Impossible Living

Brotherhood

2009-08-04T08:54:00.006+10:00

Introduction

It is a poorly kept secret that I have, for some considerable time, viewed “men’s ministry” with somewhat of a jaded eye. I have not been greatly inclined to engage in breakfasts, lunch meetings or studies supposedly targeted towards making better Christian men - and for a very good reason. They are for the most part an ineffective event. By that I don’t mean that what is being talked about at these meetings is necessarily bad or incorrect (although I do reserve the right to use the word “tedious”), nor do I suggest for a single moment that there is not at least a modicum of benefit from Christian men gathering to have fellowship with one another. But if one were to measure the usefulness and/or effectiveness of the ministry in terms of developing spiritual maturity and lasting benefit to either the men involved or the church in general, you might be enticed to draw a similar conclusion to that which I have so boldly stated.

My view is that men’s ministry cannot be a special monthly event, or a weekly program – it is potentially even more than the more intense activity of discipleship. I think that men’s ministry is a “cultural” thing, and the development of men in the church requires “cultural change” – it has to be ingrained into the very nature of our church. It is a committed push towards developing true spiritual men (i.e. men that are full of and controlled by the Spirit of God).

If there was a true commitment to seeing men act as true men of God, and were being trained from their youth to develop strong spiritual character, the church would be defined by characteristics such as strength, purpose, effect, stability, authority and integrity. These characteristics would be manifested through the men in the church – setting an example to follow. If you agree with me on this proposal, then it follows that we as men have an obligation to lead but not as authoritarians - as a group of men that takes responsibility.

That said, and despite what appears to be the overt cynicism that I initially brought to the subject, I have begun to see that there is some benefit in a form of men’s ministry, but it takes a form that is considerably different to that which has traditionally been touted.
It is to that end that I write this discussion paper on the concept of men’s ministry built around the philosophy of what I will for the moment term “brotherhood”, and why this could potentially provide the impetus (or at least a genesis) for creating effective men’s ministry.

Disclaimer

Much of what I have written may give the appearance that I am being overtly critical of the church in general. However I do not write from a position of strength – rather, I write with a sober realisation of my own shortcomings with respect to the standards and demands that God has established. Any criticism is first and foremost directed at myself, and I certainly in a poor position to “pass judgement” on no one.

Biblical basis

A little background is in order so you get a feel for why I started writing about this subject…and perhaps the circuitous route that I’ve taken. The background is important – it might help to explain why I have seen this subject as important, and perhaps some of the questions that arose in my mind as I studied it.

I had for some time been looking into the ministry gifts, which Paul defines in Ephesians and again in 1 Corinthians. The ministry gifts are referred to in other areas as well but these are the major sections. These gifts include pastors, teachers, evangelists, prophets and apostles. This is all good stuff, and clearly necessary for the church to grow (according to Paul, who laid it out for the Ephesians).

As you can see from the attached graphic, there is quite a range of ministry gifts – and each has a particular purpose. These ministry gifts will, in the future, prove to be the “anchor points” for the church (more on that later).

Ephesians seemed to be a good place to start when thinking about how to develop a strong church. Paul writes that the people fulfilling these ministries are there to create a specific effect – let me spell it out in terms of how the bible refers to them:

The work these ministry gifts accomplish results in the perfecting and the full equipping of God’s people (i.e. the aim is for us to reach the full level of maturity that God has for us individually and corporately)
God’s people then do the work of ministering toward building up Christ's body (i.e. we have the responsibility to bring about this level of maturity that God has planned for the church)
As they do this, the church develops until we all attain oneness in the faith and in the comprehension of the knowledge of the Son of God (i.e. we move from being bound together by physical factors and start to be interconnected spiritual beings – connected to one another and with God)
This results in us achieving really mature manhood - completeness of our spiritual personality

The language that Paul uses when talking about these gifts may sound a bit “spiritual” but there is some real practicality contained in these words that needs to be teased out. Stay with me!

I have had ongoing debates with various friends about the potential for us to become perfect here on earth – I won’t burden you with that discussion (but it rages on, much to my delight). Sufficed to say though that Paul is talking about a capacity for the church to build up to a point where we can achieve what he terms “really mature manhood”.

It’s this concept that led me to conclude that, unless the ministry gifts are operating effectively, we as a church are not going anywhere! Unless we have true pastors, teachers, etc operating in the church and doing their job, we are going to see the opposite of what Paul was talking about. A church without the ministry gifts is a church characterised by ill-equipped saints, who have no capacity and potentially no interest in ministering to and building up the church. There will be division in the church (a lack of “oneness in the faith”) characterised by opposing views and potentially outright conflict. The church will in effect be a collection of children, not exhibiting the real maturity of which Paul speaks.

Disturbingly, there is evidence to support the view that the church has indeed infantilised itself by failing to place appropriate focus on the ministry gifts, and I specifically use the word “appropriate”. There’s a lot of talk about these ministries, and many are lionised as being holders of these positions, yet the lawyer in me is persuaded by the strong circumstantial case that these people are either not who they say they are, or they are not fulfilling the role to which they have been called.

It’s probably more correct to say that the church has not taken the appropriate steps to initiate an environment in which people can begin to grow into these roles. Perhaps there is a lot of focus on the gifts, but no real action in the background to develop people into these roles. Part of the problem we have experienced to date has been that there is a focus on fitting people into ministry roles without the precursor steps of growing people in their capacity to take on responsibility.

One of the reasons that I think that this subject is so important is that we are at somewhat of a watershed moment in the history of the church. I am convinced that God wishes to see the model that He revealed through Paul brought to life. This is going to require some pioneering work, and perhaps even a few mistakes, but it is to that end that I think that this discussion about brotherhood has some merit – it creates the environment for bringing these ministry gifts into being, and the “hard men” that are ready to step into the roles.

Hidden dangers

This paper is not a discussion on how the ministry gifts operate, but I do want to point out a particular aspect of the gifts of which we should perhaps be aware.

There is great power and authority to attaches to these ministries. Like nuclear power they have great potential for good, whilst at the same time they can have a devastating effect if not undertaken with care and circumspection. An incredible level of responsibility attaches to the ministry gifts – probably more so than is generally spoken of.

There is a specific order to the gifts, starting with those that speak in unknown tongues, moving all the way up to the apostles. Each carries with it a level of power, responsibility, and authority. As one moves up the hierarchy of gifts, we see increasing levels of authority, but contemporaneously the level of responsibility changes. For instance, administrators attract a relatively low (but in no way insignificant) level of responsibility, and apostles attract the highest level of responsibility.

What I am suggesting is that one of the reasons that some of the gifts are not being seen is because God is still looking for people whom He can trust, who will act selflessly, and who understand the spiritual concept of “taking responsibility”.

I would venture to say that we see, in some quarters, the role of the teacher being undertaken. It is interesting to note that Paul said that the church of his time did not lack for teachers – back in his time (and I suspect in today’s age) plenty of people would take on that level of responsibility, and exhibit sufficient spiritual maturity to be entrusted with that position. However, the greater roles require a level of commitment and I suspect God finds it increasingly difficult to identify people who can take on those roles. It is as if there is a “ministry threshold” that exists.

Paul creates a dilemma for us – whilst proposing that we need these high responsibility ministry gifts operating in the church, he also says that we should be very careful about aspiring to those ministries. With responsibility, authority and power comes accountability and a requirement to meet a higher standard – and the potential for condemnation and severe repercussions for failure.

Yet it remains that, without having each of these ministry gifts working together, we have a church akin to a high performance engine with some critical components removed. The potential for remarkable performance exists, yet this will never be achieved whilst we’ve only got half the engine operating.

The “shape” of the curve on the graph is important – you’ll note that responsibility/selflessness are not directly proportional to power/authority. I don’t at this time propose that my reasoning is entirely correct, but at least intuitively I suspect that our level of selflessness needs to grow at a faster rate in comparison to the power and authority that would accompany us. Why? Primarily because of the inherent risks that attach to receiving God’s power – and there are risks. I said previously that we are talking about power and authority here that is far more potent than anything that we can at this time imagine, and given our predisposition towards selfishness there is always the risk that we could allow our own desires and pride corrupt and usurp God’s work through us. Unless selflessness outstrips authority, corruption could most certainly creep in.

The Dilemma

Having been convinced that there was a requirement for these ministry gifts, and that God needs these ministry gifts to be operating effectively before anything else can really progress, I then began to wonder why we don’t see people fulfilling these functions. Let me be more specific (and put the pressure back on myself for a moment) – why do I have such limited “drive” to meet the requirements of responsibility and selflessness to be positioned for higher levels of ministry (forgetting the labels for the moment).

I’m working from what I believe to be the strong premise that God is ready, willing, and able to create some rather remarkable and amazing things happen in our lifetimes. His nature is inherently creative and imaginative, and if we mix that with what we have learned of His desire to have a close relationship with us, these things combine with the potential for staggering results.

What I’m proposing (and I reiterate that these are proposals only) is that God’s capacity to do all these remarkable things is stymied by one or more of these three things:

The lack of need for these roles to be filled right at this time; and/or
The lack of people willing to step up into these roles; and/or
The failure on God’s part to appoint people to these roles.

I think that all of these options are worth considering. God may perhaps be holding off on “formally” appointing people to these roles for the very reason that people are unwilling to step up. Or maybe He doesn’t require the roles to be fulfilled right now – maybe they are designed for another time and place. Maybe it’s the case that there are people who are fulfilling these functions, but they are not recognised (or “labelled”) according to the schema proposed by Paul. Any one of these scenarios is a possibility.

I would hazard to say that were it the case that these appointments as prevalent as God intends, we would not see the dysfunctional state of the church that we now see.

One thing I do recognise though is that I have seen people appointed to these roles by the church into one of these ministry areas, only to fail to meet what are the biblical expectations of that role. People that claim to be prophets who fail to speak with authority or wisdom. Pastors that fail to take care of their congregations. Teachers who handle the Word carelessly. There has historically been a “failure to deliver” from people who supposedly have been entrusted with these ministry gifts. Sure, they’ve been willing to undertake the role, but there are question marks over whether they are truly stepping up into the role (which I’ll discuss) and more importantly there are questions surrounds whether they have actually been gifted in the ministry they so boldly undertake.

The church can only handle so much responsibility at the present time. The church “hangs” on the ministers along the curve…kind of like a curtain hangs by hooks along a curtain rail.
Given that there are a lot of missing “hooks”, what we end up with is a “sardine effect” in the church – we are all packed together down one end of the Responsibility/Authority Curve because there are no hooks to allow the church to expand outwards towards greater maturity.
The attached graphic gives an example. If the most mature level of ministry in the church is the “helper” then there is nothing for the church to “hang on” beyond that ministry gift” The result is like a shower curtain that is drawn aside and bunched up down one end of the curtain rail (the shaded area).

Now I need to make something abundantly clear here – just because we cant see people exhibiting higher gifts does not give us an excuse to maintain our current level of maturity. This whole paper is about trying to create impetus for us to “slide along” the rail and become those “hooks” that God needs. Forget the labels on the graph at the moment – God will appoint people when and where He sees fit – but the precursor is for us to create an environment where this can happen (the pioneering work I mentioned earlier).

When we start to talk about building God’s kingdom, what we are talking about an environment where we have God’s power and authority evident, which requires all the “offices of government” to be assigned. All of the hooks are available for the kingdom to hang together.

Stepping up

I think that the genesis of the problem we are seeing in the church stems from this failure to step up, and so it’s worthwhile looking at what this actually means, particularly since I am placing the responsibility for this problem back on the men of the church, and thus the need for men’s ministry to be geared towards this little problem.
I need to take a short detour here for moment to talk about the concept of love, with a view to setting the scene for some more “tough stuff”.

Don’t zone out of me, OK? One of the problems that I have had when people start to talk about God’s love, or God being love, is that it tends to go straight through me. I totally agree that “God is love” – I’ve all been taught this since forever. However, what this phrase actually means and implies necessitates a far greater understanding of God’s character – the concept of love is an incredibly large and complex subject. Sadly, it has become a “throw away line” that has lost significance…probably due in part to the fact that our concept of love has become rather tainted.

I don’t intend to write a huge diatribe on love – rather, I want to make particular note that one of the defining characteristics of “perfected” love is complete selflessness.

Paul gives a pretty comprehensive rundown of how love manifests and how it is characterised. It is God’s character we are talking about here – these are the character traits that God exhibits consistently, and that motivate His every thought and action. You will note that selflessness features heavily in the definition proffered by Paul. Try this as an experiment – wherever you read the word “love” in the bible, replace it with the word “selflessness” – you’ll see why I see selflessness as arguably God’s most dominant character trait.

I previously proposed that every ministry gifts requires a person to have at least some of God’s character active within them. The higher ministry gifts require a person to have adopted God’s character and values to an even greater extent.

That being the case, it could be suggested that the church is notably devoid of ministry gifts because it lacks love. This is rather bold statement to make; however you would think it likely that the church that effectively adopted God’s characteristics and values (all wrapped up under the general banner of “love”) would be a spiritually vibrant and highly influential organism (and note that I have steered away from the word “organisation”). A church that displays spiritual maturity, comprehensively exhibiting all levels of ministry.

The ministry gifts (and the spiritual gifts in general) provide a good indication on the health of the church. God ‘s gifts must be operated in love (otherwise the whole Chernobyl thing I was talking about earlier). The people that are “stepping up” are those within which God will choose to invest His gifts.

Where we as individual parts of the church are focussed on our own lives to one extent or the other, we inevitably create levels of insulation - we are separated from one another.
This is controversial in that it could be argued that we all have responsibilities in life that we need to respond to that preclude us from connecting – we simply don’t have enough time, energy or capacity to be selfless. I’ll talk about that shortly, leaning heavily on some of the things that Paul wrote about…which shows that this is not a new issue for the church!

Setting a foundation of values

I have previously written extensively about the fact that we are tripartite beings i.e. we are made up of three distinct parts – body, mind and spirit. Our body is the part of us that interacts with this physical world – pretty straightforward. Our mind contains our emotions and our attitudes…this results in the behaviours that we exhibit. It is also the part of us that contains our free will (which is another massive subject that will have to be left for another time).

Our spirit doesn’t really get a good “look in” because it seems to sit behind the scenes – we know that we have one but realistically it seems to be the “passive” element of our make-up. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth.

This could be controversial; however it is my view that it is our spirit within which our values are seated – our concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, driving the way in which we live our lives.
The main reason that I come to this conclusion is actually quite simply. God is a spiritual Being, and I would propose that God is not a Person that is driven by His emotions. He has always been motivated by His values. God’s values must be embodied within His Spirit…after all, where else could these values be contained?

As I said, values are the things that direct our attitudes and behaviours. Our values drive our attitudes. Our attitudes drive our behaviours.

It makes a certain amount of sense, doesn’t it?

OK, the reason that I am talking about this issue is that selflessness is an attitude that stems from the value of love, and I am proposing that the attitude of selflessness is key to what God wants to do in the church at the present time. To bring it back on topic, I believe that men’s ministry has become inwardly focussed, encouraging men to look at themselves and their own issues, rather than encouraging men to look outside themselves and selflessly expend themselves).

Love has connotations of being “soft” or “weak”, yet careful revision of I Corinthians 13 should modify your thinking – exhibiting the behaviours that spring from the attitudes that love creates within us requires considerable selflessness – in fact, it requires an exercise of self-control and self-discipline of great proportions. To go one step further, it requires a “hard man” to be able to manifest love the way that Paul lays it out in 1 Corinthians 13.

God’s Spirit was given to us not simply so that we had His presence with us at all times, nor did the Spirit come just so that we could have power and special gifts (and in saying all that I do not in any way seek to diminish the value of the aforementioned). One of the key purposes for the Spirit being given us to live within us was to create a “value change” – a capacity to develop and “socialise” the values of God. When we do that, our attitudes and behaviours will change. We have no capacity within ourselves to be selfless. We are predisposed towards self-preservation – it is hard-wired into our natural core.

Much more could be written here, but imagine if you will a group of men each of whom acted towards one another with selfless, putting the value and importance of their “brothers” ahead of their own. Men that were motivated by God’s Spirit at all times. What would be the outcome? How “tight” would this group of men be? This leads into the idea of “connectedness”.

How “connected” should we be?

I keep reminding you that this manifesto is about brotherhood. Brotherhood itself is part, a subset if you like, of the larger concept of Christian unity and the way in which we, as spiritual beings, need to be strongly connected to one another.

Unity is kind of a scarce commodity in church circles – factions and cliques abound. Some of the factions within the church are rather passive in nature – people with particular interests or at a particular place in life. A generalisation of course, but reasonably accurate. For instance, married couples with young families gravitate towards one another. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Similarly, young people will tend to move within their own circles, sharing similar life experiences. Again, this is not altogether a bad thing. Musicians, artists, lawyers, doctors – churches contain all the various “subcultures” that we see in society at large.

However, there is the risk of exclusivity creeping into the church. It starts small, building up over time. In fact, it becomes part of the character of the church.

It is not unusual that there are so many churches that break down or split. Satan is a patient being, and he is quite happy to let the fissures and factions build slowly. I don’t think it is Satan’s preferred option that churches break down and split apart in a spectacular fashion - a factionalised church has far greater potential for ongoing negative influence (generational influence in fact). However, I also have no doubt that Satan takes some considerable pleasure in seeing churches fall apart.

The church is cognisant at some level of the need to create unity and connectedness, and to that end we see a plethora of programs and events that are designed to connect people with one another. The issue here is not with the programs themselves – I am sure that there is much benefit to be gained – but rather that there is no true spiritual unity that underpins these programs and events.

Unity is not something “man made”, and in fact any attempt to create unity through natural means results in a house of cards, liable to fall at any time. Society is characterised by what social scientists have called “contracted relationships” – which basically refers to relationships that exists whilst the individuals involved see that there is some personal benefit in being in the relationship. I see no reason to believe that the church and its programs would not suffer from this, and indeed there are some hard questions to be asked about the large numbers of people that leave a church when they are personally dissatisfied (rather than because of God’s direction). The church is at fault in these circumstances – it is upon the church that rests the responsibility to proactively develop spiritual unity.

Unity is not a mutual thing – there is nothing “equal” about unity. It would be nice if it were mutual, because this would mean that each part of the church is contributing equally to the unity of the body. Yet this doesn’t seem to be the case, and neither does the bible suggest that we could expect this to ever happen.

The creation, development, and maintenance of unity is, by it’s very nature, against the laws of nature. Our natural tendency is towards disharmony, a proposal that many may argue with, but we see it both as a scriptural principle and in the world around us.
Because it is such a hard thing to bring about, the responsibility for unity absolutely falls to the stronger members of the body. It is incumbent upon the more mature Christians to act as the “reinforced concrete” that provides strength and flexibility to the body.

It’s a funny thing about reinforced concrete. Concrete on its own is very strong, but it suffers from being brittle and having an inability to stand up under unusual stresses and loads. Putting rods of steel through the concrete allows it to flex and take on those unusual loads.
We are in a position of strength as Christians, but unfortunately we cannot be “loaded” - we can bear our own weight (most days), but problems arise when you start loading on anything else! To carry the analogy forward, God is looking for mature “load bearing” Christians that not only have the strength of character that is required (i.e. they hold to and are driven by God’s values) but also embody the flexibility that is required (i.e. they are selfless and exhibit the full gambit of attitudes that fall out of having God’s love).

Again, I am of the opinion that this starts with men of God displaying these ideals, and this invariably will involve sacrifice. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the concept of brotherhood is heavily characterised by sacrifice – it costs us something in order to be a true brother.

It is the case that we have various rights prima facie that we could lean on if we wanted to. We see that Jesus had rights when He was here on earth (because He was God after all), but the bible says that He did not “leverage” those rights. Jesus understood what it meant to be a “brother” rather than demanding respect and obeisance to His authority.
The idea of sacrifice is sort of tempered by the fact that we are motivated by love, and the selflessness that attaches to that.

