Challenging the Habit of Judgment

Jesus said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matt 7:2).

In our world where we encounter a nearly constant stream of judgments on social media or the news, this teaching stands out as remarkable. Jesus says that we can either play the judgment game or the grace game. If you don’t want to be judged, don’t judge others. Extend to them the same gracious love that God has extended to you. But if you insist on playing the judgment game, then know that the judgment you give is the judgment you’ll get.

This command of Jesus stands out even more when we read,

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye’ (Matt 7:3-4).

It’s important to note that the people Jesus was talking to did not have greater sins than others. In fact, by the standards of the day, those people would have been considered above average morally. Jesus was pointing out that they needed to be free from the addiction to (that is getting life from) judging others.

He did this by instructing them to think in the opposite way about people, one that revolts against the standards of their day … and ours.

To judge another person is to ascribe worth to yourself at the expense of others. This minimizes your sins and faults, while maximizing the sins and faults of others. If you’ve ever said to yourself, “At least, I’m not as bad as that person (or group)” then you were likely feeding off the idol of judgment.

Jesus proclaimed that we are to regard our own sin as plank-sized sins while regarding other people’s sins as speck-sized sins. It can be especially challenging in our world where the faults and sins of public figures are constantly scrutinized in the media, but whatever sins we think we see in another, we are to consider our own sin as worse.

With the apostle Paul, we are to see ourselves as “the worst of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15-16). When you let go of your need to judge others as a way of getting life and worth, you are freed to get your life from God so that you can love others as Jesus loved. Nothing is more central to the Kingdom than agreeing with God about every person’s unsurpassable worth and reflecting this in how we act toward them. Nothing is more important than living in Christlike love for all people at all times.

—Adapted from The Myth of a Christian Religion, pages 51-55

- Greg Boyd

"What is the truth?

"What is the truth? That at the Cross God forgave all your sins - past tense. At the Cross God took away the rules and laws that stood opposed to you. At the Cross He disarmed the powers and principalities. (Colossians 2:13) He forgave ALL your sins.
You have received fulness in Christ! Fulness!

I want to shoot a sacred cow - the teaching that says that every time you sin, you have got to confess your sin in order to get your relationship with God restored again - is heresy and it is Old Covenant teaching (1 John 1:8-9) "If you confess your sins He is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness". That was not written to Christians - it was written to a congregation that were a mixture of Gnostics and people who were confused by Gnostics. Gnostics were teaching that sin doesn't exist in the world, they weren't born again - they didn't believe in the blood or the Cross and John's writing to address and rebuke that Gnostic idea and that particular Scripture is telling the Gnostics - you had better get saved!

To be cleansed of all unrighteousness is when you get saved. But if you go to Hebrews 10:1-4, it warns that under the Old Covenant they had a system where you had to confess your sins whenever you made a sin and it says this didn't help them get rid of their sin conciousness - it actually was a reminder of their sins and then it says that the blood of bulls and of goats could not take away their feeling of sinfulness and guilt. It says we have a New Covenant and by ONE sacrifice this Priest doesn't do a sacrifice year after year and over and over again but by one sacrifice He has made perfect FOREVER all those who are being made holy! There is no more sacrifice needed for sin!

The next verse says that the Holy Spirit testifies to this. What? That your sins are forgiven! That you are perfect forever and that God doesn't remember your sins anymore. The Holy Spirit isn't telling you that you are a sinner - He is telling you that your sins are gone and that you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Evangelicals teach yes on the Cross Jesus may have died for your sins - come to Jesus and He has forgiven all your sins. Then you come forward and get saved and they tell you; "Yes but every time you sin, your relationship is cut off with God". So then you have to confess your sin to restore your fellowship with God.

When did Jesus die for your sin? Did He die before you committed any sins? Before you committed one sin, Jesus TOTALLY dealt with ALL your sin and forgave ALL your sin (that's what it says in Colossians 2:13: "Having forgiven all your sins"). HAVING forgiven - not "going to where you confess". HAVING forgiven ALL your sins! (Romans 5:19) - God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself NOT counting men's sins against them but imputing and counting your sins against Jesus and imputing Jesus' righteousness to you.

