The Ruler

Again Isaiah says, "THERE SHALL COME THE ROOT OF JESSE, AND HE WHO ARISES TO RULE OVER THE GENTILES, IN HIM SHALL THE GENTILES HOPE." (Romans 15:12)

I want to go back to this verse and examine something that stirs a little discomfort inside of me. Whenever I feel some dissonance inside it alerts me that something is needing to be exposed and resolved and that I should not simply stuff it out of sight as I have most of my life. Getting things out into the light is the best way to heal and to grow.

The word that triggers me a little bit is this word rule. Of course, the discomfort comes from the typical associations that I have had with this word and my own experiences with people who are perceived as rulers. The very word conjures up for me ideas of abuse of power, exploitation and selfishness. Of course not all rulers have to be this way but it seems to be the trend among rulers. So when I see this word applied to a prophecy of Jesus it seems to be a contradiction with the very nature of what I have been learning about Him over the past few years.

Now I realize that there are many better definitions of this word rule than what I have just mentioned and many would point that out. I agree. But what I am referring to here is the feelings and gut-level definitions that are inside of me, not my knowledge-based definitions that I try to believe from the head. And our gut-level beliefs are the ones that are much closer to what we really believe when the pressure is on. So every chance I get I need to bring those deeper beliefs to the light and have God address the truth or falseness of them so that I can move closer to what is really true.

So as I always like to do when I read something disturbing, I went back to the original language to look for clues as to what else it might be saying. In this case I found that very rewarding. Both the words translated rule and Gentiles have very interesting and different connotations than what they seem to convey in the English.

What I get from this sequence of words is quite interesting. It conveys the idea of someone standing up, raising up (from the word for arises) or even lifted up (think John 12:32) with the result that they will become the first in importance, in political rank or power, the most significant, to rule or reign over a race of foreigners (translated Gentiles).

With the background of what I have learned about the three false foundations that make up what we know today as civilization, I see something interesting in this passage that shows me how God is working to undo those counterfeits while at the same time addressing them within our context. One of the counterfeits is the whole idea of distinctions between people and the artificial values we assign to them. This includes the whole notion of hierarchy in politics and every other means of discrimination. It also creates the context for viewing races differently as more or less important than others. And it is inherent in the typical concepts of what it means to rule.

But this is all antagonistic to the real kingdom of heaven (which is not really like any kingdom we think of because of the connotations we have about what the word king means). But since we can generally only think in terms of earthly models and assumptions, God has to use our language and our logic to communicate with us until we grow enough in maturity to begin to think more along the lines of His logic and His assumptions. And that is what I detect a little bit in this verse.

If I read these verses from the context of what I have been learning about the true character of Jesus, I see something very different than a person who is seeking to rule or dominate others like we usually see in a ruler. God's system of governing relationships to our perception is almost always up-side-down and therefore makes very little sense. I believe the reason so much of the gospel sounds confusing to us is because we unconsciously intermingle our models with God's logic and come up with amalgamations that only corrupt the truth of the Word of God. We must be constantly seeking to have our assumptions challenged and updated so that as our whole library of internal definitions becomes more closely aligned with the thinking and attitudes of heaven that God's ways and thoughts will become more clear and more rooted in our hearts.

So instead of Jesus looking for power and influence to control others like we think of in the word ruler, Jesus is destined to become the most important person in the hearts of all those who choose to accept heaven's ways of thinking, which is living selflessly from the heart to bless others. In God's system of government, the ruler is there not to dictate to others as to what they should do, but to inspire by example and empowerment everyone who wants to imitate their spirit and life. What I see in this verse is that this Root of Jesse will arise to become the most important person in the hearts of all who once were foreigners. And foreigners is the description that includes every one of us including Jews, because every human being has become foreign to the ways that heaven operates and interacts.

I notice one more phrase that I don't know if it is intentional or just coincidence. But the words in Him remind me of the discourse that Jesus had with His disciples in the upper room just before He died. He spent considerable time instructing them about the extreme importance of abiding in Him. (see John 15) Whether or not this verse is alluding to that, I believe it is vitally important to understand for anyone who wants to be part of those who live under the reign of Jesus Christ in their hearts. Each person must have a much better understanding of what it really means to abide in Him and for Him to abide in us.

And as I look one last time at this verse I see that as I learn to abide in Him that the result will be hope growing in my heart and mind. This is the relationship that links me to this God of hope that wants to fill me with all joy and peace in believing. That is the kind of experience that I want for myself. That is the choice that I want to continue making every single day.

