Author: shea

Copyright by Shea Oakley

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Not too many years ago the New York area received its first Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) station. At the time I was happy to see it happen. Despite not always being of the highest quality, CCM has, at times in recent years, been the fastest growing segment of popular music in the United States. It’s potential for reaching the millions of un-churched people who live in the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut is great. But after listening to the station a few times something began to bother me. The advertising and disc jockeys spoke constantly of how it was “safe for the entire family”. In fact the word “family”, in one context or another, was mentioned literally hundreds of times a day and it soon became apparent to me that single people were off the radar screen, at least as far as station promotion was concerned. This was a bit disconcerting to me considering that 41% of America is single, as I was at the time.

Fast-forward several months. One night I was at a fundraising dinner for the local chapter of a national youth ministry. The keynote speaker turned out to be an employee of the station in question. After the dinner I took the opportunity to speak to him about his employer’s tendency to play a song that might catch the ear of the average urban single, and then follow it with advertising that made that single person, perhaps from a family background just as soon forgotten, feel left out. His answer was to inform me that the target audience was 38 year-old Christian soccer moms! Then he told me to start my own radio station. I was speechless. Here was a broadcaster with a historic opportunity to reach perhaps 15 million people with what, in my opinion, is one of today’s more effective media-based evangelistic tools and they were purposely preaching to the choir!

This is an egregious example of how the Christian population in this country sometimes takes care of itself at the expense of the Great Commission. Now I did not completely write off this station. Apparently the evening broadcasts were less family-oriented. As for the rest of the time undoubtedly some New York area secular adults did not bolt after the song ended and the “Focus on the Family” rhetoric began (In fact a friend of mine once told me about one such man she knew who was a new listener and one whom she felt was being led to faith at least partially by the programming). But as a former New York area secular adult myself I can tell you with some confidence that more did bolt than didn’t. You see; healthy families are scarce here and that breeds a certain cynicism among those of us who survived childhoods molded by divorce, various kinds of abuse, and broken promises. We number in the millions and saccharine odes to the nuclear family are apt to make us twitch…and switch… stations that is.

Much has been written about the so-called “Christian Ghetto”. This is a term used to describe the separatist evangelical subculture that has developed in the United States over the past two-decades. We have a Christianized version of everything here, ranging from Christian dating services to “Christian yoga”. In fact some of our vaunted mega-churches resemble nothing so much as shopping malls, right down to an actual “food-court” in one such behemoth on our West coast. We may not want to be of the world but we apparently have little reluctance about copying and baptizing it. The result is a facsimile of many of the more banal elements of contemporary pop-culture in a supposedly more spiritual setting. This allows American Christians to enjoy the blandishments offered by our consumerist nation while still feeling comfortably set-apart.

I cannot help but wonder if we have ceased being salt and light in pursuit of this comfort.

This brings us back to the radio station ministering to the approximately 500 or so “38-year old Christian soccer moms” who live in its multi-million resident broadcast area. When I happened to run into the person from the fundraiser in a local restaurant a year or so latter I re-introduced myself and brought up the topic again. This time he ruefully commiserated with me about the tiny demographic his station was chasing, his tone of voice having a sort of “resigned to reality” flavor to it. Then he shared with me that he was now in station management! Once again I was speechless.

I can only assume that this man was not willing, or able, to challenge his bosses with what he himself implied to be true in his comments to me on both occasions, that catering to the saved is of higher value than meeting the unsaved where they live. As long as this kind of thinking holds sway, at this organization and at others like it across America, the “Christian Ghetto” will continue to exist and everyone outside that ghetto will be that much more likely to end up being un-reached.

By the way, if anyone out there has the 5 million or so dollars of start-up capital needed to create a new radio station here please let me know….

Copyright by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

The greatest aid to our ongoing ability to repent from transgression against God is found in coming to the knowledge that He does not love us less, nor withhold His faithfulness to us, despite the fact that we have not yet repented. It is, as the Bible tells us, His kindness that leads us towards repentance.