"Rob it doesn't sound right to me!". Yes because you are thinking Old Covenant. This is a New Covenant and it is superior to the Old one and based on better promises. Stop mixing the two and getting confused! When you come to Christ He has already forgiven your sins past, present and future - they're not being counted and the Bible says in Colossians 2 we have been given fulness in Christ!
Everytime the devil says you need to confess your sin because you have sinned then he is getting you to remind yourself that you don't have the final and full package from Jesus Christ - you have got to DO something. If you have got to confess your sin to keep your relationship with God open then you never got the full and final package at salvation."

- Excerpt from the 2008 Rob Rufus sermon:

So Who Was Praying?

I am utterly confident that prayer works, but am far less certain about how prayer works. God invites and commands us to come to him with our petitions, our requests. He promises that he hears them, that through the intercession of the Spirit he perfects them, and that it is his joy to answer them. He gives us the things we long for, though not always in the way we ask and often not in the time we ask. Still, he is a God who hears and answers prayer.

I understand that much, but not a whole lot more. Like all Christian parents, I pray for the salvation of my children. Let’s say I pray for the salvation of my child 5,000 times or 10,000 times over the course of his life. Then one day my child becomes a Christian by putting his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. God has answered prayer! But is he responding to a certain one of my prayers, either the first one or the last one or another one I made along the way? Or is he responding to the quantity of my prayers, as if I’ve now prayed enough times that I receive what I’ve so long desired? Or maybe he is responding to the earnestness of my prayers as they’ve grown sufficiently pleading and sorrowful to have gained his ear. I just don’t know how all that works. I’m quite sure I don’t need to. I just need to know that I ought to pray and that it is God’s joy to answer prayer.

I’ve been thinking about all of this in a very precious context—the context of my wife. Aileen is a Christian and has been since we were 19 years old. But there’s no obvious earthly reason that Aileen should be. While she had a safe, stable, loving childhood, it was completely non-religious. When I met her as a twelfth-grade high school student she had never read a Bible or heard any of its stories. She had never set foot in a church. She had never heard anyone pray or heard a Christian song or listened to a sermon. She wasn’t an unbeliever because she had rejected the gospel but because she had never heard it or had opportunity to believe it. Then my mother took her out for breakfast, shared that gospel with her, and encouraged her to respond to it. She did immediately, confidently, and irrevocably. In a moment Aileen became a Christian, her life transformed, her eternal destiny fixed at the very first hearing of the good news. She was and remains the only practicing Christian in her family—direct or extended.

This is a wondrous thing that makes sense only in the context of prayer. Someone must have been praying for her! How else can we explain it? Why else would God have so suddenly and unexpectedly plucked her out for himself? It must have been prayer.

I have spent a lot of time wondering whose prayers were answered in her salvation. I’m sure I prayed for her a bit after meeting her as a high school student, but probably not much. Surely my parents had been praying for my future spouse since my childhood, though only as a stranger they would someday meet. Was it people in her neighbourhood who prayed for her and pleaded with God to extend his salvation? Was it a local church who perhaps prayed their way house by house? Was it a stranger in a distant land for whom the Lord had somehow brought to mind a pretty brown-haired girl in Canada who knew there just had to be more to life than this and who needed to hear the gospel just once? I don’t know, of course, and don’t know how I ever could know. It’s a line of enquiry I’ll want to pursue with the Lord one day. I know I’m not capable of unraveling the whole tapestry God has woven, but I’ve got a theory.

Much of Aileen’s family emigrated from Scotland a decade before she was born. She was and is my Scottish girl. And Scotland has a special Christian heritage. Though such days have long since passed, it was was once a bastion of Christianity, a bright light in a dark, dark world. At one time it counted among its citizens a great many believers—believers who prayed. They prayed for themselves and their families and they prayed for their nation and its people. They prayed for the present and the future, for generations alive and generations still to come. And I just can’t help but wonder if her salvation was the long answer to one or many of those prayers. I just can’t help but wonder if many, many years ago a Scottish family pleaded with God to extend his salvation to their children and to their children’s children. And maybe, just maybe, God answered that prayer in her salvation. Maybe, just maybe, he continues to answer it as our children now hear that gospel from her lips and as they accept it in repentance and faith. Maybe, just maybe, God will make it all clear in eternity and I will be able to thank those people for being faithful Christians who faithfully prayed.

