The Light in the Darkness

Think with me for a moment.

Psalm 23:5(a) says “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies….” The Message renders it, “You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies.” We can discuss what kind of provision the “six course meal” represents, but notice first where that provision comes: “in the presence of my enemies.”

Romans 5:20(b) declares, “…where sin abounded, grace abounded much more….” This time it’s in the presence of sin that is emphasized as the place of great provision (“abounded” is a big word!).

Luke 7:34 describes how the ungodly saw Jesus: “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” Apparently, Jesus frequented such places, and hung out with such people. I’ll bet that he still does.

Let’s think about it: when I’m feeling weak and needy, and I need an extra dose of the grace of God, where shall I go?

First, let’s nip some potential problems in the bud:

·         We don’t go “sin much more” so that we get more grace. The book is really clear on that topic. Romans 6:1&2 provides a starting point on this one.

·         We also don’t go get in a place where we’re are personally, severely tempted to sin. That’s just plain stupid. If you don’t want to get shot, don’t wander onto the firing range.

·         We don’t place ourselves or those with us in real danger, whether physical or not.

Traditional religion has always said, “If you need more of God, you go to church, where God is, of course.” That, of course, presupposes that God is more present in a particular building more than in his son or daughter, and I’m not sure that this can be supported Biblically. If there are good people at church who can help you, that’s great, though you’ll probably be able to deal with the issues you face better meeting with them outside of the church’s programs. Just an opinion.

But our verses hint at something else: God’s presence can be found unusually strong in other places, places where “my enemies” gather, places where people are not afraid to sin.

I reiterate: we don’t choose to put ourselves in danger: if there’s a temptation that’s hard for us, don’t go to that place. But just because sinners gather there is not a reason to avoid a place: Jesus didn’t avoid those places (cf Luke 7:34). (And there’s always the “go” part of the great commission that so often gets overlooked.)

This is, frankly, not an exercise for spiritual babes. And it’s a good time not to practice 2 Peter 2:22 (“But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: ‘A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.’”).

Some would argue that such places are indeed more full of God’s grace, but it’s because they also provide a greater need for God’s grace, and the two influences balance out, leaving the believer no better off than s/he would be at home in bed. That’s actually not a foolish argument, but neither is it conclusive; it’s absolutely worth considering, and perhaps field-testing.

In the town where I live, there’s an austere micro-beer tavern near the famously-liberal, liberal arts state college. So naturally, it’s full of non-Christian and anti-Christian college students, expounding on their views over admittedly delicious brown brewed beverages. There’s an old-world coffee lounge downtown that caters to the more permanent residents of similar persuasion, who expound their views over similarly delicious brown brewed beverages of another nature.

I’ve found that both places are excellent places to bring my laptop or a Bible and enjoy the Father’s healing presence and think creatively with him. The tavern is also hosting a number of Bible studies and “cell-group” type fellowships, so maybe the word is getting out.

On the other end of the scale, some friends and I occasionally visit dance clubs for the purpose of spiritual warfare dance, specifically counting on a table of provision being prepared before us in the presence of the spiritual environment found in those places. From a natural viewpoint, we look ridiculous: a bunch of overweight shaggy old men – I wear earplugs – completely ignoring the writhing young people around us on the dance floor. But it is has been a marvelous place for engaging the heavenlies, and the temptations there don’t even speak to us. (Note: we don’t do this alone, and we don’t go without substantial prayer covering.)


I’ve also surprised myself with this discovery: the secular German band Rammstein is actually pretty good for worship. I can’t understand the words, so it’s as if it was instrumental music to me, and I enjoy the table prepared for intimacy with Father in that dark place.

And of course, God is still committed to the Great Commission, which still begins with “Go ye….” The command is still to take the light to the places of darkness. I’m convinced that one of the reasons that so many Christians are so ineffective at sharing the gospel with non-believers is that they don’t actually meet any non-believers. When we bring the light into the darkness, the light is quite a lot brighter than when we put all of the lights into a big room that is outside of the world of unbelievers.

Now, I have known of a number of men who have heretofore been effective in the Kingdom who have been discouraged, and wandered into similar places specifically in order to find temptation, which they do in fact find, and which has all too often led to moral failure. This, of course, is the danger of finding the presence of God in the places of darkness, and it is for this reason that caution is to be exercised.

