Month: December 2015

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley

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We need not fear those who are in conflict with us without good cause. Many of us are afraid of interpersonal conflict and do whatever we can to avoid it. Sometimes it can be avoided and when that is true we are wise to do so. At other times a clash of human wills is inevitable.

When it is impossible to steer clear of such a clash anxiety and unease about it can become just as debilitating as the thing itself; especially if our antagonist is not a believer and perhaps more apt to fight viciously. In fact the way we feel prior to “the battle being joined” may actually cause us more harm than the battle. What is sad about this reality in the lives of many believers is that it reveals an immaturity and ineffectiveness in the quality of our faith in God. How can we develop that faith to find courage in the face of conflict?

The most important thing to remember is that our Lord is infinitely more powerful than any human adversary. If we are holding, as best we can, to a fair and righteous position in an appropriately humble spirit He will go before us into the fight. He will also be with us in the midst of it, working on our behalf to bring about a satisfactory resolution. The reality is that we cannot be really harmed, in the truest sense of the word, if we have a divine Ally. The conflict at hand may be painful but it can never be fatal to our souls. Truly knowing this reality is one antidote to the unnecessary dread we may be feeling.

In the light of this truth it is vital that we be in contact with that Ally preparatory to an expected argument. Prayer is the key to both reducing fear and becoming ready to act in a Godly way if and when conflict becomes inevitable. Jesus taught us to lay our burdens upon Him. This cannot happen without talking to Him about those burdens. We must then give them over in continuing conscious prayer. We need to either literally or figuratively be on our knees whenever we see an interpersonal battle on the horizon.

Part of that prayer needs to include something else we are commanded to do in scripture: asking for God to ultimately bless our enemy of the moment. To achieve this it is always helpful to remember that the person who we are at odds with is not the real enemy in spiritual reality. Our true foes are the powers and principalities behind them (this is particularly true if the person does not share our faith.) Angry people often are playing into the Enemies hands without the slightest awareness that they are being manipulated. Remember also that their susceptibility to such manipulation might be caused by emotional damage they have sustained in life. This should be kept in mind when spiritually preparing for a potential quarrel. Sincere and fervent prayer can disarm the malevolent spirits influencing the person in question and give us the victory in a conflict. Hopefully those same prayers will also minimize any damage that might be done to our human adversary in the heat of verbal battle.

As Christians, we must approach any human disharmony with awareness that the problem is largely spiritual and has largely spiritual answers. In learning to trust in God’s power, praying for a just outcome, and petitioning our Lord on behalf of our, hopefully temporary, human enemies we will find release from unnecessary fear. Conflicts are an unavoidable part of living in a fallen world with fallen people (as we ourselves once were and, in some ways, still are.) What is avoidable, with God’s help, is dreading those conflicts once they are unavoidably upon us.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

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Even during this yuletide season I’m not sure that we who call ourselves followers of Christ often give much thought to the supreme miracle that we are about to celebrate, the miracle that exists at the very center of our faith. The advent on earth of the universal God in human form is a mystery both unfathomable and blessed. We are all far the less if we do not take time at this season, or at any time of the year for that matter, to ponder the sublime reality of God becoming a man.

No other religion in the world puts forth the idea of a Supreme Being so willing to identify with His deeply fallen human creation as to literally become one of them. That He would do so out of love, because only such an “incarnation” would make possible our rescue from spiritual death, can become for us an incredibly sweet and compelling truth if we but ponder it for a while. It is mind-boggling, yes, but even though we cannot completely comprehend the full glory of our Lord becoming incarnate we can apprehend it in such a way as to open a door to one of the greatest and most transcendent blessings that we can know in our Christian walk.

Just think about it. We belong to a God who so loved us as to become one of us to make that “belonging” possible. What indescribable condescension must that have entailed for One who is infinite, eternal and uncaused Being? I once wrote that it is somewhat akin to a man becoming a flea to save a world of fleas, but that barely begins to cover the magnitude of the descent we now consider. It is truly the miracle of all ages.

