What I have been facinated by for years is the issue of worry, anxiety, and the living of the Christian life.    Here is part of the book description:

Each sunrise seems to bring fresh reasons for fear.

They’re talking layoffs at work, slowdowns in the economy, flare-ups in the Middle East, turnovers at headquarters, downturns in the housing market, upswings in global warming. The plague of our day, terrorism, begins with the word terror. Fear, it seems, has taken up a hundred-year lease on the building next door and set up shop. Oversized and rude, fear herds us into a prison of unlocked doors. Wouldn’t it be great to walk out?

Imagine your life, wholly untouched by angst. What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats? If you could hover a fear magnet over your heart and extract every last shaving of dread, insecurity, or doubt, what would remain? Envision a day, just one day, where you could trust more and fear less.

Can you imagine your life without fear?

If you have ever read any books by Max Lucado, then you know the quality of his writing.  To me, this is one of Lucado’s most practical book to date.  While many of his books have dealt with great theological themes, we live in a society dominated by fears and worries.  Here is a quote from the book:

“Fear, at its center, is a perceived loss of control. When life spins wildly, we grab for a component of life we can manage: our diet, the tidyness of our house, the armrest of a plane, or in many cases, people.”

I would recommend this book to anyone who has struggled with worry.  It is possible to break free of this trap!  This book is a great starting point on that journey!

One of my favorite Christian singers is a guy named Steve Taylor. Steve Taylor had a way of sarcasm that I loved. He coined a phrase in one of his songs called “I Want to Be a Clone.”

Their language it was new to me
But Christianese got through to me
Now I can speak it fluently
I want to be a clone

That phrase was Christianese. That is, the “language” that Christians speak to each other. The problem with this language is that it sounds so right … so religious … yet most people don’t even know what the words mean. We toss around words like sin, repent, righteousness, faith, salvation, and so on like we really know what such terms mean! “Holiness” is one such term being tossed around today. I have been shocked to find out that how the Bible defined these terms (especially in the Greek language the New Testament was written is) is at times DRASTICALLY different than how people in our day and age define them. We will get into this issue much in the future.

Make no mistake … sin is serious business. It isn’t that God just winks at it saying, “Aw shucks, who cares?!” God does not tolerate sin, because to do so would mean that He is a sponsor of it. God’s entire being is set against sin as a man is set against the cancer that eats at his life.

But in that analogy is a wealth of freedom. The truth is simple: God is FOR us, not AGAINST us. And because of that, His goal is to lead us out of sin and into the “great dance.” The sin is not in things (like sports, sex, wine, business enterprise, …), but in what we have done with them. The sin is that we have sought meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in the creature and the created – instead of in the Creator.

Jesus said that He is the Bread of Life and in believing, in coming to Him, we would never hunger or thirst; every need, every longing, every cry for meaning would be satisfied (John 6:35). We say “Amen,” but reserve the right to run to certain things or activities when life gets too tough for us. Jesus is the Bread of Life up to a point, but then we have alternative “breads” to eat. This is the sin we are talking about. This is the sin that God wants to free people from … the insane approach to find meaning apart from Him … insane because it never works, but we keep trying.

We eat of Him, and He is the Bread of Life through the operation of the Holy Spirit. Hence, if we are to be filled with the Spirit, we must repent of all alternative ways to find meaning which we may have established. And there is another “religious term” – repent. We will try to do a whole study on that word in the future. Suffice it for now, the word repent just simply means to change your mind. Have you ever been told by people that some person was not nice, then you met them and actually liked them? If so, you repented!! You thought something was true, you encountered truth, then you changed your mind. In changing your mind, a LOT of things changed. For example, whereas before you might have avoided that person, now you might seek them out.

Repentance has nothing to do with altar calls, or crying. You may cry, but don’t call that repentance. Repentance has nothing to do with making promises to God: “God, I promise you that I won’t ever do this again. After all you’ve done for me, the least I can do for you is …”

None of that is repentance. Repentance means that you come face to face with Truth. And that encounter is like a flood of light into your whole being.

Let me give you an example from my own life. In the past, I have had much temptation to worry. Now, why do I worry? And what is the REAL sin in worry? Worrying is an expression of something deeper … an expression of the lie that I try to be “God” apart from God. Think about it … we worry because we are not in control. Now, I can attempt to overcome this in my efforts, but it does little good. But what I have found is to know the truth … that God is for me, not against me. The truth that God takes care of me, even through things in life that I might consider “bad” and not like.

Now when I see that … really see that … it affects me. To the point that I walk in truth without thinking about it. I am walking in the Spirit.

