2016 – Page 4 – sheaoakley.com

April 6, 2016shea No Comments

Escaping the “Should Be” Trap

Some advice for the perennially frustrated Christian: learn to depend on Who God is, not on who you think you “should be”. This is one of the traps that most easily ensnare us. The essence of a defeated Christian life is seeing our salvation and sanctification as dependent on who we perceive ourselves to be instead of Who we know Jesus Christ to be.

It is doubtful that many of us wake up in the morning thinking “today I’m going to try to build my faith on my self-perception rather than on my Lord”. The curse of too great a focus on who we feel we should be instead of who Christ has already made us is rarely a conscious one. Most of us have at least the head-knowledge that it is only the grace of a loving God that has saved us. The problem is the proverbial “18 inches between our heads and our hearts”. It is our hearts that stubbornly refuse to believe that God accepts us in all our continuing imperfection, even as He works within us to perfect what we absolutely cannot make perfect on our own.

It is imperative to our spiritual wellbeing that we learn to really trust our Redeemer for our redemption. That statement may sound a bit obvious, but it reflects the need to confront the disconnect too many of us experience between what we claim to believe and what we too often really believe. For millions of professed Christians today the “peace that passes understanding” is a profoundly elusive thing. Perhaps this is so because we spend our time looking at our own sin instead of looking to the One who is the bearer of our sin.

No living human being is behaviorally who he or she “should be”. What every human being should be is perfectly obedient to God. That is the standard required to make us acceptable to Him and it is a standard that is patently impossible for any member of our fallen race to attain to through self-effort. As long as we are focused on our condition in the flesh we will exist in anxiety, fear and, finally, despair. We cannot find our way to God in this way, not before we become believers and certainly not after.

The only solution for the aching reality of our “should be’s” is the deeper reality of what real faith in Jesus has made us to be, persons who have been once and for all reconciled to our Creator by the blood atonement of His Christ. Once we enter into saving faith in Jesus God sees us through the prism of His son’s absolute perfection. We are already perfect in our father’s eyes. Because he stands outside of time He sees us as the perfect beings we will be in eternity. As for now God is working out our temporal imperfections in the process of sanctification, a process that we take part in but for which He is the source. As we learn to look only to Him, to our Source, and not to ourselves, we will be set free of the curse of self-centered effort and finally find the peace of heart that we so desperately need.

March 30, 2016shea No Comments

Our Darkening Age….and Evil’s End

The Enemy of our souls spends much of the time remaining to him trying to convince us that, somehow, God cannot win the battle between good and evil in the world. The darker the times get the more liable we are to believe him.

But our Lord, by His very nature, cannot lose.

Evil is an inherently finite distortion of the good. Its existence is only made possible by God’s decision to create self-aware beings with free will (from a biblical perspective we, along with the angels, would appear to be the only creatures so endowed.) God, in His perfect wisdom as God, created the conditions that made evil possible, but the power of that evil was confined to beings with no independent existence apart from their Maker. Evil, therefore, is only an intrinsically imperfect derivative of the good; a derivative embodied in creatures with finite power. Since God’s power is infinite, and His eternal nature is perfect goodness, He will have the final say over evil’s continued existence. We know from the eternal victory His Son achieved on the cross over both fallen human and fallen angelic evil that the ultimate temporal fulfillment of what was achieved at Calvary will be the final destruction of evil and all who choose to embody it.

What causes human beings, even Christians, to sometimes doubt this reality is the fact that another part of God’s plan is to work out His purposes through actions taking place over time. In other words He has chosen to work His final ends for this universe through history. For those of us who have suffered from the effects of internal and external evil it may seem cruel and incomprehensible that He did not banish evil from our reality a long time ago. From our position of being seemingly trapped in time this makes perfect sense, but the viewpoint of God is from eternity and that viewpoint is as far above our fallen, sinful perspective as the heavens are above the earth.

The Bible tells us that the final fruit of man’s disobedience (as well as that of the angels) will be a divinely-limited period on this planet when evil will greatly increase and seem to hold sway over the destiny of the entire human race. As we watch the news everyday it would certainly appear that this period is upon us. But the Bible also says that at the end of that period Christ, the Son of God, will return and rout all evil from the earth. As God in human, but now glorified, form King Jesus will put an end to history as we now know it. In its place will be the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom triumphant over all darkness. Evil, and its personification in Satan, will both be utterly and eternally destroyed by the one being Who has that capability.

