Freedom from Guilt and Shame

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When Temptation Comes

James 1:2-4 Consider it all joy my brethren, when you encounter various trials (temptations), knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance (steadfastness). And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect (mature) and complete, lacking in nothing.

How many of us consider it all joy when we are slammed with temptations?  Because we have grown up in this world not knowing the love of the Father, we walk as orphans.  Within this orphan mindset is the belief that “It’s up to me; It’s my fault; I must be doing something wrong; me, me, me, me…  Therefore, when temptations come, we don’t count it all joy.  We go into worry and fear and begin to wonder: “What’s wrong with me; what did I do wrong; God must be mad at me because all of this stuff is happening; I need to fast, pray, read, more… it’s all about me, me, me!”

Yet, James, the half-brother of Jesus is telling us that it’s this testing of our faith that produces endurance (steadfastness) and as we allow it to have its perfect work we will grow into maturity and recognize that we really are complete, LACKING IN NOTHING.  Not because we have become better orphans, but because it’s in the seasons of testing that we discover we have a Daddy God who never leaves us or forsakes us.

Jesus demonstrated this life of sonship.  Remember, He was tempted in ALL things, yet without sin!!!  He didn’t wake up and face the day with the thought, “How am I going to avoid sin today; I need to work really hard to be a good son?”  No!  He awoke full of the Spirit and fully connected to His Daddy!  And from this position of sonship, while being tempted in ALL things, He loved and gave; doing all He saw His Daddy doing and saying all He heard His Daddy saying! (John 14)

So, sons and daughters of God count it all joy.  Don’t look at yourself when temptation comes and try to figure out what’s wrong with you.  Look up.  Look into those fiery eyes of Love and ask, “Who do You say that I am?” and let the testing produce maturity in you as you move into the knowledge that you really are complete, lacking in nothing.  You and God against every demon in hell are still a majority!

Conviction of the Holy Spirit; What is It?

Conviction.  The word appears 8 times in the New Testament.  Without going into each verse and its meaning, let me just share a few thoughts.

For years we have believed traditionally that the Holy Spirit is there to convict us (Christians) of our sins.  With that belief, the enemy has found the opportunity to sneak in under the guise of “conviction” and heap false guilt and condemnation on the heads of believers; God’s holy ones, the saints, His righteous ones, His sons and daughters.

Let’s look at this.  The word for convict(ion) is elegchos or elegchō: “not merely a charge on the basis of the conviction, but the manifestation of the truth of that charge.  The results will be reaped from that charge, and the acknowledgement, if not outwardly, yet inwardly, of its truth on the part of the accused. This doesn’t just imply the charge, but the truth of the charge.” Spiros Zodhiates, Th.D., Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible

Romans 8:33-34 Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

When Jesus became the Propitiation for our sin, He satisfied God!  When Jesus died on the cross for all of the sins committed from the beginning of time to the end of time (Rom. 5), He said “It is finished!”  When we receive His forgiveness and His life, we are given His righteousness.  It’s not your righteousness.  If it is, then you will be convicted of sin every time you miss the mark.  But if it’s His righteousness, you will be convicted of your righteousness every time the Holy Spirit comes to you to remind you who you are when you are walking in opposition to your true nature. (2 Cor. 5:17)

If you are being convicted of your sins, you might be bound in the cycle of sin, try hard, defeat, sin, try harder and ultimate defeat!  Not to mention your eyes would be on yourself!  But, if when you sin, the Holy Spirit is convicting you of your righteousness and wooing you to look again to the cross of Christ, then your eyes are on Him and the joy before you would cause you to run into His arms. 

We’ve been duped.  The enemy has come in for thousands of years and convinced the church that we are sinners and ultimately failures.  He is there tempting us and when we don’t know who we are and what we were created for, we say “yes” to sin.  Then he stands as accuser and pretends that he is God accusing us.  We walk away feeling like God is mad at us or maybe that He is simply disappointed.  How has this helped the church?  Does this bring us into sonship?  Does it release us into our destiny?  How has it worked for you?  …Or does this lead us to run from God, hide from Him and ultimately give up?

Romans 16:7-11 But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.  And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.

The Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin.  The world needs to be convicted of sin because they need to receive the sacrifice for those sins; because they need Jesus.  We do not need a Savior until we are convinced of our need for a Savior. The Holy Spirit convicts the believer of righteousness.  Jesus, talking to His 11 closest friends, hours before His betrayal said, “concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me.” 

Remember, we are in the world, but not of the world.  We are the “you” in John 16 because we are His followers.  “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”  If I am righteous; if I have been justified; if I am redeemed and sanctified… why would the Holy Spirit come and convict me of sin.  He knows that my sin is upon the cross.  He knows that I will walk in it if I believe that it’s still alive in me.  He knows that I will be free of it if I know I have been crucified. (Rom. 6) If God casts our sin as far as the east is from the west and remembers it no more, why do you think the Holy Spirit still remembers?  Hmmmm.  Maybe that voice that is pointing at your sin and causing guilt and condemnation to rise up within you is not the voice of God at all.  Maybe it is the voice of the accuser who accuses us day and night!

Romans 8:1 Therefore there is NOW no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  When will we believe this?  When will we receive this?  If we continue to hold onto our sin and condemnation, then we continue to walk in pride.  It might be masked as false humility, “I’m just a sinner saved by grace”; but don’t be fooled.  Jesus was enough!  Jesus did it!  He went to the cross.  He took the sin of the world and He said, “It is finished.”  He defeated death and hell and is now seated at the right hand of God and we are in Him. (Eph. 1 & 2)  Do not be deceived any longer.  Agree with God. Say yes to the finished work of Jesus and enter into the rest that God has for you. (Heb. 4)  May you be convicted of the truth of that charge: that you are righteous, redeemed, hidden with Christ in God, sanctified sons and daughters; that you have peace with God because of His great love and His great sacrifice.  Amen

What if God Really Does Just Love You!

What if God really does just love you?  It is difficult to believe and difficult to receive.  This world has clouded our minds and left us thinking everything must be earned.  What if God's love is much bigger than that?  What if grace truly is amazing and the good news is really good?
Four years ago God led me into a wilderness.  In that wilderness I discovered that I was not a servant with a master, but a bride with a Husband (Hosea 2) and a daughter with a Father.  Then 2 years ago I realized He was calling me away to Himself.  He just wanted us to "hang out".  It was difficult to grasp at first, but then I began to understand.  In that 2 years He has loved me.  Every day that I hang out with Him, He just simply loves on me; no agenda.
One day (after hearing a sermon about God giving us strategies in our quiet times with Him) I was talking to Him: "Lord, what are we doing?  Every time I hang out with You, You are just loving on me.  Aren't we going to move into strategies; you know, for ministry, life, etc.?"  His response, "Intimacy is the strategy."
So, I have continued to hang out with the Lord and today I have realized, He simply wants to love me; no agenda.  Isn't it what Jesus told His Father when He was with His disciples in His very last prayer: "that the love You have for Me may be in them." (John 17)  Doesn't all of life begin and end there, in the love of God that will forever unfold.
The good news really is the good news.  Jesus came, and for the joy set before Him (being reunited to you) He endured the cross.  He doesn't need servants.  If He created the world to have servants, He would've left out the free will part (and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil).  He has always wanted lovers and children and friends.  It has always been about relationship and it has no agenda.
What if God really does just love you?  Wouldn't that change everything?  You might fall so in love with Him that you begin to do relationship without agenda?  Wow.  Maybe it really is simply love God, love others.
I pray that Christ may live in your hearts by faith. I pray that you will be filled with love.   I pray that you will be able to understand how wide and how long and how high and how deep His love is.  I pray that you will know the love of Christ. His love goes beyond anything we can understand. I pray that you will be filled with God Himself. (Eph. 3:17-19)

He’s your Man, Not your Manna

When I married my husband, Scott, almost 28 years ago, I thought he was supposed to make me complete.  Because you see, I was very incomplete; I was, like most women, wounded.

Then as I grew through the years and allowed the Lord to teach me and, most of all, to heal my heart, I began to realize that true marriage and relationship came in releasing the ones you love.

I explain it best with this illustration: my friend Marie and I went to Steak and Shake to hang out and talk one night.  Well, since it’s always freezing in there, we ordered hot chocolate.  When our server brought it to the table, it was about the prettiest cup of hot chocolate I had seen: a beautiful mound of whipped cream, decorated with miniature chocolate chips and a cherry on top!

