Freedom and leashes

For the Lord is Spirit,

and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is,

there is freedom.

2 Corinthians 3:17

I've been thinking a lot about freedom lately.

Freedom in Christ is often seriously misunderstood these days.  People somehow get the idea that Freedom in Christ means freedom to sin, when it actually mean freedom from sin.  Jesus came to free us from the bondage of sin (Romans 6:6-10).  Sin is not good.  Sin is bad, harmful, destructive, and it leads to death.  Our movies and novels consistently present a deceiving line of thought that says sin is fun, desirable, and it makes us happy.  We regularly escape reality and immerse ourselves in fictitious stories about people who call themselves courageous when they throw aside loyalty and altruism in favor of selfishness, people who have sex as casually as a conversation and never bear a scar from it, people who do nothing but lie, and it results in good cheer, rather than serious consequences.  We fall under the delusion that these things can translate to real life.

We praise the right to pursue happiness, and in our minds the words, "right to pursue happiness"--whatever the founding fathers might have meant them to mean--morph into the the phrase, "freedom to do whatever makes me happy."  We think sin is the thing we need the freedom to pursue, and some people think Freedom in Christ grants that very desire.

This morning I woke up thinking hard about freedom and righteousness, and other things.

I need to work through the serious (and seriously misunderstood) difference between righteousness and self-righteousness.  Self-righteousness is bad.  It flows from pride and a mistaken idea of self-sufficiency.  It may start out looking something like righteousness, but it is not sustainable.  Because of its roots in pride, self-righteousness always sours over time and becomes full of rigid bitterness.  But righteousness, plain righteousness, is good.  It's an attribute of God, and Jesus died expressly for the purpose of imparting it to us.  

He Himself, Jesus,

bore our sins in His body

on the tree,

that we might die to sin

and live to righteousness.

By His wounds you have been healed.

1 Peter 2:24

We are saved for righteousness.  Real, visible, beautiful righteousness.  Righteousness is God's way, God's design, and when we live in righteousness, everything flows smoothly.  Or, I guess I should say, if we would live in righteousness, everything would flow smoothly.  At base level, righteousness is the opposite of sin, and it is what we need.  [This is a thumbnail for a post I hope to work on soon.  Sometimes I think I should rename this blog, "Processing Life in Rough Draft."]

For now, I need to say this:

We can only safely receive freedom after we have learned to love righteousness.

Many years ago, when Piper (may he sleep in peace beneath the pines) was a wee pup, we tried to take him to obedience school.  This endeavor was largely futile, although he was a good dog, and easy to have around.  He was too little when we enrolled him, and I think all it did was convince him of his dog phobia.  I remember eight years later, when we brought little Schubert home as a puppy, Piper just kept telling me, in his wordless, doggy way, "Mom. You know I have a dog phobia.  Why would you bring a dog into our home?"

I digress.  I bring up puppy obedience school, because I remember that the teacher spoke passionately about the importance of dog obedience.

"If you can teach your dog to obey voice commands," he said, "you will have a free dog.  When you know your dog will come if you say, 'Come,' or  hit the ground if you shout, 'Down!' you can take him anywhere, even off-leash.  It's just amazing.  That's a free dog.  It's the reason why we do this."

When the Spirit of God transforms our hearts to the point where we love righteousness, then we are free.  We are free to do what we love, and only good will result, because we are walking in the way of God, the way He designed for creation to work.  There is incredible freedom when we find ourselves swimming along with the current of the God who created the Universe, instead of trying to butt heads with Him.

Some pictures of Duffy on a leash, 

because he is certainly not ready 

to handle the freedom of being off-leash.

If this small fellow could break away with the intensity of his straining, he would shortly find himself crushed under the wheels of a car.  May we look, and understand, and submit ourselves to the merciful protection of our loving heavenly Father.

Insufficient, yet thankful

Currently, I am preparing to teach a ladies' retreat.  I've never done this before.  Once, when I was quite young, in my twenties, I think, I was asked to speak at a Mother-Daughter Tea.  Being young, I went forward brashly and presented something completely unmemorable, probably no help to anyone.

