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Beginning of Series How desirable is ease, riches, popularity, etc?   Certain big name preachers suggest we should become rich and famous to make non-Christians envious and so win them to Christ. That’s about as far from being a slave as anyone can get. I do not want to spend long on this but this matter is highly pertinent to God’s view of suffering.   When a friend recently asked me about this evangelistic strategy, my first worry was how the Author of the Ten Commandments would view a deliberate attempt to entice people to break the tenth commandment: coveting. Dare any of us, in the name of the Holy Lord, join the Evil One in tempting someone? How, precisely, would our Judge feel, after filling his Word with such things as the following?   * “the deceitfulness of riches choke the word”   * “it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into God’s Kingdom”   * “You can’t serve both God and Mammon”   * “Woe to you who are rich!”   * “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some have been led astray from the faith in their greed, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows”   * “Those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction”   Matthew 13:22 What was sown among the thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. Matthew 19:24 it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into God’s Kingdom. Matthew 6:24 . . . You can’t serve both God and Mammon. Luke 6:24 But woe to you who are rich! . . . 1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some have been led astray from the faith in their greed, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 1 Timothy 6:9 But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction. Other Scriptures Acts 8:20 But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! Ecclesiastes 5:10 He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he who loves abundance . . . Hebrews 13:5 Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you have . . . James 1:11 For the sun arises with the scorching wind, and withers the grass, and the flower in it falls, and the beauty of its appearance perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in his pursuits. James 5:1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming on you.   Instead of pursuing this, however, I retorted, “In Jesus’ parable of the rich man and the man who begged at his gate (Luke 16:19-26), who was the hero?”   That got me thinking. Who won Jesus’ praise in the following Gospel stories?   * Jesus’ parable of the revered priest, the holy Levite and the despised person we call the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30).   * Simon the Pharisee and the sinful woman whose tears wet Jesus’ feet (Luke 7:37-48).   * The crazed man with the legion of demons or the locals who were so disturbed by his deliverance that they asked Jesus to leave (Mark 5:15-17).   * The parable of the guilt-ridden, despicable tax-collector and the clean-living Pharisee praying in the temple (Luke 18:10-14).   * The prosperous people and the impoverished widow putting money in the temple offering (Luke 21:1-4).   * Zacchaeus, the tree-climbing runt of a tax collector scorned by the crowd (Luke 19:2-10).   * The successful man in Jesus’ parable who had to build bigger barns to store all his wealth (Luke 12:16-12).   * Blind Bartimaeus in the midst of an embarrassed crowd, who tried to hush him up (Mark 10:46-52).   * The once-blind man whom the ‘righteous’ threw out of the synagogue (John 9:22-41).   On and on I could go, listing all the beggars, nobodies and social outcasts featured in the Gospels.   Don’t like obscurity? Want to make a name for yourself? Then Jesus isn’t for you. He was forever zeroing in on society’s rejects for special attention or praise. They were the ones who warmed his heart.   Consider the twelve Jesus singled out for special training. Even the disciples we know most about were lowly fishermen and a despised tax collector (Matthew 9:9). Who among that motley band could be considered successful, popular or respected? Celebrities, super-heroes or scholars, they were not. In fact, they sloshed around somewhere at the opposite end of the scale.   Educated? Sophisticated? You’re joking! It’s highly doubtful that any had money but even if they did, Jesus told them to give it away. They were hot-heads, forever saying or doing lame-brained things. You would think their sole purpose was to make Jesus look smart and patient – except that they were the ones to whom Jesus entrusted the gospel message and world evangelism.   Jesus could have chosen Nicodemus, the Jewish ruler who came to Jesus asking about being born again (John 3:1-10) and later stuck up for Jesus (John 7:50-52) and still later brought about seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes for Jesus’ burial (John 19:39). He could have chosen rich Joseph of Arimathea, the disciple who gave Jesus his tomb and tended to his body (Matthew 27:57-60). There must have been many other candidates more promising and respected than the twelve Jesus singled out. In fact, most of even the twelve barely rate a mention in the Bible. Most of them remain obscure to us, but not to heaven. How the world sees things is of no consequence. What matters is how our eternal Judge sees things. In fact, Jesus said, “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!” (Luke 6:26, KJV). Anyone disagreeing with his assessment will be proven wrong for all eternity. Isaiah 41:10-11 Don’t you be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. Yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all those who are incensed against you will be disappointed and confounded. Those who strive with you will be like nothing, and shall perish. Isaiah 50:8-9 He who justifies me is near. Who will bring charges against me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help me! Who is he who will condemn me? Behold, they will all grow old like a garment. The moths will eat them up. Isaiah 51:7-8 Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law: Don’t fear the reproach of men, and don’t be dismayed at their insults. For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool; but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations. Isaiah 54:17 No weapon that is formed against you will prevail; and you will condemn every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the Lord’s servants, and their righteousness is of me,” says the Lord. Romans 8:31, 33 What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? . . . Who could bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? . . . Revelation 3:9 Behold, I give some of the synagogue of Satan, of those who say they are Jews, and they are not, but lie. Behold, I will make them to come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you. Revelation 12:10 I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, the power, and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ has come; for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night.   Emphasizing the immense value of what is seen by God alone is, of course, fully consistent with Jesus’ teaching:   Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18  Be careful that you don’t do your charitable giving before men, to be seen by them, or else you have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Therefore when you do merciful deeds, don’t sound a trumpet before yourself, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may get glory from men. Most certainly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you do merciful deeds, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand does, so that your merciful deeds may be in secret, then your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.When you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Most certainly, I tell you, they have received their reward. But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. . . . Moreover when you fast, don’t be like the hypocrites, with sad faces. For they disfigure their faces, that they may be seen by men to be fasting. Most certainly I tell you, they have received their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head, and wash your face; so that you are not seen by men to be fasting, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.   For many more such Scriptures, see The Immense Value of Doing What Only God Sees below: The Immense Value of Doing What Only God Sees Matthew 22:16  . . . Teacher, we know that you are honest, and teach the way of God in truth, no matter whom you teach, for you aren’t partial to anyone. Matthew 23:5-12 But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad, enlarge the fringes of their garments, and love the place of honor at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, the salutations in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi, Rabbi’ by men. But don’t you be called ‘Rabbi,’ for one is your teacher, the Christ, and all of you are brothers. Call no man on the earth your father, for one is your Father, he who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for one is your master, the Christ. But he who is greatest among you will be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Luke 8:17 For nothing is hidden, that will not be revealed; nor anything secret, that will not be known and come to light. Luke 14:12-14  . . . When you make a dinner or a supper, don’t call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbors, or perhaps they might also return the favor, and pay you back. But when you make a feast, ask the poor, the maimed, the lame, or the blind; and you will be blessed, because they don’t have the resources to repay you. For you will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous. Luke 16:15  . . . You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts. For that which is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. Luke 20:46-47 Beware of the scribes, who like to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts; who devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers: these will receive greater condemnation. John 5:41, 44 I don’t receive glory from men. . . . How can you believe, who receive glory from one another, and you don’t seek the glory that comes from the only God? John 7:18 He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, but he who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and no unrighteousness is in him. John 12:43 for they loved men’s praise more than God’s praise. Acts 5:29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. Galatians 1:10 For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? For if I were still pleasing men, I wouldn’t be a servant of Christ. Colossians 3:22 Servants, obey in all things those who are your masters according to the flesh, not just when they are looking, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. 1 Thessalonians 2:4-6  . . . we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, who tests our hearts. For neither were we at any time found using words of flattery . . . nor seeking glory from men (neither from you nor from others), when we might have claimed authority as apostles of Christ. Hebrews 4:13 There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. Revelation 2:23  . . . I am he who searches the minds and hearts. I will give to each one of you according to your deeds. Proverbs 25:27  . . . nor is it honorable to seek one’s own honor.   If there are times when only God is aware of what you think or do, never forget there is no such thing as ‘only’ God. Place God on one side of the scale of importance and put on the other side the entire universe, along with every living being, and the scale would not budge. Relative to him, everything else weighs less than a speck of dust. Isaiah 40:15, 17, 22 Behold, the nations are like a drop in a bucket, and are regarded as a speck of dust on a balance. . . . All the nations are like nothing before him. They are regarded by him as less than nothing, and vanity. . . . It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers 1 Kings 8:27 . . . Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens can’t contain you . . . Job 4:18-19 Behold, he puts no trust in his servants. He charges his angels with error. How much more, those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth! Job 25:5-6 Behold, even the moon has no brightness, and the stars are not pure in his sight; How much less man, who is a worm, the son of man, who is a worm!” Psalm 2:2, 4 The kings of the earth take a stand, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his Anointed . . . He who sits in the heavens will laugh. The Lord will have them in derision. Psalm 39:4-7 Lord, show me my end, what is the measure of my days. Let me know how frail I am. Behold, you have made my days hand widths. My lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely every man stands as a breath. . . . every man walks like a shadow. Surely they busy themselves in vain. He heaps up, and doesn’t know who shall gather. Now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you. Psalm 62:8-9 Trust in him at all times, you people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. Selah. Surely men of low degree are just a breath, and men of high degree are a lie. In the balances they will go up. They are together lighter than a breath. Psalm 102:25-27 Of old, you laid the foundation of the earth. The heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will endure. Yes, all of them will wear out like a garment. You will change them like a cloak, and they will be changed. But you are the same. Your years will have no end. Psalm 118:9 It is better to take refuge in the Lord, than to put confidence in princes. Isaiah 40:8 The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever. Isaiah 44:6 . . . The Lord of Armies, says: “I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is no God. Daniel 4:35 All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; and he does according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and no one can stay his hand, or ask him, What are you doing? Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Ephesians 1:22 He [God] put all things in subjection under his [Christ’s] feet . . . Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things are held together.  We live in a world that ignores God. It is therefore to be expected that it would measure people’s achievement not by how God sees things but by their fleeting fame and/or impact on this world. The sad thing, however, is how swayed many Christians are by such worldly thinking.   You might recall Naaman, the military commander struck with leprosy who would eagerly have done anything great for God, but crept precariously close to missing his miracle by dismissing as too humdrum what God actually asked of him (2 Kings 5:9-14). May we muster the humility to end up choosing as wisely as him. Often, the way we handle what seems insignificant is a better test of devotion than the spectacular.   Remember the origin of the saying that obedience is better than sacrifice. The Lord told Saul to destroy all the enemy’s captured livestock. That seemed a waste. Wouldn’t it be better to turn this into a spectacular sacrifice – an enormous thank-offering to the Almighty? The king tried telling himself that this would be nobler. So important is simply obeying God, however, that Saul lost his dynasty over choosing an impressive display of devotion and worship over what we might dismiss as a useless waste (1 Samuel 15:1-23).   Think of Sarah and Abraham suffering all the shame and emptiness of childlessness, year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year after . . . I’ll stop. I’m too embarrassed to waste a millisecond of your life for every year that they suffered this. For them, every interminable moment became as much a testimony to the power of faith as every moment spent proudly displaying their baby. Who would be impressed by the greatness of the miracle if Isaac had been born when they were in their twenties? How could that inspire others to hold on in faith year after year?   Every torturous prolonging of their agony ended up bringing more glory to God (and ultimately to themselves) as they faithfully endured it, and every slip-up on the way – and there were several – is instructive to us. Take heart from the man exalted as Scripture’s prime example of faith (Romans 4; Galatians 3:6-9; Hebrew 11:8-19; James 2:21-23). In an early chapter of Genesis, God tells Abraham on two separate occasions that he will give him the land and descendants (Genesis 12:2,7). Just four verses later we find Abraham humiliating Sarah, denying that she is his wife. In cowardly deceit, he stands dumbly by as Pharaoh marries Sarah and takes her into his harem (Genesis 12:10-16). Next chapter, God yet again details the promise of land and descendants (Genesis 13:14-17). Nevertheless, two chapters on, we find Abraham expecting to die childless. For a fourth time God insists he will give Abraham descendants. At last the old fossil believes. The Lord, thrilled with Abraham’s refound faith, repeats his vow to give him the land. In disbelief, Abraham asks for a sign (Genesis 15:2-8). With divine patience God dramatically shows the mighty man of faith not only his future descendants, but what will happen to them. In the next chapter we find our faith model throwing away any hope of a miracle from God. He resorts to dubious natural means to forcibly accomplish what God seems unwilling to do. He bypasses his wife and turns to her maid for a baby (Genesis 16:1-3). Years later, the Lord yet again reaffirms his promise to Abraham and declares that Sarah would conceive. Abraham laughs. He is sure his wife has more potential as an Egyptian mummy than as a Hebrew one. ‘She’s too old. Just bless Ishmael,’ is the crux of his reply (Genesis 17:17-18). Yet the Lord persists. One more time our hero gropes for that slippery fish called faith. Before long, he is again passing off Sarah as his sister, showing more faith in his powers of deception than in God’s integrity. This time it is King Abimelech who almost has a go at impregnating Sarah (Genesis 20:2-3). Just weeks later, (assuming Genesis 18:10 to 21:2 are in chronological order) she conceived Abraham’s baby.   We can see how God could treasure suffering for Christ as an exquisite act of love but what Scripture says about slaves enduring their indignity opens for everyone enormous other opportunities to delight our Lord – opportunities many of us might never have seen.   The mysteries of suffering might be profound but they are strewn with beauty because the stupendously compassionate Lord, whilst most definitely not the cause of suffering, is himself an active participant. We never suffer alone. The lover of our souls suffers with us.   Human feelings are such poor indicators of spiritual truth that it can feel as if God is aloof, even though nothing could be further from reality. One of the practical implications of the infinity of God’s love and knowledge is that he is highly sensitized to everything about you.   Christian, the Almighty is so intimately connected to you that Scripture emphasizes over and over that he is in you and you are in him. Your Astonishing Union with God You in the Godhead John 17:21  . . . May they also be in us . . . Acts 17:28 For in him we live and move and have our being. . . . Romans 8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus Romans 16:7  . . . they were in Christ before I was. 1 Corinthians 1:30  . . . you are in Christ Jesus . . . 2 Corinthians 2:17  . . . in Christ we speak before God . . . 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation . . . Ephesians 1:1 7  . . . the faithful in Christ Jesus: Ephesians 2:6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus (Emphasis mine.) Colossians 1:28  . . . so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. Colossians 2:10 you have been given fullness in Christ . . . Colossians 3:3  . . . your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 1 Thessalonians 4:16  . . . the dead in Christ will rise first. 2 Timothy 3:12  . . . to live a godly life in Christ Jesus . . . 1 Peter 5:14  . . . Peace to all of you who are in Christ. 1 John 2:24  . . . you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. 1 John 2:27  . . . remain in him. Psalm 90:1  . . . Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. The Godhead in You John 14:17 the Spirit . . . will be in you. John 14:23  . . . My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. John 17:23 I in them . . . John 17:26  . . . that I myself may be in them. Romans 8:9-11  . . . if the Spirit of God lives in you. . . . But if Christ is in you . . . And if the Spirit . . . is living in you, he . . . through his Spirit, who lives in you. 1 Corinthians 3:16 Don’t you know . . . that God’s Spirit lives in you? 1 Corinthians 6:19  . . . the Holy Spirit, who is in you . . . 2 Corinthians 6:16  . . . For we are the temple of the living God. . . . Ephesians 3:17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Colossians 1:27  . . . Christ in you, the hope of glory. 1 John 3:24  . . . he lives in us . . . 1 John 4:4  . . . the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. Ezekiel 36:27 And I will put my Spirit in you . . . (Expression repeated in Ezekiel 37:14 .) In God and He in You Of course, it is no slip that God’s Word says both that we are in God and that God is in us. In fact, it is so deliberate that there are times when the Bible puts both in the same verse, just as Jesus said in his prayer about his relationship with the Father (“. . . you are in me and I am in you. . . .” – John 17:21). John 6:56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. John 15:4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. 1 John 3:24 Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. . . . 1 John 4:13  . . . we live in him and he in us . . . 1 John 4:16  . . . lives in God, and God in him. Isaiah 59:21  . . . My Spirit, who is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth . . . Judges 6:34 is particularly interesting. It is so ambiguous it allows both interpretations. Some translations speak of the Spirit of the Lord clothing Gideon with himself (eg The Amplified Bible) whereas others translate it as the Spirit of the Lord clothing himself with Gideon (eg English Standard Version). Astonishing Intimacy Given the depth of our merger with the divine, it comes as no surprise that there is also reference to us being one with the Godhead: 1 Corinthians 6:17 But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Ephesians 5:31-32 “ . . . and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church. Let’s unpack this a little. Scripture not only compares but contrasts the closest of human relationships with our union with God: 1 Corinthians 6:16-17 For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. (Emphasis mine.) The ultimate in being one flesh is conjoined (‘Siamese’) twins. Their lives, experiences and destinies are utterly intertwined. Even so, they remain two separate entities. A lifetime of experiences makes them superb at guessing each other’s thoughts but it is still a guess. As much as I would love to, I cannot get inside my wife’s mind. It is impossible for two humans to have one spirit. Only if this could happen would they truly be one. Here’s why: 1 Corinthians 2:11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? . . . The passage goes on to say, not merely that you and Christ can read each other’s minds, but you “ have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). This astonishing oneness is a miraculous restoration of the idyllic relationship with the awesomely holy Lord as it was before humanity’s sin ruined everything. Christ and you are not meant to be two separate identities, each striving for recognition, but merged in a mystical union; no clash of wills, just exquisite oneness. This is a restoration of what humanity lost when Adam and Eve sinned. From that moment, sin entered the human gene pool, giving us not only a genetic predisposition to sin and a lost relationship with God, but a distorted perception of God. For this to happen we must die to our own will. That is why Jesus kept emphasizing denying ourselves and “losing” our life to find it. It is why Paul kept saying similar things, such as “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). You and he are one; more intimately intertwined than co-joined twins. He has invested more in you and is more alert to everything affecting you than is humanly possible. He is more aware than even you are of your every thought and feeling, your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your astonishing potential, your past, your present, your future.   And your pain cuts him like a knife.   The Story So Far   Having barely begun this series of webpages, we have so many wondrous things yet to discover. Nevertheless, we have already progressed by glimpsing two very different types of suffering spotlighted in Scripture: persecution and slavery. We have seen that not only can suffering for Christ be heroic and bring both God and us eternal glory, as it did for Christ, so can  any  suffering achieve this, if endured – indeed endowed – with the right attitude, the most important of which are  love  and  faith  (Galatians 5:6; Ephesians 1:15; 1 Thessalonians 1:3, 6; 2 Thessalonians 1:3; 2 Timothy 1:13; Philemon 1:5), which lead to the final part of the glorious triplet (1 Corinthians 13:13; Colossians 1:5; 1 Thessalonians 5:8): the sure  hope  of eternal reward.   Continued: Part 9

Beginning of Series What comforting advice does Scripture offer slaves suffering under non-Christian slave masters?   Like persecution, slavery is a type of suffering that the Bible mentions with what to us is surprising frequency because it was more common back then. More accurately, slavery was less secretive in those days. Slavery is actually becoming appallingly common in our own society in a dark underworld exploiting hapless people desperate to migrate to safer, richer countries. Tragically, many are treated far worse than most slaves in Roman times.   Imagine the humiliation of being a first-century slave. Maybe you were born a slave or become one through defeat in a war or maybe through falling hopelessly into debt caused by things beyond your control, such as drought, or perhaps through your own stupidity or even addictive behavior.   Once enslaved, you could languish in defeat and despair, or let bitterness hollow you out, or you could do as Scripture exhorts. Before plunging into what the Bible advises, however, let’s first acknowledge what it does  not  tell slaves. It is rather astonishing.   Many of today’s preachers would quote all sorts of Scriptures about our spiritual authority and tell slaves to pray, fast and believe God for instant deliverance from the oppression of slavery. In bewildering contrast, the inspired Word of God says nothing like that to the vast number of first-century Christian slaves. (Remember, the Bible addresses slaves about as often as it does married couples or children.)   There is only one New Testament passage that gets even close to suggesting one should try to extract oneself from slavery, and even this begins this way:   1 Corinthians 7:20-21  Let each man stay in that calling in which he was called. Were you called being a bondservant? Don’t let that bother you . . .   If you were a slave when you came to Christ, “Don’t let that bother you”! “Well, never mind,” is how The Good News Translation puts it.  Just lie down and accept it? Is this for real?  In fact, it refers to slavery as a calling. The verse then goes on to say, almost as an after-though t:   1 Corinthians 7:21  . . . but if you get an opportunity to become free, use it. . . .   (Most slaves, through faithful service, could eventually work their way to freedom.)   It’s interesting that this, the only suggestion that being free is even desirable, is in the very chapter that almost no one wants to take seriously. This is the chapter that says that denying oneself marriage, sex and children is better than being married.   When we find ourselves at odds with the Bible (and this will grow increasingly likely as we proceed) our mind cleverly goes into overdrive, trying to twist Scripture into conforming to our preconceptions. Or we try to shove it out of our thoughts like an embarrassing secret, or treat it like an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise exquisite masterpiece. Or, whilst being far too holy to dare use such words, we might even flatter ourselves by secretly congratulating ourselves on being more ‘enlightened’ than God’s Word. But when biblical thinking clashes with our own thinking, could it actually be time to reassess our thinking?   Are we as smart as we suppose, or more worldly than we dare think? As tempting as it is to sideline Scriptures we don’t like, let’s shock ourselves out of our deluded stupor with an icy confrontation with reality: it is God, not us, who is the greatest mind in the universe. He is the one whose ways are “unsearchable” (Psalm 145:3; Isaiah 40:28; Romans 11:33). Or did we suddenly gain that title? “No one is good – except God alone,” said Jesus (Mark 10:18, NIV). We, on the other hand, are so easily deceived that Scripture says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).   Consider this: what’s the point of being given a book crammed with divine revelation if it’s what our own heads would have come up with?   With this in mind, let’s see what the rest of the New Testament says to slaves (using the NIV):   1 Peter 2:18-21  Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if a man bears up under  the pain of unjust suffering  because he is conscious of God. . . . if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.  To this you were called , because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. (Emphasis mine.)   Ephesians 6:5-7  Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart . . . like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men.   Colossians 3:22-24  Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.   