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Dissociative Identity Disorder Explained       When people suffer something so horrible that their mind recoils from the very thought of it, we can understand their mind trying to suppress all memory of the event. A simple blocking of the past would not work, however, if a person were continually reminded of the trauma by, for example, the trauma being repeated every few days. When the trauma is on-going, the mind has to employ a more sophisticated approach to maintaining sanity by giving itself as big a reprieve as possible whenever the trauma is not occurring. The mind divides itself so that part of it is kept unaware of the bad times. That way, whenever the bad times are not occurring, part of the mind can function without being oppressed by an awareness of the horrors that occurred yesterday nor by the paralyzing fear that the horrors might be repeated tomorrow. Additional sources of trauma can cause further fragmenting of the mind. The advantage of fragmentation is that the mind-crippling task of trying to cope with an awareness of everything at once is broken down into smaller, though still highly challenging, pieces. It is not only memories that are divided up, but with them go other intellectual abilities as well. Some abilities can be replicated in another part of the brain, just like right-handed people can further develop the side of their brain that controls their left hand so that they can write with their left hand almost as well as with their right. Not all abilities are replicated, however. Some parts of the person end up with skills that other parts do not have. As a result, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder are usually more skilled than they realize until they become fully aware of all their other parts. Previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder, the newer term sounds like gobbledygook but it is actually more meaningful than it first seems. If you were suffering, you might make it more tolerable by seeking to lessen your awareness of your current situation and imagining you were somewhere nice. This is called  dissociation  and although it would not stop all pain, it is likely to genuinely help. Instead of thinking of yourself as being  somewhere  else, an alternative is to think of yourself as being  someone  else – someone who is never subjected to this distress. That is called taking on a  dissociative identity . This would become an obvious choice if, for example, you were a little child singled out for severe beatings simply because of who you are – the child of an abusive parent. This coping mechanism becomes a  disorder  – a disadvantage rather than an advantage – if part of you got trapped in that dissociative state and could not return to normality even when external circumstances become normal. Becoming permanently disconnected from part of yourself would not be because of an inadequacy in you but because of the severity and prolonged nature of the trauma you suffered and because it began in your formative years. On-going disconnection could occur if, for example, you remained too scared to let yourself remember what happened when you were in that dissociated state. Being unable to access unpleasant memories might superficially seem desirable but it is likely to keep you from ever healing from those memories. How could anyone resolve a problem that he refuses to think about? To live in denial is to let a problem grow. Moreover, you would probably lose not only access to certain memories but to skills you had developed while you were in that state and to certain intellectual potential that this part of you has. So remaining disconnected would prevent you from being as consistently skilled as you have the potential to be and keep you from accessing the full extent of your intellectual capacity. If you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, healing involves reconnecting with those parts of you that had become disconnected from you. False healing occurs if a person is still disconnected but mistakenly supposes nothing is missing, simply because the person has lost all awareness of disconnected parts. As a child’s brain grows it becomes increasingly rigid and the ability to compartmentalize itself through Dissociative Identity Disorder is lost if the process is not initiated by around about seven years of age. If someone learns the technique when young, however, the person can continue further compartmentalizing his/her brain later in life. Far from being freaks, people with D.I.D. have, from an early age, stumbled upon an ingenious mental strategy for coping with situations that are almost beyond human endurance. It is an emergency response to an extreme situation, however. There are significant disadvantages to remaining fragmented, such as the inability to simultaneously draw upon one’s full intellectual resources to solve problems and heal from trauma. Not as Weird as You Think An older term for Dissociative Identity Disorder is Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Regardless of name, its existence has been recognized by researchers at least as early as the 1800s. In a sense, we all have multiple personalities and switch between them according to our circumstances. We would act differently, for instance, in each of the following circumstances:  In the presence of a head of state  When alone with our spouse *  On a night out with the girls/guys *  When playing with children *  When depressed In other ways, too, everyone has “multiple personalities.” For example, we might say, “My heart says one thing, but my head says another.” The ability to see things from such different perspectives can be a significant asset. When indecisive, we speak of being “in two minds.” When dieting we are not sure which part of us will win – the part wanting to be thin or part wanting to keep eating. In Romans 7, Paul devoted almost an entire chapter detailing the battle within myself between the part of him wanting to obey God and the part wanting to indulge himself. “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15). So having multiple personalities is not nearly as abnormal as it first seems. Moreover, dissociation is normal. In order to focus on the task at hand, all of us sometimes temporarily put unpleasant memories out of our minds, or tune out to such distractions as background noises. It is just that for some people this natural tendency is done to a greater extent. For them, shutting off awareness of certain distressing things is done so effectively that a separate consciousness forms within the person, with part of the person knowing, feeling and thinking some things that the other part does not. For further explanations, see  The Inner Child.

Explaining to a Child Alter Who He/She Is   Tell the alter:   You know that something very scary happened to you. It was such a shock that it is as if a part of you fell into a deep sleep, like sometimes happens when someone has been hit hard on the head. You are now awake, of course, but while you were sleeping another part of you stayed awake each day and kept growing. You were asleep for so long that what seems like yesterday was actually years ago. Things that you have feared have gone forever and you are now very safe.   You are now as strong as a grownup, and God – who can do anything – has become your best friend. He loves you so much and if you let him he’ll take away your pain and make you happy.   I can tell you some of the good things that have happened since you were asleep, but there is something even better. In time, you will be able to join up with the part of you that stayed awake so that all that has happened while you were sleeping will become your memories and you will be as smart as a grown up and good at all the things the awake part of you learnt while growing up.     Back

Psychological Tests to Diagnose Dissociative Identity Disorder   Official Medical (Psychiatric) Diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder (M.P.D.)     As tools to speed their understanding of individuals, psychologists have developed a wide range of questionnaire-type tests. IQ tests are a well-known example. Among the many tests are ones designed to diagnose Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known by the older term of Multiple Personality Disorder). I would not regard any test as infallible but much care has been taken in developing the tests and the more they are used in conjunction with each other, the more reliable they are.     Note:  Free, on-line tests exist but they are  highly unreliable and not recommended. The following information has been kindly provided by a professional who herself has D.I.D. She is in the U.S.A. and her information applies to that country.   These tests need to be administered by a PhD level Psychologist or other Mental Health Provider (regulations differ from state to state in the US). This is because considerable skill is needed for accurate interpretation of the results. The further removed in culture the person taking the test is from a white, middle class American, the more care is required to interpret the results and the less reliable it is likely to be. Greater accuracy is believed to occur if a professional asks the questions, rather than it being reduced to a pen and paper test. The more tests that are used, the more likely it is that the final result is valid. The tester also needs to be comfortable with the fact that Christians believe it is not unusual to contact angels, demons and God. Otherwise some of the answers could be wrongly interpreted as psychosis or deliberate fabrication.   The larger and more valid tests usually cost several hundreds of dollars ($250–$500+) and unless there is a competent physician who understands the testing and there is a good reason for doing the testing (not just for curiosity’s sake or personal confirmation), most insurance companies do not cover the cost. Also, the tests themselves can be very triggering and can cause some distress.   Another important consideration is who will be seeing the results and what they will be used for. Confidentiality is a  must . Professionals understand the importance of confidentiality but it is worth asking about the office procedures regarding handling of client files and who will see your information and for what purpose.   No one should intimidate you into doing anything you feel uncomfortable about. If you feel your questions and concerns are not being given adequate attention, end the appointment and seek someone who will give you the care and respect you deserve.   You have a right to have the test administered in as comfortable an environment as possible where privacy can be maintained. It is your right to view the results of the testing – usually through a summary written by the professional – and have it explained in a non-intimidating, non-judgmental, confidential manner. Furthermore, you have a right to a copy of the summary and to ask for a second opinion.   Tests occasionally undergo revisions that further increase their accuracy. Occasionally, practitioners buy in bulk and could have old stock. It might be worthwhile asking if the lastest revision is being used.   Here are the tests, ranked approximately from the most useful/important for D.I.D. diagnosis down to the least important:   1.     MMPI-2-RF:  Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory   A 338 item tester administered “inventory” which is a standard in many psychological circles to help in the “correct” diagnosis of an individual. Some of the conditions that it can help interpret are schizophrenia, depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, dissociation, and a host of other personality/behavior disorders.   This is usually used in conjunction with MCMI-II (see 6. below) but if cost prevents this, MMPI-2-RF alone is still better than not using this test.   2.     SCID-D-R:  Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders–Revised   A 250 item “interview” meaning it is tester administered face-to-face in question/answer format.   3.     MID:  Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation   A 218 question self-reporting measure.   4.     DAPS:  The Detailed Assessment of Posttraumatic Stress   A 105-item inventory that provides detailed information on an adult client’s history of various types of trauma exposure and their psychological reactions to the trauma including dissociation.   5.     DES-II:  Dissociative Experiences Scale   A 28 item self-reporting measure.   6.     MCMI-II:  Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory   This, along with the Rorschach (“ink-blot” test) and TAT (Thematic Apperception Test – consists of 20 drawings) can provide information regarding various ways that a person interprets information and understands the world around them. The Rorschach and TAT tests are especially subjective in nature.   7.     MDI:  Multi-Scale Dissociation Inventory   A 30 item self reporting measure of the individual’s dissociative symptoms.   8.     PAS:  Perceptual Alterations Scale   A 35 item self-reporting measure.   9.     QED:  Questionnaire on Experiences of Dissociation   A 26 item self-reporting measure. A good provider may also administer an Intelligence test such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III (WAIS-III) which can screen for and differentiate psychosis from dissociation, as sometimes DID is misunderstood as a psychotic disorder.   “ God is the center and source for all healing ,” writes the abuse survivor recovering from D.I.D. who compiled this page. Never forget this, even if you receive some help from professionals.   For self-diagnosis and indicators suggesting Dissociative Identity Disorder, understand that  alter  is a term for a separate “personality” associated with D.I.D., and see  How Can You Know if You Have an Alter?

Pride vs Humility   False Humility Exposed   The Difference Between Faith in God and Faith in Self   As affirmed in Ephesians 2:8, we are born again by grace (God taking the initiative and offering us what we don’t deserve) and we receive this by faith (trusting God to cleanse us from our sin and give us spiritual life through Jesus’ sacrificial death).   Paul agonized over the Galatian church because although they knew their spiritual life commenced through faith, they were beginning to think that the way to proceed to spiritual maturity was through their own effort. As he says in Romans 1:17 ‘For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last . . .’   The following is a relevant extract from my web book Waiting for Your Ministry and another of my webpages.     Glorious Failure   Moses was in ‘the backside of the desert,’ says the King James Bible (Exodus 3:1). I’d steer clear of that expression, but there might have been times when Moses was tempted to use it. The desert drop-out stood before the burning bush a broken man, haunted by his inadequacy (Exodus 4:10-14). He was so long in the tooth ivory hunters must have started asking after his health. And excuses! When God called him, this word-masher’s comeback was packed with more ‘buts’ than a church pew on Easter morning. As he tried to stammer home his point he even had the audacity to imply that his deficiencies were bigger than God. What’s a stutter to the One who fashions mouths? What’s a mental block to the Maker of minds?   Poor old tongue-twister – one foot in the grave, and the other in his mouth. Yet it was Moses the word-slurping geriatric, not Moses the headstrong royal, who was on the brink of greatness.   Forty years earlier, fresh from his Egyptian education, strong in body, high in status and political pull, he was keen to help God’s people. But heaven had no use for a budding superstar. Heaven was waiting for a bumbling sheep-minder.   Viewed from the final side of the grave, everything tackled in one’s own strength fizzles (Compare John 15:5). Only through God could Moses’ splash in time ripple for all eternity. Perhaps it took the full forty years for this realization to become an unshakeable conviction, but it was worth the wait. It became the secret of Moses’ strength, ridding him of the arrogant independence that would otherwise have fouled his service. He was the meekest man on earth (Numbers 12:3 ff). This precious quality is adorned with exquisite promises.   ‘The meek will he guide . . . The meek will he teach his way.’ (Psalm 25:9)   ‘The meek will increase their joy in the Lord.’ (Isaiah 29:19)   ‘The meek will inherit the earth.’ (Matthew 5:5)   Humility – joyous dependence upon the Lord – is the road to honor (Proverbs 15:33 b; James 4:10; 1 Peter 5:6-7). The glitter at the end of other roads is a mirage (Luke 14:11; Proverbs 16:25).   There was a young man with rashes; All that he touched turned to ashes. Yet marigolds, azaleas, Lily bulbs, and dahlias, All grew in those wonderful ashes.   (If you wrote poetry like this, you’d be humble, too.)   The issue of pride and humility is a deathtrap, strewn with confusion and false concepts. Let’s clear this minefield before anyone else is hurt. We’ll begin with the analogy of a lamb in Bible times.   There’s a pride that says, ‘I can find better pasture than the Shepherd. I’ll always find water. I can handle bears, and lions are probably a myth invented by the Shepherd so he can dominate me.’   Few of us are in danger of such stupidity. Our danger is the independent spirit that says, ‘I adore my wonderful Shepherd, but that grass over the rise looks particularly juicy. I’ll just wander over. I’m growing up. I’ve been out of sight before and everything went fine. If a lion comes I’m sure I can bleat loud enough and the Shepherd can run fast enough . . .’   There’s an attitude masquerading as humility that beats itself miserable. ‘I’m dumb. I’m ugly. I’m hopeless.’ Give no room to this imposter. But there’s a humility that rejoices in the certainty that the Shepherd knows best. Having abandoned faith in itself or in luck, it puts all its hope in the Shepherd, believing that to leave him out of sight for a second is to flirt with disaster. This virtue hugs the Shepherd, delighting in his every whisper, feasting on his goodness. Sometimes humility is led over rocky terrain but ultimately it enjoys the best pasture and the highest security. Not only is it not mauled by predators, it produces the best wool and the best offspring. It sometimes staggers up hills to stay with its Shepherd but it frolics in the warmth of the Shepherd’s love.   Just to be sure you have grasped the difference between this beautiful quality and the ugly imposter that beats oneself up, let me interrupt this by quoting from something else I’ve written:   James 4:6   . . . God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.   For most of my life, scriptures like this have filled me with such dread of the dangerous trap of pride that I felt driven to avoid it at all costs. Tragically, this commendable attitude got me nowhere. My godly intentions were sabotaged by such a mistaken understanding of pride that all I managed was to fall into false humility. I wrongly thought I could foster humility by thinking negatively about myself. To my horror, I eventually discovered that false humility is itself a form of pride.   I correctly understood that if I thought I could achieve anything of lasting value without God’s help, or if I thought I were moral enough to gain God’s approval outside of Christ’s forgiveness, then humbling myself involved lowering my opinion of myself. My mistake was in wrongly concluding from this truth that the basic ingredient of humility is having a low opinion of oneself.   Godly humility flows not from thinking lowly of oneself but from seeing things through God’s eyes. Pride is having the audacity to disagree with God. It is saying I know more than the God of the universe; my puny intellect knows better than the Almighty; the God of truth is wrong and I am right.   Since the God of love sees you as lovable, and true humility involves taking God’s assessment of everything as gospel, humility requires you to see yourself as lovable. If God sees you through eyes of love, how dare you see yourself in a different light, as if your perspective is right and your Creator and Savior is wrong? If God forgives you, to refuse to forgive yourself is to have the audacity to imply that you have higher moral standards than the Judge of all the earth; that you are holier than the Holy Lord. Isn’t that the very pinnacle of pride? Please avoid this deadly trap.   Make God your God by agreeing with him. He says you are the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Dare you exalt yourself above God by disagreeing with him? Stop wounding yourself by squandering your faith on a lie, thus robbing God of faith that should be invested in him. Refuse the sinful, pride-filled path that deceptively seems humble but is actually implying that you know better than the Almighty. Set yourself free. Embrace God’s truth.   Even in Christian circles we hear so much about positive self-image that we seem to believe in the power of self rather than humility. ‘Negative’ confession seems to have done little harm to the following people.   *  ‘There comes one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose’ –  John the Baptist  (Mark 1:7).   *  ‘I am not worthy that you should come under my roof’ –  the centurion  commended for his faith (Matthew 8:8).   *  ‘I can of myself do nothing’ –  the Lord Jesus.  (John 5:30)   *  ‘ . . .  Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.’ (1 Timothy 1:15) ‘I am the least of the apostles, and am not fit to be called an apostle.’ (1 Corinthians 15:9) ‘[I] am less than the least of all saints [ie believers] . . .’ (Ephesians 3:8). –  the apostle Paul.   *  ‘I write to you concerning righteousness, not because I take anything upon myself . . . For neither I, nor any such one, can come up to the wisdom of the blessed and glorified Paul’ –  Polycarp,  revered Bishop of Smyrna, martyred c 166 AD.   *  ‘I,  Patrick,  a sinner, the rudest and least of all the faithful, and most contemptible to very many . . .’ wrote the fifth-century Christian who risked death to return to the godless country from which he had fled slavery. Before he died he is said to have baptized over one hundred thousand Irish, established more than three hundred churches and changed the course of history.   *  ‘[I am called] to be a new kind of simpleton’ –  Francis of Assisi.   *  ‘I am a mere nothing’ –  Madame Guyon.   *  ‘Oh, that I may . . . desire to be nothing and to think it my highest privilege to be an assistant to all, but the head of none’ –  George Whitefield.   *  ‘ . . . though I am of little use, I feel a pleasure in doing the little I can do,’ wrote one of Christendom’s most obvious achievers,  William Carey.  ‘When I am gone,’ he said twelve years later, ‘say nothing about Carey. Speak instead of Carey’s Savior.’   *  ‘[I’m] the most overestimated man in America’ –  D. L. Moody.   *  ‘I have often found that the place where I have seen most of my own insignificance, baseness, unbelief and depravity has been the place where I have got a blessing . . .’ –  Charles Spurgeon.   *  Having been introduced as ‘our illustrious guest,’  Hudson Taylor  replied, ‘Dear friends, I am the little servant of an illustrious master.’   *  ‘It isn’t Mary Slessor doing anything, but Something outside of her altogether uses her as her small ability allows.’ ‘I am . . . nothing more and none other than the unworthy, unprofitable - but most willing – servant of the King of kings.’ ‘I know what it is to pray for long years and never get an answer . . .’ ‘I don’t live up to half the ideal of missionary life.  . . . We are very human and not goody-goody at all.’ –  Mary Slessor,  outstanding missionary to Africa.   * Amy Carmichael’s  personality and powers of leadership were such that, according to one biographer, she could easily have become a cult figure, had she so chosen. Instead, when her name appeared on the Royal Birthday Honors List she begged to have her name withdrawn, insisting she had done nothing worthy of the honor. It is said that whenever there was a task no one else wanted to do, people would say, ‘Ask Amy.’   *  Until her dying day, even after becoming a world-wide celebrity and receiving more acclaim than any single female missionary in modern history,  Gladys Aylward  believed she could not possibly have been God’s first choice for the ministry he gave her. God’s preference, she confided to a friend, must surely have been someone better educated and of the other sex.   Such self-depreciation is so characteristic of truly great Christians that finding the above quotations was nearly as easy as finding noses in a group portrait – provided I looked beyond the last few decades. That so many people could accomplish so much while having such a mind-set is an enigma to the gurus of positive thinking. It boils down to this: succeeding in situations where others would succumb, necessitates defiant faith in either yourself or in God – and which of the two you spend your faith on determines whether your achievement will be temporal or eternal. You might build an empire by believing in yourself. In time, however, every empire falls. Only by abandoning faith in self can you build for eternity.   In terms of mass impact, I suspect positive mania has been gaining momentum and creeping over the globe only in the last few generations and the modern move seems to have gravitated particularly to America. A world-wide survey of mathematical ability in thirteen-year-olds was most revealing. Of the six countries studied, America came dead last, yet 68% of the Americans rated themselves ‘good at mathematics,’ while a mere 23% from the top-scoring country (Korea) rated themselves so highly. The American youngsters had a wonderfully positive attitude as they limped home last.   In God, native ability and confidence in self amount to nothing. A frail old lady with child-like faith in Christ can make a muscle-bound, positive-confession-crazed he-man look like a cringing weakling. She could turn an intellectual giant into a fool.   A radio’s usefulness rests entirely on which frequency it is tuned to. Anyone trying to tune into a point somewhere between faith in God and faith in one’s self, will produce little more than static, no matter what the volume of its output. When the tuning slips slightly off God, positive thinking becomes humanism. Faith in one’s self is so intoxicating and the two types of faith are so easily confused or amalgamated, that we are unlikely to see the error of our ways while our misdirected faith seems to be producing results. That’s why total failure is often a necessary preliminary to outstanding success.   Sweet Smell of Defeat   The secret of an earth-shaking ministry is to by-pass our limitations and tap directly into the power of the One who holds the stars. We’re in union with the Creator of sapphires and seraphim, molecules and galaxies. In him is all power, all wisdom, all love. Why, then, do we act like those who have no God? Empowered by him, our accomplishments should excel anything godless humanity could contemplate. Yet the more content we are to draw solely upon human resources, the more ‘God’s work’ is riddled with human frailty.   Love and good intentions are never enough. It was love for Jesus that caused Peter to blurt out words that had such the opposite effect to Peter’s wishes that Jesus retorted, ‘Get behind me Satan’ (Mark 9:31-33). Job’s counselors seemed to have been motivated by deep concern for Job and genuine love for God when they unwittingly became Job’s tormenters and sinned against the God they thought they were defending (Job 2:11-13; 4:17; 5:8-16; 8:3,20-22; 42:7-8).   We could be like little children redecorating the house for Daddy without waiting for instructions or help. Daddy might not even want the television painted. Sadly, our loving, enthusiastic efforts could prove worse than nothing. Oh, we may think we have done a marvelous job – until we meet Father face to face.   A disastrous failure could therefore be a great blessing. There is nothing like it for excising the tendency to draw upon human, rather than divine resources. If allowed to spread, that cancer would destroy an otherwise healthy ministry.   Any hurt that causes me to cling more firmly to Christ is a hurt for which I will be forever thankful. Any ‘defeat’ that has this result is a victory. What seems an obstacle to service ends up an essential stepping stone. Brought to God, a string of failures becomes a rainbow, at the end of which lies golden success (Psalm 37:23-24; Proverbs 24:16; Micah 7:8; Romans 8:28).   If the following lines mirror your feelings, you’re headed for glory.   I need the Lord, my Maker, As rivers need to flow; As flowers need the sunlight; And seedlings need to grow; As marksmen need a target, And arrows need a bow. I’ve feigned my independence, But failed to improvise. I need the One I’m made for, As eagles need the skies. You’re my breath and my light, My food and my wine. I’m the brush, you’re the artist, I’m the string and you’re the harpist. Tune me for your glory.     I need the Lord, my Maker, As falcons need to see; As the clay needs a sculptor, And a lock needs a key. As a ship needs a rudder; And coral needs the sea. I’m done with empty living; Success that’s make-believe. I need the One I’m made for, As creatures need to breathe. You’re my strength and my hope, My peace and my shield. I’m the hands, you’re the healer, I’m the sword and you’re the victor. Wield me for your glory.     I need the Lord, my Maker, As an arm needs a hand; As a babe needs its mother; And a dove needs to land; As a car needs a driver And a glove needs a hand. I’m tired of ‘great achievements,’ Of life that’s just a game. I need the One I’m made for, As deserts need the rain. You’re my life and my joy, My truth and my guide. I’m the song, you’re the Singer, I’m a well and you’re the water. Fill me for your glory.     Blessed are they who know their labors have failed, for they shall learn to serve God his way. But woe to them who vainly imagine God approves of their labors. They have their reward already.   False confidence leads to chaos (Compare Proverbs 3:5,7; 28:26).

