Month: June 2017

Copyright by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

Our sense of limit, of the finite, needs to go when it comes to our contemplation of the attributes of God. He is limitless and, by definition, so are the qualities of His Being. As finite creatures our unconscious limiting of the attributes of God comes naturally to us. We live in a world of scarcity and so we have trouble apprehending a God who is both eternal and infinite in every aspect of who He is.

Entering into a greater apprehension of the endless deeps of the divine character is a vital call for all His children, and from more than just the standpoint of “head-knowledge”. It is also necessary to our sanity. We live in a world of imperfection. We embodied this imperfection especially in our pre-conversion nature, but also exhibit it even now as believers living on this side of Heaven. This is why coming into contact with the unbounded nature of God is vital to our very spiritual life. We need to know in our hearts that nothing is impossible for our Lord. This is because the transformation we need in order to truly live is totally impossible for us to attain on our own. If we are to grasp the reality of the power of God to redeem and sanctify us we must have a growing belief in certain attributes of His character, and the fact that they are without limit.

What are some of these attributes? They include His faithfulness, goodness, justice, grace, love, wisdom, and sovereignty. There are many more than these (A.W. Tozer, in fact, lists 19 separate divine qualities in his classic little book, The Knowledge of the Holy.) God might even, as Tozer at one point suggests, have attributes we cannot perceive in our current state of existence. However the ones for which we need to have some recognition of limitlessness are those which are vital to us in this life. For instance one prime example of such a crucial knowledge is the true conviction that God is omnipotent, in other words: all-powerful. This is a must if we are to even begin to believe that He, in Christ, is capable of securing our salvation and enabling our sanctification. The sense of the vastness of our own sin alone makes knowledge of the infinitude of our Lord’s power to atone for it essential.

Another example of a “need to know” in our Christian walk is the unlimited nature of God’s love. This is because it is one thing to recognize He has the power to save us and quite another to believe He also has the desire to do so. Infinite love points towards the absolute reality of such a desire because he who loves something inherently wants the highest good for that something, or someone. If God loves us He wants to do us good and because He is God he wants to do us good beyond all limits. Infinite love supplies the desire and infinite power the means.

The other divine attributes also meet some absolute need in us. Because we live in a sometimes unfair world we need to know that our Lord is infinitely just and will eternally remedy that unfairness someday. Because we live in a place of uncertainty and change we need to know our God is immutable and will soon usher in a perfect and permanent place for us to inhabit. In each case we require knowing more than the fact that these qualities exist in our Redeemer; we also must know they exist in such quantity as to forever secure the remedy for the particular thing that ails us.

Like nearly everything else in the life of a believer coming to viscerally know the truth of the eternal infinitude of God’s attributes will only happen over time (and we will not know its likely most profound fruition in us until we meet Him face to face.) In His perfection He has ordained that human beings learn things in this progressive way. For this reason patience with ourselves is an important part of coming into a deeper knowledge of the all-sufficiency of God to remake us in the image of His Son. It does us no good to fruitlessly fret about not having what we would consider to be an adequate knowledge of these things by a certain point in our lives. For this reason we would do well to always be looking to that divine attribute of all-sufficiency to put our minds and hearts at rest in the process. He is more than able to give us whatever degree of such knowledge we need at just the right moment in our existence.

After all, His timing is infinitely perfect too.

Copyright by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

We cannot manipulate God. This might seem like an obvious truth in a meditation written for those who have come to know Him. “Of course God cannot be manipulated, He’s God!” you might declare. But as in so many aspects of the Christian life what we believe intellectually may not have yet taken root in our hearts. It is one thing to affirm this truth in our mind, another to accept it in our souls to the point where we no longer try to maneuver Him into giving us what we want.

Human beings can be masters of manipulation. Whether we do it consciously or unconsciously some of us have learned how to subtly tip the scales in our favor when we deeply desire something from someone. This tendency towards manipulation is so ingrained in our fallen race that it first manifests itself in our childhood. Children often play one parent off against the other. When dealing with one or both parents they learn to use every emotional trick in the book to get what they want. As a little boy I can remember using a very effective method to get two toys when my father offered to buy me one. I would simply feign an inability to decide which of two playthings I really wanted. I’d stand there in the store and look innocently bewildered. “Which one should I get, daddy? I don’t know which one I like better!” Invariably my father (who, by his own admission, could be an “easy mark” at times) would be melted by my innocent look of confusion and end up buying both for me. Mission accomplished!

