The Biblical Husband: Pretty Desirable, Eh?

It seems that sometimes, at least in the secular world, though even in the confused Christian world, there is the notion that a biblical husband is not really someone you would want.  It’s something maybe you should have, but not really someone you would want.  There’s the notion that he would be domineering and lordly, insensitive but providing, etc. Maybe you’ve felt this way, maybe you haven’t, but regardless, check out this list of attributes of a biblical husband and see what you think.  It is a brief, non-comprehensive, New Testament study of overt husband-oriented passages.  You could do SO much more in studying what it means to be a husband.  But this is a good start. =) (By the way, men, we can do this.)

The Biblical Husband:

-He Loves (agape) His wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her (Eph 5:25). (If you only understood the word agape this would in and of itself overwhelm any woman (or man).)

-He loves her to sanctify her.  His aim is for her to know Jesus perfectly and more, to be like the One they both love.  He gives himself up for her that she might be sanctified; he has great passion and self-sacrificing willingness behind his desire and acts to sanctify her and yet he loves her unconditionally, taking great delight in her regardless of anything in constant openness, hope, trust, and self-giving [agape] (Eph. 5:26a).(The extent of passion, intention, and desire behind the desire to sanctify is suggested by the fact that it says 'he loved her and gave himself for her, that she might be sanctified'.)  (The fact that he loves her ἵνα (in order that) she might be sanctified, shows that the aim of this love, at least in part, is not only just to exist, but in order to bring her closer to Jesus. With Christ and with a human husband, it is important to know that sanctification leads to greater intimacy, so that love can flow more fully and beautifully.)

-He washes her with the water of the word.  He pours the life of the Holy Spirit onto her, the essence of the Word. He aims to fill her with the truth of the Word of God.  He seeks to bring even greater beauty to her frame by washing her with truth regularly. (When you read this verse it is important to know that 'the word' did not mean to them what it means to us now.  It meant more profoundly the truth of God, the essence of Who He is.  Jesus was called the Word, which was an already established reality of the OT that involved the wisdom/truth/character/ways of God.)  (Eph. 5:26b)

-His aim is to present her to Christ in splendor, holy and without blemish (Eph. 5:27)

-(Potential) He also aims to present her to himself in splendor, without spot or blemish (Eph. 5:27).

-He loves his wife as himself, as his own body (Jesus does this!) (Eph 5:33, 28).

-He nourishes her and cherishes her (Eph. 5:29).

-He is not harsh with her. (Col 3:19).

-The best husband has only one wife (1 Ti. 3:2, 3:12, Titus 1:6)

-He dwells with His wife in understanding.  He understands her and lives with her in this understanding (1 Pet 3:7).

-He honors her (1 Pet 3:7).

-His understanding of her and his honoring of her, at least in part, come from an understanding that she is an heir of the grace of life with him (1 Pet 3:7).

-He is able to talk to His wife about theological issues and would do so willingly if she had any questions (1 Cor. 14:35).

-He knows he does not have authority over his own body, but that his body belongs to his wife.  He does not treat his body as his own and therefore does not deny his wife access to it, except by agreement for  a limited time for the purpose of relationship with God (1 Cor 7:3-5).

-His 'justness' causes him to be unwilling to put her to shame (Mat 1:19, about Joseph).

God’s Constant Wooing: A Perspective on Everything that You Feel.

       It’s Wednesday morning.  You wake up.  You feel kind of horrible, a tinge of worthlessness creeping around the corners of your consciousness.  Later in the day you are talking with a group of people, someone makes an off-handed comment that causes you to become suddenly angry.  What do you do?  What is your perspective on the way you felt when you woke up or on why you became angry? Do you just chalk it up to “waking up on the wrong side of the bed” or do you get mad “just because of what that person said”? What paradigm do you see the events of life through in order to interpret each day, week, month, or year?  Is it a paradigm that leads you into greater intimacy with God?

       

       I would like to put forth a rather bold idea that affects my life every day, almost insanely so: that everything that you feel or experience actually involves God’s attempts to draw you to Himself. It is not simply random situational events that you should try and respond well to.  Now maybe this sounds obvious to you at first or maybe it doesn’t, but when you examine it practically, it is normally quite different from one’s usual perspective, even controversial. 

       

       When you are suddenly angry at your friend who said whatever, do you actually think, “What is God trying to bring me into for relationship with Him?”  Normally not.  When you wake up feeling low, do you normally think excitedly, “How is God trying to woo me?”  Probably not. Human beings are normally very situational, reactionary, and self-protective.  At best, we tend to think of the events in our day as events to which we must try and respond righteously.  Now, this isn’t wrong but it is burdening and is a less-helpful way to live.  What if you dared to believe that God was in control of your life, so that when that person says some comment to you that causes anger to come up in you, you believed that God was trying to show you some place where you could know Him more.  What if your perspective turned the ordinary events of life (and often the difficult ones like getting angry) into entry ways to more greatly know God?

       

       At this point, you might be wondering, how does my anger at someone have to do with me knowing God more?  Everything about you is actually about how you relate to God.  If you are getting suddenly and sinfully angry at someone, it is not “just because they said something mean and you got mad.”  No, if you are getting suddenly and sinfully angry, it is because you do not know something about God.  Let me give you a personal example. 

       

       Just the week before last I was at home for Christmas.  My mom made an off-handed comment about one of my old friend’s mom.  She said, “She’ll never be a Christian.”  I found myself suddenly infuriated by what my mother had said.  Now, in honesty, my mom said something wrong and sinful, condemning a person to never be a Christian.  And yet, I could feel in my anger towards my mom something sinful.  I was hurt by what my mom said.  And even if she told me she was wrong, I did not want to forgive her.  These were my cues that my anger was sinful, that I was believing a lie about God. 

