Month: June 2015

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

During my nearly 25 years as a believer I have observed in some church’s a tendency for preachers and teachers to consistently favor exhortational sermons over encouraging ones. By “exhortational” I mean those messages that are, at their core, about telling Christians they are not committed enough to the Faith, not doing enough for the Kingdom, not fully “sold out” to Christ, etc. Such messages are often consciously or subconsciously designed to trigger the consciences of listeners in the congregation who, in the eyes of the speaker, do not take the call to costly Christian discipleship seriously enough.

No doubt this is often a true judgment in the 21st Century American church, but one might argue whether this approach is effective considering that a huge part of real repentance happening in any human soul is the applied kindness of God. Since we are also told to “gently restore” the fallen it would seem apparent that our Lord uses “the carrot” as least as much as “the stick” in convicting His people of sin.

But whether there is a place for hard sermons in bringing people to a place of repentance is not the point of this piece. The point I would like to make is that many pastors do not understand that they are not only talking to lazy or licentious Christians when they decide to major on warning exhortations; they are also being heard by believers who struggle mightily with self-condemnation and obsessive fears about their spiritual standing. For these listeners such guilt-inducing messages only re-enforce an often false sense of “not making the grade” as a child of God. All such a sermon does for them is reinforce wrong patterns of belief that, many times, stem from abuse they suffered in their formative years…often before they even came to know Jesus Christ.

I was such a Christian for many years. More than once I approached a Pastor who had just finished an exhortational message asking him what to do about my obvious lack of faith and/or discipline. Invariably what I heard back was “Shea, I wasn’t talking to you”.

If he wasn’t talking to me I suspect he “wasn’t talking” to quite a few other dedicated, but fearful, believers as well. The problem is that we didn’t know this and most were probably not approaching the pastor with the same concerns I was. They just left the service with an even greater load of unjustified guilt and unjustified guilt is a great tool for the Enemy of our souls to use against us.

With this in mind I would encourage shepherds in the church to include a sort of “disclaimer” in their harder sermons. Such a disclaimer would clearly state that they are by no means talking to everyone in the pews, especially those with possibly damaged consciences, consciences that cannot be fully trusted. In this way they may be able to “comfort the afflicted” in their congregations at the same time they attempt to more effectively “afflict the comfortable.”

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

“A tree cannot taste its own fruit.”  -Wayne Scott Farley

There are times in the Christian life when we are called to bless others whether we feel like it or not. Sometimes the actual giving of the blessing is enough to engage our feelings in a positive way; however other times we feel no better after giving of our self.

Occasionally we may even feel worse.

Nowhere in the Bible does God promise His children that doing good will always feel good. Perhaps the ultimate example is the cross of Christ itself. Jesus did not enjoy the cross; He endured it. Undoubtedly Jesus foresaw “the joy set before Him” and this helped Him to bear the horrific experience of Good Friday, yet what He felt in the actual giving of Himself was unspeakable torment.

Our own blessing of others often requires us to carry a cross. It may be the cross of helping someone we do not particularly like or it might be the cross of giving to others what we feel we do not have enough of ourselves. Sometimes we may wrongly fear that our motives are too mixed, so we do not allow ourselves to know the joy of the blessing. Whatever the cross is we bear the result is that we do not take pleasure in giving what we give.

In more than one place the Bible refers to us as trees. A growing Christian is like a healthy tree whose branches produce much good fruit. If we are abiding in Christ then He is the motive power for our fruitfulness. In daily life this fruitfulness is largely manifested in how we physically, psychologically, or spiritually help others. Again, however, the Bible does not indicate that we will always get some kind of positive emotional charge out of this. We may indeed feel better after blessing others, but it is not something we can or should always count on. In fact to do a good deed purely for the chance to feel good renders the deed selfish. Such giving is not a true fruit of the Spirit.

In the end we must remember that some true giving to those in need may not feel good or even real. Self-judgment in this area is tricky because often we do not know ourselves well enough to come to an accurate conclusion about motives. Perhaps only our Lord can ultimately perceive if our fruit is authentic or false. At the very least only He can know all of the time. The bottom line is that, as Farley tells us, “A tree cannot taste its own fruit.” It may be that some of us will be in for a surprise when, after a lifetime of sometimes agonizing over whether our giving was sincere, we get to Heaven and receive a “well-done” we did not think we deserved.

