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June 8, 2022Shea Oakley 2 Comments

One View on the Spiritual Gifts

by Shea Oakley

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“Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.” 1 Corinthians 12:31 (NIV)

During my many years as a Christ-follower I’ve come to believe it is a good thing for believers to “eagerly desire” and accept all the gifting’s God may desire to specifically impart to individual Christians to further the work of His kingdom on earth. As I understand it this means every gift mentioned in the New Testament, including the more obviously supernatural ones.

Today, many of these gifting’s are considered valid by bibically grounded churches. Unfortunately, this is not the case for some churches that claim such grounding. I know this because I’ve been a part of some of those congregations over the past three decades.

Often the gifts from which they shied away were the ones that appear to be more “purely spiritual” than other’s that might seemingly be possessed even by non-believers (administration, helps, hospitality, etc.). To be specific the divine empowerments some implied were no longer valid for today almost always included the following three:

Supernatural healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues.

For instance, all three of my previous church homes prior to my current congregation would have been uncomfortable with the public manifestation of these three divine gifts during any official meeting. I did not ever see them in operation personally. This was despite at least two of the three denominations having nothing in their constitution which forbade operating in healing, prophecy, and tongues. (One of them, though, had what I thought was a particularly ironic “neutrality” about one of the three. This denomination said that speaking in tongues should “be neither encouraged nor discouraged.” You might guess which one of those suggestions was taken as the more authoritative advice!)

In some cases, I think the bias against supernatural gifting’s was more an unspoken reaction to some of the perceived excesses of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement than a reaction to anything grounded in the sound interpretation of Scripture
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However, that was not the only factor that influenced churches to reject prayer for supernatural and immediate healing along with giving public voice to prophecy and encouraging speaking in tongues. There was and is a “counter-narrative” to their use which exists as well. Some theologians, and the denominations with which they are affiliated, support something called “Cessationism.” This is the belief that all three of these gifts “ceased” with the death of the original Apostles.

I personally think such a theological position is untenable.

There is one basic reason why I believe Cessationism is faulty. In over 30 years of being in the Bible every day I have yet to find a single verse that could be effectively used to prove that healing, prophecy, and tongues somehow stopped being among the gifts we are given in the Church to glorify God and serve others. Such a verse just isn’t there. Nowhere did I find biblical evidence that they all are not for use today or, for that matter, were never used during most of the 20 centuries since the Church was founded.

So why does the Cessationist cause still have support among a substantial segment of American Christ-followers? I think it primarily goes back to those Pentecostal/Charismatic excesses.

Such excesses do exist.

One of the more egregious examples of this in recent history was during the so- called “Toronto Blessing” which began as what appeared to be an authentic revival at a church in that Canadian city in 1994. Healings, prophecy, and tongues were all in evidence during the several months of this revival. Many miraculous things appeared to have occurred and believers from all over the world flocked to Toronto to be a part of what was happening there.

Unfortunately, at some point things began to get a bit out of hand, especially in the case of supposed manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s presence. There were several questionable things that started to happen. The worst I remember reading about was that some participants literally began to “bark like a dog” while under the supposed influence of the Spirit (Because of this, and other clearly non-biblically supportable behaviors the denomination to which this church belonged cut all official ties in 1995).

What I believe is often forgotten when Cessationists use what happened in Toronto, and sometimes elsewhere in revivals of the past, to prove their point is this: revivals can be “hijacked” by either the enemy of our souls or just by human psychological maladjustments. At some point spiritually unstable and/or immature believers can and do end up “going off the rails.” This has been especially true during prolonged historical revivals that are otherwise remembered as genuine and widespread moves of God.

So, point taken, but the fact that some professed believers may end up “swinging from the chandeliers” does nothing to change the basic flaw in the Cessationist argument.

The fact that they can point to excesses which sometimes crop up around genuine works of God involving healings, prophecy, and tongues is nothing but a “straw man argument” in my view. It misses the point completely because it does not address the lack of even a hint in scripture that certain gifts stopped being given either at the end of the apostolic age, or upon completion of the biblical canon.

