Month: October 2015

Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

What is the place of human happiness in the economy of God? The world often tells us that nothing is more important than its pursuit. In fact “the pursuit of happiness” is so important in the national zeitgeist of America that it is literally enshrined in our nation’s constitution. But seeking happiness at any cost is not the counsel of Scripture. Seeking God at any cost is.

When good feelings are put at the center of our aspirations we become Hedonists and Hedonism is a form of idolatry. In fact the argument could be made that the all-out quest for personal happiness may, in and of itself, constitute a complete false religious system in our times. If seen in that light it may not be too far from the mark to suggest that this system is the de facto majority religion of the 21st Century Western world. If you ask the average person on the street in the United States or Europe today what they want most out of life it is a fair bet that he or she will tell you that they “just want to be happy”. Even a less self-seeking answer to the same question usually revolves around happiness. Often the hope is expressed that someone near and dear may achieve it, most often the inquiree’s children.

Of course gladness of heart is not intrinsically evil. It may be presumed from the Bible that it is even a large part of God’s ultimate will in offering redemption to his fallen human creation. Yet the Bible is also quite clear that the chief purpose of man is to glorify God above all other goals. Whatever true happiness we can hope for here is a direct function of worshipping and obeying God simply because He is our Creator and He is holy. We must love God primarily because of who He is intrinsically, not because of what He can do for us.

Such devotion may sound patently impossible to we who are essentially born with self-fulfillment as our natural “default setting”, but it is not impossible if the perfect beauty and righteousness of God captures our hearts. This is only able to happen because, in Christ, He loves us with a love so pure and powerful that our hearts can be awakened to that beauty and righteousness. When this occurs we end up loving Him above all things, including our own temporal happiness, because He first loved us. The place where that kind of love was most perfectly made manifest is at the cross, and it is only there that we learn to exchange our demand for bliss for the higher goal of blessing Him.

The sweet paradox in all this is that, in first seeking God’s glorification in our lives, we obtain much temporal happiness in our earthly existence and ultimately the promise of eternal happiness as well. The degree to which our hearts are truly surrendered to God in this present life will determine how happy we will be in the here and now. The happiest people on Earth are those who are in intimate union with Jesus Christ and, in grace beyond all measure, they are further promised perfect and infinite happiness in the Kingdom of Heaven.

So being happy is not a bad thing if it is not elevated above God as an object of worship. When rightly seen as a byproduct of knowing our Lord as our first priority it is put in its proper place, and then released into our hearts.

That very prospect is something to be happy about!

Copyright by Shea Oakley.
All rights reserved.

Perfection without love is not perfection at all. Human perfectionism is most often a cold, hard thing. It is only concerned with reaching the highest possible level of performance, the highest level that self-effort can achieve. It has everything to do with pride and nothing to do with love.

It is well to remember an aspect of the revealed nature of the One by whom everything is measured. The God of the Bible is described as love. In fact His love for us is declared to be perfect love. He is also known as the giver of grace to His fallen creation. Part of our Lord’s perfection includes the bestowal of unmerited favor, even to those who do not know, or care to know, Him. God’s grace can also be assumed to be perfect as it is an outworking of His nature.

The truth of this, if received, is the greatest source of comfort a human being can ever know. Perfect love implies a love so pure and so strong that it can overcome the deepest darkness we might encounter during our earthly pilgrimage. Perfect grace extends that to include the darkness that dwells in our own souls as well. Whether it is within or without, the evil that once indwelt us as unbelievers cannot the withstand divine perfection now working within our surrendered lives Upon receiving Jesus Christ this perfection is imparted to the new believer. At that moment we become flawless, unblemished in His sight. That reality is then worked out within us over time through the process of sanctification.

Notice that we receive this faultlessness, we do not achieve it. True perfection is only gained by accepting God’s perfection, and that as a gift. Any human attempt to reach this condition autonomously is, by definition, doomed to failure. It is inherently flawed because it is in no way related to the source and embodiment of all that is perfect. If God is not both present in, and master of, the life of a human being that human being remains profoundly flawed and that which is flawed in any way ultimately can never dwell with Him, in this life or the next. The imparted perfection of God, in and though Christ, is ultimately the only way to find what so many profoundly frustrated perfectionists are looking for.

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

“The more light we have, the more we shall see our own imperfection.” -J.C. Ryle

Any sincere Christian who has sought over time to draw closer to the Lord has experienced the truth of Ryle’s observation. The closer we come to the light of God, the more that light penetrates into our hearts. What His light often illuminates is a depth of negative attitudes and tendencies that we did not think we could possibly contain. The holiness of God, apprehended by us, uncomfortably reveals our own lack of holiness.

