Month: September 2015

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

Love, by definition, desires the best for its object. In the Scriptures we are told that God is love. Only the ultimate, perfect love issuing forth from the heart of God is powerful enough to fully actualize that best; both for and in us.

Every human being is fallen. We are all in need of complete transformation from the inside out to change us from the profoundly darkened creatures we have become to the perfected children of the most high we will be. Human love, no matter how intense and long-lasting, does not have the transformative power necessary to achieve this in us. While it is true that God can use our love for one another to further our metamorphosis into beings who more fully reflect His likeness this “horizontal love” cannot be a substitute for the “Vertical Love” that comes directly from the Father through the Son.

The problem with affection between persons is that it is never completely without self-interest and is always prone to variation. Our Lord is not susceptible to either of these imperfections. He is an inexhaustible source of selfless and constant love because he completely embodies love itself, and He is perfect as well as all-powerful in all His attributes.

Our Creator wants the best for us above all others because He loves us above all others. With his will wedded to His power it becomes possible for us to receive that best. We who belong to Him are literally being loved into the greatest possible thing we could ever hope to become, a being completely remade in the full image of God.

If we could just grasp the reality of this truth we could cease our striving to be “lovable enough” to God, other people and ourselves. To be the focus of divine love, and to know it, is to be set free from looking for love “in all the wrong places”. We can allow ourselves to be loved by the one Person whose care and affection for us is unconditional and sufficient for every circumstance we face, no matter how difficult it might appear. God’s love trumps every obstacle we face in life if we understand and receive it as it is given: in the perfect power of the divine.

Because God is love, and because we are the apple of His eye, those of us who bear the name “Christian” can fully trust that the best possible outcome for our individual existence is assured. This is the legacy the Lover of our souls will bequeath us on that day when our relationship is consummated in full and final union with His Christ. It is the best thing that we could ever hope for. In fact it is better even than that because His best for us is beyond what we could ever dream or imagine.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

About 10 years ago a prominent Evangelical leader made a statement that was long overdue. He told his audience that the biggest threat to the family today is not homosexuality but divorce. In the midst of our resistance to the growing acceptance of the gay lifestyle we have ignored a much greater danger. As the Evangelical divorce rate in America has soared in recent years many churches have failed to recognize the more urgent priority of reinforcing marriages.

According to the latest polls the percentage of Christian marriages ending in divorce is around 50%. It is important to note that these polls also include second marriages ending, so they are not indicative of the failure rate of first marriages alone. The numbers would be considerably lower Vis a Vis the secular statistics if only first marriages were included. The rate for Evangelicals would then be closer to 25%. But even these lower numbers leave us with the sobering realization that far too many Christian families are being torn apart.

The most tragic result of divorce is its effect on children. Studies have shown that children who come from broken homes are more likely to suffer depression, anxiety and learning disorders. They also tend to be more prone to engaging in drinking, drug use and illicit sex. The alienation and despair that is increasingly common among adolescents shadows the increase in divorces. The bottom line is that we are badly damaging our kids insuring, among other things, that their own attempts to bond in life-long unions will likely be even more problematic than our own.

With just the stark evidence of what failed marriages produce in our children alone one might think that churches would be doing everything in their power to insure that Christian unions survive. No doubt some are and for that they should be commended and emulated, but unfortunately what seems to be happening instead in too much of the Evangelical subculture is a growing tolerance of divorce. The stigma of a failed marriage is no longer as powerful a deterrent as it was in years past. These days’ marriages ending among Christians, is more often labeled “tragic” than sinful. Such a value-neutral term seems a bit dissembling for a people whose God clearly states that He hates divorce.

It should never be an easy thing for a believing couple to jointly dissolve a union whose foundation rests on vows they have made to one another before God. To start with the Church needs to support the few recent secular legal initiatives designed to make it more difficult to divorce. Pre-marital counseling should be vigorous, in depth, and occur over a longer period of time then is sometimes the case today. Divorce outside the scriptural guidelines regarding unrepentant adultery or abandonment by an unbelieving spouse should be strongly and unapologetically spoken against from the pulpit and not just occasionally. Finally husbands and wives who plan to ignore pastoral counsel and end their marriages for un-biblical reasons should know beforehand that their church will biblically discipline them if they choose to sin in this way.