For this reason, along with many truly miraculous things I have personally seen, or heard about from very reputable sources, during my time as a believer, I do not see reason why any church should not collectively and individually “eagerly desire” and pray for every true gifting of heaven to be bestowed on Christ-followers according to God’s sovereign will, for His sovereign purposes. If they are genuine and authentic manifestations of His redemptive power, why on earth should we not seek them?

In fact, I do not think it foolish to think we might even be acting in disobedience to that will if we refuse to seek every gift He might want to give us.

September 1, 2017shea No Comments

When Straight Paths Lead to Dead End’s

There are times when God fulfills His purposes in us in ways we would never have guessed. Just when we think we have gripped a fuller understanding of His will for our lives something happens that makes us wonder if we have grasped anything at all. Many prayers for direction in life are answered with circumstances that seem to make no sense. God’s will rarely takes us on what we would consider a neatly linear journey towards its fulfillment. Most seasoned Christians can relate stories about how they were sure they knew where the Lord was taking them only to discover some unexpected twists and turns along the way.

A woman is certain that her fiancée is the soul mate for whom she has prayed so long and hard, only to have him suddenly end the engagement for no apparent reason. After a long, dark night of grief, and doubt about her prospects of ever marrying, she truly surrenders her hopes to the will of God for the first time. A few months later she meets a man who is better for her in every way than the previous one. They marry and go on to have one of the most enduring and successful unions in their church.

A man convinced he has found God’s will for his vocational life asks for a well-deserved promotion. His outwardly genial new boss turns out to really be an intimidating bully with a grudge, and fires him in a fit of anger. The next day he returns to to pick up some personal items. Meeting his hostile ex-boss he verbally stands up for himself; overcoming great fear in doing so. A few days later he calls a friend fired by the same employer months before, just to commiserate. Unbeknownst to him the friend then phones a sympathetic member of the organization’s board of trustees. The unfair boss ends up being fired himself. The man is ultimately reinstated with both the position he wanted and a raise he did not expect.

These unexpected trials turn out to be integral to God’s perfect plan for answering both His children’s prayers. Neither the woman nor the man expected them, and neither understood why they were going through the adversity at the time they went through it. Only afterwards they realized that God had granted them their requests, while at the same time profoundly refining aspects of their character through the fire of the trial . God’s agenda is often larger then our own desire. It is not that the desires to marry or be successful in one’s work are wrong; if so the hand of providence would have not ultimately fulfilled them. But God often has other, sometimes higher, purposes for sanctifying the people who bear His name.

When well prayed for and seemingly God-ordained blessings appear ready to fall on us only to seemingly end in disaster we must remember that God’s ways are not our ways. We cannot completely anticipate how He will answer our prayers because His work is often not completed according to our expectations. In our Lord’s sovereignty He may sometimes seem inscrutable; but He is never unkind. God will not ultimately withhold any truly good thing from His children that is within His will. All we need is the faith to ask and then continue to trust even when, for a season, things may not seem to make any sense.

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.

August 20, 2015 No Comments

The Answer to Anger with God…

It is vitally important for struggling Christians to know that if they feel anger towards God in the midst of great pain God will not destroy them for it. But it is equally important for them to finally go beyond that anger and come to the point of realizing that He has the right to allow, or even cause, their pain for His own good purposes. Eventual repentance from anger against our Creator is necessary and part of that repentance must be grounded in this simple but profound fact: He is God, we are not.

This was the lot of Job. From a purely human perspective no one in the Bible had more right to be angry at God than he. By God’s own reckoning Job was a righteous man, yet God allowed Satan to destroy everything he held dear and then go on to deeply afflict him physically. Job had no idea why this was happening to him and after his initial “though He slays me yet will I trust Him” period at the beginning of the book he begins to become angry, and this is not lost on his “comforters.” In verse 15:13, for example, Eliphaz says to Job, “Why do your eyes flash, so that you vent your rage against God and pour out such words from your mouth?” In verse 18:4 Bildad calls Job “You who tear yourself to pieces in your anger.” By this point in the narrative, both by their words and his own, we can have no doubt that Job is angry and his anger has a Target. In fact Job is not only angry towards God. He goes so far as to accuse Him of wrongdoing.

