Picking up the threads where I left them before Christmas. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. And I also hope you had some time to contemplate and reflect on the awesome miracle that took place at the birth of Jesus. The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, actually came to dwell within the human body of baby Jesus. This is not just symbolic language. We are talking about realities here. How could the God who created the universe become a human being and not cease to be God? As a human being He was limited by time and space. As eternal God He is unlimited. How did that work? The Apostle Paul gives us a clue in his letter to the Philippians 2:6-8 "Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross!" (NIV)
The Spiritual Identity of Jesus
All four Gospels in the New Testament depict Jesus as fully human. When he was growing up as a baby, he had to go through the same process that we all went through. He had to learn how to speak Aramaic and later possibly Greek, he had to crawl, then walk and grow... He was fully human, yet in His spirit He was the eternal, almighty Son of God. When did Jesus become aware of His spiritual identity? We don't really know. The Bible doesn't tell us. We only know that by the time he was ready to receive his Bar Mitzva at the age of 12 He was already aware of His divine identity. Luke tells us the story towards the end of the second chapter of his Gospel.
But the Bible also insists that Jesus did not use any of His divine powers as the Son of God while He was here on earth. Some apocryphal Gospels (like the Gospel of Thomas) depict Him as some sort of a "superhuman", making doves out of clay as a toddler and then breathing on them and they became alive... This is not the way the Word of God portrays Jesus. Jesus was fully human. He emptied himself of his divine attributes and powers and chose to operate as a human being. As the second Adam (see Romans 5:12-21) He was living as a representative of the human race. That's why it is safe to say that He knew about His divine identity by faith. When God the Father revealed it to Him, He had to believe it. Against the physical appearance and the physical reality that suggested to Him that He was only human, Jesus had to exercise faith and believe that in the spirit He was the Son of God.
Satan challenged Him on that one and tempted Him to disbelieve God. "If you are the son of God... " he said three times, trying to get Jesus to act in violation of His mission and calling (Matthew 4:1-11). All the miracles that Jesus performed He performed as the son of man, through faith and the mediation of the Holy Spirit. This is very important for us to note - because we tend to think that Jesus was absolutely out of reach for us as a role model. But He wasn't. He actually expected His disciples to do the same works and even greater works than He did. (John 14:12). Why? Because He demonstrated to them what every human being can do if He or She is connected to God in the Spirit and exercises faith. (Mark 11:22-25) And in the book of Acts the Bible shows how the first Christians actually took Him by His word and did exactly the same miraculous deeds by faith, even to the point that Peter's shadow would heal people and cloths taken from Paul's body would heal people and drive out demons. (Acts 5:15/Acts 19:12)
Our Spiritual Identity as Believers
Where am I going with this, you may ask. Surely we cannot compare ourselves with Jesus, can we? We don't have a divine nature in our spirit as He had. We are not God. We are fallen human beings, sinners, separated from God, weak and feeble and prone to fall easily. - Well, that is describing our flesh and the carnal reality. But the Bible actually teaches that something dramatic happens in the moment a person puts their trust in Jesus and is born again. I have touched on that in my last post. In our spirit a dramatic change takes place the moment we are born again. This change has very far reaching consequences and is meant to completely revolutionize and change our lives - if we can believe it and exercise faith.
Remember - spiritual realities are not directly accessible to us via our 5 senses. We have to access them through our sixths sense of faith. Most Christians do have some sort of an emotional reaction when they experience the new birth and are first touched by the Holy Spirit. My personal testimony is like that. When I was 12 years of age I had my first encounter with the Holy Spirit and was born again. That was a very powerful emotional experience for me. I really felt that something profound had happened to me and a real change had taken place. But the emotions didn't last long. After a few weeks or months they pretty much went back to normal. That's when my problems started, because I hadn't been taught how to walk by faith. So I deduced from the lack of emotional closeness to God that I have actually moved away from God or that I had in some way lost it. A life of spiritual struggle began...
Some Christians never experience an emotional high at conversion. Does that mean that they didn't really "get it"? - No. Spiritual realities have to be accessed by faith, not by our senses. You can be born again and connected to God in your spirit and yet feel perfectly normal most of the time... Only as you exercise faith and implement what you believe the spiritual reality starts to dominate and penetrate the physical reality.
So what does the bible teach about our spiritual identity?
A New Creation
Something brand new enters our personality and changes our identity the moment we put our trust in Jesus. Paul puts it like this in 2. Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come." Where does this change take place? It is obviously not in the physical body. Our physical features do not change when we get born again. The body looks pretty much the same. It is also not in our soul realm, in our psyche. If we struggled with emotional problems before we became born again, usually the problems don't immediately disappear after we get born again. The change happens in our spirit, in the deepest part of our soul that connects with God. Whereas before we were separated from God in our spirits and therefore spiritually dead, by putting our faith in Christ we allow God to come in by His Holy Spirit and recreate our Spirit in a way that it is connected with God and can now have fellowship with Him. We now can worship Him in Spirit and in truth.
From Sinner to Saint
In Romans 5:8 Paul writes "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us". We were sinners before the new birth. That was our identity. We were spiritually dead, disconnected from God and we couldn't help but sin and live in unbelief. Now, after the new birth, who are we? The New Testament refers to Believers as "saints". That is a complete change of identity. As soon as you are born again, you are no longer a sinner by default. You are a saint. A holy one. You are righteous, cleansed and made new.
It is very important to note again that the bible is talking about realities here. Spiritual realities. We are not only forgiven and left unchanged. The core of our identity changes the moment we are born again. We actually become "the righteousness of God". 2 Corinthians 5:21 "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." You are completely righteous in Christ.
Partakers of the Divine Nature
The New Testament goes even further. It actually talks about us being partakers of the divine nature. 2. Peter 1:4 "Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." That means that in the spirit we are connected to God in a very real way. We are no longer "only human", weak, feeble and shaky. We can walk in total victory over Satan, over sin and evil. We have the fullness of God dwelling in us through Christ (Colossians 2:10). Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1. Corinthians 6:19), we are one spirit with God (1. Corinthians 6:17). All these statements sound just too good to be true, right? And often enough they contradict our experience. In our experience we sometimes give in to sin, we fall, we make bad choices and do stupid stuff. So most of us come to doubt the truth of what the bible says. We think this must be just figurative language... Maybe some day in heaven we will be all that. But here on earth? Well, it is for the here and now. But it only becomes effectual and real when we renew our minds and exercise faith.