Paul talks a bit about this in Corinthians, and we see how even he as an apostle was willing to sacrifice and flex where required in order to create unity and be useful to the people with whom he came in contact.

Breaking the insularity

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul writes quite extensively about the issue of marriage, and this scripture has probably received some bad press over the years. Paul was an unmarried man, and in his letter to the Corinthians he proposes that a person is better off remaining single than to seek to be married. He makes various allowances on that matter, recognising the difficulties that we all have as human beings, yet he also makes it clear that there are problems that attach to being married.

However, to simply look at this scripture as Paul’s “jaded” views on marriage is short-sighted and desperately ignorant. Understanding that every scripture was written to teach us something of a spiritual nature and with a view of developing our spiritual maturity and relationship with God we should look behind what Paul was saying to understand his motivation for writing this stuff.

In the preceding chapters of Corinthians, Paul gives the church a flogging. Firstly, he berates them for being unable to sort out their own internal disputes (and instead were they were taking each other to court….good for lawyers, not so much for church unity). The chapter before that he rakes them over the coals concerning their lack of purity. Jump back one more chapter and Paul actually sounds a bit sarcastic, saying that the Corinthians were behaving as if they “had their act together” (and this is also the chapter that speaks about having many teachers but very few fathers).

Paul hits 1 Corinthians 7 in full flight, having laid a foundation in the preceding chapters wherein he saw fit to audit the health of the church (which was his prerogative as an apostle)– with damning results:

The church had become self-important (because they were after all a pretty good church);
The church was complacent (and were quite effectively justifying that complacency);
The church was focussed on personal desires and needs (many of which you would not prima facie consider inappropriate).

It’s within that paradigm that Paul is telling them to think very carefully about the lifestyle that they desired, because (as he said in 1 Corinthians 4) the church had hit the ministry threshold – their capacity to build and strengthen the church had topped out at the level of teachers. Exceeding that threshold required them to break the insularity that they had built up.

Higher ministry gifts, as we discussed, carry higher levels of responsibility, authority and power, and along with that is a requirement to become more selfless. Insularity and self-focus has little place in the life of a highly gifted minister.

Making it happen

This whole thing becomes an interesting academic exercise unless we move from theory to practice, and I was determined to propose some ideas or options for moving us along the curtain rail I mentioned earlier.

In saying that, I also have a strong recognition that God works with each of us differently, and it would be inherently dangerous to propose that my journey is the way for everyone. The most effective means of avoiding this risk, I believe, is to ensure that any proposal has a “watertight” scriptural basis.

To that end I am only going to propose one idea upon which God might then build something. Again, I think Paul nailed it, and for the sake of the exercise I have noted the entire passage that I want to refer to and use as my modest foundation.

Galatians 6:1-5 (Amplified Version)

BRETHREN, IF any person is overtaken in misconduct or sin of any sort, you who are spiritual [who are responsive to and controlled by the Spirit] should set him right and restore and reinstate him, without any sense of superiority and with all gentleness, keeping an attentive eye on yourself, lest you should be tempted also.

Bear (endure, carry) one another's burdens and troublesome moral faults, and in this way fulfill and observe perfectly the law of Christ (the Messiah) and complete what is lacking [in your obedience to it].

For if any person thinks himself to be somebody [too important to condescend to shoulder another's load] when he is nobody [of superiority except in his own estimation], he deceives and deludes and cheats himself.

But let every person carefully scrutinize and examine and test his own conduct and his own work. He can then have the personal satisfaction and joy of doing something commendable in itself alone] without [resorting to] boastful comparison with his neighbour.
For every person will have to bear (be equal to understanding and calmly receive) his own [little] load [of oppressive faults].

Let him who receives instruction in the Word [of God] share all good things with his teacher [contributing to his support].

The cunning plan that I want to present to you as a starting point for moving forward pretty much focuses entirely on what Paul wrote to the Galatian church. This was an important letter that Paul was writing here – in fact, whilst it suggested that Paul often dictated his letters to others to write for him, Paul says in Galatians 6:11 that he was writing this letter himself (noting that his handwriting was quite distinct) – it was significant that Paul didn’t use a “middle man” for this letter, and that what went on paper came straight from his heart.

Note also that the Galatians were a pretty strong church, but something had caused them to “top out” and stop progressing. They had started out very strong, but had got sidetracked somehow. I would encourage you to go back and read Galatians before enduring any more of what I have to write, and to read it with a recognition that this was a real church with the same kinds of problems that we experience today. They weren’t stupid people – in fact, in many ways, their church far outstripped our own. Yet they seemed to reach a ministry threshold, and Paul writes with a desire that they break through that self-imposed ceiling.
OK, assuming you’ve read Galatians, I want to crack the passage in chapter 6 and present my case for the “go forward”.

There seems to be 5 primary things that we need to get to grips with:

There were some people in the Galatian church that were “spiritual” i.e. that were responsive to and controlled by the Spirit. Clearly this was a church in which there were people committed to a strong relationship with God, and a relationship that meant that they had high spiritual sensitivity. With that kind of character, these people would have undoubtedly taken on the challenge of replacing their own selfish values and desires with God’s values.
It was this group of people that had developed a high sense of sensitivity to the Spirit that Paul charged to act very selflessly – although they may perhaps have had grounds to consider themselves superior because of their maturity in God, Paul tells them to act with gentleness and to take responsibility. This group needed to be “load bearing” or, to use a previous analogy, to be the “reinforced concrete” in the church that could provide strength and flexibility. They provided the hooks upon which the church could hang. Whilst “mutuality” is implied (“bearing with one another’s burdens”) it’s clear that Paul isn’t suggesting that it was “quid pro quo”. Taking responsibility means picking up the load without an expectation that the person you’re helping will return the favour!
Paul focussed this group on the people for whom they needed to be responsible i.e. people that were both inside and outside the church (but particularly those inside). Being spiritually aware as they were, it would be a safe assumption that this core group knew who they should be responsible for, and what they were supposed to say or do in the situation…they would be alert for the opportunities.
Paul encouraged this core group to be self-reflective, and realise that there were high risks attached to the responsibility and authority that they embodied (the most prevalent risk being that they would consider themselves too good to be “load bearing” Christians, and that they had transcended the need to be involve themselves in “lesser duties”). Paul leaves them in no doubt that they were not perfect, and that there are always things that even this mature group of “stabilisers” needed to be careful of. They had their own faults – potential “cracks in the concrete”. Paul doesn’t try and tell these people what they should do (they were, after all, controlled by the Spirit) but rather he focussed on the fact that they needed to work on their selflessness and “step up”.
Whilst the core group bears the load of those that are not necessarily as mature, it is also the case that they have a responsibility towards the higher level “hooks” – a need to share and encourage those that have greater burdens of responsibility and authority. The people that constitute these higher hooks have their own faults and problems, and Paul’s words establish some “expectation management”. Because someone is placed in a higher ministry position does not provide a basis for judging that person – they are not perfect! Rather, Paul encourages the core group to stabilise the both those “below” and “above” them on the ministry curve.

How does all this give us a practical approach? Importantly, how does this relate to Christian men? Let me propose a way forward:

Proposal #1
We need to spend more time developing a practical relationship with God, and by that I mean that do three things:

We recognise God’s presence with us at all times, and take active steps to acknowledge that;
We maintain a constant expectation that God will communicate with us (in some way, shape or form); and
We develop a increasing obedience to the guidance and teaching that God gives us (either in the moment or as we study the Word).

Proposal #2
We should recognise that our character is inherently selfish – left to our own devices, we will invariably take a path that is at least partly selfish. It is not within our own ability to act selflessly – the behaviour of true spiritual selflessness can only originate from a person that is controlled by and responsive to the Spirit. Sure, we may act selflessly (in the eyes of others) but if this doesn’t originate from God’s motivating power then it’s pointless, fruitless, and in fact selfish! For that reason, we need to be constantly self-evaluating, and indeed we should be quite aggressive in this task, thinking carefully about what we are doing and why we’re doing it. Put bluntly, are we acting from Spiritual motivation and Godly values?

Proposal #3
We need to understand that God has made us “hooks” for one or more people in our environment, which encompasses both the church and those outside the church. Even with our relatively limited stature as “spiritual” men, we have to recognise that we sit at least somewhere on the ministry curve, and that means we’ve got a responsibility right now to stabilise our environment and become “load bearing”. It is a worthy exercise, I believe, to commit to paper those people for whom God has made us responsible, and I challenge you to suggest that there is not at least one person on that list. Those people are, for all intents and purposes, the most important people in your world. You will be held accountable for them.

Proposal #4
We should further recognise that a special responsibility is placed on men to be the first to step up. Paul’s writings may appear anti-feminist; in fact, he is capturing on paper God’s design for men to exhibit the values and characteristics of God. Paul writes that God is the authority over a man, and man over a woman. The implication is enormous. God is the epitome of selfless. Men should therefore act more selflessly than women. I propose that men have this special demand placed upon them.

Proposal #5
We as men need to disengage from the doctrine of mutuality and embrace the doctrine of unity. Practically, this means that we are not looking for an equal and “balanced” response from those for whom we are responsible – in fact, we should resolve ourselves to the fact that there will be apparent inequality because we are load-bearing. Acting in brotherhood means a recognition that we are carrying our spiritually “younger” and “older” brothers and sisters (Christian and non-Christian). The concept of “balance” and “mutuality” is not biblical and is in fact selfish – it will kill our capacity to be selfless.

When to begin

I should be quite overt about defining the group to which I believe that this approach applies, and to that end I want to start by highlighting a problem.

We focus our men’s ministry on men in a demographic of around 18 years old and upward. Cutting to the chase, my view is that we’re pretty much shutting the gate after the horse has bolted by focussing our attention here. Trying to change the culture of a person once their values and personal culture is set in place and well established is an incredibly difficult and time-consuming exercise. King Solomon captured this concept in Proverbs, recognising the need to begin instilling values at a young age.

I have no intention of developing this particular tranche further, other than to say that fathers have a particular responsibility to begin to instil the ideal of selflessness and responsibility in their sons from an early age. This is predicated on the assumption that men are in fact setting an example to their families and those around them – it’s pointless preaching something for which there is no example. It is unsurprising that Paul writes about the need for those who are the “hooks” in the church to have their act together when it comes to presenting an example worth imitating.

Conclusion

I am somewhat embarrassed at the rather clumsy fashion in which I have presented some of these principles, and have a strong recognition that there are elements of this subject that are important but have not been touched upon. Undoubtedly as you consider the matters I have raised, my inexperience will be exposed!

That said, I am personally concerned to preserve the ideal that the church requires selfless men to break apart the ministry threshold with which are currently burdened. Whilst at some points I paint a rather indifferent portrait of the current state of affairs, I trust that we might be enticed to consider that God has a desire at this time to “hook up” his church on strong anchor points, that we have been placed at this juncture in history for a particular purpose, and that we have a part to play.

Healing misrepresented

2009-05-01T13:55:00.004+10:00

Introduction

I struggle with blind acceptance of biblical principles, and by that I don’t mean that I don’t believe the bible whole-heartedly. What I mean is that it is inherently dangerous to read something in the bible and base a belief on it without understanding what God’s intention was and the principles that surround the particular promise or commandment.

One of the principles of the bible that has been taught to us since we were children is that of God’s capacity to heal. I have never questioned the fact that God has this capacity (and I still don’t) yet a quick straw poll of a few close Christian friends indicates to me that God doesn’t seem to be doing much healing.

This created somewhat of a concern for me – if there is a biblical principle there that says that God will heal us, and He isn’t doing so, there must be a problem. Healing is presented to us in the bible as a promise – something that can be relied upon. In the legal world, this is called a contract, and in fact it’s the case that contract law has developed around the centuries old principles of the promiser (the person giving the promise) and promisee (the person receiving it).

I thought that it might be useful to approach this issue from a rather legalistic perspective in the first instance, and doing this I don’t intend any disrespect – it is simply a vehicle to bash out the issues.

So let’s assume that God is being sued! God will be the Defendant in this matter, and the Christians will be the plaintiffs (the people bringing the complaint).

Let’s pretend for a moment that this is a real case – that Christians are suing God for failing to deliver on His promise of healing. When lawyers a preparing to go to court and fight a case, what we do is develop a case theory – basically, a summary of the arguments and the evidence that will be used to support those arguments.

The plaintiffs’ case really pivots on a few simple issues:

God claims to be ready, willing, and able to heal;
God has put in writing His intentions regarding healing;
God does not deliver on this stated intention, or alternatively, God only delivers on this intention at His sole discretion;
As a result, the promise that God has given is unreliable or uncertain;
The bible contains many stories of God’s healing power in action, but these stories misrepresent God’s actual intentions for Christians today;
The “contract” says that the reason that Christians don’t receive from God is because they ask with “selfish motive”, and given that the request for healing could conceivably be classed as “selfish”, God has created a contract that is entirely “unenforceable” – that is, there is no way that Christians can possibly “force” God to deliver on His promise; and
We have suffered damage as a result of the God’s failure to deliver on His promise.

Reasonably straightforward case I would have thought. I believe that, had I been briefed to appear for the Christians in this class action against God, I would be in a reasonably strong position.

An outline of the submissions has been prepared by the legal team for the Christian, summarising the arguments they intend to make to the court at the trial. The document is a little bit “legalistic” but you’ll get my drift as you read (and potentially re-read) the submissions. Hopefully, you’ll see from the outline of submissions the crux of the arguments that is being made.

______________________________________________________________________________

IN THE SUPREME COURT

Applicants: CHRISTIANS

And

First Defendant: GOD

OUTLINE OF SUBMISSIONS
ON BEHALF OF THE PLAINTIFFS

Background

This is a class action commenced by the Plaintiff against the Respondent with respect to a breach of contract;
The Defendant has specified in the Contract that the Defendant would heal the Plainifffs (hereafter referred to as “the Service”);
The Plaintiffs maintains that the Respondent has breached an essential term of an expressed and implied unilateral contract by failing to provide the contracted Service;
Alternatively, the Plaintiffs submit that the Respondent has displayed a willingness to provide the Service; however the Respondents has acted in a discriminatory nature and only agreed to provide the Service at the discretion of the Defendant;
The Plaintiff seeks damages and compensation from the Defendant.

Essential Terms & Conditions Precedent

The unilateral contract in question was made by the Respondent on various dates between 1445BC and 80AD in which the Respondent made two (2) specific representations, namely:

To forgive the plaintiffs of all their sins; and

To heal the plaintiff of all their diseases

The Contract is considered unilateral as said Contract was constructed without the requirement for a mutual promise, that is, that there was no requirement for the Plaintiffs to provide consideration for the creation of the Contract;
The offer to provide the Service contained within the subject Contract did not require the Plaintiffs to accept the offer;
The Plaintiffs concede that certain expressed and implied obligations (constituting consideration on the part of the Plaintiffs) attach to the provision of the Service, those being:

that the Plaintiff must ask;

that the act of asking must be accompanied by faith;

that the motive for asking must not be from selfish motive.

Representations

It is submitted that the Contract was represented to the Plaintiffs by the Defendant on the basis that:

The Defendant had an intention to create a legally binding Contract;
The Defendant had the requisite capacity to provide the Service;

The Plaintiffs have relied upon these representations, and presumed reasonably that said representations were provided in good faith;
It is conceded that this Honourable Court may look to external standards, which are either mentioned explicitly in the Contract or implied by common practice in the subject field;
It is respectfully submitted that the Defendant had represented His capacity and capability to provide the Service by communicating the Defendant’s previous record of Contract compliance, with primary reference to the practices of Jesus Christ on various dates between 0 BC and 3 AD;
The Defendant further communicated His capacity and capability to provide the Service by reference to the activities of various authorized agents, namely:
His appointed executive officers (traditionally referred to as “the twelve (12) apostles”); and
Various and subsequently appointed agents (and in particular the agent commonly referred to as “the apostle Paul”)

Time to Completion

It is submitted that the Contract implicitly indicates that the healing to be provided by the Defendant would occur contemporaneously with the request for said healing;
It is submitted that no provision, either explicitly or implicitly, has been made within the terms and conditions of the Contract for said healing to be delayed; however despite the fact that the Plaintiffs concede that time is not of the essence it remains that:

The Defendant should complete the Service within a reasonable time; and
The Defendant has represented that the Service would be provided immediately;

Unreasonable Conditions

It is submitted that the Defendant has unilaterally and unreasonably relied upon two (2) clauses within the Contract in order to avoid provision of the Service, namely:

That the Defendant has unilaterally required that the Plaintiffs understand His intentions and will prior to asking for the Service; and
The Defendant has required that the Plaintiffs exercise faith, without providing any reasonable facility to evaluate whether sufficient faith has been exercised by the Plaintiffs

Accordingly, it is submitted that these terms should be considered by this Honourable Court to be severable on the grounds of uncertainty;

Breach of Contract

It is submitted that the Defendant has failed to heal the Plaintiffs of their diseases:
The Plaintiffs complied with all conditions precedent to said completion;
The Plaintiffs, in accordance with the Contract, made reasonable requests of the Defendant for healing;
As a result of the Respondent’s failure to complete the contract, the Plaintiffs have suffered loss and damage.

Damages

The specific damages that the Plaintiffs have suffered are as follows:

Ongoing physical ailments, including physical pain and discomfort; and
Ongoing mental ailments, including depression, anxiety and fear; and
Interest pursuant to section 47 of the Supreme Court Act
Costs

___________________________________________________________________________________

Defence case

I would think that God’s legal team is going to address the case fairly aggressively – after all, there’s quite a bit at stake here. God’s whole character and reputation is built on the premise that He is reliable, trustworthy, truthful, and powerful. This case is questioning some of these claims.
God’s lawyers are defending the claim on the following basis:

The representations that are made are reliable;
Healing is available to everyone;
God has a proven track record of healing;
Christians are expecting healing without fulfilling their obligations;
Christians have an incorrect understanding of the contract, which provides God with grounds not to provide healing.

Defence is going to argue their case, and attempt to prove that God is ready, willing and able to heal the Christians, on three main bases:

that the Plaintiff must ask;
that the act of asking must be accompanied by faith;
that the motive for asking must not be from selfish motive.

Let’s get into court and see what happens!

The trial commences

In any trial, there are going to be a number of things that the parties don’t see eye to eye on – that’s the reason that we’re in court! However, there will usually be things that the parties do agree on, and the judge generally wants to know right up front what the “agreed facts” are.

Agreed facts

The judge in this matter has been informed of the following “undisputed facts”:

Firstly, that the parties agree God has the power to heal – that’s not in issue – everyone agrees that God is powerful and capable healing;
Secondly, that God has a track record of healing – the parties don’t dispute the fact that God has healed in the past and that the bible contains a truthful account of God’s activities when it comes to healing;
Thirdly, it is not disputed that God hears Christians when they pray to Him;
Fourthly, it is no disputed that Christians are actually asking for healing;

Issues to be decided

Given these agreed facts, the judge is being asked by the plaintiffs to focus on deciding two main issues:

Has God reasonably withheld healing because the Christians have failed to ask in faith; and
Has God reasonably withheld healing because the Christians have asked with a selfish motive.

These are fairly reasonable grounds for the defence, and given the rather eclectic and perhaps “fuzzy” nature of the conditions it seems that God has created a contract that gives Him a good “escape clause” if and when He decided not to heal someone.

Escape Clauses

How do you measure empirically whether a person has the faith to be healed – there is no scientific measure of faith, and no evidence that could be put before the court to prove that a person has faith or how much faith a person may have?
What about the selfishness piece? It would be reasonably easy for the defence team to prove that, when we are asking for healing, we are asking with ourselves in mind. We want the healing for ourselves. We want it for our own benefit. That would quite reasonably constitute a “selfish motive”.

