Taking a Week Off

Not for no reason. This week I'm on a trip having a most blessed and truly holy time with two of my six children. First my second-born Rachel, who lives with husband and two children in Welland, Ontario. Then, as I write this, enjoying time with my baby girl Rebekah in Boise, Idaho, and making preparations to officiate at her wedding on June 23 (which happens to be my birthday). Returning home this Tuesday; hope to be back on track sending the next post Sunday coming. Blessings and power and commitment and faith to each and every one of you this week!

Don't Skip Over the Power Words

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The more familiar a person is with the Bible, the harder it becomes to concentrate deeply, slowly, intensely as we read it. This happens to me constantly. Three chapters of Old Testament and one chapter of New Testament gets me through the Bible in a year. But the goal isn’t simply to “get through it.” That would benefit me nothing.

Still, when I’m reading each morning while drinking my coffee, or praying along with a Psalm, or concentrating on one book as I do later in the day (currently Jeremiah), I can easily find myself skimming over familiar parts, like “I already know this so no need to take time with it.” Considering I’ve been into the Bible for almost 60 years, I’m “familiar” with almost all of it. But when I catch myself skimming, I have to stop, back up, close my eyes, and pray, “Holy Spirit, show me something I’ve never seen here that you want me to see today; give me revelation insight beyond all former understanding.” Because no matter how familiar I am with the Word of God, I could never say I’ve got it all down pat!

Sometimes I find myself preferring to read books that explain the Bible, or even the lengthy footnotes in what’s called a “Study Bible,” instead of concentrating on the Scriptures themselves and believing that the Spirit will reveal it’s meaning to me…which is one of the reasons why he lives inside believers. I’m not saying commentaries or footnotes on the Bible are not helpful, but when I find myself spending more time two steps away from the Scriptures than I do with eyes and mind focused directly upon it, I need to wonder what kind of spirit (read evil) is happy to keep me at that distance.

We are on a rather long path to create new life-reconstructing habits. First to eradicate unwanted or sinful old habits, then to create and maintain new ones. We’re not doing this simply to make our lives more ordered and tidy, but to turn ourselves and those around us away from the current world darkness and into the brilliant light of life as it was meant to be.

So I want to use this post today to share the increased levels of difficulty in creating new habits, destroying non-sinful negative habits, and destroying sinful habits. Then I want to draw you deeply into a few chosen Scriptures about our sinful desires and actions. Later I will share “Eight Keys to Kill Negative or Sinful Habits.” Finally, we’ll be able to get on with creating new positive, life-transforming habits!

From easiest (relatively) to most difficult:

            1) Create new habits  

2) Destroy non-sinful negative habits

3) Destroy unwanted sinful habits

At each level we need more powerful inner tools, more effective change agents, and for passion to be increasingly stirred, convinced, and equipped. Examples: At level one we might want to make our bed daily, exercise daily, and put limits on Facebook scrolling. At level two we might want to speak no judgmental words to our spouse and forgive all who have offended us. At level three, we might need to turn pride to humility, measure out daily alcohol allowance, and crush sexual sin in both thought and action!

You can see why we want to concentrate deeply at level three before moving on to the rest. Let’s concentrate, then, on a few Scriptures to deeply motivate us at level three.

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15-17).

The three most universal sins are listed here. Lust of the Flesh refers to all sexual sin which is anything sexual apart from marriage occurring in our thoughts, words, or actions. Lust of the Eyes refers to our desires, often insatiable desires, to have material possessions, to place our primary use of money in having them, to find our greatest pleasure in the things we own, and to be jealous of what others have that we cannot afford. Pride of Life is that longing for others to look upward at us, to see us above them in some way, and to talk about ourselves in a way that makes us look better than we really are. Other Scriptures say that God hatespride and loves humility, and that he reserves a special place for those who deny themselves to take up their cross and follow him.

 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:1-3).

This Scripture reveals to us the sources of sin, which we normally refer to as The World (“following the course of this world”), The Flesh (“among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind”), and The Devil (“following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience”). For each of these sources to become sin, they must first move from temptation to thought to desire to will to action. It’s never true that “The devil made me do it,” but rather “The devil’s demons tempted me, and I chose to grab onto that temptation and turn it to evil thoughts, plans, and sometimes action.”