       

       I knew that this anger therefore wasn’t mostly about what had just happened.  It was about something between God and me.  I took some time to feel and see what I actually felt my mom had said.  Sitting there asking the Holy Spirit to help me, I discovered that I felt that my mom was condemning people, saying that they could reach some certain place where they became unworthy of hope or attention.  From there, I moved to realizing how the stuff that God had been revealing to me in general for the past week or two was related to this particular emotion, and that I actually felt that God felt this way towards others and me.  So, I looked at God and said, “God, you would never speak this way, you would never feel this way about people.  You constantly have hope and belief that people can be more, can change. You are so full of love.”  It is not always this fast, but right at that moment when I said those words, my emotions towards my mom changed.  I suddenly felt joy towards her and love and compassion. 

       

       The point of that story is to give you an example of how often the emotions we feel towards people are actually about ways we feel or believe God is. The point of this blog entry, however, is to use this true perspective coupled with the knowledge of God’s seeking of your heart to define your whole life.  Are the events in your life random?  Could you dare to believe that when you wake up in the morning feeling bad, that God is graciously trying to show you something you feel so that you can have the Holy Spirit change it, so that He can be with you more in truth?  Could you dare to believe that when your anger is suddenly flaring at a friend, that God is trying to show you a way that you do not know Him, so that you can then know Him more?  Can you dare to believe that God is more in control of your life than demons? Or even than your own weaknesses?

       

       Even concerning those things that are flagrantly from the kingdom of darkness or from the sin of human hearts, I think we should view our lives this way.  Whose agenda do you want to see as superior in your life?  Satan's agenda?  Your own weaknesses' agenda?  Or God's agenda?  Even when something clearly of Satan or clearly from human wickedness is occurring, you can still choose to view superiorly that which God is doing.  This is not to make the sins or acts of darkness okay.  For instance, when I felt anger at my mom, I was sinning, and the idea of simply permitting that sin to continue is wrong.  However, only looking at that sin at my mom as something that I should just try and not do or be is shallow and sad.  What if I not only looked at it as wrong but also looked at it as God saying, “Look!  Look at this way that you can know me more?!” 

       

       How different would your life feel if everything that you ever felt, good or bad, difficult or easy, was actually a window through which God was trying to show you ways you can know Him more?  How different would you feel if everything that happened to you was actually being employed by God to help you know Him more? 

       

       I recently spoke to a friend who was having a really hard time with her family.  Quite frankly, it is a very difficult situation that tears most families apart.  She has been so burdened down by it and God has such compassion towards her pain and her constant attempts to try and make the best out of the situation.  But in all her attempts, I asked her if she ever looked at it as anything other than a series of negative events to just try and get through, to just try and respond to as best as she could and then get by?  Even if she is still struggling, it was incredible to watch her face as hope came onto it, as love came onto it, as a lightness came onto it, when she thought of that whole series of events as actually involving God’s attempts to cause her to get to know Him more. 

       So, the next time you feel a negative feeling in your own self or the next time you are suddenly in a difficult situation, instead of just thinking that it is a random negative burst, try viewing it as God’s pursuit of your heart.  Try viewing it as God trying to highlight something for you to see, that you may know Him more.  At least in my life, as I have done this day in and day out, I have discovered how incredibly in control God actually is.  Events that might seem random to someone are actually all God’s handiwork.  For instance, that wrong view of God that was highlighted by my anger at my mom was actually another piece of the puzzle of what God had been trying to show me more generally for the previous two weeks. 

       God knows how to weave events and emotional bursts in a way that will cause you to learn certain things at certain times.  He is so good at leading, so good at teaching, so good at saving.  If you will simply look at the events of your life, as small as what you feel each day, you will see God’s  hand all over your life trying to pull you into certain revelations, certain pieces of Him you still do not know. 

Note: I do not believe God ordains sin.  I believe He ordains awareness of sin that has always been present.

Profound Self-Denial: the Permission of Love’s Entrance

       Stephen Venable, one of my favorite teachers at IHOP, recently gave a brief sermon at the 2010 OneThing Conference that the International House of Prayer-KC puts on every year.  His sermon was on a passage of Scripture that we all know of, found in Luke 9 (and Mark 8 and Mat 16).  In this passage Jesus calls the one who would come after Him to deny Himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Him.  It is followed by “for whoever would save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (9:24). 

       Stephen’s message was a hammer blow.  It was profoundly challenging and offensive to anyone with a heartbeat.  He essentially asserted that western Christianity is fundamentally flawed in that it is built around what God can do for us instead of about what we can do for God.  As Stephen put it, “We are concerned with how Jesus can die for us so that we can have what we want instead of how we can die for Him so that He can have what He wants.  Jesus is not your butler! Jesus is not your vending machine!  Jesus is the King of glory to be glorified!” 

       There is profound truth in Stephen’s assessment of this unbiblical atrocity that underlies much of Christianity today, and he is devastatingly accurate in his assertion that much of that church will fall into apostasy and burn in a lake of fire forever through it.  As I said, it was an offensive message, one that I am sure many need to hear, myself included. 

       However, there was, at the least, a very important angle lacking in Stephen’s message.  Part of Stephen’s sermon entailed the seeming condemnation of sermon’s that are about “how much God loves us”, that are about “who we are” or “how great we are” or “how great we can be.”  Here, I feel that Stephen made an unbiblical detour, though I still applaud the spirit behind his sermon and the overarching punch of it.  The Bible is full of verses that define the believer as great or in God’s love (Eph. 2:19, 1 Jn 3:1, Luke 15, Jn 3:16).  Speaking the love of God over someone is not agreement with their self-obsession inherently and all the verses listed are in fact in line with Luke 9:23. 

