What's Your Ministry and Message? - Part IV

What do people say about God? Have you ever been told that God can't have anything to do with you because your sin has separated you from Him and He can't tolerate sin?

People go to great lengths in telling others about how they can have a relationship with God. But instead of being newsboys we become bread men. Instead of sharing Good News we market a product of salvation that we can hand out after people follow the steps we lay out.

In this study of 2 Corinthians 5:14-21, we come to verses 18-19.

"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation."

2 Corinthians 5:18-19

Paul has just stated that the new creation work of salvation ,that we have ALL been included in, is accomplished in Christ and now he calls us to focus on the author of salvation - "all this is from God...". God is the one who does the work of salvation - not you or me. God reconciled us to Himself through Christ. We aren't reconciled to God when we pray a prayer, when we commit our lives, when we join the church or are baptized. We WERE (past tense) reconciled to God through Jesus in His death and resurrection.

Isn't that amazing? Take a moment and soak that in. God has reconciled you to Himself. God has, through Jesus, reestablished a close intimate relationship between God and you. In Jesus, your life has already been restored to Father God. What Adam lost for you in his disobedience has been restored to you in Jesus. God is for you not against you!

This is the ministry and message God has given us, the church, to the world: "God was in Christ restoring you and the whole wide world to the Father and He doesn't hold your sins or anyone else's sins against you!"

You are forgiven! The Lamb of God has already taken away of the sins of the world. God doesn't keep a ledger sheet and He doesn't grade on a curve. Grace, grace and more grace!

The church isn't the place to dole out God or salvation. The church is the place where people, captured by the Good News of God's philanthropy, go far and wide announcing like angels (who were messengers):

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

This is the message we have been entrusted with. When was the last time you told a stranger with confidence: "God's favor rests on you. He loves you. He has forgiven you. He is well pleased with you!"?

Don't let those using sales pitches and memorized scripts selling fire insurance shame you into backing down from telling everyone you meet the Good News of God's favor in Jesus. You will here them say; "You're giving them false assurance. If they don't sign on the bottom line and commit they are an object of God's wrath."

The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who wastefully scatters seed willy-nilly everywhere and lets the seed do what it's going to do. Spread the news, plant the seed of hope and truth, water lives with grace and have a harvest celebration when one sinner wakes up to the truth - that when they were dead in their trespasses and sins God made them alive with Christ and raised them up and set them in the Father's lap.

What a message to spread!

How Do You See Me? - Part III

What lenses do you look through when you look at another person? Do you see their skin color? Do you hear their dialect? Do you observe their economic standing? Do you judge whether or not they are a beautiful person?

We all bring a pair of glasses to our relationships. We look and judge and generalize our findings into nice, neat little categories. We do this so we can esteem some and demean others. Now on this third day of teasing out II Corinthians 5:14-21, we come to verses 16 & 17:

"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! "

Paul has just stated in verse 14 that he was convinced that when Jesus died, ALL died (implicit is our participation in His resurrection, too). And, that we all need to surrender to this reality and live for Jesus and not ourselves. Now we hear Paul say that it has totally transformed the way he sees everyone. He goes so far as to state that to see someone excluded from Jesus is to have a "worldly" perspective and not a Christian (or Christ-centered) perspective.

To paraphrase Paul -"I can't look at anyone and see them apart from Jesus Christ and His all encompassing work of death and resurrection. Everyone I see was included in Christ's death and resurrection and to think otherwise is to deny His lordship - which is just what the world does and I once did, too!"

To see Jesus as He is, as Lord incarnate, is to have your prescription lenses completely overhauled which revolutionizes the way you see the world around you. To know that Jesus Christ is Lord tells you the secret (mystery is the biblical language) that is hidden in everyone you meet. It drives you... compels you... constrains you... to tell the folks you encounter the Good News of who they are in Christ.

The passage further declares that everyone is a new creation in Christ!

What? That's not what it says, Mark. Someone only becomes a new creation IF they are in Christ and you can't get into Christ unless you pray the prayer. Only after that are you included in Christ and then you are recreated and old things pass away and everything becomes new. You have to get into Christ and only the saved are in Christ.

Hold your horses, that is not what the passage states. I realize that most of us evangelicals were raised hearing the verse, "if anyone is in Christ..." on the heals of praying the prayer or extended as a promise of what is to come when and if we say the prayer, BUT just because we have always heard something doesn't make it so.

Verse 17 starts with the word "therefore" which means that everything that is about to be said hinges on the preceding thought. "Based on all that I have just said, the following is true." What did Paul just state? Who did Paul just say was in Christ dying? ALL! All are in Christ already. He states it again in Colossians 1:17:

"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

Therefore, carrying forward the Christological argument he started, he declares if the preceding is true then it stands to reason that in Christ's death and resurrection a whole new creation has been birthed in the person of Jesus. The old man was taken down in Christ and the New Man has arrived in His resurrection.

Peter echoes this in his first epistle, chapter 1:3:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead..."

