How to experience the love of God without trying!

In the last post we exposed the error of self-focused love.

In our culture most of what passes for love is really just dressed-up self-interest.

I will feel love for you about as long as it makes me feel loved!  But if you stop making much of me…and even dare to confront me or to point out my faults…well, I’m just not feeling the love anymore.

Here’s a very interesting statement Jesus made about love:

“O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:25-26)

All through John 17 we find a central thread:  Jesus is revealing how His entire existence was God-centered.  Everything He did was to glorify the Father (i.e, make His Father known).  Jesus experienced love and glory from one thing: knowing the Father and making Him known.

So here’s a radical principle about experiencing God’s love that I hope you will embrace:

The best way to experience God’s love is to not try to experience “it”!

John Piper perhaps said it best, and I paraphrase from memory, “The greatest moments of satisfaction in life always involve self-forgetfulness.”  Why do people feel so warm and fuzzy when they get to hold their first grandchild?  Or see the Grand Canyon for the first time?  Yes, these are truly amazing experiences.

But they are so emotionally gratifying because they enable us to escape from looking at ourselves!

Can you fathom someone stepping up to the edge of the Grand Canyon for the first time, taking a look down and across, and then suddenly pulling out their purse looking for their makeup kit?  No way!  Maybe they will try to grab a camera to capture the moment! But they will not be thinking about taking a look in the mirror.

Lots of Christians are trying so hard to feel God’s love.  In worship services they look at other people worshipping God, and think, “I’m not feeling what they are feeling. They are getting something I’m not getting.”

Or else, in “worship” they may be trying to manufacture the feelings of warmth and acceptance that they remember experiencing during some prior time of worship in their lives.  This is not seeking to know God and make Him known.  This is seeking a euphoric emotion from the past.

So stop worshipping your feelings.  Consciously say to yourself,

“This is NO LONGER ABOUT ME. I am here to see God and worship and serve Him.  What I need is to know Him. Forget my feelings.  I need to know His true nature and character and word.”

Feelings come and go.  But Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  Listen to Jesus very carefully, as He talks to the Father about the subject we are discussing.  This is my paraphrase of the text above, John 17:25-26:

O Father, You are so much better than anyone or anything in this world and the people in this world are so wrong about You. But I truly know You. And My followers understand now that You sent Me here.  And I have come to reveal Your real character and nature to them, and I will keep on doing this since there’s no end to Your glorious perfections. As they come to see You and know You as You truly are, they will begin to more powerfully experience Your love. Yes, for You love them with the exact same love that You love Me.

Pursue knowing God as He has revealed Himself in Christ.  Don’t pursue feelings of love and acceptance.  As you see Him as He truly is, that is, in truth, as His word is revealed to You, you will begin to be captured by the glory of His divine Person.  Perhaps the grandest of all His qualities is His love.

But even God’s deepest love cannot be understood apart from His other attributes, like holiness and justice.  The Cross of Jesus was not God’s plan “B”.  It was (and continues to be) the climax of God’s progressive unfolding of His nature to a world blinded by the self-focus of sin.

Why most people are not experiencing God’s love

A very sinister thing happened when Adam and Eve sinned.

Their universe changed.

Suddenly everything turned outside-in. In their own minds, they became the center of their own consciousness…of their own affections…indeed, of their own world.

It’s not that they had no consciousness of self before the Fall.  But self was  not the “center” of their thoughts.  God was the glorious center of everything.  Everything they saw, smelled, touched, tasted, and experienced all flowed from and into an amazing awareness of their God, His nature, and His provision.

But this all collapsed inwardly because of sin.  Talk about tragic.

Okay, so what’s this got to do with the title of this post:  ”Why most people are not experiencing God’s love“?  Let me start by showing you an important Scripture text:

“O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:25-26)

I may be about to offend some of you. Hopefully not.

Most of us think of love in terms of “being made much of.”  We feel love, when we feel affirmation and approval and acceptance and praise.  Many (most?) people suffer with self-rejection and self-hate.  They don’t feel a love for themselves and certainly can’t perceive it from others. So we are told that we must learn to accept ourselves and to think positive thoughts about ourselves.  This is the world’s way of helping us feel love.  And it’s definitely better than self-loathing!  But it’s nowhere close to God’s idea of love.

Similarly, well-meaning Christians often misinterpret the Bible, when they say, “The Bible says to love others as you love yourself.  This means you have to truly love yourself or you’ll never be able to love others!”

