And I know you because?

The Koran says that not only did Solomon understand “the language of the birds” but that “winds also performed his will, and the jinn . . . To him were obedient demons of the most diverse sorts, and the evil spirits were given into his hand.”

The Koran’s male and female “jinns” were spirits to be worshipped and feared and could be found in trees, stones, rivers and mountains.

“In terms of pre-Islamic religious life, the basic orientation of the people was that of superstition—the Arabs believed in the ‘evil eye,’ the casting of curses and spells, magic stones, fatalism, fetishes, and the fabulous stories of the jinns, or what we call in English genies or fairies,” reports author Robert Morey in his 1992 book The Islamic Invasion.

“Most people in their childhood have read some of the fantastic fables found in The Arabian Nights, stories of Aladdin’s lamp, of flying carpets, etc. It is no surprise therefore to find that the Koran also contains references to such things as the evil eye, curses, fatalism, and the fabulous jinns (Sura 55; 72; 113 and 114).

“In many Islamic countries, Muslims still wear an amulet around the neck in which a part of the Koran is recorded to ward off the ‘evil eye.’ ”

 

*****

According to the Koran (Suras 46:29-35; 72:1-28), Muhammad, on his way back from Mecca, preached to and converted the jinns who, in turn, preached Islam to the masses.

“Thus, the male and female spirits who inhabited the trees, the rocks, and the waters of Arabia were now Muslims and under the control of Muhammad,” writes Morey. “This is a classic form of shamanism in which Muhammad now claimed to be in control of the spirits of the earth.”

Morey reports that Muhammad’s mother Aminah, in fact, often claimed to be visited by jinns: “Muhammad’s mother was involved in what we call today the ‘occult arts,’ and this basic orientation is thought by some scholars to have been inherited by her son.

In fact, it was when Muhammad was in a trancelike state that he’d receive his “divine” visitations and then rise and proclaim what had been “handed down” to him.

“From the description of the bodily movements that were often connected with his trances, many scholars have stated that these were epileptic seizures,” writes Morey. “For example, the Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam, published by Cornell University, points out that the Hadith itself describes ‘the half-abnormal ecstatic condition with which he was overcome.’

“What must be remembered is that in the Arab culture of Muhammad’s day, epileptic seizures were interpreted as a religious sign of either demonic possession or divine visitation.

“Muhammad initially considered both options as possible interpretations of his experience. At first he worried about the possibility that he was demon possessed . . . The bodily characteristics connected with his religious trance seemed even to Muhammad to parallel those of people in his community who would fall down in fits and of whom others would say that they were possessed of devils.

“He became so depressed that he decided to commit suicide. But on his way to the place where he was going to kill himself, he fell once again into a seizure. He experienced another vision in which he felt that he had been told not to kill himself because he was truly called of God.

“Yet even after this religious experience, he still became depressed and filled with doubt.”

*****

Paul testifies in Acts 26:15, “And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.”

Paul, an orthodox rabbinical scholar, knew who Jehovah was and he knew it was the God of the Bible who opened the heavens, so when he says, "Who art thou, Lord?" that question goes back to the Book of Genesis, explains Richard Jordan.

When Jacob wrestled with the Lord, he said, "Tell me your name!" Then, in Exodus 3, Moses says to God, "Tell me, who am I supposed to say sent me?!" In the Book of Judges, Gideon’s mom and dad say, "Tell us who you are! Who is this guy?"

God wouldn’t tell any of them. Paul said, "I got a question; who are you?" You know good and well he was thinking, "Oh, man!" because he’d been out killing Christ’s followers.

*****

King Nebuchadnezzar says to Daniel in Daniel 2:47, "Of a truth it is, that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret."

To me this is one the greatest titles of God in all of the Bible. In verse 29, Daniel had told him, "As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass."

You can’t find God out by searching but you don’t have to because God reveals Himself.

Isaiah 22:14 says, "And it was revealed in mine ears by the LORD of hosts, Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord GOD of hosts."

At camp in California we were discussing some of these guys in the Bible who talk about God talking to them.

You know how He spoke to Isaiah? It was, "HEY, Isaiah!" It was an audible voice and Isaiah heard Him with his ears. Now God isn’t going to talk to you like that today.

I Corinthians 2:9-10 says, [9] But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
[10] But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

You got something better than Jesus Christ appearing to you at the end of the bed and talking to you. You’ve got something that doesn’t disappear; something that doesn’t just rely on your memory of what was said.

You’ve got something written down on a page that doesn’t change and is always there and always reliable.

*****

When people talk about translating the Bible, the great translation problem was taken care of long before anybody had to worry about English. If you can translate deity thoughts and deity words into human words, that’s the translation product!

People talk about language limitation--there’s the language limitation! If you could take the thoughts of the godhead and put them in Hebrew and Greek, anything else taken from one language to another is a snap.

God revealed it, made it known. He translated His thinking into our thinking. Isaiah 30:8 says, "Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever."

He takes the revelation and commits it to written form, putting words on the page in a book. He writes that revelation down and we call that inspiration.

With another Halloween upon us . . .

(as the days add up for my ongoing "cold," the more I suspect I have COVID. still NO taste or smell, but the worst thing is the tiredness. I was fully intending to have a new article for tonight but just awoke from a very long nap that was totally unpredicted. now it's close to midnight and time has run out on me since I have to be up for work bright and early. so surely intend to make up for lost time tomorrow)

I Samuel 28: [6] And when Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams nor by Urim, nor by prophets.

[7] Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and inquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor.

Saul is rejected; God is done with this guy. In verse 7, Saul's now going to participate with evil," explains Alex Kurz.

Verse 8: [8] And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee.

On Halloween, you have all these kids roaming the neighborhood, extorting everybody's household, wearing disguises. I wonder where the Celts and the Druids got the idea of disguising themselves when you're dealing with somebody with a familiar spirit who's interested in conjuring up the souls of the dead. Personally, I think somebody stole it from I Samuel 28:8.

Saul put on a costume before he made contact with this witch. As a type, you know what the king of Israel is doing? He's hiding his identity. He's at a horrible point where he's really wickedly insane due to chronic rebellion; his hardheartedness.

