Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #11

Hallelujah, what a Savior!! Blessings on you in this Christmas time!

Jesus has lived this life for us in his 33+ years as a man on earth, making the way for those of us who are in Him to be able to live as He lived. I want to remind you from last week of what Tom Marshall says in chapter 12 when he explains how Jesus internalized the law of God, writing it on His own heart:

By obedience. By painstaking, persistent, perfect obedience, in every situation and in every circumstance, He wrote the law of God on His heart.

Now in chapter 13, our reading for this week, the author addresses how we, God's people, experience new covenant freedom as Jesus did (in contrast to living under the external law).

The work of the cross and the work of the Spirit is imperative in this.

The work of the cross:
"'Now is the time for judgement upon this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.' He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.' (John 12:31-33)...The context of the saying is His death and what is meant is this: when Jesus came to the cross, His individual personality became a corporate one. It incorporated all those who would believe in Him. Satan, the ruler of this world, is ejected from us and we are drawn into Him to become one with Him and part of Him.
...What does this mean? It means that the cross does away with (or makes of no effect) the line of authority that binds us to the law of sin and death. We are free of the authority that made us slaves to sin. The compelling and dominating effect of the inner values of the sinful nature is rendered powerless..."

The work of the Holy Spirit:
"'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him...Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.' (John 7:37-39) Why was the Spirit not yet given?
... He was waiting for something. He was waiting for Jesus to complete the perfected set of inner values we have been speaking about. To build into them every capacity and every resouce that we would ever need in this life: perfect love, perfect faith, perfect obedience, perfect forgiveness.
...He was waiting until Jesus came to the cross and His individual personality became a corporate one that incorporated us.
...He was waiting until the atonement was a finished work...
...He was waiting until Jesus broke the ultimate barriers of death itself and was raised to resurrection life..."

After Jesus completed His work of living in perfect obedience to His Father and going to the cross, the Holy Spirit did two things related to this subject:
1) His power liberates our will from the bondage of habitual surrender to the demands of the flesh.
2) He is the one who educates us in living by the internalized law.

Marshall says, "Walking in the Spirit means that the soul yields up its desire to rule, and submits to the authority of the human spirit, inhabited by the Holy Spirit...God will never force the human will. this means that the power of the Holy Spirit will never be released into the area of the soul without the free response of the soul. As far as the will is concerned, the response that bridges the gap from soul to spirit is obedience. When we reach out in a response of obedience, the power of the Holy Spirit is released into the area of the will and breaks the yoke of bondage."

Sanctification is the ongoing educating work of the Spirit, in which He applies "the law of God to our lives in such a way that we are not trapped into legalism or self-conscious spirituality."

So with every little or big obedience to God on our part, the Holy Spirit is doing in us what He did in Jesus: "He writes the law on our heart. And the law sets us free! (Romans 8:4 '...in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who so not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.')"

Praise the Lord! Because of the life and work of Christ on the cross and because of the work and presence of the Spirit in my life, as I believe in Christ's work and provision and obey God, the law of God gets written on my heart step by step; and the more the law is internalized in me, I enjoy greater and greater freedom because I am living according to the law (the values by which I was meant to live)!

Simply put, the believer's simple trust in Jesus and obedience to the Spirit of God will incrementally write the law of God on his heart; with this process comes increasing liberty to choose for God. We will fail along the way, but the pattern of living is that of obedience rather than resistance to God.

Father, thank You for the life and death of Your Son, Jesus; thank You for the grace and power of Your Spirit at work this moment in our lives. Thank You that there is nothing too difficult for You! We worship You in this time of celebrating Your first coming and cry out to You to come in Your fullness to Your people that those around us would taste and see that You are so good!

I will be at the Urbana 06 conference next week so may not be able to blog; we'll do chapters 14 and 15 for the next two weeks, starting Part IV about the "self."

A blessed Year 2007 to you! The Lord is with you always!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #10

Blessings in the name of the Lord!

The two chapters we read this week are 11 and 12. I'll quote some key truths that the author gives in these two chapters...

Chapter 11: The Power Struggle in the Universe

• ...the power struggle between God and Satan...is not to find out whether God is more powerful than Satan...When it comes to a question of naked power, there is no competition with omnipotence!
• The conflict in the universe is over something quite different. It is a moral and spiritual struggle.

Tom Marshall presents some wonderful truths about the law of God, which expresses how God is; he goes on to say that the law of sin and death expresses the way Satan is. In giving man the freedom to choose, God "has allowed the scales to be weighted against Him to an incredible degree."

Why would we humans go for the law of sin rather than the good law of God? -

• The appeal of sin is founded on deception and delusion. Its end is hidden...Sin is presented to us as a matter of choice or preference...there is an "ought-ness" about the demand of (God's) law that is quite different from the question of liking or preference.
• Authority is power that we recognize as being legitimate...I recognize power as being legitimate when the norms (or standards) that it represents correspond with my inner value system.
• When external law and inner values are in conflict, inner values will, in the long run, win out every time.

Building off these truths, the author goes on to say that fallen nature follows '...the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.' (Eph.2:2) Satan uses his access to humans to "implant in human hearts a set of inner values" - this is what the Scriptures call "the flesh" or "the body of sin and death."

• The flesh...refers to the sinful principle of self-gratification that holds human nature in bondage to the law of sin and death...The inner values of the flesh are detailed in Galatians 5:19-21 (sexual immorality, impurity, idolatry, hatred, jealousy, selfish ambition, dissentions, etc.).
• The norms of the law of sin and death correspond exactly with the inner values of the flesh. Thus they reinforce each other. (Ephesians 2:3)
• No wonder Paul, in the face of this seemingly impregnable system, cries, 'What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?'

Bottomline is that the law of sin and death appeals to fallen human nature, so the inner values of the flesh within us win out over the external law of God.

Chaper 12 - God's Answer for the Flesh

Fundamentally, God's solution for the flesh is the new covenant, which is the law of God imprinted on the human heart; in other words, the law is internalized (Jer. 31:31-33). But to complete this, the "polluted human heart" must be cleansed from sin and a new set of inner values in harmony with the internalized law must be implanted in the heart. (On page 114, the author shows clear contrast between the old covenant and the new.)

This internalization of the law was accomplished by Jesus' perfect obedience to the Father in His earthly life. In this daily obedience to God, the law of God was being written on His heart. Marshall puts it this way:

...By painstaking, persistent, perfect obedience, in every situation and in every circumstance, He wrote the law of God on His heart. In times of stress, in times of boredom, against opposition and throughout misunderstanding, over small issues and great, always internalizing the law...(Heb. 10:5,7)

For the very first time in human history, a person lived in such a relationship with God that He was able to say in all honesty and in perfect truth, 'I always do the things that are pleasing to him.' ...In that one life the perfect law of God was perfectly internalized.

According to Marshall, Jesus created two things in His human nature that never existed before: 1) a perfect human hatred for sin 2) a perfect human love for righteousness.

And Galatians 5:22,23 lists the inner values of this new self (love, joy, peace, patience, etc.), and Paul goes on to say that the law of God is not against these values; in other words, they are in alignment with the law of God! So because there was in Jesus a perfect harmony between inner values and the internalized law of God, He was "free to do spontaneously and freely whatever He liked because the value system that guided His preferences or desires was in total harmony with the law of unselfish love..."

Praise the Lord! I believe it's this place of freedom that the Holy Spirit, through the work of the cross of Jesus, wants to bring us into increasingly...

So next week's final chapter on the will (chapter 13) will deal with how this works out in the lives of those of us who are in Christ.

Lord, send Your Spirit to create a desperate desire in us to live increasingly in this freedom for the sake of Jesus and for our sake and the sake of those who have yet to know Him in His fullness.

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #9

I trust you are well and maturing in the love of God...it's certainly a lifelong process, and even this morning as I was quiet before the Lord, the thought came to me that the Holy Spirit's relentless and unending work in the believer's life is to bring the soul (mind, will, and emotions) into alignment with Jesus, who is Truth. This can be very painful at times but He is with us in the pain and so it is bearable.

We've gotten through the sections of the book on the mind and the emotions. This week's chapter is the first on the will.

The longer I walk with the Lord, the more I realize how important it is that the human will be whole because, as Tom Marshall says, it's like the clutch in a car. You can have your hands firmly on the steering wheel (the mind aligned with truth), and be pushing the gas pedal (the emotions are awake and in agreement with truth), but if you don't engage the clutch (action taken in obedience to truth), the car will not move forward.

