Search Results

You are no longer the person who sinned!   This webpage assumes you have undergone a spiritual transformation so radical that it is appropriately called being born again. This, the most thrilling and significant experience known to humanity, is so misunderstood that millions walk past it, never imagining the wonders they are missing. If you are unsure about this, it is important to bookmark this page and go straight to  You Can Find Love .   You are a new creation  (you could almost say a new species)   Your old guilt-ridden self is dead and buried. That’s the most wonderful news anyone could hear! Gleefully devour the  Scriptures  that make this announcement to the world! You are a totally different person to the one who sinned. Just as you are utterly innocent of the sins of another person, so you are innocent of your past sins. The devil has no more right to accuse you for Charles Mason’s or Jack the Ripper’s sins than for your past sins.   2 Corinthians 5:17  declares you to be a new creation – a totally new person – because of what Christ has done. The old has passed away. The person who was defeated, the person who sinned, the person who didn’t radiate the beauty of Christ, is dead. You are someone new, a completely different person to the one who, like all of us outside of Christ, had reason to feel ashamed.   Satan could accuse you as much as he liked for Hitler’s sin, but the accusations would be meaningless. You would ignore them because you know you’re not Hitler. Likewise, he can accuse as much as he likes about the person you once were, but you can ignore it. That person is dead. It’s not you. It was someone else who did those shameful things. You have a whole new identity. The new you, the person you now are, is pure and holy and righteous and filled with the beauty of God; a prince or princess – a child of the King of kings – heir to the riches of God, someone in whom God delights and is proud of.   No one likes being slandered and that is what Satan is trying with you, but it’s a case of mistaken identity. Satan is accusing the wrong person. The person he’s accusing is dead and buried with Christ. Just ignore him. When the Accuser knocks, he’s at the wrong address!   Imagine you’ve just moved into a new apartment. It so happens that the previous tenant had foolishly amassed a huge debt and then died. The day after moving in, there’s a knock on the door. It’s a debt collector claiming you owe quarter of a million dollars. ‘You’ve got the wrong person,’ you tell him.   ‘I was given this address,’ he replies.   ‘Maybe so, but I’m not the person who owes the money.’   ‘No, this is the address, alright!’   ‘The person you want is  dead! ’   ‘Look! I’ll bring the full weight of the law down on you!’   ‘Please do!’ you reply, ‘the law will prove I’m not the person you claim I am.’   Suppose this goes on day after day. Each time you could slam the door in his face and refuse to listen to his groundless accusations. Or you could choose to waste hours every day arguing with him. Or you could meekly listen to all his insults and foolishly begin to believe him. No alternative would be entirely pain-free. And none of them would change the fact that you are innocent. But clearly some responses would be far more upsetting and disruptive to your life than others.   This, of course, describes your situation, and that of every Christian. You live at the same address as the guilty person – your body. But the person living at that address is a new tenant. No matter who comes knocking at your door, the law (of God) is always on your side. God pronounces you innocent. It’s up to you how much you let the Accuser annoy you. You won’t be able to stop him knocking at your door, but it’s your choice whether you keep ignoring him or invite him in and give weight to his lies. Either way, you are still innocent, but why put yourself through unnecessary torment? The old you died with Christ -  Galatians 2:20   So the old you, the person who had reason to feel dirty, ashamed and inferior, is dead. Christ now lives in you – Christ in all His beauty and purity and perfection; Christ in all his goodness, splendor and favor with God. A little girl, when asked how she dealt with temptation, said that when the devil knocks, she sends Jesus to the door. That’s what you can do. Christ has taken up residence within you. The previous tenant is dead. Christ now lives at your address. You don’t even have to worry about trying to forgive yourself, because the real you, the person you now are in Christ, never did anything that needed forgiveness. The old you, the person who needed forgiveness, no longer exists. You have been born again -  John 3:3; 1 Peter 1:3;23   Sadly, overuse of the term born again has sapped this mind-boggling expression of it’s power. It is such an astounding concept as to be almost beyond our powers of intellect to grasp. What more powerful way could there be to convey the fact that, spiritually, you have no past? You weren’t even born when the things your mind accuses you of took place! You can’t get any more innocent than that! What a miracle! What a display of love, for God to do that for you!   (If the sins that haunt you happened  after  you were born again, don’t be disturbed. Once repented of, later sins, like surgically removed tumors, are no longer a part of you. They are a dead issue, a non-event, consigned to the same fate as pre-conversion sins; wiped from heaven’s data banks. (As you keep following the main link at the bottom of each page you will discover entire webpages devoted to reassuring you about sins committed after conversion.)   Maintaining the breakthrough   God has promised you everything mentioned in this webpage, but he never promised you would  feel  it. Father God expects his children to place their confidence not in their fickle feelings, but in the integrity of the one who rises the sun each morning. The Christian religion is rightly called the Christian  Faith . Faith is paramount.   When Jesus successfully resisted every temptation hurled at him in the wilderness, Scripture says Satan left him, not for forever, but for a while ( Luke 4:13 ). Through Jesus, we too, can have spectacular victories over Satan and he will withdraw,  for a while . He’ll skulk into his hole to lick his wounds, but he’ll be back. That’s not because of any inadequacy in you. He did the same with Jesus. When the battle returns, you’ll need to rush to these webpages to once again take your fill of Scripture’s liberating truths with which to resist the awful, deceptive feelings and accusations he’ll try to land on you. Below are more webpages on the same theme. You might not need them now, but print them off in readiness for when the battle returns.   I also suggest you pamper yourself by regularly reading the following Scripture:   Romans 6:3  Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  (4)  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.  (5)  If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.  (6)  For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin –  (7)  because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.  (8)  Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  (9)  For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.  (10)  The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.  (11)  In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.  (12)  Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.

Romans 6:4  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. . . .  (6)  For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.   Colossians 3:3  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.   Galatians 2:20  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.     Return to the webpage that will set you free

In the name of Jesus, who shed his blood that I might have eternal life, I rebuke and refuse to surrender to any and every evil power that would like me to doubt the infinity of God’s love and goodness and to doubt the power of Jesus’ sacrifice to forgive  all  sin. I hereby relinquish everything that is not of God and I swear my allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, affirming him as my Lord and Savior and declaring that the cleansing power of his sacrifice is stronger than any sin I could ever commit. Anxiety might plague me, Lord, but I praise you that you are stronger than any unwanted feeling, doubt, worry, guilt, fear or disgusting thoughts. Moreover, you have promised to work all things together for the good of those who love you. I love you, so this is your promise to me. I thank you that this persistent anxiety that harasses and confuses me is my opportunity to grow spiritually stronger, just as having to keep running uphill is a chance to grow physically stronger. Faith is more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:7) and faith can only develop during times when feelings and circumstances clash with what you want me to believe. So I praise you for this opportunity to grow in faith. And I thank you that even though, because of the very nature of the trial, it will feel as if you have left me, you are actually with me every step of the way. Despite everything that might plague me and confuse me, you have pledged never to leave me nor forsake me (Hebrews 13:5). Regardless of what I feel, you remain faithful and true. You are Truth and you declare over and over such things as: 1 John 1:9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. You rightly say that if I claim to have never sinned, I deceive myself and accuse you of lying. In the same way, if I, who have confessed to you my sins and put my faith in Jesus, claim to be unforgiven, I also deceive myself and accuse you of being a liar. Anxiety feels like a guilty conscience. This tempts me to dishonor you by concluding that just because I  feel  guilty, you must have lied when you made this promise to cleanse all who confess their sin to you. Despite these horrible feelings, however, I make you, not my feelings, my God – my spiritual authority and source of truth. Since you, in the above Scripture, declare me purified from all unrighteousness, then I  am  purified from  all  unrighteousness, no matter what I experience and how powerfully I might be tempted to think otherwise. So I hang on to your truth, refusing to contradict you, no matter what feelings and doubts rage within. I cannot stop powerful feelings that are contrary to your truth – even Jesus was tempted – but I can repent of caving into the temptation to accept those feelings as truth. I repent of being so carnal as to think that a mere feeling – rather than your Word – indicates spiritual truth. I have sinned by thinking that you might not be the God of infinite love and that you therefore must prove your love for me by giving me signs or feelings or assurances. I have insulted you by wanting such “proof,” as if you could lie or be unloving unless what you say is true matches my feelings or circumstances. From now on, I steadfastly refuse to believe that any feeling, no matter how strong, persistent and convincing, is a more reliable source of truth than you are. “The just shall live by faith” (KJV, cited four times in the Bible – Habakkuk 2:4. Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38). So I choose to live by faith, not feelings. I hereby renounce feelings, or anything less than you alone, as a reliable source of spiritual truth. The perfection of divine love means that you passionately love even your worst enemies; more fervently yearning to forgive them than any human is capable of craving anything. You recoil at the thought of in any way letting your beloved Son’s agonizing sacrifice for the sins of the entire world be in vain. You want  no one  to perish (1 Timothy 2:3-4; 2 Peter 3:9; Ezekiel 33:11). You tell us to forgive “seventy times seven” and yet I keep worrying that you will tire of forgiving me, as if perhaps you were a hypocrite. The truth is that you love me far, far more than any human has ever managed to love himself or anyone else. Driven by infinite love, you passionately long to keep on forgiving me and to lavish your mercy upon me for all eternity. Since this is your burning desire, propelling you to the extreme of the cross, I was wrong to ever  beg  you to forgive me, as if there were any reluctance within you to cleanse me. You are  eager  to forgive; your reluctance is in giving signs and feelings because that makes me spiritually vulnerable by fostering a dependence upon means that the Deceiver can easily replicate and manipulate. Your word declares that it is faith, not signs and feelings, that is “the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1, KJV). I repent of playing into the devil’s hand by seeking such things instead of simply accepting your loving forgiveness. I acknowledge that signs and feelings are the Devil’s playthings – his way to entice us to get our eyes off the cross and the integrity of your character. He cannot touch spiritual truth but he can toy with signs and feelings. Faith is our only shield; our sole protection against his trickery. So I commit myself to start honoring you by stubbornly clinging to you, no matter how many doubts, fears, worries, guilt feelings and unwanted thoughts scream within me. I cease right now from insulting you by wanting signs, feelings or assurances as proof that you love and forgive everyone – including me – who comes to you in the name of Jesus Christ. I renounce all attempts to get such things. The integrity of your character is all that I need. I resolve from now on to live as you have called all your children to live – by sheer faith, and nothing else. Taken from https://www.netburst.net/post/scrupulosity Back

What Makes St Paul Such An Expert?     He really knew God.  This one-time violent opponent of Christianity was bright, but as every agnostic knows, when it comes to contacting the Almighty, intelligence helps no more than one’s bank balance (Luke 10:21; Mark 10:15; 1 Corinthians 1:19-29). The apostle Paul’s interaction with God makes the spiritual experience of this world’s geniuses shrivel to insignificance (Acts 9:1-24; 13:7-12; 14:8-11; 28:3-6; Romans 15:18-19; 1 Corinthians 2:4-5; 11:1; 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; Galatians 1:10-20; 2:1-2,6-7; Philippians 1:21; 2 Timothy 1:3).   Few people have endured such torment.  He was slandered, betrayed, flogged, stoned, imprisoned and shipwrecked with devastating frequency (1 Corinthians 4:11-13; 2 Corinthians 11:23-29).   Paul’s grasp of the purest love  completes his credentials as an authority on the relationship between God’s love and suffering (1 Corinthians 13). He was unmoved by soppy emotionalism or other sham forms of love.   Though you spurn every Christian on the planet, you cannot dismiss this saint of a man. And he discovered that the reality of suffering cannot diminish the infinitude of God’s powerful love.   This enlightenment did not come cheaply to Paul,  and he realized it could not be passed on by words alone (Ephesians 3:17-19). Intense experience, prayer, and intimacy with God is a common price.   Back

2 Corinthians 5:21  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 1 Corinthians 1:30  It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Romans 3:20  Therefore no-one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.  (21)  But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.  (22)  This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, Romans 9:30  What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;  (31)  but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.  (32)  Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the “stumbling-stone”. Galatians 2:16  know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no-one will be justified. Philippians 3:9  and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 1 John 1:8  If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  (9)  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 4:17  In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. Hebrews 4:15  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin.  (16)  Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. And very many other Scriptures.   Return to the webpage God will use to set you free

