Lovers Of Pleasure...

In 2 Timothy 3:3-5 there is a list of negative trends that characterize life in “the last days”. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, etc. And then come these words: “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”

Our modern pursuit of pleasure has skyrocketed. Today we are relentlessly pushing the pleasure button in our brain – and overloading a system that is not designed to be continuously stimulated. The result is a condition in which our brains slowly lose the capacity to give us real pleasure.

There is in the brain (the brain being the control center of the soul) a particular point – it’s called the locus acumbens –that allows us to experience pleasure. Most people refer to it as the pleasure center. There is no pleasure humans experience that doesn’t come from this small, specialized area of the brain.

It is not the locus for happiness. There is not one – it takes the whole soul and spirit to give you happiness. That is an important difference.

God designed the human body with physical limits. We have a limited amount of strength, example. We have a limited amount of time we can go without sleep or food. We must live within those limits. If we step outside them we’re in trouble.

We need to learn to live “inside the box” of our human limitations. The pleasure center is inside that box, and when we abuse it, when we over-stimulate it or tax it beyond its capabilities, we should not be surprised if we begin to have difficulty finding real happiness in anything.

I can hear some people protesting: “But the Lord gives us His joy. We don’t generate it ourselves – He gives it to us.” Right – but we need the brain to appreciate it.

We cannot fully experience the joy that comes from God when our brains are abused with over-stimulation. We have to live within the box if we are going to live a happy life. God does not give us happiness outside of our brain. It doesn’t work that way. We need a healthy pleasure center to be happy.

Today we are caught up in a world that is pushing the brain’s pleasure button too fast and too often. A simple thing, like just being together as a family, doesn’t give people the pleasure it once did. You’ll often hear young people say, “I’m bored around here.”

It isn’t just the children, though. A pastor of a church admitted, “I can’t find pleasure in anything anymore. I used to enjoy preaching, but I just don’t find pleasure in it. My children don’t give me any pleasure anymore. And just recently, I’ve noticed that I’m not even experiencing any pleasure with my wife. And what scares me most of all is that I don’t seem to be able to take any pleasure in God anymore.”

There are three major things which shut down a person’s pleasure center: depression, stimulant drugs and stimulating behaviors.

Depression today is typically brought on by the prolonged stress of our accelerated pace of life. We don’t know when to quit. Most of us are not sleeping enough. And we don’t have enough downtime.

For the last century, the pace of life has steadily accelerated, but about 12 years ago, it suddenly skyrocketed. What was the cause? The Internet! The Internet opened the door to continuous, relentless stimulation, to steady abuse of the brain’s pleasure center. The Internet and hyper-realistic video games devour people’s time for hours, even days, on end, and the opportunities for numbing the brain’s pleasure center rise exponentially.

The second major cause of pleasure center shut-down is stimulant drugs. Probably the most extreme stimulant drug, cocaine, is that it totally hijacks the pleasure system. When it reaches the pleasure center, nothing else can provide pleasure.

But the lesser stimulants such as caffeine present in many soft drinks can also provide a slow shut down to the pleasure center. And Pepsi, Coke, etc., are consumed in fantastic quantities today.

The third cause of pleasure center shut-down is over-indulgence in stimulating behavior, which can shut down the pleasure center just as effectively as depression and stimulant drugs.

Behaviors can be as stimulating as drugs. The pathways to the pleasure center use a neuro-transmitter called dopamine. In a newborn baby, the pathways to this pleasure center are un-encumbered. Have you watched the joy on a young baby’s face as it recognizes its mother? That’s the perfect pleasure system.

And it will stay that way for a lifetime if it isn’t abused. The problem is, faced with the stress of modern life and the continuous flow of stimulation, we are “pushing the pleasure button” too frequently. So barriers are built to that pure baby pathway. The more we overload the pleasure center, the higher the barrier goes. So we seek bigger and more pleasurable activities to get over that barrier to the pleasure center.

WE HAVE DEVELOPED A CULTURE WITH SUCH A HIGH BARRIER TO OUR PLEASURE CENTER THAT THE SIMPLE, LITTLE THINGS OF LIFE CAN NO LONGER GIVE US PLEASURE.

The pleasure center needs rest, folks. Multi-tasking overloads our system. Everything in the media, every television program, every movie, every music CD, is designed to give us higher and higher levels of stimulating responses. None of these exciting things are necessarily bad. What is bad is that they are unrelenting. There is little downtime. That’s the problem.