When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” He was not making a case for self-focused love!  He was actually assuming self-centeredness in His hearers. (Remember, we all come by this through Adam and Eve!).  Jesus was actually contradicting the view stated in the previous paragraph.  Jesus was saying that the focus of our affections must make a huge shift. We must move from focusing on ourselves to looking outward.

Most Christians have the idea that “unconditional love” is when people look beyond our faults and see how special we really are deep down inside.  They are able to look past our junk to affirm and make much of our better side or our best intentions.

While being able to look past people’s junk to see potential and value is definitely a good thing, none of this is even close to the real foundational concept of love that we find revealed by Jesus.

Maybe you’ve already seen where I am going from the Bible text above.  If not, you’ll have to wait until the next post for the solution!  Stay tuned.

Faith is not the tail wagging the dog!

Today’s post is a continuation of the last.

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. (2 Cor 1:20 NIV)

     Many years ago I followed a number of the leaders in the Word of Faith movement.  Though I learned a number of things from the “faith teachers”, sadly much of it was misguided and has had little long-term benefit. We were taught that real faith was developing an absolute certainty regarding short-term outcomes…all based upon the authority of God’s Word (as we perceived it). Certainly there is an assurance and confidence that springs from real faith. A big danger is when it is our faith that we are trusting in and NOT the Christ who is the goal of faith.

Our perspective and logic can be in the wrong direction.

     In the faith camp we started with a preferred outcome for our faith, and then sought the Scriptures for proof-texts to believe and claim and build our faith on. This, we were told was “working the word”.  It was how to get what you wanted and needed from God. Again, there is a measure of truth in this. But it is dangerously incomplete.

     Certainly it is a good thing to trust in God’s word. There is nothing wrong with believing the word of God!  You cannot be saved unless you do!

     But what I finally realized was that we had a very serious case of the tail wagging the dog!

     Little did we know that many, if not most, of our presuppositions about what God’s Word meant were seriously off track!

    The verse at the beginning of this post is a great example. We were all taught that this verse was our title-deed to claim any promise from God in the Bible. Yes we are gloriously “accepted in the Beloved”, and are joint heirs with Christ (which, by the way, was almost entirely a future/heavenly orientation for Paul). Nonetheless, this text is not an entitlement clause for self centered “faith.”

     Here’s how the faith teachers unwittingly twisted it: Since Jesus died and has risen, and has given us His perfect righteousness, in Him we can claim and expect the perfect fulfillment of every promise God has ever made. (Again, there is a measure of truth here, as long as it stays connected with the full counsel of God.). Or else we may massage the text to say, “I can use Jesus to get everything I want from God, when I want it.”  Sadly, this was what we were taught faith was.

     The problem with this is that it is an adulteration not only of Scripture but of God’s eternal purposes in Christ.

     The Holy Spirit is not saying that Jesus is our ticket to God’s promises (and thereby all the short-term blessings and benefits we desire – perhaps even more than Him).  Rather, He is saying that the promises of God all point to and have their ultimate fulfillment in His Son, Jesus Christ!

     And this is a HUGE difference!

     It’s amazing how prone we are to make Jesus into a means to an end, rather than the glorious and all-satisfying end that He is in Himself!

This is not faith. It is covetousness. And covetousness is idolatry- and idolatry is heresy.

How to be certain in the midst of uncertainty

A statement from Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest this morning, created a flow of fresh thoughts for me.  Here’s an excerpt:

Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what tomorrow may bring. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.  As soon as we abandon ourselves to God, and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our life with surprises. When we become simply a promoter or defender of a particular belief, something within us dies.  That is not believing God- it is only believing our belief about Him. Jesus said, “…unless you become as a little child….”  The spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, just uncertain of what He is going to do next.

In my last post I shared how I have often misinterpreted what God was saying to me.

I think most of the mistakes I have made have related to focusing more on what I expected God to do for me, and less on what He intended to become to me.

Or stated another way, I have often been focused on short-term outcomes rather than God’s eternal purposes in the glorious Person of Christ.

I think this is the essence of what Chambers is getting at.  The longer I walk with God and the more of His character and glory that I carry, the less dogmatic I am about temporary outcomes. But at the same time I am becoming more convinced that God is powerfully in control, and daily register indicators of His nearness and involvement.

Thus, for me faith has matured from predicting, claiming, and confessing some temporary action or preferred intervention from God, to a greater knowledge of a glorious Person in Whom I have fullness and every good thing.

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. (2 Cor 1:20 NIV)

Many years ago I was caught in the Word of Faith trap.  Can you guess how the verse above was interpreted in within that belief framework?  Take a moment and reflect on this verse.  I’ll share the rest of the story next time, so stay tuned….

