“If we believe there’s more pleasure in something other than God, then our obedience will never rise above required duty, our prayers will never aim higher than using God, and our joy will always leave an emptiness that drives us to further self-centered efforts to find the fullness we demand.”

Shattered Dreams, Page 183

Question for Reflection:

Do you believe it’s possible to enjoy God more than anyone or anything else?

Human Needs as Motivation

Following the teaching of Webex 97, at the beginning of the question/answer phase, Dr. Brettell asked a question concerning the motivation of the OM and NM. The essence of the question as I understood it was is there a difference between Old Man motivation and New Man motivation? Isn’t OM motivation selfish and egocentric while NM motivation is unselfish and Christocentric? This is a key question in the discussion of OM-NM and Dr. Brettell’s keen understanding of these two different systems saw the issue right away. While I spoke to the issue briefly during the meeting, I would like to clarify it in the following discussion.

The following paragraphs will discuss the divine design of the soul, focusing on our needs that we experience as desires. We will explain how these needs motivate the Old Man to seek their fulfillment by attaching to people & by developing relational strategies designed to manipulate others to love us. We will then discuss how the new believer who initially perceives their needs as unfulfilled, uses the same needs/desires as the reason to pursue God. Finally we will see how as the believer reaches a mature status through spiritual growth, we realize that our needs were totally fulfilled at salvation and this new belief about being fulfilled enables us to sacrifice self for the sake of Christocentric motivations.

Neutral Soul – Sin Nature

First, we know that at the moment of birth, for one microsecond we have a soul that is neutral, meaning it is neither influenced by the sin nature or by the Holy Spirit. Following this micro brief moment, the sin nature takes over and begins to influence the soul. At that moment the soul begins to be dominated by the sin nature, by the world’s beliefs & by the devil (Eph 2:1-3).

Human Needs

Part of the divine design of the human soul is the existence of needs. God didn’t create man to be strong, to be independent, to stand on his own by his own power. He never intended that any of us would be able to exist in a self fulfilled state. He made us with holes in our soul that cause us to crave that these holes be filled by someone outside of ourself. The purpose of these needs is so that man will realize that we can never be happy without God and to a lesser degree, one another. He created man with a primary need for a relationship with God and a secondary need for other humans. While some believe these needs are a result of the fall and didn’t exist in the garden, I believe that they did exist as part of the divine design in the garden and that Adam and Eve experienced these needs. The basis for this belief is Gen 2:18:  Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” In the garden Adam was alone with God but he wasn’t designed to live alone, he was designed to need a wife to fulfill his human needs. The driving force of human needs goes all the way back to the creation of man’s soul and is in the heart of every human being.

Needs Experienced as Desires

Our human needs were given to us by God as part of our design to reveal our need for Him and our need for one another. We experience these needs as desires, as longings, as cravings and as Jesus called them as hunger and thirst in the soul. Our hearts feel empty and this emptiness creates a craving for someone else to relate to us and to express to us a positive regard for us. This is what Jesus had in mind when He called out to the crowd:

John 7:37-39 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. 38 “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’” 39 But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

God designed our needs with a primary, which is for Him and a secondary, which is for other human beings. Our needs/desires can be categorized as physical and soulish. Our physical needs are the most obvious and what many people think about when the subject of needs is discussed. Our soul needs are met through relationships with God and man. Each of us begins our life clearly in touch with our needs and we honestly acknowledge our desire for love, affection, attention, approval, acceptance, accomplishment, security, challenges, significance and the ability to contribute to others. As we encounter rejection, harshness, abandonment and disappointment because of our relationships, we naturally distance ourself from our feelings and desires as a means of protecting ourself from pain.

Old Man Beliefs

We are born with needs that feel like deep longings and cravings for love and relationship with others. From the moment of birth we begin to experience our needs and feel driven to find fulfillment for our needs. Being born after the fall, we are born spiritually dead, separated from God, unable to process spiritual concepts and unable to obey God. While we are designed to need God, Adam’s sin has caused us to be born cut off from God so that our needs go unmet. Because we experience the drive to connect, we turn to our only available relationships, people. We attach our needs to mankind and develop the belief that people are the source of meeting our needs. Our first relational attachment is mother, then father, then peers, then a mate and finally our own children. As we grow up, we continue believing that man can meet our needs and so we develop a system of relational strategies designed to cause others to see us in a positive light. From childhood to adulthood and even to the point of death we continue to be motivated by our desire to relate to others with love. The Old Man belief system, the beliefs of the unbeliever are totally motivated by the need for certainty, security, challenges, love, connection, growth and the need to contribute to others.

The New Man

Hopefully at some point we come to believe the gospel and trust in Christ for our salvation. At the moment we are born again and become part of God’s family, He meets every need we will ever have. Yet, at the moment of salvation we will have lived out our life with a critical need for God’s love but will never have experienced it. We will have lived with a need for His approval but having lived with out it. We will have lived with the need for spiritual self esteem but will have only the esteem we have earned through our own abilities.

Fulfilled Souls

For the believer every human need involves God either directly or indirectly. He gives us His love directly and provides for our every other need in many different ways. Initially when we come into His family we are still driven by the desire to fulfill our souls. The need/desire for love, approval, significance, meaning and purpose continues to be the reason we pursue God. As we learn the whole realm of doctrine and come to adjust ourselves to His plan, we develop our intimacy with God. As we lay aside our Old Man beliefs about relating to people and replace them with beliefs about relating to God, we come to experience His love as our reality. As our relationship with Him grows, He continues to fill our hearts with His love and unconditional regard. As we experience His love more and more we realize that our every need has been realized and we want for nothing, we are full, we are fulfilled.

Reciprocal Love

As we grow into love with God, our hearts are filled with confidence, courage, peace, compassion and an intense personal love for God. His loving us first causes love to grow in us. The Apostle John writing to the church said: 1 John 4:19 We love, because He first loved us. We love Him in a personal way and we gain the capacity to love others with unconditional love. It is at this point of fulfillment that we return His love and begin to be motivated by our love for Him instead of our need for Him.

Mature Motivation

It is at this point of adult growth that we take on spiritual responsibilities and honor Him simply because we love Him and want to please Him. As we continue to grow and reach the higher levels of maturity, we become willing to sacrifice everything we have in this life to glorify Him and please Him. Mature motivation as a Christian becomes Christ centered rather than self-centered. But, before we reach this place of fulfillment through spiritual growth and relationship with God, we will continue to be driven by our own needs.

The baby and childhood stages of the Christian life involve the same needs we had at birth and the same needs that drove us to build the Old Man belief system. These needs are not Old Man needs or New Man needs. Our needs are part of the divine design of the human soul and pre-date both sin and salvation. They are with us at birth, with us through our life as an unbeliever and are our motivation all the way to maturity when they are finally fulfilled through God’s love. Only then, having experienced fulfillment are we free to love like God and give freely in grace like God who has no needs and an abundance of inner resources to give to others.