Evil may seem to be having its day, but evil is actually in its last days. With this in mind may we all look to the soon coming King and turn from our own present evil to the divine remedy: repentance towards, and faith in, Him and Him alone

March 17, 2016shea No Comments

A Dirty Word in the Church

If you have spent some time in the contemporary Evangelical church you may have gathered that there are a number of “hot-button” words that are used more frequently than others. This is especially true of certain terms connected with efforts to exhort believers towards more holy living. One of these is “compromise”. I can think of few words in the lexicon of “Christianese” that convey more of a sense of distaste in the average conservative Christian’s heart than this one. In fact one might almost call it a dirty word.

For most human beings “to compromise” means to find a middle-position acceptable to two parties in conflict with each other with the goal of settling that conflict. Many non-Christians consider compromise to be a noble word; one indicative of mutual humility, the willingness to meet someone halfway in order to re-establish peace and balance in a relationship both parties consider to be valuable. While some non-believers may have disdain for this idea, and thus for the term that describes it, their motivation is often pride. For some compromise is equated with weakness and is simply out of the question in their human associations. These are often the people who leave a rather obvious trail of relational destruction in their wake. They would rather alienate family, friends and co-workers than give up any power in a relationship whatsoever. Such individuals usually end up more or less alone.

This brings us back to the use of the word in Christian circles. In our community the public use of the term “compromise” is usually in the context of the danger of making some concession to “the World, the Flesh and the Devil.” Any watering-down of the Gospel, any adoption of what is considered to be carnal behavior; any adaptation to the surrounding cultural milieu may earn the sobriquet of “compromise”. Nine times out of ten, if someone in a church publicly uses this word, its connotation is not only negative but often negative in the extreme. For instance to be labeled a “compromiser” is at best to be labeled a spiritual second class citizen and at worst a person on his or her way out of the faith.

Of course this negative connotation of “compromise” is not without some legitimacy. When someone is more interested in following the way of the world than the way of the cross that someone is a compromiser to the degree they willingly indulge in attitudes or behaviors that dishonor Christ. The first time someone came up with the idea of using this term to describe taking the easy way out and falling short of the mark spiritually they were not in the wrong. On the other hand whoever that person was probably did not know they were giving birth to a definition that would eventually become both overused to the point of cliché and wrongly used in inciting sometimes unnecessary guilt. They did not know that they were giving birth to one of the more effective clubs utilized by the more self-righteous among us.

The fact is that the word compromise is not used in the Bible to describe sin. In fact the word compromise does not, according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, appear in the Scriptures anywhere at all.

So it might be a good idea for some brave Evangelicals in the Church today to take the initiative to rehabilitate the term in question. We need to be reminded of the other use of “compromise” because the other use happens to be conducive to our sanctification. When two headstrong believers are butting those heads in unhealthy, pride-driven conflict both need to be gently urged to compromise. Ask any happily married Christian couple how they stay that way and they will tell you that reaching a compromise in an argument is often the only way to successfully resolve a difference. If the compromise reached in such a case is not a moral one than it is a blessing and a sign that two people are growing in Godly humility.

Personally I’d like to see the word gain a better place in our lexicon, for “compromise” to become a term more often used to describe how mutual humility can enhance human relationships then as a weapon to rebuke our brothers and sisters for falling into sins that we ourselves may be prone to.

Then maybe we will have one less dirty word in the House of God.

March 10, 2016shea No Comments

Giving, Receiving, and the Heart of God

God wants to bless His children. This truth can be difficult to swallow for those of us who have known grudging, conditional giving from important people in our lives and who, to whatever degree, have ended up embodying that kind of “giving” to others ourselves.

Giving for its own sake, giving that finds its fulfillment simply in blessing another, is rare among human beings. The fact of the matter is that much of the generosity human beings extend to one another has some condition to it. At the very least we expect to be thanked for our efforts. But even this “least” is indicative of giving to get something in return, and there are those who expect far more than that. The problem with this motivation is that people rarely are as appreciative as we’d like and over time whatever true generosity that was in our hearts begins to wane. Finally we can end up not wanting to give and if we continue to give at all it is with reluctance.