       There are also verses that clearly call believers to seek rewards and greatness.  “But to him who by patiently doing good seeks for glory, honor, and immortality, there will be eternal life”, which is then contrasted in the next verse with “but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury” (Rom 2:7-8). Whatever it is that is this disobedient self-seeking and unrighteousness it is not seeking for glory, honor, and immortality unto eternal life.  Even Jesus Himself, our example, says that He laid down His life that He might take it up again, followed by the declaration that this makes the Father love Him (Jn 10:17).  We are commanded to look to the founder of our faith who endured the cross for the joy set before Him (Heb. 12:2). 

       My point is that self-denial and taking up your cross cannot and does not mean biblically that you are to try and give your life to Jesus without an awareness of His love for you or without an awareness of the glory and joy set before you.  In fact, I will go as far as to say that any time you choose to suffer without a knowledge of His love and what you gain by it, you are operating in self-abuse.  My primary point in this blog, however, is not even this.  It is to go even further. 

       I believe that one of the greatest forms of self-denial, of taking up your cross daily, of losing your life, is actually permitting God to love you, to speak worth over you.  Oh, it slays the selfish.  It slays the prideful.  It consecrates the heart into meekness. There is, in my experience, nothing more humbling than the joyful reception of unconditional love.  It’s so hard! There is nothing more slaying of sinful self than the permission of the entrance of great mercy, of free gifts of affection and blessing.  Oh we hate it!  We rail against it! It is against the natural man to permit unconditional love. Can you feel how much easier it is to simply beat yourself and do everything for Jesus without ever thinking about yourself?  It feels better actually because it is in favor of the prideful self.

       I find in my own life and in my experience with the paradigm Stephen preached on that we can be very prone to believe that righteousness is to try and “live only for God with no benefit to self”, never letting ourselves for a second sit and receive love from God, to let God say to us, “You are beautiful to me.”  This phrase specifically is one that Stephen spoke of with a sardonic condemning tone, but I tell you truthfully, nothing will grant you poverty of spirit, so greatly glorifying to Christ, like letting Him tell you that you are beautiful.  Oh, it will knock you off every false throne you’ve ever imagined. 

       Have you felt it?  Can you feel the tension?  Can you feel how self-preserving and self-advancing it is actually to try and “just glorify Christ by only doing everything for His sake and never doing anything for yourself?”  Obviously, these quoted words could communicate truth, but I have found that in many individuals, myself included, they actually harbor pride and sinful self advancement, the antithesis of Luke 9:23.  The religious self-denial actually promotes pride and is the opposite of self-denial.  In contrast, permitting God to love you, permitting Him to be focused on you is a cross like no other.  It will slay your sinful self in a second. 

Masculinity: Such a Hated Thing?

     It's shocking really, the number of men my age who I have heard speak of the word "man" with disdain in their voice, myself included.  With women, you might expect a negative connotation of the word "man" (due to the way most women are treated by most men), but why in the world would it be so with men?  It seems rather rare to find a Christian man my age who will refer to himself as such in a sincere, emotionally-connected way with positivity.  Many seem to prefer the word "guy".  Now, I won't say that this is a vast majority of men, but I would easily say half of them.

     Seeing this over and over again in talking with different guys, I have sincerely wondered why it is so and what to do about it?  Is it good?  Is it bad?  Where does it come from? Is it a rejection of some set of traits that should be rejected but the name "man" should not be discarded?   As in all things, how is it related to our relationship with God?  To our relationship with yourself?  Or to other men or to women?  What can men do to help each other out with this?  What can women do to help men out with this?  How should we pray?

     I by no means have some complete answer, though hopefully one day I will have much more.  However, I definitely have a few conviction-based understandings.  First of all, it seems that many men associate the word man in some real way with sin, actual sin.  This is rather varied.  It may be associated with unemotional hardness/callousedness (the opposite of tenderness, gentleness, and love).  It may be associated with abusiveness, taking advantage of women or bullying men.  It may be associated with chauvinistic attitudes or money/work obsession.

     It is very important to say that, quite frankly, these are sins of men.  I do not say this in a misandrist way .  Men and women are prone to certain sinful behaviors based off of the specific curse of Adam and the specific curse of Eve, which produced, in some ways, different sin natures.  Nearly all Christians look at the Fall in Genesis 3 as the source of the human sin nature.  However, very few people can show you in the story where the sin nature actually came from.  Was it simply because Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden that they developed an ontological transformation of desires that now naturally wanted sin?  I think there is great credence to the idea, but I do not think it is entire.  Was it because the awareness given to them in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil caused them to sin?  I give less credence to this idea, and definitely believe it is not entire.  Or did it have something to do with the curses?  About this, I would make a big point, at least for discussing masculinity.

      In Genesis 3, God curses four things: the serpent, the woman, the man, and the land (it is important to note that the curse was a natural byproduct of the sin, necessary in the justice of God, not an arbitrary decision of a puffed up, angry God to make the living situation of Adam and Eve worse; it broke His heart.)  These curses are, in my opinion, a part of the sin nature that human kind (and creation itself) now live in bondage to apart from Christ, though they also involve the prophetic declaration of how such problems will be resolved: Jesus.  Worded otherwise, I believe that these curses are substantive and relational, not shallow and only physical.

