Author: captain7391

“When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, ‘Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.'” – John 8:10-11

Stop expecting non-believers to act like believers.

That’s it. That was worth following the link and opening up this blog article.

Okay I will elaborate, but only because this concept is so simple that people shoot right past it without actually comprehending it. The prevalence of social media has certainly exacerbated this problem. Everyone has always had an opinion, but at no other point in history has it been so easy to blurt that opinion to anyone with an Internet connection (which is everyone). While the Internet can be a fantastic tool to spread the Gospel, it is being used far more frequently as a soapbox, for slander, or for a “venting” platform. If this trend were limited to unbelievers that would be one thing, but sadly, it’s not. The amount of pure venom spewing from the “mouths” (or typing fingers) of Christians is alarming. It seems that many of us have forgotten that being kind, courteous, and respectful is what followers of Jesus are called to exemplify. We need some mind renewal about this!

Getting back to the main point, we as Christians need to stop expecting and demanding that people who don’t follow Christ act in a manner consistent with Christians. Not only is this expectation unrealistic, it can seriously hurt our faith. We have the Holy Spirit living within us. If we’re sensitive to the voice of God, He will direct and shape our world views and our consciences. Unbelievers do not have the same convictions, and we seriously need to stop pretending that they do!

Many of the issues of today’s culture: abortion, censorship, freedom of religion, and even the right to bear arms can be looked at through a morality filter or through a filter of humanism and logic. As followers of Christ, we should be counted on to view any issue through a Christian world-view filter. Naturally this explains how most Christians think, believe, and vote. While we are to respect our elected officials regardless of party or affiliation, we should certainly be involved in trying to see Godly men and women put into places of authority. The second part of that statement we seem to have no problem accomplishing, but respecting those in authority? We are failing miserably at this.

It’s a problem all the time, but during election season it becomes almost unbearable. Name-calling, meme making, and general reputation trashing has become the norm. And that is by Christians! I have a wonderful church family that I love dearly, but there are ten or fifteen of them that I have to mute on social media from August to November every year. Mud-slinging and illuminating past mistakes and indiscretions is something we constantly accuse Satan of doing. Revelation 12:10 calls Satan “the accuser of the brethren, who accused them before our God day and night,”. However, over and over again I see believers running down candidates and reposting anything that will besmirch their character. Many of these individuals being torn down in public make no pretense of being Christian. So why are we ripping these people apart for being sinners? Sinners sin. It’s what they do!

Many of us have forgotten where we were before Christ took us out of our mess. God never looked at us as the enemy; only as one who hasn’t decided to live for Him yet. People are not the enemy. People are God’s greatest resource and the only thing on this planet that He loves unconditionally. We have got to stop beating people over the head with scripture that non-Christians don’t believe in in the first place. The word of God is to be used to show people the truth and the light, not to score points off of someone else. Without the grace of God, we are no better! The Bible is very clear about how our righteousness stacks up apart from Him. Roman 10:3 reads, “As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one;”. Isaiah 64:6 says, “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;”

Insulting and tearing someone down to make ourselves or someone else look better will always be wrong, no matter who it is. Even if everything we say about someone is factually correct, if we don’t do it in love, we have pasted a large sign reading “VOID” across the entire incident. If God had been dealing with someone and calling them to repentance, our treatment of them can, and in many cases will, drive them away from any affiliation with “those so-called Christians.” So how do we stop this avalanche of hatred and venom that seems to be getting worse every day?

Go to the word. Pray for those who despitefully use us. Pray that God will help us to realize that the same set of moral guidelines don’t exist for the believer and unbeliever alike, and let’s pray that God will use us to help lead them to Christ. Let’s not misuse the word of God and form it into a weapon against people. Let’s not use social media to “defend” ourselves from accusations that ninety percent of the general public hasn’t even heard. Putting someone on blast on Facebook is actually worse than insulting someone to their face because we’re inviting everyone else to eavesdrop on the ugliness. If we get offended or upset, we need to address it and then move on; either with resolution or a parting of the ways, but not with contention and nastiness. We’re called to be better than that. Let’s live our lives above reproach and let our actions speak.

“For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” – Matthew 24:24

God’s word is enough. Why do so many Christians have problems accepting this principle? The Bible warns us about false teachers and prophets, but the reality is that many of these apostates truly believe what they’re saying. So much of the shaky theological doctrines we see today aren’t born out of malice, but rather out of ignorance. People are trying to make a doctrine out of an experience, and that simply doesn’t work. When looking at the numerous miracles in the Bible, we see the methodology change frequently. Jesus Himself didn’t seem to perform miracles the same way twice. One time He would smear mud into someone’s eyes, but the next time He would talk to a fever and command it to depart. I’m convinced He was quite intentional in this because He wanted to remove any glorification of the process.

