Leveling and Straightening Paths

Make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12:13)

A voice is calling, "Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. "Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isaiah 40:3-5)

I visited this verse back on February 12^th but as is often the case I keep listening and hearing more that I want to absorb. Just what does this leveling and straightening of the path mean in actual life? What is it in my life or thinking that must happen to level the path? What is a cause for stumbling for both me and others that needs to be leveled or straightened?

Maybe it is the discipline process discussed previously in this chapter that constitutes the leveling process that we naturally tend to resent and resist. If I am instructed to pursue peace with all men and I have obstacles to that peace, then those are high spots or mountains that need to be lowered, excavated, even blown apart if necessary. If I am to pursue sanctification without which I cannot see God then there are ruts and valleys that terrify me that need to be filled in to bring them up into the light and out of fear. The ruts of old habits, ways of thinking and relating, assumptions and paradigms that need to be released and exchanged with God's perspective, these all hold me locked in their control over my life.

Grace (v. 15) is the extravagant supplies for my complete success that have been provided for me by Jesus. But if I fail to receive this grace to empower me to endure the discipline needed to level and straighten the paths in my mind and heart and relationships, then I fall short of that grace and will not be able to cooperate with God's work in my life. When that is the case I will have seeds that produce roots of weeds that will quickly spring up crowding out the slower growing plants of real goodness in my life planted by the Holy Spirit. Weeds typically grow faster and crowd out the good plants robbing them of needed nutrition, water and sunlight.

Trying to walk on a path full of weeds, briars and/or covered with tree roots is a very difficult task at best. It tends toward heightening the danger of putting weak knees and ankles out of joint or causing a sprain. That is quite clear in the analogy, but I still want to know how it applies to my own emotions and heart condition? I need to explore much more clearly what this all means in real life for me.

One thing that comes to mind is the pride scale. The pride scale creates unevenness that must be dealt with. This whole scale is the flesh's attempt to create value and identity apart from God. Anything I imagine beyond reality (reality is God's definition of my identity) that I believe about myself must be removed and anything below that reality must be filled in. Twisted ideas about myself, about God, about others are crooked ways that need to be straightened. Perversions of truth, either factual or emotional make up the crookedness and unevenness that needs to be corrected to make it easier to move forward.

The whole object of a path is to provide access and direction for movement from one place to another. Those who insist on “standing firm” and refusing to move beyond their present concept of truth are often refusing to lift up their hands toward God and their knees to move forward. Discipline sometimes involves the work required to hack a path through the woods and underbrush and weeds so that it becomes more clear to others who are following us.

"I will lead the blind by a way they do not know, In paths they do not know I will guide them. I will make darkness into light before them And rugged places into plains. These are the things I will do, And I will not leave them undone." (Isaiah 42:16)

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners; To proclaim the favorable year of the LORD And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn, To grant those who mourn in Zion, Giving them a garland instead of ashes, The oil of gladness instead of mourning, The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified. (Isaiah 61:1-3)

Put out of joint... Other translations have a completely different interpretation of this Greek word. I believe there is a lot to be learned from both of the possible meanings. This is the other way that translators render this phrase. And make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame be not turned out of the way, but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12:13 ASV)

What struck me when I looked up this word was the similarity between the meaning of this word and the meaning of repentance. It almost appears to me that this may be the opposite of repentance in some way. Both terms mean to turn around, to change direction. In the case of repentance it means to have a change of mind, of thinking, of perception. Repentance is a gift from God that we receive and exercise by our will. In this verse the turning seems to be almost a re-turning back to the direction which repentance had turned us away from.

The cause for the turning brought about in repentance is the heart's response to the attraction of God toward Himself and His heart. Seeing something of the beauty of God, the loveliness of His character, His faithfulness and trustworthiness causes us to want to quit running away from Him and turn toward Him by accepting His invitation into a life-giving relationship with Him.

What I see in the Word here in Hebrews is almost the opposite in some respects. It seems to describe some who are trying to move toward God but become discouraged because of the roughness or twistedness of the apparent path leading toward heaven and God. It describes the lack of needed healing apparently because of continuing damage from paths that are very difficult to travel – too difficult as far as God is concerned because He is asking us to do something about it.

In this passage we are asked to make corrections to the path so that the lame, whether others or even ourselves, are not induced to give up moving in the right direction and turn back toward where we have come from. What is also implied here is that healing is found in moving forward on this path and conversely healing will not be experienced if the lame turns back in discouragement. It also implies that there is a certain amount of responsibility on our part for the condition of the path.

This highlights the need to address the many unnecessary obstacles that we have placed in the way toward God in many respects. Our traditions have created a great deal of distortions that prevent or discourage people from moving toward God. The proliferation of lie-based beliefs about God so popular in all religions are a major cause for the twisted and contorted paths that we try to follow to heaven. Even the condition of the spirit and attitudes of those professing to be followers of God are often a source of discouragement for others who are in need of healing. There are many others sources of problems that need to be addressed in order to smooth and straighten the path to heaven for ourselves and others.

I am now starting to see, given this context, the reason for the next verse. It is the imperative, the focus needed by a person who accepts this job of trailblazing for God. It addresses the issues both in our relationship with others and our relationship with God.

Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)

(next in series)

Bitter Roots in the Landfill

“We don't have problems, we have opportunities”. That was the company line I was given soon after I joined a hand-picked team of designers and engineers at Whirlpool a number of years ago to design a completely, radically different washing machine from scratch. We had been assigned not to just rework or modify any existing design but to think way outside the box and come up with something completely new that would challenge each one of us to the maximum of our creativity. It was one of the most enjoyable jobs I have ever had in my life, primarily because of the freedom to utilize my creativity in teamwork with others who were not afraid of change.