     Take the curse on the serpent for example.  It is rather straightforward.  The curse on the serpent is a rather clear reference to the reality that God will eventually birth a Seed through the bloodline of Adam and Eve that will conquer the serpent (Satan, Rev. 12:9).  God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Gen. 3:14-15).  However, this is not just a description of the physical state of the serpent or of the natural animosity between serpent and mankind.  Mankind now has natural enmity with most of nature.  This was a declaration from God that Satan would be placed in the lowest place of all creatures forever because of what he just did, and this was a promise that a human being (Jesus, God in the flesh) would one day accomplish this.

      Most theologians view the above verses in this way.  However, it seems less common for there to be deeper/substantive understanding of the curses on the man and the woman.  The curse on the man is, "...in pain you shall eat of it [the ground] all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground" (Gen. 3:17-19).  Now, we could do with this verse what we could have done with the verses about the serpent (though the Scriptures clearly indicate those verses are about Christ's conquering of Satan), but it is not just about man having trouble getting the ground to produce food, just as the one's about the serpent were not just about snakes sliding on their belly and mankind and snakes being disagreeable.

       Part of the sinful nature of men is the propensity to find all of their value and purpose in their ability to self-produce, to self-accomplish.  When the Scripture says that "in pain" men will "eat of the ground" and that it will "bring forth thorns and thistles", that men will only eat by the sweat of their face until they die, it is communicating that men will be consumed with the desire to try and perfect their situation, to make everything right via their own self and their own power. They will feel valuable and purposeful only if they are accomplishing, if they are "bringing forth food". But this self-based method of accomplishment will not work. It will only produce thorns and thistles and in the pain of it they shall live.

      There are very few people who could not see these propensities in men (or a very evident attempt to evade them).  Many of the sins that men struggle with come out of this fundamental sin nature.  The work workaholic, money-obsessed issue is rather obvious in how it relates; a man is trying to produce.  Less clear, possibly, is the propensity to be unemotional and calloused in an overly rational way.  This, however, is often related to the way men view emotions, as dangerous, unstable, and most of all, as ineffective, as a waste of time.  The seeming inefficacy of emotions verses the seeming efficacy of "reasoned" thought causes the efficacy-obsessed sin nature of a man to grab a hold of emotions rather quickly.  The propensity in men to feel like failures the longer they go through life (in their attempts at producing perfection) causes them often to seek other destructive behaviors, whether that be alcohol abuse, sexual addiction, or obsession with certain entertainment.  The sense of failure they have in categories relating to women often push them deep into these kinds of things as well.

     My point is that the specifics of the sin nature given to men as found in Genesis 3 DOES in fact produce many of the negative traits commonly viewed to entangle men.  That man who treats other men like crap and takes every opportunity to build himself up at their cost actually just feels like such a failure himself, has reaped so many thorns and thistles, that he knows not else what to do.  That man who abuses women and takes advantage of them hates himself so much for his own ineptitude that he would do anything to find 'pleasure' or 'worth' or 'purpose', even something as vile and fake as rape.  The man who sleeps with women left and right is so full of the "pain" that Genesis 3 says men will live in, that he is utterly numbed to anyone's cares.  The emotionally dead man who can do nothing but sit and watch TV learned that such deadness was preferable to that pain.  The man obsessed with his work, for now, is still trying, trying to make something that will last, something that will fill the hole cursed on the inside of him.

      The list can go on and on but the point is that many of the negative qualities we attribute to men are actually ones that men, in their sinful nature possess naturally, without being taught anything.

    The same could be said of women, though this paper is not going to focus on the sinful nature-specifics of women.  I will also briefly note that the above things described about men are not exclusive to men.  Women can do every single one.  It is simply that there is a tendency in men to sin in this way.  It is for this reason that men are told three times in Scripture to agape (love) their wives while women are told in the same three passages to honor or submit to their husbands.  It is not that men do the loving and women do the submitting, the end. The reason these verses are here is because they combat the sinful nature of both the man and the woman.  For a man to be told to unconditionally have affection for his wife, to give himself relationally in love without any demands, is so difficult for his sense of failure and so difficult for his constant attempts at trying to fix everything (his sinful nature).  The command, "Husbands, love your wives" is distinct because the sin nature of man has a distinction.  If we were to analyze the sin nature of women based on the curse in Gen. 3, we would find that the command "Wives, honor your husband" is there for similar reasons.  It is not there because of some misogyny in the Scriptures.  It is there because it combats the distinct elements of a woman's sin nature in a way that will cause her to grow closer to God when done, just as the command to the man does the man.

      So where does that leave us at this point?  'Men' truly do have many natural qualities that are negative.  At least with my generation, seeing these negative qualities all around seems to have produced a strong aversion to masculinity, to being called a man.  So what do we do?  We certainly don't give up on men; God didn't.  We acknowledge the sin nature.  I would even say we acknowledge the horribleness of it, the depth of its wickedness, how abusive and cruel it is, how severing of relationship with God and self and others it is.  But then we realize a marvelous truth: Jesus was the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45).  Jesus came to be the end of the Adamic race, of a certain kind of man.  Jesus came to start a new race, to show true humanity, and true masculinity.  The primary, the eternal, definition of man is not Adam and his cursed line.  It is Jesus, the Second Man, and His new line (15:47).  

