The Consuming Fire

 Know therefore today that it is the LORD your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the LORD has spoken to you. --Deuteronomy 9:3

A fire is so interesting; it sucks the life out of the object that it consumes, so it is only possible where there is some level of life. Fire is life exiting. Simply burn a log and watch energy and life departing from the wood. All that will be left after life exits is ash, a lifeless, dead thing. One day the earth will be destroyed by fire. It makes sense. Jesus, the Life that holds it together, will be withdrawn, fire will be the result, and the life will be returned to the Father.When Jesus exits, there is nothing left. He is the Divine Glue that holds all things together, but by fire the glue leaves. II Peter 3:7, “But the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” A great fire is coming to the earth, to things above the earth and those below. When Jesus, who is eternal, exits, a fire that is eternal will remain. There is a fire for those who have not believed. It is only extinguished by faith in Him. Belief is the only thing that can quench it. In the end, the unbelievers will get their wish. He will depart completely from them, and all that will be left is fire. 

- Mike Wells

Church: A Place of Love, Not Judgment

Jesus said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned” (Luke 6:37). Jesus contrasts love and judgment as antithetical activities. This verse comes immediately after Jesus told us to love our enemies (Luke 6:27, 35). We cannot love and be judgmental at the same time.

When the church assumes the role of moral guardians of the broader culture, Christians become judges over others. Not only is there no precedent for this in the life of Jesus, but Scripture explicitly and repeatedly forbids us to judge others.

This why the original sin of the Bible is depicted as eating from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Our fundamental job is to love like God loves. We are not to pretend that we can know good and evil as some kind of moral guardians because we cannot know what God knows.

When the church sets itself up as the moral police of the culture, Christians earn the reputation of being self-righteous judgers rather than loving, self-sacrificial servants. While outcasts and sinners gravitated to Jesus because of his magnetic love, people today tend to steer clear of the church.

The brutal fact is that we Christians are not generally known for our love. This is catastrophic! Love is the all-or-nothing of God’s kingdom. Above all we are to love (Col 1:14). Everything we do is to be done in love (1 Cor 16:14). We are to imitate God by living in Christlike love (Eph 5:1-2).

If we lack love, everything we do is devoid of kingdom value, however impressive it might otherwise be. Not only this, but God has leveraged the expansion of his kingdom on the church loving like Christ loves. By God’s own design, the corporate body of Christ is to grow as the corporate body does exactly what the incarnate body of Christ did—dying for those who crucified him.

Until the broader culture identifies us as loving, humble servants, and until outcasts and sinners are beating down our doors to hang out with us as they did with Jesus, we have every reason to accept our culture’s assessment of as correct: we are more judgmental than loving.

The ugliness of self-serving, judgmental religion pushes people away from God’s kingdom. The beauty of humble, Calvary-like love pulls them in. If we lived in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, we would in time possibly find outcasts and sinners—that is those who are most maligned and judged by religious people—hanging out with us. Only in such a kingdom context can they experience God’s love, worth, and acceptance.

—Adapted from The Myth of a Christian Nation, pages 132-135

- Greg Boyd

What’s the Purpose of Old Testament Law?

Understanding the law in the Old Testament can prove difficult. For instance, Paul believed that the law is good and holy (Rom 7:12). However, he also said that it only serves to expose and even increase sin (Rom 5:20; 7:5-11). He wanted to carry out the law, but he also found himself unable to do this consistently (Rom 7:9-24). The result was that the law brought Paul to the point at which he proclaimed that he was a “wretched man” and cried out for someone who “will rescue me from this body of death” (Rom 7:24).

What then is the purpose of the law?

Paul argued that one of the reasons God gave the law in the first place was to lead us to Christ (Gal 3:17-24). The law leads us to Christ both by showing us what love for God and others looks like and by showing us how we can never be united with God through the law. “No one is justified before God by the law” (Gal 3:11).

We cannot arrive at union with God through the law because we cannot actually get our relationship with God right on the basis of our ethical behavior. We lack the one thing that is necessary for genuine relationship to exist: love.

The law is a classic Catch-22. Our efforts to get life precludes our ever getting life. And this is exactly the point! Through the law, God actually intensifies our need to get life in order to break us from the illusion that we can ever get life from the law.

