He's Smooth, Suave, Debonair and He Reads . . .

Distorted Motivation

The love of Christ controls me (2 Corinthians 5:14).

One day when my granddaughter, Hannah, was eleven years old she came running to Melanie, obviously upset. Here’s the conversation:

Hannah: Grandmommy, Jeremy just choked me!
Melanie: He choked you?
Hannah: Yes, look at the red mark on my neck!
Melanie: Go tell Jeremy to come here.
Melanie: Jeremy, did you choke Hannah?
Jeremy: Shakes his head yes with a guilty expression on his face.
Melanie: Jeremy, you can't choke your sister.
Jeremy: I can't go to jail until I'm thirteen.
Melanie: Jeremy, nobody has said anything about going to jail. You don't choke your sister because you love her! Do you love Hannah?
Jeremy: Nods his head yes again.
Melanie: Do you think there's anything you want to tell her?
Jeremy: I'm sorry.
Melanie: That's a good idea.
Jeremy goes into the other room and apologizes.

Yes, those are my daughter's children! Jeremy really is a kind boy and that behavior was untypical of his normal attitude. I'll admit though that his train seriously jumped the track with that incident.

It's noteworthy that the first response that popped into his seven-year-old mind was about the law and jail. The little legalist takes after his Dad's side of the family. I’m joking, of course, but the issue here is that it is the bent of the flesh to think in legalistic terms. Would it be wrong to do this or that? Would I be punished for doing it?

It’s not just Jeremy who missed the point. We all miss it at times. Our actions aren’t about right versus wrong or about punishment. The catalyst for our lives is to be love. When our lifestyle is grounded in our union with Triune Love, we live from that benchmark, not a set of rules that come with a corresponding set of rewards and punishment. We act lovingly because Love is our DNA. In Him we live (and love) and move and exist.

Love relocates the motivation for our behavior out of the realm of duty and into the realm of desire. We honor Christ in our actions because we want to, not because we have to. So many people have been abused by a religion that has taught them that they must behave in certain ways so that they’ve never been free to live a godly lifestyle. Instead, they have always been obligated to live a certain way.

Your Father’s love for you will remain the same regardless of what you do or don’t do. As long as we think that our behavior has anything to do with how He feels about us, we will never be able to rest in His love. We will always find ourselves focusing on what we’re doing, wondering if it is good enough to stay in His good favor.

The wonderful truth about His grace is that God doesn’t love you because of how good you are. He loves you because of how good He is. Your behavior may fluctuate but God’s love for you does not. His love for you will never be any greater or any less than it is at this very moment. Your Father loves you as He loves His own Son. In fact, you stand in a Circle of Love among the Members of the Trinity and the great Three-In-One embrace you as the Father, Son and Spirit embrace each other in an eternal love that will forever be steadfast and unchangeable.

The Apostle Paul said that it was the love of Christ that controlled his actions. It is important to note that he didn’t say it was his love for Christ but instead it was Christ’s love for him that regulated how he behaved. The emphasis in the modern church is about how we should love Him, but the emphasis of the New Testament is on His love for us. To reverse the two is to find ourselves in a place where we’re filled with constant spiritual fatigue from our efforts to love Him more.

Our lifestyles are to be motivated by His love for us, but how are we to grow in our love for Him? The answer is to grow in the knowledge of His love for us. As you grow in your capacity to receive His love, you will discover that love flowing out in your lifestyle in an unprecedented way.

Too many times when we misbehave, we confess and ask God to help us to love Him more, but as we grow in the knowledge of His love for us loving Him in a greater way will be the natural outgrowth. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). When we know how much we are truly loved regardless of whether our behavior is right or wrong, our motivation changes so that we become motivated internally, not externally.

So, when your own behavior jumps track at times, don't look upward to an imaginary Judge of the Universe who stands ready to send you to jail. Look into the face of Pure Love and you'll find yourself wanting to behave well on the basis of His loving attitude and actions toward you.