A lawyer, advising the Christians as to their prospects of success at trial, would be considering these issues and considering the matter from the perspective of the judge. And taking that tack, I would say that the plaintiff lawyers are suggesting to their Christian clients that they “settle out of court”.

But these Christians are a litigious and stubborn bunch, and they want to bat on because “it’s the principle of the thing”...words that are music to the ears of any lawyer, and the reason that so many of them drive luxury cars and drink expensive wine in penthouse apartments all around the city. When clients say “principles” a lawyer hears “money”. So, despite the odds, the trial is going to go ahead. Game on!

Argument #1 - Faith

Consideration of faith

We said that there are effectively three conditions for God to fulfil the contract – asking, faith, and lack of selfishness. Having established that the “asking” is not in issue (because everyone agrees that the Christians are asking), we need to deal with the other two issues. The first point to be argued is faith.

The defence team will argue that Christians lack faith, and that’s one of the reasons that God doesn’t heal them. There are good grounds for this argument – the bible makes particular mention of men and women that had faith, as well as those that did not.

The judge in this matter needs some certainty about what the parties are talking about when they use the word faith, and the judge calls for some definitions and discussions (fully expecting that there are some strong arguments to be had).

The plaintiffs argue that faith is a characteristic – its something that you develop, and it would be unreasonable for God to expect us to have faith in Him unless He did something that gave us reason to trust Him. The plaintiffs make a “chicken and egg” argument – they want faith so that God will do something for them, but God won’t do something for them unless they have faith….and around and around it goes. This is the classic “Unreasonable God” argument, where the Defendant has seemingly established a circular dependency that cannot be broken into or out of.

The defence readily concede that the concept of faith is a difficult one (and the plaintiff lawyers turn to one another and congratulate themselves on how clever they are). However the defence team’s position and counter-argument proves to be quite interesting, and causes the plaintiff team to scratch their heads and stop congratulating one another. The defence makes a rather novel argument, submitting that faith is not something that Christians can develop within themselves – faith is not something that the Christian can directly generate – and in fact the plaintiffs have incorrectly defined faith as a characteristic that God wants Christians to exhibit. The defence argument is that faith is in fact a lifestyle, not a characteristic.

Taking that then one step further, defence argues that the act of “asking in faith” does not mean asking whilst exhibiting the characteristic of faith – what it means is asking whilst living a life of faith.
A rather confused look crosses the face of the judge at this juncture, and the judge starts asking questions…

________________________________________________________________________________________

(Judge) - “Let me ensure that I understand your position – you are saying that faith is not a characteristic - or perhaps to put it another way, you’re saying that faith is not a character trait?”

(Defence) - “That’s so, Your Honour”

(Judge) - “And you are saying that when your Client talks about faith, what He is talking about is a lifestyle?”

(Defence) - “Yes your Honour, that’s our position.”

(Judge) - “What you also propose is that faith is not something that the plaintiff can develop of their own volition?”

(Defence) - “Yes, your Honour, it’s our position that faith is not something that a human being can develop themselves directly, and furthermore because it’s not actually a ‘thing’ per se.”

(Judge) - “You realise, Counsel, that you’re skating on incredibly thin ice, don’t you?

(Defence) - "It may appear so at first blush, Your Honour, but that’s our position nonetheless".

(Judge) - "Can you give me some kind of analogy that might assist me in understanding exactly what you mean?”

(Defence) - "It may appear to be a fairly rough example, but perhaps we could compare it to physical fitness. One cannot simply have the characteristic of fitness – it requires a considerable number of lifestyle choices. Fitness may finally be classed as a characteristic of a person, but primarily it relates to the lifestyle of the person".

(Judge) - "So, if I understand where your argument is going, and I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, what you are proposing is that the plaintiffs may potentially not be asking in faith because they are not living the lifestyle that your Client has established for them – is that a reasonable summary?”

(Defence) - "Your Honour has indeed summarised our position most eloquently.”

__________________________________________________________________________

The concept of anticipation

I haven’t quite got this next concept all sorted out in my mind at this stage; however let me give you what I’ve got and what my current understanding is.

I have indicated in previous documents that the concept of faith can be looked at a number of different ways, and I’m about to add another to the list. For the purposes of this paper, I define faith from two perspectives:

Firstly, reiterating what I’ve said already, faith is a lifestyle rather than simply a characteristic. I’m not saying that it is not a characteristic, but for the Christian it is should be considered as such.

Secondly, and again considering faith from a lifestyle perspective, living by faith means living in such a way that you are actively making space for God. How we each do tis will be different, and God requires different things of all of us. Sufficed to say that by putting our own desires, thoughts, biases, etc to one side and allowing God to take that space, we give God some “elbow room” to work in and around our life.

Thirdly, and this is the new concept, faith is a state of spiritual anticipation. By that I mean that faith actually results from the Holy Spirit living in us, and as a result of that we begin to sense what God’s intentions at any given time and in any given situation. That “sense” then results in a spiritual anticipation.
Ok, now that I have kind of packaged together some fairly simplistic view on faith (I hope), now I want to take it one step further.

Activating faith

Let me give you a scripture that most of you will have read a million times before:

James 2

17 So also faith, if it does not have works (deeds and actions of obedience to back it up), by itself is destitute of power (inoperative, dead).

18 But someone will say [to you then], You [say you] have faith, and I have [good] works. Now you show me your [alleged] faith apart from any [good] works [if you can], and I by [good] works [of obedience] will show you my faith.
…
26 For as the human body apart from the spirit is lifeless, so faith apart from [its] works of obedience is also dead.

This scripture sound familiar? I have always been taught (and thus I have always believed) that this scripture means that you cant say you have faith if you’re not using it to do something for God. Indeed, it has been a “helpful” scripture for many a church to get their congregations engaged in doing something, or as a motivational tool to get people out of their seats and get into “exercising their faith”.

I’d like to propose a slightly different take on this scripture.

Whilst I agree that there is a need for us to be active Christians. One of the “activities” that we might typically be involved with is to pray for healing for someone (just to keep the whole thing topical). Some might say that this is “faith with works”. But I need to give you another scripture.

In Mark 9, we see the disciples praying for a boy that was possessed by a demon that caused him to be unable to speak. Not only that, the demon would force the child into water and fire with the intention of killing the child. The demon refused to budge until Jesus cast the demon out. Read this scripture – it was a pretty traumatic event.

In verse 28, the disciples asked Jesus privately why they could not drive the demon out? Jesus says that this kind could not be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.

My point is that the disciples didn’t lack faith – they had a spiritual anticipation and expectation. They even had a track record of being able to drive out demons. I think what was happening here (as with most of what Jesus did in front of the disciples) was that Jesus was both teaching a spiritual principle and demanding that the disciples rise to their next level of spiritual maturity. The disciples were being asked to focus on their preparation and discipline. Jesus was pointing the disciples at the need to spend time in prayer and fasting to prepare for the situations that they would encounter. Faith without preparation and discipline results in a Christian simply talking a “big game” – lots of noise, plenty of excitement, high levels of expectation…but no result.

Lifestyle change

So basically I’m asking myself this question – what would compel me to change my lifestyle from the one that I live now to one where faith is central (rather than peripheral)? More than that, how can I make the lifestyle “stick” rather than it being like the gym membership that I signed up for that never really took off?
The answer is not simple (sorry about that!)

Stay tuned - there's more to come on this!

Adjournment

A brief adjournment has been called to the case as the defence team wish to do some research into this issue of faith.

There are a bunch of scriptures that comes to mind when we think of faith, and it is generally thought of a belief and confidence in God to do something. That definition isn’t entirely incorrect; however, it is an incredible over-simplification of what faith is.

The classic scripture that comes to mind when thinking about faith is this one…

Hebrews 11:1 NOW FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].

This scripture gives us a good starting point, because it really makes it clear that faith is a big concept.
Firstly, faith is more than just belief in what God can do. I would suggest that faith is more about “enlightened perception” – seeing things the way that God sees them.

It goes a step beyond this though - faith actually brings together several important concepts:

The fact that God is actually capable of doing the impossible, and He is ready to do so;
The fact that God’s character is such that He only does the impossible;
The fact that our “situations” are not coincidental – that God’s purpose for our lives is so comprehensive that it can be defined on a minute by minute basis;
The fact that we have the capacity to understand God’s purpose on that “minute by minute” basis – we are not puppets, nor is it God’s intention that we live our lives in the dark.
The fact that God has a desire to be involved in our day-to-day situations – He has not only defined the purpose, but wants to be involved in bringing it to fruition – and furthermore that we have confidence in the fact that He will become involved;

It’s worth “soaking” in these ideas for a couple of minutes, rather than simply agreeing with them (or disagreeing!). I would think that few Christians would have any problem with these proposals – so why don’t we feel that God is responding to our faith in the same way that He did with the people we read about in the bible? Dangerous territory, I will concede; however we might as well ask the hard questions!

“Starting Faith”

I said earlier that our spirit is switched on 24x7, but “active” does not mean “perceptive”.

I mentioned above that being faithful is a three-part exercise in seeing things the way that God sees them, understanding the purpose that God has in the situation, and having a level of confidence in God’s intention to get involved (as we give Him space to do so).

The encouraging thing is that there is at least some faith in all of us – if we totally lacked the ability to see things the way that God sees them, then we would never have turned to God in the first place.

The bible talks about having faith the size of a mustard seed – a tiny seed about 1mm across and virtually weightless – so small in fact that it’s hard to pick up with your fingers. Mustard is an annual plant that grows so fast that it is the type of seed that most farmers would not deliberately sow in their fields - a single mustard plant may grow to about 4 meters (15 feet) high in just weeks & sprout many leafy branches that overshadow other slower growing plants.

I refer to this small amount of faith as “starting faith” – the faith that we all have. The amazing thing is that even this small amount of faith can really make a difference. The disciples were talking to Jesus one day, and wanted to have bigger, more effective faith. Look at what Jesus says.

Luke 17:5-6 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" He (Jesus) replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.

Interestingly, Jesus talks about this again after the disciples could not drive a demon from a boy. Jesus explains to the disciples why they had failed…

Matthew 17:20 He said to them, Because of the littleness of your faith [that is, your lack of firmly relying trust]. For truly I say to you, if you have faith [that is living] like a grain of mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, Move from here to yonder place, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

Jesus then goes to say that the demon that He cast out could only be dealt with through prayer and fasting – time spent with God, and time spent focussed on “relocating”. Starting faith is great, but we’ve go to take some action to “plant” that seed firmly. And that’s where the Spirit comes to our assistance…

Faith and the Spirit

This scripture is going to make a regular appearance, but I’m going to keep reprinting it anyway:

2 Peter 1:5-8 For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence)

And in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety),
And in [exercising] godliness [develop] brotherly affection, and in [exercising] brotherly affection [develop] Christian love.

For as these qualities are yours and increasingly abound in you, they will keep [you] from being idle or unfruitful unto the [full personal] knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).

It’s verse 9 that follows the “fruits” verses that I want to highlight:

For whoever lacks these qualities is blind, [spiritually] shortsighted, seeing only what is near to him, and has become oblivious [to the fact] that he was cleansed from his old sins.

So, winding this passage of scripture back a bit, we are blind if we don’t have faith – we will lack God’s perception of situations, we will fail to understand God’s purposes, and we will lack confidence that God actually intends to get engaged in the situation.

And because faith is a quality or fruit of the Spirit, we will be “blind mice” if we don’t allow the Spirit to truly be with us and working through us on a consistent basis.

Taking it just one step further – if we choose not to relocate into the spiritual realm that we’ve been talking about, we are making a positive choice to be blind…or to put it the way the bible puts it, we are being “wilfully blind” (Eph. 4:18).

Argument #2 - Selfish motive

The defence “curve ball”

One of the most stressful things about trial work is the unpredictability of what can and will happen in court. It is also one of the things that makes trial advocacy interesting and exciting – it’s a kind of “full contact sport” where you pit your skills against an opponent in a highly charged tactical game.

Almost inevitably, at some stage in the trial, your opponent throws you a “curve ball” – something that you were not really expecting. Usually, if you’ve done your preparation and have looked at all the angles, these curve balls don’t cause you too much damage. However, from time to time, there is an argument that is raised by your opponent that can really cause you some difficulties.

The defence team have kept their powder dry and are now ready to release a curve ball that may well cause the whole trial to come to an abrupt end. And here it is…let’s hear the transcript of the submissions made by the defence lawyer:

“Your Honour, my learned colleagues for the Christians maintains that my Client will not provide the healing that they have asked for pursuant to the promises made by my Client.

It is my respectful submission, however, that the Christians have failed to understand what, in fact, my Client has promised to deliver – that is, that the Christians have a fundamental misunderstanding of what “healing” actually means, and I will address this momentarily.

Firstly, I submit that my Client has been prepared from the outset to provide healing, and in fact what has happened is that the Christians have refused to accept the healing that has been presented to them.”

(There is a brief break in proceedings at this juncture whilst the judge tells the plaintiff lawyers to bring their clients under control – the Christians are apparently a little upset at this submission by the defence team, and have started making some rather uncomplimentary remarks. Order now having been restored, the defence lawyer continues.)

“The fundamental misunderstanding that I eluded to is this – the Christians have identified what they perceive as an illness, disease, complaint or ailment – and they have sought to have my Client restore them to health. It is my Client’s position that this was never His intention.”

(Again, the plaintiff lawyers clap one another on the back and light cigars in the court room at this admission by the defence…they quickly put out the cigars though as defence continues with their “curve ball”).

“What my Client intended, has always intended, and with respect to this intention presents with a proven history, is that His healing would have a transformative effect rather than simply a restorative effect on the lives of the Christians. Moreover, this intention by my Client extends beyond Christians and applies just as readily to the non-Christian.”

“The problem is, from our viewpoint, that Christians do not want to be transformed – they just want to be restored to the position that they were in. If they have a physical injury or ailment, they want the physical healing. Our Client wants to do far more than that – the healing that He provides goes against the laws of the natural world and is intended to focus people on God in such a way that the person that is healed AND the people that see the healing are affected in a transformative way".

Stay tuned - more to come....

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Changing Values

2008-05-09T07:03:00.006+10:00

I have been banging on about "impossible living" for some time now - a change of living that sees us existing first and foremost as spiritual beings (rather than physical beings). This involves us being linked so closely with God that we basically don't exist apart from God - a 24x7 existence.

Within this paradigm, we exhibit the fruit of the Spirit - the characteristics that the Word notes as the fruit of the Spirit are not characteristics and behaviours that we can simply "do" or "display" - they are a "by-product" of the Spirit living in us.

OK, so having thought about the back story, I began to dwell some more on the fruit of the Spirit and realised that these fruits were more than characteristics or behaviours of God - they are in fact God's VALUES.

The interesting thing about what we think about as values is that, when it comes to our society, they are really hard to define. I've been trying to find some definitive statement of our values - can't find one. There's some ethereal (mamby pamby) stuff but nothing hard core. What I've basically come to realise is that we don't think much about values - we think a lot about the stuff that surrounds values but not values themselves. We are not (I am brave enough to say) "values orientated".

OK, how can I make such an outrageous comment to you fine upstanding Christians? A very quick picture is in order ....

Remember - I am talking about human values here for a moment. I'll get to God's values but I need to draw a distinction.

If we stick VALUES in the middle of a page, sitting underneath them are BASIC HUMAN NEEDS(food, clothing, shelter). Values mean nothing to the average punter if the basics don't exist. These are non-negotiable, in that you can't trade anything valuable enough to make someone give up these things.

Sitting on top of values are INTERESTS - desires and wants. These are usually negotiable - you might trade or compromise an interest in one area to get a bit of another desire or want. This is where lawyers make money.

On top of interests sit POSITIONS - these are "surface" demands - I won't get into this, sufficed to say that they are the most easily negotiated - sometimes you might take a position simply to make someone angry, fearful, confused, etc. - like arguing about the price of something you are prepared to pay full price for but just want to "tweak" the deal..

Back to values - these are the things that motivate the way we act, think, interact, etc. They are our beliefs. They are the things that we deem to be good and true. It encompasses the concepts of individual and group identity, security, self esteem and justice. The term "values" could in fact be replaced with the term "motivators". These are very hard to negotiate - some say impossible.

Values define the way we look at the world - how we perceive reality.

Take a group of 12 people and define with them their top 10 values - compare the lists - I bet you find that there is some duplication but no two lists will be the same, and the priority of the values will also be different. Multiply that by 20 million Australians. You see why we have such discord and disharmony in society! Perhaps the church.

Given that God's desire is to harmonise us - make into a single spiritual (Spirit-led) entity, it becomes clear that unless our values align that this is impossible.

See, God's values (motivators) are the things that drive His plans and purpose. If we understand His values, we can come to grips with God's purpose and reasoning. Which is, to say the least, incredibly wild!

Which is why understanding the fruit of the Spirit as values is so important - they are not optional, nice to have, Christian "bling" - the fruits are all there is! Non-negotiable "must have's.

In summary:

Living as Spirit-first people is crucial - we move from following our bodies and minds and start linking in with God...and we need to force ourselves down that track;
As we listen, walk, obey, quieten down, etc the fruit of the Spirit becomes a "natural" resultant of this. We cannot simply be fruitful - the Spirit creates the fruit in us;
These fruits are a "value transplant" - we start to be motivated in thought and action in every situation by the fruit...we are compelled by the fruits or values;
These compelling values create an environment in which we start to attack life the same way God does - we see what God's purpose is - we understand His heart, His plans. We get vision.

Absolutes

I'm going to shamlessly copy almost verbatim from a friend's response to the draft of this section of the manifesto....I have great friends!

In thinking about defining what our values are (in natural terms....not the fruits of the Spirit), we shouldn't be surprised that we find it difficult to define our values. For the last 100 years or so we have gradually worked away from a position where these things were considered 'absolutes' to a point where we (human society) deny the existence of absolutes. The modern era has seen this happen in philosophy, art and music to a point where we take it for granted in general culture.

The church has not escaped unscathed from this movement - a kind of postmodernism that perhaps doesn't throw away God's values, but either "re-interprets" them to make them more palatable, or studiously avoids discussing values that might either create confrontation or scare away the punters!

(THIS BLOG IS NOT COMPLETED)

Humility

2008-04-22T08:53:00.013+10:00

It’s worth keeping in mind where we’re coming from here – we’ve been talking about the desire to relocate from the “natural” world that we’ve been living, and start living lives where our spirit has precedence and where “impossibility thinking” is normal!

Now is probably a good time to discuss an issue that I really have struggled with – humility - not because I disagree with the concept of humility, but because I came to realise that this characteristic is a precursor to just about everything, and it’s a concept so much larger than I first anticipated!

I have had a concept of humility, but I think it was probably based on a whole lot of stuff that I kind of picked up as I ambled along through my life.

My concept of humility carried with it the connotation of weakness and getting walked over. The classic “turn the other cheek” mentality. One the other hand, throughout my life, I’ve been taught that I needed to have boundaries, and that God doesn’t intend for people take advantage of me. As a result, I have lived with this “two headed monster” that seems determined to pull me in two directions at once.

Does this sound sort of familiar?

Having said all that, I had a real sense that if I didn’t come to grips with this whole “humility” concept, there could be a bottle-neck in making the relocation happen.
This section of the manifesto is broken into a couple of parts – that’s how big the concept got! I’d encourage you to check this section out with a very open mind – to put aside your previous conceptions of humility and start from the ground up.

Looking for examples

I needed some examples to begin with – some illustration or pattern that could give me direction on humility. My first point of call was Moses – he seemed like a logical starting point since the bible says Moses was humble “above all the men on the face of the earth” .
Before I did that, I reminded myself of Galatians 5:23 which says that humility is one of the fruits of the Spirit – it’s not a natural thing for humans to have (maybe even contrary to “normal” human nature). Since we’re talking about an “impossible God”, Who creates “impossible things”, I could reasonably go so far as to say that humility is an impossible trait for humans to have (in the way that we need to have it) unless God has some considerable involvement.