But when we came up with seemingly impossible obstacles in the progress of our design – and that quickly became the norm – we were instructed to view them from the perspective of the old adage quoted at the beginning. We were to change our whole frame of reference, the fundamental way we perceived situations at a deeper level of our mind. This presented some real challenges for me.

My first reaction was one of secret but very intense skepticism. I had not worked there all that long but I was already becoming familiar with the enormous amount of hypocrisy that is so prevalent in the corporate world. It seemed that every few months top management would be taken by the latest craze in the world of motivation and success formulas from expensive corporate consultants and everyone would be required to go through some new intensive mental training program to learn the latest buzzwords and psychological policyspeak until the next consultant guru came along and all of the previous clichés were eclipsed with the latest round of imposed catchphrases.

Needless to say, I quickly caught on that people who had been around for awhile were quite used to all these mind games and had learned to talk the talk simply to keep themselves in favor with those who determined their salary. But they also tended to maintain an inner opinion that was seldom swayed by all the external noise and hoopla. What I found, especially among older engineers was a very deep level of suspicion and doubt about the potential for any real progress which became a problem for me when I wanted to propose radically different approaches to engineering made possible by the rapid advance of computers that they were unfamiliar with.

This problem tended to bring me around full circle to the problem I had myself – very deep-seated skepticism. The first time I heard an engineer declare that we did not have problems, just opportunities inwardly I sneered with contempt. “Yeah, right” I thought, “that's just another cliché we are supposed to spout off. But everyone knows that these are still really problems.” To me this was just another symptom of the pervasive corporate hypocrisy that was becoming apparent to me and in addition it directly crossed my natural skepticism. Insisting that I think and talk about problems as really opportunities not only irritated me a bit but had the potential for creating a spirit of bitterness that I had to keep hidden if I wanted to continue to be a part of this elite team.

So why did this come to my mind this morning? Well, I just read from my morning devotional book about the thousands of hours of painful and intensive training, effort, energy and pain that goes into the execution of just one well-planned successful football maneuver. Much of that training cannot really be considered that much fun while it is being endured, but the ultimate objective when realized brings a great deal of satisfaction and, in this arena, a great deal of glory for a short time. But it is also true that if that training was not willingly endured but was aborted due to the interference of bitterness taking over the mind, the potential champion would not be formed in the mind and body of the athlete and he would be replaced by someone else more willing to endure the hardships of training to achieve the ultimate goal.

It is starting to be even more clear to me the grave dangers of allowing the poison of bitterness to remain in my life. It appears that bitterness may be one of the worst enemies of success, achievement and victory that there is. It suffocates hope, it infects the heart with depression and discouragement, it is debilitating and it weakens friendships. The more I become aware of the symptoms of this poison the more painfully aware I become of the evidence of those symptoms throughout most of my life and my relationships. It is becoming very clear that I desperately need a detox program to rid my system of this pernicious poison. But it has so deeply infected my heart that I cannot do it on my own. I need a really good Doctor as well as skilled medical assistants to help me in my recovery.

What I am learning here in Hebrews 12 is the exposure of more and more roots of bitterness that are grown all through the soil of my life. Trials and discipline have been sources of bitterness for me. Broken promises and neglect, lack of acceptance of love have long been a source of bitterness for me. The unfairness of life and the lies about God that I inherited as well as the ones I developed have been reinforcements of the bitter conclusions that I have often subconsciously drawn about God and His treatment of me. The seeming randomness of evil in this world and the unanswered questions that plague everyone about life are additional fuel for the intensifying of bitterness when they are allowed to fester in my heart. All of these things and more have added together to simmer far beneath the surface in the cesspool of bitterness that has long remained hidden out of sight.

But like any landfill filled with garbage, the unresolved baggage in my heart has not failed to produce the methane gases of bitterness that can seep to the surface at times and produce foul odors and unpleasant relationships. This bad atmosphere has likely kept me at a distance from many that I have longed to connect with at a much deeper level but could never do so, much to my frustration and grief. These events just added to the fuel for the landfill as I tried to bury each succeeding failure and the pain of lost friendships into the growing landfill of my heart that has by now become quite a sizable mountain. What a mess I have. And with roots full of bitterness grown all through this landfill it is no wonder that I have such a difficult time producing decent fruit on the limbs of my external life. The same sap that flows in the roots will eventually feed the fruit as well.

Like Paul I feel very much like crying out, O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24 NKJV) My only hope is to finish the exclamation with the same conclusion that Paul had to make in the very next words.

Thanks be to God –through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 7:25 - 8:2 NIV)

(next in series)

Drooping Hands and Weak Knees

Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees; and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame be not turned out of the way, but rather be healed. Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord: looking carefully lest there be any man that falleth short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby the many be defiled. (Hebrews 12:12-15 ASV)

Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble... (Hebrews 12:12 NAS95)

I was a little baffled by the translation that I study from, the NAS95 quoted last here, until I looked up the original as well as a number of other translations. I believe from looking at all of these that the ASV best describes what the original intent of the text was, especially for verse 12. It also has strong implications of reference to parallel verses in Isaiah that I believe this alludes to. Particularly I think these apply: Isaiah 40:1-11; 42:16 and all of chapter 61.

One of my initial questions is, why does it specifically mention hands and knees?

Lifting hands implies worship and looking to God for strength. If the hands are hanging limp then it may mean that there is discouragement going on and a lack of focusing on Jesus. Most likely if the hands are hanging limp then the head may be hanging down along with them.

