Demystifying Mystery

I’d like to say something about mystery which has long been a tension point in my heart and is just now beginning to get resolved. In the context of this “life in the Spirit” I’ve been enjoying, I can almost feel the veil lifting off my eyes and I can see what was clearly there the whole time. That’s why I’m writing this: because when I say these things you might shrug your shoulders and say “sure sounds biblical enough” but if you ask yourself if you really believe this in your heart you may feel a bit fuzzier… maybe because it doesn’t “ring true” with your experience. But I’d encourage you to search the scriptures on this. You may find as you do, your belief changes; and then over time, your experience.

I’d like to propose that many of us have misunderstood the tension of mystery and revelation in the bible. Many Christians feel it is an expression of humility to confess “how little I really know” when it comes to ultimate truth and reality. This matches with common wisdom: “The older I get, the more I know how little I know.” And why shouldn’t this be true of God? God is so great and we are so small, that our ability to really fathom His attributes and will must be small indeed! 

But I think this is a mistake. Taken to the extreme, you might think some Christians have embraced a strange agnosticism. We believe it is virtue to stand in the tension of unsearchable mystery and never aspire to levels of revelation which are considered unattainable. The tragedy is that in our devotional zeal, we apply this “embrace of tension and mystery” to our understanding of God’s love and His will in Christ. It makes its way into our songs and liturgies: “I’ll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross.” May I suggest that our embracing such an attitude bears itself out in apathy more often than real devotion? What we understand defines what we do. And if we embrace a lack of understanding, our actions won’t be much different than folks who may not know Christ at all.

In the Old Testament, a reverential embrace of mystery was more appropriate. The will of God was mysterious to the Jews. Why? Because it had not yet been revealed in Christ. In some who walked by faith, the realities revealed in the new covenant were pointed to, but not fully understood. “They only saw them and welcomed them from a distance” (Heb 11:13).  So Solomon (who lived under tremendous revelation) would say things like, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; But the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (Pr 2:2). In other words, only people of certain wisdom and anointing could search out the deep things of God. But even in the old covenant, Moses understood that revelation was required for obedience. So, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”

I recently studied the occurrence of the word “mystery” in the New Testament. Here’s what I found: there is still mystery which we live under, even now. But, in the New Testament any mention of ongoing mysteries generally refer to things which have not yet occurred: primarily the “Day of the Lord”. Those things remain hidden for the time being. However, I would argue that every other passage pertaining to mystery in the New Testament (there are about 35) discusses it in the context of what has been revealed to everyone who is in Christ and who knows him through His Spirit who lives in us. God doesn’t want us to revel in the mystery of his unknowability. He wants us to know Him!

Exhibit A:

“With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment —to sum up all things in heaven and on earth under Christ” (Eph 1:9)

So there was a mystery surrounding his will in Christ. But this mystery has been revealed. To who? To us! To regular old believers. What is this great revealed will? The summing up of all things in Christ. Jesus wants all things, all wills subjected under his perfect will. “And when all things have been subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will be made subject to Him who put all things under Him, so that God may be all in all” (1 For 15:28). In this great truth we see a picture of the goodness and grace of God’s sovereign will that “even angels longed to look into” (1 Pet 1:12). What incredible revelation we have! What amazing truth is available to us! We don’t need to be brilliant to grasp these truths. Quite the opposite, we must approach them as little children! But to say they are unknowable (or only partially knowable) is like saying that the storyline of “Breaking Bad” is unknowable just because I haven’t taken the time to go binge watch all 6 seasons on Netflix.

I’m not saying this revelation has been equally grasped by every believer. I AM saying that true revelation is available to every believer and so much more of it that than most of us have dreamed possible! I’ve been rereading the bible in the last couple years and I’m blown away by one single fact: for the most part, it actually makes sense to me! 

One wonderful expression of God’s wonderful knowability is Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians: that they “may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:18-19)

Why would Paul pray that the Ephesians might understand the full dimensions of Christ’s love if such knowledge was unattainable? Why not pray “that you may worship God for his love which is deeper than you can ever really grasp?” And what would happen if we DID grasp the full measure of His love? Well, Paul says, then we would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God! I want that. I want the fullness of God, don’t you? Even though Paul freely confesses that this love “surpasses knowledge” he doesn’t say it can’t be grasped on a deeper level.