Father, fill me with hope, with all joy and peace, and place within me a believing heart. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit today and make me a more effective channel of Your selfless love and kindness to attract others to Your reign through my example and spirit. Thank-you for these words for my heart this morning. Thank-you for the power that comes through Your Word. Remind me of Your thoughts for me today.

(next in series)

Full of Goodness and All Knowledge

And concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able also to admonish one another. (Romans 15:14)

As I have noticed this verse coming up for several days now, my mind has kept raising an objection to what I read here. Something inside of me rankles at the assertion that those Paul was addressing could be said to be full of goodness and filled with all knowledge. Isn't that bordering on blasphemy? I mean, even Jesus stated clearly that only God was good. And to say that someone other than God is full of all knowledge seems to me to be a very serious overstatement at the least.

So when I found myself ready to explore this verse this morning I also found that it was time to ask God directly what He meant when He had this written. Just why does this say here that the recipients of this letter – which by implication includes Christians today – could be considered full of goodness and all knowledge.

Well, I realize that for a skeptic this is material for criticism of the Word of God. But that is not the direction I care to go. But at the same time I want to be open and honest about any questions that come up from deep within because I have learned that God is never put off or upset about honest questions. In fact it is highly important that we feel safe to ask tough questions or we will quickly come to hide our real feelings and questions for fear of being shamed or discounted. That happens all too often in the religious world today but it is not the way God treats us.

So I sat here wondering what answers God might have to my question about this issue of humans full of goodness. And then my eyes wandered up to the previous verse and I noticed a very strong clue to follow that gave good promise of finding the answer. May the God of hope fill you....

Of course! If the Word says that I am full of something then it would be logical to also explain how that came to be. It is the Source of all goodness that naturally would be the one who would fill me with that same goodness, especially when I come to believe in His goodness. In fact, it is my very believing in the goodness of God that opens the door that same goodness to flow into my life and begin to be reflected from me.

And the very same applies to this issue of knowledge. It is totally absurd to even consider that anyone of us might be full of goodness or knowledge by any other means. Mirrors do not inherently contain anything that you might see when looking into the mirror. But a clean, properly formed mirror will be able to pass along the same beauty, colors, brilliancy and information that is in its line of sight.

So now I see very clearly here that the reason anyone might be full of goodness and all knowledge is because they have chosen to believe that the Source they are believing in is full of goodness and all knowledge. And because they are believing and reflecting and focusing on that Source they are empowered, just like a mirror, to become brilliant reflections of all that goodness and knowledge and as such are also able to pass that information on gently to others who need it.

And that is the meaning of this word admonish. In the original it means to put in mind, (by implication) to caution or reprove gently. That is very consistent with the way God relates to us when we understand the truth about His character. God never uses force to accomplish His work of transforming our hearts. He uses gentleness, kindness and attraction. I realize that this sounds like heresy to many and they are quick to point to many stories in the Bible where it appears God engages in violence to get His way. I firmly believed that myself for most of my life. But these conclusions are arrived at without careful consideration of the filters we bring to our reading of these stories. And all of us always have filters over our minds about everything we perceive, and the filters are far more important to analyze and challenge than the facts or details of the stories under consideration. (I have a whole web site that partly relates to this issue.)

So, as we choose to believe the truths about God as revealed in Jesus' life and death, the God of hope fills us with – what? Well, I see here that I can be filled with joy and peace and hope and the power of the Holy Spirit (v. 13). And at the same time I will also be filled with the goodness of God and have access to all the knowledge of God – whatever knowledge I need in the moment to help me reflect His character to others in gentle nudgings to encourage them to believe more in God also.

One more thing in this context needs to be included in the assembly of these things into our lives. The next verse refers to Paul's own motivation for doing this very thing – admonishing in this letter he has written. Paul says that he could be bold in his admonishing because of the grace that was given him from God. If we review the background and history of Paul's life it becomes very clear that Paul was not speaking from a self-righteous attitude. Hardly! That was the original mindset from which he had been delivered when he was confronted by Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. After that Paul was in the school of humility and his motivation was to share the passion of God with others that had so transformed his own perspective and heart.

Because of grace Paul was full of God's passion to reflect God's goodness and His true knowledge and to mentor others into becoming the same kind of reflectors as he had become. For that is what true admonishing is really all about.

(next in series)

Believing

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

There is just so much to learn and assimilate in this one verse that I can't do it in just one or two days. What I want to ponder and listen about now is this idea of believing and the implications that it has on the surrounding elements in this passage.