What can we do to help preserve a healthy pleasure center? It is a paradox. If you pursue too much pleasure, you upset your pleasure center. You have to find a way to maximize your pleasure center without overloading it. Fortunately, there are things you can do to achieve that.

Excitement is not happiness. In fact, it is the ultimate drug. It is excitement that people seek when engaging in any destructive or addictive behavior. Today people have the ability to experience excitement more than any generation in history - cell phones, digital music players, radio, cable TV, not to mention designer drugs.

But what is missing is imagination. We all, and especially children, need a creative hobby. We need to be creative in talking to family members and friends. We need to find simple non-exciting pleasure in walking the dog, doing chores, reading a book or magazine, learning a musical instrument, or foreign language, exercising – or just plain thinking.

If we want to experience the joy and the happiness that come from living in union with Christ, we have to “live inside the box” and not abuse the pleasure center He has given us.

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A Raisin In the Sun

I just watched the old 1961 movie titled “Raisin In the Sun” with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee.

In the story, the father dies and is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter. Each one of them has a different idea about how to use the inheritance from the father’s death.

The widowed wife wants to buy a new home. The daughter sees it as an opportunity for her to go to medical school. The son wants to go into business with a friend.

The son persuades them to see it his way. “Don’t you see,” he says to his mother and sister, “if I take this money I can do all these things for you.” So the son gets the money, and gives it to his friend to start their business. His dream is smashed when the friend absconds with the money and skips town.

Now the son has to tell his mother and sister that all the money is lost. Their reactions are interesting. The mother responds sympathetically. She hugs her son, rubs his neck and says, “Honey, I know you feel so bad!”

The sister is astonished and asks the mother, “How can you love him after what he has done? He doesn’t deserve to be loved!”

That’s the reaction a lot of people have to the gospel. It’s hard to believe that God forgives us and loves us after everything we’ve done.

Listen to how the mother in A Raisin In the Sun replies to her daughter’s harshness.
“Honey, when do you think is the time to love somebody? Is it when they get a big promotion? Is it when they’re successful? Is it when all their investments pay off? Is that the time you love somebody? Honey, the time to love someone is when they are down and out. The time to love someone is when they’ve made a mistake in their life and they feel bad. The time to love somebody is when they have nobody to reach out to. The time to love somebody is when life has whipped and beaten them. That’s the time to love somebody.”

Isn’t that exactly what God does? Jesus described the Father’s love for us in these words:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believer stand condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:16-18).

I have seen many movies and heard many memorable lines, but the mother’s response to her daughter in A Raisin In the Sun stands out as wonderfully biblical. When we come to Jesus as Savior and Lord, God lifts our fear, our grief and our anguish about all our failures off our shoulders and we can rest in His love, knowing we’re clean and forgiven and accepted and loved.

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Genocide In the Old Testament

Readers of the Old Testament may have the question come to mind about God’s seeming approval of genocide – the stories of Sodom and of various Canaanite peoples God wiped out one way or another.

In order to understand this apparent genocide, you must consider the context. It’s a crucial factor.

Consider, for example, the act of slashing someone with a knife. Such an act would be criminal UNLESS the person wielding that blade is a skilled surgeon operating in a medically appropriate context. Cutting away malignant or dead tissue may be essential to saving life.

This surgical analogy certainly applies, given the historical and spiritual context of these Old Testament events. Some ancient peoples were wicked beyond imagining. Archeologists confirm the biblical account of people whose religion involved wholesale atrocities against infants. And consider what happened when two visitors arrived at Lot’s home in Sodom. It’s a chilling, “X-rated” story, and it offers a clue to how depraved an entire population could become.

Such pervasive “approved” depravity of an entire population has not been seen since the days of Christ. Since His death and resurrection and the coming of His Spirit to indwell believers, evil has been restrained – certainly not eliminated, but restrained. Christ living in and among Christ’s followers carries preservative qualities (like salt), keeping evil somewhat in check.

So I look at the Old Testament apparent genocide by God as surgical action by God to eliminate malignant parts of the human race in order to preserve the overall race.