If referring to slavery as a calling is startling in 1 Corinthians 7:21, the quote above from 1 Peter 2 is even more so, as it refers to unjust suffering as a divine calling or vocation and “commendable before God.” That anyone could be divinely called to be a slave seems bewildering until we peer behind the gloss of every calling.   It is an overwhelmingly immense honor to be called of God to serve the Lord of glory in any capacity. Just, however, as the Son of God’s earthly assignment ended in eternal glory but involved unspeakable agony and humiliation, there is almost inevitably a grueling side to every divine mission. Fake heroes might have it easy, but nothing fake enters heaven. There is nothing cushy about true heroism. With heroism, the more grisly the ordeal, the greater the acclaim. The hazards are not futile. On the contrary, they are the very thing that creates the glory. In the words of 2 Corinthians 4:17, our “affliction  is producing  for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison”. (NASB and NET Bible, emphasis mine). Still more scriptures speak of the inseparable connection between suffering and eternal glory. As fire generates light and warmth so, for Christians, arduous times generate eternal acclaim. 1. For our Lord Suffering hard times leading to eternal glory is the path blazed by the One we are called to follow Philippians 2:8-9 . . . he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him . . . Hebrews 2:9 . . . Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor . . . Revelation 5:9 You are worthy to take the book, and to open its seals: for [“because”, say many versions] you were killed, and bought us for God with your blood . . . 2. For us, his Followers Romans 8:17 . . . if indeed we suffer with him, that [“so that”, or “in order that”, say many versions] we may also be glorified with him. 2 Timothy 2:12 If we endure, we will also reign with him. 1 Peter 4:13 . . . because you are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice; that [“so that” say many versions] at the revelation of his glory you also may rejoice with exceeding joy. Revelation 7:14-15 . . . These are those who came out of the great tribulation. They washed their robes, and made them white in the Lamb’s blood. Therefore [“this is why”, or “for this reason”, “because of this”, say other versions] they are before the throne of God   Consider Joseph’s harrowing route to Pharaoh’s court. Think of Moses before the burning bush, shrinking from his call. Obediently forcing himself to do what he recoiled from not only infuriated the Pharaoh but the people Moses was trying to help ended up suffering more than ever and turning against Moses. Exodus 5:1-8, 14, 20-23 . . . Moses and Aaron came, and said to Pharaoh, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’ ” . . . The king of Egypt said to them, “Why do you, Moses and Aaron, take the people from their work? Get back to your burdens!” . . . The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, “You shall no longer give the people straw to make brick, as before. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. The number of the bricks, which they made before, you require from them. You shall not diminish anything of it, for they are idle . . . The officers of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, “Why haven’t you fulfilled your quota both yesterday and today, in making brick as before?” ” . . . They met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the way, as they came out from Pharaoh: and they said to them, “May the Lord look at you, and judge, because you have made us a stench to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.” Moses returned to the Lord, and said, “Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Why is it that you have sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people; and you have not rescued your people at all.” Think, too, of David fleeing from Saul like a hunted animal. Think of Elijah wishing he were dead (1 Kings 19:4). Think of Jeremiah complaining that he was ever born (Jeremiah 15:10;  20:18 ). On and on, I could go (for more, see The Cost of Service below) but must I? The Cost of Service If you want to stand out like iridescent acne, have the spirit of an Old Testament prophet. Zany publicity stunts were their specialty. You’d think Ezekiel was vying for the weirdest entry in the Guinness Book of Records, lying on just one side for more than a year, fueling his fire with dung to cook needlessly-rationed food. (God wanted him to use human feces, but Ezekiel was too straight for that – (Ezekiel 4:4-15)). He dug through a wall, built make-believe siegeworks against a brick he called ‘Jerusalem’, and attacked shavings of his hair (Ezekiel 4:1-3; 5:1-4; 12:5). Isaiah sauntered around almost starkers for three years. (Isaiah 20:2-4) Hosea got involved with a woman. Pious eyebrows must have shot through the roof. Yet these were not the hare-brained schemes of religious nuts. Men of God were obeying the holy leadings of the Almighty. See Samson, flat on his face – tripped over his hair again. Nearby is a Nazarite, desperately trying to suppress his laughter (laugh at Samson and you laugh all the way to hospital). Under divine direction, the Nazarite has shaved his entire head (Numbers 6:9, 18-19). Here we have two men led of the Spirit. One we’d reject because his hair has never seen a razor, the other because his hair has seen a razor. We should long for a ministry as a woman longs for a child, knowing it will involve anguish and intense commitment as well as joy and satisfaction. If you think Bible heroes had a ball, you are right, but you’ll never win the spelling bee. They had a bawl so often they needed waterproof ink to write the Bible. Remember Jeremiah, the town crier? If he wasn’t filling buckets over his nation’s plight, he was howling over the ministry heaven had landed him with (e.g. Jeremiah 9:1,10; 15:10,15,18; 20:7-10,18). If Jeremiah was a real stick-in-the-mud in the bottom of a hole, (Jeremiah 38:6), Paul – going to sleep a stone’s throw from death (Acts 14:19) – had rocks in his head. He made many a hasty exit and some people genuinely missed him. Others were more accurate. From the outset he knew persecution would shadow his ministry (Acts 9:15-16). Tears and trials were his constant companions (Acts 20:19). Isaiah, from the moment of his call, knew his generation would reject his message (Isaiah 6:9-10). Abraham had to endure the agony of almost killing his own flesh and blood. Jeremiah was not allowed a wife, let alone children (Jeremiah 16:2). Ezekiel was not permitted to mourn the death of his darling (Ezekiel 24:16-18). Hosea was condemned to heart-break, commanded by heaven to marry an adulteress (Hosea 1:2; 3:1-3). Like Gideon, many faced such danger that it took all they had not to cower in terror. Isaiah had to strip and wander in public with his body exposed year after year (Isaiah 20:2-4). Many had to suffer not just constant humiliation, but physical torment and a horrible death. Not surprisingly, in the prime of their ministries, suicide seemed attractive to not only Job, but to Moses, Elijah, Jonah and Jeremiah (Job 3; Numbers 11:15; 1 Kings 19:4; Jeremiah 20:7-10,14-18; Jonah 4:8). Hoping for the milk of human kindness, all they got was stiff cheese. Yet each soldiered on, so proving the purity of their motives. If their resolve mirrors your urge to serve, you’re on target. I could write an entire book on the pain and humiliation of serving our King but it has already been written. We call it the Bible. Our exalted Lord, the beloved Son in whom the Almighty was well pleased (Matthew 3:17) was not only called to suffer as the lowest criminal (Philippians 2:5-8), he declared:   Luke 6:22  Blessed are you when men shall hate you, and when they shall exclude and mock you, and throw out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake.   Matthew 10:22, 24-25  You will be hated by all men for my name’s sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved. . . . A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be like his teacher, and the servant like his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those of his household!   Asking, what  comforting  advice Scripture offers slaves suffering under non-Christian slavemasters, might have you scratching your head. Scripture’s directives to slaves, however, are not only comforting but thrilling – and not just for slaves, but for all who practice it. Dare to live this way, and you will discover that turning anything oppressive into an act of service to God, turns a tragedy into a triumph. Let me explain:   Attitude changes everything. Turn something into an expression of your love for God, and everything turns around. It not only lifts us; it impacts heaven. Love shines the mundane – even the catastrophic – until it gleams with eternal glory. It transforms everything. “We know that  all things  work together for good  for those who love God ” (Romans 8:28, emphasis mine).   The Story So Far   Scripture insists that, stripped of love, even the noblest acts – martyrdom, giving all one owns to the poor, mountain-moving faith, or whatever – are a useless waste (1 Corinthians 13:2-3). Love for God, however, lifts what might otherwise be a useless waste – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, physical disability, chronic pain, terminal illness, or whatever – and transforms it into something noble. Without love for God, even the highest is pathetic, but with such love, even the most pathetic things become priceless.   This raises the next question.   Continued: Part 8

The Subject Index will take you to a webpage about the topic that interests you but to find further pages on that topic, make use of the links listed at the end of the page/ series. Click on the section below that interests you, and this will take you to all the post covered on that subject. Before you browse the index I would like to draw your attention to what I consider to be one of the most important things I have ever written. Please read this: Invaluable post! Abortion Abuse Addiction Anger Bible Bible Verses Christian Help Christianit y Comfort Counselor-Therapist Creative Deep Truths Demons Depression DID/Alters/ BDD/MPD Divorce EBooks Faith Finance Forgive God Growth Guilt Healing Help Hope Jesus Love Marital Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Occult Prayer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD ) Reincarnation Repentance Revenge Scrupulosity Self-Harm Sexual Abuse Singles Spiritual Abuse Suicide Testimony Tough

Beginning of Series Has the cross of Christ rendered obsolete what Job reveals about suffering? If you think that’s a peculiar question, you’re not alone. Until recently, I had no idea how profoundly your answer to this question will affect your answer to the question of why Christians suffer. Some readers might think I should spend quite a while discussing the book of Job. The risk of wasting my time is too high, however. Many an ingenious Christian mind has found ways of reverently transferring what might seem like highly pertinent Scriptures into a new category of once-divinely-inspired writings now labeled Superseded. The Word of God is emphatic that Christ suffered in our stead. That Christ died (and, of course, this involved suffering) for us is so widely mentioned in Scripture, and likely to be so well known to you, that it is hardly worth citing examples. Nevertheless, here are some. Isaiah 53:4-6, 11 Surely he has borne our sickness, and carried our suffering; . . . he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; . . . the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . . My righteous servant will justify many . . . and he will bear their iniquities. Mark 10:45 For the Son of Man . . . came . . . to give his life as a ransom for many John 10:15 . . . I lay down my life for the sheep. Romans 4:25 who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification. Romans 5:6, 8 . . . Christ died for the ungodly. . . . while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 14:15 . . . him for whom Christ died. 2 Corinthians 5:15 He died for all . . . 2 Corinthians 5:21 For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Galatians 1:4 who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil age . . . Galatians 2:20 . . . the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me. Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,” Ephesians 1:7 in whom we have our redemption through his blood . . . Ephesians 5:2 . . . Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance. Ephesians 5:25 . . . Christ also loved the assembly [church], and gave himself up for it Colossians 1:22 . . . he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without defect and blameless before him Hebrews 9:28 . . . Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many . . . Titus 2:14 who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for himself a people for his own possession . . . 1 Timothy 2:6 who gave himself as a ransom for all . . . 1 Peter 1:18-19 . . . you were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your fathers, but with precious blood, as of a faultless and pure lamb, the blood of Christ 1 Peter 2:21, 24 . . . Christ also suffered for us . . . who his own self bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness; by whose stripes you were healed. 1 Peter 3:18 . . . Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God . . . 1 John 1:7 . . . the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. 1 John 3:16 . . . he laid down his life for us. 1 John 4:9-10 . . . God has sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. . . . sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Revelation 1:5 . . . To him who loves us, and washed us from our sins by his blood Revelation 5:9 . . . you were killed, and bought us for God with your blood . . . If this means our magnificent Lord suffered on earth so that his followers need never suffer on earth – or if persecution is the only exception – then Christ’s stupendous act has not only split history in two, it has rendered Job virtually obsolete. As we progress, things will gradually clarify, but we must look to the New Testament to be sure of current spiritual reality. I will mention the book of Job here, only to the limited extent that it raises issues it would be cowardly for us to dodge. After all, no matter how much one tries to diminish it, Job remains an inseparable part of that unique work of God of which we read, “From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures. Just think of what Scriptures were around when Timothy was a baby. For examples of Bible scholars who affirm that this is referring to the Old Testament, see: Kent, Homer A The Pastoral Epistles: Studies in 1, 2 Timothy and Titus, Moody Press, 1958, page 289 Kelly, J.N.D. A Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, Baker Book House, 1963, reprinted 1981, page 201 Moule, H.C.G. Studies in II Timothy, Kregel Publications, 1977, page 123-124 Bernard, J.H. The Pastoral Epistles, Baker Book House, 1899, reprinted 1980, page 135-136 Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:15-17). Size-wise, Job is a significant portion of Holy Writ. Since I don’t think it fair to compare two different languages (Hebrew and Greek) I have chosen a King James Version word count. At 18,096 words, Job is longer than Romans, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians combined . It is longer than the Gospel of Mark and nearly as long as the Gospel of John. And it is devoted to the very enigmas this webpage grapples with. Even the briefest of overviews of Job highlights brilliantly the perplexing dilemmas we Christians face in trying to get our heads around God and suffering. In fact, less than a minute’s mention of the story is enough to ram home that the subject we are tackling is not only puzzling and alarmingly emotive: daring even to hint at a possible reason for Christians suffering is so strewn with dangers as to make dancing on a minefield seem a sensible pastime. The whole point of the book of Job is that he suffered horrifically, not because he was in any way spiritually lacking, but precisely because he was exceptionally godly. The divinely authorized biography insists that Job was “blameless and upright” and “fears God, and turns away from evil,” (Job 1:1, repeated by God himself in Job 1:8, and yet again in Job 2:3). The Lord was so delighted with Job that on at least two different occasions God boasted about Job to Satan, saying, “For there is no one like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil” (Job 1:8; 2:3). Even very many generations later, the Lord still rated Job as one of the most godly, spiritually powerful, people ever to have lived. In Ezekiel 14:13-14 (repeated in Ezekiel 14:20), to ram home a point, the Almighty Lord chose to name three people who, in all previous human history, epitomized those who had the greatest ever influence with God – the most righteous and spiritual powerful people ever to live up to and including Ezekiel’s time. In whittling down the list, the Lord bypassed such spiritual giants as Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, all the judges, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and so many more, in order to place Job in what The Message Bible calls the Big Three. Dare any of us suggest God got it wrong in so highly esteeming Job? Ezekiel 14:13-14 . . . when a land sins against me by committing a trespass, and I stretch out my hand on it, and break the staff of its bread, and send famine on it, and cut off from it man and animal; though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver only their own souls by their righteousness,” says the Lord God. Ezekiel 14:20 Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live,” says the Lord God, “they would deliver neither son nor daughter; they would deliver only their own souls by their righteousness.” Like maliciously telling a man that the love of his life married him only for his money, Satan claimed Job served God only for what God gave him. Take away all the cozy benefits of being faithful to the Lord, declared the Accuser, and Job would turn his back on God. Suffering brought Job immense glory by proving his love and integrity in a way that nothing else could. You might argue that God already knew Job’s heart, but no one else knew for sure. As underscored by Peter proving manifestly less able to resist denying his Lord than he supposed, not even Job really knew. I believe that, human psychology being what it is, through successfully enduring this test, Job took with him for the rest of his life an increase in his steely resolve to serve God no matter what. In any case, to Job’s eternal glory, every angel and spirit and human who knows the way things unfolded, has undeniable proof of Job’s devotion. For years, an athlete will endure great sacrifice and agonizing training sessions to be hailed as a champion for a moment. Job’s glory is greater in every way. The other element in the story spotlights the serious danger in getting wrong one’s theology of suffering. Like some of us today, (rather surprising for a book some consider outdated) Job’s friends theorized that genuinely good people don’t suffer. Their sincere belief was that the good Lord protects the truly righteous. Job must therefore have had somehow erred. If they could discover the nature of his slip-up, it would help their friend. Their well-intentioned attempt was so disastrous that they ended up not only tormenting the very person they were hoping to help, but incurring God’s displeasure (Job 42:7-8). Despite these self-appointed advisers receiving a divine rebuke, I have a lot of time for them. What makes their appalling failure so tragic is that they truly were his friends. Look at their depth of feeling: Job 2:11-13 Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come on him . . . they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and to comfort him. When they lifted up their eyes from a distance, and didn’t recognize him, they raised their voices, and wept; and they each tore his robe, and sprinkled dust on their heads toward the sky. So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great. They were cut to the core over Job’s plight. These devout people had the highest of motives. Not only were they genuinely empathic and said not a word until Job broached the subject, when they did so, they sincerely believed they were defending the Lord. They knew that the Almighty is good, and they felt sure this means he will not allow an innocent person to suffer. I’ll keep this brief, so here’s just a sample of their wisdom and devotion to God: Job 2:11-13 But he saves . . . the needy from the hand of the mighty. So the poor has hope, and injustice shuts her mouth. Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects. Therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty. For he wounds, and binds up. He injures, and his hands make whole. In fact, their beliefs are remarkably similar to modern prosperity teaching. Job 8:3, 5-7, 12-13, 20-21 Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert righteousness? . . . If you want to seek God diligently, make your supplication to the Almighty. If you were pure and upright, surely now he would awaken for you, and make the habitation of your righteousness prosperous. Though your beginning was small, yet your latter end would greatly increase. . . . While it is yet in its greenness, not cut down, it withers before any other reed. So are the paths of all who forget God. The hope of the godless man shall perish . . . Behold, God will not cast away a blameless man, neither will he uphold the evildoers. He will still fill your mouth with laughter, your lips with shouting. Job 22:1-2, 21-22, 24-30 . . . Can a man be profitable to God? Surely he who is wise is profitable to himself. . . . Acquaint yourself with him, now, and be at peace. Thereby good shall come to you. Please receive instruction from his mouth, and lay up his words in your heart. . . . Lay your treasure in the dust, the gold of Ophir among the stones of the brooks. The Almighty will be your treasure, and precious silver to you. For then you will delight yourself in the Almighty, and shall lift up your face to God. You shall make your prayer to him, and he will hear you. . . . You shall also decree a thing, and it shall be established to you. Light shall shine on your ways. When they cast down, you shall say, ‘be lifted up.’ He will save the humble person. He will even deliver him who is not innocent. Yes, he shall be delivered through the cleanness of your hands.” Job 34:12 Yes surely, God will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert justice. Even today, despite reading God’s judgment on Job’s sincere, though mistaken accusers, many a devout Christian is keen to assure us that we need never suffer. They believe Job must somehow have slipped up and brought all his suffering upon himself. Sure that the Bible must somehow have overstated Job’s blamelessness, and that for all of this to finally make sense, they need simply find the dirt on Job, they have grabbed their microscope, poring over the book, hoping to detect Job’s mistake. Here’s what some found Job saying in the midst of his distress: Job 3:25 For the thing which I fear comes on me. Average people might simply think, “Yes, what happened to Job is one of the scariest things anyone could imagine.” Nevertheless, when eager to condemn (otherwise known as offering ‘helpful advice’) people get quite creative. They claim the person of whom God spoke in such glowing terms, erred by fearing – and suffered the consequences. With the highest of motives – keen to honor Christ and rescue distressed Christians – some have assumed the role of a backyard soul-surgeon armed with a rusty scalpel and verses conveniently ripped from their Bible. With the best intentions, they have joined Job’s friends in their quest to find fault with the man God called “blameless and upright” (Job 2:3). But is it wise to side with those who incurred divine anger? Job 42:7-8 . . . The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “ My wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore, take to yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept him, that I not deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has.” (Emphasis mine.) For a hint at the gravity of their offense, consider merely the monetary cost of the seven bulls and seven rams the Lord required (and if you know anything about Old Testament law, you know all fourteen had to be flawless to be acceptable to God). And, of course, this was just the beginning. The cooling of God’s wrath hinged on them acknowledging their error and humbly entreating the spiritual intervention of the very man of God they had previously tried to advise. No matter what we have so far said, however, the burning question remains: has Christ’s triumph over sin and Satan so turned everything on its head that it renders most of the book of Job obsolete? Whereas Job was once a spiritual hero, is he now, relative to our Christ-bought authority, an embarrassing weakling we dare not emulate, lest copying him shame our Savior by letting the devil bully us? On the other hand, what weight should we give to New Testament revelation that Christ suffered as much for generations prior to the cross as for those born later? Hebrews 9:25-28 . . . or else he must have suffered often since the foundation of the world. But now once at the end of the ages, he has been revealed to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many . . . Hebrews 4:3 . . . the works were finished from the foundation of the world. Matthew 25:34 . . . Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world Ephesians 1:4 . . . he chose us in him before the foundation of the world . . . Revelation 13:8 . . . everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been killed. In the mind of the eternal Lord Job served, the work of the cross had already been completed, even before the foundation of the world. As emphasized in the Faith Chapter (Hebrews 11), and elsewhere, relating to the Holy One has never at any time been through works or animal sacrifices. Salvation has always been solely through faith that God can cleanse us sinners from all unrighteousness. We, living this side of the cross, have a clearer idea of how much securing our forgiveness and cleansing cost the Almighty but, as stressed in the Old Testament as much as the New, we are by no means the only ones to live in that forgiveness. As to how Christians should view Job , we cannot overlook James , where, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Job is exalted as the Christian’s role model: James 5:11 Behold, we call them blessed who endured. You have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the Lord in the outcome, and how the Lord is full of compassion and mercy. Nevertheless, for many Christians, doubt lingers as to whether James somehow got it wrong about Job. We’ll leave this dangling for the moment. Earlier in this section, I mentioned the possibility of persecution being such an exceptional form of suffering that general principles that apply to other types of suffering might not apply. Let’s ponder this. Continued: Part 5

