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When things are so tough that even suicide seems attractive The shadow of his affliction fell across his life like a black and bottomless chasm. Reeling under hellish torment, bereft of all his children, cruelly stripped of his reputation, all of his possessions gone, Job coveted death. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing ahead but pain, accusations and despair. Job had nothing to live for (Job 3:1-26; 6:9, 11). Or so everyone thought. Before him lay joy and honor, a long and fruitful life, double his past prosperity and the fathering of a superb new family. (Job 42:11-17; compare Job 1:2-3) Job had everything to live for. The pain and the glory Hounded by defeat, Immersed in gloom. Confounded by a curse, Scorned and spurned. Haunted by despair, Mocked by words of doom. My eyes may fill with tears, But not with dread or fear. This grub, wings will sprout. This down-trodden worm will soar; Transformed by redemptive power, Set free by the Lord of all. No one sees it yet: The secret's heaven-kept. They mock and jeer They do not know; Success is slow, but it is sure; Though it tarry, it will come. All Father touches turns to gold. It matters not what others say, The winning's done; Like Father, like son! Founded on his Word; Embalmed by love. Surrounded by his arms; Washed and warmed. Granted all I need, Buoyed by thoughts above: From fear I find release, Becalmed by heaven's peace. Like vine branches, we are not continually laden with fruit. That would be unnatural. (Ecclesiastes 3:1) For a significant portion of its life, a grapevine is nothing but a dry, twisted stick; fruitless, useless for shade, worthless as timber; to all appearances fit only to be ripped from the ground and reduced to ashes. Yet those barren times are as vital in the life of the vine, as the seasons of fruit. If spring could tip-toe past nature without stirring it from its winter slumber; if the sun could slip through the sky without dispelling the night; if rain could fall to the ground without bringing life to the desert - only then should you fear dry times, dark times, lean times. Though you feel as useless as a fur coat in a heat-wave, the time will come when your warmth is treasured. For everything there is a season. We could stock a library with stories of spectacularly unsuccessful men and women who eventually sparked massive moves of God. Many closed their eyes in death without seeing the fruit their labors finally produced. God established the pattern millenniums ago: Sarah knew nothing but barrenness for ninety distressing years, yet became the ancestress of multiplied millions. NEXT (To continue this theme, click above)

Oppressive times: The springboard to a productive life Your greatest contribution to God and humanity might flow from your greatest weakness. If you find this website useful, it’s because I have felt useless. It’s the spear through my heart that binds me to the pain in yours. It’s years plagued with questions that have unearthed answers. Had something dulled my pain, you would not be reading this webpage. John Bunyan’s spiritual torment was horrific. With a severity that few of us could even conceive, year after year he was repeatedly overwhelmed by sin, hopelessness and the seemingly certain prospect of an eternity in Hell. Then followed long years of harsh imprisonment, intensified even when not in prison by the very real threat of execution or deportation. No wonder Pilgrim’s Progress is such an outstandingly powerful book. Much of it was virtually autobiographical. Great men like Whitefield and the Wesleys suffered enormously in their struggle to find salvation. Whitefield’s spiritual need was so all-consuming that his fastings almost killed him. John and Charles were inconsolable until at long last they found salvation. Spurgeon, who knew what it was to endure painful illness, suffered so greatly in his quest for salvation that he wrote, ‘I had rather pass through seven years of the most launching sickness, than I would ever again pass through the terrible discovery of the evil of sin.’ Not surprisingly, their subsequent ministries eclipsed that of almost all Christians who have been spared such anguish of soul. Mark Virkler’s torment was his inability to hear God’s voice. In vain he sought the help of those who regularly heard from God. They could not even understand his problem. For them, it’s as easy as prayer. Year after year, Mark wrestled in the agony of silence. Why would a Father who longs to communicate with his treasured children, allow him to suffer so cruelly? Because, unlike those for whom hearing comes easily, Mark now has answers which have swept thousands to ‘the other side of silence’. Traumas qualify us for ministry like nothing else can. After losing his sight, Dr. William Moon prayed a prayer that was powerfully answered: ‘Lord, help me use this talent of blindness in your service ...’ Barbara Johnson has touched incalculable numbers of people for the glory of Christ, because of the numbing horror of being robbed of two sons through death, losing a third to a gay lifestyle, and her husband being critically injured. Who would have heard of Corrie ten Boom or Richard Wurmbrand if they had not suffered in prison camps? Rather than test your patience by citing hundreds more examples, let me conclude by stating the obvious: for vast numbers of Christians, the spiritual impact of their lives seems directly proportional to their past agony. Situations they would have most wanted to avoid – times when death seemed preferable – empowered their lives like no other experience. NEXT (To continue this theme, click above)

The church is full of hypocrites Many people imagine they despise Christianity when they are merely rejecting aspects of ‘Churchianity’ that Jesus himself would reject. Jesus denounced religious hypocrites. So if hypocrisy turns your stomach, you might be Christlike, but to make this claim stick you must have Jesus’ attitude to hypocrites: he forgave them. People can deeply hurt us, and if they happen to call themselves Christians it could turn us off Jesus for life. Emotionally, this is perfectly understandable, though of course it pales under the light of rational thought. If Jesus’ extraordinary claims are true, however, this matter is more important than life itself. The consequences of ignoring him are too catastrophic and the implications of responding to him are too stupendous to let emotions swindle us. A major theme in Jesus’ teaching (it’s even in the Lord’s prayer) is that we can enjoy the wondrous transformation that God’s forgiveness brings, only to the degree that we are willing to forgive people who have hurt us. (Matthew 6:12,14-15; 18:21-35; Mark 11:25-26) Jumping over the moon would be easier than forgiving some people, but if we come to Christ with sincerity, he will work the miracle of liberating us from the bondage of bitterness and empower us to forgive the unforgivable. Hypocrites are people who claim to be morally better than they really are. Authentic Christians claim to be so bad that they deserve to be sentenced to hell forever. Are you saying they are even worse than that? Christians are people who consider themselves such moral failures that they have come to Jesus for help and forgiveness. Making it spiritually depends not on how popular or nice we are, but how much we want God to rule our life and change us. Whether it be through quirks of nature or upbringing or whatever, becoming likable is harder for some of us. What matters most, however, is not where we are now, but where we are headed. Though they may have started far behind many non-Christians, people who have opened their lives to Jesus, have commenced a spiritual journey that will end in divine moral perfection in the next life. This, they insist, will not result from their own efforts, but from an utterly undeserved miracle of God – a miracle freely available to anyone who dares ask Jesus for it. Not realizing that genuine Christians have such a low view of their own morality, we attack them. What drives us to despise Christians is not unkindness so much as a desperate attempt to drown the shrieks of our own conscience. A favorite, rarely conscious, technique to silence a suppressed but nagging conscience is to muddy the name of anyone who might give the appearance of being morally better than us. Would you criticize hospitals for being filled with sick people? When Christ walked this planet, one of the most frequent criticisms he faced was that sinners were drawn to him like drought-stricken animals to water. Not all the unsavory characters milling around Jesus let him deliver them from their sin-sickness, but they sensed that in him was something their aching consciences desperately needed. The more Christ-like a church is, the more it attracts such people. Jesus chose his twelve disciples and loved them unreservedly, knowing that one of his supposedly closest friends, Judas, was such a hypocrite that he would arrange Jesus’ murder. The presence of the ultimate hypocrite in the midst of that inner circle has not prevented millions of people throughout the ages from becoming devoted Christians. Moreover, the leading disciple – Peter – was also a hypocrite. He vowed he would remain true to Jesus no matter what, and within hours he swore he didn’t know Jesus. Years later the apostle Paul accused Peter to his face of further hypocrisy. (Galatians 2:11-14) But Paul and other Christians were made of stronger stuff than to try using the failings of key Christians as an excuse for wavering in their own devotion to Christ. They know that to forgive is to act like Jesus. If you let a hypocrite stand between you and God, observed someone, guess who is closer to God! Yet another response: The embarrassing thing about denouncing hypocrisy is that it is equally hypocritical to condemn those who do not follow the teachings of Christ if you do not follow the teachings of Christ yourself. And one of his most fundamental teachings is that we should take our critical eyes off the sin of others and concentrate on our own chronic need for Jesus’ forgiveness. (Matthew 7:1-5; Luke 6:37; 18:11-14) Christian superstars are after money Although it is disturbingly easy to misjudge people’s motives, my guess is that many people become doctors for the money. If I were sick, however, I wouldn’t risk death just to make a point! A different view: Deny, if you must, thousands of martyrs throughout history so unselfishly devout that they gave up everything for Christ, even their last drop of blood. Were everyone a fraud, you would still have no excuse for not becoming the Christian you expect others to be. You know you are not accountable before God for the actions of others. You are accountable, however, for your own actions – and especially for your response to Christ’s offer to die in your place. I’m answerable to no one There is no such monstrosity as a self-made person. We did not decide to be born and we can’t even design our offspring’s fingerprints. The One who made everything owns everything. Every molecule in your body and everything you have stuffed in your pockets – everything you have ever used and abused – belongs to God. And to him you must give account. And judgment will be on his terms, not ours. With accountability comes dignity. To treat us as not responsible for our actions would be to treat us as sub-human.

Emotional Pain * Grief * Loss * Tragedy * Inner Pain * Death * Sorrow Real Christians Grieve When Bereavement Counselling Meets the Bible Help, Comfort and Healing Did Jesus really say, “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:4)? Without ever intending to, vast numbers of caring, Bible-loving Christians have slipped from the Bible’s view of grief. They suppose they should be more lion-hearted than David the giant-killer, the man after God’s own heart who, upon finding Ziklag burned and his family taken captive, wept aloud until there was no strength left in him, before heroically seizing back from the enemy everything that had been stolen (1 Samuel 30:3-19). There are Christians who think they should be less human than Jesus, who often wept, and more spiritual than the Spirit-filled early church. See how the power-packed early church reacted to the death of its first martyr: Acts 8:2 Devout men buried Stephen, and lamented greatly over him. In contrast to the New Testament’s directive to “Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15), many well-meaning Christians think the truly Christian thing to do is to gently chide mourning Christians for not rejoicing. The great apostle Paul, whose references to joy and rejoicing have inspired modern day super saints to think it spiritual to act like robots, spoke often of the tears he shed in his labors for the Lord (Scriptures). What an embarrassment he is to those of us who sincerely think we are following his lead by never showing sorrow. The other major source of inspiration is for praisers, of course, the Psalms that are filled with praise and rejoicing but also filled with strong laments and complaints (e.g. Psalms 6; 10; 12, 13; 38; 51; 55; 60; 70; 74; 79; 80; 83; 88; 123; 137). The Bible has only one hymn book, yet even many of the psalms that end in praise only get there after working their way through grief. Although each completed psalm can be read quickly, it summarizes a real-life emotional journey that surely took considerably longer. To suppress grief is suppressing not just part of our humanity but a part of us that is in the image of God. Rocks and robots don’t cry. Jesus did. The one in whom “all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9) wept – often. Isaiah 53:3 He was . . . a man of suffering . . . Matthew 26:37-38 . . . and began to be sorrowful and severely troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. . . .” Luke 19:41 When he came near, he saw the city and wept over it John 11:33-36 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping who came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. The Jews therefore said, “See how much affection he had for him!” Hebrews 5:7 He, in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and petitions with strong crying and tears . . . Christ came to show us the heart of the Father, but even before then, God revealed himself as one who grieves. Genesis 6:6 The Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. 2 Samuel 24:16 When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented of the disaster, and said to the angel who destroyed the people, “It is enough. Now withdraw your hand.” The Lord’s angel was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Isaiah 63:10 But they rebelled, and grieved his holy Spirit. . . . Before the Son of God shed tears, the Almighty’s highest revelation of himself was through the prophets and by them he revealed himself over and over as being emotional. 1 Samuel 15:35 Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death; for Samuel mourned for Saul: and the Lord grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel. We repeatedly find this same convergence of God’s emotions with those of his prophets. Here’s a few examples: Isaiah 16:9, 11, 13 Therefore I will weep . . . I will water you with my tears . . . Therefore my heart sounds like a harp for Moab, and my inward parts for Kir Heres. . . . This is the word that the Lord spoke concerning Moab in time past. Isaiah 22:4 Therefore I said, “Look away from me. I will weep bitterly. . . .” Jeremiah 8:21 For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt: I mourn; dismay has taken hold on me. Jeremiah 9:1 Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a spring of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Jeremiah 9:10 For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the pastures of the wilderness a lamentation . . . Jeremiah 13:17 But if you will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret for your pride; and my eye shall weep bitterly, and run down with tears, because the Lord’s flock is taken captive. Jeremiah 48:30-32 I know his wrath, says the Lord, that it is nothing; his boastings have worked nothing. Therefore will I wail for Moab; yes, I will cry out for all Moab: for the men of Kir Heres shall they mourn. With more than the weeping of Jazer will I weep for you, vine of Sibmah . . . There are those who pride themselves in a form of Christianity devoid of emotion. We truly must love the Lord with our mind and walk by faith, not feelings. However, the greatest commandment is to love God with all our mind and our emotions (heart/soul). Then there are Christians who think themselves more biblical by allowing emotions, but it seems they unconsciously go through their Bibles with a black pen, blocking out the vast number of references to displaying “negative” emotions. The only emotion they allow is joy. Praise and rejoicing are, of course, highly biblical, essential ingredients in emotional healing, but the same is true for expressing grief. The Bible’s full teaching is that bereaved Christians should grieve, but not as those who have no hope. 1 Thessalonians 4:13 But we don’t want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, so that you don’t grieve like the rest, who have no hope. Hope lessens grief, but it does not eliminate it. Here’s how the elders – not the less spiritual ones, but the elders – of the Ephesian church reacted when Paul left them: Acts 20:37-38 They all wept a lot . . . because of the word which he had spoken, that they should see his face no more. . . . It is both natural and biblical to grieve the departure of loved ones. The reality is that no matter how happy those who have gone are, and how much they gain by the move, we suffer the loss, and to try to live in denial of this reality is not heroic but caving in to social or religious pressure that is not of God. Ironically, those who refuse to mourn often take much longer to heal, just as someone ignoring a physical wound, acting as if it had never happened, is likely to end up with an infected wound that takes much longer to heal. Those who refuse to grieve – refuse to admit to themselves the extent of their loss and to express that loss – can end up hobbling through life without ever healing. To be authentic Christians is to display the full gamut of God-given emotions. Passionately in love with their Lord, Paul and the other apostles longed to share in the sufferings of Christ. Since no one loves as deeply as God does, no one grieves as deeply as God as he contemplates this hurting world and lost humanity who curse and reject the God who longs to save them. To experience heart-ripping grief is to enter into a unique understanding of the heart of God. We shrink from tears like a cat from water, but as the old Arab proverb observes, “All sunshine doth a desert make.” In the words of Scripture, there is “a time to mourn” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). Life has its seasons and the dark rainy days that no one wants are essential for fruitfulness. God will turn your “mourning into dancing” (Psalms 30:11) but for that to happen you must mourn. There is much evidence that those who confront their inner pain head-on, heal quickest. Inner pain will gradually retreat when we face it, but it will keep haunting us if we run from it. To live in denial grieves the Spirit of truth. The healing Lord is a God of truth and he ministers in an environment of truth. Have you noticed in the gospels how, before healing them, Jesus often asked sick people what they wanted? As much as Jesus wanted to heal them, their healing hinged on them admitting that they were sick and needed healing. Had they said, “I’m fine,” they would have missed their healing. This principle applies to emotional healing as well as physical healing. Louise wrote to me saying how she had delayed her healing for so many years by suppressing inner pain rather than facing it and grieving it. I asked this creative woman if she could write a poem about this topic and here is her response: “He who sows in tears, will reap with a joyful cry” I’ve tried to trust in the God of truth While clinging to the lies of youth I’ve tried to learn the truth myself And put his grace upon the shelf I’ve listened to those who madly say “Do not cry, but to him pray” But for the baptism giving life The water of tears of grieving strife Are necessary. He collects and keeps Every tear an agonized sad soul weeps To pour out, melting pillar of salt Resurrection being the final result And tenderly, as I seek rightly Humbly in my difficulty He’ll touch and bring me joy and peace And promise life that will not cease. I long for us not to add to people’s burdens by implying that a stiff upper lip is a spiritual duty, or is even helpful. I would be horrified, however, if anyone responded to this webpage by going to the other extreme of looking down on those who find themselves too inhibited to openly grieve. Our emotional response to crises is largely concreted into us during our formative years. Freeing ourselves up in later years is exceedingly difficult and takes more than mere willpower. Those who clam up emotionally suffer enough without anyone compounding it by being critical of their dilemma. Particularly men from some cultural backgrounds, such as