The Ugliest Religion in the World

I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.--John 15:5

What, exactly, is the most ugly religion in the world?I have come in contact with countless religions, and I believe that I have found the absolute worst one. Christianity! That is right, Christianity! Why? Every other religion is created to be a religion, centering in laws, sites, chants, and ceremonies, things that signify the very nature of a religion. However, Christianity centers on and in Jesus. Christianity centers on a relationship with the Founder, who is not a teacher of new rules but is the Son of God, who was raised from the dead, actually living in and through the followers. When reduced to a list of behaviors to be imitated, Christianity is just too high of an ideal to attain. Since no one can imitate Jesus, the religious have to come up with a set of laws that they can imitate to exalt themselves over others. Take Jesus out of it and Christianity becomes ugly, if not out-and-out goofy. The religious cannot emphasize Jesus, else in so doing they hold up a model they are not able to imitate. Therefore, they hold up everything else that appears spiritual. Things I have heard during my travels are nearly unbelievable. “Wear a white shirt when you preach. White allows the Holy Spirit to get out of you easier!” “Jesus said to love your neighbor. That is why I am right to have an affair with my neighbor.” “The color red is never to be worn by a Christian; it is evil.” “A woman is never to enter the sanctuary in anything other than a dress.” “Command God to give you wealth and health in the name of Jesus. He has to obey you.” I could go on and on, but to what end? Christianity as a religion is undeniably ugly. By bringing Jesus back to the center where He belongs, letting Him live through us and lifting Him up without fear, no religion on earth can comparably measure up to Christianity. The world would be so uncomfortable by the contrast that they would have to rid themselves of us, just as they did Jesus.

- Mick Wells

For Reflection

Can you not see now how it is, my beloved, that when the sons of God present themselves before the Lord, Satan comes also among them? This very same experience happened to none other than our blessed Lord Jesus – the Pattern Son. Did you notice how strangely Matthew and Mark speak of Christ's temptation? "And immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil" (Mk. 1:12; Mat. 4:1). What a strange statement! The Holy Spirit of God drives the sinless Son of God into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan, the arch enemy of all righteousness, a murderer from the beginning, and the father of lies! Ah, but it was necessary for the Son to be PROVEN, to be made STRONG, to OVERCOME in these realms before proceeding on into His glorious ministry and the agony and death of the cross.

Do you suppose the Devil came to Jesus there as a weird-looking figure, with little, evil-looking horns protruding from his temples, and a pointed tail? How often with our childish and distorted understanding, have we pictured Jesus confronted by that legendary figure in the red suit, with a pitchfork in his hands! This is nought but foolishness, for Satan is spirit, and spirit is INVISIBLE ENERGY! How many times have you been tempted by the Devil? Can you count the times? How often has he spoken to you, enticing, suggesting, compelling? Have you ever seen him? Have you ever heard his audible voice? Certainly not! And yet – you HAVE sensed his presence, you HAVE heard his voice, you HAVE felt his power! It was all in your MIND, in your EMOTIONS. And does not our Lord, the Spirit of Truth, speak to us in the same way? That still small voice, the inner urging, the inward knowing, the spiritual consciousness – all from a dimension beyond the natural senses.

Because it is all in our mind and heart does not mean that it is imagination or hallucination! In the depths of my spirit I am absolutely certain that there was not some hideous spirit-being materializing before the eyes of Jesus in that Judean wilderness. Remember – Jesus was not only the Son of God, He was the Son of man. And being both He was capable not only of hearing from God, but hearing those things that be of man. So when we speak of that ancient Serpent which is the Devil and Satan, we are not talking about some mighty fallen angel, but that mind which savors the things of man – the carnal mind. The apostle James put it this way: "But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death" (James 1:14-15). The Moffat Translation reads, 'Everyone is tempted as he is beguiled and allured by his own desire, the Desire conceives and breeds sin, while Sin matures and gives birth to death." Everyone has desires of one kind or another, and that really can be quite natural. When we see the word "lust", most Christians think it is used exclusively in a negative, sensual, or sexual context The word simply means desire, and a person's desires are not always evil. The Greek word EPITHUMIA is translated primarily as "lust" in the King James Bible, but the same word is also translated "desire" in Lk. 22:15 where our Lord Himself told His disciples how much He longed (desired, lusted) to eat the Passover with them. A related Greek word, EPITHUMEO, is often translated as "desire" and is used in several places in a positive context, as in desiring to know the things of God (Mat 13:17). Even in the things of the Spirit one must keenly discern between his own desire and the desire of the Spirit.