Was Jesus Uniquely Perfect?   Do not miss the significance of the many Scripture references cited below. These are primary historical documents of a reliability seldom seen in the realm of ancient history, written by (Eg 2 Peter 1:16) or heavily dependent upon (Luke 1:1-4) eyewitnesses. And note the natural bias of the witnesses. They were utterly convinced of the sinfulness of every human (1 John 1:8,10; Romans 3:9,10,23). This was a basic belief of not just the early Christians, but of the Jewish religion that had been drilled into most of them almost from birth (1 Kings 8:46; Job 15:14; Psalms 130:3; 143:2; Ecclesiastes 7:20; Isaiah 53:6; Jeremiah 17:9). Yet still they came to the staggering conclusion that Jesus was sinless.   General  – When appealing to the common knowledge of non-Christians, Peter could speak confidently of the good Jesus had done (Acts 10:36-38).   Jesus’ religious opponents   The only charge they could make stick was that he made claims no normal man could make.   Pilate  – John 19:4-14; Matthew 27: 23-24 Pilate’s wife  – Matthew 27:19 Jesus’ betrayer  – Matthew 27:4 Jesus’ executioner  – Matthew 27:54; Luke 23:47 The thief crucified with Jesus  – Luke 23:41 A demon  – Mark 1:23-24   People who knew Jesus intimately:   John the Baptist  – Matthew 3:13-17 John the apostle  – John 1:14; 1 John 2:29; 3:5 Peter  – Luke 5:8; Acts 3:14; 1 Peter 1:19; 2:22; 3:18 Early Christian witnesses  – Hebrews 4.15; 7:26; 9:14 2 Corinthians 5:21 Jesus’ own mother and brother believed in him  – Acts 1:14; Galatians 1:19   Jesus’ own testimony  – John 5:30,36; 7:18; 8:29; 10:32,38; 14:11, 30-31; 15:24   Don’t dismiss this. The more godly people are, the more conscious they are of their sinfulness. (Cf Ephesians 3:8; 1 Timothy 1:15) Jesus stands out as a stark exception to this rule. ‘Who can accuse me of sin?’ he dared ask a hostile crowd. (John 8:46)   An angel   – Luke 1:35        Foreseen by Old Testament prophet s  – Isaiah 53:9,11; Jeremiah 23:5; Zechariah 9:9     Objections It is sometimes thought that Jesus must have sinned for one of the following reasons:   Jesus cursed a fig tree  – If Jesus swore because of the tree we would have reason to question his character. The word ‘cursed’ is clearly not used in this sense, however, because all he did was to say to the tree, ‘You will never bear fruit again.’ (Matthew 21:19)        Jesus got angry at the temple money changers  – The disciples’ immediate reaction is revealing. Jesus’ action reminded them of a relevant Scripture and they saw the event as proof of Jesus’ godliness – that he was moved by the things that move God. (John 2:15-17; Psalm 69:9) From beginning to end, the Bible is filled with references to God’s anger. (Eg Exodus 15:7; Deuteronomy 9:7-8; Ezekiel 7:19; Romans 2:5; Revelation 16:1) Christians have always made a distinction between righteous anger and selfish anger. There was nothing impulsive about Jesus’ action. He displayed complete self-control. He went to the temple, looked around, and left because it was late. The next day he drove out the temple workers. (Mark 11:11,15) To see if any selfish anger resided within Jesus, examine his response when he was cruelly and unjustly executed. ‘Forgive them,’ was his cry.        Jesus dishonored his mother by addressing her as ‘woman’   – Most modern Bible translations use expressions like ‘dear lady,’ but even these seem artificial. The Good News Bible does not even try to translate it. There is, in fact, no exact English equivalent for the word that is in the original text. ‘A term of endearment and respect’ is one Greek scholar’s description of the word. We have only to examine one of the contexts to see the accuracy of this description. Jesus used this term of address in the tenderest of moments. He was on the cross dying in agony. His heart-broken, probably widowed, mother, soon to be bereft of her son, was looking on, and Jesus was making final arrangements for his most loving disciple to look after her for the rest of her life. (John 19:26-27)        Conclusion:  Distance in time and culture, a superficial look at a text and an unfamiliarity with biblical morality can momentarily throw us, but a more careful examination affirms that Jesus was uniquely without sin. Back

Supernaturally Confirmed Unforgivable or Damned By dreams, Visions & Miracles     When Supernatural Signs Contradict Biblical Truth     Supernatural Deception   No one familiar with the Bible should be surprised when supernatural revelation confirmed by undeniable miracles contradicts the holy Word of God or declares a genuine Christian to be spiritually damned, unforgivable or apostate. It could happen to you at any moment. Are you prepared for it?   I love plunging headlong into topics but this time I see the need to provide some perspective and explain why this topic is so important to everyone.   In the webpages listed at  Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope!  you will find overwhelming biblical and theological proof that God longs to forgive, and that there is no one alive who cannot be cleansed from  all  sin, provided he or she sincerely seeks it through faith that by his sacrificial death Christ has paid the full penalty for humanity’s sin.   My writings on this matter are so extensive because year after year after year I was driven to extremes to keep piling higher and higher this mountain of proof because of deep compassion for people who seemed to need ridiculous quantities of proof. Literally hundreds of people kept e-mailing me out of what turned out to be an irrational, insatiable yearning for more and more proof. Like them, I was under the illusion that they needed more facts, more Scriptures, more convincing arguments to find the peace and assurance they so desperately craved. Finally, I discovered to my amazement that their lack of peace had nothing to do with a deficiency in theological knowledge or spiritual experience but was the product of an anxiety disorder (often undiagnosed) that keeps gnawing away inside them, making them feel guilty and anxious and uncertain, no matter how much divine reassurance they receive.   Anxiety feels like a guilty conscience and acts like a false alarm screaming that something is dangerously wrong when, in fact, all is well. This insidious affliction keeps its victims feeling oppressively guilty, thus incessantly tempting them to believe their intense feelings, rather than believe God’s promises. Starting with  Scrupulosity: Worried about Salvation & Severe Guilt Feelings , I have written many webpages specifically to help these people understand the nature of their affliction and learn how to live with it.   This webpage, however, is for another group of people: those whose faith in the power of Christ to forgive  every  sin is undermined by powerfully supernatural indications that they are damned. These dear people have been attacked by terrifyingly convincing dreams and visions, and/or signs that are so supernatural that they are sorely tempted to presume the signs are of divine origin.     This webpage is not just for these people, however, but for us all, because any of us at any moment could suffer such an attack and, without the information provided here, we would be highly vulnerable to deception.   Although dreams may sometimes be supernatural, they are more commonly the mind reacting to fears and anxieties. For example, after a scary car accident, one is likely to have many disturbing dreams about being in car accidents. Obviously, these are not warnings from God but a natural response to an upsetting experience. This link between dreams and anxiety makes those suffering from an anxiety disorder especially likely to suffer alarming dreams that can seem to confirm their worst fears. Such dreams can be natural and yet so vivid and terrifying as to seem supernatural. In this webpage, however, we will focus on dreams, visions and signs that are genuinely supernatural.   Only God is good (Mark 10:18). Only he is truth. Only he is love. While he alone is all-powerful, he is not the only source of supernatural power. There are evil supernatural beings who, by their very nature, are opposed to God and play dirty, seeking to seduce and deceive those who serve God. Evil spirits are quite capable of manufacturing signs and wonders. The Word of God leaves us in no doubt about the power of supernaturally deceptive signs:   Mark 13:22  For false Christs and false prophets will appear and  perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect  – if that were possible.   2 Thessalonians 2:9-10  The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with  the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders , and in every sort of evil that  deceives  those who are perishing. . . .   Acts 8:9-11  Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is the divine power known as the Great Power.” They followed him because  he had amazed them for a long time with his magic .   Revelation 13:3  One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the  fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast .   Revelation 13:12-14  He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And  he performed great and miraculous signs , even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast,  he deceived the inhabitants of the earth . . . .   Revelation 19:20   . . . the false prophet who had performed the  miraculous signs  on his behalf.  With these signs he had deluded  those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped his image. . . . (Emphasis mine.)   No wonder John admonished those he loved:   1 John 4:1  Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God . . .   Likewise, we read:   1 Thessalonians 5:20-21  do not treat prophecies with contempt.  Test everything . . . . (Emphasis mine.)   Matthew 7:15, 22-23  Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. . . . Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and  in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’  Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’  (Emphasis mine.)   Matthew 24:11  and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.   2 Peter 2:1  But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.   All of these divine warnings line up with even more ancient warnings. Read carefully:   Deuteronomy 13:1-5  If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he preached rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you.   Here the Almighty emphatically declares that false prophecies confirmed by dreams and supernatural signs could actually come to pass and yet must be totally rejected.   It is a test: will we trust in the integrity of Almighty God, who cannot lie (Numbers 23:19), or will we believe Satan, the father of lies (John 8:44), simply because the evil deceiver has a speck of supernatural power? Will we pursue integrity or power; common truth or spectacular lies? Will we stubbornly believe in the love of God and the forgiving power of the cross or cave in to satanically inspired fear?   We can even travel back further in time to Pharaoh’s court, when divine miracles performed through Moses were matched by the occult powers of the magicians. Yes, the true God eventually allowed his power to be proved stronger, but take very seriously this account:   Exodus 7:10-13; 20-22; 8:6-7   . . . Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake.  . . . Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen . . . Moses  . . . struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. . . . But the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts, and Pharaoh’s heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron . . . So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.   When Pharaoh saw the power of the magicians matching that of the true God, his heart hardened against God. Will we be so foolish as to harden our hearts against what the God of the Bible declares to be true, just because of supernatural manifestations?   The power of false prophets and dreams and so on is confirmed throughout Scripture. For example:   Jeremiah 23:25-26  I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’ How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds?   Jeremiah 29:8-9   . . . “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the LORD.   Ezekiel 13:2-3,22-23  Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘ . . . Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! . . . Because you disheartened the righteous with your lies, when I had brought them no grief . . . therefore you will no longer see false visions or practice divination. I will save my people from your hands. And then you will know that I am the LORD.’   Zechariah 10:2  The idols speak deceit, diviners see visions that lie; they tell dreams that are false, they give comfort in vain. Therefore the people wander like sheep oppressed for lack of a shepherd.   Zechariah 13:4  On that day every prophet will be ashamed of his prophetic vision. He will not put on a prophet’s garment of hair in order to deceive.   Over and over the holy Word of God insists that we must cling to the full biblical revelation of God and not let ourselves be duped by supernaturally convincing signs and visions. In the words of the great apostle, “But even if we  [apostles of God]  or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:8). This does not mean that preaching another gospel is unforgivable – before his conversion, Paul himself taught, and even did all he could to violently enforce, doctrines that were contrary to the gospel – but it means we are to take no notice of anything that contracts biblical revelation, even if it were to come from an angel from heaven or a revered preacher.   And this is no wonder, since “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light,” (2 Corinthians 11:14).   Clearly just because something is supernatural does not mean that we should accept it as truth.   Note all the supernatural elements in the following:   Matthew 3-16-4:11  As soon as Jesus was baptized . . . heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. . . . The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. . . . Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. . . . Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.   Do you find it as staggering as I do, that God’s Chosen was somehow physically propelled by the devil both to the top of the temple and later to “a very high mountain”? What I find even more astonishing than the devil physically moving the eternal Son of God is that what Jesus was shown on the mountain was more than physical. From no mountain in the world could anyone see “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor”. Somehow, the devil not only got Christ to the exact geographical point where he wanted him, but the devil messed with the holy mind of the Son of God and gave him a supernatural vision of all the kingdoms of the world.   If even the Lord of lords could be subjected to satanic, supernatural signs and visions, it is clear that signs and visions must never be automatically accepted as being from God. Like our Leader, we must refuse to be swayed by them but must stubbornly cling to Scripture, just as Jesus, in response to each of the three powerfully persuasive temptations had to slice through the deception by declaring, “It is written . . .” The devil, knowing the exalted position Jesus gave to Scripture, even tried to confuse and deceive Jesus by quoting from the Bible (Matthew 4:6). Jesus’ response was the same as usual: “It is also written . . .” (Matthew 4:7).   Over and over Scripture says such things as:   1 John 1:9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from  all  unrighteousness.   And:   Hebrews 13:5   . . .God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”   Like all Scriptures, these remain true no matter how many signs and wonders contradict it. Anything contradicting such Scriptures must be rejected as insidious lies, no matter how many out-of-body experiences you have, or how many million angels in luminescent nighties sing it, or how often your neighbors are woken by a booming voice thundering it to you, or how many psychedelic dreams you have, or how many times your donkey speaks to you, or how many other spectacular miracles confirm the contradiction, or how many prophets from God declare it.   To ask God to confirm that you are forgiven after you have sincerely confessed your sin and sought forgiveness through Jesus is a gross insult to God. It is implying that the Holy One is capable of lying and it is questioning the power of the cross to forgive all sin. Even that blasphemy will be forgiven the instant we seek it but do not imagine that God will concede that his Word is inadequate and that he might lie and so give you a sign that this time he is not lying.   But What If . . .   Elsewhere in this long series of webpages I have proved that we are called to live by faith, not feelings and that we must not look to feelings as a source of spiritual truth. In this webpage I have proved from the Word of God that we must not use dreams, visions, miracles or any other supernatural sign as a source of spiritual truth. The webpages listed at  Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope!  are filled with Scriptures affirming that no one who puts his faith in Jesus is excluded from salvation and for all who put their faith in him there is nothing that is unforgivable. If feelings or the supernatural do not line up with the Word of God, they must be rejected, no matter how powerfully convincing they seem. What, however, should we do if we meet a Scripture that seems to condemn us and to undermine faith in the forgiving power of the cross? In the next webpage we will face this issue head-on.   Next Webpage:   Condemned by the Bible? Afraid of God’s Word