You know, at the beginning of my marriage I was a woman with an empty cup.  I thought Scott was supposed to fill it to the top.  Then through much pain and frustration, I realized: it’s not his job!  I have learned that as I go to God with my wounds, my empty places, my anger, the lies I’ve believed, that He meets me and He fills my cup.  He not only fills it to the top, but to overflowing.  You know, that point where you have to get the person beside you to bring their cup close so that you can let the excess pour into theirs!

I am blessed to have a husband who loves me well.  So, when he comes home to his wife who is living from the place of fullness and he brings flowers, or just a word of encouragement or even just a hug… whipped cream, sprinkles, etc.  Of-course there are bad days too (especially in almost 28 years)… but if I am choosing to look up, my cup is full.  Since he is not the one that fills it, he is not the one that syphon’s it out.  Actually, it cannot even be syphoned out if my eyes are on Him and His finished work!

So, how do I release? I look up.  I take my cup to God instead of Scott.  So... instead of him holding the job of filling it, which was never his job, he gets splashed on, often!

So women of God, remember this: he may be your man, but he’s not your manna.  Actually, if you live your life waiting for him to complete you, you will never be satisfied.  There is only One who can satisfy you and He is the One who gave it all to restore you back to intimacy and dependency.  It’s time to look up.  Tell Him what you want, what you need, where you hurt and look to His response because I can guarantee you one thing: He will always be enough.  Lord, give us hearts to release and eyes to look up.

In the Father’s Embrace

John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life and the life was the light of men.

We are  familiar with this passage.  We realize that Jesus was God and He was with God and He created all things.  We realize He is the light of all men and we are fortunate when we realize our need for Him.  Yet, we don’t realize what has been given to us.  Our minds cannot comprehend the vastness of the goodness of God.

John 1:18 says, “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.”  I looked up the original word translated “the only begotten”; the word is monogenes.  The editor of the Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible, Spiros Zodhiates, admits that this word is “unfortunately translated as the only begotten”.  He states that the word monogenes is used to show a very special relationship between the Father and the Son.  When we read the word (begotten) we get the idea that Jesus was generated by the Father.  A better description is “the unique Son who being in the bosom of the Father, He Himself brought Him out.”  In verse 1 when it says that the Word became flesh – the word for became is a word that means “to become something you have never been before”.

So, here is what the Lord has been speaking to me this morning: Jesus, for the first time in all eternity, was brought out of the Father and chose to be placed, from that unique and glorious position of unity and oneness, into flesh.  He became like one of us because He wanted us to be united with Him as He is united with the Father.  Jesus, in the last few hours of His life, while with His closest 11 friends prayed, “Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” (Jn. 17:11) Then in the last breath of His prayer He said, “I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known; that the love with which You loved Me may be in them.” (John 17:26)

So, Jesus allowed Himself to be brought out of the Father so that we could be brought into the Father!  Do you see that all of creation is groaning for the sons of God to be revealed? Rom. 8:19

Jesus said, “In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me and I in you.”  The truth is that if we are in Christ, we cannot distance ourselves from God.  The deceiver whispers "you are far away from God and you must hide", but Jesus stepped out of the Father, so that He could bring us into that most intimate of places: into the embrace of God (into the bosom of the Father).  Sons and daughters will discover their identity in the embrace of the Father.

Let yourself see and know this truth: If you are in Christ… all things, all things are new.  You are someone who you have never been before.  If you are in Him  all things work together for your good; i.e. every circumstance and situation does not have its’ origin in Him, but He will use all things, good or bad, of your doing or of someone else’s doing, for your good.  As Don Finto says, “God wastes nothing!”  If you are in Him, you are in the Father and you cannot be separated from the Father or His love or His adoration or His constant delight.  All things belong to you, and you belong to Christ; and Christ belongs to God. (1 Cor. 3:23)  Know this truth and this truth will set you free!!!

Sons and daughters of God, know who you are and know Whose you are.  Sons and daughters of God, the earth is groaning for you to lay down your orphan way of thinking, your striving and your fear, and be revealed in truth and identity and love.  Sons and daughters, there is no greater place in all of eternity than in the Father’s embrace.

Will you say "yes"?

