to help you know where to start and which of these to focus on first.  Don’t be discouraged when you don’t meet them perfectly, in fact, no one ever has.  However, you can be a person who takes the statements of Jesus seriously and asks Him to help you become His disciple.

The following is only a partial list of verses about becoming an authentic disciple.

1. A person who puts Jesus before self!  (Luke 14:26b)

a. Gal. 2:20; Phil. 1:20,21 & 2:5-13; Col. 3:1-4.

2. A person who puts Jesus before others!  (Luke 14:26a)

3. A person who puts Jesus before possessions!  (Luke 14:33)

4. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.  (Luke 14:27)

a. How do you understand; “your own cross”?

5. A person who prays!  (John 16:24-31)

a. Matthew 6:5-15 & 9:36-38 & 18:19; Mark 1:35; Luke 6:28; John 15:7 & 16:24

6. A person who abides in Jesus and produces fruit.  (John 15:7-8 & 16b)

a. The right definition of ”Fruit” is crucial.  (Check Gal 5:22-23)

7. A person who loves other believers!  (Jn 13:34,35)

a. Romans 12:3-9; 1 Cor 1:10; Phil 2:1-4; Hebrews 10:24,25

8. A disciple is one who works at maintaining unity!  (John 17:20-23)

a. We are not asked to create the unity but rather to maintain it.  (Eph. 4:3-6).

b. Ps. 133:1; Matt. 23:8-12; Romans 12:10 & 15:5; 1 Cor 1:10 ; Gal 3:28; Eph 5:21

9. A person who lives the words of Jesus!  (Jn. 15:7) (obeys, continues in)

a. Rom. 15:4; Col 3:16-17; 2 Tim 3:16,17;

What is the Gospel?

     The Gospel is a Person.  That Person is Jesus.  So the Gospel is Jesus not information about Him.

To preach the Gospel is to preach Jesus.  He Himself is the “Good News” (John 1:1,14; Colossians 1 & 2; I Corinthians 2:2)

     Truth is not correct facts; truth is a person.  Jesus said, ”I am the truth.”  Our Faith is not placed in what Jesus said but in Himself  (SUBTLE BUT IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE)

What is the work of God?

     “Then they asked him, what must we do to do the works God requires?”  Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”  (John 6:28-29)  This is not just a salvation verse.  The work of God is to believe in Jesus in every situation we find ourselves.  Not believing in what He will do but in Himself.

A great quote:

     “The most conspicuous thing in the New Testament is the supremacy given to our Lord.  Today the supremacy is apt to be given to phases of the truth, to doctrines and not To Jesus Christ.  Truth is a person, not a proposition.  If I pin my faith to a logical creed, I will be disloyal to the Lord Jesus.  The most fundamental heresies that split the church are built on what Jesus Christ can do instead of on Himself.  Wreckage in spiritual experience always follows.”   Oswald Chambers

I am so concerned about a development within the body of Christ that I feel compelled to sound an alarm.  An un-Biblical movement is growing like a forest fire with a 50 mile an hour wind, and it’s affecting people I care about.  I’m not sure whether its leaders are intentionally leading people astray, or if in fact, they themselves have been deceived.  Yes, true believers can be deceived and they can also lead people into error the same as intentional false teachers.  I’m thankful that it’s not my calling to sort this out or to start a campaign against them.  Even writing an article like this is highly unusual for me because while I have strongly held personal convictions, I enjoy fellowship with folks who differ from me on non-essentials.  However, in this case, I feel obligated to warn my friends and family about this aberrant teaching.  I urge you to read the entire paper, and my prayer is that it will help you evaluate your current spiritual input or prepare you for what you will encounter in the future.

For years I’ve known that several eccentric groups were teaching an erroneous theology.  They believe that God is restoring the office of Apostle and Prophet for the purpose of governing, (rule over) a unified one-world church.  They teach that these so-called “restored apostles” will take DOMINION over ALL spiritual, social, political and financial entities and establish, the Kingdom of God, on earth. (Details later)  Of course, I don’t believe that, so I wrongly assumed that these were small fringe groups and wouldn’t amount to much.  That all changed when a longtime friend sent me a CD of a talk about Jesus by a nationally recognized Bible teacher he admired.  It was so right on that I found myself in sync with his teaching.  It made me want to hear more from this man, but when I did, I was appalled at what else he taught.  His teaching was Jesus PLUS a theology that clearly identified him as a leader of the movement I am writing about.  As I learned more about him, it became clear that he was part of a large network of teachers and I was shocked to learn how pervasive it is.  Its aberrant theology is currently being taught in thousands of churches and influencing millions of believers world-wide.  In fact, church growth experts say they have the fastest growing churches in this nation and around the world because they’re highly organized with a global agenda. After an extended period of time investigating this movement I’m even more convinced of the danger, it represents for the church.  I have done my homework and am certain that this teaching is un-scriptural but I encourage you and yes even urge you to come to your own conclusion.

The movement I’m concerned about is not a new phenomenon because, since the earliest days of the Church, various groups have attempted to restore the offices of apostle and prophet for the purpose of governing (ruling) the church.  Examples: Just 35 years after the Apostle John died, “Montanus” and two female colleagues started a movement called, “The New Prophecy.”  They claimed their prophecies were directly from the Holy Spirit and superseded the authority of Jesus and Paul.  They were eventually branded as heretical and excommunicated by the early church; There were others during those early years and later in 1851 the Catholic Apostolic Church started in England and then spread to Germany and the United States.  Its last “so-called apostle” died in 1901 but there are still remnants in various countries including America;  The Mormon Church is governed by the “Quorum of Twelve Apostles.”;  In 1907 the “New Order of the Latter Rain”^(B1) was birthed, and its theology has produced a variety of movements.  One of those emerged in the 1970’s and 80’s and was called, the Shepherding/Discipleship movement.  It caused a great deal of harm before it imploded and now in the 21^st century, a new version of the same theology has surfaced.  All these movements mixed orthodox Biblical doctrine with what they called, “new revelation.”

Today’s version of these discredited movements is called, the “New Apostolic Reformation.”^(B2) (NAR)  Even though they attach the word New to it, there is nothing new about it.  They have simply repackaged and rebranded the discredited extra-Biblical teaching called Latter Rain Revival.  It taught that God is restoring the offices of Apostle and Prophet which they call the lost offices of church governance.  They teach that all true believers must be submitted to one of its so-called apostles.  This is also the central message of the NAR and the International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders. (ICAL)  Its founder Peter Wagner claims that the Second Apostolic Age started in 2001 and alleges there are currently more than 500 so-called “restored apostles.” (Both male and female)  Wagner further asserts that more than 100 million people are submitting to their leadership.  Most of you will not have heard of the NAR because it’s not an organization but rather a loosely connected network of spiritual leaders.  It’s made up of individuals or apostolic networks that submit to the authority of a so-called, “restored apostle.” 

Regarding this movement, I think those who read this paper will fall into one of three categories. The First is the largest group, and they are completely unaware of what I’m writing about.  If that describes you, I thank God for your protection.  The Second group is comprised of those who are unaware that the Church and Conferences they attend and even Authors they read are part of this movement.  My guess is that they became involved because they love the music and worship and really like the teacher so even when incorrect interpretations of scripture are presented, they are accepted.  I believe this is one of the prime reasons why so many people are being led astray.  Let me say that in a slightly different way because it’s very very important.  One of the main reasons why false doctrine gets accepted by millions of people is because the teacher speaks about Jesus and familiar themes in such an appealing way. While it’s the same Jesus I know and love, they add the un-Biblical and discredited theology spelled out below.

Thirdly: An increasing number of people understand and accept much of what is being taught, and I fear that many of them are so involved, my warning will go unheeded.  They’ve developed a great deal of respect and trust for a teacher and have accepted him or her as an Apostle or Prophet.  I believe most of these folks are true brothers and sisters in Christ and are knowledgeable about the Scriptures but for inexplicable reasons seem to have missed the real direction they’re being led.  That’s hard to understand because the key leaders of the movement have openly and clearly stated that they are committed to; “fundamentally transforming the church.”  If you are a person that is knowingly involved, I ask you to please hear me out and then do a little research on your own.  With Acts 17:11 in mind please evaluate what you are being taught.

Since these thoughts are a warning about the theology of NAR teachers, let me answer those who ask;  “Doesn’t the Bible tell us not to judge?”  Yes, Matthew 7:1 very clearly says; “Judge not that you be not judged.”  However, in verse 15 of the same chapter, Jesus warned us to be on guard against false prophets.  To do so requires us to exercise discernment so there must be a difference between judging and discerning.  In fact, there is, and for me, I use history to understand the difference.  Only God can judge Hitler, the man, but it’s our responsibility to recognize his actions as immoral.  So that illustration helps me avoid judging individuals, but Scripture commands each of us to evaluate their words or actions.  This paper is my attempt to do so after carefully studying what the leaders of the NAR are teaching.  In an earlier version, I refrained from using the names of NAR leaders, but since they openly promote their message, I see no reason to do so.  Additionally, I am encouraged to name them because the Apostle Paul warns his readers by giving specific names a number of times.

With a little research, you will find that a multitude of authors, conference speakers, and pastors, embrace the NAR teaching.  Each of them has been influenced by the acknowledged leaders of the movement.  There are too many to mention but a few of the prominent U.S. leaders are: Peter Wagner, Bill Johnson, Os Hillman, John Kelly, Lance Wallnau, Jack Deere, Ed Silvoso, Rick Joyner, Cindy Jacobs, Patricia King, Heidi Baker, Jim Goll, Mike Bickle, Dutch Sheets, Che Ahn, Bill Hamon, Lou Engle, Kim Clement, Randy Clark; Chuck Pierce; etc.  In addition to their individual ministries, some of them have established their own “apostolic networks.”  An example; Harvest International Ministry in Pasadena California claims that 20,000 churches in 50 nations on five continents have submitted to the leadership of self-appointed Apostle, Che Ahn.^(B6)  Each church is asked to tithe between 5 and 10% of its gross income to the apostolic network.

Since I’m focusing on the aberrant theology of the NAR, I think it’s important to start with a bit of its history.  It should be instructive that this new movement has been profoundly influenced by the teaching of two men.  They are the foundation the current leaders build on, so it’s important to study their character and doctrine.  Often the past helps us understand the present, so let me give you an unvarnished overview of the core beliefs of these men who are major influencers of this movement.