As with so many traits common to humanity this reluctant giving can end up being wrongly projected onto God; this despite it being clear from the Bible that our Lord never gives demanding something in return. If He did then it would stand to reason that He would never give a thing to the unrepentedly wicked, those whom He knows will never turn to Him. But as we read in both the Old and New Testaments God does exactly that. He causes the rains necessary for the harvest to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. This is because it is inherent to His nature to give. God gives out of the overabundance of His infinitude, and He gives to all freely.

If the Lord is willing to do this for men and women who ignore Him or worse, how much more is He willing to do so for His children, for those who have embraced His Son? Yet many who bear the name Christian walk through life with a sense that their God is withholding blessing because He is somehow miserly or grudging towards them.

Now it is true that God often withholds certain blessings until we are truly ready to receive them. It is also true that our persistence in certain sins sometimes prevents us from obtaining what He may long to give us, but the bottom line is that the longing is there. In fact it hurts the heart of God when we sabotage our own ability to receive the good He wants to grant us. This is because He is the quintessential Good Father and a good father wants his children to fully enjoy all the good things he is able to provide for them.

We only frustrate the heart of God and impoverish ourselves when we limit our ability to take what He, by nature, loves to give. We must come to a place in our spiritual walk in which we willingly trust that God is not like those who have given things to us only to gain something for themselves. This is a matter of learning the difference between other people (and, for that matter, ourselves) and our Maker, a loving God whose perfect nature includes perfect motivations for giving. Thank God that He is willing to help us learn this lesson over time and with experience. Thank God that, along with being giving, He is also patient.

May it be that we all come to the place of receiving that which our good Father desires to bestow upon us, and may His true generosity finally make us truly generous as well.

March 4, 2016shea No Comments

One Way to be an Effective “Cultural Heretic”

It is no overstatement to say that our society has largely embraced, as an advance in human liberty, the wholesale rejection of moral constraints that guided Western civilization for most of its history. This is most obvious in the realm of sexuality but it also holds true when examining things as diverse as rampant materialism, violent entertainment, the legalization of marijuana, and no-fault divorce laws. In fact it is increasingly a “fait accompli” that the tipping point beyond which there is no coming back has already been reached. A Judeo-Christian civilization is dying.

It is to be replaced by one that exalts man as the measure of all things. In such a cultural environment it is becoming increasingly difficult to explain that the actual ramifications of such “liberty” are still, and always will be, the opposite of what so many people believe them to be. When fallen humankind is the arbiter of a freedom wrapped up in endless rights without moral responsibility the end game is slavery to the self. Such slavery has the byproduct of destroying the civilization that has enshrined it. Every decadent society in history that eventually died from moral license masquerading as liberation died because the growth of that license remained unchecked. As our culture continues deeper into the 21st century the signs of mortal illness are not hard to pick out and efforts to treat the symptoms rather than the disease continue unabated.

Biblical Christians living in such an age are called to point out this gradual self-destruction that cloaks itself in new “freedom” and that call remains even if fewer people are willing to listen. This is not easy as those who are given over to the current zeitgeist in the West become increasingly hostile towards anyone who dares question what “progress” is and what it isn’t (Witness the instant application of the term “hater” to the many people who still dare to question transgenderism. The truth is that I know of people of that conviction who might not bake a cake for a “gender-transition party,” but who would unhesitatingly throw themselves in front of a bus to save a pedestrian that they knew was transgender, whether they agreed with their lifestyle or not.)

The reality is that, whatever the resistance, we are still morally obligated to make some effort to speak against the cultural metanarrative in the hopes that some may hear. The following is one way to do this.

When I was a boy my parents, who were not religious by any stretch of the imagination, regularly told me that nothing is ever right just because “everyone is doing it.” They were warning me, of course, about the dangers of peer pressure being allowed to mold my developing moral compass but it seems to me that today this is a salient argument on a societal scale. A majority of Germans initially thought Hitler was going to be a great leader and many of those that voted for him in 1933 seemed to have no problem with the extreme anti-Semitism already evident in the Nazi party. The question then, as now, is this: since when is right and wrong determined by majority vote? By and large I think people sense it is not determined that way because of the conscience that God built into them. Even as an Atheist teenager I knew on some level that I could not effectively argue with my parent’s logic. Right and wrong had to have an ultimately objective basis or there was no such thing as right and wrong, and I was pretty sure there was.