Renewing the Mind to the Truth of God's Word
In Romans 12:2 Paul exhorts the Christians "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Our mind is the key to accessing this spiritual reality. Every single Christian who has been born again is a new creation in his or her spirit and is connected to God in a very real way. This is true regardless of our theology or our understanding because the Bible says so. In the Spirit you are AWESOME, if you have put your faith in Christ. You are not a sinner, you are a saint, connected to God in the Spirit. You are a loved, cherished and accepted Son of God. - But whether you actually get to experience the fruit of this your new identity in your daily life or not depends on the way you think. If you think that you are still a sinner, only forgiven, but not really changed inside, you will live like that. You will struggle with sin and feel that you are not really able to change. You will feel condemned and discouraged and weak. The key is faith - you have to choose to believe that what the bible says about you is true. And then act on it. And you will find that it is actually true. This is the victory that overcomes the world - even our faith (1 John 5:5)
Becoming like Jesus
The goal for every Christian is to actually become like Jesus. Jesus made it very clear that He expected His followers to become like him. "A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher" (Luke 6:40) Now I hope you can see how this is actually possible. Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our spirit we can by faith learn to live from the spiritual reality of our new identity. We will never be like Jesus in the sense that we become incarnate deities. He was the only SON OF GOD in the Flesh, the second person of the Trinity. But we have become His brothers and sisters, coheirs with Christ, little replicas of our brother. We can learn by faith to do the works that He did and even greater works. He is in us, the Father is in us, the Spirit is in us, we are in Him, we are in the Father, we are in the Spirit. These are awesome spiritual realities.
I don't know what that means to you. But I am absolutely thrilled and blown away by the prospect of it. God is much more real than I ever thought He could be. And He is much better than I thought He was. He is awesome - I just had to start to believe it and then I began to experience it. Changing this paradigm about my identity in Christ made a HUGE difference in my life. And it can do the same in yours. It is the truth of the Bible, waiting for you to believe it.
Until next week!
Sunday 28 December 2014
Sunday 21 December 2014
The Reality of the Spiritual World
Last week I shared how God convicted me of the fact, that I was living my life mostly from a worldly paradigm. Although I intellectually believed the biblical world view, in my practical life I by default acted from the carnal reality. I was what the Apostle Paul would have called a carnal, or fleshly Christian. (1 Corinthians 3,3). My problem was that I didn't know how to consistently live from the spiritual reality. I had a lot of knowledge about the bible, about theology and all kinds of approaches, but the simple life of faith was hidden from my view. I just didn't seem to be able to connect the dots. I didn't know how to make it work.
Faith starts with choosing to believe the truth
The discovery that I described in my last post opened the door. Faith is choosing to believe the truth, choosing to believe what the bible says is true, regardless if it feels true, lines up with my experience or contradicts it. If God says it, I can choose to believe it and act upon it. Period. This is what it means to have faith, to exercise faith. I simply trust God that what He says is true and go by it. And if I do, I experience the truth of it after I have believed...
What if it doesn't feel true?
But how can you do that and keep your sanity? Isn't that hypocritical? For example, how can I rejoice in the Lord always (Philippians 4:4) when I feel sad and discouraged? How can I not worry when my bank account is in the red and I don't know how to pay my bills? ... These are the common objections of the natural mind, aren't they? Does faith mean, you ignore the physical reality and pretend it isn't there? Is faith just faking it? - That's where the world view comes into play. If I operate from the purely natural world view, then the physical reality is the only reality. And faith feels like hypocrisy. Many biblical commands seem totally impractical and we need complicated theologies to twist them and to tell us that they don't really mean what they say. "Paul could not have possibly meant it literally that we can rejoice always, because that would not be real..." - such an objection makes sense if the physical reality is the only reality.
Unfelt and unseen reality
However, the biblical world view says that although the physical world is real, it is not the only reality. In fact, it is a secondary reality. God is Spirit. There is a whole spiritual world that is very real, it always exists, it permeates and penetrates the physical reality. Right now as I am writing this, I am connected with God in the Spirit. There is at least one angel in my room, probably many more, there is the Holy Spirit inside of me and Jesus lives in my heart. And I am seated with Christ in the Heavenly realms. These are true statements. The spiritual world is real. And it is the parent force. God created the physical reality out of the spiritual world. But the spiritual reality is not accessible to us through our five senses. We cannot see it, we cannot feel it, we cannot touch it. That's why it is very easy for us to ignore it. But it is very real. I am absolutely convinced that what I just wrote is true. How do I know it? Have I ever seen an angel? Nope. Have I ever seen the Holy Spirit? Nope. Have I ever seen God? Nope. So how can I be so sure that they exist and that they are here in me and in my room? - Because I believe the Word of God.
The Bible as a mirror of spiritual reality
The bible is like a window into the spiritual world. It tells us what is true in the Spirit realm and how we can connect with God in the Spirit. The bible is like a mirror. Did you ever stop to think that nobody has ever seen his or her face? We cannot see our faces. All we can see is a reflection of our faces, a representation, or a picture, a video... But it is impossible for us to look at our own faces directly. We need a mirror. That's a good analogy for the spirit world. We cannot see it with our senses. The bible is the mirror that tells us what it's like in the spiritual realm. Once I had understood and accepted that, faith started to make sense. Faith is not denying the physical reality, it is simply choosing to focus on the spiritual reality and go by it.
Made alive in the spirit
The Bible says that in the unregenerate state we are spiritually dead. (Ephesians 2:1) That does not mean that we don't have a spirit when we are not born again. Every human being on the face of this earth has a body, a soul and a spirit. But our spirit, the part that connects with God, who is Spirit, is dead through sin. The biblical definition of death is separation. It is not ceasing to exist. When we die physically, our body is separated from our soul and spirit. We don't cease to exist. The same is true of spiritual death. It simply means we are separated from God. When we are born again through faith in Jesus, our spirit gets reconnected with God and created anew. We become a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). Something that was not there before is created deep inside of us. That is our spirit-man. Now we can have a relationship of love with God, because we are connected with him in the Spirit. However, this is a spiritual reality. And as such it is not directly accessible to our physical senses. We have to believe it.
You have the choice
As people who are born again and connected to God in the spirit we now have a genuine choice. We can either focus on our old identity and the reality of this world, or we can focus on the new identity, who we are in the spirit, and go by it. The consequences of that choice are enormous. Paul says in Romans 8 that to focus our minds on the flesh (live by the physical reality) is death, but to focus our minds on the Spirit (live by the spiritual reality) is life and peace. (Romans 8:6)
To illustrate this choice I have put in the old woman/young lady illusion. When you look at the picture below, what do you see? Some see an old hag with a huge nose, some see a young and attractive lady. Those of you who are familiar with this picture can easily see both and switch between them as you wish. Others, who have never seen it before, will probably first see only one face. It takes a while to see the other. But both are in that picture.
You have the choice to focus on the old woman or the young lady, once you have discovered them both in the picture. In our daily life we are presented with a similar choice. Every day of our life as Christians we can choose to live from our new identity as sons and daughters of the living God, or we can choose to live from our old carnal self, that is just like all the unsaved people who do not know God. We can focus our thoughts on the things above or on earthly things (Colossians 3:1)
Renewing the mind
The key is the mind. In our minds we make these choices. That's why Paul stresses the importance of renewing our minds in Romans 12, 1-2. We need to align our thinking with the reality of God's spiritual world. That makes all the difference in the world.