Beginning of Series Do such Scripture as “he who endures to the end will be saved” imply that suffering (enduring hardship/oppression) is an unavoidable aspect of Spirit-filled living? Salvation might begin with a one-off prayer but, to honor biblical revelation, our understanding of salvation must progress to incorporate Scriptures as: Matthew 10:22 You will be hated by all men for my name’s sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved. Matthew 24:12-13 . . . iniquity will be multiplied, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end , the same will be saved. Hebrews 10:36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. Revelation 2:7 . . . To him who overcomes , I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. (Emphasis mine, NIV last two quotes.) For more such Scriptures see The Need to Endure below: The Need to Endure Hebrews 12:3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 6:12 We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised. James 1:12 Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial [or endures temptation] because when he has stood the test , he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. Revelation 13:10 If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity he will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword he will be killed. This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints. Revelation 14:12 This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. (Emphasis Mine) Does this mean victorious Christians have much to endure? Is spiritual life like a romance novel in which we eventually realize Jesus is the one for us, we excitedly accept his proposal, and the story ends? Or is life with God – and spiritual success and failure – all about what happens after we commence our union with Christ? At least nine times the New Testament likens our spiritual life to a prolonged event where athletes compete for a prize. Is this a favorite with the Bible because athletes are expected to embrace pain and give their utmost? Athletes who act this way win acclaim, whereas those who slacken off before the race or game or fight is over are dismissed as fools. No matter how brilliantly or heroically quitters perform early on, instead of being hailed as winners, they are shunned as an embarrassment. The Word of God sees this as so important that we read: 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 Don’t you know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run like that, that you may win. Every man who strives in the games exercises self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I therefore run like that, as not uncertainly. I fight like that, as not beating the air, but I beat my body and bring it into submission, lest by any means, after I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected. Philippians 3:13-14 Brothers, I don’t regard myself as yet having taken hold, but one thing I do. Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Acts 20:24 . . . bonds and afflictions wait for me. But these things don’t count; nor do I hold my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy . . . Galatians 2:2 . . . for fear that I might be running, or had run, in vain. Galatians 5:7 You were running well! Who interfered with you . . . ? 1 Timothy 6:12 Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you confessed the good confession in the sight of many witnesses. 2 Timothy 2:5 . . . if anyone competes in athletics, he isn’t crowned unless he has competed by the rules. 2 Timothy 4:7 I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. Hebrews 12:1 Therefore let us also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. It’s sobering to see in the above even the mighty apostle Paul writing this way about himself. It is not, of course, that we compete against each other, but the emphasis is upon continued persistence lest one lose. Jesus, too, said such things as, many are invited, but few end up chosen (Matthew 22:14). In fact, in at least nineteen of his parables, the critical factor is not how things were early on, but much later, at harvest time, or when the master or bridegroom or Judgment Day arrived – or however the parable went. The Sower – Matthew 13:3-9; Mark 4:3-9; Luke 8:5-8 The Tares – Matthew 13:24-30 The Barren Fig Tree – Luke 13:6-9 The Wise and Foolish Builders – Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:46-49 Calculating the Cost of a Tower – Luke 14:28-30 Assessing the Risk of Going to War – Luke 14:31-32 The Unforgiving Servant – Matthew 18:23-35 The Growing Seed – Mark 4:26-29 The Rich Fool – Luke 12:16-21 The Prodigal Son and his Brother – Luke 15:11-32 The Rich Man and Lazarus – Luke 16:19-31 The Master and Servant – Luke 17:7-10 The Two Sons – Matthew 21:28-32 The Wicked Tenants – Matthew 21:33-41; Mark 12:1-9; Luke 20:9-16 The Great Banquet – Matthew 22:2-14; Luke 14:15-24 The Faithful Servant – Matthew 24:42-51; Mark 13:34-37; Luke 12:35-48 The Ten Virgins – Matthew 25:1-13 The Talents or Minas – Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-27 The Sheep and the Goats – Matthew 25:31-46 Consider the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:18-23), in which all sorts of scenarios are detailed: 1. The evil one snatches the word from some people’s hearts 2. Some receive the message joyfully but it ends up dying due to one of the following: a) Trouble b) Persecution 3. For still others, the word is choked by one of the following: a) The worries of this life b) The deceitfulness of wealth c) Pleasures (Luke 8:14). 4. Others are productive, but to differing degrees: a) A hundredfold b) Sixtyfold c) Thirtyfold Although we can only expect the briefest of outlines in a parable, a huge number of differing outcomes are covered, some of which involve hardship (trouble, persecution and worries) and all of the first three categories end in spiritual disaster. Perhaps we should note in passing that in Jesus’ explanation of the parable, wealth and physical pleasure (both of which some of us might consider the extreme opposite of suffering) is seen not as blessings but as spiritual hazards. The spiritually discerning realize from this parable that what distinguishes those that survived is not that they were spared hardship but that they successfully endured it. This principle is seen with particular clarity in the parable of the two houses; one built on sand and the other on rock (Matthew 7:24-27). Both were assaulted by the same storm. The house that survived did so, not because it suffered less, but because, right from the beginning, adversity was anticipated. One builder had the ‘faith’ to believe conditions would always be favorable and that he could take it easy. The other considered hard times a distinct possibility. We might have thought that expecting never-ending supernatural protection from life’s storms would be displaying praiseworthy faith. Jesus, however, labeled it foolish (Matthew 7:26). Such ‘faith’ brought disaster. This is no incidental aspect of the parable but the very heart of it. Real faith is not the positivism of convincing ourselves that since God is with us, life’s gales won’t hit; it is having the resolve to stick it out, no matter how difficult things get. Again, in the parable of the ten virgins, they all had to suffer precisely the same prolonged wait for the bridegroom, but only some coped. Again, what differentiated them was whether they expected it to be easy (Matthew 25:1-12). The limitations of parables are such that although the story of the seeds allows for differing productivity in the plants that survived, the full picture cannot be portrayed because plants have no consciousness of loss or failure. For this, Paul fills in the gap: 1 Corinthians 3:10-15  . . . let each man be careful how he builds . . . For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble; each man’s work will be revealed. For the Day will declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man’s work is. If any man’s work remains which he built on it, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned, he will suffer loss , but he himself will be saved, but as through fire. (Emphasis mine.) And suffering loss applies even to those who not only make a good start but spiritually last the distance. Beyond that, are those who do not survive at all. For some who start off well, things can turn out so disastrously that Paul considered the possibility of all his efforts in bringing certain people to Christ ending up a total waste: Galatians 4:11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you. Philippians 2:16 Do everything . . . so that you may become blameless and pure  . . . in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing . 1 Thessalonians 3:5  . . . when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter might have tempted you and our efforts might have been useless . (NIV) He even mentioned this possibility about himself: Galatians 2:2  . . . for fear that I might be running, or had run, in vain. Falling away can be much worse than achieving a big fat zero, however. Ponder the implications of this: Mark 14:21  . . . It would be better for that man if he had not been born. 2 Peter 2:20 For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in it and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. It seems our futures hinge not on a one-off event but on continued faithfulness. And, from what we have so far seen in Scripture, it is hard to resist concluding that this could involve suffering. This message is not only crammed into the New Testament but repeated over and over in the Old – as highlighted, for example, by 1 Corinthians, which looks back at the Old, stressing that all those leaving Egypt for the Promised Land commenced with the same profound spiritual experiences. They “were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). Nevertheless, Paul continues, vast numbers perished in the wilderness because few remained faithful when the going got tough (1 Corinthians 10:5-10). These tragedies, the apostle insisted, occurred and were recorded “for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come (verse 11, emphasis mine – Romans 15:4 is similar). “Therefore,” concluded Paul, “let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall” (verse 12). Is the time between salvation and receiving our “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21) meant to be spent idling our lives away in ease, or achieving things of eternal significance? Jesus came that we may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10). He is the one who could have indulged in inconceivable opulence but chose to fast for forty days. He who could have spent eternity luxuriating in Paradise was so exhausted that he slept in a boat tossed around by a storm so severe that it terrified even professional fishermen (Matthew 8:24-26). He who could snap his fingers and miracles would materialize, spent entire nights in prayer (Luke 6:12). He who could have had ten thousand angels serving him was so overworked that he sometimes didn’t have time even to eat (Mark 6:31-34; John 4:31). Do you think pain-avoidance or lounging around would be his idea of an abundant life? Or is that more likely to be the mentality of “the last days” when people “will be lovers of self, lovers of money, . . . lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power” (2 Timothy 3:1-5)? Ponder this again: 1 Corinthians 15:19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. (NIV) Does this describe our view of life with God this side of Judgment Day, or has our religion somehow strayed from Biblical Christianity? Romans 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Are you comfortable with that being in the Bible? Shouldn’t it read: Because of the love of Christ, you will have no oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Why did Paul and Barnabas return to the disciples in Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, exhorting them that “through many afflictions we must enter into God’s Kingdom” (Acts 14: 22)? Why, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was Paul compelled to pen such words as the following? 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 We are pressed on every side , yet not crushed; perplexed , yet not to despair; pursued , yet not forsaken; struck down , yet not destroyed 2 Corinthians 6:4-10  . . . as servants of God, in great endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses, in beatings, in imprisonments, in riots, in labors, in watchings, in fastings  . . . by glory and dishonor , by evil report and good report; as deceivers , and yet true; as unknown , and yet well known; as dying , and behold, we live; as punished , and not killed; as sorrowful , yet always rejoicing; as poor , yet making many rich; as having nothing , and yet possessing all things. 2 Corinthians 7:5  . . . our flesh had no relief, but we were afflicted on every side. Fightings were outside. Fear was inside.  . . . 2 Corinthians 11:26-29 I have been in travels often, perils of rivers, perils of robbers, perils from my countrymen, perils from the Gentiles, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils in the sea, perils among false brothers; in labor and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, and in cold and nakedness.Besides those things that are outside, there is that which presses on me daily, anxiety for all the assemblies. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is caused to stumble, and I don’t burn with indignation? (Emphasis mine.) No matter how painless some preachers might make it seem, Jesus stressed that the cost is high: Luke 14:28-32 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? Or perhaps, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, everyone who sees begins to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build, and wasn’t able to finish.’ Or what king, as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an envoy, and asks for conditions of peace. There is a need to rest in God and let him be our strength, our righteousness, our victory, our shield, our life and our wisdom; drawing from him everything we need, for “of him, and through him, and to him, are all things” (Romans 11:36). He is our beginning and end (Revelation 21:6), the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). Our growth comes from him, not from our efforts. 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Ephesians 4:16 From him [Christ] the whole body . . . grows and builds itself up (NIV) Colossians 2:19 . . . the Head [Christ], from whom all the body . . . grows with God’s growth. But don’t we, precisely because of this, need to devote ourselves to Christ; making him our Lord, serving him, obeying him and delighting in him? He must be the love of our lives, our joy, our hope, our reason for living. Our entire lives must revolve around him. And what we have seen so far seems to indicate that resting in God is not incompatible with Christians having to endure hardship. What Does God Expect Christians to Endure? We mentioned Paul detailing how so many started with powerful spiritual experiences and yet perished in the wilderness because they failed to faithfully cling to God when things got tough. The same message is packed into the rest of the Old Testament, with warnings and further stories from throughout Israel’s history of appallingly vast numbers of people falling away, and of individuals like Esau, Balaam (note), Saul, Solomon and others, who started off well but fell into error. Whether it be of a servant, a son, or a lover, faithfulness is expected. God’s love is such that he longs to enter into mutual, never-ending devotion with us. It hardly bodes well if we cannot keep this up even for our few years on earth. The divine principle is spelled out here: Ezekiel 18:24-32 But when the righteous turns away from his righteousness . . . shall he live? None of his righteous deeds that he has done shall be remembered . . . Again, when the wicked man turns away from his wickedness that he has committed, and does that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive. . . . Return, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin . . . and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit: for why will you die, house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him who dies, says the Lord God: therefore turn yourselves, and live. The God who graciously disregards our sins when we wholeheartedly return to him, disregards our service when we desert him. It is not, of course, that we should be panicking over our salvation. Our God is mighty to save. But does the Bible present life after salvation as putting our feet up until we get to heaven? Or does it keep emphasizing that what we do with the rest of our stay on the planet is critical in determining our destiny, and can even impact the destinies of those whose lives we touch? Jesus refused to make it easy for would-be followers. To various ones he said: * “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” * “Leave the dead to bury their own dead . . .” * “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for God’s Kingdom.” (Luke 9:57-62) Was Jesus needlessly harsh or could it be that hard times are so much the norm for Christians that steely resolve is a basic requirement for all would-be followers? We rightly expect our Savior to always be here for us. And he deserves nothing less from us. We are God’s representatives, not spasmodically but 24/7; not only in the thrill of first love but when the going gets tough. We are not paid by the hour like laborers. As family, we are expected to keep pressing on with our life’s work beyond normal working hours, and enjoy the rewards forever. Divine promises can come with provisos our eye sometimes slips over, For example, “he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation – if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel” (Colossians 1:22-23, NIV). Consider also: Galatians 6:9 Let us not be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season, if we don’t give up. Hebrews 3:14 For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm to the end Biblical Christianity is about love, joy, peace and rejoicing, but at times will this be in spite of hardship, not instead of it? There will be miracles, but will they sometimes be miracles of endurance of the order of those heroes of the Faith who “were tortured, not accepting their deliverance . . . Others were tried by mocking and scourging . . . imprisonment . . . stoned . . . sawn apart . . . tempted. . . . They went around in sheep skins and in goat skins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated . . . wandering in deserts, mountains, caves, and the holes of the earth. . . .” (Hebrews 11:35-39)? The stakes could not be higher. We are in a spiritual war zone. Quoting from the NIV: 2 Timothy 2:4 No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs – he wants to please his commanding officer. 1 Peter 2:11 . . . I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. The Story So Far We will seek biblical clarification later. For now, I will leave it to you to decide how little or how much suffering could be involved for the devout Christian who “endures to the end,” or “overcomes” (Revelation 2:7; 2:11; 2:26; 3:5; 3:12; 3:21; 12:11; 21:7) or in “having done all, to stand,” (Ephesians 6:13). The biblical truth explored in this section, however, is yet another pointer to the steely resolve our Lord expects Christians to develop. As part of the issue of why Christians suffer, we must tackle this question: When Christians suffer, is it typically an act of heroism or spiritual ignorance? Rather than jumping to hasty conclusions, we will continue gathering evidence from the Word of God. Before moving on, however, let’s bring together a little of what we have so far discovered. We saw Jesus warning about counting the cost and, by making it tough for would-be followers, indicating upfront that they could expect a demanding time. The parables of the two houses in the storm and the ten virgins both indicate our expectations regarding what we might encounter are critically important to our spiritual survival. We also noted the apostles strengthening/encouraging/establishing (various renderings of the Greek word used) the disciples by saying that “through many afflictions we must enter into God’s Kingdom.” The apostles acted as if it were vital for the believers’ spiritual well-being that they understand this. This message is further strengthened by many other Scriptures, such as “don’t be astonished at the fiery trial . . . as though a strange thing happened to you” (1 Peter 4:12). Where We are Headed We are working our way toward grappling with this question: should we worship our suffering Lord not only as our Savior but as our Inspiration and Role Model, who lived in human flesh to show us how to live, and endured to show us how to endure? Or should we treat Christ solely as our Savior, who suffered in our stead so that we can avoid all suffering? Let’s ponder a smaller question first. Continued: Part 4

(Beginning of Series ) What would drive a Christian to continue even if it involved hardship and suffering? We will later say still more about this but, for reasons just explained, we will touch on it now. It is heart-breaking that many of us are left floundering in bewilderment at scriptures suggesting that aspects of the Christian life might be a hard slog. The sad reality is that self-sacrifice seems incomprehensible to the myriads of brain-washed victims of the era prophesied by 2 Timothy 3:2, 4, when people “will be lovers of self, . . . lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God”. Such spiritually emaciated people have no idea that a world even exists beyond self-infatuation. Even among today’s churched, tragically many of us find ourselves so hopelessly self-obsessed that we can conceive of little reason for living other than feeding our addiction to self. Using a range of different expressions – denying one’s self, crucifying the flesh, dying to self, and so on – the Bible repeatedly emphasizes that we cannot enter spiritual life without ending our selfish ways. Matthew 10:39 He who seeks his life will lose it; and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. Matthew 16:25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it. Luke 9:23 He said to all, “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. . . .” Luke 14:26 If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t disregard his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple. John 12:25 He who loves his life will lose it. He who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life. Romans 6:4,6 We were buried therefore with him through baptism to death , that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life . . . knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him , that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin. Romans 8:13 For if you live after the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body , you will live. 1 Corinthians 15:31 . . . I die daily. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 . . . because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 . . . You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. . . . Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me. . . . Galatians 5:24 Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. Galatians 6:14 But far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Ephesians 4:22 That you put away , as concerning your former way of life, the old man, that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit Philippians 3:13 . . . Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before Colossians 2:11 in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ Colossians 3:3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:5 Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry Colossians 3:8-10 But now you also put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and shameful speaking out of your mouth. Don’t lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings , and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his Creator. (Emphasis mine.) It is even at the heart of baptism and repentance. Only by dumping the dead-weight of self can our spirits soar with God. Where selfishness ends godliness begins. Jesus told of a man who sold everything just to buy a piece of land (Matthew 13:44). If puzzled observers thought he was crazy, it was only because they did not know his secret: the land had buried treasure on it, making it worth far more than everything he had sacrificed for it. So it is for those who pay what others mistakenly think is an exorbitant price to follow Jesus. It is actually the smartest investment anyone could ever make. In words made famous by missionary martyr, Jim Elliot, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Framing it this way appeals even to those riddled with self. Nevertheless, the “treasure” Jesus spoke of might not be obvious in the here and now. The apostle Paul frankly admitted that unless the Bible’s promises about the nature of life after death are entirely accurate, he and those like him “are of all men most pitiable” (1 Corinthians 15:19). We don’t like that. Who wants whatever makes sacrifices worthwhile to be delayed for an entire lifetime? Who wants to live knowing that for all that time we could have been less “pitiable” had we chosen an easier life and that for all those years, the multitudes who goof off are happier than us? Moreover, it necessitates immense faith to risk absolutely everything not just on the Bible’s promise of an amazing afterlife but on Jesus’ claim that only those who take the narrow road enjoy all the benefits. We’d rather pander to our less spiritual side. We’d prefer to hedge our bets by having an enjoyable here and now so that it would not be such an enormous loss if the Bible turned out to have it slightly wrong. Jesus, however, thought very differently. For him, what is catastrophic about hypocrisy is that hypocrites receive their full reward down here (Matthew 6:2, 5, 16). Hebrews 11:6 says without faith it is impossible to please God. It then provides as examples of this faith: Hebrews 11:35-38 . . . Others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance . . . Others were tried by mocking and scourging, yes, moreover by bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn apart. They were tempted. They were slain with the sword. They went around in sheep skins and in goat skins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated . . . wandering in deserts, mountains, caves, and the holes of the eart h. Then, to inspire us to act this way, it urges us to keep “. . . looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame . . .” (Hebrews 12:2). What was this future reward – the joy “set before him” – that motivated our Lord? Was it roughly equivalent to fame and fortune? Was it remotely like a drug-induced high? No. To the disappointment of the self-obsessed, it was the joy of pleasing the Father – the Love of his life; the One he lived for – and the joy of saving you and me from eternal damnation and filling us with endless joy, and of him being able to delight in our companionship for all eternity. In short: it was love. So the greatest, most fulfilling motivator is what fired Christ to endure the cross: beautiful, glorious, exquisite love. Love for the wondrously perfect One, the most astonishing, fascinating and adorable Person, who loves us infinitely more than we love ourselves, and has done infinitely more for us than we could ever do. And love for those who mean everything to him – humanity. In the words of the great Apostle: 2 Corinthians 5:13-14 If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us . . . And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves . . . (NIV) Or, as the New Living Translation puts the middle verse, “Either way, Christ’s love controls us . . .” It was this same apostle who famously wrote, love “bears all things . . . endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7). Real love is not about having goosebumps and gooey feelings. It’s about passionately caring about others more than one’s own comfort. Ephesians 5:2 Walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God . . . 1 John 3:16 By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. In a universe where even mountains don’t last, and the entire planet is wearing out, “these three remain: faith, hope [the certainty of future reward] and love. But the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13, NIV). For further encouragement about love, I invite you to ponder these Scriptures below: 1 Corinthians 8:1 . . . Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Galatians 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision amounts to anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love. Philippians 1:9 This I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more . . . Colossians 3:14 Above all these things, walk in love . . . 1 John 4:7-8 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God. He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:16 . . . God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. Realizing just how invaluable love is intensifies the question: how do we find this love and grow in it? We have already mentioned a critical factor: we must avoid confusing love with feelings. If you are starving, what you want is food, not for someone to feel sorry for you. Neither do you want someone to wait until he feels moved. As I have explained elsewhere, many human conditions and attacks from our spiritual enemy (the deceiver) play havoc with our feelings, but just as temptation need not stop us from loving, neither need feelings. There are two more factors in fostering love that I should share. The vast number of Scriptures telling us to love God and humanity keep screaming that love is something we must choose to do. God’s Word actually calls love the greatest commandment . If so, idly waiting around, hoping God will zap us with love would be futile. In fact, it would be offensive to the Lord of all. If the King of heaven and earth commands us to do something, dare we reply, “No. You do it”? Here’s a divine principle that extends far beyond finances: “Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be given to you. . . .” (Luke 6:38). Expressed another way: he who is faithful in little will be given much. When we do everything we can to give love, God will do everything we can’t. As we keep on investing every speck of love we can scrounge, more will be divinely deposited in our hearts. The Almighty has set everything in place. The next move is up to us. The final insight I wish to share is encapsulated in this verse: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19, many versions – in the King James, “him” is rightly in italics, which is the convention it uses to indicate when it has added a word not found in the original Greek or Hebrew). Our love for God grows as we grow in our awareness of how much he loves us. Likewise, our love for those he loves (everyone) is proportional to our understanding of his love for us. There is no one as lovable as God. Truly, to know him is to love him. So the way to grow in love is to give top priority to knowing him better and better. The more we spend time with him and the more we learn about him by reading his Word, the more our love will grow. The Story So Far To what extent does God protect Christians who do everything right? “Totally.” someone might answer. “Not at all,” someone else might reply. And here’s a question for those who think good Christians could suffer: How much and how soon does God compensate those who suffer? We will explore these matters in depth but irrespective of one’s answer to these critical questions, this fact remains: Jesus is worthy. No matter what the cost, the one who suffered stupendously for us deserves our utter devotion. Regardless of whether life is easy or hard, there should be a mental toughness in every Christian; a steely resolve to serve our Lord, no matter what. Continued: Part 3