(to be continued)

There are a total of 7 audio CDs, unabridged. The book is read by Roger Mueller, who is a well-known stage and television actor in Chicago. In addition, his radio and voiceover credits include Unshackled! (WMBI), the Left Behind series, and the Morrisons with wife Jill Shellabarger in the audio series Down Gilead Lane (CBH Radio).

Whenever a medium switches from print, I’m sure there may be a let-down for some. Imagination is such a powerful thing when we read. But I have been pleasantly surprised with this audio series. You can tell that this is a quality product, and that is obvious since Oasis Audio put it out.

Mueller does a wonderful job in capturing the spirit of the book, and his voiceovers of the various characters are indeed inspiring. The audio still leaves much of the imagination intact … something that will be hard for the movie to do.

The pace of the audio is pleasant. Mueller does all the voices of the characters, and displays a wide range of talent in this. None of the characters are unbelievable with his voiceover.

I have been enjoying the MP3 version in my car on the way to work each morning.

My only complaint is that I wish there were more background music or sound effects at times. But perhaps that is a good thing as well.

I would encourage everyone to check these out!

Blessings,
Brandon

http://windblownmedia.com/orderus.html

I do understand your confusion, but it is not where you think it is! The problem is in your understanding of what prayer really is. If we look at it from a self-centered point of view, we see prayer as a means of getting things from God for ourselves, or for those we care about. In His mercy, God answers us, even when we pray with that mindset.

Prayer must be understood as the method God has ordained to bring to pass on earth His desires for the creation. When we pray, we are not earning the right to have the desired blessing … we are not paying the price by so many minutes or hours spent in asking a reluctant God to release what we want. Prayer, in fact, does not begin with us, but with God. He reveals His desire for the human race through the Scripture, and then makes a particular part of that desire alive to us in our specific situation through the nudge of the Spirit in our hearts. “This,” He is telling us, “is what I will to happen now.”

We, as His representatives on earth, are to bring His will to pass on the planet, but are helpless to do so in and of ourselves. Prayer is our deliberate choice to take our place as a creature, helpless apart from the Creator, and to ask Him to bring to pass what He wills.

It is when we take the place of humility that asks, coupled with the faith that knows He is there and will do as He says, that He works His will on earth.

You may ask why He involves us … why He doesn’t just go ahead and do what He wants to do? It is all bound up with the incredible plan that lies behind His creating us in the first place. He made us to know His mind, to fellowship with Him, and to share with Him in the implementing of His will as the ages unfold. Prayer is learning how to function in that capacity.

And so, when we pray, we are not slavishly going through words that will purchase blessing. We are, rather, taking our place as co-laborers with God to bring His heart’s desire into being on earth.

This is clearly illustrated in the life of Jesus. He is the sinless man, who lives in perfect fellowship with His Father. Yet, He takes many hours out of His week to pray. He was not slavishly trying to extract some blessing from His Father; He was functioning as man was always intended to function, in humility and faith receiving into substance His Father’s will.

This question actually opens the door to understanding the whole nature of salvation. God come to us in grace, having redeemed us and brings us to know Him, so that we may begin to live the kind of life we were created to live.

Salvation restores us to normality and wholeness as humans … which means that we walk in fellowship with God and love one another. Prayer is part of that return to being normal functioning humans, working with the Creator in the running of His universe. Prayer is part of the “great dance” of the Trinity. Prayer is the adventure in which we walk hand in hand with God in life.

Burnout among executives, at least in part, is coming face-to-face with the sickening realization that our dream of success, and maybe it realization, is only a minuscule drop in the vast emptiness within man that only God can fill.

Spiritual burnout is the realization that the emptiness within the human heart cannot be filled with the religious rituals, church activity, and endless promises to be a better Christian. That hole within us can only be filled by the Spirit of God.

We can thank God for the collapse of all creature-focused and, therefore, sinful alternatives, that have been substituted for God Himself. Thank God when life fragments and is seen to be empty; it is then that we repent and find reality in Christ.

If you as a believer feel disillusioned and empty, it may be that the Spirit has brought you to painfully discover that whatever created thing, or person, you have set up as an idol, to be the integration point of your life, is not enough. It is time to repent, turn from it and be filled with the Spirit.

But how? What steps must a person take to live in Holy Spirit fullness? What is it anyway?

The Greek tenses explain it a little better than our regular English translations. It is better rendered, “Allow yourself in every moment, as your habitual lifestyle, to be under the love control of the Holy Spirit.”

We cannot achieve this by an act of our will, but we can yield to Him by faith and let Him energize us at the heart of our being. We are purchased in our bodies with the blood of Jesus, and the Spirit wills to literally take up residence in every area of our being and bring us into wholeness. The Holy Spirit is the integrating God who is with us.

