Forgiveness

Clothe yourselves therefore, as God’s own chosen ones (His own picked representatives), [who are] purified and holy and well-beloved [by God Himself, by putting on behavior marked by] tenderhearted pity and mercy, kind feeling, a lowly opinion of yourselves, gentle ways, [and] patience [which is tireless and long-suffering, and has the power to endure whatever comes, with good temper]. Be gentle and forbearing with one another and, if one has a difference (a grievance or complaint) against another, readily pardoning each other; even as the Lord has [freely] forgiven you, so must you also [forgive].  ~Paul in his letter to the church in Colossae

The other morning God and I were talking about forgiveness and the dangers of unforgiveness.  There were a couple of people in my life that were brought to mind that have a tendency to hang on to unforgiveness. Many times you can see the tendrils of the root of bitterness that grows out of dormant unforgiveness, offenses are picked up without even realizing they are there and these feed that root. 

One of the key things that He was showing me was that forgiveness needs to be unconditional, just as He forgives us we need to forgive others.  When we do something and we go to Him and ask for forgiveness, He doesn’t say: “No, I’m not ready yet” or “I need to process it first” or “My feelings are still hurt so you have to wait until I feel better.”  1 John 1:9 says: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And in Romans 5:8 Paul says: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

When you look at how we were forgiven and the lack of conditions that are set upon us to receive forgiveness from Jesus, it sheds a whole new light on what it means to die to self.  We are called to demonstrate and be a reflection of His love and to pour out the same grace and mercy that poured out on us.  He demonstrated His love by dying for us on the cross so that we could enter back into relationship with Him. Sometimes, we need to set ourselves aside, are to live by faith and not be feeling.  Our feelings while valid will lie to us and keep us from doing what we are supposed to be doing.  I’m sure if Jesus let feelings be His compass when it came to forgiving, we would all be in trouble.  But imagine if He let feelings guide His ability to forgive on the day He went to the cross.  He is hanging there nailed to the cross beaten and bloody and the guy hanging next to Him recognizes Him for who He is and asks to be remembered when He gets to His Kingdom.  Jesus didn’t say “you know I have had a really bad day today, they took My clothes, pushed this crown of thorns down into My head, beat Me and nailed Me to this cross.  I really don’t feel like forgiving you for your sins right now, I think I’ve had enough for one day.”  Instead He turns to him and says “Surely this day you will be with Me in paradise.”   Jesus didn’t say: “I need to heal some first, you know you are part of the reason I’m hanging here, or I think you need to suffer in your guilt for a while.” He said, “I forgive you.”

I think that one of the things God was showing me in this is that forgiveness and healing are two separate processes.  Forgiveness is not dependent on healing; however, healing is fully dependent on forgiveness.  Forgiveness is a key to release healing, sometimes miraculous healing, but definitely complete healing.

Some say that “time heals all wounds”, in fact I used to say that too.  But I don’t really think that is true anymore.  I do believe that sometimes healing can take some time to complete and that with time pain subsides making it easier to get through the healing process.

But when we leave wounds unattended or un-dealt with then what we usually end up with is an ugly mass of scar tissue.  This scar tissue gives the appearance of healing that happened, but the underlying wound starts getting infected and festers.  This wounded area becomes tender and sensitive, sometimes when its touched it causes you to lash out because the pain returns and the memory invoked brings you back to the original time of being wounded.  What happens is this underlying gunk will eventually want to find its way out. Sometimes that manifests itself in something ugly like cancer or some other life stealing disease.

I have an example of this; a few years back I was working with wood and got a pretty nasty sliver in my hand.  I dug in and got what I thought was the entire sliver.  After some time the areas healed and I didn’t think about it much, but every once in a while I would hit that area on something and it would hurt a little. Being the tough guy I never really wanted to address what was causing the pain just kept going knowing it would stop soon.  After a few months, I had a growth start on my hand it looked kind of like a wart.  I figured that was the source of the discomfort having forgotten about the sliver.  Again being a guy as this thing kept growing and becoming more obnoxious I started digging at it with my knife to see if I could get rid of it.  Then I noticed at the center there was something that looked different than the skin around it so I started to squeeze and out popped a chunk of wood and a bunch of pus.  I proceeded to properly clean the wound and now you can’t even see a scar where it happened.  I had come to realize that my body knew that chunk of wood didn’t belong in my hand and since I hadn’t dealt with it properly, it rejected it and forced it to the surface.

