Manifesting Deeds

"But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God." (John 3:21)

So that it may be seen to others that the choices I made about my externals (my deeds) were motivated from a heart that is seeking to submit and synchronize with God's heart.

Does this mean that all the deeds are going to be right, perfect, good? Not necessarily. In fact, it is this very point that becomes a source of fear or contention. It is very easy for people to point out my errors, mistakes and failures and use them to claim that my heart is false, the my motives are evil, that I am a bad person that is not being honest about what is inside. They can easily claim based on my track record that I cannot possibly be practicing the truth because of all the mistakes they can see in my life. In short, they believe that the most important things about figuring out my identity are my faults and mistakes.

And this logic is very powerful in affecting my own thinking and perception about myself as well. Satan, the accuser, is always eager to reinforce this kind of shame and doubt about my connection and desire to follow God, to be in God, to abide in Him. And that is precisely why it is so important for me to keep coming to the light instead of trying to figure out my own motives or to justify myself against accusations.

This text does not say that it is my job to prove that what I am doing is motivated by a desire to follow God. It says that coming to the light will result in that being manifested. I am not the one responsible for manifesting to others what God is doing inside of me. I must rest in God and trust Him to manifest His work in and through me in the ways He chooses, not in order to justify myself. In fact, any time I try to justify myself or my actions I prevent Him the opportunity to justify me Himself. And that is certainly not a very good place to find myself.

But there seems to also be multiple layers of this. Parts of me are eager to come to the light to find that my motives are truly to know and follow God. But then I sense that there also may be deeper, darker areas inside of me that resist coming to the light even for me to see. Some would say that this indicates that my real self is much worse than I believe it to be. Others would say that it is simply an awareness of the sinful flesh that resides in every one of us. There is always debate going on about this and the motives of those debating this also have a great deal to do with the real meaning and truthfulness of the conclusions that they draw.

Then there are likely those who would say that all this introspection itself is the real problem. Is it? Sometimes I wonder myself. Am I trying to figure myself out and becoming more and more frustrated or am I really trying to understand God's word and how it applies to me personally? I have to conclude that in the end only God really knows the answer to these questions and that maybe He has other different questions or statements He is more interested in me dwelling on.

Believing and Consequences

No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised. Therefore his faith "was reckoned to him as righteousness." Now the words, "it was reckoned to him," were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification. (Romans 4:20-25 NRSV)

As I saw these words on one of my walls earlier today it connected with my ongoing pursuit of understanding this thing John talks about so much in his writings – what it means to believe in Jesus and in the Father.

He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18)

I am perceiving that understanding the true meaning and nature of the kind of belief that Jesus talks about is an extremely large undertaking. The simplistic explanations of what it means to believe by many religious exporters falls far short of the deep heart involvement that God has in mind when it comes to believing in a way that is really meaningful. I really want to not only know what it means to believe with my mind but far more urgently I want to experience what I am learning about in this area.

Abraham encountered and experienced this thing called belief in such a way that God made him a prime exhibit of what He wants all of us to do in relationship to His words. The Bible says that Abraham believed in such a way that the result was an accounting of righteousness on his behalf, whatever that really means. And it seems to mean, besides maybe a lot of other things, that he and God became very connected in a mutual trust and love relationship at the heart level. That is certainly something that I need to experience much deeper myself.

I remember when these passages about Abraham were first pointed out to me a number of years ago. It startled me that belief and righteousness were described in this way – simply believing that God can and wants to do what He says He can do in our lives. James talks about this from a different angle and emphasizes that if Abraham had not taken action on his belief ideas that they would have been useless and lifeless. That describes much of the belief and faith that is promoted today. But that was not the main problem I grew up with. My culture emphasized belief as a very high priority in religious experience but without the focus on a personal relationship with God. It was belief in a set of doctrines and rules more than anything else.

As a result, there grew up around those rigid teachings a whole lot more rules that were supposedly designed to help us keep those “truths” from being contaminated or violated. This is exactly what the Jews had done by the time Jesus arrived on the scene and yet we today still cannot see the strong correlation between what we are doing and what they did back then. It is amazing how self-deception can keep millions of people oblivious to the presence of lies and false assumptions that govern every aspect of the life. I am no exception to this problem either.

What I find compelling in looking at these two passages together is what is involved in the belief described here in Romans and then how a failure to enter into that kind of belief will inevitably produce judgment in one's life. I feel I need to revisit my own comments about this passage that I wrote during my intensive study of the book of Romans and remind myself of what God was showing me about this verse. I feel I could really benefit from comparing those notes with the implications that relate to understanding judgment better in relation to these verses in John 3.