The record states that after fasting for forty days, Jesus hungered. When you're hungry, what kind of desire do you have? You want to eat! In that crucial moment the Tempter came to Him. He began to feel the physiological pangs of hunger, and then the thought occurred to Him. Jesus dropped down from the high and holy thought of God, into the reasoning of the human mind. He descended in consciousness from the Son of God to the Son of man. He said, "I know who I am; I can turn these stones into bread." And in His natural mind the voice cunningly suggested, "If you are the Son of God, go ahead and do it! Use your sonship to fill your belly! Use it to satisfy your own needs and desires!" But Jesus quickly discerned that wily Devil and knew how to nip that idea in the bud before it had time to blossom. He got to it before it could conceive, before it could start making a baby of sin. Jesus answered out of the depths of His spirit, "It is written – man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Mat.4: 4). And that ended that temptation! The battle lay not with some mythical personage outside of Himself. The conflict was within The voice was an inner voice. The suggestion was in His mind, its power in His emotions and will. God speaks to us in our mind and spirit Satan also speaks in our mind and heart. There is no monster without. There are three things in this vast world, and only three – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; briefly, appetite, avarice, and ambition. I do not think you will be able to avoid the conclusion that all the inventions, creations, and contrivances of man are in existence to cater to these three things. It was with these three things that Eve was tempted. She saw the tree was good for food (the lust of the eyes), a tree to be desired (the lust of the flesh), a tree to make one wise (the pride of life), and the temptation was not from without but from within. How remarkably the three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness parallel these three! Every temptation of the Devil comes to us through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. There are no others. Not for Adam and Eve, not for Jesus, and not for us.

Humankind has an enemy – a wily Nemesis, an adversary, described in God's Word as desperately wicked, deceitful above all things. This enemy has adversely affected every generation of humankind from the Garden of Eden to the present Just who, or what, is this inimical deceiver? The prophet Jeremiah unmasked this enemy in these words of inspiration, "The HEART is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked," and he went on to ask the searching question, "who can know it" To the enlightened mind of this prophet, the depth of iniquity of which the human heart is capable is so great that it is beyond the ability of any man to comprehend. How many times have you heard it? Someone perpetrates an unbelievably ghastly crime; like the axe murders of an entire family by a young lad barely in his teens, or the brutal murder of a father and a mother by a teenager a few years ago, who buried them in a shallow grave, and then repeatedly drove a tractor over the site, in an attempt to cover the crime – and yet relatives, close friends and near neighbors all said, in a state of bewilderment and shock, "But he was such a nice, quiet, decent boy!"

A motion picture some years ago portrayed the dual lives led by a judge, who had two families, some distance apart! He had "married" two different women, was actually living with each for a certain number of days each week; would then disappear, as if he had some important responsibilities in a distant town, when in actuality he was going to spend the remainder of that week with a second family. Obviously, each wife thought she knew this man, thoroughly! After all, just how well do you know you own spouse? Interesting, isn't it? We feel we truly know our husbands, wives, children; our closest and dearest friends. But according to the word of God we don't even know ourselves. We, perhaps above all people, are most often deceived by our own hearts! There is a deeper part to all of us – a part that only God knows! As a friend has so aptly written: "We should not find this so amazing a passage of scripture if it were not for one important thing. Jeremiah did not list an exception, saying, The heart is deceitful above all things except the Devil. ' He merely stated that the heart is deceitful above all things, PERIOD! Since Jeremiah spake by the Spirit of God, this could not possibly have been a slip of the tongue or something uttered before it was thought through. If the heart is deceitful above all things, it naturally follows that there is nothing more deceitful. The heart of man, then, is the MOST DECEITFUL THING IN THE WORLD!

"There is no doubt whatever in my mind that Jesus had this very scripture in mind when He spoke the words recorded in Mk. 7:15-23. "There is nothing,' He said, 'from without a man that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, these are they that defile the man. ' Having said that, He uttered the statement that so often followed His teachings when there was contained in them a mystery,' IF any man has ears to hear, let him hear.' If we will be honest with ourselves, we will have to admit that we have fostered and taught for generations a concept that directly contradicts the words of Jesus Christ, for we have, indeed, declared that there IS something from without a man that can enter into him and defile him. We have called him Satan (an adversary), and so he is! We have called him a murderer and a liar, and so he is! We have had much truth about him – but the one thing we have NOT known about him is his LOCATION! We have said that he was without – Jesus said that he is within! If there is nothing from without a man (and in the Greek that reads: not one thing) that entering into him can defile him, then we must conclude the Satan's activity is not without, but within.