What I have been learning and reinforcing in my mind and heart over this last week is the surprising truths about God's forgiveness and salvation that were never so clear to me before. When I realize from various texts in the Bible the unconditional nature of these things that God has revealed to us through Jesus and His sacrifice for us, I begin to experience the kind of amazement that draws me into that salvation. At the same time I become more disillusioned with the false teachings that I grew up with that makes us the centerpiece of salvation and the focal point of the universe. While we are certainly an important part of the issue, the great war does not really revolve around us like we have so long supposed. The real center of all the commotion is the accusations against the real truths about God Himself.

God is the center of all attention in this trial for everyone who knows anything about what is really going on in this war. God's character reputation has been maligned, distorted, blasphemed, and displaced with lies and insinuations by His archenemy who used to be His closest created comrade and friend. The part that us humans have in this battle of the titans is only as witnesses to testify in His trial. And our testimony that is required and that every person will give whether they claim to know God or not is this, Can God accomplish in the hearts and lives of fallen sinners what He claims He can do or is it all a ruse?

The ninth commandment given on Mount Sinai is the requirement that we are not to witness falsely against our neighbor. But I believe that even more importantly we must experience God's transformation in our hearts so thoroughly that we will not falsely witness in God's trial about His desire to work in our lives.

We can present a false testimony in God's trial in different modes. We may claim outwardly and intellectually that God is good and kind and powerful but not allow those truths to transform our hearts. Then it will be our spirit and influence and symptomatic behavior that will be testifying against the claims of God contrary to our professed claims.

But even more common is the embracing and teaching of some or many of the lies about God that have so long been assumed to be true. This clearly becomes an endorsement of the false charges against God that Satan insists are true. But no matter how many centuries these lies have been accepted and promoted by millions they are still lies and will never stand the test of full exposure to the light of real truth.

The problem for us is that we were born in this sea of lies as well as taught many of these lies about God and therefore have little frame of reference to even know that they are false. The very nature of deception is that one does not usually even know they are deceived. The things they believe are in their mind completely true and they are simply embracing what they have assumed all their lives to be the path of integrity while not realizing they are promoting insinuations about God that inhibit them and others from coming to Him for life. And the fact of the matter is that every single one of us finds ourself in this condition to start with.

For many years I was mystified by Jesus' repeated statements about our urgent need to believe. John seemed to pick up this theme particularly and amplified it in his other epistles. But what I could not figure out for a very long time was just what it was that we are supposed to believe. Sometimes He would say that we were to believe on the Son of Man. Other times it was to believe that Jesus came from the Father. Sometimes He simply said that we were to believe with seemingly little hint as to what that meant, at least from what I could tell from the context and my perspective.

This used to greatly frustrate me and even fed into my secret suspicion that maybe it was another scheme by God to keep me from being saved. (Yes, that kind of picture of God was a very real part of my life growing up, sadly to say.) I wondered for years why God did not make it more explicit just what it was that I was supposed to believe so that I could fulfill this additional requirement so as to get “saved”, whatever that meant.

But a few years ago when God began introducing Himself to me personally and began to seriously challenge my many fears and false assumptions about Him with the truth of His goodness, kindness, compassion and all the other unconditional truths about His character, it began to dawn on me that what Jesus was really saying to people was this: I want you to believe that what you see Me doing and how I relate to you and treat you is the same as the way the Father feels about you. My kindness, gentleness, unconditional forgiveness and my passion to lift you up, heal you and love you is exactly the truth about both Me and the Father that has been hidden from you by all the lies you have believed.

I am sad to admit that this process of changing my opinions about what God is like has been extremely slow and full of resistance due to the lies about Him that are so deeply rooted in my psyche. These lies appeal for justification to the continued belief of them by most people in the church and by misreadings of the Scriptures and other inspired writings. These lying spirits are irreconcilable with the Spirit of God and the only way I can relate to them effectively is to expel them forcefully from my heart and mind as they come to my attention in the light. There can be no compromise with them. There can be no shared mind space between the real truth of God and the poisonous counterfeits that are dedicated to drawing my heart away from Him.

But a very interesting aspect of this thing called believing is the element of free choice. While it is amazingly true that God's forgiveness is permanent and has been in place since eternity (it is a description of what God's heart is like), and His salvation is also a permanent fixture and has been gifted to every human being whether they know it or not, it is completely up to each one of us as to whether we will experience all the benefits of engaging or synchronizing with these unchangeable facts of reality. It is very much like two gears that are near each other, one with power in it and the other in need of power. It is only as the powerless gear chooses to move close enough to the powered gear to engage its teeth with the stronger gear that any power can be transferred into itself and it can begin to turn.