     Men, right now, as you read this blog, know this glorious truth, that there are two species of human beings walking around on this earth right now, two groups of men, ontologically different in their very substance and core, able to be totally different things. You may not be able to tell right now, but there truly are two species of human.  One is of the Adamic line, the line that was cursed to struggle and strive in worthlessness until he falls to the ground in utter sin and ruin.  The second is of Jesus, the Second Man, the man of love, goodness, mercy, nobility, meekness, might, and gentleness, the man from heaven (1 Cor. 15:47).  And you don't have to be the old man. Don't fail to acknowledge the evils that the old man committed and commits, but know that Jesus came as the Last Adam to end his line forever. There has existed on this earth a perfect man, a man who has not a single sinful thought or emotion in His whole life.  And that man made a way for us to get what's inside of Him in us.  That man made a way to destroy Adam's curse and nature.  That man made a way for us to join with Him and be like Him, utterly new, as perfect as He is perfect. It's happened.  It happened on this very earth.  Masculinity has been redeemed. Manhood has been transformed.  Rejoice, for freedom has come.  No longer do you have to be abusive. No longer do you have to be trapped.  Jesus has slain the old man, and the new is born. 

    Women, there is real value in your understanding of this, in you having this perspective.  How many times have you thought that men are "just unemotional and overly rational"?  Or how many times have you thought that we are just bigoted and chauvinistic? It is fine for you to think that 'men's' sin nature is prideful in its rationale ability, but don't let this come to mean what it means to be a man truly, for the men around you to be  men. How often have you matter-of-factly expected men to be ruled by an abusive sex drive (which is deeply related to worthlessness and purposelessness in them)? How often have you expected them to be obsessed with work or entertainment, but never love?  Change what it means to be a man in your own eyes.  Let Jesus, the most glory filled man to ever live, define what being a man means, because this is the Person all men who you will be around are moving into. And lastly, I would encourage you to tell the men in your life, and particularly the man in your life (if God's done this for you), that he can be like the Man Jesus.  Free Him to be not like the classic overly burdened, unemotional, unloving but super macho man.  Most men, whether they realize it or not, actually think on some level that most women want a man who is the classic overly macho man, even though it includes insensitivity and incommunicable hardship.  In actuality, most women don't really want this except in some confused, sinful self-protective way.    

     Lastly, I think it is very destructive for men to not use the word "man" in description of themselves.  I think a shame or total abolition of your gender is detrimental to your relationship with God, who made you as such.  Eventually, you want to be able to say to God, "God, you love that I'm a man.  You love men. I love being a man. You made me as a man and I can be like Your Son, the Example of all Men."  To do this, however, takes time.  I know I am not there, yet.  However, I can tell you that I have found substantial freedom so far and want to find more and more.  

       Oh, men, you are not made for a calloused heart.  You are not made for that sense of hopeless failure that busies itself in 'entertainment' gorging.  You are not made to abuse women and hate yourself for it.  You are not made to grow up obsessed with money and work, dead to truth and light. You were never meant to feel like your purpose is to try and produce security for you or anyone, burdened incessantly until you die (that's His job).  You were never meant to "earn" a living or procure happiness for your wife or children.  You were never made to be chauvinistic or cruel.  You were never made to have to pretend you are strong.  

       You are made to be emotional and alive, invigorated in purpose and full of joy. You are made to feel free to lean on your Father.  You are made to have the deepest conversations and love it.  You are made to view women as precious and full of worth; you will view women as precious and full of worth.  You are made to love listening to women speak, with patience and gentleness, and constant flow of awe and love; this you will do.  You are made to love listening to other men speak, to have love for them, to not be afraid to love them; this you will have.  You are made to have strength beyond imagination, that comes from the Source of all strength, to be so full of life that you could burst.  You are made to laugh out-loud in purity and wholeness, and you will; in fact, you probably do.  You are made for love, to love and be loved, to love feeling love.  You are made to be like the one you want to be like, to be like Jesus.  And you will be. Keep saying yes, and I have no doubt, you will be.  

Theologians Need Good Anthropology

     Here at IHOP it seems that everyone loves theology, a blessing of blessings, as what one thinks and feels about God is more vital than anything else.  However, what I have noticed lacking is understanding the value of  anthropology (understanding or study of the nature of man) and sociology (the understanding or study of human interaction), from a biblical viewpoint of course.  What this seems to lead to is people with great ideas that are difficult for the intended recipients of those ideas to acquire.
    
     So, you've got a smart guy with all sorts of understanding on the knowledge of the cross, but He has almost no idea what the purpose of that knowledge is for the human soul.  Why is the knowledge of Jesus' resurrection vital for the human soul to have?  What freedoms are granted to it by this knowledge?  How will a human being interact poorly with other people without this specific knowledge?  How will a human being interact poorly with himself if he doesn't have this specific understanding?  How will a human being interact poorly with God if she doesn't have this specific understanding? Many of us are familiar with the verse, "...the truth will set you free" (Jn 8:32), which, like all verses, is brimming with verity. And yet, what does this verse mean?
    
     I would assert that the meaning of this verse is more clearly: every specific truth sets a person free in a specific way that, without that truth, they would not be free.  Human beings are like diamond-shaped crystals.  They light up in a different way based on the angle light shines into them, and they light up most brilliantly when hit from every angle.  Truth and the human soul relate in the same way.  Someone may be struggling with trying to not feel scared of being killed. But what truth or combination of truths are necessary to free them from this malady and into communion with God in that area? Only a theologian with good anthropology will know the answer.
    
     Furthermore, someone might be talking to you about problems they are feeling with respect to not feeling loved by God.  But what is their real problem and what do they actually need to know?  What revelation are they actually lacking. Again, deducing what someone is actually talking about substantively and knowing the truths that will release the glory of God in them is something only a theologian with good anthropology will know the answer to.
    
     Finally, even if someone knows both the anthropological relevance of doctrine in general and is able to see how an individual needs a specific increase of the knowledge of God, there is still the challenge of understanding how human beings work enough to be able to help them receive that revelation.  We could talk for hundreds of hours, speaking of revelation after revelation, and the means by which the Holy Spirit imparts it, what understanding comes first, how the building blocks mesh together, what paths are taken or practicals employed to arrive at such revelation. Without understanding human beings very well, and laboring to do so, we will not arrive at understanding the means of imparting revelation.
    