Legacy: bearing fruit after you are gone

Still bearing fruit today.

A lot of times God simply does not do what I expect Him to do.  This would not seem strange if I were not a sincere follower of Christ.Just a short review of my past journal entries reveals that I have often expressed a sense of what I thought God was going to do.  Sometimes I was right on target. But many times I was wrong – or at least appeared to be.  The interesting thing is that in all of these instances I was pretty sure that I had heard from God!  Needless to say, I don’t carry the title of prophet of God!

A good example was the night before my father died.  He and I had a great chat on the telephone.  He was so encouraged in the Lord. God had given him a real sense that He was about to attract some new people to the church where he served on the elder team. Dad was still dealing with the effects of a stroke he had earlier that year, but was no longer questioning why God had not healed him of all the lingering disabilities.  He was so full of joy and contentment in His God. His confession to me was, “Dane, God has been so faithful to me in everything.”

After hanging up the phone I was so encouraged. (My dad’s main spiritual gift was encouragement, by the way.) I had this deep sense in my spirit, “Dad’s most fruitful ministry is about to launch.”  I turn to my wife and said, “Molly, Dad is really back. He’s come through the trial of his stroke. God is going to use him greatly in this next season.”  I was deeply stirred that this was of God.

The following morning I got the call.

Mom said that she had just sent Dad in the ambulance and that he hadn’t breathed in 20 minutes.  I knew at that instant that Bill Gressett was already in the presence of Jesus.  And my immediate cry was,

“God, how can this be?  He was poised for his greatest fruitfulness in ministry. He was just 71, Lord. This doesn’t make sense to me.”

I have learned many lessons from the Lord as I have reflected on the timing and nature of my dad’s passing.  But one fresh thought just came this morning.  And here it is from my journaling:

I did hear from God that evening after talking to Dad. Even though Dad died the next morning, he is now in his most fruitful season of ministry. In a real sense, his ministry was just beginning.

In writing this, I’m not presuming to know all that Dad is doing now in heaven – or what he will be doing after Christ returns and creates a new heaven and earth.

What I am referring to is the power and fruitfulness of his legacy.

Do you remember Jesus saying, “It is in your best interests that I go away [to the Father]“?  The disciples couldn’t accept that statement.  Jesus no longer here with us?  How could that be better?

Can you see that Jesus is bearing far more fruit today than He was during His three years of public ministry in Israel?  This is undebatable.  But the same principle is true for Christ-followers who impact others with their life and faith:

They leave a tidal wave behind, a reverberation of passion for Christ, that spills into the next generations.

Their  rewards greet them when they arrive in heaven. But then more follows as their legacy kicks in and the fruit goes viral.

Oh hallelujah.  God is so wise and so good.  What a Savior!

I am glad that God does not limit Himself to my small views and short-sightedness. And I am glad that when He does speak to me, that His intentions are far greater than I can imagine!

The Secret to Becoming a Fisher of Men

Have you ever deeply reflected upon the command/invitation of Jesus to His disciples:

 “Follow Me and I will make you to become fishers of men.”

This simple statement is incredibly wonderful.  First, it typifies the essence of the new covenant:  God’s commands have been transformed into self-fulfilling prophecies for those who believe.  Note that Christ is not commanding us to become fishers of men.  He is inviting us into a love relationship of trust and obedience with Himself.  He takes on the responsibility to transform us into fishers of men.  My part is to follow Him.  His part is to make me a fisher of men.  I call this “no sweat evangelism.”  I for one have had enough of the guilt-driven, sweaty palm kind!  I suspect you are a lot like me!

 This leads understandably to the next point.  When we truly follow Christ we take on His values.  If we are truly walking in relationship with Christ, the things that are important to Him become important to us.  The focus of Peter, John and the others had been the fishing business so as to earn a living, pay the bills, and afford the things they wanted.  But Christ introduced them to a new and greater passion and a more eternal purpose!

 Their passion would no longer be fishing, it would be Christ Himself.

Their primary purpose would no longer be to make money but to make Christ-followers!

By the way, working in the marketplace and ministering to people can happen simultaneously!  But make no mistake, when a business person truly decides to follow Christ his/her motives and priorities take on an entirely new shape.  They realize that their job is their mission field and no longer just their source of provision or identity.

 Years ago a pastor near where I lived was dismissed from his church by the deacons.  They said to him, “You’re fired.”

 He responded by saying, “You can’t fire me.  I don’t work for you.  You can only withhold my paycheck.”

