What's True Vs The Truth

When God called Ananias to go pray and restore Saul's sight (see Acts 9:10), Ananias had a better idea. “Lord,” he answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name!” (Acts 9:13-14 NIV)

Everything Ananias said was absolutely true! And God completely ignored it. He didn't respond, “Oops, gee you're right, Ananias. What was I thinking? Being God, running the universe and all, got a lot on my plate, you know? We try to keep it quiet but sometimes one slips through the cracks. Hey, don't tell anybody, ok? Anything I can bless for you while I'm here? Ok then, I'm out.”

God didn't respond that way because Ananias was just speaking what was true about Saul (soon to be called Paul) – Earth's truth. Nope, God responded with Heaven's truth because Heaven's truth, The Truth about the person not just about what they've done, trumps Earth's truth every time. You are not what you do.

What is true about you never disqualifies you from God's Truth about you – who you really are in Him and His calling on your life and your mission for His kingdom. God responds in verses 15-16, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to _____” and God gives Saul's mission.

Fill in the blank. What is God's truth about you? He has a mission for you; do you know what it is? You are his chosen instrument for…, what? That's the Journey of Discovery you get to go on with Him. If you don't know, start praying for that answer, start asking Him. Start the exciting Adventure!

Will you, like Bilbo the Hobbit, go on this Journey?

You Are Not What You Do

For so many of us our identity is in what we do or what we've done. But that's not who we are. God loves us based on position not accomplishment. Our position as His son or daughter. Nothing we ever accomplish (good or bad) can ever change that, nothing we do can make Him love us more or less than He does in this moment. In every moment. He's that consistent.

We all say we believe that, but many of us secretly don't. I say “secretly” because often it's secret even from ourselves. We can test ourselves to see if we inwardly believe we are what we do, though. When we get mad at someone for disagreeing with us, when we take someone's disagreement with what we said or did as a personal affront, it's often because we believe that we are what we do. “If you attack what I do or say, you're attacking me!” Do you see it?

You are special to God because you are you. You are valuable because you bear the image of God (see Genesis 1:26-27) whether you realize it or not. The trick is to understand who you really are, the unique person He made you to be.

Psalm 139:13-14 says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (NIV) So before you were even born and had done anything good or bad, you were God's wonderful work. And nothing we do can ever undo His work.

So let's stop trying to be what we do. Let's discover and walk in who we really are. Ask Him to take you on a journey of discovery.

“That's Just the Way I Am”

This is my “favorite” ungodly belief. “Favorite” in quotes, because I absolutely hate it when people say this. “I'm just ____ and always will be.” Fill in the blank with your stuff. “Angry.” “Overweight.” “Controlled by out-of-control emotions”. “Addicted to alcohol, porn, drugs, sex, or TV.”

The next word out of my mouth is always, “No.” As kindly as possible, and in love, but “No.”

“No,” that's not who you are.

“No,” that's not how God made you.

“No,” that weakness is not stronger than the blood of Jesus and the work of His Spirit in your life.

Just plain, flat-out “No.”

No, that's not just the way you are. Well, it could be, that's a choice you make. But it doesn't have to be. Not by a long shot. Jesus died so it doesn't have to be.

Freedom is out there, if you want it. Getting free is simple, but it's not easy. It means dying to yourself. It means trusting God, and being willing to risk the consequences if He doesn't come through. Will you take the risk?

Controlling Your Emotions

The second strategy we'll talk about this week for living a godly life is controlling your emotions. “But it's not my fault I just don't love my spouse anymore.” Yes, it is totally your fault. It's something you can control. “But I just don't like that person at work – I can't help how I feel!” Yes, actually you can.

But not by trying harder. You can't control your emotions by gritting your teeth or being robotic or by militaristically obeying orders to love. Love doesn't happen that way. Trying harder just gets into religion. God's not into religion, so we shouldn't be either. (As an aside, the Enemy's totally into religion – he's started lots of them. God's totally into relationship – He's started lots of them.)

The point is you can't control your emotions by trying to control your emotions. But you can totally control your emotions. “Dude, starting making sense!” Okay, here we go. You control your emotions by taking advantage of a Kingdom principal that God wove into the fabric of the universe.

God wants us living out of our will, not out of our mind or our emotions. You control your emotions by choosing to serve that person. Find something you can do to serve your spouse or your co-worker or whoever you have negative emotions for. The Holy Spirit's presence and favor is like water – it flows to the lowest point. So get low. Philippians 2:3 says “... in humility consider others better than yourselves.” Be determined to serve them. Not just once, but as a lifestyle. What can you do that would bless them? The 100% guaranteed, God-ordained, by-product for you will be positive emotions toward that person.