Teaching Bible studies is the passion of my heart, and God gave me a virtually-seven-year hiatus from it.  Recently, a dear woman at our new-found church granted me the privilege of doing some long-term subbing for her while she is going through a busy and overwhelming season of life.  This has been a tremendous joy, and such a wholesome, healthy place for me to focus my mind.  How kind God is, to give me wonderful things to meditate on, while I struggle to manage troubling life issues that tempt me to doubt His goodness.

Somehow, while I was in the middle of the rich joy of studying and teaching, the women's council at our church approached me and asked if I would be the speaker at our spring ladies' retreat.

It sounded like a wonderful thing to do.  A sweet young lady asked me.  After praying, I told her, "Yes, I will do that.  I'd love to.  When is it?"  She told me it was in April.  I said, "I'll really look forward to that.  Thank you so very much for trusting me with such a responsibility.  I'll be happy to do that.  In March, when it's drawing close, I'll probably be a little freaked out and wonder why I said yes.  But right now I'm excited, and so grateful that you would ask me."

So.  It's March.  I'm having some tense times, but mostly I'm excited, although intimidated.  It's okay.  In our weekly Bible study, in 2 Corinthians, we are studying words that ask, "Who is sufficient for these things?" and answer, "Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us to be sufficient..."

My grace is sufficient for you, God tells me, for my power is made perfect in weakness.  And God knew, exactly, that I would need these words, this encouragement, this month while I feel so insufficient.  I am insufficient, but it's okay, because God is sufficient, and He will come through.

The retreat is called:  The Way of Forgiveness:  Receiving and Extending the Grace of God.

This may be ironic, because I'm by no means a master at forgiving.  Yet, I take God's commands about forgiving very seriously, so I am always trying to learn how to forgive better.  Perhaps we teach more effectively in areas where God has made it necessary for us to practice again and again, because we keep struggling to get it right.

Yesterday as I was working on the retreat, God showed me something I can't believe I'd never seen before.  It's not about forgiveness, exactly,  It's about apologizing, about being the one who needs to ask for forgiveness.  Do you know that a good apology can help someone tremendously with their struggle to forgive?  That's not the new thing God showed me, though.  God showed me something else. He showed me that in the forgiveness process, if you apologize to someone and ask for forgiveness, and the person says, "I forgive you," that is not the end.  No!  There is one more thing, a very important step to bring closure for both parties.  After someone tells you, "I forgive you," it is very important to say, "Thank you."

Did you know that?  I don't know why I never realized it before.  Forgiveness is an undeserved gift, and if someone gives you this gift, you need to respond with appropriate gratitude.  If you don't feel thankful for the forgiveness you receive, you must not have been appropriately sorry for the wrong you did.

I realized this because the Bible says, "Forgive as God in Christ forgives you."  We pattern our human confession-forgiveness exchanges after the grace of God.  All who have truly received the Lord's forgiveness surge up with gratitude for this great gift.  We should also be grateful for forgiveness extended to us from another person.  This requires great humility, but it pays in an abundance of joy and restoration.

Think about how fears would be allayed and life would be different if we learned this conversation:

I'm sorry.

I forgive you.

Thank you.

Faithful or fearful... or both?

The last five years of my life have entailed a difficult and painful journey, forcing me to deal with issues I never imagined experiencing.  I suppose I had a warped and deluded view of myself as somehow, for some reason, immune to these things.  God has saved me from that delusion.  He is humbling me, and I know His humbling is healthy.  Satan means these things for evil and destruction, but God uses them for good.

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.
~Romans 8:28

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
~Psalm 23:4a

During this difficult journey, sometimes I run into discouragement.  Sometimes people, intending to encourage, say things that profoundly discourage me.  One of the most discouraging words of encouragement I have received is: "When you have faith, you will not be fearful."  Another version of it is: "Faith and fear never go together."