I find many Christians who have received prayer ministry and are being renewed in the spirit of their mind but are stalled out because they don't take steps of faith to walk out what the Spirit has done within them and for them.

It's possible that the will has been severely damaged through addictions of all sorts (this includes such socially acceptable addictions such as overworking, as well as the non-socially acceptable addictions), and a person who genuinely loves the Lord can find him/herself quite weakened in their will. Healing prayer is important for this. Then the person must listen to the Lord and obey whatever he believes the Lord is asking of him.

Leanne Payne writes so well on this topic in her book, Restoring the Christian Soul. I would also recommend the chapter on the will in The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith.

The will is that more "masculine" part of the human soul; in other words, it's that part of us that stands up and takes action in line with the Spirit of God. All of us need to be strengthened in our will. I'm not referring to natural willfulness and natural stong will but to the human will aligned with God's will. So anyone, whether a naturally strong-willed person or not, can stand upright before God, hear His word, and take steps of obedience (even if they are feeble and wobbly steps). A baby's steps are wobbly and feeble but grow stronger the more he walks.

Marshall finishes the chapter by saying that free will in a person "must always be expressed within the limits laid down by law...We call this obedience." And so true freedom is found obeying a higher law which is God.

Holy Spirit, come and strengthen us to will for You and with You. I ask that You would reach down and strengthen the feeble knees as we take baby steps of faith in the area that You presently are maturing us in. Thank You that You are the divine Helper who breathes the strength and life of Jesus into our being! We say yes to You and will obey Your word even in our weakness, by Your grace and power.


(For next week let's read chapters 11 and 12 which continue on the theme of the will. Have a blessed week!)

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #8

We're on chapter 9 which finishes up the section on the emotions. Chapter 9 is an exciting chapter about living with our emotions.

The author deals here with the ongoing life in the Spirit as it relates to our human emotions. I have come to believe that our emotions, when healed and in right alignment with truth, can be wonderful boosters to our faith and motivators to righteousness. Most of us live in the place of either being pulled here and there by how we feel or we have succeeded in stifling our emotions so as to not be jerked around by them. The problem with stifling them is that we aren't living as true humans are meant to live: alive in all areas of our soul.

Please read early in the chapter what Tom Marshall has to say about Jesus' identification with us in all areas and how this is God's way of dealing with sinful and broken humanity - the incarnation. When by faith we are united with Him, His righteousness is mine, and all of my brokenness and sin is rolled onto Him. It's an amazing exchange that takes place.

I walk this out in my flesh by faith which means I incrementally take back what has been lost through sin (both my own and others' sin against me) through worship and developing the discipline of listening to God and obeying anything that I believe He's saying to me. This impacts the emotions by virtue of the fact that in the process of listening to the Living Word, He will call on me to take steps of obedience that will bring my emotions into alignment with His truth. This will both awaken deadened emotions and tame uncontrolled emotions. He alone knows how to best bring me into wholeness; that's again why the work of the Holy Spirit is absolutely imperative in this ministry of healing. No one knows me like He does and no one knows how to bring me into fullness of life!

As we grow and mature in obedience to God, we find that we are in that delightful place of living with our "spirit out front, as it were" so that we increasingly experience what's happening around us through our spirit grid rather than the soulish grid. The spirit is gaining its rightful place as the "integrating factor" in our personhood. The spirit, which is alive to God and aligned to His truth, becomes the ruling part of us as God originally intended and the soul takes its rightful place in alignment with the spirit.

The more this is the case, the more we understand what's really happening around us, and our emotional responses to the spiritual perceptions are now trustworthy, and we can live fully alive in our emotions and they actually help us to take action.

The beauty of this too is that because our spirit is "out front" now, what others encounter when they meet us is the life of Jesus coming through our personality, rather than meeting our soul life which isn't evil but it is not life-giving in itself. It's the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing in terms of giving spiritual life to others. People encounter life when they encounter a person living in the freedom of the Spirit.

So the spirit of the person becomes the part of us that's out front, and like Tom Marshall says, we begin, at least in some measure like Jesus, to discern the true condition of others around us and experience the appropriate emotional responses triggered by spiritual perception (see pages 88-92).

This is a life-long maturing process so we won't reach absolute perfection in this before heaven, but it's great to be growing little by little. The Holy Spirit, on the basis of the Cross, is continually bringing His own into this - He's so good at this!

Lord, thank You for Your awesome work on Calvary and Your Spirit who takes the things of Jesus and makes them vitally real to us today!!! How can we thank you enough? You are worthy to be loved and adored now and eternally by all peoples!

For next week read chapter 10, The Freedom of the Will. Note Marshall's analogy using the parts of a car in his explanation of the functions of the mind, will, and emotions. What part of the car does he compare the mind to?...the emotions?...and the will? Have a wonderful week because of the Lord very real presence with you!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #7

Blessed Thanksgiving to you all!

I simply want to greet you and say how thankful I am (not just on a formal holiday) for the Lord of my life and for His people, without whom I would be so lost!

Because we're taking more time to finish out the chapters on the emotions, this posting will be simply a quote from chapter 8 that I want to repeat from last week's posting for you to consider carefully...it means a lot to me because in my little experience of ministering to others in these areas, I have fear and trembling to do this if it weren't for the growing confidence I have in the work of the cross and the Holy Spirit in each person's life. If I weren't convinced that God wants to heal human emotions and can be trusted to know how to handle each person with dignity and care and that I don't have to get it all right in praying for another, I wouldn't dare step into these waters. Tom Marshall expresses it well:

"What makes gospel healing unique (and distinguishes it from all human psychotherapies) is that a real, living , supernatural Savior and Healer enters the picture. Often, with only an inkling of the suppressed pain and hurt that some people are holding at bay, I would be genuinely fearful of encouraging them to open up, if it were not for one thing - Jesus really is there."

And so His very real presence is what makes us dare to face emotional pain and hurt and then to become "wounded healers" for others. He is with us right now - praise His name!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #6

Hello, dear ones...before we jump into chapters 7 & 8, take a moment and ponder this statement by the author and its implications for you personally. You may get no further than this in reading this blog, and if not, that's just fine:

...the love of God is not like human love at all. It is not human love enlarged or magnified many times. The difference is qualitative, not merely quantitative...The love of God is absolutely unconditioned and totally unconditional. It cannot be merited, earned, altered or lost - it just is...

This fundamental truth is what the God-Man lived and died and now intercedes to make real to us humans, and the ministry of healing prayer is not first of all to make life pleasant for us or for others around us but to heal the heart so that it can receive this truth and thereby become like Him in love. As evangelical believers we understand the need for forgiveness and repentance of our personal sin, but sometimes we don't realize the need of cleansing and healing of personal emotional suffering in order to readily receive this unconditional and unchanging divine love.

The more I receive of this divine love (and it's taking me a lifetime), the more I realize how offensive it is to my flesh because it is so unlike human love and sympathy which I can manipulate. By the careful and skillful work of the Holy Spirit, I still find myself slipping into wanting to prove myself worthy in one way or another. And the fact that I may have caught a glimpse of this love at one time in my life doesn't mean I don't need to be seeing this over and over and over again in order for my heart to not be offended by life and its ongoing difficulties.

Now to the reading for this week. I'm going to just put down some bedrock truths that Tom Marshall gives in chapters 7 & 8. Thank you to those who made comments this week - I find myself challenged by those.

Chapter 7 "Healing for Inner Hurt"

• God's answer to human need is always two-fold - the work of the cross and the work of the Holy Spirit.
• Marshall expounds by saying that Jesus suffered in every way (spiritual, emotional, physical) to the uttermost, and because of that He is able to save to the uttermost, touching all areas of human sin and frailty and woundedness through His own suffering. This is why meditating on Isaiah 53 and the story of His crucifixion is important for our healing. But the work of the Holy Spirit is just as important or else the work of the cross means nothing to us personally as humans in need. He is the Spirit of adoption, which in Jewish understanding was the entrance of the son into maturity and adulthood. So without this Helper and Comforter at work in us, we cannot come into genuine adulthood in Christ.

Chapter 8: The Process of Inner Healing

• …for the Holy Spirit to heal our feelings he must gain access to them; we have to open up the hurt areas to His ministry…you can only deal with a feeling when you are feeling it.