So how do we come by this Spirit of Revelation so that we might go deep in our understanding of God’s love, his attributes, his will, and his heart for us? It turns out, the answer is right under our noses. 

“These are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.”

Praise God! He has made himself understandable! He renews our minds and our whole lives follow suit! Can you taste it? Real transformation, real love, real understanding. It’s there, and God is eager for His people to lay hold of the revelation that is freely theirs in Christ! Woohoo!

I’m convinced that the great battle is not a battle for our circumstances, our emotions, or even our spirits, but rather a battle for our minds. What we think (read: believe) shapes everything. The good news is that when we start connecting with Jesus, our thinking changes. Sure does! And when our thinking changes, our experience of God soon follows suit. And on it goes.

I wish I could communicate what a joy it has been to bask in the truth of God’s zealous passion for self-disclosure, His absolute consuming desire to be truly known. It’s so good.

Here are a couple recommendations for you if the bible feels dull or confusing or if the Christian life feels unapproachable or overwhelming.

1. Consider that God is not grading you on your discipline, your sincerity, or your effort. He loves you. Period. And any desire on His part to draw you deeper into the life of Christ is purely a desire to give you a gift which will grow into enduring delight and rich fruit to be enjoyed by the whole world. He doesn’t want to “use” you. He wants live in you, to put heaven into your heart now, and to do wonderful things through you by giving you the very mind of Christ.

2. I’m enjoying a wonderful old book right now called “The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life” by Hannah Whitall Smith. Her perspective is simple, refreshing, and colored by an obviously deep friendship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. https://smile.amazon.com/Christians-Secret-Happy-Reflect-Classics/dp/1433649993/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1535591551&sr=8-2-spell&keywords=secret+to+a+happay+life

3. Consider that the source of false belief and unbelief is often rooted in emotional (not rational) beliefs acquired through emotionally painful experiences. Such things are received experientially. Healing is also experiential: Through counseling, through community, through worship, through prayer, etc. I’m particularly fond of two programs/approaches. To uncover, understand, and address childhood pain (emphasis on grieving and forgiveness): http://restoringyourheart.com/ …And to address specific traumatic memories with the (extremely effective) help of the real presence of Jesus: https://www.immanuelapproach.com/

God bless you on the journey!

How to Get Ruined by Jesus' Love

Song of Solomon is one of those books I’ve never quite known what to do with. In my tattered and underlined old bible, the pages of this wisdom book are surprisingly clean. Though I knew on some level that Song of Solomon is an prophetic allegory for Christ’s relationship with the Church and with individual believers more specifically, it always makes me a bit queasy saying things like “let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” in regards to my relationship with Jesus.

But recently I’ve started meditating on Song of Solomon line by line, placing myself in the character of beloved. I’m asking the Spirit of Christ to illuminate each phrase in regard to my relationship with Him. As I do, I’m finding two realities that move cross-current against evangelical sensibilities.

1. Jesus is far more in love with His people than we ever imagined. Listen to what he speaks over his bride

“You have stolen my heart, my sister my bride. How delightful is your love , my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice!”

“How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves.”

“You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.”

Though Jesus, allegorically cast in the character of Solomon rides majestically up from dessert surrounded by columns of smoke and 60 fierce warriors, when he reaches his beloved, he can barely keep his composure. Uncomfortable as it is for us confess, you and I make Jesus’s heart race and his knees quiver.

But we think that’s all too close, too intimate for Jesus to relate to us in that way. Jesus loves us, of course. But He is also mighty and exalted isn’t he? Sure He loves us a lot, but is it really appropriate to say that Jesus is our lover, ruined by his romantic affection for broken sinners like us? Like Peter, we don’t want to see Jesus coming down to our level to wash our feet, to wash us with his loving words. We distance ourselves from his affection in the name of protecting his dignity. But Jesus won’t have his bride any other way. So Jesus says to his friend, “except I wash you, you can have no part/share/inheritance in me.”