The Illusion of Separaton

The horrific thing that happened to humanity in the Garden of Eden was the dark illusion settling on man's mind causing Him to think that He was separated from God by sin. He became "alienated" in mind (see Col. 1:21), "dead" to His Father's love. When Jesus died on the cross and became sin for us, He cried out, "My God! My God! Why have you separated yourself from me?" Jesus, the man, became blind and in that moment identified with the blindness of mankind. He couldn't hear the answer the Father's answer is found in the Messianic Psalm 22. Verse 1: The question: "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" Verse 24: The answer: "For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted ; Nor has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard."

God did not abandon His Son on the cross. Instead, "God was *in* Christ, reconciling the world to Himself..." (2 Cor 5:19) God has NEVER forsaken Jesus nor never forsaken man. And He never will . . .

Speaking In California!

I'll be speaking in California March 24-30. For information on where the meetings will be held check out the links and contact information to get more details here:
http://www.gracewalk.org/web/pageid/47999/pages.asp

Contact information for both the Redwood Alliance Retreat and the churches where I'll speak in the San Francisco Bay area are at the link...

A Parody of Legalism

(Here's one I put online four years ago and got into trouble for, mostly from my wife, who simultaneously admires me and questions my sanity at times.)


I make no claims to being on course toward a lifetime achievement award for political correctness or even necessarily for knowing when to tell something and when to keep it to myself, but something happened yesterday with my two grandsons that illustrates a point that just has to be made. Plus, it's just plain funny - at least to a biased granddaddy who has been accused more than once of talking when it would have been a better idea just to shut up. If you're one who thinks it is uncouth or even vulgar to tell such a story, I offer you my apology in advance. Pray for me. Sometimes even I question if I have good sense.

My grandsons, Jonathan and Jeremy, were here with us while their mother went to the vet to pick up their dog, Aslan. Actually, Aslan is more like a horse. He's a Labradoodle - apparently a cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle. (You read it right.) This breed of dog is extremely friendly but is very large, not always a good combination with children in the house whose height is approximately the same as the dog. It's his friendliness that presented the problem at hand this week.

Making conversation with my grandsons and thinking the dog went for shots of some kind, I asked, "Why did Mommy have to take Aslan to the vet?" Without hesitation, seven year old Jeremy answered, "Because he is acting crazy so he had to get his manhood cut off." Eight year old Jonathan began to howl with laughter and screamed, "That IS crazy!"

"You boys had better be careful not to ever act crazy around your mother!" I heard laughingly coming out of my own mouth as if I had some sort of grandfatherly Tourette's Syndrome. Thankfully, the statement fell flat on their seven and eight year old ears. Unfortunately, the same wasn't true with Melanie who yelled my name from the kitchen in a way that, after 35 years, I've come to recognize means that my own life may be in peril.

Poor Aslan. I thought from the beginning that a Shetland Pony would have made a better pet if my daughter and son-in-law were bound and determined to buy a gargantuan pet for their kids. But I'm not sure he deserved to be made a lifelong eunuch. Surely there must have been some way to teach him to behave without going to that extreme.

The application? My daughter was the legalist in this story and the veterinarian was the exacting hand of stern religion. Aslan is anybody in the world of dead religion who has the gall to live unashamedly, acting like who we are without inhibition. Live free and there are always those out there who'll try to make a eunuch out of you. Avoid these people at all costs. Veterinarian Community Church may look like a pretty place from the outside, but if you're not careful they'll take away your spiritual manhood and leave you singing soprano in the church choir.

A Hyperactive Mind

A hyperactive mind can be a distraction from our daily grace walk. Some people can’t even sleep well at night because of all the thoughts running through their minds. They’re thinking about all that happened during the day; thinking about their plans for tomorrow; thinking about children, finances, past mistakes, future plans. Some even have imaginary conversations with people, picturing what they’ll say if this happens or if that happens. Sometimes they even rehearse conversations of the day thinking about what they should have said. Thinking, thinking, thinking!

Do you sometimes find yourself in a similar situation? It’s not uncommon. Jesus even told His disciples on more than one occasion, “Take no thought.” His instructions literally meant, “Don’t take on the least bit of anxiety.” Nothing drives away our sense of peace more than over -thinking things.