I’m going to leave you today with a few more selected Scriptures about sin, and ask you to take a moment before reading them to pray that the Spirit of God would speak to you and give you personal insights or impulses as you slowly read and concentrate on them:

 Colossians 3:5

• Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.   

• Proverbs 25:28 Whoever has no rule over his own spirit  Is like a city broken down, without walls.

• Mark 7:21-22 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.   

• James 1:12-15 Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.   

• Mark 7:15 There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man. 

• Matthew 5:27-30 "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.   

• 1 Corinthians 6:18-19 Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?   

• 1 Corinthians 6:20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.   

• Galatians 5:17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. 

• 1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.  

• Colossians 3:2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.   

•    Hebrews 4:15

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

I mostly sing contemporary worship songs, but there are a number of "oldies" that stay deep in my spirit. This is the third verse of "Come to Calvary's Holy Mountain":

Come with hurts and guilts and meanness

Come however soiled within

From the most ingrained uncleanness

From pollution by your sin

Wash your robes and make them white

You shall walk with God in light

Be blessed today as you seek a deeper walk with Jesus, a deeper passion for and revelation from His Word, and a growing anticipation of a life truly renewed in ways you may have desired for some time.

Old Out Before New In (Part 2)

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I begin this post by deepening my explanation of thresholds, so you can understand how serious is our decision to cross over them. This in turn will give us a handle from which we can begin the process of destroying sin (the old) so that abundant life (the new) can take root in our reconstruction.

Thresholds had serious meaning in many ancient cultures. There are entire books written on the subject, of which I’ve read a couple. So I am greatly condensing what I write here to give you just enough to open your discernment and apply it to your own situation.

For God’s people, the significance of thresholds began at the first Passover, when the angel of death killed all the Egyptian firstborn while the Hebrews were spared, leading to Pharoah’s agreement to release them from slavery. And how were the Hebrews saved? Each family killed a lamb at the threshold of the doorway into their home. They dipped a branch into the lamb’s blood as it lay in the doorway and spread the blood down the doorposts at either side and across the lintel above. The threshold was not flat as they are today, but was a channel, a kind of basin that would fill up with the blood dripping into it.

To enter the house, then, you had to cross over the threshold and literally walk through a curtain of blood. No one would step on the threshold but rather over it, because to step on the blood that was protecting the house would be to defile it. It would mean you were stamping out its very purpose.

God told the people through Moses that once past the bloody threshold, they should roast the lamb and eat it. Then they should remain inside while the angel of death passed over the house, as they were only safe inside the house "under" the protection of the blood. Death could not pass through the blood of the sacrificial lamb.

God was punishing the Egyptians for centuries of evil they had practiced in the worship and service of demons. They would die for their sins. Did that mean the Hebrews were pure and holy and had not also sinned? Of course not, but rather that the lambs’ deaths would be accepted by God as a substitute, an atonement for the Hebrews’ sins, and they would be forgiven, yet not for eternity, because those sacrifices had to continue over and over for centures to come, until…

…until Jesus came. He would come as the Lamb of God who would die to permanently take away the sins of those who would receive and follow him. And when did he die? On the night of Passover; he was breathing his last breath on the cross as all the Jews gathered in Jerusalem to kill their Passover lambs. Talk about being oblivious to the most powerful supernatural event of history!

There’s more to know about thresholds. First, you may know that most Jewish households today have a “mezuzot,” a little box on their doorpost that has a tiny parchment inside inscribed with a bit of Scripture. They kiss their fingers and touch it as they enter and leave, but more important for this discussion, they still step over the threshold and never on it. Now we know, sadly, that this practice lost all meaning once Jesus died for our sins. Without the blood of their Messiah now spiritually instead of physically poured out upon them, their human actions cannot produce any salvation from eternal death.

Even more vital for the purpose of our discussion: Whatever God, devil, or demon we are serving moment by moment in our thoughts, words, and deeds, we are in a very real sense crossing over the threshold of that being’s house. That means, if I engage the lust of my flesh, lust of my eyes, boastful pride, or any other sinful behavior, such as filthy talk which I refuse to corral as soon as it leaves my lips, or evil thoughts I dwell on without restraint, or outright abominable behaviors, I have crossed over the threshold of Satan’s dwelling place to receive what he alone can offer me in the privacy of his house! I have left the safety of my “house,” whose doorway was covered with Jesus’ blood, stepping directly upon the threshold as I left. Does this open up new windows of revelation insight to you? I pray it does.