There's a lot of typology (the Lord uses types, shadows and figures in teaching the nation Israel) in verse 8 about the nighttime. He takes off his identity and now he's going to join the unfruitful works of darkness. 

Verse 9: [9] And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land: wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die?

Historically, God called the Gentiles "snares." Kind of interesting. The tables are turned on Saul and he is now taking up this sad identity. He's becoming a substitute for the witch. He's becoming the witch! He's doing everything the pagans did--the witches and the warlocks and so on.

The Lord's view of Saul is, "You're the necromancer." Gentiles were always called snares, thorns and thistles to the nation of Israel, and Saul is a pagan. I'm not going to say he's acting like one, because in chapter 28 he IS a pagan at this juncture.

Verse 10: [10] And Saul sware to her by the LORD, saying, As the LORD liveth, there shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing.

The Lord said 'thou shalt not use the Lord's name in vain,' and that's what it means. That means you don't swear an oath using the Lord's name.

By the way, Saul's a false prophet. We know from I Samuel 18:10 that Saul is a prophet. What he's doing is saying, 'I swear to God.'

What's fascinating is the witch is not put to death; Saul is. There's a dynamic here. God is communicating something to Saul about who he now is.

Verses 11-12: [11] Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel. [12] And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul.

I do not believe this witch had any supernatural power to call anyone, let alone Samuel, out from the dead. I Samuel 2:6 says, [6] The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.

No human being has a supernatural capacity to conjure up the souls of the dead. My opinion is a familiar spirit, they do COUNTERFEIT someone's identity, but they don't have the supernatural capacity to call someone out of hell, or for that matter, Samuel who is Abraham's bosom.

Notice what Samuel says to Saul in verse 15: [15] And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.

Samuel isn't giving the witch any credit. He's saying, "You, Saul, you're the necromancer, you're the wizard who has dsquieted me."

The Bible view is this woman's really a nobody and Saul is held fully responsible for what's taking place.

Going back to verse 12, when it says 'the woman cried with a loud voice,' something happened which she never witnessed before. Guess who really is coming up from the dead? It's Samuel.

She screams in terror. The loud voice is evidence that suggests this was out of the normal; it was extraordinary.

Verse 13: [13] And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.

No indication she was terrified by that. Personally, I wonder if she was used to seeing this. If she is a medium with familiar spirits, she's making contact with fallen angels.

There are good gods (small g) and there are bad gods (small g). This woman doesn't appear to be terrorized by the gods; she reacts to seeing Samuel. This is a miracle God is performing, not by the witch but in spite of the witch. She's not the issue here.

It's interesting that she says, "I saw gods ascending out of the earth." There are passages in the Bible showing a correlation between the spiritual realm and the physical realm and I take this as she's familiar with seeing these entities coming up out of the earth.

Psalm 83:1-8 lists the 10-nation confederacy the Antichrist will lead against the extermination of God's people, Israel. These 10 nations are under 10 kings (the 10 toes) who are not ordinary human beings. They're actually fallen angels. They're made of iron and they're trying to mix with clay.

Verse 9-10: [9] Do unto them as unto the Midianites; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook of Kison:

[10] Which perished at Endor: they became as dung for the earth.

Think about that for a second. Here is a prophecy regarding the future 10-nation confederacy under the command and leadership of the Antichrist. When you talk about the gods, you're talking about these fallen entities and what we have is this appeal, "Destroy them."

Why Endor? What happened at Endor?

Judges 5:19-20: [19] The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of Canaan in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo; they took no gain of money.

[20] They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.

These are fallen angels. There's some wild, bizarre activity that's taking place in the stars that influences and impacts the battle taking place on the earth.

I kind of wonder, well, because of the impending battle and potential destruction of the nation of Israel, is there this unseen Satanic activity just as we witness here in Judges 5.

*****

From daemon to Beersheba

“Satan, the real master of the New Age, delights in mysterious code words and phrases because they allow his agents, when questioned, to escape public censure by hiding behind a verbal mirage.”

-- Texe Marrs, author of Dark Secrets of the New Age.

 

Much of the New Age plot behind the “modern versions” of the Bible is accomplished through either omitting or changing God’s use of phrases and words—including the connotations of words—to make verses support Satan’s cause.

 

One of hundreds of great examples is the change of the word “devils” to “demons” in the New King James Version, along with the other corrupt bibles published since the King James Bible.

 

In Webster’s dictionary, “demon” is defined as “a tutelary divinity,” while the word “devil” comes with the explanation, “In Jewish and Christian theology, the personal supreme spirit of evil and unrighteousness.”

 

Madame H.P. Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society and recognized as “the mother of the New Age Movement,” once wrote:

 

“[T]he Church is wrong in calling them Devils. . .[T]he word demon however, as in the case of Socrates, and in the spirit of meaning given to it by the whole of antiquity, stand[s] for the Guardian Spirit or Angel, not a Devil of Satanic descent as Theology would have it. . . Demons is a very loose word to use, as it applies to. . . minor Gods;. . .there are no devils.”

 

Indeed, in The Theosophical Dictionary, demon is said to have “a meaning identical with that of ‘god’, ‘angel’ or ‘genius’. Under the word “demon” in The Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology, Socrates is quoted as saying, “[A] voice has been heard by me throughout my life. . . I call it a God or a daemon.”

 

*****

 

To the Greeks, the word “daemon” meant “demigod” and Socrates taught that a daemon was a “spiritual something that put him on the road to wisdom.”

 

In her 1993 book, New Age Bible Versions, author Gail Riplinger writes, “All of the world’s religions, except biblical Christianity and Judaism, believe that those entities which the Bible calls evil spirits are demigods, worthy of veneration or placation.

 

“In the West, New Agers are told that Nathaniel Hawthorne, ‘ascribe[s] some measure of importance and success to his prompt obedience to the wise Daemon’s direction.’ Eastward, Buddhists tell of ‘good demons,’ mosri sho shu and mischievous demons, nushi sho shu. . .

 

“By switching to the globally acceptable ‘demons’, new ‘International’ versions follow their admitted philosophy of choosing words which ‘allow each reader to decide for himself’ what a verse means. God, however, has already decided. . .