Once I understood that, revival came to me. I didn't need to beg and plead with God to pour out His Spirit and make himself real to me and change me. He had already done all that. It was my thinking and my perspective that needed to change. While I was pleading with God and begging him to send revival, He was trying to get me to live by faith. Man, that was an awesome liberation when that dawned on me. I had to simply focus in my mind on what was already true in the Spirit. But for that I had to believe that the Bible is actually true, that it means what it says and that it is trustworthy.
This is the foundation. To be able to live the victorious life that the Bible is describing in the New Testament, we have to accept the biblical world view. We must accept that what God says about reality in the bible is actually true. And we must not mix it with other world views. That will lead to wrong paradigms and frustration.
Unfortunately, many Christians (including myself, as I have had to admit) often don't let the Bible get in the way of what they believe. Our upbringing, denominational traditions, theological schools of thought and our own experience often shape our beliefs far more than the actual word of God. And I was amazed and ashamed at myself when God showed me, how easily I was willing to discard what the word of God says, or explain it away, just because it didn't line up with my experience, or the way I was taught. I had to repent, turn around and go back to believing the Holy Scripture in its entirety. That was a major step, and I never want to get back to where I was.
The next paradigm shift that made a huge difference for me was my new identity in Christ. Am I a sinner or a saint? Or both, as Martin Luther insisted? This will be the topic next week. Until next week everybody! And don't forget, God loves you all very much. As we are celebrating the coming of God into the world through the birth of Jesus, some amazing features of the spiritual world surface in the Christmas Story. God the Son was able to squeeze himself into a tiny little baby and dwell in a human body for over 30 years in history. That is mind boggling and absolutely awesome. God bless you all! Happy Christmas to all my readers!
Faith starts with choosing to believe the truth
The discovery that I described in my last post opened the door. Faith is choosing to believe the truth, choosing to believe what the bible says is true, regardless if it feels true, lines up with my experience or contradicts it. If God says it, I can choose to believe it and act upon it. Period. This is what it means to have faith, to exercise faith. I simply trust God that what He says is true and go by it. And if I do, I experience the truth of it after I have believed...
What if it doesn't feel true?
But how can you do that and keep your sanity? Isn't that hypocritical? For example, how can I rejoice in the Lord always (Philippians 4:4) when I feel sad and discouraged? How can I not worry when my bank account is in the red and I don't know how to pay my bills? ... These are the common objections of the natural mind, aren't they? Does faith mean, you ignore the physical reality and pretend it isn't there? Is faith just faking it? - That's where the world view comes into play. If I operate from the purely natural world view, then the physical reality is the only reality. And faith feels like hypocrisy. Many biblical commands seem totally impractical and we need complicated theologies to twist them and to tell us that they don't really mean what they say. "Paul could not have possibly meant it literally that we can rejoice always, because that would not be real..." - such an objection makes sense if the physical reality is the only reality.
Unfelt and unseen reality
However, the biblical world view says that although the physical world is real, it is not the only reality. In fact, it is a secondary reality. God is Spirit. There is a whole spiritual world that is very real, it always exists, it permeates and penetrates the physical reality. Right now as I am writing this, I am connected with God in the Spirit. There is at least one angel in my room, probably many more, there is the Holy Spirit inside of me and Jesus lives in my heart. And I am seated with Christ in the Heavenly realms. These are true statements. The spiritual world is real. And it is the parent force. God created the physical reality out of the spiritual world. But the spiritual reality is not accessible to us through our five senses. We cannot see it, we cannot feel it, we cannot touch it. That's why it is very easy for us to ignore it. But it is very real. I am absolutely convinced that what I just wrote is true. How do I know it? Have I ever seen an angel? Nope. Have I ever seen the Holy Spirit? Nope. Have I ever seen God? Nope. So how can I be so sure that they exist and that they are here in me and in my room? - Because I believe the Word of God.
The Bible as a mirror of spiritual reality
The bible is like a window into the spiritual world. It tells us what is true in the Spirit realm and how we can connect with God in the Spirit. The bible is like a mirror. Did you ever stop to think that nobody has ever seen his or her face? We cannot see our faces. All we can see is a reflection of our faces, a representation, or a picture, a video... But it is impossible for us to look at our own faces directly. We need a mirror. That's a good analogy for the spirit world. We cannot see it with our senses. The bible is the mirror that tells us what it's like in the spiritual realm. Once I had understood and accepted that, faith started to make sense. Faith is not denying the physical reality, it is simply choosing to focus on the spiritual reality and go by it.
Made alive in the spirit
The Bible says that in the unregenerate state we are spiritually dead. (Ephesians 2:1) That does not mean that we don't have a spirit when we are not born again. Every human being on the face of this earth has a body, a soul and a spirit. But our spirit, the part that connects with God, who is Spirit, is dead through sin. The biblical definition of death is separation. It is not ceasing to exist. When we die physically, our body is separated from our soul and spirit. We don't cease to exist. The same is true of spiritual death. It simply means we are separated from God. When we are born again through faith in Jesus, our spirit gets reconnected with God and created anew. We become a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). Something that was not there before is created deep inside of us. That is our spirit-man. Now we can have a relationship of love with God, because we are connected with him in the Spirit. However, this is a spiritual reality. And as such it is not directly accessible to our physical senses. We have to believe it.
You have the choice
As people who are born again and connected to God in the spirit we now have a genuine choice. We can either focus on our old identity and the reality of this world, or we can focus on the new identity, who we are in the spirit, and go by it. The consequences of that choice are enormous. Paul says in Romans 8 that to focus our minds on the flesh (live by the physical reality) is death, but to focus our minds on the Spirit (live by the spiritual reality) is life and peace. (Romans 8:6)
To illustrate this choice I have put in the old woman/young lady illusion. When you look at the picture below, what do you see? Some see an old hag with a huge nose, some see a young and attractive lady. Those of you who are familiar with this picture can easily see both and switch between them as you wish. Others, who have never seen it before, will probably first see only one face. It takes a while to see the other. But both are in that picture.
You have the choice to focus on the old woman or the young lady, once you have discovered them both in the picture. In our daily life we are presented with a similar choice. Every day of our life as Christians we can choose to live from our new identity as sons and daughters of the living God, or we can choose to live from our old carnal self, that is just like all the unsaved people who do not know God. We can focus our thoughts on the things above or on earthly things (Colossians 3:1)
Renewing the mind
The key is the mind. In our minds we make these choices. That's why Paul stresses the importance of renewing our minds in Romans 12, 1-2. We need to align our thinking with the reality of God's spiritual world. That makes all the difference in the world.
Once I understood that, revival came to me. I didn't need to beg and plead with God to pour out His Spirit and make himself real to me and change me. He had already done all that. It was my thinking and my perspective that needed to change. While I was pleading with God and begging him to send revival, He was trying to get me to live by faith. Man, that was an awesome liberation when that dawned on me. I had to simply focus in my mind on what was already true in the Spirit. But for that I had to believe that the Bible is actually true, that it means what it says and that it is trustworthy.