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Four Major Worldviews Competing With Christianity

Christianity has always had competition. In this 21st century, there are four major competitors for the Christian perspective:
NATURALISM – secular.
SUBJECTIVISM – skeptical.
PANTHEISTIC MONISM – mystical.
ISLAM – radical.
All four have certain attractions for non-Christians. Although it is impossible in this article to cover a book-length topic such as this, I want to hit the highlights of each of the four.

Naturalism

The number of people worldwide who embrace a godless perspective remains a relatively small percentage compared to the large majority of people who embrace some type of religious perspective. However, naturalism seems to be growing in popularity and is well entrenched in many parts of the Western world, especially in the centers of academia.

Naturalism, as traditionally defined, is that system that regards the natural, material, and physical universe as the only reality. The world of nature is viewed as the whole show - all that actually exists. All reality is located within the exclusive domain of the space-time world of physical objects, events, processes, and forces.

Naturalists reject a supernatural realm of existence thus eliminating God as a creator and sustainer of the universe and eliminating the human spirit as a part of man.

However, the house of naturalism is a house divided. There is much disagreement about how naturalism is applied and the thinking that is required. These points might be considered its so-called family traits.

Everything is reducible to or explainable in terms of nature itself as studied and interpreted by science.

Many naturalists assert that the material physical brain with its related electrical-chemical processes produces or causes the mind analogous to how an engine causes exhaust or fire causes smoke.

Naturalists tend to consider science as having privileged status with regard to knowledge. Science is either the only reliable method or the best, most dependable method for obtaining genuine knowledge.

Naturalists staunchly defend some form of evolutionary theory because biological evolution is the only naturalistic explanation for life and the appearance of man.

Appeals to the supernatural to explain events transpiring in the world of time and space are considered unscientific and illegitimate.

Naturalists are typically atheistic (there is no God) or agnostic (either they do not know personally that God exists or that no one can know it).

From the naturalist perspective morals, values, and societal norms find their source, foundation, and justification in the conventional agreement of humankind. Great confidence is placed in science and technology’s capacity to solve human problems.

The problems with naturalism are these:

How can non-rational physical factors succeed in producing the rational faculties of human beings and how can the human brain and mind be trusted to deliver rational content?

Science alone cannot explain some of the most meaningful human realities of life (for example, moral values, aesthetics, and meaning).

Naturalism appears to be self-defeating in that it does not address the internal needs of humanity such as moral obligations by which they will be held accountable for their moral actions.

Subjectivism

Subjectivism is characterized by an utter skepticism about the nature of reality and truth. So-called “truth” can only be subjective, relativistic, pluralistic, and socially constructed. An objective foundation for truth, meaning, purpose, and values simply does not exist.

There is a deep suspicion and ultimate rejection of religious systems, governmental systems or any organized systems in general.

The language of communication is also considered arbitrary and incapable of clear meaning.

The problems with subjectivism are these:

Many of this position’s central claims involve inherent contradictions. This bold rejection of systems becomes a system itself. And to assert that no one has access to the ultimate nature of reality requires that very access. Only knowing about ultimate reality can reveal the position that access to it is denied.

Certain elements of subjectivism seem practically unworkable, it not self-defeating. The exaggerated approach to language is a strong indicator of a basic incoherence and practical unworkability as a social objective.

Pantheistic Monism

One philosophical and religious orientation that permeates the East and has become increasingly popular in the West during the last half century is pantheistic monism. This perspective proclaims that all reality is an undifferentiated one, and that unity is God or Ultimate Reality and may be summed up in the statement “All is God and God is All.”

Everything that is real – including the universe and the spirits of human beings – is one in essence with this single all-encompassing Ultimate Divine Reality which is not material or physical (as the naturalists believe) but rather totally spiritual in nature.

In large measure, this perspective is reflected in the popular beliefs of the New Age movement rising in the West.

Adherents to this basic viewpoint may have different orientations and special points of emphasis. This ultimate God in all is considered totally impersonal and therefore amoral with no boundaries or divisions. Some forms of pantheism proclaim that the physical universe only appears to be real but is in actuality an illusion.

If all is one (monism) and the one is God (pantheism), then it follows that man is God. The spirit of each human being is the cosmic spirit.

Prominent is the belief in reincarnation where after death, the spirit returns in a new and different body and life.

The problems with pantheistic monism are these:

The “distinct true self” idea logically conflicts with monism’s basic assertion that there are no distinctions.

How will the human spirit be reunited with God or Ultimate Reality when the spirit is already (and has always been) one with God?