But do not just use your intellect in your endeavor to experience the truth of the earthly advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, use your heart as well for this is also nothing if not an affair of the heart. How can our hearts not love Immanuel, “God with us”? Christmas testifies to the beginning of a new and profound opportunity for human intimacy with God, an intimacy with God as man. How can we remain unmoved by a Holy God, One “Wholly Other” as one German theologian once described his innate separation from us, becoming us? The mere fact of the Son of God becoming also the Son of Man is enough, in my opinion, to make Christianity the most compelling belief system on the planet. No one has a God like ours, no one, and it is Jesus, the God-Man who makes this so.

Perhaps the only thing more compelling than the Advent itself is the reality that the God who arrived on earth as one fully human over two-thousand years ago then proceeded to go to the cross and defeat death for what were now His fellow human beings as well as His creation. Contemplate that. He made us but, because of Christmas, he also died for us, as one of us.

But then that is a story for another Holy Day, a few months from now.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

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Nothing a believer is allowed by God to go through is more than that believer can bear. To be more specific nothing that God allows us to experience that is part of our sanctification will be too much for us to stand if we depend on Him and His resources moment by moment for strength.

There are times in life when circumstances can seem like mountains of the Mt. Everest class. Perhaps some problem that has been present for years finally has to be faced. Or maybe the thing in question is completely new. Sometimes it might even be a combination of both, a new situation that forces us to deal with old demons. Whatever the nature of the challenge it is one that cannot be ducked. We are faced with two choices, beat the problem or be beaten by it.

One of the reasons believers sometimes feel defeated in the battles of life is because the trouble looming before them seems unbearable. If something feels unbearable, we are tempted to assume it is. Giving into that temptation is usually a big mistake for three reasons. The first reason is that what we think we can survive and what we actually can survive are often two different things. The second is that we forget that nothing truly worthwhile in life is gained without much travail. The third reason is that Jesus told us faith “like a mustard seed” can move mountains.

If the author had a dollar for every time he thought he was being stretched beyond the breaking point he would be a multi-millionaire. The challenges of existence in a fallen world can sometimes seem overwhelming in the extreme. It can feel like the pain that results from our wounds and wounding is about to destroy us. But at such moments we call out to God for mercy and help and somehow He brings us through, every time. Know, struggling believer, that what you feel often does not reflect reality.

Nothing that has enduring value is easily attained. One might feel tempted to claim that the free gift of salvation is but, in a sense, it is not. When Paul talks about working out our salvation with fear and trembling he is not kidding. We do not earn our salvation but, paradoxically, walking it out is the most costly thing we will ever do. The same is true of the other valuable things in life. Think of the difficulty married people have in keeping their marriages healthy or parents have in raising their children. Neither is easy yet good marriages continue to thrive and good children continue to be raised.

Finally there is the mustard-seed principle. Our Lord means what He says and He told us that even what seems like a little faith can cause incredible things to happen. It is of great importance that we really take Him at His word on this. It sometimes takes less faith than we think to effect profound change. People who forever are trying to summon up some kind of superhuman belief under the assumption that only perfect faith will achieve anything for them are some of the unhappiest individuals around. I do not believe God is surprised that not everyone has the faith of a Paul or a David all the time (and even these men had their times of struggle). He works with the faith we have and gently helps our trust in Him to grow through the patient love He manifests towards us. What may seem like little faith can sometimes go a long way simply because He honors the faith we have at the moment.

Nothing is insurmountable that God permits for our good. It may seem that way during our worst times, but those times pass. If we truly love and follow Jesus Christ we will have eventual victory over every challenge that faces us. This is the enduring birthright of the children of God.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

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“Though the command to hate oneself in order to follow Christ can be grossly misinterpreted, it makes perfect sense if it is understood as a relinquishment of the biopsychosocial and ethical self who lives autonomously in relation to God”.

-Eric L. Johnson

Through the centuries many pathologically masochistic believers have taken the “die to self” counsel of scripture apart from its true meaning and used it as justification for all kinds of destructive practices. While one might only think of ancient desert hermits and monks scourging and starving themselves as they walk around wearing hair shirts the truth is that many contemporary Christians are still caught up in harmfully inaccurate thinking about what the word “self” means here.