In all this the Lord never sends down a lightening bolt to smite him from the Earth. Why? Perhaps it is because God still loves Job despite what He has allowed Satan to do to him as well as how Job has reacted to it. Since God is unchanging we can be confident that we latter-day Job’s do not forfeit His love when we are upset with Him either.

But it is important to remember that Job does not stay angry with God indefinitely. Yahweh’s response to Job’s anger and accusation is to finally reveal Himself in all His holiness and sovereign power. This encounter completely overwhelms Job and absolutely convinces him that God is God and he is not. He repents in dust and ashes and God, Who has both proven His point to Job as well as won the Devil’s cosmic wager, restores Job completely.

Job is not the only biblical hero who has times of antagonism with his Lord, David and Jeremiah both come to mind. Despite what some timid or legalistic believers may tell you anger with God is not the unforgivable sin. In fact it seems reasonable to assume that God would rather deal with honest anger from His children than hypocritical piety towards Him when anger is what truly dwells in that child’s heart.

Still, anger long held against God is destructive to our relationship with Him and cannot be countenanced forever. Unchecked it leads to bitterness and alienation from the Lover of our souls. It is vital that we learn the same lesson that Job did, and one more thing. We must come to both know and accept that we have no final justification in accusing God of treating us wrongly because He is intrinsically incapable of treating anyone wrongly. By His very nature God is God and therefore rightly sovereign over our lives and circumstances, but beyond that God is also good and he takes no pleasure in our afflictions. In fact such afflictions always have a redemptive purpose in the lives of his people. It is only through learning these definitive truths that we can come to our spiritual senses and turn from anger that has no legitimate grounds, no matter how much we feel it does.

When we do we will know the abundant blessings that are the fruit of reconciliation to the One Who took the ultimate initiative to be reconciled to us…by bleeding and dying on a cross 2000 years ago.

August 14, 2015 No Comments

Adversity, Comfort and Manipulation

I have recently recognized a disturbing tendency I have to sometimes use a type of wrong personal reaction to circumstantial adversity to elicit excessive sympathy from those from whom I want it. This most often tends to manifest itself in the way I react to physical pain or emotional tension. There was a time in my life, not so very long ago, when I would bear both of these things with more of the “stiff upper lip” for which the English have famously, and probably stereotypically, been noted (disclaimer: I am not English.) My tendency at that time was to not take advantage of my pain or tension to subtly, or not so subtly, manipulate people into treating me as I wanted to be treated. For some reason this has, at times, no longer been the case in my life in recent years.

I believe that every human being desires to be comforted during times of trial and tribulation and I do not think that the God of the cross considers this to be a sinful desire. Actually it is often this very desire which, when it becomes acute enough, plays a major role in drawing people towards that cross and salvation. Once we do become children of God we learn that He is the source of real comfort, that He is in fact “the God of all comfort.” That God loves to comfort his own in their distress is a thoroughly biblical presumption.

It is also no doubt true that His comfort often comes through people, and should we expect it to be otherwise when we are called to be the hands and the feet of Christ on earth? God does sometimes comfort us with a direct touch from Heaven, but it seems that far more often this touch comes from our fellow believers (and sometimes even from non-believers who are people of good will through the common grace that the creator gives to all of us, whether we know Him or not.) There is nothing wrong with the idea of finding comfort in those who care for us.