God can move in whatever way He sees fit and doesn’t confine Himself to a particular method. In Isaiah 49:19 the prophet writes, “Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth;” The Lord is not locked into constraints, especially those devised by man. Isaiah writes again in chapter 55 and verses 8 and 9, “’For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And my thoughts than your thoughts.’” God can choose to accomplish His will in more ways than we could fathom.

That being said, our God is a God of order and not chaos. In I Corinthians 14:33 Paul writes, “For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.” The danger for Christians, especially new Christians, is the inability to distinguish between the authentic operations of the Holy Spirit and those things that are simply emotional displays, outbursts of carnality, or rote traditions. Paul describes these latter actions to Timothy as “having a form of Godliness, but denying its power.” (II Timothy 3:5) Seasoned believers should be able to tell the difference. Romans 8:15-16 says, “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” If we are believers and have the Holy Spirit living within us, then His spirit bears witness, or agrees, with our spirit. This allows us to discern between the authentic and the false.

I have been in places where the Holy Spirit was being stirred up and the genuine spirit of God was tangible and overwhelming. There was no chaos. There was no conflict within my heart. There was no trepidation or discomfort. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I have also seen things that made my skin crawl. I have been in earnest times of seeking God’s face and then witnessed people whipping themselves into a frenzy and doing things that did nothing but cause confusion and a deep uneasiness. My spirit was certainly not in agreement or harmony with the spirit of God. However, how confusing would this be for baby Christians who haven’t yet become familiar with God’s leading and more importantly God’s character?

God’s word is pretty specific. The methods may change, but God does not. Malachi 3:6 reads, “’For I am the Lord, I do not change’”. The author of Hebrews also expresses a similar sentiment in chapter 13 and verse 8 which says, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.” God will never act outside of His character. We as mature believers must show by example how to rightly divide the word of truth. We must hide the word in our hearts so that we will show ourselves teachers of the next generation. If we are following after every new “spiritual fad”, then how easily will new believers be manipulated or deceived?

As I’ve stated, I don’t believe that many of these instances are malicious in nature. I think that many Christians are being deceived into creating doctrines out of experiences and trying to fit God into a mold of how they believe He should operate. Naturally to experience the presence of God in your life is something any Christian would want to repeat, but as we mature and grow, we must not try to force a fresh experience into a disposable frame. Let’s allow God to do what He desires in our lives and let His spirit and His word be our guides. They are enough.

“Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, And for His wonderful works to the children of men! For He satisfies the longing soul, And fills the hungry soul with goodness.” – Psalms 107:8-9

When I was growing up, my parents made sure I was in church. I learned a lot of things growing up in a spirit-filled house of worship that became a foundation for who I was to become as a man. I witnessed and experienced the moving of the Holy Spirit and the demonstration of the gifts of the spirit. The power of God evident in those services served to guide me back to a relationship with God as an adult. That being said, there were many doctrines and beliefs in a dogmatically strict denomination that handicapped my ability to view God correctly.

I’m not talking about man-made standards or what was labeled “holiness standards”. I am still a firm believer that any personal standard that you uphold as a consecration to God is a beautiful thing. I am talking about the view of God that was presented and taught to me at a young age. The perspective of God as a loving, forgiving, and merciful Father was not one talked about frequently. God was more often described as the chastiser rather than the provider. There were far more sermons taught on judgment than on kindness. Unless it was preceded by “Amazing” in a hymn, grace was rarely taught.

These ideals helped to shape and color my perception of God. When I returned to God in my late 30s, I tried to let go of many of these approaches to the Father. I got ahold of some great teachings about faith, grace, and the goodness of God. Those resources helped me to rebuild my image of God and enabled me to release the condemnation that the enemy uses on each of us to keep us from being effective Christians. I didn’t just go to church and start calling myself a Christian again. I started serving. I started hungering to hear God’s voice and His direction for my life. I stepped out in faith and wrote a book. I was no longer going to just go through the motions, but I was going to go after God!

In the last few months, I have discovered a major stumbling block in my path to this empowered life that I was now trying to live. My view of God had changed some, but not enough. I honestly thought I had turned that corner. I no longer viewed Him as the spiritual police. I didn’t feel like He was always just waiting for me to mess up. I knew that He loved me. I knew that He was for me. Surely that was enough, right?

Wrong.