How cool is that! Jesus didn't just come to do the work. He is The Work. Ephesians 2:15b-16 says:

"His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them [Jews and Gentiles] to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility."

In Jesus Christ, and through His death and resurrection, old has been destroyed and the new has been ushered in!

Do you see His new creation in you? Have you trusted in the message of truth? I know it's hard. Everything else around you says something to the contrary. The cold, hard facts of your existence tell you a different story.

But which word will you believe? The word of this world which is passing away as we speak? Or the Eternal Word, Jesus Christ, who has overcome this world and your death and has made all things new?

Tomorrow: What's Your Ministry and Message?

Those that live... Part II

Yesterday I began my discussion of II Corinthians 5:14-21 by discussing the driving force and conviction of Paul - love and the belief that ALL died in Christ. I finished the discussion by sensing that some of you may have been champing at the bits to have some folks excluded from the work of Christ. I've heard the questions before:

"Are you saying that all are saved and going to heaven?"
"Isn't that universalism?"
"So people don't have to do anything - they are saved but just don't know it?"

Now before I answer the questions that may be whirring around in your head let me digress by first asking you a few questions. What would be so bad with that if it were so? Would it thrill your heart if all in the finale got grace and mercy and not flames?

"But, Mark, the Bible doesn't leave us with that option - some are going to burn!"

OK, OK, that's fine, you can have your hell. But don't be so quick to rush there and start throwing people over the rail into the bottomless pit. God is not quick to anger or to judge and neither should we be. When our focus is on punishment and people getting their just desserts, I fear we run past love and treat it as a minor bit of sentimentality and believe somehow that we need to help God with by dabbing the corner of his eye with our tissue.

"Now, now, God, I know you are a loving God but remember you are also a wrathful and judging God and we can't let people forget that! Hurl a few lightning bolts and remind them whose boss - we don't want any spiritual slackers. Besides, fear will really get our conversion numbers up."

Let me remind you - Zeus throws lightning bolts at people he doesn't like - our Father sends His Son out of love for the world (John 3:16).

All that being said, let's get to verse 15 which states:

"And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again."

I hope this answered those questions above - there is a "should" in the discussion. Paul has just laid out his strong held conviction that Jesus' death included everyone... yes everyone.. and now he turns to our response - "Don't live for yourself but for Jesus who has redeemed you in His death and resurrection."

The statement assumes that it is possible to live for yourself instead of Jesus. As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to state that it is impossible to live for anyone but you if you dismiss Him.

The sad truth is that all of us are under the harassing assault of this world's system and it has not left us neutral or passive. It has driven us to unimaginable depths of brokenness trying to find our cure. The greedy, lustful, slothful, gossiping, cheating and killing schemes we have tried are all born out of a diseased heart, mind and soul desperately trying to save itself from death's inevitable clutch.

All our attempts are destined to fail. None will satisfy and rescue us.

"What? What's that you said?

Jesus has overcome my death?

When He died I died? When He was raised I was raised?

How can that be?

He's Lord? What does that mean?

All things, including me, are held together in Him?

What becomes of Jesus becomes of me?"

There are two possible responses:

"Yeah right! Nice try! You think you can dupe me with that stuff? I see what's ahead of me and I can handle this on my own. I don't need charity - I can do this myself. What you're after is control and I ain't giving that away. I'm the captain of this ship"

Or

"This is amazing grace that I don't deserve! God loves me that much? Where is He? I've got to tell Him thanks. What? He wants me to hang out with Him and learn how to be free indeed? Sign me up; put me down, whatever it takes. I'm His!

Our response to the Good News doesn't make it true, the Good News is already true - Immanuel. Our response just allows us to experience the fullness of the truth. The scriptural language for that is "salvation" and it is liberating! What do you get if you don't live for Him but for you? Your get your self - and whatever capabilities you have to save yourself from death.

So, back to the questions:

Q. Are you saying that all are saved and going to heaven?

A. Yes, all are saved. But no, it doesn't work that way. If heaven was just a geographical issue it would work that way, but heaven is a relational issue. To say you can have heaven without faith is like saying you can have health without taking medicine. Only those who take the Gospel medicine into their heart are healed by it - the beginning of heaven (which is relational). Those that leave the Gospel medicine on the outside of their heart are not changed by it and they are left with themselves - the beginning of hell.

Q. Isn't that universalism?

A. No. Universalism denies that there is a you in the equation. Universalism says that your will doesn't matter, and your wants will be violated. That to me is like spiritual rape.

I hope that when it is all said and done God's love will win over the hearts of everyone like it has mine, but I am doubtful. Scripture keeps showing us that there are those who don't want God's love and grace in Jesus. Sad! They perish in vain.

Q. So people don't have to do anything - they are saved but just don't know it?

A. If you're asking if we must do something to seal the deal, the answer is no - just receive, with a happy heart, the grace of God. It is finished and you were included. And yes, in a way people are already saved; they died and were raised in Jesus 20000 years ago. But ignorance isn't bliss - it's lost-ness. (Go back to the paragraph above on broken schemes.) Salvation is just life, and it begins when those saved by grace respond by faith to the truth and are set free. (Ephesians 2:4-10)

How beautiful are the feet of those who go, like Paul, with the driving force of God's love and the burning message of inclusion and Christ's accomplishment and call all people to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.

