Resting in His Goodness

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Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations.

Psalms 46:10 (NKJV)

If you are following me, you will hear a lot about rest. It is presently what God is doing with me in this season. He is quieting my soul as a mother a child who, having felt the hardship of life in some way, finds himself in tears.

In the Christian life, there are times we are called to act, to step out of the place of idleness or timidity and conquer whatever needs to be conquered. But sometimes the hardships of life jar us in a way that puts our soul in a state of distress, and in those moments what is needed is rest. In those moments, it may feel like God is bringing us to a place of inactivity, even idleness. But what He is doing is bringing our souls back to center. He is allowing the trauma, for lack of better words, to come up, instead of allowing it to drive us.

Six years ago my wife of twenty-five years died suddenly. That was a shock to the system, but in the wake of my loss, I felt like God saying to me, “You have been grieving for a long time.” And by that, he meant what I am describing: life had jarred my soul early on in life, long before my recent loss, and I had been in a state of distress ever sense. I had been going through life on high alert without even knowing it, and God was now bringing me into a place of deep rest.

I am a high achiever by nature. But sometimes the only thing we can do is be still. For it is in the stillness that God does his best work. Many of us think we are not doing enough; the truth is we are doing too much. Again, it depends on the season, but many of us are operating from a place of high alert in the wake of some moment where life jarred us.

Rest is not idleness. It is giving the soul and God a chance to quiet our souls long enough to align us with the rhythm of the Spirit. This is what we were created for, and this is why having a proper theology about the Christian life is so necessary. There are so many opportunities in modern culture to keep your soul in a state of distress. Or if it is already in distress, to indulge its tendency to remain that way. But God is calling us deeper.

Be still today and know that he is God. He will be exalted among the nations, and that means he will be exalted in your life as well as you come to a place of stillness in Him.

Faith in the Suffering

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Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:7-9 (NIV)

A few weeks ago, this verse came to mind. It is a difficult verse for many who believe in supernatural healing1 because it would suggest God’s will is not always to heal. That in fact God’s will, from time to time, is to not deliver us from our suffering.

Now the reason this is difficult for many of us is not because this might be true, but because we have been taught the means by which healing is achieved in our lives is faith. Our belief in God’s willingness to heal is what brings about our healing. But if God’s will is not to heal from time to time, how then can we have faith and not doubt according to Scripture?

The answer, I believe, is by understanding how faith works in the Christian life, namely that faith is the beginning of the journey with God. Paul clearly believed it was God’s will to heal; otherwise he would not have pleaded with God three times. But his faith alone, though necessary, was not sufficient to bring about his healing. What was also required was something else, namely the tendency of his heart toward conceit to be removed. We know this was the reason God chose not to heal Paul because he tells us so. So Paul found himself in extenuating circumstances: God chose to refrain from doing the very thing that was his will to do in order to prevent a condition that could destroy him.

On that note, I wish to point out there is no reason to believe Paul’s situation was permanent. Neither Paul nor God suggest his tendency toward conceit was a character flaw God could do nothing about. And once God did, there is every reason to believe the artificial restraint keeping him in a place of humility would be removed. I say this because some try to elevate this verse to a place of defining whether it is God’s will to heal or not in the absolute sense. But this very passage, by clearly defining the extenuating circumstances taking place in Paul’s life, prove otherwise.2

But what are we to do as far as believing it is always God’s will to heal? The answer is: continue believing it is always God’s will to heal. Press into God in every area where you are not seeing his kingdom come and will be done in your life, just as it is in heaven. And if in the process God reveals to you extenuating circumstances that cause him to refrain temporarily from doing what is otherwise in his heart to do (and only because he wants what is best for you), be patient, allowing the fullness of his kingdom to be established in your life.

  1. That is: God’s desire to heal all our diseases ↩︎
  2. Otherwise, Paul would have said God does not always heal and left it at that. ↩︎

License to Sin

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“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything.

1 Corinthains 6:13

I wonder why the apostle Paul, in response to the church at Corinth claiming they had a right to do anything, did not say, “No, you don’t.”

The Corinthian church was taking full advantage of their freedom in Christ since their sins were forgiven; they were, by all standards, a wild and reckless bunch. Why not tell them they do not have a right to do anything? Why not tell them (putting it in the words of the New King James or Amplified Bible) all things are neither lawful nor permissible?