Reincarnation and monism, two necessary features of the pantheistic monism perspective, are logically incoherent. Reincarnation involves the need for many distinctions, whereas monism insists there are no distinctions at all.

How did personal agents such as human beings come forth from a completely impersonal source? And isn’t personhood a greater state than the impersonal?

Islam

The three aforementioned competitors with Christianity are basically competitors for the mind and are certainly dangerous in that respect. But I consider radical Islam the most dangerous competitor because of its desire to destroy physically all non-Islamists – a competition not only to change the minds but also to destroy the bodies of non-Islamists.

Going into the history of the Islamic religion is not within the scope of this article. But the following are some of its attributes:

Islam believes in working to please God (Allah) by the 5 Pillars of Islam:
1. Profession of faith in Allah.
2. Prayer bowing and on your knees facing Mecca 5 times a day.
3. Almsgiving (approx. 2.5% of your net worth).
4. Fast of Ramadan once a year.
5. Pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime.

For radical Islam, there is a 6th Pillar: called Jihad. The concept of Jihad can refer to either an internal spiritual striving or exertion against one’s own evil inclinations, or to military warfare against all infidels (non-Islamists).

The problems with Islam are these:

The religion of Islam claims to be part of the biblical tradition, However, Islam also claims that both the Old and New Testament scriptures are incomplete and corrupted.

The Muslim has an unknowable God. A Muslim can know the will of Allah but cannot know his character or essence or have a personal relationship with him. With relationships as one of life’s most meaningful experiences, the importance of a personal relationship with God cannot be overstated.

Islam’s view of man seems unrealistic and even naïve since human beings are said to be born innocent with an unequivocally good and positive nature.

In conclusion, there is much competition with Christianity in the 21st century – a battle for the mind and even a war of the body. I pray that Christians and non-Christians may not be misled and that the power of the message of Christ will continue to draw people to conversion and new birth in Christ and that Christians will sustain themselves in the truth of Christian knowledge.

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A Great Depression Again?

I was born in 1931 at the start of the Great Depression. My family survived the depression better than most. My father had begun his dental practice five years earlier and, although it required some bartering for services to get along, he was able to care for his family reasonably well.

If the crash of 1929 had been like previous ones, the subsequent hard times might have ended in a year or two. But instead, uprecedented economic meddling prolonged the misery for 12 long years.

How bad was the Great Depression? Many felt despair as trade stopped, unemployment spiraled, banks collapsed and hunger spread across the nation. During the four years after the 1929 stock market crash, the nation regressed like at no other time in its history. 42% of America’s banks folded. Production at the nation’s factories, mines and utilities fell by more than half. People’s real disposable incomes collapsed 28%. Stock prices cascaded to one tenth of their pre-crash height. Unemployment rose from 1.6 million in 1929 to a whopping 12.8 million by 1933 – leaving one out of every four workers jobless. People lost their savings, their homes, their health and their hope.

But what made the 1929 stock market crash turn so much more deadly than the previous short-lived crashes of 1920 and earlier? According to many economists, the 1929 crash was unique because just months later, the first shots of a trade war that quickly engulfed the world were fired.

Industrial America erupted into protectionist fervor. In a reversal of conditions today, back then it was inexpensive European imports, especially agricultural products, due to cheap labor and falling European currencies that began to undercut American producers.

Riding a populist wave, U.S. politicians imposed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act – one of the most severe protectionist policies in America’s history. Designed to protect American farmers and manufacturers from cheap-labor low-cost European imports, Smoot-Hawley instead unintentionally triggered an economic arms race that helped plunge America – and the rest of the world – into a decade of depression and despair.

The rest of the world saw the Act as a virtual declaration of economic war on them. Foreign nations were outraged. Within two years, 25 countries had retaliated; U.S. and foreign trade took massive losses. America exported $5.24 billion in goods in 1929; by 1932 the total had fallen to just $1.6 billion. Overall, world trade declined some 66% by 1934.

What does this all have to do with 2008 America? It seems the first shots of global trade war are about to be fired – only this time, America’s falling dollar could be the trigger.

The dollar has fallen by 40% against the world’s major currencies over the past seven years. 16% of that loss has come in the past year alone. Against gold, the dollar has fared even worse, losing 19% in 2007 and falling more against gold in 2008.

The rapid fall in the dollar’s value is drastically changing global trade dynamics. The immediate impacts are being felt most dramatically in Europe.