This is an important “sideline” (and it helped me a bit to understand this) – if you go back and have a look at fruits of the Spirit, I propose that we have no capacity at all – none whatsoever - to create characteristics such as faith, self-control, godliness, etc on our own. We may be able to create a “form of godliness” , and perhaps generate something that “kind of” godly or “kind of” patient, but it will lack power and efficacy.

Throughout this section there’s going to be a wide range of issues, so you’ll find that I’ll try and reduce this stuff to diagrams wherever possible….starting now!

So, having established that humility is created in us by God (under the circumstances mentioned above) let’s get back to Moses…

Moses started his life from a position of great affluence and advantage. He would have been highly educated inside Egyptian society – a society that at the time was a leader in terms of technology and learning. This place was highly advanced society in 1500BC (around the time of Ramses II) – a lot of the stuff that we see in Egypt today, some 3,500 years later, are the amazing structures, painting, and other archaeological finds that either existed, or were being designed or built, at that time.

Moses escaped to the desert after killing an Egyptian who was abusing one of Moses’ countrymen, and it was in the desert that he got married. Moses ended up spending a long time working for his father-in-law (before leading the Hebrews out of Egypt), and we could be forgiven for viewing Moses’ time in the desert as a negative experience. Forty years of sheep and sand, working for a father in law who treated Moses like a slave. That could be viewed as “negative”!

One day God comes and has a chat with Moses, speaking out of a burning bush. You know the story. But stop and have a think about what was really going on in Moses’ mind…

It is hardly surprising that, after 40 years in desert with sheep, Moses says to God that he cannot go back and talk to the Egyptian king (despite the whole burning bush thing). Moses refusal to go back to Egypt makes me wonder whether he suffered from a physiological speech impediment, or whether it was more to do with anxiety arising from his perception that he could not compete in intellectual terms and speech with the king and the wise men and sorcerers. I surmise that I would be a freaked out and (at the very least) develop a speech impediment at the thought of having to go and mix it up with a group of Egyptian wise men that had such command of the black arts that they could throw a wooden stick on the ground and have it turn into a snake!

As I read on (in Exodus 4), I began to think that maybe Moses was suffering from poor self-esteem. God did a number of miracles back to back for Moses to prove He was with Moses, but Moses argued with God, saying that the people wouldn’t listen to him, that he couldn’t talk properly, etc. God had given Moses the power to perform miracles, but Moses still keeps on arguing, at which point God gets really angry and tells him to engage Aaron to speak for him.

Just a reminder - Moses was the most humble man that God had ever dealt with – and given that humility is not a human characteristic, that humility must have been developed in him. This humility that Moses had was specifically mentioned in the bible – it is mentioned so prominently that it must have had some real significance. In fact, it was a defining characteristic.

Now that I’ve somewhat cryptically introduced Moses (without explaining too much about his humility) we’ll come back to him in just a moment and look at what it was all about, but I need to choke you with scripture first!

What’s the bible say about humility?

I said I needed to question my concept of humility, and to do that I went back and looked at the scriptures that might help.

I mentioned Galatians 5 that says that humility is a fruit of the Spirit – so we know that it’s something we can’t simply generate or develop on our own. So before moving on, I’m going to blast you with a whole stack of “humility” scriptures to look at…

Ephesians 4:1-3 I therefore, the prisoner for the Lord, appeal to and beg you to walk (lead a life) worthy of the [divine] calling to which you have been called [with behavior that is a credit to the summons to God's service, living as becomes you] with complete lowliness of mind (humility) and meekness (unselfishness, gentleness, mildness), with patience, bearing with one another and making allowances because you love one another. Be eager and strive earnestly to guard and keep the harmony and oneness of [and produced by] the Spirit in the binding power of peace.

Philippians 2:3 Do nothing from factional motives [through contentiousness, strife, selfishness, or for unworthy ends] or prompted by conceit and empty arrogance. Instead, in the true spirit of humility (lowliness of mind) let each regard the others as better than and superior to himself [thinking more highly of one another than you do of yourselves].

1 Peter 5:5 Likewise, you who are younger and of lesser rank, be subject to the elders (the ministers and spiritual guides of the church)--[giving them due respect and yielding to their counsel]. Clothe (apron) yourselves, all of you, with humility [as the garb of a servant, so that its covering cannot possibly be stripped from you, with freedom from pride and arrogance] toward one another. For God sets Himself against the proud (the insolent, the overbearing, the disdainful, the presumptuous, the boastful)--[and He opposes, frustrates, and defeats them], but gives grace (favor, blessing) to the humble.

Deuteronomy 8:2 And you shall [earnestly] remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and to prove you, to know what was in your [mind and] heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.

Proverbs 11:2 When swelling and pride come, then emptiness and shame come also, but with the humble (those who are lowly, who have been pruned or chiseled by trial, and renounce self) are skillful and godly Wisdom and soundness.

Luke 14:11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled (ranked below others who are honored or rewarded), and he who humbles himself (keeps a modest opinion of himself and behaves accordingly) will be exalted (elevated in rank).

Romans 12:16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty (snobbish, high-minded, exclusive), but readily adjust yourself to [people, things] and give yourselves to humble tasks. Never overestimate yourself or be wise in your own conceits.

James 4:6 But He gives us more and more grace (power of the Holy Spirit, to meet this evil tendency and all others fully). That is why He says, God sets Himself against the proud and haughty, but gives grace [continually] to the lowly (those who are humble enough to receive it).

The concept of “Self-X”

You’re probably drowning about now in all these scriptures…pretty much the same way that I did! I went away and “soaked” in these concepts for a while, trying to distil everything down into something I could hook into.

I began to think about what was at the other end of the spectrum to humility, and the bible talks at length about pride, arrogance, high-mindedness, selfishness, etc, and these things seem to be the counterpoint to humility. So boiling all that down, what I came up with was one simply concept – the concept of “Self-X”…..

So, lot’s of things starting with “self”! More thinking followed, and all the “self’s” reduced down into just one item….SELF-SUFFICIENCY. This might sound a bit strange, but all will become clear (or clearer at least)!

These two things (humility and self-sufficiency) are at opposite ends of a fairly broad spectrum. Whilst I may not think of myself as proud, conceited and arrogant, I have no defence against the charge that I try (consistently, and in lots of ways) to be self-sufficient.
The reason that I settled on self-sufficiency as the counterpoint to humility is because of the dictionary definition of self-sufficiency…

self-suf-fi-cient

able to supply one's own or its own needs without external assistance:
having extreme confidence in one's own resources, powers, etc.

So I’m proposing a fairly simple but potentially powerful concept….when bible talks about “PRIDE” we can immediately think “SELF-SUFFICIENCY”, and that this is the direct opposite to “HUMILITY”.

See, now I’ve made life difficult…it was kind of easy to get around pride and arrogance (because we don’t like to think that we’re that kind of person) but when I start thinking of self-sufficiency I have a much harder time avoiding the issue.

Let me back up my proposed concept from scripture…

1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world--the lust of the flesh [craving for sensual gratification] and the lust of the eyes [greedy longings of the mind] and the pride of life [assurance in one's own resources or in the stability of earthly things]--these do not come from the Father but are from the world [itself].

Paul implies in Philippians that without a “true spirit of humility” we will act from factional motives, or prompted by conceit and empty arrogance. Peter twists the knife and equates a lack of humility with an attitude of pride, arrogance, etc. In Ephesians, Paul equates “humility” with “lowliness of mind”. Add in the above scripture in 1 John, and what we end up with is this – a humble person is a person that is not self-sufficient, and has none of the “self-x” characteristics.

Humility is a state of being where our tendency for self-sufficiency is put on hold… we suspend our self-sufficiency. And not just temporarily. It has to become part of my character, and something that cannot be stripped from me, even in situations where my own self-sufficiency seems to be more than adequate for and equal to the challenge.

I quickly add that the self-sufficiency that I’m talking about here is the type where we think that we can do it all on our own i.e. we think we don’t need God, or more appropriately, we think we don’t ALWAYS need God.

Let’s take self-motivation (an element of self-sufficiency) as an example:

A self-sufficient person has self-motivation…they set their mind to the task at hand and drive themselves through sheer determination, confidence and focus on the outcome
They don’t need someone telling them to “go for it” - they are already on the road “going for it”
They undertake the task without the need to be prodded or supervised.

Does this seem like a bad thing – at first glance not so much. But looked at from the viewpoint of impossible living, where we are a “spirit-first” being, and our life perspective are focussed on the spiritual rather than the natural, it’s actually quite a bad thing. This is because self-motivation:

is dependant on our own internal desire and energy to get motivated;
focuses on the things that satisfy our own natural desires (attain something good or avoid something bad);
can often result in us refusing to hear appropriate criticism or counsel;
is generally maintained by focus on a pre-defined outcome.

We’re talking about developing a spirit-first life where we are not dependant on our own energy and desires; where we are open to redirection from God (either directly or through trusted people); where our own self-defined purposes are overridden by God’s much bigger and far more satisfying purposes; where we may not necessarily understand or comprehend the outcomes. Self-sufficiency can’t handle this environment. Trying to be self-sufficient in a spirit-first life is like trying to run a petrol engine on diesel...powerless, noisy, and damaging.
(MORE TO COME)

Linking with purpose

I’m going to dig into the idea of purpose a bit more later, but just at this stage I remind you of what I said earlier in the manifesto…that God has a comprehensive purpose for us that goes down to the fine detail of our lives. It’s not just a “big picture” purpose – God has a purpose in every hour, every minute even, of our lives.

(MORE TO COME)

Why humility is a good thing

We might give some sort of mental consent to the fact that humility is a good thing, but do we truly think that humility is a good trait to have? Put aside your standard “good Christian” response for a moment…do you really think that humility is a good trait to have, or do you think it’s just one of those characteristics that we are obliged to have as Christians? Is it just the “cost of doing business” as a Christian?
(MORE TO COME)

Deny the battle

OK, while I’m on a roll, let me make another bold admission. I like my self-sufficiency - it’s one of my defining characteristics. So this new concept of pride and humility has started to become a real challenge, since I am “wired” to be self-sufficient.
I can’t escape from what the bible says – that there are two ways of approaching life:

I can be self-sufficient (which is quite bluntly another way of saying I am proud, arrogant, opinionated, wise in my own mind, reliant on my own resources, capable of keeping things under control, etc); or

I can be humble (which is pretty much the opposite of everything I just mentioned).

Then I began to realise (one of the reasons) why I try so hard to be self-sufficient…it’s the basis of all of the other “self-x” characteristics:

I am constantly concerned for my own well-being, so I want enough self-sufficiency to solidify my own position (self-preservation).

My happiness is important, so I want to have enough self-sufficiency to determine my own path (self-determination).

The world is not out to do me any favours and will tell me I can’t do things, so I need enough self-sufficiency to keep going when everything is against me (self-motivation).

And on and on it goes.

There is a particular and inescapable “by-product” of self-sufficiency – CONFLICT.
Because all these self-x factors are self-focussed, I end up in various levels of conflict everyday with something or someone. My interests, my self-x factors, will invariably clash with other people. Now, maybe you don’t think you’re quite as aggressive as I am making myself out to be, and that may well be the case. But even in our personal lives, away from the demands of work, we experience conflict when what we want doesn’t match with what someone else wants. And conflict is an incredibly destructive, distracting, and energy-sapping thing to have in your life…which is why Satan loves it and uses it to full effect.

James 4:1-3 What leads to strife (discord and feuds) and how do conflicts (quarrels and fightings) originate among you? Do they not arise from your sensual desires that are ever warring in your bodily members? You are jealous and covet [what others have] and your desires go unfulfilled; [so] you become murderers. [To hate is to murder as far as your hearts are concerned.] You burn with envy and anger and are not able to obtain [the gratification, the contentment, and the happiness that you seek], so you fight and war. You do not have, because you do not ask. [Or] you do ask [God for them] and yet fail to receive, because you ask with wrong purpose and evil, selfish motives. Your intention is [when you get what you desire] to spend it in sensual pleasures.

According to James, conflict inevitably arises when my own desires override everything else. Why? Because my desires are inevitably selfish – I want things that are good for me, I am prepared to expend significant amounts of energy to get them, and (quite frankly) what I want is more important than what you want! (Oh, did I say that out loud?)

This conflict is an incredibly strong thing – it’s at the heart of human nature because we are “hard-wired” to seek after the things that make us happy and that fulfil our own desires. Self-sufficiency is in our DNA - you can’t easily escape from this because it’s human nature. But what you can do though is “deny the battle” by allowing your spirit to be dominant.

How is this possible?

Your spirit is not motivated by your natural desires and tendencies because it’s the part that is responding to God. Basically, your spirit and God’s Spirit become “linked” with common purposes and desires. This creates space for God – it gives God the opportunity to empower you – the Holy Spirit is able to work with and in you – this results in the Spirit’s character becoming evident in you (i.e. the fruit of the Spirit).

Because of that, the conflict dissipates…when your spirit (linked with the Holy Spirit) is dominant, you remove yourself from the field of battle - your desires are not clashing with someone else’s desires because you have exchanged self-sufficiency for reliance on God.
So to answer the question…how is this possible? I have found that the best way to start to let my spirit link with God is to adopt the “traction” principles that I previously outlined.

How things progress from that point onwards becomes a bit more “specialised” – what I mean is that, having started with the acknowledge/include approach, God absolutely starts to point you in the right direction. By “right” I don’t mean your “preferred direction” or even “comfortable direction”. I mean that your heart starts to tune in, slowly and unsteadily at first but with increasing clarity and confidence, to God’s voice. A sudden awareness that you should do something; a knot in your stomach when you go to do something you shouldn’t; your heart suddenly because concerned about some person; there is a motivation to undertake a certain task or go a certain way. Small steps lead to bigger steps. But you’ve got to start stepping.

You can’t be humble – you are made humble

What I mean by this is that you simply cannot be humble in your own strength – it is created as a result of the Spirit living in you. Great, we have an excuse not to be humble – clearly I am not humble (and have to be self-sufficient) because God isn’t generating humility (and reliance on the Spirit) in me.

Do you really think that you’re going to get away with that!

Yes, it is true that humility is a fruit of the Spirit, and results from the Spirit living in us, but do you wonder why God’s character isn’t more evident? I mean, if God is living in us, and He’s so powerful, and has such an amazing personality, wouldn’t you think that God’s character would overtake everything?

It comes back to the fact that God has created us with the capacity to choose, and in this case our capacity to choose is focused on how much space we allow God. So read on…

You’ve only got so much space

Whilst we have been saying that living in the spiritual realm is a much bigger way of living, the fact remains that you’ve only got so much space in your life. There are many things that we have to pack into our day, and there are only so many hours.

As a result, what we try and do is create “life slices” – parts of our life that we set aside for God…and other areas that we set aside for us (because we “need our space”). The slicing varies, but at any given point in time, our lives can divide up this way. Sure, God’s involved…but only in those slices we permit at any given time.

There are any number of ways that we both do this and justify this – I’m not going to give examples but I’d like you to think about it. Are there those times when God simply doesn’t even get a thought? Let me twist the knife…are there those times when you think about God, but make a decision that this is your time, your activity, your money, your relationship, your hard-earned break?

The “Two masters” dilemma

You might have read this verse (about a million times)…

Luke 16:13 No servant is able to serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will stand by and be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (riches, or anything in which you trust and on which you rely).

Another one of those scriptures that we’ve come to accept more or less on face value – we generally employ it when we want to communicate that the love of money is evil. In fact, that’s usually the only situation in which we use it. But the implications of this scripture are more extensive, and it goes to the heart of the whole humility issue. “Mammon” is more than money – it’s anything that you rely on and anything you trust in. Roll back to the self-x factors…things like self-motivation, self-reliance, self-determination require large amounts of “mammon”.

If you read on (vs.26) Jesus talks about the birds that don’t sow, reap or gather…yet God keeps feeding them (and the fact that we are more valuable).

The “two masters” scripture is not about the love of money – it’s about making a “sufficiency” choice – I can either choose to totally rely on my own resources or I can choose to totally rely on God’s resources. And the bible is indicating that we cannot “mix and match” our sufficiencies.

This change in where we focus our sufficiency is not proposed lightly – in fact, it goes entirely against human nature. It seems wrong. It doesn’t make sense. It seems pretty stupid to the average man, in fact.

Basically, the “slicing” changes – instead of life becoming a mix of “God space” and “us space”, we end up with something that looks a little the diagram below.

Hierarchy of Needs

One of the issues that I ran into with this view of humility is that it flies in the face of some of the foundational ways we work as humans, particularly when it comes to the way in which we prioritise our lives, how our needs are fulfilled, etc.

I keep boring you with psychology, but it’s useful because we can look at how the natural man operates then compare it with how God intends our “impossible life” to operate. Remember that we are still focused on humility…this is just a “small” sidetrack to highlight the importance of humility and how central and critical it is.

You might have heard of a guy called Abraham Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970), an American psychologist famous for developing what he called the hierarchy of human needs. Maslow contended that humans have a number of inherent and instinctive needs, arranged in a hierarchy (or pyramid) in terms of their potency. The lower the need is in the pyramid, the more powerful it is. The higher the need is in the pyramid, the weaker and more distinctly human it is.

Maslow proposed that unless the lower needs were fulfilled, the focus on the higher needs was put on hold.

The base of the pyramid is formed by the physiological needs, including the biological requirements for food, water, air, and sleep.

Once the physiological needs are met, an individual can concentrate on the second level, the need for safety and security. Included here are the needs for structure, order, security, and predictability. These safety needs manifest themselves in such things as a preference for job security, grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority, savings accounts, insurance policies, Personal security from crime, financial security, health and well-being, safety nets against accidents/illness and the adverse impacts.

The third level is the need for love and belonging. Included here are the needs for friends and companions, a supportive family, identification with a group, and an intimate relationship. In the absence of these elements, many people become susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and depression.

The fourth level is the esteem needs. This group of needs requires both recognition from other people that results in feelings of prestige, acceptance, and status, and self-esteem that results in feelings of adequacy, competence, and confidence. Lack of satisfaction of the esteem needs results in discouragement and feelings of inferiority.

Finally, self-actualisation (i.e. the need to make the most of your abilities, striving to be the best we can, working toward fulfilling our potential, etc) sits at the apex of the pyramid. This includes stuff like:

Clearer perception of reality
Acceptance of self, others, and nature
Spontaneity
Problem-centering
Detachment and the need for solitude
Autonomy, independent of culture and environment
Continued freshness of appreciation
Deep interpersonal relations
Democratic character structure
Ethical means towards moral ends
Philosophical, unhostile sense of humor
Creativity

Personally, I like the sound of being “self-actualised” – it sounds like a pretty amazing way to view and live life. The only problem is that I have to get all the other levels of the pyramid sorted out before I can effectively get to that top self-actualisation level.

Which brings me back to my tendency to “life-slice” – I usually focus my energy on the lower levels of the pyramid because once I’ve got that sorted out then I’m far more useful to God – I can start to focus on the higher level stuff - or at least that’s how I have perceived things. Apparently I was wrong!

God’s hierarchy of impossible living

As with a lot of things we’re looking at in this manifesto, you can usually take the way that the natural man lives, turn it upside down and back to front, and you come up with the way that God intends us to live. So that’s what I did with the pyramid of needs…

What’s the implication of turning things around like this?

Firstly and most obviously, the “self-actualisation” comes before everything – it becomes the highest priority in our lives so that our energy is focussed on this before we think about anything else.Whilst Maslow and others have defined self-actualisation in quite comprehensive terms, I have defined it as one “simple” concept…humility.

How does this affect “slicing”?

Taking this approach to our needs affects the way in which we “slice” our lives – dramatically! In fact, what happens is that there is no slicing…none whatsoever.
(MORE TO COME)

Supply and demand

Philippians 4:19And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Kind of comforting isn’t it to know how rich God is? It’s a concept that we’ve been taught as children – God owns everything, and all we need to do is ask Him for stuff!