I confess that I experience fear, anxiety and dread.  At times, these emotions have commandeered my very body, producing headaches, nausea, trembling, and even heart palpitations.  At the same time, I cling to a deep, abiding faith in God.  God Himself has granted this gift of faith to me: I believe that God is for me.  He is good.  He hears and answers my prayers (not always the way I wish He would, but He does hear and answer with compassion and grace).  God is sovereign and in control.  God has good plans and almighty power to carry them out.  God is always with me in the here and now, and someday He will bring me to a New Heaven and a New Earth where there will be no more suffering, sadness, disappointment or fear.

I have faith, and I also experience fear on this earth.  I am not afraid of eternal destruction; I know God promises to bring me home to heaven.  I am not afraid that God might abandon me before that day.  These truths help me immeasurably.  However, I do fear pain, and sadness, and trouble.  I don't like pain, sadness and trouble.  Nobody does, and I don't think we are supposed to.  God didn't create us for pain, sadness or trouble.  These things are in the world as a result of sin.  God doesn't expect us to like them, only to persevere through them, trusting Him to make all things new.

We trust God to make all things new, but trusting doesn't make our endurance and perseverance free from pain and fear.  If it were easy, we would not need to endure and persevere.  We would simply float along.

It seems like Jesus Himself struggled with fear, or at least dread, before He went to the cross:

And He withdrew about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.  Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done."  And there appeared to Him an angel from heaven, strengthening Him.  And being in agony He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat became like great drops of blood, falling to the ground.  (Luke 22:42-44)

Do you know what the Bible says?  The Bible says, "When I am afraid, I put my trust in You" (Psalm 56:3).  When I am afraid.  This is an acknowledgment that fear will, at times, rise up in our hearts.  Then King David (who wrote this psalm), goes on to say, "In God whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.  What can flesh do to me?"  So, he finishes looking to eternity:  If I am eternally secure, protected by the Almighty God of the Universe, I do not need to be afraid.  What can flesh do to me?  Well, mortal people can shun me, mock me, steal from me, lock me up, torture me, and all manner of terrible things.  They can even kill my body, but they can't separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus my Lord.  They can't take away my eternal inheritance in glory.

I maintain that I may experience fear in the present, fear of temporary, earthly experiences, circumstances and tragedies.  I may dread the trouble that looms on the horizon.  But my dread is always mitigated by God's promises and God's character; He is always at work planning ultimate good for us.

Do you know what we do not have to fear?  We do not have to fear shame.

I sought the Lord, and He answered me and delivered me from all my fears.  Those who look to Him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.  (Psalm 34:4-5)

I think this may be part of what it means when John writes, "Perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18).  We do not need to fear shame.  We can come open and vulnerable before God, exposing all our sinful failings.  In fact, we must do this.  His promise is that when we confess our sins, He is faithful and and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).  We confess all the things we are ashamed of, and He responds with nothing but forgiveness and cleansing.  We don't need to be afraid of this process.  Where sin increases, grace abounds all the more (Romans 5:20).

In God's Kingdom, we have no need to hide our sins.  We can look straight at our past, with no fear, because after we have been redeemed, every failure is another marker to show where the power of Jesus Christ has triumphed.  When we look back at how low we had sunk, we can appreciate how far God has lifted us in redemption.

Our sins do not define us.
Our deliverance demonstrates God's victory over sin.

If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)

Jesus promised us peace, because He knew we would face fearsome circumstances.  He does not shame us for being afraid; rather, He encourages us to keep our eyes on the prize of eternity in perfect fellowship with Him.

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation.  But take heart; I have overcome the world.
(John 16:33)

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
(2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

May we see the goodness of the Lord

God is for us.

God is for us.  He is on our side.  He loves us, and His heart is set to help us, to give us aid.

It is a tremendous blessing to read passages in the Old Testament about God pouring out streams of life on the earth to make it flourish.  Psalm 65 is one of my favorites:

You visit the earth and water it;

You greatly enrich it;

the river of God is full of water;

You provide their grain,

for so You have prepared it.

