Without Measure or Limitation

For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure. (John 3:34)

This Spirit without measure phrase has been in my mind for several weeks now. It is one of those hints that I don't want to plaster over with quick platitudes or easy explanations because I suspect there may be much more here than at first meets the eye. I want to listen to hear if God wants to show me much more hidden beneath the surface in this text.

When I read it again this morning another text immediately came to my mind. It is the one in James that has helped me understand better the reasons that we don't receive as much from God as we want to quite often. It involves the problems with our receiving equipment rather than the transmitting equipment on God's side.

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord. (James 1:5-7)

Currently I am also reading a book that is really opening up my perceptions about reality and the problems we all have in perceiving it clearly. It is called The Truth About Lies And The Lies About Truth by David Takle. It is one of the best books that I have read in a long time and is helping to reinforce and supplement many things that God has been teaching me for a number of years. It explains how that our problems with sin and evil are really rooted in lies and deception more than in our sinful nature or rebellion or pride.

Pride and rebellion and most other forms of sinful attitudes are propped up on lies that we firmly believe in our hearts and many with our heads. Until we allow God to take us back to the real roots of our problems and expose and replace these lies with real truth about Him and ourselves, we are going to find ourselves circling around again and again with the same problems and weaknesses repeating themselves over and over in our lives.

When I read a statement like this – that God gives the Spirit without measure – my mind immediately reacts with questions and doubts because of many lies that lay hidden inside of me still. I quickly move to assume that this must be talking only about Jesus because it doesn't seem to fit the experience that most of us have in our daily lives. So it feels easier to just believe that God gave Jesus the Spirit without measure or limitation but for the rest of us He has to be much more restrictive. We have to meet certain conditions and criteria before He can trust us with His Spirit or His wisdom.

While there may be elements of truth in that belief, I suspect that there is also lurking some serious lies in there as well, though not very obvious. And upon examining this text from James and what I have learned from it in the past I now believe that is very likely the case even more. Just like the unlimited Spirit that is talked about here in John, James refers to unlimited wisdom available just for the asking. But then he goes on to reveal what it is that limits us from receiving something that is supposed to be unrestricted.

Now if I approached this the way I usually did most of my growing up years I would immediately feel guilty and condemned because I couldn't work up enough faith to impress God to answer my prayers. But that is precisely where the lies began to emerge into the open. The real problem is not my inability to conjure up enough “faith” or “belief” so that God will change His mind and give me the wisdom (or the Spirit) that I request, the real problem is my own beliefs that God does not want me to have it or that God doesn't really care about me that much or that I don't deserve it or.... All of these gut-level beliefs that hide below the radar from easy detection prevent me from trusting God and resting in His love which is the real description of faith.

So what I am starting to see more clearly now is that the real problem is not on God's side who is holding back good things from me that I need to live a successful Christian life. The real problem is that I believe that very thing – that He is the kind of God that holds back on me until I jump through enough hoops or get my act together well enough. There are hundreds and thousands of lies all tangled together in these types of reasoning and God wants to deliver us from their power over our hearts and minds.

These false assumptions permeate nearly everything we believe in religion and about life in general. It is not limited to religious people at all; if we are human we are filled with complex lies about God and about ourselves. But it is often the case that the more religious we profess to be the more likely we are to be immersed in subtle deceptions that we are afraid to confront or to admit may be inside of us. Jesus while on this earth found it much easier to connect with and hang around those who were more blatantly irreligious and openly sinful than He could with the professors of religion. And that is because it is always much easier to relate to people who are more honest about what is going on in their heart even if it is really messed up, than it is to connect at the heart level with people who are in constant denial of the true condition of their heart.

It has always been the case that what is really needed is honesty of heart before God is able to pour out the things we most need to be reconciled to Him more fully. We really need wisdom from God and we need to receive His Spirit far more than we do if we are to begin to perceive reality as heaven views it. But the lies that block our ability to trust in God and that lead us to doubt His promises are the real core issues that need to be addressed if we ever want to make any real progress in growth and maturity.

It is the heart that must be willing to be open, honest and willing to receive the gifts of God, His wisdom and Spirit and love. Our heart is the receiving device inside of us that God communicates with. So until we are willing to get real about our heart and start living in touch with our heart, we will be unable to receive the unlimited resources of heaven because the only part of us designed to receive them has been hijacked and taken over by lies implanted there by Satan. Truth in the head is not enough to prepare us to connect with God's heart. Only hearts can connect with other hearts and God is after our hearts more than anything else.

What we need more than anything else is fresh revelations of the real truth about God and how He feels towards us as well as stark revelations about our own inability to do anything to make ourselves better or more acceptable to God. We need to have the lies about God exposed and displaced with heart truths as well as head truths about Him. And we also need to become honest about God's assessment of our own condition and the helplessness that we really have to change our own hearts and lives. When these two fundamental lies are faced head-on and dealt with, then we can begin to make real progress in true spirituality.

The more apparently successful we are socially or religiously the harder it is for us to see our own blind spots where we are deceived. We believe that what we are doing must be working so we need to just keep doing it harder so it will finally succeed in getting us into heaven or into God's good graces. But when we come to the place that we finally begin to see clearly our own total helplessness and inability to change our own hearts, and then in addition begin to see the extravagant and unconditional mercy, kindness and outrageous grace that the Father is eager to pour into our lives, then we will be in position to really begin to grow in grace and to know God as He wants us to know Him.

And when I choose to believe in and respond to His outrageous grace, forgiveness, kindness and love and I confess my real condition as He reveals it to me, then I will be in alignment to encounter and receive the unlimited resources of wisdom, grace and the Holy Spirit that is always there waiting to be received. For the real problem is not that these things are limited by God in some way so that I cannot access them but the problem lies in the deceived condition of my receiver so that I am unable to absorb, understand or appreciate and assimilate the Spirit and the wisdom that I so desperately need and want.