Matthew 7:7-12 Keep on asking and it will be given you; keep on seeking and you will find; keep on knocking [reverently] and [the door] will be opened to you. For everyone who keeps on asking receives; and he who keeps on seeking finds; and to him who keeps on knocking, [the door] will be opened. …. If you then, evil as you are, know how to give good and advantageous gifts to your children, how much more will your Father Who is in heaven [perfect as He is] give good and advantageous things to those who keep on asking Him!

Then there’s the caveat (because you’ve always got to have an escape hatch if things don’t work out) – the principle that “Sometimes God says YES, and sometimes He says NO, and sometimes He says LATER”. Have you heard that from the pulpit? I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard it. So I checked the concordance…there is no scripture that says this. There is nothing scriptural to back up this “principle” that has been presented as a truth.

Keep reading on from where I left off in Matthew 7…

Matthew 7: 13-14 Enter through the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and spacious and broad is the way that leads away to destruction, and many are those who are entering through it. But the gate is narrow (contracted by pressure) and the way is straitened and compressed that leads away to life, and few are those who find it.

The “ask and keep on asking” scripture has an underlying and exceptionally powerful principle behind it that only comes to light when you read on to verses 13 and 14….the principle that we should not be self-sufficient…and that taking the path of “suspended self-sufficiency” is pretty much about what I talked about really early in the manifesto….the “tight squeeze”.

So no need for superannuation?

Clearly there is a discussion here about where being responsible about money and planning for the future fits into this picture – and I’m not suggesting that you simply ignore this requirement. In fact, it’s a biblical principle:

1 Timothy 5:8 If anyone fails to provide for his relatives, and especially for those of his own family, he has disowned the faith [by failing to accompany it with fruits] and is worse than an unbeliever [who performs his obligation in these matters].

But money is only part of the issue – whilst we need to eat (as do our families) we are talking about our need for both natural and spiritual resources.

Establishing the principle

It was interesting to read how Jesus sent the disciples (72 of them, not just the 12 main players) out into the countryside to minister, and He said to them to go out without taking money, baggage, etc.

Luke 10:4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.
Luke 22:35 Then Jesus asked them, "When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?" "Nothing," they answered.

There is was a reason for this – Jesus was telling these guys to suspend their self-sufficiency (which they did, to their credit). Jesus “closes the loop” (12 chapters later!) at the Last Supper, pushing the point home.

Humility and wisdom

There is another link here…

James 3:13 Who is there among you who is wise and intelligent? Then let him by his noble living show forth his [good] works with the [unobtrusive] humility [which is the proper attribute] of true wisdom.

(MORE TO COME)

Humility is part of God’s personality

Humility is a central part of God's character - it's one of the defining characteristic of Who God is, and in part this characteristic explains why God acts the way He acts. This is true of all the characteristics spelt out in Galatians 5 (the fruit of the Spirit) – this scripture gives us a great insight into what God’s character is like.

Now that’s a pretty wild concept – that God could be humble – after all, He created everything, has infinite power, etc. Why would God be humble? I can understand Him demanding that we be humble, but it’s a little more difficult to imagine God being humble.
This challenged me to go back and look at my concept of humble, having got a bit of background on Moses.

Matthew 11:29 Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest ( relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.

Philippians 2:5 Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: [Let Him be your example in humility:]

Getting "traction"

2008-02-08T14:54:00.003+10:00

I began writing this section of the manifesto as a response to a number of conversations that I have been having with friends, discussing the various ideas and principles raised as I’ve studied this whole impossible living concept.

One of the questions that keeps cropping up is, “How do you start?”

And the less than satisfactory answer is that it’s different for everyone. Just as we have different relationships with our most trusted friends, so too God’s relationship with each of us has its nuances and particular characteristics. We are individuals. God is an individual. It stands to reason that, whilst God loves us all equally, the subtleties of our individual relationships with God will vary.

I think that there are several simply principles that apply regardless of how we progress along the path of spiritual maturity.

I’ve headed this section “getting traction” because, personally, I have found getting the principles of impossible living to “stick” and being able to continually practice them has been no small task. You get busy at work, and hours later you realise that you have not thought about God even once. You find yourself in a stressful situation, and it’s not until you’ve stepped away and had time to breathe that you think maybe God might have had some answers…if only you’d got Him involved! You look back and see that there was a missed opportunity because you weren’t aware at the time of what God intended. I know because I suffer from these same problems.

So let me ask a pointed question - do you find that your relationship with God seems to swing from “intimate” to “transactional”? You might have those times when you are consistently aware of God being with you – you don’t even necessarily have to talk – just be aware of Him being there. That’s intimate. Then there are those other times where God only gets acknowledged when the situation demands His intervention – a cry for help if you like - this is the “transactional” relationship.

I think that we’d agree that the “intimate” relationship with God is preferable - a situation where we are constantly aware of God with us and working through us. This is a pretty powerful way to live!

So how to start in turning our “cry for help” relationship with God into something more meaningful. Here are my “Top 6” ideas on the matter, entitled (rather ineloquently) the “Flick, Walk, Chat, Freeze, and Jump Approach to Getting Traction”. Email me with alternate titles. Preferably shorter ones.

Flick...

Unless you’re reading this in deep well, there’s probably some noise around you. We seem to be surrounded by noise. People talking to us, phones ringing, television ads that seem to be louder than the program you were watching. All while you try and listen to the radio, the kids, and your partner simultaneously. The dog joins in for good measure.

Noisy little world we're living in!

Here’s an activity for you – walk down the street and count the number of people with ear phones in their ears. Kids going to school. Business people rushing to a meeting. Everyone has their iPod plugged in, and it’s not simply to enjoy the music. How do I know this? Because I’m one of those people, and the reason that I have my iPod almost surgically implanted is because, in a noisy world, I want to choose the noise! I don’t think I’m alone.

One of the problems that arises is that this constant assault of noise, and our attempts to control it, has the undesirable effect of making us bad listeners. Like many things in the modern world, communication has become a consumer item – tell me what I need to know, then go away! Better still, send me a text message.

I think you’d agree that trying to develop a relationship with someone with this approach would be somewhat difficult. Here’s another experiment. Next time you want to talk touch down with a friend or partner, and find out what’s been happening and discuss things of some importance, make sure that you turn a television up really loud then talk to someone else on your mobile phone at the same time….really loudly…you know, like people do on trains. Top it off with an iPod and you’ve got an incredibly appropriate forum for developing a relationship with your friend – they are going to feel really important, and you will have effectively communicated your interest in them. Am I being sarcastic? You better believe it!

Do we truly think that God is any different? We are trying to develop a relationship with Him, but we don’t always take steps to dial down the noise and give Him our attention.

This doesn’t sound like a particularly deep principle, but I think it’s an important one. What I am talking about is creating an environment where the noise doesn’t distract us from God - dialling down the noise that assaults our physical ears and, just as importantly, the “noise” in our minds.

King David was a very busy guy – he had a big kingdom to run – but he still understood the importance of dialling down the noise.

Psalm 131:1-2 My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

David had “great matters” to attend to, and he was also aware that God wanted to do “amazing things”, but he regularly made time to dial the noise down.

Flick off the radio in the car. Flick off the TV. There are things that you must do each day, and demands that must be met, but flick off those demands for a moment. They’ll still be there, but you need to actively dial down this noise.

Why do you need to do this? Read on!

Walk...

I know who my close friends are – for three reasons. Firstly, they are the ones who I can communicate with without either of us actually saying anything. The smallest facial movement says more than words. Secondly, my close friends are the ones that I know so well that I know how they would react in any given situation, or I can at least have a pretty good guess at how they would react. Thirdly, my closest friends only have to say “hello” and I can tell exactly where they are at – angry, sad, happy, whatever. It could just be the inflection in their voice, and the words they use – you can just feel what’s behind a single word.

The reason that this level of communication exists is because I’ve spent time with these people, sometimes over a period of many years. I’ve played music with them. I’ve gone out to dinner and concerts with them. I’ve finished work at some ridiculous hour of the night, and gone around to their house and sat on their balcony and drunk their coffee until they’ve thrown me out - which they can do because they’re my close friends!

God is the same – and it’s why I’m encouraging you not to pray. That right….stop praying! OK, maybe I’ll clarify that a little before you send the boys around to “counsel” me for such sacrilege.

Often when we spend time with God, we do a lot of talking…in fact, we’re usually doing one of two things – complaining or asking for something. These two things usually constitute “praying”. Now, convert that into the natural world for a minute – how much time do you want to spend with those “friends” that either complain to you about something or are asking you for something? I’d speculate that you’re desire to be with these people, and your level of relationship with these people, is “limited”.

And it's for this reason that I’d encourage you to simply “walk” with God, and I’m not talking about some sort of super-spiritual thing here. It is valuable to spend time with God, and recognise that He is “around”, without actually needing to say anything. Just like I enjoy being with my friends without the need to be in constant conversation with them, I enjoy the same experience with God. It’s nice to just be in the same room as my close friends – even if we are not doing something together. Again, it’s the same with God – just recognising that He is in the “same room” is a great way of developing an awareness of Him. You can get closer to God just by positively recognising that He is with you.

Don’t think you’ve got to say something or do something. Just be in the “same room”. Communicating with God consists of more than asking for something - in fact, it's more "walk" than "talk".

Chat...

I said before that you should stop praying, with some clarification around the comment…so I’ll take the clarification a step further. We should ask God for assistance, and we should bring our issues to Him, and He’s happy about that. It’s just that our communication with God has to be more than the “complain/ask” stuff.

What I have been finding beneficial is the habit of chatting with God – talking to Him about what I am doing, how things are going, etc.

What’s the benefit in chatting? My aim is to two-fold:

By chatting to God I am including Him in what I am doing…even the really small and insignificant stuff like what’s for lunch, or how bad the coffee was at the new coffee shop (and how we’re never going back there again!)

It makes opportunity for God to talk to me – not with some thunderous voice necessarily, but usually through my thoughts and attitudes being directed by Him. God has a chance to “impress” some particular idea or thought on me when I engage Him in simple interaction.

I learned that God likes to chat…and indeed He always has.

Genesis 3:8-9 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

At this time, Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit that they weren’t supposed to, and had raced off the sew fig leaves together to cover themselves. Why? Because God would come down to the garden to walk, interact and communicate with Adam and Eve, and I think it would be fair to say that this was such a regular thing. It must have been - Adam and Eve were pretty keen to get their wardrobe together because God was going to be “dropping in” at any moment. God calls out to them “Where are you?” With great respect I would suggest that God was keen to chat! How was the garden going? Had they tried the fruit that was growing on the eastern side? Had Adam come up with a name for that big grey thing with a long trunk?

My encouragement to you is absolutely to bring your needs to God, but don’t let that constitute the majority of your interaction with Him. Be inclusive, even in the smallest things.

Freeze...

OK, so you’re going to scream if one more person tells you that you need to read your bible. Well, you’ll be happy to know that I am not one of those people…I’m an “entirely different sort of people” that says you need to constantly think about the bible, and it’s hard to think about if you haven’t read something to start with. Which is kind of a roundabout way of saying it’s important to get into the bible…I’m pretty sneaky!

Since you might be inclined to skip this section, let me use the following analogy to press the point.

I like cooking, but I’ve got to have the time to do it. Week days normally consist of a mad rush to work in the morning, followed by a day of racing around, finally culminating in a crash on to the sofa when I get home. I don’t generally feel like getting all “Jamie Oliver” when I walk in the door of a night…in fact, I’m generally thinking “Colonel Sanders”. In a valiant attempt to avoid an early death and lower my cholesterol, the large wok kindly given to by my mother is loaded to the top with vegetables, meat, spices and various other items from my cupboard and I cook enough to last an entire week. The culinary surprise is lovingly ladled into Tupperware and frozen, ready to be whipped out on the ensuing nights.

What the heck does my apparent lack of domestication and poor time management have to do with the bible? I’m glad you asked!

The bible contains a lot of principles and laws that we should give attention to, but it’s far more than that. It is actually the result of God putting on paper the things that are in His heart – it outlines His intentions and attitudes. And it’s comprehensive – God has prepared the bible the way that He has to ensure that we can, in any given situation, understand how He thinks.

So, why read the bible? And not just read the bible – why think about what you’ve read? A couple of reasons, the first being that we are talking about living a life where our attitudes line up with God’s way of thinking. A pretty significant shift from our natural tendency…but then again we are talking about becoming spiritual beings! Secondly, we are not only wanting to know how God thinks, but also to know what God would have us do in a situation. We want to get on board with God’s purpose, acting in a way in which our lives have a significant and positive effect on the people around us.

We’ve talked about communication, and the need to “walk” and “chat” - now it’s time to “freeze”. What I mean by this is that reading the bible is not always about getting some “bolt from the blue” when you read it, which is kind of what many people expect. This will happen (regularly) but many times there is a need for us to “cook and freeze” the bible – spend the time to read it, think about it, link it together with other scriptures, study particular areas of it, etc so that it’s stored away ready to be “defrosted” when we need it. Unlike my cooking, the things that you've "frozen" will retain their "freshness", ready for any situation.

I quickly add though that, just like frozen food, the "freshness" of the principles I'vehave stored away isn't guaranteed indefinitely. I can't read the bible say in January 2008, then expect that it's going to remain "ready for use" in my heart unless there is a constant intake of study and attention to the Word. The analogy starts to break down here (as analogies often do) - bottom line is that find I need to sustain myself with both the Word frozen/defrosted in my heart AND the new stuff that I read and study each day.

Jump...

Anyone that knows me will tell you what a huge fan I am of physical exercise. OK, that’s not true…in fact, I would drive to the bathroom if my pesky car was narrow enough to fit down the hallway of my house. It’s not that I’m totally lazy – it’s just that rapid movement seems like such a waste of the limited number of heartbeats God has kindly provided to me!
Secondly, by way of further insight into my personality, I am not a risk taker. Don’t get me wrong, I will take risks, but the risk is calculated to ensure that I can afford to lose. You won’t find me bungee jumping or mountain climbing. More power to those of you that do those things. I’ll take risks in business, put myself in uncomfortable situations, speak to large groups, kick off big projects, etc but I’ve weighed the risk eight ways to Wednesday before doing it.

So here’s where things might start to get uncomfortable.

It goes without saying that we’re talking about a different way of living (even though I keep saying it) and that this new way of living is in many ways unfamiliar territory. Because of that, I’ve suggested we need to be thinking the things that I’ve mentioned above.

In the middle of all this, God is giving us wisdom (which is comprehensive insight into His ways and purposes). God provides this wisdom as we develop a relationship with Him, spend time talking with Him and getting the principles of the Word under our belts.

It’s what happens next that might challenge you. Wisdom is not given to us simply so we can be wise – this life is not an academic exercise in gaining knowledge. God intends for us to “jump” – take the wisdom and direction that He has given us and take some action. Wisdom is referred to as “comprehensive” because it presupposes that we are going to need the fine detail to do what needs to be done. And we need to jump when God says so - not to do so would result in a missed opportunity.

There is a significant element of risk here, at which point I get nervous. I don’t want to look stupid, and I don’t like making mistakes, but God wants us to become risk takers. He gives us direction and insight for a reason – so we can take action – but all that is useless if we are afraid of failure.

My proposal is to take a chance when you feel that God is taking you down a certain path. I’m not talking about big stuff here – it’s part of the chatting with God piece. God gives us direction in the smallest of things – as small as where to get lunch! So it is not inappropriate to get direction from God on even the smallest, seemingly insignificant areas of our lives, and begin to act on what God impresses on us at that time. This builds our confidence in our ability to hear from God.

I quickly add that you should read again the section on “safety nets” – I have found this to be invaluable as I have started to do some risky things i.e. things that I would not normally do because they’re uncomfortable or I might look stupid. I have people around me that I talk to about things – people I can trust that I know hear from God (and that are taking risks themselves). We keep an eye on each other, and we have given an overarching permission to one another to talk honestly and frankly if there seems to be a problem.

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Part 9 - Is this life boring?

2008-01-28T17:21:00.000+10:00

Who called the Fun Police?

Before we go any further I have to kind of balance out what’s going on here. I asked a question in a group of friends not long ago – one of those “off the wall” questions that sometimes rolls around in my confused little mind! The question was “Were the apostles fun at parties?”

I mean, really, the bible talks about the apostles doing amazing works and really hearing from God, and I just did not get the impression that they were the type of people that got invited to parties. To put it bluntly, I started to think that people like Paul, Peter, John etc were nerds!

In fact, you could even be excused for thinking that the bible even backs up this type of thinking.

Acts 5:12-13 Now by the hands of the apostles (special messengers) numerous and startling signs and wonders were being performed among the people. And by common consent they all met together [at the temple] in the covered porch (walk) called Solomon's. And none of those who were not of their number dared to join and associate with them, but the people held them in high regard and praised and made much of them.

Let me put this verse in context – a couple called Ananias and Sapphira had just tried to pull a swifty on the church, and Peter called them on it – the upshot was Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead on the spot. Generally speaking, people don’t drop dead when I speak to them – bored to death maybe, but they don’t fall dead where they stand!

The apostles seemed to have reached a stage in their relationship with God where they became intimidating to those around them – they were respected, and people had a lot of time for them, but they authority of God that they exhibited scared people to death – literally and figuratively.

These people were not boring – they lived a life that was out on the edge – there was always something amazing, confronting and occasionally scary happening around them. You could always count on the extraordinary happening when an apostle was around.

But did they have a fun life?

In saying that the apostles experienced a pretty full-on lifestyle, I still have not answered my own question – did these people have a fun life? Or to put it another way, did they really enjoy life when there was so much going on, so many demands, and a demand to be “in the game” every single day?

Quite frankly, I don’t want to live a life that doesn’t have some fun in it – I want to enjoy my time with friends, listen to my music really, really loud (and yes, my iPod has a “LOUD” playlist), and take joy from life. So if I’m supposed to become this spiritual person, does this mean that the "Fun Police" are going to ensure that I don't enjoy life?

The bible is pretty clear on this front – the life we live is intended to be exciting, fulfilling and edgy. Jesus makes this clear when He says…

John 10:10 The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows).

But it really becomes a matter of perspective. Or to put it another way, what’s “fun”? There are many things that we might consider gratifying, exciting and fun right now. Will that be the case as we become spiritual people?

Then I read what Peter had to say (which at first glance I did not find all that encouraging):

1 Peter 4:1-4 So, since Christ suffered in the flesh for us, for you, arm yourselves with the same thought and purpose [patiently to suffer rather than fail to please God]. For whoever has suffered in the flesh [having the mind of Christ] is done with [intentional] sin [has stopped pleasing himself and the world, and pleases God], so that he can no longer spend the rest of his natural life living by [his] human appetites and desires, but [he lives] for what God wills.
For the time that is past already suffices for doing what the Gentiles like to do--living [as you have done] in shameless, insolent wantonness, in lustful desires, drunkenness, reveling, drinking bouts and abominable, lawless idolatries. They are astonished and think it very queer that you do not now run hand in hand with them in the same excesses of dissipation, and they abuse [you].

What an incredibly uncomfortable scripture for us “fun people”!! The fact that Peter is suggesting that we’ve got to be ready to suffer doesn’t seem like much fun. Then Peter goes on to say that it was time to give up their old lifestyle, and he spells out what he’s talking about in no uncertain terms.

Now, I read this, and I didn’t think that I was living “in shameless, insolent wantonness, in lustful desires, drunkenness, revelling, drinking bouts and abominable, lawless idolatries”, and so Peter could not be giving me a lashing, could he? But then I started to think about the people that were living in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, and what their lifestyle was and what was important to them.

Something's rotten in Cappadocia

I went back and had a look at what was happening in this region at the time Peter was writing. The first thing I learned was that Peter was writing in about 60 A.D. which is when the fire that burned Rome occurred - the Emperor Nero basically blamed the Christians for this and started down a path of persecuting them.