Jesus our Brother   You might have enjoyed the best human relationships ever known, but even they are inadequate preparation for comprehending the wonder and excitement and depth and intimacy of the relationship God wants with you. God’s uniqueness and the perfection of his goodness and selfless devotion to your lasting happiness leaves us flabbergasted. No one comes anywhere near the way he feels for you, sees the best in you, and has stupendous plans for you. He soars far beyond the proudest father cheering you on in the race of life; far beyond the most devoted mother tenderly helping you in every way; far beyond the most passionate lover feeling your every pain and thrilled to be in your presence; far beyond the most loyal brother; the most effective helper. Not even the intimacy with which you know yourself can compare with his depth of understanding of you. Even your patience with yourself is totally eclipsed by his tender concern and astounding patience toward you. And yet, as patient and understanding as he is, the mighty Lord is fiercely protective of you and determined for you to have the best and achieve the most.   We acknowledge that God, being perfect, is utterly free from the character flaws we keep finding in humans. So when the Bible calls God as our Father, we know it is describing Someone far wiser and more loving than the best earthly father. Tragically, however, some of us have suffered such pain in our upbringing that even trying to imagine the ideal father leaves us cold. God also reveals himself in his Word as being like a perfect mother. (See a link at the end of this webpage.) Although still inadequate, some of us will find this an easier launching pad from which to begin to grasp how wonderful God is. Elsewhere, I have explored how much like a lover God is. Surprisingly, much of our yearning for a perfect lover is actually an unconscious yearning for God. Approaching an understanding of God’s love from this angle will help still other people. In fact, we can all benefit from each analogy because each reveals another facet of our glorious Lord. For simplicity’s sake we will limit ourselves here to the terms father and brother, but we must realize that we are referring to a Person incomparably superior to anyone we have ever met. Alongside him the best imaginable human parent or sibling or lover seems cold, selfish, heartless, fickle and frail.   Although understandable on an emotional level, it is both tragic and irrational that we tend to let poor human relationships taint our feelings towards the Perfect One. In reality, the more we lack a good father or brother or lover, the more we need our relationship with God to heal our pain and fill that void in our lives by letting the Lord be our perfect father, brother and lover.   The Secret   There’s a way to transform the next moments from mere reading to a momentous experience, propelling you to new heights in God. The secret is prayer. I suggest something like this:   Dear Lord, As my eyes glide over the following lines, take me beyond words to a life-changing encounter with you. I look to you to powerfully impact me with new revelations of yourself, so that in holy awe I fall more in love with you and become more like you.   Normal, conservative Christian theology is almost incomprehensibly exciting, and yet words used to convey those truths often waft over us without the significance exploding in our minds. I’ve made it my mission to express time-honored biblical truth in a way that will help you see as you have never seen before. Nevertheless, your prayerfulness is still the key. Passionately seek the God of Truth and this time the truth might hit you as never before. And if it does, it will most likely shock you.   God’s ‘Sperm’?   Because it describes an aspect of the enormity of what God has done for us, the Bible sometimes speaks of God adopting us as his very own children. Adoption by the King of kings opens to us wonders that will keep us dancing for all eternity. Through it we can enjoy God’s intimacy and inheritance and royal status. The full story, however, is even more astounding. When we were born of God we were not merely adopted into God’s family, we were  born  into his family. By this staggering act of God we received God’s genes, as it were. At that instant a fundamental change in our entire nature occurred. Suddenly, with God’s genes in us, we were not only new people, we had the potential to grow up to become very much like God.   Scripture is compelled to oscillate between calling God our natural and our adoptive father because what the majestic Lord has done is so mind-blowing that it is without human parallel. No human can become someone’s genetic father after that person has already been conceived by another man, and yet this is precisely what God had done. He has given us not merely his love and possessions, but, spiritually, his own genes. Through the miracle of spiritual rebirth, our spiritual DNA has been impregnated with the divine nature.   In what seems a bold reference to sperm, the Bible says:   1 John 3:9  No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.   We have heard the words ‘born of God’ so often that our familiarity with the term lulls us into a false complacency that we have fully grasped what an astounding thought it really is. So let’s remove some of the deadening familiarity by considering Eugene Peterson’s expression, ‘people conceived and brought into life by God’ for the term  born again Christian . The agent of conception is sperm. It is the means whereby a father’s genetic blueprint is used to create life that bears the father’s image. The Greek word used in 1 John 3:9 is  sperma.  Depending upon the context,  sperma  can mean a plant seed, someone’s child/descendant or sperm/semen. In the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, this word is used in such passages as Leviticus 15:6   When a man has an emission of semen . . .   In the New Testament, it is used in Hebrews 11:11   Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age . . . (KJV)    God is now our natural father. Only because this has not always been so, is there a narrow, historical sense in which God could be thought of as our adoptive father. As dramatic as rebirth is, it is merely bringing us to the state that God has always intended us to be – his full children. I love the expression in James 1:18 that Father God ‘chose to give us birth.’ Unlike some human conceptions, God’s decision to become our father was a very deliberate act. He knew exactly what he was getting when he chose you.   To describe what has happened, I am particularly drawn to the term ‘gene therapy:’ inserting into cells new genes to replace defective genes. Spiritual rebirth is a replacing with the divine nature those parts of us that, through sin in our ancestry and sin of our own doing, had become hideously mutant.   At our spiritual rebirth our entire nature changed. We became a new species, a new life-form so astoundingly different from the rest of humanity that Jesus put it this way: ‘Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit’ (John 3:6). We’re talking not just in the order of the difference between giraffes and monkeys but the difference between flesh and spirit! Scientists have genetically modified pigs with DNA from a jellyfish. That staggering gene mix is child’s play, relative to the act of God Jesus is talking about.   Now that God is our Father, we bear the family likeness. At present we are mere embryos relative to what we will become, so our Godlike nature is not yet particularly apparent. Jesus put it this way: humanity is like a field of wheat interspersed with weeds that initially are nearly indistinguishable from wheat (Matthew 13:24-30). With the weeds Jesus had in mind, only an expert could tell which is the true wheat when the crop is young. As both species mature, however, the difference becomes pronounced.   The exciting news is that through the spiritual miracle made possible by the Son of God trading places with us on the cross, we can, as it were, undergo the gene manipulation that transforms us from weeds to wheat. Once this happens, though there may be little obvious change at first, a fundamental change is initiated. As effortlessly as a child’s nose begins to take on the shape of its father’s nose, so we will grow more and more like Father God, not merely because we try to model ourselves upon him but because God has transformed who we are by seeding his very own nature into our genetic blueprint.   No Longer Part of the Human Race   As astounding as it sounds, true Christians have been fathered by a Being from another world; a Life-form so totally different that he is the source of everything good. This fathering took place not when we were conceived but at some later time when we willingly allowed ourselves to be, in a spiritual sense, genetically interfered with by the God of selflessness and purity. Of course, this is the most wonderful thing we could ever experience, but it is clear why the God of compassion waits until we give our approval before transforming us. If done without our consent, it would be akin to spiritual rape; an act totally contrary to the gracious and holy ways of the Lord. Just as a man passionately in love can be expected to romance a woman but never to rape her, so God lovingly takes the initiative in doing all he can to win our trust and affection. Even if we push him away, he perseveres, doing all he can to coax us to change our minds, but there has to be a limit to how far he goes.   Ezekiel 36:26 uses a different lens with which to view this massive alteration of who we are, and his insight brings us to the same conclusion:   I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.’   By ‘heart,’ Ezekiel was referring to the seat of our thoughts, emotions and personality. Were he writing today, Ezekiel would probably have spoken of a near-total brain transplant. And note that the change is so profound that he likens it to the enormous difference between flesh and stone. Even imperfect modern medical ethics would not tolerate even a minor operation to be performed against a person’s will, let alone something that would change a person’s entire personality. Even if it were a lifesaving operation, medics would try hard to persuade the person and advise of the importance of the operation, but they would be forced to leave it there if the person refused them permission to operate. No wonder God – who always acts with the highest conceivable integrity – does not bring about spiritual rebirth without people’s conscious consent. Of course, God’s methods are too sophisticated to be  physically  invasive, but in terms of its affect upon our entire being, nothing – not even death – could be more invasive, because its effects last for all eternity. In fact, letting God take up residence in our lives ultimately affects every cell in our body because the end result will be a completely new body in the age to come. What else has such a massive impact on our personality and our destiny? This fundamental change is so appropriately called being born again because we have to go right back to our very conception to find anything so radically affecting who we are.   It’s said we can’t choose our parents, and yet God has bestowed on us such dignity that spiritually we can do just that.   We have seen that although it is only yet in embryonic form, this change of our essential nature renders us Christians aliens – a distinctly different species – to the rest of humanity. Many of us do not realize the extent of this and so do all sorts of perverse and unwise things under the delusion that we are essentially the same as unregenerate humanity. For instance, though I wish I could put it more gently, my study of Scripture drives me to the conclusion that in God’s eyes for a member of the other-worldly species to deliberately marry a non-Christian is a spiritual perversion, with distinct similarities to bestiality. When non-Christians marry and later one, but only one, partner becomes born again, an enormous spiritual dilemma arises. The implications of such diverse creatures being intimately related are so serious that God has to perform a special miracle to make possible the continuation of the marriage (1 Corinthians 7:14).   As radically as light differs from darkness and the Holy One differs from evil, born again Christians differ from non-Christians (2 Corinthians 6:14). This biblical fact, however, most certainly does not mean we can look down on non-Christians. Not only was each of us once one of them, they have as much potential as any of us to join the new race. Christ passionately loves those who currently are non-Christians. He died for them as much as for us. There is, nevertheless, a vast spiritual gulf between Christians and non-Christians. The entire universe is at war, with one side fighting for Satan and the other siding with God. This war in the heavenlies has engulfed planet earth, splitting humanity in two. There are no neutral humans – only some who are barely aware that they are Satan’s pawns. We will later see some of the significance of this enormous difference between Christians and non-Christian.   The Miracle of Christlikeness   The potential to become like one’s father is so strong that the saying has entered our language, ‘Like father, like son.’ Nevertheless, a father contributes just one half of his children’s genes. The other half of our spiritual genetic makeup is our humanity. Even that comes from God (by a less direct route) and bears great similarity to him, because he created humanity in his own image. However, there are aspects of our humanity, such as our finiteness, that will forever keep us from being one hundred percent like God. And yet, in an astounding display of love for us, the eternal Son of God became human. Jesus resurrected with a perfected  human  body, which he took with him to heaven. It is staggering to realize that even now as he reigns at the right hand of the Father, our Lord’s body, although completely devoid of the defects associated with fallen humanity, is as human as the flawless bodies we will one day have.   As a consequence of Christ swapping places with us and becoming one with us spiritually, it is as though an exchange of genes occurred. Not only did the Son of God gain human genes though the reincarnation, we gained God’s genes. That means born again Christians bear, as it were, nearly the full genetic blueprint of the resurrected Lord – both the spiritual half contributed directly from Father God and the physical half that belongs to glorified humanity. We can never grow up to become infinite, but we can grow up to become like our big brother Jesus.   1 Corinthians 15:49  And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.   Physically and spiritually, and in how precious we are to God, we will be like the glorious Son of God. We won’t however, be Jesus clones. Any variation from everyone being exactly identical will be minor, but precious, because although we will all be Christlike, we will each have a uniqueness that will set us apart.   Here’s my attempt to express the truth of Romans 8:28-29:   For those who truly love God, everything touching them is working towards their highest good, which is, of course, that they become increasingly like God’s very own Son. The divine Artist intricately and lovingly manipulates everything touching them so that all life’s squalls and sunshine and even life’s humdrum are progressively sculpturing his loved ones into the very image of the Perfect One; beautifying them for all eternity with the divine likeness. Yes, for those of us who love him enough to let him, the Sovereign Sculptor sends life’s caresses to polish, and each of life’s blows – even things hurled in satanic malice – he deflects with divine precision to chip off only those parts that must go, so that every influence reaching us is etching into our lives the exquisite and eternal beauty of Christ. This is the destiny of all who yield their lives to him.   As many earthly parents long for their firstborn to have brothers and sisters, so it has been the Perfect Father’s intention since before creation that his eternal Son have many brothers and sisters so that he no longer be regarded as God’s only Son, but as the Firstborn. The divine plan is that we each end up beautifully unique and yet bearing with perfection the unmistakable family likeness; displaying the matchless beauty of the Glorious Victor and ruling in regal majesty with him for all eternity.   The inspired apostle continues his chapter to affirm that this is so locked into the divine purpose that no amount of suffering or disasters or demonic interference can ever foil God’s magnificent, love-filled plan for us to be radiant with the beauty and perfection of his Son.   We typically pluck Romans 8:28 out of context, dangling it in thin air under the illusion that it is proclaiming that every circumstance is working towards our happiness or prosperity. When viewed from eternity – not necessarily as seen on earth – this is indeed true, but if we only understood, we would realize that the most dazzling ecstasies of happiness and prosperity pale in the brilliance of the next promise.   Romans 8:28  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.   (29)   For   those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.  (Emphasis mine.)   Christlikeness is the treasure that renders all other pleasures and honors mere tinsel.   As exciting as it might be treated as if we were exceptionally intelligent and good-looking, it would fade to nothing relative to being able to transmute into someone who really is that intelligent and good-looking. Similarly, as much as would be wise, our gracious Lord treats us right now as if we were Christlike, but far more breathtaking is the honor and wonder of actually becoming Christlike.   Other exciting Scriptures confirming our glorious destiny include:   2 Corinthians 3:18  And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.   It has rightly been said that God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way.   The Joy of Having the World’s Best Brother   Though he lived in human history, Jesus is far more to us than merely a figure in history. He is like the closest and best brother a little kid could dream of. We will soon plunge into a heartwarming discussion of the feminine perspective on this, but for the moment think what it would be like to be a little boy growing up with the ideal older brother. He is your advisor, giving you all the benefits of his experience. He is your best friend, sharing secrets with you, teaching you how to fish, how to play games, how to tie your shoelaces, and helping you with your homework. He protects you from the school bully. When anyone makes fun of you, he sticks up for you. When you are in danger of getting lost or running in front of a car, he is looking out for you. He would give his life for you and he means so much to you that you would try to do the same for him. You idolize him and model your life on him. You daydream about becoming just like him and you fully expect to achieve that goal, as you get older. You have fun together, do chores together, and share experiences – like the time when Bitsie had pups and when the family went camping in the mountains, and when grandpa died, when Mom got real sick and when Dad lost his job.   Even in our pre-Christian days, when we were unaware of his presence, Jesus was with us. When you were conceived, he was there. When your mother had her first bout of morning sickness, he was there. When you cut your first tooth, took your first step, swallowed your first piece of solid food, he was there. When the scary darkness made you cry, when you skinned your knee, when you got lost, he was there. When you had your first kiss, your first heartbreak, your first pimple, he was there. All the while he was loving you, feeling your pain and longing for you to let him help.   I had exceptionally good parents but for some reason still a mystery to me I was very shy. Being the oldest child in my family proved a source of several insecurities for me. For example, I ached to have a girlfriend but this would involve suffering the excruciating embarrassment of my parent’s reaction. They most likely would have been supportive but I had way no of finding reassurance. I was too embarrassed to raise the matter and no one in my family had ever witnessed parental reaction to dating. I recall agonizing over how much easier life would have been had I had an older brother who had broken the ice with my parents on such matters.   Spiritually, we have numerous and enormous sources of insecurity relating to Father God. How does a human relate to the One who inhabits eternity (Isaiah 57:15), who fills heaven and earth (Jeremiah 23:24) and whom even the New Testament says ‘no one has seen or can see’ (1 Timothy 6:16; John 1:18)? What a relief to spiritually have an older Brother! Our wonderful Brother has smoothed out every awkward moment we could ever have in relating to the Infinite, Eternal, Invisible Lord. The Bible uses several terms to describe this precious aspect of Jesus’ grace towards us. Jesus is our Intercessor, our Advocate, our Mediator (Hebrews 7:25; 1 John 2:1; 1 Timothy 2:5). He is our Pioneer who blazed the trail for us to follow (Hebrews 12:2-3).   The Feminine Perspective   If you are a woman, in terms of Jesus’ closeness and his understanding of you and his fostering your development as a woman, there are ways in which Jesus is, to you, more like an older sister. As ludicrous as it initially sounds, no woman understands your feminine needs and feelings and concerns as well as your Lord does. He made you, he knows you and, if you are born again, he lives in you every moment of every day.   It is through the Son of God that all things – including femininity – were created. Consider Genesis 1: 27   So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.   It is my conviction that this reveals that humanity had to be made both male and female in order to more accurately portray the breadth of God’s nature. Looking at what is best about femininity or masculinity allows us to see with greater clarity a facet of the nature of our magnificent Lord.   For all eternity the Son of God has had infinite knowledge and understanding. There has never been a deficiency in his intellect that rendered him unable to know exactly how we humans feel. He became one of us, not because of an inability to understand us, but so that we might understand  him,  and so that by full identification with us he could rescue us from our hopeless predicament. Just as Jesus has had no need to experience a computer crash before he could know how I feel when I suffer one, nor must he become a husband in order to understand marital pressures, so the all-knowing Lord has no need to become a woman before he can fully understand women or be like a sister to them. You are a stranger to yourself, relative to the way he knows you. He knows every molecule in your body. He understands perfectly everything you have never understood about yourself.   It turns out that women have little reason for feeling disadvantaged by the Bible’s use of predominantly male imagery for the Godhead. It is not just women who have difficulty in relating to God as Father. In fact, although there are many serious exceptions, I suspect that even more men than women battle negative feelings towards their human father and that the average woman feels closer to her father than the average man. And for women, thinking of Jesus as their brother is a breeze, relative to men thinking of Jesus as the Bridegroom and themselves as belonging to the bride of Christ!   Since there are two genders and only one Jesus, and no one can equal him, it is inevitable that both genders must make numerous mental adjustments in attempting an accurate conception of how perfectly he relates to us.   There are times in the lives of both men and women when we need Christ to have the feminine qualities of a sister or mother or girlfriend and other times when both genders need him to have masculine qualities. That is no problem for Christ, because there is nothing lacking in him. When it comes to satisfying our deepest needs, Jesus is all that either gender could ever hope for.   Merely Having the Best Brother is Not Enough   When we see Jesus face to face, those who are born of God will be like him. So we just put our feet up and wait for it to happen, right?   Wrong.   1 John 3:2  Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  (3)   Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.   (Emphasis mine)   In the same passage, Scripture is telling us both that we will be like Jesus in the age to come and that we must become like Jesus by purifying  ourselves.   Rabbits might be good at multiplying, but I don’t think they will ever be good at algebra. Do you know of many worms that have mastered the violin, or snails that win gold in the high jump? The potential one is born with sets the ceiling on what one can achieve. This is one of the thrilling things about being born of God and why we can leap for joy at Jesus telling his disciples, ‘Everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher’ (Luke 6:40).   However, one’s inborn potential is just half of the equation. Note that Jesus said it is the disciple who is  fully trained  who will be like him. This implies our need to seek and apply Jesus’ training. A boy might have the same potential as his brother to become a top surgeon, but he will only achieve it if he mimics his brother’s work ethic.   Our potential to become like our brother must be matched by our efforts to follow in his footsteps.   It would seem that the mighty Lord has the power and right and necessity to invade our personality and make us all that he longs for us to become. After all, he owns us, having designed and fashioned us and created every molecule in our body. Moreover, we desperately need it, since justice demands that if we reject God’s pardon and rule, the only option is eternal banishment from God, the Source of everything good. Nevertheless, we have seen that the Gracious One restrains his explosive yearning to transform our nature against our will. To do otherwise would be a violation not only of ourselves but of God’s own personality. It would shatter the Holy One’s commitment to shower us with undeserved dignity by respecting our choices. God, in his infinite love, craves relationship with us, not to crush us into automatons. We know this applies to the new birth itself but the principle applies with equal force to each developmental consequence of the new birth. God is not a con artist who respects our wishes only before tricking us into signing on the dotted line and then transmutes into an evil tyrant. When we discover some of the implications of letting God into our lives he doesn’t say, ‘Too bad sucker! You were stupid enough not to read the fine print, now I’m going to force myself upon you.’   From the moment we invited the Perfect One into our lives we were impregnated with the divine nature. It is as if, like sperm, this miracle enters us in the form of a single cell that contains the divine genetic blueprint, and has the capacity to multiply and replace every sin-damaged part of our nature. Day by day, year after year the transforming power of the divine nature gradually spreads through our entire being. For God’s integrity to remain intact, this exciting but sometimes scary process requires not merely the fact that we once in the past yielded to God; it requires our daily consent.   Now that divine life has been seeded within us, it is like a tender shoot growing among such weeds as selfishness, fear, lust, laziness and bitterness. If our Christlike nature is to flourish, we must continually cooperate with God in killing these weeds that keep springing up.   In Ephesians 4:24 Paul speaks of his readers’ ‘new self, created to be like God.’ How thrilling! And yet he told them, ‘ . . . Put off your old self . . . and put on the new self.’ One might expect this to be a once-and-for-all event occurring at the time of the new birth. This is clearly not the case because Paul was addressing people who had already been born again. He seems to be saying something close to what he meant when he wrote, ‘I die daily,’ (1 Corinthians 15:31, KJV) and what Jesus meant when he said, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’ (Luke 9:23).   This ‘new self,’ as the great apostle calls the person you are destined to become, is indeed a ‘new creation’ (2 Corinthians 5:17). Just as each of a father’s children has unique characteristics, so the new you, conceived as a result of your union with Christ, is so special that in the entire universe no one is exactly identical to the person you will become. What makes your new self unique is that it is formed not merely from a joining of some general form of human nature with God himself, but the human contribution is your very own genes. Father God cherishes your contribution to the union.   When Scripture speaks of the death of self, it means the death of selfishness and the assassination of sin so that its tyrannical rule over your life is terminated. It involves killing off everything that twists and deforms the real you. God not only does not want to suppress you, he wants the real you to flourish so that you become the person of great dignity and beauty you were created to be.   