As I look at this again this passage in Romans seems to say to me that I will be filled/covered/accounted with righteousness (the essence of what God is) whenever I believe what is described next. And there is a great deal described in this passage that upon close examination is often not what we assume it says.

First of all, this belief is directed toward the Father God, not just Jesus Himself. That is very easily missed in a quick reading of this verse but is very clear upon close observation of what the words literally say. ...believe in Him who raised Jesus. This again reminds me that the main reason that Jesus came to live and die was to change our minds and opinions about God, not to change His feelings about us in the slightest. The whole Trinity loves us in unison with love that is unquenchable and will never cease. They are all in perfect agreement in their desire to save us from the lies about Them that sin has poisoned us with and that prevents us from trusting Them in faith.

The only way that I can come into a saving faith relationship with God is to first begin to have my perceptions of God changed. I simply cannot produce trust in anyone that I cannot see good reasons to trust, not at least at the heart level. Ironically I actually violate that statement much of the time by trusting my heart to humans who have never earned my trust simply because they look good or have fooled me into believing they won't hurt me. Part of the insanity of sin and its effect on our psyche is that we too easily trust the untrustworthy here on earth while we uniformly seem unable to trust the only One who really is trustworthy because of the lies about Him that are embedded so deeply into our hearts.

The last two items listed in this passage from Romans have great significance that is also easily overlooked. We talk a great deal in various ways about Jesus being handed over for our sins, but there is so much in that phrase that completely flies right over our heads and never connects. I don't have time here to go into all of them but again I believe that I may have tried to unpack at least some of this in my previous notes when I studied this much more some time ago.

The second phrase, was raised for our justification, is even more startling and misunderstood. This too I remember dwelling on in my previous notes and I remember how surprised I was when I first saw this. It really challenges me to examine closely what I believe about what Jesus really did for me on the cross and for me to take a hard look at the many questionable assumptions about the cross contained in most of the teachings of religion along this line.

But part of what I am seeing today is the connections between properly believing these truths in relationship to what Jesus did for me and the presence of judgment referred to in John 3. This judgment is not an imposed, arbitrary condemnation type of judgment inflicted on anyone who refuses to believe things the way God insists we must. This is a judgment – an exposing of the heart – that is a natural consequence that results from the outgrowth of what I have chosen to believe about both the Father and about Jesus and His death on the cross for me.

This is really a warning to me to be very careful about swallowing the typical jargon and assumptions about the cross that swirl around in religious teachings today. Most of what I hear about the cross of Christ is tainted with false assumptions about what it really meant and is almost consistently based on terrible assumptions about the Father and His supposed animosity toward sinners. When the cross is seen in the light of Jesus placating an angry Father to any degree, then that belief is dangerously laced with deadly poisonous lies about God that must be avoided at all costs. That kind of thinking and believing is not a saving faith but is the kind of belief that will produce negative judgment in the heart and life.

This can help to explain why most of Christianity today is so full of condemnation, fear and confusion. It is because nearly all of our teachings about the Father and about the cross of Christ is founded upon false beliefs about how God feels toward us and how He implements salvation and even what those words mean in the first place. There seems to be more confusion, darkness and distortions about the cross of Jesus Christ and what it means for sinners than there is about anything else in the Bible.

But that should come as no surprise, for Satan is intent on keeping us from knowing the real truth about God in any way possible. And the focal point of his plans to keep us in darkness is to promote lies about God that will attack the plainest demonstration of love this universe has ever witnessed. In the ways that we usually present the cross we actually endorse many of the lies of Satan and weave them into our explanations of what was going on there which in turn weakens our faith instead of strengthening it. What is truly amazing is that in spite of all these fierce attempts by demons and sinners to obscure the truth about God through religion, through blatant lies or by any other means, the incredible love of God and the truth about Him is simply so big and powerful and unstoppable that it continues to leak around and through all the barricades of lies, distortions and perversions of the reality of God's positive attitude towards us.

It is at this juncture that we find this verse in John applicable. This is where each one of us finds ourselves looking into the measuring mirror of truth. When we come to begin to perceive some of the real truth about God's attitude towards us as described here in John 3, it is then that our deeper motives and attitudes begin to be exposed. It is here that we either are confronted with our love for darkness or can see more clearly that what we really desire is to grow closer to the light of the truth about God. The real core issue that is the pivotal point of destiny here is whether we are willing to be exposed and healed by the light of truth about God that will continue to challenge and often shatter our preconceptions about reality and God or whether we will insist on clinging to our fears and assumptions about God and His supposed anger towards us.