The author gives an experience out of his life about this, but I want to testify that this has been true with me as well. Though raised by outstanding parents, they weren’t perfect, and over the years the Holy Spirit has surfaced a few experiences out of my childhood that were wounding. My parents themselves asked me forgiveness many years ago for a particular situation, but at the time I responded in an academic way and said I forgave them; it wasn’t until about a year ago or so that the Holy Spirit quickened this to me afresh but this time He helped me feel the emotion of the child I was at the time and I was able then to forgive and get release and healing at the gut level.

• ...we cannot open up the emotions by an act of the will….Memory is one of the most potent means of opening up the areas of hurt feelings (Psa. 42:4)…But we need to allow the Holy Spirit to do the reminding. Only He knows which memories are significant – and they may not be the ones that we would think are important.

Marshall goes on to talk about blockages to our healing, such as wrong attitudes, bitterness and unforgiveness, grief and sorrow, and just plain unwillingness to face up to unpleasant truths about our immaturity and behavior that someone has addressed. Without dealing with these realities, we can’t hope to receive the healing work of the cross and Spirit of those sins against us that cripple us emotionally.

• Forgiveness if often a pre-requisite to healing, but forgiveness itself will not heal us…The hurt has to be handed over to Christ.
• What makes gospel healing unique (and distinguishes it from all human psychotherapies) is that a real, living, supernatural Savior and Healer enters the picture. Often, with only an inkling of the suppressed pain and hurt that some people are holding at bay, I would be genuinely fearful of encouraging them to open up, if it were not for one thing – JESUS REALLY IS THERE!...(because of this)…the hurt we never thought we could get over, can go – permanently!
• Because emotional hurt many times results in immaturity, the healing of the hurt involves a process of growth. In strict terms, you cannot be healed of immaturity or delivered from it: you can only grow out of it.

Just as the little child must go through certain stages of development physically and intellectually in order to become an adult, so he or she must do the same emotionally; so if a particular stage of emotional development got skipped over because of something that shut him down in his formative years, then the Holy Spirit needs to pinpoint that and heal it so that emotional maturity can take place.

All of this may seem overwhelming, and it should because we can’t do this – that brings us back to chapter 7 and the need to know in a profound way that only the work of the cross and the Holy Spirit is sufficient for this. My role is to say, “Here I am, Lord…I’m willing for You to do what only You can do. I am Yours!” Then watch how He maneuvers to do His good work in you!

The Lord bless you...here’s the plan – let’s read chapter 9 which is the final chapter about the emotions, but let’s take two weeks before we go on to the next section, and I’d encourage you to reread chapters 7 & 8 along with 9 and take the time necessary to not only let these truths sink in but to pray over them with the Lord. Enjoy the Lord and others during the Thanksgiving holiday!

P.S. to Living in the Freedom (Week #5)

Just a quick question for any of you to respond to, if you want:

Related to chapter 7, Healing for Inner Hurt, the author stresses that genuine healing only comes through the cross of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. Do you believe this is true, and if so, why?

Blessings on you all!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #5

This week we read chapters 5 and 6 which follow up on the general chapter on human emotions or feelings. I'm going to take each chapter separately and essentially cite some highlights from them that will pretty well speak for themselves:

Chapter 5: Where Did We Go Wrong?
In speaking of what to do with our emotions ("very powerful but unreliable motivators of behavior"), Marshall says: "...neither ignoring nor suppressing emotions ever really succeeds. All that happens is that they are driven underground where they work just as powerfully as before, while we work out different reasons to justify our actions or attitudes."

He goes on to make an important observation: "When we turn to Scriptures...we discover that the emotions are unreliable not because God made them to be so, but because something happened to them. It is part of the problem that entered with the Fall."

(For those of you who have this book in hand, look carefully at the two diagrams that he gives showing Adam before the fall then fallen humanity. They are very helpful...)

Since the whole of human nature was affected by the fall, it's not only the emotions that are not reliable but all areas of the human soul. As it relates to the emotions, the author says that the results were: perversion (we're attracted to sin and obedience but have negative feelings toward a perfect and loving God), and disintegration (the human spirit cut off from God causing the whole being to fall into disarray since the human spirit in union with God is meant to be the commanding part of the person).

Quoting Tom Marshall: "The result is anarchy. Every part of human nature now strives for rule, or at least for autonomy. With some people it is the intellect that dominates...there are those whose lives are ruled by their emotions...Then there are people dominated by a very strong will...Lacking an integrating principle, fallen humanity is always under severe tension, in many cases coming apart at the seams...The result is unbearable inner strife."

Chapter 6: Emotional Hurt
In this chapter the author begins by pointing out how important it is for us as children to respond to our environment emotionally, and while not all unpleasant emotional experiences are damaging, if a particular trauma or stress is more than we can cope with at the time, critical hurt or damage can take place and affect us long-term. This can show up in our adult life sometimes in strong emotional reactions to situations that don't merit that degree of response.

Evidences of emotional hurt:

• Great difficulties in the area of personal relationships
• Very poor self-image or self-hatred (which we sometimes confuse as being Scriptural self-denial) - this can be expressed in various ways, such as extreme shyness, judgmentalism of others, a drive to prove oneself...
• Pessimistic outlook on life
• Severe attacks of spiritual doubt and a loss of assurance of salvation

Sources of inner hurt: in general, emotional wounds can be caused "by traumatic emotional experiences that are beyond our capacity to handle at the time" of its occurence (i.e., bereavement, marriage breakdown, job failure, childhood deficits, loss of health or reputation, et.)

When trauma happens in childhood, it is usually critical because of how vulnerable the human personality is in the formative years. Some people carry within themselves a general sense of "unconditional badness" and worthlessness as a result of early deprivations in life.

Parents are often the primary source of woundedness, and it's not always because of what they have done wrong but may be because of what they have NOT done. Every child is born with two fundamental needs: the need for love and the need for worth/significance..."love needs to be experienced; and for it to be experienced, love has to be expressed towards us...Parents need to express their love for their children - and do it often - both in words and actions."

"...in very broad terms, the child looks to mother to meet his love needs, but looks to father to meet his need for significance." Frank Lake, in his book Clinical Theology, says that the child needs the gracious smile of the mother (unconditional love) and the affirming voice of the father (affirming the goodness of the child's identity as son or daughter).

Tom Marshall gives a good warning about the difference there is among people, saying that not all children respond the same way to similar circumstances, so what might do deep psychological damage to one may not have the same effect on another. This is why it's so important to trust the Holy Spirit to do the work and not automatically assume that everyone is affected in the same way.

So what is it that happens when a personal has been hurt emotionally? Simply put, emotional growth stops. "We may grow up physically, intellectually, socially and even spiritually but certain parts of our emotional development are held back in a state of immaturity."

I want to say in closing this particular posting that all of us have sinned and all of us have been sinned against. No parents nor authority figures ever do it all right, which means that all of us have not only sinned but been sinned against early in life. So we shouldn't be surprised that we need the healing grace of God along with His saving grace. For many years I didn't acknowledge this because I didn't want to dishonor my godly and wonderful parents, even though they themselves openly acknowledged where they had sinned against me and asked my forgiveness. I now understand that I honor them more by facing where they failed me, forgiving them, receiving healing and blessing them for the wonderful persons they were and the good things they did for me.

For next week let's read chapters 7 and 8; although chapter 7 is only 2 pages long, it is absolutely core to all of this so please read it carefully and more than once, if possible. Let its truth soak in deeply, because without it, there is no hope of genuine healing. Blessings on you this week!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #4

The Lord bless you! He is with you right now...you might want to pause a moment to be in awe over this reality.

This week I'm going to slow the pace down with this book in spite of the fact that I've laid out a particular schedule for getting through it, so please bear with me, ok?

I'm concerned that in the pressure to meet the deadline each week, we may not really get from the Lord what He wants to say in these chapters. The mad pace of life can swallow us up, and as people of the times we live in, we tend toward thinking that the more correct information we can get on a certain topic, the better we'll be.

Of course, we need to know truth. If I didn't believe this, I wouldn't be doing this book club. However, when the Scripture speaks of "knowing," it's a deeper knowing than mere gathering and retaining of information. It's an intimate knowing of Truth. In my personal devotional life right now, I'm spending time in the Psalms and the Gospel of John. I just read this morning the much-quoted words of Jesus in chapter 8, "...and you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

If Jesus is Truth (see John 14:6), then knowing truth is knowing a Person, and it is in that intimate knowing of Him that I am made free. And because knowing a person is a never-ending experience, the implication is that I will need to be moving from one degree of freedom to another all my life.