Divine Revelation on a Perplexing Subject It has been my matchless privilege to have invested much of my life ministering God’s love and encouragement to people who are deeply hurting. For virtually all of my life I have also been devoted to the prayerful study of God’s Word, and for well over twenty years I have been writing about how a tender, compassionate God views pain and suffering. And yet I have been stunned by the Bible-based revelation our Lord has graciously given me while writing this webpage. If it achieves in you a fraction of what it has done for my wife and for me, it will change your life. When knocked by things that seem disastrous, we are sorely pressured to conclude there can be no alternative other than what we are suffering is either because we have let God down or he has let us down. For anyone to whom God means everything, either possibility is devastating. But can there be any alternative? Is it callous or even erroneous to think Christians usually suffer because they don’t understand their Christ-bought authority? Is it way off the mark to think God is hardened to human suffering or that certain Christians avoid suffering because God has favorites? Live long enough, and questions about suffering will hit you hard. Far more is on the line, however, than a need for comforting answers or an escape from affliction. At stake is our entire walk with God. Our understanding of these matters drastically shapes what we expect from God (and hence affects our critically important faith) and it determines much of our attitude to life. In this webpage we will endeavor to hunt down every possible cause, in a Spirit-led quest for answers, comfort and empowerment when life’s blows send us reeling. Some see suffering as inevitable for Christians because we are called to be like Christ who suffered in, and for, a world that is in rebellion against God’s loving ways. Others believe such thinking is a denial of much of the victory Christ’s earthly sufferings achieved for us. On the other hand, could pointing the finger at a Christian reeling in misfortune, expose us to the wrath of God, as it did for Job’s friends when they turned into spiritual advisors (Job 42:7)? Could it even expose us to the fate of those causing someone to stumble, for whom Jesus said it would be preferable to be weighed down with a millstone and be hurled into the deep (Matthew 18:6-7)? On one side, we find Bible believers who see it as a privilege and the ultimate proof of faith to suffer for the One who suffered for them, whether that suffering be persecution or illness. On the other extreme, are Christians, equally fervent in their devotion, who consider such thinking distasteful and dishonoring to Christ. They think it foolish and showing a lack of faith in the finished work of the One who suffered in our place so that we need never suffer. Each side sees the other as pathetically weak, unbiblical and bringing shame to the name of Christ. Of all people, I have reason for humility in this dispute. Despite maintaining my zeal for the Lord and devotion to him, I have at times leaned to one side of this divide and at other times leaned toward the opposite side. Mere logic compels the conclusion that I must have been wrong at least some of the time. Most of us are strongly convinced that our understanding of this matter is thoroughly biblical and pleasing to God. It can take a surprising degree of courage to prayerfully look to God to double-check whether, like me, you have been sincerely mistaken. Do you have what it takes to face this challenge? The issue, of course, is not whether you and I agree with each other but whether God agrees with us. Neither is the issue whether we can amass an impressive body of biblical support for our views, but whether our interpretation of those Scriptures is human or divine. (Few of us could match the fervent devotion and biblical scholarship of the devout leaders and theologians who arranged their Messiah’s murder.) My wife’s fervor in studying Scripture drove her to the edge of human endurance and yet she has since discovered that she had misunderstood the Bible’s teaching on this subject. Her new discoveries have not merely brought her peace like never before but, far more importantly, it has profoundly deepened her relationship with God. It is not for me to tell you what to believe. Through much waiting on God and seeking his face, I have grown sure – even excited – about much that we will discuss. I cannot adequately express how grateful I am for what our Lord has graciously revealed to me, and I will not hold back in presenting reasons for my certainty. Nonetheless, my longing is for you to have your own divine encounter and reach your own Spirit-led conclusions, even if that means you leaving my views behind. If I can assist you by alerting you to certain Scriptures or some implications that you have not yet considered, I would count it my undeserved privilege. In fact, would you join me right now in a short prayer for this? Precious Lord, We come to you as the source of grace and truth. To know you is to fall in love with you; and loving you is the only way to live. As we spend this time together, may you reveal yourself to us more deeply than ever before. I pray your comfort upon every reader who, even now, is reeling in physical or emotional pain. In a way that only you can, I pray you penetrate the bewilderment and mental haze that assaults us in such circumstances, so that none of us is hindered from receiving the support and insight that you long for us to have. I also ask, however, that none of us drop this vital subject until we are as equipped as we can possibly be for whatever future challenges await us. This webpage is far too readable, fascinating and relevant to everyday living, to be hidden behind a highfalutin title. Other than that, it could be called a theology of suffering. In exploring this topic I will dodge nothing, but where insights gained from minor suffering will prove just as instructive, I will not inflict needless discomfort by focusing on the extreme. When asked a question, Jesus sometimes responded by asking a question himself. Luke 20:2-4 They asked him, “Tell us: by what authority do you do these things? Or who is giving you this authority?” He answered them, “I also will ask you one question. Tell me: the baptism of John, was it from heaven, or from men?” Matthew 22:17-20 “ . . . Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”But Jesus . . . said, “. . . Show me the tax money.”They brought to him a denarius.He asked them, “Whose is this image and inscription?” Mark 3:2,4 They watched him, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day, that they might accuse him. . . .He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good, or to do harm? To save a life, or to kill?” If we can answer the smaller questions raised below we will go a long way toward answering the big one about why Christians suffer. Examining these questions, some of which will seem initially unrelated, also reminds us that God’s attitude toward suffering is totally consistent with his stance on other matters. Although I will share my insights into these lesser questions, I think you will find it beneficial to ponder them and find your own answers before reading mine. The choice, of course, is yours. You will find my writings crammed with Bible quotes and links to still more. Skip them if you wish, but since there is no higher source of spiritual revelation than Scripture, it would be your loss. Regardless of how familiar you are with the Word of God, I suggest you at least remind yourself of these verses by glancing at them. A compromise might be to slide over them on your first reading and return to them later. Christians suffering is a big topic, and I plan to sidestep nothing. Before progressing to other aspects, however, we should resolve whether or not a degree of suffering is an unavoidable part of the effort required to faithfully serve our Lord. Is it that suffering never has a divine role in Christian living and it only occurs if we needlessly let ourselves be defeated, instead of exercising our Christ-bought authority over adversity? Or, on the other extreme, is it that, for all of us on this planet, suffering is fundamental to victorious Christian living? Suffering was central to Jesus’ earthly ministry. Could it likewise be a central aspect of our earthly service? “Be sober and self-controlled. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,” says 1 Peter 5:8. What then, would be the dangers of not being alert and spiritually readied for an attack? Since, as Jesus taught, the devil comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10), surely we would be needlessly exposing ourselves to hardship and suffering if we ignored the Bible’s directive to submit ourselves to God and resist the devil (James 4:7). All Christians agree that there is much we can do spiritually to reduce our own suffering. There is a huge diversity of opinion, however, as to how far we can push this. Is it biblical, or is it unbiblical, to think that if we do everything right – sufficient faith, prayer, praise, submission to God, spiritual discernment, alertness, spiritual warfare, and so on – we can avoid all unpleasantness? Or if we are sufficiently in tune with God, could we avoid all but minor persecution, or perhaps all but very brief challenges? Of course, there are innumerable other guesses as to where the line should appear. And if it were to turn out that certain unpleasantness is actually unavoidable for even the most godly and spiritually empowered of us, how could that be, in the light of God’s love and goodness and our crucified Lord’s stupendous victory over evil? These are some of the questions we will wrestle with. Before taking the plunge, however, I should confess one more thing: In my yearning to best serve you, the reader, I find myself tortured by two conflicting concerns. Straining like a bullock team on one side, is my conviction that the longer our voyage together, the more likely you are not just to find answers but be profoundly transformed by them. Pulling in the opposite direction, threatening to tear me asunder, is a fear of losing readers who have little conception of how much they could benefit from a longer journey. A related matter that is tearing at me is the question of how extensively I should share all the biblical evidence. I have prepared such a thorough explanation of all that God reveals in his Word about this topic that most people would be fully persuaded by less. Nevertheless, I honor those who demand more. My heart not only goes out to those who are not easily convinced, I feel a deep kinship with them. It is not that we are thick or stubborn or skeptical. On the contrary, I write for truth-seekers who are passionate about God and are keen to know him even better, and to please him even more. This webpage is particularly for those who long to honor God by being faithful to his revelation and are already well-versed in all the biblical support for their view. I long to support those who have been thoroughly taught and wish to double-check how completely their understanding stacks up against the “whole counsel of God” (cf Acts 20:27). Among the things goading me to introduce more detail into this webpage is that, if continued for more than a few minutes, much good can be worked within us by pondering the possibility of suffering for Christ, even if it were never to happen. A longer webpage could achieve that but I worry about less devout readers. Although I believe it would be more beneficial to prolong the tension, my compromise is to lessen it by acknowledging upfront what would otherwise be the elephant in the room. So let’s face the worst case scenario right from the start: what if our study ended up proving conclusively that, at least for some of us, devotion to Christ necessitates suffering? Would that cripple Christianity? We’ll consider this in the next section. Continued: Part 2

Wish God Felt Closer? Sane Help This is a continuation of Feeling God’s Love Recap We are continuing our exploration of reasons why we find it hard to feel God’s love. Later, we will consider practical tips as to how to start feeling God’s love. If you haven’t read the previous page, please start here. Doubting God’s Goodness If you fear he could have a cruel streak, you are sure to unconsciously keep your emotions in check when relating to God. No normal person would feel secure about giving his or her heart to someone who might possibly be callous, or even sneak some twisted pleasure out of slaughtering innocents, or in tormenting people in hell, or a God who in any other way has less than the highest conceivable morality. To be more tender hearted than any human, and to love more than life itself hate-crazed rapists as well as and their innocent victims, is to live on an emotional nuclear bomb. Nevertheless, this is the agonizing, heart-wrenching place where God lives. To be the God of perfect justice, and yet merciful and forgiving, is to live on a knife-edge that demands terrifyingly immense wisdom. If you, in your wildest dreams, suppose you could do better that the God of perfection, it is because in this infinitesimal fragment of eternity, you know only a fraction of the facts and the final destinies of those involved. The Lord could have stripped us all of our dignity and freedom of choice, enslaving humanity so that it is impossible for any of us to make wrong decisions and hurt people. Yes, such iron control would remove evil, but it would also remove all good. If robbed of choice, every human action would be reduced to moral neutrality. We could never know the joyous fulfillment and honor of having chosen correctly. You cannot congratulate a robot. Only its maker could be honored. God wants not machines but children – dignified beings who can be honored. We cannot make praiseworthy decisions, without it being possible for us to make blameworthy decisions. To be destined to rule as royalty with God for all eternity, necessitates the freedom to make horrific mistakes. Love does not enslave; it sets free. And to again quote myself: The Divine Ache You cannot fervently love someone without aching for that person to love you – especially if you know that person desperately needs you in his/her life. To deeply love someone means you could have everything else in the universe, and yet without that person’s love you would still be heartbroken. To love is to make oneself so vulnerable that even having unlimited power could not help. Omnipotence could easily force someone to obey you. Or it could produce something like a “love” potion, causing a person to be under the illusion of loving you. But genuine love can never be compelled. If it involves force or chemicals or deceit or bribery, it is a sham, and can never satisfy your yearning for that person’s love. There are things that not even omnipotence can achieve. It cannot, for example, produce a square circle. It can easily turn a circle into a square, but the instant it has straight sides it is not a circle. Likewise, when someone is forced to act in love, it is not genuine love. Even with unlimited power, there is little anyone could do to induce genuine love in a person, other than be loving and wait for a response. We would be appalled if a man kidnapped a woman and raped and enslaved her because he claims he loves her, wants her as his wife and is convinced he can make her happy. It would be an immoral abuse of power, regardless of whether he used physical force or threats – in which case she would be conscious of the violation of her rights – or if he used drugs or hypnotism so that she is unaware that what is happening is against her will. Real love respects the desires of the beloved, no matter how much it clashes with the lover’s personal longings, and no matter how certain he is that the person would benefit from lifelong intimacy with him. God wants a relationship with us more intimate, more permanent and more exclusive than the most wonderful marriage any human couple could ever experience. When we learn that he wants us to love, honor and obey him, however, we tend to back off in horror before discovering that in every way we benefit from this relationship and it is God, not us, who gets the raw end. He loves you more than you love yourself and has your best interests at heart even more than you do. He alone has infinite understanding and – as demonstrated by Jesus suffering on the cross for you – he is utterly unselfish and would sacrifice anything for your eternal happiness. To disregard the advice of someone of infinite intelligence who wants only your best, makes as much sense as deliberately harming yourself. Any time we fail to love, honor and obey the God who is devoted to our welfare, we ruin that part of our lives, relative to what we would otherwise have enjoyed and achieved. God is love, and love takes enormous risks, because there is no other way to love. “If you love something, set it free; if it comes back it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was,” said Richard Bach. This principle is the driving force behind all that God does. God is good. He is perfect in all his ways. He is infinitely trustworthy. When it Seems God has Favorites If we confuse circumstances with God’s favor, we are bound to suffer bouts of feeling unloved. Until we understand the heart of God and his plans for us, there is little that is more likely to crush our ability to feel loved than when God seems to be blessing others more than us. Let’s examine the reasons why it is so common for us to mistakenly think God has favorites. (If you don’t require all the detail provided in this section, feel free to just skim through it.) Not Seeing the Big Picture One of Jesus’ most chilling expressions was, “they have received their reward in full” (Matthew 6:2,5,16). Despite seeming blessed of God, their current satisfaction, smugness or “fifteen minutes of fame” is all they will ever get. There are those who by missing out down here are storing up treasure in heaven, and there are those who are the envy of people down here, but will live in eternal regret. “What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight” (Luke 16:15). To illustrate, Jesus compared Lazarus, a diseased, despised beggar, with a hard-hearted rich man, who seemed to be basking in God’s blessing. For all eternity, their situations will be reversed (Luke 16:19-26). Another time, Jesus told of a farmer who seemed so divinely favored that he had to build bigger barns to store all his wealth, but his riches were of no consequence because he would die and his bumper harvests were the only “blessing” he would ever receive (Luke 12:16-21). Jesus kept emphasizing that what matters is not current circumstances – whether our own or those of other people. Over and over, Jesus taught that everyone’s existence takes an astounding twist; a terrifying or heart-stoppingly thrilling reversal of fortune, in the next life. The proud will be humbled. The humble will be exalted. The first will end up last. The meek will inherit the earth. Jesus revealed that at the end of the age, when the “sheep” are separated from the “goats,” both classes of people will be shocked. Neither had imagined the stupendous and eternal implications of their seemingly minor decisions (Matthew 25:31-46). He spoke of three servants entrusted with money. Two worked hard, one had a life of ease, but the day of reckoning came (Matthew 25:14-30). Jesus’ own life highlights the great reversal. He went from the cross to the throne; from earthly shame to eternal glory; from apparent rejection from God to being exalted by him. The final twist was staggering. And he told us to take up our cross and follow him on this astounding journey. In the short term, the ungodly can indeed prosper and, like our crucified Lord, God’s children can get a raw deal. It is vital that we focus on the eternal, not current “blessings.” When we confuse the two, everything slides out of focus and we will wrongly think God is overlooking us. Often we are like athletes selected for Olympic glory, thinking that if the coach truly cared about us he wouldn’t set us grueling training sessions. Jesus warned us to store up treasure in heaven, not on earth. Blessed are the poor, the meek, the persecuted, he declared. There are Christians who will spend all eternity rejoicing in the blessing of having on earth suffered severe persecution and defamation. And there are Christians who seem to have it all and yet will suffer eternal loss, as if a fire had ripped through their home, destroying everything they owned (1 Corinthians 3:11-15). Seasons in God Job crashed from prosperity to poverty, from health to sickness and from a large, happy family to devastating grief. Throughout it all there was not the slightest fluctuation in God’s love for him. Joseph went from being the pampered, favorite son, to being a slave, then branded a rapist and incarcerated as a criminal, and finally exalted to political power, fame and fortune – all without any change in God’s attitude to him. David moved from shepherd boy to giant killer, to King’s son-in-law, to fugitive, to King – with God being proud of him the whole time. We could talk of Elijah, who slid from mountain top, to depression, to spectacular entry to heaven. Or we could burst out of the Old Testament into the New, and see the mightily blessed apostle Paul often having not even enough to eat, suffering horrific beatings, unjust prison sentences, pounded by natural disasters (snake bite, several ship wrecks, and so on) and God refusing to answer his prayers (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). On and on we could go, showing from God’s revelation to humanity (the Bible) that changing fortunes need not indicate changes in God’s favor. Paul, Hungry 1 Corinthians 4:11 To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. 2 Corinthians 6:4-5 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger 2 Corinthians 11:27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Philippians 4:12 I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. To always be in fruit would kill a tree. As trees cycle from dormancy, to blossom, to fruitfulness, to loss, pruning, and dormancy again, without fluctuations in God’s blessing, so people basking in God’s blessing have seasons of growth and fruitfulness and seasons of loss, dryness and barrenness. The main difference between spiritual seasons and natural seasons is that nature moves in unison, whereas at any one time, different Christians in the same locality will be in different spiritual seasons. Some people will be over the moon, pampered with spiritual goose bumps, like John when receiving his revelation. Others will be languishing in the midst of an oppressive trial, like John was, as a prisoner on Patmos, when his vision commenced (Revelation 1:9). It would be a grave misunderstanding to think this means some have God’s favor and some do not, or to think you have fallen out of God’s love and blessing, when it is simply not your season for fruit. As I have said elsewhere: If spring could tip-toe past nature without stirring it from its winter slumber; if the sun could slip through the sky without dispelling the night; if rain could fall to the ground without bringing life to the desert – only then should you fear dry times, dark times, lean times. You might be envious of the Apostle Paul, thinking you would feel so loved of God if the Lord had appeared to you in blinding light as he did to Paul. But would you feel loved of God if, like Paul, you reeled from one catastrophe to another – shipwreck after shipwreck, years languishing in prison, religious leaders wanting him dead, forsaken by Christians, and so on? Philippians 1:16 The former insincerely preach Christ from selfish ambition, thinking that they add affliction to my chains Philippians 2:20-21 For I have no one else like-minded, who will truly care about you. For they all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ. 2 Timothy 1:15 This you know, that all who are in Asia turned away from me; of whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes. 2 Timothy 4:10,14,16 for Demas left me, having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. . . . Alexander, the coppersmith, did much evil to me. . . . At my first defense, no one came to help me, but all left me. May it not be held against them. Living in Unnecessary Spiritual Poverty In Jesus’ famous parable, the prodigal son’s brother was jealous of the father’s extravagant display of love for the wayward son. “You’ve thrown a party, slaughtering the fatted calf for this no-hoper, when you haven’t given me so much as a baby goat!” he complained bitterly. The father’s reply is staggering: “Son, all that I have has always been yours for the taking” (Luke 15:29-31, my paraphrase). This brother had been waiting for the father to give him things; never having sufficiently believed in his father’s love and generosity to have realized that he could have helped himself to everything. Some people help themselves to God’s blessings, simply because they choose to believe the Bible when it says that God is love, does not show favoritism, and that he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). Others miss out, not because they are any less loved, nor because God doesn’t want them to have it, but simply because they fail to take God at his word. The Lord Shows no Favoritism Deuteronomy 10:17 For the Lord your God, he is God of gods, and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty, and the awesome, who doesn’t respect persons, nor takes reward. 2 Chronicles 19:7 . . . there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of bribes. Job 34:17-19 . . . Will you condemn him who is righteous and mighty? — Who says to a king, ‘Vile!’ or to nobles, ‘Wicked!’? Who doesn’t respect the persons of princes, nor respects the rich more than the poor; for they all are the work of his hands. Acts 10:34-35 Peter opened his mouth and said, “Truly I perceive that God doesn’t show favoritism; but in every nation he who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him. . . .” Romans 2:11 For there is no partiality with God. Galatians 2:6 But from those who were reputed to be important (whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God doesn’t show partiality to man)—they, I say, who were respected imparted nothing to me Ephesians 6:9 . . . knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him. Colossians 3:11 where there can’t be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondservant, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all. Colossians 3:25 But he who does wrong will receive again for the wrong that he has done, and there is no partiality. 1 Peter 1:17 If you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man’s work, pass the time of your living as foreigners here in reverent fear. Different Callings The Scriptures reveal that Christians differ so greatly from each other that it likens them to totally different bodily organs. Some of us are like eyes – spiritually perceptive but delicate and useless for carrying anything. Some are like arms – strong and useful but can sense very little. Being destined to fulfill different roles in the body of Christ means that some people will be more spiritually perceptive than others, not because God is moving more powerfully in their lives, and certainly not because they are more loved of God, but simply because they are called to perform a different function in the body than other parts. Just as everyone sees your fingernails and no one sees your kidneys, some parts of Christ’s body will, of necessity, be more noticed than others. Again, this is solely because of their function. Prominence in the body does not in the slightest mean prominence in the heart of God. In fact, as Scripture points out, God has ordained that those parts of the body that get all the attention – such as our hair – are actually less important than parts that no one sees. Your Special Role in Christ’s body 1 Corinthians 12:15-27 If the foot would say, “Because I’m not the hand, I’m not part of the body,” it is not therefore not part of the body. If the ear would say, “Because I’m not the eye, I’m not part of the body,” it’s not therefore not part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the smelling be? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body, just as he desired. If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now they are many members, but one body. The eye can’t tell the hand, “I have no need for you,” or again the head to the feet, “I have no need for you.” No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. Those parts of the body which we think to be less honorable, on those we bestow more abundant honor; and our unpresentable parts have more abundant propriety; whereas our presentable parts have no such need. But God composed the body together, giving more abundant honor to the inferior part, that there should be no division in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. When one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Or when one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually. Personality Types Some people’s personality causes them to regularly soar and plunge from dizzy peaks to darkened valleys, while certain individuals have moods that barely change from one day or week to the next. Those of us whose personality type keeps our emotions on a steady course can end up feeling inferior – and feel less loved by God – simply because we have never had the highs of those Christians who suffer great highs and lows. On the other hand, people whose personality takes them on an emotional roller coaster, instead of realizing the uniqueness of their highs, often feel inferior to Christians who rarely suffer such lows because their emotional journey is much flatter. Especially because too few Christians are brutally honest about their down times, the spiritual grass always seems greener in someone else’s life. We might be envious of Elijah when God was working miracles through him, but none of us envy him when he was in the pits of depression wishing he were dead (1 Kings 19:4). Poetic License? Yet another complicating factor is that what happens inside of us is virtually indescribable. Some people are so poetic in their attempts to describe their feelings that even if those hearing the description had the identical experience, they wouldn’t recognize it and would still feel envious. So comparing our own spiritual journey with what we know of that of other Christians is strewn with spiritual danger. To quote myself again: Eleven thousand teachers competed with Christa McAuliffe and lost. The winner of a seat on space shuttle Challenger was the envy of millions – until the shuttle disintegrated soon after take-off. Eleven thousand losers suddenly became winners. In the twinkling of an eye, the first shall be last (1 Corinthians 15:52; Matthew 20:16; Luke 16:15). Until that wondrous moment, don’t assume you’re a loser. Despite God insisting in his Word that he loves each of us with all of his heart, we are all subject to many factors that give the upsetting illusion that others are more loved of God than us. No wonder faith is so critical to the Christian life. Without faith in the integrity of God’s word and his love, we will never see past the temporary and superficial, to the heart of God. If God Loved Me He Wouldn’t Have . . . It is hard to find anyone in Scripture of whom God is proud, who did not suffer what must have felt like endless times when it seemed to the untrained eye that God was acting unlovingly toward that person. Over and over, Scripture praises Abraham for his faith, and yet he must surely have endured many times with the thought churning in his mind, “If God really loved me he would have given me a son by now. I’m getting too old to enjoy a child even if I had one.” I can well imagine Joseph thinking, “If God loved me, he wouldn’t have sold me into slavery.” Yet, after year upon year of setbacks, he ended up declaring to his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good . . .” (Genesis 50:20). Relative to God’s plans, what human minds presume to be best are nothing but short-term thrills that fizzle. The infinity of God’s intellect and the eternity of his perspective often push his loving ways frustratingly beyond our understanding. We are sorely tempted to let this eat away at our belief in his love for us. We are like children thinking, “If Mommy really loved me she’d feed me nothing but candy and ice-cream.” Just as a little child finds such logic undeniable, we find ourselves weighed down by the nagging suspicion that God cannot really love us because he does not do things the way our puny minds think he should. Every time I cannot see the love and wisdom behind God’s actions, I am displaying my ignorance and folly. To plunder other writings of mine: Embraced by divine love, your life will be tinged with mystery but aglow with glory. Tucked in the heart of Scripture sleeps a tiny psalm of precious truth (Psalm 131) . The singer confessed that as a mother denies her baby access to her milk when it’s time for her darling to be weaned, so God sometimes denies us things we crave. Yet as a weaned infant lies warm and secure in its mother’s bosom, our soul can nestle into God, not knowing why we have been denied that which we have clamored for, but content to draw love and comfort from the Father’s heart. As the heavens soar far above us, high and unreachable, so is God’s wisdom (Isaiah 55:8-9; Psalm 139:6; 147:5; Romans 11:33-34; Job 11:7-9). Our tiny minds may understand the Father’s ways no more than a babe understands its mother, yet still we can rest in him, bathed in the certainty that when the omnipotent, omniscient Lord lets the inexplicable touch a child of his, it is a manifestation of unfathomable love. In the hands of the One who wouldn’t so much as break a damaged reed or snuff a smoking wick, you are safe (Matthew 12:20). False Humility I have to quote myself again: For most of my life, scriptures like “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6) 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. Spiritual Blockages Isaiah 59:1-2 Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. Psalm 66:18 If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened The Lord is exceedingly tolerant of those who keep battling sin despite losing often. These are people who have yet to discover how to use the full power of Christ’s victory, but as long as they keep seeking forgiveness and keep seeking victory, their falls are in an entirely different category to those who have not the slightest intention of giving up willful sin. Those who abuse God’s grace by deliberately sinning without any genuine remorse are in grave spiritual danger and they can certainly expect this to end up seriously affecting their relationship with God. Then there are those who have unrepentant sin in their lives and are unaware that God disapproves. At the end of this page is a link under Spiritual Blockages to the testimony of a woman who suddenly found that God seemed distant. It turned out that this was the Lord’s way of getting her to seek him and to discover that there were matters (in her case, previous dabbling in the occult) God wanted her to repent of. Up until then, her Lord had tolerated this being in her past, but he decided that now was the time for her to learn that it is spiritually dangerous and to deal with it. Practical Help A significant cause of not feeling God’s love is that for years we have let damaging lies cycle through our minds over and over. The lies might be that we are useless or hopeless or unlovable or unforgivable. The continual repetition of these lies is such a deadly form of brainwashing that not just our intellect, but our heart or subconscious in which are feelings are based, is profoundly affected and we end up with deceptively strong feelings that make the lies seem true. Letting lies repeat over and over in our minds becomes a habit that is as hard to break as any serious addiction. Through Christ, any addiction can be broken but it usually takes great effort and much time. The best way to break this destructive addiction is to do two things. The first is to establish the new habit of whenever you catch yourself thinking a lie that does not honor the God who made you, such as “I am useless,” or “No one loves me,” immediately start praising and thanking God that the opposite is true. Silently pray such things as, “Lord, I praise you that you are powerful enough and loving enough to use me to do great things. Thank you that you are love and that I am special in your eyes. I love you because you first loved me. Thank you that because Christ suffered in my place on the cross, you see me as being as good and holy as your eternal Son.” On and on you should go, thanking and praising God. The second thing to do is identical, except do not wait for the lie to prompt you to declare the truth. Go on the offensive by habitually thanking and praising God throughout the day, regardless of whether or not you are attacked by negative thoughts. By doing this, you will begin to make inroads into that huge stockpile of negative thoughts you have sown into your heart. By repeatedly depositing truth in your heart, you will begin counteracting the countless thousands of times that you told yourself lies in the past. Eventually, this will affect your feelings, but it is a long-term project. You cannot expect repeating a truth a hundred times to wipe out the effect of having repeated a lie a thousand times. It’s been wisely said that faith leads; feelings follow. We must never let feelings take the lead. Faith painstakingly hacks a path through virgin jungle; an escape route from the dark, perversely seductive dungeon of familiarity. It’s the only way, but when faith ventures ahead of feelings, lies seem more real than the truth; prison bars seem safer than freedom. Breaking free is a hard slog, made harder still by everything within us screaming that we should return to the dungeon of doubt. Satan is a sore loser. Once he finds something that shakes us up he, keeps trying it over and over relentlessly until he is absolutely convinced that his tactics will never again work with you. His persistence is so very unpleasant. The positive side, however, is that this will make you stronger and stronger as you keep resisting his lies. The Horror of Being a Feeling Junkie We all know about anorexia and how people – often women – can be attractive and yet be fooled by a cruel trick of the mind into being thoroughly convinced that they are repulsively overweight. This is not just a devastating delusion; it can kill. There is something very similar that crushes marriages – women who are gorgeous in their husband’s eyes and yet feel so undesirable that they shrink from their husband’s advances. Not only do these women undergo needless distress, it cripples the entire relationship; greatly hindering, or even destroying, intimacy and the couple’s enjoyment of each other. The most distressing aspect of this tragedy is that all the suffering is completely needless because the husband is thrilled with his wife’s appearance, and yet this fact keeps bouncing off the woman. Either, despite all her husband’s pleas, she does not believe him, or, rather than delighting in what she knows is her husband’s view of her, she is so caught up in her own delusion that she allows her mistaken self-image to enslave her. Either way, the husband reels in the pain of rejection and the frustration of seeing his beloved suffering, and yet spurning all his efforts to convince her of how desirable he finds her. An almost identical tragedy devastates relationships with God when much of the Lord’s delight in us is dismissed as a lie, merely because it does not match our feelings. Or the tragedy hits when we are so self-absorbed with our own feelings and distorted self-image that we have little interest in how thrilled God is with us. The choice is ours. We can cave in to oppressive feelings, letting them bluff us into spoiling our relationship with God. Or we can press on, despite our feelings, and enter into the countless blessings God has for us. Feelings not based on truth are as useless and dangerous as drug-induced highs. Truth depends on facts, not feelings. It is facts, not feel-good delusions, that we need, and it is precisely these critical, life-changing facts that the Bible deals with. Chasing feelings is like chasing the ends of rainbows. To be a feeling-junkie is to throw your life away, as surely as mainlining heroin. To stake your spiritual life on the integrity of God’s love and his Word, however, is to store up treasure in heaven, where the interest rates are out of this world. Ridiculously old and childless, Abraham didn’t feel like he would end up a father of many nations. Scared and ill-quipped, Joshua, Gideon, young David and so many other heroes of the faith, didn’t feel like facing the enemy. Tired and discouraged by a fruitless night, Peter and his fishing partners didn’t feel like obeying Jesus and launching into the deep. Frail and outnumbered in a jostling crowd, the hemorrhaging woman didn’t feel like fighting through the throng to touch Jesus’ cloak. Sweating, as it were, drops of blood, Jesus didn’t feel like doing God’s will. Tortured time and again, the apostle Paul kept having to pray for the courage just to keep going (Ephesians 6:19-20; Philippians 1:20). The entire Bible is bursting with people who didn’t feel like doing the very thing that made them heroes of the faith. They felt defeated and insignificant, but they kept on anyhow. They treated their feelings with as much disdain as pests. Like troublesome flies, unwanted feelings persist but heaven’s heroes press on regardless. They pushed through the doubt, fear and pain, and kept going despite everything within them screaming that it was hopeless. That’s the heart of a champion. And you were born again to treat your feelings with that same contempt and perpetuate this glorious tradition of spiritual champions by clinging to the belief that God is on your side and loves you passionately, despite everything within you screaming the opposite. You weren’t born to be a groveling, shame-faced feeling-junkie. Cut the umbilical cord tethering you to spiritual babyhood and soar with spiritual giants to the realm of faith. You can do it! It’s a promise from God himself. Restoring Your Feelings We have reaffirmed that God loves. That is an unchangeable aspect of who God is. And as infinitely superior to humans as God is, his love for you is equally superior to the love any human has ever had for anyone. So if, like many other Christians, you cannot feel God’s love, the problem is not with God loving, but with you feeling. The blockage might be a failure to understand a spiritual principle – we have examined these possibilities – but often the problem is not spiritual at all, but psychological. In this case, it only has negative spiritual implications if, instead of believing God’s love for you – the one whom Christ died to save – you foolishly slump into believing that your lack of feeling proves that God has lost all his integrity and is no longer love. Suffering a psychological block to feeling God’s love or presence can be a superb stimulus to learning how to live by faith. It can end up giving you the spiritual edge on those who had an easier life. As much as I long for you to enjoy the spiritual benefits, however, I also yearn for you to be healed from your inner pain. Anyone trying to suppress inner pain is desperately trying not to feel inner things. The result is like numbing your arm with a local anesthetic to stop physical pain and then finding yourself unable to feel someone lovingly caressing that arm. Who would be so stupid as to permanently plug his ears to prevent himself from hearing hateful comments and then wonder why he never hears loving comments? It should hardly be surprising, then, that anyone even partially successful in suppressing negative inner feelings finds it difficult to sense positive inner feelings, such as feeling God’s love. We tend to kid ourselves that it is a sign of strength, even spiritual, to try to pretend we are not still wounded by past hurts. Nevertheless, the icy truth is that it is much less noble things, such as fear and defeatism, that keep us from facing emotionally crippling issues head on until fully resolved and healed. For inspiration to stop living in denial, see the short webpage Positive Confession? Or Living in Denial? For help with low self esteem, see How to Change Your Self-Image and links. If you have suffered sexual abuse, see Comfort, Understanding and Healing for Abuse Survivors of Both Genders. If depression is an issue, see When Things Get Tough and follow the main link at the end of each page. Find it hard to forgive those who have cruelly wronged you? See Revenge! and the links at the end of that page. If you sometimes worry that you are unforgivable, see Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope! Could you possibly have multiple personalities? See Healing the Inner Child and the pages it leads to. There’s More! This webpage exists to provide an overview of critical matters affecting the most important thing we will ever encounter – our relationship with God. For the comfort that comes from looking deeper, I invite you to explore the links below, especially those on issues of particular concern to you. Ensuring You are Truly Born Again You Can Find Love When God Seems to Have Favorites God Isn’t Fair? To God You Are Special When You Feel Too Sinful to be Loved/Accepted by God Feeling Condemned? Doubts About God’s Goodness God & Suffering When God Seems Far Away Spiritual Wilderness Survival Guide When God Seems to have Left You Feeling Rejected by God Spiritual Blockages Why We Must Stop Deliberate Sin Finding Supernatural Power to Break Habits The Unexpected Reason for God Seeming Distant: Occultic Factors Enjoying God’s Love God Loves Me? Receive Your Very Own Revelation of God’s Love Feeling Unloved Because of Circumstances Feeling if God loved me he would: Answer My Prayers Speak to Me Heal Me Comfort Me Give Me a Ministry A Help in Feeling Loved of God How to Change Your Self-Image

If required, you will find much confirmation here, but I suggest glancing at it only for as briefly as it takes to be convinced, and then return to the main page. A person’s kindness, goodness and sacrificial love might be so astounding as to put to shame most Christians, but that person has still sinned and the wages of sin – one sin – one tiny infringement – is death. And, as I often say, no one can get any deader than dead. Spiritually, we’ve all missed the boat. We are all in the same desperate situation, no matter whether we missed the lifeboat by thirty seconds, thirty minutes, thirty days, or thirty years. Imagine a dozen murderers on death row, each despising each other and thinking themselves more moral than the others. That’s a picture of all of us until we come to our senses. Who of us has not, in a flash of anger or self-righteousness, wished someone were dead? That, revealed Jesus, makes us murderers. We need murder only once in our entire lives to be a murderer. With the thought being as evil as the deed, all of us are rapists, adulterers, sadists or murderers in the eyes of the Judge who will determine where we spend eternity. Whether we or everyone on this planet finds our offense excusable is irrelevant. Whether we like it or not, our Judge is divine. He does not judge by human standards. As the stars tower high above the earth, so are his standards, and the sooner we start thinking like he does, the better. You might feel less defiled than other people, but that’s not how God sees it. His standards shatter all distinctions. For a surgeon about to operate, usual standards of cleanliness are hopelessly inadequate. You might be filthy and someone else walks off the street looking spotless, but by the standards the surgeon must maintain, both of you are equally untouchable. It can make no difference if the person approaching him is the love of his life or the most important or popular or respectable person in the world. Regardless of how special someone is or how clean by normal standards, a surgeon must not lower his standards. So it is with God. We might distinguish between sinners, but God cannot. For a glimpse of how differently God thinks, consider all the catastrophic consequences of Adam’s sin. What did he do? Murder Eve? Destroy the entire Garden of Eden? He simply ate a piece of fruit. It is not to put anyone down that I expound the truth of everyone’s depravity. On the contrary, I do it because it is God’s longing that everyone reading this will be exalted, just as the tax collector humbly faced the seriousness of his sin and was divinely exalted above the highly respected Pharisee. I dare confront you with this truth because I want you exalted not merely in your own estimation but exalted by the Lord of all. So let’s plunge into this icy truth that turns out to be the most exquisite warm spa. God’s chosen priests, Nadab and Abihu, made an offering to God in a manner similar, but not exactly identical, to how the Lord had prescribed. They were not turning away from the Lord. They were not even ignoring him. They were worshipping him. And yet God struck them dead for making that offering (Leviticus 10:1-2). Uzzah, seeing the Ark of God in danger of falling and being damaged, reached out in an instinctive, unpremeditated act to protect the Ark. God struck him dead for daring to touch the Holy Ark (2 Samuel 6:6-7). Ananias and Sapphira sold their own property and generously gave not just a tithe of this considerable sum, nor even several times the value of a tithe, but such a huge percentage that they fully expected everyone to presume that it was the total amount. They, too, were struck dead (Acts 5:1-11). Of course, many others have been slain by God, but I have focused on examples of particularly godly people. They were serving God. In fact, they were in the forefront of what God was doing and not even that saved them. Whether by the grace of God any of these ended up in heaven is not for me to speculate. What is certain, however, is that not only did God slay them; he made a permanent record of the severity of his judgment. Clearly, the Judge of all humanity knows that the whole world needs to realize the blood-curdling gravity of what we are tempted to dismiss as trivial, excusable slips. Instances like this show not the harshness of God, but his astounding patience toward every one of us who is still breathing. We must get it into our heads that it is not just “big” sins that are terrifyingly serious. Our consciences are so callous that even much of what we think acceptable is actually defiled. Even things we think are acts of devotion to God are enough to send us to hell. Like the disciples, we gasp, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus’ answer rings through the centuries, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:25-26). If there is anyone on this planet that God can make so pure and holy that he would enthrone himself in that person’s very body – and, of course, there is – he can do it to you. A person overwhelmed by guilt typically feels painfully alone, but the truth is that we are all floundering in the same spiritually catastrophic dilemma. No one but Jesus has ever reached God’s minimum standard for divine acceptance. Your path to forgiveness is the same as anyone else’s. God has powerfully used famous Christian leaders year after year while they were secretly conducting disgusting acts, such as adulterous affairs, until their sin was finally exposed. Nearly all of us are shocked when first hearing this. Our reaction exposes our spiritual blindness. The astounding thing is not merely that the Lord has used people regularly committing adultery; what is astounding is that he uses any of us. Probably, the most saintly Christians alive do things several times each day for which the Lord would be fully justified in striking them dead. All Christians are daily dependent upon the grace of God, even though most are as close to being as blasé about it as the Pharisee. Some of us struggle with addictions that horrify Christians. The rest of us struggle with sins that Christians excuse but horrify God. We must not judge anyone because all that does is prove our hypocrisy. We dare not abuse the grace of God. We must truly mourn our sins and fight them and crave total obedience to God. The Almighty’s standards are so exacting that for God to accept even the most saintly of us, would take no greater miracle than accepting the most depraved of us. Our most common misunderstanding about interacting with God is to suppose that the Exalted One’s feelings for us are based on how good we have been. In reality, our past behavior has no bearing on how God treats us. The King of kings accepts people not because of the smallness of their sins but because of the greatness of Christ’s sacrifice. The basis of God’s love for any of us is not that our sins are slightly excusable or not quite as bad as someone particularly depraved. God loves you solely because he loves you, not because of anything you have or haven’t done. You are loved so much that even regardless of what you have done, God still longs to make you in his eyes the purest of virgins; the most innocent of innocents. He has absorbed all your shame in his own being and given you all his glory. All that is needed is to admit to yourself and to God that – along with everyone on this planet – you need Jesus’ cleansing. Then, like a bride decked in an exquisite, literally out-of-this-world gown, you are adorned with the flawless perfection of the Lord Jesus, irrespective of your past. A man was offered a presidential pardon, but on the condition that he admit his guilt. That’s the ironical situation we find ourselves in. When we admit our guilt, God pronounces us innocent. If, on the other hand, we keep trying to convince ourselves that we are innocent, we will be tried for our every sin. This is something Jesus taught over and over. Here is a powerful example: Luke 18:10-14 Two men went up into the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself like this: ‘God, I thank you, that I am not like the rest of men, extortionists, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted. Do you see it? The only people with a smidgeon of morality are those appalled by their own sinfulness. Everyone else is so deluded as to be beyond hope, unless they, too, eventually become devastated by an awareness of their own depravity. Using the Pharisee to illustrate his point, Jesus reveals that some people are unforgivable. (That is not to say they could never change and hence become forgivable, but for as long as they act like the Pharisee they cannot be forgiven.) What renders them unforgivable is not the atrociousness of their sin – everyone would say the Pharisee was much less sinful than the tax collector. They miss out on forgiveness simply because they think they have no need of forgiveness and so do not bother to ask for it. Whoever asks with faith in Jesus, receives. The Pharisee could never be forgiven in this life or the next while he never bothered to genuinely ask for forgiveness. No matter how close to sinless a person is, he cannot be forgiven if he does not ask for forgiveness. Although Jesus chose the most likely characters for his story, the roles could have been reversed, with the good-living Pharisee devastated by his sinfulness, and the cheating, money-grubbing tax collector filled with excuses and self-righteousness. What matters is not our past, but our awareness that regardless of how good or bad we seem when compared with other people, relative to God each of us has been atrociously wicked. We have all been despicably evil, but only a few of us realize it, and the more we realize it, the more God longs to exalt us. The praying, temple-attending Pharisee went home unforgiven because, blinded by his own smugness, he had no conception of what we have been discussing, even though his Bible knowledge must have been immensely superior to the tax collector’s. If a building’s foundations have crumbled, it is no achievement to acknowledge that there are cracks in the wall and then start patching them. The entire building must be razed and rebuilt from scratch. Some people might think their effort to redecorate the building proves their high standards, when it merely proves their foolishness. So many people who think themselves Christians are like those who think that the building that will soon collapse is basically okay and just needs a bit of redecorating. Like that Pharisee, they are dangerously ignorant of how corrupt every one of us is. All of us – not just those blessed with a tender conscience – are in the same chronic need of God’s forgiveness. In the words of Jesus: Luke 13:1-3 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all perish in the same way. . . .” A cold-blooded murderer’s spiritual need is no greater than mine. If, however, that murderer is more aware of his sins that I am of my own, then I am the one in the more terrifying predicament. The Amplified Bible (classic edition) puts it this way: Psalm 34:18 The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves those who have a crushed spirit. . . . When overwhelmed by the gravity of our offenses, we may fear that God has left us, but he is actually closer than ever to us. While in this state we might feel sure that God is angry with us, when in reality he is brimming with tender compassion toward us. Like the lost sheep in Jesus’ parable, the Lord feels even more for anyone hurting over his or her sin than over countless “saints” who, though special to him, are not hurting. God can indeed be angry when we are in defiant rebellion against him, and yet even this is a manifestation of how important we are to him. It is only because he loves us that our sin affects God. The Lord may have been upset, but the instant we move from defiance to sorrow over our sin, his heart melts. We humans develop our own corrupt moral standards that allow us to label certain sins as “minor” and “excusable.” If we were drinking glasses, each of us would leak. Some of us might be in worse condition than others, but what difference does that make? Who would give a king a cracked glass? Nothing imperfect reaches God’s minimum standard. It’s an insult to God to suppose that even the most saintly person is good enough for God. In reality, earth has just two types of people: hopeless moral failures who cling to humanity’s only Savior, and hopeless moral failures who try to face eternity on their own. To abandon faith in oneself and put all one’s faith in Christ’s goodness is like stepping into a spacecraft. For even the nicest people to trust their own goodness is like them hoping they can reach the heavens by jumping high. Isaiah 64:6 For we have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is like a polluted garment. Carve that into the cortex of your brain. “All of us” – “ all of us ” – have become so defiled that even the greatest attempts of the most saintly person to do good is as repulsive as bodily filth. So offensive to God are our highest moral attainments that, in the original Hebrew, Scripture resorts to an offensive expression to convey this shocking truth. Quite literally, without the slightest exaggeration, Isaiah is saying that even the noblest human attempts at morality are as soiled menstrual rags. To hold up to God, as if it made me worthy, my lifetime of sacrificial service or list of sins I have avoided, is as disgusting as proudly displaying my bodily filth. The nicest non-Christian you’ll ever meet is of the devil, deceived, evil, and God’s enemy. Everyone not in spiritual union with Christ is dead to God. All of us have been in this terrifying predicament. If you’re dead, you’re dead. To argue that one corpse is in better condition or closer to being alive than another is ridiculous. Would you dare drag a corpse into a king’s presence? Would you say, “I think you should meet this man. You’ll get on well together. He’s such a good person. His corpse hardly smells at all”? If you are still only mildly convinced that by God’s standards no one is less sinful nor more sinful than you have been, I’ll have one last shot at opening your eyes, but please go beyond my attempts and pray for a divine revelation. “No one is perfect,” we glibly say. How serious would you rate the sin of sadistically devoting hour after hour after hour to torturing to death an innocent person? It was because I’m not perfect that the eternal King of kings, the darling of God’s heart, was tortured to death. My lack of perfection stripped him naked and publicly humiliated him. I flayed his flesh, mercilessly whipping the Innocent One, through whom the stars and flowers were made. My imperfection callously drove nails through the hands and feet of the One who has given me every good thing I have ever enjoyed. My sin did that. Dare I call it a minor sin? In the words of Peter, “You killed the author of life” (Acts 3:15). Oops! The Lord of lords is the indescribably majestic Being who alone keeps the entire universe from disintegrating (Hebrews 1:3). And my “insignificant slips” killed this stupendous Being on whom everything in existence teeters! It is quite literally a miracle that the catastrophic event my sin instigated did not precipitate the annihilation of the entire universe. Dare I rate that as anything less than equal to the most atrocious offense in the universe? Each of us has been monstrously evil. Self-righteous people despise this truth, but what offends the proud, comforts those who are overwhelmed by their own sin. This truth initially seems so devastating that most people spend