This is the foundation. To be able to live the victorious life that the Bible is describing in the New Testament, we have to accept the biblical world view. We must accept that what God says about reality in the bible is actually true. And we must not mix it with other world views. That will lead to wrong paradigms and frustration.
Unfortunately, many Christians (including myself, as I have had to admit) often don't let the Bible get in the way of what they believe. Our upbringing, denominational traditions, theological schools of thought and our own experience often shape our beliefs far more than the actual word of God. And I was amazed and ashamed at myself when God showed me, how easily I was willing to discard what the word of God says, or explain it away, just because it didn't line up with my experience, or the way I was taught. I had to repent, turn around and go back to believing the Holy Scripture in its entirety. That was a major step, and I never want to get back to where I was.
The next paradigm shift that made a huge difference for me was my new identity in Christ. Am I a sinner or a saint? Or both, as Martin Luther insisted? This will be the topic next week. Until next week everybody! And don't forget, God loves you all very much. As we are celebrating the coming of God into the world through the birth of Jesus, some amazing features of the spiritual world surface in the Christmas Story. God the Son was able to squeeze himself into a tiny little baby and dwell in a human body for over 30 years in history. That is mind boggling and absolutely awesome. God bless you all! Happy Christmas to all my readers!
Sunday 14 December 2014
Rediscovering what faith is
In my dealing with the faulty paradigms that were blocking me from experiencing God's best for my life I will proceed from the general to the more specific ones, in the order as I experienced it. As I was reflecting on this during the week, I became very aware of the fact that it is actually quite difficult to put them into words. There is so much room for misunderstanding, misinterpretation and false judgments that it will need the help of the Holy Spirit for me to write it down right and for my readers to understand it in a way that will be helpful and encouraging for them.
Let me make this statement right at the start: I don't think, that I am better than other Christians, or that I have now arrived and know it all. This is not to put down or condemn anybody who doesn't agree with the way I see things. This is simply a testimony about how God has changed my life by revealing faulty paradigms of thinking and replacing them with more accurate biblical ones. My life has become so much better, so much more victorious, joyful, confident and consistent that I simply want to share that with my readers. And it is my hope and my prayer that this will be helpful. That's all.
The deception of the modern and post modern worldview
For me it all started, when God showed me through the Freedom in Christ course that even though I was a believer in Jesus, I was mostly operating from a modern and post modern world view in many practical areas of my life. I professed to believe the bible and what it says about God and reality, but when it came to day-to-day living, I by default acted according to the modern and post modern world view. What do I mean by that? Let me explain using the points from the Freedom in Christ course. This will be a very concise and simplified treatment, because I don't have the space here to go into much detail, but it will certainly show the main points.
The modern or western worldview can be summarized like that:
- It divides reality into 'natural' and 'supernatural' but focuses only on the natural.
- It sees spiritual things as irrelevant to daily life.
- Reality is defined only by what we can see, touch and measure
Having grown up in the modern world I had internalized it's worldview without even noticing it. God showed me that in my daily life I also divided reality into natural and supernatural and was focusing mainly on the natural. The supernatural got some attention in the morning during my quiet time, but the rest of the day I was operating in the natural, with God not really playing a big part of my daily experience.
Why was that? I really wanted to experience God. I even got up one or two hours before everybody else to pray and read my bible, and that still didn't lead me to a joyful and victorious life. There were a few things involved, legalism being a big part of it as well, but one major thing was: I came to define reality by what I can see, touch and measure. But I couldn't see God. So I had to feel him, in order for him to be real to me. If I didn't feel anything, He felt distant and unreal. So I begged and pleaded with God to pour out his Spirit and touch me, give me something "real"... When I got a feeling of God's presence I was happy, when I couldn't feel his presence, I felt down and condemned and guilty. So I was praying and hoping for revival that would just bring this overwhelming sense of his presence and glory and that would never leave me. I was deceived.
The post modern worldview can be summarized like that:
- There is no such thing as objective truth
- Everyone has their own version of "truth"
- Each person's "truth" is as valid as everyone else's
- If you disagree with my "truth" or disapprove of my actions, you are rejecting me
Now this is so obviously diabolic that I didn't really fall for most of it. It is an ingenious trick of the father of lies to invent a worldview in which there is no truth, because everything then becomes some sort of a lie. In that way there is no foundation for any faith to be exercised, because real biblical faith is being "sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1 NIV). How can you be sure and certain if there is no truth to base your certainty on? It all is left to subjective guesswork and hoping. And it flies in the face of the words of Jesus, who said that "I am the way, the truth and the life" (John 14:6). "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." (John 8:32), and "Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth."(John 17:17). Although as a Christian I was convinced that truth existed and that Jesus was the truth, I had unconsciously accepted the post modern assumption that we are not really able to know and perceive truth as humans. That weakened my trust in the bible as a reliable guide through life and faith without me noticing it.
The Freedom in Christ course contrasted these two worldviews with the biblical worldview, or "how it really is":
The Biblical Worldview: 'How it really is'
- Truth does exist
- God is truth
- Faith and logic are not incompatible
- God's word, the bible, is truth.
Now the Bible presents us with a very distinct and elaborate worldview. It states very confidently that God is the ultimate reality and the source of all being. But God is spirit. He is not perceivable by our senses unless he chooses to make himself seen or felt by us. In fact there is a whole spiritual world that is as real as our physical world, but it is not accessible to our senses. It exists, but we cannot prove it's existence by physical means. We have to access it by faith. We have to believe. How can we be certain that what we believe but cannot prove is true? We need reliable revelation from that spiritual world to tell us, how things really are. The Bible claims to be that revelation, the reliable and infallible word of God that can be totally trusted.
The way things work in the spiritual world of faith is radically different to the way they work in the physical world. In the physical world you first prove that something is actually true, and then you believe it. In the spiritual world it works the other way round, you first trust God and believe him without physical proof, and then you see it manifest in the physical realm. That was the huge breakthrough for me and the beginning of radical change in my experience.
Rediscovering what faith is
Faith is believing God, believing that what He says is true. Even if it contradicts the physical realities, how we feel. Steve Goss gives an example in Freedom in Christ about how he first learned that truth. He had a problem with watching bad stuff on television and not being able to stop it. He would feel guilty, confess it and stop for a while, but then would fall for it again. It was one of these sin-confess-sin-confess cycles that he seemed not to be able to overcome. One day a preacher came to his church who said, that he had the answer to that problem. Steve was all ears. The preacher said - all you have to do, is just stop it. Because you are no longer a slave of sin. The word of God says in Romans 6 that you can do it. Believe it, and you will be able to do it. So he went home and knelt down at his bed and said to God: "God, I know that your word says that I am no longer a slave of sin. I feel that I can't stop it. But your word says that I can. I am going to believe your word..." After that he didn't have that problem anymore. It actually really worked. As soon as he exercised faith on the Word of God and decided to trust the word more than his feelings, he could overcome his problem.