My experience in life has taught me that knowing a person takes a lot more work than knowing information about the person. It takes time and is messy and interferes with getting things done. Our drivenness as a culture to get things done can be a huge obstacle to really knowing Jesus.

So this week, rather than continue to plunge into the next two chapters (5 and 6) as scheduled, I want to encourage you to go back to chapter 3 on The Renewed Mind and take the time to consider carefully the author's words about "retaining a renewed mind" and ask the Holy Spirit to help you govern "what is going to occupy your mind." He is in you to empower you for this but it will require that you be intentional about reprogramming the way you think about God and others and yourself.

In the rush of life, it's easier to keep piling on the knowledge and information without digesting it and obeying it. But if we move too quickly through the chapters on the emotions without taking seriously the need for getting free from mental strongholds and walking in that freedom, then our emotions won't be helped; the mind must be cleansed and healed and delivered and brought into alignment with God before the emotions will align correctly.

Last week Nonie made a comment on the reading in which she shared a practical way that has helped her in the process of renewing her mind, and that is the practicing of the presence of the Lord through contemplative worship; in other words, taking the time to get before the Lord without an agenda and without doing a Bible study in that time (that's for another time) to practice the reality that He is with me and to simply adore Him and listen to Him. Like any other discipline that we want to develop, this will usually require more time devoted to the practice at first until it becomes an easy thing to do throughout the day. Sitting down and listening to worship music can be one way of beginning this, and if thoughts begin to arise that are self-accusing or judgmental of others, it's important not to stuff those down but to write them out and then ask the Holy Spirit to replace the negative thoughts with His truth from the Word of God.

In his wonderful book Setting Love in Order, Mario Bergner (a healed homosexual) tells of a primary way in which the process of his full healing took place, and that was through practicing the reality of God's presence with him. In the early stages of his healing process, all he heard from the Lord when he was quiet with Him was, "Mario, I love you." After some time of this, Mario wanted to hear something more than that and asked God why He kept repeating that so much; and the Lord answered something to the effect, "Because you still don't believe Me."

Being made free through knowing Truth is costly and messy and will interfere with cherished and good things, but there is grace for this, and I'm praying that we will all keep moving to greater degrees of freedom, no matter how much we have already experienced.

The Lord bless you this week, and next week we'll take up chapters 5 and 6.

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #3

Great input from some of you - thanks for taking the time to bless and help us with your thoughts and experiences related to the themes of our reading.

This week we have read chapter four, What About Our Feelings? The previous chapters have been on the mind, and now Tom Marshall moves to another part of our soul life, the emotions. He starts the chapter with a statement that I have found to be very true as I have lived and moved within the Christian community:
There is probably no area of our personality where we need more help - and receive less - than in the area of the emotions or feelings. Generally Christian teaching has taken a fairly negative attitude towards the whole subject. We may, in some churches, allow freedom of expression for joy and praise in worship, but this is still regarded by others as rank 'emotionalism.' Even where expression of worship is encouraged, there remains a very tentative and uncertain outlook towards the emotions as a whole.

As one of you commented about Marshall's teaching, although we aren't meant to lean on feelings as our primary guide to truth, neither are we meant to ignore them; and when we ignore or suppress the emotional part of our makeup, we end up damaging the positive feelings as well as the negative simply because we don't have the luxury of selecting which ones to suppress. Consequently, many sincere believers have unwittingly cut off a big piece of their personality which is a gift from God. (Every human, no matter what their basic personality, has an emotional part of their nature - we all express that part of us in different ways; however, not only do we all have emotions, but that part of our makeup, influences us much more than we like to admit.)

(It's interesting to me that western believers have been trained to trust what our minds can accept but to be suspicious of our emotions. My contention related to this is that we can't trust the human mind any more than we can trust the emotions. Both are part of our soul life which is given to us by God but which has been profoundly damaged in the Fall of man and each person's choice to go our own way.)

The author's definition of emotions is that they are the "total response of the person to happenings in our environment. Thus a sudden noise makes you afraid, an insult makes you angry or the sight of a person in pain causes you to feel pity." Depending on the intensity of the feeling, there can actually be physical sensations that accompany the emotions (i.e., a red face and tense muscles when angry...). Isaiah 21:3,4 says, "...My heart falters, fear makes me tremble..."

Marshall then makes an important observation about our emotions and how they can have a long-term effect on us: "...once activated by a set of circumstances, the same feelings can be repeated time and again merely by recalling the event. A situation that caused us fear or shame can still bring anxiety or embarrassment every time we remember it even years later. It is this repetitive effect, particularly with the strong negative emotions that produce physiological changes, which can be the source of a whole range of functional and organic disorders."

After pointing out that the emotions are "powerful motivators of behavior" and that "in spite of the cherished idea...that we make decisions on the basis of logical reasoning, every salesman and advertiser knows that to bring people to the point of decision-making you have to move their feelings...," the author says that we can get into serious problems when we apply moral or ethical values to emotional conditions. "If we regard all pleasant emotions as 'good' and all unpleasant emotions as 'bad,' confusion follows..."

Anger is one such emotion...at times it's a sin, but not always, etc. Marshall concludes the chapter with this statement: "...the emotions are not of themselves reliable guides to behavior. We cannot rely on them to motivate us towards the good and away from the bad. Any specific emotion may, in fact, be either good or bad, right or wrong."

Lord, thank You that You have made us emotional creatures in Your image - You are an emotional God - and thank You for the purposes You have for our emotional well-being. I pray that You, by Your Spirit and Your healing presence, would come and do a work in us Your people to bring us into full personhood in You. Thank You that, although this is daunting to us, it isn't difficult for You and that You delight in bringing us to fullness in You. Blessed be Your name, Lord Jesus!

For next week read chapters 5 and 6 which continue on the subject of our emotions. Have a great week!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #2

Chapter 3 about the "Renewed Mind" is wonderful! I've had a couple of people comment to me about it in person, and I trust that those of you who are reading along are being challenged and helped by it.

One of the key truths that Tom Marshall brings out related to the mind, which I commented on in the previous posting, is that obedience creates authority. He continues with this into the chapter on the renewed mind.

God deals with all human needs through "two divine works or actions": the work of the cross, and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Marshall walks through how the cross separates and delivers us from the dominance and authority of the world, the flesh and the devil, and how the cross stands between us and our past. Of course, this has to be personally received and applied by faith, as is true of all benefits won for us by Jesus in the work of the cross. We must not only be forgiven for our sins but delivered from the domination of the authorities that rule in our minds. This can be done by:

• confessing the sins of our mind and receiving God's forgiveness
• renouncing and rejecting the authority that we have given in our mind to the world, the flesh, the devil and our past

This step of renunciation of alien authorities must be done by us..."if we ourselves do not reject and renounce them, we remain under their power in spite of what the cross accomplished. We are the ones who must dismantle them because we are the ones who set them up in the first place...Make the act of renunciation very specific and very definite...Confess it aloud until you really know in your heart that it is done...(Here the author gives a good prayer to use for doing this.)

Often there are cases that require special prayer ministry - these have to do with generational bondages and with curses. We inherit strengths as well as weaknesses. But if we have inherited a weakness in a certain area, and we ourselves yield along the line of that weakness, it creates a bondage that is far harder to break than any ordinary habit...Freedom from this requires 1) accepting responsibility for my sin in this particular area, 2) renouncing the authority that I have allowed to become established in my mind, 3) receive prayer for cutting the link with my past inheritance, 4) after being set free, blessing and honoring those who have given me life. We can also be loosed from the curses (that have come to us through cutting words) through the power of the cross.

Finally, Marshall talks about the gift of a renewed mind (II Tim.1:7). This renewal comes "only by the working of the Holy Spirit."

As we consciously and deliberately yield up our mind to the presence of the Holy Spirit, He will wash out the old habitual thought patterns, the compulsive thoughts that claimed autonomy, and the weary treadmill of negativity...It is a mind in which there is now only one authority, because its thoughts have been brought captive to the obedience of Christ...Because the internal problem of authority has been resolved, the result is life and peace...

I really like the figures 3 (page 31) and 4 (page 47) in which the author contrasts the double mind with the renewed mind. Figure 3 shows that the authority of the world, the flesh, the devil and the past is still active in the "enlightened but double mind". In contrast, although the renewed mind can still be tempted by the world, the flesh, the devil and the past, the line of authority from those sources is broken, because the cross stands between them and my mind and I am free to "decide what is going to occupy" my mind.

This is a life-long process and practice, because this side of heaven we are never exempt from temptation.