What I find when looking at the Greek and even some of the English translations is an implication of lifting up the knees as well as the hangd implying walking, setting out, beginning to move. Putting these two ideas together creates a picture of a person who is simply standing around feeling tired, who has lost heart (v. 3) or grown faint from the unexplainable trials that seem to be plaguing them for no good reason (v. 5-11) The do not realize that their condition of being static in their growth and experience is because they have forgotten the exhortation addressed to them as sons about these experiences (v. 5) and they are not focusing on Jesus (v. 2). Consequently they are standing still on an apparently very rough path that is too difficult and tiring to continue on and are feeling very stuck. (Hey, this is starting to feel all too real and personal.)

Then the text addresses the need for better paths so the weak knees are not twisted by uneven ground. I have many times walked on very rough ground, sometime when hiking on rough terrain and sometimes when working on rough areas planting trees on land that had not been cleared very well. I know the intense frustration of feeling like it took a lot of effort to not make very much progress. I also know that it is not very hard to end up twisting an ankle or even a knee if not being very careful while trying to navigate such terrain. In addition, if I am not in very good physical shape the danger of turning a joint is even greater.

One of the most annoying obstacles and dangers for twisting an ankle or knee is roots that get in the way. They are much worse than fallen sticks because they are anchored into the ground and will not move out of the way when hit with your foot or leg. Consequently they become much more likely to be an occasion for stumbling than most other obstacles. If your foot gets caught underneath one and you can't catch yourself quick enough it can cause serious injury. I can certainly see how roots of bitterness can be a similar cause for problems in my spiritual and social life.

What is it that strengthens and tones up my legs and body so that this danger is lessened? Resistance training (v. 4) that comes from a graduated exercise routine and also learning from experience the coordination necessary to move carefully but swiftly across very rough land or even jumping boulders in canyon creeks.

What I see in this passage is not just an urging to lift up my hands and focus my attention more on God, but also to pick up my weak knees and start moving in some direction so that I will begin making at least some progress away from where I currently am. But in addition to that I also may need to spend some time helping repair the condition of the paths that are so rough for me, paying particular attention to removing the dangerous roots so that others will not be in so much danger of becoming hurt from the confusion and unevenness of the ground. As I help to make the paths straighter and smoother for my own feet I am also helping pave the roads so that others following me may make more efficient progress than what I have experienced. Maybe this hearkens back to 11:39, 40. Both those who go before and those who follow after work together in God's plan so that they all become interconnected with each other to be perfected in the faith of Jesus.

The reason given here for the straightening of the paths is not only to avoid dislocating a knee or twisting an ankle, which could definitely slow down or stop someone's progress, but for healing as well. Healing usually takes time and also therapy many times. It means not overstressing a damaged or weak muscle. My daughter is working in a physical therapy rehab center and tells us many stories of people coming in after operations or accidents and needing muscle and joint rehabilitation and healing. There is a science to this process that she is actually going to school right now to learn. And the same kind of science needs to be applied in our emotional and spiritual healing as well.

So just where is this path leading that needs to be leveled and straightened? What is the direction we are to begin moving while lifting up our limp hands and picking up our knees one after the other? I think maybe the next verse give us some instruction about this.

I see two things in verse 13 as reasons for needing to do all of the above. (1) Pursue peace with all men, and (2) pursue the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. Evidently these two things are considered the main reasons for even participating in this whole operation, the goals of the path that we are choosing to travel with Jesus. I want to spend much more time exploring these two things later.

But most importantly mentioned here, our ultimate goal is to see God. That was the passionate plea of Moses on Mt. Sinai, he wanted to see God's glory, and it has been the underlying hunger of every heart born into this world whether they ever know it or not. Our heart was designed to be connected with God and will never really know full satisfaction with any substitute. Unfortunately many do settle for cheap counterfeits and think that those are the best that can be had. But God is not going to rest until everyone possible has been drawn into His original plan of intimacy with His own heart and they have become filled to overflowing with the immense joy and pleasures that He designed us for.

Then I will go back to my place until they admit their guilt. And they will seek my face; in their misery they will earnestly seek me. (Hosea 5:15 NIV)

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14 NRSV)

"Come," my heart says, "seek his face!" Your face, LORD, do I seek. (Psalms 27:8 NRSV)

(next in series)

Relating to Discipline

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. (Hebrews 12:11)

For me to better understand the true meaning of this verse I have to divest myself as much as possible of the context of counterfeit discipline and try to think about how this applies to God's way of discipline. For the way this verse has been taught typically was often as an excuse to justify abusive and self-centered punitive punishments which is what a lot of human discipline involves. That is not to say that humans cannot administer good discipline, I am sure much of it is effective, especially by those who are trying to serve God the best they know how, and that would have to include my own parents. But most of our attempts at discipline are tainted to some degree with the misconceptions about God that we carry in our hearts and to that same degree it corrupts our spirit and the effectiveness of our discipline.

But God's discipline is not tainted in any way and His Spirit knows exactly what our heart needs to correct its perceptions of reality. God's sole purpose in all of His discipline is to restore in us the perfection of the beauty of God that we were designed to reflect. So since that is the real purpose of good discipline then why does it feel sorrowful? And if it says here that it does not seem to be joyful why does James and Jesus tell us to count it all joy whenever we find ourselves in it?

I looked up some of the words in this verse from the Greek to get a taste of what else might be hidden under the English words. I did find some interesting variations that add more dimension. The word for joyful can also include gladness (which is not the same thing), cheerful and calm delight. Actually given my present understanding of the word joy as contrasted with these other words I think the other words might apply better in this verse. In my thinking, joy – when understood as someone being glad to be with me – would be the best antidote or resource that I could turn to whenever I find myself in the circumstances described in this verse. Remembering that I am not alone but that Jesus has promised to never, ever forsake me (13:5, 6) will greatly lessen the pain and fear I might experience in the seeming suffering of God's discipline.