It is impossible to sincerely repent of transgression apart from a heart knowledge that God loves us even when we sin. Those who struggle with the idea that divine love is conditional find it difficult, if not impossible, to sincerely and completely turn from any given sin. In fact the faulty belief that our Father only loves us when we are practicing right behavior eventually leads to an anger and frustration that is the very opposite of repentance.

We are most truly sorry for transgressing God’s perfect law when we get some inkling of His true feelings towards us, and those feelings are ones of love. We know this from the testimony of countless verses of Scripture and from the reality of what happened on the cross. In Jesus Christ we see the Lord of the Universe giving up the most precious thing He has, His only Son, for a people who were yet in their sin. In doing so He proved once and for all that His love for humanity does not depend on our moral perfection. In fact it does not depend on us at all. It depends on Him. The love of Christ originates in the very heart of God and is both unconditional and inexhaustible. It depends on the Source of love, not the actions of the objects of that love.

When we are caught up in such a love as this we are in the best place to be as far as real repentance. It is in the gentle touch of a God who loves us despite ourselves that our hearts are most likely to be pricked by a sincere desire to please Him. Doing right thus becomes a function of becoming right which is itself, a function of receiving the transforming love of our Lord. As we embrace and receive more and more of God’s love, grace and faithfulness towards our selves we can begin to “naturally” desire to turn from all known sin.

In the New Testament every instance of apparent individual repentance comes about as a result of Jesus taking the initiative to love the person involved, whether through a miraculous healing, deliverance, or just by not judging them as they expect to be judged. In each case Jesus loves unconditionally first and this is followed by genuine contrition on the part of whoever he is unconditionally loving.

I submit that this is always the pattern of true repentance. It starts with God loving us, in and despite our sin, and ends with us thankfully turning from that sin for the sake of such love.

Copyright 2017 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

“There is, we have to admit, a line of demarcation between God’s part in us and the enemy’s region. But it is, we hope, a fighting line, not a frontier fixed by agreement.” – C.S. Lewis

Most, if not all, truly honest believers must admit to there being areas in their lives in which some kind of repetitive transgression against the laws of God and man continues. It doesn’t matter, in a sense, what kind of transgression we are talking about. It may be something that seems comparatively minor like texting while driving, or it could be something that would be considered worse by most, like some form of sexual immorality. Whatever the sin in question is, it is something that we are both consciously and actively struggling against, or it is something we have decided is “only a vice” and is self-condoned on an ongoing basis.

The difference between these two attitudes is what Lewis is alluding to here. We will almost certainly not be entirely free of any kind of morally wrong tendency and action as long as we live in this world. The question is what we are going to do with the evil we consciously discover to be present in our lives? Will we do everything we can, by the power of the Holy Spirit within us, to battle against and turn from our wrong actions, or will we decide to let those actions continue in our lives without a fight?

Lewis doesn’t address it explicitly in his quote, but the reason the Christian has to deal with this issue at all is the fact that, while we are “new creatures” inhabited and possessed by the Spirit of God (with our own spirits brought to life at the moment of our conversion) we also still have “the flesh” with which to contend. The flesh is what might be called our “old person”, the dynamic remaining in our hearts that draws us towards self-rule for the purpose of fulfilling our old wrong desires at any cost. This is the part of what somehow remains within us that we are commanded by our Lord to “crucify” each day, to put to death, in favor of a deeper relationship with, and obedience to, Him. That “crucifixion” is the God-empowered effort we make to repent from and forsake all sin on a daily basis. It is not easy to do; it involves a conscious battle in which we are in constant need of the overcoming grace of God in our lives, but it is something we are commanded by our Master to do. It is not optional….on any level.

When Lewis refers to “the enemy’s region” he is acknowledging another aspect of this battle, the reality that we do have an Enemy of our souls, his name is Satan, and he and his minions expend a considerable amount of supernatural effort tempting us to favor our flesh over our spirit. Our Enemy’s forever unchanging goal is to use our continuing ability to give in to selfish, sinful desires to separate us from God and other human beings and thus to utterly destroy us (or, if that is not possible, to make our lives as unproductive for God, and as miserable to ourselves, as he can).