Starting in 1946, William Branham (1909-1965) began holding miracle healing services with amazingly accurate prophecies, even revealing specific details about people’s personal lives.  His seemingly miraculous powers, prophecies and words of knowledge filled the largest meeting halls and stadiums all over the country.  His teaching was the inspiration and catalyst for a rebirth of the “Latter Rain” doctrines. He was also the earliest and most influential leader of the so-called “Miracle movement” which produced the Prophetic and Faith Healer phenomenon.  He was so impressive and spectacular; people failed to investigate what he really believed or the true source of his supernatural manifestations.  You will see why they should have when you learn what he believed.

He denied the Trinity, (called it a “doctrine of demons) and believed that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different manifestations of one and the same God; (The Oneness doctrine)  He believed there were three revelations from God, the Scriptures, the Zodiac and the Pyramids; (His grave stone is a large pyramid)  He taught that anyone belonging to a denomination has taken the “mark of the beast.”; A woman cutting her hair is grounds for divorce; He prophesied the end of the world would be 1977 but didn’t live long enough to be disproven and exposed as a false prophet;  During the 60’s he thought he was the end-times “Elijah” of Malachi 4 verse five and six.  He also claimed that God revealed to him a doctrine he called, “the serpent’s seed.”  He said God told him that Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden was not eating a fruit, but rather it was a sexual relationship with the serpent.  That before the fall, the serpent “was somewhat in between a chimpanzee and a man, but closer to a man.”  So Satan was Cain’s father rather than Adam because Satan entered the serpent and seduced Eve.  Branham espoused these heresies and numerous others but in spite of this, prominent leaders of current movements still praise his ministry, and much of their teaching can be traced to his influence.

Branham is still recognized by many in the apostolic/prophetic/healing movement as one of the most influential spiritual thought leaders in history.  For many years he was mostly unchallenged, operated within Pentecostal circles and was accepted by tens of thousands of people.  However in 1949 his popularity and the Latter Rain teaching was called into question by the General Council of the Assemblies of God.^(B3)  Even though it cost them many members, the leaders of the largest Pentecostal denomination, published a resolution denouncing the “Latter Rain Revival” because;“it both added to and departed from, Biblical truth.”  However, it was kept alive by a few and reintroduced during the Charismatic Renewal of the 1960’s and 70’s.  By the mid-nineties, it had gained new momentum, so in the year 2000, the same Assembly of God denomination passed a second and a third resolution, rejecting it again.^(B4)  In spite of this the movement never completely disappeared and later resurfaced with a new face and a new name.

The second man who influenced and helped launch the NAR is Paul Cain (1929-   ).  He was personally mentored by William Branham and ministered with him in the 1950’s.  He is often called the greatest living prophet and is widely recognized as the father of the modern prophetic movement.  He is still called a Super Prophet by some because his clairvoyant ability allowed him to call people out of the audience and tell them facts and hidden sins that could only be known by that person.  Cain disagreed with Branham’s most heretical views but accepted and promoted the majority of his teaching.  His disciples are too numerous to list, but they include most of the prominent teachers of the movements I’m concerned about.  He was heavily promoted by John Wimber and the Vineyard network of churches and IHOP in Kansas City. (International House of Prayer)  While they and multitudes of other people accepted him as God’s prophet, he was living a hidden life of perversion and immorality until he was publicly exposed.  Strangely, this continues even after he publicly admitted that for many years he has been an alcoholic and a practicing homosexual.  So it’s not surprising that there is a long list of his disciples who have had scandalous moral failures as well.  There are too many to mention here, but they include Ted Haggard, Todd Bentley, David (Paul) Cho, former pastor of the largest church in the world and Bob Jones another major IHOP prophet who was exposed for using his spiritual status for sexual favors.

You’re probably thinking; “What’s so important about the life and theology of a man who died fifty years ago, or his disciple who continued his teaching?”  I think it’s particularly important to review their theology because the current self-proclaimed apostles, prophets, teachers, healers, and workers of signs and wonders continue to teach the fundamentals, of the “Latter Rain Revival.”  While they might also disagree with Branham’s most egregious beliefs, they derive the core of their theology and doctrinal positions from these two men.  As a matter of fact, Bethel Church in Redding California whose Pastor is Bill Johnson produced a chart which shows William Branham as one of the pioneers of their movement.  This church and its musical group “Jesus Culture” is among the most influential in the NAR network.  Unlike this church, many of the teachers downplay their connection, and some categorically deny that their roots are in the “Latter Rain” or NAR teaching.  In spite of their denial, the fact remains that when we evaluate them carefully, it becomes obvious that the majority of what they teach comes from the original, Latter Rain Doctrines.  The differences between the Latter Rain Movement and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) are minor and are mostly about terminology, not doctrinal differences.  Like the old saying goes; “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . . it’s a Duck.”

It’s important to state that not every person involved with the movement believes everything I will mention. Each teacher has a slightly different emphasis, but common themes of the NAR are interconnected in their teaching.  However, the highly influential key leaders of the movement openly teach the following.  Their declared goal is to unify and govern (rule over) the church world-wide. (One-World church)  They say that only a unified church which has submitted to the authority of these so-called “restored apostles” can bring into being the Kingdom of God on earth.  They intend to complete that task and present the Kingdom to Jesus when He returns.  They believe that He will not and in fact cannot return until they have taken Dominion and restored the earth to the condition that existed in the Garden of Eden before the fall.  To help them accomplish this, they believe that God will eventually transfer all the wealth of the earth into their hands.  This will make it possible for them to fulfill the “Seven Mountains Prophecy”^(B5) which is one of their main goals.  They claim that God wants them to take Dominion (Rule) over the seven mountains that shape culture.  This means that; Government; Business; Media; Arts and Entertainment; Education; The Family and the Church will eventually submit to these so-called “restored apostles” and be governed by them.  One TV network called their goal, “The Christian equivalent of the Islamic caliphate because each group wants the entire world to accept it’s theology and be governed by its spiritual leaders.”   The NAR has made great progress towards their goal by involving numerous nationally known religious, business and political leaders.

Believe it or not, they have even more extreme beliefs.  These so-called “restored apostles” also teach that they will lead God’s end time’s army which will cause all individuals and all nations to submit to them.  They see themselves as Generals of a militant arm of their church they call, “Joel’s Army.”  They believe they will develop a group of spiritually mature believers who possess the Holy Spirit without measure.  They call them, the Manifest sons of God (Paul Cain calls them; “The New Breed”) and these men will have an elite spiritual status and will not die and cannot be killed.  Their army will rule the earth, purge it of all evil and judge the apostate Church. (That’s me and anyone else who doesn’t submit to these apostles)  It is very sad that many who love Jesus listen to and accept these teachers without fully understanding the end game of the “New Apostolic Reformation.”

These self-proclaimed “restored apostles and prophets” vigorously proclaim their allegiance to the Bible but often place an equal and sometimes an even greater emphasis on dreams, visions and extra-biblical revelation than they do on the Scriptures.  Many of the leaders claim to have had extraordinary spiritual experiences like physical visits to heaven.  Some claim numerous face-to-face conversations with Jesus and discussions with angels.  They boldly state that the revelations they receive are “Present Truth” for today and refer to Biblical truth as “Past Truth.”

There are also literally thousands of self-appointed “prophets” who work hand in hand with the so-called “restored apostles.”  The web page “Elijahlist.com” exists for these prophets to publish their prophecies and they claim more than 135,000 subscribers.  The prophets are men and women who profess to hear directly from God and then reveal the “fresh word of God” for today.  They insist that they do not have to be subjected to the Biblical test for a prophet which demands 100% accuracy. (Deut. 13:1-3 and 18:22)  The Bible states clearly that one inaccurate prophecy proves a prophet to be a false prophet.  It must be noted here that not one of their prophets has been 100% accurate so by Biblical standards they all fall into the category of false prophet.  They vehemently reject this Biblical test and Paul Cain, one of their most prominent prophets even stated; “people should withhold judgment on my prophecies until they get to heaven.”   He is asking people to disobey the Scriptures because First John 4:1 says; “Dear friends do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the spirit, you must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God, for there are many false prophets in the world.

Since thousands of evangelical churches and ministries across the globe are part of this movement, what could a person look for in determining whether or not their teacher is involved?   It’s easy in some settings because a few spiritual leaders are open about their involvement and even lead with this teaching.  Others are difficult to identify because they preach Jesus and a substantial amount of correct Biblical doctrine while covertly adding the NAR theology.  At first, these churches appear to be quite normal, and Christ centered, but over some period their true colors will show.  You may like the music and worship, but each of us is responsible for our own spiritual health so we must be discerning about the teachers we choose.

NAR teaching is prevalent in many, but certainly not all, Pentecostal and Charismatic churches.  However, it’s also found within a large number of Para-Church ministries (Many are well known) and quite a few of the mega-churches.  I would also add that most Faith Healers, Word of Faith and Seed faith teachers are promoting some aspect of the NAR teaching.  There are also other ways that the NAR doctrines are propagated which includes the majority of Religious TV networks such as TBN and numerous others. In fact God.TV is totally committed to advancing the NAR agenda and in fact was created to do so.  Additionally, one of the so-called “restored apostles” has even produced a Bible that supports their theology.  It’s called the “Passion Translation” and is the product of one man who would like you to accept the NAR theology

For me, an alarm bell immediately goes off in my spirit if the person is introduced as or claims to be an Apostle or Prophet.  That means they are to be accepted as a spiritual authority and a spokesman for God.  Another warning signal for me is if they speak about any of the following topics, but the most common approach is to introduce them as concepts without specifically mentioning them by name:

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)

The Second Apostolic age

Spiritual mapping

Dominion Mandate

Kingdom Now Theology

Manifest Sons of God

The New Breed

Joel’s Army

The Seven Mountains Mandate

Five Fold Ministry

An end times harvest of a billion souls

Fresh Fire (Catch the fire)

Spiritual covering

Prayer Walking

Territorial spirits

ElijahList

The New Prophecy Movement

Past truth vs. Present Truth

The Third Wave

The Restoration movement

The Joshua Generation

Healing Rooms

And numerous others

You could write a book on each one of these, and I pray that someone does.  For now, it’s super important for each of us to know what our Pastor/Spiritual leader believes.  They shouldn’t be upset if you ask their opinion about each of these subjects.  If they have a positive response to any of them, then personally I would not stay under their teaching.  I would run not walk to another fellowship that uses the Bible as its sole and final authority for faith, doctrine, and practice.  Please take the time to understand the NAR  because in my opinion there may come a day when every believer will have to decide whether to accept or reject the authority of the so-called, “restored apostles.”