We all still struggle with things in our flesh. That is never going to end as long as we are on this side of the ground. Paul writes in Romans 7:14-15, “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If the one who wrote 2/3 of the New Testament complained that his flesh was constantly an issue for him, then we can certainly expect the same results.

My weight has always been an issue. I am constantly dealing with the consequences of being so overweight. It is not so much a physical issue as it is an emotional and spiritual issue. Food brings me joy. I have an emotional attachment to food. I have been praying about this frequently, but it is an area in which I have received no revelation. Until last week.

Once again I was praying that God would somehow help me to find an effective strategy to lose weight and get healthy. I have been praying this for years with no real change (either in my size or my understanding). I was talking with my wife about how I used to be so sure that God would call me to be a missionary to Africa because I had no interest in overseas mission work. Or that he would call me to the field of accounting because I hate math so much. She looked at me very puzzled and asked why I thought so negatively of God. The concept I believed was that God wants us out of our comfort zone (true) so He will call us to do whatever it is we hate or fear (SO NOT TRUE). What kind of image are we painting of God?

That is why so many Christians refuse to pray for patience or for humility. These are two areas that we desperately need according to God’s word. Ephesians 4:1-2 reads, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.” James 4:6 reads, “But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble’.” Obviously, those are important to God and should be important to us. So are most Christians so hesitant to pray for God to teach them patience or humility?

It’s because we think like humans, not like God. Our thinking is that God can only teach us lessons by chastisement. We don’t want to pray for patience because that means God will make us wait for things. We don’t want to pray for humility because we think God will take us to rock bottom to teach us what true humility is. That is such a poor representation of God! He is a good Father! He wants the best for us. He doesn’t need to punish us to teach us about GOOD things that will produce GOOD results in our life. We are effectively telling God that we don’t trust Him to be good to us as we seek after spiritual gifts that His word tells us are vital and necessary to be victorious.

As I was praying about my weight and my love of food last week, God started dealing with me about my attitude toward food. Food gives me joy. I have prayed about how to overcome this problem, but I have never given this love and joy for food over to God. I was afraid. I didn’t want to lose that joy. I didn’t want to say “God, I lay this stronghold of food at your feet” because I didn’t want to lose that aspect of joy in my life.

What distorted view of God was I adopting?! I serve a good and loving God. He isn’t going to remove joy from my life without replacing it with something even better. He isn’t going to make every meal a chore simply because I need to view food differently. I realized I was guilty of viewing God through a lens of chastisement instead of a lens of goodness. Matthew 7:11 reads, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” Don’t be afraid to turn your weaknesses over to Him. He is light and in Him there is no darkness. He will satisfy you in a way only He can!

“Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” – Proverbs 29:18

In 1943 Robert Maslow introduced his famous “hierarchy of needs”.

Okay, don’t tune out on me here! I don’t want to give anyone PTSD flashbacks to college psychology class. There will be no quiz. However, I believe that the ideas behind this theory were divinely inspired. Maslow put this hierarchy into pyramid form and it starts at the bottom with physiological needs (sleep, food, water, etc.) and peaks at the top with self-actualization (pursuing goals, using talents, seeking happiness, etc.). Basically, he explains in his theory that once each level of the pyramid is achieved, it is human nature and the natural process to move up to the next level.

I truly believe that this hierarchy can be applied to the Christian life as well as the human condition. As we mature in Christ and move from “faith to faith” (Romans 1:17), our need set changes. This is especially true in the area of physical needs. My wife and I teach a class entitled Foundational Finances which is based upon the excellent book by Robert Morris “A Blessed Life”. In this class we discuss the idea of God meeting financial and physical needs in our life. There are certainly scriptures that illustrate God’s willingness and ability to meet these needs. Philippians 4:19 reads, “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” The psalmist writes in Psalms 84:11, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” What we see as we mature however is that our needs change.

When we are baby Christians, we are new to using our faith. Our ability to trust in God is still fairly untested. The level of provision we are able to believe for is pretty low starting out, and that belief directly correlates with what God can do for us. If that sounds strange to you, study it out. See how many times Jesus told people that it was according to their faith (not God’s ability) that they were healed or delivered or recipients of provision. God is always able. God’s will is always for us to prosper (John 10:10). However, God responds to our faith. He provides based on the size of our vision, and that should be our focus.

I was listening to an online sermon recently, and the speaker said “When you have no more need, you are out of vision.” This line really stuck with me. We as Christians believe, and rightly so, that God will meet all of our needs, but in reality we will always have needs. Just as Maslow pointed out in his theory, our needs will shift and change as we mature, but we will never be totally self-sufficient.  God will always want us to lean on Him. He will never give us the excuse to quit having faith in His provision and trust in our own.