What I see in this verse right now is something along the line of this analogy. The teeth of the gears could be likened to these two important descriptions in this verse: joy and peace. It just so happens that those who have been studying the brain recently have discovered that these two things are the most important experiences that the brain needs in order to grow and thrive and mature and bond with other minds. These two experiences form a cycle that is crucial for the mental health of every individual. We need to experience joy together with others followed by times of peaceful togetherness and quietness, which is then followed by more experiences of the more active experience of joyful togetherness which is followed....

So I find it quite compelling that in the heart of this verse describing in essence the process we experience in salvation that the two most important ingredients for mental health are the same things that our God of hope wants to fill us with when we choose to believe in Him. So what is it that constitutes our choice to believe? What is it that we can choose to believe that will allow God to fill us with this energizing, life-giving joy-peace cycle?

I believe that what we need to choose to believe is in the surrounding context of this verse. We are to recognize and believe the truth about Jesus and His servant spirit (v. 8). We can glorify God for His mercy and praise Him in our joy and singing (v. 9). We can rejoice together with His people (part of the actual definition of the word joy – v.10). We can believe that God is the kind of God that will inspire hope in our hearts and instead of motivating us through fear (v. 12, 13).

Any amount of resistance to believing in any of these things betrays hidden lies and false spirits still lurking within my heart. And it is that resistance that is trying to prevent me from making the choice to believe. But choosing to believe is the permission that God must have in order for Him to enter into my heart and accomplish all that the power of His Holy Spirit is waiting to do in me.

If I choose to believe and keep choosing to believe, then God is given the permission that He needs to expel these lying spirits from my heart, to expose the secret fears and apprehensions I have harbored all of my life in the light of His love so that I can release them and become even more free from my slavery to fear. It is this point of belief that is the most crucial and pivotal point for each one of us in our role as witnesses in God's trial. For if we choose to believe the truths about Him as He reveals them to us instead of resisting them, our lives can bear a truthful testimony that God's word is true and that He indeed can do what He says He can do in us. And according to Romans 4:1-5 when we believe that God can do what He says He can do it is credited to us as righteousness.

I choose to believe the real truths about God and what He is like that He has been progressively revealing to me over the past few years. I know that there is much more that I need to know about Him and even more that my heart needs to embrace. But I am so glad that He is the one in charge of this process of transformation and lie exposure. I am coming to actually appreciate the fact that I come under conviction on a regular basis because that indicates that God is at work in my heart. I want to have the lies about him exposed that have hidden inside of me all of my life, because they have been the roots that have produced so much bitterness, dysfunction and sin in my life and my relationships. I want the God of hope to fill me with joy and peace in believing. So I choose to believe and keep on choosing that option, because I know that my choice to believe in the goodness of God is the door that allows Him to continue His work in my transformation. And the real purpose for my transformation is so that in His trial I will be able to give a truthful testimony about His character.

I know that I will be called upon to give a character reference for God in His great trial in the day of His judgment. But I also realize that I am daily called upon to testify about what He is really like. So I choose to believe the truth about Him as He continues to reveal it to me so that He can reproduce that same truth about His character in His image that He created me to be. (Gen. 1:26, 27)

(next in series)

Good News of Hope

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

For the past several days I have been listening and re-listening to a short series of sermons that I downloaded off the web site of a young pastor that I consider the best presenter of the true Gospel and the real truth about God that I have ever heard. I have a number of his series that I have greatly enjoyed over the past several years, but this 4-sermon collection is the most direct, challenging and clear presentation that continues to flush out deeply embedded lies about God that still remain in my heart. I find myself disturbed, amazed, exhilarated and in tears as the real truth about God overwhelms me again and again. It is a very powerful antidote to the perpetual negative news that surrounds me in this world and gives me refreshing access to the true news, the genuine good news that all of us so desperately need to know and experience.

There are so many things in this series that bring God's goodness into sharp relief and clarify confusing beliefs about God in my mind. I am reminded again that the truth about God is such good news that most people find it nearly impossible to believe, and sometimes this includes even me. We fall back on that old adage that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. The real problem is, that may be true in relation to all the deceptions presented to us from this world, but when we use it in relation to the good news of the gospel it becomes an excuse for unbelief and resistance.

Once again, I want to point out that it is very important to know the real meaning of the words being used. When I talk about the gospel here I am not referring to the nebulous collections of doctrines, assertions and teachings muddled together called the gospel by most religious people. I am talking about something far more compelling and life-changing that I am still only coming to understand myself, and what I have been listening to here is bringing intense clarity to that process.