 

“(New Testament) Greek dabblers may jump to the floor with reference to the Greek’s use of both diabolos and daemonium to refer to Satan and the devils, respectively. Any objection to translating two different Greek words as one English word fails disastrously since new version editors themselves translate two different Hebrew words, shed and sair, as one word ‘demon’.

 

“Scholars who live in glass houses should refrain from throwing ‘original language’ stones, particularly when their house of cards appears to have been designed by a New Age architect.”

Not thinking THE thing through

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. There is no reason not to follow your heart."--Steve Jobs, hell-bound sinner, speaking at Stanford’s commencement ceremony in 2005.

****

There are certain Bible passages people who don’t know much of anything else about the Bible are familiar with. Classic examples include, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” and “God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son.”

Another big one is from John 14: “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
[3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

The reason people know these ones is they go to funerals and hear them quoted, explains Richard Jordan. You hear Psalm 23 and John 14 and occasionally you’ll hear John 3:16.

Four simple words, “I will come again,” represent the major message of the Bible. There’s more information in the Bible about the Second Coming of Christ than any other single theme in all of the Bible. The very last thing it says at the end of the whole Book in Revelation 22 is, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

*****

Here's a passage from an article by Christianity Today:

According to Isaacson, Jobs, a self-proclaimed Buddhist, began questioning the meaning of life and God in the past few months before his death.

"I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God," recalled Isaacson. "He said, 'Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don't. I think it's 50-50 maybe. But ever since I've had cancer, I've been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it's cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives on.'"

Isaacson continued, "Then he paused for a second and he said, 'Yeah, but sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone.' He paused again, and he said, 'And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.'"

Jobs also brought up death during his discussions with Isaacson and questioned the meaning of his own existence.

"I saw my life as an arc," Jobs said in a recording aired on the show. "And that it would end and compared to that nothing mattered. You're born alone, you're gonna die alone. And does anything else really matter? I mean what is it exactly, is it that you have to lose Steve? You know? There's nothing."

*****

Paul says in Galatians 3:1, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?”

To be foolish does not mean to be stupid. “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.” I talked to a fellow this past week who told me he was an atheist, says Jordan. Now, I can tell you the guy’s not stupid. He’s an educated guy who’s got advanced degrees from the university. He’s not stupid; he’s foolish.

Psalm 14 says that. Jesus said, “O foolish and slow of heart.” But being foolish in the Bible is not being stupid. It’s being slow to use your mind. It’s to not think; to be thoughtless, unobservant, lazy-minded, not to think the thing through.

When I asked the man why he’d be an atheist, he said, “Well, there can’t be a God because if there is a God He would be terrible for being responsible for all the suffering in the world. There can’t be a God; look at all the suffering.” All the suffering and injustice means there’s no God.

Some of the great atheists of our day, Richard Dawkins, for example, that was his same excuse for becoming an atheist: the sufferings of humanity. “There can’t be a God.”

I said, “Okay, let’s say there’s no God. Now, what’s your answer for suffering?” I don’t think he’d ever thought about that.

If the suffering of humanity means there’s no God, what do you put in God’s place? Atheism. So the answer to suffering in the world today is atheism, but how’s that an answer for suffering because if there was no God—there can’t be no God; just look at all that suffering in the world.

I think it clicked with him as we were talking. If you say there’s no God because of the suffering—what is your answer? He didn’t have an answer. If anything, his answer was to be an atheist. But look at all the suffering in the world; how can you be an atheist? The same reasoning gets you to the same conclusion.

If you’ve got a foregone conclusion that you want to be there, though, that’s what happened with the Galatians. They’d come up with another idea. “O foolish Galatians.” Someone had cast a spell on them. There’s a spiritual deception going on here.

Such as is common to man or . . .

I am operating today with no sense of smell or taste! I can’t smell strong coffee, strong perfume, canned tuna fish, etc. This is on top of having a plugged nose. I ate my homemade minestrone-ish soup for lunch today without being able to taste a single item, including the ground hamburger, the freshly cooked green beans and asparagus, the potatoes, the garlic, etc., etc.

All day I've been reminded, as with many times through the years, of my former co-worker who I adored, Wanda, who had such bad allergies from keeping cats, on top of her many years of smoking cigarettes, that she seemed to have permanent loss of smell and taste.

I asked her, "What keeps you interested in food?" to which she responded, "I go on texture and memory."

I came down with a cold last Friday night after not having a cold for over a year and it’s going through an unpredicted process.

When I arrived at work this morning, really zoned out from the unpleasant sleep, waking up constantly from a dried-out mouth and then coughing fits, my 28-year-old boss said, “You still got that?! You told me about that Saturday."

I said, “Yeah, I told you I came down with it Friday evening. I’m not someone who just recovers from a cold on a dime.”

*****

My symptoms today make me wonder if it’s really just the “common cold,” or maybe I’ve got the latest COVID iteration!

I can tell you with certainty that if I lose my taste for food, I’m going to be real unhappy, because I am someone who lives to eat rather than eats to live.

I honestly don’t know whether I ever had COVID or not. The same is true for my 87-year-old mother who I live with. We just assume we never got it!

We both got the first one-two shots of the vaccination, and then the first booster without going any further.

I knew from the outset that I wanted to do what was comfortable for my elderly mother since she was so generous to let me move in with her when I suddenly found out I had “no certain dwellingplace,” as Paul puts it, during the initial months of the big “lockdown” in 2020.

Basically, my landlord told me in a phone call during the initial lockdown (while I was staying with my mom) that he was going to sell the house I lived in, and since I was working for a school district and didn’t know when they would ever return to classes, I felt I had no other options.

I would have never dreamed that I would move to southern Ohio with just my mother as my steady companion, but that’s my reality going on five years now!

*****

Here’s a New Year’s Eve message from 2014 and will have a new article tomorrow for certain:

“If you’re willing to ‘spend and be spent,’ you’re willing to say then, ‘I’m willing to love you and I’m willing for you to take advantage of that because that’s my commitment,’ ” explains Jordan.

“And if you’re not willing to get there, you’re always going to live at a level that’s real shallow because it’s intimacy that ‘opens’ you. 

“David, when he was confessing his sin, said, ‘Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.’

“Paul writes in Colossians, ‘Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.’