2. We are more beautiful than we ever imagined. All through the book, you see the bridegroom speaking his pleasure over his beloved, praising her beauty. And the bride struggles to embrace her identity. Yet the things she says of herself might be considered vain if they were not simply agreeing with the words of the lover: “Dark am I yet lovely,” she says in a half-hearted attempted to agree with what He says about her. Yet when she can begin to embrace her identity and beauty in the eyes of her lover (and many of the things he adores in her are actually things he himself gave her) she can say confidently, “Why should I be like a veiled woman beside the flocks of your friends?”

In other words, she knows she’s the Shephard’s beloved and that it is her right to connect with Him directly. She’s not a prostitute or concubine who can only connect with her lover in some distant or second-hand way like through a priest or lesser shepherd. “I am my beloved’s and He is mine.” She knows they belong together in direct and unninterupted union because she has begun to receive His words of affection for her.

In the church, we’ve become so strong in our teaching of original sin, that we’ve started to actually deny the heart of Jesus for us. We’ve developed “worm” theology that is more interested in how bad we are than how good God is! Of course God knows the darkness and pervasive nature of sin and death that works corrosively in all human beings. That’s why He sent his son to die and rise and ascend and deploy the Holy Spirit to indwell us! But God also sees the glory of His image reflected in us and it makes his heart long for us, broken as we are. 

And for those of us who are in Christ, he sees the flawless beauty of the gift of his grace at work in us as well. To be clear, it is all grace. But even when we struggle, he looks at us and sees us perfect in Him. God, standing sovereignly outside of time always sees our matured and perfected selves standing clothed in Christ before him. This may not be our present experienced reality. But it is God’s reality. 

So in this sense, there really can be “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” because the sin that lived in our flesh was condemned and executed on the cross. What is left is a ravishing, resurrected bride who is seen as “altogether lovely”. Jesus didn’t die for a worm. He died for a priceless bride who has stolen his heart. Of course this is hard for us to believe. But when we do, we come into the inheritance of uninterrupted joyful union with Him and that makes all the difference.

The 180-degree turn of repentance doesn’t start with a change in lifestyle but a change in belief. Reading Song of Solomon is forcing me to repent of my unbelief in the love of Christ. Yes, I’ve been embracing the love of Christ in deeper and deeper ways the last few years, but this goes even deeper than I ever imagined. I’m hopeful that meditating on Solomon’s prophetic love song will draw me into “the King’s chambers” where I can be ruined by the pervasiveness and stability of his affection for me.

I hope we can change our minds about God’s love for us. I hope we can change our minds about who we are before him. As I look back on my life, I realize that the pivot points in my spiritual journey have been those small moments where I changed my mind about something and before long, started discovering the truthfulness of my new belief being validated in my experience.

A couple years ago, I decided that I no longer believe that God withdraws from people periodically  to “strengthen their faith”. The belief no longer fit with my reading of scripture or my understanding of my relationship with God. I decided to start believing that God is actually always present and available to connect with us in a way that we can understand and experience. I remember the moment I started embracing this new belief because for the first time in my life, I started experiencing what I was believing for: the limitless availability of God’s abiding presence in me, which has not subsided in the last two years. New belief, new reality.

I wonder… if we can repent of our old beliefs about ourselves and about Jesus… and if we can begin believing for the depth of Christ’s love painted in the Song of Solomon, what new reality might we be ushered into?

Let Him Author You

One phrase from the bible has meant a lot to me the last several months. It bounces around in my mind throughout the day and sometimes just reciting the words, savoring them in my heart connects me immediately to the presence of God. The phrase is this: “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith; who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the father” (Heb 12:2).

There are sermons upon sermons packed in that one phrase. But one thought struck me today. We have a bible full of stories: people whose lives which encourage, instruct, and warn us. We have teachings and doctrines we can discern from the pages of scripture. But at the end of the day, it is Jesus himself who is authoring the story of our faith. He is the writer of this epic, this journey we now are on with God. He’s also the Perfecter, the one responsible to develop the climax and bring the story to a good conclusion, to resolve the tension, to develop the characters, and to assign meaning to a narrative arch that often feels chaotic and meaningless.

As much as we may appreciate and learn from the writings of Moses, David, Job, Ezekiel, or Paul, it is Jesus who is writing us. And it is Jesus who makes sure the words of our life breathe like God-inspired literature.