The drop may benefit America in the short run, even though in the long run there could be stinging political and economic consequences.

In Europe, however, things are quite the opposite. The falling dollar is hammering European industry.

The weak dollar means that European products have become more expensive in America, and consequently Europe is selling fewer goods to, and buying more goods from, the U.S. Thus, Europe is sending more money to America through trade, and America is sending less back to Europe.

But Europe is actually getting hit doubly hard because China loosely links its currency to the dollar. As the dollar has fallen, so has the Chinese yuan – and European exports have become more expensive in China too, and Chinese goods have become cheaper in Europe – the result being that Europeans are selling fewer goods to, but purchasing more from China, which means Europe is now losing billions in trade with China. During just the first eight months of 2007, the EU’s trade deficit with China ballooned 25%.

But it doesn’t stop there. Saudi Arabia and 21 other nations officially link their currencies to the dollar. And 12 nations actually use the U.S. dollar as currency. For these reasons, America’s dollar problem is the world’s dollar problem, and especially Europe’s problem. No wonder Europe is getting fed up with the dollar’s slide.

The upshot of this trend is that the nightmare scenario is coming closer to reality. Trade war alarm bells are ringing.

As European businesses suffer, pressure on politicians to take legislative action to protect trade is intensifying. Airbus boss Tom Enders said the dollar’s fall is a “life-threatening” event for the company.

Ironically, at the same time the falling greenback, while stimulating U.S. exports, is also increasing calls for trade protectionism from within America.

Foreigners are now beginning to take full advantage of the markdown sale in America – not just of toys and trinkets, but of strategic assets as well. During 2006, foreigners spent $147.8 billion snapping up U.S. businesses, up 77% from 2005. Europeans, Chinese and Arabs are grabbing U.S. infrastructure at a rapid pace. Stuffed to the brim with depreciating dollars, many investors are seeking to spend them before they become worth even less. U.S. water companies, electric companies, and other utilities are being increasingly controlled by foreigners.

This election year, demands to legislate protections for American assets and trade are sure to increase. Calls to levy tariffs, duties, quotas, subsidies, and even to outright prohibit foreign ownership, are almost sure to abound.

How much strategic infrastructure does America want to be foreign owned? When times are good and everyone is at peace, foreign ownership of strategic industry may pose little immediate threat. But given the rising global tide of anti-Americanism, is it wise for America to allow foreign nations to have unrestricted access to American assets?

You may be asking the question, “What is all this economic stuff doing on a website titled “Christian Stuff”? The answer is that fear and panic should not be in the lifestyle of a Christian. But it can be seen everywhere in the world as a non-Christian lifestyle. And panic is a “trigger”.

Trade protectionism in America or Europe could easily escalate by panic into an economic arms race where nations turn inward and erect barriers to benefit local businesses and prevent foreign entities from competing. In such a scenario, global trade would immediately begin to regress, taking stock markets with it.

What if the rich foreign investors who now own so much of America panic and quickly try to save what they have by selling off their interests in American assets for what they can get out of them – again taking the stock markets with it?

Leaders in America and Europe say they don’t want a trade war. Most economists and business leaders don’t want trade war, and the average worker certainly doesn’t want trade war – after all, nobody likes to be reduced to begging for clothes or to being unemployed. With trade wars, everybody loses. The question just becomes who loses the most. And anti-Americanism around the world thinks that America would lose the most! And they are probably right!

We Christians know not to fear or panic:
“Have no anxiety for anything [don’t panic], but for everything pray with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God [don’t fear] which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ.
(Philippians 4:6-7)

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Jesus and I Can't Both Be In Control

Let me state a truth: A lot of people are saved but they don’t know Jesus.

It’s the only way I can understand why people who believe and teach the doctrine of the sovereignty of God are so bent on controlling everything but Him…and sometimes even Him. It explains why people talk about freedom yet live in a prison of guilt and fear. It helps me deal with those who talk about grace and give very little of it. It is the only way I know to understand why I, a member of Grace Church, live a life that is sometimes marked by obsession with rules, being perfect and doing everything right. It explains why so many people have to be right and work so hard to appear good.

I don’t for a moment believe that I’m not saved and, frankly, I don’t really believe that those who drive me nuts with criticism and condemnation of other Christians aren’t saved. I just believe that those of us who are saved sometimes don’t know Jesus.