The problem comes when our desire for comfort in distress becomes excessive and manipulative. If, for instance, I use a physical ache or a bad mood to try to force my wife to feel sorry for me, drop everything she is engaged in, and treat me more like a doting mother than my life-partner and friend then I might be going over the line. It is not that we do not legitimately need this at times from a spouse or friend, but if it is frequent and becomes some kind of a substitute for learning to bear with daily adversity then we are shirking one of the responsibilities of our sanctification as believers.

The bottom line is that God, as any good father would, expects us to sometimes carry our share of worldly distress on our own. He wants us to count on the character he has progressively given us to carry on without manipulative complaint until we come though whatever the distress is to the other side. This is, in a sense, simply a part of what the world calls “growing up.” It is one thing for a five year old to run to his mother when he has cut himself or been bullied by someone. It is quite another for a forty year old man to run to his wife for the same reason and in the same spirit.

So I apparently have more growing up to do than I thought necessary at this point in my life. I do not mind admitting that it is a bit disturbing to come to this realization, but as with all circumstances in our pilgrimage through this world the truth can set us (and me) free.

August 7, 2015 No Comments

A Lie of the Soul…

A sense of superiority over others is a lie of the soul. It is part of fallen human nature to think ourselves better than many if not most of our fellows. We see the failings of the people we share our lives with and almost automatically judge them as wanting while either consciously or unconsciously forgetting our own faults. We walk in pride in this life almost as easily as we breathe.

Salvation opens our eyes to this dark part of our character but salvation does not banish it. What we are often left with initially is a terrible realization of just how bad we really are in regards to thinking ourselves better than those around us. Having one’s spiritual eyes opened can be a frightening thing for just this reason. What once seemed acceptable, or not even thought about, suddenly is recognized as sin and there appears to be no “silver bullet” that will kill that sin off within us. This is because there isn’t one. Only the work of the Holy Spirit can alter this basic aspect of who we are in the flesh; and His work is the work of a lifetime. Sanctification is an ongoing process in which we crucify our personal sin with His help. Our tendency to judge others is often one of the first things we are convicted of in this sanctification because pride is at the base of all other transgressions.

Some will object at this point and raise the issue of individuals with “poor self-esteem.” Whatever poor self-esteem may be one thing it is not is a guarantee that a person so afflicted will be truly humble. Most of us have known (or been) someone who has struggled with personal worth while simultaneously thinking themselves better than others. Some of the most insecure personalities throughout human history have also been the most prejudiced. Since the fall of Adam no one has lived a life utterly free from a superiority complex with the exception of Jesus Christ, ironically the one man who had a legitimate right to such a sense of superiority. No, this complex is present in all men and women. It is simply a matter of degree.

The Bible tells us to think of others as better than ourselves. To do so consistently is the ultimate goal for this aspect of a believer’s maturation. How do we accomplish it on a practical level? Perhaps the first step is to acknowledge our inability to accomplish anything in the power of our flesh. First we must specifically petition the Spirit to enable our transformation in this area. Asking His help is, in fact, basic to our victory over any kind of sin but it seems especially true in regards to the sin of pride. Next we have to remain consciously aware of our bent in this direction once our eyes have been initially opened to its presence. Anytime we experience a sense of moral superiority over someone else we must be ready to resist it. In addition to internally renouncing our conceit we have to remind ourselves why we are doing the renouncing, because in the eyes of a holy God we are as flawed in our own way as they are in there’s. Even Christians are never far from gross sin except by the grace of God. Further Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that our thought life can be sinful even when our external actions are not. Realizing these two truths can go a long way towards humbling us in regards to the faults of others.

Another action that can help is to look at the best qualities of each human being we encounter instead of the worst. This might not be easy at the beginning, especially if we have a tendency to see the glass as half empty rather than half full. A habitually negative frame of mind can be difficult to overcome, whether it is negative towards ourselves or others. Again, the answer is to rely on the empowerment of the Spirit over time. When we learn to seek out the best in others we will begin to see them as precious persons, created in the image of God, who have great potential for good. We might also start to see where they have admirable traits that we do not, as yet, possess. It is good for our growth in humility to gain this perspective. It gives us something else to shoot for in our own Christian life.