In that spirit let us remember what the Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 6: 9-10:

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people…”

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

It is not unusual to hear individual prayer along the following lines in our church’s today:

“Oh Lord, make yourself known to me and move in power in my life. Come into my life in a radical new way and change my heart. Make me completely yours and use me for your glory. In Jesus name, amen.”

Such a prayer is orthodox enough and certainly sounds like the petition of a person who totally seeks to be surrendered to Christ. In fact it is a good thing to ask the Lord to do what this prayer asks Him to do in our lives. The problem is that when we request such a thing of Him many, perhaps most, of us are terrified that God will actually answer the prayer and show up!

Human beings are not very comfortable with change. This is because change, even change for the good, is often painful. It is amazing how often we choose the misery we know over the possible solution we do not. This is especially true if our lives have been marked with more loss than most. The tendency is to try to hold on to what we have left, sometimes at any cost. The popular phrase “Let go and let God” applies here in the negative sense that far too often we do just the opposite. “Grip tightly and keep God at a distance” might be a better description of our practical theology. What we have trouble understanding is that anything we try to hold on to above holding on to God eventually slips through our fingers anyway.

The other thing is that the idea of an infinite and omnipotent God truly manifesting Himself to us is a potentially terrifying prospect. One is reminded of the character in C.S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” who, upon asking one of the denizens of Narnia if the Christ-figure Aslan the Lion is “safe” is informed that he is not safe, but he is good. When we ask our Lord to come into our lives in power we can expect some things to happen that will make us feel anything but comfortable. Just the presence of a holy God is something that would destroy us if it were not for the fact that we are made acceptable to Him by our appropriation of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. While God’s presence can be a comforting thing it might also sometimes be profoundly disturbing to beings that are still quite capable of sin.

The fact is that the Father intends to change all of us who claim the name of Christ into the likeness of His Son and a prayer that asks Him to truly change our hearts will be answered by Him doing just that. The life of Christ was painful and if we open ourselves to being made like Him we can expect plenty of pain too. The issue is not whether such pain is worth it, it is, but we are still not thrilled at the prospect of enduring it.

Someone once said that if we all must come to God with pure motives none of us would be able to come at all. I believe this is true not only at the time of our salvation but during our ongoing sanctification as well. The truth is that sometimes our prayers are not 100% pure. We desire God’s will in our lives, yet we also fear it. We believe, yet we need help with our unbelief. This is where our Lord’s understanding of, and patience with, our humanity comes in. His grace covers our faltering hearts if we have indeed come to love His Son in spirit and in truth. Beyond that, God’s perfect love for us can progressively cast out our fears about Him answering so audacious a prayer as the one that began this essay.

Prayers for God to fully possess our lives should not be entered into lightly it is true. But God does desire us to pray in such a way because He longs to possess us as only the true Lover of our souls can and should. We do well to pray such prayers. What is important to know is that, while the answer may be hard to bear for a time, the final result will be our entering into the bliss of God’s perfect love.

Copyright by Shea Oakley.

All rights reserved.

“In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry”  Ephesians 4:26

It has been said that those who anger us control us. Having such control may not be the conscious goal of the person our anger is directed towards, in fact oftentimes they may not even know we feel this way, but whatever the knowledge and attitude of the person in question we have given them a power in our lives they should not have. The Bible tells us that anger is not inherently wrong. But scripture also tells us not to let the sun go down with it still present in our hearts. To let resentment towards another continue in our lives unresolved is to cede control of our lives to someone other than the only One who should rightfully have such control.

Anger is often spurred by insecurity. Someone has attacked our fragile sense of self-worth. The circumstances may vary but the bottom line is that another human being has somehow made us feel disrespected or disregarded as a person. We may also feel the sting of rejection that is implicit in any negative comment or action against us. As a counselor friend of mine once said, rejection is the worst experience a relational being can have. It is that painful.