For many years, I followed Christ in a not dissimilar way to the way I followed the multiplication tables. I knew that it was true. It didn’t move me deeply, it didn’t make me feel good all over and it didn’t feel warm and fuzzy. During that period in my life, I simply didn’t understand those who had an emotional connection with Christ. I, from my superficial position of intellectual commitment, felt that they “needed” all that but all I needed was the truth.

“Just the facts, man, just the facts.”

After all, once you see truth, you can’t unsee it. Only a fool, once seeing it, refuses to live according to the truth one has seen.

As I look back, the problem was that I tried to make the Christian faith into an affirmation of propositions. It was intellectual assent, and I thought that was enough. It wasn’t…not nearly enough.

In the last century a New England man in Amherst, Massachusetts proposed to his wife this way: “I hope I have no foolishness called romance; I am too well-balanced for that sort of nonsense. But we might look forward to leading respectable and useful lives and enjoy the respect of the neighbors.”

If you think that was a good marriage proposal, there’s something weird about you, and everybody knows it. But if you believe something like that about your relationship to Christ and even teach it, making the Christian faith into a “respectable and useful” religious commitment, everybody will think you’re godly. Your not. You’re spiritually neurotic.

I’m not preaching at you – I’ve been there, done that, and God help me, still live there sometimes. It’s having it in your intellect but having trouble connecting it with your spirit. I don’t think I have all the answers. I do have at least one of them though.

With me, I think, the real problem was (and sometimes still is) control. In my need to control my situation and all the circumstances of my life, I was saved, but I didn’t know Jesus.

You see, you can analyze, teach and line up doctrines and propositions. There is something logical and proper about biblical theology. It will not only win arguments; it makes one feel secure in one’s rightness. On the other hand, trusting our mind, listening to your mind and acting on your mind’s reasons can get you into all sorts of trouble. Once you start going down that road to knowledge, you can’t control what happens. Not only that, there is something well…uh…you know…kind of crude about all that emotional stuff.

Am I saying that biblical doctrine isn’t of any consequence?

Are you crazy? Of course not!

I am, however, saying that all of those things have one purpose: To point you to Christ so that He will love you and empower you to serve and to enjoy Him.

Let me share that possibly strange passage of Luke 9:57-62 with you:
“As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, ‘I will follow you where you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.’ To another He said, ‘Follow Me.’ But he said, ‘Lord let me first go and bury my father.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Yet another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those of my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Jesus isn’t teaching that there is something wrong with caring about having a place to lay your head, about burying your relatives or about taking care of your loved ones.

Jesus is talking about CONTROL.

Of course, one isn’t going to let go of the control of anything until one can trust the One to whom one is giving control. And that’s why I’m always saying things like:
God isn’t angry at you.
He really loves you in spite of everything.
He isn’t a child abuser.
Go to Him and He won’t reject you.
He’s not surprised at anything you do.

How do I know all that? Well, of course, I know that because the Bible tells me so. But I don’t really know it until I test it, and I have over and over again. Go ahead and you test it.

Get in control of something bad. For instance, “Go sin so that you have something to repent of and, when you sin, sin boldly!” (And no, I’m not advocating sin…because you are going to anyway. Besides, that was a direct quote from Martin Luther. So, it you’re going to get mad at someone, get mad at him. After all, he’s dead and it doesn’t matter.) Then see if Jesus forgives you.

Now get in control of something good. Try to follow all of the ten you-know-whats in your own strength for just one day. Jesus will have to forgive you of that too – and He will!

The Bible calls that tree in the Garden that Satan liked so much the “Tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. From my experience, I think a better name might be the “Tree of the CONTROL of good and evil.” Because that’s where our troubles really start – where we think we can control our good and evil actions.

YOU SEE, YOU AND JESUS CAN’T BOTH BE IN CONTROL!

When I’ve been in control, He still loved me and I was saved, but it felt like He was avoiding me. When I clung to my doctrines, and my need to be right, good and in control, Jesus allowed me to do that.

However, when I decided that I didn’t have to be in control anymore and, as it were, “let the dead bury their dead,” I found that Jesus (who lives in me all the time – Galatians 2:20) started speaking to my soul deeply and profoundly.

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It's All In the "Want-to-bes"

After many years of experience in church, I have found that the problem in the church is not that people don’t want to be good, but that they want to be good and can’t.