     And the truth of the matter is that getting to a place where we understand these mechanisms takes time and, frankly, lots of work. I once heard Shelly Hundley talk about Jill Austin, referring to a question Jill once asked her that really affected her: "When you receive revelation, do you aim to be able to give it away to others?  When you receive revelation, do you labor so that you can impart it to others?"   What a question!
    
     When you receive revelation, are you simply content with the fact that it somehow just affected you?  Or do you labor in prayer and in the Word, to understand what has actually happened to you and how it is intended to affect others?  Do labor to see how you arrived at it and what it actually is?  Do you aim to understand only theology or do you aim to also comprehend the vessels of theology?  Are you living in a way that will give you relational understanding of God? Are you living in a way so that you can  impart truth to others?

What is the Relationship Between The Fear of God and the Love of God? (Part 1)

I will write two blogs, one on the need for separation between the Fear of God and the Love of God in its pragmatic application to our relationship with God.  The other blog will be on the necessity of their marriage.  

A Dangerous Lack of Distinction

    The fear of God is meant to produce in us certain realities that lead to other Godly realities.  The same is true with the love of God.  In the Lord's increase of the fear of the Lord in my life recently, this has become pointedly clear. 

     In the Lord's increase of the fear of the Lord in my life, the primary role I feel God has given me to do is to not permit myself to stand on shakable (unbiblical) props. Specifically, I have realized how futile attempts at learning the fear of God are if a person applies the love of God to his or her life wrongly, unbiblically.  This false application will keep a person suspended above the places of true, righteous agony and terror that are to be experienced. This false application will cause them to feel saved because of love instead of because of the power of God in Jesus Christ to save (of course motivated by love). "For Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.  For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, yet also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment!  At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter...For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.  Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others." (2 Cor. 7:10-11, 2 Cor 5:10-11a).  

     I have seen in my own heart the strong propensity to avoid certain pain/grief/fear through wrong application of the love of God.  Let me give you an example.  I will be planning on fasting for a certain period of time, but before that time arrives, I will end up eating something.  Then, instead of repenting before the Lord (not for not fasting but for not doing what I originally intended), I will say, "Well, the Lord loves me" and then will feel better.  Now, it is important to say that the Lord absolutely and indescribably does love us all the time, and that those emotions we tap into with respect to how He feels about us even though we failed to fast, are accurate, real emotions.  Me sinning right now and not repenting for it, contrary to the opinions of some, does not avert the unconditional love of God towards me until I repent.  While I was yet a sinner, Christ loved me (had positive emotions towards me).  So, I have no doubt at all that He does now when I sin and fail to repent.  What I am saying is that just feeling God's love for you when you stumble is, in some real way, an unbiblical and destructive application of those emotions that will hinder you from experiencing real freedom through the fear of the Lord.  

(Something this begins to touch is which you learn first, the fear of God or the love of God. Should a person who doesn't know that God loves them even though they didn't fast well try and do what I am about to tell you?  I will leave that for you to decide.)  

     Let's take another example, 2 Cor 5:10-11a.  Many individuals when envisioning themselves before the throne of Christ giving account for what they  have done are so filled with fear and condemnation that they never approach this place truly.  They simply cover it with the emotions of God's love for them.  Just as with when you are fasting and fail to do it as you intended and then cover it simply with a "well, God loves me", I would ask the same question: what emotions are you running from and should you run from them with the 'love of God'?  Or does the Lord have another means of dealing with your emotions?  Most would say they feel feelings of failure and condemnation, of worthlessness, and then would say one of two things: either that these emotions aren't true because they are saved or that 'God loves them'. Let's take both of these responses.  

These Emotions Aren't True Because I am Saved 

     Is it true that you are condemned before God (in the legal sense)?  If you are saved by Jesus, the answer is no. So maybe this response is correct.  But, do you think you are making progress away from those feelings of condemnation before God by just saying so?  Furthermore, where do you think those emotions are from?  Is Satan the one telling you you are condemned before God?  Contrary to the opinions of many, in a certain very real sense, it is not Satan. Why would Satan inform anyone of this?  Why would he ever tell anyone that they can never save themselves, that they are bankrupt in their natural state, that they can never work hard enough to produce salvation? This awareness is precisely what is meant to lead us to knowledge of salvation! That voice telling you how absolutely inept you are, how absolutely failed you are, how completely guilty and beyond any self-saving you are, is the voice of God in all people, also known as the conscience (Rom 2:12-16).

IMPORTANT Note: I am describing here how the feelings of 'condemnation or worthlessness or ineptness' are actually from God and not Satan.  However, it is HIGHLY important to realize that words like, 'worthlessness', 'inability', or 'condemnation', can suggest two sets of emotions (to simplify).  One set is precisely as I am saying: it is emotions from God that are meant not to be ignored or evaded  but faced, emotions that cause God to delightfully respond by thrusting into our soul profound knowledge of salvation that keeps us in our biblical place.  The other set of emotions are actually emotions stemming from not knowing the unconditional love of God.  These emotions ARE from Satan and should be combated with a knowledge of the love of God.  An example:  A person says they feel condemned and a failure.  You must look into it and see what they are saying.  Are they saying they feel condemned and a failure because no matter how hard they try, God will never have positive emotions towards them, will never love them?  Or, are they saying that they feel condemned and a failure because they cannot produce goodness, cannot be righteous?  Even with this language you still have to be careful, because many people, when saying, "I just can't be righteous" are actually meaning, "I can't be loved."  It is crucial to understand what you are actually saying in your own life and towards those who are in your life.  If you just keep telling a person that the reason they aren't condemned is the blood of Jesus when the real emotion they feel is that they are unloved, then you are trying to tell them they are loved unconditioanlly because of something that happened, a contradiction the heart will never receive.  Conversely, if you tell a person they are not condemned because God loves them when the emotion they are feeling is actually their profound own inability to save anyone, you will rob them of an encounter with God's holiness their life requires to continue. To put it entirely, we must know both what we receive unconditionally from God (His love) and that which we receive conditionally from God (salvation) to have every facet of our emotions affected biblically and gloriously, and when we misapply truths we can greatly harm our or our friends' relationship with God. 