Those of you who know me well, know that I consider Larry Crabb a major mentor in my life. His summary of the scriptures expressed within a psychological framework was the insight I desperately needed to understand psychology as a sub category of the divine revelation. My theological training under great Pastor-Teachers (RB Thieme & Ron Adema), great as it was, was not giving me the specifics I needed to understand my personal problems. My psychological readings were giving me the insights I needed to see my sin patterns and the thinking behind them. The writings of modern psychologists were giving me answers I desperately needed to understand my life experiences and how they had shaped my beliefs, my thinking, my feelings and my actions. God, knowing exactly what I needed, sent me the book Inside Out by Crabb, that gave me a biblical interpretation that brought the theology and the psychology together into one system, with the bible as the primary source and psychology as secondary. I jumped for joy as I read the second book, Understanding People, that explained more fully the combining of theology and psychology, allowing me to use the psychological insights within the biblical framework. I knew that they had to fit together and that what I was reading from Scott Peck, John Bradshaw, Minirith & Meier, Melody Beatie, Willard Harley and many others was truth because it revealed my life. I just couldn’t see how they fit together until Dr. Lawrence Crabb came along and showed me that all of our psychological problems were the experiential results of Adam’s fall.

I write these things not to praise Larry Crabb for his work is the copyrighted insights of the Holy Spirit and he is simply a seeker of truth for his own needs. I write to thank our gracious Lord and Savior for giving us seekers of truth the answers we seek and for allowing Larry to stick around a little longer so he can continue leading the way with insights that take us deeper into God’s love. Thank you Lord and thank you Larry for faithfully using the grace given to you to see into the depravity of your own soul, the purity of God’s and writing about it so I could see it too.

Finally, though I have never written to thank you for your work, I am sending this short letter in the hope that if you reads it, you will know that at least one other seeker is out here and that someone else is getting it and using it to grow free of the old man and enter into the love of the Lord. Keep going and don’t quit until you cross over.

Reflections: Looking Back, In, and Ahead Sixteen Days After Cancer Surgery

by

Larry Crabb

Successful Surgery

Surgery took place Friday morning, August 12, from about 7:00 A.M. to I think around 3:30 P.M. (including prep). Literally thousands prayed. Hundreds sent emails, cards and notes. Dozens called. (One card assured me that my surgeon had the latest technological equipment. Turn the page and “He just bought a 54″ flat screen High Def TV”). If I knew a stronger word than grateful, I’d use it. If the sincerity of a “thank you” depends on whether those words come from the center of our souls, then Rachael’s thank you and mine are deeply genuine.

Reading all the wonderfully warm words you sent to us made me realize how hesitantly I receive love. Maybe a good psychologist could explain my resistance. But whatever the defensive crust might be that foolishly and wrongly protects my heart from the nourishment it longs for, it’s been penetrated by you. In my pre-surgery ramblings, I spoke about searching for my center. In these post-surgery reflections, I think I can speak from the center of my penetrated heart, opened in large measure by so many of you. For 16 days, I’ve been looking back on what was happening in me since August 12, I’ve been paying attention to what’s going on in me each moment, and I’ve been looking down the narrow road as my slow journey towards maturity continues.

But first: after cutting out 1/8 of my cancer-spotted liver, removing 2 suspicious lymph nodes (one turned out to be cancerous), and leaving no remnant of my stone-infested gall bladder, my surgeon emerged from the operating room to greet nearly 2 dozen family and friends with a reassuring smile. He spoke surgeon-speak, but his message was clear: “GOT IT ALL”. No further treatment needed just follow-up blood tests. Your prayers for successful surgery were answered. God is worthy of praise whether surgery succeeds or fails, but a certain level of grateful praise comes more easily with good news. So, thank you for joining Rachael and me and our family in praising the Lord.

But a question arises as I praise. Do I know what it means, like Paul, to be content with whatever happens? Would richer praise emerge from deeper places within me if the news were different, even terrifying? Along with much appreciated prayers for my health, many of you asked God to give me a satisfying sense of His presence no matter what happened. I don’t know if that prayer was answered. I don’t think it was.

As I lay in the hospital, epiduraled, IV’ed, catheterized, and oxygenated, I remembered something my then 79 year old father said after his open heart surgery. Serious complications kept him in the hospital for 21 days. When he was finally discharged, as I was driving him to his home in South Carolina, mother in the front seat, dad lying down as best he could in the back, my father broke a sober silence with a weak voice: “I’m grateful for all the friends who came to visit me in the hospital. But the visitor I most wanted never came”.

“Who, dad?,” I asked with more than a little curiousity.

“God”, he plaintively replied.

I had no idea what to say, so, uncharacteristically when I’m at a loss for words, I said nothing.

Without any prompt from me, dad waited a few seconds and then, in a voice trembling with joy, added, “I’m so grateful”.

“For what?”, I blurted out. “God’s absence?”

“Oh, Larry, God gave me the privilege of trusting His Word in the absence of His felt presence. He must see a kind of faith in me that I can’t see in myself. I was able to rest in His written promises. I think that pleases Him.”

I remember thinking to myself as my father spoke, “Would I count it a grace-provided privilege to draw near to God when I had no sense at all of His drawing near to me? Or do I feel entitled to some felt awareness that He is with me before I’d be strongly interested in pleasing Him?”

All that happened more than a decade ago. For the past 2 weeks, after reading a little Chesterton, after slowly devouring Lewis’s book Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, after re-reading and finally understanding a little of Till We Have Faces, Lewis’s last and favorite of all his books, I’ve spent the last week soaking my soul in The Message of the Cross by British scholar Derek Tidball. I wanted to see God’s ultimate expression of love (Calvary) whether I experienced His love or not. I knew my faith required content and could best be nourished by meditating on the content that most clearly evidences the God of love.

Here’s one sentence (among hundreds) that grabbed me: “… an evangelical spirituality is developing which, in its search for self-affirmation and comfort, can only be described as cross-avoiding rather than cross-carrying”. “Calvary,” Tidball suggested, “has been replaced by Pentecost”. That sentence did more than grab me. Has the wonder of the ongoing value and presence of Calvary dimmed as I’ve been depending on the felt experience of the Spirit? When I feel empty, scared, alone, discouraged, or defeated, do I pray for the Spirit to replace those feelings with fullness, joy, and hope more than I trust Him to bring me back to the one Event on which my faith depends?

Tidball quotes charismatic thinker Tom Smail, “Experience of the Spirit has for many become more central than faith in the Crucified, so that the Christian centre has moved from Calvary to Pentecost”. “The way to Pentecost is Calvary,” Smail declares; “The Spirit comes from the Cross”.

God gave me an opportunity to bring those lofty thoughts into my immediate reality on August 16, around midnight in my hospital room, 4 days post surgery. Thanks to morphine, I had little pain. Thanks to a skilled surgeon, I had little worry. Thanks to an attentive nursing staff, I had little need. I was coasting in the river of shallow praise. Then, God seized the opportunity to fix my focus on Calvary in a way that released, not without struggle, deeper trust and richer praise.

I’ll spare you the graphic details, but I will tell you they were not pretty. Unexpected complications arose suddenly at midnight, leaving me in terrible pain, fear, and frustration. Before I pressed the “Get in here now button”, I prayed:

“God, I know You’re here. I believe You love me. And I know You’re aware of what’s happening right now. And I know You could relieve my difficulty in seconds. God, that’s what I want You to do so I’m asking You, begging You, in faith, to do what only You can do. Please, solve this problem!”