Tomorrow - How do you see me?

A Favorite Passage - Part I

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is II Corinthians 5:14-21. This week I am going to tease out my understanding of this passage and its implications for life.

"For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that
one died for all, therefore all died;" II Cor. 5:14

Paul is the author of this letter to the church in Corinth and the two things that jump out to me is motivation and conviction. Paul reveals that the motivation for his missionary zeal is the love of Christ. He has encountered in Jesus a love that blew his circuits and drove him to the uttermost parts of his world. Why does he preach? Jesus' love drives him!

Paul then gives us a glimpse into his thinking when he tells us that he has concluded something. In the NIV translation, it states that he has become "convinced". When Paul states that he has become convinced of something, I tend to take notice. What is this conclusion that he reveals?

"...having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died;"

Could this be true? Does Paul really believe this? The implications are huge! Who is the one who died for all? Jesus, of course.

I have found that most people do not have a problem accepting that Jesus died for all - unless they are of a theological persuasion that believes that "all" only means "all of a chosen few". We remember the words of John 3:16 that states that "God so loved the world" and most agree that world means world - every last person that has lived and will live, Jesus died for.

What do we do with the next conclusion of Paul's - "therefore all died"? Could he actually be saying that in Jesus death, you, me, your neighbor Earl and Kareem Abdul Jabar all died with Him in His death? How could this be? The implications are too staggering and we start to crawfish.

"No, that can't be so. He must be talking about the church... after all, he is writing to the church."

OK, let's go with that. If he is talking about only the church dying with Christ, then it is only for the church Jesus died. That ought to satisfy the Calvinists - Jesus only loves the elect and only died for the elect and only the elect died with Jesus. I don't buy it!

All means ALL! Jesus died for ALL and ALL died. This tells us something enormous about Jesus and about you, me, your neighbor Earl and Kareem Abdul Jabar. It tells us that Jesus is way bigger than we give Him credit for and there is more going on with us than we ever imagined.

Paul expounds on the amazing greatness of Jesus in the first chapter of Colossians - go read it. You can't read his letter and not conclude that Paul really believes Jesus is huge - Jesus is Lord! At the same time, you can't observe Paul's missionary zeal and conclude that he doesn't see people in a new and different light.

You can see why I like this passage, it has the potential to upend the sock drawer of our neat little conclusions and scatter our exclusionist socks all over the floor. But then again, it seems that when we encounter Jesus he does just that. He overturns our tables and calls for a thorough cleansing of our temple - His temple - and our lives will never be the same. When we meet this Jesus and believe this Jesus, it changes the way we relate to Him, yourself and others.

I know what some of you are thinking. Your "yeah, but's" are starting to explode. You are reeling at the notion of everyone being "in". You want to make sure that some get left out in the cold (or heat).

I'll talk more about this tomorrow, after all, I have a whole week to blog and I have only touched on the first verse.

Too Salty!

Saturday night Robin and I went to see the latest James Bond movie - Casino Royale - and had a great evening... except the popcorn. I took out a second mortgage for a small bag of popcorn and a 20 ounce bottle of water.

As I watched the 15 minutes of previews (actually one of my favorite parts of the movie experience) I dove into my bag of popcorn, "Boy! This is some salty popcorn!" I said to my wife. I kept eating.

I don't know why I do that, but I kept working my way through the bag of super-salty popcorn until... until... I bit into one piece of popcorn that must have been rolled and battered in salt. Ughhhhh!

"Where's the water!? Give me a few Raisinettes to balance me out!" That was a close call.

As I reflected later on my experience, I thought about how the Scriptures tell us to be salt in this world. Salt that flavors and adds to the experience of life and brings out the mystery of Christ hidden in this creation and waiting to be revealed. BUT...

How many times are we too salty and instead of whetting the appetite of unbelievers for the sweet flavor of Christ, we turn them off with a choking glob of self-righteousness? When we go overboard, all we do is compel the world to go on a low or no sodium diet.

Be salty and yet be careful to not stump your toe when flavoring your relationships with your relationship with Christ.

Something

"I'm sorry, I already have something on my calendar."

Do you ever wish you could respond that way truthfully when someone asks you to do something that you would rather not do? Do you find that time you wish you could carve out for yourself or your family always gets dumped to satisfy someone else's request?

Here is an easy solution! Go through your calendar and determine what times and dates you want to set aside for you or your family and in that space write - "Something".

When someone asks you if you can do something at that time, look at your calendar and state, "I'm sorry, I already have something on my calendar."

Problem solved.

Take, Bless, Break, Give - Part IV

Give - Jesus gave the bread to His disciples.

Jesus takes what we bring to the table, blesses it, breaks it and gives it away to the world.

Most of my life I thought that my Christian journey was about my ability to perform the Christian disciplines that I had been taught. Efforts to produce the fruits of the Spirit always seemed to fall short and never flowed from the center of who I am. The continual effort to manufacture this Christian life only led me to the place of frustration and despair.