One final word from my own experience...a powerful way to strengthen the mind in truth is through the Word and especially through singing the Word (the psalms are wonderful for this since they were written to be sung); also, singing in the spirit is very strengthening of the inner life and it ends up strengthening the mind as well!

I pray that together we will know the "unknowable" love of God and day by day be renewed in our thinking to see Him and ourselves and others through His perfect eyes. May His joy over you be your strength this week!

For next week, read chaper 4: "What About Our Feelings?"

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #1

Blessings in the name of the Lord Jesus!...wow, what a name!

Well, we’re into our next book, Living in the Freedom of the Spirit. Thanks to those who made comments on the first two chapters. We’d love to have increasing participation in order that we can all benefit from a variety of perspectives…and don’t hesitate to ask questions, ok?

This week I want to focus on three things that Tom Marshall teaches in these two chapters.

First, he says at the start of chapter one: …knowledge of God comes primarily as revelation to the human spirit, not as information to the mind (I Cor. 2:9,10,14). This is foundational to us even in our reading this book (or any of the others). The human spirit can grasp what the natural mind cannot grasp. This is why the discipline of contemplation is important in the believer’s life – in contemplating Jesus we can receive from Him what our minds cannot compute.

But here’s the beautiful thing – the more I can receive of Him through faith and trust, the more clearly my mind begins to function; and although our human mind in its limitations will never be able to intellectually understand all about God, its capacity will grow as my heart is set on fire. My mind functions better now than ever before in my life, and I’ve watched this happen as my heart has increasingly been made whole and expanded in the love of God. I’m watching this happen with some of our young people here at Bethany now, and it’s thrilling to me.

This isn’t to say that everyone will have the same natural mental capacity, but I do believe that with the healing of the soul and the setting afire of the heart, the mind’s capacity grows.

Many years ago I read from Jessie Penn-Lewis that if you are reading or hearing spiritual teaching that you’re not able to grasp, don’t try to strain your natural mind to grasp it but place it at the feet of Jesus and rest in Him, asking His Spirit to shed light on it when you are ready. That has been a great help to me over the years. This isn’t the same as laziness…

Second, Marshall talks about the “sources of our thought life.” The first three (the world, the flesh and the devil) are more commonly focused on, so I want to underscore the other three that he presents: the human spirit, the voice of God, and the past.

(By the way, I was glad for the observation by one of you that (we)”… have given Satan too much credit for negative thoughts that get into peoples minds. According to Tom Marshall, there are other influences...” It’s true – there are a number of sources for our negative thinking, the devil being only one.)

It’s important that we recognize that the human spirit is a source of thoughts. This will help us as we grow in discerning between the voice of God and our own voice. There’s nothing wrong with my own voice, but I need to learn to know which voice I’m hearing so that I put appropriate weight to it.

The last voice the author speaks of is the voice from our past, and this is often not well-looked at by believers. We are either ignorant of the impact of this voice or are afraid to deal with it or it has been so well buried over time that we are oblivious to it, and yet it is still influencing us, if the sanctifying grace of the Spirit hasn’t been applied to that voice.

I don’t think it’s as commonly believed now (at least not consciously), but we used to say that “time heals”; only the cross of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit genuinely heals. Leanne Payne (Restoring the Christian Soul) says, “Time, a creature, does not erase our sin. Only by our repentance and His blood is sin and guilt lifted from both past and present…”

As is true about other areas of our lives, some things of our past may be instantaneously removed upon initial conversion, but through the process of sanctification, the Holy Spirit lovingly uncovers areas yet to be cleansed that are deeply buried beyond our consciousness. How and when He does this is totally up to Him, but I know from experience that He is very good at this and is perfect in the way He does it.

Finally, in chapter two Marshall talks of the blinded mind and the “enlightened but double mind.” He touches on a very important reality in life, which is expressed in Romans 6:16 – obedience creates authority. “Whatever we habitually obey becomes authoritative in our lives.”

So whatever power we are under has gained its authority over us through our obedience to it, and this is a principle that never changes. So even as believers we can be in Christ and still be double-minded. Marshall says, “Like Lazarus after he came out of the grave, we often remain bound by the grave-clothes. Furthermore, the world, the flesh and the devil are constantly striving to regain ground that has been lost. Thus it is the painful experience of most Christians to find…that many old bondages either persist in the mind, or (through failure to walk in victory) are re-established by the same principle of obedience...There is war in the mind…Areas of the mind are still under the control of the old masters. Into these areas they inject their poison…”

Lord, I rejoice in Your power to save Your children! Thank You for what You are doing and will continue to do…here we are; we love You and trust You. In Jesus’ name.

Next week’s reading is chapter 3 on “The Renewed Mind.” The Lord is with you!

Life Together - Week #6

We've come to the final chapter of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, which is on Confession and Communion.

I commented on this in an earlier blog but want to express again my appreciation for Bonhoeffer's large perspective on life together as God's people. The fact that he presents our life together as something bigger than our immediate relationships (in other words, we are part of a universal family in the Lord Jesus that extends back into human history and forward to the end of humanity's earthly pilgrimage as we know it) is a wonderful faith-builder and an encouragement to persevere in the intensity of the end of the age.

In this final chapter, I love how he points out that in confessing my sin to even just one other believer and receiving forgiveness immediately makes me part of the whole:

A confession of sin in the presence of all the members of the congregation is not required to restore one to fellowship with the whole congregation. I meet the whole congregation in the one brother to whom I confess my sins and who forgives my sins...If a Christian is in the fellowship of confession with a brother, he will never be alone again, anywhere."


This underscores the importance of personal and trusting relationships within the Body of Christ. One doesn't need many at all in order to feel part of the whole, if we understand this reality that our connection in to the larger Body is through open and healthy relationships (even if it's only a couple of people) in which we can confess and receive forgiveness.

I believe Bonhoeffer is right on when he contends that we "remain alone with our sin" because we don't have fellowship together as "sinners." In other words, if there isn't a place in the Body where I can speak openly of my sin and there lies hidden something unconfessed and unforgiven, I am truly alone...somehow psychologically, we can't get free unless it comes to the light as confession in the presence of another believer:

Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception.

The author ends with a section about who we should trust to open our hearts to: Anybody who lives beneath the Cross and who has discerned in the Cross of Jesus the utter wickedness of all men and of his own heart will find there is no sin that can ever be alien to him.

Holy Spirit, thank You that you know us well and love us perfectly...do Your good and kind work of bringing hidden things to light and give us the courage to open our hearts to trusted brothers and sisters in You. Thank You for those You have given us with whom we relate in this way and for the greater Body of Christ with whom we genuinely commune because of the few who are close. Teach us in this day in the Church's history how to be Your people together, for Jesus' sake...Thank You! Amen.


This week we start the book Living in the Freedom of the Spirit by Tom Marshall. Our first reading is the Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2.
Grace and blessing on you this week!

Reminder of next book - Living in the Freedom of the Spirit

Just a note to remind you all that the next book we'll be reading together is Tom Marshall's Living in the Freedom of the Spirit. It's available through Amazon.com, or some local bookstores may carry it.

We'll be starting to read this next week...see the blog for scheduling of reading, ok?

Blessings on your week!

Life Together - Week #5

Because I posted a comment this past week in response to a question about the "ministry of bearing" (from chapter 4 of Life Together), I will skip over that section.

There are so many wonderful statements made by Bonhoeffer in this chapter called "Ministry" that I think I'll just put out several quotes for you to consider:

• Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.

Under the topic of the "ministry of holding one's tongue," the author says:

• ...it must be a decision rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him. This prohibition does not include the personal word of advice and guidance...But to speak about a brother covertly is forbidden, even under the cloak of help and good will...
• Where this discipline of the tongue is practiced...each individual will make a matchless discovery. He will be able to cease from constantly scrutinizing the other person, judging him, condemning him...Now he can allow the brother to exist as a completely free person, as God made him to be. His view expands and, to his amazement, for the first time he sees, shining above his brethren, the richness of God's creative glory.
• ...God does not will that I should fashion the other person according to the image that seems good to me, that is, in my own image.
• But God creates every man in the likeness of His Son, the Crucified.

The ministry of meekness:

• Only he who lives by the forgiveness of his sin in Jesus Christ will rightly think little of himself.
• If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all...

The ministry of listening:

• ...he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life...
• ...the ministry of listening has been committed to (Christians) by Him who is Himself the greatest listener...We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.