Out of the many false ways that man has substituted to achieve inner harmony, it is interesting that Paul should compare being filled with the Spirit to being drunk! The false way brings synthetic happiness; the Spirit brings joy even in the face of apparent despair. The Spirit brings real strength and inner ability from God; a drunk only has an illusionary strength to handle life. The Spirit brings supernatural peace that passes understanding, as opposed to a sedation of the senses which produces a phoney peace. Paul is not calling them to go to a special meeting to get high, but to live totally, every moment, stimulated from within by the Spirit as being the meaning of human existence.

The Holy Spirit is not the icing on the cake of salvation. He is the finale of redemption, the person of the Godhead who dwells within us, causing us to move into integrated living and a full expression of our humanness. The Holy Spirit came at Pentecost even as Jesus came at Bethlehem. He is God, now on earth in these days of the New Covenant, the One who makes the salvation of Jesus purchased a reality in the mundane of everyday life.

He is the One who convicted us of our sin and need of Christ, and opened our eyes when we heard the Gospel. He came in the new birth and, in so doing, brought us into relationship with the Father and the Son (John 14:16-23; Ephesians 3:17). The first act of a believer, according to the New Testament, is to welcome the Spirit to come and fill to the full every part of the blood-bought temple. He comes with wisdom and insights, empowerings, enablings, and giftings … and ever day thereafter He comes to us in a multitude of new relationships with Himself.

You cannot avoid the Holy Spirit. He is the Christian life!

Then what do we do when we find that there is some area where we are bent away from God … an area where we seek fulfillment and harmony independently of Him? And how can we practically put this truth into practice?

(to be continued)

Having turned away from God as the source, the center, and the meaning of life, man gropes for other “ways.” Created to stand upright, eye-to-eye with God, he has now bent away like a hunchback spirit seeking his wholeness in the created rather than the Creator.

“For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” Romans 1:25

The heart of sin is believing that an alternative to total dependency on and intimacy with God exists as a viable way of life, and setting out to find it.

Man in general and the Church in particular have labeled the alternatives man has turned to as “sin”; and in doing so, they have missed what sin really is. Created to submit to the God who loves him, man has turned to other roads for the fulfillment of the devil’s lie. It may be a lifetime before he discovers he was cruelly tricked and is on a path going nowhere but to destruction.

Man has moved from the Spirit, the God in contact with him, to his own flesh; a flesh man instead of a spirit man. He is seeking his meaning in other created things and persons. In that he is severed from the only Source of life, this man is described in Scripture as dead. By this, we simply mean that man is left in a disintegrated wasteland in his head and heart. He is confused as to who he is and where he came from. Through emotional torment, mental disorder, and a disease-prone body, this wreck thinks he can be a god in himself, and seeks to fulfill and promote his latest answer to the confusion.

Webster’s dictionary defines “integrate” as “to be made whole, renew, by adding or bringing together parts.” The Fall has left man without the focus that will bring him together, make him whole. Man knows his need, and searches for a focal point that will draw him into inner harmony. He constantly seeks to find it by adding to his life what he believes must be missing, or by finding some focus that will bring all his inner turmoil together.

One of those additions is alcohol, hence the text in Ephesians (referenced in Part 1). But there are plenty of other vehicles to which we seek to harness our fragmented lives that are a lot more acceptable to society. You must understand that the vehicle through which we grasp for a sense of wholeness does not have to be wrong in itself; the problem is that we have given it a wrong place in our lives.

For example, there is nothing wrong with sports; only one made in God’s image can be involved in them. Yet there are millions who have made their team, or their particular sport, the integrating focus on their life. Their well-being hinges on it. There are cities in the United States that find their identity in their team. Sex is created by God and ordained for procreation and pleasure. But if it is made the focus of life, it becomes an idol, a substitute for God, who alone can give meaning in the madness of this world. Eating is given by God for fueling the body with energy, but it can become the way in which we find peace and tranquility in the stress of life. Another way of saying “compulsive eating” is “idolatry.” Drugs, compulsive television viewing – all these are methods the flesh takes hold of to bring integration into the disintegration of life. With others, a long held bitterness becomes the controller of all their thoughts and actions and, in some devilish way, become their integration point.

Closer to home, it can be the striving for success in a business or chosen profession. Many times in these days it is a ministry, a church building project, or the religious rituals that have long ago taken the place of the God they claim to glorify. Many times it is something we don’t have! We worship at the altar of fantasy, believing that if we had it then our lives would come together. It is the desire for it that holds us now, and drives us on. Some of the most covetous people I have met have been the poor. They have believed that money would solve their problems, and so they lust for it every day.