I remember coming to the place of being sick and tired of being a hypocrite and in essence telling God that I would get back to Him when I could muster up enough faithfulness and commitment to follow through on my end of the deal.

In essence I was a functional Unitarian. Yes, Jesus had saved me from my sins BUT it was my responsibility to hammer out my personal relationship with the Father and earn his approval and please him with my demonstrated devotion. I was a failure!

I was given a book by C. Baxter Kruger, Ph.D. - God is For Us - and in that book Baxter talked about the vicarious humanity of Christ - ministering in us and on our behalf. It shook me to the core - I wept! Christ in me the hope of glory!

The word that jumped out at me was participation. Participation not performance is the way of Christ. He takes my failing life, blesses and offers it as His sacrifice, breaks and transforms it and gives it to the world. Christ (everything) is working through me (nothing) to do what he wants to do here and now.

The idea of sharing in what God is doing - participation - so hit me that my wife said that in the middle of my sleep I would be saying - "It's about participation!"

"I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness--the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

Colossians 1:25-27

The most amazing thing about the Christian life is that Jesus shares His life and ministry with us and allows us to participate in what He is doing. As we present ourselves (just as we are!) as living sacrifices, He takes, blesses, breaks and gives us to the world and through us is the ministering Spirit of His grace to the world.

Open your eyes and ears to what God is doing in the world - in and with and through you - and give yourself freely to participate in His mealing sharing life of grace.

Take, Bless, Break, Give - Part III

Speaking of Break - I needed a break last week and took one.

Break - Jesus Broke the bread.

Not only does Jesus take what we bring - sin, brokenness and failures - and bless it - offers it to the Father for us as an appropriate offering - He also breaks it in His sacrificial death and transforms it into the currency of the Kingdom of Heaven. (Currency may not be the best word to use here but is the only one I can think of at the moment.)

The Apostle Paul said that Christ came to set free those who all their life had been enslaved by the fear of death. Kingdom life takes the best shot that sin has to offer - death - and turns it into the way that the Kingdom is advanced.

The bread, with its crusty shell, must be broken. It cannot be allowed to stay in its present state. It cannot be passed along whole and untouched and do the work that it was designed to do.

When our lives remain comfortable and untouched by brokenness, we are unable to truly touch this world of failures, faults, grief and despair. We cannot connect with those "less fortunate" and all we have to give is platitudes and self-help steps of human potential.

But what we see in Jesus is that he does not run from the cup of brokenness and he doesn't deny its pain. Jesus knew full well the extent of the bitter drink of brokenness and asked the Father to remove it from Him - if it was His will. It was not and he drank deeply from the cup of our brokenness and by His brokenness we are healed.

The quiet comfort of Emmanuel - God with Us - in our pain, brokenness, sin and failures heals us as we submit to our own death. In the same way, when we stop fighting brokenness as part of the ministry of sharing at Christ's table we are able to quietly comfort others in their pain, brokenness, sin and failures.

My dear friend Rod can minister to an alcoholic better than I can because he has drunk from that cup of brokenness and can minister as one touched by that disease. BUT... not before submitting to the brokenness of it!

He had to submit to the powerlessness of death and brokenness and let God - as He understood Him - transform his life into a sane slice of breaded humanity that God could use.

We must all submit - give ourselves freely - to the brokenness ministry of Jesus and not resist His breaking us in order that He can give us to the world as a taste of Jesus working in our midst. We are the Body of Christ that is broken for the world and given to the world that they might know the presence and fellowship of Christ in the suffering that this world offers.

If we shy away and refuse the cup, we don't have anything to share with the world but platitudes and empty promises. Our brokenness is not a sign of God forsakenness but His solidarity with us in our pain and His resurrection to new life in us.

How beautiful is a recovering alcoholic, a grieving widow, a dying cancer patient, a downsized middle manager that drinks deeply from the shared cup of Christ's brokenness and says, "not my will but your will be done."

They are now pieces of grace ready to be given to the world!

Tomorrow - Give.

Take, Bless, Break, Give - Part II

BLESS

As I mentioned yesterday, it is the material we bring to the table that Jesus uses in salvation. Five loaves and two fish are taken by the Lord and transformed into a meal with twelve baskets left over. Jesus takes what we bring and calls us to come just as we are.

But what does He do with our hodge-podge ingredients of sin and brokenness that we bring to the table? He blesses!

Our High Priest takes what we bring and offers it up to the Father as only he can do. In our name and on our behalf he takes our offerings and turns them into something right and good and usable in the economy of God's gracious work of salvation.

Have you ever played basketball? You're dribbling up court or the ball has been passed to you and there before you a shot opens up. You take aim, launch the ball toward the hoop and... and... nothing - AIR BALL! The embarrassment - the shame - you fell short of the glory of 2 more points on the board.