The ministry of authority:

• Genuine authority realizes that it can exist only in the service of Him who alone has authority.
• Pastoral authority can be attained only by the servant of Jesus who seeks no power of his own.

This is pretty sketchy but profound insights to chew on. Lord, continue to expand our hearts and minds to understand what we can only know in You by Your Spirit. Thank You that You love to work with us! We love You...

Next week we will finish Life Together with chapter 5, "Confession and Communion." Have a blessed week in Him with His family!

Life Together - Week #4

(Obviously my posting didn't work properly yesterday, so I'll try again!)

I trust you have had a good week of experiencing the grace of God in Jesus!

We've just finished chapter three of Life Together, which is about "the day alone." Bonhoeffer discusses in this chapter some spiritual disciplines for our personal journey with God, and as in all the other chapters, there's way too much in it to touch on everything. So I'll comment on just a little of this chapter.

In my walk with God, He has discovered to me that there's a great difference between living and moving in Him and living and moving in my own natural life. I am more of a private person by nature, but the Lord has taught me that this doesn't mean that I'm naturally good at practicing Christian solitude. The Christian discipline of solitude is purposeful, intended to be time with God alone, not simply being alone.

And I love Bonhoeffer's teaching that we can't be alone healthily if we don't know how to be in fellowship with other believers. He adds that we don't do fellowship healthily if we don't know how to be alone with God: "Only in the fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in the fellowship."

Along these lines, he goes on to address the need to practice silence..."this is something that needs to be practiced and learned, in these days when talkativeness prevails. Real silence, real stillness, really holding one's tongue comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness."

In my personal experience the discipline of silence has been powerful to teach me when and how to speak. I have become more sensitive to the nudges of the Holy Spirit when I'm talking too much or when I should be talking rather than be silent.

Although I did an extreme version of silence and solitude this past January in which I literally separated myself from people and everyday stimuli for a month, you don't have to practice this discipline in such a way. A couple of ways that we can do this in the normal course of life are the following:

• Take a few minutes out of the day to be silent before the Lord and His Word.
• Take a day (or weekend) off and get away to a retreat center or just away from your normal setting to a quiet spot, and there commune with the Lord.
• Andrew Murray suggests setting apart a month in which you don't talk - by this he means that you govern your mouth to only speak what you must in order to live your day; inother words, keeping alert to not speak carelessly every little thing that comes to your mind to say.

Many years ago I took up this suggestion of Andrew Murray's and was very surprised at what I discovered about myself. Whereas I had thought I wasn't strongly opinionated about things (because I didn't talk outwardly about them), I discovered that this discipline brought to light how much inner talking I did and how opinionated I was! The Lord was there to help me then to begin to listen more to Him and align my inner heart with His truth and passions.

Bonhoeffer goes on to talk about how meditation on the Scriptures naturally leads to prayer, and how true this is!

Intercession for others flows naturally out of meditation on the Word and personal prayer. The author says something that's so true about Christian fellowship: "A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me." I wonder if there would be less backbiting and criticism of our brothers and sisters with whom we live and work if we took more time to pray together and to pray for one another...

Finally, Bonhoeffer concludes the chapter with a wonderful and terrifying truth that I am convinced of myself: "The individual must realize that his hours of aloneness react upon the community. In his solitude he can sunder and besmirch the fellowship, or he can strengthen and hallow it. Every act of self-control of the Christian (when alone) is also a service to the fellowship. On the other hand, there is no sin in thought, word, or deed, no matter how personal or secret, that does not inflict injury upon the whole fellowship."

John Donne wrote: "No man is an island..." Your daily obedience strengthens me as does my obedience strengthen you, and the negative side to that is true as well. This isn't meant for condemnation but bears out once again how impossible Christianity is without Jesus living His life in and through me, and so we keep reaching for Him and clinging to Him continually.

May the enabling grace of the Lord Jesus rest on you this week. Lord, thank You that it is You in us who is our hope of becoming like you - increase in us by Your Spirit this week, in Jesus' name.

Next week we'll cover chapter four in which the author speaks of various types of ministry that go on in the Body of Christ. Remember that in two weeks we will be starting the new book, Living in the Freedom of the Spirit by Tom Marshall.

Life Together - Week #3

The last half of chapter two of Life Together talks of fellowshipping over meals together and working and praying together throughout the day. Bonhoeffer is speaking in the context of a community of believers that lives together in one location, but I believe the principles can apply to the family of God that lives scattered but in fellowship together.

There were a couple of things that struck me in this portion. One is when the author talks of the “three kinds of table fellowship that Jesus keeps with His own: daily fellowship at table, the table fellowship of the Lord’s Supper, and the final table fellowship in the Kingdom of God.” He then makes a powerful statement about these times of fellowship that, again, sets Christian community apart from human community: “…in all three the one thing that counts is that ‘their eyes were opened, and they knew him.’”

To know Jesus in the midst of our fellowshipping over a meal is so sweet! Each time we break bread together, it can be a time of our eyes being open to see more of the Man Jesus if we do it by faith. I personally believe that God really enjoys being with His people as they eat together!

Another part of the end of this chapter that I’ll comment on is where Bonhoeffer speaks of the sanctifying power of daily work: “…in work the Christian learns to allow himself to be limited by the task…The passions of the flesh die in the world of things. But this can only happen where the Christian breaks through the ‘it’ to the ‘Thou,’ which is God, who bids him work and makes that work a means of liberation from himself…Thus every word, every work, every labor of the Christian becomes a prayer…”

The discipline of prayer at the beginning of the day and then pausing periodically throughout the day to breathe a simple prayer of love and thanks to God is such a heart-awaking discipline. In time this practice begins to lift us out of our tiny, self-focused world to another plane in God in which we become increasingly aware of Him and of His love for others around us. This practice bit by bit helps us break through the “it” of the task to the “Thou,” allowing us to see what’s going on around us in a whole different light. God is with us right now and right here! What a difference that awareness makes to the daily work!

I’ll end with two more short quotes from this portion:
“The prayer of the morning will determine the day."
"The organization and distribution of our time will be better for having been rooted in prayer.”
When Allen Hood was here last year at our college, he challenged the young missionary trainees by saying that how you start and end your day will determine how you walk through the day.

Lord, we are Yours, and You are with us right now! Thank You for grace to pray and live and work together IN YOU…Holy Spirit, help us to increasingly practice Your presence until we break through the “it” of the task to You, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.


Chapter three has some wonderful things in it about solitude and silence and community…note the warning Bonhoeffer gives related to solitude and to community. Have a blessed week! (Take note further down of the reading schedule for our next book and the title of the book after that...)

Living Together - Week #2

Thanks for the input from some of you! The Lord bless you this week...

I have two main comments on the first part of chapter two, in which Bonhoeffer deals with corporate praying and worshiping, etc.

The first comment is that I was excited to read Bonhoeffer's citing of Oetinger's exposition of the Psalms, because it confirmed what the Holy Spirit made real to me during a month of silence and solitude I had this past January. During that time I chose the Psalms as the part of Scripture to spend my month in, and the reason I did was that I wanted to know more about Jesus' prayer life. Well, I had remembered reading a couple of authors who said that the Psalms was probably Jesus' prayer book and the means by which He learned to pray. As I thought on that, it hit me that if that was the case and if Jesus' response to His disciples' desire to learn to pray (Luke 11:1) was the "Lord's Prayer", then it seemed obvious to me that what we call "the Lord's Prayer" would be a summary of the prayers of the Psalms! That's what led me to devote my month-long sabbatical to the book of the Psalms...

So I was delighted to read this from Bonhoeffer as he spoke about Oetinger's study of the Psalms:
"...The Psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense of the word...What he (Oetinger) had discerned was that the whole sweep of the Book of Psalms was concerned with nothing more nor less than the brief petitions of the Lord's Prayer."

In light of what I'm discovering in the Psalms now that I see them in this light, I heartily recommend the reading/praying of the Psalms with the understanding that they are first of all about Jesus, but that they can, of course, apply to us who are in Him too. It's really fun to read them with Jesus in mind...(a beautiful book that highlights this is Patrick Reardon's book, Christ in the Psalms.)

The other observation I'd like to make from this chapter is his words about "singing the new song." This is something the Holy Spirit is awakening now more than ever, and we're starting to teach our missionary trainees at Bethany more about singing the Scriptures so that the truth penetrates their inner being more effectively. As I am practicing singing to the Lord spontaneously, I'm finding my heart more and more unlocked, and it actually has a healing effect on my mind so that my brain is functioning better. The beauty of this is that the Lord loves our songs to Him whether we have a lovely voice (as men judge) or not!