It is with these two realities, the flesh within and the Devil without, with which we must both contend and decide on a response. As Lewis points out, there are really only two options. We must either continuously fight the sin in our lives or we must try to sign some sort of “treaty” with Satan that we will allow certain things we do that we know to be wrong to continue, to whatever degree and frequency, to be a part of our existence.

The unchangeable problem with the latter approach is twofold:

1. We cannot conclude any kind of compromising agreement, which will ever be truly honored, with a being that embodies only evil and whose only goal is to destroy us if he can and greatly harm us if he can’t.

2. The principle of the flesh within us is insatiable when it comes to sin. If we consciously allow “a little bit” of ongoing transgression to remain in our lives it ultimately cannot and will not remain “a little bit.” Whatever the sin in question is it will not stay static. Our indulgence of it will inevitably increase.

This why we must not allow any “frontier” that we believe “is fixed by agreement” to exist in our lives because such a frontier can never remain fixed and will only increase the existence of indulged evil within us. In fact this applies not only to agreements with our outer enemy, the Devil, but also our inner one, the flesh. We should no more make unenforceable “internal treaties” than unenforceable external ones.

As good and faithful soldiers in our King’s army we must only and always be prepared to fight every kind of evil, within and without, until some day we either go to be with Him or He returns to earth to finally destroy all evil in this fallen world, ushering in His eternal kingdom.

Note: I rarely publish my own prayers, and hope you will bear with me for sharing this one rather than my usual meditation. But if there is anything in these words that resonates with you;  please make it your own, and may God truly and richly bless you in this New Year.

Father, Son, Spirit. Please so kindle the fires of grace within me that I burn with that grace entirely for and in You, and may that flame also, in time, remove everything in me that is not of You.

Help me to look steadily at You, to want to look steadily at You, the only true Source. Wrench me from my own futile self-effort, from my continuing self-importance, from all that which is worthless, to gain You, Who are of infinite worth.

Continue to grant me true life.

Thank You that there is nothing in this world, nothing that can happen in this world, that I cannot somehow transcend and benefit from, in and through You.

For you, oh Lord, are the desired end, my desired end.

May my selfishness progressively perish so that I may reach my best destiny in this life: first, the fullest possible knowledge of You, second, a more truly real and sacrificial love for others. Let me suffer the “loss” of self-centeredness all the while knowing that You are infinitely worth losing it, that You are infinitely worth any loss I might be called upon to endure in this life, for in such holy loss is, ultimately, unspeakable blessing.

Show me, oh God, what must be removed from my existence to live my life fully in You.

Help me to know that I have no greater need than to find this out, to find out what must go, and to be willing to give up what I must, so that I become no longer in any sense “my own” but only Yours, and find my true self in the process.

In Your great love please let this be my singular destiny, God. Be my Lord, and cast out my remaining fear of You being my Lord, so I shall not die, but live onto You and You alone.

Please make me perfect with your perfection.

I bless and thank you for Who You are, the God of true and eternal and infinite perfection. Deliver me from my prideful perfectionism, that can never bring perfection, and grant me to know the real perfecting I so desperately need, that is Yours for the giving through the perfect Lamb, the perfect Christ, Who is somehow You, Yourself.

May all glory be to Him, to You….in 2018 and forever….

In Jesus Name….Amen.

Copyright 2017 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

In Philippians 4:13 the Apostle Paul tells us that we can do “all things” through Christ. For centuries this promise has helped provide the faith that has enabled believer to accomplish tasks far beyond what they ever thought they could do in the context of Christian ministry. Unfortunately, like so many other Bible verses snatched out of context, this one has also been wrongly thought to mean something it does not.