To Err is Human;To Forgive is Divine Choosing your Punishment This series of webpages is about feeling forgiven, not about forgiving others. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to insert this small page here because when people share their hearts with me I keep finding that the two types of forgiveness are inseparably linked. Like spitting into the wind, not forgiving others flies back and hits us. Until we learn to forgive others we will most likely suffer serious problems believing that God has forgiven us. In some countries, it is enshrined by national law that people of native ancestry choose by their lifestyle whether they are regarded as part of native society – and hence judged by tribal law – or whether they will be subject to judgments imposed by national courts, should they commit certain offences. For lawbreakers of aboriginal descent, the difference might mean being speared in the leg versus imprisonment. In other cases it has meant being severely punished for breaking tribal law versus going unpunished.   Spiritually, we find ourselves with a similar, though more serious, choice. The lifestyle we choose determines whether we will be judged according to divine grace, or by a more primitive judgment akin to what humans usually prefer to inflict on each other.   You have heard it said that to err is human; to forgive is divine. Human justice says, if you do the crime, you receive the punishment. Divine grace says, if you do the crime, God’s only Son receives the punishment. Most of us would like both to be judged by grace and to judge others by harsher standards. But that’s hypocrisy. Humanity’s Judge must be perfect. Despite his overwhelming love for you, he must not corrupt himself by being partner to such a scheme. There must be total consistency between the way we judge others and the way we are eternally judged.   By choosing a lifestyle of graciously forgiving everyone who ever offends us we choose to be judged by divine grace. By electing not to forgive someone, however, we choose to be eternally judged by the method that humans prefer to administer, but don’t want to receive – the way that knows no forgiveness. As fallen humans, we find ourselves suspended between acting like animals and acting like God. Our calling – God’s mind-blowing invitation – is to rise from living like beasts to living like God. Our “mission impossible,” should we choose to accept it, is to rise from living by the law of the jungle to living by grace.   The choice is ours. We can be too proud to forgive or too proud to let Jesus be punished for our offenses, but that leaves us with no option than to bear the punishment ourselves. On the other hand, we can choose to be one with Jesus. The only way to do this is by both accepting his punishment for our sins and by joining him in saying, “Father, forgive them,” to people so despicable that they were torturing to death an innocent person. By this we choose God’s mercy.   Justice demands that we be punished forever. For us to escape the horrific demands of justice, we must quit demanding justice. By wanting someone to suffer as he or she deserves, we are refusing to live in the realm of grace. By wanting any wrongdoer to get what he or she deserves, we are forcing God to give us what  we  deserve. We couldn’t make a worse decision, given the reality that we each deserve hell.   A staggering number of people foolishly presume that they can reject God’s mercy, and yet expect God to still be merciful. We can’t have it both ways. As we have seen, a perfect judge cannot be partner to hypocrisy. By refusing God’s mercy – either by ignoring Jesus’ offer to be punished for us or by refusing to let mercy rule the way we treat others – we leave God with no option than to bring upon us the full, terrifying, eternal punishment our sins deserve. The appropriate punishment is more horrific than we can even conceive. Being sinners, and surrounded by sinners every day of our lives, has made us too callous to grasp how atrocious our offences really are. Those who ignore the way of grace are making the worse mistake anyone could ever make.   Forgiving others is not about earning God’s approval. It simply allows God to do what he longs to do – to lift us to a higher level in which we are judged by entirely different standards to what we would otherwise be subjected. “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. . . . Forgive, and you will be forgiven,” said Jesus (Luke 6:37). How we judge – with mercy or with a desire to punish – determines how we will be judged.   It is not the things we have done – they can all be forgiven – that determines whether we are judged by divine mercy or by eternal justice. All that matters is our heart attitude – whether we are forgiving or judgmental – and whether our faith is in the forgiving power of Jesus’ sacrifice or in our ability to bear our own punishment. The Lord of all longs for us to enter the realm of grace where he showers upon us the blessings that Jesus deserves, instead of the judgment that we deserve.   You might be so conscious that to forgive is divine that you conclude it is humanly impossible. That’s okay. The God of the impossible is so eager for you to enter the divine that he’ll do all that is needed to ensure that you dwell in the divine realm of forgiving and being forgiven. All God requires is your willingness to let him perform the miracle. Then hold on to your hat as you commence life’s most exciting adventure, soaring beyond human limitations, as the Almighty empowers you to forgive as fully as he longs to forgive you. If you refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive you. Forgiving others, however, is a long journey. If you are  wanting  to forgive but find it almost impossible, you have already made good progress. If you have reached that point, I believe God can forgive you, though you will still suffer much anguish doubting that God has forgiven you. The more you progress with forgiving others, the more you will be able to believe that God has forgiven you and the more you will be able to forgive yourself. On the other hand, the more you are sure that God has forgiven you, the easier it will be to forgive yourself and to forgive others. The three aspects of forgiveness are part of the one package and progress with one helps the others, while a refusal to progress with one holds back the others.   So at this point, the web series divides. Some readers will need to progress with the issue of forgiving others before proceeding with more help in believing that they are forgiven. These readers should bookmark this page or note the web address, go to  Forgive Us Our Sins As We Forgive ,  and from there follow links to still other pages about forgiving others. After completing those pages they should then return here to continue with this series about learning how to be sure they are forgiven and how to enjoy their forgiveness.   Next: Two Options   More About Getting Rid of Guilt Feelings Supernaturally Confirmed Unforgivable or Damned by dreams, Visions & Miracles? (This is most encouraging webpage, even though the title seems scary.It proves that one need not fear supposed revelations from Godthat one is damned, unforgivable, apostate or whatever.)   More About Forgiving Others Forgive Us Our Sins As We Forgive

Kick Up Your Heels And Rejoice!     Discovering the Ecstasy Of a Squeaky Clean Conscience     The following assumes you have undergone a spiritual transformation so radical that it is appropriately called being born again. This, the most thrilling and significant experience known to humanity, is so misunderstood that millions walk past it, never imagining the wonders they are missing. If you are unsure about this, it is important to bookmark this page and go straight to  You Can Find Love .   I once enjoyed over a year in high spirits. I had never been so joyful in all my life. Then I crashed into depression. Why? I had previously been focusing solely on Jesus and delighting in his perfection (which is ours through our union with him). Then I began examining myself and seeing all my failings. Depression snuck in. Upon discovering my mistake, I changed my focus and joy returned.   The transformation worked because it is scriptural. In Christ is a huge and exciting treasure-trove of delights fitting the category of Philippians 4:8 (whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.) This makes the Scripture four verses earlier (Rejoice in the Lord always) easy. When we look at Jesus we see beauty, goodness, perfection, love, and every good thing. What a smorgasbord of things to delight in! When we look at ourselves, however, it’s a different story. God asks us to focus on him because the benefits are astounding. Notice the instruction is to rejoice  in the Lord . There is little in ourselves to rejoice about, but in Jesus there is an endless array of wondrous things in which to rejoice. Focusing on Jesus is the secret of endless joy.   What we focus on determines what we become. The more we feast our eyes on Christ, the more we’ll become like him. As we gaze upon the glory of God, says Scripture, we are progressively transformed from one degree of glory to another. No wonder Hebrews 12:1-2 urges us to put sin aside and run the race of life, ‘looking unto Jesus’.   It takes effort – huge effort – to keep our eyes on Jesus when we’ve become so used to examining ourselves all the time. But I assure you, it’s worth every bit of effort it takes!   Remember Peter walking on the water. While he was looking at Jesus and thinking of what Jesus was doing (Jesus was walking on water) the impossible was easy. But when Peter got his eyes off the Lord, he began looking at circumstances and remembered his frailty. It’s hardly surprising that he began to sink. The result wasn’t serious, however, because Jesus was right there. And Jesus is with you.   Give God a break!   Although it is so easy to become preoccupied with ourselves and our past, it is really a form of selfishness. The union God has with you is deeper than marriage. Who would you rather be married to? Someone who is always withdrawn and miserable, or someone who sparkles with joy? Give God a break! Jesus is indeed your better half. Focus on him. Every time the shame of your former life flashes into you consciousness, turn it into an opportunity to fall more in love with the God who loved you in your degradation. You were so special to him that his dear Son went through agony to make you pure and undefiled. If he loved you when you were in your filth, how much more certain is it that he delights in you now that he has beautified you, scrubbing you spotlessly clean? When haunted by your guilt-ridden past, don’t slink off to a corner and mope. It’s your cue to throw a party, rejoicing in God’s unfathomable love. Rush up to the God who has purified you and fling your arms around him in sheer joy and gratitude. Shower him with love and thanks and awe.   Not Earned, Just Enjoyed!   And don’t for one moment imagine you can earn God’s forgiveness by being miserable or by being hard on yourself. That’s like saying, ‘If I give you $1,000 will you love me?’ You are forgiven because of the immensity of God’s love, not because you could ever do anything to deserve it. You can’t earn God’s approval, you can only delight in it.   The Value of Guilt Feelings   When it comes to lizards and spiders my mother is brave, but with birds she crumbles. In a walk-in aviary she’d be petrified. It would be an awful experience for her, but, of course, she’d be perfectly safe. That’s like the worst the Deceiver could do to you. He could give you an unpleasant experience, but nothing more. Whether you are conscious of it or not, you are in the arms of God. Safe.   Moreover those horrible thoughts and feelings are spiritually beneficial. Of immense value, in fact.   Your faith, says Scripture, is infinitely more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:7). Its rewards last for all eternity. It is the most critical factor the whole Christian walk. Every gift of God, whether it be salvation, victory over temptation, answered prayer, love, miracles, or whatever, can only be appropriated by this means. Everything hinges on it. The greater your faith, the more heaven’s riches are at your disposal. And how can you grow in faith? The same way you grow muscle – by using it. You expand your faith by holding on to God’s truth when everything within you seems to scream the opposite. For each moment you hold on, you’re building spiritual muscle – growing in faith – accumulating spiritual wealth. It’s in the painful times that you develop spiritually, just like it’s in the pain of physical exercise that you develop physically.   By putting guilt feelings on you, Satan is falling right into God’s trap, giving you the perfect opportunity to develop the most valuable spiritual asset. Each moment you choose to believe God’s truth rather than the guilt feelings and accusations, you are building your faith, which can be used over and over for the rest of your life to buy spiritual treasures.   So when those guilt feelings come, rejoice! The two mirrors The Word of God is like a mirror, says  James 1:23 . As you look into God’s Word you come face to face with reality, and so you begin to see your true beauty. But the devil also has a mirror. In his hand is a horribly cracked and distorted mirror that makes the most beautiful things of God look hideous. He keeps beckoning you to look in his direction, and whenever you do, he flashes his mirror, revealing a grotesque reflection of yourself that makes you cringe. You feel ugly and unlovable. The only solution is to keep looking into the pure mirror of God to see yourself as you really are, resplendent with the beauty of Christ. Keep looking into that mirror, dear one. The Evil One tries with all the malicious deceit he can muster to fool you into thinking that the way you look in his cracked mirror is the way you look in God’s eyes. And if you really looked like that to God, you’d have every reason to want to shrink from God and the mirror of his Word. You wouldn’t want to be reminded of how repulsive you are. But it’s all lies! You are beautiful to God. And if you dare gaze into God’s mirror long enough, you’ll see how beautiful he has made you.  Then  you’ll rejoice! These webpages (see below) are designed to entice you to look at God’s word and be amazed at your beauty in Christ. The Deceiver won’t ease up in flashing his cracked mirror in your direction, so you need to keep coming back to these pages, and to the Scriptures on which they are based, to keep fresh the memory of how beautiful you really look to God. Here’s some of ways Almighty God sees you: Precious child. Holy one. Accepted. Enveloped in divine love. Sparkling clean. Crystal pure. Made perfect in Christ Jesus. Complete and whole. Filled with glory. Destined for greatness. There’s More: Don’t miss this next page Rock Solid Bible Truth: Your Sinlessness in Christ Warning:   These Pages Won’t Help Everyone Some people terrified about being unforgivable just need Bible-based reassurance or an explanation of a disturbing Scripture. If vast amounts of rational support and biblical exposition are the answer, keep following the links. Many Christians, however, presume this is what they need but it turns out that no amount of biblical proof or sound, theological argument or even spectacular spiritual experience can put their minds to rest. If you have already sought much help but worries keep resurfacing, you most likely need a totally different approach. You should skip these pages (you can return later if you wish) and go straight to  Scrupulosity .