This is, I believe, the beginning of a line of effective dialogue with people who take as “gospel” the idea that human happiness is dependent on being allowed to do most of the things their desires tell them are right (as long as they aren’t “hurting anyone” of course.) It is, admittedly, only a beginning. There are a whole arsenal of other arguments from the Bible, natural law, human history and just plain common sense that can be employed from there. The obvious fallacy of the majority determining what’s truly right also does not have to be the starting point. My only suggestion is that it might make, with the help of the Holy Spirit, one of the more profitable ones.

Whatever approach we take we need to be ready to be rejected for believing what we do in a world where the only absolute truth accepted seems to be that there is no such thing as absolute truth. In such a morally upside down environment, in which most people are marching in lockstep towards an eternal cliff thinking they are building a relativist utopia, we should not be surprised what awaits us. Those who want to walk in the opposite direction, towards the real life and freedom that come from living in congruence with the God of the cross and with virtues tried and tested over thousands of years, are anathema to the standard bearers of Progressivism. Expect to be treated the way they always claim we treat “heretics” because that is just what we are as far as many of them are concerned, cultural heretics.

February 18, 2016shea No Comments

The Emotional Christian

Ignoring or suppressing our emotions is not, contrary to the spirit of some teaching today, a sign of Christian maturity. What is a sign of that maturity is controlling where and how we express our feelings. Emotion is a God-given component of our being. God Himself has emotions and it follows that creatures made in His image also possess them. Emotions are morally neutral in the sense that God never condemns a person for feeling them. For instance the Bible warns against the wrong use of anger but nowhere is anger condemned in and of itself. How we respond to strong emotion is where the potentiality for sin exists.

It may be that those who preach against “emotionalism” are reacting to a contemporary culture that encourages people not only to express emotion without restraint, but also to consider the way human beings feel at any given moment to possibly be an accurate guide to reality. Such elevation of emotion to the role of being an arbiter of truth approaches idolatry. The truth is often not what our passions paint it to be.

However the unreliability of feelings does not warrant their demonization. Again we must remember that the word of God reveals Him expressing every kind of emotion we do including jealousy, albeit of a holy nature, for His Church. God is passionate about us. He is not some kind of cosmic “Mr. Spock”. Our Creator is even capable of experiencing anguish. When Cain commits the first murder in Genesis 4:10 Yahweh asks him “What have you done?” and goes on to say “Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” “Say” is probably not the best word to describe how God spoke these words to Cain. The use of the exclamatory punctuation after “listen” indicates that it was more likely a cry. This was not what God had intended for the human race and He is anything but stoic about the fate of Abel.

The fully alive child of God will, in the course of a lifetime, feel all kinds of emotions and feel them deeply and God will not censure him for it.

What He will censure is the use of any emotion to justify sin. For instance it is one thing to feel anger against someone’s perceived injustice. It is quite another to use that anger as an excuse to unjustfully judge and sinfully punish the offender in question. Jealousy is also an emotion that can easily lead to sin. In fact, with the exception of a husband or wife who is being confronted with the infidelity of their partner, jealousy is usually unjustified. Actions taken based on jealous feelings have caused great damage, both inside and outside the church, throughout human history.

Generally speaking a truly mature Christian will acknowledge what they are feeling to those who they know are also mature enough to hear it. In this acknowledgment they will express whatever the emotion is without allowing the emotion to rule them at the moment they express it. As an example a mature believer who is angry may allow that anger to be apparent, but he or she will keep it under control. This person will not allow it to spiral into an uncontrollable and destructive rage. In this way the anger can be released in a way that is honest yet not sinful.

Ultimately the key is self-control. Emotions are to be felt but not allowed to rule us. Only the Holy Spirit, the One who grants us the power of self-control, should be allowed to do that. As we grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ over the course of our Christian lives we can learn to be both emotional beings and righteous ones, for our God is both as well.

February 9, 2016shea No Comments

A “Divine Debtor”?

God does not owe us anything.