Rewind the tape - You're dribbling up court or the ball has been passed to you and there before you a shot opens up. You take aim, launch the ball toward the hoop and... and... on your team is Shaquille O'Neal. Your shot is still an airball but Shaq takes your airball and ALLY-OOP slam dunks it for two. Two points are registered and you go down in the record books as having an assist.

An ally-oop is nothing more than an air ball made good by the center under the goal. And the blessing of our air ball lives is that we have "Shaq-Jesus" under the hoop taking all our air balls and slamming them home to the Father for us. He succeeds with what we have to offer and it goes down graciously in the stat books of heaven as an assist.

We hear "Shaq-Jesus" say to us at His table - "I'm open! Just it throw it up and I will bless it and take it home for you!"

We often forget that it was the murdering soldiers and religious leaders who received the prayer of forgiveness from Jesus - "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they are doing." and it was their conniving actions that were used to bless the world through his death that he willingly sacrificed but that they tried to orchestrate.

They didn't take His life - He laid it down. He took their failure and used it to bless the whole wide world! The worst day of human history - the day we killed the Son of God is the very material that Jesus used to bless the world with salvation.

The worst of human air balls does not hinder Jesus from taking it and blessing it for His glory and the outworking of His Kingdom.

Jesus takes what we give Him and blesses it. Jesus takes our failures and transforms it into something that he can use... but not before breaking it.

Tomorrow!

Take, Bless, Break, Give

I'm reading a great book by Eugene Peterson (translator of The Message) entitled Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, and in this powerful book Peterson discusses how Jesus follows a similar pattern when dealing with people and meals.

"When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them."

Luke 24:30

Take - Bless - Break - Give! Jesus did this at the last supper, the feeding of the 5,000, the feeding of the 4,000 and at other times recorded in the scriptures.

Over the next several days, I will tease out these four words and the ministry of the Eucharist that Christ draws us into.

Take - Jesus took the bread!

Jesus invites us to participate in His life and what He is doing by taking what we give Him. He calls us to table fellowship (acceptance) and takes what we have as the material of salvation.

A widow's mite, five loaves and two fishes, a short man who extorts his countrymen by collecting taxes for the occupiers, a porn addiction, a kind word, an aborted child, giving to the poor, a 20 year struggle with alcohol, teaching Sunday School for 30 years, adultery, pride, religiosity, faithfulness, love, peace, feeble legs, one hundred yards rushing, divorce, marriage, success and cancer. All the material of humanity - the mixed bag of beauty and shame that we carry in ourselves is the stuff that Jesus takes from us.

The invitation to Christ's table does not come with a dress code and does not require that we bring our best - just bring what we have. It is our failures and successes that Jesus beckons us to offer and he takes it ALL!

The Lord's table has been misunderstood and abused throughout the ages. You can eat, they cannot. Are you a believer? They are too young! Have you joined the church? Do you have unconfessed sin in your life?

Don't come to the table unworthily!

The fear of defiling the table has led many to not come to the table because what they have to offer falls short of a defined grocery list of acceptable ingredients. All I can bring to the table is faithlessness, doubt, failure and sin. "I am unworthy to come to the table. My five loaves and two fish can never feed the crowd."

The early church made the mistake of turning the Lord's table into a demonstration of the "have's and have-not's" and the poor were left out while the rich gorged. Paul rebuked them and told them their actions were denying the oneness we share in Christ and denying the fact that we feast on Christ not our well-prepared meals.

I believe that we come to the Lord's table unworthily when we come to His table thinking we are worthy. Thinking that our stuff that makes it to the table is placed there because we demonstrated a spiritual culinary flare that impressed Jesus enough to say - "Now this is good home cookin', let's dig in!"

No! The reason any of our stuff makes it to the table is because Jesus takes it - Ritz crackers, fallen cakes, burnt toast and cheese souffles are the things that Jesus takes and invites to His table and begins the process of saving us with those things. But first He blesses!

We'll pick up there tomorrow.

Only As Sick As Our Secrets

We've heard it said that confession is good for the soul. It's true! However, we really don't buy it. We hide ourselves behind masks and performance to cover over our hidden shame. Like Adam and Eve, we are skilled at the art of fig-leave deflection - "Look over there! - whew, I thought you might see me."

God's call to confession is not for the purpose of beating us down and embarrassing us into straightening up and flying right. God's call to confession is in order that we might be free from the things that lurk in the shadows of our lives.

When the doctor left the dirt in my arm after I broke it, the concealment allowed the bacteria to thrive. It was anaerobic (thrives on no oxygen) and spread feverishly in the closed spaces of my arm. His attempt to spare me further pain resulted in the loss of my left hand.

Secrets of hidden shame are our attempt to spare ourselves and others from pain. The only difficulty is that it results in destruction thus leading to more pain. But why do we hide so? What is at work in us?

One of many reasons is that we have a sinful definition of sin. What? Bare with me on this one.

I really believe that sin is first and foremost a "missing the point". That, of course, begs the question - "what is the point?". The point is that we are loved with an everlasting love by a good God - Father, Son and Spirit - and that NOTHING can separate us from that love that has been demonstrated and secured in Jesus Christ. This kind of permanent, unconditional love summons us to rest, relax, abide on a day-by-day basis in the embrace of such an amazing relationship.