As a child bears the image of both its parents, so for all eternity the new you will be in Christ’s image but will also bear your image. You will be perfect and unmistakably like Christ, and yet you will be unique. Both your Christlikeness and your uniqueness will forever make you special. Only by continual yielding to divine perfection can this happen.   Just as at the moment of conception, only God can know how wonderful that embryo will become, so at the moment of your new birth the new you is barely detectable. For a while after a woman conceives, there is no obvious change in her, and careful examination by sophisticated means would reveal that the new life looks not even remotely like its parents. Gradually, however, it becomes obvious to everyone that marked changes are occurring within the woman, and closer inspection reveals that what is growing within her is beginning to look increasingly like its parents. Similarly, the Christlike nature should grow within us until it becomes obvious to everyone that the new life developing within us looks very much like Christ himself.   But things can go wrong.   Just as an embryo needs continual union with its mother, so our Christlike nature needs continual union with the One who seeded it within us. Anything we do that hinders our union with Christ has serious implications.   Paul spoke of Christ being formed within the Galatian Christians, and yet his alarm indicates that this process cannot be taken for granted. Rather than Paul being able to relax in the knowledge that it is inevitable that the Galatians will bear with increasing distinction the image of Christ, he had to plead with them, telling of the anguish he felt for them ‘until Christ is formed in you’ (Galatians 4:19).   Similarly, 2 Peter 1:3-8 says that we can ‘participate in the divine nature,’ but rather than that being the end of the matter, it immediately tells us to ‘make every effort to’ add to our faith the godly virtues of goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love.   Significantly, the list starts with faith and we are told to  add  to our faith – to build on that foundation – not to  replace  our faith. When the Bible speaks of faith it means the attitude that says, ‘I can’t, but God will, because of Jesus.’ We often mistake this for the attitude, ‘I can, because I’m a positive thinker,’ or, ‘I can, because I’m determined to succeed.’ That mistaken view of faith sends us hurtling towards spiritual disaster.   Our faith in God inspires us to trust his wisdom and goodness and selflessness. Faith in God compels us to obey him, because we know that God’s plans for us – being plans flowing from the Heart of infinite love, wisdom, and goodness – could not possibly be improved upon. Anything God ever asks of us is always the very best we could ever choose to do. No matter how much it costs, every alternative to doing things God’s way will end up costing us even more. So we obey because faith affirms that God, in his selfless devotion to us, only asks us to do what is in our own best interest. But our faith must always be in God; never in our obedience. We achieve spiritually, not because of our efforts, but because of the unfathomable love of God that continually moves him to flood us with blessings we do not deserve.   Spiritual growth comes the same way as did our first spark of spiritual life – through faith in God’s grace in sending Jesus to die in our place, and believing that his sacrifice opens to us every spiritual blessing. We can never move beyond total dependence upon God’s lavish generosity and our never-ending need to keep receiving from him, through faith in what Jesus accomplished on the cross.   Faith remains the vital means whereby, as it were, God’s genetic material is impregnated into our inner being and from which spiritual growth takes place. For more about faith, see  The Difference Between Faith in God and Faith in Self.   So Christlikeness begins with the new birth and then slowly grows within us. The entire process is supernatural, initiated by God, and made possible through Christ’s sacrifice, but it requires our continual yielding to God through faith in his ability and goodness. This yieldedness creates a flow of divine life that is daily transforming us into a closer and closer resemblance to our Lord, who through the new birth is our older brother whom we can aspire to be like and who helps us in every way.   One of my childhood worries was that one day puberty would hit. I’d go to bed with my usual boyish complexion and wake next morning with a face full of stubble, desperately needing a shave before going to school. My dilemma was that I didn’t expect Mom to know anything about shaving and Dad always left for work long before I woke up. I knew I lacked an older brother to help me shave, but I had no idea that not having an older brother also robbed me of the chance to observe his development and so discover ahead of time that facial hair comes only gradually. Oh, for an older brother to have shown me what to expect as I grew up!   I might have missed out in the physical, but spiritually I have in Christ the older Brother of my dreams. When I was a child, however, merely having an older brother would not have saved me from foolishness and needless worries about shaving. Having a brother would have only helped had I expected my development to mirror that of my brother. Likewise, for the benefits of having Jesus as our brother, much hinges on the extent to which we expect our life to be like his, and upon how much we make him our role model.   If our family is somehow different to other families – and as we have already discussed, our spiritual family is very different from the rest of humanity – observing how people treat our brother is a valuable clue as to how they are likely to treat us as we grow older. If, however, we think our development and the way people treat us will be different from his experience, much of the value of having an older brother will be lost. If we fail to see Jesus as our living example of the life we can expect, we will fall into foolishness, such as underestimating the cost of being a Christian.   Jesus warned against our tendency to expect our lives to be different from that of our wonderful Brother. ‘Remember the words I spoke to you:’ emphasized Jesus, ‘ “No servant is greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also’ (John 15:20). ‘It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!’ (Matthew 10:25).   When it comes to believing such Scriptures, many of us western Christians don’t fare too well. We might pride ourselves on our faith and on modeling ourselves on Jesus, but the problem that dogs us is our great tendency to be selective as to what we choose to believe. ‘All men will hate you because of me,’ (Matthew 10:22) ‘We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,’ (Acts 14:22) and ‘. . .  .  everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted’ (2 Timothy 3:12) are among the many Bible promises few of us claim. ‘Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me,’ (Matthew 5:11) is one of Jesus’ blessings that few us want.   Jesus’ life was so extraordinary that he left us with a vast range of challenging things we could focus on when modeling our lives on his. Every aspect of Jesus’ example is important, but to help us prioritize, our Lord told us what aspects of his life to particularly concentrate on when following his example.   Matthew 10:38  and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.   Luke 9:23  Then he said to them all: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’   Of all the Christlike qualities we should foster, this is top priority. ‘What about love?’ asks someone.   1 John 3:16  This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.   John 15:12  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.  (13)  Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.   Matthew 20:27  and whoever wants to be first must be your slave –  (28)  just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.   During the last supper, Jesus again told us what to focus on in remembering him. We are to remember his body sacrificially broken and his lifeblood poured out for us. We are to focus on his martyrdom.   Not surprisingly, the rest of the New Testament locks into this emphasis.   Ephesians 5:2  and live a life of love,  just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.  (Emphasis mine.)   Philippians 2:2-9  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who . . . made himself nothing . . . and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place . . .   1 Peter 2:20-21  . . . if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.  (21)  To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.   1 Peter 4:1  Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude . . .    1 Peter 4:12  Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.  (13)  But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.   Wrap up   A perfect big brother is a little kid’s hero and example; his buddy and protector; his advisor and at times even his go-between in relationships with his parents. Spiritually, Jesus is the big brother we need when we are bullied, or scared or needing advice or needing a role model. He also shows us how we can expect others to treat members of God’s family.   The One we adore will forever be exalted above us. In the age to come, we couldn’t bear the thought of it being any other way because we will know how truly worthy of the highest honor he is. Jesus’ sacrifice made it possible for us to be treated as if we were as sinlessly perfect as he has always been. Despite him being exalted above us, however, we will become exceedingly like him. As a little boy might idolize his brother, modeling his life on him and fully expecting to one day be like him, so should we regard our majestic Lord.   Here’s my attempt at expressing the message of Hebrews 2:10-18:   In the process of exalting many people as his very own sons and daughters, it was fitting that God should make their Savior, perfect through suffering. God caused both Jesus, the sin offering, and us, the sinners whom he made holy, to be members of the same family, so that Jesus is not ashamed to be called our brother. As he prayed in the Messianic Psalm (Psalm 22:22), ‘I will declare your name to my brothers.’ And again in Isaiah 8:18 he refers to the family tie with the words, ‘Here am I, and the children God has given me.’ Since the children have flesh and blood, he, too, shared in their humanity so that he could suffer death and thereby destroy the one who holds the power of death –the devil – and so free humanity from the torment of death. It is not angels that Christ came to deliver, but people who would trust God like Abraham did. So it was not enough for Christ to lower himself to become an angel. He had to go all the way, being made like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful intermediary between God and humanity, and that he might make atonement for their sins. As a human priest understands human frailty and identifies with humanity, so as a human, Christ suffered when he was tempted, in order to help those who are being tempted.   Now let’s leap to other parts of Hebrews:   Hebrews 10:32  Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering.  (33)  Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated.  (34)  You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.  (35)  So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.  (36)  You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.  (37)  For in just a very little while, ‘He who is coming will come and will not delay. . . .’   Hebrews 12:1  . . . let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  (2)  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  (3)  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.  (4)  In your struggle against sin, you have not  yet  resisted to the point of shedding your blood.  (Emphasis mine.)   If we are to follow in our Brother’s footsteps, we are headed for the same destiny – rejection, pain, suffering, shame, heroism, triumph, authority, eternal glory. Jesus has shown us what to expect from earthly life and how to react to life’s pressures, and enjoy eternal fulfillment.

Jesus: The Supernatural Prophesied Messiah?   A Fresh Look at Messianic Prophecies   Creative writing makes this a quick, easy and entertaining read. I use creativity like gunpowder to shoot rock-solid biblical truth into your heart. My goal is to take what might otherwise seem dull theology and make it gleam until you see how exciting spiritual truth really is.   The narrative opens with Thomas disputing the disciple’s claims that Jesus had risen from the dead. If you want to go straight to where it discusses Old Testament pointers to Jesus’ death and resurrection,  click here .   The room was stuffy, smelly and dingy. It was crammed with people. ‘I’m telling you, Jesus is dead. D-E-A-D,’ he spelt out, ‘and dead men stay dead.’   ‘Oh, Thomas, you’re not still going on about this are you?’   ‘Yes, I’m going on about it! It’s a full week since you claim you last saw Jesus. Isn’t it about time you all came to your senses? And especially you, taxman. John floats around with his head in the clouds and Peter’s got a mouth big enough to swallow anything, but I expected more of you, Matthew. I always thought of you as a hard-nosed facts and figures man, and here I am, still waiting for you to ditch your ghost story and snap back to reality.’   ‘Thomas, these eyes saw him,’ said Matthew, pointing to his eyes. ‘With my own ears I heard him as we spoke with him for perhaps thirty unforgettable minutes!’   ‘Oh, sure! He walked right through a locked door!’   ‘That’s a breeze compared to opening that tomb  from the inside . No human could do that.’   Thomas looked at Matthew hopefully. ‘Now you’re talking, taxman! At last you agree that we’re talking impossibilities here. I tell you, I was really worried about you!’   ‘Thomas! The body’s gone – despite all those guards. How – and why – would anyone steal his body?’   Another man spoke, ‘And the grave clothes were removed and left behind, neatly bundled up. Who in their right mind would take such care – with the guards there and everything?’   ‘We’ve seen him, Tom,’ said another, ‘and we spoke with him – in this very room.’   ‘An apparition – a vision!’ Thomas snapped back.   ‘We all simultaneously had the same hallucination?’ asked Matthew incredulously.   ‘Well . . . . mass hysteria!’   One of them, chest out, moved closer to Thomas, ‘Oh, I’m emotionally unstable am I!’ His voice was raised. ‘I’m a blubbering nut-case?’   Thomas, seemed a little nervous about this man’s aggression. ‘Well, not exactly hysteria, James – sort of auto-suggestion.’   James, prodding Thomas on the chest with his finger, said, ‘I’ve got a suggestion for you, egghead!’   Was James one of the ‘Sons of Thunder’?  I wondered. Part of me wanted to rush off and bury myself in a Bible for a few moments to find out, but I was too enthralled to dare blink an eyelid, much less look in a book, even if I had one.   ‘Cool it, James,’ ordered Matthew, ‘it does sound incredible.’ A few moments later he added, ‘But Thomas, it’s not just us who saw Jesus, the women –’   ‘Women! Those emotional wrecks couldn’t see for tears!’   One of the women, hands on hips, moved closer, and in a sarcastic, indignant tone said, ‘Well,  thank  you!’   ‘They touched him, Tom.’ Matthew was calm. ‘They held his feet.’   ‘Yeah? Did  you  touch him?’   ‘N . . .  no – but I saw his wounds.’   ‘He breathed on me,’ said another.   Matthew’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes, that’s right. I felt his breath. He told us about God’s Spirit and  breathed  on us. Hallucinations don’t breathe.’   ‘What about when he walked with Cleopas and his wife to their house in Emmaus?’ the woman said.   ‘Sure! Walked seven miles on feet that had had nails driven right through them!’   A couple of the people groaned. Matthew shook his head. ‘But Jesus is healed,’ said another. ‘He’s risen!   ‘Rubbish!’ said Thomas.   ‘Jesus broke bread with them,’ said the woman.   ‘And he ate with  us ,’ added Matthew.   ‘Look, you can talk till you’re blue in the face –’   Matthew, looking around the room, said, ‘Where’s Peter? He’s unusually quiet!’ He beckoned to the burly man, ‘Hey, mouth!’ When Peter came close, Matthew put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. ‘Set this guy straight, will ya? Explain the new understanding of the Scriptures Jesus has given us.’   ‘Hey, before you do,’ said a man, ‘new thoughts have been spinning round my head lately. Can I try them out on Thommo?’   ‘Go for it, John!’ said Peter.   ‘The way I see it, the whole sacrificial system instituted by God has death and resurrection built into it.’   ‘Eh?’ said Thomas.   ‘Well, take the Day of Atonement,’ continued John. ‘Two goats are chosen. They’re innocent. They have done nothing to contribute to human sin, yet one is slaughtered for our sin and afterwards the other is presented  alive  before the Lord for our atonement. We need a substitute who will die in our place, but after that sacrificial death we need a living substitute to complete our cleansing from sin.’   ‘Then there’s the ceremonial cleansing of a leper. Two clean birds are taken. One dies and its blood is poured out. The living bird is dipped in this blood and then released, bearing the marks of recent death upon its wings. Is it just me? That sounds like death and resurrection to me. And only after both the death of the bird and the release of the living one can the now-cleansed leper join God’s people.’   Thomas looked at Matthew. ‘What’s he raving about?’   ‘The sacrificial system foreshadows Jesus because Jesus is the final – the ultimate – sacrifice.’ said Peter.   ‘How dare . . .’ Thomas was getting flustered, ‘that’s blasphemy!  Human sacrifice!  Scripture categorically forbids it. It’s an abomination to God!’ ‘That’s because anything worthy of sacrifice must be without blemish. Except for Jesus, all humans are defiled by sin and so their sacrifice would be a senseless waste of human life and an insult to the holiness of God. But Jesus was unlike any other human – perfectly sinless. A normal human sacrifice –’   ‘A  normal  human sacrifice! I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Ghost stories are one thing, now you’re talking like pagans!’   ‘For centuries God has been preparing his people for this event. Scripture over and over shows that human sacrifice is a concept close to the heart of God,’ continued Peter.   ‘Oh, come on!’   ‘Who asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac? Satan? Pagans? It was  God’s  idea.’   ‘You can’t bring that up! The Lord planned all along to stop Abraham from going through with it. He intervened and Isaac lived.’   ‘And after Jesus’ death,’ said Peter, ‘God intervened and Jesus lives.’   ‘ Oh! ’ uttered Thomas in disgust, or maybe frustration.   ‘You can squirm as much as you like, Thomas, that whole episode was initiated by God. Isaac was God’s chosen through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed. He inherited God’s promise to Abraham that people would be blessed or cursed, depending on whether they blessed or cursed him. In Abraham’s mind Isaac was already as good as dead when he set off on his divinely led journey to sacrifice his son and it was not until three days later God delivered Isaac back to him –  three days  , Thommo – just like Jesus was dead three days before resurrecting. And Isaac even carried the wood for the sacrifice like Jesus carried his cross. ‘You’re out of your mind!’ protested Thomas! ‘Next you’ll be claiming that Joseph was dead in his father’s eyes and then symbolically came back to life!’   ‘Well – er um – that was different!’   Thomas looked smug.   ‘But Joseph’s father really did think he was dead, Pete,’ Matthew looked puzzled, ‘and in his eyes it really was as if he’d returned from the dead.’ His voice trailed off.   ‘And, like Jesus, Joseph was the beloved son,’ chimed in John. ‘And he was rejected and shamefully treated by his brothers, like Jesus was rejected by most of his brethren.’   ‘And, like Jesus, Joseph ended up ruler and savior of Egypt and saved Israel and other nations, mused Peter. ‘Maybe this is more than a coincidence . . .’ Peter was becoming animated again. ‘Thanks, Thommo, I think you’re on to something!’   ‘Oh, man! I was pointing out how crazy you are seeing death and resurrection everywhere!’   ‘Well, like it or not, it’s there in the Word of God, isn’t it? said John. ‘And what’s circumcision if it isn’t the shedding of human blood to seal a divine covenant?’   ‘This principle is woven into the very fabric of creation,’ added one of the women. ‘Our Creator made us so that the binding covenant of marriage is sealed through the shedding of virgin blood.’   ‘And the new covenant the Master spoke about during the supper we had just a few days ago could only be sealed by the shedding of innocent human blood,’ said Matthew.   ‘What about God’s ruling on anyone guilty of manslaughter?’ Peter asked. ‘They are confined to the city of refuge, unable to leave year after year, until the high priest dies. Nothing but the physical death of the high priest can secure their pardon.’   ‘And Jesus is our high priest, whose death –’ the woman began.   ‘You’ve flipped!’ said Thomas. The woman fumed.   ‘What about in Elisha’s day when Moab was attacked.’ Peter clearly loved telling a good story. He quickly had everyone’s attention and loved it. ‘The king of Moab knew there was no escape. He was surrounded, hopelessly outnumbered and the invading army was closing in for the kill. In desperation that pagan king grabbed his firstborn son,’ Peter seized one of the disciples and acted it out, ‘and slaughtered the lad before the eyes of the enemy, then used that boy’s carcass as a sacrificial offering. Suddenly, all the invading soldiers lost interest in fighting and left in peace. The Moabites were saved.’   Thomas retorted, ‘The army withdrew in disgust, horrified at such a godless act.’   ‘Maybe so, but it worked. Countless lives were saved because of a ritual human sacrifice.’   ‘Oh . . !’ said Thomas, with obvious disgust.   ‘Haven’t you ever puzzled over why the Lord recorded that incident in holy Scripture? Was it because he planned to one day sacrifice his own Son so that multitudes would be saved?   ‘And remember how Jesus spoke about the sign of Jonah and applied it to himself. When Jonah was in the fish’s belly, Scripture speaks of him being in the realm of the dead, and after three days he emerged alive and because of that thousands of people were saved from God’s judgment.   That’s just like Jesus rising from grave after three days and saving from God’s judgment all who believe in him.   ‘And then there’s Isaiah’s ‘Man of Sorrows,’ wounded for our transgressions; made an offering for sin.’   ‘That’s referring to our nation!’ protested Thomas.   Others groaned. Some shook their heads. ‘But it says this ‘Man of Sorrows’ was righteous!’ said one.   ‘Isaiah said there was no deceit in him,’ said another.   ‘Israel wasn’t innocent!’ added the first.   ‘Even if Isaiah were referring to Israel,’ continued Peter, ‘– surprisingly innocent Israel – it’s still  human  suffering and death as an offering for sin.’   ‘And the ‘Man of Sorrows’ really dies!’ said John. ‘Isaiah says he was cut off out of the land of the living. He poured out his soul unto death. He made a  grave  with the wicked, it says, and with the rich  in his death . But then it says he shall  prolong  his days.   ‘If that’s not death and resurrection of a sinless human for the forgiveness and salvation of God’s people, I don’t know what it is!’   ‘Yes, Tom, explain that!’ said James.   ‘And what about that Psalm that begins “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” added Peter. Who’d ever have thought those words would apply to Jesus and yet they’re the very words he uttered on the cross. ‘Exactly!’ Thomas looked as if he was about to score a point. ‘Each of us had such high hopes about Jesus and now they’ve all come crashing down. As gut-wrenching as it is, we have to face reality.’   ‘Tom!’ Peter’s voice was raised. ‘You’ve forgotten the rest of the psalm. Yes, it starts off disastrously and gets even worse.’ Peter was calmer now. ‘God has answered others, but not him. He feels like a worm – not even human. He’s scorned, mocked, insulted and despised by people who surround him like bulls. All his bones stick out and are out of joint. His strength is dried up. He’s consumed by thirst. He’s in the dust of death. His hands and feet are pierced. They divide his clothes by casting lots. Didn’t all this happen to Jesus?’ Then Peter’s voice dramatically raised, ‘But the Psalm ends triumphantly!’   ‘Lots of psalms end triumphantly!’ protested Thomas.   ‘Yes, because ultimately, God wins!’ Peter was getting excited.   ‘But not by raising dead prophets back to life!’ declared Thomas. ‘Have you forgotten that psalm of David where he declares God won’t let his body decay? David’s body did end up decaying – we’ve both seen his tomb!   ‘But what if, under the inspiration of the Spirit, David was speaking not of himself but prophesying about his holy descendant, Jesus? And then there’s that marvelous Scripture –’ said Peter.   ‘Ah! I’ve had all I can stomach, Rockhead! Scripture calls human sacrifice an abomination and that’s the end of the matter.’   One of the women raised her voice, ‘Thomas Didymus, you’re stubborn, conceited –’   ‘And have the brains of a mud brick!’ added John.   The others cheered.   James, with his thumb and index finger close together, put them under Thomas’s nose. ‘And you’ve been about this close to having your head –’   ‘James!’ chided one of the women.   ‘How could the death of animals remove our guilt?’ asked Peter. ‘Sure we desperately need a substitute, but it’s humanity that’s sinned. It’s humanity that faces the death penalty. And no-one who himself is under the death-sentence could bear the penalty for someone else. Earth needs a sinlessly holy human willing to trade places with sinners. How could anyone or anything be an effective intermediary between God and man except Jesus, the sinless sacrifice?’   The others cheered and clapped. ‘Good on ya, Rock!’ said one.   ‘You tell him, mouth!’ said another.   ‘What’s happened to you lately? pleaded Thomas, scanning faces, hoping for a some sort of support. ‘We used to be able to talk. Now you’ve suddenly become know-alls.’ There was silence for a few moments. ‘Look, you’ve been under a lot of stress, you had your hopes –’   ‘So we’re all grief-stricken fools then?’ said James. ‘We’ve cracked? Is that it?’   ‘We can’t tell the difference between a ghost and a real person?’ added another.   ‘Or in three days we forgot what Jesus looks like, and confused him with someone else – someone who not only looks exactly like him and has his voice, but someone with his wisdom and gentleness and mannerisms?’ said Matthew.   Peter said, ‘Or we’d been on a drinking binge when we thought we saw Jesus?’   ‘Yeah, Thommo,’ James was getting worked up again, ‘just what are you accusing us of?’   ‘Look! I told you before and I’ll tell you again: unless I hold him with these arms, put my finger in the holes in his hands and put this fist in his wounded side, I’ll  never  believe!’   Suddenly, Jesus was in the room. There was no sound or movement; no opening of doors or crashing through walls; no gradual materialization. One moment that part of the room was empty; the next blink Jesus was there. My heart pounded in shock, and yet there was something about it that seemed almost natural. Maybe it was my flitting from place to place – all over the universe for all I know – that created this sense of it being natural for someone to suddenly appear. Thomas had been standing fairly close to the wall, facing inward, in eye contact with the others. Jesus had appeared behind, and just to the right of him. Thomas continued talking, oblivious to what had just happened. ‘I’m not into distorting the holy Word of God. I’m not into superstition. I’m not into emotionalism. I’m not into making a fool of myself –’   Most of the rest were as wide-eyed as me, staring straight at Jesus. A couple motioned to some others, speechlessly drawing the attention of those who had not been quite looking in Jesus’ direction. Thomas, mystified by their behavior, turned to see what everyone was staring at. For a long couple of seconds he was expressionless. Then, reaching over, he gingerly touched Jesus.   ‘It’s . . .’ But that is all he could get out. He fell in worship at Jesus’ feet. The others giggled.   ‘Thomas,’ Jesus placed his hands in front of Thomas’s face, ‘put your finger in these holes. Put your hand in my side.’   ‘Jesus, my Lord and God!’ gasped Thomas.   There was a reverent awe for several minutes, then Jesus, a big grin on his face said, ‘Let’s have something to eat!’   Everyone suddenly came alive. Some laughed. Some cheered. Some come up to Jesus and joyfully embraced him. Some shook his hand. Others slapped his back.   Jesus took some food, had a bite and with the remainder still in hand said, ‘You’ve heard my teaching. You’ve seen my miracles. You’re witnesses to my victory over death. I now appoint you to go to the ends of the earth, telling everyone, so that they, too, may believe and have eternal life.’