The next interesting thing I found out was that the Amazon women (think Xena the Warrior Princess!) were reputed to have come from Pontus, which is now part of Turkey and was quite a wild place. Bithynia was right next door, forming part of a dual province. Galatia sat between the two states (the Galatians being pretty big Zeus followers at the time). During Peter’s time, these places were part of the Roman Empire. Cappadocia was a state that had changed it allegiances regularly until Rome got it under control. This region is now in modern day Turkey.

This was a time in Roman history where the focus was on entertainment – games, sport, drinking and eating etc. The people of that time would have been exposed to and encouraged to participate in a fairly reckless and immoral lifestyle – in fact, there are considerable parallels between the activities then and the current Gen Y mentality we see today. There was great emphasis on fun.

On top of that , Nero (despite being as crazy as a cut snake) had opened up trade with many countries and there was increasing wealth. People were focussed on making money.
It was also a time when Nero saw that there was an increasing gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”, and he took at least some steps to try and help the disenfranchised (although some might say it was only to buy votes). Again, there are some parallels with our own point in history.

So the things that were going on at the time that Peter wrote to these churches seem to parallel in many respects the things that are going on now – there is a focus on entertainment and money. There is an all-pervading self-centredness evident in society. Many people are being disenfranchised whilst the rest of society chases after self-gratification.

Put aside the words “drunkenness”, “wantonness” etc for a moment - Peter was encouraging the people in that region to shift from the social norm that existed. Maybe we don’t go out and get drunk every night, and maybe we haven’t been caught sacrificing to some golden idol at a pagan temple, but perhaps we might become a bit uncomfortable when we realise that we are conforming to many inappropriate social norms.

The insidious part of all of this is that, because social norms are socially acceptable, conforming to them is not seen as a bad thing – it’s just what we do in this society! And our frame of reference for what’s “fun” generally fits inside this social norm.

Peter has not called the Fun Police on us to break up our party – what he’s done is confront us with the challenge of non-conformity, and dared us to think about a life that redefines what is fun, gratifying and fulfilling.

Hummingbird Syndrome

You would be forgiven for thinking that God has called us to a life where there is no fun, despite the fact that we are given “life more abundantly” – there seems to be a disconnect between God’s promise of this full life, and the indication the bible gives us that there is going to be suffering in our lives. It appears that God wants us to enjoy life (and not simply “suffer through” it), but how can you be suffering and still have a full life?

The word “enjoy” is based on the word “joy” – this is significant. The dictionary defines joy as the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying, keen pleasure, or elation. Despite sounding like a pretty good thing to have, the concept of joy doesn’t get much attention as a sermon topic, except to say “You’re a Christian, so you should be happy” – which is kind of patronising, since there are a lot of things going on that are particularly “anti-joyful”. Life is not an easy ride, and if we are pushing for the spiritual life being discussed here, life can get even more complicated!

So how do I get this “emotion of great delight or happiness”?

Well, actually, you don’t!

Let me clarify that – what I mean to say is that “emotional” joy is a very fleeting thing – it is, as the definition says, caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying. Going back to some first principles, we talked about the fact that we consist of three separate parts – body, mind and spirit. Emotional joy is something that is experienced in our minds, and our minds are fickle little beasts that can switch from one emotion to another quicker than you can blink. The experience of emotional joy is very much dependant on our environment, most of which we cannot control, so we do one of two things:

We find an environment where we can find some joy (even if just for a little while);

We avoid environments where there is likely to be no joy, or what little we have will get sucked out of us

The fact is that people spend their entire lives doing one of these two things, and it’s a full time job. Think about it – what things do you do every day just to grab a moment of joy, and how many of those things are there? They might be weekly events that give you a major “joy kick”, or they might be smaller daily rituals that top up the joy factor. For me, my first cup of coffee in the morning precipitates an emotion of great delight or happiness!

It’s kind of like being a hummingbird. For those of you who have never been a hummingbird, or have no immediate intention of becoming one, here are a few interesting hummingbird facts:

They are known for their ability to hover in mid-air by rapidly flapping their wings, 15–80 times per second (depending on the species). Capable of sustained hovering, the hummingbird has the ability to fly deliberately backwards (this is the only group of birds able to do so) or vertically, and to maintain position while drinking nectar;

Their heart rate can reach as high as 1,260 beats per minute;

Hummingbirds are specialised nectarivores – they feed primarily on nectar from various plants. The problem is that nectar is a poor source of nutrients, so they eat some insects and spiders, but nectar remains their primary food source.

They typically consume more than their own weight in nectar each day, and to do so they must visit hundreds of flowers daily. At any given moment, they are only hours away from starving;

They are capable of slowing down their metabolism at night, or any other time food is not readily available. They enter a hibernation-like state known as torpor. During torpor, the heart rate and rate of breathing are both slowed dramatically (the heart rate to roughly 50–180 beats per minute), reducing their need for food.

Why the ornithological detour? Well, the search for joy that the natural man is constantly engaged in is what I’ve termed “Hummingbird Syndrome” – and here’s why:

Most people spend their entire lives having to strive to keep their heads above water – to maintain at least a moderate level of peace and enjoyment. They are like hummingbirds that beat their wings at a remarkable rate simply to remain in one spot long enough to get a feed;

It takes a remarkable level of joyful situations and “things” to keep some feeling of enjoyment going in people’s lives – our consumer society is evidence of the need to consume our body weight in “stuff” to do this;

If people can’t get the joy that they need just be “normal”, they exhibit a range of behaviours, many of which are anti-social.

You see, whilst it is God’s intention that we enjoy life, the joy that we experience is not “normal”. In fact, it’s so abnormal that 1 Peter 4 (see above) indicates that people will be “astonished and think it very queer that you do not now run hand in hand with them in the same excesses of dissipation”, to the point where they might even abuse us.

Abnormal joy

The joy we are talking about here comes from living in the spiritual realm, with a focus on what’s happening in the spiritual realm rather than what’s happening on the natural place. It’s kind of like a passenger jet that flies above the weather – whilst it’s close to the ground, it’s battered by the elements, and has to brave driving wind, rain and turbulence. Once the jet climbs up to 30,000 feet, there is less of this type of nonsense going on. You can see more of what's going on, and what's ahead. You are more "situationally aware".

This joy is an inevitable result of living as a spiritual being – a person that is controlled by the Holy Spirit, and has a constant perception of the issues we raised in the “faith” section. It is not unusual that faith, hope and love get mentioned together on many occasions – these things are inextricably linked. In particular, there is a strong link between “joy” and “hope”.

(MORE TO COME)

Part 8 - Safety Nets

2008-01-28T17:04:00.000+10:00

I want to jump out here for a moment and talk about the concept of “safety nets”. What I mean is that we’re talking about some really radical stuff here – a way of living that really goes against the norm and is to a certain extent not part of any model that we see operating in the church. Effectively, we’re talking about taking some principles that were laid down a long time ago and getting them back on the road again, and so we’re having to “re-blaze” a trail that has become overgrown and infrequently travelled for some time.

There are risks associated with doing this, not the least of which is that we could get it wrong and end up following something that really isn’t scriptural – and that scares me to death.

Fortunately, and unsurprisingly, God looked ahead and knew that we might face this situation, which is why He established the principle of the safety net.

1 Thessalonians 5:19-21 Do not quench (suppress or subdue) the [Holy] Spirit; do not spurn the gifts and utterances of the prophets [do not depreciate prophetic revelations nor despise inspired instruction or exhortation or warning]. But test and prove all things [until you can recognize] what is good; [to that] hold fast.

We are not supposed to take things on face value. Testing what is being said and done is part of what we should be doing to make sure that it’s right.

The safety net involves being accountable and open to others that we trust to give us a nudge when we go off the track, but we also need to be highly self-critical.

Galatians 6:2-5 Bear (endure, carry) one another's burdens and troublesome moral faults, and in this way fulfill and observe perfectly the law of Christ (the Messiah) and complete what is lacking [in your obedience to it]. For if any person thinks himself to be somebody [too important to condescend to shoulder another's load] when he is nobody [of superiority except in his own estimation], he deceives and deludes and cheats himself. But let every person carefully scrutinize and examine and test his own conduct and his own work. He can then have the personal satisfaction and joy of doing something commendable [in itself alone] without [resorting to] boastful comparison with his neighbor. For every person will have to bear (be equal to understanding and calmly receive) his own [little] load [of oppressive faults].

2 Corinthians 13:5 Examine and test and evaluate your own selves to see whether you are holding to your faith and showing the proper fruits of it. Test and prove yourselves [not Christ]. Do you not yourselves realize and know [thoroughly by an ever-increasing experience] that Jesus Christ is in you--unless you are [counterfeits] disapproved on trial and rejected?

Paraphrased, we’ve all got issues and we’re got to help ourselves and each other through this stuff - we have a responsibility to do this.

Accountability = transparency

Being transparent is a hard thing for most people. I personally don’t like admitting to everyone that I have faults, or that I have got it wrong, or that I have caused some problem and I need to “come clean”.

I don’t think the intention is that we have to tell everyone that we’ve made mistakes – that would simply not be helpful, and may in fact present a stumbling block to some.

I do think however that God is establishing an order in the church, and identifying people that are exhibiting God’s characteristics and attitudes, and it is these people that we can turn to for support and safety. I am not suggesting that we lean on these people instead of God – what I am saying is that God sets us people and works through them to provide a “covering” – they are people we can be accountable to and transparent with because they command (not demand) trust and confidence.

We’re trying to push the boundaries of spiritual experience here – we need to make sure we keep an eye on one another as we start swimming in deeper water.

Part 7 - Love

2008-01-28T16:59:00.000+10:00

Which side of the playground?

There is one thing that you can say about God and that is that He is a great teacher – He understands that we need to learn how to be the people that He wants us to be, and He doesn’t simply make demands and expect us to muddle our way there on our own. That’s why so much of the bible has a certain logic about it – principles are laid out in a logical fashion, with one principle building on another.

I said in the previous section that there was only one pre-condition that God has for us to be ready to for Him to give us the gifts of the Spirit – we’ve got to have love. And at this point I draw a big line down the middle of the playground and ask everyone to take a side…

There are some people that are naturally “loving” – they have a disposition towards helping people, and have a caring nature. Loving people isn’t really that hard. All of you can go over to one side of the line.

Then there are those people that finding loving people difficult, maybe even impossible. People just aren’t lovely. Loving people involves a level of vulnerability that you’re just not about to buy into. Caring for people is a chore. All these people should shuffle over to the other side of the playground.

Now there is a group (probably the majority) that has a foot on both sides of the line, and this is probably where the majority are – capable of exhibiting love and care to some people, but definitely not everyone.

So does this mean that only people that have moved to the “loving” side of the playground will be capable of receiving the gifts? Everyone else goes into the “too hard basket”?

This is where we might have to throw away our concepts of love and start again from the beginning – find out what love really means, without all the hype and dogma and emotion that has been associated with love.

What love looks like

This is going to be a bit back to front – I want to start by talking about what love looks like, rather than what love is (I’m saving that up for a surprise!!)

The best starting point is over in 1 Peter 1, where God shows us what love looks like.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God's love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]. It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening]. Love never fails [never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end.

What are we looking at here? Simply put, God’s given us a copy of the “spiritual licence test” and given us the answers to the test – He’s told us how love will be exhibited in our lives (if we’ve got it). This bit of scripture is what God tests us against before “signing off” that we are ready to receive the gifts. Isn’t that great? Or do I sense hesitation in some people! If you’re like me (you poor soul) then your answers might be something like “Actually, no that’s so way not great” or “Can I please have another test?” or maybe you’re thinking there’s a way to “cheat” on this test?

I mean, at first glance, the test is impossible! And you’re right – it is an impossible test, created by a God Who likes the impossible. And God is basically saying that He expects us to pass it? He sure is – and He wants us to pass with flying colours.

I hate tests!

You’re not a fan of tests? You think that tests are basically a teacher’s way of legally inflicting pain and anguish upon you, now that public floggings and institutionalised torture has more or less been outlawed? If someone mentions the word “test” you break out in hives and find yourself hyperventilating? Am I getting the impression that you think tests are not fun?

I teach post-graduate law at university, and as part of my role as a teacher I regularly put my students to the test. My teaching style is highly practical – I want students to walk out of my course with the capacity to apply the learning. The course is not simply an academic exercise – it is meant to be useful to them and to their prospective clients.

There are a few important principles that I apply when it comes to testing:

Firstly, I am not testing my students because it’s fun for me to watch my students experience pain – I am testing them to make sure they “get it”. I can bang on in lectures for hours, but the test ensures that the student has heard and comprehended what I’ve said, and also understood how to apply that learning;
Secondly, the test is absolutely about applying the principles under pressure – when they have to appear in court for real, with everyone watching and someone’s future livelihood at stake, they have to be able to work under the pressure of the court’s expectations, their client’s expectations, and society’s expectations;
The test can never fully simulate what will happen in the real world – there are certain things that we can only contrive and “mock up”. We can’t have real plaintiffs with real injuries, real car accidents to create those injuries, real surgeons who have conducted real operations….it would just become too expensive for the university! But we can give the students enough reality to make it useful.
There is no single right answer – there are many roads to the correct conclusion and result. The path that a student takes depends on their personal experiences, their personality types, and their understanding and perception of the challenge set before them. No two practice trials runs the same way, and two students may get identical marks by attacking a problem with high differentiated methods

I’m making an important (and potentially highly controversial) point here, and in doing that I’m thinking about what love looks like when we’ve got it. The testing that we are experiencing at the moment is not the real world – it’s like the practice courts that I run at university where students get to act as lawyers in made-up criminal and civil trials. Similarly, your “trials”, the experiences that you are having at work, at home, at church, etc., are just tests to make sure you “get it” – because the real stuff is yet to really take off.

The “love testing” God is giving us right now is just to get us to our “P” plates – we’re not quite ready for the full force of “reality” to hit just as yet. God is going to let us experience some of the things that are going to happen once we step outside, but it cannot ever fully simulate what will happen in the future.

Right now we are being tested so God can get us on the road – the testing that comes later is more geared towards “perfecting” us.

1 Peter 4:12 Beloved, do not be amazed and bewildered at the fiery ordeal which is taking place to test your quality, as though something strange (unusual and alien to you and your position) were befalling you.

So how do we pass the impossible test?

It would not make sense that God would set what appears to be an impossible task before us and not give us some direction on how we deal with the situation.
A summary of where we are at:

We want to receive the gifts of the Spirit
We won’t be able to handle the gifts of the Spirit if we don’t have love
When we look at how love is exhibited, we realise that it's an impossible task
God is intending to test our love to make sure we understand what love is and what is means to have it – He is not testing us to cause us pain, but to make sure we “get it”.
BUT we have established that God wants us to live in a state of impossibility, where we aren’t bound or held back by what’s “possible” in the natural realm.

So let’s have a think about how we start to exhibit all those impossible characteristics that go along with love.

To that end, welcome to the Love Principles!!

Love Principle #1 – You’ve got to have love to exhibit love

Undoubtedly, this statement is a contender for the “Captain Obvious” Comment of the Year. But it makes sense – how can you show the characteristics of love if you don’t have love in you. Clearly it’s impossible.

Love Principle #2 – “Loveless” is the same as “Useless”

Let me flick this around – if you’re not displaying these characteristics of “what love looks like” then you don’t have love. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a Christian, and it doesn’t matter what church programs you’re involved in or the position you hold or the money you give – you don’t have love.

What’s the implications of not having love? Check out 1 Corinthians 13, which says that a person that is not exhibiting love is a “noisy gong” or a “clanging cymbal” – in other words, a grating, tuneless noise – useless in fact!

Love Principle #3 – Love is the end of the road

This is a big one! Let’s start with 2 Peter 1 where we read about the fruit of the Spirit, and how one fruit comes before another.

2 Peter 1:5 For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence), and in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety), and in [exercising] godliness [develop] brotherly affection, and in [exercising] brotherly affection [develop] Christian love.

The bible kind of lays out a logical build up from one fruit to another – for instance, you can’t effectively have steadfastness unless you’ve got the self-control that precedes it, and the knowledge that precedes that, etc.

Love comes at the end of the line, and there’s a really good reason for that. Love is actually the essence of God’s personality, and when we allow the Spirit to work through us, we are actually displaying elements of God’s personality.

It follows that when we truly display God’s personality in us, we are relocating from the natural to the spiritual.

(MORE TO COME ON ALL THIS)

Love Principle #4 – Love isn’t “thing” – it’s a “being”

It is for the reasons stated at the end of Principle #3 that I say that love is absolutely not natural – in fact, it is impossible to even think about displaying the characteristics of love unless we are becoming “spirit-first”, with the Holy Spirit working with us.

Love is not a thing – it’s not an emotion or even a characteristic – it’s a state of being. In fact, it might be said that we don’t exhibit love as much as “be” love.

This raises the issue of how we look at the spirit part of our lives – that part of our make-up that we want to become the most prevalent. I am proposing that we need to strive for our spirits to “BE LOVE”.

(MORE ON THIS)

Love Principle #5 –
Love Principle #6 –
Love Principle #7 –

Part 6 - Power Restrictions

2008-01-28T16:53:00.000+10:00

Before getting into talking about the gifts of the Spirit, I need to talk about a huge realisation that hit me, and it came in the form of a “what if…”.

I began to think about what would happen if, right now, I was given one or more of the gifts of the Spirit. My first thought was how amazing it would be, and what a difference it would make to the way in which I dealt with situations and what God could do to make Himself real to people. How much more could I accomplish for God if I had discernment and wisdom, and people were healed and miracles were performed.

Then some reality hit – I still have a large chunk of self-interest tied in with what I do, and I really do lack a lot of humility. I know this because, when people rub me the wrong way or things happen that I don’t like, my attitude is really not what it should be. I get frustrated and angry with people, I avoid the people that I don’t like, and whilst I might not always verbalise what I’m thinking, there are those times when I have (in my “inner monologue”) given people a piece of my mind!

And yet in Queensland during 2001–2005, there were 962 casualties as a result of crashes involving young drivers of eight cylinder cars and utilities. Of those casualties, 23 people were killed and 307 people were hospitalised with 632 injured. Bottom line – the statistics indicate that high performance cars are dangerous in the hands of people that don’t have sufficient skill and maturity to handle them.

This is the reason that legislation has been introduced in Queensland limiting the circumstances in which P plate drivers can drive high powered cars, and there are generally large insurance premiums attached to such drivers – the intention is to either stop them driving high powered vehicles, or make sure that there are financial penalties for doing so.

I think that we can, with respect, carry the analogy over to our spiritual lives. The gifts of the Spirit are powerful – they are designed to be powerful, influential, attention-getting. These gifts have an effect that is far-reaching and significant. Yet there are huge risks of such gifts being given to people if they are not ready for them. It seems strange to say, but the gifts would be destructive, rather than constructive, in the hands of a person not ready for them.

I think that there is one thing (and only one thing) necessary to move from your spiritual “P” plates to an “open licence” – and why God is putting us through a “spiritual driving test” – and that one thing is LOVE. This is why I propose two principles…

WITHOUT LOVE, YOU WILL NEVER EXPERIENCE THE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT

WITHOUT LOVE, YOU WILL NEVER EXPERIENCE WHAT IT MEANS TO LIVE A “SPIRIT-FIRST” LIFE

OK, before you start moaning about how “touchy feely” I’ve suddenly become, l think we’ve got to put aside our pre-existing connotations of love on hold for the moment and have a think about this - which is what we’ll do in the next section that talks about the fruit of the Spirit.

Also, I have proposed that love is necessary for us to relocate from the natural realm to the spiritual realm, and we’ll cover that off a little later down the track.