When I talk about freedom and grace and how God has destroyed the curse of the law, people tell me I’m treading on dangerous ground. “Lou,” they admonish, “if you keep talking like that, Christians are going to go out and do what they want.” Good!! That’s really good!! I still maintain that most Christians, if they did what they wanted, would be faithful. I have never heard a single Christian say, “Now that I’m forgiven I can be as bad as I want.”

When St. Augustine said, “Love God, and do as you please,” he was getting close to God’s secret of living the Christian life. At the risk of correcting Augustine (which is highly presumptuous) let me say he got it wrong. He should have said, “Let God love you deeply and completely, and then do as you please.”

The problem is not “what we please.” Because He has loved us so deeply and completely, Christians really do want to please God. The problem is that we so often fail in our efforts to please Him. Is that bad?

No. That’s good!! Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).

Let me give you a principle: Anticipating a promised reality is grounds for rejoicing in that reality. Jesus has promised that if you have a hunger and thirst for goodness, you will at some point be good. Because He promised, and because all His promises are fulfilled, you can rejoice as if you had already become good. If you know you’re going to get something, you can rejoice almost as much as if you had it.

Christians debate about how we can be assured of salvation. Some say the only way we can be assured of our salvation is to persevere in obedience, and as we obey, we will know we belong to Christ. This is called “works salvation”. Others say we can rest on the promise Jesus gave when we were saved – that is, “I accepted the gift of salvation when it was freely offered, and God doesn’t lie. Therefore I am saved.” This view can be called “easy-believism”.

Still others say we can’t know we have salvation – all we can do is hope and keep on trucking. When the game is over, God will tell us whether or not we are saved. This view could be called “daisy salvation”: He loves me, He loves me not; He loves me, He loves me not.

Now with as much humility as I can possibly muster, I’m going to settle the arguments: The way we are assured of salvation is to check and see if we desire to obey God. Please note: I did not say that you had to obey God 100 percent of the time – only that you have to want to. If you want obedience, you’ve got salvation. Scripture says, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we do know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. EVERYONE WHO HAS THIS HOPE IN HIM PURIFIES HIMSELF, JUST AS HE IS PURE” (1 John 3:2-3).

Do you see what John is saying? He is saying that the confirmation of our salvation is not in your being like Jesus now but in the hope you have of being like Jesus in heaven. When John gives us a future promise of being like Jesus (that is, obedient), our desire for the fulfillment of that promise is not only the assurance of our salvation, it is the motivation (that is, purifies himself) toward the fulfillment of the reality.

You see, just as hunger presupposes food, and thirst presupposes water, a desire for goodness presupposes its reality.

In your Christian life, have you ever felt like you tried – you really tried – but in the end you failed? You really wanted to do better, but you only did worse and you didn’t know how to fix it. Maybe you considered giving up completely. You said to yourself, “I’ll never get it right. I’m probably not a Christian at all.”

Rules and regulations are Satan’s way of reminding Christians that they have failed. But even worse, rules and regulations are the reason we do fail.

Let me give you a wonderful secret: When success isn’t the issue, success becomes the reality. In other words, success is always a side benefit of something else. You can apply that principle to lots of life’s desires, but let me show you how it works with freedom.

Holiness and righteousness is the desire of every Christian. The Scriptures say that we are made holy and righteous in Christ. When the Father looks down on us and sees Christ living in us, He sees us as holy and righteous in eternity. But many Christians say, “I’m going to be holy and righteous even if it kills me.” And it usually does. But, and here is the exciting thing: Holiness and righteousness have already been achieved for you by Christ. You have, in fact, a holy and righteous nature before God because of the cross.

That is a cold hard fact; you don’t have to try so much anymore to be holy and righteous. You are now free to fail and, more importantly, free to allow Him to love you and to love Him back. You enter a relationship, not between a criminal and a policeman, but between a loving Father and His child. When you enjoy that relationship, something wonderful happens: You find holiness and righteousness come tagging along behind. You find that you, almost without knowing it, are in a process that makes you increasingly more holy and righteous in your human parts.

This is the message. Obedience doesn’t lead to freedom. Freedom leads to obedience. If that is backwards, you lose both your freedom and eventually your obedience.

Yes, the key is in your “want-to-bes”. As often as we fail in our Christian walk, our assurance of salvation is that WE WANT TO BE GOOD.

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