Wow, that opened a whole new world for me. I didn't have to wait for God to make me feel his presence, before I could believe that He was with me. His word says that he will never leave me nor forsake me. So I can go by that and just believe it. As soon as I started exercising that kind of faith and believing what God says over what my circumstances and my feelings said, my life started to change.
My problem was mainly emotional. I used to have the tendency to have feelings of discouragement, inferiority, weakness. And when I felt that way, I was taught that I had to be "real" and just express these feelings and live them until they would go away. Now I actually saw that that was completely wrong. Feelings don't reflect reality. They reflect the way I think about the reality. So if I choose to believe God and His word rather than my feelings, the feelings would soon change. That was a major pointer to victory and a great liberation for me.
I remember driving in my car feeling very down and discouraged one Saturday night. It was after midnight, and I had to pick up my son from somewhere and I had to preach the next morning. I felt tired, frustrated and down. That's when the Holy Spirit reminded me of the truth of God's word. I remembered what I had learned about faith and I said to God something along these lines: God, I feel rotten and miserable, but I decide not to trust my feelings but to believe your word. Your word says that I am a loved and cherished son of God, I am strong and courageous, because greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. I have not received the Spirit of Timidity, but the Spirit of Power, Love and a Sound Mind... And I started praising God for that. Within 10 or 15 minutes my feelings changed from discouragement to excitement and joy. Wow, I thought, that was quick. It is fantastic...
That was the beginning - making the conscious choice to unmask the ways I acted inconsistently to the Biblical worldview and choose to believe God. From here many other paradigms started to show up where I had accepted beliefs that were actually inconsistent with what the Bible teaches. An exciting and very fulfilling journey started...
In closing I have to clarify, that intellectually identifying a faulty paradigm is only the beginning. The truth has to get into our heart, before it can really start to change us. It will take time and effort. Jesus compares the word of God to a seed. A seed doesn't produce the harvest immediately. It takes time to germinate, take root, grow and develop. The harvest will come later. But while it's growing you know, you are on the right path and it is exciting, fulfilling and rewarding. And you know that the harvest will come. Likewise with these paradigm changes it takes time for them to penetrate to the heart level, where you can actually operate in them freely. But it is very worth while. Because they reflect truth, the way it really is. And it works. Life makes sense, God becomes very real and the walk with him is just wonderful!
So from this general huge paradigm shift I want to now proceed to some more specific ones that I discovered in the bible. Until next week. Be blessed everyone. God is awesome, good, merciful and loving. Trusting Him is the best thing we can ever do. Be blessed and encouraged!
Let me make this statement right at the start: I don't think, that I am better than other Christians, or that I have now arrived and know it all. This is not to put down or condemn anybody who doesn't agree with the way I see things. This is simply a testimony about how God has changed my life by revealing faulty paradigms of thinking and replacing them with more accurate biblical ones. My life has become so much better, so much more victorious, joyful, confident and consistent that I simply want to share that with my readers. And it is my hope and my prayer that this will be helpful. That's all.
The deception of the modern and post modern worldview
For me it all started, when God showed me through the Freedom in Christ course that even though I was a believer in Jesus, I was mostly operating from a modern and post modern world view in many practical areas of my life. I professed to believe the bible and what it says about God and reality, but when it came to day-to-day living, I by default acted according to the modern and post modern world view. What do I mean by that? Let me explain using the points from the Freedom in Christ course. This will be a very concise and simplified treatment, because I don't have the space here to go into much detail, but it will certainly show the main points.
The modern or western worldview can be summarized like that:
- It divides reality into 'natural' and 'supernatural' but focuses only on the natural.
- It sees spiritual things as irrelevant to daily life.
- Reality is defined only by what we can see, touch and measure
Having grown up in the modern world I had internalized it's worldview without even noticing it. God showed me that in my daily life I also divided reality into natural and supernatural and was focusing mainly on the natural. The supernatural got some attention in the morning during my quiet time, but the rest of the day I was operating in the natural, with God not really playing a big part of my daily experience.
Why was that? I really wanted to experience God. I even got up one or two hours before everybody else to pray and read my bible, and that still didn't lead me to a joyful and victorious life. There were a few things involved, legalism being a big part of it as well, but one major thing was: I came to define reality by what I can see, touch and measure. But I couldn't see God. So I had to feel him, in order for him to be real to me. If I didn't feel anything, He felt distant and unreal. So I begged and pleaded with God to pour out his Spirit and touch me, give me something "real"... When I got a feeling of God's presence I was happy, when I couldn't feel his presence, I felt down and condemned and guilty. So I was praying and hoping for revival that would just bring this overwhelming sense of his presence and glory and that would never leave me. I was deceived.
The post modern worldview can be summarized like that:
- There is no such thing as objective truth
- Everyone has their own version of "truth"
- Each person's "truth" is as valid as everyone else's
- If you disagree with my "truth" or disapprove of my actions, you are rejecting me
Now this is so obviously diabolic that I didn't really fall for most of it. It is an ingenious trick of the father of lies to invent a worldview in which there is no truth, because everything then becomes some sort of a lie. In that way there is no foundation for any faith to be exercised, because real biblical faith is being "sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1 NIV). How can you be sure and certain if there is no truth to base your certainty on? It all is left to subjective guesswork and hoping. And it flies in the face of the words of Jesus, who said that "I am the way, the truth and the life" (John 14:6). "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." (John 8:32), and "Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth."(John 17:17). Although as a Christian I was convinced that truth existed and that Jesus was the truth, I had unconsciously accepted the post modern assumption that we are not really able to know and perceive truth as humans. That weakened my trust in the bible as a reliable guide through life and faith without me noticing it.
The Freedom in Christ course contrasted these two worldviews with the biblical worldview, or "how it really is":
The Biblical Worldview: 'How it really is'
- Truth does exist
- God is truth
- Faith and logic are not incompatible
- God's word, the bible, is truth.
Now the Bible presents us with a very distinct and elaborate worldview. It states very confidently that God is the ultimate reality and the source of all being. But God is spirit. He is not perceivable by our senses unless he chooses to make himself seen or felt by us. In fact there is a whole spiritual world that is as real as our physical world, but it is not accessible to our senses. It exists, but we cannot prove it's existence by physical means. We have to access it by faith. We have to believe. How can we be certain that what we believe but cannot prove is true? We need reliable revelation from that spiritual world to tell us, how things really are. The Bible claims to be that revelation, the reliable and infallible word of God that can be totally trusted.
The way things work in the spiritual world of faith is radically different to the way they work in the physical world. In the physical world you first prove that something is actually true, and then you believe it. In the spiritual world it works the other way round, you first trust God and believe him without physical proof, and then you see it manifest in the physical realm. That was the huge breakthrough for me and the beginning of radical change in my experience.