To miss that point (Truth as the Bible calls it) does not leave us neutral. It leads down a path of fear, pain and anxiety and into various strategies to manage that pain. Pick your poison.

What is it that you do that salves the pain of your soul? Religion, food, sex, gosssip, people pleasing, greed, adultery, pornography, drunkeness, getting high, working 18 hour days, perfectionism, TV, exercise, shopping, etc. are all possible self-management schemes to quiet the stirring pain in your soul.

Our pet strategies eventually turn on us and instead of offering relief begin to condemn us. More pain and more hiding follow and the vicious cycle continues. Because we believe we are no good, no count, worthless and disgusting we apply more and more anethestic fig leaves to the wounds and hope and pray that no one finds out what miserable wretches we are.

"If you knew me - you would see how unlovable and unacceptable I really am and you would run from the room (relationship) screaming." Secrets!

I wrote the following poem after meeting with a pastor who told me of his painful isolation and turmoil dealing with hidden sins and struggles:

Suffering in Silence

Silence is my friend
Silence is my foe
Silence -
Suffering in silence.

You would never know what I am going through, silence!
You will never know what I'm going through, silence!
Some say silence is golden and I would tend to agree
but silence is also deadly and it might be the death of me.
Silence! Suffering in Silence!

Oh, how I long to be free from this body of death
but the hands that are attached to the Body of Christ might
throw stones instead of help in healing me.
Silence! Suffering in silence!

Just to scream aloud the secrets that scream in me
and to experience embrace not another back turned from me.
Silence! Suffering in silence!

If I dared share my heart would you still look at me?
I don't think I can risk it,
So I'll be what I think you want me to be.
Silence! Suffering in silence!

Confession - the way out of Sickness

When we come to see that the root cause of our problem is our failure to rest in the unconditional love of Christ for us and that our broken strategies don't define us we become free to come out of hiding and share with others the truth of who we are and what we struggle with.

One man says - "When I lose sight of who I am in Christ I drink."
A lady says - "I forgot the truth of my acceptance and tried to gain it by tearing down my friend through gossip."
A teenager declares - "I got so afraid that I'm not loved and God isn't looking out for my future that I forced the timing of love and had sex with my girlfriend."

And together they say - we missed the point! God is good! Jesus loves us! Let us return to the Truth and be set free from our sick strategies born out of a lie.

In Him we are loved! In Him we are acceptable! In Him we are all equal.

I have a confession to make - I am a sinner that misses regularly the truth of how special I am in Christ and I medicate my pain through materialism, lust, food, control, greed, slothfulness and anger.

I need to return to the point - Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells so!

Note to self: Rest, relax, abide in His embrace!

Even More Q&A

Q. How do I get back to a point where I love my husband?

A. That is a great question, many couples face the painful awareness that they have drifted apart and no longer have those loving feelings for their spouse. At the point that it becomes obvious to you it can really scare the bejeabers out of you.

What do you do? Do you believe the Righteous Brothers and just accept that it’s gone, gone, gone, whoa? I hope not. I love that song, but it is not an accurate understanding of love.

First of all, let’s define love. I think the thing that most people are referring to when a question such as this is being raised is romantic fondness. What do I do when I no longer have romantic or emotional fondness for my spouse? Al though this is a significant aspect of love, it is not love.

Love is the act of the will to extend ones self in the best interest of another. Love is not an emotion it is action. Now things can be done and said that hurt and change our level of fondness. The scriptures say that if you want a friend you must show yourself friendly. And that goes for marriage, if a marriage is to be full of fondness and connection there must be kindness. You can’t tell your wife she is fat and expect her to warm up to you when you approach her for affection. That won’t happen.

So how do you get back? There are a couple of steps. First of all you have to do a stop-loss investigation. Just as businesses have to see where they are bleeding ink and stop the losses, couples need to take an inventory of their relational patterns and determine what is depleting them of their emotional fondness. Usually it involves a combination of criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. These areas have to be addressed in order to plug the holes in your marriage that are causing your love to leak.

After you plug the holes in your love tank. You have to invest and refill the love tank. That doesn’t mean that you then look at your spouse and say, “Well, what are going to do now to make me feel loved.” It means you say to yourself, “Well, what am I going to do to make my spouse feel loved.” The Scriptures say that where are treasures are is where our heart will be as well. We need to begin to invest in our spouse. Invest what? Loving Actions. When you invest loving actions, loving feelings will follow if you are or have worked to plug up the leaks.

What are the loving actions? Focus on what he does right rather than what he does wrong. Be quick to catch him doing “good” and express your gratitude. Talk with your husband rather than at him. What I mean is, engage in chit-chat, small talk, friendship talk that has you turning to him and sharing your life with him rather than dumping on him all your feelings and thoughts in a long drawn out monologue of pain.

Cultivate common interests. Willard Harley in his book “His Needs, Her Needs” says that husbands desire a recreational companion. You don’t have to spend every waking moment with him, but find things the two of you can do and enjoy together and watch your fondness increase.