     So, in this case, the emotion being felt by the person when I say 'condemnation and worthlessness and ineptness' is a profound awareness of their inability to be good, to produce what is worthy before God.  These emotions should not be called demonic and untrue.  These emotions contain incredible truths in them of poverty of spirit and the fear of God, and are in fact the voice of God seeking to lead you to greater truth.  The fear of God that is poverty of spirit, leads to the fear of God that recognizes His power to save us.  Coupled with a knowledge of His love, which tells us He deeply wants to save us, and you arrive at a pure bliss, under-girded not by shakable heresy but by the unmovable fear of the Lord and the heart-rending love of God.  The mere condemnation of these feelings is ineffective because they are from God! We should not simply say, "No, I am not condemned in the name of Jesus because I am saved" and be done with it in avoidance.  The emotions of worthlessness and ineptness, in this sense, are ONLY to be combated with a knowledge of salvation in God.  They are painful, grief-filled, shaking emotions that make the soul tremble.  But I believe it is extremely valuable to let these be answered by the knowledge of God's salvation, and that even 'after that', maintaining them in some real sense is crucial to both ministry and relationship with God.   

The Emotions Aren't True Because I'm Loved

     Now the second response: Someone says they are don't have to feel these emotions of condemnation and worthlessness because they are loved by God.  Again, this is absolutely true if what they mean by those two words is that they don't have to feel unloved.  However, given that these emotions are the real emotions all humans possess involving a sense of utter inability and need, terrifying and breaking, the idea that they should not be felt because God loves us (though common) is absolutely absurd.  I have a rather radical belief in the love of God, more radical than most.  I believe that God has positive emotions of ecstatic delight and wondrous, passionate, desire towards all human beings that caused Him to die for us all and now causes Him to do everything He can to bring them to salvation .I also believe God has guttural pain over the state of rebellion that His creation is in because of that love.  And yet, the idea that these emotions He has for us that impel Him with every part of His being to give Himself to us are enough to remove our guilt is, in a frighteningly real sense, false.  God's love impelled and impels Him to do everything He can to be with us, but it is not enough.  We must gain something that only comes with our surrender: salvation.

     No matter how much Jesus loves a person, if that person does not fully and perseveringly surrender to Him as Lord, that person will be tormented for all eternity in everlasting fire (Rev. 14:11).  That person will be ever-crushed underneath the weight of the wrath of God, ever screaming underneath the futility of their attempts to be righteous alone.  As has been said, there is an extent to which you are to feel positive because of God's love with respect to your attempts to be righteous, that being that you do not have to do anything and in fact cannot do anything to cause God to have any greater love for you.  And yet, you are to feel intensely miserable to the extent that you  have not humbled yourself and felt the salvation God has given you freely.  In fact, when we permit this humbling to occur in our lives, when we actually experience awareness of our own ineptness, the love of God often only becomes a sharper blow, that makes us cry out to God more.  

Oh, I encourage you, stay in that cry.  Stay in it until God answers it with an overwhelming surge of the knowledge of His salvation. And then after He answers, let yourself go even deeper.  Determine to know that you are not condemned ONLY because of God's salvation, where condemnation does not mean unloved. 

What to Do

     Once again I do not mean that you should force yourself to feel this stuff.  You must simply not use false, unbiblical props as just discussed. This does not mean you never feel joy or love.  It means that you don't feel them unbiblicaly. In my own life, as this has been occurring, the fear element has remained rather constant, but I can also feel other emotions, and the Holy Spirit tends to move me through them very well, as a great Teacher and Helper. The important thing is to not do feel unbiblically.  

     Something to not do: Even with trying to feel condemnation righteously you may make fall into something that is just as unbiblical as misapplying the emotions of God's love. I am very aware that often feeling condemnation and worthlessness has nothing to do with the fear of God or poverty of spirit but is actually a religious parade we perform to make us feel better about ourselves ('if I hit myself now because I sinned, then I am actually making up for it and am therefore worthy and good').  This is not what I'm talking about.  That is actually prideful. Fear of God that leads to striving is not actually fear of God. And this actually stems from a lack of knowing that God loves you unconditionally (this person is normally trying to be loved and thinks that they are accomplishing it by what they are doing). I am talking about a true crushing inside of you, a breaking at your awareness of how you stand before God's holiness, absolutely loved but absolutely unable to save yourself.  Please do not try to force yourself to feel condemned in some religious way as you will probably end up doing just this religious, trying-to-be-loved, gig.  