As we grow up our skill at manipulation can become well-honed. It is often rationalized or shunted into our unconscious because we do not like to think of ourselves as being devious. The unfortunate truth is that the vast majority of us can be just that, although this character flaw varies in scope from individual to individual. When it is not easy, or socially acceptable, to get something we very much want; manipulating other people becomes an attractive option in our flesh. That such an action is dishonest, self-serving and possibly destructive to the one being “maneuvered” doesn’t matter; as long as we get the object of our desire.

Quite often this tactic is destructive to us as well. Many times the thing we want to possess at the cost of our integrity is something that will only harm us in the end. Perhaps that is why a roadblock in the form of “no” was put in our path by the other person, or persons, to begin with.

Nowhere is this truer than in areas marked either temporarily or permanently off-limits by our Lord Himself. God knows exactly what will happen to His children if they gain something dangerous that they “must have”. This is why some things elude us when they are things only His intervention can grant. Our response to the divine “no” is often to get angry and pout. Some of us will then try to cajole God into relenting, as if an all-knowing and all-powerful God ever could be moved by such human manipulations, no matter how subtle or effective they might be with other people in our lives.

That our heavenly Father is thus unmoved is actually a very good thing for those of us who tend to be manipulators. What we desperately need is someone who will not give in to our devious machinations, Someone who knows what is truly best for us and will not be tricked into giving us something that might very well be poison to our souls. We also need to be delivered from our desire to be captains of our own destinies. Manipulation is a form of controlling behavior and the only One who should ultimately be in control of our lives, or the lives of others we come in contact with, is the Holy Spirit. The spirit of manipulation is one more aspect of our flesh that must be crucified with Christ; for His glory and our good.

Copyright by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

How do we stay spiritually uncompromised while living in the larger culture? This question has had to be repeatedly asked throughout the two millennia long history of Christianity. It is a question that has always needed to be answered in fresh ways by the contemporary Church of its time and never more so than now when our society is so greatly impacted by a constantly morphing popular culture born of the technological explosion of the past quarter century.

Our technological abilities, especially in the area of mass communication, have rarely advanced as rapidly as they have during this period. The primary example of what we might call the “Information Revolution” is the computer. It wasn’t so long ago that no one had ever heard of the term “personal computer” much less the “Internet”. When I was twelve my father bought our family one of the first home computers. It set us back a thousand dollars in 1980 and was obsolete in 6 months. That machine had perhaps 1/10,000th of the power of the one on which I now type these words (There was much talk at the time about how microcomputers were going to revolutionize our lives but it was painfully obvious to me that my Radio Shack TRS-80 with its “Tape Drive” and 16K of RAM was just not going to do it!)

Fast forward to today. The vast majority of Americans have either owned or at least operated one of these devices and at ever increasing levels of sophistication. What finally made these machines an integral part of our lives? The answer is the advent of the World Wide Web. The internet’s ability to open human beings to a new world of information and, perhaps more importantly, communication, has changed the Western world more profoundly than perhaps any other inventions in human history save perhaps the atomic bomb, airplane and radio.

One of the things the Internet has done is create a new conduit for popular culture to flow into our minds and hearts, a conduit so powerful that it most likely surpasses the influence any other communications media on our daily lives. TV, for instance, is an incredibly powerful medium for communication but its communication is only one-way. By contrast the Internet is interactive, allowing for two-way communication as well as the selection and perusal of perhaps hundreds of billions of bytes of information along with their accompanying images and ideas. Herein is the rub. By so effectively opening up our being to the surrounding culture the Net has made it far more difficult to be in, but not of, this world.

Much has been spoken about the struggles Christian men (and now, sadly, women) are having with internet pornography. The proliferation of sexually explicit material online continues and has created a multi-billion dollar industry. It is an obvious threat to Christian integrity and cannot be minimized as to its impact, but there are less obvious threats inherent in this medium as well.