The problem is not with the self per se. Self-consciousness is a gift from our Lord and is integral to being made in His image. As believers we are not to hate ourselves in our totality. Rather we are only to hate the rebellious capital “I” self that continues to dwell in our hearts and resists the One who created and redeemed us. It is this part of our make-up, perhaps most biblically described as “the flesh”, which still tempts us towards functional independence from God. It is this part that we must not only oppose, but actually put to death.

While at one time the flesh controlled us we who are called by the name of Christ are not defined by that flesh anymore. Our deepest, truest heart now belongs to Him. We are “new creatures”, sons and daughters of the Father, and we are certainly not to despise our new self because that self is identified with Him. In a sense to hate ourselves now is to hate the God we have become one with through the cross.

Today many conservative Christians fear the word “self-esteem”, a term that has become the mantra of secular pop psychology. To the degree that the expression has come to mean a sort of self-worship among those who continue to reject God’s sovereignty over their lives this fear is not without some justification. However a sense of self-worth is not out of place in a child of God if that worth is grounded in the imputed worthiness of the Son of God. In fact we are specifically told to “love others as we love ourselves”. If we are simultaneously called to, in some sense, love ourselves and hate ourselves in Scripture then obviously the definition of “self” is different in each case. In the former the definition is our self in Christ, in the latter the self of our past, the “flesh-self” that rejected God’s rightful claim on our lives.

We are not commanded by the Bible to pathologically despise ourselves and do ourselves harm. Instead we are commanded to hate and crucify the dying residue of what we once were, that “old man” who was not instantly wiped out experientially by our conversion to Christ. In the eternal sense we have already been made perfect in God’s sight, but in the temporal sense we still need to progressively root out the remnants of our former rebellious autonomy. This is what it means to “put to death” the flesh and progressively submit every part of our being to the One who has redeemed us. We are to only hate that within us which resists Him.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

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“How poor are those who have no patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?” –Shakespeare

One of the most enduring proverbs in the popular mind is “time heals all wounds”. The problem with this idea is that time is not the primary agent in healing. If that were true there would be no bitter old people and, unfortunately, such individuals exist in abundance in the world. In truth it is the grace of God, be it common or saving, that is the agent which binds up emotional wounds. That God most often cures our ills over time is, to some degree, incidental.

But even so qualified the fact is that healing most often does take time, thus the saying.

No doubt God can and sometimes does heal in a moment. As an omnipotent Being it stands to reason that He must have this ability. If He so desired all resolution of our problems, large and small, could be accomplished by Him instantaneously. However common human experience teaches that this is rarely the case. To our flesh’s frequent frustration God uses time, sometimes long period’s of time, in His healing of our souls.

The obvious reason for this is that He wishes to teach us the virtue of patience. Few of us particularly want to hear this. Learning patience is one of the harder tasks of the spiritual life, particularly in a day and age when instant gratification is incessantly advertised as our right. We also have trouble figuring out why God so values time when He Himself is not ultimately subject to sequential existence, but the Author of it. Why, we ask, should anything have to wait if He, as Master of time, can simply abrogate time?

There is mystery here. We cannot completely answer the question of why grass grows in a week, while a Giant Redwood takes hundreds of years. Both a lawn and a forest of Redwoods are created by the same God. But the solidity of the trees that make up that forest, their beauty and majesty, is obviously not comparable to blades of grass. Neither is their worth. The worth of things is often connected with time in God’s economy of creation and, for that matter, re-creation. The redemption of Humankind is no exception.

Beyond that the development of patience is simply the way that we bring our fallen, and thus imperfect, view of time into harmony with God’s view. It is probably safe to say that in their innocence Adam and Eve had no need to learn patience because their perception of time was the same as their Creator’s. It is only the Curse that has made us hate waiting for anything. Our first parents may well have had no sense of frustration in waiting because time had not become associated with scarcity. Scarcity of time only means something to creatures that face death and in the Pre-Lapsarian Garden of Eden death had not yet visited God’s finest creation.

So time does not heal all wounds, but time does have a role to play in that healing. This is certainly its place in the lives of a redeemed people who have yet to experience their coming full and final liberation in eternity by Jesus Christ. If it seems imperfect that is a residue of our fallenness and its resulting distortion of God’s purposes.

Of course that purpose will most likely be made known to us on that Great Day when all things are summed up in our Lord….and time itself ceases to be.