Rock Solid Bible Truth Your Sinlessness You No Longer Need Feel Guilty: Heart-warming Bible Proof The following consists of powerful Scriptures, each followed by a few words unlocking a fraction of its inexhaustible treasures. The webpage will gradually build to what for many readers will be a surprise conclusion as to a key factor in receiving Christ's sinlessness.   Ephesians 1:4  For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Regardless of how lowly you think of yourself, you have been chosen. Most of us are scared to consider how God sees us. We wrongly suspect that in the blazing purity of his eyes we must look pathetic. The truth is staggeringly different. The Almighty actually sees us as people destined to be flawlessly perfect. To be blameless in human eyes would be astounding, but to be ‘holy and blameless in his sight’ – in the exacting eyes of the High and Lofty One, the God of Truth, the All-seeing Lord – is mind-boggling. The only thing that could ruin this would be if you were to prevent Jesus from doing what he longs to do for you. You don’t have to be a spiritual Einstein to guess that the devil hates this and will do everything in his power to rob you by deceiving you into thinking it applies to other people but not to you. You must fight this powerful, highly dangerous temptation by clinging resolutely to the Bible’s emphatic insistence that salvation is promised not just to some but to  everyone  who believes in the cleansing power of Christ’s sacrifice. John 6:37  . . .  whoever  comes to me I will never drive away. Romans 3:22  This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to  all  who believe.  There is no difference,   (23)  for  all  have sinned . . .  (24)  and  all  are justified freely by his grace . . . John 5:24  I tell you the truth,  whoever  hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. John 6:40  For my Father’s will is that  everyone  who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. Acts 10:43  All the prophets testify about him that  everyone  who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. 2 Peter 3:9  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting  anyone  to perish, but  everyone  to come to repentance. 1 John 4:15  If  anyone  acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. (Emphasis mine) In  You’re Forgivable: A Sample of the Bible Proof  I cite not one or ten or twenty but thirty-five Bible verses where God uses such words as  all, everyone, anyone  or  whoever  to affirm that no one who looks to Christ for salvation is excluded. 2 Corinthians 5:21  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. The eternal Son of God came to fulfill the divine yearning to make you perfect. Like no other human, Jesus was utterly sinless, and yet for you he volunteered to become sin personified. As such, he hung in shame on the cross, suffering the full, horrific consequences for  your  sin. This astounding transaction took place so that by your spiritual union with Jesus you would become as righteous – as pure and holy – as God himself. Jesus became completely identified with your sin and shame, so that you could bask in the eternal honor of being completely identified with his sinlessness. Let this sink in: through this staggering exchange, you are credited with righteousness infinitely beyond the most saintly human attempts at goodness. If you partake of this union with the holy Son of God, you gain the very ‘righteousness of God.’ Moreover, you are not just showered with a sprinkle of this righteousness; you are so identified with divine moral perfection that, as this Scripture declares, you actually ‘become’ God’s righteousness! Our sins are debts to justice. To heighten our understanding, let’s put this in financial terms. You were once frighteningly and hopelessly in debt. Jesus is incomprehensibly rich. He would make a multi-trillionaire look like a pauper. You supposed no one would ever want you, and yet Jesus fell in love with you and longed to marry you. You couldn’t believe it. For a long while you resisted him, thinking it must be some sort of trick. And you had heard all sorts of groundless gossip about this mysterious person. What if some of those malicious rumors were true? Finally, you mustered the courage to marry him. Gradually you discovered that, for him, marriage means such beautiful things as life-long devotion to you and a total merging of assets. All your horrific financial obligations that you wished would disappear, he saw as his responsibility. Your debts become his debts, which he paid in full. And in exchange for you giving him your debts, he handed you joint ownership of his riches. All his wealth is now completely yours to spend and enjoy as your own. You are still coming to terms with the enormity of this gift and he is still trying to urge you to break free of your hesitance to make full use of the rights he has given you. Your status has now rocketed from the shame of gross financial mismanagement to the honor of being, with him, the richest person in the universe. And it is all because of his longing to be one with you. This is what Jesus has done for you morally. 1 Corinthians 1:30  It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.  (31)  Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” Here we see yet again the astounding truth that through spiritual union, Jesus’ righteousness is your righteousness. The eternal, holy Son of God becomes your righteousness, your holiness and your salvation. Your claim to moral purity and goodness is no longer limited to the best you have done. Through the mind-boggling generosity of God, he has given you the right to claim as your own the perfection of the sinless Lord himself. That is so far beyond anything any of our efforts could achieve that it is utterly pointless bothering to draw attention to our own moral achievements. To do so would be as pitiful as the richest man proudly displaying rusty fake gold. Note the beginning of 1 Corinthians 1:30: ‘It is because of him that you are  in Christ Jesus .’ Similarly, both of the earlier Scriptures we examined feature the expression, ‘in him.’ Here are just a few more examples: Romans 6:11  In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God  in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1  Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are  in Christ Jesus. 2 Corinthians 5:17  Therefore, if anyone is  in Christ,  he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! Ephesians 2:6  And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms  in Christ Jesus. Colossians 1:28  We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect  in Christ. (Emphasis mine) Even the most beautiful people on this planet would look ugly without their skin, but that is of no concern because they are never without their skin. Just as physically we are in our skin and our skin is a part of us, so spiritually we are in Christ Jesus and he is part of us. Whenever anyone looks at us with their physical eyes, they see our skin, never our intestines or other internal parts. Likewise, whenever anyone sees us spiritually, they see Jesus. That does not, of course, mean we cease to exist. Jesus is as much a part of us as a skin is a part of us. We have never been so thrillingly alive. We are snug and secure inside of him, just like physically we belong inside our skin. We were made to live in Jesus, as much as we were made to live in our skin. Whenever anyone sees us through spiritual eyes, they see indescribable beauty and perfection because, like our skin, Jesus is our covering, but unlike our skin, Jesus is exquisitely perfect. Union with him completes us and beautifies us. As a result, we need never again feel shame. Ephesians 2:8  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God –  (9)  not by works, so that no one can boast. We have been delivered from every eternal trace and consequence of sin, not because of our efforts (that would be like trying to lift ourselves to heaven by our shoelaces) but because of the exorbitantly generous, undeserved gift of forgiveness that God offers us. All we need do is accept the gift made possible by Jesus swapping places with us on the cross. To receive a gift, one must believe that it is a genuine offer and not a trick. Suppose, for example, someone says, ‘I have placed in your bank account a gift of $10,000.’ This would do you no good unless you were to begin spending that money. To do this you would have to push through various doubts. What if the money is not there and you overdraw your account? Or what if there are strings attached, or the person demands his gift back? Receiving a gift takes faith. God has offered you the gift of forgiveness but it will do you no good until you do your best to believe his offer is genuine. You will then take the step of faith – perhaps quite shakily at first – by acting as if you are truly forgiven. This involves enjoying the fact that you are accepted by God and are now completely innocent of your past sins. It does not mean that you will  feel  forgiven, it simply means accepting the fact that you  are  forgiven. The analogy about marrying someone richer than a trillionaire highlights one of our biggest hindrances to faith. How many trillionaires have you shaken hands with? Who of us have met even a moderately wealthy person eager to be so generous to us? Why would someone who could have anyone, pick us? The Almighty is so far beyond anything we have ever experienced in any other person as to seem unbelievable – except that God, by his very nature, can be expected to be far superior to anything we have ever seen in a human. Just as the Maker of galaxies has infinitely more power than anyone else, so he has infinitely more selfless love, purer motives, and superior generosity. We must keep rising above the fear that God has any failings. Alongside him, the most loving human we have ever met is selfish, small minded, and prejudiced against us. People have exploited us, let us down, lied to us, dismissed us as unlovable, and done other hurtful things, but God, being God, is altogether different. You can trust him. 1 Timothy 1:15  Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst. The apostle Paul was powerfully used of God not because his previous sins were minor but because he regarded himself as being the greatest of all sinners. God forgives people not because their sins are excusable; he forgives when they admit that their sins are inexcusable. Our Lord stressed that the most important command is to love God, and yet he said it is the person who is forgiven most – who is most aware of the gravity of the sins that have been forgiven him – who loves most (Luke 7:47).. He warned that blatant sinners who were under no delusion about the extent of their sin had a much better chance of entering heaven that clean-living Pharisees who thought themselves good (Matthew 21:31-32). Luke 18:10  Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  (11)  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector.  (12)  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’  (13)  But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’  (14)  I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. In Jesus’ day, tax collectors were turncoats who collaborated with the Romans, the enemy occupation force that had invaded the country. They extorted money from Jews to prop up the Roman Empire. Since no self-respecting person would do this to their fellow countrymen, tax collectors were usually people whose morals had already been so low that they felt they had little respectability to lose by taking this despised, money-grubbing job. Pharisees were on the other extreme, being renowned for their impeccably high moral standards. In this Scripture, Jesus is stressing that, no matter how good a person has been, anyone who thinks he has lived a morally acceptable life will rot in his sin. No one can stand in God’s holy presence except people willing to see themselves as having been hopelessly depraved morally and in desperate need of God’s mercy. Everyone coming to Jesus with this attitude is miraculously cleansed, because his faith is not in his own supposed goodness but solely in the goodness of God, who longs to purify us through Jesus. Having abandoned faith in his own morality, such a person is credited with Jesus’ moral perfection. We all have the deadly cancer of sin. The many of us who, like the Pharisee, live in denial, will die in their sin. This is a tragic waste. Treatment is freely available to those who admit their need of it. Just as doctors respect the right of patients to refuse treatment, so the Lord of all allows us the dignity to refuse his treatment for our deadly sin condition. The only ones who have hope are those who humble themselves enough to admit that without Jesus they have no hope. Proverbs 28:13  He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. As we saw with the Pharisee and the tax collector, anyone taking the coward’s approach of trying to cover up or minimize or excuse his sins is in grave spiritual danger, but anyone humbly admitting his depravity will find God’s mercy. The apostle Paul was once headed for hell like that Pharisee, but as his eyes opened to his sinfulness he became like that tax collector lamenting his sins and he found mercy. In fact he found so much mercy that his eyes opened to the point where he could truly understand his sinfulness. It was then that he pronounced himself the worst of sinners. It is he who humbles himself the most who is raised the highest. Philippians 3:4  . . . If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:  (5)  circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee;  (6)  as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.  (7)  But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.  (8)  What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ  (9)  and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. If anyone had reason to put confidence in his devotion to God and his own efforts to do good, it was Paul. Nevertheless, what made the apostle great is that he despised all his moral achievements as garbage. The King James Version calls his efforts, ‘dung’ and this seems closer to the feeling of revulsion that the apostle wished to convey. In his highly acclaimed commentary, Gerald F. Hawthorne, Professor of Greek at Wheaton College, renders the word, ‘unspeakable filth.’ He says the word, ‘seems to have meant by usage either (1) “dung,” “muck” both as excrement and as food gone bad, (2) “scraps” i.e. “what is left after a meal,” and (3) “refuse.” It is also used to describe a pitiful and horrible thing like a half-eaten corpse, or “filth” such as lumps of manure. . . . It is quite improper to weaken its meaning in any way by translation or by interpretation . . .’   As he looked to the time when he would face his Judge and be asked why he should not be thrown into hell, the mighty apostle wanted to be found without the slightest defense – other than the fact that Jesus had died for him. He ditched every other possible claim – any and every thing that some might think could help him be judged as being passable. This man, who really knew God, staked his whole eternity solely on the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ. He was putting all his eggs in one basket. This refusal to try to hedge one’s bets is what faith is all about. What empowers most of us to reach this point is the realization that we simply have no alternative. We are moral failures. Without Jesus, the best of us are doomed. With Jesus, the worst of us are safe. Isaiah 64:6  All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags. When reading this as a child I used to think of a mechanic’s dirty, smelly rags. Then I discovered that God was painting a picture far more repulsive than that and far more in keeping with the apostle Paul’s spiritual insights mentioned earlier. In the original language it is a reference to rags smeared with bodily filth. It is saying we might as well proudly display our bodily filth as hold up to God our noblest attempt at morality. Our best efforts are infested with the disgusting maggots of pride, selfishness and impurity. To try to pass that off as righteousness is to insult God. It is far, far better to be guilty of horrific sin and beg forgiveness, than to be so deluded as to imagine we could impress God with our ‘righteousness.’ No wonder Jesus said there was far more hope for prostitutes than for those who thought themselves respectable. No wonder the tax collector, overwhelmed by his sin, warmed the heart of God, and the Pharisee touting off to God his ‘good deeds,’ left God cold. Only one of them saw a desperate need to beg for mercy. Only one received it. 1 John 1:7  . . . the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.  (8)  If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  (9)  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. No matter how ‘good’ one has been, anyone imagining his life is morally passable, is lying to himself and to God. To be purified of every trace of sin, all we need do is stop trying to excuse ourselves as if our sins did less to send Jesus to the cross than the sins of the vilest criminal. It is essential that we put our trust, not in our ability to justify our actions, but in Jesus’ power to win our pardon by taking our place on death row. Romans 3:20  Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.  (21)  But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.  (22)  This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference,  (23)  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  (24)  and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  (25)  God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished –  (26)  he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time. By ‘the law,’ the Bible means God’s standards as outlined in the very Word of God, preserved in the Old Testament. This is far superior to our self-made morality, and yet it still fails to put us right with God. It says, ‘There is no difference’ – whether God-fearing Jew or idolatrous pagan, tithe-paying Pharisee or money- grubbing tax collector – ‘for all have sinned . . .’ We keep thinking there must be a difference. God keeps insisting there isn’t. You are breaking the same Ten Commandments – the same divine set of laws – when you covet as when you murder. There is no moral difference between someone who in a flash of anger wishes someone were dead, and someone who has a loaded gun in his hand at that critical moment. Someone who through fear of getting caught does not commit a crime is no more moral than someone who is braver and commits the crime. The wages of sin is death, whether it is a ‘respectable’ sin such as abusing our God-given body through overwork, or a sin society thinks is despicable. And once you are dead, you cannot get any deader. Romans 2:1  You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Instead of ‘you who pass judgment,’ the King James Version says, ‘whosoever thou art that judgest.’ This more accurately reflects the Greek by better bringing out the fact that this truth applies to every person. This Scripture sends us reeling in shock. How can it be that  whatever  sin we accuse someone of committing, we ourselves are guilty of? We suppose there are many sins we have not committed, and yet our presumption of innocence merely highlights what deluded hypocrites we are. To wish someone dead is to murder. To dress in the hope of sexually arousing someone who might not want those feelings is to rape. To keep back part of your tithe is to steal from God (Malachi 3:8). King Saul let his soldiers hold on to some of the livestock God told them to destroy. Though they claimed this was for the noble reason of sacrificing the animals to God, the Lord declared it rebellion against God and therefore the equivalent of witchcraft (1 Samuel 15:23). To be greedy is to worship an idol (Ephesians 5:5, Colossians 3:5). My desire – and God’s desire – is to not condemn you, but to bring you to the point of surrender so that you can cease the endless struggle to justify yourself, or feel inferior or superior to others, and simply accept divine forgiveness in all its wonder and endless scope. This is one of life’s most liberating and exhilarating experiences. We are in a tiny boat, furiously baling out water in a desperate, ultimately futile, attempt to stay afloat. Towering above us is God’s luxury liner, offering security, dignity, rest and refreshment. The sooner we admit to ourselves that our attempt to save ourselves is both hopeless and foolish, the quicker we can enjoy God’s luxury liner. Romans 5:1  Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Galatians 5:4  You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. When the Bible speaks of human attempts to justify ourselves, it usually means our vain attempts to offset our past moral lapses by doing good. This is utterly doomed to fail for many reasons. An obvious one is that any good we do now, we should have been doing throughout the past, as well as now. So nothing we do subsequently can counteract our past failures. Only Jesus could pay our debt to justice because only he had no debt of his own. However, in our secular society, we commonly use the term justify in the slightly different sense of trying to excuse our past. It is this common meaning that I particularly want to focus on. Once we gain even a shallow insight into the extent of our guilt, it quickly becomes nearly impossible to bear. We find ourselves with an almost overwhelming need to try to shift the blame. That leaves us with essentially two options. We can try to make other sinners take blame for our own sin, which will ultimately get us nowhere, or we can accept the staggering offer of the sinless Son of God taking our blame upon himself, suffering as if he were guilty so that we could get off scot-free as if we were innocent. We have a choice. We can say, ‘My bad behavior was justified because of my atrocious upbringing, or the person I sinned against deserved it, or I couldn’t help myself.’ Or we can choose to jettison that approach and say, ‘I am not justified by my actions or circumstances; I am justified (make innocent in God’s eyes) solely because Jesus bore the penalty that my sins deserve.’ Self-praise, they say, is no recommendation. To justify ourselves is as valuable as stale air. For Jesus to justify us, however, is profoundly significant. It means the eternal, holy Son of God declares us innocent. We can try to justify ourselves, which will never allow us to be accepted by God, or we can let Jesus justify us, which will make us fully accepted by God. But we can’t have both, any more than we could be on a train to hell and at the same time on a train to heaven. If there were a literal train to glory and a train to damnation, they would be speeding in opposite directions. To be on one involves leaving the other. Likewise, justifying ourselves is the exact opposite of Jesus justifying us. We usually try to justify ourselves by excusing our sin; we are justified by Jesus, however, by fully admitting our sin. To try to justify our past is to torture ourselves by trying to dream up lame excuses that would be laughed out of court when we meet our Maker. Right now, we decide how God will judge us when we stand naked before his Throne. We can through faith enter into a relationship with Jesus that makes us one with the holy Son of God, allowing us to ask God to judge us as if we were Jesus himself. Or we can abandon that option and put our faith solely in our ability to talk our way out of the guilt of every sin we have ever committed; trying to convince the all-knowing Lord that we have always been sinlessly perfect. What little faith we must have in Jesus’ ability to forgive if we still see the need to ease our consciences by trying to excuse our past! Feeling the need to justify ourselves indicates that we have not yet grasped the magnitude of divine forgiveness. When at last we see it, the result will be profound, liberating, and life-transforming. 1 John 4:17  . . . we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. You will be able to confidently face your Judge on Judgment Day because even while you lived on earth, God saw you as being not like an average person, nor even a saint, but like the perfect Son of God. A school bus driver was certain that he had killed a little boy by running over him. The man was devastated. He went to court and the judge pronounced him innocent. The judge said the bump he felt must have been the bus running over the boy’s bag. The boy’s death had nothing to do with his driving. What a huge difference there is between feeling guilty and being guilty! What matters is not whether you feel holy and blameless but whether you cling to the fact that this is how the God of Truth sees you, because of Jesus. The Judge declares you innocent – not because of what you have or haven’t done, but because of what Jesus has done in taking your sin upon himself and suffering the full penalty for your sins that divine justice requires. All you need do is admit your need of Jesus, unlike the Pharisee who supposed he could make it on his own. Just as the bus driver’s mind played tricks on him, so will yours. Like suddenly being told by a millionaire that all his assets are yours to do whatever you like with, it will take quite a while for the truth of what Jesus has done for you to sink in. So for a long while you will still have times when you feel guilty, but that feeling is simply an illusion.