You water its furrows abundantly,

settling its ridges,

softening it with showers,

and blessing its growth.

You crown the year with Your bounty;

Your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.

The pastures of the wilderness overflow,

the hills gird themselves with joy,

the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,

the valleys deck themselves with grain,

they shout and sing together for joy.

~Psalm 65:9-13 ESV

Of course, God does send the rain and make the crops grow.  God is our Provider, giving us water and food so we can live.  But this psalm is also a metaphor for spiritual truth.  The Holy Spirit--the Living Water of God--comes down, poured out from above, to bring spiritual life to the children of men.  God nurtures us with his Spirit.  By the power of His Spirit, even the hardest ground, the wagon tracks, compressed by wheels carrying heavy loads, can overflow with abundance.  The NLT says, "...even the hard pathways overflow with abundance" (v. 11).

I will heal their apostasy;

I will love them freely,

for my anger has turned away from them.

I will be like the dew to Israel;

he shall blossom like the lily;

he shall take root like the trees of Lebanon;

his shoots shall spread out;

his beauty shall be like the olive,

and his fragrance like Lebanon.

They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow;

they shall flourish like the grain;

they shall blossom like the vine;

their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

~Hosea 14:4-7

God is for us.  God loves us.  God demonstrated His love for us, clearly and decisively, when while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).  Amazingly, it doesn't stop there! Since our great God did not spare His own Son, but gave Jesus up for us all, we can be assured that He will also--along with the gift of salvation through Christ--graciously give us everything else we need for life and godliness (Romans 8:32, 2 Peter 1:3).

God loves us.  His desire is to see us succeed, to grow in grace and godliness, and to walk in righteousness and victory.  He is here with us, through His Holy Spirit, and He never stops working on our behalf, helping us learn how to access His power and His wisdom which He graciously, freely offers.

God is for us, and He loves us.  He envelops us and indwells us with love.  Romans 5:5 tells us, God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  This is amazing.  Maybe you've heard about God's love so many times, the words stopped meaning anything.  Stop and ponder it:  God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

I was thinking about God's love, and also about the prayer in Ephesians 3, and I realized something.  Read the prayer, carefully, and then I will tell you what I realized:

I bow my knees before the Father . . . 

that according to the riches of His glory 

He may grant you to be strengthened with power

through His Spirit in your inner being,

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--

that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

may have strength to comprehend with all the saints

what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ

that surpasses knowledge,

that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

~Ephesians 3:14, 16-19 ESV

This is what I realized:  God strengthens us with power, through His Spirit inside of us, so we can comprehend the vastness of His love and know the love of Christ.

We can't even begin to understand His love for us, until His Spirit in us strengthens us for the task.  We are rooted and grounded in His love, yet in order to comprehend and experience the infinite dimensions of this all-surpassing love, we need the strength and power of the Holy Spirit.  And here is the best news of all:  He pours His Spirit out on us abundantly, precisely so this can happen.

Dear Lord Jesus, thank you.  

Thank you for your all-surpassing love.  

Please pour out Your Spirit on me and into me, drench me and fill me.  

Help me to know and experience the fullness of Your love.  

Please give me more of You, more of Your love.  

Please enable me to feel how much You love me.  

Please make my heart sing because of how much You have done for me.  

I want to overflow with eager anticipation for what You are doing in me each day, and how triumphantly You can use me to reflect Your glory and draw people into Your kingdom.  

Even when I am crushed and beaten down, You are preparing for me an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.  

Please help me confidently wait in steadfast faith for the unimaginable delights You have prepared for us in our eternal future with You.

But, as it is written,

"What no eye has seen, 

nor ear heard,

nor the heart of man imagined,

what God has prepared 

for those who love Him" --

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.  

For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

~1 Corinthians 2:9-10 ESV

(This is a repost of an older post, slightly edited.  I needed it today.)

Undeserved forgiveness

Forgiveness is the heart of true Christianity.