The line is beginning to blur between our everyday lives and what might be called our “virtual lives.” On the Net we interact not only with other people but, in a larger sense, with our fallen culture as a whole. The Net is the place to find a plethora of artistic, political, sexual, scientific and social crosscurrents. In one sense we have been given an incredible freedom to explore the meaning of our world and our own existence. Unfortunately that freedom can so easily lead to spiritual bondage.

The Internet is not immoral, but amoral. In and of itself it is only an instrumentality; a device no doubt invented by sinful human beings but not an inherently evil one. We need to remember that truth in order to see this technological revolution in its proper context. The Web is morally neutral; it is those who use it who are the moral agents. That said, a huge portion of the internet is controlled by the Enemy of our souls and not just the porn sites. He also uses the medium to influence us in other ways, and often not so obviously. We can easily allow this technology to put us into a sort of “trance of tolerance”. “How wonderful”, we might say, “to be able to sample from so many cultures and ideas”. The problem is that the spirit of moral relativism abounds online and at times it is tempting to take off our spiritual armor and electronically “slip into something a little more comfortable”. Add to this the tendency to surf for hours that many of us have and we soon find ourselves almost living a double-life, one real and one virtual. Often the virtual life ends up not being under the Lordship of Christ.

For many years I had a small wooden cross that hung from my old desk top computer monitor. I put it there to remind me that there are places online I dare not go. The cross also reminds me that my electronic culture cannot be allowed to define or rule me. Only the Man who died on such a cross for me 2000 years ago can and should do that and for this to happen I need to be intentionally prayerful about where I allow myself to go on line (and, to be honest, probably more often than I am now.)

I also sometimes need to just power everything down for a while and re-enter the real world.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

We are far more likely to do wrong when we are keeping both God and human beings who truly love us at a distance. When we unhealthily isolate ourselves we do unhealthy things. Our relationship with the Lover, and lovers, of our soul is the very strength that keeps us from destructive and self-destructive actions. As individuals who are designed for relationship it is impossible for this to be otherwise.

Why do we isolate to begin with? Often the answer is found in our desire to avoid pain. Relational pain has many guises. Some of this pain is actually God-ordained and part of our redemption. An instance of this might be the pain of a non-believer’s first encounter with the holy. Other pain is the result of the evil that dwells in both others and us and it gratifies only the Enemy of our souls. An example of the former is the discomfort that comes from encountering a perfect God in the midst of our own imperfection and knowing that we fall short morally (prior to understanding that Christ is the answer to this problem.) An example of the latter is the misery of abuse, be it physical, emotional or sexual.

Whatever the source and nature of this pain the temptation is to withdraw into the perceived fortress of ourselves in order to avoid it. We depart from the company of God and the company of human beings in a vain attempt to escape the agents of our hurt. This is the result of our continuing inclination towards evil. No one who finally reaches Heaven in death and knows a final purification from all sin desires anything but perfect intimacy with God and those who share in His paradise in blessed community. It is only our ingrained desire for autonomy and safety on our own terms, combined with the continued difficulty of living in a profoundly fallen world, which causes us to want to flee from both divine and human company.

When we choose to run from relational pain we cut ourselves off from the very answer to it, love. No one can love or be loved in isolation. This may appear obvious since love, of course, implies relationships. However this apparently self-evident reality sometimes eludes us, especially when some of the love we have experienced seems imperfect at best and damaging at worst. At times we think we’d be better off alone than involved in something that feels less like love and more like neglect or even rejection

Yet real love exists. God’s love for us is perfect. Human love is not but it still exists, is divinely rooted, and is indispensable to our well-being. Without both kinds of love we have no motivation to resist sin and the Devil, a “loner” if there ever was one, takes full advantage of its lack. Temptation is defused by the experiencing of healthy relationships. It is amplified by isolation.

It is imperative that, despite its challenges, we who call ourselves Christians persist in the pursuit of deep connection with God and with fellow human beings, especially those who also are His children. The quest for intimacy in our earthly life is sometimes difficult, but it is not optional. Without it we become increasingly given over to evil, and thereby to death. Since sin thrives in the absence of love, love must be our refuge.…and love requires an object other than ourselves.