Then, like Isaiah 58:8 says, “Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.” That totally works for me. I'll take an extra helping of righteousness, please, with the glory of the Lord on the side. But it starts by getting low. It starts by serving. Try it and tell me in the comments how it works.

Focus on What God Is Doing Not the Enemy

That sounds like a no-brainer. We'd all agree with that. But we often don't get to the practical point of walking it out, because we don't understand what that looks like.

God is always working something positive in our lives, and the Enemy is always trying to work something negative. Again a no-brainer that we'd all intellectually agree with. Here's what it looks like in practice.

We decide with our will to focus (ie, put all our energy and attention) on the positive, not the negative. Say our problem is not being able to stop sleeping with our boy/girl friend. That's the negative. We stop beating ourselves up for our sin. What's the opposite? Purity. That's the positive God wants to work in our lives. So we cry out day and night to Him to work purity into our lives. We focus on the positive.

That means letting the negative go when it goes. In the example above, God will answer those prayers, and bring circumstances that take that negative boy/girl friend who doesn't want purity out of our lives. Let them go. Don't hold on to the negative. Now you have a season without distraction where God can work purity into your life. Yay, go God!

Think of the worst problem or character flaw in your life. Then think of the opposite. That's what God wants to do in your life. Agree with Him about it and it'll go much faster.

“I Just Need to Try Harder”

“... to live right.” “... to stop this sin I just can't stop.” “... to be a better Christian.” “... to love my spouse more.” Fill in the blank for you. These things that vex us aren't okay. They are idols in our life and we do need to lay them down and be free of them. But just trying harder won't work.

“I just need to try harder.” That's the religious answer. The condemning voice inside says we just need to straighten up and fly right. As if we could. As if we could live a righteous life by trying harder and being more religious. What a lie. Jesus is not religious; he's relational.

You can only get evil things out of your life by (1) agreeing with God that they are evil things, and (2) laying them at the foot of the Cross. Not at the foot of Trying Harder.

Yes, we do need to try as hard as we can to live a godly life. Knowing Jesus is not a license to sin. But we live a godly life by pressing into Him as hard as we can. By focusing our attention and energy on Him. By spending more time with Him. By Knowing Him and getting closer to Him, the by-product for us is freedom from the chains that bind us.

What's that look like? Isn't that just trying harder to read our Bible or spend time with Him or do something religious? No, it's different. We'll talk about two key, practical strategies for focusing our lives on Jesus and living godly lives this week.

I Like Winning Banners

In Song of Solomon 6:4, the Lover (Jesus) calls his Beloved (you and me), “majestic as troops with banners.” Armies carry banners to celebrate battles they've won, and to show off to any potential future adversaries how BA they are.

In the next verse, Song of Songs 6:5, the Lover (Jesus) says to his Beloved (you and me), “Turn your eyes from me, they overwhelm me.” The Lover is saying to his Beloved, “Don't look at me like that – the love in your eyes for me is overwhelming me with emotion and I might lose it,” while he smiles and looks away, so she can't see he's blushing. Jesus is blushing!

When you don't feel like you're winning at all, when life has the better of you, when you're sure you're going down for the last time, when you can't feel His presence, but you still choose His ways and choose to trust Him instead of give place to fear and anxiety – in those times when you felt Nothing but chose Him anyway, He felt Everything! You just won a majestic banner, and He blushed.

I like winning banners. Out of His overwhelmingly great love for us, He puts us in those situations where we feel overwhelmed and don't feel Him at all. So we can win a banner. So we can choose to trust Him instead of dwelling in fear, out of our love for Him, and it makes Him blush!

On that Day when we finally see him face-to-face, the walls of our mansion in Heaven will be decorated with the banners we won in this life in those moments when we trusted Him instead of ourselves or something else. Wow.

Getting Past the Savior to the Lover

We really gotta get past the Savior thing. Yes, Jesus is totally our Savior, and we love Him for that – while we were yet sinners and hated Him, He demonstrated His love for us in this – Christ died for us (my paraphrase of Romans 5:8).

But for some people, that's it. That sums up their whole relationship with him. God become human and he did this really spectacular thing for them a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, and it's great because now they have this great life insurance policy -- “salvation” and they get to go to heaven, sometime, in the sweet by-and-by. But it all seems very distant and impersonal and far away and, well, just not very relative to their day-to-day life in survival mode.