But at the same time, the lack of perception of His presence is actually one of the reasons most of us are so afraid of discipline. Even the faulty type of discipline received from our earthly administrators is made much more painful when it is perceived as a rejection of our value as a person instead of a correction of our course of thinking. When we feel rejected or abandoned the fear and pain are exponential compared to understanding that a given painful experience is meant for our training and comes from someone who still cares deeply about us. In fact, that is one of the greatest faults of most human discipline is the lack of genuine caring and assurance of unconditional love while administering it.

I think it is helpful to compare the ideas of punishment verses coaching. I think it is pretty clear to most thinking people that the way our judicial system punishes all sorts of people for all sorts of infractions of the rules by dumping all of them into a common prison and treating them almost like animals is not conducive to improving their characters. That is mindless, generally vengeful-type punishment as does not usually encourage maturity and growth in the character of the person thus abused. It may produce a great deal of pain and shame but not anything approximating righteousness.

On the other hand, if you look at a sports team whose goal is to develop skill, endurance, cooperation and strength in the minds and bodies of a group of people, the coach is the most important person to coordinate that process and bring that team to victory. Much of the training may feel very painful at times both physically and even mentally, but if it is clear in the minds of the players that the coach really cares about them as a person and is pushing them only for their best good, it is much easier for them to look past the present discomfort and keep their minds focused on the “joy that is set before them” (12:2) in victory. This is really the essence of the message contained in this verse.

If we have been conditioned by our experiences with counterfeit or faulty human discipline to feel abandoned and rejected or even attacked every time we experienced correction, then it makes it much more difficult to believe that God does not treat us the same way in His process of correction and training. Most likely it will require some deep healing of beliefs and assumptions that presently poison our perceptions about authority from previous bad experiences before we will can come to trust that God will not abuse His authority in our lives like others have done to us.

But it still remains that, for whatever reasons involved, discipline and correction are going to make it seem like we are being mistreated, abandoned, rejected or whatever other feelings are triggered from past experiences or suggested by the enemy. In fact it is to flush out these faulty notions that God allows things to happen in our lives. This gives us opportunity to have our faulty thinking and feelings exposed so that we can bring them to Him for truth and healing to replace the lies about Him causing this pain. As I have increasingly seen over the past few years, most pain comes from resistance of some sort. The more we resist the truth about God or the truth about ourselves the more pain we are going to suffer. God's discipline is designed to flush out what we really believe so that it can be replaced with what He really knows and bring us into harmony with Him. The transition process in exchanging these two views of reality is where the pain or sorrow occurs.

It is very helpful to realize that all of God's discipline is for training and never involves punitive punishments. If we ever think that God is punishing us for something we have done wrong by inflicting pain in our lives we are still living under the influence of Satan's lies about God. This is very difficult to accept theologically for many but is something we all need to learn. The Bible makes it very clear that it is sin that pays out wages involving death, not God. Jesus stated unequivocally that He came to give us life and that more abundantly, not condemnation. God's discipline never involves condemnation, and if we think it does we have some serious underlying perceptions about God that need to be exchanged for the glorious truth that He wants us to know. We are still in need of more training and discipline to free us from those ideas.

But all of us are tainted to a great extent with the misconceptions about God that pervade all of humanity. Even those who were closest to God on this earth did not yet have a full appreciation for His goodness enough to make it safe for them to be exposed to His full glory. God had to warn Moses that it was still not safe for him to see God's face. That was because Moses, as much as He knew and loved God, still had fatal flaws in his perceptions about God that would have caused him to self-destruct if exposed to the full glory of God's perfect beauty and passionate love. This is the whole reason for the plan of salvation, to bring as many as possible back into a safe condition so that they can enjoy the unveiled presence of God without any fear or taint of corruption in their minds and hearts.

But in our condition of doubts about God's love for us or good intentions toward us, we are still going to have feelings of apprehension at best, but more like abandonment or rejection whenever we experience discipline. God does not miraculously change our brain to suddenly think differently about Him, that would be a violation of our freedom and God never will do that. He respects us so much that He will only work to attract and prompt us to change our minds and hearts about Him through any means possible other than to use force against our will. So the reality is, we are most likely going to feel some false emotions about our discipline – that is why this verse uses the word seems. And as long as it seems like we are being hurt by God we can know that there are still embedded lies in our hearts that still need to be exposed and healed with truth from our Savior.

I also see in this verse that there is a contrast between the seeming of sorrowfulness and the peaceful fruit of righteousness. That means that quite likely these may be opposites, or at the least the later replaces the former in our hearts. Another insight that I saw when looking at the original words was the meanings for sorrowful. It included not only sadness but the idea of grudgingness and heaviness. I find that very interesting. That means that it may not be so much sorrow that I may sometimes experience but more along the line of a grudging spirit that resists cooperating with God's desire to transform my way of thinking away from what I am used to. That exposes the element of resistance as I was saying before, and resistance when met with increasing pressure always produces heat. And heat when it becomes intense enough produces pain. But that also means that the sooner I choose to release my resistance to whatever God is desiring to do in my heart the less pain I will experience and the sooner I can enjoy the benefits of this training for maturity.

There is a great deal that can be unpacked from this simple phrase, the peaceful fruit of righteousness. I have looked many times at this much-abused word righteousness and still have a lot to learn about it. But I do like the added description given here in the words peaceful and fruit. Both of these words are generally opposite of much of the world's typical religious thinking about what constitutes righteousness but they are very descriptive of God's view of real righteousness. True righteousness is not only produced from a context of peace in the heart that comes from increasing unity with God's heart but is also something that springs up very naturally like a plant that produces fruit without a lot of work on our part.