God is looking for laid down lovers; a people who are willing to go anywhere, do anything, lay down their very lives if necessary to follow Him.  His heart has been waiting for a group of people completely sold out; people who look more into His eternal face than at the temporary fixes this world has to offer.  His heart yearns for a people who say “yes” whatever the cost.  He laid down everything: His rights, His godly attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence to be with us.  He emptied Himself and became obedient to the point of death… a most gruesome death, hanging on a cross after being betrayed and abandoned and beaten and mocked and scourged and for the first and last time in history, separated from His Father, the very essence of Himself.  
 

He calls out: Who will go for Us?  Who is willing to lay down whatever it takes to pierce and expose the darkness of this world for what it is?

His heart yearns for you to know Him.  His heart yearns to give you every bit of your inheritance.  He waits.  Who will go?  Who will say “yes” to Him?  This generation has a call like none before it.  Sin has increased and become so easily accessible.  The truth has become twisted and His heart aches as He watches those He gave everything for, give everything to idols and sin and relationships whose ends lead to destruction; maybe not eternal destruction, but a destruction of the soul because sin will take its toll.

He paid so great a price; He gave it all and He is asking you to do the same.  Not because He has some longing to control you, but because He knows the greatest life that exists for you is the one where you are so woven into His heart you don’t even need to question the next step, you naturally move in unison with Him.

Let Him love you.  Let Him have His way.  Listen to His heart and how it is calling you; wooing you.  Recognize the deceptions that lay all around you that lead to nothingness.  Their reward is temporary and ultimately meaningless.  But when you delight in Him, He will give you the desires of your heart because when you delight in Him… He becomes the desire of your heart for He is the desire of the nations. 

He calls you by name.  He knows you more than anyone on this earth will ever know you.  He knows the plans that He has for you and they are to prosper you and give you a hope and a future. His thoughts of you are more than all the sands on all the seashores.  The very hairs of your head are numbered.  Why does He even tell us that?  Because He wants us to know His nearness; He wants us to realize His intimacy and His unfailing love.

The enemy also has a plan for your life… it is to kill, steal and destroy and he will use every scheme and plan to keep you from realizing your calling.  He will distract you with good things and good people.  He will offer you water from so many sources, but none of them will quench your thirst.  You will need to go again and again and all the while He waits.  Jesus waits to give you living water so you will never thirst again.

His longing is for you and whether you know it or not and whether you choose to submit to it or not, your longing is for Him.  He is looking for laid down lovers… those who will follow Him anywhere, through anything.  Will you say “yes” to the call He has on your life.  Will you say “yes” to lay down everything for the Pearl of great price?  He is the Treasure.  Nothing else will satisfy.  Nothing else will quench your soul.

He did not come and give His life a ransom for many so that we could go to church on Sunday.  He came to seek and save those who were lost; those who were perishing.  He came to restore you back to your original purpose.  Then as He died and we were crucified with Him and He was buried and we were buried with Him and He was raised and we were raised with Him and seated with Him in heavenly places, He said “Go into all the world and tell them the good news of what I have done”.

We live in a world that is dying.  Look around at the faces of the people.  What do you see?  Despair, darkness, distrust, disorder, loneliness, hurt, selfishness, protection, people rushing around and going nowhere.  There is such a deception among men.    Don Finto recently spoke of God’s people allowing life to take them along instead of them taking up their lives with direction and purpose.  Are you being driven along by the world and busyness and by what you think you need… or are you truly loving God and loving others? 

I see a picture of someone standing in the surf of the sea and being tossed about.  Their knees are getting bloodied by the sand and shells beneath the surface of the water.  This is what happens when life takes us.  But Jesus walked on water; He commanded the sea to be still and it became perfectly calm.  We can let the sea take authority over us and over our lives and we can live with it drawing us in and out, sweeping us under with the current, or we can walk on the water in Him.  Laid down lovers live in the authority that walks on water.  We may not do it perfectly, but we press on to take hold of That which took hold of us.

His desire burns for you.  This generation has been set apart for such a time as this.  He will not take away your choice.  He will not force your hand… if that was His will from the beginning there would be no Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden.  From eternity, He has wanted your love which cannot be love without choice.   He who is Love is wooing you and calling you.  Will you say “yes”?

God, make us a people who will follow you anywhere.  We long to live in the place where we know You as Savior, Lord and Life.   Lord, we want more of You at any cost, we’ll pay any price.