“Give your loved ones permission to tell you the truth no matter what. You teach each other to lie when you identify areas that when you tell the truth, you get whacked.

“If you’ve taught someone to lie to you because they know there are areas where they can’t tell you the truth because of fear of punishment. . . . I don’t just mean physical; I mean psychological punishment; the shame, the rejection, the demeaning, the ridicule, the anger. They’d rather not tell you the truth, and then brood over it, than be open to you because of the reaction.

“Tell yourself, ‘It’s more important for me to minister to them than it is to be ministered to.’ Grace allows acceptance; it’s the only thing that does. With performance systems you’re always going to fail.

*****

“There are four negative interactions that will poison your relationship if you let them run rampant. I call them the Four Horsemen in reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who, in Revelation 6, go out and bring destruction in the earth.

“I can list them for you because they’re so common. It has nothing to do with anything unique about you. They’re common to your old sin nature and they’re typical strategies that NEVER work. They destroy; they don’t build up. And yet they are a part of our arsenal; almost instinctively by nature because our ‘taker rule’ expresses itself with them.

“They are: 1.) Selfish demands. 2.) Disrespectful judgments. 3.) Angry outbursts and 4.) Independent behavior. You’ll see them in any person; any Believer who’s in reversion.

“They’ll be making selfish demands. They want it their way. When they don’t get it, they make disrespectful judgments, blaming someone else. It will escalate into anger. And then it will seemingly resolve itself. It doesn’t resolve itself, but it brings a modicum of peace and withdrawal. 

“Instead of searching for mutually acceptable solutions, abuse wants to impose a solution to the other person’s disadvantage so we can have our advantage. And, friend, the only issue there is control. You just want to be in control—behavior, attitudes, opinions.

“Again, a perpetrator rarely acknowledges it. You hear all kind of excuses, all kind of justifications. But when you hear them, something that’s justifying one of those Four Horsemen—your ‘taker’ self starts talking you into believing that you have a right for it, you’re looking out for the interest of the other. You think, ‘Really they’re to blame anyway; I’m innocent.'

“If you’re the other person, just don’t believe that stuff. Just say, ‘By faith, I know that ain’t true!’ and don’t buy into them.

“Put off selfish demands. I mean, who wants to live with a dictator anyway?! Bossing you around?! Here’s a definition: ‘Commanding someone else to do things that would benefit you at their expense with the implied threat of punishment if refused.’ Do you do that?

*****

“As a way to solve problems, selfish demands sure make sense to your ‘taker rule.’ And if your (friend or loved one) is in ‘the giver mode,’ you know what they’re going to do? They’ll reward you because their rule is, ‘Make you happy even if it makes me unhappy.’

“So if you’re in ‘taker mode’ and the other one’s in ‘giver mode,’ WHEW! You’re going to get what you want, so demands look like they work. That’s WHY they seem to work so often! And they’ll work often enough that they’ll become a habit. And it’s a habit that’s almost impossible to break.

“So think about how do you ask others for favors? Do you just tell the other what you want them to do? Do you just order them? ‘You should do this!’ or do you say, ‘Could you do that?’ See the difference between ‘should’ and ‘could’? You’re just changing one word in your vocabulary. You think about how you do it.

******

“The instinct of making demands when you’re frustrated, and the habit of making demands even when you’re not frustrated, makes them real difficult to break. Now if your (friend or loved one) is in the ‘giver mode’. . . but what happens if they’re in the ‘taker mode’? Whoa! World War VI breaks out because your (loved one) isn’t ready to quit.

“They say, ‘You want what you want; I want what I want,’ and you go to war. But you know the fight that results won’t stop your ‘taker mode’ from making demands the next time. Why? Because your ‘taker mode’ lives by the rule, ‘I need to be happy, and if I’m not happy, make (the other person) make me happy,’ and you take whatever you need to take to be happy.

“So if I got to fight someone else’s ‘taker mode,’ well, then, ‘I just need to be a better fighter than they are,’ so I develop skills—not at solving problems, but at winning wars. You think that’s gonna work?! When it comes to fairness, you can never trust your ‘taker mode,’ so what do you trust?

******

“I suggest that in Philippians 2 there’s what I call a ‘Grace Policy of Joint Agreement.’ I’m going to tell you, you need rules to force yourself into confronting these things and making choices.

“Faith is an action you take out of a positive volition. It’s a positive choice and there’s time in your life when you need to have situations that force you to make choices so that when you come to that, you’ve caught yourself; you’ve checked yourself.

“The habits aren’t just mindlessly flowing through your life. ‘Boom, here’s a choice!’ and you can consciously bring yourself back under control. It’s called ‘a belt of truth.’ That girdle of truth Paul talks about where you take truth…the soldier’s robe would flow out but he put that belt on and got it all under control. But you can’t just carry the belt; you got to put it on and cinch it up.

“Philippians 2 says, ‘Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’ WHOAH.’

“Proverbs 13:10 says, ‘Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom.’ So don’t let anything be done by strife or vain glory just to get your way. That is lowliness of mind.

*****

“Where’s your mind work? In your emotions or . . . ? What are you doing? You’re esteeming. You’re developing a value system that tells you how you think and how you make decisions. And what is it? ‘I’m going to esteem others better than myself.’ Now does that sound like the taker or the giver? Who is it really? It’s the new creature!

“But see how close the giver can be to that? But when the giver does it, why is the giver doing it? So he can feel good about doing good? When the new man does it, why does he do it? Verse 5: ‘Let this mind be in you which is Christ Jesus.’

“You see why it’s so much of a catch thing there? And the reason why that is, is when you fail, what does your new nature do? It doesn’t cast you into psychological guilt and shame and rejection. It says, ‘Wait a minute.’ You get objective guilt. You say, ‘I made a mistake; it was wrong and now I can fix it because the Cross has equipped me to.’

“You can successfully deal with failures under grace, where with the ‘giver mode,’ all the ‘giver mode’ does is what it did with Adam and Eve. It sends you into all the psychological guilt. Things that paralyze you and make you unable so now your ‘taker mode’ takes over because the ‘giver mode’—he comes to his/her rescue to say, ‘Come on, I’ll take care of you. I’ll make you happy.’