When seen in the context of all New Testament teaching on the subject of supernatural empowerment by the Spirit of God it becomes very clear that this verse refers specifically, and only, to those things that our Lord has truly called us to do. In our years as a Christian many of us have heard people exhorted to stand on Philippians 4:13 in such a way as to imply that it refers to being able to succeed at anything we want to do that is not inherently sinful. The error in this interpretation is actually so simple to refute that it is surprising such a view has appeared to hold any validity for Christian people who, one would think, also have the common grace gift of common sense.

A bit of a hyperbolic example will serve well to explain the problem with taking the “all things” verse to mean something it doesn’t. Let’s say that an earnest, if perhaps a bit naive, believer decides to take 4:13 literally as one that stands alone in the sense of its ultimate meaning. He or she then climbs atop a house, prays a sincere affirmation of the promise made in this verse, and then, in quiet determination, flapping arms vigorously, proceeds to jump off the roof in an attempt to fly. I think it safe to say that the laws of physics that God Himself has seen fit to enact will ensure in such a case, at best, an ambulance ride to the nearest hospital!

I do not use this extreme example lightly. It is, of course, more than a little unlikely it would actually ever be attempted. Unfortunately what has not been unlikely, historically, are well-meaning believers bringing various types of harm on themselves trying to do something potentially dangerous to body and/or soul based on a misreading of this verse. Further, such efforts, or their encouragement, also have the potential to harm others.

If a person succeeds, for instance, in convincing another that some ministry is right for them based solely on their desire and on reciting “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” that person might be setting the other on a course to abject failure. This is because if someone is not truly called to a ministry by God He will not ultimately bless it with the kind of supernatural power that is needed to execute that ministry as effectively as it needs to be executed. The result can be extreme discouragement for the would be minister when the fruit of all succeeding effort does not achieve the expected results. Meanwhile those who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of said ministry might end up going away empty handed, either physically or spiritually, actually resulting in an expanding ring of discouragement.

So, yes, we can do all things through the Son of God if He wills us to do it. This is why it is so important to use every type of godly wisdom when considering entering a particular kind of Christian service. In addition to using whatever divine discernment we may have already been granted we also need to seek Godly advice from mature believers, pray earnestly, and perhaps most of all, be a serious student of the Bible in a carefully holistic and fully contextual way. The whole counsel of Scripture must be brought to bear on enterprises we might at first take as obvious ministries for us to pursue. Otherwise we may find not just Philippians 4:13, but any number of other verses we decide to isolate from the rest of God’s Word leading us down the wrong path….and the fault will be our own.

Copyright 2017, 2025 by Shea Oakley

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It is God’s love for us as His children that truly keeps us in Him and “on course” towards Heaven, not a self-originating hyper-vigilance to stay on that course. It is true that we are taught in the Bible by our Lord Himself that we must “enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction.” However, what gets us through the narrow gate, and keeps us on the narrow road that gate implies, is not an obsessive and futile dependence on our own devices. In fact depending on our flesh rather than on divine enablement is a surefire way to find ourselves off the side of the narrow road and in a spiritual ditch.

Christians are not immune from the general human tendency to try to figure out and avoid all the possible pitfalls of this life through self-effort and “worldly wisdom” rather than the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit. It is actually quite dangerous to assume that we are not operating this way at times (even many times) during our earthly pilgrimage. One way this faulty approach to our sanctification can manifest itself is in an extreme compulsivity to attempt to “dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’” in our daily ethical life. We think, if sometimes only subconsciously, that if we just work hard enough, in and of ourselves, we can actually walk a perfect walk of faith simply by being mindful of what God expects of us and striving to fulfill those expectations.

This is a lie of the soul, a trap, and, in the long term, a recipe for despair.

It is true that the path to true spiritual life is a narrow one but the “guardrail” which ultimately keeps us on that path is the unmerited favor of God in Jesus Christ, not our self-effort apart from Him. A child of God must many times remember that the One who saved him is the One who sanctifies him. Our own attempt to start living the Christian life did not make us Christians, receiving the Son of God by grace through faith is what made us new creatures in Him. That same grace-empowered faith is the source of our ability to authentically live out the Christian life until He returns or we go to be with Him.