Anglo-Saxon, often feel duty-bound to go to emotionally unhealthy extremes in suppressing their feelings – with the possible exception of anger – when in physical or emotional distress. For every human, our sexual identity is an enormous part of who we are. From birth to death we are stuck with our gender and to feel that we have failed to live up what is expected of our gender is one of the most devastating things we can suffer. Moreover, I’ve discovered that most of us Christians have a subconscious bias toward claiming biblical justification for our hang-ups. Like so many men, I grew up believing that a man shedding a tear is at least as shamefully abnormal as a woman growing a beard. Real men never cry. On the other hand, I believed Jesus was the perfect man. Eventually one of those beliefs had to go. Nevertheless, the power of one’s formative years is such that despite what my mind might tell me, it is hard to feel inwardly convinced. Grieving, however, does not necessarily mean crying. It involves acknowledging to oneself the magnitude of one’s loss. Unfortunately, the pressure many men feel never to cry prevents them from even thinking about their loss, lest the mere thought produce tears. At first guess, one would suppose that the shared grief over the death of a child would bring a husband and wife closer together. Sadly, the opposite usually applies. A major reason for this is that it is normal for people to react to grief in very different ways. Some, for instance, will try to offload pain by talking incessantly about it, whereas others feel they can cope only by never mentioning it. Put a representative from each group together in marriage and one partner will see the other as a continual depressive influence, like a dead weight on someone barely able to keep afloat, while the other partner thinks he/she is married to someone oppressively cold and distant. The tragedy is that each responds to emotional pain in a way that inflames the other’s pain. This calls for great love, understanding and perseverance. Keep pouring out your heart to God, however, and the trial will be shortened. Grief is a part of the victorious Christian life. It is a place we visit but we don’t have to live there. It is not biblical to live in denial or try to sidestep grief, but neither is it biblical to sidestep praise, nor to make grief our home, rather than just a place we pass through. No matter how bad things have been, our loving Lord has good planned for us and wants us to live in hope. For encouragement, see Finding Hope When There is No Hope . For insight into just how common the shedding of tears is in the Bible, I invite you to glance at the Scriptures below. To see all these Scriptures together is quite impacting. Scriptures Specifically Mentioning Men Crying Genesis 27:38 . . . Esau lifted up his voice, and wept. Genesis 29:11 Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept. Genesis 33:4 Esau ran to meet him, embraced him, fell on his neck, kissed him, and they wept. Genesis 37:35 All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. He said, “For I will go down to Sheol to my son mourning.” His father wept for him. Genesis 42:24 He turned himself away from them, and wept. . . . Genesis 43:30 Joseph hurried, for his heart yearned over his brother; and he sought a place to weep. He entered into his room, and wept there. Genesis 45:2 He wept aloud. The Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard. Genesis 45:14 He fell on his brother Benjamin’s neck, and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. Genesis 45:15 He kissed all his brothers, and wept on them. . . . Genesis 46:29 Joseph . . . presented himself to him, and fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. Genesis 50:1 Joseph fell on his father’s face, wept on him, and kissed him. Genesis 50:17 . . . Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 1 Samuel 20:41 . . . David . . . fell on his face to the ground, and bowed himself three times. They kissed one another, and wept one with another, and David wept the most. 1 Samuel 24:16 . . . Saul said, “Is that your voice, my son David?” Saul lifted up his voice, and wept. 1 Samuel 30:4 Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voice and wept until they had no more power to weep. 2 Samuel 1:12 They mourned, wept, and fasted until evening, for Saul, and for Jonathan his son, and for the people of the Lord, and for the house of Israel; because they had fallen by the sword. 2 Samuel 3:16 Her husband went with her, weeping as he went, and followed her to Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, “Go! Return!” and he returned. 2 Samuel 3:32 . . . the king lifted up his voice, and wept at Abner’s grave; and all the people wept. 2 Samuel 12:21 Then his servants said to him, “What is this that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive, but when the child was dead, you rose up and ate bread.” 2 Samuel 12:22 He said, “While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who knows whether the Lord will not be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ 2 Samuel 13:36 As soon as he had finished speaking, behold, the king’s sons came, and lifted up their voice, and wept. The king also and all his servants wept bitterly. 2 Samuel 15:30 David went up by the ascent of the Mount of Olives, and wept as he went up; and he had his head covered, and went barefoot: and all the people who were with him each covered his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up. 2 Samuel 18:33 The king was much moved, and went up to the room over the gate, and wept. As he went, he said, “My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! I wish I had died for you, Absalom, my son, my son!” 2 Samuel 19:1 Joab was told, “Behold, the king weeps and mourns for Absalom.” 2 Kings 8:11 . . . Then the man of God wept. 2 Kings 8:12 Hazael said, “Why do you weep, my lord?” . . . 2 Kings 13:14 Now Elisha became sick with the illness of which he died; and Joash the king of Israel came down to him, and wept over him . . . 2 Kings 20:3 . . . And Hezekiah wept bitterly. 2 Kings 20:5 . . .tell Hezekiah the prince of my people, ‘The Lord, the God of David your father, says, “I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. . . . 2 Kings 22:19 because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before the Lord, when you heard what I spoke against this place, and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and have torn your clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard you,’ says the Lord. 2 Chronicles 34:27 because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before God, when you heard his words against this place, and against its inhabitants, and have humbled yourself before me, and have torn your clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard you,” says the Lord. Ezra 3:12-13 But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ households, the old men who had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice. Many also shouted aloud for joy so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people; for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard far away. Ezra 10:1 Now while Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before God’s house, there was gathered together to him out of Israel a very great assembly of men and women and children; for the people wept very bitterly. Nehemiah 1:4 When I heard these words, I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days . . . Esther 4:1 . . . Mordecai tore his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the middle of the city, and wailed loudly and a bitterly. Job 2:12 When they lifted up their eyes from a distance, and didn’t recognize him, they raised their voices, and wept; and they each tore his robe, and sprinkled dust on their heads toward the sky. Job 16:16 My face is red with weeping. Deep darkness is on my eyelids. Job 16:20 My friends scoff at me. My eyes pour out tears to God Job 30:25 Didn’t I weep for him who was in trouble? Wasn’t my soul grieved for the needy? Psalms 6:6 I am weary with my groaning. Every night I flood my bed. I drench my couch with my tears. Psalms 6:8 Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping. Psalms 30:11 You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy (NIV) Psalms 39:12 Hear my prayer, Lord, and give ear to my cry. Don’t be silent at my tears. . . . Psalms 42:3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?” Psalms 69:10 When I wept and I fasted, that was to my reproach. Psalms 102:9 For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mixed my drink with tears Psalms 119:136 Streams of tears run down my eyes, because they don’t observe your law. Isaiah 16:9 Therefore I will weep, with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah. I will water you with my tears . . . Isaiah 22:4 . . . Look away from me. I will weep bitterly. . . . Isaiah 33:7 Behold, their valiant ones cry outside; the ambassadors of peace weep bitterly. Isaiah 38:3 . . . Hezekiah wept bitterly. Isaiah 38:5 Go, and tell Hezekiah, ‘The Lord says, the God of David your father, “I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life. Jeremiah 25:36 A voice of the cry of the shepherds, and the wailing of the principal of the flock! for the Lord lays waste their pasture. Jeremiah 41:6 Ishmael the son of Nethaniah went out from Mizpah to meet them, weeping all along as he went . . . Jeremiah 48:31-32 Therefore I will wail for Moab; yes, I will cry out for all Moab: for the men of Kir Heres shall they mourn. With more than the weeping of Jazer will I weep for you . . . Lamentations 2:11 My eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled; My liver is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people . . . Lamentations 3:48-49 My eye runs down with streams of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people. My eye pours down, and doesn’t cease, without any intermission Hosea 12:4 . . . he wept, and made supplication to him. . . . Micah 1:8 For this I will lament and wail; I will go stripped and naked; I will howl like the jackals, and moan like the daughters of owls. Zechariah 11:3 A voice of the wailing of the shepherds! . . . Malachi 2:13 This again you do: you cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with sighing . . . Matthew 26:75 Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” He went out and wept bitterly. Mark 14:72 The rooster crowed the second time. Peter remembered the word, how that Jesus said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” When he thought about that, he wept. Luke 19:41 When he came near, he saw the city and wept over it Luke 22:62 He went out, and wept bitterly. John 11:35 Jesus wept. Acts 20:19 serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears, and with trials which happened to me by the plots of the Jews Acts 20:31 Therefore watch, remembering that for a period of three years I didn’t cease to admonish everyone night and day with tears. Acts 20:37 They all wept a lot, and fell on Paul’s neck and kissed him Acts 21:13 Then Paul answered, “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” 2 Corinthians 2:4 For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears . . . Philippians 3:18 For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, as the enemies of the cross of Christ 2 Timothy 1:4 longing to see you, remembering your tears, that I may be filled with joy Hebrews 5:7 He, in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and petitions with strong crying and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and having been heard for his godly fear Hebrews 12:17 . . . he found no place for a change of mind though he sought it diligently with tears. Revelation 5:4 And I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open the book, or to look in it. Revelation 5:5 One of the elders said to me, “Don’t weep. Behold, the Lion who is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome; he who opens the book and its seven seals.” If you have suffered the loss of an infant through abortion, miscarriage or early death, I suggest reading Is My Baby in Heaven? For further help and comfort with your grief, read Basking In Infinite Love and then keep following the first link at the end of each article.

Bear Each Other’s Burdens   A First Aid Course For Emotions   *   Christ-Centered   *   Down to Earth *   Important   On-line counseling manual     This is a Part 2 of a series beginning at “Everyone’s Guide to Basic Counseling ”   Caution   We need a reverent awareness of how vulnerable we are to becoming a tool of the devil whenever someone close to us is hurting.   Satan’s first act after he first gained influence over a human was to use her to adversely influence Adam, the person closest to her. That has been the devil’s top strategy ever since. He did it with Job, first using Job’s wife, and then Job’s friends for his evil purposes. He did it with Jesus, using Peter so effectively that Jesus had to tell Peter, “Get behind me Satan.” Still later, the devil got at Jesus through Judas, another close friend of Jesus.   Any person who is hurting is obviously under spiritual attack. That’s not so unusual. We all have certain times when we are particularly under attack. But note the implications: evil powers are already targeting the hurting person and the mere fact that you are nearby, puts you high on their list of potential accomplices as they seek to intensify their attack on that person. In such circumstances you must therefore be alert to the possibility of unwittingly being used by evil powers, as Peter was. Of course, there is no place for superstitious fear. To end up hurting people by avoiding them would also be falling into Satan’s trap. When someone is hurting it is a time to keep looking to God for direction, like Jesus; not a time to blurt out the first thing that comes into our head, like Peter.   Off the Soapbox   Most of us have a natural tendency to lapse into a preaching or lecturing mode when trying to help a hurting friend. By so doing, however, we give the impression of elevating ourselves from the position of warm-hearted friend to that of cold superior. People crave love and understanding, not sermons.   Fellow Christians rarely need to be treated like novices or backsliders. They often simply need to be released from the oppression of discouragement and accusations that squash the work of God in their lives. Once this overburden is removed you will find underneath a beautiful work of God already there and ready to flourish. That’s why encouragement is of such great value. It lifts people. In contrast, one-on-one preaching tends to weigh people down, adding to their feelings of inadequacy and aloneness.   Preaching, of course, is perfectly acceptable when addressing a body of people. It’s when talking with an individual that it becomes an inappropriate mode of address.   What greatly magnifies the offense of advice giving or preaching at a person is that our priceless gems rarely end up being anything the person does not already know. Offering pat answers is particularly objectionable. It assumes people are silly enough not to have thought of the obvious. People have quite enough problems without having to cope with us implying they have the intelligence of a green tomato. Moreover, our superficial solution is probably something they have already tried and they are still hurting under the bitter disappointment of that hoped-for quick fix not working. To rake it up again in an unsympathetic way would be doubly hurtful.   To be Christlike we should get off our soapbox, open it, take out the soap and wash our brother’s feet.   The margin for error   We engage in conversation so frequently that we rarely consider that personal conversation is more delicate than delivering a sermon. Letting Big-mouth Harry address an entire congregation is safer than letting him speak in private with Suzie Tenderheart. Addressing a crowd allows considerable scope for error. What is said might not apply to Suzie’s situation or it might be something so obvious to her that implying she is ignorant of it would insult her. No problem. Chances are Suzie will simply assume the remark was meant for someone else. This margin for error, however, vanishes when the audience shrinks to one.   With people brimming with joy and confidence, who feel loved and accepted by nearly everyone, we could safely say almost anything without devastating them. It is very different, however, with a person on the other end of the scale. With someone reeling under life’s blows, the safety margin evaporates. It becomes essential to avoid saying anything that could possibly be interpreted as critical, or a put down. Avoid like a ticking bomb giving the slightest hint that the person might be guilty of sin, or have a deficiency is his/her spiritual walk.   Whenever a vulnerable person feels that you are aiming a piece of advice specifically at him/her, the situation is as perilous as an amateur knife thrower trying to land knives as close as he can to the bodies of nervous volunteers, while hoping not to wound them. If we  must  give advice, we need to work hard at increasing the safety margin by reducing the person’s perception that our advice is targeted at them.   I am most definitely not talking about being devious. It is essential that we be genuine. I’m referring to being humble enough to doubt our ability either to perfectly size up a person’s situation or to infallibly hear from God.   When I am providing E-mail support I often paste into the E-mail a fairly long slab from my writings. It is filled with encouragement (an important way of increasing the safety margin). To further reduce the possibility of inadvertently inflicting pain, I explain that although the quote doesn’t specifically address their situation, they might possibly find something helpful in it. I use a fairly long quote covering several different things. That makes it less pointed. Because there is so much encouragement in it, almost certainly some of it will bless them and I leave it to the Holy Spirit and to them to determine which other parts are applicable to them. You might use a similar approach by introducing to someone a book or a tape, saying (if that is true) that it blessed you and you wondered if they might enjoy it, too. If it deals only with one subject, however, that would make it more targeted and so the safety margin narrows.   If you must give advice, don’t  tell  someone. That approach is so dangerous that the tiniest error in delivery or content could wound the person. At most, ask or suggest or encourage the person in a particular direction. Say something like “I guess you’ve already considered . . . ?” or, “I don’t know if it’s applicable to you but . . .” Remember, however, that the important thing is not to gain a good delivery technique but a good attitude. You phrase things that way because you genuinely believe they are intelligent and/or spiritual enough to have already considered that option and you genuinely believe you don’t have infallible insight into a person’s situation.   A factor seriously affecting the safety margin is the extent of a person’s emotional attachment to you. If someone sees you as an insignificant stranger and couldn’t care less what you think about him/her, you could safely say things that a treasured friend could never get away with. With a person whose emotional well-being hinges on your opinion of him/her, the slightest slip could be disastrous. The bigger the place someone has given you in his/her heart, the less you can safely say about sensitive issues, and the more critical it is that you carefully listen and be supportive. This in no way implies a diminished role in helping people you are emotionally involved with, it simply means you need to lean more heavily than ever upon means other than giving advice.   Will it help or harm?   So you have some wise advise? How do you know whether sharing it will help or harm? What makes this a particularly tough question is that giving advice is an ego boost, and pride clouds our thinking. The time when a friend is in need, is the time when one wrong word can wound like a bullet and when evil powers are on the prowl for Christian accomplices. We need our spiritual discernment to be at its peak. It is not a good time to risk being blinded by the pride that advice giving tends to produce.   The mere fact that what we share is truth, is no excuse for sharing it. Job’s friends ended up desperately needing God’s forgiveness ( Job 42:7-8 ) despite there being truth in much of what they said. (For example, 1 Corinthians 3:19 quotes from one of them – Job 5:13 – as authoritative Scriptural truth). The main problem was that the truth they recited did not apply to Job. Satan even used scriptural truth in his evil ploy to spiritually harm the Son of God (Matthew 4:5-6).   It is not even sufficient to have good motives. Tragically, Job’s friends thought they were helping Job and exalting God. Convinced they were serving God, they were actually the devil’s pawns. They were sure they were honoring God and instead they were defaming God’s friend.   A distinguishing mark of wisdom that is truly of God is that it is not argumentative. It does not steamroller those who disagree, insisting on being heard or getting its own way. It is not forceful or harsh, it is “peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy . . .” ( James 3:17 ).     “Make every effort to live in peace with all men . . .,” (Hebrews 12:14, Romans 12:18 is similar). In practical terms, I suggest this means agree as much as possible with people, and where you disagree, let it show as little as possible. (And of course by “possible” I mean to the extent that it has divine approval.)   The hidden enemy   An enormous obstacle to effective counseling is the counselor’s own unconscious motives.   A Christian approached me for advice about his emotional involvement with a non-Christian woman. As he detailed the situation a gentle anger began pulsing through my veins over the disrespectful way I perceived he was treating God and his wife.   Scripture reveals that the mere fact that I am human means there is a good chance I am self-deceived about my true motives. Could something ugly be lurking beneath my consciousness, goading me to be unjustifiably harsh towards this man? I desperately needed God in his mercy to show me. No matter how pure my feelings seemed, they could be ungodly. Counseling while blinded by self-righteousness is as foolhardy as attempting surgery while blindfolded. The scary thing is that people afflicted by self-righteousness are rarely aware of it. I immediately sought time out for prayer and asked for others to pray as well. Before attending to a possible speck in my brother’s eye, I must humbly seek Jesus for major surgery on my own eyes.   For my second line of defense I seized Scripture’s recommendation about having several advisors or counselors (Proverbs 11:14; 15:22; 24:6). If this man were somehow touching a raw nerve deep inside of me, making my reaction less godly than I imagined, there must be other Christians free from my particular weaknesses. While keeping his identity secret, I sought input from mature Christians with totally different backgrounds from me. One was a divorced woman. If I had a gender bias, her view should counter it. Could the fact that I’ve never married make me too idealistic? Or could I be jealous of this man’s relationships? Who would have the courage to recognize such humiliating weaknesses? To counter these seemingly remote but frightening possibilities I sought a man who has enjoyed a long and happy marriage.   It turned out that the three of us were as one in our interpretation of this man’s needs. Nevertheless, being right gives no one license to slacken in love, kindness, gentleness or wisdom. I spent still more hours cooling my emotions and prayerfully working on how to convey my concerns to this man in the most uplifting manner possible.   A better way   Showing  people what to do is usually far superior to  telling  them what do. Consider this example:   There is nothing as potent as faith and praise in empowering a person to burst through oppression. And yet finding someone weighed down by a trial and merely telling them to have faith and to praise God can make us as guilty as those to whom Jesus said, “. . . woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them (Luke 11:46).” Our words can be technically correct and yet end up being oppressive burdens.   Rather than  tell  people, stoop down, get below them and lift them. If you feel someone needs to exercise more faith and praise, try things like the following.   Pray aloud with them, and in your prayer lead by example, finding things to thank and praise God for in the person’s circumstances and declare things before God in faith. Do this gently, sensitively and gradually. It might have to be spread over several visits. If you move too fast and leave the person behind, your efforts will be wasted.   Fully acknowledge just how hard it can be to have faith and to praise God in the midst of a trial. Perhaps share with the person some of your defeats in this area.     Whenever the person takes the smallest step in the right direction, commend and encourage them. Without being patronizing, cheer them on.   When the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith, he spoke about the mighty things that can be accomplished by tiny mustard seed sized faith. That’s a great faith-builder because even I am capable of tiny faith. Use a similar approach. Help people realize that sufficient faith is not solely for some supersaint but is fully within their grasp.     Dangerously inadequate views of suffering   We have seen that feeling obligated to give advice causes some of us to flee because we are unsure of what to say. If we don’t run but still feel pressured to advise, we usually end up like Job’s friends saying things that sound godly but not what God would say to the person. We imagine we are being a great help but our good intentions fail to bring comfort and enlightenment.   Sadly, there are other Christians, who neither flee, nor try to help, but feel the need to attack people with problems. A common reason for losing patience with Christians who have problems is that any suffering or battle threatens to expose the deficiencies in our grasp of Christianity. It’s much easier to conclude that anyone having a hard time is obviously an inferior Christian, than to face the fact that we, too, might one day have to face such a trial.   Poor Job suffered horrifically to bring to us the truth that the most godly of people can suffer trials so awful that they wish they had never been born. His friends relentlessly expounded their theory that godly people don’t have such trials. With their tongues, Job’s friends inflicted pain as skillfully as the soldiers lashing Jesus’ back, while imagining themselves as holy as the Pharisees thought themselves when they sentenced their Savior to death. Once Job’s ordeal was carefully preserved in Scripture, along with God’s judgment of his friends’ advice ( Job 42:7-8 ), one would have expected the death of the theory among Bible believers that godliness is the ticket to earthly bliss. And yet, amazingly, we still find Christians queuing up for the shame of falling down the same holes as Job’s friends who tormented the righteous. I can only assume from this that many Christians must relegate to the trash heap the riches in the book of Job. And yet almost everywhere you look in Scripture, the same truth is taught.   Plunge into the Psalms. The book that most expresses joy and praise devotes enormous space to tears and pain, disappointment, fear, frustration and anger.   Even Christ was no stranger to tears and suffering. Or are we more spiritual than our Lord? “Since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude . . . (1 Peter 4:1).” Or do we dump this Scripture as well?   The book of proverbs warns that unless we match a hurting person’s mood, stooping to his/her emotional level, a well-meaning attempt to cheer can end up as cruel as stealing someone’s coat in the middle of winter ( Proverbs 25:20 ). Instead of heeding Paul’s instruction to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15, KJV), in modern Christianity we sometimes almost feel the need to chastise those who weep, lecturing them for being so “unchristian” as to feel pain. Amazingly, the man inspired of God to urge us to weep was the very man whose words we have so distorted as to imagine we are letting the side down if we shed tears or suffer. If we were so foolish as to jettison the Old Testament, and even Christ himself, as being too emotional to reflect true godliness, surely we cannot ignore Paul, the one who gave us such Scriptures as “Be joyful always  . . .  give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16,18). “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4). See  A time to weep .   A valued friend, John Jollie, made a profound comment about the early church, as divinely portrayed in Scripture. Adversity authenticated their witness, he observed, as much as their miracles did. It also did much to temper and shape their lives.   If, instead of treasuring only a few remnants of Scripture, we can bring into focus the full panorama of God’s view of emotions and trials, we would be much better equipped to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2, NKJV).   Understanding   When her husband unexpectedly dropped dead in front of her, nearly forty years of marriage instantly terminated. At church the next Sunday, friends gathered around to comfort her. She remembers nothing of what was said except for one remark: “I know how you feel.”   “I knew she meant well,” says the widow, “but what a ridiculous, incongruous thing to say. Her husband was standing there beside her, happy and healthy!”   That remark hurt so much that it is still vividly recalled fifteen years later. To this day, however, the woman who had uttered those well-intentioned words remains completely unaware that they had stabbed her friend’s heart like a sword.   It’s hard to resist saying “I understand” to anyone in distress. We, too, have suffered and we’ve been blessed with imagination. And on the surface it would seem that those words should be a great source of comfort. And yet those words end up annoying, even hurting, because it is obvious to grieving people that we have not had an identical experience. It increases their feeling of aloneness when we fail to see what to them are unique aspects of their ordeal.   Shortly after writing the above, I gained new insight into its importance. I am a 46 year old virgin. Since my early teens I have longed for marriage more than any earthly thing. Although over the years my ability to cope has greatly improved, I was recently under such torment over being single that I was beginning to wonder whether it could affect my sanity. I asked for a friend’s prayers. He understood, he said, because although he has had a long and satisfying marriage, over recent times he has had to forgo sexual relations due to his wife’s illness. That hurt. I felt insulted that he should think that my only burden was sexual deprivation. Apparently I was mistaken about the value of companionship.  He understood?  He obviously knew nothing about coping with feelings of shame and satanic accusations that never having married proves one is a freak and unloved and unwanted. He knew nothing about the bleak prospect of dying alone and childless. He knew nothing about aching year, in and year out, for a mere hug. And then there was my dependence upon my aging mother to feed and take care of me that was so humiliating and complex that I regularly worried about how I could successfully resist the temptation to kill myself when she died. My friend clearly had no conception of how eagerly I would have swapped trials with him. I had assumed he could guess. Those chilling words “I understand” shattered my illusion that most people can understand what I suffer. His kindly attempt at comfort proved I am less understood and more alone in my agony than I dared imagine. The wiser approach would have been for him to briefly mention being celibate and move on, leaving it to me to draw my own conclusion as to whether that implies he has any insight into my anguish.   Of course, it is not enough merely to avoid  saying  that we understand. What is critical is avoiding the  presumption  that we understand, especially after making only a token effort to do so.   Hastily claiming to understand has yet another unintended down side. It sends the message, “I’m not interested in hearing about your situation and feelings. I already know it all.” What makes this such a loss is that for hurting people, verbalizing their feelings is usually a vital part of the healing process.   On the other extreme, we shouldn’t be too free in broadcasting our lack of understanding, because that, too, adds to a person’s feeling of isolation. Rather than jumping to conclusions or resorting to hallow words, show your eagerness to work towards genuine understanding by careful listening, your lack of condemnation and by the genuine pain in your voice and facial expression.   It is most powerful for people to know that you have tasted their pain because of the depth and breadth of your own sufferings. If you have been blessed with such trials, however, don’t spend too long describing them. Make it obvious that it is their experience, not yours, that presently most moves you. And, of course, leave it to them to decide how similar your trial is to theirs.   A lack of personal suffering does much to disqualify us from ministry. Even though by divine knowledge the Son of God could intellectually know everything in infinite detail, he had to personally experience suffering like ours before he qualified to minister to us.   We should always be humbled by the fact that although we might imagine we have suffered as much or more than another person, it remains a mere guess. In variety and intensity, each of us has a unique set of fears. Dreams, expectations, perceptions, needs, backgrounds, all differ. Only Jesus has unlimited knowledge, and we need to keep pointing people to him.

In Tune With God The Quest for Music Miracles Introduction I’ve prepared a banquet. Some dishes – especially the Appendix – have plenty of meat. Others are much lighter. Some have sugar. Chapters differ so much that even the most finical of us should be satisfied. Feel free to select that balance that most satisfies you. This feast is for everyone. Whilst those directly involved in the music ministry comprise my target audience, I believe that everyone who loves God, irrespective of musical interest or ability, will find something of worth within these pages. Throughout the book, I have broken the bounds of normal language to use the term musician as a compact way of referring to anyone whose service to God incorporates the use of music, whether as a composer, lyricist, singer, instrumentalist, conductor, creative ministries’ director or worship leader. In some Scripture quotes, words appear in capitals (and occasionally italics) to draw attention to pertinent aspects of the verse. It in no way reflects the structure of the underlying Greek or Hebrew. Music’s fashion parade Though music has great power to unify, it is so subject to differing tastes that, sadly, there is probably no type of music I could mention that some readers would not regard as inferior. I’m the jittery dude standing in the cross-fire. Illustrations add power and interest, but when they wander far beyond your favorite music style I can only beg your mercy, asking that you look below the surface to see that the point of the illustration applies to your type of music. Accessibility to information has forced far more references to older music than I would have preferred. Mention of specific people or musical styles does not imply my endorsement, but Christian musicians face enough hostility outside the church without turning against each other. I long to bandage wounds, not make new ones. When I refer to individuals, my prayer is not that you be inspired by the style of their music, but by the Lord of their music. Because I cover so many topics and I long to serve Christians of all persuasions, you might find me arguing for something that you have always unquestioningly accepted without seriously considering how spiritual and biblical it is. Feel free, if you wish, to slip to other parts that you feel more needful or fascinating, but even as you do, you will know that if ever you meet someone who has doubts about that matter, you now have a resource to help them and reassure yourself. A preposterous goal and how to achieve it I have sought to sculpt a book that will grip and thrill readers who have no interest in music, and yet a book that, especially in the notes and scripture references, is so crammed with information that it will be treasured as a valuable resource book by Christians devoted to music. My prayer flies much higher, however. If your ministry involves music, my goal is that your ministry will be more inspired by God and more blessed by Him than anything you have so far experienced. Passive reading of anything I write is unlikely to achieve such a preposterous goal. For the miracles I have cited, your prayers must empower this book. I beg you to pray right now – and regularly as you proceed through the book – that you will soar beyond my words into the presence of Almighty God and that He will open to you new realms, transforming both you and your ministry for His glory. Setting the scene ‘How I long to glorify God through music!’ In his fervent cry was a plea for help. ‘If only my music were fully empowered by God. Sure, the Lord has used me, but the results are hardly indicative of God’s infinite love and power. ‘I’ve feared the corrupting power of worldly music. I’ve preached against it. I’ve even destroyed albums. Yet the world doesn’t fear my music. Something must be wrong.’ Someone of this intensity needed no reminding about the obvious essentials of practice and prayer. So I tried something deeper. ‘Do you see your music in its true perspective?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Do you know why music exists? ‘How does human music fit into God’s entire creative programmer? ‘Where is God taking music? Silence spoke loudly. These basic questions seem so unanswerable that few of us even ask them. Yet would our Lord, the Light of the world leave us in the dark? Answers could give us fresh inspiration and new direction in the challenging task of magnifying God through music. They could boost our faith concerning God’s interest in our chords and quavers, propelling us into a new realm of Spirit-empowered music. Let’s lift our eyes from the music sheets of present-day earth and, Bible in hand, scan the horizons of time and space in search of answers. Our search will take us to the very limits of divine revelation. But although we might plot tentative ventures into the unknown, we will always quickly return to the reliable landmarks of Scriptural truth. At first, our exploration will seem to produce little fruit, but as we proceed, we will pick up momentum, and apparent trivia will gain fresh significance. Don’t worry if it begins to seem up in the clouds; we’ll come back to earth with a thud in later chapters! Returning with a broader vision, we will face head-on the thorny issues involved in musically serving the Lord today on this needy planet. BIBLIOGRAPHY In some formats, I can carefully document every time I have drawn upon a source and even provide the exact pages numbers without distracting the reader. In other formats, however, I feel average readers are best served by the removal of this information. So if there is something I say that prompts your curiosity about my source, simply go to that paragraph in the eBook. Grantley Morris The entire book can be downloaded in Microsoft Word format. Chapters vary enormously in style and subject matter and can be read individually. Reading the chapters in the order they appear, however, will maximise the impact. This book is also available as an Audio Book Download as a Word Document: Word 2010: music.docx Full book in Word 6.0 (very old version of Word): music.doc - 671K All Scriptures are in footnotes at the bottom of each pages and other sources are recorded as endnotes at the end of the book. Hear this Book (MP3) Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 The Voice Behind the Audio I am deeply grateful to Wyatt L. Timmins for all his labor and professionalism in producing the audio version of this book. For more of Wyatt's work, see https://wyatttimmins.com/

