Giving All

Michael gives an outstanding analogy that provides much needed insight into one of the most widely quoted but perhaps least truly understood verses in all of Scripture.  Read carefully this day’s writing and see how you will begin to “love the Lord your God” (and “understand” many other truths) in stages as the days go by…

Giving All

Love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. --Mark 12:30           

Many make the mistake of wanting to understand exactly what is entailed in their commitment to give all to God before they take the step. They must realize that giving our all cannot be understood before it is revealed over the years we live with the Lord. We will not know what giving all means until we die; all that Jesus personally means to us is not revealed in one day, but rather over the course of a lifetime. A good analogy is marriage. In the wedding ceremony we pledge to give all, but we will not know exactly what all is involved in that until the day that we die. In giving all to God, the important thing is that we do it once with our mouth; though we may feel nothing or experience no change, He will reveal in stages what we have done with those words.

When will we ever learn “just doing” without having to have “understanding before doing”???  When we learn just that, we move giant leaps forward in experiencing God.  Perhaps the “now” generation (I want it now! …instant gratification generation) has hindered many from ever abandoning themselves to trust and obey God.  I wonder how many Christians will live a more relaxed and comfortable and productive “life as  a Christian” with just the simple understanding that Michael gives us today about “just doing” before we “have understanding.”  Should help a lot of Unbelieving Believers or Doubters…

Barbara and I have been married a little over 48 years…and, I now know that I am still getting understanding as to all that is involved in the pledge (marriage vow) that I made a little over 48 years ago!  Get this…til death do we part.  And NOW, I can begin to see that I verbally gave all to God back in June of 1980 when I was Born Again…and I can look back and see that all the years since, God has been revealing (and it has been in stages!) what I had done with those words.  Well, amen!

And, isn’t it beautiful that it takes so much pressure, and so many questions, off my plate!  I can relax and trust God to reveal more and more as time goes by, and watch my understanding expand all the while!  Hallelujah!

The Demonic Affects Us All

Many contemporary Western Christians think we only engage in spiritual warfare when we encounter somebody who is exhibiting bizarre, demonically-inspired behavior, such as the demonized people Jesus confronted in the Gospels. Since most Western Christians rarely hear about, let alone personally encounter, such people, the concept of spiritual warfare plays little to no role in their lives.


Once we understand that people can be demonized to various degrees (see the post from yesterday on this), we can begin to appreciate that spiritual warfare cannot be restricted to these sorts of extreme cases. Rather, spiritual warfare encompasses every area of life. Consider these biblical teachings that speak to a pervasive demonic presence in our world:

• Whenever we try to buttress our credibility by taking oaths, Jesus says our speech “comes from the evil one” (Mt 5:37).
• Our thought life is a battlefield. We must continually resist the enemy by striving to take every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor 10:3-5).
• Legalism is a doctrine inspired by demons (1 Tim 4:1-3).
• Christians are to live life as if they are soldiers stationed on foreign soil, always focused on pleasing their commanding officer (2 Tim 2:4). As soldiers, we are involved in a constant struggle not against “flesh and blood” but against principalities and powers (Eph 6:12).
• Christians are to live life as if they are soldiers stationed on foreign soil, always focused on pleasing their commanding officer (2 Tim 2:4). As soldiers, we are involved in a constant struggle not against “flesh and blood” but against principalities and powers (Eph 6:12).
• Whenever we let anger simmer in our heart, we give the devil a foothold (Eph 4:26-27), and whenever we fail to forgive others, we play into Satan’s schemes (2 Cor 2:10-11).
• When Paul was prevented from going on a missionary journey to Thessalonica, he interpreted this as Satan blocking his way (1 Thes 2:18).
• Satan is called “the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” (Eph 2:2), the “prince” of this world (Jn 12:31, 14:31, 16:11) and the “god of this age” (2 Cor 4:4) who controls “the whole world” (1 Jn 5:19). He owns all the authority of the world governments and gives it to whomever he wishes (Lk 4:5-7). This implies that the world outside the kingdom of God is, for all intents and purposes, owned and operated by Satan.
• The NT views all infirmities as being ultimately due to the oppressive work of Satan (Lk 13:11ff).