When a ChristianCan’t StopThinking Blasphemous Thoughts   Unforgivable Sin or Just a Spiritual Attack?   Proof of Demon Possession or Mere Temptation? A mother of two told me:   Up until about a week ago, I was great! I was strong in my faith, and things were going well when one day I suddenly awoke from sleep to a thought so horrible I was in a sweat, my heart was thumping and ever since, I have been in extreme anxiety. I had thought for an instant about the verse on Jesus being a demon, and I had imagined it being so. I am a Christian so I know the thought is utterly false, but I am so mortified that I can’t get rid of thought. The more I try to stop it, the more it comes back.   I am in turmoil! The passage about the unforgivable sin makes me so afraid, that now I am a mess. That horrible thought keeps creeping back and I want it to go away. I keep telling Jesus that I am sorry, and powerless to get rid of this false image of him. It is like living in hell. Please help me!   So common is it to be tormented in this way that this dear woman has nothing to be embarrassed about. Nevertheless, rather than risk causing her the slightest discomfort I will conceal anything that might identify her. We’ll call her Kate.   Few of us regularly have a demon appear before us and start talking to us. And yet we have all had evil spiritual powers trying to tempt us. Since they rarely speak to us in an audible voice, how do they tempt us? By putting thoughts in our minds – thoughts that seem like our own but are from them.   Churning around in our mind are not just our own thoughts but the occasional thought direct from God and the occasional thought direct from God’s spiritual enemies. It is not unusual for God to put thoughts and ideas into our minds that we mistake for our own thoughts. Likewise, it is common for us to mistake as our own thoughts things whispered into our minds from spiritual powers that hate us and hate our Lord.   Kate was so upset by those blasphemous thoughts because such blasphemy is disturbingly contrary to her own views of Christ. To a casual observer it is obvious that thoughts so contrary to her own thinking could not be her thoughts. Because they were happening in her very mind, however, it was hard for her to be convinced they did not originate from her. She was experiencing a hideous invasion by evil powers of the most intimate part of her – her innermost thoughts. It is such a terrible violation of her person that I refer to it as spiritual rape. Every Christian – even Jesus, who was tempted in all ways like us when on earth – suffers this.   “Where’s the Scriptural proof?” you might ask.   Matthew 4:5  Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.   Who, according to this Scripture, took the holy Son of God to the top of the temple? It wasn’t Jesus’ doing, nor was it God’s.   Matthew 4:8  Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.   Everyone knows there is no mountain in the world from which one’s natural eyes can see “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” The devil not only somehow managed to get Jesus’ body where he wanted it to be, he thrust a vision into Christ’s very mind. If the devil slipped that into the very mind of the sinless Son of God, we can expect no less. No Christian wants it, but it is normal. In fact, it is inevitable. Nevertheless, despite the repulsive violation, we, like Jesus, can remain pure.   Unlike God, the devil can only be in one place at a time. So in our case, we are almost certainly attacked by one of the devil’s henchmen, rather than the devil himself, but it makes little difference and so most Christians, myself included, often refer to him when it is technically one of his subordinates who actually does it.   Up until the night of Kate’s disturbing experience, everything had been going well for her. Obviously the Enemy of our souls hates that. He’d love to bring us down. Because he had failed to seduce Kate into genuine sin, the old Deceiver tried to fool her into taking responsibility for the devil’s own filthy thoughts.   The sneak attack began when Kate was most vulnerable. How dare he start his ambush when she was asleep! Most attacks occur when we least expect it and least deserve it. It’s not for nothing that our enemy is called the Evil One. He plays dirty.   Kate knew that the lies speared into her head were not true. That knowledge is all she needs to maintain her spiritual purity. No matter what floods her mind, she is spiritually safe because she believes the truth about Jesus.   Nevertheless, “mortified” is how Kate described her reaction to the haunting devastation of being plagued by thoughts she wanted nothing to do with. Examined in the cold light of day, however, it is not the slightest surprising she couldn’t get those hideous thoughts out of her mind. If Kate had woken up to find a deadly snake in her bed, she might escape unharmed but the experience would have terrorized her, just like the thought she had woken up with terrorized her.   Had Kate escaped a snake in her bed, she would have been safe. The experience might have lasted just a couple of seconds. Nevertheless, it would have so shaken her that to her dying day it is unlikely she would ever forget it. For the first few weeks the memory would rarely leave her. The vivid, recurring memories would be most unwanted, but a perfectly natural reaction to a traumatic experience.   Similarly, Kate was experiencing a natural reaction to the trauma of waking to thoughts that shocked and repulsed her because they were so contrary to her heart-attitude to Jesus. Her reaction, in fact, was proof of her sincere devotion to Christ.   Kate couldn’t remove the thoughts from her mind. “The more I try, the more it comes back,” she agonized. Large numbers of people write to me with similar stories. I have found that they are usually very sensitive people who are deeply shocked and disturbed by having such a thought, and their very reaction seems to inflame the situation. This, in fact, is exactly what one would expect.   Try telling yourself, “Whatever I do, I must not think of elephants in polka dot pajamas.” The very act of trying not to think of them will cause you to think of them. The more I raise the stakes – such as threatening to beat you if you think of them – the more you will be plagued by thoughts of pajamas-clad elephants. One’s very anxiety about it and desperation not to think of them will increase the problem.   It’s like walking on a plank that is lying on the ground. You do it effortless and perfectly. The higher off the ground you raise it, however, the more fear of falling will begin to grip you. The more nervous you become, the more likely it is that your very nervousness will make you unsteady and cause you to fall. So it is that the more you fear thinking something blasphemous, the more likely it is to happen. That’s not for any spiritual reason. It’s purely psychological – a perfectly normal mental reaction. On the other hand, the less concerned you are about the thought and the more you ignore it and focus on other things, the more it will fade from your thoughts.   Why did God make the human mind this way? It’s because thoughts that flit through our mind are of no concern to God. What matters to him is not random thoughts but what will firmly decide to believe.   It is astounding how high a proportion of those who e-mail me fearing that they have committed the unpardonable sin suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), or some other psychological difficulty. This shows that in most cases, uncontrollable blasphemous thoughts are not a theological matter or even a spiritual one, but the product of a psychological condition that is not only most unpleasant, but exceedingly unfair. Ironically, the more anxious one is to please God, the more severe the affliction.   Fearing that God will not forgive us is like fearing a harmless spider. The fear is awful but it is groundless. Someone with a phobia about spiders does not need to be lectured about trusting God and made to feel spiritually inferior. It is simply a most unpleasant, irrational fear for which there is no shame in seeking psychological help. Many Christians plagued with the irrational fear of being unforgivable are suffering from psychological problems that medication might help. Medication can’t save anyone’s soul; only Jesus can. But medication has the potential to stop some Christians from suffering needless torment. Whether it be a fear of harmless creatures, or a fear that God has suddenly turned unforgiving, if medication can ease the fear and help one act more rationally, I’m all for it.   Medication is far from perfect. For a few people it can have side-effects and what works well for one person might not be as effective for another. If you are among the majority whose body tolerates it, however, and it helps you think more rationally about spiritual things – and so helps you cling to the biblical truth that all sin is forgivable through simple faith in the power of Christ sacrifice – then I see such medication as a plus.   In theory – I know that in practice it is difficult – Kate should try to be as unconcerned as she can about the repulsive thoughts buzzing around in her mind. Like someone swearing in her presence, it is unpleasant but it is not her doing. Those thoughts are the devil’s doing, not Kate’s. She can simply ignore them and let the devil take the blame for them. None of us will ever stop the devil and his horde from being evil, so we can just let them do their thing and focus on glorifying our Lord.   When you find yourself suffering like Kate, my suggestion is that you go on the offensive and hit the Enemy where it hurts him most. Whenever a lying thought about Jesus comes to you, turn it into an occasion to praise Jesus, thanking him that he is the holy Son of God; pure and sinless. Keep exalting Jesus until the blasphemous thought eventually leaves. Every time the thought returns, rejoice in the purity, perfection, and divine power of your Lord, affirming his goodness in praise-filled prayer. Then, no matter what heretical things flash through your mind, every lie fired into your head turns into an invitation to exalt Jesus and build up your faith in his righteousness. However, you most exalt Christ, not by turning this into an obsessive ritual, but by relaxing and enjoying the fact that through Christ you are forgiven, no matter what unwanted thoughts plague you.   Let’s return to the analogy of finding a snake in one’s bed. If it turns out to be merely a toy, it would be far easier to be rid of the recurring memories. The greater the perceived danger, the harder it is to get it out of one’s mind. Kate’s fear that she was committing the unpardonable sin was adding to the trauma and so helping to perpetuate the recurring thoughts. Her fear was yet another dirty trick from the Evil One. She was  not  committing the unpardonable sin. Despite uninvited thoughts clouding her mind, she did not genuinely believe that Jesus was of the devil. And even if someone had actually believed that in the past, it wouldn’t matter, provided that person no longer believes it. For as long as a person believes Jesus is of the devil, that person’s sin cannot be forgiven since he or she would not ask for God’s forgiveness in the name of someone he/she believes to be of the devil! If that person changes his/her attitude to Jesus, however, forgiveness again becomes fully accessible.   Jesus was tempted with horrific things – even to bow down and worship Satan. So let’s not despise ourselves if we, too, face horrific temptations. They indicate how evil our enemy is; they do nothing to suggest that we are ungodly. We don’t have to own the thoughts that come to us, nor be disturbed by them. We can simply reject them as being untrue and continue to enjoy closeness with our loving Lord.   There are surprising medical factors influencing devastating guilt feelings and sacrilegious mental images or thoughts. As you follow these pages, we will soon examine this. Later, we will explore a wide range of testimonies. But first I should raise another matter that could be nagging away at you.   Bringing into Captivity Every Thought?   The frustrating, unavoidable reality is that the very act of  not  thinking about something forces us to direct our thoughts to those very matters, thus ensuring we are spending more time than ever thinking the thought we are desperately trying not to think. It becomes a no-win situation because it is contrary to the fundamental design of the human brain. Everyone’s experience confirms that to cease thinking something we are desperately trying to stop thinking is as impossible as it is to stop  all  thought.   A man was keen to accept this fact of life and cease trying to do the impossible. However, the most common reason for being hounded by unwanted thoughts is anxiety stemming not from a rational concern but from an imbalance in one’s body chemistry. Since no amount of rational understanding of the cause of unwanted thoughts can change one’s body chemistry, he kept feeling anxious. More disturbing still, anxiety feels like a nagging conscience and can easily be mistaken for a divine warning that one is somehow displeasing God. This anxiety kept driving his restless mind to find some sort of rational basis for his irrational anxiety – some indication that he might be doing something displeasing to God. Not surprisingly, his mind latched on to worrying that even though fighting the thoughts inflamed them, not fighting them might be at odds with 2 Corinthians 10:5, “. . .  bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ,” (KJV). He emailed me about his nagging concern about this Scripture. I quickly replied:   This verse does not mean to try not to think about compulsive thoughts because that is impossible and anyone who thinks otherwise does not understand the human mind and has not suffered from this affliction. What it means is, rather than trying to battle the thoughts yourself, entrust them to Christ, your Savior who has demolished everything that could separate us from God. He is your Savior, so let the thoughts be his concern, not yours. Refuse to worry about the thoughts but trust your Savior to keep you cleansed and acceptable to God, no matter how you feel.   