Along this line I think it is very helpful to remember one of Jesus' story-clips to share the truth about this with us. And He was saying, "The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows – how, he himself does not know. "The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. "But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come." (Mark 4:26-29)

This kind of righteousness is clearly both peaceful and fruitful but is also very natural. The person himself does not know how the seeds grow, all he can do is observe the growth after the fact and wait for it to mature before trying to work with it. We would do very well to learn this lesson both in the lives of those we work with as well as in our own life. We must trust God to accomplish the miracle of producing righteousness in our lives. And one of the means He uses to do that is His perfect way of discipline, His discipling process.

Again, discipline is best understood when associated with the word disciple. I do not know of any Christians who would not volunteer if given the opportunity to live in the time of Christ and be one of His personal disciples. But really not much has changed. We still have the opportunity to be a disciple of Jesus and interact with Him much like the original disciples did. If we will invite Him to mentor us and then submit to the discipling process we can be just as much disciples as were Peter, John, Philip or any of the others. God is ready to mentor everyone personally if they are willing to allow Him access to their heart so that He can begin His work of rewiring, repair and restoration. That is what this whole business of discipline is all about. It is the plan of salvation being implemented in our lives and hearts.

(next in series)

Flying Higher

I just finished reading today's devotional reading from a wonderful book called The Gospel From Patmos by John Paulien. It talked about a pilot's experience years ago looking at the top-secret SR-71 up close for the first time and being very disappointed in how badly it leaked and limped while sitting in the hangar. What he found out from the ground crew preparing it to fly was that though it looked very shabby and even disfunctional compared to other planes while sitting on the ground, it was designed in such a way that when it arrived at extremely high altitudes and very high temperatures from extreme speeds that it would function perfectly. The leaks would all stop, the skin would literally grow and tighten up and it would actually become much stronger under those extreme conditions.

What really got my attention was the last paragraph of John's comments.

“God doesn't permit His people to go through trials in order to find out what they are made of. He already knows. But one reason He allows trials is so that we can discover what He has been remaking us to be. As we learn to stay close to God in trial He redesigns us so we can fly higher and faster than we could possible have imagined. If our lives were easier we might never discover the rich fulfillment that comes from soaring at God's altitude.” (p. 53)

I then laid down the book and picked up my Bible to see what God had for me in Hebrews 12. As I opened it the first thing my eyes fell on was, For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. (Hebrews 12:10) I have been looking at this for many days now but suddenly it took on new life.

The whole purpose of God's work in my life is to prepare me to soar in ecstasy at levels of intensity that I cannot now imagine. Living in the presence of God is an overwhelmingly satisfying and exhilarating experience that I have not even tasted yet and can only imagine in the slightest, but it is the ultimate desire and plan of God for my heart. Everything that He allows in my experience is to prepare and shape me to be able to fully participate in this reality with total abandon, freedom and joy. Every pain and tension and problem is God's work to remove the beliefs and false ideas that would cause fatal flaws in my psyche when exposed to the extremes of His high altitude, intense love and presence.

No wonder James declares that we should welcome trials with joy. Jesus told us the same thing. And it does make it easier to do so when I have a better grasp of the bigger picture, the amazing future that God wants me to be an intimate part of in His kingdom.

God, please tune my heart today to be more synchronized with Your heart. Teach me Your ways and let Your will be the story of my life and not my will. Prepare me for the intensity of the joy You are bringing into my life very soon and strip away all the leeches and barnacles and messed up thinking that will endanger my safety when I reach higher speeds. Glorify Your name in my life and through my heart and in my words, attitudes and actions.

(next in series)

Discipline for Glory

Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. (Hebrews 12:9-10)

I am still on my quest to uncover and expose the roots of bitterness within me that are preventing me from enjoying the freedom and joy that God intends and desires for me to live in. I am carefully studying the passage in Hebrews surrounding the key verse about roots of bitterness to find all the clues I can and to flush out for my own recognition anything that resonates in my heart with the descriptions I find here in the Word. I have been experiencing progress in this journey though much of it is not easily definable in words.

One of the areas that has very strong resonance to what I find in this chapter is the discussion about discipline. I have been unpacking this for some time and find that there is always more whenever I come back to look at it again. It is an area of my life in which there is a great deal of misperception, pain and apprehension in my heart. I have reason to believe that it may also be one of the greatest contributors to the mass of lies about God that was early instilled into my thinking, launching me into many years of fear, legalism and bitterness toward not only those who mistakenly trained me in this area but toward God on whom I projected all of my false conclusions.

So I feel that it is very helpful for me to go back to this base of soreness and open it up again to receive light, truth and healing. By doing so I believe that the triggers that currently cause such intense inner reactions that blind me from relating properly to a wholesome relationship with God whenever this subject is raised can be neutralized. The verses quoted above hold a great deal of the truth and correction needed for my false perceptions about valid discipline and I want to explore them deeper.

As I have processed previously, the word discipline is strongly related to the word disciple and is better understood in the context of how Jesus related to His disciples. But looking at that example does not resonate much with what I experienced growing up. Most of the training that I received was closer to the counterfeit of good discipline and thus seemed to have more negative than positive effects on my life that were then passed on to another generation. But God is giving grace to stop this cycle and bring truth and healing into the lives and hearts of everyone affected who are willing to receive it.

I looked up some of the words in the original language this morning from these verses and found some interesting insights. I have been writing for some time about the contrasts presented here between the typical discipline received from the father of our flesh and the healthy, life-producing discipline we can accept from the perfect Father of our spirit. Many of the problems we experience in our flesh (literally the sarx) are passed on to us in the messed-up thinking from previous generations and the misconceptions they in turn received from their previous generations. One reason for this is because of the nature of the world's view of reality and the assumptions in false religion itself. These focus primarily on the externals to the exclusion generally of the condition of the spirit of a person. This means that appearances are more important than the heart, that results and symptoms are far more valued than looking past those to healing and nurturing the roots that produce the external symptoms. This is an accurate description of the way the world operates – conformity, but it is not the ways of God – transformation. (Romans 12:1)

I looked into the Greek to unpack this phrase, they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them. The discipline here is the same word used as for God's discipline in this passage so it is clear that there is at least some similarity involved. But the description of the motives and goals are what reveal the real contrast.