Before you disregard this warning, please do your own investigation and ask the Holy Spirit to give you discernment.  If you have even a hint or tiny suspicion that something is not quite right with what you are hearing, I urge you to pursue it until you know the truth.  It will be difficult at first because you want to be loyal to your teacher but a higher loyalty belongs to Jesus and the Scriptures.  My prayer is that these thoughts have provoked you to seek the Lord and search the Scriptures before you accept the teaching of any man, and that includes this one.

The early church gives us a pattern of how to respond when we listen to any teacher.  A paraphrase of Acts 17:11 says:  They searched the scriptures daily to see if what they were being taught, was true.   The Bible is our only standard, and we must stay true to the inerrant word of God.

 Addendum

 A. The Bible gives us numerous clear, definitive and authoritative warnings.

1. “If the prophet speaks in the LORD’s name but his prediction does not happen or come true, you will know that the LORD did not give that message”… (Deut 18:22)

2. “Let these false prophets tell their dreams, but let my true messengers faithfully proclaim my every word.  There is a difference between straw and grain.”  (Jer. 23:28)

3. “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: What sorrow awaits the false prophets who are following their own imaginations and have seen nothing at all.”  (Eze. 13:3)

4. “On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?  And then will I declare to them, I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Mat 7:22.23)

5. “many false prophets will appear and will deceive many people.”  (Mat. 24:11)

6. “…false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones.  See, I have warned you about this ahead of time.”  (Mat. 24:24-25)

7. “These people are false apostles. They are deceitful workers who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ. But I am not surprised!  Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”  (2nd Corinthians 11:13-15)

8. “Dear friends do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the spirit; you must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God, for there are many false prophets in the world.” (1 John 4:1)

9. “You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars.”  (Revelation 2:2)

10. Read the Book of Jude for a good description of what to be concerned about.

 B.  Internet resources:

(1) Various articles on the Latter rain and associated ministries.

http://www.letusreason.org/Latradir.htm

Latter Rain and it’s spin offs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latter_Rain_%28post%E2%80%93World_War_II_movement%29

(2) New Apostolic Reformation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewApostolicReformation

A transcript of a talk given by Peter Wagner, the father of the NAR.

Make sure you get to the second half where his own words confirm their goals.

http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/arise.html

(3) 1949 Assembly of God resolution:

(Read the section:  “The New Order of the Latter Rain”; Resolution No. 7)

http://ifphc.org/DigitalPublications/USA/Assemblies%20of%20God%20USA/Minutes%2GGeneral%20Council/Unregistered/1949/FPHC/1949.pdf

(4) 2000 Assembly of God resolution.

(This is very definitive in describing the many fallacies of the Latter Rain teaching.)

http://ag.org/top/Beliefs/Position_Papers/ppdownloads/ppendtimerevival.pdf

(5) Dominion Mandate and 7 Mountain Mandate (Peter Wagner, the father of the NAR)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0KbH9H9vLk&index=4&list=PLnWLm645TqLvvRTkfgaj0QdnpdqbhwNqy&noredirect=1

(6) Che Ahn;  (Harvest International Ministries)

http://harvestim.org/index.php?a=about&s=vision&ss=who-we-are

For some, it may seem heretical even to raise this question, but I ask you to hear me out because, the Scriptures admonish us to, “Test everything…Hold on to the good” (1st Thess. 5:21).  Luke confirms this by giving us an account of the early church evaluating what Paul taught.  He  commends the Bereans for “receiving the message with great eagerness and then checking the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul said was true.”  (Acts 17:11)  Approximately forty-five years ago, this became a life verse for me because two centuries later it is even more important to, “test everything.”  When I applied it to the teaching I had received, it took me in directions I could not have guessed.  I had been thinking about the question of whether Christianity is Biblical or Traditional for some time, when the following meeting occurred.

While having breakfast with a member of the Israeli Cabinet and his wife in the breakfast nook of their lovely home, we began to discuss the Jewish-Palestinian conflict.  After many personal stories about the pain and anguish he had experienced, our discussion turned to possible solutions.  I asked if he could conceive of anything that could make a breakthrough in this desperate situation.  He thought for a few moments and then said, “No; too many people have died.”  I suggested that in my opinion, the only possible solution was the reconciling love of Jesus.  He quickly said, “I don’t have anything against Jesus, just some Christians.”  I also answered quickly and without thinking said, “I can understand that, but Jesus wasn’t a Christian.”  He was visibly taken aback by that statement and repeated it several times, “Jesus wasn’t a Christian…wow!  Jesus wasn’t a Christian.”  He even turned to his wife and said; “Leah, Jesus wasn’t a Christian.”

Several years later, I had a similar conversation with the Chief Rabbi of Israel, and he had the same reaction.  Like it does for most people, this statement came as a shock to him, but it is irrefutable that Jesus was Jewish and not Christian.  There was much more to both of these conversations because each man initiated a serious and thoughtful dialogue about Jesus.  As I look back, those meetings were also important for me because they caused me to ask questions that helped me resolve my question about Christianity, and to become even more Jesus centered.

Questions like: Even though Jesus was Jewish and not a Christian, did He start Christianity?  If not, did Paul the Apostle start Christianity?  Did Paul consider himself a Christian?  Did the early church consider themselves Christians?  What role has tradition played in the development of Christianity, is it Biblical?  These and other questions caused me to search the Scriptures, and the following thoughts are my conclusions on the subject.  My prayer is that the reader will consider this paper in the spirit of Acts 17:11 and search the Scriptures to see if these thoughts are consistent with our only standard for truth.

Firstly, I discovered that the word Christianity is not in the Bible, so it is not Biblical in the literal sense.  However, the absence of an exact word doesn’t itself mean that an idea is unbiblical.  The word Trinity is not in the Bible, and yet a picture of God existing in three persons is very clearly taught.  Even with this understanding, I cannot find a religion called Christianity in any form in the New Testament.  The emphasis is in the person of Jesus, not an organized or structured set of ideas and doctrines.  Webster’s dictionary defines Christianity as “a religion based on the Old and New Testaments.”  It’s my opinion that Jesus didn’t come to start a new world religion.  He is the Lord of the Universe; it is we who make Him the head of an earthly religion.

Let’s look at some of the differences between Jesus and Christianity.  Jesus unites; Christianity quite often divides.  Jesus attracts; Christianity is often unattractive.  Christianity is not pure, but Jesus is pure.  Christianity has buried Jesus under layers and layers of traditions, doctrines, convictions, creeds, and social issues.  These things frequently draw people to themselves; consequently, many people have not come to the real Jesus.  Billy Graham has said he feels that his ministry has been to bring “Christians to Christ.”  His message has not been, “Believe in Christianity and you shall be saved!”  He has been faithful to the Scriptures that say,”Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).

Secondly, Jesus never used the words “Christian” or “Christianity” in His teaching.  Paul, who penned the majority of the New Testament, didn’t use those words either.  In fact, a thorough search of the Bible shows that only Luke and Peter use the word, “Christian.”  They report it was used three times but Always by Outsiders; “The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch” (Acts 11:26).  Those who called the believers Christians might have used Christian as some people use such socially incorrect words as, kike, nigger, wop, gook, or spic.  These words which are meant to hurt and degrade.  Scripture seems to confirm this, “But it is no shame to suffer for being a Christian.  Praise God for the privilege of being called by his name” (1st Peter 4:16)  To me, this verse shows that when people were called Christian, the intent was to cause shame.  A modern-day paraphrase of Peter’s counsel might be, “Don’t let them get to you no matter what they call you.”  So if I am called a “Christian” by an outsider, I will bear it gladly.  However, since no believer in the Scriptures refers to themselves as a Christian, including Jesus and Paul, I do not call myself a Christian.

When I raise this issue, some people get a bit agitated and tell me that when they use the word Christian they mean “a person who follows Jesus.”  Their comment has led me to ask many, many people for their definition of the word Christian.  The most common answer I receive is, “a person who has received Jesus.”  That is indeed a correct definition of a true believer, but if we use Christian when we mean “Jesus” or “Christ,” then we are saying they are equal.  To do so is disloyalty to the name above every name.  People seem to believe that if they know what they mean; substituting other words for the name of Jesus is justified.  The name of Jesus cannot be replaced by something less without consequences.

After speaking about this idea on a retreat, a man approached me angrily.  He said this was heresy and I shouldn’t talk about it anymore.  He said he had been an elder for thirty-five years and Christianity and Christ meant the same thing.  When he said Christian, he meant Christ and vice versa.  As we talked about this, I suggested that I might call on him to pray that evening.  I told him if he would close his prayer “in the name of Christianity,” I would reconsider my position.  That would prove that he believed they are interchangeable.  He flushed and said, “Oh no, we pray in the name of Jesus; how could I have missed it?”

Some people ask, “If you don’t call people Christians, what do you call them?”  My answer is that Paul didn’t seem stumped by this, even though he never used the word, Christian.  Call them what he did: believers, saints, followers of the way, sons of God, disciples, brothers, sisters, etc.  Paul obviously didn’t consider himself a Christian since he never used the word, but he did say that he considered himself a true Jew since he was in Christ.  (Romans 2:28-29)

Most believers talk more about Christianity than they do about Jesus.  From the pulpit, in Sunday School, and in our songs we hear the name of Jesus frequently, but go to the fellowship hall and listen carefully.  A few minutes after singing, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…there’s just something about that name,” we find that people rarely speak His name.  Listening to conversations in the workplace I have found this to be almost universally true.  People will talk about Christians or Christianity but rarely will they mention the name of Jesus.  Any who read this and question its truth may check for themselves.