I paused, for only a few seconds. Then, with neither cynicism nor disappointment but with a strangely calm settledness, I went on, “God, I really don’t expect that You’ll answer that prayer. And I don’t believe that if I had faith that You would, then my prayer would be answered. So, in line with James’ encouragement, I pray now for wisdom. What do You want me to see in my suffering? How have You empowered me to please You in my trouble? What would it mean to consider this misery as an opportunity for great joy like You said in James 1? God, I know You’re good. I believe You’re doing me good right now. Help me define good the way You do so that I can see how You are using Your power, right now, to do me good.”

That prayer was answered. My by then lesser but still strong desire for pain relief was non-miraculously, uncomfortably and slowly satisfied (in measure) by standard medical means offered by competent medical personnel. But in those difficult moments, I became quietly aware of a desire to reveal the Christ I knew on the Cross, the One who lived to honor His Father and to bless others at any cost to Himself, who remained profoundly other-centered even while enduring pain that would seem to justify an obsession with His own relief. I discovered in my center a primary longing to be spiritually formed, to relate like Jesus, in any circumstance. I had no overwhelming experience of His loving presence. God still seemed distant, unnear in the way I was thinking of nearness.

But thoughts of Calvary aroused a compelling desire to reveal to others that I had been crucified with Christ by now crucifying every desire in me that competed with my longing to reveal Christ to others and release Christ into others by the way I related, all for the Father’s pleasure and in the Spirit’s power. Calvary became the center. Resurrection became a personal vision. Pentecost supplied the power to stumble toward the vision.

I’ve just described what took place Tuesday night, August 16, beginning near midnight and slowly growing clearer during a sleepless early morning. Looking back on that miserable opportunity to move another small step on the narrow road to life, and now looking in to see if anything remains from that night, I think something I’ve believed and taught for years has taken deeper root in my soul. It’s this: whether the truth excites me or not, my supreme good in this world lies not in the enjoyment of blessings I legitimately desire such as good health, loving responses from others, good income, well-received ministry, respect and recognition from people important to me, godly kids and grandkids who fulfill my dreams for them. My supreme good in this world, the source of my deepest joy, lies rather in the Cross-dependant, Resurrection-affirmed, Pentecost-supplied power to relate like Jesus through any trial in a way that reveals God’s heart to others and releases God’s life into others.

That Terrible Tuesday became a window that let me see a beam of glory, a door opening that drew me to walk more closely with Jesus, to keep Him company as He continues to bring His light and love into the dark places of our human experience, to take more seriously my calling to love God with all my heart (releasing the pure longings that fill my center), with all my soul (releasing by choice the power to live from my center), with all my mind (releasing my capacity to think, study, meditate and believe what I can know of God as I sit at the foot of the Cross and immerse myself in God’s 66 love letters), and with all my strength (releasing the already supplied courage to persevere in love when I fail others badly or slightly and when I am failed badly or slightly by others.

I’ve just re-read these rambling reflections. If I take my eyes off Christ, I want to burn everything I’ve written, leaving only my expressions of thanks to you for your prayers and the good news of successful surgery. I write better than I live. When I see Jesus remaining on the Cross during those 3 hours of darkness when He felt Satan’s presence and His Father’s absence, when I hear the call to be formed like Jesus, I realize how far beneath my calling I live, how too often I lose sight of my calling and want only those blessings that provide immediate satisfaction and comfort, how easily I let boredom, sleeping troubles, health and money worries, ministry pressures that feel like inconveniences, and debilitating weariness of soul and body reduce my calling to little more than an irritant, a lovely but unrealistic, unreachable, and only weakly desired goal. I so easily slip into complacent satisfaction with a hoped for good life as I naturally define it.

The battle continues. But my Terrible Tuesday has wakened me to so much more that is available to me in the Gospel of our Creator God, our Incarnate God, our Crucified God, our Resurrected God, our Pentecost-released God, and our Soon Coming God. Father, Lord Jesus, indwelling Spirit, expand my capacity to know You, to believe You, to trust You, to enjoy You, to be formed like Jesus and to keep in step with Your Spirit, all for Your glory, which means my good.

Well, that’s it. Brevity is not among my gifts. My only excuse for so many words lies in the stewardship opportunity that burdened me to honor all your kindnesses to Rachael and me by sharing what I discern to be how God has been (and will continue to be) working in response to your prayers. Thanks for listening. Be encouraged. I am.

Larry

The following discussion was generated from 2 questions asked about marriage. It reads like a personal response because it is but has been edited to remove any personal information and I have tried to make it fit both the needs of a husband and a wife.

What are the benefits of marriage? What can a husband and wife expect from each other in marriage?

The first question should be: What is God’s purpose for marriage? The answer is: to meet man’s need for companionship because we are not designed to be alone. “Not good for man to be alone” Gen 2:18.  As unbelievers, we marry to meet our own needs for a partner. If it doesn’t work out the way we want, we move on an try again with someone else. This is what we see the world doing and rightly so, they have no divine motives working in them to move them to self sacrifice.

The benefits are related to who you marry and what they have to offer. From the divine view, marriage is about giving more than getting. It is about seeing where we need to change more than the other person changing to meet our expectations. Marriage reveals our old man beliefs through our discontentment even when we are being wronged. Imagine if Jesus had gotten married to someone who gave very little and did many wrong things. Do you think He would have left it, complained about it, tried to change the other person? The answer is no, but he had no earthly, human expectations to fulfill, only pleasing God motivated Him.

When we are discontent with what our mate gives us, it shows where we have formed a human image we want to fulfill that they fail to live up to. The image may even be a right one or contain much good but we have no guarantees that it will be fulfilled. Even in extreme situations, our internal image is our own, not something God promised to give us. Even when your image is simply a normal life with a normal partner and children, the image is still our own and not something God promised to give us.

For Christians, marriage is a picture of Christ and the church and the ultimate completion for us is to give to God what the roles require. Christian marriage is a ministry for God’s sake where both parties fulfill the biblical roles and in doing so, form the image of Christ and the church to teach angels and man, the relationship God desires with all mankind. We get very confused about this and think marriage is about getting something for self instead of giving self to God. For believers contentment in marriage can only be found when we discover this truth and give our self to God for His use. He gives us the inner peace and contentment in spite of what our mates give us and this is the primary way happiness can be found in marriage.

Now, having said this and painted the picture of self sacrifice so that we can selflessly give self to God by being the loving husband or the submissive wife to a man who doesn’t do his part very well, none of us are there and able to give what God needs from us. We are all programmed to want something for self and expect our mate to love us, sacrifice for us and fulfill the image we have for them. How do we ever become the person who can forgo what we want and give our self fully to form this image of Christ and the church? That is where taking off the old man beliefs comes into view and reveals that my unfulfilled desires must be given to God, not to our mate, even when our complaints are legit. You see our mate is also programmed with old man beliefs, different ones too and they drive him/her in a different direction. We can’t sacrifice self to fulfill God’s design of living out the roles and forming the picture of Christ/church because we are driven to fulfill the image we formed in our minds about our life. Very seldom do 2 people’s inner images match up driving them in the same direction. This cause us to be unhappy with what the other gives in marriage.

