This Is Why We Pray

As I look in the Old Covenant more and more for Papa, who himself has not changed, only the covenant has changed, I less and less see and angry “Sovereign God” always wanting to wreck havoc on his people but a loving Father who truly is responsive to the cries of His beloved.  Again, as a young college age believer described in the post below, I attended a summer Bible study at Third Presbyterian in Richmond hearing a great Scot-preacher teaching on God’s sovereignty from Exodus 32. Here Moses begs God to not destroy Israel for their idolatrous Golden Calf. It says in vs 14 “And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people,” RSV- the only translation I had at the time, no NIV yet. 

"Wow, what power Moses had," I thought, to make God repent! 

But I also had memorized Numbers 23:19 in the RSV

“God is not man, that he should lie,

or a son of man, that he should repent.

Has he said, and will he not do it?

Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?”

So later I asked a resident scholar at the Christian Study Center in Charlottesville about this seeming contradiction in Scripture. As a holder to inerrancy I believed (and still do) Scripture cannot contradict itself. He replied “it's a hermeneutical issue.” I had to look that word up. I was premed at the time. So I never got an answer until I could read Hebrew and change the translation to “relent” (NIV) from “repent” (RSV).

But today, 40 years later, I see something so different in the heart of God. Back then I knew God as good, sovereign, and in control. His goodness would preclude Him from doing evil or needing to repent. So we can legitimately change the translation of the Hebrew words to brunt the impact of the RSV. But today I don't need to soften these words. I am discovering the God of the Old Covenant to be the same as the God of the New, He is not an angry ogre. He is a loving Dad who wants nothing more than His kids’ hearts, to live in perfect love and devotion with them.

When Moses cried out in Exodus 32 or Amos in 7.3, God did repent of the calamity he was about to bring. Repentance means to change your mind, your direction, your intention. Hearing Moses’ cries, seeing his tears, feeling Moses’ heart all made God’s heart arise and say “NO, I will not destroy the ones I love.” Though they truly deserved it. Though to some degree we all deserve it. 

God responds to our hearts. He’s a good Dad. Perfect in his righteousness, perfect in his justice, perfect in his love. These do not war against each other, one is not greater than the other. Love does not win over righteousness or justice. His righteousness is not exceeded by his love as the old Honeytree song said that I listened to in college. Perfection is completeness and wholeness, intricate and profound, totally and particularly satisfying.

Sovereign God responds! Adonai Yahweh is Spirit. Yahweh Elohim is Love. El Shaddai is Father. Love responds to the object of His love- you and me!

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This is why we pray.

Allen's testimony of Receiving Father's Love shared at "Growing the Church in the Power of the Holy Spirit" Black Mountain, NC, May 2017

Law and Life, the Do's and the Don'ts

Why does the Law bring death though it is good? Isn't this a contradiction? So many today strive to be free from the Law. The Law is best encompassed in the 10 Commandments. 9 of those are “Thou shalt nots”. Why shall we not? Because doing those things hurts our relationship, with God and man, breaking fellowship, ruining love. “Thou shalt not” does not produce life, but it does protect life. When asked what is the sum of the Law, Jesus goes to the next chapter of Deuteronomy and cites Moses (6.5) “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” That is the sum of what we do.

The one commandment of the 10 that is a positive injunction, something we do, is to “honor our father and mother.” Why that? Because in that relationship is the pipeline of experiential love. If we dishonor our parents we, for our part, shut off our hearts to comforting, outflowing love.  Honoring our parents is the “on earth” side keeping our lives receptive to heaven side love. Law is good because it protects what is good.

But prohibitions do not bring life.  Obedience is not merely not doing what is wrong. Biblical Obedience is listening, hearing, responding; residing, remaining, and abiding. We love because God loved us first. We love God because our hearts respond to Him loving us first. “God can only be truly loved in response,” (Steve Hill, Primal Hope, pg 145).