This really explains the primary fallacy of praying to win the lottery. I know many people who do. No matter how you feel about the morality of lottery, I believe God ignores these prayers for a whole different set of reasons. Number one, because buying tickets isn’t exactly great stewardship. More importantly however, is because the temptation to trust in your financial security and bank account instead of God. The trust in money more than God is addressed in the Bible and is called the spirit of mammon. Mammon is not money, but is the spirit of greed or the trust in money to solve the problems in your life. Being rich is not a sin. In fact, I firmly believe God gives us richly all things to enjoy (I Timothy 6:17), and that He delights in the prosperity of His servants (Psalms 35:27). However, there is a reason that Jesus taught so many parables about money. He knew how powerful the spirit of mammon can become in mankind. The real way to financial freedom is to show yourself faithful with what you have. This will lead to God trusting you with more. It is His way of making us a success.

That being said, I know from personal experience that our needs change the more we grow in Christ. When I first gave my life to God, I was using every bit of faith I had to believe for a tank of gas or money for next month’s electric bill. The stronger I became in faith and knowledge of His word, my needs were changing from that bottom level of the pyramid to more long term ideals. I started believing to get out of debt. I started believing for a house for my family. As I continue to mature, I find myself believing and standing in faith for things outside myself. My wife and I are looking for a harvest on our seed so that we can help other people’s faith and become God’s hands and feet in supplying needs for others. I see a time in the not too distant future where we will be looking to sow large seeds into ministries and doing things to advance God’s kingdom!

 God has indeed met all of our needs. We aren’t anxious about if we’ll eat next week or if the power will be shut off. We still have debt we would love to eliminate. We still have a need to put some savings and additional retirement plans in place. However, we have a vision of what we’d like to see happen in our local church, in our ministry, and in the ministries that we support. We still have needs, but we are climbing up the hierarchy to things outside of “us”. Those needs will always be with us as long as we still have a vision of what God wants to accomplish and we continue to seek Him about how to be involved in it. Need is not a bad thing. Need makes us exercise our faith. Need lets us know that we still have a vision for where God wants to take us. God will indeed meet all of our needs according to His riches in glory through Christ Jesus, and as our needs climb the hierarchy, His provision grows to meet them!

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6

In Genesis when God created man and woman, He gave them something that separated humanity from any other creation; the ability to choose. We as humans have the freedom to choose to live for God and worship Him, or to reject Him and live for ourselves. This free will is a seeming paradox when looking at the sovereignty of God. His omniscience, omnipresence, and absolute power tend to make us think that He is in COMPLETE control of everything; and He could be, but God has chosen to let us make some decisions for ourselves. Even after we choose Him, we are faced with following His direction or striking off on our own.

There are many examples in the Bible of God’s sovereign will being rejected by humanity’s choice. God’s will was for the first generation of Israelites that were delivered out of Egypt to possess the Promised Land. Hebrews 3:19 reads, “So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.” Notice it wasn’t because God didn’t want them too. In fact, the two that did believe and were ready to take the land the first time, Joshua and Caleb, outlived the first generation and entered with the second generation.   In another example, God had declared that the city of Nineveh was to be destroyed. However, Jonah 3:10 reads, “Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.” God is all-powerful, but in His sovereignty He has chosen to leave many things up to us. “Let go and let God” sounds super spiritual, but sometimes we need to seek His face and make some decisions.

So what does this have to do with the scripture above and the title of this article? I’m so happy you asked.

Just because we give our kids a good foundation and have taught them well does not mean they won’t wander for a while. I can speak from personal experience on this. My parents raised me in church. My teething ring was the back of the pew in front of me. I went to church camp every summer and was baptized at age 8. I was singing specials in service and occasionally leading praise and worship as a teenager.  My mother was (and is) a prayer warrior that anointed my sister and I in prayer every day. And guess what? I wandered. I wandered a lot! I spent sixteen or seventeen years out of church and running from God. I did my own thing. I lived life. If you want to put it in biblical terms, I took a journey into a far country, and wasted my substance with riotous living. I was living in sin and was pretty happy to continue doing just that.

Were my parents to blame? Did they miss something in my upbringing that would have helped me avoid all of this? I can almost guarantee that they felt that way. I know because as my wife and I are raising adolescents and grown children, we constantly deal with that battle in our minds. When we see them stepping out of God’s will and out of God’s plan for their life, we feel responsible. Therefore, I’m pretty sure my parents felt the same. Our key scripture above seems to leave the impression that if we’re doing our job as parents, this wouldn’t happen. I constantly see family members or friends in our local church who are being tormented by feelings of inadequacy as parents. They are watching their kids stray further and further from God’s truth, and they feel responsible.