Anger is the natural response to being hurt un-justfully. It seems completely reasonable for us to hold on to that anger until the person involved repents of his or her actions. Unfortunately that repentance sometimes, perhaps most times, does not come. It is then we may decide that it is our “right” to continue to be offended. In time our anger turns into bitterness. The problem with being bitter is that it poisons our ability to live life to its fullest. This is particularly true spiritually. Anger which has been allowed to go deep into our hearts and become bitterness is a very effective block to sharing in the life of the Christ in whom there is no bitterness. We have allowed a person to have a power over us that is destructive to the most needful relationship we have.

How then can a believer escape from something to which is so easy for our still unperfected nature to fall prey? The key may be in asking God to enable us to see things from His perspective, the only perspective that shows us what is ultimately real. From this point of view a few things become clear to us. One is that, as Charles Stanley once said “You are no better than your worst neighbor.” Yes, we have been wounded, but we also wound. Another truth is that God happens to love our antagonist just as much as He loves us. Most importantly we can come to know that our security and worth are found in almighty God alone, and because He is the source for our right standing it is not necessary to pay attention to criticism not given in love. Grasping these realities can help us to move towards resolution of anger and bitterness as we allow God’s love to enable us to love those with whom we have been angry. Then we begin to be set free from the negative influence these people have on our lives. We release both them and ourselves when we forgive and put the Lord alone on the throne of our hearts. Real freedom and a newfound capacity for joy will then follow….just as surely as day follows night.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

The “spirit of the law” spoken of in the New Testament is revealed to and in a believer through the Holy Spirit, not through self-indulgence, not through self-righteousness, not, in fact, through “self”-anything but through God Himself. Knowledge of the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law is at the very core of the new life granted to the children of God through Christ. It is part and parcel of the freedom bought for us at the cross and is absolutely essential to fully experiencing that freedom. The opposite errors of legalism and license that have plagued so many Christians through the centuries are both derived from a functional ignorance of what Jesus came to deliver His people from, and both lead to back to spiritual bondage.

In the case of legalism this ignorance manifests itself in a futile attempt to earn our way to God through self-righteous moral scrupulosity. Such scrupulosity may be based on codes of conduct obvious or implicit in either the Old or New Testaments, but in each case it is manifested by works that originate in the self rather than in the enabling power of God. Furthermore the motivation behind legalism is often found in a combination of pride and fear of punishment, rather than love of Christ. Because of this faulty motivation those caught up in it cannot please God no matter how holy their conduct may appear. They are out of touch with the grace and kindness of God, the only things that lead to true repentance in humility of spirit. People who are bound up in legalism have bypassed the cross to their own harm and the harm of those under their sway. To be completely given over to legalism is to exhibit the same alienation from the Son of God for which the Pharisees were condemned.

Licentiousness, meanwhile, shows an ignorance of the continued destructive power of sin. This is the error that says that Jesus came to abolish the law rather than fulfill it. To be licentious is to be morally self-indulgent, to commit obvious or subtle sins in the mistaken belief that one can somehow avoid sin’s wages because one has been released to do so by grace. But as Paul said in his letter to the Romans “Are we to sin so that grace shall abound? God forbid!” License does not prove freedom from the law of God, but only defiance of that law. Its end is the same slavery to sin that held us before we came to know Christ and, like unrepented legalism; licentiousness begs the question of whether we ever really came to know Him at all.

Standing over and against both these potentially deadly errors is living in a state of harmony with the “spirit of the law”. This is the hallmark of the truly surrendered and Spirit-filled Christian. Such a person is no longer ruled by the opposite poles of self-centeredness apparent in legalism and license, but by the Spirit of Christ Himself. This kind of believer is not sinless, no Christian this side of Heaven is, but the true law of God is in the process of being written on his or her heart. This can only happen when the Holy Spirit has so shifted our attention off ourselves that Jesus is before our spiritual eyes more than we are. He then progressively fulfills the law in us and makes us truly holy as He is holy. We come to embody the fulfillment of the law that our Lord and Savior achieved on Calvary. True freedom from the sins of legalism and license is the lasting fruit of this vicarious fulfillment. The “spirit of the law” now becomes resident in our deepest hearts and we are set free to live the truly moral life we once tried to either simulate or reject.