It’s even possible that Satan is pleased when we use the term Christian and Christianity.  In fact, he may have something to do with helping us substitute those words for the name of Jesus.  I am sure that you are thinking, how could this be even remotely true?  My answer is; he knows there is no power or authority in the name of Christianity but all power and authority accompany the name of Jesus.  He knows that when we use the name of Jesus, the power of God is released to accomplish whatever He wants to do.  So if Satan can take the name of Jesus off our lips and replace it with a religion that has no inherent power or authority, he wins.

To show how far off we have gotten let me recount another personal experience.  I received a complimentary copy of a newspaper called, “The Christian Courier.”  Given my new awareness, I counted the number of times they used the word, Christian.  It wasn’t a surprise to find Christian used 97 times (Christian lawyer, Christian Radio, Christian psychologist, etc.).  In the Bible Christian (always used by outsiders) is a noun and never is used as an adjective as in Christian TV or Christian Books.  In this entire “Christian” newspaper, Jesus was mentioned only once, and that was in an article reporting a conversation with a pastor.  This might seem to be an aberration, but when one is alert to this phenomenon, it seems more like the norm.

When one reads the New Testament, it is just the opposite.  The writers emphasize the name of Jesus and only use Christian when they are reporting what others have said.  The following are examples of how the early church talked: Peter said to the lame man, “In the NAME of Jesus Christ, walk.”  (Acts 3:6)  Philip, the first evangelist, preached “the Kingdom of God and the NAME of Jesus Christ.”  (Acts 8:12)  “Paul and Barnabas…risked their lives for the NAME of the Lord Jesus Christ.”  (Acts 15:26)  “The NAME of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor.”  (Acts 19:17)  “Whatever you do whether in word or deed do it all in the NAME of the Lord Jesus.”  (Col. 3:17)  “We pray this so that the NAME of the Lord Jesus will be glorified in you.”  (2nd Thess. 1:12)  “At the NAME of Jesus, every knee shall bow.”  (Phil. 2:10)  “Through Jesus, let us continue to offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that confess his NAME.  (Heb. 13:15)

Given this emphasis on using the name of Jesus without even a hint of encouragement to call believers Christians, why do we persist in doing so?  When we use Jesus and Christian or Christianity interchangeably, we are communicating that they are the same thing.  The Bible says.  “In everything, He must have the supremacy.”  (Col. 1:18)  This verse is speaking about the person of Jesus, not a religion called Christianity.  When we make the mistake of thinking, acting and speaking as if Christianity is equal with Jesus, we are dishonoring His name.

That seems to be the point of the events that took place on the Mount of Transfiguration.  (Luke 9:28-36)  As Jesus was praying, His face changed, and His clothes became brighter than a flash of lightning.  All of a sudden, Moses and Elijah were standing there talking to him.  Peter, in his habit of speaking before thinking, said, “Master, it’s good to be here; let us put up three shelters, one for Moses, one for Elijah and one for you.”  (Lk. 9:28-36)  He didn’t say, “…and a big one or a special one for you”; he simply proposed making them equal.  Luke’s editorial comment on Peter’s statement is, “He didn’t even know what he was saying.”  Moses represented the law and Elijah the prophets, both good and given by God, but Jesus is greater.  Without being aware of it, Peter was making Moses and Elijah equal with Jesus.  The Father was not pleased with this and acted immediately interrupting Peter in mid-sentence.  While he was still speaking, a cloud covered them, and a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son…listen to Him.”  The Father was helping Peter have a proper view of Jesus, and then He makes His point dramatically.  Scripture says, He lifted the cloud and “they saw Jesus only.”

This lesson must not be lost on the Church.  Most people today think the church is in need of revival but maybe there is simply a cloud on the church because we have made the religion of Christianity equal with Jesus.  If that is true, it has certainly been without intent, and it happened as it did to Peter; we didn’t even know we were doing it.

It is true that in our everyday world, it’s easier and more comfortable to speak about Christianity or use the word Christian than it is to speak the name of Jesus.  In spite of this, take a risk and try it for thirty days.  Be observant and see if Jesus doesn’t become more active in your life as you confess His name openly.

After these discoveries, I disciplined myself to remove the words Christian and Christianity from my vocabulary.  I did this to replace them with the name of Jesus.  Instead of asking, “Are you a Christian?”  I might say, “Are you a follower of Jesus?”, or “Are you a disciple of Jesus?”  Rather than, “Christian bookstore,” I say “a store that sells books about Jesus” or “Bible bookstore.”  Some think these thoughts are just semantics, but I beg to differ.  Words are very important because they can build bridges or barriers and can present a true or distorted view of what the Bible teaches.  For 45 years, I have searched the Scriptures and given careful and prayerful thought to this idea.  I am convinced that the use of the term “Christianity” was passed from generation to generation causing the Church to equate religion with the name of Jesus.  Today more than ever, we need to be more careful how we speak about the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  Tradition can be wonderful until it finds itself in conflict with the Bible.  Remember the Bible is our only standard and in it, the believers never promoted “Christianity” or called themselves “Christians.”

For those who love Jesus, one truth is absolutely without dispute.  The Father gave Him the “NAME above every NAME,” and “at His NAME of Jesus every knee shall bow.”  May Jesus be exalted and may His NAME be returned to its proper place of honor in the community of believers.

During my early years of walking with Jesus, numerous people encouraged me to meet with a small group of like-minded men.  The kind of group they meant was not another Bible Study, but rather a  small group of friends who could help me live what I already believed.  Even after I felt a nudge from the Lord to do so, it was six years before I acted on it.  As you can tell from the rest of this paper, it has become a very important part of my life, so I wholeheartedly endorse the idea of a core group.  By this I mean, small groups of men or women not in Paul-Timothy relationships (Discipler-Disciplee) but rather meeting as peers like Paul and Barnabas.  Those of you who know me, understand that everything begins and ends with Jesus so let’s start with how He related to people.

Jesus related to people in very different ways, and it seems He had levels of relationships, sort of like concentric rings.  The large crowds were in the outer ring, and He related to them in parables, so they didn’t really get to know Him personally.  The next circle was the 500 who saw Jesus after His Resurrection.  He revealed a lot more of Himself to them because they saw Him in His glorified body.  The next circle was the 120 who were filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.  The next circle was the 72 that He sent out two by two and gave them the authority to be His representatives. (or 70, depending on the translation; Luke 10:1)  Closer still were the twelve disciples, and even closer, were the inner circle of three, Peter, James, and John.  It’s quite obvious that Jesus revealed more of Himself to these three than the others. (i.e. the Mount of Transfiguration, raising the daughter of Jarius from the dead, Gethsemane, etc.)  Finally, Jesus had one best friend, John the beloved, who He chose to care for His mother after He was gone.  At the Last Supper, Peter, who was one of the inner three, asked John to ask Jesus who was going the betray Him.  He knew John, who was physically next to Jesus, also had the closest relationship.  The smaller the number of people, the more Jesus revealed of Himself.  Maybe this is why John, one of the “Sons of Thunder,” became known as the “Apostle of Love.” (i.e. always ready for a fight;  Mk. 3:17)

Everyone in the entire world is in one of those circles, so I urge you to evaluate which one you are in?  Are you in the multitude with all the non-believers, who know Jesus by name, but not much else about Him?  Are you with the 500, who might represent all the believers in the world?  Maybe you are like the 72 and are involved in a ministry?  Or, are you in a small Bible study like the twelve around Jesus.  That’s terrific, but it’s not as rewarding as being in that inner group of three.  A core group is similar to being in that small group with Jesus.  I know these thoughts are about a small group, but I must add that there is one level deeper.  The Bible says Jesus limited Himself to the time and space of humanity, so He could only have one closest friend.  Now that limitation no longer applies so each of us can have the closeness that John had.

We are already relating to Jesus, and others in this same way.  We each have a multitude of friends that know a few things about us but don’t know personal details.  We all have a smaller group of people who know us a little better.  These relationships are close, but not as intimate as they could be.  We need to go even deeper with a few and experience the relational intimacy that we were created for.  For this discussion let’s call what we are talking about, a core group.  You can call it a covenant group, support group, fellowship group, growth group or as in Australia, they’re called cells.  The name is unimportant; we are simply talking about a small group meeting in the Spirit of Jesus to discover all that God has for them.  The church is where you worship and are taught, but the small group is the best vehicle I’ve found to strengthen and support my life in Christ.

The Bible and history are full of examples that should motivate us to pursue involvement in a core group.

HISTORICAL EXAMPLES

Jesus left us this model, but others have adopted it and been more effective in using it than we have.  The idea of small groups is used by many movements and organizations, some for good, others for subversion.  The primary unit of the Marine Corps is the four-man team.  All special forces like “Seal Team” use small groups.  Asymmetric warfare like the French Resistance used small groups.  Communists use small cells as their basic structure.  Terrorist’s use the sleeper cell.  Have you ever seen just one Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness come to your door?  No, they move in twos and threes.  It is also a method used by criminal organizations like the Mafia which uses a series of small cells.

John Wesley started a movement in England that eventually became known as the Methodist Church.  It was called that because of the “method” he used.  It is said, “he filled all of England with little groups.”

The well known 100-year revival began among the Moravians and was led by Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf.  He favored small groups of four or five believers who came together to strengthen and purify their lives and be available to the call of God.

SCRIPTURAL EXAMPLES

Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; David and Jonathan; Paul, Barnabas, Timothy and Silas.

Ecclesiastes 4:12 (paraphrased) says, “One person standing alone is easily attacked and overcome, two not so easily overcome and a three-stranded cord is not easily broken.”  This clearly shows that the independent life is vulnerable.  The Bible teaches us that we need each other and that we should have an interdependent spirit.  The writer goes on to say that if one lies down alone, he gets cold, but two together will stay warm.  We know that one log won’t keep a fire going but three logs will.  The idea, in the Hebrew, of one standing alone, is that each of us has a blind side.  We all have them, but when we have others guarding our blind side, we are safer and less easily overcome.  If a brother is with me physically, he can warn me if someone is approaching me from my backside.  We also have blind spots spiritually, emotionally, relationally, socially, in our marriage, etc.  The idea of guarding one another is useful in these areas as well.  We all need someone we trust to warn us of approaching danger.  The poet, John Donne, knew this when he said, “No man is an island.”