It isn’t true. These are lies sent from the enemy of our souls to get us into condemnation and guilt. The scripture above is not a guarantee that our kids won’t stray; but a promise, if we’ll hold on and believe it, that our kids will return to what they have been taught! I am the object lesson in this. I wandered pretty far from God, but in the back of my mind I always knew where I would end up. My mother’s prayers were not falling on deaf ears. God honors the promises in His word, but it doesn’t always happen when we think it should. God’s voice was muted for me for many years, but it was always a fishhook in the back of my brain that would never totally go away. I was raised well. I was taught to value the things of God. I was a human with the free will to walk away, but because of the prayers of loving parents, I came back.

Proverbs 22:6 is a great promise, but it’s not an assurance of lifelong commitment that never waivers. If that were the case, our kids wouldn’t really have free will. Our will would be imposed upon them and the freedom that God intends for each of us would have no value for them. They may stray. They may break our hearts sometimes. We will, at times, have to watch their actions produce necessary and inevitable consequences. However, if we will believe in God’s promises and by faith speak those promises over our children, we will see the completion of His plan. My favorite verse in the entire Bible, Philippians 1:6 reads, “Being Confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Don’t lose hope! Don’t stop believing! God is mighty and He will accomplish what He sets out to do!

Instead of your shame you shall have double honor, and instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double; Everlasting joy shall be theirs. – Isaiah 61:7

When I was 17 years old, I was talking with a girl friend (not a girlfriend) about our lack of significant other. This is pretty common conversation for kids of this age, and we were the stereotypical moody teenagers that felt rejection and isolation more keenly at this age than at any other age of our young lives. We were consoling each other about past rejections (imagined or real, I cannot say now), and we made a pact that if we both reached the age of 28 and were still single that we would get married. While we both acted dead serious about this agreement, I don’t believe either of us thought about it again.

Cute right?

She and her family moved away a couple of years later, and we lost contact soon thereafter. Fast forward 10 years and imagine my surprise when I exited my home to head to work one day, and there she was. She was in a full bridal gown with several of her friends in attendance. She had cans tied with string onto the bumper of my car and the epitome “Just Got Hitched” was soaped onto my back windshield. There was a Justice of the Peace standing on the back of a truck bed behind a small portable pulpit. Her parents were both in attendance as were a few mutual friends that she had hunted down.

I was stunned.

I was shocked.

I am completely making up that whole story.

Nothing after the “she and her family moved away” actually happened. If it had, we probably could have gotten on Springer or Maury! The idea of sticking to a hormonal induced pact made by my 17 year-old self is absurd. I actually never heard from this young lady again after my 18^th or 19^th birthday. I hope she’s living a wonderful life, but I certainly never again heard about that pact. First of all, we were not mature enough to realize how silly the idea of our oath really was. We were in our turbulent teenage years and having a theoretical solution in place (even ten years down the road) made us feel better. Most importantly of course, we never went to any authoritative body to legalize that agreement. The idea of being legally bound by a couple of teenage decisions is outrageous.

The book of Genesis in the Old Testament tells us about the story of Jacob and Esau. These two brothers were as opposite as they come. Esau was a rugged outdoor type and skilled hunter (which his father Isaac really admired, mostly because he loved to eat wild game), while Jacob was a mild man who was more of a home body. They were twins, with Esau being born first and Jacob right on his heels.

One day after a long hunt, Esau came home exhausted and famished. Jacob had just got through cooking a stew and some bread. Esau asked him for some food. Jacob, being a deceptive man and always looking for a way to advantage from others, countered Esau’s request with one of his own. Genesis 25:31-34 reads “But Jacob said, ‘Sell me your birthright as of this day.’ And Esau said, ‘Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?’ Then Jacob said, ‘Swear to me as of this day.’ So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils; then he ate and drank, arose, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.”

If you’ve spent any time in church listening to sermons and teachings, you have heard this story. Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. Is it really accurate? Well, I guess it is as accurate as possible considering it was an oath from one fifteen year old to another. How much control over the firstborn’s birthright did either of them have at fifteen years old? Probably not as much as I’ve always been led to believe. Even if this promise was more ironclad in biblical times, the blessing of the firstborn from their father would have overridden the birthright. So even after manipulating Esau into promising over his birthright, Jacob still wouldn’t have received the lion share without another deception.