"As we continue to read this passage, we hear Jesus say, 'For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication's, murders, thefts, coveteousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these things come from within and defile the man.' Every sin category imaginable is contained in this discourse. Everything that a man could ever think or do that is evil is said by Jesus to come – not from outside of man but from within! In our consideration of this passage, there is one all-important phrase that we must be careful to note, for it is the key to the true nature of Satan and the heart of man. Jesus said, 'For from within out of the heart of men...' It is imperative that we notice the grammatical number of the two words here. The word 'heart' is singular being in the Greek in the genitive singular case. The word 'men' however is plural being in the genitive plural case. We have, then, ONE HEART but many men!" – end quote. This heart is the heart of the Self, the inward nature of man, one great nature shared by all the inhabitants of the world, the very heart of Adam shared with his many-membered body!

The natural mind is the mind channeling the condition of the human heart. It is not the same mind that understands how to drive your car, or lusts after someone of the opposite sex, that also understands the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. Not at all! The promise is sure: "Then will I sprinkle dean water upon you, and ye shall be clean... a new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony (spiritually unresponsive) heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a (soft, pliable, responsive) heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statues, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them" (Eze. 36:25-27). This new creation of which the Spirit speaks is blest not only with a new heart and a new spirit but with a NEW MIND as well. For, Paul says, "Who hath known the mind of the Lord." But WE HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST" (I Cor. 2:16). There is by regeneration within ourselves, beyond the realm of our conscious knowledge, a divine life, the child of God's Spirit, ever unwearied, ever growing and maturing, to gain control of our whole being, and transform us into the image of God.

Samson's Crisis

We come now to the famous crisis of his life when he was to learn once and for all that redeemed man is no good unless he has found the union basis, which is what we also call sanctification. We learn that it is not we but God and that God can take us through the crisis moments because it is He operating. We know God. We have our weaknesses, but God can take us through them.

Samson did not know that. He loved a woman named Delilah, the famous Delilah. I do not think he was married to her but he had a real passion for her. The five lords of the Philistines made her one of their agents by offering her eleven thousand pieces of silver to get the secret of his strength. Remember, those were external days and they did not know the secret we have within us today. Thank God, it is a universal secret today and we are all Samson's in our way.

Apparently she had a great hold on him because he visited her again and again. A woman has great power when a man is grabbed by a passion for her. Time and time again she said, “Now, tell me wherein your strength lies.” He pretended it was a game. He did not know there were men lying in wait to grab him when they found the secret. Three times he played his tricks with her. She got hotter and hotter and put pressure on him. Finally she said to him, “I won’t love you if you don’t tell me your secret. I don’t call it love when you act like this.” She cut him right to the bone. Thinking he might lose her, he told his secret.

He sold out his central allegiance to God for the love of that woman. However, that was not his basis. We will prove later that it was his soul, not his spirit. He was God’s man and he never ceased to be God’s man; but he almost sold out his very birthright. Not quite, for he was not like Esau who sold his spirit. The point is that flesh cannot exist by itself. That is why we must not judge people for going to the flesh. Unless God is in you, you cannot resist. It is only in Christ, in the power of His death and resurrection, that we can walk and be delivered. We can have confidence in that deliverance and be kept in that deliverance. Samson did not have the confidence that he could be kept by God so he played too far in his weakness for women. He did not have the controlling power of God to keep him. He did to a certain extent, for God used him. There was a purpose in his going too far, for he must be broken. If God’s ultimate power was going to come through, he would have to ultimately be a broken man, a God-filled man to the death. We all have to go through that and this was Samson’s time.

The world mocks and makes up plays about Delilah but a wonderful thing was happening here. This was God. He was using the sex drive in the man for His own purposes. We must not say that Samson sold himself totally for he only sold his flesh. He got to a point where he was beyond resisting, but if he had walked with God, God would have kept him from going beyond resistance. He would have stopped where he should have stopped long before. God would have held him. What he did did not come from his center but he sold his center out. For twenty years he had been accepted by Israel as a judge and now he had sold his commission, his nation, his reputation, himself. It is possible to go pretty far but much less possible if you have moved in, because there is something in God that will not let you. God has you and He will keep you. There is nothing that says you will not have whatever your special tendencies or weaknesses may be, as anybody else does, but you will not be held by them. You only know that if you have settled into knowing you are not you but He, that He is the only One living. You are not safe out of union.