Don’t take this farther than I’m presenting it. But let’s not be afraid of taking the light into the darkness. Let’s also not be afraid of finding the light in the darkness. 

Second Hand Smoke

I felt God drawing my attention to second hand smoke today. 

Second hand smoke is smoke that you breathe from someone else’s cigarette, or pipe, etc. It doesn't come as a result of your actions, but its smell still clings to your clothes, and it exposes you to lung cancer nearly as much as if you were smoking yourself. 

In some ways, it's more dangerous: pipe-smokers (and some cigar and cigarette smokers) don't generally inhale their own smoke, but if you're in their company, you don't have a choice about whether you inhale their secondhand smoke: it's just part of breathing when they're smoking around you. Your body actually experiences more of the deadly smoke than their body does.

In my own experience, there are far more times that people around me are smoking, than there are times when I am the person smoking. (Full disclosure: I do occasionally smoke a pipe.)

Second hand smoke happens in the spirit realm as well. We experience things – smells cling to us; we’re exposed to deadly danger – not because of things that we’re doing, but because of things that others are doing around us. I suspect it is true here: there are far more times when people around me are doing things to stir up the hornets' nest, than when I'm stirring that nest. After all, there are many people around me, and there's only one of me! 

May I encourage us: when we're feeling the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" coming against us, avoid the foolishness of self-accusation: "Well, I must have done something wrong." Sure, sometimes we do something stupid and open a gate to give the devil permission to steal, kill & destroy. And he generally makes use of those opportunities. In that case, all we do is repent, kick him in the teeth, and move on. 

But sometimes the troubles coming against us are brought about by the actions of others: maybe stuff passed on by parents, or foolishness committed by people we're in covenant relationship with, or maybe we've associated ourselves with a group that has given place to some sort of stronghold. Just because we're in relationship with a number of people, there's secondhand smoke around. 

It's probably appropriate to remember that our own actions affect many of the people we're in relationship with; in another way, there's no such thing as a "secret" or a "victimless" sin. 

I'm not trying to bring a teaching on how to overcome demonic attacks: there's lots of that around, and we all remember: repentance is a super-power, and I suspect the 'kicking the devil in the teeth" exercise will still be valuable. 

Rather, this is about diagnosing the source: when trouble comes our way, it isn't always about us; sometimes it's from second-hand smoke

Believing What the Bible Says About God

We need to consider whether we actually believe the Bible or not. We generally do not in this one area:

We have been fed a pack of lies about who God is, about God being the source of all kinds of evil, but we miss the foundational underlying truth: God isn’t actually evil. He’s actually good. Seriously. We don’t really believe it.

We need to understand, deep in our soul, that this is who God is. We say, “God is good,” but we believe all kinds of evil accusations about him! We (our culture) blames him for death (“God took her.”) and disaster (“an act of God!”) and trouble (“Well, he must be teaching me patience.”) and we blithely accept it (“His ways are higher than my ways… sigh.”) and we even quote scripture (“Look! It SAYS God did that! Why, it must be that simple!”) to support our naïve belief that God does nasty things. 

Let’s look at the record: 

Psalm 34:8: “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him”: God is actually good. This is who he is. A good God does good things. 

1 John 1:5: “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all”: So nothing of darkness can come from God because he has no darkness to give to anybody. The only thing he can give is light. 

Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will”: God’s will is only about goodness, about pleasing us, about perfection. This is something that can be tested; we can know this. Moreover, we are to be like this, our will is to be like this. 

James 1:13a: “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone…”: God doesn’t have anything to do with evil. There is someone else (fairly often ourselves) that is responsible for the evil that survives in our presence. 

Matthew 13:28a: “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.” When evil comes in among the people of God (in this parable of the tares), Jesus defines it as something done by his enemy. 

Matthew 7:11: “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!” : paraphrase: If you roughnecks can figure out the difference between a good gift and a bad gift, you can seriously trust your heavenly Father to give only good gifts. In other words, bad things do not come from God. 

John 14:9: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” We have a brilliant revelation of who God is, of who the Father is: He’s like Jesus. They’re so unified, they’re so alike, that if we have seen one, we’ve seen the other. You want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus. 

John 1:18: “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him”: So we must trust what Jesus says about God more than we trust our own perception, because we ain’t never seen him right. Everything else we believe about God must be interpreted through what Jesus says about Him.