Scrupulosity Worried about Salvation Blasphemous Thoughts Severe Guilt Feelings The Help You Need       The following is desperately needed by two types of Christians:   1.     Everyone plagued by blasphemous thoughts 2.   Or those who, despite repeated assurances, keep worrying that God might not have forgiven them. If you fall into either category, your friends, loved ones, counselors and spiritual advisors will end up not only distressingly perplexed and frustrated but unable to give you the assurance you crave. The condition affecting you is so rarely understood that the people who care about you need these webpages almost as much as you do. I strongly recommend that you not only read all of the following but that you encourage these people to read it as well. (I consider this so important that I have gone to the effort of providing a version of this webpage just for those who care about you:  Tormented by an Over-Sensitive Conscience . The main difference is simply that I have slightly lessened some of the detail in case they are busy or less motivated to read it all than you are.)   If you suffer from uncontrollable blasphemous thoughts, the following is best understood after reading the previous page:  When a Christian Can’t Stop Thinking Blasphemous Thoughts .   Worrying that God has not forgiven them and suffering unstoppable blasphemous thoughts might seem distinctly different but at the root of both dilemmas is devout Christians being plagued by the very thing they most fear. And it turns out that there is a common cause. Such fear has no biblical or spiritual basis and yet it persists and to their minds it seems fully justified, no matter how much reassurance they receive from spiritual advisors and even from God himself.   Starting at  Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope!  and continuing for almost sixty webpages, I have assembled a ludicrously vast amount of biblical and theological information and testimonies proving that no matter how gross a person’s sins or how often the sins were repeated before or after salvation, there is not a person on the planet who cannot be fully forgiven by God by simply looking to Jesus for forgiveness.   My store of information has grown so enormous because, even after poring over all the proof and careful reasoning I had amassed, people kept writing to me, year after year, tormented by the irrational fear that they could somehow be the sole exception to God’s promises or somehow disqualify themselves or that they had managed to find some sort of loophole in God’s clear promises. They seemed unaware that they were going to almost insane lengths trying to justify their needless worries.   Moved by the intensity of their anguish, I kept piling up the evidence; expecting these dear people to eventually accept the power of rational, Bible-based argument. Even when at last they seemed to grasp it, however, their relief was short-lived. In just a few days they would be back with yet another supposed reason for them continuing to doubt their salvation. Eventually, to my astonishment, I was forced to conclude that if ten thousand angels spent ten thousand hours emphatically declaring to these people that they were genuinely redeemed, their assurance would begin to melt away and their doubts return soon after the heavenly visitors had completed their assignment. These special people did not see it that way. They were sure that such a sign would settle the matter for life, but my long experience counseling literally hundreds of them has shown me otherwise.   For years I prayed and prayed, seeking spiritual insight as to how these people could have their breakthrough. Finally, I discovered that my approach would never work because these otherwise normal, intelligent people suffer from an anxiety disorder that keeps undermining their ability to accept rational argument. In all other areas of their lives they are perfectly rational but not in whatever matter is of the greatest emotional importance to them. Not surprisingly, for Christians, this problem usually targets assurance of salvation, since this is the matter that is of supreme importance to them.   If you suffer this, I understand your agony. God’s solution, however, is very different from what you expect, and you and I will be at cross purposes until you can see beyond the superficial to comprehend what is really happening to you. Our priorities will differ as much as if you had acute appendicitis and want nothing but painkillers whereas my understanding of the medical necessities obligates me to focus not on pain relief (as much as I passionately want that for you) but on the  cause  of the pain and to convince you of the critical importance of getting proper treatment. Just as pain killers would not be the real answer to appendicitis but would actually lessen your motivation to get the help you desperately need, so assurance that you are divinely forgiven or ending your unwanted thoughts is not the help you really need, despite it seeming that way to almost every sufferer.   If, for example, horrendously blasphemous thoughts against the Holy Spirit keep flooding your mind, you are being hit by torturously strong temptation, but the Tempter is hoping to get you so confused that you do not even recognize the temptation. Blasphemy is  not  the temptation. The spirit realm is amazingly unconcerned about that. Not even gross sin is the real temptation. The temptation is to  stop believing  that because of Jesus, God forgives, loves and delights in you.   You might be sure God’s forgiveness and cleansing extend to everyone else, but your ugly temptation is to believe you have managed to expose a flaw in God’s love and goodness; that the power of Christ’s sacrifice is not as infinite as Scripture claims; that your repeated sin or atrocious thoughts are able to make a liar out of the God who offers forgiveness to all who accept Christ’s cleansing; that you have somehow found a loophole in Scripture to all of God’s promises regarding salvation; that because you feel guilty, uneasy and distant from God that your feeling is more spiritually dependable than the love and integrity of God and the power of the cross.   Just as an addict yearns for a miraculous end to withdrawal symptoms, you yearn for a miraculous deliverance from your distress. But although you are sure miraculous deliverances from the temptation to doubt would be in your best interest and God’s best interest, they are not.  Life’s Mysteries  explains this surprising truth but if you read it, you must keep in focus that the spirit world does not even see blasphemy as the temptation. The real temptation is to fall for the Deceiver’s malicious lies that if you suffer disgusting thoughts or have done some other hideous thing and then sought forgiveness, then God no longer delights in you. The temptation is a concerted attempt to trick you into giving up on God because you wrongly suppose the blood of Christ no longer cleanses you. It is like being conned into thinking Fort Knox is filled with fake gold. It is only by having to battle this temptation to doubt that you can truly become Christlike and grow in faith. Miraculous deliverances are superficial. They leave us as weak as being carried everywhere would cause our muscles to waste away. No matter how appallingly agonizing your affliction is, and how pathetic and ungodly it makes you feel, it can become a springboard to spiritual greatness.   As surely as there is no quick or easy way to become an Olympic champion, so it takes enormous effort to become a spiritual champion. You might simply want an easy life and to languish in mediocrity, but you are stupendously loved of God. He believes in you and has far greater plans for you than you dare dream. Please don’t break his heart. The easy life is not for you. You were born to rule.   Because the road to spiritual greatness is long and hard, you need all the insight and support and encouragement you can get. That’s what my webpages are about. As an expression of the immensity of God’s love for you, I have devoted years and years and years of agonizing prayer, counseling, study, and wrestling with words; pouring my life into providing you with everything I can find to help you. I am far from perfect, but having done my utmost, I have no choice but to leave the final critical step to you. It is up to you to reciprocate by devoting to reading these pages an effort equal to at least a fraction of all the prayer and mental exertion I have given to amass this support for you.   What these webpages offer is so immense that to get the equivalent through personal counseling would cost you thousands of dollars. Instead, moved by how precious to God you are, I have provided it all for free. Even if an athletic coach generously offered all his services for free, however, it would still cost a would-be champion massive effort. That is unavoidable. You must be willing to invest significant effort into prayerfully reading and re-reading and re-reading all that I have provided for you. All my years of passionate prayer and searching has found no alternative to having to keep plowing through these webpages.   Right now, you might wish it were less reading but when you find your anxiety grinding on and on and on, you will be thankful I have written so much. I have provided all this reading to keep your mind fixed on reassuring truths and guidance, rather than slipping into panic. Constant reminders are needed to help counterbalance the constant anxiety that keeps tricking the mind into supposing there is a genuine reason for alarm.   If the pages were brief you would get bored reading them over and over and over, and I cannot guarantee other websites.   My pages are like having instant access to a counselor who is on-call every moment of every day of every year. I cannot do this personally for the thousands of people who crave it, but my writings can.   I might update my pages from time to time but print off at least some pages so that you can access them even during a power failure, or some other unforeseen circumstance.   I’m no substitute for God, however. Read prayerfully and don’t lessen your fellowship with God, no matter how many appallingly blasphemous thoughts and mental images flood your prayers and how much false condemnation tries to terrorize you.   The Mysterious Power of Anxiety   Earlier in this series of webpages (starting at  Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope! ) I have provided enormous quantities of detailed information, carefully explaining all the biblical, spiritual and rational reasons why forgiveness is fully available to absolutely everyone who puts faith in Jesus’ forgiveness, no matter how gross or repeated their sin (before or after salvation, including the vilest blasphemies) and no matter how plagued they are by blasphemous thoughts. Later in this series you will find many testimonies from people whose atrocious blasphemies and hideous sins after salvation confirm that forgiveness is available to all. (I am almost ashamed to include these testimonies, however, because they are totally unnecessary. It is like suggesting the Bible is unreliable and God might be a selfish liar unless people have testimonies that prove otherwise.) In addition to all this proof, I have another long series of webpages beginning at  How Much does God Love Me? Receiving a Personal Revelation of God’s Love for You  proving the magnitude of God’s personal, never-ending love for every person.   All of this only helps normal people, however. There are those who require such a radically different approach that it usually flabbergasts people when they first hear it. To ease the shock I will try to gently prepare you. First, you must understand what it means to have an anxiety disorder and that it is common for people to have no idea they are suffering from one.   Anxiety acts as an alarm, warning us that something needs urgent attention to avoid a disaster. An alarm triggered by a technical malfunction sounds exactly like the real thing and so we rightly panic when it occurs and feel compelled to check whether we are in danger. If we examine the most obvious source of danger and find no reason for concern but the alarm keeps going, we will feel compelled to check another possible source, and another, and another. If we finally convince ourselves that we have eliminated every possible source of danger, we will heave a sigh of relief and reset the alarm. Should the alarm be faulty, however, it is likely to go off again in a day or so, and again we will panic and feel compelled to investigate. If this happens day after day, it will get very tiring, but alarms are designed to be too irritating to ignore and each time it goes off we have no way of telling whether this time there is genuine danger.   An anxiety disorder subjects a person to continual false alarms, each of which feels just like the real thing – terrifyingly so – and despite doing everything we can think of to put our minds at rest, the nagging, deeply worrying anxiety will continue. As if this were not disconcerting enough, anxiety feels like a guilty conscience (which makes it seem spiritual) and the inner alarm it sets off is so overwhelming that it drowns out our ability to feel peace or joy or God’s presence (which again adds to our worry that something must be spiritually wrong).   Christians suffering this will assume they must be in spiritual danger and jump to some conclusion as to what could be the cause. Even when they finally reach the point of being sure that what they initially thought could be sabotaging them spiritually is not a valid cause for concern, the alarm will keep blaring (anxiety) and so they will simply switch to assuming there must be some other spiritually valid reason for concern. The inner alarm feels so terrifyingly real that they get highly inventive in dreaming up excuses for believing their never-ending anxiety rather than believing the reality that God has forgiven them. There is  no valid reason  for anyone seeking forgiveness through Jesus to doubt that they are cleansed from all sin, but here are some examples of the  false reasons  people come up with for doubting their salvation:    They have blasphemed the Spirit  They keep falling into sin *  They are more sinful than anyone else on the planet *  They never feel God’s presence *  They don’t have enough faith *  They have not adequately repented *  They have demons *  They have sold their soul to the devil *  They are not sincere enough *  They are not chosen by God *  They have denied Jesus *  They cannot pray without blaspheming *  They are angry at God *  They don’t feel guilty when they sin *  They have found some Scripture or authority that confirms their fears *  They feel condemned whenever they read the Bible or go to church *  They never feel peace or joy or an inner witness that they are saved *  They keep having dreams or supernatural signs that they are not saved.   Not one of these things is a valid reason for doubting your salvation. None of them can separate us from the love of God. None of them – nor anything else you dream up – is unforgivable.  If you were to keep stubbornly refusing to believe that God is loving enough or powerful enough to forgive you through Jesus, or you kept refusing God permission to rule in your life and you were not in the slightest willing even for God to make you willing, you would have a problem until you changed your mind. The moment you change your mind, however, total forgiveness and cleansing from all sin is yours.   It is with reluctance that I provide the above list because it is like listing a thousand diseases never before considered by a hypochondriac who keeps needlessly fearing he is ill. The bottom line, however, is that anyone going down this path will keep being plagued by anxiety, no matter what he does, and the sooner he realizes it, the sooner he is likely to accept his need for an entirely different approach.   Evil spiritual powers can never touch God’s love for us, nor the infinite power of the cross. All they can do is meddle with our feelings, in the hope that we will start believing our changeable feelings rather than stick to believing in God’s unchangeable love and forgiveness. So anyone looking to his feelings to confirm that he is right with God is leaving himself wide open to doubting his salvation. In fact, until completely weaned off treating feelings as a spiritual barometer, every one of us is dangerously vulnerable to spiritual deception. Moreover, if anyone with an anxiety disorder looks to his feelings to confirm that God accepts him, doubt will always win because, no matter how close he is to God, highly unsettling anxiety will keep dominating his feelings.   I suggest that you not only pray the following but that you print it out so that you can keep returning to it:   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 pledge 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.   As surely as you need to keep recharging your cell phone, I expect you will need to keep returning to this prayer because this commitment is enormously difficult to maintain when plagued by relentless, torturously strong anxiety and/or well-meaning preachers who have no idea of the havoc they wreak in some people’s lives by speaking as if feelings matter.   The great illusion for anxious people is that they will at last find peace if they resolve a particular issue. The truth is that an anxiety disorder means that anxiety will continue no matter how many issues are resolved. Just like a faulty alarm that keeps going off no matter how safe the situation, the anxiety will keep on going and it will keep on feeling as if there must be some genuine reason for concern and so their mind will stay in overdrive trying to find some reason, rather than accept the fact that it is a false alarm.   It usually takes months, or even years, of hard work for these dear, anxiety-plagued people to become convinced that just one of the supposed reasons for concern listed above is not valid, but when they finally get there, the anxiety will continue as strong and insistent as ever and so,  unless they reach the point of learning to live with the false alarm of anxiety and stop treating it as genuine , all that will happen is that they move to obsessing over another supposed reason for doubting.   It often takes years of agony before they finally realize it but it turns out that, for many devout Christians, nothing – with the possible exception of medical help – is capable of easing their anxiety (the source of their doubts, fears and overwhelmingly strong guilt feelings). Like a thirsty man chasing a mirage, these genuine Christians sincerely believe there must be some assurance that would finally satisfy them. They will temporarily feel better after receiving a full explanation of why their fears are spiritually, biblically and rationally groundless but the devastating worry that they are doomed will soon return. Despite the mirage seeming so real, the truth is that this side of heaven there is literally no experience or proof, no matter how stupendous or spectacular that could permanently quell their fears. To illustrate, let’s go to extremes.   Suppose not just one but hundreds of gigantic angels in dazzling white clothes and supernatural glory appeared to you and declared that Almighty God is pleased with you and will reward you eternally. If you are one of the Christians plagued by an anxiety disorder (and vast numbers are without realizing it), you would be on Cloud Nine; flooded with peace and joy. You would finally feel certain that you are saved and that you will never doubt again. Within a few days, however, you would yet again become aware of the anxiety incessantly gnawing at you; inducing panic and causing your mind to go into overdrive wondering why you cannot rid yourself of this strong gut feeling that something is seriously wrong. Rather than accept that the feeling itself must be wrong, one’s mind dutifully seeks to ensure one’s safety by assuming that for as long as the anxiety continues, a real threat might be present. In a protective frenzy it keeps seeking any way in which there could be danger despite that supernatural confirmation that all is well. Before long, under the relentless scrutiny of your intellectual powers, possibilities will begin to emerge, such as, “What if that divine visitation were just my imagination or a dream or wishful thinking or a false memory or a psychotic episode? What if what I experienced were someone playing a clever prank with lasers and holograms? What if it were demonic deception? What if that angelic pronouncement were true at the time but I’ve since sinned and am now lost forever? What if . . . ?” Soon, all that relief and certainty you had just a few days ago will have vanished.   How the Natural and the Spiritual Interact   I am still cautiously inching my way to the part that initially staggers deeply spiritual people because on the surface, it seems unspiritual. Some readers might wish I would jump ahead – and you may skip this section if you insist – but most will need this introduction more than they currently realize. In fact, after proceeding through this webpage and ones that follow, many who have read this section will begin to discover that it is more valuable than they had thought and will want to return to read it again with renewed interest.   Often the natural and the supernatural are not opposed. Indeed, they often work hand in hand. After all, they were both lovingly created by the same infinitely good God, and both realms have been attacked by the same anti-God spiritual forces.   Not only is it not unspiritual to consider the natural, it is often unspiritual to ignore the natural. For instance, James 2:15-16 ridicules those who say spiritual things to people in physical need but do nothing to help them in a practical (natural) way. Likewise, Jesus emphasized the importance of caring for people’s physical needs, be it a cup of water, feeding and clothing the poor, welcoming a stranger, caring for the sick or visiting prisoners (Matthew 10:42; 25:34-39). Jesus’ earthly ministry was by no means exclusively focused on people’s spiritual well-being; healing their physical bodies was a high priority with him. To be so “spiritual” as to ignore the physical is to be more “spiritual” than God!   I so much believe in the Bible’s teaching about demons that I am convinced we all regularly deal with demons. For instance, since the devil does not have the divine power to be everywhere at once, it is not usually Satan who personally tempts us but his underlings.   