Another Look at Resistance - 2

A few weeks ago soon after I got into my study of Romans 13 I began to perceive that the real issue in this passage is the problem of resistance more than it is about authority. My resistant reactions to authority are simply trigger points that expose a much deeper problem that must be addressed in my heart. But like all triggers, these events are like warning signs that are really opportunities for me to face the deeper root issues inside and seek healing and repair so that I can live in genuine freedom. This is one of the important principles that I learned from Ed Smith, the founder of Theophostic Ministries.

This issue about resistance and how it shows up in my daily life has been on the back of my mind throughout the past few days and weeks with growing awareness. I believe that the Holy Spirit has been alerting me more and more to various aspects in which I resist. As I said, it is not only in the area of relating to authorities, but resistance shows up in a wide variety of circumstances and relationships. When I become aware that I am experiencing that familiar feeling or sensation of resistance, I am trying to train myself to do a mental inventory quickly to see if my resistance is something that God wants me to let go of and the appropriate way to go about doing that.

There is another interesting development that has emerged from this increased awareness of this life principle. I have noticed that when I discuss this topic with others who are interested in some of the things I have been contemplating about this topic that one of the surest things to come up in the discussion is a defense of resistance. This is quite understandable and it is something in which I share the same questions as others around me. We usually get into a discussion or analysis of the pros and cons of resistance and what the Bible really says about this topic. But what I am noticing is that there is an ingrown or deep-seated belief in most all of us that we might be left helpless or vulnerable if we were to give up clinging to this most familiar feeling of resistance.

I make no claim that I have the best Biblical answer on this question or that I have a really good grasp on God's will in this arena. It is definitely an area of my own life that is in process and my understanding and beliefs about the proper or improper place of resistance in a person's life is very much open to modification and instruction from heavenly influences. But I also strongly sense that this is an extremely important and crucial part of my learning to live in right relationship to God, the one who created me and designed me and is restoring me to live in harmony with true reality.

My recent radical shift in thinking about what goes on in hell has been a major factor in allowing me to see the eternal dangerous nature of resistance. It is becoming apparent that one of the greatest dangers we need to be aware of is not the evil that comes from the outside – and definitely not from God – but is the natural consequences of resistance itself which carries the potential to create immense damage in our own hearts and minds.

I just did a cursory word search in my Bible software to see what might come up with the word resist. With the initial results that I looked at I can see that I definitely want to do a much more in-depth study on this word and see what God is seeking to relay to me about this. One thing that so far has jumped out to my attention is that the only thing I see that we are instructed to resist is the devil himself. In stark contrast to that there are references to those who are true followers of God who clearly are not resistant and suffer at the hands of others as a consequence. Yet the heaven clearly views them as the better for it and we must learn to see things from heaven's perspective instead of using the “normal” filters we are used to using to determine what is right or wrong for us.

In my thinking it is starting to seem that resistance and unrighteousness seem to be almost synonymous. Therefore, I have been asking God in the language of 1 John 1:9 to cleanse me of all resistance. Part of this cleansing is my need to confess the resistance that comes to my attention. Now if I understand the true meaning of the word confess, that makes it really something very easy to do. For to confess simply means to agree with. When the Spirit convicts me that I have something internally that I am hanging onto and that is out of sync with the way God views things, out of sync with true reality as it is in heaven, then to confess simply means to choose to agree with the Holy Spirit's opinion about that thing or attitude and that is all there is to confession.

Of course, confession itself is not the end of the process, but it is a very important beginning. For if I do not first agree with God's viewpoint about something deep within me or some belief that I am clinging to, then trying to align the externals of my life to comply with God's requirements without resolving the roots that naturally produce the externals is terribly self-defeating and only leads to a lot of hypocrisy. Can two walk together, except they be agreed? (Amos 3:3 KJV) If I desire to have a fruitful and life-changing walk with God, then the very first prerequisite is that I begin to agree with His view of reality instead of always insisting that I know better.

And now that I think about it, this is precisely where a great deal of resistance shows up. Whenever I don't want to confess something that the Spirit is convicting me of, I am exercising resistance. Now I am not saying that I should agree quickly with what everyone else tries to convict me of. Job had some very demanding friends that were absolutely certain that they knew that Job needed to confess something in order to get back into God's graces. Most of the book of Job is a heated debate between Job's opinion about his character and his friend's determination to expose something in his life that was causing all of these judgments to fall on him from God. But in reality it was finally exposed that all of them were mistaken and we are given the privilege to see that none of the evil he experienced was from God at all.

It is very important to understand that just because people claim to be followers of God, that does not qualify them to bring conviction to anyone else around them. Conviction is strictly the work of the Holy Spirit alone and anytime we try to impose conviction on someone (and we tend to do it an awful lot) we are usurping the function of the Holy Spirit on this earth. That is not a very enviable position to find one's self in. We must leave the work of conviction up to God no matter how obvious someone's faults may appear to us. To do otherwise is to engage in counterfeit judgment. And Jesus clearly stated, For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7:2 NIV)

But we can and should come alongside others in love and compassion and cooperate with the Spirit to create an atmosphere of grace and truth in which they may feel safer to respond to the inner convictions of the Holy Spirit. While we must be exceedingly careful not to play God in other people's hearts and lives we should be the place where healing can take place without danger of further infection.

Resistance is not something we are to weed out of other people's lives but is something we each have to deal with on an individual basis for ourselves. I am seeing more and more clearly that the assembly process of the true body of Christ requires that each person let go of their own heart resistance that keeps them from bonding in love to the others that God is putting into the body around them. And this leads to another interesting observation that is emerging in my investigation into this issue of resistance.

I noticed in some of the verses about resistance in the Bible that healthy resistance is a natural event that occurs when people are love-bonded properly with each other. It is like the analogy of certain animals and their natural defense behaviors when facing danger from predators. Certain species tend to clump very tightly together placing the young and vulnerable in the center for protection and the larger and tougher animals ringed around the outside with their backs to the enemy, all facing in toward each other. There are variations on this natural behavior which include the stronger animals with horns ringing the herd with their horns all facing the enemy on the outside. But in either case, the most important aspect of this behavior for their protection is that they all stick tightly together and not one animal is left alone and vulnerable to easy attack by their predators.

I believe that God reveals many things about reality in the natural world, and important lessons for us are embedded in the observations we can make in nature. This illustration is an important principle of our need for love and being in closely bonded association with the rest of God's family so that we are not easy prey for Satan's attacks. This is the real deal of which typical resistance is the counterfeit. Instead of going out to fight the enemy or resisting convictions from God in our mistaken desires for self-preservation (Matt. 16:25), we need to turn our focus on being closely bonded with the heart of God which will always lead to close bonds with others who are seeking to do the same. This is the only real safe resistance that we should engage in.

I can see that there is a lot more to this than I have time or space for right now. This is a very fast growing topic for me right now and I want to remain open and unresistant to whatever the Spirit wants me to learn as I live my life in relationship to others. I definitely know that I need a lot of healing in this area, but as I am alerted to even the small ways in which I resist and let go of them, I find that I am not so frightened at the bigger problems and that I can begin to see myself as a different person in the future, one who is full of compassion and love and free of all resistance to God's plans and desires for me. And believing that something is possible is one of the first steps on the road to realizing and experiencing that possibility.

(next in series)