Hebrews 1:3a: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of [God’s] being”: So we must trust what Jesus shows about God more than we trust our own perception. Jesus is the clearest (“exact”) revelation about God’s character. Everything else we believe about God must be interpreted through who Jesus is.

There is a principle of Biblical interpretation: if you see something in an obscure passage (eg. in a story, in a passage that’s teaching on a different topic, in a passing comment, in an unclear passage), then we MUST refer to the clear passage to interpret it. We cannot just see something done in the Bible and then all go do what someone else did, or we’d all lie to the Holy Spirit like Ananias did, or we’d all hang ourselves like Judas did. So what’s the clearest revelation of God’s nature?

The Bible itself clearly says that the “exact” revelation about who God is has been given to us: it’s Jesus, who is the Incarnate Son of God, who best reveals the nature and character of God to us. He is the very best revelation about who God is: if we believe something about who God is, but it isn’t found in the life of Jesus, or it isn’t found in what Jesus teaches about who God is, THEN IT ISN’T WHO GOD IS! 

Do we believe the Bible or not? I vote to believe the Bible. 

Replacing God With God's People

When we take it upon ourselves to be responsible other believers, to be their warning of possible error, possible deceiving spirits, then we are working from the assumption - I'm not sure we often see it - that protecting believers is our work. I believe that is a faulty foundation.

I try (with only moderate success, I grant) to work from the assumption that it is God's work to protect his children - using other children sometimes in that process, no doubt, but it is his work. I recall Jesus claiming, "I will build MY Church," and I don't remember him delegating that to anyone else at any point.

Let's assume that I never once err in my identifying what is of God and what is from deceiving spirits - and that of course is pure fantasy at best - then perhaps I have saved them the inconvenience of being sidetracked for a short while. But in the meantime, I have denied those immature believers the opportunity to hear from God themselves, substituting my own words in the place of His words, substituting my leading instead of His leading.

I do not believe that this is in their best interests for us to replace God's leadership in peoples' lives with our leadership, our protection.

And although it might make me feel important, I do not believe it is in our best interests either.

A Change of Seasons

I guess that there was a season where God was blessing it, but I think the blessing has moved on. I think we’re coming to the end of the season of the anointing being on those whose full-time work is “in the ministry.”

I suspect that the blessing was less on “full time ministry” than it was on “ministering in His name,” but it sure looks to me like that season – whatever it was – is now over.

There are still some people in “full time” ministry who walk in favor, in the midst of God’s move today. But if you look closely, they are mostly in the work of equipping others, sending out a new generation of “ministers” who generally have no title, have no ministry paycheck. They are spreading the good news, demonstrating the Kingdom at their “secular” (whatever that means) work, and the secular mission-field pays their living.

As a result, they have a credibility among the world that those who make their living from purveying the gospel never had.

I invite the saints of God to work hard, forcefully, to rid themselves of the religious heresy that “full time ministry” is better ministry. It’s not. It’s actually a hindrance, though it is a comfortable hindrance.

The best ministry nowadays, and generally the best anointing, comes to those who live and work and eat and sleep among the world to which they minister.

That means that those whose “day job” gets in the way of “their ministry” probably have the more effective ministry. And many of those whose “full time job” is ministry, find their work less effective, when measured by Kingdom standards. 

Milk or Meat?

There are a couple of places in the NT where the apostles contrasted the intake of believers, using the metaphor of “milk” as the food for babies against “meat” as the food for mature men & women. (1 Corinthians 3, Hebrews 5, 1 Peter 2 are the clearest.)

The apostles (Paul, the anonymous author of Hebrews, and Peter) all seem to reference something similar to John’s stages of Christian growth (1 John 2:12-14): that there are clearly stages of growth for us as Sons of the Most High. John makes it clear: believers in different stages of growth have different needs (for a discussion of those stages, see here: http://bit.ly/QMANqF)

Reflecting on this, I observe several things:

§         There are several places where believers are described as children, as milk-drinkers, often bemoaning the fact that by this stage of their growth, they should be eating meat and changing the world.

§         There appear to be NO places where any of the apostolic writers of the NT acknowledge a group that has progressed from milk-drinking to meat-eating. This may be simply because the epistles were all written to address problems among one church or another, and the churches that made the transition didn’t need corrective letters. There is no epistle to the church at Antioch, for example; it may be that this early center of the Church may have gotten some things right, though we have no record of it.