The Resurrection of Jesus:Fact or Fiction?   Did Jesus Really RiseFrom the Dead? A Hard-Hitting Examination of the Facts ‘I’m flabbergasted by people trying to pass Jesus off as just a good man!’ said Jake. ‘Eh?’ asked Amber, mystified. ‘Good men don’t go around emphasizing humility, attacking hypocrisy and then making the stupendous claims that he made, such as, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). As if it weren’t enough that Abraham lived hundreds of years before him, Jesus didn’t even say, ‘I was’ but ‘I am,’ implying he was eternal and beyond time. Good men don’t claim to be wiser than Solomon, who had been pronounced the wisest man ever to live (Luke 11:31). Good men don’t say, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to God except by me (John 14:6) or anyone who has seen me has seen God (John 14:9). No good man would be so conceited as to claim that the greatest prophets before him were mere servants of God and that he, in contrast, was the beloved only Son (Mark 12:1-12). Good men don’t go on making claims of this magnitude day after day until finally sentenced to death for the blasphemy of claiming to be God.’ ‘Jake’s right!’ exclaimed Jasmin. ‘In contrast, the Apostle Paul – perhaps the greatest Christian ever to live – made claims like, “I am the chief of sinners.” The closer people get to God, the more humble and more aware of their moral shortcomings they become. Jesus was totally different to any other “good man.” He was continually making assertions that would brand him as the most arrogant, hypocritical man ever to live – unless he truly was God.’ ‘And more than that,’ added Jake, ‘good men die and stay dead. The firm, historical evidence that Jesus bodily rose from the dead is enormous. And good men don’t keep working miracles 2,000 years after they are dead; transforming the lives of multiplied millions of people of all different races and cultures and religious backgrounds! ‘Here’s a great quote I’ve found.’ Jake fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and began to read. ‘Christianity “is either the greatest certainty or the greatest delusion . . .” ’  ‘What excites me about Christianity,’ said Jasmin, ‘is that it is not mere theory; it  works . It transforms lives. And more than that, it is rooted in rock-solid historical reality, with a huge emphasis upon eyewitness accounts.’ ‘I have a theory the early Christians’ huge emphasis on the observable is in part because of their Jewish roots,’ said Jake. ‘Among ancient peoples, the Jews stood out for their rigorous adherence to historical fact, rather than myths, legends or stories.  The Cambridge Ancient History  states: The Israelites certainly manifest a genius for historical construction, and the Old Testament embodies the oldest history writing extant. ‘You could argue that, more than their Jewish roots, it’s because the same God who inspired the events and writings of the Old Testament, inspired the New’ said the Professor, ‘but it is certainly true that wherever you go in the ancient world – not just the Middle East, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and so on, but as far afield as India, China or northern Europe – no people respected observable, verifiable real-life human history like the ancient Jews. Not myths, but real human history was vitally important to them because they discovered God to be not some philosophical concept or nebulous or mythical being but someone who chooses to reveal himself in and through various people. They found that just as the invisible wind becomes observable by the way it interacts with the physical world, so the otherwise unknowable God lets himself become visible by the way he chooses to interact with real people. God kept repeatedly removing himself from the realm of blind faith and making himself observable and knowable by intervening in human lives, and hence in verifiable human history. And God’s ultimate revelation of himself was when he entered human history by actually becoming part of the human race in Jesus. The daring claim of Christianity is that in Jesus, God became flesh – physical, tangible – fully exposing himself to human observation and examination, which should particularly appeal to our scientific age.’ ‘Yes,’ continued Jake, ‘and the facts were so well attested that when arguing their case, early Christians would appeal to the non-Christians’ own knowledge of the facts. This continual appeal to eyewitnesses has become a well-established practice today but was extraordinarily advanced for its era. ‘The Gospels were published so soon after the events they record that many of Jesus’ contemporaries were still living, and yet the Gospels clearly compilations of still earlier documents.’ Jake grabbed a Bible and opened it to the beginning of Luke and began to read: Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. ‘The Gospels could easily stretch back to notes taken while Jesus spoke.’ ‘Eh?’ Jasmin’s eyes were almost popping out. ‘Let’s be realistic,’ said Jake. ‘We know Jesus drew crowds of multiplied thousands and exceptionally loyal followers. With all those people treasuring Jesus’ every word, who can imagine no one taking notes?’ ‘Hey, you’re right!’ exclaimed Jasmin. ‘Even when the Gospel accounts reached their final form and were published, hordes of people who had lived through Jesus’ ministry were still alive. There wasn’t a sufficient time gap to pull the wool over all those people’s eyes. ‘There are several critical factors affecting the reliability of any ancient document, such as how long after the described events it was written, the age of the oldest surviving manuscripts and how many samples of ancient manuscripts have been found. The latter two factors are significant because until the printing press, copies were made by hand, thus introducing the possibility of error. In all key measures, the New Testament writings are typically  hundreds  of years closer to the events and  thousands  of copies better than other significant records of ancient events. The New Testament has more manuscript evidence than any ten other pieces of ancient literature combined (9). Amazingly, despite being written after the printing press, the text of Shakespeare’s writings is far less certain than that of the New Testament (9-10). ‘Whoa! Hang on!’ interrupted Jasmin. ‘More than  any ten  other ancient pieces? Where did you get that from?’ ‘Josh McDowell’s  New Evidence that Demands a Verdict.  Everyone should read it. It’s fascinating, cites scholars left, right and center, and yet remains highly readable. It’s also where I learnt the Shakespeare comparison.’ ‘Oh, I’ve seen it!’ said Jasmin defensively, ‘I just must have missed that bit.’ Jake continued, ‘McDowell belongs to that rather long list of scholars who set out to write a book disproving Christianity and ended up having to write a book confirming the authenticity and historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. He admits that even though he had emphasized the importance of finding the truth, once he discovered that the truth confirmed the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, he was very reluctant to commit to that truth. Later, he said, “For me, Christianity was not a ‘leap into the dark’ but rather ‘a step into the light.’ ’(xxv, xxxiii). ‘How many people can you recall like McDowell who set out to disprove Christianity and ended up writing a book supporting it?’ asked Jasmin. ‘I know of heaps! I’m particularly impressed by Sir William Ramsay, the famous British archaeologist. Did you know he started off determined to prove that Luke’s writings – the Gospel and Acts – were unreliable . . .’ ‘Yes,’ said Jake, ‘he was forced into a complete about-turn. McDowell quotes him a couple of times. Let’s see . . .’ While flipping pages, Jake kept talking, ‘After thirty years of archaeological discoveries and meticulous historical research Ramsay said . . . er, here we are: “Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy . . . this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.” ’ Jasmin giggled. ‘Wait,’ said Jake, with a huge grin, ‘Here’s what the one-time skeptic wrote in another book: “Luke’s history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness.” ' ‘How humiliating!’ giggled Amber, ‘And they’ve been lots more who’ve had to eat their words?’ ‘Oh, yes!’ said Jasmin and Jake, almost simultaneously. ‘Okay,’ sighed the Professor, ‘let’s move on to Christianity’s most astounding claim: the evidence for Jesus’ bodily resurrection.’ ‘Everyone will  have  to believe when they see all the historical evidence we’ve amassed!’ said Jasmin. ‘No-one is ever  forced  to believe,’ replied the Professor, rather soberly. ‘They can’t deny the facts.’ ‘They’ll find a way.’ Amber sounded mystified. ‘How?’ ‘Some claim the multiple sightings of Jesus after his crucifixion must have been an hallucination.’ ‘No way!’ protested Jasmin, ‘ . . .  spread over forty days with five hundred witnesses?’ That caught Amber’s ear. ‘ Five hundred? ’ she asked. ‘That’s how many the risen Lord appeared to,’ replied Jasmin (1 Corinthians 15:3-7), ‘and his disciples touched him and ate with him. Some hallucination!’ They all laughed. ‘And that still doesn’t explain the empty grave,’ added Jake. ‘Some say the disciples stole the body,’ said the Professor. Jake laughed. ‘The religion with the highest conceivable morals, based on the biggest swindle in human history? You’re joking! Simple fishermen putting one over a hundred generations?’ ‘It was the official line of the Jewish authorities,’ said the Professor. ‘Only because any other attempt to avoid the facts was even more laughable,’ replied Jake. ‘They had supervised Jesus’ burial, sealed the tomb, set soldiers over it to guard it and then suddenly found themselves unable to produce the corpse when the disciples began claiming Jesus had conquered death.’ ‘The authorities were still peddling that story when the ink dried on Matthew’s Gospel’ (Matthew 28:11-15). ‘If there were a smithereen of truth in it they would have arrested the disciples and tortured them until they handed over Jesus’ body,’ said Jasmin. ‘Tortured?’ questioned Amber. ‘Look at what they did to Jesus!’ retorted Jasmin. ‘Then they arrested Peter and John just for healing a life-long cripple. They flogged all the apostles for preaching. Then they stoned Stephen to death. Later they imprisoned Peter, intending to execute him.’ ‘And don’t forget what Saul did to Christians to try to make them blaspheme!’ added Jake. ‘I’d forgotten how brutal they were,’ said Amber. ‘And how desperate! But how could the disciples have carried it off?’ Jake began walking on his toes in a delightfully comical way. ‘Tiptoed past blind guards I suppose!’ The others burst into laughter. ‘Oiled the stone so it wouldn’t be heard!’ added Jasmin, doubling over in hysterical laughter. The others laughed even harder. ‘Who could believe that not one of the five hundred, even when dying a martyr’s death, would let it slip that it was all a hoax?’ said Jake. They sobered a little. ‘In it for the fame I suppose!’ jested Jasmin. ‘They’ll be in big demand all right. The Jews were demanding their lives. The Romans were demanding their heads. Christ’s yellow-livered deserters taking on the Jewish leadership and the entire Roman Empire – and all for a sham!’ ‘Maybe they were in it for the money!’ laughed Jake. ‘They could make a fortune teaching people how to win popularity contests!’ They were laughing again. Jasmin, still giggling, added, ‘Or they could write a best seller:  How I earned My First Million Bruises.’ ‘With books like that they could earn enough to keep them in bandages for weeks!’ replied Jake, laughing heartily. ‘And cash is cold comfort when you’re looking death in the face,’ added Amber, soberly. ‘If they want money they’ve got a much easier option. Put yourself back in that era,’ said Jake. ‘Christianity is set to explode. If the Jews thought they’d killed their problem they were in for a shock. They were running scared. They’d pay big money for someone to prove it was a hoax. ‘No, Professor, no one could believe they’re in it for fame or fortune. And if they’re into fraud, the first thing they’ll change is their own account of their actions. Those dull-minded disciples would be so wise and holy in the gospel tradition they leave posterity. If truth’s not important to them then the denying, deserting disciples would in their gospels be loyally supporting Jesus when he’s sentenced to death. The Sons of Thunder would portray themselves as calmly in control. Loudmouth Peter would ensure he’s the epitome of diplomacy in the revised version. Self-seeking liars don’t paint themselves as bumbling idiots!’ ‘Professor, no-one could deny that those scatter-brains were sincere. What transformed the disciples from wusses to fearless leaders, if not their utter conviction that Jesus had conquered death?’ ‘Some say Jesus was merely unconscious when they took him down from the cross and revived in the cool of the tomb,’ said the Professor. All except the Professor burst into fits of laughter. ‘So he survives an horrific flogging followed not only by crucifixion, but a spear driven through his heart,’ replied Jake. ‘He convinces experienced Roman executioners that he’s dead. Then he fools his mother and followers who’d give anything to find a sign of life as they prepare his body for burial. No breath. No bleeding from his open wounds. Then, without them noticing, he manages to breathe through nearly a hundred pounds of spices and grave cloths tightly wound around his face. Next, he somehow bursts through his bonds, and with nail-crushed hands single-handedly rolls back a stone so massive that several women pushing in unison couldn’t budge it.’ ‘And Jesus was on the  inside ,’ added Jasmin. ‘Hey, that’s right!’ exclaimed Jake, ‘This gets better by the minute!’ ‘I don’t get it,’ said Amber, a slightly puzzled look on her face. ‘A gravestone is like a solid wheel chiseled out of rock, designed to roll downhill at right angles to the grave,’ explained Jasmin, ‘and, of course, its purpose is to fully seal off the entrance. You don’t want odors escaping. From the outside, people trying to move it push against the rim. From the inside there’s no rim and nothing to grip.’ ‘That settles it! Escape was humanly impossible!’ Amber looked triumphant. ‘Skeptics will say that by some miracle . . .’ the Professor managed to say no more. ‘Skeptics who believe in miracles?’ declared Jake. They erupted into hysterical laughter. Amber was bent over, holding her tummy. Jasmin was rolling on the ground. Jake was on his back kicking his legs in the air. Finally they began to calm down. ‘Okay,’ said Jake, trying to be serious, ‘by some inexplicable means, what must have been the world’s strongest man and greatest escape artist staggers out of the grave . . .’ ‘Not bad for someone so mutilated even  before  he was crucified that he couldn’t drag his cross to avoid yet another beating,’ interrupted Jasmin. Jake continued, ‘Then he miraculously – er mysteriously – eludes armed guards, somehow hobbling out on nail-pierced feet, gaping wound in his side, back flayed, bruises and lacerations from head to foot, blood dripping everywhere –’ ‘If you could imagine blood left in that tortured frame,’ said Jasmin. ‘Don’t forget the Roman executioners confirmed death by thrusting a spear into this side, draining his body of blood.’ ‘Looking the most pathetic human wreck, he somehow walks miles to Emmaus with two of his friends when he shouldn’t have been able even to crawl. Later, he staggers alone all the way back to the upper room, breaks through a bolted door and in his emaciated condition manages to convince even the most skeptical of the disciples that he’s conquered death!’ They were all in fits of laughter. ‘Finally,’ continued Jake when he had regained a little composure, ‘he gives his followers the slip and manages to die in such a way that his body is never found. The world’s greatest moral Teacher becomes the world’s greatest con artist? I think not!’ ‘They’ll say it was simply someone who looked like Jesus,’ replied the Professor. ‘Oh no! It’s getting worse!’ protested Jake, ‘Not only Jesus’ closest earthly friends, but his very mother was just inches from him when he died. Then they prepared his body. Soon after, they were handling the risen Lord, examining the nail holes, speaking with him and eating with him over a period of 40 days. And his own brothers – brought up with him from infancy – who didn’t believe him when he was alive, suddenly become believers after his resurrection appearances. That’s not mistaken identity, that’s insanity!’ He had them in fits of laughter. ‘And that still doesn’t explain how Jesus’ body mysteriously disappeared,’ added Jake. ‘And what about the survival of Christianity?’ said Jasmin. ‘That’s getting off track,’ said Jake. ‘No!’ insisted Jasmin. ‘No one denies that Jesus was a highly exceptional leader. How many people of his caliber has the world ever seen? Even his bitter critics would be hard pressed not to rank him at rarer than one in a hundred million people. But after killing this exceptional person when he had barely started – a mere three years from starting to teach – and then violently turning on his followers, why wasn’t the tiny movement crushed? Why did it keep growing exponentially, as if the tragic death of its charismatic leader were a mere hiccup?’ ‘In fact, as if it were part of the divine plan,’ added Amber. ‘Exactly!’ Jasmin was looking triumphant. ‘And how did Jesus, from a handful of uneducated fishermen and the like, find such high caliber, inspirational leaders to keep the moment roaring ahead? Sure, they were convinced that Jesus had conquered death but it takes more than that to make high quality leaders. What other explanation can there be than that these apparently very ordinary men were divinely selected and divinely empowered, just as the Bible claims, to perpetuate the most important message humanity has ever received?’ ‘You’re right,’ said the Professor, ‘but many will still refuse to believe.’ ‘Why?’ asked Amber and Jake almost simultaneously. ‘Jesus told his hearers, “If anyone desires to do God’s will, he will know whether my teaching is from God . . . .” Spiritual truths are hidden from everyone unwilling to obey God. Again Jesus said, “Men love darkness rather than light for their deeds are evil.” It’s insane, but we humans close our minds to reality because we would rather be enslaved by our pet sins than enjoy intimacy with our loving Creator. We prefer ignorance to truth.’ ‘Even though that truth would fill them with never-ending joy and eternal fulfillment?’ quizzed Amber. ‘Yes, Amber, even though it’s the most exciting truth in the universe. We fear the unknown. Not only are we chronically addicted to selfishness and various other sins, we’re like blind beggars who have known no other way of earning money and fear healing because of the major changes to their life that seeing would cause.’ ‘Like prisoners who have been behind bars for so that they fear the increased responsibility and lifestyle changes that freedom entails?’ said Jasmin. ‘Or like battered wives scared to make a new life for themselves?’ chimed in Amber. ‘Yes,’ replied the Professor, ‘almost wherever we look, we see people bound by fear of positive change, and nowhere is that more tragic than in people fearing the freedom and fulfillment and wholeness that Jesus offers.’ ‘It makes you wonder why Jesus bothered!’ commented Jake. ‘Thankfully there have always been a minority with the guts to face reality, but even they find it hard to admit their need of God and to let go of selfishness long enough to discover the matchless joy of knowing God,’ replied the Professor. ‘The famous scholar, C. S. Lewis, preferred Greek myths to the hard facts of the Gospels. He used to complain about the Gospels being written in an “artless, historical fashion” by “narrow, unattractive Jews too blind to the mythical wealth of the Pagan world around them.” When he changed from atheist to believer, he described himself as perhaps the most reluctant convert in all England, but the truth is that everyone who ends up a true Christian once dreaded the prospect.’ ‘I sure did,’ laughed Amber, ‘I thought all Christians were weird!’ Jasmin giggled. ‘I was certain Christians were all stuck-up hypocrites.’ ‘Straight-laced religious people frustrated Jesus,’ said the Professor. ‘He was forever uplifting those who felt down about themselves but the self-righteous earned his stinging rebukes. Bible fanatics in his day hated him so much that they killed him. ‘Severe persecution keeps Christianity pure, but whenever it becomes respectable, pretenders want to become part of it, like loud-mouthed couch potatoes who think themselves sporting experts. It’s a turn-off – yet another excuse for people being reluctant to become true Christians – but those who are truly genuine won’t be deterred in their pursuit of truth. They’ll muster the courage to exchange a life of shame and mediocrity for eternal glory and divine excellence. ‘By the way,’ added the Professor, ‘in discussing the certainty of Jesus’ resurrection, no one has mentioned the Apostle Paul.’ Jake wasn’t sure what the Professor was getting at, but that didn’t silence him. ‘Paul was converted after the early church was established and after Jesus had left earth. Paul was highly intelligent . . . must have known the full inside story of the resurrection from the perspective of Jesus’ enemies. Not must he have rubbed shoulders with the Jewish officials who set the guard on the tomb and those same officials must have had close contact with the Romans.’ ‘To Paul, Jesus’ resurrection was so undeniable, and so central to Jesus’ astounding claims, that he insisted that without it there is no Christianity,’ added Amber. ‘Where’s your evidence?’ asked the Professor. There was silence for a couple of seconds. ‘1 Corinthians 15,’ said Jasmin. ‘Paul,’ said Jake, feeling that at last he was on a winner, ‘had committed himself to violent persecution of Christians, torturing them in the hope that they would blaspheme Jesus, until every Christian was wiped from the planet. Suddenly, he threw away everything he had studied and worked all his life for, losing all his status and friends, to become a despised Christian.’ ‘Did his career path ever nosedive!’ said Amber, ‘How his former colleagues must have hated him!’ ‘But he persisted, despite having access to inside information from those who ordered Jesus’ execution as to what really happened to Jesus’ body,’ added Jake. ‘And not even the Christians wanted him! ‘That’s right! His turnaround was so phenomenal that Christians feared he was playing a deadly trick on them,’ chimed in Jasmin. ‘From then on, until his eventual martyrdom, Paul suffered not mere ridicule but devastating numbers of whippings, beatings, tortures, imprisonments and even stonings – all because this bright, hard-nosed persecutor was convinced that he was blinded on the way to Damascus by none other than the risen Lord who personally spoke to him.’ ‘You see,’ said the Professor, ‘this is the amazing thing about Christianity. It didn’t just have a unique, miracle-working founder; it has always been perpetuated by the supernatural. It is truly mind-boggling as to how that tiny, despised, highly persecuted minority ever survived the first century, let alone is thriving almost two thousand years later. ‘Of course, there has always been concrete historical proof but who would die for mere facts?  Lives  were transformed by Jesus and this has kept going unabated in those who believe in him, century after century, right down to us. Today, who can count, not just the one-time anti-Christian intellectuals who have converted, but all the alcoholics who are now sober, the drug addicts set free, the criminals going straight, the abuse survivors healed, the once-suicidal down-and-outs who are now changing the world, the Mother Theresas, the . . . ? Well, let’s go back to the original documents.’ The Professor opened his Bible. ‘Mark 16:20, “Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.” ‘This kept happening throughout the critical early days of the church. Look at Romans 15:19.’ The Professor began turning pages furiously. ‘Here we are . . . “by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.” ‘Supernatural signs and miracles were the early church’s secret weapon. We find it not just with Paul but in Acts with Peter and Philip and Agabus and so many other early Christians. In fact, there is no other explanation for the early church’s phenomenal growth despite all the attempts to annihilate it. See, for example, in Acts 4 when Peter and John were dragged before the Jewish court for daring to proclaim that Jesus had risen. They were in grave danger, but what could the authorities do? All of Jerusalem knew the cripple who for more than forty years had so predominantly begged in front of Israel’s only temple was now healed. Twice they supernaturally burst out of prison. That might stagger skeptics but how else can one explain Christian in its vulnerable beginnings not only surviving despite every attempt to snuff it out, but spreading like wildfire? ‘Look at how confidently the writer to the Hebrews puts it: Hebrews 2: 3-4 “how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.  God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will .” ‘Look at Acts 1:1-2.’ The Professor thumbed through his Bible and then began to read, “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus  began  to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven . . .” See! Luke is saying that everything Jesus did up until he returned to heaven was just the  beginning  of Jesus’ earthly miracles. All the miracles recorded in Acts confirming the reality of the Christian message were but the continuation of Jesus’ ministry.’ ‘Yes,’ added Amber, ‘and he’s continued them in my life.’ ‘And mine,’ said Jasmin. ‘Mine, too!’ grinned Jake. ‘What fires Christianity is not merely historical facts, nor even the supernatural. It is not just that Christianity is real, but that it satisfies the spiritual hunger of the human soul. Of course, Christianity has had millions of sad hangers-on – having a facade of godliness but not living in its power – but those who have truly tapped in to spiritual reality have found in Jesus true fulfillment, achievement, purpose, meaning, and life-long spiritual adventure,’ said the Professor. For help in understand and starting this adventure, see  You Can Find Love: What Your Fantasizes Reveal . It’s not too easy arranging your own public execution and resurrection, but harder still when it must be done within the confines of prophecies issued hundreds of years before the event. For proof that Jesus was no ordinary man, see  Jesus: The Supernatural Prophesied Messiah?