By facing the truth about ourselves, and practicing these methods with the potent help of the Holy Spirit, we can overcome our arrogance and come to love and esteem those persons who we once disdained. In doing so we will please our Father; and continue to be transformed into the image of His beloved Son. The power of this lie of the soul will be broken in our lives and we will be free to leave the judging of people to God alone.

July 30, 2015 1 Comment

Anxiety and the Myth of Personal Autonomy

One of the causes of anxiety in life is the erroneous belief that we must do everything that is required of us on our own, without outside help. We find ourselves feeling overwhelmed when this conscious or unconscious mindset possesses us. Whenever a mountain must be climbed, but the face of it appears too shear to do so, anxiety is ready to make its presence known. This is a universal human experience and few believers are automatically delivered from it as an immediate result of conversion.

The tendency to feel like we must face our challenges alone is particularly common in the present-day West. This is because our culture’s emphasis on personal autonomy and power has created a zeitgeist that not only says we can overcome all obstacles in our own strength, but expects us to. The myth of the rugged individualist is very much operative today, especially in America, and those our society holds up as heroes are usually those who have bought into this myth. The result is a lack of understanding about human limitations and a tendency to look down on those who acknowledge these limitations. We are expected to succeed in this life as if we can do this without help. This expectation has undoubtedly added to what has literally been called “The Age of Anxiety.”

But human beings are dependent creatures. This is explicit not only in the pages of the Bible, but also in the realm of natural reason. Just as we know that our physical existence is sustainable only by the intake of food and water that comes from outside of us so, also, it stands to reason that our emotional and spiritual health is dependent on that which comes from outside. Angry hermits may well be able to physically endure their self-chosen isolation, but they pay a terrible price for it. Their spirits die. Ted Kaczynski, the notorious “Unabomber” of recent American history was an effective hermit for decades. What he was not was sane. In cutting himself off from people he began the long descent into madness and, ultimately, to behavior not only destructive to himself but to others.

No man is an island, or at least no man can be an island and avoid dire consequences for his soul. Christians are called to acknowledge this reality, a reality that reveals to us just how desperately we need help to climb the mountains of life and, at the same time, directs us where to look for that help.

The categorical imperative of the Christian life is that we must seek help from two places: directly from God Himself and through His people; very much in that order. To live as a Christian is to daily depend on both sources to give true life and to enable the meeting of the myriad challenges of existence in a terribly fallen world. Our spirits only thrive when we embrace our absolute need for relationship with our Lord and with our brothers and sisters in Him.

As we progressively accept this need, surrendering both our false sense of independence and our confidence in any ability to overcome purely on our own, we can begin to lose our anxieties and replace them with real peace in the face of adversity. The level of anxiety we continue to feel informs us to what degree we have grown in our recognition and acceptance of our requirement for the support of God and our brethren. It is a bellwether for our progress in both spiritual wholeness and health because, in the end, we are called to live not only for others, but from others.

July 15, 2015 1 Comment

Self-Discipline and the Legitimacy of pleasure

Discipline enables us to enter into and be abandoned to legitimate pleasure at the appropriate time. Lack of discipline leads to wrong forms of pleasure being indulged in at the wrong time. A mistake Christians sometimes make is to reject the willful enjoyment of even that which is not inherently evil. The problem is not found in drinking deeply of earthly delights that God Himself has created and ordained for us to experience, rather it is brought into being by indulging in a distorted version of those delights. Such distortion usually comes when we decide to seek pleasure apart from any rules and when we alone decide how and when we should have that pleasure. This is the definition of license, the undisciplined, wholly self-centered attempt to satisfy a God-given desire in a way that He forbids.