Some may ask how we actually transfer the power source of our sanctification from the efforts of our flesh to dependence on the enabling grace of God. Certainly the answer is not a new form of self-effort, this time designed to stop using self-effort! Instead it is a gradually growing, faith-enabled, trust in our Lord, a surrender to Him that progressively dis-empowers purely self-centered effort while empowering Him to take the reins of our lives.

I use the words “gradually” and “progressively” here very intentionally.

One of the biggest culprits that keep us fearfully dependent on our own energy in attempting to stay on the narrow road is our sense that we are not able to somehow immediately become the kind of Christian we often see described in the pages of the New Testament. We look at someone like the Apostle Paul, for instance, and we think that by emulating him we should be able to instantly begin living a life like his. The truth, however, is that Paul did not become the man he was at the close of his extraordinary life overnight. If we read the Scriptures carefully we see someone who grew to his deep level of maturity over a lifetime, even the part of that lifetime which followed his conversion. Paul knew, perhaps better than anyone, that true transformation was only possible through the received grace of God over a long period of time. After all he was the Pharisee’s Pharisee before his conversion on the Damascus Road. Paul was all too aware how perfectionistic self-effort had deceived him into thinking he was right with God when he was anything but right with Him.

It can potentially be a great relief to discover the truth that we need God to follow God, and that in actualizing this truth about Him He truly will begin to provide us with the power to change. It is primarily in grasping this reality that we become able to surrender to God and find in Him the only Source which enables us to walk that narrow path….for as long as it takes to lead us home.

Copyright 2017 by Shea Oakley

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In my 27 years as a believer, I have found that how I am feeling before I open the Bible can profoundly affect how I perceive what I am studying at that moment. This is particularly true if I am in the midst of some circumstantial struggle that has contributed to a pre-existing sense of anxiety or depression. In this case, the seemingly harsher verses of Scripture seem to jump off the page and embed themselves in my disquieted mind and heart. These verses all seem meant for me, and only me. At the same time, the words I read about God’s love, mercy and grace seem meant for someone else. It is as if the sterner language is boldfaced and the softer words are grayed-out in comparison.

Sometimes (though not as much as I would like) the opposite happens. When I’m in a positive place emotionally and I sit down to do my devotions I can, at least to some extent, apply all the warm and reassuring verses to my life. I have a sense that I’m easily accepting these encouraging words into my, now, peaceful mind and heart.

Of course, whether I am in a bad place or a good one, the words of the Bible have not changed. What has changed is my emotional state which can pose a considerable challenge to my ability to interpret the Word of God. The primary danger is that I will decide who God is to me based on my feelings, bad or good, rather than on the objective truth of God’s nature as revealed in Scripture.

We fallen human beings are notoriously ineffective in discerning Truth (the capital “T” being key). We see this in the moral confusion and self-destructive tendencies of so many people on our planet today; being Christians does not exempt us from these things. We also can, like a faulty radar system, fail to transmit reality accurately and end up going off the moral “deep-end” to the detriment of our own souls. The best defense against this is in having consistent knowledge that, to paraphrase Martin Luther, God is good and He is good to us [italics mine]. One of the principal ways we get such knowledge is through encountering the character of God in His book, the Bible.

The problem is that we cannot accurately discern the truth of God’s character if we always allow our pre-existing emotional state to dictate how we understand Him. In this circumstance we can err on the side of God being all about justice or, otherwise, being all about love. In either case we are allowing our feelings at that moment to create a “God” who does not exist. The true nature of our Lord is not found in the extremes that arise when we let a random verse, tainted by an out of context interpretation influenced by our emotions, determine who we think He is.

So what’s the solution to this problem? To be honest, I haven’t yet fully found one. Letting my mood determine my understanding of Scripture remains an issue for me. I will say, though, that recognizing and acknowledging that this dynamic exists helps me to work on finding a solution for it. We cannot fix a problem we don’t realize we have.