If we choose to remain in the darkness of false assumptions about God after seeing the truth as it is in Jesus, the consequences of that choice always results in more darkness, increased condemnation, reduced ability to embrace repentance and reduced ability to feel convicted by the Spirit of God. As this condition intensifies by repeated resistance to the real truth about God, we will find it easier to believe our lies, our false systems of belief about Him, our false constructs of religious explanations about the cross and God's wrath and all sorts of other religious-sounding topics. All of this religion will lead us to believe that we are in fact living in increased light while in reality our hearts are being shrouded in darkness and are becoming hardened against the gentle voice of a compassionate Father pleading with us through His Spirit to believe in Him.

If I am unwilling to believe in the scandalous-sounding mercy, grace and compassion of the Father; if I am unwilling to believe that the Father loves me exactly like the Son does; if I believe that Jesus was appeasing an angry God when He died on the cross instead of exposing the intense passionate love of the Father to me, then the effect of that belief will keep my mind in darkness and will produce judgment and condemnation in my heart that will prevent me from being able to trust this God who desires to save me from the destructive lies about Him that infect my soul.

But if I allow the real truth about God to cut through my traditions, upset my life-long assumptions and the religious teachings I have embraced all of my life; if I allow my mind and heart to open up to radical new impressions and emotions and ideas about what God is really like and give Him permission to reveal Himself to me personally, then it will become evident that my motives are inspired by the Spirit of God and that I am being drawn to a Light that is different than what I have ever believed before.

A New Look at Reproof

For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. (John 3:20-21)

For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. (John 3:20 KJV)

And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. (John 8:8-9 NKJV)

Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? (John 8:46)

And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; (John 16:8)

If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. (Matthew 18:15)

Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. (Matthew 18:15 NKJV)

I found something very insightful when I looked up the Greek words in this text. The word translated go lends significance to the attitude with which this event is entered into.

Go – to lead (oneself) under, i.e. withdraw or retire (as if sinking out of sight).

Tell him his fault – to confute, admonish:--convict, convince, tell a fault, rebuke, reprove.

In the original it actually says to reprove his reproof; it uses the original word twice in a row.

What is the right way to convict/reprove someone of a fault when convicting people is the role of the Holy Spirit?

Does this mean that we must be so full of the Holy Spirit that it is not really our desire to force others to agree with us that motivates this encounter? Maybe if we are going with the attitude of humility, as if sinking out of sight that we might be used by the Spirit simply as a agent, a messenger sent to expose them to His presence.

What is the difference between conviction and reproving? In my mind there is a difference but both words are used by translators in these verses. Maybe I don't have a correct idea of what reproving really is all about. Or maybe I am not seeing this verse in the right context or from the right perspective.

It is extremely easy to think that we are doing God's will by pressuring others (trying to convict them) to conform to our ideas and beliefs and even customs when it is really not God's Spirit in us at all. We are so prone to doing and saying things motivated from the influence of subtle deceptions in our own heart while believing we are carrying out God's will. So how can we know that we are doing this from the right motive – from God's motives and desires instead of our own? How can we avoid usurping the job of the Holy Spirit and yet still be involved in allowing Him to use us to accomplish His work of reproving in someone else?

Most of us at times are eager to expose other people's faults. But if the truth be really seen, much of the time this desire to expose others is the kind of judging that Jesus warns against doing. So how does this instruction in Matthew 18 integrate with other instructions to not judge others?

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. (Matthew 7:1 NRSV)

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. (Luke 6:37)

Or is this a situation where we must be willing to be judged ourselves when we are causing judgment to take place for someone else? That would put this whole thing in a different perspective. If we get involved in judgment we must be keenly aware that it is not just others who will be judged but everyone involved. God's light in judgment is not like a spotlight designed to only highlight our sins but nothing about the character of Him who is hiding behind the light. God's light is His character and illumines everything and everyone including Himself like the pervasive nature of the light that comes from the sun. So if I choose to follow these instructions and go to a person who has sinned against me to bring exposure to their fault, I must be prepared to be as fully transparent and exposed as I am asking them to be if I am really serious about bringing about reconciliation between us.

Look again at the verses in John 3. This is judgment... Judgment is just what happens when the light of truth shows up. But that light is going to light every person involved, not just others without involving us. The true Light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9 NRSV) Real judgment has as much to do with how we react to the presence of that exposing Light as it has to do with the approaching of the Light itself.