All our religious strivings to obey, i.e. to do the right thing, ultimately defeat us because we cannot give out from the place of emptiness. Obedience flows out of the full well of love. Rivers of living water spring up from the heart that is being nourished and amply supplied. We wrongly think that if we just try harder the next time we will do better. No, the secret is to stop trying, admit our total incapacity and even unwillingness, and say “Father, I need you. Abba, please love me right now. Hold me. Forgive me. Fill me.” And then the burden becomes easy and the yoke becomes light because we are walking together again in unity.

Have you noticed that so much of the Law is prohibition? What thou shalt not do? It's hard to know what to do when all the guidance we get is what we are not to do. When love is our rule, not “Law” as in prohibited activity, but rule is in motivation, we are free. The “Law of the Spirit of Life” sets us free from the Law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). We live “according to” or “down from” or “through” the Spirit. Spirit life here isn't describing signs and wonders and power ministry but love and fruit and relationship. Spirit life pours the love of God into our hearts (Romans 5.5) and the more our hearts receive the freer we become and the more revelation we receive to know what to do and not just what not to do. When we live in love we know.

That's The True You

I journaled on 2/2/17:

Our struggle seeing ourselves as so unworthy, so unlovable, something to be cast off, pushed aside, even burned is deep and pervasive. A friend wrote this morning struggling, feeling isolated, unwanted, worthless. This is gross, but deep down many of us feel like cur, something to be scraped off our boot. I hate dog poop. I love dogs but I hate the poop. I hate having to pick it up in a plastic bag and carry it to the trash can. I nearly gag. I love Wiley, my son’s dog. But the poop…ugh.

I had a little Facebook discussion this week with a friend about hell, whether it exists as a real physical place of eternal separation and torment. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount speaks several times about a place we translate as “hell” but the literal name is “Ghenna” (Gk) or “Ge-Hinnom” (Hb).  Ge-Hinnom is a deep rift valley outside Jerusalem where human waste, dead animal bodies, and other nasty stuff is thrown and burned in a perpetual fire. When Jesus spoke of “hell” people undoubtably knew the imagery he was using for the fate human souls, if we stay angry or lust (Matt 5:22,30) and more. He said we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless our righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees (Mat 5:20). Wow. Feel condemned? Unworthy? Like a little piece of….? I sure have and at times still do.

But what has Jesus done? He, by his life, “fulfilled all righteousness.” Paul tells us that His righteousness becomes our righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). And where did Jesus go? For us? Hebrews 13:10-11 “For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.”

Jesus became for us everything we want to scrape off the bottom of our shoe. All the shame, all the stink, all the unworthiness, all the filth and isolation. He, as the only righteous one who ever lived, became our unrighteousness and was essentially burned in hell as human waste/dead animal.

And now we have what theologians call “imputed righteousness.” We “are the righteousness of God.” “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). So yes, we do far exceed the Pharisees and we can thus sprint joyfully into the Kingdom. But what about how we feel today? Our hearts may be  telling us the opposite of what our minds understand as truth from the Scripture. When all we can so is smell the…

“Quick, Find his mother… that baby needs his diaper changed, … and fast.”

Years ago I was taught that in Christ God does not “see” my sin. “That’s nice” I thought. “He’s blind.” "But He can’t be because He’s God." Or "He has a clothes pin on His nose." I was taught that “in Christ” God only sees “Christ in me.” That may be so but all I could see was Allen in me. “Quick, get the clothes pin...  Where’s that Febreze? Anybody got any real dark glasses?”

No, that’s not how our Father God sees or smells. Satan sees, points to it, and literally rubs it in our noses. 

Father sees, knows, picks us up, undresses us, places us in the warm baby tub of sudsy water. Gently washes us sparkly clean, picks us up again and cuddles us to his breast. He then feeds us, wraps us in clothes of pure, spotless, clean-smelling righteousness. He takes that diaper (or lack thereof) and throws it into Ghenna where it belongs. And not only is the baby clean on the outside, but the crying has stopped, the smile has returned, the heart and belly are fully satisfied. And life is as it should be.

That’s the true you.