What I want to simply share this morning is a report of my own experience of being filled with joy and peace by this God of hope who is once again applying healing truth to my confused and damaged heart. And knowing the universal principle or law of the mind that what we dwell on we become, I am choosing to fill my mind more and more with all the truth about God that I can find so that as I become more and more enchanted with His beauty, His patience, His kindness and tolerance and humility, that my own spirit will begin to more and more reflect to others the way He relates to me.

I find myself often bemoaning the many faults and weaknesses within myself that I see in my attitudes toward others. I see the bitterness that poisons my feelings toward others and the pride that seems lurking behind every turn. I get so frustrated in wanting to be able to view others differently and to love them unconditionally no matter how hypocritical, repulsive, obnoxious or evil they are to me. But I simply cannot find it within me to produce the kind of love that I know I am supposed to show.

But then I sense in my spirit that trying to love other people who hurt and offend me is not something that is possible by working on it directly as I have supposed for most of my life. Irregardless of the many years of insistent instruction given by religious people of all occupations to the contrary, my heart will never be able to love before it learns to believe and receive love first. I simply cannot give what I don't both believe and have experienced. So if I want to reflect the amazing gentleness of Jesus that has the divine power to transform lives through the presence of His Spirit, then my only hope is to focus all my attention on allowing my picture of God to be corrected so that my reflection to others is not filled with distortions.

Those distortions in my beliefs about what God is like and how He feels about me are so infiltrated throughout all of my thinking that it takes a supernatural power to expose them and replace them with truths. But that sounds all too much like an intellectual project whereas most of the lies are residing at my heart level much more than in my logical thinking. And for my heart to change its assumptions about God I have to emotionally experience those truths first-hand in my own experience. It is simply not effective for changing my heart to acknowledge the true facts about God's character as helpful as that is for a beginning. Sure, wrong facts held in my mind will certainly create obstacles for my heart to change. But what I really need is a complete overhaul of both sides of my brain and especially the experiential beliefs that reside in my fundamental control center that is activated anytime I come under pressure. And that is all primarily located on the right side of my brain which is linked to my heart.

As I have been listening to these presentations over the past few days I can sense my heart coming alive and reaching out in deep hunger for what it inherently knows it was created to experience. I find myself crying out to God, confessing my own unbelief and pleading for cleansing from all my resistance to these radical, fresh revelations of the real truth about Him. I am tired of living my life in the lowlands of depressing and confused views of God's character and attitudes towards me. I can see more clearly that the Word of God confirms all the these wonderful truths that I have missed for so long which only helps to reinforce their impact on my heart. As I take a fresh look at all of the Bible in the light of these “new” truths it comes alive even more in startling ways, sort of like taking ultraviolet light and shining it on objects to reveal unexpected beauties that could not be seen before.

I want to point out here that I am not trying to draw more attention to a messenger of truth than I am to the One he is talking about. I know of others who are also presenting similar themes and they have been and still are wonderful resources for deepening my appreciation and love for the real God. And I also realize that different people are used at different times to target specific areas that need exposing or revising and that it is the Holy Spirit that coordinates all of this effectively. But I also know that when a person has caught the passion of God's heart and allows it to flow through them in ways that are undiluted by their old mistaken views of God, that the power of their message takes on new energy and God is able to work through their ministry in far more effective ways to reach hungry, hurting hearts.

I plan to continue to listen to these talks several more times and allow the Spirit to impress me with the wonderful revelations about God's heart even more deeply. I copied them onto a disc so that I could play them in my van to and from work. I have had them in my computer for about a week or so now and have been listening to them while I eat breakfast or after I get home during supper. I find it so much more energizing and inspiring than the typical fare from the radio and I believe that we are currently entering a time in this world where our daily choices about our mental diet are going to determine the condition and reactions of our spirit very directly and quickly.

I choose to engage as a direct recipient with my God of hope who has promised to fill me with all joy and peace in believing, so that I may abound in hope. I also pray that He will help me let go of all my resistance and fears so that my believing will be genuine, deep and firmly rooted within my heart, replacing all the lies and fears and apprehensions that still cling to my heart like leeches and parasites. I also know that this can only happen through the power of the Holy Spirit who has been commissioned to cause me to abound in this hope.

Maranatha.

(next in series)

God of Hope

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

I like to take time to make sure that I have the best mental grasp of the words I am reading in order to have a better context for the message embedded in the passage and for it to be most effective. I again looked up this word hope to make sure I understood what it meant and it still inspires me to be reminded. It means to look forward expectantly and with pleasure to something in the future and it also involves faith.