A Totally Useless Waste of Space?   Feeling Useless & Hopeless   Compassionate Help for “Hopeless Losers ”   To think, “I’m a useless waste of space; I’d be better off dead,” is a soul-destroying place to be. Being certain you are a hopeless loser or that accident or disease or advancing years has rendered you incapable of achieving anything of value will obviously make you feel useless. Nevertheless, feeling hopeless or useless, no matter how devastating and convincing the feeling, does not make it true; it just means you will need a lot of convincing before you change your mind.     I understand you fighting me in my efforts to empower you to see that you are not nearly as hopeless or useless as everything suggests. For sure, some of the following will not apply specifically to you, but some of it will, even though you will probably feel certain you are an exception to all of it. You deserve to be understood and to be patiently given all the proof you need. I get down on my knees and beg you, however, not to be like a drowning person stubbornly fighting off his rescuer. No matter how enticing such resistance is, it is clearly not in your best interest, and your well-being is all I care about.     Talking about getting on one’s knees: why not earnestly pray right now that as you read God open your eyes to those parts that particularly apply to you?     Not for financial reasons, of course, (my idiosyncrasy is to refuse to make money from any form of ministry) but because there is so much of value in my book, Waiting for our Ministry (also available in audio form), it is my personal preference is that you read the book, instead of reading this webpage. Nevertheless, I live to serve ( Explanation ) and I am acutely aware that anyone hounded by oppressive feelings of being a useless non-achiever is likely to be hurting too deeply and feel too drained to muster the strength to read anything not highly relevant. So in this webpage I have distilled from that book excerpts particularly helpful and inspiring to everyone devastated by what seems undeniable proof of being useless or hopeless. In  Not The Failure You Thought: Help When You Feel You’ve Failed  I have used the same method. Since there is a degree of overlap in the two topics, but the excerpts are quite different, you might also find that page helpful.     Since I often quote from my book in other webpages, you might have possibly already discovered a snippet of the following but unless you have read the entire book, most of it will be new to you.   Heaven’s Bunglers Convention   Heaven’s honor roll reads like a Who’s Who of bungling. And I love it!   I must have slammed into so many closed doors in my spiritual job search that my whole head is a dead end. Of my legendary brain malfunctions, you’ll squeeze just one example from me. Divulge more, and I’d be sentenced to wearing a paper bag over my head for the rest of my natural life – and that’s a prospect I don’t relish, no matter how much you think it improves my looks.   I was about to go home when a manager said he couldn’t start his car. Some idiot had left the headlights on. Suddenly my nerves thought I’d caught malaria. That morning I had tested the lights of our entire vehicle fleet. ‘That’s funny,’ added another manager, ‘I can’t start my car either – battery’s dead.’ (It was definitely malaria, maybe yellow fever as well.) Up walked another manager – and was that another one behind him?   I’ve got a mechanical mind; it’s just that the gears have jammed.   When I have mistake and onions it’s neither rare nor well done. And just when I’ve had my fill I’m forced to eat my words. And that’s only the entrée. Somehow I always end up in the soup and have to pay for it. Humble pie follows with a generous serve of raspberries and I scream.   I make more slips than a lingerie company. As my mind lurches from one goof-up to the next, I fill with despair. Then I limp to the Bible and find comfort. I bump into Isaac, who blessed the wrong twin; (Genesis 27:21-35) and Jacob, the scheming mummy’s boy, who had to marry his sister-in-law to patch up his first mistake. (Genesis 29:20-28) I hear Job clawing for words to recount the tragedy that marred his childhood – he was born alive. (Job 3:1-19) I see Saul hiding amongst the baggage; (1 Samuel 10:22) David squabbling with his brothers; (1 Samuel 17:28-29) Jonah bewailing the death of a weed; (Jonah 4:7-9) Thomas poking holes in Jesus’ side. (John 20:24-25) I don’t know that they had pogo sticks back then, but if they did, they played under the table for too long. Hard-boiled? These egg-heads were always in hot water. Whenever they had a brainwave heaven ducked for cover. Of course, Solomon had a good head on his shoulders – a cute brunette one night, a redhead the next. I think he ended up counting his wives and kissing his money.   Jesus hand-picked the quiet, intelligent type. When they were quiet, they were intelligent. They spent the rest of their time turning howlers into an art form. Their business cards must have read  Bloopers for Every Occasion . There were the sons of blunder, James and John, armed with tongues programmed to shoot first and ask questions at the inquest. Those thunder-heads even thought the Prince of Peace was into star wars. (Luke 9:54) Then there was Peter, whose mouth went into spasms whenever his brain died. He always spoke with his mouth full, and still found room for the other foot. (Any normal sized mouth would have had corns.) You were sure to find this crying shame somewhere between boo-boo and boo-hoo. And while our silver tongued, lead brained hero was doing what came naturally, everyone else was scrambling to prove they had the IQ of a doughnut hole. Who could forget that ridiculous prayer-meeting when the maid left Peter locked out in the cold, the pray-ers thought the maid had gone around the twist for being so stupid as to think their prayers had been answered, and they finally made the brilliant deduction that the guy, who looks and sounds like Peter bashing on the door, must be Peter’s angel? (Acts 12:12-16) They believed in keeping their brains in ‘as new’ condition. Remember the dozer with the window seat who fell three floors to sleep during Paul’s sermon? (Acts 20:9) They make that drop-out look like a genius. Paul wasn’t kidding when he said that by normal standards few of the Corinthian Christians were wise. (1 Corinthians 2:26-27) If they were anything like the rest, you could pool their intellects and not have enough to power a headache.   I could put my feet up with folks like that. And what fires me is that these scatter-brains are God’s sort of people – the type through whom he changes the world.   Christians squabble over whether tongues have ceased, but no one doubts that signs and blunders are with us still. The centuries have made Christians no brighter, nor any less treasured by heaven. My favorite is Dwight Moody. He hated his first name, pronounced Jerusalem in two syllables, and wrote without a speck of punctuation. Can you guess the words he was attempting to spell in the following: sucksead, beleave, shure, clurks, bead, hav, don, bimb bi, peter? (Succeed, believe, sure, clerks, bed, have, done, ‘by ‘n by’, better.) ‘I am getting over the difficulty,’ said middle-aged Moody about his spelling, ‘I am always sure of the first letter and the last . . . ’ Such shortcomings are endearing. To scorn them is to act like a thirteen year old despising childish behavior in his little sister – behavior that more mature people find adorable. Had we a massive intellect and love approaching that of our great King, we would not only discern the frailty of even the greatest earthly minds, we would probably feel as warmly about their foibles as we do about those of the cutest child.   Feeling Useless   Most of us, ably supported by Satan, are unnecessarily harsh on ourselves. This self-inflicted, satanically-enhanced torture can wound deeply. We may presently be so hurt and agitated that we can’t be sufficiently still to hear God’s call, or are too despondent to amass the faith to embrace his challenge. In this webpage we will look to the Lord for healing and inspiration.   Scripture’s silence implies Jesus spent most of his time on earth doing almost nothing worth mentioning. This impression is amplified by the shock registered in his old acquaintances at the thirty-year-old’s miracles. More astounding still is that even his teaching and wisdom surprised people who had heard him all his life. (Mark 6:1-3; Luke 4:22) Thirty years! That’s over ninety percent of his earthly life.   Dare we say that during this time the Sovereign Lord of Glory was useless, or a failure? The very thought is blasphemous! You know God’s Son is of infinite worth because of who he is, not for what he does.   Well, remember that you, too, are God’s child. You have already attained the highest status.   Real significance and fulfilment can only be found in your union with Christ. To seek them through what you do is to chase a vapor. For starters, it’s a perversion akin to parents looking to their children for things that should only be found in their marriage partner. Secondly, earthly service is temporal. Will you suddenly decline in value when age forces retirement upon you? You were created for the security that only God can offer.   To look to anything other than Christ for our sense of worth is like a commoner made royalty by her marriage to the king, hoping her trinkets will make her important.   Performers often gauge their success by how much people pay to hear them. The King of glory paid the highest conceivable price – the staggering cost of his Son’s life – just to be close to you. That’s how precious you are. Furthermore, he has made you heir to heaven’s riches, destined to reign with eternal honor. As God’s heir, you are of such mind-boggling importance that nothing – not even the greatest achievement – could increase your significance.   Limitless Potential   Our mighty Lord can use anything for any purpose. Look at the tiny book of Jonah. God used a storm, heathen sailors, a sea-creature, a plant and a grub, as well as moody, heartless, rebellious Jonah. (Jonah 1:4,12,15,17; 2:10; 4:6 ff) Centuries later, the Lord even made a Messianic prophet out of the man who sentenced Jesus to death. (John 11:49-51)   One of the things that transformed the great evangelist D. L. Moody was the sudden realization that ‘It was not [the famous preacher, Charles Haddon] Spurgeon who was doing that work: it was God. And if God could use Spurgeon, why should he not use me?’   Was that same God who mightily worked in Spurgeon and then in Moody suddenly incapacitated when he took up residence in you? Dare you claim that your weakness could weaken God?   If the Lord could work only through people of a certain calibre, the Most High would be impotent and dependent upon human abilities. That’s unthinkable. Either God can move the world through you or he isn’t God. (E.g., 2 Chronicles 14:11; Isaiah 40:29) Incompetence melts in the presence of omnipotence.   So if the Lord appears not to be using you, it cannot be because you lack ability. In fact, God delights in displaying his majesty by employing those who seem hopelessly inadequate. (E.g., 1 Corinthians 1:26-29; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10)   And I hope you know enough about God to realize that it cannot be because he does not love you! What more could the One who died for you do to prove his love? Let’s not slander the Holy One by imagining infinite love is so fickle that it fluctuates according to a person’s physical attractiveness, popularity or talent.   By making you feel as if God loves you less than certain other Christians, it seems as if Satan is attacking your self-esteem, but he isn’t. He is attacking the integrity of God. He is hissing that God’s love is so inadequate that it is only people who have certain qualities whom God can love or be gracious to. That’s a lie! God’s love toward you is perfect. GOD IS FOR YOU. He’s cheering you on. He’s on your side!   In this world, success is often relative – the closer the relative, the higher you go. Don’t decry the system: remember who  you  call Father.   Christian, you are the focus of divine love; filled with the majesty of Almighty God; spiritually enthroned with Christ in his heavenly palace; granted the highest level of access to the greatest Person and the holiest place. (Ephesians 2:6; Hebrews 10:19-22) You are the work of divine hands, made perfect in Christ Jesus. And enshrined within your being resides the infinite power of the sovereign Lord. (1 Corinthians 6:19; Ephesians 3:20) How dare you think you’re useless!   Top fashion model Claudia Schiffer has been nominated the most beautiful woman in the world. Yet as a teenager, she concluded from her lack of popularity at school that she was not beautiful. We make a similar mistake in assuming that if we are not popular with people, we lack what it takes to make it in a big way with God.   In 1943 five missionaries tried to establish links with an unreached tribe in Bolivia. Not only did they fail, it cost them their lives. It took the wisdom and perseverance of Joe Moreno, using an entirely different tack, to achieve what the five could not do. Joe was a sixth-grade drop-out; a middle-aged farm laborer with three children who had been abandoned by his wife. He considered himself unworthy of the title ‘missionary’ yet he achieved more than those he revered. The lower you are, the stronger God’s urge to lift you high. (Job 5:11; Psalm 113:7-9; Isaiah 40:4; Ezekiel 17:24; 21:26; Luke 1:52-3; 1 Corinthians 1:26-29)   If you have so far achieved little, it says nothing of God’s plans for you, nor of his evaluation of your worth. Prized silverware is reserved for special occasions. The fact that it is rarely used hardly means it is of little value. A craftsman will use some tools more than others, simply because they have different functions. Frequency of use in no way indicates quality, nor the craftsman’s pride in the tool. No one in a right relationship with God has a sane reason for feeling inferior to people who are used often.   Basking In Infinite Love   Anyone who feels slightly worthy of divine love has had no more than a superficial brush with the majestic and holy Lord of heaven and earth. If you are not overawed by the thought that a perfect God could love you, then you are either so jaded to the truth or so infatuated with your self-importance, so blinded to reality, that your need for spiritual revelation is desperate.   Heaven sometimes lets our efforts fail so we may learn it is not our labors or our diligence or our usefulness that makes us precious to God. If your child fell ill and could no longer do her chores, would your love for her diminish? Well, don’t imagine this speck of human love exceeds the love of the Almighty.   Would you attempt pushing a jumbo jet to help it fly across the Atlantic? That would be wiser than trying to do your bit to help Christ secure your salvation or breach the infinite gulf between who you are and what a person would have to be to merit God’s smile. Anyone foolish enough to keep trying will be left on the runway when departure time arrives. In love, the Lord will not take us far in ministry until this issue is sorted out. (Romans 3:19-24; 9:30-33; Galatians 3:1-14; Philippians 3:3-10)   We often get the salvation part fairly right, yet still imagine we must earn God’s smile by serving him. It’s hard to believe the King of glory would treasure our friendship. Though we keep pushing it down, bobbing close to the surface of our consciousness is the thought, ‘The Lord saved me because of the things I can do for him.’   The false notion that service could buy God’s approval might heighten motivation, but heaven will not exploit it. Nothing is more important to God than our spiritual well-being.   They had just brought in the washing when there was a knock on the door. ‘Oh no! The house is in a mess! And just look at me . . . !’ exclaimed Martha.   ‘I’ll get it,’ called Mary. She opened the door and her heart skipped a beat. There was Jesus and all his disciples.   ‘Come in!’ she gushed excitedly. ‘Martha! It’s Jesus!’   Martha was in a panic. How was she going to feed them all? If only she’d had more warning. She had wanted everything to be so nice for Jesus. ‘Where’s Mary? She’s taking her time!’   She ran next door to borrow some food. Still no Mary. She stoked the oven and got out the plates. Still no Mary. She peered out and there was Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet with not a care in the world! Martha exploded. Yet it was Mary that the Savior defended.   I don’t question Martha’s love, but her sister was more perceptive. Mary had discerned that Jesus’ yearning was not primarily to be served. He craved intimacy. Cakes could never taste so good that Jesus considered it worth being robbed of Martha’s presence.   Basking in the love of Jesus seems self-indulgent. We feel compelled to slip out of his embrace and whip ourselves into running errands for him. To sit with the King in the drawing room might be acceptable for royalty, but not for the class of people we see ourselves as. Slaving in the kitchen seems more appropriate.   God, however, is a giver not a taker. If the Lord of hosts wanted slaves he could compel the entire human race to serve him. He yearns for love, not labor. An hour spent luxuriating in the King’s presence means more to him than a life-time of fear-motivated service. If it’s a genuine expression of love, sweat is beautiful. But service as an expression of a slave-mentality grieves him. God longs to lift us from viewing ourselves as heaven’s second-class citizens. He has made us royalty and he wants us to know it.   Whether it is this particular revelation, or some other message he wants to share, sometimes the only way our Lord can get our attention is to block all ministry opportunities. Otherwise, we’d be in too much of a frenzy to hear him. We can only give to others what we have first received from above. Resting in God’s presence enables us to receive.   Locked doors are infuriating. I rant. I rave. I kick the door. But when at last I see more clearly, I realize enforced rests are a precious manifestation of God’s love. How I thank God for not letting me smash down the door. What tragedies he saves us from! Father calls ‘time out’ and I’m given the opportunity to commune with the Lord of creation and receive whatever it is I need.   We look to the day, however, when our Savior need no longer resort to compulsion before we ‘come aside . . .  and rest awhile.’ (Mark 6:31) We are nearing graduation when we have learnt to sit daily at Jesus’ feet.   Service is being granted the honor of an assignment worthy of God himself. It is God doing us a favor, not the other way around.   Reprogramming our Minds   Unfortunately, intellectual assent is easier than feeling inwardly convinced.   One has simply to consider the plight of skinny girls who see themselves as fat to realize that a wrong mental image of ourselves can be so powerful as to resist all logic. Anorexia can so grip its victims as to defy what their eyes tell them, what the scales tell them, what other people tell them. Such a mindset can kill. Spiritually, the forces of deception arrayed against us are no less intense and the stakes can be eternal.   Throughout our lives we are subjected to the brain-washing of a godless world that values even its own not for who they are but for what they do. It is vital that we counter-attack, constantly expanding our minds with God’s estimation of our worth; persistently rejecting the human vantage point. (2 Corinthians 5:16-17) Diligent attention to reprogramming our minds will slowly loosen the strangle-grip of those deceptive feelings of worthlessness. (Romans 12:2)   We need more than this, however.   While some mental patients have delusions of grandeur, we suffer the opposite psychosis. Relative to who we are, God’s children – even those with dangerously inflated egos – have delusions of insignificance.   The instant we were born-again, our status and potential rocketed out of this world, leaving our self-image floundering somewhere between earth and reality. The gulf between who we really are and who we think we are is so serious and so beyond our normal comprehension (Ephesians 3:19-20; 1 John 3:1-2) that we literally need divine psychiatric help. (Ephesians 1:16-19; Colossians 1:9; Philemon 6. The psychiatric definition of a delusion is a false notion that cannot be altered by reasoning or by demonstration of the facts.) A major task of the Holy Spirit is to help us grasp the enormity of what has happened to us. (John 16:14; 1 Corinthians 2:9-15; 1 John 4:13; Ephesians 3:3-5; John 14:26; 16:13) It is vital that we keep probing the Scriptures (2 Corinthians 4:6-7) and pleading for spiritual revelation. We are like paupers ecstatic because we think we have inherited $10,000, when we’ve actually received $1 billion. We live chronically impoverished lives and the less we know of our spiritual inheritance, the greater the tragedy.   So to mental discipline add the spiritual therapies of faith, prayer, study, revelation, and submission to the Holy Counselor. By drawing on these vast resources, banish every thought that anything you accomplish could boost your personal worth. Drown the doubts, insecurities and guilt feelings. Cling to the emphatic Word of God which affirms that God’s estimation of you is far too immense for human fame or shame to budge it. (E.g., Galatians 2:6; Ephesians 6:9; Job 34:19) Whether the high point of your Sundays is counting the souls you have won or counting the specks on the your pew, on the ceiling on your hospital bed, the King delights in you.   The Exception   In theory, God can use anyone but you think you are special. You’re an exception, right? Okay, let’s find an exception. Create in your mind someone incapable of achieving anything of significance. Make him unable to read, write or speak.   ‘What about sign language?’ you ask. Okay, rule that out too. Just to be sure, we’ll imagine he is blind and suffers severe mental retardation. If you insist, we’ll say he’s had these limitations since birth.   You want to pile on even more disabilities? This is ridiculous. How about making him spastic – so handicapped he can’t even wriggle out of bed by himself? Maybe he could use his hands. We had better make him incapable of even holding a spoon.   By now we have surely blocked every possibility. He can’t read, write, talk, sign or see; unable even to think straight or move properly. We have created in our imagination a hideously handicapped person utterly incapable of achieving anything of note, right? Hogwash. I’ve been describing Leslie Lemke, a man so powerfully used of God that you have probably heard of him. Steve Bergelin – who has worked with Bob Hope, Robert Schuller, Paul Harvey and many others – claims to have seen no one touch an audience the way Leslie does.   After sixteen years with not a glint of the most rudimentary potential for anything, Leslie was suddenly empowered to play the piano. Using fingers incapable of the simplest task, he played intricate pieces like a professional. Later, years before he could speak, he began to sing. He need only hear a piece once before he can reproduce it flawlessly, with skillful embellishments. He’s now world-famous and has been instrumental in leading many to the Lord.   Robert Reed’s speech is slurred. He has twisted hands and useless feet. By himself he cannot bathe, eat, brush teeth, comb his hair or put on his underwear.   He is a missionary in Portugal.   Bob Byers, besides being tormented by total blindness and poor hearing, was so paralyzed that not only was he completely immobilized below the neck, his front teeth had to be extracted to force liquefied food past his locked jaw. He could not read, write, see or move. You could fill a chapter detailing fundamental things this man could not do, but you could fill a book with things this founder of  Mission to the Blind Overseas  achieved for the glory of God.   Achieving this of eternal worth is for everyone. Don’t ever let Satan call you an exception.   A mental asylum inmate grabbed a canvas and painted. In his saner days he had attempted theological studies and missionary work. He apparently failed at both. Added to this was the torment of repeated failures at romantic love. Now he was attempting to paint. He seemed to like the result. But who could appreciate the product of a twisted mind? Can a tortured soul produce beauty?   In 1987 a canvas changed hands. It fetched $US 53.9 million – a world record for any painting. The previous record belonged to another painting by that same impoverished man. A third work of his changed hands for $US 20.2 million.   Obviously, the artist is now famous. But do not let van Gogh’s present-day fame blind you to the fact that those treasured works of art are by a mental patient who died in obscurity; a luckless madman who suicided after living only half his life.   From humanity’s sludge comes the finest gold.   Charlotte Elliott became an invalid in her youth and deeply resented the cruel restrictions. Decade after decade found her wrestling those same agonizing restrictions. Her brother’s evangelistic success, contrasting so markedly with her own fruitless life, intensified her anguish. She longed to serve her Lord but instead she was incapacitated, isolated, useless. At age 47, still single, still sick, still cut off from ministry opportunities, she pressed into a poem her frustration, confusion and helplessness, with words like ‘fightings and fears within, without’. The year was 1836. The poem became the hymn  Just as I am . Years later, still a century before Billy Graham took up the hymn, her brother looked back on his productive life and confessed that he had probably achieved less in all his years than his sister had accomplished with one hymn. Her hymn is now believed to have ‘touched more hearts and influenced more people for Christ than any other song ever written.’   It would take quite a library to detail the achievements of spiritual giants like Catherine Booth, Frances Havergal, Charlotte Elliott, David Livingstone and Amy Carmichael weighed down by chronic health problems; of Christians like Alexander Cruden and William Cowper afflicted by bouts of insanity; and of the legions like Gladys Aylward (it is speculated that Miss Aylward had ‘a profound learning disability’) who with God soared above their intellectual limitations.   Or are you too ordinary? That’s another myth we’ll sink.   Every physical and mental barrier to be powerfully used of God crumbles at the name of Jesus.   A Lowly Ministry?   