Has the enemy swindled you out of some things in your life? Do you hear the subtle (or not so subtle) whispers that you cannot retrieve everything you have traded away? Don’t believe it! The enemy would love for us to believe that once we’ve agreed to one of his trades, we are locked in for life. This is yet another lie from the father of lies. We can get it all back! No matter what our past looks like, the grace of God continues to make goodness available to us. If there was ever a calling on our life, it is still there and valid. In Romans 11:29-31 Paul writes, “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy.” In other words, God never removes the gifting and anointing that He placed upon His people. If we become disobedient, He is ready to welcome us back with mercy. What a promise!!

Esau had the opportunity to gain back everything he had bargained away, and so do we. Don’t believe the enemy’s lies concerning this. Philippians 1:6 reads, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ”. God isn’t done with us. He will finish what He started!

And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own? – Luke 16:12

Proverbs 20:6 reads, “Most men will proclaim each his own goodness, but who can find a faithful man?”  This is a pretty sobering scripture because it implies that there is not much faithfulness in this world. Most of us like to think of ourselves as faithful, and are quick to tout it. However, as the scripture above reveals, not many of us are faithful. Much of this unfaithfulness is simply ignorance though. What is faithfulness?

Dictionary.com defines faithful as:

Strict or thorough in the performance of duty

True to one’s word, or promises

Reliable, trusted, or believed

Adhering or true to a fact, a standard, or an original; accurate

It’s this last definition that I want to stress today; faithfulness meaning adhering to a standard or an original. That is a major issue with our culture today. We don’t want to stay true to the original of anything. We like to adapt it. We like to modify it. We like to tweak it to suit our tastes or agendas. This is perfectly fine when dealing with what belongs to us, but when dealing with another’s, we need to stifle the urge to do it “our way.”

This is especially true in church service and ministry. We all have dreams and goals for our ministries. We all want to make an impact for God’s kingdom and bring our vision to life. However, we generally don’t start out as the master of our own destiny. This may frustrate some people, but it is this way by God’s design. God often places us under different spiritual leadership and under someone else’s ministry. How faithful we are in helping someone else complete their vision will often dictate the timetable of receiving our own ministry. Today’s key scripture highlights the importance Jesus put in this concept. In His sermon in Luke 16, Jesus is talking about stewardship and being able to be faithful to someone else’s vision when dealing with their things. He says very clearly that if we can’t be faithful with another man’s, we won’t get our own.

Just to be clear: we will be tested in this. I know that in several of the ministries in which I serve, I have ideas that seem better than what we’re currently doing. There is nothing wrong with making suggestions, but we need to be at peace with the possibility of those suggestions being shot down. I don’t care how much better my plan sounds than plan of the heads of the ministry, I am not in charge. I don’t have the liberty to change things without being directed to do so. This is faithfulness! Staying true to the original and being accurate to the vision of the person in charge. Our pride doesn’t like this. The enemy will have us fully convinced that no one respects our opinions and will try his best to get us out of the place in which God has placed us. Don’t listen! Don’t give him place! Let’s be faithful!

The rewards that come with this type of faithfulness are stressed by Jesus in another parable in Luke 19. This parable told of a nobleman who went into a far country and left his servants in charge of differing amounts of money to manage. Upon returning he called his servants to him and checked on their progress. Luke 19:16-17 reads, “Then came the first, saying, ‘Master, your mina has earned ten minas.’ And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.’” Ten cities! That’s the kind of exponential growth we can expect when we show God that we can be faithful!

Let’s not waver on this. Let’s cultivate this and get it planted deep in our spirit. We are going to be trustworthy. We are going to steward wisely. We are going to be faithful!

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.  For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.  But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. – Ephesians 5:11-13

My grandma used to tell me that nothing good ever happened after 9:00 pm. Now she was raised in a different time, but I have heard that same sentiment repeated many times using midnight instead of nine. What is it about nighttime that prompts such a greater percentage of nefarious deeds?

There are certainly some practical reasons: not as many people around, visibility lower for being spotted, higher likelihood of being on mood or behavioral substances (alcohol or drugs), etc. However, these reasons are only the temporary and physical reflections that mirror the spiritual truths.  In his gospel account John writes these words of Jesus in chapter 3 verse 20, “For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come into the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” God created both the day and the night and both are good simply by virtue of being His creations. However, the night is often used as a “type” of hidden deeds or secrecy. Concealment is the true issue we’re dealing with here, not really the night itself.

Proverbs 28:13 says, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” Confession is good for the soul is more than a tired cliché. It is actually vital for true repentance and forgiveness. As long as we keep something hidden, we will continue to struggle with it. In the Old Testament story of Jacob, we read that God changed Jacob’s name to Israel. We see several examples of God changing people’s names to something more appropriate. However, in this case, I believe we see a deeper spiritual truth being highlighted.