This verse says that my God is a God of hope. That tells me something very important about God that I want to have permeate every cell of my brain. God is just the kind of being that can cause me to look forward with intense pleasure to what He has planned for my life and my future. I do not have to know exactly what that is, for to know something fully is no longer hope. Part of the meaning of hope is the incompleteness of one's awareness of the fulfillment. But faith, which hope inspires, trusts the heart of the One who is the source of that hope more than the supposition about what might be coming.

When I think about what hope is I also try to imagine what the opposite of hope is. Comparing something with its opposite can bring added insight and depth to the meaning of something. In my view, I think the opposite of hope might be dread, which I have all too much experience with. In fact, when I am honest with myself I have to admit that my imagination tends to dwell on low-level dread much of the time. Sometimes this is called negative thinking or scenario thinking. I began to realize sometime back that my imagination has been hijacked by the enemy for many years tied up creating scenarios of dreadful things that might happen to me in the future and how I might relate to them.

Now that I think about this more clearly I suddenly realize that I was carefully trained to think this way from a very young age. The very same method is typically used in many religious circles in mistaken attempts to motivate people to “get ready” for Jesus to come. All sorts of frightening scenarios are created in the imagination as to what might happen in the last days – persecutions, threats, torture, pressure to change our minds about our doctrines – all sorts of scenarios calculated to induce fear and dread in supposition that these fears will somehow motivate me to stiffen my resolutions and entrench me more firmly in my beliefs so that I can make it through the trials ahead.

Yes, dread has been an all too familiar companion and still is in my mind. And that is likely why hope is something that almost has the sense of being a foreigner to me. Fear and dread I can explain and experience at a moments notice, but hope is something that I have to stop and analyze and grope through my intellectual mind to explain. This is a very sad state of affairs but not at all surprising considering the planet I was born on. I suspect I am not alone in this condition which is why Paul has written this passage for all of us who are so devoid of hope.

Hope and joy – particularly joy – are words that seemed almost distant and mysterious to me for most of my life. I can distinctly remember trying to wrap my mind around what joy might feel like or what the word was referring to when I was young but realized that, given the descriptions I read about it, that I must not have any idea of what it meant or felt like. To a lesser extent I still feel that way now, though I have a much better intellectual understanding of what joy should feel like. And I do have certain events or incidents in my experience that I have to confess were filled with intense encounters with real joy, though that joy involved no sense of happiness or euphoria.

For those who know me better or have read much of what I have written they will know that when I say joy I am talking about the nervous system's definition of joy which has been discovered by scientists recently studying how the brain functions. Joy, according to the brain's most basic function and craving, is the sense I experience when someone is glad to be with me, when I am the sparkle in their eye. This may be in spite of whatever emotions I may be experiencing at the time or despite circumstances I may find myself in. I may be buried in shame, in fear, even in anger – but if someone insists on wanting to be with me and love me and cherish me no matter what I do or how I feel or even how I treat them, I am in a position to know first hand the true experience of joy.

So what does joy have to do with hope? Well, because right here in this verse I am told that the God of hope will fill me with all joy and peace in believing. As I was writing the above paragraph about joy I remembered a particularly painful, shameful day in our life where another couple refused to leave us alone. They stayed until the wee hours of the morning during a catastrophic experience we were going through, and then took us into their small apartment to comfort and care for our bodies and our hearts. The effect on our emotions and psyche was unforgettable and intense under those circumstances and I have since told and retold this story – usually without being able to contain my intense emotions in the process – as one of the best examples of real joy. It is also a classic illustration of how joy is distinctly unique from the feeling of happiness.

But as I again revisited my feelings during that horrible experience and the effect of this young couple's choice to stay close to us through it all and their ministry to our hearts at the end of that day, I also am aware of the peace that we experienced as a result of the joy they created for us. As we lay down that night to go to sleep I remember commenting to my wife that I could not imagine the emptiness and sense of hopelessness we would be experiencing right then if this couple had not laid aside their own interests and comfort to put our needs first and to be very sensitive to our emotional pain. So what I see is that there is a very strong natural link between joy and peace.

What I also see here in this verse is that the source of all joy and peace is from the heart of this God, our Father in heaven who is called the God of hope. And according to the previous verses in this passage He can become our God of hope even more effectively as we allow Him to rule over us and as we engage in praise to Him.

What is becoming more starkly clear to me is the contrast between the assumptions of my past about how to prepare for end-times and for Jesus' coming by whipping up ever-increasing levels of dread and fear and this verse which tells me that God is the source of hope and joy and peace. To me those two ways of viewing God are simply incompatible. Hope is not inspired in the heart by inducing dread and fear. Love cannot be created in the heart by inducing dread and fear. And by extension, true obedience which can only be produced from a heart of love and devotion to God cannot be elicited in the life by inducing dread and fear.