From this small sampling of passages, it’s clear that spiritual warfare is not an activity that’s limited to freeing overtly demonized people. Rather, our entire life is engulfed in spiritual warfare. We live in the middle of a spiritual battlefield. Though the vast majority of Westerners are completely unaware of it, there are, if you will, spiritual bombs and grenades going off all around us. Our job as Kingdom people is to remain aware of this warfare and to continually seek to please our “commanding officer” by carrying out his directives.

Can Christians Be Demon Possessed

The Greek word that is usually translated “demon-possessed” in the Gospels is demonizomai, which literally means “to be rendered passive toward a demon.” It’s unfortunate, in my view, that the term is usually translated “demon possession.” “Possession” implies complete ownership whereas the concept of being rendered passive toward a demon can be reflective of many degrees of passivity. A person can be a little passive or completely passive toward a demon. And a person can have one area or many areas of their life rendered passive toward a demon. But “possession makes it sound like demonization is an all-or-nothing thing. For this reason I prefer to simply transliterate demonizomai as “demonized.”


This point is of some importance, for the question of whether or not a Christian can be “demon possessed” is at stake. One school of thought cites numerous examples throughout church history of Christians who have needed, and benefited from, exorcism. On this basis they argue that Christians can be “demon-possessed. The other school of thought argues that this is impossible, for Christians are owned and indwelt by God, a fact that rules out the possibility that they’re also owned by Satan and indwelt by demons (1 Cor 6:19-20, 1 Jn 4:4).

In my view, there’s truth to both sides. Christians can be, in varying degrees, demonized. They can have areas of their life rendered passive with regards to a demon. Despite the fact that we are owned and indwelt by God, we can give the devil a “foothold” and can have demonic “strongholds” in our life (Eph 4:27; 2 Cor 10:4). This demonization may, on occasion, be strong enough that it leads to a person manifesting bizarre behavior—the sort often associated with exorcisms—when the stronghold is being confronted.

At the same time, however, I think the other school of though is correct in maintaining the impossibility of a person being simultaneously owned by God and owned by demons. A person whose life is authentically surrendered to God may continue to have significant strongholds, but they cannot have every area of their life rendered completely passive toward a demon. In other words, Christians can be demonized, but not demon possessed.


And when Christians are significantly demonized, it’s appropriate, and sometimes necessary, to engage in deliverance prayer (exorcism) on their behalf.

- Greg Boyd

Are the Charismatic Gifts for Today's Church

This week, we have offered a brief series on the Holy Spirit touching on what the Spirit does, how it changes us, and how the fruit of the Spirit is produced. Now we will look briefly at the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and more specifically the “charismatic” gifts.


In the church today, Christians can be roughly divided into three groups on this topic. First, cessationists believe that the charismatic gifts ceased as soon as the NT was completed. The continuationists believe that the charismatic gifts are for today and thus should be pursued and practiced. In between are those who are not theologically opposed to the exercise of charismatic gifts, but they are cautious.

The following is a brief introduction that supports the continuationist view.

In the various passages where the gifts are spoken of in the NT, (1 Cor 12, Rom 12, Eph 4 and 1 Pet 4), we must ask this question: Where is it stated that God did not intend for these gifts to continue throughout history? Isn’t it arbitrary to suppose for example, that the gift of teaching is still valid but the gift of speaking in tongues is not? Isn’t it arbitrary to allow for exhortation, giving, showing mercy while excluding Spirit-inspired words of wisdom, prophesy, speaking in tongues, and healing?

In addition, to exclude these is actually unbiblical. Paul affirms that Christians should not lack any spiritual gift as long as they “wait for the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ” (see 1 Cor 1:4-8). He uses the same word (charisma) in this passage to refer to spiritual gifts as he uses in 1 Cor 12:1 when discussing the charismatic gifts. The implication is that Paul believed the charismatic gifts would be in operation until the Lord’s return.

In Eph 4:11-13, he explicitly mentions the charismatic gift of prophecy that along with other gifts are meant to build up the saints “to the measure of the full stature of Christ,” which will not occur until the Lord returns.