If we were free of our old man image of marriage, we would be free to give our self fully to God and it wouldn’t matter what our mate did or didn’t do, we would still do our part for God. He would meet the deep needs of our souls and we could wait on our mate to grow and be able to do their part for God and make marriage good. But we are not free, we are enslaved to what we want and so we demand that the other give what we want. We express our unhappiness trying to drive them to be what we want but it never helps, only drives them away. Gaining freedom from our old ideas that create our wants is the only way to find happiness and contentment in this life. God has made a way for us to be free from the old thinking we bring into the Christian life, called Transformation. We exchange our old beliefs for the same beliefs Jesus used in His humanity.

Bottom line, for unbelievers marriage is to meet the need for companionship and if it doesn’t, we move on and try again. For believers, it is to form a picture of Christ and the church as a sacrificial ministry for God.  He wants us to give our wants up and replace them with the desire to please Him. If we are to fulfill God’s desire for us will depend on if we are willing to let go of the image we all form of what marriage should give to us, even the legit images that our mate can’t give to us or wont give to us. The only way to make Christian marriage what God wants it to be is to give up the old man image, even the right things in it., This will enable us to embrace His ideas which give us the capacity to give self fully to God for His purposes. If we refuse to let go of our inner image and continue to demand our mate live up to it, it can never be what God wants from it and will never be what we want from it either. If we relinquish our old view of what it should be, we find contentment in pleasing God and fulfilling the ministry of forming our side of the Christ/church picture.

You ask what should both parties expect from the other in marriage? The answer is nothing. We have no real basis to expect that the person we marry will live up to the roles described in the bible. If we are wise in our choice of a mate, then we might get part of what we want and expect but never all of it. The image in our mind of marriage was formed from our parent’s marriage and from other influences along the way, even legit ideas. Often we will hold a biblical view of marriage, learned in church and expect our mate to fulfill this image. The problem is that all of us are damaged inside and driven to please the dictates and principles of our original family. We all try to recreate our family of origin whether it was good or bad. It was where we drew our first images of how marriage should work and to us it is what normal is. We begin marriage expecting our mate to live up to the image in our head but none of us can do that. Even if the image is biblical, and maybe especially if it is biblical. All of us have an old system of beliefs that dominate us in the subconscious and until we disassemble it and lay it aside, we are controlled by it. All of these beliefs are self centered and self serving, formed while spiritually dead and separated from God, under the control of the sin nature. The image we form for marriage is also self centered, self serving, driven by our sin nature and formed apart from God’s input. His image for marriage is self sacrifice for His sake. Our image is self serving for our own sake.

The real answer to the marriage dilemma is to disassemble and lay aside our human agenda and replace it with the eternal, divine agenda. This solves all problems in life and resolves all conflicts. It enable us to forgive all failures by our mate and give compassion for the inner turmoil they faced from trying to please us while driven from within by their false beliefs. Much of what we want is legit, but we expect it and demand it from them and we drive them to give it and in doing so we kill the love that we began with. Our image is selfish even if the image is composed of right things and the mutual selfishness is what drives us apart.

Many of us have been disappointed by what has gone on in our marriage. Yet, from the divine perspective, it is all that was possible from the man or woman you married. It was all he/she had to give and their inner program was put in place for by his parents and family. Unless they are willing to see it and lay it aside, he/she can never be any better, he/she is unable to do better than the program in his old beliefs, nor are you. As long as we come at each other with the old program, even when it is legit, we can never find contentment in marriage. As believers, it is the laying aside of the old way and embracing of God’s way of self sacrifice and giving that makes it good for each other. I hope you both are willing to do the work to lay aside the old self and put on the new self, created in the image of the one creating him.

The following article gives us a very important concept, that what we say to our self is very important. Rick Renner who wrote this article  in his book Sparkling Gems from the Greek, is a writer and speaker. The following link will take you to a video message about the Greek word ago from Rom 8:14. It is worth a listen as this article is worth a read.  Important concept my friends who are trying to take off the old way and put on the new way in Christ.

http://www.lightsource.com/ministry/refuel-with-rick/

http://www.renner.org/index.html

That the communication of thy faith
may become effectual by the acknowledging
of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.
Philemon 1:6

What kind of things do you say about yourself? Do you speak well of yourself, or are you hyper-critical of your appearance, your weight, your intelligence, your talents, your skills, and every other aspect of who you are as a person?

I used to be so hyper-critical of myself that one day the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “How dare you continually talk so badly about yourself after the good work I’ve done inside you. Don’t you know how marvelously I created you to be in Jesus Christ? Quit speaking so negatively of yourself, and start acknowledging every good thing that is in you.”

I didn’t realize how badly I was speaking of myself until the Holy Spirit brought it to my attention. But after He spoke to me, I started noticing every time something evil slipped out of my mouth about myself. I was stunned to see how many times I did it! I became painfully aware that my own mouth had become one of my greatest enemies. With the help of the Holy Spirit, I made a decision to quit speaking such foul things and to start aligning my mouth with what God’s Word declared me to be.

Paul said we need to speak good things about ourselves! In Philemon 1:6, he said, “That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.” Today I want to especially draw your attention to the part of the verse that says, “…May become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.”

Even though God has done great things in you and has planned a powerful future for you, it is up to you to activate His blessings in your life! This is why Paul says, “That the communication of your faith may become effectual.…”

The word “effectual” is the Greek word energeo. It is where we get the word energy. However, in this verse, the word energeo carries the idea of something that has suddenly become energized or activated. Paul’s words could actually be rendered, “That the communication of your faith may become energized and activated.…”

Let me give you an example to help you understand what this word energeo means in the con­text of this verse. An automobile may be filled with enough fuel to drive a long distance, but it won’t go anywhere until someone puts the key into the ignition and then turns the key. The moment that key is turned, the spark plugs are sparked, which fires up the engine. Once the engine has been acti­vated, the potential in that car is ready to be unleashed.

The car always has the capability of moving, but if it is never activated, it sits silent in the drive­way. No matter how much fuel is in the tank or how much horsepower that car possesses, its power and potential will never be realized until someone turns the key in the ignition.

Now let’s apply this to you. In Philemon 1:6, the apostle Paul writes that “every good thing” has been placed in you by Jesus Christ. Think of it – He saved you, healed you, redeemed you, and pro­tected you. He has given you a sound mind; He has given you the mind of Christ; He has imparted gifts and talents to you; and He has planned a future for your life that is simply glorious. You are loaded with phenomenal potential that is just waiting to be activated!

You may say, “Yes, well, I know that the Bible says I’ve been given all those good things, but I don’t feel like any of that is true about me! I feel like such a defeat. Even though the Word says I’m healed, the reality is that I feel sick. Even though God’s Word says I have a sound mind, I continu­ally feel like I don’t have control of my thought life. And in spite of the fact the Bible says God has blessed me with gifts and talents, I feel like a dope who has nothing to offer to this world. There is a big gap between what the Bible says about me and what I feel about me!”