“And when you put off all that thinking process, it becomes, ‘I’m going to esteem others better than myself because that’s what Christ teaches me to think.’

Like a river

Paul lays out two vital things that every person is desperate for and it’s two of the great heritages of the Believer. These are two things you have no matter what the circumstances because they didn’t come from circumstances. They aren’t earth-born blessings. They came from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Where’s God the Father at? In heaven. Where’s the Lord Jesus Christ? He’s in exile in heaven. That’s where these things come from; they descend from the Father. They come to you through Jesus Christ, explains Richard Jordan.

By the way, every place in the Scripture that I know of, they’re always in this order. It’s always grace, and then peace. You never see peace and then grace. Grace is the source; peace is the effect of the source.

Grace is all God’s power, love and wisdom that’s available to us. It wraps up all that God is and all that God offers to us. Grace is God at work on our behalf and in our lives.

Peace is simply peace from anxiety; freedom from fear, from worry. When we studied Philippians 4, I tried to show you that peace is that relaxed mental attitude that comes into your life. That tranquility that comes into your soul simply by resting in an intelligent understanding of God’s grace to you in Christ.

Peace is that sense of security; that sense of trust. I just can’t get over the sense of rest; how wonderful it is to be able to rest in God’s grace.

Paul says, “Grace be to you and peace.” Here’s the ultimate thing you’re going to get out of what Paul teaches you. “Grace be to you and peace from God our father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.”

*****

Jesus Christ in John 14:

 [25] These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.
[26] But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
[27] Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Christ says, "I’m gonna be gone.” He knows He’s going to die the next day, then be raised up and spend only 40 days with them before going away, but He’s going to send the Holy Spirit. He’s in essence turning them over to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And He says, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you.”

That expression “my peace”-- Paul uses a wonderful phrase: “The peace of God,” and that’s what that verse is talking about. Peace is that relaxed mental attitude of faith. It’s that inner-man tranquility that results from a total dependence on the will and the Word of the Father. That’s exactly what Christ is doing here.

Watch how it happens. Verse 28: ‘Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.’

So that everybody understands that “I’m totally committed to doing what the Father says to do because I love Him.” He already told them, “If you love me keep my commandments.” I’m living in complete total dependence on the will of my Father, is what He’s saying. Paul has a great phrase for that—he calls it “the faith of Christ.”

He entered into a plan and an agreement with His Father that that’s what He would do and said, “Now my peace I leave you.” He’s completely at peace. He has complete inner tranquility even though He knows the agony He’s going to face.

In fact, when He says in verse 30 and then 31, He’s saying in the vernacular of our day, “Let’s git-er done . . . Let’s get on with it!” The Adversary the prince of this world has come to fulfill the conflict of Gen 3:15 where the seed of the woman and the seed of Satan will be in personal hand-to-hand combat. That day has arrived, so let’s go!

Because He’s got nothing . . . there’s “no weakness in me at all. I’m ready to go.”

He knows about what the Scripture says is going to happen to Him and yet He doesn’t hold back. In Hebrews 12 He says, “Who for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame.” He had in His mind an understanding of what God had promised Him and believed it and trusted it confidently. There’s no rebellion, no hesitation; He has that complete inner tranquility.

When Paul talks in Philippians 4:7 about the “peace of God,” that’s the peace that BELONGS to God. In Romans 5, he talks about “being justified by faith we have peace WITH God.” That’s us and God; there’s not an argument between us anymore. God is no longer against me. There’s a cessation of hostility. No cause for God to be angry with me anymore.

But the peace OF God is something different than that. That’s the peace that God Himself has. God is at peace with His own will. He’s at peace with His own plans. He’s at peace with His own word. And God’s peace; that total tranquility and inner calmness over what He’s doing, He takes that and gives it to me when I trust Him. And I can live, and Jesus lived, in complete dependence on His Father’s will and that gave Him that inner man tranquility that results from that total dependence.

By the way, when he talks about the peace WITH God and the peace OF God, Melchizedek was the king of righteousness and the king of peace. Righteousness is first, peace is second. Because peace can only be based on righteousness; things have to righteously be dealt with. So you have peace with God where the righteousness of God is satisfied; then you can have the peace OF God.

James 3:17 tells Israel, “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” First you have the righteousness, then you have the peace.

Isaiah 32:15 (“Until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest”) talks about the work of righteousness is peace. Righteousness has to do with being right. God’s word is right and I’m in relationship with it and the peace comes out of His righteousness.

Verse 27 is a great illustration of the peace of God. Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. Here’s God living in our humanity and He has complete and total peace—inner tranquility, inner calmness, a relaxed mental attitude in his heart that results in that faith, that total dependence on the Word of His Father.

Verse 28. Ye have heard, and By the way, that’s how you don’t let your heart be troubled. You know, most trouble comes from fear. There are really two fundamental emotions that we deal with in all of life—one is love (drawing us toward things) and one is fear (pushing us away).

If you take a list, for example, I Timothy 3 where Paul talks about if a man desires the office of a bishop and he gives you a long list of characteristics that this what a mature godly saint’s life would look like. When he does that, he identifies for a man a lot of the issues you’re going to have to deal with and have straight in your life.

I took those things one time and listed them out and began to try to put them into categories and you know more things in that list in I Timothy 3 about what a man has to face and deal with to become a mature godly Christian man, the one category that had more things under it than any other was the issue of anger!

Kind of shocked me. I studied that 2-3 times to see if I got it right. Men especially have to deal with the issue of anger and the reason for that I suppose is only by pride comes contention. And men have that issue.

But when you study anger what you discover is almost always anger is a
disguise for fear. Because you get angry and when you get down to the bottom of where did the anger come from, it’s because you’re afraid of something either to lose or going to happen. Fear is a debilitating thing.

In this context, the fear of men kept people from trusting and believing even when they saw the truth of God’s word by seeing the Messiah in their midst.

Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled.” What does your heart do? With a heart man believes. “Neither be afraid.” Without having that turmoil down inside just have the ability to, “Ahhh,” let it hang out. Relax inside. Relax in the truth of God’s Word about who Jesus Christ is and what He’s accomplished.