Maybe writing this essay is a part of my finding an answer to this problem. And, perhaps, if you are like-minded, reading this essay might be a part of you doing the same.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

When we feel badly “burnt-out” in doing the hard work of loving others we often think of only two solutions. One is to pull-back from the objects of our love to seek an extended period of rest and the other is to “re-double our efforts” and try to continue being there for them despite feeling like we have nothing more to give.

There is, however, a third option.

When deeply fatigued we can consciously choose to begin seeking to go farther into God, to find the strength we need in our weakness in the infinite yet accessible depths of His love. Instead of pulling back or bearing down we can choose to dig deep.

It is easy to forget that as Christians we have access to unlimited resources. The God to which we have given our lives to is not finite. This may seem to some like the most basic spiritual common sense, but it is one thing to affirm the omnipotence and infinitude of God in our heads and another to believe it in our hearts. We live in a world of scarcity. All resources seem limited and, in the natural sense, this is indeed the case. All material things on earth truly are in limited supply and this perception is so pervasive in human life that it becomes easy to forget that scarcity in the natural realm does not extend into the realm of the supernatural. There is no shortage of resources in God’s economy and there never will be. If our spiritual “tanks” are empty He is always able to fill them again to the brim and, beyond that, to make them overflow onto others.

The Scriptures tell us to “seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these other things will be added onto you.” Included in what can be added on to us is the love we need to reach out to those the Lord has given us for the purpose of blessing. We may indeed be burnt-out, we may indeed need to rest and even limit our participation in the lives of certain people for a short season. But that time of rest is perhaps best used to turn our hearts, minds, souls and spirits towards our Lord in a way we have not done before.

Very few seasoned Christians would disagree that they have more to give the people in their lives after they have spent a sustained period of time seeking seriously after God. Whether the seeking takes the form of extended periods of prayer, meditation, worship or Bible study the fruit of drawing near to God in new and deeper ways is new strength to sincerely love and serve others.

Of course some will argue that the demands of modern life make it very difficult to find the time necessary to draw near to God in this way. There is some truth to this complaint, especially for those trying to balance the seemingly endless demands of work and family life, but here the old cliché about “being too busy not to pray” is an apt one. If God cannot be given priority in our lives in the sense of giving him the first fruits of our time then something beyond “burn-out” is at stake here. Coming under the Lordship of Christ and progressing in sanctification is in no way optional for an authentic believer. In the long run we will see our lives fall apart spiritually if we do not find the desire to seek God before all other persons and things.

One heartening truth that needs to be stated is that it is the love and grace of God which not only motivates our decision to go deeper spiritually, but also opens the practical doors to do so. He can and will show us how to find the time to seek the deep resources within Him that He longs to share with us. Once our will is set the doors will be opened, for all who earnestly desire more of God will find more of God.

In the end we who dare to plumb the depths of divine love will find renewal in every sense, for our own sakes, for the sake of others and, ultimately, for the glorification of our Lord.

Copyright 2017 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

Sometimes “the World, the Flesh, and the Devil” are not trying to get us to do something obviously and openly wrong. Instead they are more quietly tempting us to try to work our way to Heaven in a way that apes the true holiness of life that comes only through the progressive application of God’s transforming grace.

Legalistic and self-centered attempts to earn favor with God, whether conscious or unconscious, are nothing new in the history of Christianity. Despite our Lord’s severe warnings to the Pharisees about thinking their external works would make them acceptable to His Father we still have plenty of modern day Pharisees in the Church and, if we are honest, we often also are aware of at least traces of that error made manifest in ourselves.

Why are these tendencies towards “work-righteousness” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) so difficult to eradicate within our hearts? There is more than one answer to this question and I will not presume to address them all here. Instead I would like to shine a light on one reason why we continue to mistake false holiness with the actual article.