In practical terms, what I wrote was entirely correct. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that the verse about making every thought captive is not even relevant to a discussion of intrusive thoughts. It has nothing to do with casual thoughts but is referring to attacking various belief systems adhered to by non-Christians thinkers (philosophers, religious teachers, cults and so on).   Hailed as “one of the best evangelical New Testament scholars” (D. Stewart) and elsewhere called “master New Testament exegete,”  Murray J. Harris  specifically says in this commentary on 2 Corinthians 10:5, “ It is not a case of the Christian’s effort to force all his thoughts to be pleasing to Christ. ”   The most confusing thing about King James English is not obviously archaic words but ones that seem the same as modern words but have actually undergone a change of meaning. For example, in the King James Version  conversation  can mean not just speech but one’s entire behavior, even though few readers today are aware of this shift in meaning. The full verse, of which we have quoted just a slither, uses the word  imaginations  in the King James Version. Back then, however, the word had a different meaning (it could mean stubbornness, or plotting or devising evil) and later translations (even, as quoted in a subsequent webpage, the New King James Version and the King James 2000 Bible) use a different word.   Consistent with this, the word translated  thought  is not used in this verse to mean imagination or casual thought. It is referring not to things that pop unbidden into the mind but to an entire system of thinking – a whole manner of thinking about spiritual matters, such as consistently thinking of (i.e. viewing or perceiving) God as an assortment of many different gods (pantheism) or consistently seeing salvation as dependent upon animal sacrifices. It is referring not to fleeting or superficial thoughts that one hardly believes, but to mindsets – deliberate thoughts and ways of seeing things that are so consistently believed that they transform one’s understanding of spiritual truth.   The precise meaning of the Greek word translated  thought  in 2 Corinthians 10:5 is hard to express in English. The difficulty is that there are different types of thought, and English speakers are not used to differentiating between them when they communicate. There are fleeting, flippant, frenzied thoughts that come out of the blue and not from one’s solid convictions. On the other extreme, certain thoughts are the product of deep, deliberate, focused thinking and match fully and precisely what one really, firmly believes. The word used in 2 Corinthians 10:5 refers to this second type of thought. It refers to one’s powers of thought in using logic and reasoning – not to wandering, scatterbrain thoughts, but to carefully thought through conclusions.   The Greek word is  noema . HELPSTM Word-studies defines it as “the  mind , especially its  final output  (systematic understanding . . .)” It rightly notes  noema  as being derived from  noieo  and it defines the latter as meaning, “to apply  mental  effort needed to reach ‘bottom-line’ conclusions.”   The word is relatively rare in the New Testament. Besides 2 Corinthians 10:5, it is used only five times and only one of these is outside of 2 Corinthians. In no instance except 2 Corinthians 10:5 is it translated  thought , and the following occurrence is particularly illuminating as it highlights how it is the product of careful, deliberate, methodical thought:   2 Corinthians 2:11  in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his  schemes .  (NIV)   2 Corinthians 2:11  Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his  devices .  (KJV) (Emphasis mine.)   Not surprisingly, Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines it as “(an evil) purpose” and, specifically in reference to 2 Corinthians 10:5, says it is “devising evil against Christ”. Note the choice of words:  devising  implies meticulous planning, not something that comes unbidden or unwanted into the mind. “ Purpose,  in a bad sense  design, plot ,” says the highly regarded  A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature  by Arndt & Gingrich, about both 2 Corinthians 2:11 and 10:5.   The scholarly  New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology  (Vol 3, p 128) makes crystal clear just how far  noema  is from referring to fleeting thoughts. It defines the New Testament meaning of the word as “ . . . the understanding of the divine will concerning salvation, the thinking concerned with this. . . .  noema  is thus the general faculty of judgment, which can take decisions and pronounce verdicts right or wrong . . .”   Furthermore, this portion of Scripture uses war terminology, describing the “war” between Christian and anti-Christian ideologies. In this context,  captivity  refers not to total control of individual or fleeting thoughts but to the defeat of an enemy by taking prisoners of war. And in this case the enemy is the belief systems (the thought patterns and entire way of thinking about spiritual matters) adhered to by anti-Christian philosophies and cults. As made more obvious by some Bible versions, but implied elsewhere, an analysis of the verse reveals that it is not even about  your  viewpoint, mindset, and so on, but  about that of your spiritual enemies . The New Living Translation makes this abundantly clear:   We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture  their  rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ. (Emphasis mine.)   So “bringing into captivity every thought” is not about an impossibly unhuman, machine-like control of one’s mind, but the spiritual defeat of belief systems present in the non-Christian world that are opposed to the gospel message.   A correct understanding of this verse is aided by consulting the context:   2 Corinthians 10:3-5   . . . we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.   And it is confirmed by seeing how this dovetails with what the apostle Paul told the Corinthians earlier:   1 Corinthians 1:17-24; 2:1-2  For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel – not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. . . . When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.   God declares through the pen of Paul that there is a spiritual war between the gospel and people who suppose they can connect with God without reliance upon what Christ achieved on the cross. The way to win that war (figuratively speaking, destroy defenses – pull down strongholds – and take prisoners of war – captives) is not through using the means (weapons) that opponents of the gospel rely on – human reason (in the case of Greeks) or expecting supernatural signs and wonders (in the case of Jews) – but through simply preaching (declaring the truth) about the reconciliation between God and humanity that Jesus achieved through his sacrificial death.   To those who look to supernatural signs or human reasoning to confirm spiritual truth, the gospel message (the message of the cross) seems weak and foolish but those who abandon trying to confirm spiritual truth this way and instead choose to believe (put their faith in) the message of the cross (Christ securing our full acceptance with God – the forgiveness of all our sins – through his death) will be saved and they will connect with the genuine power and wisdom of God.   In other words, we win this spiritual war and connect with God not by discovering some convincing argument, nor by some supernatural sign confirming that we are saved but by clinging to faith in the power of Jesus to secure the forgiveness of all our sin. Trying to wrestle unwanted thoughts into submission is carnal and will ultimately fail; clinging to faith in the power of the cross to forgive all sin is spiritual, and where godly power lies.   Burn this into your brain:  You must cease trying to stop repulsive, ungodly thoughts . Fighting thoughts is as carnal and as opposed to God’s holy ways as trying to physically kill people who hate Christ. Supposing we can gain God’s approval by thinking nothing but pure thoughts is as heretical as abandoning faith in Christ and supposing we can be saved by works.   We must put an end to carnal methods – fear, mental effort, fighting thoughts – and become spiritual. That means relinquishing faith in our own efforts and trusting Christ alone. We overcome not by fearing thoughts, nor by fighting them, but by faith alone – by resting in the fact that on the cross Christ has completed everything necessary to secure our salvation.   To be spiritual is to look not to one’s thought life but to Christ alone. The more messed up our thought life is, the better, in that it forces us to realize we can only be saved by faith in Christ, not by our works.   All your prayers and efforts to stop unwanted thoughts have failed and will always fail, because the only way to please God is by faith in what Christ achieved on the cross without your prayers and effort.   It is unhuman never to have unwanted thoughts, just as it is not human never to suffer temptation (even the holy Son of God was tempted). This, of course, does not render it impossible for the omnipotent Lord to make you the world’s only exception and keep preventing unwanted thoughts in your case. Likewise, if you were literally afraid of your own shadow, the God for whom nothing is impossible has the power needed to treat you as if you were hopelessly pathetic by perpetually performing the miracle of preventing your shadow from ever appearing. Wouldn’t it be better, however, for God to allow you to be normal so that you can eventually overcome your ridiculous fear? Wouldn’t that end up giving you greater dignity? So it is with those who fear thoughts.   Thoughts are not your enemy; your enemy is the ever-present temptation to exalt thoughts above Christ – to imagine that overcoming thoughts will please God. Trusting what Christ did on the cross is the only way to please the Holy Lord.   Whenever you worry about thoughts, you have slipped from faith and reverted to a dangerously non-Christian works-based theology. Every time that happens, pull yourself back to faith by thanking God for your salvation that was secured solely by Christ crucified. It is essential to keep returning to faith, which means ceasing to fight thoughts and resting in Christ’s completed work.   What makes this simple thing so hard is that anyone worried about thoughts has become addicted to fear and to human effort. And addicts are repeatedly tempted to return to their old coping mechanism, which will never deliver what they actually need. Instead of continually slipping back into the old rut, forge a new path by leaving behind your preoccupation with thoughts and instead delighting in the salvation that – regardless of whether you feel it or not – is yours through Christ alone.   For people addicted to the futile hope of trying to control their thoughts, this is such a radical change that few of them grasp it. As one final attempt to help you understand what anxiety-driven people typically fail to grasp, let me share my response to another e-mail I received. The email read:   About a year ago I was flooded with unimaginable blasphemous thoughts and felt doomed. But then I read your webpage and it helped me a great deal. But now, a year later, I am being attacked by more blasphemous thoughts. I start thinking of them on my own because I know that they are lurking somewhere in my mind and I feel like I just want to get it over with. I feel like I am going to be rejected by Jesus because of this and I am so afraid. It has put my life on pause because I feel like I am going to be left behind and that terrifies me. These thoughts are things I see in my mind and they sicken me. I can’t think of Jesus without seeing something blasphemous. Please could you help me to stop this?   This is typical of many e-mails I receive and shows that the person had failed to take on board what I keep stressing in my webpages. My goal – and I believe God’s goal – is  not  to stop blasphemous thoughts but to build faith in the power of the cross to forgive  all  sin and keep us holy in God’s eyes. Upon reading that he was again having blasphemous thoughts, I wrote:   Wonderful! This is your opportunity to finally grasp what salvation is really about and abandon the heresy of salvation by works.   My response to his plea to help him stop these thoughts was:   I dare not! Allowing the existence of these awful thoughts is God’s precious gift to you, so that you will finally learn to live by faith in Christ.   I am not in any way saying we should sin so that grace will abound (compare Romans 6:1-2). I am saying, replace fear with faith and stop trying to save yourself. Salvation depends on Christ’s efforts, not your efforts. So get your attention off yourself and on to your Savior.   Thoughts do not faze God. His concern is that we keep trusting in the power of the cross. Our thought life does not save us; Christ does. Neither will our thought life condemn us to hell. The only thing that will do that is to die refusing to have faith in the power of Christ’s sacrifice to cleanse us.   The frustrating problem I face in explaining the meaning of “bringing into captivity every thought,” is that no amount of convincing proof can ever fully put to rest the mind of anyone worried about this. This is because the very nature of the affliction that causes intrusive thoughts is to suffer perpetual unease and worry. No matter how certain something is, people suffering an anxiety disorder will keep feeling anxious and so will find themselves unable to stop worrying about it.   Anxiety driven by an imbalance in one’s body chemistry will ultimately remain untouched by rational argument. For psychological reasons, worry might temporarily ease in response to rational proof but the anxiety will soon return. Other than find a medical solution, its victims have no alternative but to learn to live with their anxiety and refuse to believe that its presence means there is a legitimate reason for concern. In other words, as the Scriptures affirm, they have to cease trying to find some convincing argument or supernatural sign, and take it by raw faith that despite their awful thoughts and worries they are cleansed through the blood of Jesus.