What the Light exposes is not just the symptoms of our outward behaviors that are produced by sin, but far more importantly it exposes the motives hidden deep in the heart. It is easy to point out external faults either in others or even in ourselves sometimes. But it is a whole different thing to have the secret motives of our heart that are often very hidden even from ourselves to suddenly come out into the open. That very often is quite shocking and surprising to everyone involved. And that too can produce an event of judgment in the way that others react and interpret what they think is going on.

So again, am I prepared to have the secret motives of my own heart of which I may be totally unaware, to be exposed by the light of real truth in the process of judgment? The real question here is, what is my attitude about being exposed. Will my discomfort about being exposed and having things come out from the inside of my heart that might embarrass me, that could be cause for potential shame or that may contradict my assumptions about myself – will that fear of being exposed prevent me from being willing to come to the light? Will my fear of being exposed cause me to take any other option rather than relying on God to be my source of true identity?

This fear seems to be the major source of keeping us away from light and immersed in deceptions about ourselves. Remember, deceptions are very seldom detected by the person who is deceived unless the Spirit brings conviction. The very nature of deception is that we don't know we are deceived; we honestly think that what we assume about ourselves is really the way it is. But by nature our professions and assumptions about what we believe are many times at odds with what our hearts really believe and feel deep inside. The purpose of the light of God's presence is to expose those discrepancies and reveal to us the conflicts between what we thought was true about ourselves and what our hearts really feel and believe.

If I am willing to go through this kind of exposure without giving in to fear that keeps me away from it, then I may become available for God to use me in turn for Him to bring light and conviction to someone who is at odds with me. This seems to help unpack part of this passage. He who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. If I am willing to go through a time of judgment along with the one I am approaching with light, then my very willingness is what is being described here as having been wrought in God. That sounds a lot like true humility.

I guess what is confusing about this is the seeming conflict in calling a sense of willingness a deed. What I can't accept at this point is the legalistic interpretation that would imply that my deeds become so righteous that I am justified by them as being a good person in God's eyes while trying to make the other person look bad by comparison. What I can see however is that if deeds are symptoms of the real condition of the heart, then if my heart is willing to be exposed to the light of truth in God's presence I am practicing the truth. In fact, I like that phrase practicing the truth because it implies that it is an ongoing process or experiment of learning to be vulnerable and honest in the light and not running away from exposure.

I heard someone note recently on the way that God brought judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. I had never thought about it from this perspective before. God did not take the reports of angels complaining about how bad people were in those cities and based on that hearsay summarily impose punishment. The way that God induces judgment was demonstrated very clearly in that situation. Angels showed up as normal-looking people and simply provided opportunity to see how the people in the city would treat them. They came as first-hand observers of what would happen when someone apparently vulnerable came within reach of these people. The people's reaction and treatment of vulnerable strangers became the opportunity to expose what was in the hearts of these people.

We typically assume that judgment was the fire that destroyed these cities of the plain. But now I am starting to see that this may be a mistaken notion, a common misinterpretation of the concept of judgment. Real judgment took place when the people of the city followed the lusts of their hearts without inhibition and wanted to rape and abuse these new strangers who showed up in town. Judgment took place when everyone who was watching saw plainly that there was no righteous restraint left in the lives of the people of these cities by the actions that they did when given opportunity.

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it. (Ezekiel 16:49-50)

The angels who went to Sodom were angels of light from heaven. So it only stands to reason that when they arrived at Sodom they brought light with them in the way that they acted, the way that they presented themselves to the city, the vulnerability with which they appeared to have as they approached. We don't typically think of light and vulnerabilities as being similar, but now I am rethinking this. God seems to always take notice of vulnerability in people and everything about true spirituality often seems to us to be too vulnerable for our liking. We recoil from the humility, the apparent passiveness, the seeming weakness of true Christians. But come to think of it that is what got Jesus killed too.

Jesus was the greatest light that has ever come into this world. And one of the most striking things about His life was the seeming weakness and vulnerability with which He lived according to the standards of this world. His meekness, His kindness, His compassion and tenderness all appeared to humans who viewed Him through the distortions of sin to look like weakness. They deeply resented His ways of dealing with sin and sinners because He did not reflect the popular views of a powerful God by employing force and fear in bringing about what they thought was righteousness.