The gifts of the Spirit arm us for active duty. The Spirit fits us out with that particular mix that suits our individual call. Yet we usually eye such gifts as evangelism, prophecy, teaching, miracles, and ignore the other half – helping others, administration, showing mercy, giving, serving. You may even feel compelled to check the Bible before believing they belong alongside the attention-grabbing charismata. (Romans 12:7-8; 1 Corinthians 12:28)   The way we revere a few gifts and denigrate the rest, you’d think the ideal body of Christ consisted of a giant set of flapping gums, a fingernail emitting divine bolts of power, and a few emaciated odds and sods.   Is there really such a thing as a lowly ministry? Might it not be that the only thing that can make a ministry mediocre is a mediocre effort? In the context of ministry, Paul speaks of ‘striving to excel’. (1 Corinthians 14:12 – Amplified Bible – many versions are similar) The pursuit of excellence is a challenge from the throne of God to every Bible-believing Christian.   ‘Do small things as if they were great, because of the majesty of Christ,’ counseled Hudson Taylor. He said we should even ‘hang up clothes, wash, dress and comb our hair in a way to use to the full measure of ability which God has given us to the glory of his holy name.’ I was so impressed I chose a likely spot on the floor, rummaged through two dirty shirts, assorted books, three socks and a shoe, finally found a pen, blew off the fluff and recorded the quote. (My special gift is the ability to encourage – people come to me thinking they are the world’s worst and leave greatly encouraged.)   It is not organ music, stained glass or living off other people’s money that makes a task sacred. The sacred is no less and no more than that labor instigated by the Lord of lords, produced in union with his Spirit, and offered to him in joyful submission, faith, love and purity. That’s why Scripture fails to denigrate even the sweat of a slave, when offered to God by a heart redeemed by Christ.   If you are called to be a cleaner then rise to that challenge with the grace of Strauss, the flair of Michelangelo, the persistence of Edison and the dedication of Jessie Owens. Polish with the love of a mother, the care of surgeon, and the joy of a lover. Pour your soul into your work till it gleams with heavenly glory; till God can look at your floors and see his face in them; till all of heaven exalts you as an example of what a cleaner should be.   The standard and status of nursing rocketed because Florence Nightingale brought a sense of God’s call to a job that had been regarded as little better than prostitution. Edith Schaeffer, wife of Francis and hostess of the Christian chalet L’Abri, believed table settings could be elevated to an art form. The world has yet to see how you can transform the task before you.   The world marvels at the work of a genius. It is even moved by someone who overcomes severe handicap to do something a normal person could do. But though the world misses it, ordinary people are just as capable of heroics.   Paul White – later to became renowned through his  Jungle Doctor  books – wanted to become a medical missionary. His financial predicament made it essential that he obtain a scholarship to pay for his medical studies. This necessitated being ranked in the top two hundred students in the final year high school exams in his home state of New South Wales, Australia. He came one hundred and ninety-eighth. To add to the drama, to attain the mark that barely enabled him to scrape in, he had not only studied feverishly, he had repeated his entire final year at high school. His grades the first year were too poor. Now to turn this into a thriller, read the conditions of the scholarship: it would terminate the moment he failed just one examination, or part thereof, in any of the six years ahead of him. In his third year, over half of the students failed. With a pass mark set at fifty, he scored fifty, fifty, and fifty-one. He had pushed himself to the limit and he still had three more years to go.   Paul White might have had unremarkable ability but, to me, his graduation is a wonder equal to an armless woman using her mouth and feet to change her baby’s clothes; as sensational as a man walking on Mars.   Rarely in life do we have the precise measures of achievement that students have, but like White, we can grasp the hand of Jesus and teeter on the edge of our ability with the daring of a tight-rope walker, to the hushed delight of angelic throngs.   God’s Favorite People   ‘God must love ordinary people because he made so many of them.’ We laugh. But the truth is profound.   From tongue-tied Moses (to  er  is human) to cave-mouth Peter; from down-in-the-mouth Jonah to high-as-a-kite Noah; (Noah embarrassed himself by getting drunk (Genesis 9:21)) from Job in his trouble-bath to Mordecai having the last laugh, the Bible bristles with ordinary folk who achieved extraordinary things for God. And you were born to continue this tradition.   If to the world you seem insignificant, it merely intensifies God’s longing to raise you high. (This common theme in Scripture is worthy of close examination: Job 5:11; Psalm 113:7-9; Isaiah 40:4; Ezekiel 17:24; 21:26; Luke 1:52-3; 1 Corinthians 1:26-29)   Recall the Messiah’s birth. The leaders, the teachers, the theologians, and the priests, were oblivious to it. Heaven shared the news with shepherds at work; with old, temple-bound Anna; (Luke 2:8-18; 36-38) and with ‘wise men from the east’. The latter presumably weren’t even Jews.   It was the common people who heard this Man gladly. (Mark 12:37 b) And it was from their ranks that he handpicked the ones to fire the world with his glory. He chose hotheads with provincial accents, a tax man – a small-time turncoat any self-respecting citizen would spit on – and logheads with the stench of fish on their callused hands.   Christ was continually aware of the invisible people, whether it was a despised tax collector peering through the leaves, or an unclean woman pressing through the throng; a wild-eyed madman in the Decapolis back-blocks, or a luckless loner at the pool; a sightless misfit, or a stinking leper; a cripple, or a mute. (Luke 19:2-9; 8:43-48; 7:11-15; 21:1-4, 8:27 ff; John 5:2 ff) To a tired and hungry Jesus, befriending a spurned woman – giving hope to a Samaritan living in shame – was more important than food. Society’s rejects warmed his heart.   It seemed wherever there was a paltry act of kindness you’d find religious people simmering with contempt, and Jesus glowing with admiration. A pauper slipping a pittance into the offering, (Mark 12:41-44) a street woman’s pathetic washing of his feet, (Luke 7:36-50) a boy’s fish sandwiches, (John 6:9-11) thrilled him. Mary just sat on the floor in rapt attention. That was enough to fill him with praise. (Luke 10:39-42)   Jesus was forever shocking his observers by selecting non-entities for special attention. Society saw a dirty beggar, a nauseating blotch on the neighborhood, a curiosity for theological debate (is it right to heal on the Sabbath? who sinned, he or his parents?). Jesus saw a worthy recipient of his powerful love; a precious work of God brimming with beauty, dignity and heart-wrenching need; someone to die for. While crowds turned up their noses, he poured out his heart. The masses tried to silence blind Bartimeus, the loud-mouthed groveler. (Mark 10:46-52) They sneered at Zacchaeus, the money-grubbing runt who soon towered over them by displaying exceptional generosity. (Luke 19:2-8) His followers wanted to push aside snotty children. (Mark 10:13-16) They opposed the Canaanite woman whose incessant nagging was driving them to distraction. (Matthew 15:23) No one could guess who Jesus would next honor. It was sure to be some faceless loser they had not even noticed, or an embarrassing nuisance they wished would skulk away.   Jesus came to show us the Father. (John 14:9) Today, the religious world still looks at the big names, while God treasures the ‘unknowns’. He delights to endow with eternal grandeur their simple acts of service.   From the time Mary, ‘just a housewife’, mothered the Son of God, and the world’s greatest Teacher spent five or six times longer as a carpenter than as a teacher, humanity has had living proof that the mundane can be holy.   The world is filled with God’s undercover agents – ministers of the gospel who have successfully infiltrated enemy territory using all sorts of ingenious covers – housewife, plumber, bus driver . . .    One of the most powerful influences in evangelist D. L. Moody’s life was the now-famous statement, ‘Moody, the world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to him.’ The words that moved the man who moved the multitudes was uttered by a butcher.   In Argentina, around-the-clock pray-ers do battle in what is possibly one of the most powerful centers of prayer earth has seen. Some independent observers have concluded that it is bolts from this continual prayer storm that fuel the massive Argentine revival and spill over to the rest of the world. The participants are 2,000 prisoners.   Brother Andrew, ‘God’s Smuggler’, tells of a girl who became a Christian because he obeyed the Spirit’s prompting  not  to share the Gospel with her. He was in the ideal position to witness, but his Spirit-led refusal to exploit it, seized the girl with fear that she was becoming past hope. This moved her, like nothing else could, to give her life to the Lord.   The journalist who found Livingstone and was converted by him, initially grabbed headlines and published a book about his adventure. It is not this that interests me, however, but a letter Stanley wrote some years later. According to a modern appraisal of missionary history, this solitary letter, published in a newspaper, did more for the cause of missions than many missionaries have achieved in a lifetime.   The Stick-Holding Ministry Come with me to Rephidim. Join a rabble of run-away slaves trudging through the scorched terrain. The Israelites have just escaped Pharaoh’s sword. Sinai still lies ahead. They are barely organized and not yet hardened to desert conditions. Some are nearing exhaustion. Dazed by arid bleakness, they plod in eerie silence.   Suddenly, from the rear a blood-curdling shriek splits the desert stillness. Still reeling, your ears are hit by an escalating babble of anguished cries, bleating sheep, shouted orders and pounding hooves. Swords glisten through the swirling dust. Arrows darken the skies. Blood stains the ground.   The fierce Amalekites have attacked.   With agonizing slowness, Israel’s fighting men try to regroup. The fate of the nation rests with them. Or so it seems.   An elderly man clambers up a near-by hill, a staff in his hands. Reaching the summit, he holds his staff aloft. You know the story. The key to Israel’s survival was that little old man on the hill, right? Wrong.   The octogenarian quickly tired. The staff began to lower. Immediately, the Amalekites gained the advantage. Israel was staring defeat in the face. Someone hastily found a rock for Moses to sit on and ushered him to it. Instantly, the battle turned. An usher had saved the day.   If that’s the first time God used an usher, he was merely setting a precedent. It’s been repeated times without number. (James 2:2-13 hints at the importance of this under-rated ministry.)   Before long, however, Moses’ arms began to tire. The battle had barely started. Israel was doomed. Then someone had a brainwave – hardly Einsteinian, but on it hung the new nation’s very existence. Why not support the old man’s arms? This they did. It was they, as much as big-shot Moses and muscle-bound Joshua who saved Israel. An entire nation was indebted to two men helping an old man hold a stick. (Exodus 17:8-13; Deuteronomy 25:17-18)   ‘Anyone could do that!’ you object. ‘Who’d applaud such a lightweight act?’ How distorted our thinking is. We, not heaven, are the ones who exalt trivia. Do seraphim turn cartwheels when the latest sports sensation kicks or hits a piece of leather? Do angels drool when a shapely distribution of body fat saunters by, or sigh in envy at a billionaire’s greed?   Neither is God awed by the nature of the gift he has given us – it’s his anyway. Whether our ability is rare or common is of no consequence to God’s evaluation of our worth.   With the Almighty pulsing within you, a stunning victory, an earth-shaking sermon, the sweetest music, are no more beyond your grasp than polishing the church floor. All that matters is what particular privilege the Lord gives you. (And all service is a privilege.)   Without God, nothing is significant; with him, nothing is insignificant. (Job 36:5; John 15:5)   Dr. Big-un   ‘Fame, said Emerson, ‘is proof that people are gullible.’ Not the full harvest, perhaps, but those words are heavy with truth.   For instance, few Christians actually write the books they are credited with. Miss Hardwork could write a biography about Dr. Big-un and be the acknowledged author. Instead, Big-un might ask Hardwork to change the pronouns from he/him to I/me and call the book  The Big-un Story by Dr. Big-un . It would not be unusual for Hardwork’s name to appear no-where in the book, not even in the section where Prof. Swellhead is thanked for scratching his nose and Sister Jane for feeding the cat. And somehow most of the royalties end up in Big-un’s bank account. That’s fair. He has so many more expenses. Simple things like clothing cost a fortune when ten thousand eyes are on you. No one sees Miss Hardwork, so her five-year-old dress and shabby shoes are quite adequate.   I’ll repent of my cynicism by pointing out that many conservative scholars believe the Bible has its share of ghost-writers – almost nameless people who, under an apostle’s direction and the Spirit’s anointing, used their own words to express the apostle’s heart. It’s not for us to judge Big-un. But there is a Judge, and in the end everything will pan out. Meanwhile, let’s try not to let some people shrink to nothing in our estimation while a few Big-uns fill the entire screen of our mind.   Nicky Cruz kindly insisted that Jamie Buckingham’s name appear on the book Jamie wrote for him. By the time the publisher was finished, the author’s name was not only smaller than Nicky’s, but smaller than that of Billy Graham who merely ‘wrote’ the foreword. (Actually, the foreword was written by Lee Fisher, Billy’s ghost-writer.) Jamie was peeved about that cover until humbled by the realization that God’s name appeared no-where on the cover. After that, he decided to become a holy ghost-writer. His next book was called  God Can Do It Again by Kathryn Kuhlman  (I had always thought she wrote that). Jamie had his wish: God’s name was on the cover.   As Jamie discovered, relative to our Savior, we don’t get such a raw deal. If torrential rain on foolishly deforested land causes a flood, it is ‘an act of God’. If the weather is perfect, who needs God? If someone smashes his thumb with a hammer, whose name gets cursed? If the hammer is on target – don’t talk to me about God, I’ve got work to do.   Following our Savior may take us into the shadows, but the time will come when we’ll shine like the sun. (Matthew 10:25-26; 13:43) God’s Radical Views It is common in our society to refer to one’s leaders as ‘superiors’. No wonder we fall for the lie that some vocations are superior. This delusion has so fogged our thinking that it would seem to require thousands of words to clear our minds. Yet just one sentence from Andrew Carnegie’s epitaph almost does it. This man started working for two cents an hour and ended up giving away $365 million. His leadership ability was the key. Before he died he ensured his tombstone read: ‘Here lies one who knew how to gather around him men who were cleverer than himself.’ When referring to the leaders and big names of the Jerusalem church, Paul wrote: ‘ . . .  those who seem to be something – whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God shows personal favoritism to no man –’ (Galatians 2:6, New King James Version) Let the truth overwhelm you: Paul was writing about the so-called pillars of the church, including Peter, James and John. (Galatians 2:9) He had in mind the most intimate friends of Jesus when divinely moved to declare that God has no favorites. Try the Amplified Bible: ‘ . . .  those who were reputed to be something, though what was their individual position and whether they really were of importance or not makes no difference to me; God is not impressed with the positions that men hold and he is not partial and recognizes no external distinctions.’ One more time, remembering that Paul was referring to apostles ranked with the greatest and most spiritually gifted leaders the church has ever known: ‘ . . .  as far as their reputed leaders were concerned (I neither know nor care what their exact position was: God is not impressed with a man’s office) . . . ’ And what of the great apostle himself? Paul reminded the Corinthians that he preached Jesus as Lord and himself, not merely as  Christ’s  servant but as  their  slave/servant. (2 Corinthians 4:5 – note also 1 Corinthians 3:4-7) Burn that into your brain. Prominence in the church – even God-ordained prominence – does not imply prominence in the heart of God. Not even apostleship breaks this immutable rule. Except perhaps for a malfunctioning part of our body, our hair usually receives more attention than any other physical part of us, even though it is the least important. This paradox, insisted Paul, is typical of the way God deliberately arranges honor, prominence and attention among the members of his church. (1 Corinthians 12:23-25) Leadership is valuable, but there are a multitude of ministries of equal significance. It is our carnal side that covets leadership. Few of us display the spirit of Francis of Assisi. When his followers had swollen to thousands they began to abandon his principles. He returned from Egypt to find that the men he had left in charge were forbidding the eating of meat and allowing the ownership of goods. His response to those wanting to usurp his authority was to humbly relinquish leadership of the order he had founded. The Friars selected another leader, to whom Francis submitted as a common brother. Even on his death-bed, some eight years later, Francis bowed to his ‘superior’s’ directive that he stop singing and face death in a more ‘dignified’ manner. Centuries later, George Whitefield, declared, ‘I know my place  . . .  even to be servant of all.’ Whitefield was the powerful founder of the Methodist movement. Today he is rarely credited with this honor. To foster love and unity between his followers and Wesley’s he abandoned his leadership rights and turned the entire ministry over to Wesley. To his horrified supporters he said, ‘Let my name be forgotten, let me be trodden under the feet of all men, if Jesus may thereby be glorified . . . ’ Not everything that passes as leadership in the Christian church corresponds to Christ-likeness. Another fallacy I’d like to pulverize is the notion that for divine service to be important it must touch many lives. Bible translators Des and Jenny Oatridge were so sure that God cares not just for the thousands but for the ones and twos that they resolved to bypass large language groups that needed the Bible and find a language known only by a tiny minority. They got their wish when they heard of a language on the verge of extinction in Papua New Guinea. It was spoken by just 111 people. To sacrificially spend one’s life for so few would be remarkable if that tiny population were stable, but their numbers were plummeting at a phenomenal rate. Moreover, relative to hundreds of language groups, their need was minor; the tribe already had a strong Christian witness in languages they half knew. Nonetheless, the Oatridges devoted more than a quarter of a century to the herculean task of putting God’s Word into the mother tongue of this dying tribe. The heart of God and the hope that a few primitives might more fully comprehend the Gospel spurred them year after year. Many of us would feel failures if our sole spiritual input were to a few retarded people. Yet we would think we had ‘arrived’ if our ministry were to three millionaires. What twisted minds we’ve got. Let’s push aside petty human concepts and rise to the challenge of thinking like God. The Savior shed as much blood for a derelict as he did for the entire world. In the combined angelic and human hosts there might be a trillion objects of God’s love, yet our amazing Lord loves an individual, not with a trillionth of his love, but with  all  his love. Moreover, his love for that person is infinite. You can’t exceed ‘all’, nor can you beat infinity. That makes it impossible for God’s collective love for a million, or a trillion, to exceed his love for one solitary person. That’s perfect love. So, as staggering as it seems, if you alone can reach a particular individual, your contribution is as vital to God as that of someone who can reach a million. Moreover, people who on earth enjoy popularity are already receiving a portion of their reward. Other things being equal, if your labors are unrecognized, you are more blessed than the person made famous by the obvious success of reaching a million. Instead of receiving your reward now, you’re accumulating eternal wealth. That’s great news because heaven’s interest rates are out of this world. (Luke 14:12-14; 12:33; 1 Corinthians 9:18) Forget the multitudes; you are blessed if, by being true to your call, you touch just one person. In fact you can do seemingly even less and still accomplish much. Consider Scott and his team, who struggled to the South Pole only to discover their honor of being the first to reach the Pole was lost forever. Amundsen had beaten them by about a month. To add to the futility, they endured further blizzards, illness, frostbite and starvation only to perish; the last three dying just a few kilometers from safety. Yet today their miserable defeat ending with death in frozen isolation, witnessed by not a living soul, is hailed as one on the greatest ever epics of human exploration and endurance. Every fiber of my being is convinced that their glory is just a shadow of what you can achieve. Though you suffer in isolation and apparent futility, the depths of your trial known to no one on earth, your name could be blazed in heaven’s lights, honored forever by heaven’s throngs for your epic struggle with illness, bereavement, or whatever. The day is coming when what is endured in secret will be shouted from the housetops. Look at Job: bewildered, maligned, misunderstood; battling not some heroic foe but essentially common things – a financial reversal, bereavement, illness; – not cheered on by screaming fans, just booed by some one-time friends. If even on this crazy planet Job is honored today, I can’t imagine the acclaim awaiting you when all is revealed. Your battle with life’s miseries can be as daring as David’s encounter with Goliath. Don’t worry that others don’t understand this at present. One day they will. No Call? Another reason why some of us undervalue our service to the Lord is because we have not received a call of the thunder and lightning variety. God’s call is his selecting and empowering an individual for a specific task. The response he expects is not necessarily to do anything new. You’ve asked for God’s guidance haven’t you? Don’t you think God just might be smart enough to have maneuvered events so that your divine assignment is right in front of you? If so, he simply expects you to plunge into what you are already doing. Don’t conclude heaven rates your service as second-rate ministry just because you have no need for angels in luminescent nighties to boom something stirring like, ‘You should be doing something else, O great and mighty blockhead.’ There are Christians like Thomas who believe only because of a divine visitation. Yet, contrary to the way we often feel, Jesus affirmed that the people to be envied are those who believe without such displays. (John 20:29) So long have I been tinkering with this book that it was years after penning the above that I sank into perhaps the blackest time of my spiritual life. It lasted for over a year and it was largely because I forgot the truth of the above paragraph. I craved greater intimacy with God and more spiritual power. My one passion – my one reason for living – was to know Jesus and bring him glory. To allow more time for seeking the Lord I stopped my habitual revising of the book. I knew that my brain needed continual refilling with the words of this book or its truths would slowly seep from my mind, but I hoped the resulting frustration and lowered faith levels would merely intensify my drive to seek God. Heaven’s steely silence was devastating. Nearly every day I seemed to slump deeper until I was forced to re-read the book for my own survival. It worked. Meditating on the book revealed that my search for a spiritual breakthrough had degenerated into an excuse for unbelief. I had been edging closer and closer to refusing to believe God has great plans for me or even that he loves me unless he gave me an undeniably supernatural experience on which to hang my faith. How could I be so stupid? (Don’t answer that.) I was on dangerous ground. The omnipotent Lord, whose word is impossible to break, has gone to the extreme of putting his promises in writing. How dare I imply that even that is not enough! Do I need a flock of angels on my roof, or an all-expense paid trip to heaven and back before I will accept that God thinks I am important to him? Christ’s shed blood proves God’s pledge of total commitment to me. Am I to pronounce that sacrifice inadequate and demand additional proof? Must God send a bolt of spiritual electricity through me before I’ll believe he wants to powerfully use me? In his grace God might do something extra for me, as he has done for thousands, but to so focus on this possibility as to not believe unless he does it, is the height of impertinence. If every non-Christian on this planet had amazing (though phony) spiritual encounters and every Christian received divine visitations every day, and I alone in all humanity experienced nothing, it could never diminish the infinitude of God’s devotion to me. If in his wisdom God decides to cut me off from such experiences in order to toughen my faith – that essential ingredient of spiritual life, more valuable than earth’s treasures – it is yet another demonstration of his love. Faith in the unchangeable character of God is the only bedrock upon which a person’s ministry call can be founded. We have no need for God to write in the sky because he has written in a book. And Jesus taught that people who fail to believe the Bible would not believe even if they experienced the ultimate miracle of someone they knew returning from the dead and warning them. (Luke 16:27-31) I dare not slacken my quest for a deeper spiritual experience. I will welcome any manifestation of the Spirit of God in my life and not proudly assume I don’t need it, but if God decides not to use such means to prop up my spiritual life, it merely proves the depth of his confidence in me. He obviously believes I have the grit to tough it out by raw faith. Our call needs not spectacular confirmation but spectacular commitment. Lopped Off The divine vinedresser prunes every fruitful branch. (John 15:2) Twigs with great potential are lopped off. That way, God’s life and our attention are channeled into those parts that will ultimately achieve the most. For months the vine seems cruelly maimed. But what seems a senseless waste produces better fruit. On the steps of an opera house, gifted vocalist Peter Cameron Scott yielded to his Lord. In 1890, he set sail for the wilds of Africa. Cricketer, C. T. Studd was rich and famous in his home country. His reputation alone could draw a large crowd. Yet Christ inspired him to dispense of his wealth and trek to China, where he was neither rich nor famous. An irresponsible waste? Perhaps – if the Supreme Being were a celestial talent scout. The Almighty is not frantically scouring the planet for someone with the natural ability to fill a particular role. Nor is he obligated to use our every skill. He is as capable of by-passing native talent as he is of supernaturally giving us new abilities. Yet you are tenderly pruned with boundless wisdom. If a part of your life is thrown in the fire, another branch will bud, bearing bigger fruit. Though groomed for it from his infancy, Ezekiel was barred by divine law from entering the priesthood until his thirtieth year. Finally, the day arrived. Can you see him, as excited as a flea at a cat show? Then you don’t know Ezekiel. In exile, Ezekiel was a priest without a temple. That’s like being a sailor without a ship, a painter without a brush, a carpenter without wood. Poor man. Instead of ministering rituals to his tiny nation he had to be content with shaking the entire world for millennia as a powerful prophet. Brooks’ failure as a school teacher was so complete that he had to quit the profession forever. And the headmaster was as comforting as sandpaper. He informed the shattered man that he had ‘never known anyone who had failed as a schoolmaster to succeed in any other calling.’ The pain intensified. Utterly devastated, he intended spending the rest of his life as a recluse. Little did he know that one day someone would write, ‘What a blessing it was that Phillips Brooks was not permitted to be successful’ as a school teacher. Otherwise, ‘the brilliant, soul-winning, character-building minister might have been lost to the world.’ The Vinedresser is always right. And he still saves the best vintage until last. (Compare John 2:9-10) Disappointments are divine appointments to a later, richer harvest. Perhaps you incorrectly discerned heaven’s call. (You thought it was heaven but it turned out to be a local call, not long-distance.) If so, quitting is no failure. You have given it your best and grown in the process. There is no shame in changing direction when that change aligns you closer to the perfect will of God. One of the greatest preachers ever, Alexander Maclaren, has retained his influence for generations because he shunned what we consider the usual duties of a pastor to concentrate on sermon preparation. He would spend up to sixty hours preparing a single message. ‘He did more by doing less,’ concluded one biographer. I am reminded of the early apostles who off-loaded responsibilities they had originally assumed, to limit themselves to prayer and preaching. (Acts 6:2-4) Should this principle be applied to your calling? Some of us either get involved in too many things at once or flit from one activity to another before getting established in any. We’re shooting out in all directions and wonder why we produce so little fruit. Welcome the pruning hook. Truth Distilled If we seem to be achieving nothing, it is usual to feel like second-hand chewing gum. No matter how real the feeling, however, to give credence to the illusion is a tragic mistake. It is human to suffer irrational feelings but only the hopelessly insane are compelled to  believe  those feelings. Only people living in a land of fairies and goblins have the right to surrender to feelings of inferiority. Though you feel as cherished as a lump of soap at a boys’ camp, to God you are priceless. You may seem as useful as an inflatable anchor, but with God, no one is useless. See Jesus naked on the cross, scorned by demons, soldiers and Jews. To even his supporters his failure was undeniable. Thousands were ashamed of him. We, too, may be pounded within and without by accusations that we are weak, ineffectual, useless. It is Satan, however, who not is the accuser. Our Lord, is the redeemer who takes the shattered pieces of our lives and sculpts them into divine masterpieces that win both him and us eternal acclaim. Try not to underestimate God’s ability to use for his glory, even the most trivial things you do. (I’d like to say  never  underestimate it, but that’s a tall order when living within you is the One whose power surpasses our wildest hopes. (Ephesians 3:20) I casually mentioned in the introduction that I live to serve and then felt compelled to add a brief explanation in a link.  If you have not yet read that little explanation, I suggest you do, since it is most relevant feeling useless:  I live to serve .

“I Live to Serve”   To serve is my entire reason for living but this does not mean if I were to be so incapacitated that I could barely think, that my reason for living would fade. It is a mind-boggling, utterly undeserved privilege and honor to serve the exalted Lord in the tiniest capacity. In fact, serving him in minute ways – rather than spectacular ones that attract human recognition – is the purest and the most eternally rewarding form of service (Matthew 6:1-6,16-18). Moreover, it is a particular honor to suffer for the One who suffered for us.   Acts 5:40-41  . . . They called the apostles in and had them flogged. . . . The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.   I used to imagine that the unique blessings of suffering apply only to persecution, but I was wrong. If, out of respect for the God who gave me life, and the Son who gave his life for me, I choose not to despise that precious gift, throwing it on the trash heap by killing myself, the suffering endured through remaining alive is never pointless, but is a profoundly meaningful, love-charged expression of my devotion to him.   Back

Expressing Your Compassion   Taking the Trauma Out of Counseling     *   When your friend needs help   *   Christian counseling at it’s Best   *   Counseling Made Easy     This is a Part 3 of a series beginning at   “Everyone’s Guide to Basic Counseling”   “Love believes all things”   “. . . the Holy Ghost is the only One in the true position to criticize,” believed Oswald Chambers, “He alone is able to show what is wrong without hurting and wounding.” ( My Utmost for His Highest,  June 17th)   Job knew what it was to be a counseling victim. Given the extent of his suffering and that God meticulously recorded his thoughts for all time, we should take his words most seriously. “To him who is about to despair,” pleaded Job, “kindness is due from his friend . . .” Note what this Scripture says is at stake: “. . . lest he forsake the fear of the Almighty” (Job 6:14). A person may be much closer to suicide or forsaking the Lord than he/she ever lets on. People’s destinies could hinge on how effectively we live that verse.   No doubt Job’s friends would have liked to have been kind, but their tragic error stemmed from being so convinced of their  theory  that it outweighed their faith in their friend. They had so firmly locked into their mind the doctrine that good people do not suffer, that they felt compelled to cling to that belief no matter how strong the evidence that Job was innocent. The way they ended up tormenting God’s friend and incurring God’s wrath confirms my choice of the single most important Scripture for counselors: Love “is ever ready to believe the best of every person,” (1 Corinthians 13:7, Amplified Bible).   If only we could live like that Scripture, always interpreting people’s actions and what they tell us in the best possible light, continually giving them the benefit of the doubt. Even if people openly confess a problem, realize that in their depressed state they could well be too hard on themselves. Certainly show that you realize the gravity of their present situation, but always give them hope. Encourage, encourage, encourage.   Be convinced of God’s love and power and of the good plans God has for those you wish to support. Believe in the people God has sent you to, and believe in God’s willingness to work powerfully in them and to mightily use them. The apostle Paul typically showed great faith in those he was writing to. We would do well to follow his lead. It is the most effective and spiritual way both to bring healing to people and to avoid hurting them.   If we are filled with love, whenever we talk with people or even think of them, our first, instinctive move would be to think well of them, to find things to admire and praise in them and to overlook or excuse any shortcomings they may have. Sadly, such an attitude is far from natural to us. Continually seeing things through the pure, loving eyes of God takes a transformation that cannot be perfected in a few days. Ridding ourselves of a critical mind set requires an on-going Spirit-led reprogramming of our mind and spirit, through prayer and practice, miracle and effort. It starts with the miracle of Christ’s likeness being, as it were, divinely impregnated into our genes; taking on the family likeness by being born into God’s own family. It continues with a supernatural explosion of love within us that saturates our whole thinking and personality (Romans 5:5). And as we keep looking to Christ it builds momentum for the rest of our time on earth. It involves killing off old habits and thought patterns and living a new life through the resurrection power of the risen Lord. Divine love and purity are our new nature, but jealousies, resentments and one-up-manship are second nature.   Love builds up   “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (Proverbs 12:18).   “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness” (Proverbs 31:26 NKJV)   Christians have a bottomless pool from which to shower encouragement after encouragement upon each other. For example, we don’t have a God who greets the longings of our heart with a stern “No!” On the contrary, we have:   a God whose eyes sparkle with love at the beautiful surprises he has carefully planned for you   a God who has invested his infinite resources in ensuring your success     a God who is fiercely devoted to maximizing your long-term happiness   a God so opposed to every force that threatens you that he has committed his unlimited power to manipulating each potential disaster until it ends up furthering your welfare.     You can tell every Christian that the richest, most powerful, most desirable person is in love with him/her. We are treasured by the wisest and greatest person in the universe. That makes each of us mind-bogglingly important. We are royalty; beloved heirs of the King of kings, and we will soon share his throne and his wealth, not to mention his perfection. We have in God someone who knows our blackest secret and yet delights in us with unswerving loyalty. Every source of embarrassment and shame that clouds our past is wiped from heaven’s records and in its place is credited to us purity and moral perfection so astounding as to be humanly unattainable. You can look at yourself in the mirror and know that no matter what your past, you are now pure in the eyes of the holy God.   We need the supernatural inspiration of the Spirit of God, not only for understanding of truths that uplift and set Christians free, but equally for divine enabling in imparting those truths in such a way that Satan does not twist them into condemnation in the hearts of sensitive people.   Love is humble   Most would-be counselors come up with half-baked solutions that will never work and when their advice fails to instantly transform a person’s life, instead of humbly recognizing the limitation of their approach, they blame the person they were trying to help! They conclude the person must be sinful or lazy or must not have followed their sacred instructions to the letter.   Love is always quick to blame itself, rather than the other person. “Do nothing out of  . . . vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves (Philippians 2:3).”   When progress is not as fast as you expected, be quick to assume the problem is your inadequate “solution,” not their inadequate application. Be quick to blame your insufficient prayer and poor understanding. Pour out your frustration on God, not on them.   Complain to others about your own deficiencies if you must, but do not dishonor those you have been trying to help by complaining to other people about them. That’s betrayal.   Remember how insistent Peter was that he would never deny Jesus. Imagine how hard he would have been on anyone who in a moment of weakness was unfaithful to his Lord. Just hours later Peter did what to his mind was unthinkable. That demonstrates how difficult it is to project ourselves into a situation we are not presently in. Add to this the impossibility of understanding the pressures of living inside someone’s else’s body and of having the entirely different background.   Humility keeps us from foolishly judging people.   Love is patient   “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” (Proverbs 17:17).   Years ago I labored, to win back a backslidden Christian. After exhausting everything I could think of, it became obvious he would never return to the Lord. I gave up. Soon after, he came back to God. It hit me like a sledge hammer to realize that although I had written this young man off, God obviously hadn’t. Ever since, I have determined to do my utmost to reflect the patience and faith of the eternal Lord whenever I counsel people.   If you are not willing to stick by hurting people’s side, faithfully believing in them for literally years if necessary, why bother to start? Be prepared for their healing to be a lengthy process with many a disappointment and setback, but always believe they will finally make it.   The secret   The kingdom of God, declares Scripture, consists not of talk, but power (1 Corinthians 4:20). Don’t abandon your Christ-bought spiritual heritage and resort to the powerless ways of the world.   Power resides not in clever words but in simple, heartfelt prayer.   Hoping for prayer support, I have often shared my needs with people and all I’ve got is cheap advice. Don’t sidestep the pain and the privilege and the power of prayer. Our two cents’ worth is rarely worth even that much, but faith-filled prayers are gold.   How often do we find the a writer of Scripture penning a request for advice? Yet we find at least nine distinct requests for prayer. Romans 15:30 I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. (31) Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there. 2 Corinthians 1:11 as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favour granted us in answer to the prayers of many. Ephesians 6:19 Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, (20) for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. Colossians 4:3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. (4) Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Philemon 1:19 I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will pay it back-not to mention that you owe me your very self. 1 Thessalonians 5:25 Brothers, pray for us. 2 Thessalonians 3:1 Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honoured, just as it was with you. (2) And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith. Philemon 1:22 And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers. Hebrews 13:18 Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honourably in every way. (19) I particularly urge you to pray so that I may be restored to you soon. It is noteworthy that although Paul gave advice in his letters, he did so by regularly beginning with the affirmation that he was called of God to give advice (ie called to be an apostle) and by stating that he constantly prayed for those he sought to advise. God’s call and calling upon God are the cornerstones of ministry.   Never be content with something a godless do-gooder could achieve. Reach up to heaven and bring down divine power.   Know the source of your power   I was appalled to read a “Christian” manual for sexual abuse counseling in which Christ’s sacrifice barely rated a mention. Authored by someone who should have known better, it was secular counseling with the word “God” slipped in now and then.   Never forget that the heart of Christianity, the source of its power, is the cross. We have nothing of lasting value to offer anyone outside the fact that the sinless Son of God bore the punishment for humanity's sin, so that all who come to him can trade their sin for his purity. Every conceivable spiritual blessing – love, relationship with God, answered prayer, the indwelling of God’s Spirit, wisdom, spiritual revelation, power over temptation, the fruit of the Spirit – flows from the death and resurrection of our Lord and from that alone ( 1 Corinthians 1:17–2:2 ). Wrap Up   In spiritual first aid, as in physical emergencies, virtually untrained people can save lives, provided they do not foolishly attempt procedures beyond their expertise.   There are two warning signs indicating that you need to ease off:   1.     When you find yourself beginning to preach to the person.   You could be an excellent orator and brilliant Bible expositor, but the perfect wording and delivery for a sermon is usually unacceptable for private conversation. Remarks that bring acclaim when directed at a sizable congregation suddenly become offensive when targeted at one person, especially if that person is already hurting. With the degree of intimacy that personal conversation brings, a gentler, less direct approach is needed.   2.     When what you say produces even the slightest sign of pain or offense.   If you sense any such reaction, immediately back off. Ideally, of course, you will avoid the problem ahead of time by anticipating possible ways what you say could be misinterpreted as an accusation or hurtful remark.   If you are tempted to raise a matter that could cause a reaction, at the very least pray and fast about it for a couple of days. Check it out with a pastor or someone mature in the faith.   It’s my guess that a very high proportion of well-meaning Christian attempts to counsel people end up hurting people. We are all in danger of adding to this statistic. Remember Job’s counselors, who tried their hardest and yet ended up doing the devil’s work and desperately needing God’s forgiveness. They were quick to assume there was something wrong with Job. They criticized and accused. It’s the devil who is the accuser. Our role is to support. Our role is to love; to give people the benefit of the doubt; to be quick to find a good light in which to interpret our brother’s actions.   There is no need to be continually on edge, however. Be aware of the dangers, commit them to God, then rest in him, trusting your Lord to sound the alarm bells whenever needed.   To be the help that we want to be, we need the full gamut of Christian graces:   Love   This is our great motivator. It keeps us thinking the best of a person and pressing through in prayer and faithfulness for as many weeks, months or years that it takes to see a full breakthrough in his/her situation. Love remembers people’s kindnesses and forgets their failings.   Don’t hide your love. Express warmth, enthusiasm, interest, compassion. Let your face light up when you see them. Show real delight in their triumphs. Hang on to their words. Don’t interrupt with lengthy statements, but show you are interested and following their conversation, perhaps by use of words like  Wow!  or  Fantastic!  where appropriate, or  That must have hurt!  or by showing pain on your face, when such a response is called for.   Peace   “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone,” (Romans 12:18). This, and scriptures like it highlights the key role of this grace in calming human relationships. Since anger is an expected human reaction to grief, anyone relating to a hurting person needs the spirit of a peacemaker; always ready with the soft answer that diffuses wrath; displaying the humility that would rather be wronged than inflame a situation.   “Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out” (Proverbs 17:14).   Gentleness   This is the very word Scripture uses to describe the way an erring brother should be restored and the way opponents should be corrected. “By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you –” entreated Paul (2 Corinthians 10:1).   Treat people as delicate masterpieces, honoring them as exquisite works of the divine Craftsman, fearing least by rough handling you mar a precious work of God.   Wounded people are sensitive people. Your off-hand remark might seem little worse than a friendly slap on the back, but you don’t slap seriously wounded people, no matter how friendly the intention. “Let your gentleness be evident to all” (Philippians 4:5).   Faithfulness   Be that rock-solid friend “who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24) when everyone else turns away. Be dependable, remembering them in prayer, phoning them, keeping appointments.   Kindness   This is what Job longed for in his friends (Job 6:14). Instead, they were like a mirage to a thirsty man. Like many exponents of the “you have to be cruel to be kind” philosophy, they succeeded only in being cruel.   “Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong,” warned Paul (1 Thessalonians 5:15), “but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.”   Goodness   This has been described as “generous kindliness” and as the antithesis of envy. We need to be generous with our time and our compliments and to rejoice in every victory of the other person, displaying the exact opposite spirit of the gossiper, who delights in someone’s downfall.   Self-control   When a person lashes out in pain, you need self-control. When you are itching to accuse someone, you need self-control. When you long to break a confidence, you need self-control.   Patience   “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense” (Proverbs 19:11). “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love,” (Ephesians 4:2).   Humility   “Beware of anything that puts you in the superior person’s place. . . . .” pleaded Oswald Chambers. “Stop having a measuring rod for other people. There is always one fact more in every man’s case about which we know nothing. . . . . I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God” ( My Utmost for His Highest,  June 17th).   If there is anything we usually get wrong, it is recognizing who is in danger of pride. “Humble yourself,” says many scriptures. Instead, we think it our divine duty to humble  others . Rather than fear our own pride, the beam in our eye causes us to fear others falling into pride. We’re tempted to not mind how much they fall into despair or how much we wound them, as long as we save them from pride.   “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love,” (Ephesians 4:2).   Wisdom   The wisdom we desperately need comes not from books but from a relationship with the Almighty God. It is founded not on intelligence but on a fear of the holy Lord. It exalts not in itself but in the will of God.   What about joy?   You need it in abundance, not to flout your joy insensitively in front of someone who feels cruelly robbed of it, but to sustain you, empowering you to minister to hurting people without being dragged down by their oppression. It’s ever so hard to lift your brother or sister if you yourself are sinking into the bog of depression.   Final Word   In most cases, giving advice is like a doctor opting for surgery the moment someone complains of heartburn. There are usually far more effective and less drastic ways of helping. At best it should usually be the last resort, and often it is totally inappropriate. Additionally, like surgery, it is usually morally wrong to attempt it without the person’s willing consent. And most importantly, no one should perform surgery merely because they  feel  qualified. Anyone attempting surgery has committed a serious offense unless he/she is pronounced qualified by the state’s medical authority. Likewise, we dare not assume the role of advice-giver or teacher (not to mention the role of judge) without specific authorization from God, the Highest Authority. Nevertheless, we are surrounded with exciting opportunities to take from God’s medicine cabinet the sweetest and most potent of medicines – love. We are divinely authorized to use it in unlimited quantities. And when applied in humble dependence upon the Spirit, astounding things happen. For practical suggestions as to how to show love, see the final part of this webpage series:  Christian Carer’s Guide:  List of Practical Suggestions.   We often think it Christlike to tend to the needs of the sick. Jesus didn’t actually do this, however. When, for instance, Peter’s mother-in-law was bedridden, instead of waiting on her, he healed her. She then waited on him! (This is a reminder that we must not delight in people becoming dependent upon us.)   Of course, nursing the sick and comforting the hurting is highly commendable, but let’s never lose sight of what Christ, our example, would have done. He was a man of intimacy with God his Father, who acted in constant, humble dependence upon him. He was a man of prayer, who kept urging his followers to have faith in the prayer-answering God for whom nothing is impossible. He walked this earth stripped of his divine glory and privileges, miraculously setting people free and pronouncing that through faith we would do likewise. Even greater works are within our grasp, he declared, because of his triumphant return to heaven’s throne after establishing our spiritual union with Almighty God (John 14:12-13).   Let’s dump small thinking and rise to the challenge of Christlike faith and dependence upon God. Heaven forbid that we be content with merely comforting the hurting. May love drive us until we seek God with such passion and faith that the power of the Almighty hits those we serve, transforming their lives. Truly, the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but power (1 Corinthians 4:20).