This might seem like an obvious truth, but it is one that many of us have had trouble accepting in our own lives. In our minds we may know that He is not in any way a debtor to us. It is our hearts that are more often the problem.

We live in a world of reciprocity; a place in which it is regularly assumed that clichés like “one good turn deserves another” and “if you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” are really are inviolable laws . Human beings do little for others of their own kind that is not predicated on this principle. It is rare to find a truly altruistic person, someone who gives for the sheer joy of giving expecting nothing tangible in return. I suspect the majority of us live out most of our daily interactions with others with the ingrained, unconscious assumption that we give in order to get. This is just the way it is in a fallen world where scarcity determines value and enforces the reality of indebtedness between men. People owe us, we owe them.

Because of the pervasiveness of this aspect of our present existence it is difficult not to at least unconsciously try to apply the Rule of Reciprocity to our relationship with God. Perhaps some blessed souls have been so powerfully impressed with their own depravity apart from Christ, and simultaneously with His supremely loving solution to it, that they never could feel God owes them anything. Many of us, though, cannot honestly say that we have reached that place yet. The truth is we sometimes feel “shortchanged”, as it were, by Him. We have what seem to be overwhelming needs that are not getting met when and/or how we want them to be and we end up blaming the one Person we assume could and should do something about it.

The problem here is that our Lord is, by His very nature, not beholden to us in anyway whatsoever. He does not need anything we can give Him because He is utterly limitless and thus the only truly self-sufficient Being in the Universe. Scarcity does not exist in the economy of God. Moreover God has no intention of furthering our sinful self-centeredness by giving into our absurd demands towards Him. It may well be that Christians must, by necessity, operate within the constraints of a world where we do not get something for nothing. A Christian-run business, for example, expects payment for its services just as any secular business does. But that necessity is a concession to our having to live in this world. It is in no way applicable to our relationship with our Maker.

No matter how badly we want something, whatever the reason may be, that something is never “owed” to us by God. On the contrary, we owe Him for everything we are and possess. Both our natural and spiritual lives are ours only through the sheer gift of God. There are few more important heart lessons we need to grasp than this one. If we do not learn to both accept and appreciate this eternal truth we condemn ourselves to a life of frustration and bitterness, a life that, as children of God, we need not experience. God actually longs to give us all of what we need and even some of what we want, but He will never do so on our terms.

In the light of this eternal fact the best thing we can do is to choose to consciously reject our wrongful sense of entitlement. Then we can humbly ask our good Father for the things we desire and know that He will wisely and lovingly provide them for us, if it is to our benefit for Him do so, in His perfect time and way.

February 2, 2016shea No Comments

Anxiety and Decision Making

In the earlier years of my faith I often struggled with whether my decision making was in line with the will of God. As you might expect this was especially true with the bigger choices in life. While I was not too concerned about choosing what color socks to wear in the morning I was very concerned about my vocational life, who I might marry, what to do with my financial resources, etc. In the case of these kinds of “life-changing” decisions I felt that I must have “a peace about” it before taking any action. By that I mean that I had to sense God’s approval in some kind of warm, fuzzy (and nebulous) feeling-state before I would choose that course. If, after praying about a big choice, I had this kind of “peace” then it must be the seal of divine approval on my action. If I did not have it or, worse, had a sense of anxiety about what I was considering I assumed that the Lord was using the anxiety to warn me off of a bad decision.

I suspect that to many, if not most, biblical Christian readers this sounds like an eminently reasonable way to operate. After all, true peace comes from God and anxiety, on the other hand, is not supposed to be of Him. If you feel anxious about doing something then simply do not do it; in fact if you do not feel right about it the reason is probably that the thing in question is either innately sinful or, at least, sinful for you. It seems very cut and dry, this way of making big choices in life. In fact it seems like spiritual common sense.

The difficulty comes when the person doing the decision making has a problem with chronic anxiety that is not necessarily related to the problem at hand.

Some people are afflicted by anxiety no matter what they do or do not do. Theologians might ascribe this tendency to spiritual immaturity and/or lack of faith. Psychologists would more likely call it a disorder brought on by early life experience, or a chemical imbalance, or both. I will not pass judgment here on any of these viewpoints. I suspect they all contain aspects of truth.