A primary reason is found in the subtlety of the forces mentioned earlier. The “World” constantly tells us that we cannot get something for nothing. We are led to believe that we have to work for anything and everything we want to possess, even love itself. The “Flesh”, meanwhile, appeals to our internal sense of pride, the idea that we really can attain to whatever we want based on our own completely intrinsic merits. Then there is the Enemy of our souls, the “Devil”, an active and actual being who embodies evil in its “purest” form. He does his best to deceive us into thinking that both what we learn from the World and what we learn from the Flesh is the truth.

All three of these influences also encourage us to commit those obvious and open sins this piece began by mentioning but such transgressions, because they are obvious and open, are much easier for us to identify, and from which repent. It is not so easy to identify the spiritual pride lurking within us and encouraged from outside ourselves. It’s that pride which ultimately motivates our inauthentic efforts to be “good”, to grow in the appearance of true holiness. In fact there is perhaps no other threat to our spiritual life both as profound in its negative effects and as elusive in its identification as prideful effort masquerading as God’s sanctifying work in us.

This begs the question of how to recognize and turn from trying to work our way to Heaven. Blessedly, there are several ways to tackle this problem. Probably the most effective approach is to ask God, by His Spirit, to both show us when and where we are practicing works-righteousness and then to direct us away from our own efforts and into surrender to His grace. We can also pray for protection against the effectiveness of those three influences: the World, Flesh, and the Devil. Another resource is our brothers and sisters in the Faith, who can pray towards that end for us. Finally some fellow Christians even have the gift of identifying legalistic effort in others. Often pastors and Christian counselors are particularly discerning in this area.

The problem might be a difficult one to both know and resolve but, as with all the things which threaten our progress in being conformed to the image of Christ, God Himself gives us strength even in our weakness to overcome. In fact it is in recognizing our weakness and accepting it that His grace can be brought to bear on this challenge to an authentically Christian life.

Copyright by Shea Oakley

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It is not easy to be a pilgrim. The sons and daughters of God live in a world which we have come to realize can no longer completely fulfill us and, truthfully, never could. We long to be in the place our Father is, the only place that we can truly call home now that we have come to know His Son, but we are not there, not yet. The pain of the Christian sojourner is the perception of being so long in transit from the temporal to the eternal. We yearn for the redemption of our bodies and the time when we will enter the life that truly is life. But for now we must wait and none of us knows how long that wait might be.

It would be one thing if we were fully reconciled to living the life of a pilgrim, the life led by our Savior while He walked the Earth. The truth is that few of us can claim to have never attempted to futilely sink permanent roots into the troubled soil of this world. Most if not all human beings want to have a home. While some may enjoy a certain degree of wanderlust the vast majority of us desire, like the birds of the air, to nest. We long for a safe haven, a place of comfort and solidity, where we can live with those whom we love and who love us, forever. But nothing is forever which is wedded to the world as it now exists.

This is not to say that the believer has to be a complete vagabond. Christ did not command us all to wander aimlessly through life without any kind of “safe harbor.” Throughout our lives we will know the comforts of temporal dwelling places, homes for a season. Not every one of us is a Paul, a man who seemingly was always in motion throughout his lifetime. While it is true that some believers are called to that kind of life many of us will not venture far from the place of our birth. But even if we live in only a few dwellings and never are more than a handful of miles from our hometown the sense of not being able to find true permanence in our lives here will haunt us. It can be no other way for the Christian.

The abode of God is our only ultimately real dwelling place. It is strange to think of home being a location we have never physically visited. The human tendency is to romanticize the place we knew as a child as our truest home, but the new Heavens and the new Earth come at the end of our journey through this fallen world, not at its beginning. Our hearts will never be at rest until we enter the gates of the New Jerusalem and see the One whose very presence makes it the destination of all who love Him.

In the meantime we must learn to endure being where our greatest longings for home cannot yet be fully realized. It is difficult to live here, but we can trust that the God of all places had our best interests in mind when He decided that our being born from above would not immediately bring us above. In fact feeling like this world is not our true home is one of the things that tell us we are children of God; that we cannot fully be at rest this side of Heaven is actually a sign of spiritual health. All that remains for us is to endure and know that, whether by death or our Lord’s return, our final homecoming is not that far away.