Lord Jesus, we want to see Your beauty...thank you for the means of grace that you give us weak humans to experience you in truth. Holy Spirit, You Who love Jesus best, show Him to us in our simple and fumbling spiritual disciplines so that we live and move in Him with open and tender hearts. We love You, Lord!

For next week, we'll continue and finish chapter two, ok? Blessings on you!

Living Together - Week #1

Whoa, there is sooooo much in this first chapter of Living Together! And while I could comment on a number of things that caught my attention in it, I'm going to discipline myself to focus on one particular aspect of community that Bonhoeffer addresses, because I believe it's absolutely foundational to experiencing true Christian community.

I'm referring to the last part of the chapter under the subtitle "A Spiritual Not a Human Reality." I'll quote several lines out of this section to summarize his thoughts about this:

• Because Christian community is founded solely on Jesus Christ, it is a spiritual and not a psychic (human) reality...
• The basis of the community of the Spirit is truth; the basis of human community is desire...
• Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ's sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one with whom it binds to itself...
• JESUS CHRIST STANDS BETWEEN THE LOVER AND THE OTHERS HE LOVES...Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them...
• I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love...
• Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother before I could begin to act, I must leave him freedom to be Christ's...Human love lives by uncontrolled and uncontrollable dark desires; spiritual love lives in the clear light of service ordered by the truth...

I totally agree with the author in this, both because I see it in Scripture (II Cor. 5:16) and because I know it in my personal experience! (Watchman Nee addresses the root issues around this topic when he writes in Release of the Spirit about the difference between living from the spirit and living out of soulish powers...wonderful book, by the way!)

In our sincere desire to see those around us walk in the life of Jesus, we so often operate from a place of soulish force, hoping to coerce the person into truth. What a release it is to see Jesus Christ between myself and others and understand that no amount of psychic or human pressure will accomplish the job, and that long before I came along, Jesus knew the person and so he or she must be given "freedom to be Christ's". It is a painful process to come to this reality because of our proneness to want to "own" or "possess" others and ensure that they go the right way.

But true Christian community is impossible without a strong awareness and embracing of this truth...otherwise, it's simply natural human desire for community; and human community without Jesus strongly in our midst between every relationship is doomed for failure.

Come, Holy Spirit, and teach us how to live with one another in such a way that we understand that our calling is to be the friend of the Bridegroom whose joy it is to point others to Jesus rather than to ourselves...may we see one another through the cross and thereby see each other correctly - in this wholesome relating, we build Christian community. Thank You, dear Lord!

For the next two weeks, we will be in chapter two, which is about "The Day with Others." How does Bonhoeffer's approach to our life together in prayer and the Word help lift you out of a narrow, restricted understanding of what's going on in our corporate prayer and worship?

In the Name of Jesus - Week #4

This book went fast! What a blessing it's been to share it with some of you. I've received comments in person and via email (which don't appear on the site) that indicate that Nouwen's simple little book has had an impact. Be sure to read the Epilogue!

(One more reminder that the next book that we start this week is Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. See the schedule for reading at the bottom of this posting. The one after that will be Tom Marshall's Living in the Freedom of the Spirit.)

In this final posting for In the Name of Jesus, I will share personally about the three temptations. I read this years ago and was impacted by it; rereading it has been wonderful. At every stage of our journey these temptations are part of how we grow in trust, and they appear in many and subltle ways...

First, the temptation to be relevant has come to me in the form of wanting to be needed by many. It's gratifying to the flesh with all of its sinful independence and woundedness to find its identity in how sought-after I am by those in need. The desire to help and minister to people is God-given, and for the believer the temptation lies in wanting to find my sense of importance in this life through how much people seek me out and how busy I am meeting people's needs. Eventually, this can burn you out because human need is endless; that's why Nouwen's suggestion that contemplation (getting truly quiet long enough to consider/ponder reality through God's perspective) is so good. This discipline has been and continues to be powerful for me to help me keep perspective in a very needy world.

Second, I shared last week how the temptation to be spectacular (the best or the most sacrificial...) in order to have the applause of people has expressed itself in my life, so I won't repeat that here. Nouwen suggests that the discipline of confession and forgiveness helps move us from popularity to ministry, and I have seen this to be true for me. In true ministry (which is done in relationship with others), I am known both in my strengths and weaknesses and so am known to be human and not any more or less special than others around me. It's in the close company of others that I'm saved from getting big-headed about myself, because the Lord will make sure there are those who not only don't think I'm that special, but who don't especially like me, and yet they love and accept me. This is a true gift from the Lord, and I have learned to be grateful for this! Popularity may feel good but it's full of unseen traps that are easily fallen into. It's those around me that help clear the spiritual ground I walk on of the land mines that I can't see on my own.

Third, the temptation to be powerful plays out in my life in the desire to control people and situations. The tricky thing about this for the believer is that this is so tied to the desire for good for those we care for, and we unwittingly pervert the place of influence we have in their lives by resorting to abuse of that influence. There have been many times in the course of my life and ministry when I have taken advantage of my "position" (which can be in a church or organization or in the family, etc.) to strong-arm my way, and I thought it was ok because it was for the benefit of those under my influence. Over the years the Holy Spirit has made me acquainted with myself in the Lord so that now I detect in my spirit when this temptation is at work in my desires, and I can back off from following through on this sin. Henri Nouwen suggests that the discipline of theological reflection will help us move from leading to being led.

He says that "Theological reflection is reflecting on the painful and joyful realities of every day with the mind of Jesus and thereby raising human consciousness to the knowledge of God's gentle guidance." In other words, for me not to abuse the influence that I've been given, I must be a person that understands God and others and the world through the heart and mind of Jesus, not through the lens of psychology or sociology, etc. While these areas of study are important, they should not be the dominating influence in my way of thinking and relating to people. The cross of Jesus and all that it stands for, both for me personally and for others in time and eternity must be central in my heart and mind in order for me to be empowered to handle power and influence in the spirit of Jesus Who didn't cling to His position but made Himself subject to those He had created (Phil. 2). Without this, I can't walk a "leadership in which power is constantly abandoned in favor of love." True spiritual leadership has in it the ability to rightly give way to those under one's influence, thereby being led by them.

I don't believe a person has to go through seminary or Bible school training to practice the discipline of "theological reflection." This can be practiced through study and meditation on the Word of God with the help of other believers and good books, etc. I do believe it's imperative in our day to have a worldview grounded in the Lord Jesus Christ and what we see and know of Him in the Scriptures, and we will need the help of the Divine Helper and one another in this!

Lord, thank You for Your servant, Henri Nouwen, through whom You shed more light on Yourself and Your ways. Continue Your delicate and decisive work of discerning between soul and spirit in our lives so that we increasingly reflect the life and ways of Your Son Jesus through our ways of relating with You and with others. Thank You that You really do hear our prayer and are doing this, for Jesus' sake!


For next week, please read and make your comments on the Introduction and Chapter One of Life Together. The chapter lengths vary in this book, so I think we'll plan on the following schedule for it (note the two weeks for chapter two):

Week of August 25-31................Introduction and Chapter One
Week of September 1-7..............Chapter Two
Week of September 8-14............Chapter Two
Week of September 15-21..........Chapter Three
Week of September 22-28..........Chapter Four
Week of September 29-
October 5.....................................Chapter Five

In the Name of Jesus - Week #3

(Just a reminder that next week we'll be introducing our next book, Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The one following that will be Tom Marshall's Living in the Freedom of the Spirit.)

This week we have read the second chapter of In the Name of Jesus, in which Henri Nouwen calls the Christian to make the shift from "popularity to ministry." Nouwen says early in this chapter:
"...I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg."

As I read this, I'm picturing what it is that people applaud for; it's for some kind of visible performance, whether that be in the arts or in service or in leadership, etc.; and the better one performs, the louder the applause. When I was a young missionary-in-training, I wanted to do the "most difficult" thing a Christian could do to prove how spiritual I was. Looking back, I know now that I wanted to be popular and well-liked by a certain segment of society. I was willing to do the most difficult things I could imagine in order to have people's applause.

Desiring applause is not evil. God created us for applause. Where it is sinful is the source to which I look for applause. Jeremiah 2:13 says, "...my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water." In various and subtle ways, we look for applause through what we can do that will get people's attention. And if we can do it better than the next guy, then people will notice me more and give louder applause. This is as common in the life of the missionary as it is in the life of the marketplace person. None of us is immune.