their entire lives running from it. Those who dare face the truth head-on, however, eventually discover that it is actually one of the most exciting of truths. The truth that every one of us deserves hell is the great leveler. That of itself is a great relief to the humble. Most gossip and slander is an attempt to pull someone down to our own level. But anyone understanding the truth we have been exploring, realizes that without Christ, all of us are already on the same level. When the full implications hit, the pressure to slander, gossip and resent people vanishes, just as being given multiplied trillions of dollars would evaporate every temptation to steal or covet anyone’s money. But after leveling us, the Almighty exalts us far beyond our highest dreams until we are sharing God’s very throne. From there, all itching to put anyone down disappears. It is only insecure people haunted by feelings of inferiority who feel the “need” to convince themselves that they are superior to at least some people. It is a failure to comprehend that we are all equally defiled that keeps millions of people blackmailed into keeping guilty secrets – often from those who love them the most. They end up staggering through life feeling sickeningly alone and unloved and terrified that if ever their dirty secret were discovered they would be rejected and despised. Like a gangrenous wound slowly killing someone because he is too riddled with shame even to admit he needs medical help, so is a guilty past until we make the liberating discovery that we have nothing to hide from each other because we are all equally defiled. Spiritually, people aware of the hideousness of their sins are light years ahead of everyone else. Those who think themselves good are so deluded by their own pride that they are to be pitied. The humble know they have been abominably wicked, but if they accept Bible truth they know they are not alone. Everyone on this planet is in the same appalling predicament, and for each, Christ offers the same glorious solution. Humanity’s depravity throws the holy Lord into a horrific dilemma. The darlings of his heart – that’s you and me – are utterly unacceptable and should be eternally trashed. The Almighty has resolved this seeming impossibility by devising a way in which each of us can be re-made, thus completely undoing the effects of our sin and making us perfect. If “small” sins can condemn us to hell, then our eternity teeters on our willingness to repent not only of the sins we find inexcusable, but also on us repenting of sins we think excusable. For an example of a damnable sin we try to excuse, consider a refusal to pray God’s blessing upon those who have shamefully treated us. The despicable brutes who have hurt us are as worthy of hell as we are. (Remember, our sins tortured to death the Innocent Son of God.) For forgiveness, we must act like the tax collector, in mourning our sins. But since “small” sins are just as deadly as the ones that disturb us, for us to escape hell all our sins must be forgiven. It is therefore essential that we regret not only the sins we loathe but the sins we love. The Lord freely pours his innocence upon all who want it. To want God’s innocence we must want God to deliver us from all sin – to rip from our lives. We must want to be rid forever from all sinful pleasure. Suppose the Pharisee had been rushing to the temple. He turns a corner and does not see a toddler in the middle of the street before his donkey tramples the little girl to death. He enters the temple as hardened as ever over most of his sins but riddled with guilt over the death of the toddler. Do you expect him to be forgiven all the sins he is oblivious about, just because he is filled with remorse over an accident? In fact, he might focus so much on the accident that he is even less aware of his other sins that he previously was. Only if the incident caused him to review his entire life and he repented of his self-righteousness would there be hope for him. Distinguishing between “big” sins and “small” sins is largely a human invention devised by guilt-ridden sinners desperate to feel superior to certain other sinners. The same Jesus who was so gentle with those who regretted their sin was furious with hypocrites. To expect God’s forgiveness while we refuse to forgive someone is to tell God, “Do what I say, not what I do.” What could be more hypocritical? Despite all our protests, anyone we refuse to forgive is actually no more worthy of hell, and no less forgivable, than we are. Grace is not license to sin; it is license not to sin. It is freedom not just from the penalty of sin but from bondage to sin. If it is an insult to God’s holiness to think anything substandard is good enough for God, it is an insult to his omnipotence to think that for God anything is beyond repair. Either God can restore anyone to holy perfection who suddenly sees the need for it, or he isn’t God. We are saved not by our works but by a divine miracle. The tax collector went home forgiven before he had a chance to physically do anything. He received the divine miracle of forgiveness, and the Pharisee missed out, not because of what they did but because of their heart attitude. Jesus gave sick people the divine miracle of healing only because they wanted it. You will recall that he often questioned the sick to confirm that healing was what they really wanted. Likewise, God will treat us as sinless – in other words, forgive us – only if we decide that we want to be sinless. If we had cancer, a big part of us might not want to be operated on but our reluctance is not the critical issue. All that matters is whether, despite our misgivings, we sign over to a surgeon permission to do whatever he considers necessary to remove every trace of cancer and we agree to follow that up by taking whatever medication he prescribes afterward. Likewise, a big part of us might love our sin and not want to be sinless but our reluctance will not stymie God as long as we muster our will to decide to give God permission to make us sinless and to devote the rest of our lives to cooperating with him in this process. If you were a thousand times more evil than your worst fears, it would not stop Jesus from making you blameless. However, if you were the most saintly person alive and you died thinking you did not need Jesus’ cleansing, you would rot for eternity in the stench of sins in your life that you were too reprobate to even notice. Without exception, all of us are evildoers, but what infuriates God are evildoers who think they are better than other evildoers. Those who think they are good enough just because they seem to be in a bit better condition than some others are unlikely to see the absolute necessity of Jesus perfecting them. This is the most terrifying blindness because it has eternal implications. When people see no great need of the purification that only Jesus can give, the Lord has no choice but to withdraw and leave them to try to work their own way out of hell into heaven, which of course is impossible. Their one hope is to come to their senses and admit that they are as worthy of hell as any and every person on this planet. If only they would humble themselves that way, the Lord would rush to exalt them. We are all like people with cancer that will kill us unless we seek medical attention. Life’s most dangerous act is to live in denial of “sin cancer.” When you are terminally ill, there is no comfort in saying, “His cancer looks worse than mine.” Only after admitting to ourselves that we have this “cancer” will we seek life-saving treatment. So although this admission might initially seem depressing it is actually our passport to life and joy. Ultimately, it is denial that is scary and depressing. We must face the bad news – that we are terminally sin-sick – in order to enjoy the glorious news that we can be cured and overflow with vibrant health beyond our wildest hopes. If ever the saying, “No pain, no gain” applied to anything, it applies to this. This is why Jesus said blessed are they who mourn now (Luke 6:21,23). Everyone will mourn over his or her moral condition. The only difference between people is timing. Mourn now over your sin and you will find what Jesus offers and burst into purity and endless joy. Mourn too late, and you’ll mourn forever. Ezekiel 6:6-9 In all your dwelling places the cities shall be laid waste, . . . The slain shall fall among you, and you shall know that I am the Lord. Yet will I leave a remnant, in that you shall have some that escape the sword among the nations, when you shall be scattered through the countries. Those of you that escape shall remember me among the nations where they shall be carried captive, . . . t hey shall loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations . (Emphasis mine) The ones to be envied are those who mourn while the joy of forgiveness is still on offer. Their mourning will turn into dancing; their sorrow into never-ending joy. When you stand before your Judge he will not be interested in even hearing the charges. All that his penetrating eyes will see is whether you have clothed yourself with the righteousness of Christ – whether you are trusting Jesus’ purity for your approval, or whether you have the audacity to try to go it alone. The only people who miss out – and tragically there are many – are those too arrogant to admit that they need Jesus’ purification or who refuse to believe he is powerful enough to make them pristine in God’s eyes. Suppose you were enduring appalling hardship and danger, struggling to attempt something that is generally believed to be humanly impossible. The thought that thousands have tried and every one of them has failed would be so oppressive and discouraging that you would want to keep pushing that fact out of your mind. After you make it, however, this same fact that no one before you had ever done it would become an exciting truth that you savor and will boast about for the rest of your life. Likewise, human depravity is an unbearable truth until viewed from the perspective of Christ’s victory and the purity that is now ours. If, instead of running from it and trying to live in denial, you start savoring this truth, you will discover that what had seemed to be the ugliest of truths is actually strewn with the richest of treasures. Until you experience it for yourself, you will never understand how wondrously liberating it is for me to despise any foolish excuse I might find for thinking myself morally passable. I pooh-pooh the fact that I was a virgin until I married in my mid-fifties, have never uttered common swear words, have never tasted alcohol or taken illicit drugs or tobacco or even had a speeding ticket. Instead, I glory in the truth that I am as guilty and as worthy of hell as any rapist-murderer and yet, through Christ, more innocent than any baby. Though initially horrifying, knowing that I’m as evil as Stalin or Hitler or anyone you could name has ended up becoming a cherished truth for me. You will find my joy in this truth so incomprehensible that you will never believe it until you make the discovery yourself. All I can do is try to coax you to explore the truth that seems so awful that no one wants to even think about it. Christianity is not for escapists. God honors those with the courage to face truth head on. In Jesus’ famous words: the truth will set you free. Face your fears and they will vaporize. Run from them and they will terrorize you. What makes the apostle Paul, the former Pharisee, so spiritually different from the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable is that Paul finally reached the point where he wanted to be found on Judgment Day having no moral achievements that he could claim as his own. Jettisoning every act of devotion others might boast about, he staked his eternal destiny solely on the right-standing with God that Jesus offers everyone who trusts him for it. Had he chosen to, Paul could have pointed to decade after decade of sacrificial devotion, prayers, fasts, financial giving, Scripture memorization, prestigious scholastic achievements in biblical studies, and meticulous attention to obeying God’s every command. Instead, he counted it all as – well the Greek word he chose means offal (stinking, stomach-turning animal waste)! Trashing as pathetically inadequate and unacceptable his every effort to please God, he staked everything on the conviction that nothing but the purity that comes through sheer faith in Jesus could render him acceptable to the Holy Judge. He insisted on putting all his eggs in the one basket. That’s what saving faith is all about. This is too staggering and too significant not to quote the passage in full: Philippians 3:4-9 . . . If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith (Emphasis mine). People who think themselves good, are in grave spiritual danger. They want to hold on to all their acts of kindness and good deeds, proudly displaying to God “moral achievements” that impress them but in the eyes of the Holy Lord are imperfect and hence as repulsive to the Perfect One as bodily filth (Isaiah 64:6). A groundless, divinely-offensive pride – a preference for their attempts to do good over God’s free gift of righteousness – is why Jesus told the chief priests and the elders, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21:31). We have just two options: present God with the perfection of Jesus’ purity, or present him with our defiled attempts. Guess which option impresses God! Saint Paul dies and the first thing he sees is an angel who says, “Welcome, I’m Uriel. Like everyone, you must face the Judge to be sentenced to hell or ushered into heaven. I’ve been appointed to build your case for the defense. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how vital it is that we get this right. We don’t have long, so let’s get right into it. Could I have your name, please?” “Saul of Tarsus, but everyone calls me Paul.” “Wow! You’re the great apostle Paul? What an honor to meet you, Sir! Could I have your autograph when we’ve finished? Anyhow, we’d better get on with this. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your moral achievements?” “Minus ten.” “Ha! Ha! Sorry, Paul. It must be your accent. For a moment there I thought you said minus ten!” “That’s right. Minus ten.” “Oh, dear! We’ll have to work out how to present this in the best possible light.” “Forget it. I don’t want the life I’ve lived taken into consideration.” “What?” “My sole defense is that Jesus died for me.” “But Paul! We have only one shot at this! We need the best possible defense.” “Jesus died for me. That’s it! I have nothing else to offer.” “ Nothing? ” “Nothing.” “Well – er – um let’s try another tack. There are so many common sins that almost everyone has committed but you haven’t. Let’s . . .” “Forget it. Alongside the perfection of Jesus my best efforts are garbage. Nothing in my life will impress the Almighty except that Jesus died for me and has handed me his righteousness.” “But what about all the imprisonments, deprivations and torture you’ve suffered for Jesus’ sake?” “Suffering for Jesus was an undeserved honor. Yes, I believe the Lord is so gracious that I’ll be eternally compensated for anything I’ve suffered but as far as escaping hell is concerned, the only suffering that counts is what Jesus suffered for me.” “Paul, I hate to bring this up but we’ll need an exceptionally strong case. After all, you realize, don’t you, that you’ll have to plead guilty to torturing Christians, trying to get them to blaspheme. That’s a horrific offense, and with all your learning we can hardly plead ignorance . . .” “Yes, I am guilty. I deserve hell a million times over, but Jesus died for me.” “So that’s it? You’re staring at eternity in hell and that’s your only defense?” “Yes.” “Congratulations, Paul! I knew you’d pass! It’s going to be great having you in heaven! Would you be willing to give me your autograph?” Just as we cannot find salvation by dividing our faith between Jesus and false gods, so we dare not divide our faith between Jesus and our own attempts to please God. It would be a recipe for spiritual disaster to try to hedge your bets by placing some of your faith in the unique power of Jesus’ sacrifice to make you acceptable to the Holy Lord and some of your faith in your own efforts. It’s those who have abandoned faith in their own efforts to be holy who are destined for spiritual greatness and divine perfection, provided they go all the way by putting all their faith in the life-transforming power of what the Innocent One achieved by letting himself be tortured to death. Does anyone think that to soar heavenward you must help a jumbo jet by pushing it? That is as nonsensical as people who think they have to help God in their quest to get to heaven. Just as you cannot hedge your bets by putting one foot in a jet and the other on the tarmac, so you must decide whether to put your faith in Jesus’ ability to make you right with God or whether to keep struggling. There is no divine disapproval left because Jesus bore it all. The only thing we must decide is whether to let Jesus’ suffering count as our suffering, or whether we’ll waste his sacrifice and continue to act as if we must bear the blame and shame ourselves. Do you believe Jesus took upon himself the full consequences and punishment for your every sin? Your eternity hinges on your answer to that question. And if you believe it, spend a few minutes asking God to examine your heart and show you whether the way you think and act is consistent with that belief. In the piercing eyes of the fearsomely holy Lord, even virgins who have never so much as touched anyone are so far from God’s standard of absolute perfection that they – like every human not connected to Christ – are defiled. Yet this same God of unapproachable moral standards pronounces you flawless, if you trust Jesus for your forgiveness. “Innocent!” declares the Judge of all humanity, “Morally perfect from the day you were conceived right up to this minute and for all eternity, if you remain spiritually one with Jesus.” With the omnipotent God in one’s life, anyone’s potential is limitless. God is excited about you right now because he sees that astounding potential. All you need do is yield to him, letting him forgive you, cleanse you and join himself to you so that your destiny and his destiny, your ability and his ability, merge. Instantly you are treated as being as holy as he is, and even though it is only partially manifested in this life, you are destined for an eternity of sinless perfection. We have been morally bankrupt but whenever anyone becomes a true Christian, that person’s assets merge with God’s assets. It would be ridiculous to suppose that the merger of our moral debts with God’s moral riches could end in impoverishment. Our moral bankruptcy is utterly swallowed up by God’s riches, even more than a two dollar debt vanishes in a trillion dollar bank account. To think it could be any other way is an insult to the Almighty Lord who longs to merge his assets with yours. There is only one critical issue: whether we trust Christ to gain our forgiveness and to make us one with God. Here’s a prayer I suggest you read to God, if you really mean it. Help me to keep remembering that the fact that you are God makes you altogether better than anyone I’ve ever met. You hate sin with an intensity and loathing beyond human ability to even imagine and yet, with an equally astounding passion, you long to forgive sinners. I cannot come to a holy, sin-hating God saying, “I want you to let me keep sinning. Let me have sin’s pleasure but not sin’s punishment.” I cannot say to Jesus, “I want to keep enjoying sin and I want you to suffer all the torment my sins create.” Since it is not just the “big” sins that can send me to hell, I desperately need you to remove all my sins – not just the sins I hate but the sins I love. Even though sin’s pleasure is but a cardboard cutout of the fulfillment and joy you offer, and it ends up destroying me anyhow, I am so hooked on the inferior that a part of me does not want me to pray this, but I know that I must. There can be no spiritual benefit in me being sorry about some of my sins that killed my Savior if I’m glad about other sins of mine that killed my Savior. I need to deny myself all sinful pleasure forever and I ask you to help me do just that. Like the tax collector, in Jesus’ parable, I realize I am condemned and without excuse. Overwhelmed by the sickening magnitude of my sin, all I can say is, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That, taught Jesus, is all the man did. Instantly, he became so holy in your righteous judgment that alongside him it was the fasting, saint-like Pharisee who was the wicked sinner. Not only does that astound me, it doesn’t seem right. My iniquities are so atrocious that they deserve horrific punishment. But your Word affirms that all of my abominable acts have indeed received the awful punishment they deserve. Humanity’s only Innocent – whose perfection mysteriously outshines even the innocence of a baby – was voluntarily abused, tortured and killed for my every misdeed. I dare not insult you by implying that your one and only Son, who died for the sins of the world, did not suffer enough to convince me that my sins are utterly forgiven. I will no longer render Jesus’ death for me a useless waste by refusing to accept his torturous death as adequate payment for my offenses. I will not dishonor you by refusing to forgive myself, as if I had higher moral standards than the Holy Judge of all the world who declares me innocent. I see the tax collector doing nothing except be devastated by the gravity of his sins and desperately crying to you for mercy. If he went home justified , then I, too, am made just as if I’d never sinned, if I regret all my sins. If the devout, tithe-paying Pharisee could miss out because he trusted his own goodness, and the despicable, cheating tax collector won God-given holiness by abandoning faith in himself and trusting in your goodness, then divine holiness is mine. Like the great apostle Paul, my faith is not in my own righteousness but in the righteousness of the Son of God who took my punishment and traded my defilement for his purity. Therefore, Scripture says, I have “become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Your Word says that how I judge others is how you will judge me; how much I forgive others is how much you will forgive me. Since I need you to be merciful to me, I desperately need you to help me be merciful to others. There are people who have hurt me so immensely that they owe me more than I could ever describe. Nevertheless, Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:23-35) implies that my debt to you is exceedingly greater than what these people owe me. That defies my imagination but it must be true. Their sins have hurt me beyond words but somehow my sins have hurt the innocent Son of God even more. I am acutely aware of the enormity of their sin because I am so sensitive to the pain they have inflicted on me, but I am so insensitive to the pain I have inflicted on you. The people I find hard to forgive deserve an eternity of torment in hell. But so do I. I bring before you those who have hurt me so horrifically. Show them the enormity of their sin against me and against you. Fill them with deep regret. May they loathe themselves for what they have done. May they never do it again. May they cry out to you for forgiveness and may you transform them into completely different people who are meek, gentle, good, kind, loving and thoughtful, just as I want to be. Even though I don’t deserve it, bless me beyond my wildest dreams. And bless those who have hurt me just as much as you bless me. Thank you that your longing to forgive and bless me is far greater and purer than my prayer of blessing for those I despise. Nevertheless, thank you for graciously promising to forgive me because I pray your blessing on these people. Help me get my thinking right. Your Word declares that you, the holiest of all, dwell in the weakest believer, as you dwelt in the holy of holies in Old Testament times. How, then, could I be anything but the pinnacle of holiness if you, the fearsomely holy Lord, have chosen to dwell in me, thus making me your temple and holy of holies? I used to wish I could be as pure as a virgin, as innocent as a child, but now I realize that in your unfathomable love and power you give me far more than this – more, in fact, that I can comprehend. Not even virgins or tiny children reach your exacting standards of perfection, yet you offer me the pinnacle of purity that not even they can achieve. Had I been the most corrupt and defiled person on the planet, you would have made me pure as crystal the moment I sincerely asked for the forgiveness and sinlessness that Jesus died to honor me with. On the other hand, had I arrogantly supposed I have no need of Jesus’ cleansing, I could not avoid an eternity of hell even if I were the nicest, noblest person alive. Without Jesus, the best person is doomed; with Jesus the worse person is fanfared into heaven, if the person has genuine remorse for all offenses and commits his/her life and spiritual destiny into Jesus’ hands. Since Jesus gives me moral goodness that no human could ever attain, it is pointless for me ever again comparing myself with others. I cannot look down on anyone because, were it not for Christ’s undeserved gift freely offered to us all, I would be as defiled as those I am tempted to despise. Neither can I think myself morally inferior to anyone, because Christ has clothed me in his perfection – and no one could ever surpass Christ’s perfection. Never again need I try to dredge up the past in an attempt to assign blame, because Jesus bore all blame. I don’t have to judge myself because you, the Judge of heaven and earth, declare me innocent of everything that has ever touched my life – from the biggest to the smallest thing. I dare not judge anyone, because all of the blessings you shower on me come through Jesus out of your love for me, not because of any moral achievements of mine. With everyone on this planet deserving hell, how can I demand you give others the punishment they deserve without demanding that you be consistent and give me the eternity in hell that I deserve? And yet in my self-righteousness, that is what I have sometimes done. Thank you so much for mercifully delaying my request until I could see the sheer folly of demanding justice when I need your mercy. I repent of ever wanting it. Help me be as merciful to others who deserve hell as you have been to me. Through Jesus, you have transformed me so that I can hold my head high, not just among saints, but in your very presence. Forgive me for thinking of myself as second class when Christ died to treat me like divine royalty – an exalted son/daughter of the King of kings. Help me get it into my head that the magnificent, eternal Son of God, through whom and for whom everything in existence was made, bore my shame and blame so that I could have his honor. Without you, I’m a fire that would wreak havoc and destruction. But I’m not without you. So as a fire I’ll bring warmth and cheer. Without you, I’m as useless as a brush without an artist. But I’m not without you. Together, we’ll create divine beauty that will stun heaven and earth. Help me stop thinking and acting as if the exalted Lord had never exchanged places with me on the cross. I need your supernatural empowering to grasp the mind-boggling implications and to live in the joyous wonder of it all. May awareness of all that you have done for me – and all that I now am in you – sink deep into my spirit until I am fully healed . 