     So, what do I think you should do?  Part of that is up to you following the Holy Spirit as He might want to really teach you about the love of God first.  I honestly don't know His syllabus for you.  =) And part of this I have already explained in another blog.  But here I will say that I think you should let yourself feel your failure before God and that from that place of actually feeling the failure, God will show you the knowledge of salvation (the other side of the fear of God).  I believe that that condemnation we often feel is actually the places inside of us that do not yet know we are saved.  One day when the pressures of life have increased, if we have not let the Lord give us a solid foundation, we will have a real problem.  My goal now is to not hide from the fear of God through an unbiblical application of love.  It is to face the way His fear-worthiness destroys me so that I will realize how He has saved me from that destruction.  Knock out the shakable props from your life.  If you feel like you are good because of the way you minister, then be careful with those moments.  If you feel like you are good because of certain prayers you pray, then you might consider lessening those prayers and sitting in the feelings that those prayers conceal. If reading this list of things to do right now, causes you to feel ways that you are going to fix yourself, then stop reading it and sit in that emotion. If you feel like you are good because God loves you, then get a new definition of love (an unconditional one), and know that being absolutely loved does not cause you to be saved.  

     The primary purpose of this blog is to show how the love of God and the fear of God should be separated.  The primary purpose of the next blog is to show how the love of God and the fear of God must be married. 

My Most Fundamental Understanding

Everything is Relational.  Everything is Theological.  So Everything is Relationally Theological.

Before going on any further in a blog, I realized that it is rather crucial for me to explain what is probably my most fundamental belief of God and us, and well, everything really.

God is Relational
     God is relational, meaning that God exists and functions relationally always; it is His nature, His heart-pulse.  Whether it is relationship to Himself or to creation, this is what most fundamentally defines Him.  Nothing else makes sense without this understanding.  For instance, calling God holy is confusing without understanding that He (and everything) is first and foremost relational, because holiness is relational. As John Wesley said, "There is no holiness that is not social."  Holiness, whether defined as being loving or defined as being worthy or perfect, or even other-than is something that does not make sense without a relational basis.  Trying to understand God's motivation for interacting with humanity, the way He saves us, His eternal purposes, His character, the reasons He is worthy, is insensible without understanding God as relational.  Every dimension of holiness is about relationship/relation.  Even God in His preexistent splendor maintained holiness via His relationship with Himself in Triune glory. God's inherent Triune nature is evidence that God is quite fundamentally relational.

So We Are Relational
     So what does that make us, those who are made in His image?  And what does that make creation, when its creator is a relationally-obsessed Being?  It makes everything about us relational too and everything about creation relational too.  And though we are fundamentally relational in general, we are gloriously most relational with respect to God, meaning that everything we are and do is actually subsumed in relationship with Him, whether we realize it or not. If you get that everything is relational because God is relational, you're on the right track.

Everything is Theological
     But then you must add to this that everything is theological.  God is the Alpha and the Omega (Rev. 1:8, 21:6), the source of everything and the end of everything.  All things were made for Him, through Him, and to Him (Rom. 11:36).  By Him all thing exist and in Him everything has its movement and being (Heb. 2:10, Acts 17:28). Creation lives to praise Him and cries over what makes Him cry (Isa. 55:12, Psalm 19, Rom 8:19-22). Everything is about Him, whether we realize it or not, though one day everyone will (Rom. 14:11, Phil. 2:11).

So Everything is Relationally Theological
     When you add these two realities together (that God and therefore everything is relational and that everything is about God), you get the truth that everything is about relating to God. I mean this most literally.  From the big to the small.  Look at all anthropology, sociology, and hamartiology (nature of sin).  The reason you get angry at your roommate when he turns the light on while you're asleep is actually about a way that you are currently relating to God.  The reason you like certain colors is actually about a way that you know (or don't know) God.  The reason you struggle with that addiction is not because of some arbitrarily existent desire inside of you that you 'just can't seem to stop.'  It is about something substantive and relational in your being that does not know some part of God. The reason you are able to be full of delight and love (righteously) for a person is because of something you are experiencing or know of God.  The reason you enjoy your job or feel stressed in it is because of something about God that you do know or don't know.  The reason certain people are attracted to certain people is actually about how we are relating to God.  The reason cultures develop with certain norms is about a corporate acceptance or rejection of a truth about God. Everything in these categories is actually about relating to God. If you want a fun challenge, read through the New Testament and see how clear it is that sin flows out of not being in right relationship with God (meaning how each sin is inherent disconnection with a specific part of God) and righteousness flows out of loving God as He is and fearing Him as He is (meaning righteousness is inherent right connection with God).

     Even if we move to 'grander' more obviously philosophical topics, such as cosmology (the reason all things exist/the nature of the beginning) or eschatology (the end/purpose of all things), the same absolute truth remains.  It's all about God desiring to relate to us and whether or not we are doing so in a variety of specific ways.  In the more 'obviously religious' topics of soteriology (how humans are saved), missiology (the purpose of God's people in this age), ecclsiology (nature of the church), or theology (the study of God), the same is blindingly true: it is all about relation to God, to knowing this Father, Friend, Lord, Lover, King, Savior, Brother.

Do You See it This Way Really?
     To some this might seem absurd and to some this might seem obvious, but whatever camp you are in, I would challenge you to see how often you don't perceive your life this way.  How often you think things are some way 'just because they are that way' or how often do you talk to a friend about a problem in their life, maybe even a problem they have with you, without knowing that the reason those emotions are there has something to do with they way they view and are relating to God.  How often do you work to change something in your life by your own force of will, by just trying not to do it, instead of by understanding how that problem is actually flowing out of a lack of knowing God and therefore seeking to know and be with God in that way you lack!  How often do you see a problem in society, big or small, and attribute it to something other than a specific lack of a relation to God?  How often do you view salvation as the waving of a magic wand over your life instead of as relation with a Person?  How often do you view your purpose in life as task-oriented instead of love-oriented?  How often do you view the church as a machine instead of a Bride?  How often do you view eternity as vague and ethereal instead of fabulously real in everlasting, tangible relationship?  And mostly, what are your thoughts of God?  What is He like?  Who is He?