In any case chronic anxiety is very real in the lives of many believers and it often manifests itself most strongly in circumstances that require decision making. Perhaps you have met fellow Christians who are seemingly forever looking for a clear sign from Heaven before doing anything of importance in life. It may be that they operate this way because of an obedient spirit that wants God’s will done before their own but, frankly, I suspect more often the reason has to do with an anxious spirit. Such a spirit can be almost paralyzing to those whom are most subject to it. If you tend to be nervous to an extreme potentially every decision you make is problematic. This is only exacerbated by the common teaching that God cares about every decision made (maybe even the one about what color socks you are wearing.)

So, you might be asking, how are such benighted souls ever going to make important choices in their lives? I believe there are two solutions to the problem:

The true source of the chronic anxiety must be identified and dealt with.
A conscious choice must be made to sometimes disregard feelings in making a decision and trust that God speaks more to us through scripture and the “many counselors” He puts in our lives.

The first solution usually involves either pastoral or clinical counseling; more often the latter. We most often need help identifying where generalized anxiety is coming from. We can then know if it is something that requires repentance, healing, or some combination of the two. In fact sometimes anxiety begins to dissipate as soon as we realize what is truly behind it. (That said it is not unusual for the process of overcoming anxiety to take a long time and we should not necessarily feel badly if it does not yield in a single “ah hah” moment.)

The second answer to the problem is to choose to use the general principles of the Bible in combination with sharing our decision-making challenges with trustworthy, mature, Christians we know. The Bible obviously helps us to avoid innately sinful decisions. It also helps us to see how the great men and women of God in its pages made their own decisions; sometimes without supernatural signs I might add. As for our trusted Christian friends scripture tells us that “there is safety in much counsel.” If most of our believing friends think, for instance, that the person we are dating is a good potential spouse might it just be possible that God is influencing them to tell us so? (This is especially true, by the way, if those friends have prayed for wisdom in sharing their thoughts on the matter at hand.)

I can tell you that I have found both these approaches to work in my own pilgrimage. I spent many years allowing my anxiety about making the perfect choice to rob me of both my joy and of what likely would have been good things I could have possessed earlier in my life. Perhaps the greater regret for me has not been making wrong choices as much as it has been allowing anxiety to keep me from making some of those choices for so long a time. The great lesson for me has been to learn that anxiety, in and of itself, is not necessarily something to which I should listen.

January 27, 2016shea No Comments

Surrender, Resistance and the Timid Heart

Most if not all believers have at one time or another experienced an inner resistance to the pursuit of sanctification. This resistance is more pronounced in some Christians than in others and it is sometimes proportional to the degree of rejection they have known from human authority figures in their formative years. It can also be, at least partially, a function of the psychological and emotional “hard-wiring” of our imperfect human nature. For some of us an ingrained timidity or tentativeness inhibits risk-taking, which serves to further hamper our sanctification since such risk-taking is part and parcel of a deeper submission to the divine will. The life of the surrendered Christian is, at least from a worldly perspective, always one of potential danger. Christians, who remain “in the shallows” rarely become martyrs for their faith, either literally or figuratively.

It is one thing to fear being more fully surrendered to God and another to not want to be surrendered to Him at all. Barriers to deeper discipleship do not necessarily stem from a fundamentally rebellious heart; they can also result from weakness or yet unconquered sin. But those who truly do not want to journey any closer to the heart of God, and undergo the transformation inherent to that journey, are in another category. It is neither unreasonable nor judgmental to at least theoretically question if a person who calls herself a Christian, yet consciously keeps Christ at a distance, is what she claims to be. Part of true conversion is a heart desire to better know and obey God. If that desire is completely absent so too is true conversion.

I speak here not to this second category of individual but rather to those in the first category who may erroneously believe they belong to the second. One of the afflictions of timid believers is a gnawing fear that the reason they have not gone farther in the Christian life is because they are not really Christians at all. Many who attend our churches are tormented by the fear that if they have not yet achieved “super-spirituality” it must be because they do not really love God and desire to be closer to Him. These are often the ones in our congregations who more than occasionally question their own salvation. These troubled brothers and sisters in our midst (and the author, incidentally, can identify with such because he has, in the past, been there himself) confuse lack of progress with complete lack of desire. They equate performance with acceptance ─ doing with being ─ and have reaped self-torment as the fruit of this assumption.