My friend, you are like a car that is loaded with enough fuel and horsepower to get anywhere you need to go. But for that potential in you to be released, you have to hold the right key in your hand.

Furthermore, it isn’t enough for you to just possess the key. You have to put that key into the “ignition” and turn it so the latent potential that resides inside you will be ignited. When you turn the key in the ignition, suddenly the potential you possess in Jesus Christ is supernaturally ignited, activated, energized, and released inside you!

• So what is the key that sparks all the good things God has placed inside you into becoming an outward reality?
• What is the key that causes all that God declares about you to become manifested in your life?
• How do you “turn the key in the ignition” so that the great work God has done inside you is activated and released?

Paul says, “That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.” The word “acknowledging” in this verse holds the answer to the questions above. This word is from the Greek word epignosis, which describes a well-instructed, intensive, deep knowledge of the facts.

The word epignosis pictures a person who knows his facts like a professional. This is a person so sure of his information that when he speaks, he does so with confidence and boldness. He has no reason to be ashamed or to fear that others may accuse him of being incorrect because he is well instructed and has an intensive, deep knowledge of the facts.

But how did he obtain such knowledge of the facts? No one becomes this knowledgeable acci­dentally.

For example, consider the book you hold in your hands. The information contained in this book didn’t come to me while I was sleeping. It is the result of many years of study and very hard work. I have passionately applied myself to understanding the Greek New Testament so I could share these truths confidently and boldly with others.

To become astute requires study, meditation, digging deep into truth, and applying oneself to know the facts inside and out. The result of this hard work is such a thorough knowledge of the facts that a person has a strong confidence regarding what he says or writes.

In my case, I am confident of what I have written in this book because I have put so much study into it. You could say that I have an epignosis of this information.

Now Paul uses this same idea when he says we are to “acknowledge” every good thing that has been placed in us by Christ Jesus. Of course, this means we are to confess the truth about ourselves – but before we can confess the truth, we must first know the truth!

Because the word epignosis depicts a well-instructed, intensive, deep knowledge of the facts, Paul is letting you know that it is essential for you to possess:

• a knowledge of exactly who you are in Jesus Christ.
• a knowledge of what Jesus has purchased in your redemption.
• a knowledge of every good thing that God has placed in you by Jesus Christ.
• a knowledge of all these truths that is so concrete and so unshakable that you are immovable in what you think and believe.

If you don’t know the facts of who you are in Jesus Christ, it’s time for you to get serious about digging into the Bible until you know these truths like a professional. The truth about who you are in Jesus Christ is the key to your victory. You should study, read, listen to teaching material – in other words, you should use every available resource to discover what God’s Word says you’ve been given in Jesus Christ. This knowledge is the key that will set you free. However, merely possessing the key won’t activate these realities in your life. You must put the key into the ignition and turn it, sparking these truths into manifestation in your life!

A key in the ignition switch does no good unless it is turned. Likewise, the truth in your life does no good until it is spoken! The moment you open your mouth and start confessing the good things that are in you by Jesus Christ, a supernatural connection is made between your faith and all that Jesus has deposited inside you. At that moment, the gifts and treasures God has placed inside you become supernaturally activated. The confession of your mouth – your acknowledgement of the truth – is what sparks these spiritual blessings and causes them to become operative, activated, and manifested realities.

Sadly, many people who know the truth remain in bondage because they never align their mouths with the truth. Instead of speaking what God says about them, they ridicule themselves, put themselves down, and speak badly of themselves. They possess all the potential that God has placed inside them, but they never experience that potential because their mouths have never sparked and activated those spiritual blessings into becoming manifested realities.

To make these truths real in your life, you have to put the key in the ignition switch.

• The key is the Word of God.
• The ignition is your mouth.
• The key is turned in the ignition when you open your mouth and start to speak the truth.
• The good things in you are activated the moment you start confessing the truth.
• The way to make these blessings real in your life is t 1) thoroughly know them through diligent study; 2) put these truths into your mouth; and 3) speak them out loud!
• That is how you turn the key in your ignition and energize these truths until they begin to manifest in you!

You see, it’s time for you to stop speaking so badly about yourself. Instead, you need to open your mouth and start acknowledging who you are in Jesus Christ! By acknowledging the basic truths of what you have been given in Jesus, you will release so much divine energy that it will radically transform your life. The recognition of these spiritual treasures that reside within you will pick you up, lift you high, and carry you right over into the realm of victory you desire!

So quit talking negatively about yourself, and begin to bring the words of your mouth into agreement with the truths God has deposited in your life.

• God’s Word says you’re healed, so begin to say you’re healed.
• God’s Word says you have the mind of Christ, so begin to say you have the mind of  Christ.
• God’s Word says you’re blessed, so begin to say you’re blessed.

You turn the key in the ignition by getting your mouth into agreement with God’s Word. And as you start speaking what God says about you, all your potential will start becoming a manifested reality!

MY PRAYER FOR TODAY

Lord, I know I have been speaking badly about myself. When I hear my own words, even I can tell it’s wrong for me to speak so lowly about myself. You have done a great work in me, and I have kept myself bound by the words of my mouth. Forgive me for speaking so wrongly and for allowing myself to remain imprisoned in self-defeat. I am truly repentant for these actions, and I ask You to forgive me and to give me the power to change my behavior. Holy Spirit, I can only do this by Your power, so I am asking and expecting You to empower me to make these changes in my life and in my mouth!

I pray this in Jesus’ name!

MY CONFESSION FOR TODAY

I confess that I speak well of myself. I don’t batter myself with wrong or negative words. I agree with all that God’s Word declares me to be, and I speak these truths about myself. Every day I am getting more positive and more faith-filled, and my mouth is speaking what God says about me. As a result, I am getting better, freer, and I am stepping upward more boldly into the plan God has for me!

I declare this by faith in Jesus’ name!

QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO CONSIDER

1. Do you speak well of yourself, or do you find that you constantly criticize yourself and continually point out all your flaws? If you were to ask your friends what they hear you saying about yourself, would they say you speak positively or negatively?
2. How much time do you spend meditating on truths about who you are in Jesus Christ? Do you regularly read and confess what the Word of God says about you?
3. What changes do you need to make in your life in order to change your confes­sions about yourself? For those changes to happen, what do you need to do dif­ferently in your life and your daily routine?

You can find more from Rick Renner on LightSource.com, including broadca

http://brettell.org/webex.htm

Over 50 recoded lessons given during 2010 in a Webex meeting with believers all over the world. The study goes on every Sunday night at 7PM. E-mail me ( al@bluminghearts.com ) to sit in live. Be sure to catch up with the content by listening to the recorded lessons.

COLOSSIANS 3:1-10

Exegesis and Commentary

Before we can understand the Apostle Paul’s warnings and admonitions, we have to understand the religious systems that were competing for their allegiance.  There were at least three groups that wanted to have dominance over the church:

1)   The Jewish element in the church who insisted that everyone adopt the Mosaic Law as part of their spiritual lives;

2)   There were the ascetic Gnostics; and

3)   The antinomian Gnostics that combined Jewish, Greek, Asian and Christian principles trying to synthesize a new view out of all of these.