It would be very easy at this point to move into a spirit of blame against all those who have hobbled me and handicapped me all of my life using these methods. But I also have to remember that they too were equally handicapped in their lives by others previously who passed it on to them and the cycle goes back all the way to Adam. It is sin that is the root cause and it is Satan who keeps the problem going and intensifying. My only hope is to focus on the God who is my God of hope. And as I believe this truth about Him my belief in His heart of faithful love for me will displace the dread and fears that are all too familiar to me and replace them with the freshness and freedom of hope, joy and peace.

(next in series)

Reliable Hope

Again Isaiah says, "THERE SHALL COME THE ROOT OF JESSE, AND HE WHO ARISES TO RULE OVER THE GENTILES, IN HIM SHALL THE GENTILES HOPE." Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:12-13)

Living presently during the intensifying heat of rhetoric in the most contested season of our country's politics, I can't help observing some of the massive use of spin on facts and the desperate struggle to capture the minds and hearts of millions of voters by both sides in this contest. Almost nothing is left untried and the temptation to indulge in deception and slander is one that is almost assumed to just be part of doing business in politics today.

As I read this text this morning I saw a parallel in what God is doing on this earth to what politicians are attempting to do in the world's counterfeit system of government. Like God, they are trying to convince as many as possible that they are the people's best hope for the future. In fact, just like God they are also very intent on trying to capture the confidence and allegiance particularly of those who are not presently considered to be on their side. There is an intense battle going on between conflicting fundamental views of reality right now and what should be done to better our situations. This is rather obvious on the political front but it is far more intense in the spiritual realm where it has far more significance for our future than any politician could ever hope to offer. And by “spiritual” I am not talking about religion here.

Spirituality simply means the things having to do with our spirit. Every person on this planet has a spirit and whether or not they are aware of it or in touch with it, their spirit is the most important aspect of their existence. It is with our spirit that we interact with others and with supernatural beings in a way that remains mysterious to most of us. But just because we cannot explain it easily in the “natural” realm of logic and words does not reduce the powerful impact that our spirit plays in our life. It is with our spirit that we deeply connect with friends and loved ones. It is with our spirit that we hate our enemies and indulge in prejudice against people we don't even know. Our spirit can be poisoned with bitterness or inspire us to amazing creativity. It is even with our spirit that we somehow receive and give important messages that we are often consciously unaware of but that deeply affect how others feel about us and relate to us – even in our relations with lower life-forms such as animals and other living things.

Jesus made it explicitly clear that God is a Spirit and those who worship Him must do so with their spirit as well as in truth. One of our greatest failures in Christianity today is that we are so ignorant about the true nature or even existence of our own spirit that we are rendered nearly incompetent in our ability to enter into any real and significantly meaningful, life-changing worship of the Father of our spirits. That is not because we do not have a spirit or even that our spirit is not worshiping. Our spirit is the part of us that is created to worship and worship it will do. But the direction and focal point of our worship may be rather surprising when the light of truth is shone on the real condition of our hearts.

So what does this have to do with politicians and a God of hope? A great deal more than might be supposed at first. While politicians right now are in a desperate struggle to outdo each other in vying for positions of power to control the lives and destinies of millions of people, God is even more intensely working to attract the affections of billions of people who still know very little about His existence and even less about the truth of His perfect, loving character.

Unlike politicians, God will never stoop to even the slightest hint of deception to gain the allegiance of the children He has created to live in His presence with joy. Because real love requires the pure environment of total freedom of choice and thrives on truth, God fiercely protects our right to choose Him freely without any coercion or distortions of truth that may play on our selfish desires. Instead of pandering to the conflicting self-interests of each group of people that wants their own desires met at the cost of others like politicians are so apt to do, God is busy forming a unified family of believers from all groups of people who are connected to Him directly as their own personal Savior.

In the previous verses in this passage Paul touches on one of the most sensitive areas of the gospel that triggered the prejudice of Jews in his day. The Jews had clearly been selected as God's chosen people many centuries before and they had become extremely proud of this fact – too proud. However, due their misconceptions of the nature and purposes of God, they misinterpreted God's motives and turned His favors into excuses for exclusiveness to prevent anyone else from joining into the family of God.

God's original purpose and intent for His chosen people was to make them the core of His plan to attract all the peoples of the earth to come into fellowship with Him. If they had followed God's purpose for their nation, instead of looking on the nations around them with prejudice and disdain they would have seen the intense need of others who were hurting and dysfunctional because of the many lies they believed about the their true Father in heaven. And if the Children of Israel had caught the passion of God for lost souls they would have allowed Him to so transform them into examples of the results of living in harmony with the God of heaven that all the world would have been streaming to Israel to discover the secret of their riches, their success and most of all the source of their happiness, joy and peace.