Likewise, I don't read anything in the story of Sodom that the angels introduced an attitude of force or antagonism or even trying to incite people to do anything to incriminate them. They simply showed up as quiet observers, as gentle visitors and then watched to see how they would be treated. The reaction that they received from the city became the deciding factor in the act of judgment that took place during the exposure of the darkness in the hearts of the people in Sodom. Those people demonstrated that they loved darkness and hated the light of gentleness, kindness, humility and love that could clearly be seen in the demeanor of the angels in human form. They hated that light so much that they wanted to gang-rape and abuse these angels.

So I see something emerging here. Judgment seems to occur whenever light is brought into proximity to people who love darkness. Of course it also occurs to people who love light even if they are caught in the traps of darkness. Light does not come to condemn but to expose what is really inside. If we are willing to have the ugliness exposed and seek healing from the Source of the light, then judgment will actually work for our benefit. If we resist the light that exposes our true condition and choose instead to live in bondage to fear, then we will end up fighting against the light, hardening our hearts and eventually acting out the deeds of darkness that always results from estrangement from the true light of love.

When the world seeks to expose our faults it is for the purpose of shaming us, devaluing us, humiliating us and driving us to hopeless despair. This is one reason we are so afraid of exposure. But God's motives for exposing us are diametrically opposite to the motives of the world in this regards. When God's light comes to expose it is not in order to shame us but to expose the lies inside our hearts that keep us afraid of Him. It comes to reveal how much we are out of sync with our Creator and Lover. It comes to give us opportunity to allow God to come in and replace our heart-based lies about Him with the real truth and His presence so that we can move from living in fear to a life of thriving in love and joy.

A New Baptism

After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He was spending time with them and baptizing. (John 3:22)

There are some places where phrases or words just seem to jump out at me from the Bible. This happens to be one of those. When I read that Jesus intentionally spent time with His disciples while at the same time drawing others close to them to be baptized, it just does something inside of me. It makes me want to have that same experience myself. I want to benefit from Jesus spending time with me, mentoring me, showing me through expression and body language, tone of voice and gestures all sorts of things about Himself that simply cannot be conveyed through words.

It is said that 90% of communication is non-verbal. I don't know how that can be accurately measured or how true that number is, but it is certainly true that words fall far short of conveying the real essence of what a person is really like. To get to know someone reliably you have to be exposed to them on a very personal level, to watch how they act around different kinds of people and in various circumstances. This is the way in which a person's real character and personality become known much more accurately than by simply listening to them say words to you. Words can certainly be an important part of the mix and can strongly reinforce or explain many things that might be confusing about them. But to have a deep and significant bond with someone nothing can replace just spending time with them personally.

I also see something in this verse that has been a point of difference between what I see in the Bible and the traditions of men as implemented in nearly every Christian church. The Bible explains elsewhere that Jesus in fact, did not actually do the baptizing on these occasions but his disciples did that. Jesus was the central attraction that drew people who wanted to be baptized just as John the Baptist was in his sphere.

Today, baptism has become an issue entangled in the power struggles over supposed authority and even control over people's lives. Baptism has devolved into simply an initiation of sorts, a means of determining whether one can join a certain denomination as a member instead of it being an outward symbol of a real new-birth experience. All too often baptism in reality has little to do with an attraction to Jesus on a very personal level. I agree that we often talk about new birth and give lip service to the meaning of baptism and claim that baptism has great significance. But all too often it mostly ends up much more about talk than reality. We try to say all the right words while ignoring the much more important realities that are going on at the heart level.

Another hot-button issue that is even more ignored because it is so entrenched in long-standing tradition is the question of who is supposed to administer this act of baptism. I have been through the Bible numerous times in my life and I have yet to see clear restrictions about who is supposedly allowed to baptize or who is forbidden to do this. I just don't see any place in Scripture where someone was reprimanded for baptizing without being duly authorized or licensed. In fact, what seems to be much more clear from a plain reading of the Bible is the fact that Jesus' commission to disciple and baptize others throughout the whole world was given to everyone He was talking to at the time which included women, men and whoever else happened to be in the group listening to Him.

This has been a source of quiet concern for me over many years. Any time it is raised in a discussion it is immediately confronted with long-standing rules, traditions and ideas completely rooted in church policies and opinions but with no meaningful Scriptural support. This leaves me to believe that nearly all of the heavy restrictions that churches today impose on who and who cannot baptize others are completely artificial and have much more to do with control and political power over membership privileges and authority than it has anything to do with the real kingdom of God. People who are in positions of power over others seem to feel so threatened by any discussion of this issue that they will do nearly anything to shut down thoughtful discussion of this topic as quickly as possible.