Forgiveness is the remedy for sin, which is the core of all the trouble in the Universe.

We cannot survive if we do not receive and extend forgiveness.

Forgiveness is absolutely essential.

Given the importance of forgiveness, we need to have an accurate understanding of what it is, and what it is not.

Forgiveness is a gracious response to a wrong.  Forgiveness is what you do when someone sins against you, and you respond with grace rather than vengeance.  Forgiveness is what you receive when you sin against someone, and the person chooses to give you grace rather than punishing you.

Grace--by definition--is not deserved.  Therefore, forgiveness is not deserved.  Nobody deserves to be forgiven.  You cannot earn forgiveness; you can only accept it.  You should never try to demand forgiveness, because that would deface its very nature.  If you need to be forgiven, but the person you wronged struggles to forgive you, you must wait patiently and pray for the person to heal from the hurt you caused.  Tender wounds get in the way of forgiveness, and if you caused the wound, you must not then compound the problem by condemning your victim for not immediately forgiving and forgetting.

Christians, in particular, can have a hard time with this.  Jesus commanded us to forgive.  Forgiveness is absolutely essential.  Yet, as we consider this, we must only apply it to ourselves:  I must forgive.  I must not demand that others forgive me.  Jesus did not command forgiveness so that I could go to someone I've hurt and say, "You have to forgive me.  Jesus said so."

At the same time, it is much better for people to forgive.  If you hurt someone, and that person cannot seem to forgive you, it is a compassionate thing to pray and ask God to help that person find the freedom of forgiveness.  If you can do it humbly, and in the interest of the other person, it can be good to pray for God to help someone forgive you.

When we sin, we need to feel the weight of our sin and be sorry from the depths of our hearts.  We need to examine what we did and consider the effects.  We need to honestly assess the damage we caused.  We need to imagine the way others felt in the wake of our behavior.  When we sin, we should experience sorrow over what we have broken, be it a dish, a promise, or a heart.

If the person against whom we sinned needs time to heal and recover, we must be patient.  We should try to help the healing process in any way we can.  We should ask what we can do to improve the situation.  Understanding how deeply we have hurt someone should lead us to prayer and acts of compassion, not impatience and judgment.

We also need to understand that forgiveness does not mean that what happened was okay, or that it doesn't matter.  Both the forgiver and the offender need to understand this.  Forgiveness would not be required if what happened was no big deal.  Forgiveness is when we radically give up our right to shame someone for hurting us, and say, "I do not like what you did, but I will absorb the consequences, trusting God to work for good, and hope that by grace you will be able to do better in the future." 

And when we receive forgiveness, we should receive it humbly, recognizing and acknowledging that we do not deserve it, that we could never deserve it.  We should receive forgiveness with gratitude and thanksgiving, with a heart that says, "I don't know how you can forgive me, but thank you."

This, after all, is what we say to the Lord who, while we were yet sinners, died to obtain forgiveness for us.  The human forgiveness process is to be patterned after God's forgiveness process.

Be kind to one another,

tenderhearted,

forgiving one another,

as God in Christ forgave you.

~Ephesians 4:32

Credit and blame

Someone once said to me, "Why do you believe that God gets all the credit if we do something right, but it's all our fault if we do something sinful?  How is that fair?  That isn't fair."

He saw things so strongly from his own perspective, I was at a loss to explain to him how he was missing the point.

I'm going to detour for a minute and tell you about my phone.  Don't worry.  It will come back around and connect in the end.

My phone is called a "Smart Phone."  I'm just saying, but it doesn't seem very smart to me.  Sometimes I literally want to pitch it out through a window, even if were to break the window in the process.  It has the capacity to make me that angry.  (Yes, full disclosure of a sinful heart over here.)

Of the features on my phone, the one that enrages me most is the keyboard.  I feel as though this diabolical keyboard has been programmed especially to get my goat.  It has all kinds of automatic editing functions built into it, to thwart me at every turn.