Only God is big enough to fill man’s inner person. No thing, no person, no relationship can ever do it. Man is dangerous to himself and to all he touches while he seeks to find meaning in the created; only when he has found integration in God can he safely enjoy all of life.

And so, says the Ephesians 5:18 text, do not seek to find wholeness, harmony, and focus in alcohol that will only waste you. Find it in being filled with the Spirit. And please pay special attention to this … in the New Testament, living in the condition of Spirit fullness was not equated with being a member of the fanatical fringe … and it was certainly a lot more than some kind of spiritual gift like speaking in tongues! Being filled with the Spirit is being fully human, fully alive … spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and even physically. It is the way man was made to be.

(to be continued)

Man was created to enjoy a relationship with God the Holy Spirit … to be filled with Him, living under His gentle embrace. Human existence was to find its meaning in man living in a functioning union with God, his body the dwelling place of God. The fall of man was essentially a separation from that purpose … from that adventure … from that “great dance” as C. Baxter Kruger would say.

With man separated from his purpose, what was man left with? Man was left with finding his meaning and purpose in himself … in what he did, his success (or failure) in life, his possessions, and so on … or in his relationships with others … who he knew, in their acceptance of him, their approval, and so on. The Biblical idea of this is that man sought his purpose in his “flesh” existence, and there was a great void where once the Spirit made His home. The search to find an adequate substitute for the Spirit is the obsession of man’s existence from the awakening of self-consciousness to the grave.

The Ephesians passage above tells us of how one substitute (among many) for the Spirit filling our lives is to become drunk with wine. But this text is not so much dealing with only this particular substitute; the text is calling us to be done with ALL substitutes and to return to the meaning of our existence … being filled with the Spirit.

To me, one of the most important things to come to grips with is our beginnings. How did man get the way he is today? What was man’s purpose from the beginning? If a person does not understand this, he will struggle much with his Christian life and basic Biblical interpretation. If we go back to the very beginning, man was made for a functioning union with God. This is never an option, a hobby for the “religious” human. It is the way man is, and he is not fully functioning as a human unless he totally embraces and is wrapped in Trinitarian love.

Persons living apart from union with God are existing at a subhuman level. They are incomplete humans. They are out of harmony with the blueprint and, therefore, lack the sense of wholeness, harmony, adventure, peace, and joy that is present when everything is an integrated whole.

Such a union of God with His creature, man, was always meant to be implemented by the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit. All creation followed the same pattern: It originated in the mind of the Father, was patterned after and spoken by the Son (who is the Word of the Father), and that Word was taken and made substance by the Spirit. The process is easy to see in the Genesis 1 account of creation.

Man was made in the image of God. He is a person, self-conscious and rational. We might call this the “natural image” of God in man, but there is more to it than that. The image of God is ultimately in His holiness which is shown to us in Jesus, the Man, who is the image of God. There is much confusion about what the term holiness means, and we will deal with that extensively in future blogs. Suffice it to say right now, man cannot produce that holy image from his humanness; it must be produced in him by the Spirit. True man can only be known when he is yielded to the Spirit. To embrace total acceptance through Jesus Christ, and to live in that adventure is the true understanding of holiness (but more on this later).

Man, this amazing creature set apart from all other creatures to be like the Creator, must choose to be who he is. He must freely choose dependency upon God, to be a container of God. He is not a robot. And so, the place of choice, where his faith must express itself in complete dependency upon the Trinity, is set up in the Garden of Eden.

I would encourage you to read the story of the fall of man in Genesis again. Here we meet with the temptation and choice to be independent of God … a center unto himself … the beginning of a futile attempt to find another meaning to life other than that of union with God. Basically, man believed he would be an independent god.

His seeking to be a god left him pathetically naked, cringing in the bushes holding a fig leave in front of him, afraid of his nakedness before his woman and his God. Man was suddenly in darkness and a slave of the devil, but he clung to the promise of the liar that he, within himself, could be a god. In spite of thousands of years of failure in this, man still clings to this lie.

At that moment man disintegrated inside. He lost his focus, his reason and meaning for being, which was a relationship with the Creator, a “dance” with the Trinity. Without that focus to live, he was lost. He wandered down dead ends, going nowhere. Jesus’ favorite phrase for man was not “sinner” but “lost” (for example, Luke 19:10). But think about this … if man is lost, then that implies that man has a destiny and purpose. And where we find man today is part of his false belief that “in this thing” or “in that relationship” he can finally find his meaning and purpose in life.

To this very day, in every fad and philosophy that comes down the turnpike, mankind continues the futile search for meaning, wholeness and inner integration. He will believe anyone who promises him a fulfillment of the devil’s original lie … well, he will believe everyone that is except God.

(to be continued)
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Blessings,
Brandon