In the Hebrew lexicon, the name Jacob means several things: supplanter (to supplant means to overthrow or ‘trip up’), deceiver, or trickster. This is the man that manipulated his brother Esau out of his birthright, and deceived his father to obtain the first-born blessing. He was not exactly a man of integrity. However, after being caught up in the natural consequences of his schemes, he became desperate to know God and continue the traditions of his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham. He wrestled with an angel in order to obtain a blessing from God, and God made a decision to put his favor and blessings upon Jacob, but He needed to make a change to his name. Jacob means deceiver and God cannot bless deception! Therefore He changed his name to Israel to qualify him for blessings. Deception is done in the dark, but blessings are always bestowed in the light!

I have experienced this truth in my own life countless times. There have been several seasons of my life that I was wrapped up in different addictions or sinful lifestyles (pornography, gambling, etc) and I continued to experience failure after failure in overcoming them. I was adequately convicted in my choices but I failed all attempts at breaking free.  However,  the idea of broaching the subject with anyone else was unthinkable. The shame and reproach to which I thought I would be subjecting myself kept me from doing anything to shine light on it. I didn’t understand the power of accountability and the freedom that comes with it. The sooner we can drag it into the light, the sooner it can be resolved. Many times it isn’t that the other person will magically solve our issues, but rather that God sees our desire and efforts to illuminate what we had been trying to keep hidden. God won’t bless deception, but he will certainly provide strength to those who acknowledge their weaknesses and let the light shine on them.

Now, we shouldn’t just share our issues with anyone. I discovered pretty early that not everyone was “team Chris”, but there are a lot of people out there that want to see us succeed.  Find a mentor. Find a true Christian friend that you can trust to be loyal, and open yourself up to accountability with them. Give that person the right to ask you about it. Give that person the right to correct you. Call that person to encourage you. Once I had found some accountability for myself, I found it much harder to sweep my discretions under the rug.

God has always intended that we use our fellow Christians as accountability. Proverbs 27:17 reads, “As iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.” That sharpening may even create some sparks, but once it is in the light, healing and freedom can truly begin!

“Now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: ‘Who will give us meat to eat?’. We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic;’”

– Numbers 11: 4-5

“Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.”

“Birds of a feather flock together.”

“It is better to be alone than to be in bad company”

“If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?”

These are not Bible verses. We’ve heard these quotes for most of our lives and there is good reason for that. Most clichés are grounded in truth in some way or another. Good company can lift you up higher. Positive and encouraging friends are able to build you up, give you confidence, and help you to make sound decisions. Bad company, while being a pretty good hard rock band in the 70s, can be a ball and chain on your life and ministry. Those who you surround yourself with can (and will) make or break you. I think that the biggest mistake made by believers, both new and seasoned, is their belief that they can keep their spiritual lives separate from and unaffected by their everyday surroundings and peers.

In the scripture above, we find the children of Israel being led out of captivity and heading to the land that God promised them. This journey was being undertaken not only by the Israelites but also the mixed multitude of non-Israelites who joined the exodus from Egypt. Just as a side note: there will always be those who follow and “hang on” to those going after God’s will. Not all of these people have our best interest in mind. Many are simply following what they see as the next big thing. Is your church in a season of explosive growth? You can count on there being a lot of people along for the ride. They’re pretty easy to spot as they make a lot of suggestions that turn into criticisms, but do precious little actual work. They usually won’t get involved and serve at all (unless of course a title is involved).

The mixed multitude in the company of Israel was intrigued by the plagues, the miraculous exodus, the parting of the Red Sea, and manna from the sky– at first. They were quick to join in the celebration and praise when God was performing mighty miracles. As we all know however, mountain top experiences don’t last forever. When the real journey began and the earth shattering miracles weren’t necessary anymore, the non-Israelites were the first to start grumbling. They liked the eye-candy of supernatural phenomena, but walking through the desert? Not so much.

The Bible says that these followers had greedy desires (Numbers 11: 4 – Amplified Bible). Naturally they did not keep these desires to themselves, but started lamenting out loud about the foods that they missed from Egypt. They talked about the cucumbers, the melons, the garlic, the leeks, and the onions. They reminded the Israelites about the variety of foods that they used to “enjoy”, and eventually the children of Israel joined the complaint chorus. How very very awful for them! There was more than just “Manna Café” back in Egypt. They were pretty down and out about it. Egypt was looking better and better.

They were slaves.

They were in captivity.

They had zero control over their own lives.

“BUT WE USED TO HAVE LEEKS!”