Colossians 3 begins with the conjunction oun, translated “therefore.”

“Therefore” indicates we are drawing a conclusion and advocating action based on what has come before.  Therefore, we must consider the total context by looking at chapter 2 as the basis of oun in chapter 3.  Chapter 2 discusses the false religion of the Jews who had turned the law into a means of salvation and insisted that believers in the church age continue to follow its rules.

Colossians 2:16-17 Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day– 17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.

• dietary laws, festivals and sabbaths which are shadows of what is to come.
• Mosaic Law as Shadow Christology but the reality is now come in Christ.

Paul also warns against the ascetic Gnostics whose fascination with angelic beings and denial of the flesh was another system competing for the hearts of the believers in the church.

Colossians 2:18 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.  20 If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, 21 “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” 22 (which all refer to things destined to perish with the using) – in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?

• The Gnostics believed that all physical matter was inherently evil and that God who was pure, was unable to directly interact with the earth or its inhabitants.
• Based on this view, they pictured God creating an agent who in turn caused a series of creatures to exist, each one more physical and therefore more evil than the last until one was able to create and interact with the earth and mankind.
• This brand of Gnostic was ascetic and used extreme privation of the body as the means of escaping the evil influence of the body, its desires and earthly matter.
• Paul tells the believers to stop listening to the crazy talk and focus on Christ.

The conclusion of chapter 2 is that Paul warns them against being influenced by Jewish believers who will insist that they continue to follow the Mosaic Law and by the ascetic Gnostics who will insist that they deny themselves any of the normal pleasures of life.

Paul says, “Do not allow either of these religious systems to judge you or influence you.”

In chapter 3, he begins with an emphasis of our position in Christ and because our life is hidden in Christ who sits at the right hand of God-Father, we should pursue the things of heaven and focus our minds on the things of Christ in His heavenly position.  He says our life now is there with Christ, not here on the earth and so we are to not focus on the things of the earth like dietary rules or ascetic extremes, both of which deal with denying the human body.  Then, he discusses the other brand of Gnosticism that said since the body was evil and separate from the soul, it didn’t matter what you did with your body, so indulge your most extreme desires as you wish.

Colossians 3:5-7 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.  6 For it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come, 7 and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.

• This is where these believers used to live, in the sphere of these lust trends and sins and this is the life they practiced.  Now that they were saved and no longer lived in this sphere of people, they were to consider their earthly members as dead when they imagined using them to commit these sexual sins.  It is possible that he is even referring to the pagan rituals of using sex as part of their religious rituals.

In 3:8-10, the passage of immediate interest, he begins by using the adverb nuni, meaning “now.”

“Now” in contrast to “then” when you lived in those things.  Now that you are saved and your life is hidden in the sphere of Christ and not in the sphere of these sex laden religious views, lay aside this next category of sins that deal with our relationships.  The sins listed in 3:8-9 are mental and verbal sins that occur in intimate relationships, such as different types of anger and sins of the tongue that come from our anger at others.

3:8 – but now put aside also – de is the connector and kai means also, in addition to the sins mentioned in 3:5.

3: ‑ 8 put away – apotithemi – aorist, middle, imperative – place away from you; put off, the same word in Ephesians 4:22 to put off the old-man.

The aorist imperative is the strongest of the commands in the Greek.  It is a hut-to, command meaning do-it and do-it now.  When Paul uses the aorist imperative he means business and intends that these believers take action.

3:9 – stop lying – me pseudomai ‑ present, middle, imperative – the negative me + present imperative can mean to stop an action already in progress.

Paul gives a similar command in Ephesians 4:25 when dealing with the same subject of the old-man and new-man.  Now it might have been that Gentiles in the ancient world were notorious liars and benders of the truth so that he had to command them to stop telling untruths to one another but I think not.  I believe the reference here is to pretending with one another, wearing the mask with one another, where out of old-man motivation to look good to others, everyone was presenting the cleaned up version of their self to others rather than being honest with one another about the real struggles they were each having trying to put off their old-man lifestyle.

Al Rosenblum translates 3:9 – stop pretending with one another.

3:9 – having put off the old-man – apekduomai aorist, middle, participle – literally, to strip off clothing; figuratively, to take off old-man beliefs.

The action of the aorist participle occurs prior to the action of the main verb, which is “stop pretending” in verse 3:9.

3:9 ‑ stop pretending with one another since you have already taken off the old-man.

• The aorist tense indicates the time of action (prior to the command to stop pretending) and kind of action (punctilliar – a point in time indicating a previous point in time).
• The previous point in time was the point of salvation when the old-man was positionally taken off and rendered dead, crucified with Christ.

3:9 – with his practices – praxis – habitual doings; normal behaviors that the old-man does in the sphere of life in which he lives.

• At the point of salvation, these believers had separated themselves from their normal public connections and ceased to practice some of their previously accepted behavior.
• It is clear that they had not ceased all old-man behavior since we have the admonitions of 3:8-9.
• They had stopped practicing some old-man behaviors and I would suggest that they had ceased from the more obvious and public sins like the ones listed in 3:5.

Notice that Paul says to consider their bodies to be dead to these sins and not to stop practicing them like he does with the relationship sins, indicating a difference in their practice of the sins in 3:5 and the relationship sins of 3:8-9.

3:9 stop pretending with one another since you have taken off the old-man with his more obvious behaviors.

3:10 ‑ having put on – enduo aorist, middle, participle – to put on; literally, to dress oneself; figuarively, to put-on the new-man.

The action of the aorist participle occurs before the action of the main verb to “stop pretending.” Both taking off the old-man and putting on the new-man are actions that had already occurred (both are aorist participles) when Paul commanded them to put away the relationship sins and to stop pretending with one another.

• Time of action – prior to the action of the main verb – stop pretending.
• Kind of action – punctilliar – a point in time – point of salvation.
• Notice that the only points in time of significance in the Christian life are the point of salvation and the point of death.

3:10 ‑ the new-man – neos – new with reference to time and the neos is superior to the old.

The new-man is new in relation to time meaning that the capacities given to the Church Age believer were new in human history.  Never before had these kind of abilities been given to any human being, the ability to think, feel, speak and behave like Christ.

3:10 – the one being renewed – ho anakainoo – to be made new in quality, superior.

The process of being made new in our beliefs.  Having positionally taken off the old-man and put on the new-man with his new spiritual capacities, the new-man can be programmed with the belief system of the One who created him.

3:10 ‑ unto complete knowledge – eis epignosis – with the goal of full knowledge.

Renewal is only accomplished by obtaining full knowledge.

3:10 ‑ according to the image – eikon – the manifestation.

eivkwn

1)   as an artistic representation, such as on a coin or statue image, likeness (Matthew 22:20).

2)   as an embodiment or living manifestation of God form, appearance (Colossians 1:15).

3)   as a visible manifestation of an invisible and heavenly reality form, substance (Hebrews 10:1).

The new-man is renewed into the image of his creator.

3:10 ‑ the one having created him – aorist, active, participle – to create in the same sense as the Hebrew word bara – the creation of something out of nothing.