Matthew 18:19 says, “If two of you agree about anything, it will be done by My Father in heaven.”  One does not have this power.  The word “agree” is important; this happens when two people are close enough to one another that they can understand each other’s, heart.  To “agree” describes a person with a trumpet and another with a trombone blowing the same note; they may be different instruments, but they are making the same sound.  Relationships, like good music, take time, trust and practice.

Deuteronomy 32:30 says, “One can put 1,000 to flight, but two can put 10,000 to flight.”  There is something very powerful when we get together.  If we are together, then God begins to work, and Satan doesn’t want this to happen.  One of the major tools of the Devil is isolation and division because he knows the power that comes from unity.

VALUE OF A GROUP LIKE THIS

 You have the opportunity to know Jesus better!

In Colossians chapter two verse two, Paul said he was praying for them and “all those who haven’t met him” (that’s you and I)  He prayed the following for you an me.  “My prayer for you is that you would be encouraged in your spirit and knit together in love…and the result will be that you will know Jesus Christ better in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”  One of the major things that happens in a core group is you get deeply encouraged in your spirit, week after week, and are knit together in love.  Paul’s prayer is answered in core groups.

 You have an opportunity to know yourself better!

You can’t make spiritual progress until you really know yourself.  An alcoholic cannot be helped until he or she admits they have a problem.  This is also true in the area of spirituality.  For growth or healing to be realized, we must know and admit our need.  The first step in spiritual growth is understanding who we are.  For me, it seems that self-discovery comes through self-disclosure.  One time, as I was sharing in a group, it became increasingly clear that I was prejudiced about a certain type of personality.  I hadn’t consciously known that until I began to talk about it.  From then on, this area of my life seemed to show up in sermons and in my Bible reading.  Additionally, the people around us see us differently than we see ourselves, and they can reflect a truer picture of who we are.  A good friend who loves you is the best mirror.

You have companions who can help guard your strengths!

We all have weak areas in our lives, but we also have wonderful strengths. The great Scottish man of God, Oswald Chambers, once said, “An unguarded strength is a double weakness.”  It takes some thought to gain the full meaning of this statement.  Our strengths, though God-given and useful, can have negative consequences if not guarded or used wisely.  A core group can help guard our strengths and give us balance.

Illustrations: 1. Some have a wonderful natural strength of self-confidence.  This strength lets them tackle and accomplish things others think too difficult.  It’s a valuable strength, but people are often hurt when the strength isn’t used appropriately.  2. Some have the ability to see the needs of people (sometimes even before they do) and use their energy and skills to help others.  If such a person tries to help too many others with their needs, it can become a burden and a weakness to the helper.  Our strengths make us respect each other, but our weaknesses make us love each other.

 You have companions to hold you accountable!

Accountability is the only reason for corporate or individual morality.  Accountability to God is inevitable so why not prepare for it (Rom 14:12).  We are a nation of covenant breakers, both corporately and individually. We broke most of our Indian treaties.  Divorce is rampant.  We say, “I’ll pray for you” and then forget.  We make vows to God after retreats or sermons and fail to keep them.  Why do we fail to keep our covenants?  Lack of accountability is the answer.  Who holds you responsible for living what you profess?  We need accountability in our personal lives, our relationships (with God, our spouse, our family, our friends and our work), our attitudes (about the events of life, self, others, money), and our decisions (before and after).

It is very important that our accountability be voluntary rather than imposed and it certainly doesn’t mean the firing squad at dawn.  Many core groups use the idea of a “table of accountability.”  Whatever we volunteer to throw on the table, is what we can be held accountable for.  This way our friends are not meddling but rather are helping us live out our own desires.  In the beginning, we can at least throw our life in Christ on the table.  We need the group to ask us from time to time how we are doing with the Lord.  As trust grows, we need their help to guard our most important human relationships.

Example; One of the men I meet with said to me one week, “Glenn, I think you may have hurt your wife’s feelings last Sunday after church.” When I asked her about this, she said I had, but it wasn’t very significant.  When I asked for the details, she told me that I had joined her and a few others after I finished talking with another group.  She had been in the middle of recounting our recent trip to Europe.  I had interrupted and told the story from my perspective making her look and feel foolish.  After she had     shared this, I asked her to forgive me, and now I have a new sensitivity to her in public.  I’m fortunate to have a brother who cared enough to bring this to my attention.

You have a place to be affirmed!

      The need for affirmation is very strong in all of us.  It’s a legitimate and God-given need like food and water.  We require affirmation to mature in a healthy way, and it is absolutely necessary for our well-being.  Like other basic necessities, if we don’t receive affirmation we will die emotionally.  If we don’t receive it legitimately, we will get it any way possible.  We might boast, become an over-achiever, or a clown, act badly, or take many other routes to fulfill this need. The people in the core group should be legitimately meeting this need in each other.

HOW TO GET STARTED

One way to begin a core group is to pray for another like-minded person and keep your eyes open.  If someone keeps coming to your mind, then you should go to him or her and simply explain your desire for a closer fellowship.  Ask if they are interested in meeting for six weeks to talk about the idea.  Don’t make a long-term commitment; remember; it will work only if God puts it together.  If we try to make it happen, it will become burdensome like a wheelbarrow that only works as long as you push it!  That kind of relationship is not a support.  If after six weeks it seems right for the two of you, then pray for one, two, or three other people to join you.  Talk about any additions and come to unity about this before you ask someone new.

AGREEMENTS BETWEEN MEMBERS

For this kind of bond to develop each member needs to commit to the following:

Have no leader except Jesus!

You need a facilitator, but this can be on a rotation basis.  A core group should function as the twelve did around Christ…all were brothers and Jesus was the leader.

Be as open as possible about your life!

Some people are more able to be vulnerable than others.  Allow each person to do this at his or her own pace.  Aesop fable: The Sun and North Wind looked down and saw a man walking along wearing a heavy overcoat.  They decided to see who could get the coat off of him.  The North Wind tried first.  He produced a howling gale, but the stronger the wind, the more the man drew his coat around himself.  The Sun said, “Now it’s my turn.”  So he beamed the sunshine down on the man, and soon, of his own choice he removed his coat and walked happily in the sunshine.  When we surround people with warmth, they will remove unnecessary layers of protection.

Maintain strict confidentiality!

The benefits of a core group will not happen without trust.  This means we don’t even share with our spouses what happens in these groups.  The things we need to talk about will only be shared with those we are convinced are trustworthy.

Love enough to confront when necessary!

Proverbs 27 says, “Man sharpens man like iron sharpens iron.”  However, remember that we don’t sharpen a knife or an ax by taking out chunks.  We file it slowly and gradually until we have a sharp edge.  This same method works best with our relationships; slowly and gradually we will sharpen the character of those with whom we meet.

Exercise unconditional love! 

No matter what we learn about each other, we are going to stay together.  Agree in advance that we will continue to love even if we discover things that are difficult to handle.  An old Arab proverb says, “Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to measure words or weight thoughts, but just pouring them all out grain and chaff alike, sure that a faithful hand will keep what is worth keeping and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”  So the question is, with whom do you feel safe?

Pray for each other regularly!

Make a commitment to pray for each other daily.

 WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU GET TOGETHER

There are no rules regarding what groups should do, but the following are ideas that have been helpful to others.  Many groups use Acts 2:42 as a pattern.  It says that those who came to Christ after Peter’s sermon devoted themselves to four things: the Apostles teaching, breaking bread, fellowship, and prayer.  That seems like a pretty good precedent to follow.  Let’s talk a little about each one of them.

Apostles teaching.

Read the Scriptures each time you are together but agree in advance that you will NOT have a Bible study.  Bible studies are wonderful and necessary but not in a core group.  Make your time in the Bible a little different than you may be used to.  Most people who involve themselves in a core group are believers and already know more theology than the Apostles knew.  Remember that the Apostles didn’t have Romans and the rest of the New Testament.  If we have been around Churches for a while, we do know more than they knew, yet they impacted the world in ways we have not.  This is probably because they knew Jesus in a way that we don’t.

It’s certain that we know more theology than we are living.  That is one of the big problems with the Church; we are overfed, fat sheep.  It’s time we began to actually live what we profess to believe.  In a core group, if we are committed to Jesus Christ and each other, we have the potential to turn this around.  Typically in Bible study, we read a portion then try to figure out what it means. When we think we understand what it is saying we conclude that we have grown spiritually.  That is not spiritual growth, it’s intellectual growth.  Spiritual growth only takes place when we are obedient to what we have learned.  A better and more advantageous way to spend time in the Apostles teaching is to read until you come to a portion you do understand and are not living.  Stop there and discuss how to help each other live it out.  When we are obedient to what we know, He will reveal more.

Example: In James, it talks about the problems the tongue can cause.  If those in the group love and trust each other enough they might talk about how each could improve in this area.  It is easy to understand what this says, but we may not have given it enough time to reflect on our own life.  Ask each other, “What do you think     about my tongue?”  “Do I need to give more attention to it?”  If you love each other, you might say; you talk too much or you are sometimes harsh or critical or you don’t talk enough.  You can then begin to be obedient to what the Scripture says about it.  Your time in the Scriptures should help you live what you already understand.

 Breaking Bread.

Something special happens when we eat together.  In most of the world, one of the major indicators of the quality of a relationship is being invited to share a meal in each other’s homes.  Eating together leads to closer fellowship.

Fellowship.

      The ideal situation would be to have a group in which all members grew up together and knew a lot about each other.  Since that is very rare, we need to take the time to really get to know each other.

Here are some ideas to help facilitate getting to know each other on a deeper level: (1) Tell life story in detail, maybe in chapters. (2) What is the most valuable thing you own, not related to money?  (3) “I Am…” name 20 things.  (4) Tell about fears, failures, and success while growing up.  (5) Create shared experiences like recreation, retreats, dinners, etc.  (6) Have one day when you can’t talk about anything outside the room.  (7) Have assumed, but unspoken, check-in questions each week such as, “How are you doing with Jesus, spouse, children, other relationships, etc.?”  Talk about and work on giving up our independent spirit.  We should be interdependent and mutually submissive.  There are three stages of life: dependence (childhood), independence (adolescence) and interdependence (maturity).  All of us need support, growth and even inner healing.  Jesus gives us the privilege of being involved with Him as He heals people’s lives.  We are to be people removing each other’s grave clothes like Jesus asked those at the graveyard to do after He raised Lazarus from the dead.  He could have had Lazarus come out unbound, but now as then, Jesus wants us to participate with Him in helping people be set free from those things that bind them. (John 11)

Prayer.