How incredibly petty does this sound to us? It’s easy to judge this generation of wishy washy Israelites, but they’re really a lot like us. As long as the miracles, healings, and dynamic church growth keep up, we are content and thriving. However as soon as the enemy starts attacking, or a leader falls from grace, or new membership plateaus, those that were along for the ride start complaining. If the true core of the body stays on the path and remains faithful, the boat doesn’t capsize. All too often though, the “mixed multitude” affects the rest of the body. Hastily built friendships and suspect allegiances can suddenly overshadow God’s will for our life and the direction of our local church.

We, as the church, must keep the big picture in view at all times. Many of us came out of bondage and the enemy would love to get us to focus on some simple and petty pleasure that was associated with that time in captivity. Sure, we used to have leeks, but we were slaves while eating them. The wonderful thing about living for God is that He is a good Father with good intentions for us. Isaiah 1:19 reads, “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;” God will give us so much better than leeks if we stay faithful and not allow the rabble to sway us. We must stay focused and not let anyone pull us off of our destined path!

“And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

 – Matthew 16:19

They had it pretty good.

They really did.

When God created man and woman, He didn’t stick with any of His former blueprints. He created Adam and then Eve as unique beings that had dominion over every area of this earth. They were given lordship over all other living creatures on the planet. They had the run of the Garden, which was the known world at the time. There was no sickness, stress, anxiety, lack, nor sorrow of any kind. All of this was great, but the most amazing thing about Adam and Eve was their ability to communicate with and be in the presence of God. They were created to have personal and tangible fellowship with God! How astonishing would that be?

As we all know, this paradise didn’t last forever. Satan, staying true to his form, craved the power and dominion given over to man. He had already been ejected from heaven for trying to usurp God’s position and this ambition to rule on earth was the next best thing. In succumbing to the enemy’s temptations, man handed over the authority that God had entrusted in him. According to II Corinthians 4:4, Satan was now the ruler of the world. It reads “Satan, who is god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe…(NLT) The keys were handed to the enemy, and it remained like that for thousands of years.

Of course the good news is through the ultimate sacrifice of God’s only Son, our situation changed considerably.  Jesus, speaking to John in Revelation declares that He took the keys to hell and the grave back from the enemy. Revelation 1:18 reads, “I am He who lives, and was dear, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.” According to the scripture at the top of this article, the keys of heavenly and earthly authority have been given to us as Christ’s disciples. With these keys we have the ability and authority to lock doors to deny access to Satan. We can also unlock doors that the enemy is trying to keep us from opening. This is wonderful news, so why aren’t we living victorious lives? I believe we are loaning out our key far too often, and many times to the devil himself.

There are probably a host of reasons we let him have access that he should no longer have, but I’m convinced the main reason is spiritual fatigue. The greater threat we are to Satan, the more frequent and vicious the attacks will be on us. The enemy has no problem leaving us alone if we aren’t doing anything to threaten his agenda. The Christian life is the most fulfilling and joy filled life there is, but like anything else of value, it is not always easy. When we are doing things to advance the kingdom of God and rob Hell of its assets (unsaved people), we should be expecting to receive some kickback from the enemy. One of the few promises that Satan makes that he will honor is: “Quit exercising your faith and I’ll ease up on you.” Of course he is a liar, so even though we may feel the pressure ease up, there is so much damage being done in other areas of our life that we will end up in a worse predicament than before. However, it is tough to see the big picture. We feel the heat NOW. We need some relief or peace NOW. So we let up on the gas. We let old habits creep back into our lives. We are not as bold as we were about our faith. We’re not as faithful in church attendance, serving, or studying God’s word. In essence, we are loaning out the keys we’ve been given.

In Ephesians 4:27 Paul writes, “nor give place to the devil.” Whenever we back up from our service for God, the devil is quick to step into that now vacant space. Vacant space is pretty easy to re-take, but occupied space requires a battle to obtain. When we give place to Satan, he will not give that ground back easily. What might feel like breathing room at first will quickly turn into enemy territory. So what is the answer? Don’t let up. Don’t take your foot off the gas. We are more than conquerors through God. I know there is resistance. I know you’re tired. I know you feel weighed down. However, Jesus said His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Don’t let Satan deceive you into quitting for the sake of an illusion of rest. The enemy’s “rest” will cost you twice as much work in the end. Ephesians 6:13 reads, “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”

This life is the shortest thing we will ever do. James describes it as a vapor, here and then gone. Let’s not grow weary in well doing. Let’s finish our race strong and receive our reward. Let’s not give place to the devil. Let’s not let him take back ground that we fought for already. Stop slipping the key under the mat!