Along similar lines, John instructs that “the anointing” they received “abides” in them and shall do so until the Lord returns. Hence, they “may have confidence and not be put to shame before him at this coming (1 Jn 2:27-28). The assumption is that nothing substantially changes with the “anointing” the church receives until the Lord returns.

Other aspects of the NT confirm the view that all the gifts are intended for the entire church age. For example, Paul explicitly commands believers to “strive for spiritual gifts” (speaking specifically of the charismatic gifts listed in 1 Cor 12). Believers are especially to “strive for” and be “eager” for the gift of prophecy (1 Cor 14:1, 39). Paul commands believers not to “quench the Spirit,” “despise the words of prophets,” or “forbid speaking in tongues” (1 Thes 5:19-22; 1 Cor 14:39).

While cessationists insist that these verses apply only to believers who lived before the NT was completed, Paul gives his instruction in these passages without any temporal, cultural, or theological qualification. To the same audience and in the same context he also gives his beautiful teaching on the supremacy of love (1 Cor 13). If we believe he is talking to contemporary Christians about love, we have no reason to conclude he is not talking to contemporary Christians when he gives helpful instruction regarding the use of the charismatic gifts.


—Adapted from Across the Spectrum, pages 237-240 - Greg Boyd

How to Produce the Fruit ot the Spirit

When the New Testament tells us to be loving, joyful, peaceful, kind and so on, it is not giving us a new set of behaviors that we are to strive to accomplish. Striving to attain them means nothing if they are sought as ethical ideals or to meet a set of religious rules. They have meaning only insofar as they manifest the new life that is found in Christ.

They are descriptions of what real life looks like, not prescriptions for how to get life. These descriptions Paul calls the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22-23) and they are manifested in our lives as we cease trying to produce them on our own and yield to the Spirit’s loving influence in our lives. They are the fruit of the Spirit, not fruit of our trying harder. 

Peace is one of the fruit of the Spirit listed by Paul. However, it is an incontestable fact that believers are frequently plagued with anxiety. Sometimes were are overcome with worry, anxiety, and stress, just as much as unbelievers in some cases.

One way to deal with this is to challenge ourselves to trust God more, to have more faith, and to take God at his Word. The way to peace according to this solution is to try harder to do the right things. If you want peace, you have to work at it. But does this approach actually succeed in replacing a person’s anxiety with peace? Not usually!

 It does not get to the root of the problem.

The most fundamental reason why believers do not experience the peace they can have in Christ is that their experienced self-identity is rooted in the flesh and therefore not in line with their true identity in Christ. The way they see and experience themselves, God and the world is not in conformity with the way things actually are. They may intellectually believe the truth, but they do not experience the truth as real and thus do not consistently live according to truth. To the extent that our fundamental orientation is fleshly, destructive works of the flesh will characterize our lives.

Anxiety, worry, and stress are but one set of symptoms of this flesh orientation. And as long as our minds are rooted in the flesh, no amount of self-effort is going to free us from the destructive attitudes and behaviors that arise from the flesh. Life and peace come when our orientation is according to the Spirit, and thus our minds are set on the Spirit. As our rooting in the flesh is confronted by the Spirit of God, we are “transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Rom 12:2).

When the Spirit of truth frees us from deception at the core of our being, we begin to experience in our own lives what is true about us in Christ. The peace that characterizes our relationship with God by faith becomes experienced as the peace that transcends all understanding. The key to experiencing the peace of God as an ongoing reality in our lives, then, is not in trying hard to achieve it. This can only make us more anxious!

The key, rather, is to cease from our own striving and let the Holy Spirit do his work in pointing us to Jesus. The key is in allowing the Holy Spirit to make Christ real to us and to rest, just as we are, in this reality. In doing this we allow the Holy Spirit to overcome deception in our lives with truth, performance in our lives with grace, hiddenness in our lives with openness, and thus destruction in our lives with wholeness. As we through the power of the Spirit experience the peace Jesus offers us as we are, in the midst of all our anxiety, the peace that characterizes his life becomes ours by grace.