But that is not how they chose to live. Because God's blessings were so selfishly abused and His favors were so misunderstood, instead of Israel becoming the magnet of God in the earth they became the laughing stalk of the world and God's reputation was blasphemed in the way His representatives on earth portrayed Him to the world. Because they failed to believe the real truth about God and His blessings for them, they used His blessings for selfish consumption and used His favors to them as a people as an excuse to hate all those who were not born into their lineage.

This became so deeply entrenched in their hearts that finally God had to “divorce” them and start over with a whole new group of people. When Jesus came to earth to make one last offer of “marriage” to His chosen bride and was stood up and stiffed at the point of matrimony, sadly God had to accept their final rejection of His overtures and begin to form a new bride that would be more inclined to respond to His romances. At this time He changed the status of the Israelites and declared that they were no longer His exclusive people but that the status of “chosenness” would be opened up to all people everywhere who would respond to the drawing grace and love demonstrated by Jesus when He was lifted up on the cross.

"Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." (John 12:31-32)

This is what Paul is talking about here in Romans 15. He is celebrating the new position of the Gentiles who are now invited, even urged to join in with the Jews in praising and worshiping God. The Gentiles are to consider God as their real ruler and as a result of this new relationship they would discover their hearts becoming full of hope.

Hope is exactly what all of the politicians are trying to convince everyone that they have to offer for the future. With all of the wild uncertainty occurring right now in the world financial markets and all of the unrest and threat of war and violence facing our nation, people are becoming much more acutely aware of their need for real hope. And most politicians are eager to exploit that deep craving on the part of millions in their desperate rush to secure votes of confidence so as to usher themselves into high positions of trust and power.

However, one does not have to go very far in asking people about the integrity of politicians before it will become obvious that almost no one really believes that politicians are truthful or honest to a great extent. Skepticism and cynicism are so pervasive in politics today that is has become lucrative fuel for humor and entertainment as comedians poke fun at the obvious discrepancies in the claims and assertions of politicians of every stripe. To even say the words “honest politician” can produce howls of laughter from generally any direction as people just simply believe that those words paired together are nothing more than an oxymoron.

And yet, people are so desperate for hope that they will suppress their obvious skepticism as the promises and platitudes are ratcheted ever higher the closer election day approaches. They will temporarily suspend their skepticism and induce a level of amnesia to cover all of their previous experiences with broken promises while whipping themselves and each other into a frenzy of emotion in order to promote their favorite candidate of deception. Of course, if they could really be honest with themselves many would likely admit that they suspect in a few months, or years at the most, they will be in regret for their avid choices today and will be ready to move on to the next person who can promote themselves so effectively as to once again blind the sensibilities of people with their loud promises of hope.

Do I sound a bit cynical? Well, in contrast right now with the madness of politicians and the intensity of their followers I am sure my words are very out of sync and unwelcome. But as I ponder the real meaning of these verses I see a wonderful alternative that is still being offered as a source of genuine hope that will not leave one empty and ashamed in the future. And our real source of this hope is not a futile alternative to the real-life politics of today as many would try to assert. For each person who is willing to actually submit to the authority and rulership of the true God of heaven will tap into the only source of real hope that will actually accomplish all of the promises that come along with it.

But it gets even better. Instead of waking up a few weeks or months down the road with a serious hang-over after the intoxication of the political season has faded away and deep regrets replace the false hopes whipped up during the campaigns, God's election in our lives will result in an infilling of joy and peace in believing. Instead of regrets, we will find ourselves being swept up into the everlasting excitement of the winning ticket and our hearts will continue to expand and abound with hope as we are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit which is the very passion of God Himself.

This may at first sound like so much religious jargon to an unbeliever. But this is a reality that is far more intense and with far more important results than any politician could ever promise or deliver. If one chooses to cling to their unbelief and put their trust in earthly heroes, they will sooner or later find their dreams crumbling into ashes. But the Word of the Lord lasts forever and the God behind all of these promises is perfectly good, kind and compassionate consistently.

Father, I vote for You and only for You. I select You to be the supreme authority in my life, my soul and my spirit. Fill me with Your hope that never makes ashamed and fill my mind with Your promises that can produce new life within me. I choose to praise You with all the others who are discovering the truth about how good You are. Thank-you for this fresh revelation of Your heart this morning.

(next in series)