“But I Go to Church...”

“I go to church! What else do I need?” Good. I'm glad you go to church. We should. It's hard to have relationship with somebody if you never go to their house. But that's not enough. Not nearly. Because that doesn't make a relationship.

The Bible compares our relationship with God to a marriage. If you're married, try spending only an hour or two a week with your spouse and see how that works. Yeah, you laugh because you know that won't cut it. Not by a long shot. You can't have intimacy with somebody on a few hours a week, and that in a group setting.

If you're not married, I bet you laughed too when you read that sentence. That's not the marriage you hope for – only seeing the person you're spending the rest of your life with once a week for a couple hours.

Yet we're too often content to spend only a few hours a week with the person we're going to spend the rest of our eternity with. That's pretty jacked up.

Church is good, and we need that corporate worship time; it's very important. But we need intimacy with Jesus, just him and us, too. Just like with our spouse. In fact, he wants to be closer than our spouse. No other religion boasts a god who wants that! Woof!

Intimacy Not Insurance

Jesus didn't die to give us salvation. Controversial statement, I know. But it's true. He died to give us relationship with him. Salvation was just the prerequisite.

Jesus didn't die to be our insurance salesman. Often we get distracted away from the intimacy he wants with us right now in this life. We think it's ok because we have a policy with Jesus Christ Mutual Life. But without a lifestyle of intimacy with him, we're not keeping up on the premiums. We're in danger of hearing, “Away from me, I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23). Policy cancelled.

He died to be our Lover-King. Read Song of Songs – that's the kind of personal intimacy with us he wants. Lover close, private intimacy. Yes, we need corporate worship also, there's power there. But we also need that private time – just him and me. Just him and you.

“We [the Father and Jesus] will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23). Catch that? He wants to move in. He's not standing at the door and knocking because he's selling fire insurance or the latest sin vacuum. (Revelation 3:20).

Christianity is about so much more than salvation. There. Is. So. Much. More. It's about a wonderfully unpredictable and adventurous relationship with our Living Lover-King God.

One Heart at a Time

There's a strategy put forward in Kirk Walden's book The Wall for ending abortion. It has nothing to do with changing laws or reversing Roe v. Wade. In fact, it requires no action from the government at all.

It has to do with pro-life community crisis pregnancy centers. Such grass roots centers are actually making a huge difference nationwide. Women in crisis pregnancies come into the centers for a free ultrasound and get so much more. They are listened to, some for the first time in their lives, loved on, told they have value. And more importantly, shown they have value by how they're treated. They are introduced to a world of free resources to help them parent.

As more and more women choose parenting or adoption, business at abortion mills declines. Unlike the community crisis pregnancy centers, they are for-profit businesses. Once business drops below profitability for long enough, they close. It's very black 'n' white. We are seeing them shutdown all over the country.

The feminists can keep their precious piece of paper, the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, keeping abortion legal. But if no one has one, abortion is still defeated. They can keep their piece of paper; I'll take the hearts of the people, one heart at a time.

It's the same thing with the same-sex marriage Supreme Court decision. I believe we can defeat the homosexual agenda one heart at a time, by loving the ones God's placed in our path. We can love them without condoning their lifestyle. Jesus was an expert at it. If we love them like he loved the woman at the well and the tax collectors, bringing them the healing they need, same-sex marriage can be defeated just like abortion is being defeated.

Revealing the Heart of a Nation

When a nation has righteous laws, the people can appear more righteous than they really are. How many people would really live in an immoral way if the laws were not in place? The nations true heart remains hidden.

When those righteous laws are removed, the nation's heart is revealed.

I'm not a Libertarian; I don't necessarily think removing righteous laws are beneficial or good. However, it does reveal the nation's heart. That's what I think God is doing in the recent US Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nation-wide. He's revealing the heart of our nation.

The Next Barrier

While much of the country rejoices over the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the country, I, and many other Jesus-lovers, mourn.

One of my friends who was rejoicing asked me why I feel threatened. But I don't feel threatened at all, although religious liberty is coming under overt attack through this. Christians who have wedding-related businesses and feel its against their religion to participate in same-sex weddings are being prosecuted under anti-discrimination laws. Pastors are exempt for the moment, but for how long? There is already talk by certain law-makers of revoking churches tax-except status if they don't allow their facilities to be used for same-sex weddings.

But all of that's not why I mourn. The marriage line fell in the '60s and '70s, and the gender line just fell now in 2015. What's the next line to fall? What's left? Probably the age line. NAMBLO, the North American Man Boy Love Organization, has been trying to legalize child molestation for decades. It doesn't even have to be homosexual. What if a 60 year old man wants to marry a 12 year girl. If they both consent, what's wrong with that? How about incest? Why is that still wrong? Any argument defending any sexual standard except the Bible's (which is God's standard -- one adult man and one adult women, inside marriage only), whether it's living together, same-sex marriage, or whatever, can also be used to defend these and other perversions.

So that's why I mourn this devastating Supreme Court decision. I mourn for the future of our children. We have no idea what we've just unleashed on ourselves.