If this sounds overly stern to some ears it should be remembered that for most of the history of Christianity divorce has been very strongly discouraged. Its one thing to single-out already divorced people for special censure and another to do every thing possible to discourage them from becoming divorcees in the first place. For centuries there was a healthy fear of both the spiritual and temporal consequences of ending a marriage. The fact is that the advent of a higher tolerance for divorce during recent years is not a sign of a progressive church but a regressive one. We might do well to remember that 2000 years ago Jesus Christ Himself roundly condemned a religion that had made divorce easy to justify and obtain. That fact alone should give pause to many a married believer considering his or her options.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

Experiencing pain is hard, but the result of avoiding pain is much harder. The pain I speak of is necessary pain. This is the discomfort involved in confronting that within us which is both the result of what we have done to others and the result of what has been done to us. It is the pain that precedes repentance and it is the pain that precedes healing Allowing ourselves to experience both kinds are unavoidable if we hope to live an authentic Christian life.

But avoid them we do.

I’ve never known a true masochist, an individual who consciously derives pleasure from pain. Most of us are all about avoiding it. God does not begrudge us that desire in and of itself. The myriad aches we today experience as human beings were not part of the original plan. Adam and Eve knew no pain in Eden until the moment they choose to disobey the only demand their Creator gave them, to not eat of the Tree of Good and Evil. Pain was, and is, the necessary consequence of our rebellion against a just God. We need not have experienced it as a race had we had remained obedient to the One who deserved no disobedience from us. That we do know pain in this life is the greatest evidence that the biblical account of the Fall is true.

God takes no pleasure in misery for its own sake. If He did He would be a cosmic sadist and the God of the cross could not possibly be that. He looks at the afflictions of humankind as the necessary result of transgression against him, but he does not enjoy it. If He did Jesus would never have been sent to us.

So all of the sons and daughters of Adam must know pain in this world. It is part of a just curse upon a fallen race. However, for the blood-bought son or daughter of God, pain has a particular role to play. This role is two-fold, to show us our need for healing and to show us our need for Godly sorrow over what we have done to cause others to need healing. Without this kind of pain we would forever remain wounded and wounding. Without it we would not know something is terribly wrong in our souls.

Physically it is better to feel the agony of a second-degree burn than the numbness of a third-degree burn. Why? Because the pain of the former indicates that the affected nerves and tissues are still capable of healing, the lack of feeling in the latter means that both nerve and tissue have been completely destroyed. Pain is nature’s (and by extension God’s) way of sounding the alarm that something is not as it should or could be. It tells us we need to do something about a problem.

Whether that problem stems from what we have done, or what has been done to us, pain is often what brings it to our attention. But we have an option when such a feeling begins to make itself known. We can choose the path of avoidance.

Every mood-altering substance, action or possession known to human beings is potentially an enabler for such avoidance. Alcohol, sex and money are respective examples of each. Drunkenness, promiscuity and compulsive shopping are all pain-avoiders. All seem to promise an easy alternative to experiencing the hurt that is endemic to our existence. This is a cruel illusion. Most of those who do not know God will, to one degree or another, take this route. It is, for them, a dead-end. The pain they avoid is exchanged for greater pain latter on, compounded by the sinful activity’s destructive effects on their bodies and souls.

Those who know God can choose this route as well; and I daresay that every Christian has chosen to detour down it at some point. We are not immune to the siren-call of avoidant behavior either. But in the power of the Spirit living within us we can choose to go another way. We can embrace our pain and ask God to use our experience of that pain to change us for the better. When we do this in sincerity He will honor our willingness to trust Him and the pain we then enter into and endure will be profoundly redemptive. It will result in the purification and growth of our hearts and prepare us for the Godly joys God wants all his children to know, the greatest of which is a deeper intimacy with Him.

When pain seems unavoidable it probably is. Our best reaction is to accept it after asking our Lord to use it to bring about His loving plan for our lives. Learning to react to pain in this way is one of the most important lessons of the Christian life. It is not easily accepted, and we should not expect it to be so, but once we have learned this lesson we will ultimately be taken beyond the hurt we experience to a place of blessing that will make that hurt pale by comparison.

Then the pain will have been worth it beyond what we ever could have imagined.