Why should you trust it? Look at me; I’m trusting it. Verse 28. You heard it. You heard me tell you. You know why you ought to have your heart trust me and not be afraid? Because you’ve heard my word. The path to peace is dependence on God’s Word. It’s to trust in what God has said to you. “If you love me you would rejoice because I said I go to my Father. Now why is He going to go to the Father?”

He’s going away to receive the kingdom. Remember the parallel in Luke 19? The passage in Daniel 7 where the son of man comes before the ancient of days to receive the kingdom and the power and the dominion? He goes there to receive the kingdom and to return.

Philippians 2:5 says, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ
Jesus.” This is a truth that Paul followers should be very clear about and should rejoice in. Paul goes on, “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
[7] But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
[8] And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

He made himself of no reputation. Who did that to Him? He did it to Himself. Voluntarily He took up a position and took upon him the form of a servant. Though He’s equal with the Father He chooses to function in relationship to the Father as a servant. Did He have to? No. He willingly chose to.

The next verse says, “He humbled Himself and became obedient.” What does a servant do? He does what his master, his lord, tells him to do. So when Jesus Christ says ‘the Father is great than I’ it’s in relationship to Him coming as a servant.

What He’s doing is owning His place as a servant. Verse 31: “I’m going to go do the commandments of my father” and he’s magnifying the one who sent Him: “I’m doing the will of my Father.”

Now that Jehovah was going to send a son to be a servant is in Isaiah 42:1, which looks forward to the Messiah coming: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.”

There’s God the Father describing the coming Messiah. He said it there at the baptism: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased.” I’ve put my Spirit upon Him. That’s how John is told in John 1: “You’ll know who He is because you’ll see the Spirit descending on Him. He’ll come and fulfill that passage.”

He’s going to enable the nation Israel to be exactly the channel of blessing God chose them to be. A blessing to the nations. Verse 6: “I Lord have called thee in righteousness and will hold thine hand and keep thee and give thee for a covenant of people.”

You know where Israel’s going to get her covenant? It’s going to be in Christ. That’s why in John 15 He’s going to say, “I am the vine.” It’s only Israel in Christ. He’s going to make the covenant that allows them to be who God has chosen them to be; enables them to be that. He’s the servant.

Poet's license

Rufus Henry McDaniel, born in Ripley, Ohio in 1850 and retired in Dayton, Ohio at his death in 1940, is the author of the classic hymn, “Since Jesus Came Into My Heart.”

McDaniel was a preacher at seven different churches in southern Ohio and the author of 100 different songs.

It was after the untimely death of his son, Herschel, in 1913 that McDaniel wrote his most famous hymn. He sent the poem to Charles Gabriel, a prolific writer of hymn tunes, but when he didn’t hear back thought it must be a reject.

But Gabriel added the music and the song began to be sung at the Billy Sunday crusades in 1915.

“It was so popular people began to sing the song in the streets of Philadelphia. It is reported that during these crusades God used the lyrics of the song to convert an Officer Fowler of the Philadelphia Police Department. The officer convinced many of his officers to attend the services and more than a hundred professed their faith in Christ.”

1. What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought
Since Jesus came into my heart!
I have light in my soul for which long I had sought,
Since Jesus came into my heart!
(Refrain)

2. I'm possessed of a hope that is steadfast and sure,
Since Jesus came into my heart!
And no dark clouds of doubt now my pathway obscure,
Since Jesus came into my heart!

Refrain:

Since Jesus came into my heart,
Since Jesus came into my heart,
Floods of joy o'er my soul
like the sea billows roll,
Since Jesus came into my heart.

******

It is amazing how many great hymns from history were born of sad things and accompanying intense emotions—the death of a loved one, personal tragedy, ailments and impairments, tremendous physical and/or mental hardships, on and on.

I remember being shocked when I learned that the author of a very favorite hymn of mine since childhood, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” is speculated to have committed suicide!

“There are conflicting reports about the death of Joseph Scriven,” writes Helen Salem Rizk in her 1964 book, “Stories of the Christian Hymns.” “Some authorities say he died of natural causes; others that he took his life in a fit of melancholia. However, they all agree as to the humility and kindness that ruled his days from the great tragedy on the eve of his marriage, when his bride-to-be accidentally drowned, to the day of his death in 1886.”

Considered one of the ten most popular Christian hymns ever published, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” was discovered “in a very dramatic manner,” says Rizk. “When Scriven, who lived an extremely tragic life, was in his last days, a friend who was sitting with him during a time of severe illness came upon the manuscript.

"The friend was very impressed and wondered why it never had been published. Scriven replied, ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus has been written by God and me to comfort my mother during a time of great sorrow.’

“He explained that he never intended that it be used by anyone else. Strange are the ways of fate; a song written only for the life and need of one person became the inspiration of millions!”

*****

The classic hymns, “O For a Closer Walk with God,” and “There is a Fountain Filled With Blood,” were written by the son of a clergyman, William Cowper (born in England in 1731), who four times in his life was committed to insane asylums and many times attempted suicide, says Rizk.

“His sixty-nine years of life were physical torture and mental anguish,” she writes. “The burden of his mental affliction and at times partial insanity was lightened by his desire and ability to write . . . This suffering man was loved by many and known to be a true Christian. He was able to produce some of our sweetest and most spiritual hymns.

Of “There is a Fountain Filled With Blood,” she noted, “People have sung this grand old favorite through the years. Probably unaware of the struggle Cowper had in his life, they see only the beauty and feeling reflected in this hymn.”

*****

For George Matheson’s “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go,” Rizk summarizes, “This great hymn of courage and faith was written, strangely enough, under circumstances of tragic inner conflict and severe mental suffering as a release from personal tragedy . . .

"The courage and fortitude of Dr. Matheson (1842-1906) was evidenced by the dramatic fact that from this deep sorrow and heartache he could write: ‘O love that wilt not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee.’ ”

*****

The classic of classics, “Sweet By and By,” is written by Sanford Filmore Bennett (1836-1898).  “It is said that this entire hymn, including words by S.F. Bennett and music by J.P. Webster, was written and composed in less than 30 minutes,” Rizk’s book confirms. “Webster, who was subject to moods of melancholy and depression, once visited his friend Bennett who was writing at his desk.