Rediscovering what faith is
Faith is believing God, believing that what He says is true. Even if it contradicts the physical realities, how we feel. Steve Goss gives an example in Freedom in Christ about how he first learned that truth. He had a problem with watching bad stuff on television and not being able to stop it. He would feel guilty, confess it and stop for a while, but then would fall for it again. It was one of these sin-confess-sin-confess cycles that he seemed not to be able to overcome. One day a preacher came to his church who said, that he had the answer to that problem. Steve was all ears. The preacher said - all you have to do, is just stop it. Because you are no longer a slave of sin. The word of God says in Romans 6 that you can do it. Believe it, and you will be able to do it. So he went home and knelt down at his bed and said to God: "God, I know that your word says that I am no longer a slave of sin. I feel that I can't stop it. But your word says that I can. I am going to believe your word..." After that he didn't have that problem anymore. It actually really worked. As soon as he exercised faith on the Word of God and decided to trust the word more than his feelings, he could overcome his problem.
Wow, that opened a whole new world for me. I didn't have to wait for God to make me feel his presence, before I could believe that He was with me. His word says that he will never leave me nor forsake me. So I can go by that and just believe it. As soon as I started exercising that kind of faith and believing what God says over what my circumstances and my feelings said, my life started to change.
My problem was mainly emotional. I used to have the tendency to have feelings of discouragement, inferiority, weakness. And when I felt that way, I was taught that I had to be "real" and just express these feelings and live them until they would go away. Now I actually saw that that was completely wrong. Feelings don't reflect reality. They reflect the way I think about the reality. So if I choose to believe God and His word rather than my feelings, the feelings would soon change. That was a major pointer to victory and a great liberation for me.
I remember driving in my car feeling very down and discouraged one Saturday night. It was after midnight, and I had to pick up my son from somewhere and I had to preach the next morning. I felt tired, frustrated and down. That's when the Holy Spirit reminded me of the truth of God's word. I remembered what I had learned about faith and I said to God something along these lines: God, I feel rotten and miserable, but I decide not to trust my feelings but to believe your word. Your word says that I am a loved and cherished son of God, I am strong and courageous, because greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. I have not received the Spirit of Timidity, but the Spirit of Power, Love and a Sound Mind... And I started praising God for that. Within 10 or 15 minutes my feelings changed from discouragement to excitement and joy. Wow, I thought, that was quick. It is fantastic...
That was the beginning - making the conscious choice to unmask the ways I acted inconsistently to the Biblical worldview and choose to believe God. From here many other paradigms started to show up where I had accepted beliefs that were actually inconsistent with what the Bible teaches. An exciting and very fulfilling journey started...
In closing I have to clarify, that intellectually identifying a faulty paradigm is only the beginning. The truth has to get into our heart, before it can really start to change us. It will take time and effort. Jesus compares the word of God to a seed. A seed doesn't produce the harvest immediately. It takes time to germinate, take root, grow and develop. The harvest will come later. But while it's growing you know, you are on the right path and it is exciting, fulfilling and rewarding. And you know that the harvest will come. Likewise with these paradigm changes it takes time for them to penetrate to the heart level, where you can actually operate in them freely. But it is very worth while. Because they reflect truth, the way it really is. And it works. Life makes sense, God becomes very real and the walk with him is just wonderful!
So from this general huge paradigm shift I want to now proceed to some more specific ones that I discovered in the bible. Until next week. Be blessed everyone. God is awesome, good, merciful and loving. Trusting Him is the best thing we can ever do. Be blessed and encouraged!
Sunday 7 December 2014
A Shift in my Thinking
Last week I ended my post by promising to come back and talk about mental paradigms and how they influence our lives and our experience without us even noticing it. And that the current revival that has already started here in Ireland is a silent "reformation" of theological thinking, a paradigm shift in people's perception of God, His word and reality. I am going to expand on that further, and I am going to do it by way of personal testimony. I hope this will help my readers to connect with what I am saying and maybe apply it to their own lives.
How paradigms work
Steven Covey explains the power of mental paradigms and how they function in his classic "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". I am indebted to him and also Neil Anderson (Freedom in Christ) for the following insights. As human beings we have this incredibly powerful ability to take in and process information through our senses about the world, about ourselves and others and then interpret this information by way of thinking. We form a world-view, a philosophy of life, that consists of our main mental paradigms, i. e. the way we think about reality, about the world, life, God, relationships, the purpose of life and how life works. Mental paradigms form the framework within which we interpret reality. But they are not reality itself. They are a representation of reality. Steven Covey likens them to a map of an area. If you want to find a certain destination in Dublin, an accurate map of Dublin can be incredibly helpful to get you to where you want to go. Our mental paradigms are maps of reality. They help us interpret the reality we encounter each day of our lives. But what happens, if we operate from a wrong map? If the map isn't accurate, or completely wrong?
The source of frustration
Imagine that an error occurs in the printing shop and an actual map of Limerick accidentally gets the title "Dublin" printed on it. So you have this map, it says Dublin on it, and you are in Dublin trying to find a certain street. But without you knowing it you are trying to find this street by actually looking at a map of Limerick. You are bound to be frustrated and lost and you won't be able to find your destination. Because you are operating from a wrong paradigm. If you don't know that you've got the wrong map, you will probably try harder, put in more effort to reach your goal. It won't work. You will still be lost. Or you may end up saying - the main thing is to have a positive attitude, not to reach a goal. So you can go through Dublin with the wrong map and sing this song "Don't worry be happy" and just have a bit of craig and a good time - but you would still be lost and disoriented. The only thing that would help you, would be to change your map. If you exchanged your wrong map of Dublin, which is actually a map of Limerick, for a real map of Dublin, things suddenly would start to make sense and start to work. That's why Jesus said - the truth will make you free. If your thinking lines up with how things really are, with reality, life suddenly starts to make sense. If it doesn't, you'll be lost and frustrated.
A frustrated pastor
Most of my life in pastoral ministry I was frustrated because I was operating from a whole bunch of wrong, distorted mental paradigms. But I didn't know it. I had a real heart for God. I wanted people to get to know God and be born again. I really believed that he was real, and yet my Christian life somehow didn't seem to work. When I read the bible, especially the Acts of the Apostles, the frustration reached sometimes nearly unbearable levels. There I read how God was real, present, active, how these first Christians were joyful in the midst of terrible persecution, how they could heal people in Jesus' name, experience miraculous deliverance out of prisons and turn their world right side up within a lifespan of a generation. Compared to that my life was just not matching up. It was not in the same league. And I didn't know how to change it.