The law pushes us to see that the only way we can get life is by being united with God, as was always intended. And the only way to be united with God is to receive it as a gift. A life-giving relationship with God can only be entered into when we stop trying to establish it on the basis of judging what is right and wrong. It can only be entered into by placing our total confidence in God’s ability to make us good and abolish our evil in Jesus Christ.

The only way to get life is to have it freely infused into us by the Spirit of God. As we learn to walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh, all that belongs to God by nature begins to evidence in us by grace. When we abide in love, the evidence of love is manifested in our lives. Without striving to keep a list of laws which means that we are trying to acquire something we don’t yet have, we don’t strive to acquire something we don’t yet have. We now can manifest love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in our lives. There is no law that can get us such things (Gen 5:16-23). And there is no law that can get us such things.

—adapted from Repenting of Religion, pages 90-93

- Greg Boyd

The spirit shrieked,

The spirit shrieked, convulsed him and violently
came out. Mark 9:26

Evil never surrenders its grasp without a tremen-
dous fight. We never arrive at any spiritual inher-
intense through the enjoyment of a picnic but al-
ways through the fierce conflicts of the battlefield.
And it is the same in the deep recesses of the soul.
Every human capacity that wins its spiritual free-
dom does so at the cost of blood. Satan is not put
to flight by our courteous request. He completely
blocks our way, and our progress must be recor-
ded in blood and tears. We need to remember
this, or else we will be held responsible for the ar-
rogance of misinterpretation. When we are born
again, it is not into a soft and protected nursery
but into the open countryside, where we actually
draw our strength from the distress of the storm.
"We must go through many hardships to enter
the kingdom of God.  Acts 14:22 

- John Henry Jowett

The Christian and The Supernatural

As the crowds were increasing, He began to say, “This generation is a wicked generation; it seeks for a sign, and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah.”–Luke 11:29

The fact that believers often clamor for the supernatural is understandable, since many have been covertly taught that God’s stamp of approval is His supernatural response in our daily activities.Having God continually act in supernatural ways for us personally is viewed as proof that we are special, not mere dots on the planet. Those who have accepted and identified with the above theory make the following types of statements. “God noticed me! I have worth, value, an identity.” “God sought me out. I had no intentions of getting married, of becoming a minister, of moving to another place. I said, ‘God, if You want me, You will have to come and get me!’ Then God spoke to me, He visited me, He turned my car around.” In other words, “I am special, He wants me, He comes after me supernaturally.” This emphasis also leads the “less fortunate” to make the following statements: “God let me down, He does not notice, care, or work in my life.” “I guess I do not measure up or will ever be good enough,” or, “I will no longer trust God! He allowed my wife to die of cancer, a child to rebel, my unwed daughter to get pregnant, financial bankruptcy, my marriage to be a failure, or my ministry to dissolve.” In short, so this belief system goes, those God loves He blesses, and those He wants to get even with find evil! What seems good reflects His pleasure, and what we perceive as bad indicates His displeasure. The measure of God’s concern for us, then, is seen as His supernatural activity in life to the degree that it makes us comfortable and leaves us feeling good.

Maintaining this kind of thinking is, first of all, anti-God; second, it is Taoism; and third, it is eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This rationale places incredible pressure on believers to act and speak in such a way as to solicit the supernatural activity of God. We are strained, hating ourselves for not doing enough to reap God’s pleasure and angry with Him for not noticing us. We dislike the partiality that He shows, then hate ourselves for disparaging God, and feel we must protect God’s image as well as our own.

Now for a moment let us lay aside all thoughts of the supernatural and move in a different direction to ponder God’s working in the natural.

Often when discipling a discouraged believer I will ask the question, “Did you sometime in the past five years, five weeks, or maybe five days, while reading your Bible, listening to a sermon, or reading a good book, happen to say to God, ‘You can have my life. I want all that is possible for a human who knows You. I want the deep spiritual life; I want a marriage that works’?” Invariably the believer will say yes! I then respond, “Well, that explains it. If you wanted to remain unchanged and comfortable, God would not be using the natural in your life to perfect the answering of your expressed desires.”