So here’s how it works, or could work. Demons approach us with the precise temptation that matches our flesh’s weakness. Some people think (do you?) that there are levels of sin and that the particular one that draws them is of a less serious variety. Do they not realize, for example, that all sexual sin pulls the same strings of temptation? Every one is equally bad, wrong, evil, abominable, perverse, and is equally unable to exist simultaneously with a life connected intimately to the Father.

Many men think if they experience sexual temptations toward women (or women toward men) that somehow this is “normal,” and they might easily dismiss it like, “It's true, I fantacize about that, but it’s no big deal, doesn’t everyone? At least I’m faithful to my marriage.” Which is not true, seeing that Jesus said if you engage your thoughts in sexual lust it’s no difference in heaven’s reckoning than engaging a prostitute, just as hating your brother is the same as murdering him.

To allow the lusts of your flesh to possess your mind, eyes, or behavior toward the opposite sex has the same evil root as homosexual lust or other attractions that Christians experience yet never mention. Every variety of sin is “common to man;” every one is a response to demons drawing you to step on God’s threshold as you leave his house to step over Satan’s threshold and worship him.

So when the demons tempted us, did we get close, feel the pull, sense a physical reaction, but then cry out to God and run back across the blood-covered threshold before we could take more than two steps away? “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Hebrews 12:4). Did we cry to God for deliverance even as we suffered deeply in the forsaking of sin we knew could bring us pleasure?

The temple of God, his house on earth, is now in us, in our very beings. There is no longer a building, as in the Old Testament, where God was enthroned between the two gold angels on top of the Ark of the Covenant, on what was called the “mercy seat.” We mistakenly refer to our church building as the “House of God.” God does not live in any building. His Holy Spirit lives in every person who has made the choice to confess their sins and step over his threshold. His house is in us!

So think about this. Revelation 3:10 says, “Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.” We let Jesus into our house (our body, our being) and he comes in and eats with us, which signifies the creation of a deep intimacy. Then we have the opportunity to give him the keys so he can take over as the new owner, meaning that our house (body/soul/spirit) is no longer ours but his.

We could then invite him to cross over all the thresholds in our house, even those leading through locked doors to the rooms where we hide our secret sins, those we hoped we could hold onto for our own "occasional" pleasure. We thought we could keep them, indulge them once in a while, and still have Jesus as Master and Lord. But now, offering ourselves to him for eternity, we ask him to cross every threshold and purify all the putrid stuff he finds in those corners and closets. Then we’ll be able to know what it means to live in deep, uninterrupted intimacy with God.

Now we don’t have a house, because we’ve given it to him (remember we’re talking about our bodies, minds, wills, emotions, and spirits). So what does it mean if we respond once again to the demons’ temptations, to leave what is now the Lord’s house, to step on the threshold as we leave, and to cross over Satan’s threshold? It means we now worship Satan because we're following his voice to do what is unholy, impure, and filthy again.

In the face of terrible judgment for unrepented sin, the Israelites continued to worship idols, which included having sex with male and female “temple prostitutes” in order to insure fertility of their crops. Even worse, as God said through the prophet Jeremiah, “They have built pagan shrines to Baal, and there they burn their sons as sacrifices to Baal. I have never commanded such a horrible deed; it never even crossed my mind to command such a thing!" (Jeremiah 19:5). These were the chosen people of God, but you only have to read the book of Jeremiah to see what happened when centuries of pleas, warnings, and patience from God went unheeded. The punishment that fell on Egypt centuries before was now measured out to God's own chosen people.

We’ve been talking about all negative behaviors, and how we can first admit (confess) them instead of making excuses or denials, or continue in self-deception. We talked about non-sinful ones, then sinful ones, and now I am centering on sexual sin. Why is that? It’s because that’s where it all started, from the beginning and onward through Biblical history.

