Sin Mangement Vs. Forming Jesus In Us

March 19, 2010 · Filed Under freedom, renewing our mind · Comment 

From BobHamp.com

Dallas Willard has described our modern version of Christianity as the “Gospel of Sin-Management”, because of our propensity to think in terms of “what do I do about my sin?”. How do I stop, it? Is it sin if I…? What do I do when I do sin? How do I control my “besetting sin”? All these seem to be the central focus of christian practice. If not preventing or managing bad behavior, we are trying to foster “good” behavior. Read your Bible, Pray more. All these things seem so different from what Jesus seemed to say and do for people. How odd that the religion we named after Him promotes itself differently than He did.

It seems to me that when we go back to God’s original blueprint we might adjust (again) our view of the message and work of Jesus.

God had always intended to cover the creation with His nature, and He has always intended that His method be mankind, re-presenting, or presenting again His nature in the places we inhabit. When Adam and his wife turned the keys over to God’s adversary, God was not confused, frustrated, or shocked. This was all still part of His strategy to achieve His goal.

Part of His nature is that He is a Redeemer and and a Repairer, so to cover the creation with that, He would redeem and restore mankind. In so doing, He could resume covering the earth with Himself. As He re-forms His image in us, we re-present Him as we go. Where confusion has been we can bring clarity. Where fear has been we can deliver perfect love. Where anxiety has been, we can step in and restore peace beyond understanding.

Sure, these things don’t work as well when we are arm-wrestling our own behavior patterns, but winning the behavioral struggle was not the ultimate goal of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The cross allows us to be reconciled again to God, so that He, in us might fill the world with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, meekness, mercy and self-control.

In other words God’s goal was not to straighten out a bunch of misbehaving miscreants, it was to bring sons and daughters back into a relationship in which His life flows through us to the creation around us.

Try hard to be good if you want, but you could just yield to a very effective transformation process, in which God Himself is making you again into the person He designed you to be. Would it make any sense at all for God to make you, and then expect you to be someone other than who He made you to be?

Become yourself.

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Focusing on your problem or focusing on God?

March 5, 2010 · Filed Under freedom · Comment 

From Alan Smith.

“I can’t afford to be more conscious of any problem than I am of his presence.” –Bill Johnson.

How often do I pray from a place of being conscious of a problem rather than of His presence? Too often.

When I am problem-focused rather than Kingdom-focused, I usually end up striving from a place of fear and unbelief. This usually produces fruitlessness in prayer, which then magnifies the unbelief. This process may produce louder and more fervent prayer, but rarely does it produce more effective prayer.

Faith comes from hearing God. Revelation results from turning toward Him, not toward a problem.

I’m most effective in prayer when my focus is upon pursuing divine encounter rather than relief from a difficulty.

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Think Again

March 3, 2010 · Filed Under freedom, renewing our mind · Comment 

From Bob Hamp.

“Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  So simple, yet so many ways we can misunderstand.  I think the key to understanding this phrase, is understanding who it is is that spoke it and how He might be thinking.

Men and women who have spent a lifetime, (or even a day) in church are so bent towards connecting Scripture with behavior control, otherwise known as “The Knowledge of Good and Evil”, that almost all our experience and perception comes through that lens.

Repentance is much more about the blind seeing, than it is about bad people trying to be good.

Jesus never really met a man who was not blind.  At least not in light of His way of seeing.  Jesus could see all things, including the hearts and minds of men, and the swirling activity of the spiritual realm around us.  Because He saw clearly, He could look at every man in every situation and see every aspect of both.  Motives, hidden thoughts, fear, and even the spiritual forces lurking within each exchange, all were as visible to him, as traffic signs are to us.  Such was the vista in the Kingdom to which He was accustomed.

Crippled as we are, we try to perceive reality through a singular set of “senses”. Sight, sound, touch, taste, fragrance.  All these are senses which apprehend a single realm; the physical.  Perhaps within this arena we could perceive clues, signs and symptoms of other arenas, but we could not see them.  Like seeing tree branches move, while not seeing the wind that moved them.

Walking through a dark room, we would trip over furniture and obstacles we could not see. Turn on the light, the natural result is a different set of responses. Step around the table, stop and turn when solid objects are in our path.

Repentance is about changing the way we see.  The natural result is a different set of responses.  Repentance is about using a set of senses beyond the physical.  Intuition, wisdom, revelation, faith (yeah, you remeber, the assurance of things NOT SEEN!) Operating by these senses, behavior change is a natural result of seeing clearly, as opposed to the application of will power.  When we try to produce behavior change without repentance (Seeing Differently; with different senses) this is called, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil”

Repent for the Kingdom of the Heavens is at arms reach.

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