The new-man is the product of the creative power and genius of God.  As He created the universe out of nothing, He created the new-man out of nothing that already existed in the soul of the new believer.  God created these new capacities to relate to God, to understand and apply spiritual concepts that unbelievers are unable to do.

Conclusions

1.  Taking off of the old-man and putting on the new-man occur at a point in time based on the aorist tense of the participles in 3:9-10.

• I suggest that the point in time in view is the point of salvation.

2.  Notice that the emphasis is placed on the ceasing of old-man behaviors rather than when the old-man was taken off or the new-man put on.

• The main verbs carry the main ideas with the participles giving us secondary ideas surrounding the main verbal ideas.
• Paul could have easily placed more emphasis on the old-man new-man by using different verbal structures like he does in Ephesians 4:22-24.
• Ephesians 4:22-24 Paul uses a series of infinitives indicating the purpose of the teaching they had received about their relationship with Christ.

3.  The Colossians passage deals with the subject based on its positional aspects and the Ephesians passage discusses it from an experiential view.

• The Colossians 3 passage uses aorist participles to show the prior taking off – putting on.
• The Ephesians 4 passage discusses the subject from an experiential aspect using a series of infinitives (purpose/result) to show the purpose of the teaching they had been given.

4.  The only real, existing entities in the analogy are the souls of the believers and the 2 systems of influence, but the analogy requires us to flesh it out with all its parts.

• The soul yielded to the influence of the body’s sinful nature (OSN) is the old-man – the soul using the old, previous way of thinking before we knew Christ.
• The soul yielded to the influence of the Bible and God the Holy Spirit is the new-man – the soul using the new way of thinking.
• If we have an old-man and a new-man then we picture a person who is the old and a different person who is the new.
• The person who is the old-man is under the influence of his sinful nature (OSN).
• The person who is the new-man is under the influence of God.

So, we have a person who has a soul that is yielding to a system of thinking, either the old system, i.e., old-man or yielding to the new system, i.e., the new-man.

Eldridge says it well in this one.

I Hate Valentine’s Day
Love & War part 1: He Said
by John Eldredge

“My soul finds rest in God alone…”
(Psalm 62:1)

This week’s devotional is from Love & War by John and Stasi Eldredge.

I hate Valentine’s Day. There, I said it.

Most of the guys reading this just thought, “Yes! I can’t believe he said that.”

Most of the women just thought, “What a jerk! I can’t believe he said that.”

But it’s true. I hate Valentine’s Day. Stasi loves it; it’s one of her favorite holidays. (God, what are you thinking?!) I hate being told, “Today, you will be romantic.. Today, you will be amazing. Today, you will ‘Get It All Right.’ And tonight, you will arrange for one of the most romantic evenings you two will have this year. Tonight, sex will be on a level with the Hallelujah chorus. Hollywood will have wished they had filmed this day.

Who wants to live under that kind of pressure?

The rule of human nature seems to be this: The harder you push, the more the heart flees. The more we demand the heart show up, the more it disappears. We may try to Get It All Right, out of fear or guilt (like most guys on Valentine’s Day), or maybe even out of a desire to be good. But that is not the same as loving.

So I find myself dreading the approach of Valentine’s Day. Can I pull it off? Will she be happy? And now we’ve got a culture crazed with the upgrade of everything. Dinner and a card used to be a home run. That sounds so blasé these days, like you barely even gave it a thought. Now you have got to make it an all day. We have blown this day way out of proportion. It has taken all the fun out of it.

And the truth is, women feel the pressure, too – the pressure to be beautiful, the pressure to have just the right earrings to go with the right dress, the pressure to have the perfect hair – to achieve “sexy” without tipping over into “skanky.” A woman feels the pressure to make all the right conversation, not to order too much at dinner, and certainly don’t eat it all. And a woman feels the sexual pressure coming – either to offer sex “because it’s Valentine’s Day” or because she wants to win her man.

Real romance doesn’t work like that.

Romance seems to happen not because you have turned your google-eyed attention to romance, but because the two of you are focused on other things – a beautiful fall day leads to a spontaneous walk in the woods.. An evening out “just because” becomes lovely after the two of you stumble on a great little restaurant.

Romance requires free hearts.

Pressure, on the other hand, kills everything it touches.

I don’t think most of us have any idea how much pressure we bring to our marriages.

There is the pressure one of you feels from the other “to be happy.” Usually because somebody’s childhood wasn’t all that happy and they can’t bear the threat of unhappiness in the marriage, or because we deeply believe that If you’re not happy it’s because of me. The message comes across loud and clear: “Do not be unhappy.” The spouse feels the unnamed pressure and comes to resent it.

Christian couples feel the added pressure to have a model marriage, to be a “witness” to our families and neighbors. Therefore nothing can ever be wrong. We’ve got to present a good face to the world. We feel the pressure to pray together, to have family devotions, and to love going to church. We feel the pressure to be “Christ-like” in our marriages – and since none of us are even close to that level of sainthood, we feel a lot of guilt and shame. But we feel compelled to hide all that because, after all, we are Christians.

There is the pressure – and how bizarre is this, really – that someone love you. Of course we want to be loved. Of course it hurts when we feel we are not loved, especially by the closest person in our life. But insisting that someone love you is like telling a fawn you have just seen slip into the woods to “Come Back Out,” or commanding a hummingbird to land on your finger and “Stay There.”

And then there is the Biggest Pressure Of All – the pressure we feel to make each other happy. After all, this marriage is supposed to make me happy. Right?

The human heart has an infinite capacity for happiness and an unending need for love, because it was created for an infinite God who is unending love. The desperate turn is when we bring the aching abyss of our hearts to one another with the hope, the plea, “Make me happy. Fill this ache.” And often out of love we do try to make one another happy, and then wonder why it never lasts.

It can’t be done. You will kill yourself trying.

We are broken people, with a famished craving in our hearts. We are fallen, all of us. It happened so early in our story, back in the Garden of Eden, that most of us don’t even realize it happened. But the effects of the Fall are something we live with every day.

Every woman now has an insatiable need for relationship, one that can never be filled. It is an ache in her soul designed to drive her to God. She aches for intimacy, to be known, loved, and chosen. It also explains her deepest fear – abandonment.

Men face a different sort of emptiness. We are forever frustrated in our ability to conquer life (Genesis 3:17-18). A man aches for affirmation, for validation, to know that he has come through. This also explains his deepest fear – failure.

Now, take these fears, brokenness, and this famished craving, throw them together into the same house and lock the door. What ensues is the pain, disappointment, and confusion most people describe as their marriage. But what did you expect?

Of course you are disappointed; your spouse is disappointed, too. How can we possibly be enough for one another? Two broken cups cannot possibly fill one another. Happiness flows through us like water through a volleyball net.

Your unhappiness – and your spouse’s – means you both have a famished craving that only God can meet.

You have to have some place you can turn. For comfort. For understanding. For the healing of your brokenness. For love. To offer life, you must have life. And you can only get this from God.

Trying to sort your way through marriage without God in your life is like trying to be gracious when you are utterly sleep-deprived. At some point, you lose your ability to be kind; you lose all perspective.