When I turned 40 I decided to have my midlife crisis. I was so fed up with always trying harder and harder, seeking God, praying, fasting and getting nowhere. I started to rebel against God. Started to question his goodness and love to me. I reasoned, "God, if you are real and care about me, you would let me succeed, you would let me know what's wrong, you would show up and change my life." I remember at the beginning of that phase attending a pastor's conference in Germany. One morning I poured out all my frustration to God in prayer in my room, telling him how disappointed I was that he just didn't answer my prayers and let me experience more of his power and victory in my life. And then I turned to the bible passage that was selected for that day. And it turned out to be Matthew 17 - the healing of a boy with a demon. When Jesus hears that his disciples were not able to heal the boy, he vents his frustration in verse 17 "O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me" - Wow. It felt like God was talking back to me. And he was not at all compassionate with me and my frustration. He was frustrated about me. I felt like Jesus turned around and stuck his finger in my face and said - you faithless and perverse generation... It didn't make sense. I couldn't wrap my head around it. I went on and had my crisis anyway... God was very gracious and he gently restored me back to himself, but this memory remained. The only solution for me to ever experience God's power and reality, I decided, was to live through a revival. A mighty and powerful move of God's Spirit. So I went back to seeking God and praying and hoping for revival. When God would decide to open the heavens once again and pour out his Spirit, I hoped to be right in the midst of it. With this hope I came to Ireland in November 2008 and started working as pastor of the Nazarene Church in Greystones.
Unmasking faulty paradigms
How paradigms work
Steven Covey explains the power of mental paradigms and how they function in his classic "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". I am indebted to him and also Neil Anderson (Freedom in Christ) for the following insights. As human beings we have this incredibly powerful ability to take in and process information through our senses about the world, about ourselves and others and then interpret this information by way of thinking. We form a world-view, a philosophy of life, that consists of our main mental paradigms, i. e. the way we think about reality, about the world, life, God, relationships, the purpose of life and how life works. Mental paradigms form the framework within which we interpret reality. But they are not reality itself. They are a representation of reality. Steven Covey likens them to a map of an area. If you want to find a certain destination in Dublin, an accurate map of Dublin can be incredibly helpful to get you to where you want to go. Our mental paradigms are maps of reality. They help us interpret the reality we encounter each day of our lives. But what happens, if we operate from a wrong map? If the map isn't accurate, or completely wrong?
The source of frustration
Imagine that an error occurs in the printing shop and an actual map of Limerick accidentally gets the title "Dublin" printed on it. So you have this map, it says Dublin on it, and you are in Dublin trying to find a certain street. But without you knowing it you are trying to find this street by actually looking at a map of Limerick. You are bound to be frustrated and lost and you won't be able to find your destination. Because you are operating from a wrong paradigm. If you don't know that you've got the wrong map, you will probably try harder, put in more effort to reach your goal. It won't work. You will still be lost. Or you may end up saying - the main thing is to have a positive attitude, not to reach a goal. So you can go through Dublin with the wrong map and sing this song "Don't worry be happy" and just have a bit of craig and a good time - but you would still be lost and disoriented. The only thing that would help you, would be to change your map. If you exchanged your wrong map of Dublin, which is actually a map of Limerick, for a real map of Dublin, things suddenly would start to make sense and start to work. That's why Jesus said - the truth will make you free. If your thinking lines up with how things really are, with reality, life suddenly starts to make sense. If it doesn't, you'll be lost and frustrated.
A frustrated pastor
Most of my life in pastoral ministry I was frustrated because I was operating from a whole bunch of wrong, distorted mental paradigms. But I didn't know it. I had a real heart for God. I wanted people to get to know God and be born again. I really believed that he was real, and yet my Christian life somehow didn't seem to work. When I read the bible, especially the Acts of the Apostles, the frustration reached sometimes nearly unbearable levels. There I read how God was real, present, active, how these first Christians were joyful in the midst of terrible persecution, how they could heal people in Jesus' name, experience miraculous deliverance out of prisons and turn their world right side up within a lifespan of a generation. Compared to that my life was just not matching up. It was not in the same league. And I didn't know how to change it.
When I turned 40 I decided to have my midlife crisis. I was so fed up with always trying harder and harder, seeking God, praying, fasting and getting nowhere. I started to rebel against God. Started to question his goodness and love to me. I reasoned, "God, if you are real and care about me, you would let me succeed, you would let me know what's wrong, you would show up and change my life." I remember at the beginning of that phase attending a pastor's conference in Germany. One morning I poured out all my frustration to God in prayer in my room, telling him how disappointed I was that he just didn't answer my prayers and let me experience more of his power and victory in my life. And then I turned to the bible passage that was selected for that day. And it turned out to be Matthew 17 - the healing of a boy with a demon. When Jesus hears that his disciples were not able to heal the boy, he vents his frustration in verse 17 "O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me" - Wow. It felt like God was talking back to me. And he was not at all compassionate with me and my frustration. He was frustrated about me. I felt like Jesus turned around and stuck his finger in my face and said - you faithless and perverse generation... It didn't make sense. I couldn't wrap my head around it. I went on and had my crisis anyway... God was very gracious and he gently restored me back to himself, but this memory remained. The only solution for me to ever experience God's power and reality, I decided, was to live through a revival. A mighty and powerful move of God's Spirit. So I went back to seeking God and praying and hoping for revival. When God would decide to open the heavens once again and pour out his Spirit, I hoped to be right in the midst of it. With this hope I came to Ireland in November 2008 and started working as pastor of the Nazarene Church in Greystones.
Unmasking faulty paradigms
It was a few years later when I finally started to get a clue about the solution to my problems. A good friend of mine invited me to take part in a
course called “Freedom in Christ”. He had experienced major breakthroughs while
on that course, so he asked me to join in as he was doing it in a
friend’s house. I agreed. The course is based on material written by an
American, Dr. Neil T. Anderson, and presented on DVDs by the Englishman Steve
Goss. It is a very good course. My major breakthrough came with Session 4: “The
world’s view of truth”. In it the author discusses the effect a worldview has
on our perception of reality - it lined up with what Steven Covey taught about mental paradigms. He explains the main world views that are
prevalent in the Western hemisphere at the moment. The modern world view, the
post modern worldview and contrasts them with the biblical world view.
In this session the Lord showed me that
in my practical day-to-day living I was operating from a humanistic,
materialistic paradigm. My theological beliefs were like an icing on a cake
that underneath was almost completely rooted in a materialistic world view.
Spiritual reality was kind of distant and somewhat “unreal”. I went by what
my senses and my feelings told me was true, not by what the bible says is true.
I was operating in unbelief. I was an unbelieving believer. I trusted God with
my salvation, but as far as the daily life was concerned, I totally relied on
my senses, my knowledge, common sense and experience. And where my senses or my
feelings were contradicting biblical truth, I definitely went with them and
against what the bible was saying. I thought that was normal, that there was no
other way to live. I pleaded with God to change my feelings, to overwhelm me
with his Holy Spirit, to influence my feelings and senses directly. But that
would be walking by sight, not by faith.