“Walking to the fire, Webster turned his back to his friend without a word. When Bennett asked him what the matter was, he received the curt reply that ‘it would be alright, by and by.’ Seizing upon the last three words, Bennett exclaimed, ‘The sweet by and by! That would make a good title for a hymn!’

“Whereupon, he wrote without stopping, covering the paper as fast as his pen could go. When he finished he handed the manuscript to Webster, who immediately sat down and composed a melody to fit the stirring words. From this union in the village of Elkhorn, Wisconsin, the gospel hymn was born: ‘There’s a land that is fairer than day, And by faith we can see it afar, For the Father waits, over the way, To prepare us a dwelling-place there.’ ”

Authority in a big old black Book

Came home from work this evening looking forward to replaying the CD I finally found in a large pile but--get this--it doesn’t play on my boom box’s CD player. The title of the sermon from August 22, 2004 is “A Change to Keep.”

I looked through the Shorewood archives and couldn’t find it. I did find a good one, though, entitled “It Became a Proverb” and here’s a first installment from it.

I came down with a cold sometime today and it is worsening each hour now with building pain in my head, eyes and ears to go along with the congestion that’s causing me to cough and have my throat feel sore. Wish I had a reserve bottle of Robitussin in my medicine cabinet, but I’ll just have to take some Tylenol and get to bed early since there’s no calling in sick tomorrow—Saturday is my biggest day of the week at work.

John 14:23: [23] Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

You’ve got in your lap the greatest book the world’s ever seen and the wonderful thing about it is you can understand it. You can get it and you can get into it and KNOW what’s involved in what God Almighty’s doing in the world, said Richard Jordan, who mentioned he was 36 years old during the message.

If you don’t have that Book, you don’t have any way to demonstrate whether or not you love the Lord. He said, “If you love me, you’ll keep my words,” and if those words aren’t available to you to keep, and you don’t have them and you’re not keeping them, you don’t have any proof that you love Him.

I mean, folks, you think God Almighty would have inspired His Word, and then He was just so tired and pooped out, impotent and worn out from inspiring it, that He couldn’t preserve it and keep it so you can have it today?!

You ever thought about that for any length of time? Not just that He wrote it in original manuscripts, but that He’s preserved it for you and there’s somewhere for you to get your hands of them?

When Jesus said, “If you love me you’ll keep my words,” He expected His people to be able to know where that Book was and be able to hold it in their hands and be able to believe it and obey it. And it’s demonstration and proof of their love for Him.

If you took the Bibles of the average Believer . . . Billy Sunday said one time that if you took all the Bibles on Christians’ shelves and blew the dust off of them, you’d have a dust storm.

I’m sorry to say but I’d be willing to guess that there’s a lot of you folks that between Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night, you take that Bible and put it on the shelf and it gathers dust.

And you just think, as far as Bible-Believing people go you’re some of the cream of the crop. You think of the treatment it gets out there.

Take a look at that Book of yours and hold it up. How many of you have black ones? How man of you have red ones? Red is the blood; that’s a bloody Book.

The most prominent color is black. You ever heard anybody say, “Put that down in your little black book.” You know what they’re talking about? That Book’s the authority.

I used to go around Down South in the late ’60s and preach on the street. They had a lot of racial tension across the South then and we’d go all through Mobile and other cities all around  and I didn’t have any problem at all.

You know what I learned? Any neighborhood I went into, it didn’t matter what the racial makeup, or the economic makeup, I take a big old black Book and stick it under my arm and I could walk down through any crowd and people got out of my way.

I used to get on the bus, lay that Book on the seat—you don’t wany anybody to sit next to you on a crowded bus, you know what you do? Lay that big old black Book on the seat next to you.

Now, it won’t work on an airplane because there are assigned seats, but they’ll be eyeballing that thing. If you had a Playboy magazine, they wouldn’t look at you twice, but you open your brief case and get out that big old Book and lay it out and you’ll hear, “Uhh, uhh,” and get people moving around, all upset. That’s the authority.

New bibles, they don’t put them out in black; they lost the authority.

Present experience of 'caught up'

(happy to report I found the CD I was listening to in my car during a road trip the other weekend and will post tomorrow. In meantime:)

A huge turning point in a person’s Christian walk is when they realize that it isn’t really what’s done for Christ that’s the issue; it’s really that, "I’m in Christ and He’s in me and it isn’t what I’m doing for Him; it’s His life in me that’s the real issue," says Richard Jordan.

At some point in my ministry, I figured out that no matter what I did, and no matter how hard I worked at it, tomorrow I could look back and say, "Boy, I could’ve done better yesterday." It was along in there that I began to realize it’s really not what I do for the Lord, striving and being on the treadmill, thinking, "I gotta get there and I gotta accomplish that."

The Christian life is really Him in you, living out through you. Now that’s wonderful to understand in theory, but you’re like I am and we’re both like Paul was in Romans 7.

He said, "To will is with me. I got all the will you want; my problem isn’t will power, my problem is want power. Because the good I would do, I don’t, and the evil that I don’t want to do, I do. How to perform I can’t find."

The answer to that, in Paul’s case, was it wasn’t in what he was doing. He’s saying that, "What I’m going to do isn’t going to be the issue. The answer is in, 'Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. ' " There’s the how to perform!

******

From the beginning courses of speech class, the student is taught to listen for the main thrust of what a speaker is trying to convey, express, teach, etc., in any given speech, lecture, etc. The key is take what they say at face value.

Now, when he says "the disciple whom Jesus loved," who wrote the book? The disciple whom Jesus loved. So when John describes himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved," he's telling you, "Here’s how the Lord thinks about me." The writer is so caught up in Christ’s love for him.

It wasn’t his love for Christ he was focused on. That’s what Peter was focused on. You go on down in the text and Peter says, "Lord, I’ll go to death with you. I’ll go to prison with you. I love you. I’ll prove I love you."

So which one of them had the close, personal, intimate relationship with Christ? The one who was talking about what he was going to do for Christ, or the one who was focused on what Christ was doing for him?

You want to have some intimacy with the Lord? You want to have a personal contact? If you want to have that personal intimate relationship with God the Father that He desires to have, it’s called eternal life.