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Christian Compassion And the Wrath of God Love your Enemy And Heap Burning Coals on his Head! Justice: So Important to the God of Love Several Scriptures telling us not to retaliate, emphasize that this is not to let the offender get off scot-free, but to release the Almighty to execute judgment. Romans 12:19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. (20) On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Proverbs 24: 17 Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, (18) or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him. This shocks us, even though it blends in with other Scriptures that seem to speak of vengeance with peculiar relish: 2 Thessalonians 1:4 . . . we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. (5) All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. (6) God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you (7) and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. (8) He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. (9) They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power Revelation 6:9 . . . I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. (10) They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” (11) Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed. Deuteronomy 32:43 Rejoice, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants; he will take vengeance on his enemies and make atonement for his land and people. We discovered in the previous page, significant reasons for God urging us not to take vengeance into our own hands. For even more insight into this perplexing issue and an examination of how loving our enemies fits into divine vengeance, let’s explore a powerful passage of Scripture, commenting as we go. Romans 2:1 You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, Absorb those words: “at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself.” Over and over, Scripture emphasizes that no matter what happens in the short term, eternity will reveal that only people who humble themselves end up exalted. In contrast to humble people, whoever judges someone considers himself morally superior to the person he judges. By judging, he proves himself to be so far from the spirit of humility as to be in grave spiritual danger. Jesus emphasized this when he said, “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God’ ” (Luke 18:10-14). The man overwhelmed by the immensity of his own sin was forgiven, whereas the man who looked down on certain people remained tragically unaware that he was condemned. Most of us delight in finding people whose sins we can despise. We rarely analyze why we do this, but it is actually our pathetic way of getting our minds off our own sins and drowning out the screams of our consciences. There are “those who are pure in their own eyes and yet are not cleansed of their filth” ( Proverbs 30:12). The only way to be pure is to admit to ourselves and to God our desperate need of cleansing. Living in denial of the gravity of our own sins is eternally more dangerous than a person with a deadly cancer living in denial of the need to seek medical help. Better than being cured of cancer, facing head-on the truth about one’s filth, and coming to Christ to be pronounced spotlessly pure, is the most liberating experience in the universe. Salvation from eternal judgment depends on you believing that Jesus was nailed to the cross to pardon your sin. How can anyone possibly imagine a more horrific sin than one that required the Innocent One – the only Son of Almighty God – being tortured to death? How, then, could anyone accepting salvation through Christ’s sacrifice possibly believe there could be a worse sin than his own? And yet isn’t this exactly the deluded, self-righteous belief of anyone who judges another? Doesn’t judging involve thinking someone’s sin is worse than one’s own sin? Anyone claiming to be a Christian who judges someone, thinks to himself, “Because that person’s behavior offends me, he is a more serious offender than little ol’ me. I’m almost perfect. After all, my sin merely tortured to death God’s only Son.” Who in their right mind could claim to be a Christian and think like that? To judge anyone – considering yourself morally superior to someone – is to so minimize your own sin as to virtually live in denial of the fact that it was because of your sin that the Savior died. Such a denial would involve either rejecting your one hope of salvation – the fact that Christ died for your sin – or at least edging precariously close to that point. Is it any wonder that someone judging another stands in danger of eternal condemnation? We saw from Romans 2:1 that merely thinking ourselves morally superior to anyone exposes us to divine condemnation. What, then, will be the consequences of having such an inflated view of our self-righteousness that we suppose ourselves justified not only in condemning someone but in wanting to take the law of God into our hands and see our self-centered, hypocritical wrath executed on that person?Dare we have the audacity to think we know better than the Judge of all humanity and accuse the holy Lord – the one who at any instant would be fully justified in sending us to eternal torment – of being too soft? If thinking ourselves better than other people exposes us to judgment, what does thinking ourselves better than God do? Other Scriptures are even more emphatic that our very salvation hangs in the balance when we daydream of “getting even.” Jesus repeatedly said such things as, “ . . . if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:14). Now to continue with Romans 2: because you who pass judgment do the same things “No I don’t!” we protest in chorus. Our response shows just how deeply a judgmental spirit blinds us to our own sins. We all have our particular version of hypocrisy in which we manage to see our own sins through the wrong end of the binoculars but see more clearly the sins of those who have hurt us. In God’s eyes, our hypocritically biased view is as pathetic as the following exchange. “How dare he steal yellow jellybeans! I want a law passed that anyone stealing yellow jellybeans be jailed for life!” “But you’ve stolen jellybeans. You’ll be sentencing yourself to jail.” “Of course not! I only steal red jellybeans!” The Lord graciously – it certainly was not my doing – blessed me with wonderful Christian parents and through Christ he spiritually joined me to himself at a young age and I’ve never drifted from him. Consequently, I could produce a long list of common sins I have never indulged in. I would sooner publicly display my bodily filth than present any of that as a suggestion that I’m the slightest less worthy of hell than the most sadistic mass murderer on the planet. If anything, my spiritually privileged background fills me with shame. It means I’ve never overcome the huge obstacles to faith that so many have had to overcome to believe in Jesus. Of course, salvation is always undeserved but someone who becomes a Christian despite being born to non-Christians is rather like someone who becomes a millionaire by starting a business with nothing, whereas I’m more like a millionaire who simply inherited his money from his parents. My sheltered background also means there are many powerful addictions – even smoking – that I have never broken in my own life, since I have never had the slightest exposure to them. For all these reasons, my supposedly less sinful life is simply an illusion – and a dangerously seductive illusion that I must not fall for, lest the resulting hypocrisy expose me to the wrath of God. “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded,” warned Jesus (Luke 12:48). I dare not point the finger at anyone. Had I lived my highly sheltered life until I was born again as a child and then lived sinlessly for the rest of my life, no one that ever existed would be more worthy of hell than me. Even if, like Adam, I had merely had a piece of fruit that I shouldn’t, I’d be worthy of hell, let alone all the horrific sins I’ve committed. In a flash of anger I once wished my little sister were dead. That makes me a murderer in the view of the One whose piercing eye bores through one’s hypocrisy into one’s heart. Like a rapist, I have lusted. Like a con artist, I have deceived. To try to throw up as an excuse the fact that almost everyone else has acted similarly, would not only fail to reduce the magnitude of my sin, it would expose myself to eternal judgment because, “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). For years I considered my sins minor. Not even now has my calloused conscience fully softened to the gravity of the offenses each of us try to excuse. How dare I have the audacity to want God to be merciful to me if I – being guilty of the atrocious sins I mentioned – cannot be gracious toward the sins of others! If there is one thing that riled Jesus, it is hypocrisy. Anyone not wholeheartedly agreeing that you and I are equal to the vilest of sinners, has no conception of the holiness of God. Tragically, most people have spent so long looking down on others that they cannot even imagine what it would be like to look up and behold the Holy One. They have so closed their eyes to spiritual reality that they live in a world of make believe – a world that, to their eternal horror, will one day shatter. No matter how horrifically someone has treated you, his offense against you is not as grave as what you have done to God. Your sins were so atrocious that nothing short of Jesus’ death could atone for them. In effect, your sins tortured and murdered the Holy Son of God, the Lord of the universe. In the terrifying words of Peter, “You killed the author of life” (Acts 3:15). Oops! That has to be biggest conceivable blunders. Imagine ignorantly destroying the very One who upholds the fabric of the entire universe; the One keeping our very atoms from disintegrating, along with every atom in all creation. That is the magnitude of our sin. We are so self-centered that we are acutely aware of our pain when others hurt us, but barely conscious of God’s pain when we hurt him. In our hypocrisy we are usually full of excuses for our own sins, grossly downplaying their gravity, but rarely are we as generous in excusing anyone else’s sin. We seem hell-bent on pointing to the speck of dust in someone’s eye, utterly oblivious to the sandpit in our own eye. We suppose it is the other person who is annoying us, but it is primarily the yet-to-be-discovered sand in our own eye that is the real source of our irritation. When we start accusing others as if we are better than them, the problem isn’t their sin, but our blindness to our own sins. Let’s proceed to the next verse in Romans: (2) Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. God’s judgment is based on truth, not only because he alone sees everything and knows every heart, but in stark contrast to even the most unbiased of us, he alone does not view people through a hypocritical, self-centered haze. (3) So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Suddenly, the issue is no longer, Why hasn’t God’s judgment fallen on that person? but, How speedily will divine judgment fall on me for my self-righteous hypocrisy? Note the words, “you, a mere man.” Did we create ourselves? Did we design the molecules of the person we want punished? What makes that person answerable to us? Do we have a perfect, unbiased grasp of the intricacies of morality? Do we know everyone’s secret thoughts, pressures and motives? Just who do we think we are in usurping God’s right to be Judge? (4) Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance? The driving force behind God’s kindness toward his enemies is the hope that they would repent. His longing is that those who continually hurt him – and we ourselves once fell into that terrifying category – will have a genuine and complete change of heart so that they can become his treasured friends, totally new people and fully trustworthy. This, too, is a major reason why he wants us to show this same kindness to those who don’t deserve it. If they respond to our kindness by repenting, we have truly succeeded in “teaching them a lesson.” Instead of simply doing what it takes to avoid unpleasantness, someone changed by kindness, not force, genuinely wants to do right. The person’s sincerity invites God into his life. He becomes a new person. (5) But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. We might think those we despise are beyond change, but if the Almighty can change you and me, he can change anyone. Nevertheless, any who refuse to repent are “storing up wrath.” God’s restraint in kindly giving people more time to come to their senses is a window of opportunity that if not seized by the guilty, will end in a full outpouring of divine wrath. The Lord told Ezekiel, “When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself (Ezekiel 33:8-9). The same principle applies to us being kind to those who mistreat us. If we don’t show kindness to offenders, we will be held responsible. If we do the right thing and they refuse to repent, however, they will be held accountable, but we will be innocent. “You are storing up wrath” is in the present tense, implying an on-going process. It is my conviction that Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is not merely saying that wrath has been delayed, but that wrath is constantly being added to the store during the time of kindness, thus continuously increasing the final outpouring of wrath if there is no repentance. For confirmation from Bible scholars, see “Storing up Wrath.” Likewise, our kindness to our enemies makes us godlike and increases the stakes for them. It gives our enemies a greater opportunity to come to their senses by seeing first hand that there is a better alternative to their own lifestyle. Love is perhaps the most powerful way of proving to people the spiritual reality of Christianity. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Again, Scripture reveals to wives that loving gentleness is the best way to bring unbelieving husbands to salvation (1 Peter 3:1-4) Likewise, there is nothing more powerful in transforming this planet for the glory of God than you displaying the character of God with supernatural patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, faithfulness, goodness, love, joy and peace. And the best opportunity you will ever have – in this life or the next – to portray the beauty of the Lord is when people mistreat you. Under normal conditions, to try to demonstrate the reality of God is like trying to show a movie in a Drive-In during daylight. When the deeds of darkness touch us is like when darkness falls at a Drive-In. It is then that people can appreciate what is being displayed. Jesus referred to his enemies tormenting him to death as his “hour” – the pinnacle of his ministry, his glory (John 12:23,27; 13:30-31). Likewise, the time when we are cruelly treated is our moment of glory. It is our finest hour; our stupendous opportunity to show forth the reality of the Lord who indwells and empowers us. A greater demonstration of the reality of Christ and a greater opportunity to repent, however, increases the accountability of those receiving our kindness, so that if they don’t repent they will face even greater severity on Judgment Day. Paul urges us to consider both the kindness and severity of God (Romans 11:22) – kindness to those who respond to his love by a genuine change of heart, and severity to those who abuse his grace. Of course there is heaven and hell, but if there is just one eternal reward given equally to all Christians, and just one uniform punishment, talk of increased accountability and accumulating wrath would be almost meaningless. Throughout the world there is an enormous range of accountability, from babies to intelligent adults who have not heard of Jesus through to those who have witnessed mind-boggling miracles and proofs of God’s power and yet have stubbornly refused Jesus’ salvation. There are also vast differences in degrees of faithfulness and in the varying abilities and opportunities assigned to different Christians. If the Judge of all humanity could access just one reward and one punishment to assign to each of such diverse people, it would seem hard for him to adequately respond to all this variability. The options available to the Judge, however, are up to the task. Scripture refers to a whole range of rewards and punishments. Punishment varying according to accountability is hinted at in many Scriptures. For example: Luke 12:47 That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. (48) But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. For more Scriptures and explanations, see Degrees of Punishment. There are also varying rewards. Consider Jesus’ parable in which servants were each given an equal sum of money known as a mina. Because of their varying faithfulness, one servant ended up with eleven minas and control of ten cities, another had five minas and control of five cities, another had nothing but his life, and the enemies of the returning king lost even their lives (Luke 19:12-27). For explanations and other Scriptures, see Heavenly Rewards. Parables A man is in court, convicted of driving a car while intoxicated. The law says he should lose his driver’s license. The man pleads with the judge that his job depends on him having a driver’s license. The judge is in a dilemma; he wants to be merciful but if this man re-offends someone could be killed. Finally, the judge agrees to let him keep his license but pronounces that if this man again appears in court convinced of this offense he will not just lose his license, and hence his job, but he will be jailed. God’s kindness is like that. It raises the stakes because it unavoidably raises our accountability. A woman wearing her finest clothes is attacked by a man who grabs her by her dress. As much as she loves that dress she has no option but to tug at it with all her might. The dress will either tear and be ruined or she will retrieve it undamaged. Either way, however, that evil man will not win. Likewise, when the Evil One attacks God by holding on to someone important to God – and that’s every human – the Lord pours out his mercy on that person, engaging the Evil One in a supernatural tug-of-war for the person’s soul. That person will either respond to God’s kindness and be saved or refuse and be ruined. Either way, when the battle is over, the Evil one will end up with nothing. So it is when you show kindness to the undeserving. Your action invites God to apply supernatural force to that person. By the time God has finished, the person will end up either restored or ruined, but you, like that woman, will be free. Whatever the outcome for that person, you will triumph, be vindicated and eternally exalted. You acting in a loving, non-judgmental way causes everything to slot together with divine precision. It releases God to execute perfect justice, while allowing the Judge to be merciful to you and also stopping evil in its tracks by preventing the offender from contaminating your own heart. When you and I were God’s enemies he loved us so much that he went to the extreme of the cross to make us his friends. And beyond that, he had to tolerate much evil until we finally accepted his forgiveness, and even then we try his patience. If God didn’t treat kindly those who hurt him, we’d all be in hell right now. How dare anyone forgiven so very much not forgive others! From the moment all is revealed, the redeemed with spend the whole of eternity marveling at God’s judgments. Revelation 16:7 And I heard the altar respond: “Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments.” Psalms 145:17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made. Psalms 96:11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; (12) let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; (13) they will sing before the LORD, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth. Burning Coals? Let’s see if we now have deeper insight into that mysterious Scripture with which we commenced this webpage. Romans 12:19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. (20) On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” In biblical thought, burning coals are most commonly associated with divine wrath. For example, we read in Scripture, referring to God: Psalms 120:4 He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows, with burning coals . . . Psalms 11:6 On the wicked he will rain fiery coals and burning sulfur . . . 2 Samuel 22:8 “The earth trembled . . . because he was angry. (9) Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. Psalms 140:10 Let burning coals fall upon them; may they be thrown into the fire, into miry pits, never to rise. In fact, the connection between burning coals and divine wrath is so strong that Bible readers can hardly get it out of their mind. Nevertheless, despite the reference to divine vengeance just a few words earlier, it seems so out of place to bring wrath or vengeance into an exhortation to love that Bible scholars struggle with this interpretation. They typically opt for the reference to burning coals to mean that our kindness will fill our enemy with “burning shame.” Renowned theologian, Charles Hodge wrote, “To heap fires of coal on anyone is a punishment which no one can bear; he must yield to it. Kindness is no less effectual; the most malignant enemy cannot always withstand it.” (Source). This is true. It would seem almost impossible not to eventually win an enemy over by continued kindness. Here’s a fascinating reference to burning coals: Isaiah 6:5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” (6) Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. (7) With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” A burning coal to the lips would normally have tortured a person. Instead, Isaiah being cut to the core over his sinfulness allowed that coal to sanctify and transform him. Likewise, if your enemies repent, the coals your kindness heaps on their head will burn off their defilement, transforming them into godly people filled with “burning shame” over what they did to you. Nevertheless, as a last resort, divine vengeance hovers over the head of the offender so that one way or the other – heartfelt remorse or eternal judgment – your enemy will indeed be overwhelmed with regret over his past misdeeds. Regret – One Way or Another Even God’s judgmental, wrath-filled pronouncements of doom are usually our loving Lord’s last-ditch effort to avert judgment. An obvious example is Jonah’s prophecy that in forty days’ time Nineveh would be destroyed. There seemed not a glimmer of hope in his entire message. It had the effect God longed for and that Jonah dreaded. The evil city repented and God relented. As I have shown elsewhere (see the link at the end of this series of webpages) forgiveness and restoration is more often the goal of harsh prophecies than most of us realize. We don’t know a lot about the next life. We know that divine forgiveness means we will go to heaven, but Scripture shows us that forgiveness does not mean an end to our remorse over past sin. For example, God forgave David over his sin with Bathsheba but David kept suffering the consequences for decades to come. 2 Samuel 12:11 “This is what the LORD says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity upon you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight. (12) You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’” (13) Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Nathan replied, “The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. (14) But because by doing this you have made the enemies of the LORD show utter contempt, the son born to you will die.” Suppose David had eluded punishment and repented only on his deathbed. If suffering regret and loss after forgiveness is an insight into divine judgment, I can’t see David’s last-minute repentance saving him from suffering regret and loss over his sin. Forgiveness means that a genuine deathbed repentance would allow David to go to heaven, but he would still suffer loss because of his sin. I also believe that in heaven he would receive a divine revelation of the sinfulness of sin and of God’s holiness beyond anything we are likely to experience this side of eternity. I can only assume that this would flood him with heart-wrenching regret over how he had wronged Bathsheba’s husband. Whoever has sinned against you will either end up with his eyes opened to the gravity of his offence and reeling with remorse over what he did to you, or he will be eternally punished for his sins. Either way, it is certain that the person who has wronged you will forever regret his actions. There is no question about that. The only question mark dangles over our neck is whether we will be filled with shame over crashing to the level of the someone who has wronged us by trying to “get even,” or will we be eternally pleased with the victorious, Christlike way we responded to the challenge? Understanding Divine Wrath There is nothing more fundamental to God than love and justice. Before we can claim even a superficial understanding of the heart and mind of God, we must come to terms with the fact that “An eye for an eye” is instruction from the same unchanging Lord who said “Turn the other cheek.” Ultimately, it is not a choice between love or justice. This world is hurtling toward both. Both are God’s passion and must be our passion. That’s why you must read An Eye For An Eye: Christian Justice or Love Your Enemy? Related Page Turn the Other Cheek

Faith versus Feelings Detecting God’s presence When trying to measure time or weight or temperature or speed or any of a hundred other things, we make a huge leap forward whenever we stop trusting our feelings or intuition and start relying on instrumentation. For instance, trying to tell the time by using our feelings, such as how hungry or tired we feel, and our senses, such as how light it seems, is crudely inaccurate compared to using an objective measure of a clock. Likewise, guessing from circumstances or whether we feel guilty or happy or peaceful or excited or lucky, is a most unreliable way of gauging spiritual reality. The more important a matter is, the more critical it is that we stop trusting our feelings or senses and start relying on an objective measure. What if an airline pilot ignored the plane’s instrumentation and decided to fly by his gut feeling? Spiritual matters are literally more important than life and death. All of eternity hinges on them. The stakes are far too high to dare rely on your feelings or circumstances to guess spiritual reality. Sensations like ‘feeling’ the presence of God are so vague as to be virtually useless as a spiritual gauge. I don’t know if I’ve ever ‘felt’ God. And whether or not I have is of little consequence. To base one’s faith on such feelings would be a disaster for anyone. One’s faith must be in the integrity of God. Do not rely on your own understanding, warns Scripture (Proverbs 3:5). There is a way that seems right but it leads to death, screams another verse (Proverbs 14:12). You need the precision of God’s Word. Each revelation of Scripture is like a dial in a pilot’s cockpit. Give more credence to your gut feeling than to one of them, and your spiritual life is on the line. The Bible affirms that a prophet can speak in the name of God and his prophecies be supernaturally accurate and yet if his message does not align with Scripture, it is merely a test that must be utterly rejected (Deuteronomy 13:1-4). If the great apostle Paul, who worked miracles in name of Christ, proclaimed a gospel different to that recorded in Scripture, his words must be rejected. The same, he insisted, applied to a message from an angel (Galatians 1:8). Even the most anti-God force in all creation can appear as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). The Deceiver could possibly give you a false spiritual experience, but he cannot change the Bible. ‘Heaven and earth will pass away,’ said Jesus, ‘but my word will never pass away’ (Matthew 24:35). God can give you feelings God could instantly give you feelings but in the long run it wouldn’t help. Your faith must be in the bedrock of the Word of God, not the shifting sands of feelings. Emotions fluctuate wildly. God’s word is solid. And the only way anyone can be a solid Christian is to ignore feelings and hold on to that word. It’s no use thinking, If God gave me some sort of sign or feeling it would strengthen my faith . You would be hoping to put your faith in the memory of the sign or feeling, rather than in the integrity of God. You are indicating that you regard what you see and feel are more dependable than Almighty God. Handling doubt It’s been rightly said, ‘Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs.’ Rather than become over-worried about your doubts, look to what you do believe, and draw strength from God. You will make it, not because of anything within you, but because God is powerful. Forget any deficiency you sense within you, and remember instead the sufficiency of Christ. When the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith, he replied, ‘If you have faith as small as a mustard seed . . .’ The implication is that what we need is not so much great faith, as a great God – and you’ve got One! Often our problem is that we wrongly think our faith to be so insignificant that we don’t bother using it. To achieve great things in God, simply use the faith you already have. Take your eyes off the supposed inadequacy in your faith, and fix them on the adequacy of your God. He is all you need. When handed a million dollar check you can have many doubts and still end up rich. It doesn’t matter how much you suspect the check might bounce. It’s only if you doubt so much that you refuse to try to cash it that you could miss out. A man came to Jesus saying, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.’ He got his miracle! We cannot muster faith by ourselves. Jesus said even about himself, ‘I can of myself do nothing.’ How much more must that be true of us! So continually look to God to strengthen your faith. That won’t stop the Evil One putting doubts into your mind. He’s been using that ploy ever since Adam and Eve, when he insinuated that God did not have their best interest at heart and that the True God was lying when he warned that eating the forbidden fruit would harm them. The Deceiver even tried putting doubts in Jesus’ mind. God had audibly said, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’ Then along came Satan. ‘ If you are the Son of God . . .’ he began two of his temptations. We must not let such accusations against God wander unchallenged through our minds. Reject the thoughts. Push the slimy intruders out of your mind. Displace them with the truths of God’s word. Hold out against the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7). Entertain that old snake’s thoughts no more than you would let a viper repeatedly bite you. No one has perfect faith. The Bible shows even the greatest people of faith wavering in their faith. Limp faith might be all you need Take heart from the man exalted as Scripture’s prime example of faith. (Romans 4; Galatians 3:6-9; Hebrew 11:8-19; James 2:21-23) In an early chapter of Genesis, God tells Abraham on two separate occasions that he will give him the land and descendants. (Genesis 12:2,7) Just four verses later we find Abraham humiliating Sarah, denying that she is his wife. In cowardly deceit, he stands dumbly by as Pharaoh marries Sarah and takes her into his harem. (Genesis 12:10-16) Next chapter, God yet again details the promise of land and descendants. (Genesis 13:14-17) Nevertheless, two chapters on, we find Abraham expecting to die childless. For a fourth time God insists he will give Abraham descendants. At last the old fossil believes. The Lord, thrilled with Abraham’s refound faith, repeats his vow to give him the land. In disbelief, Abraham asks for a sign. (Genesis 15:2-8) With divine patience God dramatically shows the mighty man of faith not only his future descendants, but what will happen to them. In the next chapter we find our faith model throwing away any hope of a miracle from God. He resorts to dubious natural means to forcibly accomplish what God seems unwilling to do. He bypasses his wife and turns to her maid for a baby. (Genesis 16:1-3) Years later, the Lord yet again reaffirms his promise to Abraham and declares that Sarah would conceive. Abraham laughs. He is sure his wife has more potential as an Egyptian mummy than as a Hebrew one. ‘She’s too old. Just bless Ishmael,’ is the crux of his reply. (Genesis 17:17-18) Yet the Lord persists. One more time our hero gropes for that slippery fish called faith. Before long, he is again passing off Sarah as his sister, showing more faith in his powers of deception than in God’s integrity. This time it is King Abimelech who almost has a go at impregnating Sarah. (Genesis 20:2-3) Just weeks later, (assuming Genesis 18:10 to 21:2 are in chronological order) she conceived Abraham’s baby. Faith is not a non-stop flight above reality; it’s a fight. What distinguishes people of faith is not how rarely they hit the dirt, but how often they get up again. To be perpetually positive is impossible. The mere attempt embroils us in prayer battles and Abrahamic effort. The enemy often flees to his corner, only to prepare for the next round. You might even have climbed out of the ring, but the reward for getting back in exceeds anything anyone could offer. You have faith – maybe not as strong as you would like, but you have it. And Jesus taught that as you use what you have, God will give you more. (Luke 16:10; Matthew 25:21) If we had to become perfect (whether you define that as having absolute faith, giving up every sin, being absolutely sincere, or whatever) no one could ever be saved. If it were necessary for us to get our act perfectly together in order for us to be saved, it would mean God is so pathetic that he needs our help to save ourselves. You are not asked to believe you are good or lovable or dependable. You just have to believe that God is good and lovable and dependable. Faith sufficient to receive God’s blessings is fully within your grasp. So we come back to our million dollars example. ( In Part One ) All that the Deceiver can do is try convincing you that you are just as spiritually poor as you were before you asked forgiveness through Jesus. He’ll try putting thoughts and doubts into your mind to get you to throw away as worthless, God’s ‘million dollar check.’ He’ll try to say that God is not true to his word – that although the unchanging Lord promised spiritual riches to all who come to him through the sacrificial death of Jesus, it’s a lie. The Evil One might be more subtle and try to persuade you that you are not calling God a liar, you simply think you are not good enough. But this is just his trickery because God guarantees that whoever (no exceptions) asks forgiveness through Jesus will be forgiven and inherit all of God’s riches. (John 3:16; 1 Timothy 1:15-16; Romans 5:10; 8:32; 1 John 4:10 etc) Either that includes you, or God is a liar. Easier for some? Some people have a bigger struggle in receiving assurance of God’s favor upon them and yet these are the very people who usually end up receiving a bigger than normal blessing. I guess you have heard of John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim’s Progress, one of the most published books of all time. John Bunyan’s spiritual torment was horrific. For years this poor man lived in inconsolable agony, convinced he was going to hell and he could find no way out of his spiritual dilemma. With a severity that few of us could even conceive, year after year he was repeatedly overwhelmed by sin, hopelessness and the seemingly certain prospect of an eternity in Hell. Not only did he finally get all he had been yearning for, it was largely this experience that formed the book that has touched and brought spiritual help to multiplied millions. No wonder Pilgrim’s Progress is such an outstandingly powerful book, impacting people over the centuries and around the world in a phenomenal way. Much of it was virtually autobiographical. Great men like George Whitefield and John and Charles Wesley also suffered enormously in their struggle to find salvation. Whitefield’s spiritual need was so all-consuming that his fastings almost killed him. John and Charles were inconsolable until at long last they found salvation. Spurgeon suffered so greatly in his quest for salvation that he wrote, ‘I had rather pass through seven years of the most languishing sickness, than I would ever again pass through the terrible discovery of the evil of sin.’ Not surprisingly, their subsequent ministries eclipsed that of almost all Christians who have been spared such anguish of soul. So I believe the greater your present struggle, the more likely it is that you are headed for an exceptional spiritual adventure. The positive side of doubt A woman who was plagued with doubts e-mailed my ministry partner. Helen Hall’s reply was so good that I must share it with you: When we are hit hard by life’s negative experiences – death, divorce, unemployment, rebellious children – we can all find ourselves questioning God’s existence, or mercy, or love, or ability or willingness to help. But you are approaching this in the right way – by bringing your doubts out into the open. Babies don’t ask questions. They just accept everything around them quite happily, unless they are uncomfortable. But 4 year olds are totally different! They ask endless questions. How? When? Where? Why? Who? They have become more mentally aware of the world around them, and they are trying to make sense of it all, and understand how it all fits together. If they ask “Why did you do that, Mommy?” it isn’t that they are doubting their mother’s love or wisdom. They are just trying to understand how her actions fit into the general scheme of things. They are on a steep learning curve. And, spiritually, you are on a steep learning curve. So were the disciples. Christ said to them at the Last Supper (John 16:12) “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” It is possible that these doubts that arise in you from time to time are an indication that the Holy Spirit knows you are now ready to grow a little more. Currently you are experiencing ‘growing pains,’ but your faith will be all the stronger for it! Yesterday I was reading Matthew 9:18-26: (18) While He spoke these things to them, behold, a ruler came and worshiped Him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay Your hand on her and she will live.” (19) So Jesus arose and followed him, and so did His disciples. . . . (23) When Jesus came into the ruler’s house, and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd wailing, (24) He said to them, “Make room, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping.” And they ridiculed Him. (25) But when the crowd was put outside, He went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose. (26) And the report of this went out into all that land.” My attention was particularly caught by “the noisy crowd wailing, . . . And they ridiculed Him. But when the crowd was put outside, He went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose.” (NKJV) The crowd were right! They had to be right. They were official mourners. They could recognize death when they saw it! The girl was definitely beyond help. And so they ridiculed Christ’s words. They were never more wrong! This was certainly a case where “seeing is believing” didn’t work! And then I looked at, “But when the crowd was put outside.” What an odd way to put it! Why “was put outside,” not “had gone outside”? I examined the Greek word for “put outside.” It means to eject, cast out, expel! The Bible uses this same word when it talks about Jesus casting out evil spirits! So I now see my doubts as being like that noisy, clamorous crowd, who, trusting in the evidence of their own eyes, were so sure they were right – and were so seriously wrong! And now I grab my doubts by the scruff of the neck and throw them out. Should you believe your senses? * A scientist says earth hurls through space at great speed; t o you it seems motionless. * A doctor says a mark on your body is cancer; to you it feels harmless. * An electrician says a wire is dangerously live; to you it looks dead. * A mechanic says your car needs oil immediately; you don’t think it’s necessary. * A soldier says an area is sown with land-mines; you can’t see any. Who should you believe: your senses, or the expert? * Jesus says ‘if anyone loves me . . . my Father will love him and we will make our home with him’ (John 14:23); you feel empty. * God says how often I would have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings (Matthew 23:37); you feel God is unfeeling. * God says nothing can separate you from the love of God (Romans 8:35-39); you feel something going wrong proves God no longer loves you. * God says rejoice in the Lord always (Philippians 4:4); you feel there’s nothing to rejoice in. * God says be not surprised at the painful trial you are suffering (1 Peter 4:12), we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom (Acts 14:22); you feel surprised. * God says, he was bruised and wounded for you (Isaiah 53:5); you wonder if he loves you. * God says your sins will be wiped out (Acts 3:9) and he will remember them no more (Isaiah 43:25; Hebrews 8:12); you feel he is holding the past against you. Truth versus Emotion * God says his will is good, and perfect (Romans 12:2); you feel you could improve on it. * God says all things work together for good to them that love God (Romans 8:28); you seem to stagger from one disaster to another. * God says he upholds the universe by his mighty word of power (Hebrews 1:3); you feel he is not dependable. * God says he is no respector of persons; you feel he has favorites. * God says ‘whoever comes to me I will in no way cast out’ (John 6:37); you feel rejected. * God says ‘you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm’ (Ephesians 1:3); you feel spiritually bankrupt. * God says our light momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all (2 Corinthians 4:17); you feel it’s not worth it. * God says there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1); you feel condemned. * God says ‘I will never leave you or forsake you’ (Hebrews 13:5); you feel forsaken. * God says you are more than a conqueror (Romans 8:37); you feel a weakling. * God says the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5); you feel devoid of love. * God says through Jesus you are the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21); you feel unclean. * God says a person’s folly ruins his affairs and then he resents God for it (Proverbs 19:3); you feel God is to blame. * God says he who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6); you feel like your spiritual life has fizzled. * God says weeping may endure for a night joy comes in the morning (Psalms 30:5); your pain feels endless. * God says we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance . . . and does not disappoint (Romans 3:5); you feel your suffering is useless. Who do you believe: your senses, or the Expert? Climax If your spiritual enemy knows you will be thrown by what happens to you, he can twist you around his little finger just by giving you a hard time. You are inviting him to attack because he knows it will keep you from trusting the Lord, who alone can defeat Satan. For as long as you look to feelings and circumstances to verify spiritual truth, you will be a weak Christian. But you can be a powerful spiritual conqueror by stubbornly clinging to the fact that the God who cannot lie is steadfastly devoted to you. Refuse to entertain any other thought. By having that resolve you have defeated the devil. He knows it doesn’t matter what he hits you with, you will cling to God, your strength, so he has less incentive to bother. Faith – believing in the integrity of God despite what things seem – is the basis of the entire Christian life. Some people’s ‘greater’ faith might only be an illusion produced by them having had an easier life than mine. Nevertheless, I am sick of being immobilized by excuses. I don’t care how impossible things look, how many failures I have experienced, how spiritually dead I feel, how much the Lord appears to overlook me: God is still the God of the Bible. His Word affirms he is my God and he loves me, regardless of how abandoned, unloved and insignificant my wild imagination paints me as being. That makes spiritual success inevitable. All I need do is stop wallowing in doubt long enough to receive my rightful inheritance. So often God seems to deliberately overlook me. So often the Bible seems as dry as dust. So often I feel as if I have nothing to live for. My emotional pain seems endless. God constantly seems to favor others over me. But nothing – nothing – can change the constancy of the incomprehensible enormity of God’s love. Nothing can made God break his word. Suppose it were rumored that your marriage partner is being unfaithful. There are three things you need to know for peace of mind. Does your partner insist he or she loves you faithfully? Is your partner honest? Does he or she know what genuine love is? Once you are certain of these three things, you can dismiss all evidence to the contrary and believe in your partner’s love. God in his Word has declared his undying love for you. He’s put it in black and white for the whole world to see. Is God honest? Does he know what real love is? Then you can put aside any suggestions to the contrary and rest in his love. If salvation were by works we might have to hobble 100 miles on our knees, or some such thing, as certain misguided Indians do. To go even one mile on our knees, we would have to resist the pain and slog on with sheer determination, step after step after excruciating step. But since salvation is by faith, we should prayerfully look to Jesus and pour that degree of grit into ignoring agonizing doubts and press on relentlessly, month after month, year after year in sheer faith that God keeps his word. We long for some sort of sign or confirmation that God keeps his word. In his grace the Lord might one day give us confirmation in addition to his promise, but to refuse to believe without it is the height of impertinence because it means we think God could lie. Anyone with such a low view of God has no right to expect anything from God. We march forward not by signs or warm fuzzies but by faith; stubbornly holding on to scriptural truth even when everything within us screams against it. That’s the path to spiritual honor. P.S. My Confession For over forty years, I have ached to hear God speaking to me. I’m not a talkative person. I hate monologues. I crave two-way conversations with God. It has never happened. My unmet yearning has left me deeply disappointed, frustrated, and feeling spiritually inadequate. It’s no exaggeration to confess that I find myself reeling in torturous bewilderment over this never-ending dilemma. On the other extreme, what I don’t think has happened once in my entire life, is for my wife a daily occurrence. Every time she shares what God has told her, it is spot on, filled with divine wisdom, always perfectly consistent with Scripture, and often contains new insights she needs. The only thing stopping me from going insanely jealous, or from feeling appallingly inferior, is that my dear wife looks up to me as someone who knows God better, and walks closer to him than she does. Moreover, despite all that God tells her to the contrary, she is tormented by a whole range of feelings that are the opposite of how warmly God feels about her. My only explanation for this bizarre situation is that our neighbor’s grass always seems greener, and that trials – even those that last a lifetime – end up building into our lives strength, character and stability like nothing else could achieve. As only an infinite God could, our wonderful Lord loves everyone on this planet equally. What confuses many of us, however, is that a facet of his astonishing love is shown by him treating each of us as unique individuals. So intense is his love, that he would selflessly endure our wrath, rather than let us miss out on his best. Infinite love blended with infinite knowledge compels him to resist caving into our emotional blackmail by giving us what we have convinced ourselves that we need, at the expense of what superhuman wisdom knows will end up blessing us more. Apparently, the Omnipotent Lord somehow gets through to me what he wants me to know, but it is far too vague for my liking and leaves me feeling lonely for God. Maybe if I got what I pine for, it would go to my head, or I would lack compassion for those to whom God seems deathly quiet. All I know is that even if God’s choice for me were to grieve me for the rest of my earthly life, God’s way is always best, and I would have to be crazier than an inflatable dartboard to choose anything else. When I finally understand the Perfect One’s reason, I’ll praise him for it for all eternity, and the more I can praise him ahead of time, the better. P.P.S. A New Thought Only recently has it hit me that a biblical account I have been acutely aware of for decades hides something exciting that I had missed. It suggests that a highly significant divine revelation can come so subtly that it seems to the receiver like something he had figured out himself. When Peter first declared that Jesus was the Messiah, it meant that Peter had been supernaturally granted special revelation far beyond that of all the top theologians and spiritual leaders of the day. We all know Jesus’ response, but why did Jesus say it? Matthew 16:17 . . . Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. It would seem that until Jesus’ explanation, Peter had little or no awareness that his understanding of Jesus was not the product of human reasoning but had been a supernatural act of God, of the highest order. I put it to you that we, too, can receive profound revelation from God without realizing just how supernatural it is. Beginning of this series Webpages more powerful than this one Does God Love Me? God’s Love for You Revealed Feeling Loved by God Has God Rejected You? Also read the pages it leads to Dark Blessings Hearing the Voice of God Overcoming Temptation Keys to Spiritual Growth Life’s Mysteries Explained

Christian Therapy Anxiety is undeniably unpleasant. Regrettably, it is worsened by a senseless social stigma hanging over it. General ignorance is such that many with anxiety feel misunderstood or even looked down on by those so fortunate as to never having suffered from severe anxiety. Men can feel unduly shamed by it – as if it were somehow unmasculine to suffer certain afflictions. Christians can feel like failures, or even get mad at God, for suffering from it – as if having God as your best friend were somehow meant to make one immune from being human. Actually, anxiety is an invaluable spiritual opportunity. All of us are alarmingly vulnerable to spiritual deception until we learn to live by faith, not feelings. Like so many important things in life, there is only so much we can learn from a book. We desperately need real-life practice. Anxiety gives us a rare chance for hands-on practice in living by raw faith, when highly convincing feelings scream the opposite to spiritual reality. If you can become a concert pianist after a single thirty-minute lesson, you might quickly learn how to live by faith. For the rest of us, it makes many laborious years of practice. Anxiety is also annoyingly mysterious. Some people are anxious about specific things. Not so, for those who have generalized anxiety. Even when various triggers can be identified, however, the deeper cause can remain elusive. There are strong anecdotal pointers to there being a medical component: some form of imbalance in one’s body chemistry. Identifying the precise nature of the imbalance, however, can be exceedingly difficult. For a specific individual, it could be one of any number of possibilities. For some people it might be as simple as a mineral or vitamin deficiency (but which mineral or vitamin?). For others, it could be hormonal or something quite different. Anxiety can drive many afflictions, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), phobias, panic attacks, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). If you suffer from guilt or OCD, there’s a special version of this webpage that I suggest you now go to: Guilt, Fear, OCD: What Should a Christian Do? It is worth praying about seeing a doctor. Medical solutions often take the edge off anxiety but, even then, some of it lingers. So, medical considerations aside, when hit by anxiety what should a Christian do? Nothing. Yes, you read that right. Despite an overwhelmingly strong urge to avoid anxiety, fear it, run to someone for reassurance, beat yourself up for feeling it, fight it, or beg God to end it, the most Christ-exalting counter-attack is to do all you can to ignore it. I am acutely aware that choosing to do nothing in this situation is both exceedingly difficult and the exact opposite of what feels like the correct response. Note, however, that if doing what comes naturally were the answer, you would not be reading this; you would already be free from these attacks. You need a radically different approach – probably one you have not even considered. Regardless of how intense, prolonged and repeated those awful feelings are, it is perfectly safe to treat them as if they did not exist or had never happened. As shocking as it seems, you should view them as being of not the slightest consequence. You might have grown so used to letting anxiety alarm you, that reacting in fear whenever it comes has become a deeply ingrained, unthinking habit. And habits are hard to break. In fact, as ridiculous as it is, not being afraid can seem scary. It is time to break the cycle by choosing to act as if these unwanted feelings were not even happening. Don’t interact with them in any way. Don’t fear them, don’t be ashamed of them, or worry about them, or fight them, or ask forgiveness. Just, as much as you can, remain relaxed and unconcerned, and move on. Not only does acting in fear achieve nothing positive, it achieves less than nothing. It ramps up fear by reinforcing in one’s mind the lie that there must actually be something to be scared of. Let’s forget psychology and look at this spiritually: behind anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD and so on, is fear, which leads to ‘works’ – our own desperate attempt to save ourselves. What makes doing nothing the perfect counter-attack for Christians is that the spiritual opposite of both fear and ‘works’ is faith. Deliberately doing nothing in response to these attacks is faith in action. It is declaring to the entire spirit world that there is nothing to fear and that Jesus, not your efforts, is your Savior. Fighting the symptoms gives the illusion of helping because it can temporarily ease them. The sad truth, however, is that it actually ends up worsening them by reinforcing the unspiritual notion that you should act in fear, rather than in faith. Since fear fires the problem, you need to put out the fire. Instead, frantically fighting the symptoms – reacting as if there were something to fear – fans the fire and so inflames the problem. I once hyperventilated. It vividly illustrates why choosing to do nothing when hit by anxiety, is the ideal response. I was feeling a little unwell and began to focus on my breathing. Thinking I needed a little more air, I breathed slightly deeper. That did not seem to help, so I calmly breathed still deeper. That make me feel as if I needed even more air. I breathed even quicker and deeper. Soon I was caught in a vicious circle in which I found myself gasping for more and more air. Then my hands began to uncontrollably clench and go numb. Thinking I must be having a stroke or something, I panicked even more, which further affected my breathing. Someone with nursing experience placed a paper bag over my face (not recommended these days). Certain that I needed more air, I tried to fight her off. When it was all over, I was flabbergasted to learn that the entire incident had been fear-driven. Every part of me had seemed to be screaming that I needed more air and that I was having a medically dangerous episode. It turned out that it was not that I needed more oxygen, but that I was actually getting too much. I simply needed to calm down (not easy when so worked up) and act normally. That’s what it is like with anxiety. When in the midst of it, panicking and trying harder and harder seems the appropriate, Christ-honoring response and yet it drives a vicious circle that makes everything worse. As counter-intuitive as it seems, you actually need to do the exact opposite of what fear tells you. This is the safe, God-honoring thing to do, but it will not feel that way. Fear feels like a friend that protects you and helps you be a better person, when it is actually an insidiously cruel parasite that sucks spiritual life out of us and robs God of the glory he deserves. So reverse this. Choose to honor God by accepting that, regardless of all your turmoil, through Christ you are accepted by God. Despite this spiritual reality, anxiety causes us to panic and continually focus on a molehill until it looms in our mind as enormous as a mountain. So honor God by doing the opposite. Let even the molehill shrink to nothing by disregarding it. Anxiety is just a feeling until we start fearing and obeying it. Then we let it become a life-controlling problem. We expect that by yielding to it we are making life easier on ourselves. Nothing could end up further from the truth. To yield to anxiety is to empower it. Each time we obey its demands, it grows stronger and we grow weaker. Anxiety is like having the most annoying itch that incessantly demands to be scratched. If, despite that intense urge, you leave it alone, it will eventually calm down. Give into its demands, however, and do what feels like the natural thing to do – scratch it – and you will feel temporary relief but the itch will soon return even stronger than before. With eczema, for example, scratching can even cause infection. Enduring that irritating itch and refusing to scratch it, is agonizing and feels so unnatural, but it is the only way to stop it from getting worse than ever. This is the dilemma you face: will you do what feels natural and give the anxiety the attention it seems to demand, or will you trust that God can handle it? Will you act out that faith by deliberately doing nothing, despite the infuriatingly strong urge to believe the anxiety, or to fight it, or whatever you have been doing? Will you put your faith in Jesus or in your own efforts? Will you, by faith, accept that what seems to you a terrifyingly enormous mountain is nothing because of your almighty Savior? Or will you act as if he is pathetically weak and needs you to sweat, struggle and strive? You cannot stop fear from taunting you but you can stop yourself from doing what it says. It is not your choice whether fear follows you wherever you go but it is your choice whether you turn around and follow it, making it your god by doing whatever it screams. What fear does is up to fear, but what you do is up to you. The goal is not to try to stop anxiety but to disobey it. Don’t wait for anxiety to stop bothering you before deciding to no longer let it control your actions – you would be waiting forever if you chose that path. Instead, press on regardless of its presence. Let fear roar. It’s a clawless, toothless tiger. Despite every appearance of being ferocious, it is merely a feeling. It is harmless. The only way it can hurt you is if you give into it by doing what it says. To let fear order you around is to needlessly let a mere feeling become a life-controlling tyrant. None of us want to dethrone God in our lives and replace him with fear as our source of truth (the one we believe) and the one we obey. Nevertheless, it’s a hole we easily fall into. Thankfully, reversing this catastrophe can happen in an instant – just like at any moment an alcoholic can say no to a drink. What is difficult, however, is keeping fear off the throne – just like it is exceedingly hard for an alcoholic to keep saying no, day after day. Whether it is an addiction to obeying fear or to obeying the urge to drink, the first week or so is the hardest. Thereafter, however, occasionally the temptation to revert to old ways will again be agonizingly intense. That’s just the nature of a past addiction. Hold out during these times and life will get better and better. To squander one’s energy on trying to fight anxiety would be like an athlete in the midst of a marathon race continually running off course to scold random people for not applauding you. Focus your efforts on the real enemy: being intimidated by fear. The real battle is won by refusing to let fear bully you into obeying it, and by believing that through Jesus you have already won. That’s challenging when obeying fear has become a way of life. Nevertheless, you can do it. If you are on a journey, it is easier on yourself if you never slip and fall. Ultimately, however, what matters is not how often you slip up, but how often you get up. No matter how hard it might seem, if you get up each time and keep going, you will make it. Micah 7:8 Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. . . . Proverbs 24:16 for though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again . . . A righteous person? That’s you because of Jesus. Consolidation & Beyond This webpage has been about the power of doing nothing. Rather than moving on from this theme, the next page will move us closer to it. Having no kinship with escapism, we will discover that doing nothing is actually doing something profound: it is facing head-on the reality of our smallness and God’s greatness; our powerlessness to achieve anything of eternal worth and our utter dependence upon the Eternal Lord. It is letting our incompetence be swallowed up by his competence. In contrast, escapism is distracting oneself in the rat race of frantic activity; it is getting giddy and so high on the adrenaline rush of desperately running around in dizzy circles that we fall prey to the delusion that we can save ourselves. The next page is about ensuring that doing nothing is not cold, tense emptiness – a place where anxiety could grow – but filled with warm contentment. And, even more powerful and fulfilling, letting God fill it with himself. If delighting God by doing nothing is a startling concept for you, now might be a good time to pause. First, bookmark this page, or record the web address, so that you can return to it when you are ready for more. Then, by all means, take a break but, if possible, before getting distracted by other things, let the insights so far discovered settle deeper into your heart right now by taking time to ponder and review them. That’s like adding cement to a carefully constructed sandcastle so that all your efforts are not lost by the incoming tide.