When I looked up the word used for as seemed best, I found that the original word means as they supposed or thought, for their own pleasure, having to do with their reputation. That is certainly a very good description of much of the supposed discipline as administered by most parents or authority figures. It usually has more to do with their own distorted suppositions about how to train a child through means of force, intimidation and the instilling of fear mixed with attempts to love or offer enticements. Rewards and punishments in varying degrees of mixture is the norm for this world's idea of good discipline. It is the standard by which we almost always measure the way we or others treat our children or subordinates. But this is in contrast to a very different picture of how God views discipline.

He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. While on the surface it may appear that our methods are not really that much different than God's ways, this phrase exposes a whole world of difference – in fact the difference between this world and the ways of heaven. It is true that God's discipline often involves pain and even great discomfort at times, but the greatest distinction is found in the character and motivation of the One who is perfect and is always acting out of the context of complete selflessness. Not only is His objective to have us share in His holiness instead of the self-interests that our earthly parents typically had, but when I looked up the word here translated share I found something even more revealing.

The original Greed word used here is metalambano. It literally means to participate; to accept (and use): – eat, have, be partaker, receive, take, according to Strong's concordance. That immediately reminded me of the word's of Jesus that reflected this very idea. Jesus was the perfect example of how God administers discipline and demonstrated that in the way He treated everyone and especially His own disciples. Here is how I believe He described the purpose and intent of God's discipline.

So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. "For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. "This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever." (John 6:53-58)

What is even more interesting is that when I looked up all the references to this Greek word metalambano, almost every time it was used it refered to eating food and sometimes in the context of social interaction. So what I am seeing here in Hebrews is a description of discipline as the means that God is using to get me into looking and feeling just like Him. Depending on your current inner picture of God that can either be very exciting or quite intimidating or even disgusting.

What I have not explored enough in this study is what the true meaning of holiness is. What I do know already is that nearly everything that immediately comes to most minds when they hear this word is misleading at best and very distorted and usually confused. Holiness along with other words like piety and righteousness are some of the most obfuscated words in our vocabulary that have been twisted and defaced through centuries of abuse and distortions about what God is like and how He treats people. I believe that if it is possible we would be far ahead in our progress to understand these words if we could completely divest our minds and hearts all previous notions of what they mean before we try to find the true meaning of them from God's perspective.

There is a very good study on the word “holy” put out by Craig Hill from Family Foundations International that I would recommend highly for this study. It is called Holy verses Common and is one of the best explanations I have ever heard on the real meaning of this word “holy”. Basically he explains that this word simply means, “totally and exclusively dedicated to...” To understand this concept it must also be understood that there is always an object or person to which it is dedicated. Therefore, something cannot be considered holy or dedicated unless there is something or someone that is the subject of that dedication.

Craig uses the illustration of a “dedicated phone line” for use of a FAX machine. That phone line is not to be used for any other purpose (common) than for incoming and outgoing FAXes. If that line is used for some other purpose it has been “defiled” or corrupted from its “holiness”, it has then been made “common”. Common does not necessarily mean bad, it just means it is for common use for all sorts of things or people. He shows throughout Scripture how various things or people were viewed as “holy” and what or who the subject of that holiness pointed to. This is made even more clear when it is noted that on the front of the turban of the High Priest in the Old Testament the words were placed, “Holy unto the Lord”. That meant that this person was totally dedicated to the service of God and was not to do anything else but what God wanted for Him.

When this understanding of holiness is applied to this verse in Hebrews it shed a whole different light on what it means to share in God's holiness. A priest by definition is a person whose sole job is to communicate the thoughts of God to people and to carry the problems and sins of people to God. He was to be a mediator for God as God's representative to draw people to God's attractiveness and instruct them about the things and ways of God. If a priest is someone wholly dedicated to God and not to be involved in anything common or unholy, that tells us something very important and wonderful about God's plan for all of us.

God tried to offer His plan early on to the Israelites, but they were so stuck in the fears and misconceptions about God that they failed to accept His offer and in place set up what is typically referred to as the Old Covenant. That arrangement was one in which they promised obedience and tried to perform good enough to impress God instead of allowing God to live inside of them and do the work Himself. Here is God's original offer to them just before He gave them the simplistic description of His character in the 10 Words from Mt. Sinai.

'Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel. (Exodus 19:5-6)

Now look at the offer made again, but this time to us. How are we going to relate to it?

You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

But you are a chosen race, A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:5, 9-10)

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (Revelation 1:5-6 NRSV)

So let me pull all of this together now. Apparently the whole purpose of God's discipline is to remove anything from within me that contaminates my spirit so that I can be totally dedicated exclusively to the purpose of proclaiming the excellencies of Him who has called me out of darkness into His marvelous light. I do this by feeding on the very essence of the body of Christ, filling my mind and heart with the truth about God as primarily revealed in Jesus. As I do this I realize the incredible value of the identity that I have as a child of God and my inclusion in His family. I accept and believe in His mercy and offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Because I am holy dedicated to this purpose of proclaiming His excellencies I must not become contaminated again with the lies about God that have made me common in the past. I am now exclusively His and need to continually feast on the Word of God, both from the written Word and even more from the Father of my spirit, the Word made flesh. This is the true meaning and purpose and method of discipline (discipling) as God sees it in contrast to the performance-oriented, fear-based discipline and punitive punishments that I learned from the system of flesh-thinking.