And where is this crazy story leading us in the end? Love and suffering and finally the ultimate goal: sitting down with the Father, participating in the divine relational intimacy the flows through the Trinity. The goal is “that where I am you may also be” (John 14:3). The great joy of the Author is being with God. It’s not being spiritually enlightened, or saving souls, or fighting God’s battles, or starting a movement, or leaving a legacy. It’s stepping back into the place of perfect intimacy and connection with God.

So what’s your goal in life? Is it the same goal as the one who authored and is perfecting you? Is it friendship, intimacy, and connection with God? Is it resting in vital connection like a branch attaches to a vine? Or is it something else? Is your deepest motivating joy to simply be with the Lord? Or is being with him some means to a different end?

I encourage you to let the author write his story on the notepad of your life. As you do, consider that the best conclusion to your story will be like the conclusion of his own: death and resurrection yes. But even beyond that, intimate connection and union with God.

Secure Connection and the Witch of Endor

Today I’m in 1 Samuel 28, which provides an eerie but insightful peek into another spiritual ecosystem: that of witchcraft. In this scene, King Saul consults a spiritist in a desperate attempt to gain direction and insight on the eve of a terrifying battle against the Philistines. In this passage we see the irony of Saul who had in his zeal for the spiritual purity of his people expelled spiritists from Israel now seeking the guidance of a witch. I can imagine the shadowy room in a hovel lit by a couple smoking lanterns. Saul, weak from fasting but frantic sits across from the disheveled woman awakened in the middle of the night. After assuring her she would not bear the consequences of channeling the dead, he asks her to bring up his former mentor, Samuel. Only the woman could see the shadowy figure of Samuel coming up from the ground and she channeled his voice. 

After confirming the woman was really seeing Samuel by asking her about his appearance, Saul explained his desperate plight to Samuel: “I am in great distress,” Saul said. “The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has departed from me. He no longer answers me, either by prophets or by dreams. So I have called on you to tell me what to do.”

Samuel has no encouragement for Saul and assures him that “tomorrow, you will be here with me.” Saul collapses with grief and exhaustion. It is only with the insistence of his companions that Saul is willing to receive the kindness of the spiritist in feeding him what may have been Saul’s last meal. The next day, both Saul and his sons were killed in battle.

What strikes me in this passage is the contrast of Saul in chapter 10 and the one we find 18 chapters later. In 1 Samuel 10, Samuel gives Saul the blessing of kingship with the anointing of oil and a kiss saying, “Has not the Lord anointed you ruler over his inheritance?” Then Samuel gives an unusually descriptive prediction of events to come that would assure Saul that God was working and anointing him for this task. All this things were fulfilled with divine precision, including a supernatural overriding of Saul’s natural will in an Acts-like visitation of the Holy Spirit, Saul’s prophesying, and transformation into “a different person.”

I love what Samuel says to Saul by way of instruction: “Once these signs are fulfilled, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you.” Don’t you love that? When God is with us, transforming your essential character, we can essentially do what comes to us, trusting the security of our position in God’s presence and the transformation of our person.

So what went wrong with Saul?

As I think about the episode in chapter 28, I can see the ways in which Saul’s earlier spiritual journey was consistent with his final conclusion. I believe Saul found himself dabbling in witchcraft because of a series of choices, but none of these choices were inconsistent with Saul’s basic desires and natural inclinations. And in some ways, the episode in chapter 10 flows naturally into chapter 28. Think of the things Saul would may have quietly understood from his unusual spiritual encounter in chapter 10

1. God speaks to me primarily through someone else.
2. The pursuit of spiritual power is connected to my security and blessing in my calling.
3. God’s power is separate from the free exercise of my will.

What we see its a rapid amplification of destiny affirmed by a dramatic encounter with God but not accompanied by the slow formation of character through a consistent personal relationship with God. Is is any wonder that when Samuel dies, Saul seems desperate to connect to God in the only way he knows how: through somebody else? In contrast, our early images of King David are of a young shepherd cultivating a love relationship with God in private and channeling the power of God through the exercise of his will (i.e. his willingness to go against Goliath).