Don’t just have a closing prayer but really pray and ask God to give you insight on how to pray for yourselves and each other more effectively.  Pray for each other every day of the week and call to check on special concerns.

Vision

After you have been together for a while, God will probably give each of you a vision and strategy for accomplishing that vision in your own sphere of influence.  Maybe you will want to adopt a country to pray for.  Watch the TV and newspapers; they will tell the needs of that country.  Be ready to accept spiritual responsibility; that is, embrace what is on God’s heart for a given area.  In Mark 3:14, Jesus “chose twelve to be WITH Him…and to SEND them.”  Vision and ministry are always on God’s heart.  As you get together, purify your lives and grow spiritually; you will become better husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, business people, and individuals.  He is also preparing you to be involved with Him in being the light of the world.  Vision is a major part of core groups. Don’t start a core group in order to accomplish great things but that is often the natural result.

CONCLUSION
     Get together with a small group around Jesus, then spend time together, pray and hang on!

Address Comments to: Glenn Murray at:  “[email protected]”

Rethinking the traditional interpretation of Luke 10:25‑37

     DISCLAIMER!  It is difficult to conceive of a different meaning than I have been taught, but on a recent reading, the following thoughts developed.  In the spirit of Acts 17:11 I was trying to carefully understand the parable in context.  These ideas are entirely exploratory, tentative and not confidently held, so the purpose of these thoughts is to think them through with my brothers.

I have been taught that the man in the ditch was the neighbor, (i.e., anyone who has a need is our neighbor) but on rethinking this parable, that is not what it teaches.  The scribe asked, “Who is MY neighbor” not, “To whom shall I “BE” a neighbor”?  Of course, we are to show love, compassion, and mercy to those in need but are we commanded to love them, “AS WE LOVE OURSELVES?”  That is reserved for our neighbor, and this parable helps us understand who our neighbor is.

An expert in the law asked Jesus, “Who is MY neighbor?”  Jesus answered, “I’ll tell you a story, and you tell ME who your neighbor is?  After Jesus told the story, He asked, “Who was a neighbor to the man?”  He did not ask who the Samaritans neighbor was, but rather “which one of the three who passed by, was a neighbor of the man in the ditch”?  The Pharisee said the Samaritan was the neighbor and Jesus agreed.  From the perspective of the man in the ditch, the Levite, and Priest were not his neighbor, so maybe he did not need to, “love them AS he loved himself.”

Application:

Maybe not all people are our neighbors in the sense that we are to, “LOVE THEM AS WE LOVE OURSELVES.” However, if we have a neighbor like the man in the ditch had, we are to “love that person AS we love ourselves.”

This seems to be what the story teaches if interpreted literally.  It appears that our neighbor is the person who shows us mercy by pulling us out of a ditch; physically, spiritually, financially or emotionally, etc.  These are the people we are to “love, AS we love ourselves.”  This makes more sense than everyone in the world is our neighbor and makes it much more achievable.  It’s also more conceivable that we can love (“AS WE LOVE OURSELVES”) someone who has helped us in a time of great need.  This story teaches that the person in need is the one who is in a position to recognize his or her neighbor.

The statement of Jesus, “Go and do likewise” does confuse us since it seems to indicate that we should “BE” a good neighbor.  Indeed, we should BE a neighbor to those around us, but the story was told in response to the question, “who is MY neighbor.”  Maybe go and do likewise means, the man who was helped loved his neighbor as he loved himself and we are to do likewise.  (i.e., even if he is not of our race)  On the other hand, maybe Jesus took this opportunity to help the scribe know who his neighbor is and ALSO to teach that we should help those in need.  Whichever way we look at “go and do likewise,” it’s clear that the Samaritan is the neighbor and the man in the ditch should love him as he loves himself.

We call this story the parable of “The GOOD Samaritan” but when Jesus told it, it was simply “a Samaritan.”  The translators gave another of Jesus’ parables the title, “The prodigal son.”  When Jesus told the story he made no mention of a “prodigal son,” he just said, “There was a man who had two sons.”  (Mat. 21:28)  If He had given the parable a name, it might have been.  “The parable of the loving, waiting, forgiving father.”  We have emphasized the son, but Jesus told it to point out the nature of our Heavenly Father.

This interpretation of, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” would not relieve us of our responsibility to love every person we meet.  There are many scriptures about loving others, helping the poor, and those in need.  The question for this parable is “who are we to love AS we love ourselves?”  I am continually open to rethinking my interpretations if it will lead me to a closer following of Jesus.  I hope that at the very least, the process of reevaluating our views will make us more confident of our Biblical convictions.

“He determines the course of world events: He removes kings and sets others on the throne” (Dan    2:21)

“He decides who will rise and who will fall” (Ps. 75:7)

If God has elevated you to a position of responsibility, Daniel would be a good person to study.  Even though he and his people were second-class citizens in Babylon, God gave Daniel favor with the King, and he was made the ruler over one of the greatest political establishments that has ever existed.  He accepted the responsibility and excelled at the job but eventually had to draw a line in the sand.  However, his story involves more than the fact that he went to the lion’s den for his faith.  The context in which he governed is also a major part of his story, and the fact that the rest of his story is included in the Bible is a message in itself.  There are many lessons in Daniel, and one of them might be that God was showing us that believers can live for Him in leadership roles even though our core values are not the cultural norm.

When we study the lives of great men and women, it’s important to understand the world in which they lived so let’s take a cursory look at Babylonian culture.  The administration that Daniel served was not a kind, benevolent nonprofit institution.  He had to manage a staff and a nation of people whose lifestyles and values were abominable to the laws of his God.  Absolute power was used to control the people and lives were expendable at the whim of the king.  Even government officials including Daniel could lose their heads for disloyalty or incompetence.  Slavery was condoned in a culture of brutality and indifference for the welfare of people.  He had to watch his back constantly because people who despised his values were out to get him.  He had to be smart, politically astute, tough, persuasive, and able to withstand intimidation.  It’s an understatement to say that Daniel lived and worked in a vile and corrupt culture.  Although he wasn’t able to change the culture, we have to believe that he saved many lives and was an agent of moderation and restraint.  He knew that it was impossible to take a stand on every issue that came across his desk so he must have spent hours and hours thinking and praying about when and where to draw the line.  He chose the moments well because when they came (and he chose only a key few), Daniel used his influence with consummate skill.  Daniel must have often been discouraged, even to the point of saying, “this isn’t worth it.”  There must have been many times when he wanted to give up, but God had brought him to a position of leadership, so he didn’t quit no matter how bad it got.  It may make us uncomfortable, but we have to face the fact that Daniel would not have survived as long as he did if he had taken a stand on every issue.  He surely must have lobbied the king for causes he felt strongly about but did not quit when things didn’t go his way.  He had an uncompromising faith, but he could not have been an absolutist except when the issue caused him to compromise his loyalty to God.  He must have accepted trade-offs that caused consequences he privately abhorred because he knew that “bomb throwers” limit their ability to accomplish what God wanted him to do.  In spite of the setting he lived in, God made it possible for him to forge a strong faith that stood the test even when his career was on the line, and he faced a den of hungry lions.  Daniel and his friends Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednego show us the strength that a small group of like-minded people can develop in this kind of setting.  They struggled with the same issues because the King had also appointed them to positions of authority.

Today, believers in positions of responsibility must also work with people whose motivations and values are hostile to the interests of God.  Daniel is a good example of how to live with the imperfect but understand where to draw the line.  If God has elevated you to a position of responsibility, can you represent Him in the real world of business and politics in spite of the deterioration of our culture?  Like Daniel, you may not be able to reverse the cultural slide, but you can be God’s agent of moderation and restraint with occasional victories.  My prayer is that God would use these thoughts to challenge and inspire believing leaders to develop the character of Daniel.

The Greatest Commandment is to “Love others AS we love ourselves.” (Matthew. 22:36-40)

This commandment assumes that we love ourselves correctly, but if we do not, it is unlikely we will love others, as we should.  Of course, an inordinate self-love is wrong, but many people don’t understand that if they do not love themselves appropriately, it hinders and sometimes blocks the expression of love to others.

So let’s tie the “Greatest Commandment” to another often-quoted passage from 1st Corth.13:4-7.  These verses are often used at weddings or in sermons to challenge us to love others.  However, in order to love others correctly, we must first apply the love chapter to ourselves.

Let’s personalize those verses

LOVE IS PATIENT

Are you patient with yourself or do you demand more of yourself than is realistic?

Affirmation: I will be patient with myself and refuse to expect perfection in everything I do.

LOVE IS KIND!

Are you kind to yourself or is your self-talk often negative and harsh?  (Like, You’re such a jerk)

Affirmation: I will be kind to myself knowing that I can learn from my mistakes.

LOVE DOES NOT ENVY!

Are you satisfied with who you are and what you have, or do you compare yourself to others?  (2 Cor. 10:12)

Affirmation: I will not waste time wanting what others have or wanting to be like them, realizing that God had a purpose for making only one of me.

LOVE DOES NOT BOAST!

Do you have a habit of adding a little to every story or achievement?

Affirmation: My self-worth is not based on the approval of others, so I will stop trying to impress them by self-promotion.

LOVE IS NOT PROUD!

Do you have a sane estimate of yourself and your achievements?  False humility is also a form of pride.

Affirmation: I will refuse to over-value or under-value my achievements or myself.  (Rom. 12:3  NLT)

LOVE IS NOT RUDE!

Do you ridicule or belittle yourself?   (i.e., “sometimes I’m so stupid”)

It’s inappropriate to say that to others so why do I say it to myself.

Affirmation: I will not put myself down in the presence of others or with negative thinking.

 LOVE IS NOT SELF-SEEKING!

Few people are completely self-centered but is this an issue you should deal with?

Affirmation: I will remember that Jesus said; “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.”

LOVE IS NOT EASILY ANGERED!