It has about a 40% accuracy rate for long words.  But it has about a 2% accuracy rate for short words.  Currently, one of the most annoying substitutions I get is "wad," which comes up every time I try to type in "was."  Can we think about this for a moment?  How many times per day does the average person use the word "was"?  I don't know, maybe 7,000?  And how many times per day does the average person use the word "wad"?  I don't know, maybe zero?  So why?  Why would the algorithm default to wad, over was every single time I try to type it?

Here's another baffling one.  My phone loves to present this:  "we'r".  It doesn't give me, "we're," mind you.  It gives me "we'r."  This, every time I type in anything related to "we."  Now, the word we is a word I use quite often in texts, so this is getting really old.  I do not know how it ever came up with we'r in the first place.  I must have made some fatal typo in the past, and it latched onto it to remember forever, regardless of how many times I correct it.  Sigh.

Seriously, when I input a text, it takes me forever, because I often have to correct every single word in the text before I send it.  I am not exaggerating.  I am telling the literal truth.  This is if I use the keyboard.  It is slightly better if I dictate. With the dictate function, among other issues, my phone comes up with random and inexplicable capitalizations in the middle of sentences.  Sometimes I get so fed up, I just leave these, and then I feel crummy about myself.  Getting lax about typos is dangerous.  When I dictate, my phone has around a 50% accuracy rate, so I only need to correct 50% of the words.  However, I always miss some, because my eyes are weakening and the screen is tiny, and I am always sending off texts with ridiculous and sometimes embarrassing mistakes in them.  Yesterday I sent someone a text in which I meant to say, "I thought it was beautiful," but it went out saying, "I thought I was beautiful."  I hang my head in cringing shame.

So anyway, my phone is a frustrating device that thwarts me at every turn.

Now, if a skilled programmer were to develop a better algorithm for texting, I would be in awe of this person, and very grateful.  The current situation is not good.  The current algorithms don't work properly.  They need to be reprogrammed, and the programmer would be a Hero.  Of course he would get credit for what he fixed.

This brings us back to my original subject: whose fault is it, and who gets the credit?  Specifically, remembering where we began, whose fault is sin, and who gets the credit for righteousness?

I think we as humans are very quick to lay blame, mostly because we want to justify ourselves.  I don't think God sees it in terms of faults and blaming.  The world is broken by sin.  We arrive broken, and we continue to deteriorate, unless restorative help is applied.  The natural state of a man is one of rebellion and pride, wanting and often demanding his own way.  This began in the Garden of Eden, a result of Satan's scheme to deceive, and everyone's tendency to grasp for power, even though the power began in the right hands and everything had been good.

God does not "blame " us for this.  God knows our weaknesses and our propensity to reject Him.  God knows that without Him we can do nothing.  God knows we need Him desperately, and we spurn Him relentlessly.  He doesn't blame us, He understands us.  He understands us much better than we understand ourselves, and He pours out compassion on us.  God knows our brokenness, and He knows the remedy for our brokenness.  He patiently works to woo us and heal us.

"I will heal their apostasy and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them," He says in Hosea 14:4.

I think of animals that need to be tamed.  Some are much easier to tame than others.  A patient handler, however, actually enjoys taming the difficult ones.  The greater the challenge, the greater the sense of accomplishment.  This is why God says, "My power is made perfect in weakness," (2 Corinthians 12:9).  The more messed up a person is upon coming to Jesus, the more striking is the patience and skill God displays through redemption.  Yes, He gets all the glory!  He absolutely gets the glory!  We are broken, and He fixes us.  This is the story of salvation.  We were dead in sin, and He makes us alive in Christ.

If we won't let Him fix us, if we taste His grace and reject it, there comes a point where He gives us what we demand.   This is a very serious and tragic thing, and difficult to understand, but essentially it means that those who refuse to be tamed will be allowed to go wild.  Yet, His patience is unfathomable, His grace is sufficient and His love is unfailing, so there is always hope.  There is always hope for everyone.