Samson was not safe because, although he was God’s man and the Spirit of God came upon him, he did not know God in that inner relationship which men like David, Elijah, Moses, and Joshua came to know. So he had to go through this and, therefore, in that sense, he could not help it. This was God’s purpose because God was going to strike His final blow at the Philistines by the weakness of Samson.

That very weakness problem made strength, perfected in that very weakness. This thing we could call sin was the very thing God used. The sin was not the sex; the sin was selling out his faith. In those days sex did not matter as much. Those were different days. This thing was used by the flesh in him to cause him to practically deny his faith, which was the real sin.

Choosing to keep her love rather than keep his faith was his sin. It is equivalent to our setting out in a ministry and then destroying our ministry by being involved in something of the flesh. That is much less likely to happen if we have moved into this union life. We can never say it cannot happen for Paul says, “For it is a mighty force that I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection lest that by any means, when I have ministered to others I, myself should become a castaway” (I Cor. 9:27).

Castaway does not mean thrown out. It means disapproved. It does not mean the loss of salvation. It is the same idea as the branch burned with the vine. It is men who cast you out. Samson was no good to men, to Israel. We can be cast out of our ministry but we have not lost our salvation. We may lose our ways so that men have no use for us, but we have not lost our salvation. We have no word for them, no message. They will not come. We lose out on that level. That is the level that Samson lost out on but he did not lose his inner relationship, his inner knowing.

This is how God moved, and so he had to go to the bottom. He had to become a helpless, weak person, put in prison, blinded, and made to sweat away at grinding corn at a mill. He became a normal, physical body, a laboring slave.

Then came this remarkable way of God. God is with his people, even these early people. There Samson was, and he knew God. He knew that he had lost his way. All he had really lost was his way; he had not lost God. His hair began to grow again and it began to dawn on him that he was getting back to being a Nazarite again. He was still in grace, God’s man. He had made a mess but the Philistines did not know that his symbol would grow again. He was conscious of coming back to the place where the power of God could come through him.

Not long after Samson had this growing realization, a great occasion arose. The Philistines wanted to rejoice because Samson, Israel’s Goliath, had been destroyed. This Samson was a slave now and they wanted to have a great celebration. It symbolized to them that the whole nation was back under their control. They planned a great feast in a building so remarkable that they had three thousand on the roof. They certainly built in those days! In some strange way, the building was held up by two great pillars. The Lord was moving now, and they wanted to make sport of him. The pillars were centered in this building which had this great crown, including the lords of the Philistines in it. They had a little boy lead him in by the hand in between those pillars. I suppose this was a way to laugh at him best. They conveyed to him that these were the pillars that held the building up. Then Samson said to the lad, “Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I may lean upon them.”

Suddenly he saw it! My symbol is back with me; God is with me. Then he prayed. This was new. This was his real relationship now, because he had not thought of praying before. “Remember me, O Lord, I pray thee, strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once. I’ll give my life for this.” Now he becomes an intercessor. “My life doesn’t matter; I’ll give my life for my two eyes.” He had been

God’s man and this is the way he looked at it. Obviously this was the way of the Israelites’ deliverance from the Philistines if they would take it. Then he took hold of those pillars upon which the house was borne, one with his right hand and the other with his left. That is it! He would die that in the end God’s work would be glorified. He knew he had come back again to be anointed of God. He would die with the Philistines.

And it says, “He bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life” (Judges 16:30). Then they took his body and buried it.
So that is the story of Samson. There are some great revelations of the way God works by people who have to come to the same way in the end. You have to come out of the idea of “If I’m equipped in some separate way I can do it.” No! I have to come back into the center where the “I” has disappeared and God is the One and all is God. What happens to me is not the point. God will now operate by me. That is the history of Samson as presented to us.

- Norman Grubb

Tsunami of Grace

Some say that a tsunami of grace is currently sweeping across the world. If so, then one of the signs of this grace awakening will be an increasing emphasis on the short and simple gospel Jesus revealed and the New Testament writers proclaimed.

The gospel of grace is unlike the rule-based religion many of us are familiar with. Religion is complicated but grace is simple. Religion is vague but grace is crystal clear. Religion finds fault and does nothing to help, but the grace of God propels you triumphantly through life’s toughest challenges. Religion will give you a headache and leave you sick and tired, but grace gives strength to the weary and life to the dead. Religion seeks to bridle the free but grace liberates the prisoner and the oppressed.