Part 5 - Faith

2008-01-28T16:49:00.000+10:00

The concept of faith

I’ve talked a lot about the relocation from the natural to the spiritual realm, and the need to start to perceive things the way that God perceives them (i.e. impossibility thinking).
What I have not mentioned to this point is faith – with good reason! The word “faith” has also become one of those throw-away words in the Christian vernacular that has been used so much that it has lost its true meaning.

There are a bunch of scriptures that comes to mind when we think of faith, and it is generally thought of a belief and confidence in God to do something. I don’t disagree with that definition per se; however, I think that this is an incredible over-simplification of what faith is.

Hebrews 11:1 1NOW FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].

This scripture gives us a good starting point, because it really makes it clear that faith is a big concept.

Firstly, faith is more than just belief in what God can do. I would suggest that faith is more about “enlightened perception” – seeing things the way that God sees them.
It goes a step beyond this though. I propose that faith actually brings together several important concepts:

The fact that God is actually capable of doing the impossible, and He is ready to do so;
The fact that God’s character is such that He only does the impossible;
The fact that our “situations” are not coincidental – that God’s purpose for our lives is so comprehensive that it can be defined on a minute by minute basis;
The fact that we have the capacity to understand God’s purpose on that “minute by minute” basis – we are not puppets, nor is it God’s intention that we live our lives in the dark.
The fact that God has a desire to be involved in our day-to-day situations – He has not only defined the purpose, but wants to be involved in bringing it to fruition – and furthermore that we have confidence in the fact that He will become involved;
Just go back over that list a few times to “soak” in those principles for a couple of minutes, rather than simply agreeing with them (or disagreeing!). Part of the problem is that we tend to give mental assent to these things sometimes, rather than actually “leaning hard” on the truth of them.

I would think that few Christians would have any problem with these proposals – so why don’t we feel that God is responding to our faith in the same way that He did with the people we read about in the bible?

I’m inclined to apply the principle of “Archam’s Razor” – the simplest explanation tends to be the right one. In this case, maybe we should question whether we truly have faith! If that’s the case, it might be useful to attack these points and get things back on the rails.

Points 1 and 2 have been beaten to death in the previous parts of the manifesto, so I’ll leave them for the moment – only to say that it’s worth reminding ourselves that God is challenging us to recognise these parts of His character as we bang on with the other points.

The comprehensive purpose

If we were to be entirely honest, one of the issues that we experience from time to time is a sense of frustration with life, and what I mean by that is we sometimes sit back and ask ourselves questions like:

“What am I making of my life?

“What’s the point of me even being here?

“Why aren’t I further ahead than I am?”

“Why can’t I change this or that situation?”

Rather than being despondent at having these types of thoughts, I’d say that we should really get excited every time we do! It indicates a sense of dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs…the question is whether we can and will do something about it.

I said two things above - that our situations are not coincidental, and that God has a comprehensive minute by minute purpose for our lives. And for this reason, I propose another principle – that faith and purpose are inextricably linked.

How can I say this? Check out Hebrews 11, where Paul talks about all the different heroes and heroines in the Old Testament, and how their faith made them commit to the purpose that God had communicated to them.

We do have a choice in this though – it’s not like God just says “Here’s the purpose for you and that’s what’s going to happen regardless of your attitude”.

2 Timothy 2:20-21 But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also [utensils] of wood and earthenware, and some for honourable and noble [use] and some for menial and ignoble [use]. So whoever cleanses himself [from what is ignoble and unclean, who separates himself from contact with contaminating and corrupting influences] will [then himself] be a vessel set apart and useful for honourable and noble purposes, consecrated and profitable to the Master, fit and ready for any good work.

Sometimes the exposure of our desires, and what we want from this whole deal, is going to be a bit confronting.

Hebrews 4:12 For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart

Later on in this document I talk about the fact that we sometimes view God as being in charge of the “Fun Police” – a perception that we are called to a life of misery, arduous work and poverty. In other words, we think that God doesn’t want us to have fun! You’d be happy to know that nothing is further from the truth!

What I address in that section (just in case you don’t want to go jumping to it now) is the fact that there is a level of incredible joy associated with finding our place in God and stepping forward in the purpose He has for us. But before God can take us down that path, He sometimes has to do a bit of “exploratory surgery” to expose to and confront us with what we’re really thinking and desiring.

Sure, we can talk the talk, and put on the right persona for the occasion, but it’s the desires and attitudes that are prowling in our hearts that determine whether or not we are “faithful” – that is, whether we are prepared to see things the way that God sees them rather than the way we see them because (a) that’s the only way we can or (b) that’s how we want to see them.

(MORE TO COME)

God’s desire to “buy in”

We tend to think of God as a “macro” level Manager – like a CEO of a large corporation that watches the balance sheet and keeps an eye on the big picture – without any real awareness or care for the people tucked away in their office cubicles.

We attribute a level of disinterestedness to God – and nothing could be further from the truth.
Luke 12:24 Observe and consider the ravens; for they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn; and [yet] God feeds them. Of how much more worth are you than the birds!

Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.

Proverbs 5:21 NKJV) For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, And He ponders all his paths

Three blind mice

We don’t like to think of ourselves as being blind. We like to think that we can see what’s going on around us and respond accordingly, if one for the sake of self-preservation.
In reality, without the Holy Spirit guiding us, our body/mind/spirit ensemble is a variation on the children’s rhyme about the three blind mice – blind in spirit, blind in mind and blind in body (in this specific order).

We lack spiritual sight because we are not allowing God to show us, by His Spirit, what’s going on around us and what He intends to do.
We are mentally blind because we allow our emotions to be guided by our own natural beliefs, and the biggest indicator of mental blindness stemming from spiritual blindness is fear.
Our physical blindness is not so much about the need for a guide dog and a white cane – it’s more about relying on what we can see with our own eyes. If we can see it, then it’s real – yet we cannot begin to see all that needs to be seen just using our natural eyes – we can perceive so little with our natural eyes that we might as well be totally blind.

Matthew 6:22-23 Your eyes are like a window for your body. When they are good, you have all the light you need. But when your eyes are bad, everything is dark. If the light inside you is dark, you surely are in the dark.

“Starting Faith”

I said earlier that our spirit is switched on 24x7, but “active” does not mean “perceptive”.
I mentioned above that being faithful is a three-part exercise in seeing things the way that God sees them, understanding the purpose that God has in the situation, and having a level of confidence in God’s intention to get involved (as we give Him space to do so).
The encouraging thing is that there is at least some faith in all of us – if we totally lacked the ability to see things the way that God sees them, then we would never have turned to God in the first place.

The bible talks about having faith the size of a mustard seed – a tiny seed about 1mm across and virtually weightless – so small in fact that it’s hard to pick up with your fingers. Mustard is an annual plant that grows so fast that it is the type of seed that most farmers would not deliberately sow in their fields - a single mustard plant may grow to about 4 meters (15 feet) high in just weeks & sprout many leafy branches that overshadow other slower growing plants.

I refer to this small amount of faith as “starting faith” – the faith that we all have. The amazing thing is that even this small amount of faith can really make a difference. The disciples were talking to Jesus one day, and wanted to have bigger, more effective faith. Look at what Jesus says.

Luke 17:5-6 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" He (Jesus) replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.

Interestingly, Jesus talks about this again after the disciples could not drive a demon from a boy. Jesus explains to the disciples why they had failed…

Matthew 17:20 He said to them, Because of the littleness of your faith [that is, your lack of firmly relying trust]. For truly I say to you, if you have faith [that is living] like a grain of mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, Move from here to yonder place, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

Jesus then goes to say that the demon that He cast out could only be dealt with through prayer and fasting – time spent with God, and time spent focussed on “relocating”. Starting faith is great, but we’ve go to take some action to “plant” that seed firmly. And that’s where the Spirit comes to our assistance…

Faith and the Spirit

This scripture is going to make a regular appearance, but I’m going to keep reprinting it anyway:

2 Peter 1:5-8 For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence),
And in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety), and in [exercising] godliness [develop] brotherly affection, and in [exercising] brotherly affection [develop] Christian love. For as these qualities are yours and increasingly abound in you, they will keep [you] from being idle or unfruitful unto the [full personal] knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).

It’s verse 9 that follows the “fruits” verses that I want to highlight:

For whoever lacks these qualities is blind, [spiritually] shortsighted, seeing only what is near to him, and has become oblivious [to the fact] that he was cleansed from his old sins.

So, winding this passage of scripture back a bit, we are blind if we don’t have faith – we will lack God’s perception of situations, we will fail to understand God’s purposes, and we will lack confidence that God actually intends to get engaged in the situation.

And because faith is a quality or fruit of the Spirit, we will be “blind mice” if we don’t allow the Spirit to truly be with us and working through us on a consistent basis.

Taking it just one step further – if we choose not to relocate into the spiritual realm that we’ve been talking about, we are making a positive choice to be blind…or to put it the way the bible puts it, we are being “wilfully blind” (Eph. 4:18).

(MORE TO COME)

Part 4 - The Holy Spirit

2008-01-28T16:08:00.000+10:00

I want to look at something that seems a bit basic, and that is to understand who God actually is. If we are going to have some sort of meaningful relationship with God, then it kind of makes sense to know this.

There are a lot of theological studies on God, but I’m not that bright! What I am looking for here is not something “academic” but rather a practical view of God.

I considered opening up a discussion here about the Trinity. Christians give mental assent to the concept that God is a Being consisting of three separate “Entities” – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; however this is a pretty wild concept in itself. For the moment though I’ll want to look more closely at the Holy Spirit. The reason for this is pretty simple – God has sent His Spirit to be with us so that we can have this practical relationship that I’m trying to get to grips with.

This section of the “manifesto” is not complete as yet, so look for regular updates!

The Spirit has been here for a while

Spirit has been recognised and operating in the world and in human beings well before the time of Acts. The Spirit gained real “profile” in New Testament times when the disciples were filled with Holy Spirit at Pentacost. However, we see that the Spirit of God was an active Participant in everything right from the beginning:

Genesis 1:2 (Amplified Bible) - The earth was without form and an empty waste, and darkness was upon the face of the very great deep. The Spirit of God was moving (hovering, brooding) over the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:26-27 God said, Let Us [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] make mankind in Our image, after Our likeness, and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the [tame] beasts, and over all of the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them.

So here we see that the Spirit of God was involved right at the very creation of the world, and He was part of the creative and creation processes.

As to the Spirit of God operating in individuals, we also His regular involvement from early history:

Genesis 41:38 And Pharaoh said to his servants, Can we find this man's equal, a man in whom is the spirit of God? (speaking of Joseph)

Exodus 31:1-3 And the Lord said to Moses, See, I have called by name Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and ability, in understanding and intelligence, and in knowledge, and in all kinds of craftsmanship…

So the Spirit working in men way back before Pentacost and the whole “upper room” event, but having God Spirit’s working through you seems to have been a very discreet and unusual event in Old Testament times – it was a particularly special thing for someone to have the Spirit of God with them, and it was usually accompanied by amazing acts and skills. Usually, this spiritual experience was for prophets and leaders – people that God worked through to help keep the rest of the nation on track, or to carry out some particular task.

Things changed at Pentacost – the Spirit worked through a whole bunch of people, most of whom I guess were not considered prophets, apostles and leaders. They were for the most part ordinary people that were waiting for God to take them on to the next phase of their relationship with Him. These people knew that the Spirit was coming (because Jesus had told them so) but I don’t know if they really knew how this would happen.

Throughout the New Testament we see that the Spirit of God wanted to be with the average Christian, and that will be something that will become an important concept as we continue on.

The purpose of the Spirit

It is important to look at the purpose God has behind sending the Spirit to us – and there are many incredible reasons. The following is just a summary list without going into specific detail.

Comforter (John 14:26)
Speaking to God (1 Corinthians 14:2)
Self-edification (1 Corinthians 14:4)
Sanctifier / Separator (Exodus 30:30-33)
Creator (Matthew 1:18)
Speech Writer (Mark 13:11, Luke 12:11)
Instructor and Commander (Acts 1:2, Acts 1:8)
Revealer of Truth (Acts 13:9-10)
Love (Romans 5:5)
Helping us meet God’s expectations (Romans 8:4)
Controls our desires (Romans 8:5-6, Romans 8:9, Romans 8:23)
Putting aside selfishness (Romans 8:13)
Intercessor (Romans 8:26, Romans 8:27, Jude 1:20)
Renewal & rebirth (Titus 3:4-7)
Seal/Guarantee of God (Ephesians 1:13-14)
Making us acceptable (Romans 15:15-17)

We can see, just from the scriptures above, that the work of the Spirit is “multidimensional”.
What is our relationship with the Spirit?

I think this is a really important area of discussion because of what Jesus said before He left earth after His resurrection:

John 14:26 But the Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, Standby), the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name [in My place, to represent Me and act on My behalf], He will teach you all things. And He will cause you to recall (will remind you of, bring to your remembrance) everything I have told you.

Jesus left earth, but He left the Spirit of God to be with us – and the relationship between us and God changed at that point. Unlike Old Testament times, where the Spirit would come upon only a few ultra-special individuals, God had basically kicked the doors in on things that stopped us having a really close relationship with Him, and sent the Spirit not only to teach us how to relate to God, but give us the capacity to relate to Him.

The relationship that we are talking about here is contrary to anything that we would do just in our own strength and wisdom.

Depersonalisation of the Spirit

There is a really dangerous tendency in today’s church to depersonalise the Spirit, and treat Him as an object, or simply as some kind of “power socket” that we plug into to get power to do things.

The Holy Spirit is first and foremost a person – not simply a power. He is the part of God that God has undertaken the role of interaction with our spirit 24x7. The Spirit is in a unique position – He understands both what God thinks, feels and intends (because He is part of God) but He also understands what’s in our hearts (so you can’t hide anything from Him), what is in the hearts of the people around us (so they can’t hide anything either). The Spirit works between the natural and spiritual realms, and understands the difficulties that we mere humans have in trying to operate in both.

The Holy Spirit has a multidimensional role in our lives (as is evident from the non-exhaustive list that I prepared above), and we’ll be covering some of those points in some detail. At the moment though, let me just say that one of His roles is to help us with the tight squeeze – without Him, we don’t have any hope of relocating. If we take the caving analogy one step further, trying to move into spiritual things without the Spirit is like delving into a cave without a guide, without a light, without a safety harness and without any plan. Dangerous, deadly, and doomed.

It’s a jungle out there

This may seem to be an alarmist comment, but I would suggest that it is indeed true that we are operating in a jungle environment. The spiritual realm has, since the beginning of time, been the ultimate power play. Satan is a spirit, he knows both the natural and spiritual realm inside out, and he is comfortable operating in both environments. His preference is the spiritual realm – there is so much more room for him to operate, and so much more to be gained!

There are lots of people that go about on spiritual caving expeditions, trying to move into spiritual realms without the Spirit. The more extreme example might be Satanists, but a more “mundane” example would be someone that gets their fortune read, or plays with tarot cards. These are caving expeditions, and the spiritual realm is definitely not for the unprepared or unguarded – there are forces at work that have the capacity to kill.

Ephesians 6:12 For we are not wrestling with flesh and blood [contending only with physical opponents], but against the despotisms, against the powers, against [the master spirits who are] the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spirit forces of wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) sphere.

This world is owned by Satan – he has laid to claim to it and he calls the shots at the moment. That situation won’t last, but for moment we need to understand that we are playing in Satan’s backyard. Or more appropriately, we are in Satan’s feeding ground.

1 Peter 5:8 Be well balanced (temperate, sober of mind), be vigilant and cautious at all times; for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring [ in fierce hunger], seeking someone to seize upon and devour.

Why am I bothering to discuss this? Primarily because Christians don’t for the most part realise the high risk environment we are in. We are warm and comfortable in our churches, surrounding ourselves with people that think and talk like us. We see the spiritual realm as a happy place where God lives, so everything there must be warm, fuzzy and comfortable. In fact, it is a realm that is characterised by conflict – it’s a battlefield, not a holiday resort. An enlightened peek through the doors of our “gated community” would reveal a blood bath – people are being torn apart and devoured (including many Christians).

Understanding Who God is also requires that we understand where God lives – that’s the reason for raising this issue at this time.

The challenge for us is to push open the door and step outside where the carnage is going on. Out where Satan is actually killing people. Out where Satan sometimes possesses people because they ventured into the spiritual realm and never quite came back. There are significant risks because Satan takes a dim view of people intruding upon his feeding frenzy. In the words of Guns ‘n’ Roses, “welcome to the jungle”!

Part 3 - "Spirit First"

2008-01-28T15:59:00.000+10:00

In the first section we have been talking about the new environment that God wants us to live in. In this section, I want to start by talk about what we are – body, mind and spirit – and how that make-up fits in to our relationship with God. The focus at the end of the day is on what God wants us to become – but understanding what we are now is a useful starting point.

We are “spirit first”

One of the more radical concepts that I would propose is that we are primarily spiritual beings. We have three parts to our makeup – body, soul and spirit. This in itself may not appear particularly radical – we as Christians are pretty much on board with the fact that this is our make-up.

Where things do start to get radical is with the concept that the spirit part of us should be the most dominant and all-encompassing part. And it is this recognition that is key to relocating from the natural realm to the spirit.

This recognition will only start to take place when we begin to perceive and understand that we live in a spiritual world, and the physical world is just a temporary and moderately small part of our real world.

Defining our parts

Whilst we understand the “body” part, the definitions surrounding our mind and spirit tend to blur.

Broadly speaking, our mind includes our intellect, our emotions and our personality. It also encompasses our will – our ability to choose.

The bible seems to make clear that a human being can’t live without a spirit, whereas as spirit can exist without a body - which means that our spirit seems to be the most important part of our being.

Genesis 25:8 - Then Abraham's spirit was released, and he died at a good (ample, full) old age, an old man, satisfied and satiated, and was gathered to his people.

Genesis 25:17 - And Ishmael lived 137 years; then his spirit left him, and he died and was gathered to his kindred

Matthew 27:50 And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and gave up His spirit.

Whilst we give at least some credence to the fact that we have a spiritual side, if we were to be entirely honest we would probably admit that we don’t think about ourselves as being “spiritual” beings. We can see the physical being, and we interact primarily as physical beings, and we have plenty of exposure to intellect and emotions, but the spirit part of us doesn’t get much attention.

It’s not something to be ignored – in fact (and I’ll come to this) I propose that our spirits don’t simply inhabit our bodies, buried somewhere in our chest like a little shiny object that will be released when our body dies. Instead, it’s God’s intention that our bodies and minds are just resources that He has provided to our spirits whilst we “straddle” the natural and spiritual environments. Put another way, our body and mind is “plugged into” our spirit, rather than the other way around.

Perhaps a little extreme, but what I am trying to communicate is the fact that the bigger part of us is our spirit – it needs to be the dominant, active, influential part of our make-up.

The problem is that the body and mind parts of us have a lot of influence when we place little attention on our spirits – for instance, we get “tired and emotional”. This body that we get to live in and the intellect that drives it along creates issues – the demand for food, sleep, comfort, entertainment, affection, etc. The spirit part of us doesn’t have these issues – the needs that I have mentioned are not important to our spirit.

Our spirit is “switched on” and active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no “down time”. This would imply that we as spirits are constantly aware of what is happening around us – it is not a dormant and disinterested part of our make-up. The spirit part of us is highly responsive to the spiritual realm – the problem generally is that we permit our bodies and minds to suppress our spiritual being by placing more attention on physical and emotional feedback.

So, if we are primarily spiritual beings (with 24x7x365 awareness) and God is the same, there appears to be no reason why we cannot be in constant relationship and communication with God, and living in a spiritual environment, 24 hours a day. If we aren’t experiencing this, the only logical conclusion is that we are allowing our bodies and minds to “call the shots”.

Mark 14:38 Keep awake and watch and pray [constantly], that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

When Jesus told the disciples in the garden to “keep awake” He wasn’t talking about physically staying awake – what He was saying was to become spiritual beings. The flesh (the body and mind) is weak – it gives into the natural realm in a flash, and of course it does because that’s where it belongs! It requires a decision on our part to go down a path of “awakening”.