 —Adapted from Seeing Is Believing, pages 53, 177-180 - Greg Boyd

How The Holy Spirit Changes Us

The Bible is full of stories of people who experienced the presence of God. If we are to experience something similar today, we must, through the Spirit, cultivate the spiritual capacity of an inner life to see and hear spiritual things. Paul wrote:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Cor 3:17-18)

 This Spirit-inspired “seeing” of Jesus changes our being. As we see his glory, we are transformed into his likeness “from one degree of glory to another.” This is, in essence, how the fruit of the Spirit is produced in our lives. When we cease from striving in our own effort and yield to the Holy Spirit, and when our faith ceases to be merely intellectual and rather becomes experiential and concrete, our lives begin to reflect Christ’s image. It is what we see, not how hard we strive, that determines what we become.

 This “seeing” is of a spiritual sort. Paul uses the Greek word katoptrizo, which literally means “to look at a reflection.” This reflection is in our minds. According to the teaching of Paul that follows the passage quoted above, believers have an ability to see in the mind. The “image of God,” the “face of Jesus Christ,” enlightens the mind of the believer. The mind of the believer can be “controlled by the Spirit” (Rom 8:6).

 The place where the Spirit produces a reflection of “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6) is in the regenerate mind of the believer. It is through this spiritual mental vision that we are “transformed by the renewing of [our] minds” (Rom 12:2) and set free from the pattern of this world. While all believers have this capacity, however, we don’t necessarily use it.

Though we are regenerate and have a new nature, we still struggle to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). We yet have aspects of our minds veiled and thus experience ourselves as through we were not all God says we are in Christ. Our tendency to trust our own efforts to bring about transformation plays into this ongoing veiling of our minds.

We need to recover our sense of dependency on the Spirit of God rather than our own effort and recover the use of the imagination in our relationship with God to experience the transformation of which Paul spoke. We need to learn how to “fix our eyes on Jesus” and “set [our] minds on things that are above.” 

We become what we imaginatively see. If all we imaginatively see are the vivid re-presentations that have been instilled in us by the pattern of this world, we will be conformed to the pattern of this world. But if we learn to imaginatively see “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 4:6), we will be transformed “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18).

 —Adapted from Seeing Is Believing, pages 86-94. Greg Boyd

What Does The Holy Spirit Do?

The true God breaks into our deception-filled world to reveal himself to us in the person of his Son. In and of itself, however, this doesn’t lift the deception of the flesh from our hearts and eyes. We are yet dead in sin, blind, and lovers of “darkness rather than light” (Jn 3:19). As long as the god of this age blinds us (2 Cor 4:4), we inevitably and habitually suppress the truth. Thus the light of God’s revelation in Jesus would fall on blind eyes and never benefit us if God’s plan of salvation stopped there.

Yet God didn’t stop there. God knew that if we were ever to enter into a saving relationship with him, he not only would have to be revealed to us, he would have to be revealed in us. So God didn’t stop with sending his Son to dwell among us; he also sent his Spirit to reside within us. God not only speaks to us and lives the truth for us in his Son, he also opens our eyes and ears to see and hear this truth by the sending of the Spirit.

The main work of the Holy Spirit, then, is not to supplement what the Son did but to apply what the Son did to the lives of God’s people. He glorifies Christ by revealing him to his children (Jn 16;14). He does not speak of himself (Jn 16:13) but rather causes people to behold the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ, thereby transforming them into this glory (2 Cor 3:17-18).

Whereas Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers, the Holy Spirit opens our minds and causes us to see the truth—the truth of who God is and the truth of who we are. The Holy Spirit manifests the truth of our fallen condition and thereby produces conviction and repentance in our lives. The Holy Spirit opens the hearts and minds of people so we are able to receive the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord and in him become children of God. The Holy Spirit also infuses people with the love of Christ so that we may live in the truth.

In doing all of this, the Spirit of truth is simply pointing people to the one who is truth, Jesus Christ. He is confronting and reversing the deceptive assumptions of the flesh in our lives. He is unveiling the true God for us, revealed in Jesus Christ, so that he might reveal our true identity as people who are loved by God.

 —Adapted from Seeing is Believing, pages 56-57. - Greg Boyd