The rooting out of sinful habits of thought and action is a progressive process that continues throughout our lives. In His superintending of this process it appears that God knows just how much self-revelation we can take at one time without falling into complete despair. For instance, if we were suddenly forced to confront the entirety of our remaining leanings towards wickedness in a moment it might be more than we could bear. It might induce such horror that we would be destroyed by it. So God, in His mercy, reveals what we need to be cleansed from only as we become ready to face it. This is part of the nature of sanctification.

So what can believers do when they come to have a new awareness of previously unsuspected strongholds of sin in their lives? Perhaps the first thing we could do is thank God for that awareness. While this process is unpleasant it proves that we are still on the road to Heaven. We would not experience this progressive unveiling of our personal proclivity for certain sins if we were not truly seeking after God and the Holy Spirit was not actively working in our lives to change our hearts into the likeness of Christ. We can also thank Him because now that we see within ourselves what needs to be repented of we are ready to cooperate with the Spirit to be cleansed from this particular unrighteousness, if it is something we are unknowingly practicing.

Progressively convicted Christians can also respond to such a revelation by humbling themselves and coming to understand yet one more reason why they are not in a position to judge others. Sometimes it seems that God reveals our hidden sin just in time, for instance just as we are preparing to harshly judge another human being. If we are willing to receive the truth He is communicating to us we can be saved from judging that person and thus opening ourselves up to being judged. Thus humility is also the potential fruit of being confronted by sinful tendencies in our lives that we did not know we had.

Finally there is the realization of our dependence on God that this process makes possible. We are again reminded that we are truly lost without Him because if He did not reveal the temptations in our lives that we must turn from we could ultimately be ruined by giving in to those tendencies. For this reason we need not inordinately fear the unveiling of our souls by the penetrating light of our Lord. He shows us our remaining imperfections out of love for us. It is like a good surgeon who probes deeper than we might like to make sure he has gotten all of the cancer in our bodies. The surgeon has our best interests in mind and he knows that the pain that is associated with the discovery and removal of more cancer is the necessary byproduct of his effort to rid us of it.

How much more should we expect this from the Great Physician who is also our loving Father?

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

There is much to be said for a raw emotional honesty before God, however it may manifest itself. Whether we cry out with a broken heart, express deep anger or shout for joy in His presence, the God of the Universe does not begrudge us our emotional outbursts. I believe He would prefer that we engage in an open and genuine discourse with Him rather than display a forced and false outward piety. He knows what is really going on inside of us anyway; we might do well to acknowledge that fact and voluntarily share our deepest feelings with Him. God is not insecure. He can handle seeing what comes out of us at our worst moments as well as our best, even when the pain and anger we express is directed toward Him.

Despite this, many sons and daughters of God are terribly afraid of being “real” in the presence of their Lord. I knew of one man who was so fearful of expressing his anger toward God about great misfortunes in his life that he would physically injure himself instead of confronting the Lord (or anyone else.) The result was not just an injury but a continued emotional paralysis that, at least partially, prevented him from doing anything constructive about the afflictions that made his life so miserable. I believe the primary reason he would not allow himself be openly angry with God was his great dread about how God would respond.

If we look in Scripture, we find many emotional outbursts of various kinds in front of the Lord, often coming from people dear in His sight. Many names come to mind, with David, Job, Jeremiah and Peter among them. Sometimes they may have said the wrong things to Him in wrong ways. They are not severely punished by their Creator and Redeemer. Although they may have suffered intensely emotional experiences, they all continue to be men of great faith to the end of their lives. They also continued to be loved by a God who never stopped blessing them throughout their lives.

It is true that our Lord, a perfect and perfectly loving being, is incapable of acting in a way that legitimately warrants our wrath. So, the Lord never deserves our negative emotions directed toward Him. But, there is a huge difference between willful anger toward God as a continued state of being and an instance of emotional honesty. The latter can open the door to a cathartic release, repentance, and renewed relationship with God. More than once in my own life I found that after I “had it out” with God, I came to a new place of love for and appreciation for who He is and how He continues to lavish abundant and unmerited grace and love on me.

The Bible tells us that the One in whom we have placed our faith desires “truth in the inward parts” (Psalm 51:6). It may be that such truth cannot continue to exist if something deep within us remains un-confessed by a refusal to bare our emotional selves to Him. Could it be that stuffing our feelings may damage our innermost being? I think so. At the very least, a lack of emotional intimacy with God thwarts our spiritual growth and sanctification. It seems much better, on all counts, that we outwardly express to God what is going on within our hearts.