Mexican Stand-Off

Are you getting the impression that there seems to be a big gap between the natural (body/mind) part of us and the spirit part of us? Absolutely! Whilst the diagram above seems to indicate that our body and mind co-exist with our spirit, it appears to be an uneasy alliance – in fact, it’s seems like it’s a “Mexican Stand-Off” where there is a strategic deadlock or impasse between our natural and spiritual parts, in which no part can act in a way that ensures victory over the other. There is a conflict here – an incompatibility between our natural and spiritual parts that can never be resolved.

Paul understood the conflict that exists, and talked about it in Romans 7:14-25 where he said that even he, as a very mature and powerful Christian, battled the conflicting demands of his mind, body and spirit. Paul says in verse 23 that he had two sets of “laws” raging in his being – the law of God that his spirit wanted to follow, but the conflicting law of his natural being.

Galatians 6:5 For every person will have to bear (be equal to understanding and calmly receive) his own [ little] load [of oppressive faults].

So is it a stand-off? I don’t think it’s intended to be, because that would suggest a stalemate in which neither our spirit or our body/mind wins out. I think the intention is that our body and mind lose the high ground they currently occupy – that is, our body/mind backs down from the fight and submits to our spirit’s desires.

Not only is this not a stand-off, but our spirit needs to start some “gun play” – aggressively and purposefully driving our body and mind from their position of strength to a position of submission. I am quick to add that we cannot do this on our own- we need God’s help – and this is one of the reasons why the Holy Spirit is so important to us. We will always have a load of faults that we will carry with us – it’s really a matter of which part of our being has the upper hand.

I am quick to add that your spirit needs some “ammunition” – and this is why soaking yourself in the bible is absolutely crucial. God can bring back to your heart the things that you’ve read (even if you can’t recall exactly the words used) so that you’ve got God’s position on a situation. You can’t know what God thinks about a situation if you haven’t taken the time to investigate it. Don’t take any short-cuts here – devotionals are great, sermons are useful, but you’ve got to “load up” yourself with the bible.

What I’ve found useful is a four-part “attack plan”:

When an inappropriate attitude (and you can use any attitude you happen to have in your cupboard) starts to roll around in my mind, I immediately “label” it – I recognise that I’m thinking something that’s not right, and label it “WRONG!”

I then mentally “grab” the thought and come clean with God – basically, I acknowledge to God that I’m thinking something that isn’t right, and that I know that I’m doing it.

I then remind myself of Galatians 6 – I’ve still got a lot of “natural me” floating around, and so at the moment it’s inevitable that I’m going to think things that aren’t right.

Having grabbed the thought, I push it to one side and remind myself what God thinks of the situation. I know that thought is still there, and I realise I still have some “attitude”, but I also practice letting the “bigger” part of me have the upper hand – the part of me that want to know what God thinks, and wants to see things the way that God sees them.

Why can’t we just forget about the natural realm?

When I talk about this whole relocation concept, I don’t mean that we forget about the world around us and become some sort of exclusive group that hides away behind closed doors, having nothing to do with our environment or the people in it. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth – we need to be out in our communities because that’s where we undertake and complete the purpose that God intends for us.

Philippians 1:21-26 For me to live is Christ [His life in me], and to die is gain [the gain of the glory of eternity]. If, however, it is to be life in the flesh and I am to live on here, that means fruitful service for me; so I can say nothing as to my personal preference [I cannot choose], but I am hard pressed between the two. My yearning desire is to depart (to be free of this world, to set forth) and be with Christ, for that is far, far better; but to remain in my body is more needful and essential for your sake. Since I am convinced of this, I know that I shall remain and stay by you all, to promote your progress and joy in believing, so that in me you may have abundant cause for exultation and glorying in Christ Jesus, through my coming to you again.

Paul was hanging out to get to heaven and be with God, but at the same time he understood that there were things for him to do here – and he wanted to finish what he had started.

Is this a hard transition?

The relocation thing seems hard at the outset, and it would be completely dishonest of me to say that I have been finding the transition (or even the concept of relocation) in any way easy. This transition from the natural to spiritual thinking seems to be more an issue of determination and commitment. Paul the apostle didn’t just become a spiritual man and then it was all down hill – in 1 Corinthians 15:31 Paul said that he died daily – that he died to self every day of his life. It was a constant process for Paul because, whilst he was alive and had a body and a mind which would always be tied to the natural realm, he needed to be disciplined to keep those natural elements of his being in check. Paul was bright guy – highly trained, very intellectual, self-confident, upwardly mobile, and not the least bit stupid – so I’m sure this would have been a hard process for him.

Can we just decide to change and expect to make it happen?

Unfortunately we can’t, mainly because our body and mind seem to have an incredible amount of influence over us. Our own personal determination and will just won’t cut it. There is only one way that we can change, and that’s by giving God some space in our lives – and there is only so much space. And God knows that – which is why in this manifesto I’ll be discussing the ongoing role that the Holy Spirit undertakes in helping us with the “tight squeeze” I mentioned as one of the early changes. The role of the Spirit is ongoing because, like Paul, whilst we are tied to a body and mind, we will always be hooked into and dealing with the natural realm.

Part 2 - Where to start

2008-01-28T15:51:00.000+10:00

In contemplating these issues, probably the most difficult thing to define is where to start. We are being challenged to completely change the way in which we live – and radically so. Potentially the best way to start is by coming to grips with some of the early changes that will need to take place.

Early Change #1 – A reason to relocate

First and foremost, I guess there has to be some reason to even think about this stuff. In the introduction to this Part, I proposed that there were a number of challenges facing us at this time, and more specifically a growing realisation that God wants to mentor us into our intended ministries to meet these challenges.

The reason that drives me to relocate is an increasing frustration with “possible living” – being constrained to do what I find possible when I can see that there are things I need to do and become that are impossible. Unless I can break free of the constraints, I will never do or become what God wants me to do and become. I will never really see God working in the way that He can (and wants to). I might gain some level of maturity and I might do some good, and I might even see flashes of God’s involvement in my life, but in the grand scheme of things I will have “prodigalised” my life[1] - squandering the opportunities and living below the spiritual poverty line.

One of the big things that I struggled with at the outset was my perception that this whole spiritual realm stuff was simply not that interesting or attractive (I’m being honest here!) There were simply not enough reasons to relocate.

I mean, in the natural realm, you generally move house when (and only when) there is a really, really good reason for doing so. Moving is a painful process, and we will usually avoid it at all costs. Even if you’ve got so much stuff that you can barely turn around, or moving would mean 30 minutes less travel in the day, you’ll avoid moving! I looked at the natural realm and saw that there were interesting things going on all around me, and it was comfortable. I had my environment set up and going the way that I wanted it. I looked at what I perceived as the spiritual realm, and there just wasn’t enough there to capture my attention and interest. God’s spiritual realm just wasn’t interesting enough – in fact, to be entirely and brutally honest, God Himself wasn’t interesting enough!

Because God is such a great listener, and has an inherent ability to say just the right thing at just the right time, He challenged me on this point. In fact, God basically stood right in the middle of the path and said, “Hang on a minute, I AM interesting – the fact of the matter is that you just don’t know Me well enough to realise it!” And (strangely enough) God was right – I had this concept of God, and it was a very flat, bland, colourless concept.

Early Change #2 - Sifting

The whole business of relocating from the world of the “possible” to the world of the “impossible” is costly. It’s costly because the relocation from the natural to the supernatural realm makes no allowance for taking our old lives with us, so if we’re going to move we are going to have to leave a whole bunch of things behind.

Genesis 12:1-3 Now [in Haran] the Lord said to Abram, Go for yourself [for your own advantage] away from your country, from your relatives and your father's house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you [with abundant increase of favors] and make your name famous and distinguished, and you will be a blessing [dispensing good to others]. And I will bless those who bless you [who confer prosperity or happiness upon you] and curse him who curses or uses insolent language toward you; in you will all the families and kindred of the earth be blessed [and by you they will bless themselves].

Abraham went through a relocation, and for him that was an incredibly costly process. He was set up – wealth, property, family, reputation. The natural side of his life was progressing well. But God wanted to move him from that natural life into a bigger, more significant spiritual life, and for Abraham that meant leaving all that security, stability and comfort behind. He was “sifted” - a lot of the stuff that he depended on could not be carried forward into the new life.

In Judges 7, God intended to have Gideon defeat the Midianites, and Gideon found that he had significant resources at his disposal (see chart). He was a trained soldier, who knew how to conduct a battle. However, from God’s perspective, this was not simply a battle – His intention was to shift Gideon personally from his reliance on his own significant resources, and in the process change Gideon’s perspective on what was possible.

Put simply, if we want to expand beyond the physical world and start to think and act as spiritual men, and experience the perception and power that accompanies that, we need to come to grips with the fact that we are going to be sifted. God is going to place us in situations where our skills and experience and resources are not sufficient. God may allow you to experience varying degrees of frustration, anger, pain, etc to bring highlight the insufficiency.

Early Change #3 – Forgetting the outcome

In a world that is defined by outcomes, this is a difficult step. We think in terms of creating an outcome in all areas of our lives – we use our time and resources to “make” something. Whether you consider yourself a relaxed or driven person, we all focus on the outcomes, results, benefits, etc of our efforts in life.

It would be an over-simplification to suggest that God is not focussed on outcomes. Clearly, God has plans and He applies effort and resource to achieving those plans – Genesis 1 is a prime example of that. However, we need to understand that God is the one Person that can never be restrained by an outcome that He wants to achieve. We unfortunately can be so restrained, and for that reason I believe that God wants us to turn away from our incessant “outcomes focus”.

To position you on this, it is a fact that God is not bound by time or resources. He has the capacity to provide (and create from nothing) the resource that might be required in any given situation. Also, God is not bound by time – it is merely a convenience that He has created to tie together the physical world in which we currently find ourselves. If God wants to do something, He controls the resource and He controls time, so He is never daunted at the immensity of any outcome He wants to undertake and achieve.

On the other hand, when we want to achieve a result, usually the first things that we think about are time and resources. How do I fit this activity in amongst all my other activities and responsibilities? How can I afford to undertake that activity when I have other financial responsibilities? In this reality, we have exceptionally limited control over our resources and time.

The early change that needs to take place is a focus on the “journey” rather than the “outcome”. We will cover this in greater detail further on, sufficed to say that God will start to challenge us to be obedient and do what He sets in front of us to do without necessarily telling us what the outcome is to be, or even showing us the outcome when it happens. Are you getting uncomfortable yet?

There will always be an outcome (because God has a purpose in everything) but in the early part of our relocation we may not be privy to the outcome, either before or after the outcome happens. Why not? Because knowledge of the outcome (again, either before or after the outcome occurs) can really mess us up! If God were to tell us everything that He intended to do, the natural part of us would be looking for ways to make it happen, or we might even think that the outcome was impossible so “I mustn’t be hearing correctly from God”. Worse still, we might look at the outcome and take some personal pride and glory in it. So what God does is outline a path for us – He establishes some markers along a path that we can follow, and asks us to travel the path one step at a time. As we mature, God reveals more of the path at any given time, until eventually we get to a level of maturity where God can reveal outcomes to us without the risk of tripping us up.

Bottom line – forget the outcome and ask God to show you the journey. Don’t measure your spiritual maturity and relationship with God in terms of outcomes.

Now, some might say this proposal is unscriptural – that you should have fruit attached to what you do, and that a man is measured by that fruit. I agree wholeheartedly with the principle that we should be fruitful, but we often get it back to front. A farmer knows the fruit that he wants to produce when he plants a tree, and sometimes the farmer will graft branches onto a tree to make it produce different fruit. The farmer introduces different chemicals to the soil and the leaves to improve the health of the tree, and prunes the tree at particular times for the same reason. What say does the tree have in this process? Well, the tree had an inherent potential to produce something, but without the farmer’s intervention there are significant risks of the tree producing no fruit at all, or without the grafting it might produce unnecessary fruit, or it might just die. The tree cannot help but produce fruit (because that’s what trees do) but it’s energy is on maturing and making the most of the opportunity to grow – the fruit is a guaranteed outcome. Yes, that’s right, fruit is an outcome – you know, that thing that I have suggested we don’t focus on!

We will be recognised by our fruits[2] - I totally agree with that concept. But we don’t have the capacity to turn our potential into fruitfulness unless we focus on the journey. And that’s what this whole manifesto is about – becoming fruitful and useful.

Early Change #4 – Timing isn’t everything

Because time is merely a convenient concept for us to keep life on track (and one that God doesn’t need) we should understand that in the relocation from the natural to the spiritual environment our “normal” way of thinking about time will change.
Our lives are very short – there doesn’t appear to be nearly enough time to achieve everything that we are talking about here:

James 4:14 Yet you do not know [the least thing] about what may happen tomorrow. What is the nature of your life? You are [really] but a wisp of vapor (a puff of smoke, a mist) that is visible for a little while and then disappears [into thin air].

The encouraging thing is that the amount of time that we have available to us is not a constraint for God – take for instance the fact that the bible only contains “highlights” of the things that Jesus did in a space of three years:

John 21:25 Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

My point is that we should not see time as a barrier. Many of us have responsibilities and demands upon our time, and God is very aware of these things. It remains however that God is still wanting us to relocate, and because He “owns” time, He is ready to respond to our timing issues as we move down this path.

This leads to a second point – the fact that God is highly efficient. He has a tendency to tell us what we need to know when we need to know it – He doesn’t waste His time (or ours) telling us stuff that isn’t important yet. Oh sure, we might think it’s important to know tht whole plan and purpose up front, but God has a different view. Take the example of Abraham (Gen.12:3) where God says to him 'Leave your country and your people, and go to the land I will show you’.

Basically, God challenges us to apply our limited capacity (and obedience) totally to a task. Task completed, God can then take us the next step we can totally commit to. God gets some time efficiency through attacking issues this way – there is no time wasted with us racing off down various paths or trying to jump ahead (and having to backtrack).

Early Change #5 – Different Strokes

Another point to raise here is that each of us moves down this relocation path at a different rate and in a different way. Because of that, looking at where others are at in their spiritual journey and making inappropriate comparisons is unhelpful.

The encouraging thing is that God will mark the path for you as fast as you can travel it and handle it. If someone else has spiritually developed faster than you, this should not be reason for you to become jealous of them, nor should the more developed person be conceited.

It is the case, however, that we develop together with no one racing ahead and leaving a trail of dust in their wake! God doesn’t want to build a “lop-sided” church, with the spiritually mature and powerful on one side, and the weaker, less developed people on the other.

Ephesians 2:21 In Him the whole structure is joined (bound, welded) together harmoniously, and it continues to rise (grow, increase) into a holy temple in the Lord [a sanctuary dedicated, consecrated, and sacred to the presence of the Lord].

Even whilst a lot of things here require us to focus inwardly and look to our own journey, we still have an equal responsibility to look out for one another and develop and a group. Racing ahead without fulfilling the responsibility we have to help one another develop will result in factions and “fault lines” in the church – these are points of failure along which the church will crack when pressure and stress are applied by the enemy.

Early Change #6 – Understanding God

God is looking to have a meaningful relationship with us, but the problem is that we will never understand where God is coming from, or appreciate Him, or appreciate how He looks at things or feels about things, if we don’t relocate from natural thinking to spiritual thinking.

1 Corinthians 2:14-15 But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated.

One of the early changes that we will experience is an understanding of how God feels about things, and His intentions and purposes in all kinds of situations. This will occur as we spend time reading the bible (which is an incredibly effective way of God starting to share how He thinks) and simply acknowledging God in the things we do and really sincerely inviting Him to become involved and be active in our lives. A constant acknowledgment and awareness of God’s presence is crucial – it doesn’t involve “feeling” God’s presence, but simply acknowledging confidently that He is with you. Feelings are notoriously unreliable.

God wants to be involved – we don’t have to plead with Him to get involved because He is ready and waiting. But God is desperate for us to make space for Him to get involved.

Early Change #7 – The Tight Squeeze

If you thought that this was going to be an easy ride, you’re going to be bitterly disappointed! One of the things that you will realise very early in the piece is that there not so no barrier that separates natural ‘possible” living from supernatural, spiritual, “impossible” thinking – but what does exist is a narrow channel between the two realms.

This is part of the reason that the sifting process is so important. It’s like being a cave explorer that wants to find their way through into the deeper, undiscovered parts of an amazing underground cave. The “cavers” as they are called can’t negotiate their way from ground level in through the tight passages and various obstacles if they are carrying excessive amounts of unnecessary equipment – they travel light with only those things that are necessary to get them through.

Similarly, to move into the spiritual realm, we need to shed the stuff that is unnecessary, because we wont see, let alone be capable of negotiating, the channels and passages that God will take us down to get there.

Following on from this, check out the parable that Jesus told in…

Luke 5:36 No one puts a patch from a new garment on an old garment; if he does, he will both tear the new one, and the patch from the new one will not match the old garment. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the fresh wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be ruined (destroyed).

We can’t “patch together” our old life with our new life – they don’t match, and trying to do so will result in everything coming undone…like some sort of spiritual “wardrobe malfunction”. This new way of living is too big and amazing to try and contain within our old attitudes and desires.

The fact of the matter is that not everyone is going to make the decision to find this new life – whilst many will become Christians (which is the first part of the “squeeze”) the path gets narrower.

Matthew 7:14 But the gate is narrow (contracted by pressure) and the way is straitened and compressed that leads away to life, and few are those who find it.

I don’t think this scripture is simply talking about people becoming Christians – the “way to life” extends beyond simply the first step of salvation.

[1] Luke 15 – parable of the prodigal son
[2] Matthew 7

Part 1- Introduction

2008-01-28T15:46:00.000+10:00

There are four simple reasons for writing this “manifesto”.

Firstly, the ministry situations in which we increasingly find ourselves defy any attempt on our part to apply our normal human reasoning. We are being asked to solve issues that involve people with complex psychological, spiritual, financial and physical problems, or to find our way to a solution through a web of untruthfulness, deception and sometimes outright evil. In some cases, we find ourselves at risk of violence. Most of these people that come our way would not be considered lovable. Unless we start to operate very differently to the way that we have in the past, we will at best apply a short term fix to a problem.

I feel that the change that God is looking for is for us to become spiritual men and women that can bring the gifts of the Spirit to bear, not only to address the “impossible” issues that these people are facing, but contemporaneously to create a compelling moment for these people to turn to a real, active, and loving God.

Secondly, there is an acute awareness that God has brought these people across our path, and it is not His intention that we avoid dealing with these matters. We don’t choose when to be responsible for people – we have been made responsible. We fail to meet our responsibility unless we step up and deal effectively, efficiently, and “unnaturally” with the situation.

Thirdly, I believe that we are being challenged in our relationship with God to “phase shift” – to move from being primarily physical and emotional beings to people that are “spirit first”. By this I mean that we stop looking at ourselves and the world around us as a three dimensional environment that operates within the boundaries and constraints of time, and begin to perceive and experience things on a larger scale. The spiritual realm is the “real world” – we need to relocate.

Fourthly, and this reiterates some of what I have previously said, I think that we are now moving to a new stage in God’s plan in which we will consistently be presented with the “impossible”. The places where complex, dangerous and high risk situations exist (and are the norm) have now become our new playground. I think that we have been born into a time, and into a specific country, for the purpose of creating and contributing to a watershed moment in history – where 2,000 years of desert wandering comes to an end and significant spiritual progress begins to be made on a wide scale.

There are pockets of spiritual power being exhibited. There are those people that God is using in unusual and powerful ways. But these are discreet events – it’s the equivalent of a paraplegic that has very strong arms, but is incapable of running . The church is not operating corporately as a spiritually powerful entity, with various gifts and talents all working together to provide a fully functional instrument. The time is close where we need to focus our efforts on getting ourselves, and those around us, over the fence and start to act like spiritual men and women.