Should I hate God?   Be angry at God if he is the cause of suffering   WHY I HATE THE MYTH OF A CRUEL CHRISTIAN GOD     The problem of pain       The problem of evil   You might have every reason to hate the person you think God to be, but is that ‘God’ real?  Your anger feels justified, even though we can understand infinite wisdom no more than a babe understands its mother. What if your resentment towards God is like that of a desperately sick child who bites his doctor, imagining the caring doctor to be the cause of his torment, rather than his only hope of recovery? What a tragedy if we let the simple fact that we don’t have infinite IQ rob us of our greatest source of comfort.   I encourage you to  reject God  if he wants people to suffer or if you could be a better God than him. I urge you to lay it on the line with such a beast, telling him:   God of the Bible, I don’t even know if you exist or whether I am talking to myself, but even if you do exist, if you are a God who is unfair or delights in people suffering, I want nothing to do with you. I’d rather be tortured forever in hell than serve you if you are cold and heartless or selfish or arrogant.   ~ ~ ~   God Weeps?   What if no one in a lifetime has been so spurned, so misunderstood, so much hated without cause as God is every moment of every day by millions of people, each of whom he loves more than we could conceive? No one would be as aware of the full extent of suffering humanity as God is. What if no one loves with the intensity that God loves? No one would be touched as deeply by humanity’s anguish as its Creator. And your own pain would intensify his pain.   What if, even when the cause seems beyond human influence, all heartache can be traced not to God’s will, but to rebellion against God’s will.  Many things are murky or unknown to us – the view from eternity, the non-physical realm, the intricate chain reaction set off from person to person and generation to generation whenever anything happens. Relative to the all-knowing Lord, we are as short-sighted as King Midas, who discovered too late that having everything he touches turn to gold was not the great idea he thought it was. We might be exceedingly smarter than Midas, but we still lack the capacity to know the full consequences of our wishes coming true.   We vainly pit our puny intellect against the Infinite Mind, using brain cells he gave us to try to out-think him. If God’s ways don’t always make sense to us it merely confirms that our combined brain power couldn’t light a single galaxy. And too often we confuse a good life with a soft life. Too often virtue slips in our priorities. Of necessity, God’s love must be like that of a wise parent, focusing on long-term good, even at the price of tearing his own heart by infuriating the tiny minds of people he loves. His goal is the highest good for all humanity, not some short-term gain that fizzles or ends up robbing others.   The rantings of arm-chair philosophers differ markedly from the findings of people with the deepest experience of both God and suffering.  The apostle Paul, one of the most qualified persons ever to broach this subject ( reasons ), discovered that no tragedy could ‘separate us from the love of God’ (Romans 8:35-39). For nearly 2,000 years this hard-won insight has been put to the test by the torment of thousands of Christian martyrs who have agonized in triumph, rejoicing in the goodness of God.   Include all types of affliction, and it is no exaggeration to say that multiplied millions of people have suffered without it diminishing their devotion to Jesus.  On the contrary, they insist it was God’s comfort, love and inspiration that empowered them to endure.   It was once claimed that by the laws of aerodynamics bumble-bees cannot fly. But people who know bumble-bees could not be hoodwinked. A scientific explanation might elude them, but they know bumble-bees fly. Similarly, people who really know God, even those who have suffered as much as is humanly possible, know what they know: God’s love is as mind-boggling as his power. Gaining insight in this matter might not be scientifically satisfying, but it is truth proven by cold reality.   ‘When you know God,’ breathed a Nazi concentration camp inmate, ‘you don’t need to know why.’ The hearts of thousands leap in agreement.   Although we can gain a little insight into God’s wisdom, were all our attempts to fail utterly, we have the security of knowing that our sorrow plunges a knife into the heart of the all-powerful Lord. That’s the ultimate proof that secreted within the stupendous intellect of Almighty God is an ingenious, love-filled reason for allowing it.   ‘No loving God would let a bystander be maimed by a drunk driver’   What alternative can you suggest? If God enslaved the human will, squelching wrongdoing by forcibly preventing us from indulging in our favorite sins, we’d be the first to shake our fists at him.   A God of love wants the whole world to operate in love, but could you force someone to love you?  An involuntary act can have no moral value. It’s slavery. Where would the virtue be in any action if it were impossible not to be virtuous? All of life would become meaningless.   It would be the height of hypocrisy to dare criticize God for not always interfering when tragedy looms. Time after time we have each proved by our actions that we don’t want his love and wisdom cramping our style.   We say there is no hell and set new records in suicide rates. We call God’s morality old-fashioned and suddenly it’s old-fashioned not to know the latest AIDS statistics. We fill our hospitals with bodies ravaged by promiscuity and substance abuse. Try calculating even the dollar cost of divorce, fraud, laziness, irresponsible driving, theft, vandalism, prisons, judicial system, and police. One wonders how our economy has survived this long. Incalculable misery is inevitable whenever God’s laws are regarded as oppressive restrictions rather than loving expressions of divine wisdom.   We spurn God’s laws, hurt each other, and then have the audacity to blame God for the resulting disaster.  All suffering can be tracked back to human wrong-doing – not necessarily the action of anyone presently alive, but to someone’s deliberate disregard of God and his ways. (There is even a human link to  natural disasters .) And why didn’t God strike that person dead before others could be hurt? Because to be fair he should do the same to you and me.   No clever argument, however, and no spiritual experience can hide one unavoidable fact: a holy God would yearn to wipe out every cause of pain. And if he eradicated everyone who has ever caused pain by selfishness, cheating, lying, gossiping or hurtful remarks, who would be left? Only a maniac or an ego-maniac would dare demand justice from God. Though we are too blinded by our own mud to have a hope of seeing ourselves as we really are, if we could peer through our own muck a little, we would realize we have each added to humanity’s pain. Many of us would go to any lengths – even to accusing our Judge of injustice – in an unconscious attempt to push the spotlight away from the recesses of a dirty conscience. If only we could smear God, narrowing the gap between his perfection and our shabby behavior, we’d feel better. ‘Suffering is God’s fault!’ we sneer, conveniently forgetting times our anger, greed and lies hurt others.  Naturally, there is a degree of hurt we deem excusable, and for some suspicious reason the hurt we have inflicted happens to fall within the standard we arbitrarily set. It is like failing an exam and then moving the pass mark to make our score look good. A holy God could not be partner to such hypocrisy. To wipe out some people who cause suffering and spare you and me would make God guilty of gross injustice. We have each chosen to reject God’s loving ways and have contributed to humanity’s pain. If there is a God of love, the people he loves and longs to place in a pain-free world are the very ones who cause humanity’s suffering. ‘If there really were a God of love, the innocent wouldn’t suffer’ Brilliant minds have reached this conclusion. It’s a time-bomb set to explode in Christians’ faces the moment they encounter personal tragedy. When we stop to carefully examine reality, however, we are forced to the conclusion that only one innocent ever suffered!  Few of us can face this reality, until Jesus cleanses our deeply suppressed but dirty conscience. Only after that spiritual miracle dare we relax our frantic attempts to conceal and excuse and push from our minds the extent of our depravity. It is a devastating experience to have one’s supposed goodness exposed by God’s blinding purity. With every shred of pride within them shrieking in protest, Christians feel driven to a crushing conclusion: the moral gap between them and a serial killer is invisible, compared to the gulf separating even their best efforts from the terrifying holiness of God. We must move on, but we can’t question why the innocent suffer without facing the issue of innocence. Astoundingly, we are so far from being innocent that even babies owe their very existence to sin. If, for example, we traced our family tree far enough, we would probably each find an ancestor born as a result of sin – rape, unlawful incest, a despised pregnancy, and the like. The divine dilemma is that had God already done what he longs to do – remove all evil from this planet – we would not even have been born. Nevertheless, having consigned everyone to the sin bin, Christians back flip, seizing the pretentious assertions of a man renowned for humility. Christ claimed an existence independent of human ancestry (John 8:56-59; 17:5). If true, and if he subsequently lived a perfect life, he alone could be innocent in every conceivable sense. And we know this man suffered. He appeared as the uniquely perfect human who preached impossibly high standards, claimed they were God’s requirements and actually lived them. Turning the cheek, loving his enemies, just as he had preached, he yielded to abuse and torture, somehow absorbing within his mangled body the horrific consequences of all humanity’s sin. Humanity can boast one perfect Person.. We killed him. Yet our only Innocent gladly suffered the injustice to free the guilty from suffering eternal justice. In this cataclysmic exchange, the Innocent and the guilty traded places, making it spiritually legal for his suffering to end your suffering. As incredible as it seems, this has ushered us to the brink of a new world where the longing deep within us will be met – deceit, abuse, and hurtful actions will be swallowed by goodness; misery will dissolve in endless joy. Nevertheless, temporary earthly pain continues for a wonderful reason.  A paradise of harmony, trust, openness and love would quickly spoil if just one of its citizens acted remotely like we presently behave. To enter a perfect world without shattering its perfection, would require a personality transformation more radical than ever seen on earth. Through Jesus’ intervention, God can perform this miracle and make us fit for such a world, but he won’t abuse us by forcing a personality change upon us against our will. We must be willing to let God take our pet sins from us and let him, in his unlimited wisdom and love, rule every part of our lives. But there must be a Day of reckoning.  All evil must be removed. Even the self-righteous have been demanding it for millennia, though they have no idea what they are asking. Our response before that terrifying moment will determine whether we’ll be around to enjoy an evil-free environment. The suffering of humanity’s only innocent (Jesus) blazed the way for the total removal of all suffering and when he re-visits this planet he will complete his mission.  But how, without unprincipled favoritism, could he eradicate all evil without destroying you and me? Only by us letting him wrench our darling sins from us, and trusting him to have taken their horrific consequences upon himself. Then we will be spared and no one can accuse God of injustice or favoritism. He has borne the penalty himself. Humanity quivers on the brink of extinction, mesmerized by sin like serpent’s prey. Each moment that God suppresses his explosive urge to extinguish evil, is a moment in which billions of us have yet another chance to come to our senses and let Jesus deliver us from our infatuation with sin. But the end of this period of grace is hurtling toward us. Soon all suffering will cease. All wrongdoing will be destroyed, along with everyone still caught in its deadly embrace. Try this daring experiment: I believe I am right to have very serious doubts about you, God, but here I am talking about my belief when I am well aware that beliefs can be wrong. If you do exist, then because you are infinite, you are difficult to know. And if there are also evil, though lesser, spiritual beings, I guess it is theoretically possible that I have somehow got my wires crossed in trying to figure you out. If I have been blaming you for things that break your own heart; if you are actually utterly unselfish and good and fair and wise and truly have my best interest at heart, then perhaps it would be worth my while to know. It seems beyond belief, but if you are a God of tender compassion who feels my pain and longs to use your stupendous power and wisdom to bless me; if serving you is the greatest thing that could ever happen to me, causing me to rise to my highest potential and filling me with eternal fulfillment; and if my whole eternity hinges on me making this magnificent discovery, then not only do I need to know, I  want  to know. Since I can’t see into the spiritual realm, I’m dependent upon you revealing yourself. If you are God, you are so superior to me that I cannot put demands on you. Anything you choose to show me must be on your terms – your time and your method. If I dig my heels in, refusing to believe unless you move Mount Everest or some such thing, you’ll see right through me and know I’m not sincere. And why should you bother showing yourself to anyone who would continue to ignore you even after you revealed yourself? So let’s do a deal. If the truth is that you are not worthy of my love, I will reject you for all eternity, no matter how much that costs me. For as long as it takes, however, I will remain open to you showing me the truth about yourself. I know I can’t fool you. I can’t expect a defiant ‘prove yourself to me or else’ to move you, but if you are good, a sincere desire for truth on my part will touch you. If you somehow get through to me that you are a God whose love and wisdom is utterly trustworthy; that you are the God who made me and wants the best for me, I will give you your rightful place as God of my life. And if you show me that I need to trust Jesus alone for the purification necessary to relate to a holy God of perfection, then I will do this. You have commenced an exciting adventure if you really mean that prayer and stay open to God revealing to you his true nature. Don’t expect much, however, if it’s a shallow prayer that you hardly mean or quickly forget. ‘God is Egotistical’ If God were so mind-bogglingly loving that it were really true to say ‘God is love' – as the Bible asserts – then anything God asks you to do would be because it is in your very best interest. God’s blueprint for your life would focus on your endless happiness and fulfillment. This is not to be confused with  short term  ease and bliss that ultimately wears thin and crumbles. Like little children who think happiness means having no rules and an endless supply of candy, we still have a lot of growing up to do before we understand what is truly in our best interest. Much of what we presently clamor for we will eventually discover is not what we really want after all. In contrast, the infinite knowledge and intelligence of God focuses on things we will be eternally thrilled about. That often puts our priorities at odds with God’s priorities, even though both he and us seek our happiness. Some people who haven’t thought it through imagine God is egocentric because he asks us to praise and worship him. What we hold highest in life sets the ceiling for personal growth, achievement and honor. And being preoccupied with oneself makes one’s personality shrivel. That’s why our loving Lord wants you to be God-centered. The Lord’s only wish is that we act as wisely and unselfishly as him. Like the Perfect Leader that he is, he asks nothing of us that he would not do himself. It is the very nature of love – and hence the nature of God – to focus on the beloved. Just as he wants you to be God-centered, his plans focus on you as if  you  were the center of the universe. Your love means infinitely more to God than all the diamonds in myriads of galaxies. And praise is a natural expression of love. Lovers find praises effortlessly flowing from their lips as they praise their beloved’s looks, abilities, and so on. If God wanted slaves he could in an instant create too many to cram on to every planet in the universe. The All-powerful, Self-Sufficient Lord of the Universe craves your praise only because he is love and is rapt in you. To discover how to get to know God and undergo the spiritual transformation we need to enjoy an evil-free eternity with him, see  You Can Find Love: What your Fantasies Reveal. ~ ~ ~