Our Rights Are Killing Us

California become the first state in the United States to pass a right-to-die law. That means terminally ill patients can opt for physician-assisted suicide. Many other states have proposed similar laws. It's probably only a matter of time before the US Supreme Court declares it legal across the nation. Other nations in Europe are already there.

The Corinthians were as obsessed with their rights as we Americans and Europeans are. They had a saying, “Everything is permissible for me.” Their false logic was that, since Christ set us free from the Law on the cross, we're free to do whatever we want. They were even proud that of one their members was living in an incestuous relationship with his step-mother. They were proud that they'd gone beyond what even the pagans of their day would do – celebrating their freedom in Christ! (1 Corinthians 5)

As enlightened 21st century citizens of the first-world, we don't need the false logic around the cross of Christ. We've turned our rights into an idol so we can do anything we want. Really, we pretty much can. We can kill our children before they're born. We can have our perverse life-style sanctioned by the government as “marriage,” complete with medical benefits. Now, we can even opt to kill ourselves. It's not bad being god of your own life. Or is it?

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, trying to appeal to them using their own logic, “ 'Everything is permissible for me' but not everything is beneficial. 'Everything is permissible for me' but I will not be mastered by anything.” (1 Corinthians 6:12)

The Kingdom of God is very un-American. It's not about our rights. Gasp. It's about dying to our rights to further our relationship with Jesus and to serve others. And in that place God the Father will meet us with such pleasure we'll be wondering why we didn't abandon our stupid rights sooner.

Not that rights are bad. The rights America was founded on are awesome, and rightfully belong to everyone on the planet, although unfortunately most live under very oppressive regimes and are denied these basic human rights. But when we're falling on our sword over our right to sin, then it's become an idol and we need to repent and let it go, whether it's legal or not.

Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's ok. Being legal doesn't make it good. The greatest pleasure of our existence is found by loving Jesus with abandon, with all that we are, not in exercising our American or European right to practice our sin of choice.

Somebody Has To Say It

The temptation of the Garden of Eden is still alive and well and with us today. It's the ultimate question each of us has to decide that will determine our eternity. Who is god of my life? Me or God? That was the serpent's deception to Adam and Eve, “Eat this fruit and you'll be gods unto yourselves, deciding what's right and wrong.”

Evolution is saying, “We made ourselves. Therefore we can decide right and wrong.” Not true – God made us and he decides right and wrong, not us.

Bruce Jenner (yes, I will call him Bruce not Caitlyn) says we can decide our gender. No, we can mutilate our private parts and take drugs to fake out Vanity Fair, but we can't change our gender. He's a man and always will be. God made him that way.

Rachel Dolezal says we can change our race. No, we can fake it, but we can't change it. God made us who we are on purpose. (BTW, it amazes me that people support “Caitlyn” Jenner and not Rachael Dolezal. That's logically inconsistent. Any argument supporting one also supports the other.)

Not accepting who God created us be is rebellion. It's sin. There, I said it.

These people have deep wounds that have scarred their identity. Instead of facilitating the healing God wants to bring them, our society has officially sanctioned their rebellion. How sad to miss out on the wonderful adventure of who God created them to be!

How about you? How about me? Will you let God heal your identity scars and show you who you really are? I will! I can't wait to find out what God has in store for me. How about you?

Created To Be

Can we decide who we are? Can we decide who we want to be? Can we, like Bruce Jenner, decide our gender? Can we, like Rachel Dolezal, decide our race? Did God make a mistake when he made us the gender or race we were born as? Did God make a mistake when he wired us with the personality we have? Or with the unique giftings we have, different from everyone else? Should we spend our lives wishing we were, and trying to be, someone else?

Is it ours to decide who we are? Or did God create us to be who we are? Let's do something novel and ask God's opinion:

Psalm 139:13-14: 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.

Jeremiah 1:5a: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before your were born I set you apart.

1 Corinthians 12:7: Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.

Hmmmm, our Creator seems to have the opinion that he's our Creator, imagine that. We are not a mistake. We do not have the right to decide who we are, including our gender or our race. Our life does not belong to us; it belongs to God. He made it, we did not make ourselves (sorry to disappoint all the evolutionists out there).

This life is not a hollow, self-filled, selfish journey of “who do I want to be today because it's all about me.” What a horrible deception. Instead, it's wonderful, awe-filled journey of discovering who God made us to be. 

The 3 Is

Identity. Intimacy. Integrity. The three most important Is in the human experience.

We can't live our true identity without intimacy with the Living God – he's our creator and it's in those intimate lover-moments that he whispers to our heart who we really are – who he created us to be.

We can't live in intimacy with him without integrity. For long, at any rate. He leans towards certain things and away from other things. If we lean towards what he leans away from, eventually we will fall away from each other. Then, as he slowly withdraws the sweetness of his presence desperately longing for us to repent, without his intimacy in our life, our sin traps us in a false identity.

But Jesus died so his blood gives us power to overcome the sin that so craftily pulls us away from him. We are free to lean toward what he leans toward – the fruit of the spirit and holiness (ie, integrity).

And the pleasures of intimacy with him and worth more than all the sinful desires of the world put together. Intimacy with the Lord is true pleasure.