Neil Anderson opened my eyes to the fact that
all biblical faith is – is believing that what the bible presents as truth is
really true, and then acting on it; even if it feels untrue, even if there is
no physical evidence for it. Spiritual things can’t always be perceived by our
senses. Our feelings are not an accurate reflection of reality – they are a
product of our thinking. We must trust God and accept what he says is true and
act on it. Then we find out that they are actually true and that it works. Man
– that was huge. Liberation came to me at last. I could choose how I felt. That
meant that I did not have to feel rotten, guilty and inadequate anymore, because
the bible says that I am a loved and cherished son of God. I could stop
believing my feelings, I could choose to believe the truth and act on it. That
started me on the journey that I am on today. It opened up completely new possibilities
for me: The life of the Spirit. Little did I know that that was only the
beginning. My entire world was about to change.
Reorienting my thinking
Suddenly life started to make sense, my Christian life started beginning to work. It was incredible. I can't even begin to describe the liberation and freedom that started to flood my soul. God wasn't the problem, my faulty paradigms were the problem. Being part of an unbelieving and perverse generation was the problem. Now I was ready to take a close look at my thinking and get rid of every wrong and inaccurate paradigm and replace it with a right one. With the help of some very gifted bible teachers I was able to identify a whole bunch of wrong paradigms in my thinking that were keeping me from experiencing the life of abundance that the bible was talking about. And the more I progressed in that direction, the freer, richer and fuller my life became, and my relationship with Jesus was revolutionized.
So from next week I would like to take a closer look at each of these wrong paradigms that I discovered in my thinking, describe them and then show the more accurate biblical alternative to it.
Until next week. Be blessed and encouraged everybody! God loves you. God is not the problem! God is awesome and good and faithful and loving. If you are frustrated and disappointed with your Christian experience, I hope you will receive revelation while reading this blog that will lead you to see the truth and embrace it. There is nothing in the whole world like it.
Sunday 30 November 2014
REVIVAL IS HERE - BUT DIFFERENT
Picking up the threads where I left them
I am returning to this blog after a 2 year break. Just read through my last entry and realized once again how much I have changed. In the course of these two years I have undergone a profound change in my perception and my thinking, which led to dramatic changes in my life, my family, my work. I can truthfully say that scales have been removed from my spiritual eyes. The truth does indeed set us free. Life feels totally different now. Victory has superseded defeat. Joy, love and peace are no longer rare phenomena in a life mainly characterized by struggle, ups and downs and loads of guilt and condemnation. They are permanent now, it's awesome. I think it is fair to say: I have been revived. Revival is here. It is spreading in Ireland and the whole world. Excitement is bubbling up within me even as I am writing these words. But it is completely different from how I expected it to be. And it is different to all the stories I read about past revivals. Two years ago, God told me it would be different. I didn't understand it then, but I am slowly beginning to see it now. Let me explain.
Forget about the past
Two years ago, in the fall of 2012, we conducted a week long evangelistic outreach with the evangelist Tony Stone here in Greystones. Tony is a friend and coworker of Reinhard Bonnke and a great evangelist, so I really hoped to experience some kind of a breakthrough in the church with him. The week went well, we saw a few people born again. The highlight for me was the conversion of my youngest son David during one of the meetings. But no huge breakthrough occurred. It was after that week that during my devotional bible reading God spoke to me through the words of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah 43:18-19 "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."
A new approach
In my preoccupation with revival and the things that happened in the past I have come to expect God to do a similar thing in our time. But obviously God was up to something else. With this scripture he redirected my attention. I have been expecting something to happen on the outside - some kind of movement, outpouring of the Spirit, churches uniting in prayer for revival... Instead, things began to happen inside of me. I've come to realize that the major hindrance to revival was not a lack of prayer on our part, not a lack of repentance, nor a lack of willingness on God's part to pour out his Spirit. The main hindrance is wrong thinking, wrong paradigms in our world view that make us blind to the truth of God's word. That came first as a shock, but then started to really liberate me. Without knowing it, I had been operating from a wrong "mental map" over the past 20 years of my ministry. Could that be possible? An evangelical pastor, with a real heart for God, with the bible in my hands and a fervor to serve God, could I be so wrong and not see the truth for all these years? - Well, that's exactly what had happened to me.
A change in my thinking
Our thinking is a very powerful thing, paradigms of thinking have enormous consequences for our lives. They determine whether we connect to truth or are lost in deception and error. Because I had studied evangelical theology at a renowned seminary and read the bible for myself, I've come to think that I knew the truth. But my life didn't reflect that. There was not much joy and excitement left, I very rarely experienced the power of God that I read about in the bible, and most of the time I felt inadequate, guilty and like a failure. The gospel that I knew and believed somehow didn't deliver on the promises it made. It didn't really feel like good news in my experience most of the time. God was about to open my eyes to why this was so and to radically change my thinking in many areas. That was the best thing that had happened to me since my first encounter with Jesus and His Spirit when I was 11 years of age.
A silently spreading Reformation
And I am not the only one who has undergone such a change. It is spreading here in Ireland and also in Germany and other parts of Europe. I recently heard about an elderly man who was a believer all his life. For 50 years he sat in his Methodist church and kept quiet, enduring quite a miserable life and suffering from depression. Then he got in touch with the truth, was healed of depression and became a happy Christian who couldn't stop talking about God. He got kicked out of his church for that. I believe there is a paradigm shift happening in the church today that is similar in scope to that of the Reformation. Truth that has been lost for nearly 2000 years from the main stream of Christianity is being rediscovered and is changing lives. But it is also being resisted and persecuted by many a bible believing Christian. This is the new thing that God is doing. Instead of pouring out his Spirit in a massive eruption that would sweep over a country and then die out after a few months or years he is bringing about a fundamental change in people's thinking that has the potential of bringing the whole Christian church back to operating in the same degree of power and authority as depicted in the Acts of the Apostles. We live in exciting times!
The purpose of this blog
I am picking up this blog to explain these paradigm shifts that God has revealed to me in sequence and in an orderly and structured manner. It is my heart's desire and my prayer that God will use these words to bring about the same liberation in many of my reader's lives as he has brought about in mine. Jesus' statement is still true. The truth does set us free. But it is only the truth that we know, that will have this effect. My people perish for a lack of knowledge... is also a true statement today. And it has to be heart knowledge - not merely intellectual agreement. Here lies a real problem - our hearts are much slower and much more stubborn than our minds. They have been hardened and conditioned by so many factors that even for very sincere Christians it can take quite a lot of effort and focus to really connect to the truth and go with it. That's why a halfhearted approach will never do. God's promise that Jeremiah wrote to the exiles is still true today for every one of us: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart!" (Jeremiah 29:13)
So next week I hope to continue by dealing with mental paradigms and the way they determine our perception of the world and of truth. How it is possible for a Christian to be reading the same words in the bible all their life and not be able to connect with the truth that they convey... Paradigms are very powerful. They can make you to be seeing, but never perceiving, hearing but never understanding... And the liberation that a shift from a wrong paradigm to a right one brings is beyond description. It is awesome. So bear with me.
Until next week,
Be blessed and encouraged!
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