It is my firm conviction that as more people come to appreciate the beauty and richness of the undiluted gospel, sermons on other subjects will disappear like yesterday’s news. The power of God is only revealed in the gospel, and we have been called to preach nothing less.

NOT under LAW

"Under the Old Covenant of Moses sin is defined as "falling short of the law" or breaking the law. Sin is when you don't keep the law perfectly under Moses.

Under the New Covenant of grace sin is clearly defined throughout the New Testament as unbelief in the goodness of God. Sin is not defined as falling short of the law or breaking the law.

THERE AINT NO LAW ANYMORE!

There is no ..(law) to measure your sins because you are redeemed from the curse of the law ...... in Colossians 2 Christ cancelled the written code, the rules and regulations that stood opposed to us nailing it to the Cross! So that is gone! So sin in the New Covenant is unbelief in Jesus and unbelief in the goodness of God and unbelief in the grace of God!

So you can see how much sin is going on in legalistic churches! When you put the law on people you are in unbelief because the law is not based on faith. The law blinds you to the goodness of God and the law drives you to self-righteousness and to try and earn the blessing of God because you think God is not good, He's stingy, He's mean and He wants to punish me so I better behave and do good to earn the blessing! That is not a good image of God and that is never the way God wanted to relate to man.

He ALWAYS wanted it to be by grace before time began!'

Rob Rufus sermon excerpt

It's a Relationship

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Mark 12:30,31

When my boys were young I explained just how im-
portant it is never to allow Christianity to become
anything other than a relationship, for all our 'doing'
is to grow out of a relationship with the living Christ.

I am quite sure that if we included in a mother's job
description the shuttling of every kid on the block to
various activities, with the passing of time that mom
might become resentful. However, the same mother
thinks nothing of providing for her own children. As
she does the laundry, picks up after them, cooks, runs
them to various activities, cares for them when they
are sick, and confronts them when wrong, the thought
of motherhood's being a burden does not enter her
mind. Why? Because the mother has a relationship
with her children.

Few working fathers are vexed by the thought of work-
ing to provide for their families. In fact, a job that is dis-
liked is actually tolerable if one is providing for others.

In contrast, children can believe themselves put upon
when required to act on behalf of the family. That is,
they do not yet see the relationship the foundation of
the doing. As they mature and reach adulthood, they
who rebelled at the smallest inconvenience will begin
to take care of and provide for parents in times of need,
not from duty but as a normal outgrowth of the rela-
tionship.

We must be careful to emphasize the relationship that
we are to have with God. Within the context of this
relationship, anything asked of us is a privilege, not a
duty. We are not told to perform so that God will not
get us, but from love, or as a sign of commitment and
spirituality. Obedience is an enjoyable blessing amid
a loving relationship with our Lord.

- Michael Wells, from My Weakness for His Strength

Hmmmm, how many of us serve God because of the word,
'ought,' or 'to please' a God who demands a certain amount
of 'doing good?' It has been a huge relief, as I have aged,
to realize that I am living out my Christian life in a rela-
tionship and not out of the word, 'should.' If He is not ask-
ing me to do something for Him, I am free to take a walk,
read a book, or take a nap--without guilt! Even these
activities flow from His Life. We have a wonderful loving
Father who rejoices in us, in our uniqueness, gifts,pleasures,
desires. Oh, this fills me with such wonder!

Let the Dead Bury the Dead

But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.” --Matthew 8:22

I do not know about you, but I have had it with the media. This is not the age of information but the age of misinformation. When asked what I thought of the President, my response was, “I do not know him.” The inquirer proceeded to tell me exactly what he was like. I asked him how he knew all of that. “Well, it was on television!” Amazing! I have done the very same thing myself. Actually, I have been in different parts of the world when things were unstable or in an uproar; not once have I found it to be like the reports on television. I listened to a reporter who was purportedly asking questions. However, he was only making accusations and then writing his own commentary. The fellow being thus “interviewed” finally asked, “Who told you I ever said such a thing?” The reporter went quiet, because no one had ever said that; he had made it up. There is the constant promoting of an agenda in the media. Why is all the bad news shown on TV? The news is calculated to stir our flesh to fear, resentment, frustration, anxiety, bigotry, and divisions. Once the bad news is received and our focus is on it, we will surrender our peace to it. There is always something the world offers to stir pride, to encourage self-righteousness or unrighteousness, and to make us think the world and its “elite” must act to fix things. It is all piffle. We cannot believe any of it. I can go months without watching the news and find nothing that has changed the next time I see a broadcast. It would be interesting to look at what was reported as absolute truth last year and see where the facts lie today. This brings me to my point: Should I just keep my head in the sand and ignore the world and what is happening around me? Jesus said it best: “Let the dead bury their own dead!” The things of the world creating the mess belong to the world; let them report on it and stew over it. They are dead; let them bury their dead. Put it all aside and follow Christ; we are alive in a kingdom of truth.The scuba diver ventures into a domain wherein the things that bother the fish ultimately do not bother him, for his world exists above. What happens in the world, even if it is true, does not change our job description.