Tragically these struggling souls are often further harmed by teaching and preaching that constantly, and sometimes stridently, urges us on to ever greater and more sacrificial deeds for Christ. These are the voices from pulpits, broadcasts and books that never encourage, but only exhort. There is often a subtly or openly scolding tone in such messages and they sometimes emanate from people who appear to “have it all together” spiritually. Such people give the impression that the struggles of the Christian life do not apply to them or, if they once did apply, were not that difficult to overcome. What is obviously lacking in such sermons is humility of spirit. The truly mature and discerning Christian learns to take these messages with a rather large grain of salt. Unfortunately the younger and/or weaker Christian may receive them at face value and end up becoming more fearful of the ramifications of a self-perceived lack of spiritual growth than ever.

Real spiritual growth is not a function of the fleshly effort engendered by these “do ever more” messages ─ they do far more harm than good to those who are struggling with real surrender to God. Only one thing can bring anyone deeper into the Christian life and that is progressively receiving the unconditional love of God in real time. Everyday grace is the only real source of sanctification and surrender. Yes, there is room for exhortation in bringing this to pass, but it is the kind of exhortation that comes from balanced teaching motivated by love and meekness in the heart of the teacher.

Fear of one kind or another is something that all children of God will experience at times in their walk through this world. However it is not something that need ultimately keep them from belonging fully to Christ and living only for Him. “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). It is divine love that will bring even the most fearfully reluctant pilgrim to his desired destination, even if it may take more time for him to get there than some.

January 21, 2016shea No Comments

The Curse of Compulsive Giving

by Shea Oakley

Some Christians have trouble saying no to any request made of them that doesn’t appear obviously unreasonable or unethical. These are believers who have determined that anyone who appears to be in need has an automatic claim on their time and resources. Such an implied need can be something as minor as desired attendance at some social event or as major as an appeal for a substantial amount of financial assistance. In fact anytime a friend, family member, or even an acquaintance wants something these persons feel bound to rise to the occasion.

This tendency can spring more from compulsion then generosity. It is often “sanctified” as a supposedly clear requirement of the Faith by the individual always giving the time, money, etc., and may sometimes even be accompanied by a self-righteous spirit. In other cases the giver is truly humble about his or her policy of unconditional, unrestricted service and giving, but also clearly exhausted either physically, emotionally, or both.

Sometimes people who are perpetually “in need” attach themselves to those who can never say no. In them they have found a seemingly never-ending resource and they take full advantage of this new-found answer to their problems whenever the opportunity presents itself. This may be a consciously intentional decision on their part or it may not, but either way they end up in a sort of symbiotic relationship with the “constant giver” (although a better term may be parasitic.)

If this sounds a bit unhealthy that is because it is unhealthy. This is a situation in which Christians take the spiritual virtues of generosity and self-sacrifice to an unbalanced and “boundary-less” extreme. They have read their Bibles out of context and forgotten that sometimes even Jesus took time to rest and consciously put Himself out of contact with crowds of undoubtedly needy people. They also forget that the Scriptures speak of “letting your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’ ”, thus implying that sometimes “no” is a legitimate answer to a request being made of us.

It is no doubt true that a child of God is sometimes, maybe even oftentimes, under obligation to be there for people with legitimate needs. We may indeed be called to do more than the average person thinks necessary when confronted with requests for expending our time and resources for others.

However being Christian does not make us God. Only God the Father is infinitely available to fulfill every human need and even He is selective and wise about answering the prayers of human beings. We are neither infinite nor omnipotent. We are limited by having only so much time and energy to expend. If our “gas tanks” are empty we cannot be expected to always be in a position to answer every demand made of us by others. There are times when it is completely legitimate for us to say no to such demands. In fact sometimes it is actually wrong for us to say yes (for instance when we are truly in need of physical and/or emotional rest, or when saying yes means enabling someone to be unrepentedly selfish.)

It is OK to draw appropriate lines regarding our meeting the demands of people, even if those people decide to think of us as “unspiritual”. If they do that it is their choice and not necessarily our problem. We are responsible before God to do what we truly can do at any given moment, not what others assume we can. The bottom line is that true giving is a blessing; compulsive giving a curse.