Jesus didn't die for you so He could be your insurance salesman. He died for you to be your lover. Salvation is just the tip of the iceberg! There is So. Much. More! We can know Him so deep, and with such ferocious intimacy.

Think about this today. Jesus didn't die for you to give you salvation, although that's a byproduct. Salvation was never the point; it was a necessary prerequisite. Jesus died to give you Himself.

The Lover-King

Finding your identity – the Real You – letting God introduce you to Yourself – it all starts with Passion. Your first Passion needs to be for Him. God plays many roles in our lives – by which do you know Him best?

Just as each of us fill many roles – we're a child to our parents, a parent to our children, maybe a sibling, a cousin, an employee, a customer – and different people know us by different roles – so God fills many roles to us. By which do you know Him best? Savior? Redeemer? General? Commander-in-Chief? Judge? King? Healer? Best friend? Confidant? Lover? A combination thereof?

To me, he's my Lover-King. Like in the Song of Songs. Best. Book. Ever. It's all about this King who's all passionate for this woman, and he shows up in the middle of the night and at these goofy times when she's not expecting him, and he invites her to come into a wild and miraculous lifestyle with him. It's mostly from her point-of-view, and she goes through a couple identity crises and some pretty rough spots along the way.

It's written like a play, with two main parts. Most Bibles label the male part “Lover” or some such – that's Jesus – and the female part “Beloved” or something like that – that's you. I highly encourage you to read Song of Songs. We'll go through a lot of it in this blog.

He is so passionate for you it hurts. Think about that today.

Getting Free from Fear of Intimacy

We've been talking about Psalm 139 verse 1:

     O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.

In some of us, that thought brings up tremendous fear. Oh, no, He sees my shame. We feel an overwhelming urge to hide, because we are terrified of intimacy. This is one of Satan's greatest deceptions. It deceives us into avoiding the very thing that would bring us healing, the greatest need of the human heart. It poisons every relationship we have.

We can be free from that fear and actually enjoy intimacy, with God and others, if we want to. But some of us don't want to be free. Our bondage is familiar, we've had it so long it seems normal, and we've developed comfortable coping mechanisms so we can keep ourselves safe. Freedom, on the other hand, belongs to the realm of the scary unknown, and we have to trust someone else to keep us safe (God). Like the Israelites wandering in the desert in Numbers 20 and Exodus 14, some of us prefer the certainty, security, and ease of bondage to the uncertainty, risk, and hard work of freedom.

But if we want it, Jesus died so we could have freedom. Here's two simple steps:

(1) Pray and pray some more. Cry out to God until you have your freedom. Don't stop. Everything worthwhile in the Kingdom starts with prayer.

(2) Get help. From a pastor. From a counselor. From someone you trust. You can't get free by yourself, especially from this. Fear of intimacy is not trusting someone else, not allowing yourself to be close to anyone else. So in fact, when you open up to someone and ask for their help, you don't realize it or feel it, but your 80% free already. Coming to the place of asking for and accepting help is much harder than actually getting free!

Our Heart's Response

On Monday we talked about Psalm 139 verse 1:

     O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.

We talked about how God puts effort into searching our heart and our ways, into really knowing us. That thought brings up one of two instant heart responses. The first is being awestruck and overwhelmed at how much God loves us. That thought helps us understand a bit more who we are to Him, and his great love for us floors us all over again. We love it.

The second response is fear. Oh, no, He sees my shame. We feel an overwhelming urge to hide, because we are terrified of intimacy. Be honest. What was your first heart response?

The fear of intimacy is a real crippler, and is one of Satan's greatest deceptions. It deceives us into avoiding the very thing that would bring us healing, the greatest need of the human heart. It poisons our relationship with God, our spouse, our family, our friends – pretty much every relationship we have.

If this is you, there is hope, if you want it. You can be set free from the crippling fear of intimacy, and enjoy relationship with God and others the way it was meant to be. We'll talk about how on Friday.

God's Effort

Have you ever wondered what God puts effort into? Psalm 139:1 says:

     O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.

Ever search for something, like your car keys? When I've lost my keys, especially when heading out the door to some place important like going to work, everything except finding those keys goes off the table. Our whole being is focused on one thing – finding the darn keys! We put focused, intentional effort into the search, until we find what we're looking for.

That's what God does with us. He puts focused, intentional effort into searching us, our heart and our ways. Pretty cool, huh? You are on God's radar and He has exerts effort into knowing you. He loves us that much. That's an awesome thought for today.