That’s what happens with us when we allow offenses, hurt feelings and unforgiveness to lay dormant in us.  It starts to fester and our spirit knows it isn’t supposed to be there and will do things to bring it to the surface, but usually don’t want to deal with it so we let more scar tissue build up.  Then it crops up as something else, and many times the source of it is never found, because we spend so much time trying to find physical means to bring healing to spiritual wounds.

There are two main keys to getting healed:

1.       Forgiveness – Remembering that we don’t forgive out of feeling, we do it out of obedience following the example and model that Jesus gave us.

2.       Being open and vulnerable to the Holy Spirit. We need to allow the Great Physician to come in and do His job.  We need to let Him do whatever needs to be done to bring about complete healing.  Sometimes with old wounds that can be painful.  It can involve cutting away the old scar tissue or dead skin, maybe re-breaking a bone to have it set properly and made functional again. Sometimes in this process He will use other people to help, guide and support you.  But the deepest cleaning happens when you let Him go as deep as He needs to go to get at the root, to bring complete and total healing.

Who's the Judge anyway?

I had a vision while I was reading a book called “TheUltimate Treasure Hunt”, by Kevin Dedmon.   The author was talking about how Jesus came to serve (minister) and to provide forgiveness and healing.  In the vision I was preaching to a crowd, not sure where.  I was admonishing the church, telling them that they needed to love the prostitutes, and that the gay and lesbian communities needed to be reached with love.  As I was sharing I got the sense that the people in the crowd were getting angry and offended at what I was saying.

Then I saw a picture of the church setting up its own throne and judgment seat in front of Jesus.  The judgments that came from the fake throne were spoken from a spirit of religion and provoked hatred, a spirit of fear was the driving force behind the whole thing.  The throne was situated so that anyone that tried to enter The Throne Room was blocked by the fake throne and people were denied access to Jesus.   I then saw Jesus on His Throne and he was grieved by the false throne and that no one was making it to Him and He wept.

In 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 the Apostle Paul is giving instruction on immorality, the people in the church were turning their judgment to those outside of the church, yet Paul’s focus was inside the church.

9 I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. 10 Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.

In verse 11 Paul explains that anyone that is named brother, in other words anyone that is a part of the church, that participates in these things that you should not have fellowship with them, in fact he says to not even eat with them.  In my opinion this would be reserved only those that persist in this behavior not first time offenders, I think ultimately we should work toward restoration.  Paul lays this out to protect the people from being drawn into the same behavior.

¹² For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside?

Paul says that it isn’t even his job to judge what is outside the church, but we do have responsibility to judge what it is in the church.

¹³ But those who are outside God judges….

In Matthew 28:19 Jesus instructs us:  Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

And in Mark 16:15-16: And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.

We cannot “Go make disciples of all nations” or “Go into the all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” if we are sitting in judgment of those we are called to reach.  We are called to demonstrate His love not judgment.

Ephesians 2:4-5 (AMP): But God--so rich is He in His mercy! Because of and in order to satisfy the great and wonderful and intense love with which He loved us, Even when we were dead (slain) by [our own] shortcomings and trespasses, He made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ; [He gave us the very life of Christ Himself, the same new life with which He quickened Him, for] it is by grace (His favor and mercy which you did not deserve) that you are saved ([a]delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation).

We so easily forget where we came from and the love and grace that was shown to us. It is not that we need to remain strapped to our past, but we do need to have memory markers showing where we came from.  We should never forget what was granted to us.

Another thing we need to look at is our discipleship process.  This process needs to be more about helping believers develop a deep personal relationship with God.  It should be more about learning to hear God’s voice, finding your identity in Him, being quickly obedient and accepting of discipline that comes from Jesus.  It has nothing to do learning about spiritual laws, qualifying for nursery duty, guilting others into service or propagating a judgmental religious spirit.

When we look at the world outside the church too many times we have a viewpoint of it is US vs. THEM.  Which brings us down to a level below what we are called to, we forget that we are victorious and He has authority in all things.  Instead we need to look at the basics of God’s heart and why He sent Jesus for us.

John 3:16-18 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.  “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

God’s Desire: That the whole world be saved because of His love of His creation

The World’s Condition: Broken and full of sin and sickness, because of broken relationship with God caused by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

God’s Solution:  Jesus, the final sacrifice for our sins, the mender of our relationship with Abba

Church’s Condition: Creating worldly structures driven by a spirit of religion to invoke fear in the hearts of the people in the church and keeps those that need Jesus the most from being able to see Him, know Him and be able to receive His love.