In contemporary American culture probably the most obvious example of this principle is in the area of human sexuality. The spirit of times tells us that sexual gratification is a need rather than a want and that the freedom to engage in casual sex is our right. Yet not so long ago, before the vaunted “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960’s and 70’s, it was generally recognized by our society that reserving sex for marriage was the best, if not the only, way to express this aspect of our personhood. As our culture has abandoned the pursuit of sexual self-discipline and become enamored with the principle of immediate gratification what we do with our bodies has become a matter of personal choice. Every kind of sexual distortion that the Bible prohibits, from adultery to “hooking-up”, is at best winked at and at worst openly encouraged.

Unfortunately some in the American Church have reacted to the world’s embrace of unfettered promiscuity with an equally wrongheaded sexual asceticism. There are some fundamentalist Christians, for instance, who have published websites that go so far as to warn husbands and wives to abstain, even in the marriage bed, from indulging in what they consider to be ungodly sexual practices (one has to wonder whether such self-proclaimed guardians of sexual propriety have ever seriously read the Song of Solomon). The impression given is that they believe couples should not have too much fun enjoying their conjugal rights. These extremists appear to regard all forms of sexual expression as some sort of necessary evil. But heterosexual marital sexuality, in its many forms, is in no way evil if it is not coercive or abusive to either partner. As the title of a recent American Christian sex manual for married people rightly proclaims this gift from God is “Intended for Pleasure.” Joyful abandonment to loving mutual gratification in the marriage bed is as much the will of God for us as is our abandonment to loving Him in the act of worship.

A pleasurable activity ordained by God only becomes a bad activity when, through lack of self-control, a believer seeks that pleasure at the wrong time or in the wrong way; in short, apart from God. It is the Lord’s own desire for us to deeply enjoy the good things He has given us. In fact the constraints He puts on us as to the timing and circumstance of that enjoyment are for our own good. Our God knows far better than we when His children are ready to receive the legitimate experiences of ecstasy that he longs to give us.

July 8, 2015 No Comments

Sanctification and Divine Love

We do not just need to know God loves us; we also need the purposes of His love to be satisfied within us. His love must find complete purchase in our souls if we are to be transformed by it, and that transformation is the very substance of our ongoing Christian life. Today the church does a passable job of communicating the message that our Creator loves us unconditionally. What is sometimes harder to discern from pulpits is that the love of Christ must be progressively actualized in our hearts. It must penetrate to our very core and have its way.

We in the Western church seem to know all there is to know about the mechanics of conversion. Evangelistic efforts never seem to be in short supply. Where we fall short is in getting past the honeymoon period of our rebirth and onto the deeper paths of sanctification. Spiritual milk remains the primary staple in some Evangelical congregations today. The meat is too often missing for those who need to move beyond the basics of conversion.

Sanctification is, at its core, the progressive appropriation of God’s love in our lives. His love must enter into the dark and secret places of our souls and take possession of those places. Then we will become what being the object of our Lord’s passion is designed to make us become: beings both filled with, and consumed by, divine love. This is the one of the primary goals of the Savior of our souls, to re-create us as vessels of His great affection.

This “vessel” analogy often puts sensitive people off. Perhaps it is because they identify a vessel as simply a tool, something that never benefits itself from the love coursing through it. But we are destined to be more than vessels. Becoming a conduit of God’s love can only happen if we first receive that divine affection into the very core of who we are and are healed. We must receive before we can give and for that reason I believe the receiving is just as important in God’s economy as the giving. One enables the other.

Jesus Christ is the Lover of our souls. He wants us to be fruitful, yes, but He also wants us both healed and joined with Him in the greatest love affair the universe has ever known. The fruitfulness of our Christian lives will naturally flow from that primary union between His heart and ours.

True love must be satisfied and the satisfaction in question is ultimately all encompassing. The God Scripture tells us is love will not be satisfied until we are completely His, until we know the glory that is the result of being fully possessed by the greatest Lover in the Universe. It is not enough to know He loves us. The knowledge that He loves us must give way to the actual experience of being loved by Him, and we must let Him have His way with us to the deepest level of union possible in this world. That is our first, best destiny as the beloved of God on Earth and it is our eternal destiny when our time on earth is through.