Are you easily irritated with yourself?

Affirmation: I will stop turning my anger inward and try to increase my ability to live with my imperfections.

LOVE DOESN’T KEEP A RECORD OF THE PAST!

Do you continue to remind yourself of past failures?

Affirmation: I will refuse to be controlled by the memory of my failures.

LOVE DOES NOT DELIGHT IN EVIL BUT REJOICES IN THE TRUTH.

Do you inwardly rejoice when your adversary is damaged by an improper activity that becomes public?

Affirmation:  I will not be joyful that their reputation will suffer while at the same time be glad that truth has triumphed over untruth.

LOVE ALWAYS PROTECTS!

Do you protect your physical, mental, and spiritual health by setting reasonable boundaries?

Affirmation: I will give more attention to protecting and maintaining my God-given strengths, and gifts.

LOVE ALWAYS TRUSTS!

Do you believe in yourself enough to try again?

Affirmation: I will give myself another chance in any area where I have failed in the past.

LOVE ALWAYS HOPES!

Have you given up on your personal situation or your dreams?

Affirmation: I will accept myself as a person of value and potential, refusing to give into despair.  I will look for success just around the corner.

LOVE ALWAYS PERSEVERES!

Have you stopped loving yourself?

Affirmation:  I will start loving myself correctly and remind myself often that God never gives up on me because His love is unconditional and His acceptance of me is not based on my performance.

Ongoing Affirmation

In order to love others correctly, I will personalize these admonitions from First Corinthians 13 and will apply them to myself daily as needed.

The following thoughts are based on conversations with a number of people who identify themselves as homosexuals.  Many of them express a desire to follow Christ but have been heavily influenced by the cultural attitudes of the day.

The homosexual lobby has advanced its agenda with the following argument:  “A certain percentage of the population is born with the desire to be romantically and physically involved with those of the same sex. Since this propensity is genetic, it is therefore a civil rights issue.  People should not be discriminated against because of race, physical handicaps or sexual orientation. God made us this way, so who can say that it is wrong?”

The news media, a majority of those in the entertainment field and the academic world have constantly championed the cause of the homosexual community.  Anyone who disagrees with this view is called a bigot or a member of the “religious right.”  This has been an extraordinarily successful approach and has gained wide spread support based on the public’s legitimate distaste for discrimination.  Presently, for much of the nation, homosexuality has simply become an alternative life style.

The Bible doesn’t view it this way and, in fact, is extremely firm and very specific in its opposition to homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22 and Rom. 1:25-27).  In spite of this, the idea of non-discrimination seems to be winning the day worldwide.  Even many old-line denominations are influenced by this recent belief and are changing their doctrine in order to accommodate the homosexual community.  While the Biblical view is rejected by an increasing number of people, may I suggest that there are logical arguments to refute the idea of blindly following ones sexual feelings or predisposition?

Since genetic scientists have not been able to answer this question definitively, we are left only with personal opinion that homosexual tendencies are genetic.  My personal view is that people are not born with a genetic propensity to be homosexual, however, for the sake of moving the discussion to another level, I will not debate this but rather propose another line of thought.  I do believe that most people who have this tendency acquired it at such a young age that they are not responsible for the feelings they have. There are exceptions to this, but most people develop their sexual identity based on the environment and relationships they experienced in their formative years.

In light of this, I propose that just because a person finds a certain tendency within his or herself doesn’t make it legitimate.  Most people have one or two internal battles that they struggle with all their life.  Some people, whether by genetics or environment, have a tendency towards obesity or alcoholism or a bad temper.  If one is grossly overweight, an alcoholic or has difficulty in controlling his or her anger, should they submit to these tendencies?  If so, would they encourage others to live out every kind of predisposition they find within themselves?  In fact, whether the advice comes from parents, a pastor or a secular psychologist, people are counseled to resist such destructive tendencies.

In my opinion, one of the strongest and most persuasive arguments for not blindly following every internal desire is an honest look at the majority of heterosexual males.  The normal male is frequently tempted to have sex with any female who is physically attractive to them.  They don’t need romance or commitment but, in order to live a moral life, are required by society to live a life of restraint.  Should they abandon the self-discipline of remaining faithful to one woman or allow their strong sexual drive to be uncontrolled?  If the activities of the homosexual are justified by saying it’s okay to respond to an internal desire they feel, then why isn’t it just as valid for the heterosexual?

Even though there has been a decline in the moral values of America, no thoughtful person is advocating the abandonment of sexual restraint for all heterosexuals in our society.  Unfortunately, millions of people are not resisting this propensity and adultery and fornication is even celebrated in magazines and films. The breakdown of the traditional family has been devastating to our nation but clearly it is not as bad as it could be.  If everyone acted on his or her sexual feelings, our society would completely disintegrate.

Some have told me that this isn’t fair and that the heterosexual has a legitimate outlet for his or her sexual drive but the homosexual does not.  That is true but life is not fair and there are many illustrations of this in every day life.  Being extremely poor does not give one a right to steal from his neighbor.  There are moral laws in the universe that take precedence over ones individual circumstances and desires.

I definitely do not consider a person who is tempted by homosexual activities to be a pervert, as some unfortunately do.  Heterosexuals are tempted daily by the visual stimuli around them and yet it does not mean they are inherently bad.  Likewise God does not reject a person because they have an inner propensity towards homosexuality.  Every person is tempted to misuse his or her sexuality but temptation itself is not a sin.  Jesus was tempted in every way we are, and yet He was without sin.  The Bible does not call temptation a sin and neither should we.  God knows we will be tempted to live against His plan but His desire is for us to resist such temptation.

This paper has sought to address only the fact that it is specious to say that every inner desire must be lived out.  One’s sexual drive must be managed based on some standard other than an inner urge.  By default, unbelievers have chosen to set the standard for themselves.  Of course everyone is free to make this decision but if a person professes to follow Jesus, then God’s thoughts on a subject should become the standard.

“…receiving the message with great eagerness and then checking the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul said was true.” – Acts 17:11

Many believers think the future looks bleak and are concerned that the polls indicate a swing away from traditional values.  Some of them have an “all is lost attitude,” and it’s easy for them to be gloomy and pessimistic about the future.  We should remind ourselves that our hope isn’t in a democratic government or laws that reflect our convictions, it’s in Jesus.  In spite of much more difficult conditions, believers in other countries understand this, and many seem to have an inner peace and joy that would make most American believers envious.

It’s true that many of the concerns that touch us deeply are probably going to move inexorably in the opposite direction of our choice.  Issues like homosexuality and abortion will more than likely proceed unabated toward more tolerance and even wide-scale acceptability.  Social and moral concerns that are so vital to evangelicals may increasingly be seen as weird and narrow-minded.  We are probably in for less and less acceptance and possibly even a bit of open hostility from some quadrants.

Unfortunately, some of the rejection may be warranted because of our past attitudes and methods.  We haven’t always been Christ-like in our responses to the culture in which we find ourselves.  I strongly believe that many evangelicals have made some crucial errors and those errors may haunt all of us for years to come.  In the last few elections, we have thought that our Biblically based convictions would be accepted by a pluralistic and secular society.  We should probably stop expecting our present culture to be something it is not.

It is true that the men who founded our nation were largely God-fearing and many were real disciples of Jesus.  In those days, they were in the majority, and so we have the rich heritage of having been founded as a Judeo-Christian nation.  That is no longer true, and it seems unlikely that we can return things to the way they were by political means.  In light of the facts that face us, it is probably past time to re-evaluate our goals and our role as believers in American society.

Many are saying that God will judge America for its lack of morality.  That may be so, but we are reminded of 1 Peter 4:17, which says, “For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God.”  We have tended to expect change to come through political efforts when, in reality, God’s way is found in 2nd Chronicles 7:14.  “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

I am in no way suggesting a “do nothing” attitude.  In fact, I am wholeheartedly in favor of believers getting involved in politics as well as making their wishes known by voting their conscience.  In addition, we should stand against all forms of immorality and injustice even if it costs us dearly.  We are supposed to be salt and light in our culture, and it would degenerate very quickly if the influence of the Holy Spirit through believers were withdrawn.  However, it is another matter altogether to expect the ballot box to change hearts.  We have laws against crime, drugs, racism, etc., and I’m glad we do, but, these laws haven’t stopped those involved from devastating our nation, and they aren’t likely to do so anytime soon.  What I am suggesting is that the answers for America’s dilemma are spiritual, not political.  Do whatever God asks you to do but don’t be disillusioned if things don’t turn out the way you think they should.  As Mother Teresa put it, “we are not called to be successful, just faithful.”

When I was meeting with a Supreme Court justice from Columbia, we discussed the drug problem in both of our countries.  After many years of trying to solve the problem this secular man suggested that the only answer he could think of was, “if we could somehow change people’s hearts.”  On another occasion, I was in Jerusalem discussing the Israeli-Palestinian situation with the Secretary General of the Knesset.  He was a non-religious Jew but volunteered that the only hope was, “if we could find a way to change people’s hearts.”

A recent re-reading of the Jewish historian, Josephus, reminded me of the kind of world in which Jesus lived.  Let’s review the conditions during His time on earth: The combined Roman and Temple Tax was 70 percent.  Slavery was an accepted norm.  Women had few rights and children had none.  Individual human rights were non-existent, and life was cheap.  It was an extremely violent and corrupt time, and the reigning Caesar (i.e., President) was bi-sexual.  Into that world, Jesus brought a message of hope, and I believe His message would be unchanged if He came today.  Therefore, we have hope.

Even if the majority rejects our ideas about social and moral issues, they should still feel the redeeming love of Jesus being expressed by those who call themselves His followers.  I am afraid they often get our wrath, but, while Jesus lived in a less than godly culture, He reserved His condemnation for those in the religious community.  Our challenges are not as difficult as those faced by the early believers, but if they were, the answer would still be Jesus.  Let’s respond wisely to our times and accept the years ahead as an opportunity to express the hope we have in Jesus to our hurting world.  Let’s remind ourselves that our hope isn’t in a democratic government or laws that reflect our values, it’s in Jesus.

Now more than ever let’s remember 1 Timothy 2:1-3: “I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone, for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.  This is good, and pleases God our Savior.”  Notice that it doesn’t say; pray for those in authority only if your man was elected.