Go to bed at the same time. It’s not for what will happen in the bed but having the time to be close and allow for times of connection. When couples don’t go to bed at the same time, they miss out on the opportunities to talk and feel close. Try not to sleep in separate beds or bedrooms. If the only time the two of you go to bed at the same time is for physical intimacy, then you will begin to feel more used than loved.

And finally, if you want to get back to the point of loving your husband or feeling fond of him. Take walks together and stay at the same pace. Robin and I, during our courting days walked all over Clinton together. We weren’t going anywhere, just wandering around connecting and enjoying each other’s company. Our love was literally built on the streets of Clinton, Mississippi. Spend the time together and watch the fires rekindle in your marriage.

So, once again, plug the holes in your love tank, then fill your love tank with loving actions and thoughts and you will find those loving feeling return, return, return, yeah, yeah, yeah..


Q. Can God actually encourage divorce?

A. My answer is “I don’t think so.” If you read throughout the scriptures you find that God’s plan and desire for all couples is to stay together in a loving, honoring relationship. When a marriage comes to a point where it has violated certain significant boundaries, God allows for divorce but I don’t think He’s saying, “I want you to get a divorce.” What God desires is repentance, a transformed life through a changed heart and mind. This transformation would lead once again to a loving, honoring marriage.

But sadly, many times one or both spouse refuses to repent and leaves the marriage with little hope of living up to God’s plans and desires. You see God struggling with this and His love relationship with Israel in Jeremiah 3. Israel was unfaithful and unrepentant in her idolatry that God label as adultery. God brokenheartedly gives Israel a certificate of divorce recognizing her heart and will and yet still calls for true repentance and offers assurances of forgiveness and love to her.

If God forbids divorce, as some say He does, he went against himself. God hates divorce, He states that in the Bible, but why? Because it does not reflect His desire and plan for us. It is always the result of someone’s hard heart and refusal to live in a way that reflects God’s life and love.

God is both Idealistic and Realistic. God puts forward His ideal life and tells us of the blessings that will flow by living in sync with His plan and He recognizes our will and is realistic in that He knows that we will all stray and bring upon ourselves the consequences for not living out the ideal. Thank God that He sent His Son, Jesus to be our salvation, for none of us are ideal, except Him and that which he has done and does is for us, giving us a share in His ideal relationship with The Father. If you are struggling with whether or not to divorce, I would encourage you to consider a few things.

First, is your relationship where it is today, because of what you have done or are doing? If so, begin the process of repentance. You may need help with that, and Christian counseling can be a resource to help you turn in the ways needed for restoration of your marriage.

If your marriage is where it is today because of your spouse and they refuse to turn and participate in the marriage in a loving, honoring way, it is not your responsibility or duty to hold them against their will. Just as God acknowledged the heart of Israel, you may have to acknowledge your spouses heart and give them a divorce. I hope that, like God, you will also show his love with the call to repentance and return and the assurance of love and forgiveness.

I have three daughters and I hate skinned knees. Why? Because I love them and hate how it hurts them. God loves us and hates divorce because it hurts us and His desire is not for us to live in pain. If you are facing the possibility of divorce, don’t rush through this, seek Godly counsel and take your time. This is a huge step and should only be the last step after all attempts for repentance and reconciliation have been tried.

More Q&A

Q. What do I do when my husband wants me to forgive him and drop an issue but in order to do so I need to talk through it first?

A. Many times it is hard to move on with an issue until things are sorted out and we have a sense that things will change.

For many guys it is hard to discuss things and you may hear him pull the FIDO maneuver –you know - Forget It and Drive On. But it may seem next to impossible to drop something if you feel that the two of you haven’t arrived at a consensus.

I know this is a generalization but ladies tend to be consensus builders. Their conversations are peppered with, “Don’t you agree?” or “Do you see what I’m saying.” You are used to entering into conversations with other ladies and working hard to hear each other’s points. You look to share an experience if you will.

Guys use language for a totally different purpose, to gain position. Here’s another generalization, but men tend to use conversations to win and one up. That’s why when a group of guys are standing around telling war stories or jokes you will hear things like, “You think that’s bad, wait till you hear this...” or “You think that’s funny, get a load of this…” Positioning is occurring in these encounters.

For your husband he may feel as though you are trying to gain a “one-up” position over him and make him look bad. Something men tend to avoid. That’s is why you will probably hear him say, “ I said I’m sorry. What else do you want from me?”

Now you may say that is ridiculous but it won’t help you work things out with your husband. Accepting the way things are and then learning to work with what you have is the way forward. Remember, Judo doesn’t work by blocks but by taking ones movement and direction and using that energy to move them where you want to go. I’m not talking about being manipulative, I’m saying you have to work within the framework of what works.

Let’s face it, you want to discuss the issue for a couple reasons, the primary one being security. You have been hurt and you want some level of assurance that he understands what you have gone through and won’t hurt you in the same way again. So the way forward is your attempt at consensus building. Instead of hitting your head against the FIDO wall, I suggest you take another approach.