You aren’t helpless over the thoughts that may bombard your mind. The Bible tells us to bring every thought under the control of Christ. (See 2 Corinthians 10:5) A busy mind can be the result of divided loyalties. It is important to nurture yourself with the constant affirmation and realization of your Father’s love and care in every area of life. Relentless reasoning about our circumstances is an independent way of trying to understand how to control our own lives and we weren’t created to live independently. Your Father’s intent is that you learn to live in dependence on Him.

The mind must be brought in subjection to Him at each moment. While it may not be possible for you to silence thoughts that flood your mind at times, you can consciously submit the thoughts to Him. As you grow in His grace and develop the habit of submitting a hyperactive mind to Him, He will bring growth to you and you’ll find rest for a busy mind while you increasingly learn about continuously giving the details of life to Him.

There will always be outside influences that seek to invade your thoughts and shift your focus away from Christ. When your mind runs wild, simply submit it all to Him. It’s a choice you make. Some things in life you just aren’t going to be able to think your way through so you might as well save yourself the stress by simply trusting your way through them. We want answers now, but answers don’t always come when we want. Learning that fact can bring tremendous peace to your life.
Eventually, everything will be answered. Until that time comes, rest in His goodness and grace. He will work it all out. Just trust Him and relax.

(This blog is an excerpt from "The Grace Walk Devotional" to be released by Harvest House Publishers next year.)

To my "Exchanged Life" friends who are wondering. . .

A recent paper has circulated among my friends that sets forth the viewpoint of a couple of people whose view is against the Trinitarianism perspective held by a growing number of us who love grace and teach others.

The paper lacks any serious academic honesty since all it does is to build a straw man and then proceed to tear that argument down. What it does would be like me doing this if I wanted to attack "the exchanged life perspective," which of course I do not:

"The following facts have come from my conversations with leading teachers who teach "the exchanged life.

1. Exchanged life teachers teach that we don't have to live by the rules of Scripture anymore, but are free to do whatever we want.
2. Exchanged life teachers teach that we can sin all we want and still be righteous in God's eyes because of Jesus.
3. Exchanged life teachers teach that we are under no obligation to read our Bibles, pray, go to church or anything else that we've been told Christians should do.
4. Exchanged life teachers teach that we don't have to try to do our best to live for God anymore.
5. Exchanged life teachers teach that all our sins have been forgiven, so we are free to commit any sin and know that it's already forgiven even before we do it. We don't even have to ask God to forgive it."

Are these really what exchanged life teachers share? Yes, of course. But to list these things without properly showing the context in which they are taught and without offering the Scriptural context for such "raw" statements would be intellectually misleading and lack the basic scholastic integrity normally assumed within a serious discussion and debate.

There are verses that clearly substantiate the validity of all five of the statements listed above as being the truth, when properly understood but if they are omitted and instead verses that seem to contradict the five points above are set forth, it would be easy to "prove" that exchanged life teachers are teaching false doctrine, maybe even heresy!

For instance:

"Work out your own salvation, with fear and trembling."
"Be steadfast, immovable, ALWAYS abounding in the work of the Lord."
"If you love me, you will keep my commandments."
"Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed."
"Pray without ceasing."
"Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together..."
"IF we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us..."

The list of verses that could be wrongly presented to contradict the message of exchanged life teachers could go on and on and on, but what does that prove? If a paper like the one on Trinitarianism was written against the exchanged life viewpoint, using their same questionable and highly biased tactics they would cry "foul!" in a heartbeat, and rightly so.

The Trinitarian viewpoint is Scriptural and can be demonstrated to be a viable option to those who are willing to consider it with an open mind. But, as the article against Trinitarianism demonstrates and as the short example I've given above shows, any viewpoint can seem to be untrue if "evidence" that seems to refute it is the only information given and the evidence for why some serious Bible students believe that viewpoint is intentionally left out. That's especially true when we study to prove why we are right and somebody else is wrong instead of coming from a starting place of an open heart and mind with a willingness not to vilify but instead to show loving respect toward those with whom we have differences.

That's why people need to study for themselves and not take the word of any "expert." We have the Holy Spirit and He is The Teacher who will guide us into all truth. So don't fall into the trap of signing-off on something just because somebody else tells you it's right. Let the Holy Spirit and the Scripture be your guide.