§         When we are young believers, we require milk. And when we become mature believers, milk is still good.

§         We are expected to progress beyond the basics. We are expected to graduate from being nourished by the “elementary principles” of “milk” to digesting and being nourished by “meat.”

§         So much of the church in our day has not even well learned the “elementary principles”; These are the “milk” or “baby food” of Christian nurture (Quoting Hebrews 6:1 here):

1.      repentance from dead works and of

2.      faith toward God, of

3.      the doctrine of baptisms (note the plural), of

4.      laying on of hands, of

5.      resurrection of the dead, and of

6.      eternal judgment.

A number of prophets and apostles are speaking of the need, now upon us, but growing in necessity, of believers being established enough in theses topics that they are comfortable (and safe) moving on to more challenging topics. In fact, Holy Spirit has been speaking to a substantial number of believers about what some of those more meat-like discussions will be about, but they would only serve as a distraction in this conversation.

As He speaks to me about some of the meatier topics of growth that I see coming to us, I am reminded of two applications that have relevance in this conversation:

1) There will be people (possibly people who are invested in a spiritual “milk-delivery service”) who will not understand of believers’ need for meat, who will speak against it (even accusing meat-eaters of apostasy and heresy), and, sadly, who will succeed in preventing hungry believers in their sphere of influence from obeying the scriptures and pursuing more advanced topics.

2) Those who choose to leave the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, and go on to perfection, not laying again the above foundation, will likely have to go on in the face of such opposition. A very likely booby-trap will be to engage argumentative milk-delivery devotees in extensive discussion about the need for meat, though it will be necessary to discern between those committed to not moving on from milk from those who have only known milk but long for more. A wiser response may be just to “set our face like flint” toward digesting and practicing that which Father is feeding us, and leaving the nay-sayers to themselves.

I believe it will be valuable to recognize in advance (if it is in advance) the opposition that will be confronting us more and more as we run the race set before us. Such battles are often won in advance, when we make our determined decisions of how we will respond before we meet the opposition.

How will you respond when faced with this choice? Will you choose a steak knife, or a warm bottle?

Forgiveness & Healing: An Important Distinction

There’s an uncomfortable contrast between forgiveness and healing.

We forgive those who wound us, and with the grace that Jesus is so generous about pouring into our lives, we can (eventually) forgive even the most debilitating, the most wounding, the most egregious offenses against us.

More, we need to forgive those offenses. In some way (see Matthew 6:14), our own forgiveness is tied to how we forgive others. And we’re commanded to forgive (see Matthew 18:23-35), so it’s pretty important.

But forgiving is not the same as healing. The act of forgiving the one who hurt me does not – in and of itself – heal the wound that they caused. Forgiving them is about not holding the offense in my soul against them, about no longer looking for revenge (whether actively or passively) against them, about not allowing a “root of bitterness” to grow in my spirit to make accusations against my offender and against God. That’s powerful stuff, but it’s not the same as healing the wound that came from their offense.

On the cross, Jesus forgave the people who nailed him there, but he still died from the wounds. In Acts 7, Stephen forgave those who wounded him by throwing stones, but he, too, died from that stoning.

I’ve seen confusion among believers about this in two manifestations:

1) “I’ve forgiven them for wounding me. So why am I still wounded? I thought that forgiving them would make it stop hurting!”

2) “But you forgave me! Why aren’t you trusting me? Why are you still acting like you’re hurting there? I guess you didn’t REALLY forgive me, did you!”

The reality is that forgiving and healing are two completely different issues. One might as well ask, “Why am I broke at the end of the month? It’s still raining in the Northwest, isn’t it?” Well, yes, it is still raining in the northwest, but that doesn’t actually have anything to do with your personal spending habits! In similar manner, there is not a direct correlation between forgiving and being healed.

It’s worth noting that there IS a small-but-significant connection between forgiving and being healed: we receive healing more easily when we’ve forgiven. But don’t be distracted by that small issue: healing is not an automatic result of forgiving.

We must forgive, of course, and there are enough reasons to forgive to fill a book. We could fill another book on the differences between forgiving someone and trusting them in the same way again. Frankly, they would be fine books, but that’s not the purpose for this article, which is to shoot down the false belief that “My forgiving you brings me healing.” It’s a small step in the process, and an important one, but it is not the healing.

I can forgive you for shooting me in the knee, but I will still walk with a limp until my knee is healed.