Why Death? Why Life?

But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. –Romans 8:11

Often, and particularly when we are at a funeral, we ask the question, “Why death?” However, I have found that the more pressing question is, “Why life?” Why are we alive? If we can grasp the deeper issue of what the purpose of life is, then death immediately loses its sting.

It is important to understand that LIFE is JESUS. God had to become a man in order to reveal how His creation worked. The inventor became the invention. He was LIFE on earth, and He conquered everything that works against LIFE and returned to heaven as the Son of Man. God will never forget us, for at His right hand is a constant reminder of His commitment to us. Jesus is God, but also a victorious Man seated next to the Father. To forget man, God would need to forget His Son. Impossible!

There are two primary revelations that existence on earth brings to mankind. First, as the world squeezes us, we eventually come to the realization that we cannot live life on earth. At this point, Jesus makes His offer. “I lived on earth and overcame. Invite Me to live in you, and I will live life on earth through you.” This is not to say we are robots; it is merely a recognition that the LIFE that lived successfully on earth is now in heaven with the ability to enter all men, making them sons of God. Second, once Christ enters our lives, the pressure of the earth continues in order that the new LIFE we have within might be revealed. Having enemies reveals that we have a LIFE within that can love an enemy. Being offended reveals the LIFE that dwells within that can return a blessing. There is a saying among believers that actually is Buddhist in origin and says, “Life stinks, but God is good.” No! If stinking life reveals the true LIFE in me, then even stinking life is good. I want all that the world throws at me, for each time I am assaulted, three things happen. First, I try to fix it all, then I give up, and the Lord fixes me! Each so-called rotten event releases HIS LIFE, and my God keeps getting bigger and bigger than events or circumstances.

Why life? To receive and display HIS LIFE! Death is a continuation of that and is not frightening.

BEING AND DOING

Major W. Ian Thomas

This is a divine vocation into which you have been redeemed, as "His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that you should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10) can only be fulfilled in the energy and power of the One who indwells you now by His Spirit, as He walked once only in the energy and power of the Father who indwelt Him through the Spirit. Of Himself He said, "I can of mine own self do nothing" (John 5:19), and of you He says, in John 15:5, "Without me you can do nothing."

How much can you do without Him? Nothing!

It is amazing how busy you can be doing nothing! Did you ever find that out? "The flesh ­ everything that you do apart from Him ­ "profiteth nothing" (John 6:63), and there is always the awful possibility, if you do not discover this principle, that you may spend a lifetime in the service of Jesus Christ doing nothing! You would not be the first, and you would not be the last ­ but that, above everything else, we must seek to avoid!

So you discover that the life which you possess as a born-again Christian is of Him, and it is to Him, and every moment that you are here on earth it must be through Him ­ of Him, through Him, to Him all things! "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice" (Romans 12:1).

The Lord Jesus Christ claims the use of your body, your whole being, your complete personality so that as you give yourself to Him through the eternal Spirit, He may give Himself to you through the eternal Spirit, that all your activity as a human being on earth may be His activity in and through you; that every step you take, every word you speak, everything you do, everything you are, may be an expression of the Son of God, in you as man.

If it is of Him and through Him and to Him, where do you come in? You do not! That is just where you go out! That is what Paul meant when he said, "For me to live is Christ" (Philippians 1:21). The only Person whom God credits with the right to live in you is Jesus Christ; so reckon yourself to be dead to all that you are apart from what He is, and alive unto God only in all that you are because of what He is (Romans 6:1 1).

It is for you to BE ­ it is for Him to DO! Rest fully available to the Saving Life of Christ.

Major Ian Thomas,