Typically, temptation is evil spiritual entities attempting to exploit any natural weakness they can find in a person. Temptation has a spiritual component but there is also a natural component. Let’s consider the holy Son of God. When he was tempted to turn stones into bread, the devil was exploiting a natural chemical imbalance within our Lord. He had not eaten for weeks. It is natural – inevitable – for any hungry human to keep thinking of food. Moreover, many of the stones in this wilderness were shaped like the loaves of bread that Jesus had eaten all his life. For perfectly natural reasons, his body craved food and his mind invariably kept reminding him that those stones looked like bread. Anyone with the ability to turn stones into bread would keep thinking how wonderful it would be to do so. Such thoughts would torment any person but they were perfectly normal, given the chemical imbalance in Jesus’ body. If anyone were to worry that having such normal thoughts would render a person unforgivable, it would not merely be theologically ridiculous but such an unfounded fear would turn an already unpleasant experience into something terrifying. Having one’s mind continually flooded with such thoughts is not sin, however. It would only have been sin had Jesus actually broken the fast.   Similarly, as I will soon explain, your fears, doubts and unwanted thoughts are actually as natural and physically-driven as a starving man craving food. Evil powers try to deceive people who suffer this natural weakness. They exploit human weakness  not  by trying to entice these people to do what happens naturally and is inevitable – having unwanted doubts, fears and thoughts – but by falsely accusing them for having these natural reactions and by trying to seduce these dear people into believing the lie that being subjected to this naturally-driven experience nullifies Christ’s power to love, cleanse and forgive them and grant them the gift of divine approval.   Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness was so intense only because his body was abnormally hungry. Likewise, any of us can have an abnormality in our bodily chemistry that renders us vulnerable to attacks that others simply do not suffer. Those free from such attacks might seem more spiritual or better Christians, but they are not. As unbelievable as it might initially seem, the only difference between the two groups of people is a slight deficiency or chemical imbalance within their bodies.   We have already cited Scriptures that whether it be in the realm of temptation or how we show love, we should pay attention not merely to the spiritual but to the natural. For one last example: 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 says that husbands and wives should meet each other’s physical needs “so that Satan will not tempt you”. Even the great apostle Paul, who had denied himself marriage, insists that it is spiritual and right to consider the physical side of temptation and to lessen a spiritual problem by attending to a physical need if a morally acceptable way is available. Likewise, if, for example, medical researchers were to discover a healthy, morally neutral way of healing a physical abnormality and thus rendering ourselves less vulnerable to spiritual attack, then we would have a spiritual obligation to avail ourselves of it.   The staggering truth I’ve been so cautiously trying to prepare you for is that many people are tormented incessantly by what feels exactly like a guilty conscience and inability to feel God’s love, and yet it turns out that the cause is not spiritual at all. It seems initially unbelievable but for these people what drives intense feelings that are so easily mistaken for divine judgment – and it can even generate horrifically blasphemous thoughts as well – is a mild medical disorder that causes excess anxiety.  None  of my vast array of carefully written information provided elsewhere in this website will lower the deep concerns plaguing the millions of people whose anxiety has a medical basis. Just as proof that you are forgiven will not end the pain of a physical illness, neither will proof that you are forgiven end the inner pain of all the doubt, fears and worries generated by a physical illness – a disorder in one’s brain chemistry.   I completely understand you thinking I am mad , or at least unspiritual, to suggest such a thing. If you have not yet read many of my other webpages, you have not had the opportunity to discover how strongly conservative and into prayer and Scripture I am. If you need convincing, quickly scan  You’re Forgivable: A Sample of the Bible Proof  and  Life’s Too Short to Skimp on Prayer  for just a couple of sample webpages, and then immediately return to this page.   For years I have devoted enormous amounts of time and agony trying to help people who felt unforgivable. (For example, despite me being an  exceptionally slow writer  you will find on this website  over 500 pages  I have written specifically for people who find it hard to believe God forgives them.) For very many of those years, if anyone had suggested that there could be a medical component to this spiritual matter, I would have thought they were crazy or ungodly. Large numbers of people kept e-mailing me seeking help, however, and as I kept pouring my life into trying to help them, I began noticing something peculiar. Anxiety disorders were astoundingly common for those who could not be helped by even large numbers of faith-building Scriptures. Usually they regarded their anxiety disorder as irrelevant to their spiritual concerns, but as I kept conversing with more and more people, the link kept occurring far too often to be mere coincidence. Eventually, I discovered that a huge body of scientific research had already confirmed the link.   Like me, you will probably need a lot of convincing. That’s okay. I am so passionate about helping people who are suffering this horrific spiritual torment that I have gone to immense lengths assembling and carefully explaining the evidence in a logical, easily intelligible manner. All I ask is that you keep prayerfully reading it.   People afflicted by blasphemous thoughts or by continual doubts are among the surprisingly large number of people who are perfectly sane – and some are highly intelligent – except that their mind plays tricks in whatever narrow area of their life is of greatest importance to them. It is not because they have less faith, Bible knowledge, will-power or devotion than other Christians. In fact, they are usually above average on such measures. It is just that in this area of life, anxiety is almost literally driving them crazy. Contrary to what seems intuitively obvious, their fears are not spiritually or rationally driven but stem from a chemical imbalance that causes them to suffer from abnormal levels of anxiety. Because it has a medical basis, you cannot switch off this anxiety (and corresponding guilt feelings, worries about salvation, inability to control your thoughts, etc.) by more Bible reading, trying to worry less, working harder on building up your faith, or whatever. To suffer from medically caused anxiety is no more an indication that one is spiritually lacking than suffering a broken leg means one is spiritually lacking.   It boils down to the fact that the unfortunate people suffering this physical problem feel needlessly guilty, ill at ease or worry far more than average people about at least one thing (and it usually zeroes in on whatever is most important to them). And regardless of what they do – how much fellowship with God they have, how much faith they muster, how much theological knowledge they gain – that awful, unsettling feeling keeps gnawing away at them because the cause is not spiritual or rational but physical. No matter what they believe or think and how much God approves of them and delights in them, that horrible feeling keeps returning. Our brain is designed to treat that feeling – usually called anxiety – as an alarm warning us that something is seriously wrong. The problem is that when a chemical imbalance sets off a false alarm, the very alarm we rely on to alert us to physical or spiritual danger has been triggered. As hinted at previously, the part of our brain designed to respond to the alarm cannot distinguish a chemically induced false alarm from the real thing. As the alarm keeps on and on, the brain keeps frantically hunting for some danger that set off the alarm. No matter what reassurances come from God, Scripture, spiritual authorities, past experiences or whatever, the alarm keeps blaring and so the worry keeps persisting that there must be some genuine spiritual danger.   What confuses these people is that what some call their gut feeling – some call it one’s conscience and some even confuse it with the voice of God – has been seriously distorted by a condition well known to the medical profession. Unfortunately, in contrast to the experts, the implications are rarely understood by the general population.   With this deeply disturbing false alarm indistinguishable from the real thing blaring within a person day after day it is enough to seriously distort anyone’s spiritual perception. This devastating feeling keeps incessantly nagging; drowning out what for anyone not subjected to it would be more than enough proof of God’s acceptance. Although this highly unpleasant and confusing affliction troubles a relatively small  proportion  of people, the numbers add up to literally millions of people worldwide.   Multitudes of people suffer from an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. You could be one of them and if it turns out that you are, so many things will not make sense to you. For example:   *  If you are plagued by horrible thoughts, the harder you try  not  to think them, the more you will have them.   *  If you yearn for assurance of God’s forgiveness, the more you seek assurance, the less you will have it.   There is no space for a full explanation here – that comes further on – but once the process is carefully explained, it is readily understood by average people. Those suffering from this affliction, however, will have a much harder time accepting the truth because they find it so contrary to what feels intuitively right, and that dreadful feeling that something is terribly wrong keeps droning on as incessantly as ever. Everything within someone suffering from excess anxiety will scream against the truth. So despite trying to the point of utter exhaustion, those suffering this way will keep getting worse instead of better unless they totally change their understanding.   I hyperventilated once. I felt certain I was not getting enough air and so I breathed harder, totally oblivious to the fact that I was actually suffering from  too much  air and I needed to breathe less. So it is with those who are hounded by unwanted thoughts or yearning for assurance of salvation. They will only get worse until they learn to do almost the exact opposite of what they feel sure will help. They are so convinced that they need to be doing the opposite of what will actually help that they usually cannot even grasp what the following webpages are saying, but keep misinterpreting them to line up with their mistaken views.   I long to help you but it is impossible unless you not only read the following webpages but  study  them, regularly praying that your eyes be opened to the truths in them that you are currently blinded to. Even after you finally grasp the truth, you will repeatedly find yourself letting it slip and reverting to your old mistaken thinking that  feels  so intuitively right. So to keep on track you will need to keep returning to these webpages.   Don’t forget to asked those who care about you to read the abridged version of this webpage:  Tormented by an Over-Sensitive Conscience .   You Need More: If you want a rest from reading, now is a good time. If you worry that you are in spiritual danger, however, you will need to return to these webpages whenever you can and read more. Record the web address of the next webpage before leaving. Forever Lost Your Salvation?

“ No matter how new or experienced you are, I am praying for the privilege of taking you on a thrilling vacation from which you will return not just refreshed but transformed.” Grantley Morris A man suddenly finds himself flitting from world to world in a terrifying, thrilling, bewildering, deeply moving series of events. Where is he? What danger is he in? Is he suffering psychotic episodes or is he really encountering lifeforms ranging from cute and fascinating to horrifyingly alien? Is he discovering profound spiritual truths or being deceived? Will beliefs that have driven him most of his life be confirmed or prove mistaken? Gripping, entertaining and easy reading and yet thought-provoking and life-changing, no matter how new or seasoned you are spiritually. Full of twists and astonishing insights into nature, humanity, and the spirit world. Fast moving, sometimes alarming, sometimes humorous, sometimes heart-warming, always memorable. Comments Until I stumbled across Mind Blowing I considered Christian fiction to be spiritual baby-food – all mushy! I saw myself as a mature Christian, dining on strong spiritual meat, quite above reading anything as trivial as ‘Christian Fiction.’ The edition of Mind Blowing I came across began with the words, “I’d love your feedback.” Well, for that, I’d have to read it, wouldn’t I? I did – and I haven’t been the same since. As I read, my soul fed on rare, iridescent beauty. I have found nothing like it. I am not an imaginative person, and yet my spirit soared as I read magnificent descriptions, and ‘listened in’ on lofty and challenging dialog. My concepts of time, space, reality, and nature were stretched – especially nature! I am left with a greatly increased appreciation, reverence and love for my awesome God. Helen Hall Download Options More Comments Early response: I have already managed to bite two fingernails painfully to the nub. I am hooked and cannot wait to read more. Later: This book engendered a plethora of emotions in me. Could Mind Blowing possibly rival John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the book that has been translated into over two hundred languages and for generations was second only to the Bible in readership? Nikki Johnson One of the book’s surprises is being taken to Golgotha and allowed a glimpse of the cross from beyond a human perspective. A seasoned Christian comments: The most riveting and convicting portrayal of the passion I have ever encountered. Janet Congo MFT Upon reading Mind Blowing, I thought Grantley Morris is a genius who writes the most exquisite prose I’ve ever known. Terrance J. Etalia Amazing material! Dynamic and inspirational. What a gift for expressing the wonder of the gospel and biblical concepts in powerful and creative ways! Stunning! It impacted me greatly. Ian Hutchinson Download Options More Comments WOW, you have such a talent with words! The way you describe the places you find yourself in is amazing and brings the scenes to life. As a writer myself I can appreciate talent when I see it! But more than this, you have really helped me ‘see’ the awesome majesty of God, and his overwhelming love toward us. What a passionate, kind, incredibly intelligent, stunning God we serve! And how did you think up so many adjectives and metaphors etc. to describe HIM, heaven and the angels? I am completely jealous! Your writing has really helped lift my faith levels, and I intend to look back at it whenever I feel a downward spiral coming on. I was especially moved over your description of the crucifixion scene. After having shared the beauty of heaven and the angels etc., and then to be faced with the reality of his death deeply stirred me and gave me such a deeper appreciation of all he has done for us. When I come across such writing I hold it closely because it paints for me the mental pictures I so desperately need to see and new concepts I so desperately need to embrace. THANK YOU. I do hope that you will share your novel with many others that they might be as blessed as I have been! Please don’t stop writing! One other thought: reading it felt very much like reading a play that would be seen in the West End in London. It would hold its own against A Midsummer Night’s Dream! Jackie Butterworth It’s riveting . . . a huge blessing! Penny MacPherson Spiritual Writing Coach Download Options With whatever device you have, at least one of these will work: EPUB (387 KB) Works on most book reading apps including iPhone and iPad MOBI (479 KB) MOBI files still work for reading on older devices and with specific apps like Kindle (for existing files) and Calibre. PDF File (1485) KB Microsoft Word Forma t (771 KB)

Are African Blacks Human? Are All Black People Human? Are Some Blacks Part Animal? Almost all Whites are so certain that all Blacks are fully human beings that they would be utterly shocked to find anyone who questioned it. In fact, I have seen tears in the eyes of Whites upon hearing that some Blacks in Africa – some well educated – have accepted the atrocious lie that Blacks are less human than Whites and are part animal. The belief that any race is not fully human is totally contrary to science and to the Bible. Even the United States constitution states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [people] are created equal . . .” I am not American but it is thankfully illegal in most predominantly white countries to imply that one race is inferior to anyone and, as a typical White, I find the equality of people of all races so obvious that, until recently meeting some Blacks who genuinely doubted that Blacks are full human beings, I had never in my most far-fetched fantasies imagined there would be the slightest need to prove it to anyone. To be racist – or look down on anyone – is to plunge a knife into the heart of the God who determines our eternal fate. We will see below why racism is not only always a sin against people close to God’s heart, it is a slanderous attack on God himself. It appalls everyone who truly knows and loves God. We will look later at science and other perspectives but of supreme importance is not human opinion but God’s opinion. So this is where I will start. God & Racism

Christianity & Racial Issues To be racist – or look down on anyone – is to plunge a knife into the heart of the God who determines our eternal fate. We will see below why racism is not only always a sin against people close to God’s heart, it is a slanderous attack on God himself. It appals everyone who truly knows and loves God. Both the Old Testament (the Jewish Bible) and the New Testament affirm that if you trace everyone’s family tree back far enough you will find the same human ancestors. Quite a percentage of Christians believe that just as God made us and yet we formed in our mother’s womb by a gradual and complex process, so humanity was created by God and yet formed by a gradual and complex process, commonly called evolution. There is not need to squabble over that right now because regardless of one’s opinion on the method God chose to create, all Christians unite to affirm that we are God’s creation and that the Bible’s purpose is not primarily to teach science but something far loftier – to reveal the heart of God and how he would have us view things. And over and over, God’s Word makes it clear that God wants us to see everyone, regardless of race, as being physically “one blood” (Acts 17:26, literal translation). There was once a version of the theory of evolution that denied this biblical truth of the genetic unity of the human race and claimed that different types of apes evolved into different races of people. Because it is only a theory, evolutionary scientists differ amongst themselves and over time change their minds, but this particular guess is so contrary to the study of human genetics that it has been largely abandoned as ridiculous. I will explore this further later in the webpage. No matter what is currently fashionable for scientists to believe, however, God – who is way ahead of everyone – reveals in his Word that, ultimately, all races of people have the same genetic heritage and, in a very real sense, are physically brothers and sisters. Moreover, he reveals that the same spiritual Savior – the Lord Jesus Christ – loves Blacks as much as Whites or Chinese and gave his life to give them the same spiritual destiny. We will go much further than this, but just the fact that God created every race has chilling implications for anyone who wishes to look down on a race. If I hint that I regard a particular work of art as inferior, I can expect the artist’s hot displeasure. To think anyone is inferior is to insult that person’s Maker. Only a hypocrite would have the hide to claim to honor the Maker if he had a low opinion of what he has made. Hypocrisy is one of the few things that made the holy Son of God furious. The culmination of Jesus’s work on earth was to entrust his disciples with this mission: Matthew 28:19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In modern English, nation refers to a large geo-political unit, but Jesus did not speak Twenty-First Century English. Bible scholars say that the word Jesus used refers to a usually smaller number of people, identified not by geography or politics but by their distinctive cultural and genetic heritage. The last book in the Bible spells this out with almost excessive clarity: Revelation 5:9 And they sang a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation .” Revelation 7:9,10,14-17  . . . before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb . . . . And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” . . . they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple . . . Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (Emphasis mine) If I wanted to refer to everyone in the world, any one of these four words would suffice. Combining nation, tribe, language and people – is almost overkill. It is stressing that, without exception, every grouping of people, whether distinguished by language, ancestry, culture, or geographical location, is so significant to God that he is committed to ensuring that each group has representatives who will be spiritually one with God for all eternity as a direct consequence of his precious Son trading his life for theirs. Every one of them is priceless to God because for each the same inconceivably high price was paid – the life of God’s one and only Son – and all of them are spiritually equal because they are all spiritually one with God and with each other: John 17:22-23 . . . that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. . . . John 17:11, 20-23 . . . Holy Father, keep them through your name which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are. . . . Not for these only do I pray, but for those also who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that you sent me. The glory which you have given me, I have given to them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that you sent me, and loved them, even as you loved me. This spiritual equality is spelled out here: Galatians 3:26-29 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus . If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Colossians 3:9-12  . . . you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all . Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved . . . (Emphasis mine) This is saying that regardless of race, status, gender or cultural and religious background, there is no distinction in God’s eyes between anyone who belongs to Christ. All have the same spiritual heritage and the same spiritual destiny. He is equally in us all and the Father of us all: John 1:12-13 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (Emphasis mine.) I’m not so dumb as to walk up to a heavy weight boxer and tell the proud father that I think his child is inferior. That would be far smarter than criticizing in the hearing of Almighty God – and he hears everything – someone he proudly thinks the world of. And there is no one on this planet whose welfare the Almighty would not only gladly pay galaxies of diamonds for, but paid the highest conceivable price of his infinitely precious Son, the closest thing to his heart. You have never seen a proud father like Almighty God. The Bible closely connects loving God with loving people: Luke 10:25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” And Jesus immediately launched into his famous parable of the good Samaritan, thus emphasizing the ethnic and Bible stresses implications of loving people the way God expects us to. The unbreakable link between loving God and loving people is further emphasized here: 1 John 4:20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. The Bible highlights the ridiculous incompatibility of using the same tongue to praise God that has been used to put down another human being. Not only is this because, regardless of who it is, God loves that person stupendously, but because God himself is like that person. James 3:9-10 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness . . . . this should not be. And the Bible does not just stop there: Matthew 5:22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, . . . anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. James 4:11-12 Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you – who are you to judge your neighbor? Without repentance, to exalt oneself above anyone can be spiritual suicide: Luke 18:10-14 Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 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. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 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.’ 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. Proverbs 16:19 Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud. Isaiah 57:15 For this is what the high and lofty One says – he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.” 1 Peter 5:5 . . . All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” To insult any race or tribe or ethnic group is to insult people who will spend eternity delighting in God’s presence – even if by your attitude you exclude yourself from that privilege. The Bible is almost color blind; seeing no need to mention the color of people’s skin. In fact, about the only reference to skin color is: Jeremiah 13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin . . . ? So every Bible reader, no matter how ignorant about skin color, knows that Ethiopians have black skin. Is it mere coincidence, then, that one of the most celebrated conversions in the early church is someone we know was black: the Ethiopian eunuch? Because the Bible sees it as highly significant, it gives considerable space to this event. Permit me to shorten the biblical account: Acts 8:26-29,35,36,38-39 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road – the desert road – that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” . . . Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?” And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. To the embarrassment of those who imagine that being white is desirable, white skin is mentioned in the Bible only as a sign of shame and proof of divine disapproval. As divine punishment, Elisha’s servant became “as white as snow” (2 Kings 5:26-27). Similarly, in Numbers 12, Moses’s sister, Miriam, suffered white skin (“like snow”) because of the horror of a skin abnormality inflicted as divine punishment for wrongly criticizing Moses for marrying a Cushite. It would be dishonest not to point out that the big stir was over the disease rather than the color. However, that both accounts mentioning the color emphasizes that the natural color of their skin was not so white. Moreover, the color seems to be particularly significant in Miriam’s case. In this dispute over marrying someone with jet black skin, God emphatically took Moses’ side. By his actions, the Lord seems to have been saying, “Because you disapprove of Moses marrying someone of darker skin than your family, I’ll strike you with whiter skin than your family.” The black skinned woman that Moses married is usually thought to be Jethro’s daughter (Exodus 18:5-6). So it seems that Jethro, too, must have been Black. This is highly significant because of Jethro’s exalted status among God’s people: Exodus 18:12 Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law in the presence of God. Exodus 18:17,24 Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. . . .” Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said. Despite being led by the cloud of the Lord (Numbers 10:34), Moses begged Jethro (also known as Hobab) to remain with the Israelites and guide them: Numbers 10:31 But Moses said, “Please do not leave us. You know where we should camp in the desert, and you can be our eyes. . . .” The Bible stresses that everyone is made by God, loved by God and is in his very image. So to insult any race of people is to insult the God who made them, loves them and is like them. To be racist – or look down on anyone – is to plunge a knife into the heart of the God who determines our eternal fate. Racism is not only always a sin against people close to God’s heart, it is a slanderous attack on God himself. It appals everyone who truly knows and loves God. Scientific Proof 1. Genetics Dr Douglas C. Wallace (professor of molecular genetics at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta) points out that the average genetic difference between any two people in the world, even if they belong to the same people group, is about 0.2 percent. In contrast, racial characteristics such as skin color, eye shape etc. account for a mere 0.012 percent of genetic differences between people. He concludes that “the so-called ‘racial’ differences are absolutely trivial – overall, there is more variation within any group than there is between one group and another. If a white person is looking for a tissue match for an organ transplant, for instance, the best match may come from a black person, and vice versa.” If you studied Black, White and Chinese artists, cleaners, professional athletes and western-accredited doctors, they would be far more alike in abilities if grouped according to profession than if grouped according to race. 2. What Makes Someone Human? Scientifically, a species is defined as having the genetic capacity to interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Blacks and Whites can produce healthy children and so blacks and Whites are full members of the same species. In fact, when Blacks and Whites intermarry, their children are often genetically stronger than those born to more genetically similar couples. In fact, scientists regard all races as belonging not just to the same species known as Homo sapiens but to the same subspecies known as Homo sapiens sapiens (yes, peculiarly, sapiens is repeated). Whites More Ape-Like Than Blacks? Let’s examine some key features distinguishing humans from monkeys and apes. Brain Size Whilst the human brain is impressively larger than that of apes, there are virtually no differences in brain size between races. Furthermore, any attempt to examine the exceedingly minor variations in people is confusingly complex. For example, years ago at university I was taught that Neanderthals and early modern humans, sometimes called Cro-Magnons, have a slightly larger cranial capacity to modern humans. This is now generally regarded as possible but is stated with less confidence. The challenge seems to be to find enough fossils from which to obtain a statistically reliable average. On average, modern men have larger brains than women but mine is large enough not to attempt any conclusions. Manual Dexterity Without exception, every race is equally superior to apes in intricate hand movements. All are physically equal in their capacity to thread a needle, write by hand, and so on. Their Walk Unlike any ape, all races walk fully erect, with their arms usually playing no role in locomotion. All races walk identically, although if you want to be really finicky, it could be argued that average representatives from some people groups walk with more finesse (more gracefully and with more poise) than the average Anglo-Saxon. Lack of Body Hair With this is a major difference, it is worth noting that some people groups, such as Mediterranean/Middle Eastern people, have more body hair than Blacks. Chinese have the least of all. Moreover, Blacks have fuzzy hair. Technically, it is more apelike to have straight hair. Prominent Mammary Glands (Breasts) Human females have proportionally larger breasts than apes. I’m not too confident that my wife would let me do a study on the subject, but let’s just say that Blacks are not lacking in this distinguishing feature. Moreover, even without detailed analysis I think it safe to say that there are people groups in which the average female bust is proportionally less than that of Blacks. More Apelike? Anyone who has seen a plucked chicken knows that they have white skin. Does this make Whites more like chickens than Blacks are? It has been claimed that “All chimps have white skin, thin lips and flat butts.” It seems, however, that beneath their hair, chimpanzees vary as much as human races in their skin color. (Source: A ll chimps have white skin, thin lips and flat butts. wn.com/Naked_Chimp_St_Louis_Zoo  . . . shaved chimps actually have white skin. The only dark skin is on parts of their body with less hair. www.thelifefiles.com/.../dont-do-drugs-you-might-end-up-like-this/ [Chimpanzees] are extraordinarily variable in skin color, running from a grayish pink that is almost white to black, with several yellowish shades between. Their color range is essentially the same as in the races of man . . . (Coon, C.S. The Origin of Races Alfred A Knopf: NY, 1962, page 145 cited in Fuerlen Richard D. ErectusWalks Amongst Us: The evolution of modern humans Spooner Press, NY, 2008, Chapter 6, footnote 9.) Perhaps by certain measures it might technically be true that Whites are marginally more apelike than Blacks but the difference between all people and apes is so vast as to render ridiculous the whole question as to which race is more apelike. Jesus Was Not White Studies of skulls found in Jesus’ day indicate that Jews have undergone considerable physiological changes since that time. With the Jewish dispersion through White European populations and subsequent intermarriage, the skin color of these Jews has presumably been lightening over the two thousand years since Jesus walked the earth. To get some idea of Jesus’ racial characteristics, including skin color, we need to go back even further in time and examine his genetic heritage. Probably next to no one in the entire Bible had fair hair or blue eyes or skin as white as the typical Englishman. Interestingly, “His eyes will be darker than wine” (Genesis 49:12) is Jacob’s divinely inspired blessing upon the Messianic line (Judah). Most likely, virtually everyone referred to in the Bible had brown eyes and (other than a few exceptional redheads and old people going grey) dark hair. But the Bible does not bother to tell us. Despite Scripture mentioning vast numbers of people, for almost no one does it give the vaguest of what the person looked like. In the entire New Testament we are told almost nothing about the bodily appearance of anyone other than certain deformities that had to be mentioned in order to describe healings and that Zacchaeus was short (mentioned only to explain why he ended up in a tree – Luke 19:3-5). Not even how they dressed receives attention other than John the Baptist’s eccentric attire and fleeting reference to Jesus’ humiliation at the hands of his tormenters and one of his followers, who deserted both Jesus and his clothes. This disinterest in physical appearance is entirely consistent with the Bible’s insistence that God evaluates no one on the basis of what a person looks like: 1 Samuel 16:7 . . . Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. Proverbs 31:30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Luke 16:15 . . . You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight. Anyone claiming to be of God should, like him, focus on the inner person; on the spiritual not one’s body of physical appearance: 2 Corinthians 5:16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. . . . 1 Peter 3:3-4 Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. If God’s Word did not regard skin color as so unimportant that it nearly never mentions it, most of us would be surprised to see how many Blacks feature. For example, few of us stop to consider that Africa is not only the home of Blacks but the home of the Jewish nation. Abraham’s descendants exploded in numbers for over four hundred years in Africa (Exodus 12:40) and although Egyptians did not have jet black skin, you can be sure it was not only Hebrews who traded with them and/or were enslaved by them. When the Hebrews finally left Africa, a diverse range of other peoples joined them, referred to in the King James Version as “a mixed multitude” (Exodus 12:38). Many of these must have been jet black. As with those who joined the Israelites in subsequent centuries, the Lord insisted that non-Israelites like these could become full members of God’s people. Gentiles in pre-Christian times could enjoy the full benefits of God's people Exodus 12:48-49 When a stranger shall live as a foreigner with you, and will keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one who is born in the land: but no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. One law shall be to him who is born at home, and to the stranger who lives as a foreigner among you. Leviticus 17:8 . . . Any man there is of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who live as foreigners among them, who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice Leviticus 19:34 The stranger who lives as a foreigner with you shall be to you as the native-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you lived as foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 24:22 You shall have one kind of law for the foreigner as well as the native-born; for I am the Lord your God. (Numbers 15:29 is similar) Numbers 15:14-16 If a stranger lives as a foreigner with you, or whoever may be among you throughout your generations, and will offer an offering made by fire, of a pleasant aroma to the Lord; as you do, so he shall do. For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who lives as a foreigner, a statute forever throughout your generations. As you are, so shall the foreigner be before the Lord. One law and one ordinance shall be for you, and for the stranger who lives as a foreigner with you. Numbers 15:26 All the congregation of the children of Israel shall be forgiven, as well as the stranger who lives as a foreigner among them; for with regard to all the people, it was done unwittingly. Numbers 35:15 For the children of Israel, and for the stranger and for the foreigner living among them, shall these six cities be for refuge; that everyone who kills any person unwittingly may flee there. Deuteronomy 10:17-18 For the Lord your God, he is God of gods, and Lord of lords . . . He does execute justice for the fatherless and widow, and loves the foreigner, in giving him food and clothing. Deuteronomy 14:28-29 At the end of every three years you shall bring all the tithe . . . The Levite . . . and the foreigner living among you, and the fatherless, and the widow . . . shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do. (Deuteronomy 26:11-13 is similar) Deuteronomy 16:10-11 You shall keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God with a tribute of a freewill offering . . . You shall rejoice before the Lord your God: you, your son, your daughter . . . the Levite . . . the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow . . . Deuteronomy 29:10-13 All of you stand today in the presence of the Lord your God; your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the foreigners who are in the middle of your camps . . . that you may enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, and into his oath, which the Lord your God makes with you today; that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he spoke to you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. The Outworking of this Joshua 8:33,35 All Israel, their elders and officers, and their judges, stood on both sides of the ark before the priests the Levites . . . the foreigner as well as the native; half of them in front of Mount Gerizim, and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded at the first, that they should bless the people of Israel. Ezra 6:20-21 . . . they killed the Passover for all the children of the captivity . . . The children of Israel who had come again out of the captivity, and all such as had separated themselves to them from the filthiness of the nations of the land, to seek the Lord, the God of Israel, ate Isaiah 56:3,6-7 Let no foreigner, who has joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, "The Lord will surely separate me from his people.". . . Also the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the Lord's name, to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath from profaning it, and holds fast my covenant; I will bring these to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Jeremiah 39:16-18 Go, and speak to Ebedmelech the Ethiopian [a Black], saying, the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: Behold, I will bring my words on this city for evil, and not for good; and they shall be accomplished before you in that day. But I will deliver you in that day, says the Lord; and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely save you, and you shall not fall by the sword, but your life shall be for a prey to you; because you have put your trust in me, says the Lord. Even under the Old Covenant, being Black was no obstacle to becoming a Jew. The account quoted earlier about the Black Ethiopian eunuch reading Scripture on his way home from worshipping in Jerusalem indicates how drawn Blacks were to the Jewish religion. The Hebrews and Egyptians were already of darker skin than the typical White. Nevertheless, inspired by the example of their leader, Moses, who married a Black, and confirmed by divine judgment upon Miriam who criticized that union, you can be sure there were plenty of interracial marriages that would have contributed still further to the darkening of the average Israelite’s skin color. For those who wish to go beyond mere skin color, it is noteworthy that Rahab was not only a descendant of Ham (who was not cursed but some of his descendants are thought to be jet back), she was a descendant of Canaan (who was not jet black but was cursed – Genesis 9:22-27 ). Rahab was an ancestress of Jesus (Matthew 1:1,5), extolled in Hebrews 11:31 as one of the Faith Heroes, alongside Noah, Abraham, Moses and King David. Related Pages ‘ God Loves You’ means You Are God’s Favorite Are there really different races?