If you want to have that in the present experience of your life, don’t focus on what you’re doing, because there’s only failure there. Focus on how much He loves you. That song about, "O how He loves you and me," well, that’s a good thing to think about it because "it’s the love of Christ that constrains us," as Paul tells us.

And John, this disciple whom Jesus loved, had his focus on Christ’s love for him. Because of that, he had this special relationship with the Lord that the others didn’t have.

*****

Paul advises in II Corinthians 10:5, “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

The warfare we’re in with the Adversary today is a spiritual battle that gets fought in your inner man. That’s why you need to keep your mind and your ears tuned like a laser.

Just like your tongue can taste the difference in meats, your ear needs to be able to hear that message . . . The key is to win the battle for the mind because that’s where the conflict’s ALWAYS at.

Paul asks the Galatians in Galatians 3:3: "Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?"

You see all this performance stuff, all this activity aimed at the physical outward external stuff, is backwards. Satan works through your body into your soul and then into your spirit. God works in your spirit out through your soul, manifested in your body. So where’s the real battle? It’s going to be in the spirit of our minds.

Paul says, "Go over and grab all those vain imaginations; all those things you project in your mind, dream up or have other people put into your thinking." The course of this world is "bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop"--constantly.

He’s saying, "Take that stuff and just throw it out the window!" Imagine yourself on the third floor of a building and watch it go "splat" on the pavement.

*****

“Bringing every thought into captivity." You see, you’re to renew your mind to develop a positive habit of BELIEVING what God says. Develop a positive habit in your mind that says, "I am beloved of the Father."

When I bring my thinking into captivity to the grace and love of God given to me through the Crosswork of Jesus Christ, I’ll be free from self-occupation--free from thinking about me and my stuff--and I’ll start thinking about me and HIS stuff. In fact, I’ll just start thinking about His stuff.

And that’s when you find rest in the Father’s love. And it won’t just be a theological point and a doctrinal statement to say, "God loves you." It’ll be something that comes into your intimate experience moment by moment.

*****

When you’re trusting your performance, what do you get? You get failure. There are ONLY TWO CHOICES, folks, when it comes to effectually changing your life. One is law and one is grace. You either believe the law changes you or you believe love changes you.

Let me tell you this, simply warning people to change can’t change them. Giving people reasons for changing, for doing what’s right and for avoiding what’s wrong, doesn’t change them.

You get to Romans 7 and look at Paul’s description of the life of a Believer lived under the law and it’s very clear that the law endorses the need for change but is powerless to produce it. That’s not its job description.

The job description of the law is to point out failure. That’s why it gives the rules and regulations and the demand for perfection so it can hold up the mirror and say, "See, you can’t do it. You’re not perfect. You need a Savior."

Have you ever seen somebody headed for a mess and you begin to give them reasons why they shouldn’t do it? Think about yourself. You got all these reasons not to do something and you do it anyway.

You see, reasons only answer the question of "Why?" Why should I not do this and why should I do that. You need motivation to answer the "How?"

What is it actually that causes you to love God? Is it Him telling you, "Love me," or do we love Him because He first loved us? Where does love for Him really come from? It’s His love for us that motivates our love for Him.

That’s why I John 4:10 says, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." It says, "We love Him, because He first loved us.”

*****

In a study I have on tape, Detroit-area preacher Tom Bruscha, someone who has been in the ministry for three-plus decades, makes the point, “Do you realize most of Christendom is spending all their Christian life trying to get "rooted and grounded in the love of God"? (Eph. 3:17)

“Instead of being on the mountain peak, looking out and comprehending what God is doing, Christians spend all their time trying to figure out, ‘Am I really saved? Am I really forgiven? Does God really still love me?’

“It’s when you just study and BELIEVE what God’s love has done for you, and how God IS part of your life, and what God IS going to do in you, that you then see that is YOU BEING rooted and grounded. Paul’s writing as if you can ALREADY be rooted and built up! Colossians says the same thing.”

*****

A fascinating op-ed column in the New York Times, “Your Brain Lies to You,” described how the phenomenon known as “source amnesia” leads people to forget whether or not a statement is true.

“Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true,” informs the article. “With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a non-credible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength.”

Obviously, there are easily identified biblical implications. This is why you hear such outrageously untrue statements about what the Bible really says. But people listen to other people’s lies and don’t remember what they once knew as fact from God’s Word.

*****

In the Bible, truth is more than just being right all the time; it’s the ultimate basis of reality. What makes what’s real? God.

You know that coffee table is solid, but at the atomic and sub-atomic level it isn’t, explains Jordan. Well, what’s reality really made of? In Scripture, the ultimate source of what’s real—not illusionary, but what’s real—is who God is.

There's the Indiana Jones movie where, at the end, everything resolves itself. They figure out the mystery they’re looking for in the crystal and Indy asks, "Well, did they go out into space?" The other guy says, "Yes, the space between things."

You know what he’s talking about is not outer space. You take an atom

and it’s got all these neutrons, protons and electrons that circle. Well, what’s between all that?

*****

The first thing to understand is that life doesn’t begin in your emotions. Your emotions are the part of your makeup that God gave you to be motivators of your will. The way you’re made by God to function is in response to decisions that your will makes.

Too often we live under the tyranny of emotional revolt because our emotions, as dumb and as uneducated as they are . . . Do you realize your emotions are just dumb as posts?!

Your emotions think anything your mind is thinking is true. Anything your mind thinks, you project on the screen of your thought processes and your emotions think is true.

That’s why you cry when you see a sad movie. It’s only a movie. You know it’s not real, but you project it into the visualization of your mind and your emotions respond as though it were true.

Your emotions are designed to respond. e-MOTION. That’s what the word is. Most of that word is the word motion. And God has built you so that there’s a part of your inner man that is designed to put into motion the things that your heart and your mind have chosen to do.

But the order is "facts first." Then you have to have faith in the facts. And once you have faith in the facts, it will produce fruit. And the fruit will then produce the feeling.

You have to have it in that order, because until your faith rests in the reality of the facts, those facts can never go to work in your life. They’ll just be rolling around in your head. When your faith rests in them, your faith in those facts releases the power of that truth and it "works effectually in you that believe.”