 God was this pastor’s provider, not the church.  Similarly, God is the business person’s provider, not his/her job.  They are on assignment from God for strategic kingdom purposes.  Yes, becoming a fisher of men looks different for different people.  We do not all operate with the same giftings, personalities, or assignments.  But we all are called to be part of the process!  As we follow Christ passionately we should expect to be involved in mission personally.  It would do us well to use the last statement as a litmus test for our relationship with Christ.  Jesus said that if we followed Him that He would make us to become fishers of men.  The genuineness of the following sooner or later should be evidenced by the fruit of mission! 

The Most Destructive Error in the Church

The following is from James McDonald’s blog.  If you like it, please click over there and subscribe.

By James McDonald

Soteriology is a word that comes from the Greek word soterios, which means “to save.”Doxology comes from the Greek word for glory and names the single stanza hymn. While many have heard the Westminster Confession that “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever,” fewer have understood that doxology is the highest purpose for church. Doxological is a good descriptor for the mission of God’s glory. Placing evangelistic mission above the mission of God’s glory is the single most destructive error in the church today and the one from which many other errors fall out. God’s own glory as the priority for your church and every church needs no reflection on our part, only obedience. Glory is not a threat to reaching lost people but is actually the most biblical and God-honoring way to get there:

• Yes, God is passionate to see the elect brought into the church.
• Yes, God honors the efforts of those committed to scattering the seed.
• Yes, God calls us to let down the net for a catch as fishers of men.
• Yes, God is “not wishing that any should perish.” (2 Peter 3:9)
• Yes, God “desires all people to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3–4)
• Yes, “whosoever shall call,” and “God so loved the world,” and “we are ambassadors for Christ.” (Romans 10:13 KJV; John 3:16; 2 Corinthians 5:20)

The statements above are biblical fuel on the fire of evangelism, but the Scripture also puts parameters on how far that zeal can go. “For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word” (2 Corinthians 2:17). When soteriology becomes a higher priority than doxology, much is done “to reach people” that grieves the Holy Spirit and forfeits manifest presence. Like a man paddling across the Atlantic with a hole in his boat, God’s glory can be briefly neglected, but if not soon corrected, we will find ourselves in a place where the only choice is to sink. Neglect of glory is not a small oversight but the hinge on which God’s glorious favor swings in or out in any church.

The error of failing to make the glory of God your highest priority is very difficult to address in a horizontal church because they believe their mission is “winning the lost, end of story!” If that horizontal mission results in numerically successful outcomes, the methods will be considered “above reproach” ipso facto, and that is the great disaster. Even where churches have doxology in their mission statements, it is too often assumed. Those resistant to what I write might reply, “Of course God is glorified in our efforts to reach people for Him, why would He not be?” Possible answers:

• Because preachers are not carnival barkers, and Jesus is not a midway prize. (2 Corinthians 5:20)
• Because some methods use content that offends God’s holiness—ask King Saul if sincerity is an adequate reason to disregard God’s holy reputation. (1 Samuel 15:22)
• Because some methods reveal the wisdom of humans and not the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:4–5)
• Because some methods provoke people to praise the strategy, not the God who saves. (Jonah 2:9; Acts 13:48)
• Because Ichabod can become a reality just when everything looks to be going great!

How did the church get this way? I don’t know the whole history, but I do remember the impact of a book that came out in 1980 titled The Complete Book of Church Growth by Elmer Towns, John Vaughan, and David Seifert. It lists the top 200 churches in North America by attendance. Interestingly, in 1980, the largest two churches had about 5,000 attendees. By the time they got down to the 200th church, they had gone under 2,000 in attendance. As of 2011, there were 1,200+ churches in America with attendance over 2,000; more than 100 churches that have attendance over 5,000; and more than 25 with attendance over 10,000.

But wait! It’s a trick, because during that same time the population has grown by more than 40 percent and the total number of people actually attending church has fallen by greater than 15 percent. Bottom line: in real numbers, millions of people who were worshipping Christ in a Protestant church in 1980 are not doing so today. So who are we kidding? Horizontal, soteriologically driven church is not growing the body of Christ as a whole. Even if you are seeing a “win” on your side of town, we are a “loss” collectively. Do you care?

Regardless of size, every Bible-believing, gospel-saturated church, and those that want to get there, matter to God. Just because a few churches in big cities are flooding with people does not mean that those methods are helpful to the church as a whole. What if Satan allowed a few churches to burst at the seams, knowing that selfish shepherds everywhere would mimic those horizontal methods and plunge churches from coast to coast into a vortex of decline?

Sadly, many who read this believe that pursuit of the glory of God is an abandonment of evangelistic impact, when in fact the opposite is true. Check back Friday for some evidence. :)