Touching? Cuddling? Smooching? Fondling? Tongue kissing? Pashing? Heavy petting? Oral sex? How Far Is Too Far? Holding? Hugging? Stroking? Groping? Necking? French kissing? Dry humping? Foreplay? Practical Help for Christian Singles of all Ages In Setting their Own Guidelines Getting physical? Light petting? Caressing? Snuggling? Tonguey? Getting tight? Making love? Intimacy? Open-mouth kissing? Slap-and-tickle? Passionate lovemaking? This page is best understood by first reading: When Christians Date ‘Recently my fiancée and I made the horrible mistake of having sex outside of marriage and it has damaged our relationship, and also severely damaged my relationship with God. I can’t seem to find peace with Him and the adversary is all around me making everything even worse. I have this gut-wrenching feeling inside of me that will not go away. I feel torn apart . . . .’ As I read the heart-breaking e-mail, I learned that he had been a Christian since he was in his early teens. My mind flashed back to the shock I felt when I first heard the claim that research suggests that nearly as many Christian couples as non-Christian have at least once fallen into premarital sex. Then I remembered what I had once written about temptation, and with that the mystery slowly unravelled. Here’s the gist of what I remembered: Most people who lose their battle with temptation do so because they don’t start the fight soon enough. They let the Tempter have too many early victories. They give the Evil One easy, uncontested wins by hardly thinking twice about viewing/hearing/reading things that weaken them, and dabbling with ‘legitimate pleasures’ that edge them closer and closer to the crumbling cliff face. Suppose you are in a leaking boat. You are lounging on deck as the water seeps in a few bucketful's an hour. No problem. Any fool can bail that out. Hour after hour you continue to snooze until suddenly you find yourself plunging toward the ocean floor. You then bail furiously but it’s too late. The disaster was not the product of some momentary weakness or inexplicable lapse in the last five seconds. It was all so avoidable, if only the danger had been taken seriously. That’s what it’s like with temptation. Act soon enough, and you’re safe. Take no action as temptation begins to seep in, and the danger slowly mounts until finally not even the strongest saint could survive the onslaught. It’s not what happens in a moment of weakness that is critical. What matters is what you do right now to protect yourself from those moments. I began wondering how far back from intercourse one must begin the fight. If there is no big difference between Christians and non-Christians when it comes to the movies they watch and the way they kiss when dating, should we be surprised if there is no big difference further down that slippery slope? It would be very wrong to suppose that knowing where to draw the line is just a young person’s problem. It is a dilemma for Christian singles of all ages, breaking countless hearts, even when it hasn’t led to a moral fall. A woman in her mid-sixties, having been widowed for several years, was not only free from fresh memories of sex, she had gritted her teeth during marital relations throughout her long marriage. A 70 year old widower, whom she felt no physical attraction to, tongue kissed her. Despite what we might expect from her age and sad sexual history, she found it dangerously arousing. He couldn’t see a problem. She felt herself inching closer to a no-longer dormant volcano of uncontrollable passion. The result was heart wrenching as she tried to explain why she had to back off. As I pondered the danger of snoozing in a leaking boat, I recalled a feature of lovemaking that I, being unmarried, suddenly found alarming. Because of its key role in maintaining marital oneness, lovemaking is divinely designed to disarm one’s reservations and aloofness and be almost drug-like in its amazing ability to soothe. In fact, when the Bible speaks of David comforting his grieving wife, it resulted in pregnancy (2 Samuel 12:24). The nearly miraculous power of lovemaking to comfort and reassure is a feature not just of those aspects of lovemaking that must be restricted to marriage. Even something as innocent as holding hands or saying or hearing the words, ‘I love you,’ is infused with an almost hypnotic power to melt away one’s apprehensions and make a couple feel wonderfully secure and at ease in each other’s presence. Little wonder, then, that when, as an unmarried couple, we become even slightly affectionate, we tend to let our defenses down in the very situation that we need to be on heightened alert to sexual temptation. Two devout Christians who had been dating received a very special touch from God in a church service. They left the church on a spiritual high, and after an hour or so they fell into sin with each other. Devastated, they came to their pastor in tears. ‘How ever could this have happened at such a time?’ they asked in shattered disbelief. They had been feeling so close to God that they supposed they were invulnerable. Filled with the warm love of God and excitement over what he had done, their feelings imperceptibly slipped from God to love for each other and slowly gained momentum on the roller coaster ride to out-of-control passion. The enemy is like a beast of prey silently stalking those who suppose they will not be attacked. He’s smart enough to know that those who are on the alert for danger will spot him early and be off in a flash; running so fast that he’ll never sink his teeth into them. ‘So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!’ (1 Corinthians 10:12). In other words, a false sense of security is as spiritually lethal as passionate kissing behind the steering wheel of a speeding car. The issue is not whether a couple can trust each other but whether they can trust the devil. Letting our defenses down is as smart as bedding down to sleep across a railway track. If we were alone with a stranger of ill repute, alarm bells would be blaring within us. Not so, when we are alone with our most trusted and dearest friend. And yet we have a deadly spiritual enemy who delights in tempting us when we least expect it, and in getting at us through the person we love and respect the most. He used this very ploy on the Holy Lord himself. ‘Get behind me, Satan,’ the Son of God was forced to tell his best friend. Moved by love, Peter was trying his utmost to comfort and reassure his dear friend. It was at that very moment that the enemy slipped in. Peter had no idea that his attempts to comfort his beloved Master were being used of the Evil One to tempt the Holy Lord (Matthew 16:21-23). Given the soothing, reassuring nature of lovemaking and the fact that it involves our dearest friend, it is hard to think of any other type of temptation in which we are so lulled into letting our guard down. Add to this the fact that even limiting oneself to handholding – to say nothing of further down the slippery slide – is like trying to stop at eating a single salted peanut. No wonder so many of us fall! There have been times and societies in which couples were never allowed alone until after the wedding. That sounds hopelessly old-fashioned – almost as old-fashioned as virginity is becoming. I’m seeking, not necessarily to convince you of the wisdom of the past, but to stimulate your thinking. My goal throughout this webpage is to inspire you to stretch your mind and to think outside the square in your personal search for wise, Spirit-led ways to avoid soiling yourself. This is needed because the sad reality is that the approach of average present-day Christian couples is simply not working. By the way, don’t let the Deceiver tell you that because of a past tragedy you have nothing left to preserve. If you are trusting Christ’s miraculous ability to purify, then you are his virgin and have everything to preserve. You won’t want to break the heart of the One who gave his all for you. Insanely In Love My years of dating combine with my virginity to make me feel I could resist almost any temptation to engage in physical sex. Such thinking is dangerous speculation. Nevertheless, I’ve indulged in this madness to highlight an entirely different area of vulnerability that must be considered when deciding how far is too far. Even if I were completely safe when kissing a woman, what temptation am I inviting afterward, when I am alone with my thoughts? What sin might my mind slip into while trying to shut my brain down for the night? How hyped up will I get when trying to sleep? What might I be tempted to do to relieve the pressure? Might I avoid sin with her, only to grieve my Lord afterward in response to passion I had stirred up during my time with her? It had always seemed impossible, but after an apparently endless fight, involving ruthlessly denying myself any sight or thought or touch that even slightly aroused it, I have finally managed, with massive help from God, to put my sex drive to sleep. Having experienced the advantages, there is no way I want to risk waking it. Yes, an unsuspecting couple might end up sinning together. The blotch would indelibly embed into their brains and like a blood-sucking parasite they would carry the memory inside them until their dying day. But to this consideration, we must add the more subtle but spiritually dangerous matter of what getting amorous might lead to when the couple are apart. Moreover, to these concerns we are forced to add yet another need for caution about the physical side of a relationship. And this third factor makes me want to be even stricter in the amount of physical contact I permit myself. Here it is: even something as mild as handholding can lower my ability to choose the right life partner. Did you know that fond – as in ‘She’s fond of him,’ – originally meant stupid or mentally retarded? That initially startles us, but upon further reflection it fits the jigsaw. Modern English language about couples in love is filled with such expressions. He’s insanely jealous, she’s mad about him, they’re crazy about each other. Such expressions are a part of everyday speech because experience has taught multitudes that the high of being in love grossly affects our ability to be level-headed. The exhilaration might be exciting but a reduced ability to make level-headed decisions as to who we marry takes some of the mystery out of why the divorce rate is so high. Did you know that far more arranged marriages last than marriages based on romantic love? It’s not surprising when we think about it. What concerns me is that even physical contact lowers still further our ability to choose the right marriage partner. Let me explain. I am plagued with a deep ache for very basic touch – handholding and a hug. (Mind you, if that need were met it would slowly ignite a burning for going just that little bit further. And if I yielded that tiny bit, I’d be satisfied – for a while. Then a craving would grow to get just that little bit more physical with my friend. On and on it would go, like a junkie, who month after month needs higher and higher doses to keep his craving at bay.) But even without the complication of the need escalating, touch brings with it a most disturbing danger because choosing to marry the wrong person must be one of the worst mistakes anyone can make. If a woman I were dating met my basic need for touch, she would merely be doing something millions could do and yet it would heighten my feelings for this one woman. I might presume that I enjoy a woman’s companionship and hardly be aware that most of my enjoyment has nothing to do with her uniqueness but is just the thrill of having my basic need for touch met, like almost any woman could do. I might only be dating, with marriage being far from my mind, but I cannot guarantee that my feelings for her would never end up drifting toward marriage. The high of having my need for touch met by someone I am dating would further fog my brain at the very time when clear thinking is both more elusive and more important that at almost any other time of my life. Since there must be few things in life worse than ending up married to the wrong person, this is a matter about which I desperately need to hear from the all-knowing, all-wise Lord. Looking for a partner is most certainly not the time to risk having raging hormones drown out the Spirit’s whispers. My longing for marriage rose-tints my glasses. I’m so desperate that the moment I see a woman seeming to have the slightest potential as my wife, glaring deficiencies in her vanish in a rose-colored haze. I’m alarmed at how blatantly unsuited to me some of the women were who for a while I thought might possibly be ideal for me. Have you ever been shocked to discover that a radio announcer isn’t half as good-looking as you had imagined? When getting to know someone there are huge gaps in our knowledge. If we feel positively toward that person our imaginations inevitably fill in these gaps with things that are better than reality. Add to this natural tendency a longing to find as soon as possible that ‘someone special’ and we find ourselves swept off our feet by a torrent of wishful thinking, when getting to know someone we are initially attracted to. How long does it take for women to see their future husbands as someone who burps, snores and picks his nose? How many men see their future wives as someone who will have stretch marks and moods and frivolously spend their hard earned money? We are seldom aware that what we suppose to be our intimate knowledge of our friend is peppered with significant chunks that are not the real person at all, but simply our guesses and wishful thinking. As they say, ‘[Romantic, hormonal] love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener [i.e. we discover reality after it’s too late to correct a life-determining decision].’ Even when keeping open their physical eyes, dating couples kiss with their eyes closed. Like you, I want to come to my senses before plunging into what might be the biggest mistake of my life. We have already mentioned the almost intoxicating ability of touch to generate a feeling of closeness and oneness. It is frighteningly hard not to confuse this physical feeling with a genuine oneness of mind and spirit. When dating, we are unconsciously evaluating someone’s suitability as a potential life partner. Even light petting can create a most convincing illusion of oneness at a time and in an area of life in which illusions can have life-shattering implications. Friendship is such a vital ingredient of an enduring relationship and yet when hormones kick in, they so dominate as to swamp everything – even the ability to develop genuine friendship. If you are not ruthless in toning things down, by the time things calm down enough to discover that you don’t have what it takes to be good friends, you might already be married. Our sole defense against spiritual attack is faith in the power of Christ, not faith in human rules. ‘So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature’ (Galatians 5:16). Nevertheless, the same Bible commands us to flee youthful lusts (2 Timothy 2:22). We are called not to stoically endure lustful pressures but to hightail it out of there, putting as much distance between lust and us as we can. This is such an important spiritual principle that on four different occasions the New Testament tells us to flee from sin and temptation (1 Corinthians 6:18; 10:14; 1 Timothy 6:11; 2 Timothy 2:22). That’s how we escape the sin that could entrap us, and fix our eyes on the Author and Perfector of our faith (Hebrews 12:1-2). Joseph maintained his purity not by praying while enjoying a seductive woman’s attention, but by literally running away from her when she started getting physical (Genesis 39:12). When, day after day before that, Potiphar’s wife had tried to seduce him verbally, ‘he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her ’ (Genesis 39:1, emphasis mine). Note how far back from intercourse he drew the line. No matter how inconvenient, nor how much he was missing out on, nor even how weak some people might think him by acting that way, he set boundaries and stuck to them and he even added stricter ones (running) when that became necessary. We don’t prove what good Christians we are by taking heroin, confident that in Christ we can break the habit at any moment; we prove our devotion to Christ by totally avoiding any experimentation with things that entice. We don’t prove our commitment to Christ by playing chicken with the devil, seeing how close we can get to grieving God without actually falling. Setting a big gap between you and forbidden pleasure is the spiritual, God-honoring way to act. The Story So Far We have explored reasons for getting it right when setting limits in expressions of love. We have yet to get to the nitty-gritty of spelling out those limits, however. I have also discovered a factor that often pushes us into things we regret and yet is so subtle that few of us ever realize that it pushed us. So let’s plunge into these critical issues. Continued . . .