Because of the faithfulness of God and because He saw the true Nita that wanted to partner with Him in His will even more than I wanted to be popular, He was able to set my feet on a path I would have esteemed as not so sacrificial. I see now that He knew the best context for me to grow in His love and where I would best minister to Him and to others.

Nouwen goes on to say that Jesus, in the process of restoring Peter in love, calls him to be a shepherd of the flock...not a domineering shepherd that issues commands from a distance but one who is in relationship with his flock. In biblical ministry (no matter what form that takes), we are in partnership with others and are known for who we really are; we can minister from a place of not having to prove that we're perfect or the best. Nouwen's words about the need to minister together, rather than alone, are wonderful..."whenever we minister together, it is easier for people to recognize that we do not come in our own name, but in the name of the Lord Jesus who sent us...true ministry must be mutual. When the members of a community of faith cannot truly know and love their shepherd, shepherding quickly becomes a subtle way of exercising power over others and begins to show authoritarian and dictatorial traits..." As much as I possibly can, I minister with someone else alongside me and find that to be much more effective than being alone.

The author's suggested spiritual discipline to overcome this temptation to want to be the best in order to get the applause of others is the discipline of confession and forgiveness. All believers, leaders and followers alike, must be people who practice what Mother Basilea Schlink calls "daily repentance"...a daily attitude of willingness to change my way of thinking, then taking the needed steps of confession and receiving forgiveness whenever necessary. James 5:16 says, "Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed."

Lord Jesus, by Your cross and Spirit, deliver and heal us more and more from the drivenness to be applauded by others. As we do the works of the Kingdom under Your Lordship and smile, cause us to be more and more like You who found Your identity and motivation for action in the Father's praise rather than in people's praises. What a place of freedom and joy! May the spirit of grace rest on us to quickly confess and receive forgiveness in our relationships, thereby knowing one another and undoing the power of "false heroism"...thank You, Lord!


The third and final chapter of In the Name of Jesus deals with Jesus' temptation towards power and control. Though some of us may not have a position title as such, the desire for power in order to control is in all of us. Nouwen suggests that the discipline of "theological reflection" is needed in order to shift from "leading to being led."

A couple of questions to consider, if they help:

1. What does the author mean by "theological reflection"?
2. How was Jesus' choice to not yield to Satan's temptation a picture of what the cross was all about?

Next two books

For those of you who are interested in knowing ahead of time which books we'll be reading, the following are the next two:

Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Living in the Freedom of the Spirit by Tom Marshall

Both of these are available through amazon.com or a local bookstore. Since the book we're reading now is so short (In the Name of Jesus), you'll need to get Bonhoeffer's book soon, if you want to read it. We'll be starting his book on August 26.

In an earlier posting (see the blog) I told you a bit about Bonhoeffer's book which is five chapters long and is about Christian life together.

Marshall's book will take much longer because it has 25 chapters. Later I'll determine how much we'll read per week...to give you an idea of what the book is like, it's five sections are about the following:

• The mind
• The emotions
• The will
• Freedom to be ourselves
• Living out of the spirit

Loren Cunningham, founder of YWAM, says of him: "Tom Marshall was a giant in the Christian world through his teaching which embraced all cultures. He made great truths simple so that we could understand and apply them."

Happy reading!

In the Name of Jesus - Week 2

It was great to have several comments made on this first chapter! Thanks for sharing; please feel free to jump in and share even if it's very simple and short...we grow together as we share the portion the Lord gives us.

As I read this first chapter again of In the Name of Jesus, I was struck afresh with the reality that the things that our culture define as making a person successful or relevant to this age are not ultimately what people long for. Nouwen says,
“Beneath all the great accomplishments of our time there is a deep current of despair. While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, isolation, lack of friendship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success-oriented world.”

While the author would not likely be one to condemn technology and its use, he clearly recognizes that the Christian must be one who has his/her priorities well-established in order to genuinely impact the hurting people of our world. (I refer to technology simply because it is one of today’s greatest consumers of time; however, there are many other enemies of our hearts' keeping Jesus as First Love.) From personal experience, I know that persevering with Jesus as one’s First Love will ultimately cause you to appear irrelevant to this world’s system, which is alive in the Church as well.

“The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? But: Are you in love with Jesus?...Do you know the incarnate God? In our world of loneliness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God, a heart that forgives, that cares, that reaches out and wants to heal. In that heart there is no suspicion, no vindictiveness, no resentment, and not a tinge of hatred.”

Jesus could have asked Peter many other questions after his denial of Jesus, but the question He asked was, “Do you love me…?” It touches me deeply that He desires my close friendship even more than my service or my attempts to prove to Him that I love Him. I have found myself healed and much more fruitful in this place of intimate friendship with Him.

The great thing about Jesus’ question to Peter is that it’s for every one of us, and the message it sends is that I don’t have to have a ministry/vocation that has the trappings of “success” as the world defines it; I simply need to love Jesus supremely and know that I am loved by Him, no strings attached. That is success! That is relevance as it relates to the Kingdom of God! From that place of Kingdom “success”, I operate with joy and grace in whatever ministry/vocation He gives me.

“Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time…When we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the Source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Nouwen in his suggestion that contemplative prayer (i.e., pausing often and sometimes long to simply acknowledge His beauty and His loving presence) is a major means through which I begin to understand God’s emotions towards me, towards those around me and towards all of humanity. I am healed in His presence because He tells me who I am, and I am released from what all the other voices say about who I am. The more I learn to “set my mind on things above” through the discipline of Christian contemplation (Col. 3:3), the better I can deal with the issues of earthly life because I see them in the right perspective and with faith in the Uncreated God Who loves and rules His creation.

My experience in lovingly contemplating Jesus (this includes obeying anything He may say) has convinced me and continues to convince me that this has the power to radically stand a person up into full personhood in Him to such a degree that he/she begins to actually change the spiritual climate around them.

Nouwen’s challenge to move from “relevance to prayer” is much greater than it sounds on paper! The world, the flesh and the devil will oppose this every step of the way. The good news is that Christ Jesus, by means of His own prayer life and obedience unto death has conquered, and the grace by which He lived and died flows to us right now…thank You, Lord, that You haven’t left us orphans in this world but are very present by Your Spirit this moment; Your grace is sufficient for each of us to walk today in this place of intimate prayer, and You are able to define what this looks like for each of us! We worship You, our Creator and Father in Jesus Christ…

In chapter two, Nouwen suggests that we move from "popularity to ministry" and says that the discipline of confession and forgieveness will help us make this shift.

How does he use Peter as an example of this? How does getting secure in the love and affections of God through contemplative prayer (chapter one) help the believer to move from wanting to be popular to caring enough about others to forget about oneself?

May the light of the countenance of Jesus shine on you this week!

In The Name of Jesus - Week #1

Welcome to our new book, In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen.

Some of you may have caught Nouwen’s concluding remark at the end of the Prologue in which he refers to what happened on the trip he made with Bill to Washington D.C. to speak to church leaders. That story is in the Epilogue of this book…I think you’ll be blessed by it!

One of the comments you made this week referred to the question: “Did becoming older bring me closer to Jesus?” The question itself implies that aging and getting closer to Jesus are not necessarily one and the same thing.

Henri Nouwen says of himself, “After 25 years of priesthood, I found myself praying poorly, living somewhat isolated from other people, and very much preoccupied with burning issues. Everyone was saying that I was doing really well, but something inside was telling me that my success was putting my own soul in danger…”

It was his moving into a community for mentally handicapped people that God used to restore Nouwen to a place of nearness to Jesus and authenticity as a minister of the Gospel. In that place where his giftings and accomplishments meant nothing to his companions, he made discoveries about Christian leadership that are rooted in the cross and the life and ministry of Jesus.

As you read chapter one of In the Name of Jesus, ask the Holy Spirit to make the teachings there real to your life, whether or not you are in a “formal” position as a Christian leader. The truths apply to all of us who have any influence in others’ lives.

In this book Nouwen exposes the three fundamental temptations for Christian ministers, and these are based on Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness as found in Matthew 4:1-11; then he looks at Jesus’ call to Peter to be an overseer of the flock in John 21:15-19. Finally, he suggests a particular discipline to practice that can help us overcome the temptation.

In chapter one, is there a way in which you can identify with the temptation to the relevant?

Why does Nouwen suggest contemplative prayer as the spiritual discipline that helps save us from the temptation to be relevant?

The Lord bless you this week and be near you as you draw near to Him!