I think there is only one answer: it is because they did have the right to do anything. That is what it means when your sins are no longer held against you.1 It means as far as your state of righteousness is concerned before God, you have the right to do as you please.

Of course, this does not mean doing as you please will produce the life you want, much less the life God wants. It may even produce suffering and death. In your righteous state, you can make a rather big mess of your life, hurting others and creating for yourself a personal living hell. This is what Paul seems to be getting at. He is saying the question is no longer what we can or cannot get away with, but instead what will produce fruit that will last. Life for the believer is an opportunity.

In such statements there is great freedom, and as a general rule, we fear freedom. Some of us would rather have just enough fear of God’s condemnation and disapproval to keep our behavior, and the behavior of those around us, in check. And I, like many of us, am all for good behavior. I happen to believe holiness is the whole point of the Christian life, even more than God making our lives comfortable. But the thing is, fear of God’s condemnation is not what leads to holiness; understanding the full extent of our forgiveness is. It is not until we realize how forgiven and loved we are that our lives begin to change.

So do not put a throttle on God’s power. Do not temper what he has done on the Cross with fear you are still not worthy. Do not think it is better to ensure your own righteousness through good behavior than his own life laid down for you. Let the love of God, not the fear of him, lead you to the place of deep repentance.

  1. Psalm 32:1-2 ↩︎

Baptism of Love

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And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Romans 5:5 (NASB 2020)

It was the Fall last year. I was at the Healing Rooms at Bethel Church in Redding, California. Bethel is my former church and though I now live six hundred miles away, I still consider it home in many ways. As we sat in the waiting room for the healing room session to begin (the healing rooms consist of three phases: a small teaching, a prayer and worship service, and then actually receiving prayer from a team), the coordinator asked if anyone had pain in their wrist. I raised my hand and he came over, touched my wrist, and began asking for Jesus to heal me.

Suddenly a profound peace came over me, almost tangible like a weight resting on my chest. And then a sensation I can only describe as liquid love broke through and began filling my heart, causing me to weep. I had experienced the love of God before, but this was more profound than I had ever experienced. It was also something I had been praying for in the weeks leading up to this encounter with God, prompted by the scripture verse where Jesus says to his disciples, “Wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”1 The experience increased as we made our way to the sanctuary for worship and prayer. I was weeping uncontrollably.

In the weeks and months that followed, I continued to encounter God’s love in this way during my times of personal prayer, experiencing an intimacy with him I had not experienced in decades. Ironically, my wrist was not much better! But I really did not care. God’s love was all that really mattered. And in a way, it is the only thing that matters for any of us. Though we may go through many trials this side of heaven, God’s love is the one thing we cannot be separated from, and it is the one thing that does not disappoint.

  1. Acts 1:4-5 ↩︎

All Roads Lead to the Spirit

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For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.

Romans 8:14 (NIV)

As Christians, we know we are called to lay down our lives. But what are we to lay down our lives to? I mean, in what way is laying down one’s life accomplished?

When I was much younger, a well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning: I have not figured it out yet) church ministry told me laying down one’s life meant doing exactly what the Bible commanded me to do, which, many years later I realized, meant doing exactly what they commanded me to do. They wanted to control my life, and I assumed God wanted to control my life as well. He wanted me to tirelessly go about doing whatever His Word tells me to do. If Jesus said, you will remain in me if you obey my commandments,” then I was going to obey his commandments: every single one of them.

But I began to realize something unique about the Christian life: We are really not called to obey a Book. We are called to obey a Person. This began to dawn on me as I meditated on such passages as Romans 8, which states we are set free from the law of sin and death as we obey the Spirit.1 Interestingly, the law of sin and death is not about sinning: it is about trying not to sin.2 We are only successful in the Christian life to the degree we are led by and surrendered to the Spirit. It is to the Spirit of God we lay down our lives.

Which means when Jesus says, “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love,”3 he is not talking about whatever commandments we find in the Bible. He is talking about what he commands us to do through the personal and intimate relationship he has made possible by the Holy Spirit. It is this obedience that Jesus not only desires but makes all other things possible.

  1. Romans 8:1-4 ↩︎
  2. See Romans 7 ↩︎
  3. John 15:10 ↩︎