God’s Solution:  A great shaking that will remove these structures from their foundations, so that their foundations will be exposed. The churches that truly have Jesus as their chief cornerstone and built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph 2:19-22), they will remain intact, but the others are going to need to do a remodel, they are going to need to go back to the basics and to do so under attack and persecution like Ezra and Nehemiah faced when they rebuilt the wall and the temple. But only those that receive a mandate from The King will be successful, the others will fall away because of the devastation that all they thought they knew and were building was exposed as a lie. It will then be up to the saints that have a strong foundation to reach out to these broken ones and bring restoration and the truth.

Jealous.... For me?

When God says He is jealous for you we need to take that out of the human context (which is what we do). In the human context jealousy is ugly and manipulative, it could be a form of covetousness. Relationally it's us as humans saying we know what's best for you but you have submit to my conditions or else I am going to pout or get angry. God's jealousy for us is different it comes from a place of pure love not tainted by manipulation or an unhealthy past. It is Him saying I love you, I created you for this relationship and when you accept anything less or let anything or anyone get in the way of this relationship, He knows that you are settling for something lower than you were created for. Remember when He is number 1 in our lives the rest has a way of falling into place especially when we enter in to relationship with others.

Freedom

And here is another:

As we push forward striving for the goal, the yoke of the world comes upon us to try and make us slow, to keep us from attaining what has already been given, and then He comes...and makes a trade gives us His yoke so we no longer need to slave, for His yoke is freedom and fullness of life and though we strive we don't have the strife...the negativity of the world that wants to hold us back has been broken off of us and now we are on the attack!!!!  

The Beginning

This is something I wrote a while back.

The Beginning
as i sit in the sunshine preparing for bed a flow of words starts to stream into my head a reminder of a gift long ago wasted a gift that was tainted with the darkness of my youth but now as the Light has burned that darkness away there's a stirring of something I thought was buried to stay...this time will be different I hear in my sprirt becasue as the flow starts the enemy will fear it he will run he will flee he can not stand against me becasue of the power of Jesus and the dominion HE has given me...His Word is a light that illuminates my path no longer do I have to suffer from the enemy's wrath...why??? do you ask ...because I have been set free at last free from my sin and free from my past as long as my focus remains on my Lord, I will move forward, forward to the goal He has set for me

The Stuff Dreams are Made of

So the other day I had a saying that kept running through my head it was “This is the stuff that dreams are made of”.  If you are a fan of old movies you may recognize this as a quote from Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, but what many don’t know is that in the movie this was actually a misquote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest; which actually says “This is the stuff that dreams are made on”. So anyway let’s get back to what was going through my head; “This is the stuff that dreams are made of”. This was followed by “your dreams grow out of the desires of your heart.” So then I think “what’s the difference between a dream and a desire, and just what is stuff?”

So… just what is stuff I guess the best way to describe stuff is that it is in fact stuff. It’s matter; it’s tangible, there is good stuff and can be bad stuff. This is what Merriam Webster Dictionary says about stuff: 1) materials, supplies, or equipment used in various activities 2) material to be manufactured, wrought, or used in construction 3) fundamental material : substance. Ultimately if it wasn’t for GOD there wouldn’t even be any stuff.  In Genesis it says that He spoke and created stuff where there was no stuff, so all stuff is GOD’s stuff.  And all of the stuff that He spoke into existence 7k-10k years ago is the basis of all the stuff we have today. When He created us He used His stuff and made us in His image, then He breathed life into His stuff.  Part of Him making us in His image is that He made us to be creative, so we have the ability to make stuff too.  There is a difference though, He gave us the ability to make stuff out of the stuff that He created, but we are not able to make stuff out of no stuff. This is one of the things that separates us from GOD. When we come together and create in unity we are more powerful and stuff has greater potential. And because of His breath in us when we speak our words have the power to affect stuff, to shape stuff, move stuff, build stuff up or tear stuff down.

Matthew 17:20 (NLT) “You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”

Next is dreams, dreams are important many times GOD will speak to us in our dreams, in his first great oration Paul reminded the people that the prophet Joel said that “old men would dream dreams”.  Sometimes dreams can be weird and make you think twice about whatever you ate the night before.  But these aren’t the dreams I’m talking about here.  I am talking about our waking dreams, the things that consume our thoughts; they are our goals, the things we want to achieve in life.  It could be where we want to live, what our careers will be, a place to go visit, a ministry idea, a relationship. Good ol’ Merriam Webster says: Dream = a: a strongly desired goal or purpose b: something that fully satisfies a wish. Many think that dreams come from the head, I disagree I say they come from the heart. Your heart contains the well spring of life that feeds your dreams and gives them life and the fulfillment brings joy. When dreams are realized and accomplished we are able to use that as a milestone or marker in our lives that we can look back upon as a testimony to how far we have come and of the things that GOD has done on our lives.  It also lends to the heritage of those that come behind us, our children and grandchildren and the generations to come.