A deeper look at Scripture’s attitude to sorrow   The Apostle Paul   Acts 20:19  I served the Lord with great humility and with tears, although I was severely tested by the plots of the Jews.   Romans 9:1  I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit –  (2)  I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.  (3)  For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race.   Philippians 3:18  For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.   2 Corinthians 2:4  For I wrote to you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears . . .   Paul’s inspired advice   Romans 12:15  Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.     Other New Testament Christians   2 Timothy 1:4  Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy.   Acts 20:31   . . . Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.   Acts 8:2  Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.   Acts 20:37  They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him.  (38)  What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again.     Our ultimate role model   Hebrews 5:7  During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.   Matthew 26:37   . . . he began to be sorrowful and troubled.  (38)  Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’   John 11:33  When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.  (34)  ‘Where have you laid him?’ he asked. ‘Come and see, Lord,’ they replied.  (35)  Jesus wept.  (36)  Then the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’  (37)  But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’  (38)  Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.   Luke 19:41  As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it.     A few of the countless Old Testament references   Job 30:25  Have I not wept for those in trouble? Has not my soul grieved for the poor?   Ecclesiastes 3:4  a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.   Psalms 35:13  Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth and humbled myself with fasting. When my prayers returned to me unanswered,  (14)  I went about mourning as though for my friend or brother. I bowed my head in grief as though weeping for my mother.   Psalms 119:136  Streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed.   Jeremiah 9:1  Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.   Jeremiah 13:17  But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride; my eyes will weep bitterly, overflowing with tears, because the LORD’s flock will be taken captive.   Jeremiah 14:17   . . . Let my eyes overflow with tears night and day without ceasing; for my virgin daughter – my people – has suffered a grievous wound, a crushing blow.     Return to webpage

How to Comfort Hurting People List of Practical Suggestions   Tragically, Christians with the highest of motives are often blissfully unaware of the needless pain they inflict on the people they think they are helping. You, however, can avoid the pitfalls. This webpage summarizes how to move from the  illusion  that you are a blessing to  really  blessing people who need support. *   Be vitally aware that giving even simple advice is like handling a bomb: even experts are in danger of it blowing up in their face. As much as possible, leave it alone. It is so important that you grasp this that if you have not already done so, I urge you to read  Don’t Know What to Say?  before proceeding. In the eyes of the receiver, giving advice usually blasts you from the position of warm-hearted friend (the position from which you can offer maximum comfort) to that of cold superior. It can also greatly add to a hurting person’s pain.   * Think the best of people.   See them in the best possible light. View them through the eyes of love, knowing that love covers not just a few, but a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). If what we noted in the first point is true of seemingly harmless advice, try to conceive the danger of a deliberate word of correction or implying the person has demons or unconfessed sin or is not trying hard enough, or that the problem persists because of lack of faith. The impact of such ‘helpful suggestions’ is usually nothing short of horrific. Mouth them and you could incur the wrath of God for devastating one of his children. Like Simon Peter, you could temporarily become the devil’s mouthpiece (Matthew 16:23). Disregard this warning, and you could end up driving the person away from the church and even away from God. Your well-intentioned remarks almost make you guilty of spiritual murder. Don’t infect third parties with your poison by sharing with them your suspicions about a person. At the very least, the more people you tell, the more likely it is that it will reach the person and help destroy them. Pray that if your suspicions are true that God clearly reveal it to the person, with your only personal involvement being prayer and the giving of comfort. Talk it over with your pastor or a very mature Christian if you must, but don’t take things into your own hands. Clearly, you need to find the best possible light in which to interpret the actions of the person you wish to help, but the more the person sees that you have this attitude towards  everyone , the more secure he or she will feel. It will increase the person’s confidence that you will not be critical behind his or her back. Your example will also aid healing by helping to diffuse any ill feelings the person may have towards people who have hurt him or her and will inspire the person to be open with you.   * Rely heavily upon your Christ-bought union with Almighty God.   This alone gives you an edge on the help that a godless person could offer. Prayer enables you to burst through human limitations into divine omnipotence, bringing the unlimited power of God into someone’s life. Do not for a moment, however, imagine that it makes you infallible or any way better than the person you are trying to assist. Draw from the Lord all the patience, self-control and other graces you need to be as Christ to the people who need you. Pray also for divine insight into the person’s needs and for revelation as to how the Lord would have you express God’s love, wisdom and humility. And don’t underestimate the power of doing nothing but pray. Far too often people are smart enough to seek only prayer and instead get mowed down with advice from the one they had trusted to pray. * Be convinced of God’s goodness and of his wonderful plans for the person you wish to help.   Strongly believe in God’s love and forgiveness and in what God can achieve in and through the person. Know that encouragement works miracles because God is already working powerfully within the person. Encouragement empowers a Christian to see through the Deceiver's ploy. It enables God to burst through the drizzle of despair and negativity that dampens the fire of God within a person. It builds the faith that gives God free rein to do the beautiful things he longs to do in the person's life.   * Arm yourself with the attitude that your friend is delirious with pain and so can say or do anything out of character for a Christian without it affecting your opinion of him or her. Hold your friend in high regard and know that it is the pain talking, not the real person. People under pressure can explode at the slightest additional pressure. If you happen to add that tiny extra pressure, don’t take the explosion personally. Do not feel badly about the person, nor about yourself for what happened. If someone lashes out at you, feel honored. It is usually a mark of trust for someone to let you see an unpleasant side to his or her character. Letting people reveal an ugly side or express their deepest fears or grief, could be a most valuable contribution to their eventual healing. They will almost certainly feel condemned about the outburst. Being critical of them is therefore quite inappropriate. If, for instance, an ex-smoker reacted to the stress by reverting to smoking, the person would feel defeated enough without your contribution. Like Peter just hours before he denied his Lord, we have little conception of how we would react to new pressures, much less how we would cope with an entirely different set of genes and background. Don't dare feel superior to a fallen brother or sister. Instead, be as gentle and longsuffering as you would like God to be with you if you had fallen into the same quicksand. It is common for people to say deliberately anti-God things, not because they really believe it but because they ache for the added assurance of God’s goodness they hope you will provide. To blast them for what they say would be to completely misunderstand their heart. * Don’t inflame a situation.   Don’t give more fuel to someone who is already embittered towards a person. Don’t provide more doom and gloom.   * Agree with the person as much as possible and show disagreement as little as possible.   Naturally, this must be done whilst keeping the above point in mind, but remember that trying to help them see another point of view is dangerous because it can cause them to feel isolated and even betrayed by you and can drive them to defend their position even more. Often they simply need an opportunity to vent to a sympathetic ear because doing so empowers them to rid themselves of ill-feeling more quickly.   * Listen intently. Hang on to people’s every word. Enjoy their jokes, feel their pain, be thrilled with their triumphs. Be their best friend.   Eye contact can reinforce the person’s awareness that you are interested in what he or she is saying. Don’t stare, however. * In most situations, talk less than the other person.   Aim to let the other person do a minimum of two thirds of the talking. Be relaxed during times of silence. Perhaps give a reassuring smile or squeeze the person’s hand. Don’t feel pressured to fill the silence with chatter. Have confidence in the comforting power of simply being there.   * Gently probe.   Asking the occasional question shows genuine interest. Moreover, some people can be longing to talk but, due to shyness or their conception of good manners, they feel they do not have permission to say much about themselves or mention a delicate matter unless invited to do so. By asking appropriate questions you confirm that you really want to know and that they are not imposing on you. For them to broach the subject on another occasion some would feel the need for you to ask again. Of course, there are people on the other extreme who feel offended if asked, so we need to try to raise these matters with gentleness and sensitivity and in a manner in which the person can easily decline to answer without embarrassment. * Get this right: Satan is the Accuser; God is the Forgiver.   Our calling is not to help the Accuser by exposing a Christian’s sin. Our task is to undermine the Accuser’s schemes by lessening the condemnation that tragically leads to people keeping their distance from a loving and forgiving God. Neither trivialize sin, nor highlight sin. Instead, highlight the love and forgiveness of God.   * Avoid anything that could possibly give the impression of putting yourself above the person.   Don’t be a know-all. Where appropriate, briefly confess you own struggles. Give the person opportunities to minister to you.   * If God reveals to you something about a person, and prayer and fasting confirms that it really is from God, use further prayer to ascertain why you were given this information.   Chances are, it was to assist your intercession, not for sharing with anyone. If it was for sharing, you have a grave responsibility to determine exactly how and when God expects you to express it. You must prayerfully find the most uplifting and beneficial way to word the message. It is vital that everything you say must be wrapped in love, humility, and sensitivity.   * Be as ‘wise as serpents and harmless as doves’   (Matthew 10:16 KJV). Try to anticipate and avoid anything that could be misinterpreted or that has the slightest possibility of adding to a person’s pain.   * Match the person’s mood.   In the precious words of the apostle renowned for his emphasis on joy: ‘Weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15, KJV).’ Obviously, you want the person to be more cheerful, but only gradually and gently edge in that direction. Occasionally, try a little humor and fun to gauge whether the person is emotionally able to respond positively to it, but do it sensitively, never forcefully.   * Regard tears as being as natural as breathing.   If a person cries, try not to add to the person’s embarrassment by displaying your own embarrassment. Give a reassuring squeeze of the hand, or by some other means try to show that you are relaxed about any emotion that is displayed. Assure the person that tears are fitting and nothing to be ashamed of.   * Feel the person’s pain.   Don’t imagine you need to hide your own distress. * Where appropriate, use the power of touch.   Treasure with holy awe the fact that not even God can hug someone like you can. Ensure, however, that any physical contact is welcomed, restrained, and not misunderstood.   * Cultivate a friendship in which the person feels secure to confide the darkest of secrets.   Your love must be unshakable. The person should know he or she will be held in high esteem regardless of what is revealed; that you take no pleasure in anyone’s fall; and that you guard secrets as jealously as you would your own most embarrassing revelation. (Be aware, however – and make the other person aware – that if someone confesses to a criminal offense you may be legally required to divulge certain things to authorities.)  In the plastic world we live in, many Christians are desperately lonely. So few seem to admit to having problems that it can seem that no mature Christian could possibly have the problems you and I have. Surely if the crash of Christian superstars proves anything, it’s that underneath an impressive Christian exterior beats a heart as vulnerable as ours. Trying to suggest otherwise is fraught with danger.  People might not just be embarrassed about the feelings and temptations assaulting them, they could be genuinely shocked. It might have been so long since they had experienced such an onslaught that they expected never again to feel that way. They do not realize it is normal for even strong Christians to be hit by temptations, prayerlessness, doubts, fear, anger or resentment towards God or people, or feelings of being abandoned by God. * Unless you are married to the person, one must be cautious about attempting these suggestions with the opposite sex or with someone vulnerable to same sex attraction. There is probably nothing on earth more powerful in bonding one person to another than the sharing of a dark, long-kept secret. The effect is greatest with the very first person to both hear the secret and remain warmly accepting after the revelation. To varying degrees, the other suggestions in this webpage also contribute to bonding and, of course, the combining of several suggestions intensifies the effect. The result can easily be confused with romantic feelings and could have embarrassing, sometimes devastating, consequences.   * Look for a positive twist to the situation and with great sensitivity ease the person’s attention in that direction. An unmarried woman felt she needed male help in choosing a good second-hand car to buy. She lamented that such help was unlikely because her marital status caused wives to see her as a potential threat to their husbands. I expressed genuine sympathy. Being treated like a leper is one of the great burdens single people often have to bear. (I did not, however, use the word ‘leper’ lest it magnify her feeling of isolation.) After ensuring she knew I was moved by her plight I casually mentioned that being considered a potential threat proves these women see her as being very desirable to men. Immediately, the woman brightened to think that she really must be desirable. ‘I guess we can’t have it both ways,’ I said. ‘No one can both be an eligible, desirable woman and not be a seen as a possible threat.’ She left feeling much better about herself and her predicament. If every cloud has a silver lining, hunt high and low for the silver, then gently direct the person’s gaze towards it. Never, however, do this in a way that seems a put-down, such as giving the impression that they should have seen the silver themselves. Neither imply they should find the positive side comforting. Leave it to them to decide if it’s the slightest compensation for the pain they are experiencing.    * Ask if the person would like you to read a Scripture.   Don’t be surprised if the answer is no, but come prepared with passages that could not be misinterpreted as being judgmental. Particularly helpful are readings that grapple with emotions and trials in a down-to-earth manner. An example is Psalm 13. The singer starts off complaining about the raw deal God seems to be giving him, then finally staggers to the point where he praises God. Psalms are a rich source of comfort for people enduring trials, as well as an effective way of helping people feel more comfortable about admitting to problems. The psalmists were more in touch with reality than many modern writers and preachers.   * Consider practical help, such as shopping, housework, cooking.   This can be most valuable and yet surprisingly complicated. My highly experienced friend, Stephanie Goldberg, comments: ‘People find it hard to accept assistance with those day to day things that they feel are their responsibility. Doing the dishes while someone rests, making a pot of coffee, or bringing over dinner which can be reheated, can be incredibly welcome, but difficult for the person to ask for. If you know the person well enough, don’t offer, just do it. You might, for example, phone saying, “I’m on my way to the market before I see you. What can I pick you up?” Respect their right to refuse, but often they find it a great relief to not have to battle with deciding whether or not to ask you.’ Be aware, however, that many people have developed a personal way of doing housework which they consider to be the only correct method. It can be hurtful to wash someone’s car, for instance, and instead of thanks be blasted for not using the right cloth. This can test you to the limit. Anticipating possible problems by asking ahead of time can help. Merely coping with your questions, however, can put a heavily burdened person under extra pressure. So be prepared for a possibly bumpy road, but the benefits are worth the risks and pain.   * Don’t over-stay.   Just as being forced to over-eat eventually turns one’s stomach, no matter how delicious the food, so visits that are too long or frequent can turn a blessing into a burden. Whilst making it obvious that you are happy to stay, ask now and then something like, ‘Would you prefer to be alone for a while?’ or ‘Would you like to rest now?’   * Be aware that fear of hurting your feelings might make a person reluctant to admit such things, so pay attention to body language.   Don’t, however, consider yourself an infallible interpreter of this, or any other aspect of human nature. * Keep looking for feedback and signs as to adjustments needed in your approach.   Not only is every person different, people’s needs change during the course of their ordeal. For instance, when tragedies first hit, a person is often overwhelmed with visitors and attention, but this tapers off until the person is left having to cope with the opposite extreme. * Secret prayer is powerful, but shared prayer is yet another way of offering great comfort.   Pray with the person, or (usually less comforting) assure the person of your prayers. Writing your prayer in a note or greeting card to the person can be surprisingly effective.     * Maintain contact with the person.   Cards, e-mails, phone calls, little gifts, going on outings together, can be very effective. Going on an outing with someone with special needs, such as a medical problem, might require considerable preparation, like ensuring you have appropriate phone numbers. It might even require training in use of equipment, or bringing along another person to help. The more obstacles, the more valuable your offer.   * Realize that nights are often the worst time for hurting people.   The middle of the night – the time you probably least prefer to receive phone calls – is likely to be the time you are most needed. * Allow yourself time out to recharge.   It is both loving and wise to ensure you have lots of guilt-free fun times in which you as completely as possible forget your friend and his or her problems. This will do much to keep you primed for doing your utmost in supporting the person. (Of course, the person might not be in the mood for hearing you describe your fun.)   * Be prepared for a person’s struggle to continue for years longer than you imagine is normal.   God deals with us as individuals and although our common humanity makes our trials similar (1 Corinthians 10:13) there is also a uniqueness to each trial. God might have delivered you quickly from a trial only because he couldn’t trust  you  to be as faithful as someone whose trial goes on and on. Some people come to Christ as tiny children and remain faithful forever; some don’t see the light until the last moments of life. Some of us take many more years to recover from grief than others. Some are instantly delivered from addiction by a miracle that proves the grace of God and says nothing about their own strength of character; some languish in defeat year after year after year until finally finding victory.   * Never give up on a person.   The fact that some people recover far quicker than others can tempt us to give up on the slower ones. It can also make us think we are failures if our support has not had the anticipated result within the time frame we expected. Actually, the more frustrating and hopeless people seem and the more you feel like ditching them in favor of others who respond quicker, the more you are needed.   * Don’t abandon someone once his or her need is no longer chro nic.   If, when someone is well on the way to recovery, you chose to give priority to more needy people, it is important to taper off gradually and with great sensitivity, lest the person end up feeling worse than when you started. If you can begin to involve the person in your ministry, helping them to reach out to others, this would multiply your own efforts and do much to build up the person as well. You have been sent to a society so fickle that even vowing before God ‘till death us do part’ means little. In this dingy, despairing world of disposable relationships you are ordained to be light. You are called to be the ‘friend that sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24).’   * The key: humble dependence upon the Holy Spirit.   What worked wonders for all of the dozens of people you have previously helped might be hopeless for the next person you meet. Your best intentions, your hardest efforts, could end in disaster. Human nature is just too complex. Every person is different. You have no alternative but the most exciting of all adventures: being Spirit-led. “ A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities. ” – William Ward