Gary Smalley has some great resources on communication and he recommends using words pictures. This works cross-gender in both directions, but men tend to respond exceptionally well to this approach. If you tell him a story that communicates your experience, you will have a much better chance of him hearing you, considering your feelings and remembering. Just think, much of Jesus’ teaching was in parables or word pictures.

Let me give you an example:
Maybe you have worked hard all week to get things in order just so you can have free time with your husband. Although the two of you haven’t discussed it, your hopes are to spend time together doing something special or just goofing off. Without asking he calls you Friday afternoon and tells you he’s invited a coworker and his wife over Saturday to cook out on your new deck. Your crushed, you feel so excluded and disrespected. He didn’t ask you or consider your plans; he just assumed you would be up for his plans.

You bring it up to him and he gets mad, says something about calling off the cookout, you say no, the two of you tensely entertain on Saturday and as the night progresses he warms up to you. After the guests are gone, and the house is put back into some form of tidiness, he snuggles up to you in bed and you are tense and hurt. He asks what’s wrong, you begin to tell him, and he blurts out, “I’m sorry!” and expects you to be filled with glee and give him a huge kiss. It ain’t happening! You need to process and all you get are his sighs.

Happens all the time. But how do you use a word picture? Here goes one:

“Honey what if you worked all week knowing if you got the big project completed you were going to receive an all expenses paid round of golf at your favorite golf resort with your best friend. And after having busted it, you finally pulled it off and on the way home to pack, you get a phone call and are told by your boss, things had come up and they decided to give that bonus to someone in accounting. How would you feel? What would you do?”

It is at this time you let him talk and after he responds, you say simply, “That’s how I felt this weekend when I worked hard this week to play with my best friend only to have my bonus given to your coworker.”

Then it is important to add the following, “I think this is how I contributed to the problem. I never told you what I was working for; I just assumed and didn’t discuss it with you.”

Now drop it, don’t try to point out what he did wrong, you did in the story. Let the story work and by acknowledging your part in the problem and not his, his defenses aren’t as peaked and he is more inclined to look at what he did wrong.

Stories will get you heard, don’t look for consensus, look for communication and word pictures will translate.

Q&A

Q: Mr. Simpson, I was listening to your online "Help I have a Teenager" and I have a different dilemma than most parents. I've been smoking pot with my son and feel so guilty that he has no respect for me now. What should I do?

A: First of all, good for you that you are taking steps to make amends for past unwise decisions. That is the hardest step!

Your son has looked for you to set limits and you have not done so. It will take a lot of work to rectify this situation. I always say it would have been a lot easier to have kept Saddam out of Kuwait than to kick him out later. You have a battle on your hands.

For starters, you stop smoking pot. You can only lead when you have moral authority. You may have to say, "Son, I was wrong and I let you down but I am going to change that." It is at that point you have to stop feeling guilty for past mistakes and do what you needed to do all along - be the parent.

You would probably benefit from some professional help to get the car back on the road and out the ditches. You can always give us a call at 601-924-3311

Q: How do you get a spouse to open up and speak after they get angry and stop speaking?

When a spouse stops speaking during or after a conflict it probably means that they are experiencing a great deal of pain emotionally. There is actually a term for that behavior – it’s stonewalling. Stonewalling occurs when you someone feels someone feels so overwhelmed by their experience that the only thing they know to do is survive, and survival comes by hiding behind a great wall. Men will tend to stonewall when they are angry, physiologically distressed and feel inadequate. Research shows that men experience greater physiological distress by conflict than do women.

Women tend to stonewall when they feel unsafe and ill equipped to argue with their husband, who may be using his quote “logic” to run the conversation. Either way, stonewalling shuts down all things.

So what do you do? For starters, take a break. Usually a 30-minute time out will help the situation settle and allow the body to resume to its normal level of functioning. Secondly be gentle. If you saw the movie, The Two Towers in the Lord of The Ring series, you may recall the scene where The Fortress Helms Deep is being attacked by the dark forces. The feelings of despair inside the fortress intensifies as the attackers begin to use their tactics to either scale the wall or blow a hole in it. Emotionally that may be what your spouse feels when you are attempting to get them to open up once they have begun stonewalling.

You cannot fight or pry your way into your spouse’s Helms Deep, this will be experienced as an attack and will only serve to intensify the stonewalling. Instead, after the time out, come gently to your spouse and try and enter through the gate without any hidden weapons or zingers. Come in peace.

Honor the wall and say something like this, “I notice you have shut me out and that says to me that our argument was painful for you. I also realize that closing off is your way of trying to protect yourself and our relationship, thank you. Would you share with me what it is that is troubling you and maybe we can find a better way through this keeps us connected and has both of us winning.

This is not an easy task, but it is necessary. When stonewalling is present often, take it seriously. John Gottman labels it as one of the Four Horseman of the marital apocalypse.
You may want to consider seeking marital counseling if your attempts to enter in through the gate are not successful, because self-protective stances are probably pretty entrenched and over time they will only be fortified.