God, continue to open and expand and fill my mind with the real truth about You. I choose to release to you the lies and roots of bitterness as You expose them in me. At times I know this is going to be very painful, but I also realize that much of the pain is caused because of my resistance to your work to expose and remove those things in me that endanger my survival in Your pure presence of passionate love. Please help me to not be so resistant to Your perfect discipline in my fears and misconceptions about discipline that I have had all of my life. I want to cooperate with you so I can grow and mature and live in the freedom that Your children enjoy in Your presence. Make my life another successful experiment of Your grace and mercy for Your reputation's sake.

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Peaceful Righteousness

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

(Hebrews 12:11-13)

Some thoughts that come to my mind when I ponder what might be the cause of the weakness described here. One thing that comes to mind is the need for a new identity. One reason for weakness is from still believing in my old identity learned from fathers of flesh.

Weak hands, feeble knees, lameness in danger of being put out of joint from crooked and uneven paths.

Be healed. That is the purpose of sanctification isn't it? And the result is the removal of the roots of bitterness.

Weakness and feebleness results from not focusing on Jesus and the truth about God as instructed in verses 2 and 3.

The prophecies about John the Baptist foretold that he would make the paths for Jesus straight. That involved removing the high spots and filling in the ruts and potholes to make a smooth highway for Jesus. With some of the rough work out of the way Jesus' work could be more efficient in His mission to reveal to us the truth about what God is really like.

I looked up some of the instances that seem to relate to the straightening of paths and related ideas and found some very inspiring passages that connect very well with this passage.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken." (Isaiah 40:3-5 NKJV)

I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, and not forsake them. (Isaiah 42:16 NKJV)

What is interesting in these verses is the difference in the translations in various versions. Many other translations instead of saying crooked places made straight say rough places made smooth. It seems that the only difference between the two ideas is the direction of the crookedness. One seems to imply crookedness that we would think of as side to side crookedness that needs to be straighten out on the horizontal plain and the other is a problem up and down with the path that needs to be leveled and smoothed out. Really both are needed if a superhighway is to be built for the expediting of high-speed traffic. And Jesus wants to have all the speed He can get in bringing humanity back into intimate fellowship with the Godhead.

Something that comes to me this morning is the feeling that sometimes there seems to be the need for a period of time where we have to expose our lies about God and begin to release them before we can embrace the truths about God and enjoy them (thrive). If we are clinging to the lies we cannot, at least with our heart, effectively believe the truth about God that conflicts with those lies. If we try to we only end up being double-minded and highly unstable (James 1:6-8) but maybe very religious and pious-looking. We are double-minded because our head and our heart believe two different things about God at the same time.

Instability is weakness. Lameness is weakness. But in this verse it looks like it might not yet be out of joint. What does being out of joint mean? More firmly rejecting the truth about God and entrenched in bitterness? Interpreting discipline as vengeful punishments by God and growing to hate Him in our hearts? It most likely involves the opposite of the peace spoken of in verse 11.

Righteousness is defined in Romans as believing that God can do what He says He can do.

And being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform. Therefore IT WAS also CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. (Romans 4:21-22)

That assurance that Abraham demonstrated lives and thrives in the atmosphere of peace.

God's discipline produces the fruit of peaceful righteousness. Righteousness that is not peaceful is quite frightening and is the counterfeit of real righteousness. Counterfeit righteousness is exhausting, is self-focused and does not produce peace. It causes us to worry about whether we are perfect enough to be saved; if God is impressed enough with our strained efforts to please and appease Him. There is no peace in that kind of life. I can speak from first-hand experience.

I remember the powerful impact the following words had on me the first time I read them many years ago in agony of spirit, struggling to find God and holiness and worn out from the years of my effort to be good enough to be accepted by God. First I resonated unusually strong with the first paragraph that described my inner feelings perfectly.

As your conscience has been quickened by the Holy Spirit, you have seen something of the evil of sin, of its power, its guilt, its woe; and you look upon it with abhorrence. You feel that sin has separated you from God, that you are in bondage to the power of evil. The more you struggle to escape, the more you realize your helplessness. Your motives are impure; your heart is unclean. You see that your life has been filled with selfishness and sin. You long to be forgiven, to be cleansed, to be set free. Harmony with God, likeness to Him--what can you do to obtain it?

Those last words aroused an intensity within me that was like a crystal glass vibrating almost to the point of shattering with sympathetic resonance to a loud note of music. Yes! This described perfectly the desperate cry of my inner-most being – what do I have to do to obtain it? I could not wait to see what the next words were going to tell me. At last I had finally come across the secret answer I had been looking for for so many years. At last I would find the “holy grail” that would unlock the door that I had been banging my head against for so long and allow me into the acceptance of God so that I could be free of the crushing weight of condemnation that was suffocating my spiritual soul and was even affecting my physical body. With eager anticipation I read the next words and then sat stunned and in shock at the unexpectedness and yet perfect insight with which they described even more perfectly what I had not even known about myself. But is was the last thing that I expected to find here.

It is peace that you need – Heaven's forgiveness and peace and love in the soul. Money cannot buy it, intellect cannot procure it, wisdom cannot attain to it; you can never hope, by your own efforts, to secure it. But God offers it to you as a gift, "without money and without price." Isaiah 55:1. It is yours if you will but reach out your hand and grasp it. The Lord says, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Isaiah 1:18. "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you." Ezekiel 36:26.