What is God’s goal for the believer? We can read it in Matthew 5 - 7, the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, Christ’s life, now the Christian’s life. Everything that we read there is supernatural.Any believer who has attempted to love an enemy knows just how supernatural it is. It takes more Spirit activity to walk across the living room and kiss a mate who offends us than it does to walk on water. In order to reveal the supernatural, the Lord created and dropped man into the natural world, wherein all that comes to him by way of mind, emotion, and body is intended to produce what is unnatural as the natural gives way to the supernatural. The supernatural does not give birth to the supernatural; angels are angels. However, men made of dust, dwelling on the natural earth, can become the sons of God! Supernatural? I think so! Explaining the process of allowing the natural to make us supernatural is somewhat like describing childbirth; it is never really understood until it is one’s own experience. 

Let me give some examples. We go through the natural experience of having no money, no job, and no hope in sight. All of this drives us to look to Him whose presence makes us sense the true wealth in which we participate. Next we can find ourselves relaxed with a lightness of heart concerning finances in the midst of a clamoring world. Supernatural!

We develop out-of-control feelings that come from watching a government make decisions that we cannot live with. First we attempt to change the flesh in the power of the flesh, then we eloquently describe the inconsistencies we see, at length we become disheartened, and in the end we pray. His presence gives comfort, His power fills us with assurance, and His love brings us hope. We know the whole lot in life passes through His hands, and so we rest, we trust, we get on with the real mission, and we live supernaturally in a world falling apart.

The media reports each night how someone, somewhere, is being abused, and we are left feeling hopeless and negative, a state that may suit the world, but it drags down the spirit of the believer. We were made to love God, love life, love our fellow man, and love our work. We draw near to Him to be a positive in a negative world. The sense of wrongness with our lot gives way to the relationship as we experience the greatest positive, Jesus, and become light in the world.

- Mike Wells

Do It Yourself?

Bringing into captivity every thought
   to the obedience of Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:5

In our Lord's life every project was disciplined to the
will of the Father. There was not a movement of an
impulse of His own will as distinct from His Father's--
"The Son can do nothing of Himself."
Then take ourselves--a vivid religious experience,
and every project born of impulse put into action
immediately, instead of being imprisoned and disci-
plined to obey Christ.

This is a day when practical work is overemphasized,
and the saints who are binging every project into cap-
tivity are criticized and told they are not in earnest for
God or for souls. True earnestness is found in obeying
God, not in the inclination to serve Him that is born
of undisciplined human nature. It is inconceivable,
but true nevertheless, that saints are not bringing e-
very project into captivity, but are doing for God at the
instigation of their own human nature which has not
been spiritualized by determined discipline.

We are apt to forget that a man is not only committed
to Jesus Christ for salvation; he is committed to Jesus
Christ's view of God, of the world, of sin, and of the
devil, and that will mean that he must recognize the
responsibility of being transformed by the renewing
of his mind. 

- Oswald Chambers

Tend My Sheep

So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, {son} of John, do you love Me more than these?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Tend My lambs.” --John 21:15

It is interesting that Peter was to tend the sheep in response to loving Jesus. I loved having sheep as a child; it was great fun feeding and watching them. They definitely do need tending. Jesus did not tell Peter to fatten the sheep; that is the job of the butcher. He did not say stimulate and excite the sheep; that is the job of the wolf. He gave the job of shepherding to Peter. So many wipe out because of lack of encouragement and food. What feeds the sheep is the true Word, Jesus. Just talking about Jesus will allow the disciple-maker to feed and tend the sheep. Often I meet people who are so down, so depressed, but simply bringing up the name of Jesus or something He taught or said will bring a lift to their spirits. This is tending. Much of what we see called worship today is only of man; it is not feeding, shepherding, or tending.

My grandfather hated feedlots. It was his feeling that cattle and sheep were something to be nurtured; they needed space and quality conditions. I was surprised once to discover that the feedlots were giving the cattle plastic pellets to eat, for after all, they took the place of grain and could be recycled. Despite the fact that there was no nutritional value in the pellets, they were formulated to trick the normal digestive system of the cow. Church today is full of plastic pellets. Oh, we sing, we jump, we worship (sing ourselves happy), and yet we leave so dissatisfied with nothing to keep us in the coming hours when spiritual strength is needed at work or at home. Tend the sheep! Simply speak of Jesus to one another. This is the food that will keep us beyond the conversation, the sermon, and the meeting. Colossians 3:16 & 17, “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”

- Mike Wells