Jesus Christ is still the only person who can change a heart or a nation.

Address Comments to: [email protected]

You begin to attend the Sunday morning worship service.  Then the pastor says you should be in Sunday School, so you start going to Sunday School.  Then someone says, “Why don’t you come Sunday evenings?”  So you start to attend on Sunday evenings.  Then you are urged to participate in the mid-week service or a Bible study, and you become more involved.

Next, they say, “You know, we have an early morning prayer meeting,” or “We have a wonderful men’s fellowship.”  A call comes to tell you of the need for a Sunday School teacher, and since you’re so good with young people, you help out.  Someone notices that you have a good voice and they suggest that you must use your talent for Jesus.  “Why don’t you join the choir?  By the way, we practice on Thursday nights.”

Soon you are so visible and respected that you are nominated for the church Board.  Of course, everyone should do his or her part, or the church won’t function right.  Committee assignments follow.  Soon you are so involved with the church that you are neglecting your own life in Christ and even your own family.  Frequently spiritual burnout occurs, and you eventually become only an “attendee.”

Many people have been through this cycle, some several times.  It is so easy to have our lives revolve around activities “for Jesus” instead of around Jesus Himself.  This doesn’t bring the abundant life that John speaks about in chapter 10, verse 10, but we remain among the ranks of the over-committed.  However, the truth is that these commitments are about all we have.  We were not made for commitment but rather for intimacy and closeness.  The only value of commitment is to keep us together until we begin to experience intimacy.  We usually think something is wrong with our commitment, so we condemn ourselves.  Many of us go to renewal seminars or wait for the next traveling speaker who can arouse our spent emotions.

This ongoing cycle produces “Christian fruit” like church growth, mission programs, prayer meetings, and Bible studies but “Christ-like character” is what God desires.  Our churches have too much gossip, dissension, and division.  Our impact on culture is minimal and, in fact, our culture is shaping us.  Paul speaks to this in Romans 12:2 when he says, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God re-mold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all His demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.” (Phillips translation)

It may seem that I have given up on the church, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I am completely committed to the local church, but the Scriptures admonish me to, “test all things, and hold on to what is good.”  (1st Thess. 5:21)  After careful evaluation, my conclusion is that something must change if we are to realize our true destiny.  One definition of insanity is, “continuing the same activities while expecting different results.”  We must cooperate with God as he re-trains our minds to think His thoughts rather than continue happily along the path that led us to our present condition.

I do not propose a new method or program but rather an increased emphasis on helping people understand how to “Walk In The Spirit.”  We need an emphasis on personal spiritual growth instead of church growth.  We thought we were doing this, but the fruit of our collective labors does not confirm it.  May God cover us with His mercy and grant a new measure of grace as we reevaluate our personal life in Christ.

The early church grew in number and expanded to other countries.  Eventually, so much structure and non-Biblical additions meant that a reformation was needed.  Martin Luther stepped forward with his 95 Thesis, and so began a reformation that called for a return to grace.  After many years, the church, started by Luther’s insight, developed in the same way as the one before it and deadness was again the result.

Along came the Presbyterians with similar results; the Baptists then carried the banner of grace for a while.  The same thing has happened with a number of para-church organizations.  God gives one man a fresh vision but in time he, or those who follow him, develop a manual.  It sets forth the principals that make them distinctive but unfortunately, these principals are often simply another form of legalism.  The movement becomes people trying to live under a mixture of the old and new covenants.  Paul reminds us that the “letter kills, but the Spirit brings life.” (2 Corth. 3:6)  This has led some to characterize this kind of development of ministry as, “Man, Method, Monument.”  This progression has obviously left out many developments and is not meant to be chronologically accurate but rather to show an overall trend.

Each new stage brought a fresh focus on grace and the person of Jesus, but eventually, the emphasis shifted to the preservation of the institution and its ideals or doctrinal convictions.  There seemed to be an almost unavoidable erosion when a movement developed ecclesiastically.  As each movement grew in size, it developed a larger body of doctrine.  With the development of creeds and doctrinal statements came form and form demanded compliance to its codes and traditions.  This usually started with good motives but almost invariably tended to move the people back under the Law or the old covenant.  It led, and still, today leads, to living focused on a body of knowledge instead of living by the Spirit.

The whole institutional church (including non-denominational) is about to go under from its own weight because, for the most part, its leaders are doing what those before them have done.  They continue to build bigger buildings, more entertaining programs, better music, TV, radio and tapes, theme parks, etc.  It is very stimulating to “build for Christ,” but it dulls the senses to what should really be happening.

The church is vulnerable on two fronts.  There is danger from within when we mix the old and new covenants.  The church is the bride of Christ, and when we flirt or have an affair with the law, God calls it Spiritual adultery. (Rom. 7)  When we flirt with the world, the danger comes from without.  We are guilty on both fronts, so more than a revival is in order, we need a reformation.  May God grant the church a return to the centrality of Jesus Christ, and His grace.

Address Comments to:  [email protected]

Recently some thoughts by Elton Trueblood were passed on to me.  They describe the kind of community for which the world longs.  They are thoughtfully and articulately written, so I pass them to you with the prayer that they will help you better understand the plan that Christ left for His disciples.

     “Jesus was deeply concerned for the continuation of his redemptive work after the close of his earthly existence, and his chosen method was the formation of a redemptive society. He did not form an army, establish a headquarters, or even write a book.  All He did was to collect a few unpromising men and women, inspire them with the sense of His vocation and theirs, and build their lives into an intensive fellowship of affection, worship, and work.

     One of the truly shocking passages of the gospel is that in which Jesus indicates that there is absolutely no substitute for the tiny redemptive society.  If this fails, He suggests, all is a failure; there is no other way.  He told the little-bedraggled fellowship that they were actually the salt of the earth and that if this salt should fail; there would be no adequate preservative at all.  He was staking all on one throw.

     What we need is not intellectual theorizing or even preaching, but a demonstration.  There is only one way of turning people’s loyalty to Christ, and that is by loving others with the great love of God.  We cannot revive faith by argument, but we might catch the imagination of puzzled men and women by an exhibition of a fellowship so intensely alive that every thoughtful person would be forced to respect it.  If there should emerge in our day such a fellowship, wholly without artificiality and free from the dead hand of the past, it would be an exciting event of momentous importance.  A society of loving souls, set free from the self-seeking struggle for personal prestige and from all unreality, would be something unutterably precious.  A wise person would travel any distance to join it.”  

(From “Alternative to Futility” by Elton Trueblood)

The longest distance we can travel could be from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness, which will lead us to true community.  My prayer is that we can really grasp the power of this idea and give ourselves to the development of such a fellowship.  As I see it, our mandate is for vital, loving, Christ-centered communities rather than crusades.  Instead, we have a tendency to place greater value on speaker-centered events.  We think we are successful when we gather a large number of people to hear someone talk about Jesus.  Jesus had another plan.  He said folks would understand the reality of the incarnation when we love each other.  (John 13&17)  Crusades and other events may have their place if they surface out of a Christ-centered community (Day of Pentecost, Acts 2) but it is in a fellowship of believers that souls are healed and nurtured.  Trueblood is talking about the power of an idea, which was left to us by Jesus.  Alcoholics Anonymous have a phrase that fits this idea perfectly.  They talk about “Attraction Not Promotion.”  That’s it; if our fellowship were more attractive, we would not need to promote so much.  People are starved for love and acceptance but rarely find it in an event, so let’s commit ourselves to working together on a demonstration project.  Let’s be a network of people who refuse to allow doctrinal distinctives, racial differences, worship styles, denominational allegiance or methodology to divide us.  It will take much work and even reconciliation, but the idea is to develop a band of people who love Jesus and love each other.  Then we will be participating with the Father as He answers the prayer of Jesus in John 17.

Once upon a time, the animals of the forest decided they should become better educated so they could deal with the problems of a changing world.  They hired a consultant whose report urged them to form a unified school district.  An election was held, and a rabbit, a squirrel, a duck, and an eagle were elected.  In the first school board meeting, the new members discussed the curriculum.  Of course, each one had their own ideas about which subjects would be taught.  After a great deal of discussion, they adopted a curriculum of running, climbing, swimming and flying.  To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all students would be required to take every subject.

In the beginning, the duck was excellent in swimming; in fact, he was better than the instructor.  However, in the rest of the classes, it was a different story.  The duck got average grades in flying, failed the climbing class and was very poor in running.  In fact, running caused his webbed feet to become so sore that eventually, he became only average in swimming. But average was quite acceptable, so nobody worried about that, except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of his class in running but soon developed cramps in his leg muscles because of so much make-up work in swimming.  Before long he couldn’t run as fast as he had before he started school.  But that was all right with everyone, except the rabbit.

As you would guess, the squirrel was excellent at climbing.  However, he got so beat up from jumping out of trees trying to learn how to fly, that he didn’t have the energy or the strength to climb like before.  So he only got a “B” in climbing and a “C” in running.  These were passing grades, but he remembered the good old days when he was the best climber.

The eagle was a problem student from the beginning and was severely disciplined for being a non-conformist.  In climbing class, he beat all the others to the top of the tree but insisted on using his own way to get there.  The running coach accused him of not even trying.  After swimming practice, his feathers were so wet that the duck got better grades for flying than he did.  The great symbol of America was being humiliated, and it hurt.

Important conclusion: A duck is a duck and only a duck.  It is built to swim and fly a little, like from one lake to another.  They don’t run very well, and they can’t climb at all.  If God made you a duck, don’t compare yourself to an eagle.  Just swim like mad and enjoy your uniqueness.  Rabbits have the ability to change speed and direction better than most other animals.  That is a very desirable ability when you have a non-aggressive personality and want to stay alive in a hostile world.  Squirrels are unchallenged in the trees but if you demand that they swim or fly, it will drive them nuts.

The moral of the story is simple.  Each creature has its own abilities at which it will naturally excel unless of course, it is expected to do something for which it wasn’t designed.  When that happens, frustration, discouragement, and guilt bring overall mediocrity or sometimes even complete defeat.  We can learn much from this story…God has gifted us each with our own abilities, and we will excel if we concentrate on developing those gifts.

“…When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.” (II Corinthians 10:12 NIV)