What really happened in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and the “serpent?” Do you really believe that Adam and Eve lost their original eternal life in the garden of God, living with his angels and heavenly council, were cast onto the earth to face a life of toil and death, and that this punishment passed on through all people in all generations, simply because Eve picked an apple from a tree and ate it? Really? You could differentiate other symbolic stories from literal Biblical history, but the Garden of Eden was a talking snake, a tree, and an irresistible apple?

Well, friends, I’m going to propose (I’m obviously not the only one to do this) that Lucifer (Satan) appeared to Eve and Adam in the radiant splendor with which he is described elsewhere in Scripture, and “something sexual” happened that caused them to do what? Cover their sinful mouths because they ate an apple? Uhh no, they covered their genitals and hid from God. And that’s where it all began, because the carnal knowledge they experienced (that Hebrew knowledge means "to deeply experience" evil) stayed with them and was became part of human life. God never intended that we would "know" evil.

Then there’s Genesis chapter six, where rebellious angels were attracted to human women and somehow had sex with them, so that angelic DNA combined with human to create a race of cannibalistic giants who taught even more forbidden evil to humans, so much so that God found “only evil on the face of the earth” and had to destroy everyone except Noah and his family in the flood. This was because of sexual sin.

When the Israelites turned from God again and again, century after century throughout Old Testament history, God through his prophets always referred to their sin of idol worship as “adultery.” Why did he call it that? Why was it that they couldn’t resist going to pagan temples and bowing before manmade statues when God had done miracles beyond what any demon could ever do? It was because of the manner of worship that happened in those places: engaging in sex with temple prostitutes to "insure fertility of their crops," satisfying the evil blood lust of child sacrifice, that grabbed the people in it’s grip just as our sin does today.

You only have to read the Song of Solomon to find pure and holy sexual love between husband and wife as God intended. Then compare that to the history of God’s chosen people, and you'll understand how Satan has trapped humanity by perverting the most powerful physical experience God created.

Then, to illustrate that referring to Israel’s idolatry as prostitution was not simply a spiritual illustration, turn to Ezekiel and read chapter 23. I can’t quote any of it here; it’s simply too sexually explicit and speaks of actual sexual desires and behaviors of the people.

As we read through the New Testament and the words of Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John, we can be overwhelmed by the many serious warnings about sin, especially sexual sin. Here is a sample of Peter’s words from his two epistles:

“If you, then, have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God. You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.

“(False teachers lead other to) commit adultery with their eyes, and their desire for sin is never satisfied. They lure unstable people into sin, and they are well trained in greed…With an appeal to twisted sexual desires, they lure back into sin those who have barely escaped a lifestyle of deception. They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever controls you.

“When people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before…They prove the truth of this proverb: ‘A dog returns to its vomit.’ And another says, ‘A washed pig returns to the mud.’”

Finally, when we arrive at the End, the book of Revelation, chapter 17, we read about the Great Prostitute who has ruled over much of the world up to that point:

“One of the seven angels who had poured out the seven bowls came over and spoke to me. ‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘and I will show you the judgment that is going to come on the great prostitute, who rules over many waters. The kings of the world have committed adultery with her, and the people who belong to this world have been made drunk by the wine of her immorality.’

“So the angel took me in the Spirit into the wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that had seven heads and ten horns, and blasphemies against God were written all over it. The woman wore purple and scarlet clothing and beautiful jewelry made of gold and precious gems and pearls. In her hand she held a gold goblet full of obscenities and the impurities of her immorality. A mysterious name was written on her forehead: ‘Babylon the Great, Mother of All Prostitutes and Obscenities in the World.’”

Perhaps all this has left you a bit breathless. But what could be more important, if (as more believe than ever before, as current events make ever clearer) we are at the beginning of the end already? Can we ignore the truth any longer simply because it’s so terribly terrible, or because we “just want to concentrate on positive, happy thoughts?”

I can guarantee you one thing. If you will hang on with me from week to week, slowly but surely, step by step, decision by decision, truth by truth, we will arrive far past a few “interesting thoughts” or “good ideas.” We will arrive at the juncture of the most positive reconstruction of your life, far beyond anything you ever thought possible. Remember, right now we’re still getting “Old Out Before New In.”

All blessings to you this week as you continue to hide no longer from every particle of your own realities, your own deceptions, your own secrets, and your own deepest longings.