Although Saul did not have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a New Testament sense, I think we can draw many parallels to the ways in which we process our relationship with God as Christians. 

How many of us have had an experience of God through another person, whether a friend or a public figure… and then believed that the best manifestation of God’s presence would only come through the intervention or guidance of a specific mentor, friend, or spiritual figure? While I think Christians are supposed to act as bridges (priests) to connect others to the heart and presence of God, I also see friends getting stuck in the emotional belief that they are somehow unqualified or not “anointed” enough to receive a strong connection with God through their private relationship with him. Maybe the most common manifestation of this is that the role of praying, whether for a meal, a church service, or a sick person often falls to the pastor because people assume that a pastor’s prayers are more likely to be answered that that of “ordinary” people. I’ve been guilty of this myself at times and while I do think we can receive specific blessings attached to the anointing and faith of certain people, we should be careful about placing the weight of our spiritual wellbeing on the shoulders of a “more spiritual” person.

I’m also mindful that the pursuit of the miraculous as a source of encouragement and security in our calling and destiny is a strong temptation for many of us. We all experience disconnection and discouragement in our journey at time. But instead of pressing into the discomfort of those emotions and talking with God about it, we often go hunting for a sign or a demonstration of power to assure us that we are still blessed, chosen, anointed, even saved. We end up quietly testing God to see if really is there with us. In one sense this is natural. We all look for signs in our relationships that we are safe, favored, and accepted. If those signs are never there, our relationship has a problems. But often we look for assurance only in the ways in which we are conditioned to receive them. 

I think about my relationship with my oldest daughter Annabel. There is nothing I want more than for her to rest in my secure affection and love for her. I want her to know that I’ll bend over backwards to care for, protect, and provide for her. But she is hardwired to receive love through gifts. But if that becomes the only way for her to know my favor and affection, then she’ll only feel loved a few times a year. As a dad, when I see my daughter testing my love, feeling insecure in my affection for her, I feel an intense love-anger; a jealousy for her to know that I like her, that I’m on her side. I imagine God feels that towards me as well. But as long as I’m testing our connection through my experience of the overwhelmingly supernatural, any hope of an actually secure connection is ill-fated.

Finally, I think we have a common misconception that a genuine God encounter should override my will. For instance, I prayed for a long time that God would strike me with the gift of tongues. I was sympathetic towards spiritual gifts though I hadn’t experienced much myself. I think I assumed that anything supernatural would have to come through the overriding of my will. Certainly I spoke with some folks who described their experiences in this way. I figured if God wanted me operating in the supernatural, he knows where I live and he knows how to get ahold of me. But the more I began to operate in the supernatural, the more I found out what a unique dance it is between our decisions and God’s power. Without God’s power, our efforts quickly become manipulation. But somehow, God has wired us to channel his power more often than not through the mechanism of our choices. So I pray for people even when I don’t “feel the Spirit” and often the Spirit shows up! I make decisions based on my best understanding of God’s heart and often discover “random coincidences” that affirm God’s presence in that decision. While I try to stay pliable to God totally changing my schedule, often when I ask him what he wants me to do that day, he’ll simply say, “You’re plan is good. Go for it.”

I think we often want God to show up without the exercise of discipline. We hear crazy stories of people encountering God in amazing ways. What we don’t hear about is the months and years of faithful Christian discipline that many of these people went through in pursuit of a deeper life with God. The exercise of discipline is not our way of manipulating God. It’s our way of “knocking” as we trust that the door will opened to us. As I think over the tremendous growth both in my internal reality and the anointing on my life I’ve experienced the last couple years, I realize that it has been accompanied by the greatest exercise of personal discipline I’ve ever practiced. It started small, but the more God responded, the greater my discipline became. The secret is that at the time, it didn’t feel like discipline. My brain actually processed it as delight. And in the end what I have is a wonderfully secure friendship with God.

We say we want God to take over, to override our faculties, and in the short term that may feel good. But I think God knows that to build a close, secure relationship with us, it needs to be reciprocal and private in a long-term relationship that slowly loses its conditionality and takes us deep into the language relational delight. In that space, we flow freely in his power and security of our sanctification as we walk with Him.