We live in a great love story, set in the midst of war. The great and terrible clash between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness continues. They are fighting for the human heart.

Jesus is the hero of this love story and we are His Beloved. So the greatest gift you can give to your marriage is for you to develop a real relationship with Jesus Christ, where you are finding in God the life and love your soul so desperately needs.

This Week
Ask the Lord to show where you have put pressure on yourself and your spouse to be enough to satisfy the craving in your soul, then ask Him to meet you there so that you can know the rest that is found in Him alone.

Prayer
“Lord, help me to have such a powerful relationship with you that I can give and receive love freely, without the pressure to be or need to demand from others that which only You can provide.”

For the last 11 Sunday evenings 7-9 PM, I have been working with Dr. Jim Brettell using Webex, a program that creates an internet classroom. Listeners sign into Webex on the internet and are able to listen to Dr. Brettell and I discuss Christian Spirituality, with an emphasis on taking off our Old Man. The bible uses the term Old Man to indicate the habitual, sub-conscious beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviors that every human being developed in their life before Christ. Many of the articles on this site discuss our old way of life. The following link takes you to a page on Dr. Brettell’s website where you will find links to all 11 audio recordings of our sessions.

If you are serious about understanding why you can know the truth but be unable to fully implement it into your life, why you try with all your might to be and do what the bible commands, but still find yourself giving in to old patterns of behavior, then these sessions are a place to begin a journey that will open your eyes to the difficult reaalities of the spiritual war. I encourage you to listen to these 11 sessions, to read the articles you find there and here so you can develop the spiritual strength and maturity to live a life that is compatible with the Lord Jesus Himself. I wish you well on your journey to intimacy with God, the sweetest experience available in this life and the next.

http://brettell.org/webex.htm

This is the third article in the recent discussion of  the Old Man – New Man

Biblical Terminology
The terms Old Man (self) and New Man (self) found in the bible refer to the person we were in our old life without Christ and then our new life after salvation. The terms are not actual as if we were a different person before salvation and another after we trusted in Christ. The terms are personifications that describe our personal characteristics, our beliefs, our ideas, our relational strategies and behaviors before Christ and afterward. When Paul, who alone uses the terms, refers to the old self (Rom 6:6, Eph 4:22) he is thinking about our whole lifestyle before salvation. When he talks about the new self, he is thinking about our different lifestyle after salvation. This article will delve deeper into the old and new selves by discussing the beliefs, ideas and emotions we develop and use in our old life. Notice how the different pieces of the human puzzle are presented here and put together to explain why and how we are the way we are.

Sin Nature
As discussed in the previous articles, Adam’s sin has caused all of us to inherit his selfish nature. This selfish, sinful nature causes us to view our self as the center of the universe and our self-interest as the most important issue in life. We naturally put our self first above God, others and any other concern. As we grow up and build our own ideas about life, self-interest is the overriding concern in all of our beliefs. Our thoughts and feelings are controlled by selfishness and our sin nature causes us develop views that promote self above all other concerns.

Human Needs
God created Adam and Eve and in His creation He designed the human soul. We have all inherited the basic design God created in our original parents. By design, He made us all with human needs that we are compelled to have fulfilled. We experience our needs as desires. All of us hunger and long for what we need and we know that we need because all of us have wants. Our God given human needs drive us to seek others that will love us, accept us, approve of us an include us. The human soul is empty by itself and naturally seeks relationships with others to meet our needs. These God designed needs can be observed in the raw by watching young children relate to parents and peers. All human behavior can be understood and motivation traced back to the drive to meet these basic human needs.

Knowing Nothing
We begin life as babies with no knowledge, understanding, ideas or beliefs. We are born only with some basic instincts that guide us. For example, we are born with the instinct to cry when we feel need and the instinct to nurse on our mother’s breast. Almost immediately though we begin to build our own impressions about self, others and life itself. It is these earliest impressions and ideas that form the core of our own views about our self, others and about how life works. As we grow up, we build all of our beliefs on these core ideas. Additionally, our core beliefs determine how we will interpret all further life experiences. Once our core ideas are in place they control how we view life and everything we experience in life.

Stages of Development
As we progress in years, life comes in stages. It is during these stages of human development that our ideas are constructed. These stages correspond roughly to ages 0-2 years, 2-5 years, 5-12years and 12-18 years old. Each stage brings its own developmental challenges that must be mastered for a child to grow properly into the next stage. For example, the earliest stages are focused on developing the motor skills of walking and using our bodies to negotiate our world. The latter stages focus more on our mental development, relationships and the building of a worldview. The most important development in our growth is the way we learn to relate to others. The methods we learn and develop by relating to our parents are termed our relational strategies.

Life Experiences
Beginning early with the most basic issues of life we build our beliefs out of our human experiences. From the toddler stage through our teen years and beyond we form our ideas about self and others based on how we are treated, loved and nurtured. If our parents love us unconditionally, treat us kindly and discipline us fairly we develop the healthy core idea that we have intrinsic worth and expect that others will also care for us. By contrast, if we are treated harshly, loved only when we behave and disciplined with anger, we conclude that we are worth little and expect others to care only when we produce something they want. We learn how to relate by relating to our primary caregivers, developing our relational strategies based on what works with them to gain their love and approval. Whatever works with mom and dad to make them laugh, smile and praise us, we learn to use over and over. We then store these effective approaches in our inventory of ideas where they become our primary methods of relating to our peers and the opposite sex. Because we know nothing and have nothing to think with, we base all of our ideas on our immediate experiences either good or bad.

Development Summary
We are born with a nature to put self first and driven by the need for love, approval, acceptance and inclusion with others. We are born knowing nothing and having no frame of reference on which to draw accurate conclusions about how to meet our needs. We grow and develop in stages building our core beliefs first and then constructing more complex ideas upon this foundation. We build our ideas based on our primary relationships and reach our conclusions purely on the basis of how these significant others relate to us. We learn what works to induce others give us what we need and we use these methods over and over. Based purely on our own experiences with our parents and peers we build our own life views about everything in our world. Your personal opinions and views that you hold in your heart today did not form there by accident or happenstance. Your personal viewpoints were formed by choice as you interpreted your life experiences, reached your own conclusions about these experiences, believed these conclusions you reached and then used these personal conclusions as the basis of your relating and behavior in your life.

Conclusion

We believe, think, feel and behave according to the inner program running in our heart. All of the ideas we have believed and used to live our lives form this self-chosen belief system that controls our life. Driven by our needs that feel like desires within us, we pursue relationships with people using the relational strategies we learned from interacting with our parents. Growing up in stages, we built our own ideas based on what seemed to work, seemed to induce others to care and what we hope will work to get love for ourselves in the future. We are, we think, we feel and we behave the way we have chosen using the freedom of soul designed by God. The good news is that we are what we have chosen to be. It is good because if God has enabled us to choose what we will believe and we have chosen what we are, then we can also choose to change what we are. God has made us so that we can choose making us responsible and He made us so that we can change giving us opportunity.

Stay tuned for the next discussions where we will talk about how and why we feel the way we do and what God has provided so that we can think and feel like Jesus.