Psalm 37:4 (NASB) Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.

Finally we get to desires; you may say dreams and desires are the same thing but I don’t believe so. Believe it or not I looked up desire on the Merriam Webster website too (do you see a pattern here?) Desire = 1) conscious impulse toward something that promises enjoyment or satisfaction in its attainment 2) Longing, Craving.  To me desires speak of passion and the development of a fierceness that drives you to attain your dreams, especially the dreams that come from the deep places of your heart. Your desires are stirred up in your heart, we then realize these desires and in their realization stuff starts being formed this stuff is the basis for our dreams.  In our creative abilities we take this stuff that is being formed and we speak life into it, we declare its existence and its outcome.  Our desires give us the passion to speak the stuff of our dreams into something that we can obtain.

Prospero:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

Saul’s Conversion and Hearing God

Acts 9: Saul’s Conversion and Hearing God

During my journey through the Book of Acts I read through Chapter 9 a couple of weeks ago, I thought that I had posted this blog already but after talking with my friend Tony I discovered I missed it. So here it is.

The first part of this chapter deals with Saul and his conversion experience. While the conversion is important there are some other things that really stood out to me.  One of them is the difference in how God spoke to both Saul and Ananias, and their subsequent reactions. The other is how God used this situation to change Saul’s vision and perspective.

Acts 9:3 As he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven.

·         There was something significant about the light. During those days people didn’t normally travel at night, this means that when Saul and his men had this encounter with Jesus it was during the day.  The light that came from heaven was so bright that it could be seen during the light of the day.

·         It would also seem that the light had some weight to it, it carried the heaviness of God’s glory.  Evidence of this is that Saul fell to the ground because of the presence of the light.

Acts 9:4-9

Saul even though he was a Pharisee and knew the letter of Law and the Scripture, did not immediately recognize the voice of the Lord. Even though he was knocked to the ground under the heaviness of God’s glory the recognition still wasn’t there. But when Jesus spoke and identified Himself, Saul did not question Him as He knew it was Him. Then Jesus set Saul up for some changes.

·         Jesus questioned Saul’s mission

·         Jesus identified Himself and expressed His pain that was caused by what Saul was doing.

·         Saul turned his heart to the Lord’s

·         Jesus removed Saul’s vision, so that it could restored with a new vision that came from Him

In verses 10-19 we are introduced Ananias and his ministry to Saul.

Acts 9:10 Now there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and to him the Lord said in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.”

This verse shows that unlike Saul, who was a religious leader and scholar and didn’t recognize God’s voice, Ananias immediately knew Who it was that was speaking to him. This tells me that Ananias had, had previous conversations with the Lord and that he knew His voice. More evidence that Jesus and Ananias had a relationship was that Ananias questioned Him on His instructions.

Acts 9:13-14 Then Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he has done to Your saints in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.”

At some level he was saying, “Don’t You know who this guy is and what he has done? Really? You really want me to go and see this guy? Are you nuts?”

Notice that Jesus didn’t strike down or even rebuke Ananias for this questioning.  The fact is that Jesus knew exactly who He needed to talk to, to get the job done, vs. 10 said “there was a certain disciple” He knew why He picked Ananias; He knew that he would be obedient to His request.  My guess is that he had a proven track record of doing what Jesus asked him to do.  The short version of Jesus’ reply to Ananias is “I have chosen Saul to reach many and he will suffer many things for My name’s sake.” (vs.15-16) I can almost guarantee that what Ananias heard in Jesus’ reply was “I have chosen him” and “he will suffer”, regardless he was obedient and went to Saul.

Assumed Expectations: So it says in Acts 9:17 And Ananias went his way and entered the house; and laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you came, has sent me that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”  Nowhere in the recorded conversation between Jesus and Ananias do He tell him to get Saul filled with the Holy Spirit.  However this is what I like to call an assumed expectation.  It was such a normal part of the conversion experience in those days.  People accepted Christ, were filled with the Holy Spirit and baptized in water. There were no special new believer’s classes that had to be attended and sometimes all three happened simultaneously in the same day even.

So here is a re-cap of Saul’s conversion experience:

1.      He was on the right road on his way to do the wrong thing

2.      He encountered Jesus and his vision was removed

3.      He accepted Jesus

4.      He fasted and prayed for three days

5.      Ananias cam and laid hands on him

a.      He received his sight and gained new vision

b.      He was filled with the Holy Spirit

c.       He was baptized in water

6.      Shortly after his conversion he started preaching Christ instead of persecuting the Church