You have confessed your sins, and in heart put them away. You have resolved to give yourself to God. Now go to Him, and ask that He will wash away your sins and give you a new heart. Then believe that He does this because He has promised. This is the lesson which Jesus taught while He was on earth, that the gift which God promises us, we must believe we do receive, and it is ours. Jesus healed the people of their diseases when they had faith in His power; He helped them in the things which they could see, thus inspiring them with confidence in Him concerning things which they could not see –leading them to believe in His power to forgive sins. {SC 49}

It is yours if you will but reach out your hand and grasp it. Those words sounded that the catch that the lying spirits inside of me were looking for. “See”, they taunted, “you knew there was a hidden catch clause in here somewhere. And since you can't figure out what it means to reach out your hand and grasp it, or you likely could not perform well enough to do it anyway, you still will not be able to have that peace. You are stuck with us and we will continue to torment you the rest of your life.”

Now that I think back on this time in my life it is more clear to me that my heart was very much like the hardened path in the parable of the sower that Jesus told. My heart had been trampled on by many people and had become so defensive and hard that it took little effort for the birds inside of me to be off with the seed of truth. But praise God He is not discouraged by birds or even hard ground but has ways and means to transform over time even hardened hearts into more receptive soil that can allow truth to take root.

I have to confess that these lying spirits have tormented me for most all of my life. But the truth about God is stronger than the lies from the false gods within and the light of the beauty of God as demonstrated in the life and teachings of Jesus is slowly dispelling the false gods – these lying spirits, these roots of bitterness that have so poisoned my life and calcified my heart for so many long years.

I am learning that it is not my faith that is so important as the fact that God is faithful. And as I focus on the One who is faithful I find His faith infiltrating my own heart and beginning to spring to life.

I am learning that instead of intense self-focus on the sin within me that looking more intently at the beauty of the truth about God softens my heart, renews my mind and produces natural fruit from within that is reflective of what I am seeing in His character.

I am learning that instead of working very hard to eliminate all “sin” from my life as I was so desperately trying to do for so many years in my attempt to arrive at some state assumed as righteousness, that the Bible teaches that if I will just choose to believe that God can and will do what He says He can and wants to do, then that choice itself is considered to be righteousness by Heaven. (Rom. 4:21, 22) That truth was in the words that I had read, but it has taken many more years for them to become more obvious to me.

Then believe that He does this because He has promised. This is the lesson which Jesus taught while He was on earth, that the gift which God promises us, we must believe we do receive, and it is ours.

What I now realize was the biggest block in my heart preventing me from seeing or believing this for most of my life was the pervasive lies about God's feelings toward me. I grew up with a settled picture of a severe God who was constantly looking for an excuse to keep me out of heaven and be lost. Much of my early life was like an ongoing competition between me and God to see whether my confessions and petitions could outstrip His ability to find some secret sin still lurking in my life by which to exclude me from heaven. I shudder with horror as I remember those torturous days of my life, and yet some of the residual feelings and beliefs still lurk in some of the hidden places of my mind still today.

What I needed for me to enjoy that peace, that was so clearly the longing of my soul when I first read the above statement many years ago, was a clear revelation of the true heart of God and the truth about His unconditional love toward me. But I was brought up in the culture that firmly believed that unconditional love was actually a heresy to be avoided as a deception of Satan. I wish so much that I could have really believed the words in a paragraph I had read just previous to the one quoted above. But the profusion of the lies about God always short-circuited the truth that now I can see was in plain sight. Because of my dark view of God I could not really accept the following truths.

It is a mistake to entertain the thought that God is pleased to see His children suffer. All heaven is interested in the happiness of man. Our heavenly Father does not close the avenues of joy to any of His creatures. The divine requirements call upon us to shun those indulgences that would bring suffering and disappointment, that would close to us the door of happiness and heaven. The world's Redeemer accepts men as they are, with all their wants, imperfections, and weaknesses; and He will not only cleanse from sin and grant redemption through His blood, but will satisfy the heart-longing of all who consent to wear His yoke, to bear His burden. It is His purpose to impart peace and rest to all who come to Him for the bread of life. He requires us to perform only those duties that will lead our steps to heights of bliss to which the disobedient can never attain. The true, joyous life of the soul is to have Christ formed within, the hope of glory. {SC 45, 46}

Since most of these words directly contradicted what I had been taught and made up the essence of my perception of what religion was all about, I was unable to accept the truth that was right under my nose. As badly as I wanted to feel accepted and as much as my heart longed for real satisfaction, I could not reconcile the words on these pages with the inner beliefs that made up the substance of my spiritual life. So I plodded on for years in search of the peace that I could not really live without but was always just out of reach. As a result I lived and cultured the inner soil that fostered the growth of many roots of bitterness which I am now trying to expose and dispose of. I am presently on the journey of healing spoken about in verse 13. Make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12:13)

But again, now that I think of it, even weeds can be means of softening up hard soil in preparation for better seed when they are pulled up. I can see back over my life the transitions from the hard soil progressively through the other types toward the productive field that can produce useful food for the nourishment of others. I may still have some rocks and weeds in my heart, but God is faithful to continue what He started and He will finish it with style.

I love the mission statement that was crafted for Jesus and that He lived out to the full. The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified. Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, they will raise up the former devastations; and they will repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations. (Isaiah 61:1-4)

God, I am impatient for all of these lies to be expelled from my heart. They have tormented me and distorted my perception of Your face and my concept of reality for far too long. Sometimes I feel upset at You for taking so long to do Your work in me, but then I remember that one reason for this is Your intense respect for my freedom and Your intention of doing a thorough job in me that will be permanent and not just imposed on the surface. So I trust in Your timing and once again give You permission to do whatever is necessary to cleanse me of all the roots of bitterness that still infect my heart. I choose to cooperate with whatever You want to do with me. Empower me with Your blessings today. And hey, thanks for telling me this morning that all heaven is interested in my happiness. That means a lot.

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