(Part 2) holding hugging stroking groping smooching pashing tongue kissing heavy petting making love foreplay oral sex getting amorous fondling French kissing passionate lovemaking caressing getting physical necking light petting getting tight dry humping cuddling intimacy open-mouth kissing snuggling touching Read Part 1 here When I began this webpage I never expected to write things you’ll find here. Mentally and prayerfully wrestling with this subject has changed me. I’m astounded to have discovered things about myself that operate on an almost subconscious level. And I think it applies to all of us, to varying degrees. If it startles even the writer, it could well take an act of God for the reader not to entirely reject it. You’ll be shocked, angry and offended, especially at my exaggerated examples. It is the very exaggeration, however, that was like turning up the volume and caused me to know things that have always been in the background but until then their significance had escaped me. The Forgotten Side of the Coin Creatures that sexually reproduce are divinely fitted with in-built courtship behavior, the exact nature of which varies from species to species. In peafowl, for instance, the ritual commences with the peacock enticing the female by a visual display of his gorgeous tail feathers. Presumably, without that visual display no peahen would ever be in tears over an unwanted pregnancy. Although humans can override their natural tendencies, we, too, have inbuilt courtship patterns that lead to pregnancy. Essentially, it goes like this. The female, consciously or unconsciously, uses her physical appearance to sexually entice the male. The aroused male moves closer. Almost instinctively, his hands begin to wander over the female’s body. Skilfully, though almost unconsciously, he uses touch (kissing, stroking, and so on) to gently break down every trace of the female’s resistance to full intimacy. Discussions of the morality of dating behavior rightly consider the male use of touch to entice, and yet many overlook the female contribution – her unique power to use her physical appearance to set the temperature of a date. So let’s lift the lid on this significant, forgotten factor. If Muslim societies pressure women to hide their sexuality, decadent western societies pressure women to flaunt their sexuality. The pressure is so immense that the average woman is made to feel ashamed to be seen in public unless she tarts herself up more than even prostitutes do in most other societies. The very suggestion that we might do this offends us, and yet that is how observers from other cultures often view us. Are they wrong, or are we too close to see clearly? Should we stop to wonder why it is that even in church services in the west, women typically expose more flesh than their male counterparts? Is it because, unlike men, women are cruelly pressured by the world to feel great shame and embarrassment if they do not display and visually enhance their bodies to look like sex objects? Godly women seem forced to end up with some sort of uneasy compromise between flaunting their bodies and full modesty. If you are a woman, your response to this pressure is a personal matter, although, of course, your decision will affect everyone who sees you, particularly a close male friend. Please remember that throughout this series of webpage I’m not interested in pushing my view, but only in jolting you into prayerfully re-examining issues, rather than mindlessly following the mob. I’m no expert; God is. Simply ask him if there is a grain of truth in any of the mad things I say, and whether, in his eyes, you are already perfectly on course. Where your prayerful exploration takes you is between you and your Lord. In fact, would you mind if we prayed right now? Father, You tell us: Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. (2) Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. From the moment of my birth right through to this present moment, everything I have ever seen or heard has either been the world, or been influenced by the world, or, even if it is entirely from you, has possibly been distorted by me interpreting it from a mindset that has been affected by the world. Like everyone else, I have been unavoidably brainwashed by the world to the point where I cannot possibly trust my judgment on anything. As you say: Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. 1 Corinthians 4:4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Luke 16:15 . . . What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight. I don’t even know what things about the world I must avoid conforming to. Surely there must be things about the world – such as most of technology – that are morally neutral. And yet there could just as easily be things that I – and most other Christians – unthinkingly accept that are ungodly or unwise. Even Satan himself, the ultimate in evil, is the Deceiver who masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). This is an impossible mess that throws me entirely upon your mercy to open my eyes. It seems inevitable that I would be biased against learning the truth about worldliness because there must be much about the world that to me feels cozy, and much about going against the world that would make me feel embarrassed and a freak. No wonder you preface the Scripture about not conforming to the world by telling me to make myself a living sacrifice. This is going to be hard. I shrink from pain. I therefore plead with you to force my eyes open to what things of the world I must no longer conform to. I ask you to break worldly brainwashing that I’ve been subjected to since birth. And yet you ask me to no longer be conformed and to renew my own mind. Clearly, there must be much that you expect me to do to participate in this vital process. Grantley, the author of this webpage, could be just as influenced by the world or by a religious spirit as me. You alone have the purity and objectivity and intellectual power to discern. So I look to you to open my eyes as I read this webpage. When an average Christian woman in western society tells herself she just wants to look nice, she seldom realizes that she is actually making herself as sexually irresistible as she dare –just how much she dares, of course, depends on her. How conscious are we that by following normal western dress standards, women end up wearing clothes that are ingeniously designed to sexually tantalize a man? For instance, what in the west is typically feminine clothing is cleverly designed to make it unpredictable just how much more will be exposed when a woman bends or sits or the wind blows. Men don’t know what flash of flesh they will miss if they take their eyes of her for a moment. It is almost as if a woman is giving a continual, partial striptease, stirring within a man a yearning to remove her clothes. If a worldly woman has no intention of actually letting anyone remove her clothing, it adds an exhilarating feeling of power to the buzz she gets out of thinking herself sexually alluring. Worldly women who hypocritically think themselves more moral than nudists because they ‘leave something to the imagination,’ typically dress so as to provoke men into letting their imagination run wild. Sometimes their goal is merely to prove themselves to other women, but regardless of motivation, they try their hardest to deceive everyone into imagining that they look sexier naked than they really are. Do they, for instance, wear stockings to hide how sexy their legs really look, or to hide blemishes or draw attention to their legs? Are high heels chosen for comfort or to make the ankles look slimmer and hence the legs look sexier than they really are? (In fact, some think that by changing the posture and walk, high heels make the entire body more sensuous.) If a worldly woman thinks herself attractive, even when she covers up, it is usually to incite lust. If she wears slacks when she dresses up, it is usually so that she can show off her buttocks. If she wears a sweater with a high neckline, her choice is usually tight enough to emphasize her breasts. And innocent girls mindlessly follow. Although I am vehemently opposed to nudity outside marriage, nudists have a strong case in arguing that (especially after a few minutes) full nudity is less sexually tantalizing than the way western women typically present themselves. If those who keep their clothes on were truly moral, their goal in dressing would be to give the impression that their naked body has less to offer than it really does. How many western women dress like that? When sexually aroused women make love, their lips usually redden and become more prominent, their cheeks become flushed, and the pupils of the eyes enlarge. These act as sexual signals that drive a man making love to become still more passionate. It is no coincidence that modern facial makeup mimics sexual arousal. Let’s have some fun as we explore this subject. Don’t take me too seriously; just keep your ear tuned to the Lord in case something initiates a thought that the Lord wants you to pursue. When a woman dresses modestly, a date is not so dangerously hot. If she covered her hair, and wore no makeup or perfume, the temperature would lower still further. If she didn’t have a bath for a week and looked like an apprentice grease monkey about to do an oil change on her tenth car for the day, the temperature would go down even more. If she wore a baggy gorilla suit and mask, and a few slightly smelly fish strung around her neck, the temperature would be so low that the fish would freshen up. Even a nun would be proud of the man’s self-control. By now you know I’m a fruitloop, but I have this theory – and I’m sticking to it – that few women who have rolled in fresh manure on the way to a date have ever come home pregnant. Am I right, or am I right? Seriously, if just a dab of doggie poo behind the ear could keep a man in check, then, as ridiculous as it sounds, could something as minor as a dab of makeup in many cases have been a key factor in precipitating a chain of events that has ended in lifelong regret? It all has to start somewhere. If there is any truth in this, it in no way lowers male guilt. I’m just wondering whether there are factors that most of us have underestimated. Women try their hardest to appeal to men by their clothing, hairdos, makeup and perfume, and then seem to forget that it actually works. The visual side of sex is often as significant to men as foreplay is to women. So let me speak directly to women for a moment. When you try to make yourself look nice you are probably very conscious that the result is far from being the sexiest sight on the planet, and even far from the sexiest you could make yourself look. This, understandably, is likely to lull you into thinking that prettying yourself up has only a minor effect in stirring within your male friend a craving to do morally unacceptable things to you, or at least drive him to commence a chain of events that could get dangerously out of hand. What makes your physical appearance critical, however, is that your male friend knows that other women who drape and paint their bodies to tease him sexually would most likely resist his attempts to caress them. If he thinks he has a better chance of acceptance from you than from strangers, then the way you present yourself will influence his behavior more than how alluring other women make themselves. There is a significant sidelight to this that I – by education a student of human behavior – find fascinating. When women think they look attractive, they are usually more sexually responsive. Or, looked at another way, the more women feel they have succeeded in making themselves look nice, the more vulnerable to temptation they are. So, surprisingly, the more a woman enhances her looks, the harder it is not only for her date, but also for herself, to exercise self-control. I’ll try an analogy that might seal for you the significance of what a woman does without even touching a man. If a person were desperately trying to diet, it would be cruel to waft delicious food under his nose. The more tasty the food looks and smells, the more pressure his self-control is under. If it is merely a picture in a cookbook or seen through the window of a stranger’s house, the extent to which food is made to look mouth-watering will affect him, but if he can’t get his hands on the food, he won’t end up eating it. It is how tempting the food looks that is right under his nose that is most likely to break down his self-imposed restrictions. If delicious food were put through a blender to look like baby food, and somehow the food had no aroma, it would still be just as tasty, but you would have a better chance of not letting yourself down by overindulging. If I were dating a woman, the more I felt drawn to her, the more I’d prefer to make my life less torturous by restricting most of our contact to phone, and when I’m with her I’d prefer her to look as unattractive as possible. Maybe she could wear a scarf and thick rimmed glasses, no make up and something like a shapeless trench coat covering jeans and high-necked top. ‘In your dreams!’ every woman screams. Oh, well, at least with dreams like that I won’t wake up with a smouldering pillowslip. If cupid were really working overtime, my long-suffering, soon-to-give-up-in-disgust friend could add to her arsenal of cupid repellents by smearing herself with foul smelling gel such as those rather old-fashioned preparations intended to relieve muscle aches or for nasal decongestion. I know what you think about me, but I assure you I’m so sane that the psychiatric nurse says I’ll soon be able to have visitors. Oh, dear! This was going to be such a serious webpage. Now look what’s happened! Hopefully rather than dismissing my ridiculous examples, they have rammed home to you how critical a woman’s grooming really is. And a man’s appearance isn’t totally irrelevant either. In fact, it could play a bigger role than many of us realize. (With any luck, someone might mistakenly think that’s why I look like something the last high tide washed up.) What a woman does with her face has so subtle an effect compared to what she does with her breasts that men can be excused for thinking it irrelevant. One of the greatest dangers of grooming, however, is precisely that it seems insignificant. It seduces without setting off alarm bells. A weakling who slips under a tripwire can do more damage than a fearsome brute that triggers the intruder alarm. Such seemingly inconsequential things as how kissable the lips are made to look, how flawless the complexion, how big the eyes, how alluring the hair, and how inviting the perfume, can contribute to how out of control things end up. Surprisingly, it can be just as significant as how short the dress and how plunging the neckline. As you know, there is more to determining whether a woman looks attractive than her hemline and cleavage. Obviously, each couple must come to their own decision before God as to what extremes they will go in order to calm things down. Understandably, single women want to look their prettiest when they are with their special man, and yet if they must pretty themselves it would be better for them to do it for complete strangers and to be their plainest for those they feel most passionate about. If this sounds strange, it not as weird as the fact that soon after marriage women typically slip into putting more effort into their appearance when they are with strangers than when alone with the one person on the planet whose passion they have a legitimate right to stir up. The serious problem with lowering sexual tension by toning down one’s appearance is that it is most embarrassing for women to be seen in public looking less seductive than they are capable of (and some men want to boost their own ego by being seen with a sexy woman). Ironically, if I could persuade a woman to look more like I’d prefer her to look before marriage, probably one of the places where I would most want to avoid seeing her is in church because that is a place where women are likely to feel pressured to dress up and wear makeup. A further complicating factor is that many women are genuinely scared that God won’t give them a husband unless they lower themselves to using their bodies as bait. Do women who have used their looks to catch a man ever wonder how come they have landed husbands who can’t keep their eyes off other sexy sights, or who prefer women as young as they were (or tried to look) when they first attracted their men? If they can’t trust God in the selection of a husband, they can’t blame him for the result. Boundaries? It’s not for me to lay down rules, Of necessity, however, every couple needs to establish their own rules. Limits must be soberly and prayerfully determined and set in concrete ahead of time. To leave it to spur-of-the-moment feelings to influence where we draw the line is too foolish to contemplate. The tragedy is that we only have to let ourselves down once and it is like breaking down a safety barrier than can never be repaired. It is forever harder not to again go careering over the edge at the same point. We can only erect another barrier still further from the edge but it will always be weaker than the original safety barrier. That entire area is less safe than before. What we could previously get away with will now be too dangerous. It’s a fact of life that we each set boundaries. Especially in the early stages of a relationship, however, we are nervous about spelling them out to our friend. We hope he/she is a mind reader or miraculously happens to think exactly like us. That’s about as unlikely as it is that we both had identical dreams last night. We are all built differently. Honorable men who wouldn’t dare touch their girlfriend’s breasts might be alarmed to learn that certain women are even more aroused by having their earlobes kissed. And there are women who would be shocked to learn that touching some men’s nipples is as sexually dangerous as could ever be the case with a woman’s nipples. Human variability is so pronounced that no matter how many partners our friend has had, there are probably some aspects of our sexuality that our friend has never before encountered. This makes it so dangerous to clam up about our personal vulnerabilities, vainly hoping that our friend understands our uniqueness or stumbles upon the discovery before too much damage is done. If we don’t tell our friend ahead of time exactly where we draw the line, we lose the advantage of having our friend’s support in maintaining those standards. Keeping secret the precise location of your carefully erected safety rails means your friend is never sure whether you are transgressing your personal standards. This renders us less motivated not to let ourselves down in the heat of the moment. Another concern is that unless it is openly discussed, your friend might mistakenly assume that you feel coldly toward him/her, when it is simply where you would draw the line with any person, no matter how deep your feelings. We need to get it not only into our heads, but deep into our hearts, that the standards one sets reflect one’s morality, not one’s weakness, nor one’s passion or commitment to the relationship. If your friend surrenders to your seductive wiles by lowering his/her standards, it proves not what a good lover you are, but how low you have stooped. No matter how minor the infringement, by trespassing his/her boundaries, you have not only abused the person you claim to respect, you have seared that person’s conscience. Spiritually, the sin of seduction is even worse than forced sex because seduction makes its victim a willing partner in sin. ‘But what we did wasn’t sin!’ you protest. Scripture is clear that if a person yields to what he/she regards as sin, then in God’s eyes it is sin. If you think something is wrong and do it, how can you be innocent in the eyes of the One who sees your heart? (This principle is expounded in Romans 14 and Corinthians 8). For your friend to lower his/her standards for your sake is proof not of your friend’s love, but only of his/her weak self-control and of your ability to act like the devil. There are no winners when that happens. We know we should talk these things over but it is so hard when we are tentatively getting to know someone. The ability to discuss embarrassing matters is a vital key to a good marriage and to great sex within that marriage. Right now is the perfect time to develop communication skills that will enrich you for the rest of your life. It’s scary, but the benefits are immense. A perfect way to broach this awkward subject is to share this entire webpage with your friend. Doing so doesn’t necessarily mean you are getting serious about each other. It’s helpful and enlightening to learn how different Christians feel about these matters, and it assists us in developing our own standards. There is no need for any other motives. Maybe you could read the webpages out loud to your friend, with a pause between paragraphs to allow the opportunity for discussion. This would be particularly helpful if your friend is not a great reader. The Nitty-Gritty I’m about to give some statements you might like to ponder. You are unique and can have a personal relationship with God, so I’m unconcerned about whether you accept, reject or modify these statements. They are not necessarily even the standards I would apply to myself. They are simply your opportunity to begin exploring your heart, your friend’s heart and God’s heart. My longing is only that you use these statements as a launching pad for prayer and for discussion with your friend until you can say, “‘It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us’ ( Acts 15:28) that my friend and I should act this way. Discuss with your friend your reaction to each of the following. To what extent do the statements need modification to express exactly how you feel before God that you should act? While we remain unmarried: We should commit ourselves to doing nothing we wouldn’t do in front of our parents or our pastor. The man should not see uncovered nor touch (even over clothing) any part of his girlfriend that would be covered if a woman were wearing a very modest bikini. Nor should he touch her upper thighs. The man should not touch the bare skin of any part of his girlfriend’s body that would be covered by a one piece bathing costume, nor the thighs or armpits. The man should not touch bare skin between the chin and knees nor the inner part of the arm above the elbow. The woman should not wear tight clothes, dress in any way that emphasizes her breasts, shows cleavage, or shows off her behind. When we are together, the woman will try to conceal/tone down her beauty. Discuss ways of doing this. We will endeavor never to be completely alone together. (Phone calls might be a great way to have long, intimate chats. Some libraries, restaurants, parks, public events, and so on, allow privacy of conversation without being entirely concealed. Other possibilities include being in a room alone with an open door through which someone might enter at any time, or being in a car alone on your way to a destination at which you will be missed if you were delayed.) Points for discussion: Talk over with each other your feelings about tongue kissing (French kissing) before marriage. Over the time you have been close friends, what fluctuations have you noticed in your private and shared prayer lives? Helpful Suggestions To one or both of you, some rules you set may seem very strict or unworkable. You might therefore prefer to leave them open for re-consideration after a trial period or perhaps each month. Since something might suddenly prove unexpectedly arousing, you should agree that either of you can instantly raise standards higher, but agree never to lower standards in the heat of the moment. If anything ever required a cool head and a prayerful heart, it is in establishing or modifying your personal set of guidelines and boundaries. If you have a fear of intimacy that could possibly hinder you in marriage, don’t hide behind these standards. You need to discuss possible difficulties openly if the relationship is looking as if it might lead to marriage. Never resort to emotional blackmail such as: ‘If you loved me you would lower your standards.’ ‘I’ll be forced to leave you if you don’t lower your standards.’ ‘I can’t sleep because I so desperately need you to lower your standards.’ ‘So and so does it.’ In relation to this last complaint, remember that, given the number of Christians who sin and do their utmost to keep their shame secret, arguments about what other unmarried couples seem to get away with, hold little weight. Christians who freely confess their pre-conversion sins typically go deathly quiet about their post-conversion falls. And no one knows what their liberties are doing to their thought life and to God’s breaking heart. You might also be blessed with a higher libido than them. It feels like an act of cruelty to know that one’s loved one in craving physical contact and not give it. A problem, however, is that although your friend genuinely believes that just one, relatively safe thing will satisfy him/her, that satisfaction will be short lived and then your friend will crave something a little further down the slippery slide. Bringing it Together We have been seeking to determine not what is sin, but how far from the edge a couple must stop to be free from the danger of falling into sin. Because we each have unique pasts, unique bodies, and differing libidos, the point at which we must draw the line will vary from person to person. This means that for most couples, one person could safely go further than the other. This difference can be frustrating, but the person who could safely go further must strongly support his/her friend’s boundaries, even though it seems unduly restrictive. This could demand a massive rethink. You have rightly committed yourself to avoiding intercourse before marriage, but for your friend’s sake you might have to avoid very much more than that. If you are unwilling to make this sacrifice for your friend’s sake, then you are unworthy of your friend. Related Webpages Part One of This Series When Christians Date