Over the past few years I have tried to learn to be more open to what the Word of God has to say and its true meaning while being less and less influenced by the opinions and traditions of religion. And while I don't feel God is calling me to rebel against the wrong-headed ideas of religious people and try to start up some new movement, I do believe that the time may soon come when the false structures and worldly-oriented reasons for how things are done in traditional religions are going to collapse in the advancing light of God's true glory. I believe that either churches are going to disintegrate and have to be re-formed by the hand of God along His lines of thinking and His ways or they are going to be humanly propped up by the use of force and fear to justify their counterfeit ways of doing things.

Some call this the great shaking time. Some call it the little time of trouble. Whatever you want to call it, I have reason to believe that the true body of Christ is going to look and act so different and think so radically different than anything seen today that it will both be unavoidably effective in exploding the gospel all over the planet and it will cause a violent reaction from those who cling to tradition that will polarize the whole world solidly into only two modes of belief.

When those days come I believe that it will be seen that anyone who has a passionate connection with God at the heart level will be inherently qualified to baptize anyone else who desires to enter into that relationship as well. There will no longer be any arguments about licenses, ordination or other such silly squabbles as seen today, at least among the true followers of God. God is going to use anyone and everyone possible without prejudice to export the truth about His love and grace and mercy and truth to the whole world with a speed and efficiency that has not been seen since the days just after Pentacost.

When we really begin to spend quality time with Jesus and absorb the power of His example and presence with us as the disciples did in this verse, then will be seen the results of that exposure in baptisms that will be performed by anyone who is connected with Jesus irregardless of race, color, sex or maybe even age. Baptism will no longer just be an initiation into formal membership in some denomination; it will be a powerful external experience of an even more powerful, life-changing inner transformation of each person's view of reality and a new life hidden in Christ.

Resisting Waking Up

This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

It came to me as I was lying in bed this morning talking with God, that maybe one of the symptoms described here might have something to do with those times when I just don't want to get out of bed in the morning. I have thought about this issue over the years and pondered the various reasons that people resist waking up in the morning or getting out of bed even if they are awake.

I have had to be honest at times and admit, at least to myself, that sometimes when my life is crowded with fear or despair and is seriously lacking in joy that there are times when I really long to just go to sleep and forget about what is going on in my life. And if I manage to get enough sleep that is uninterrupted with disturbing dreams during those times, then I suddenly realize how precious that rest can be when I remember a few minutes after waking up what the real situation is that is threatening my peace. Then I wish that I could forget it again and return to that peaceful state of sleep or be oblivious to the things that are causing me to be afraid or maybe remorseful or condemned.

It is during those times of desperately wishing I could hide in sleep from life around me that I see a strong similarity with the words of Jesus in these verses. Most people prefer darkness when it comes time to sleep. It is not very easy for most of us to sleep well in the light of day unless we are very tired. The human body seems designed to sleep much better when it is dark and quiet around us. There is certainly nothing wrong with that and God knows that we need good sleep in order to continue to have health and strength for our human existence.

But there is no doubt that there are also times when sleep is craved for quite different reasons than just to recharge our body and rest our muscles. It is not uncommon for sleep to be viewed, though often subconsciously at first, as an escape mechanism for not facing uncomfortable reality. When this is utilized and repeated it can quickly become something along the line of an addiction reinforcing and deepening depression and leading to more and more dysfunction with those around us. It is not uncommon for people who become weakened by depression to fall into the addiction of trying to hide from life by withdrawing into sleep as much as possible.

This is not to create a guilt trip for someone, including myself, if we see this pattern in the life. It is simply to identify one of the possible ways that I may find myself loving darkness rather than the light so that I can bring the problem itself to the Light for exposure instead of staying away from it. In fact, a person who is trying to hide from life by staying asleep naturally resists the approach of increasing light for that very reason – it makes it more and more difficult to hide and avoid the pain associated with reality.

This is similar in nature to any other coping mechanism we may use to run away from the light of truth and reality. One of the common threads of every addiction is that in some way it gives us temporary pleasure which gives a short experience of satisfaction or at least numbness that turns off our cravings for peace that are becoming very demanding within our brain. But those moments of temporary pleasure or relief from the pain of unfulfilled cravings only last a few minutes at best and then leave us with even deeper cravings for satisfaction that now have to be dealt with all over again. As most people know, addictions by nature reinforce themselves by increasing the hunger more than increasing the satisfaction and so end up becoming a means of destroying ourselves.

This is really a summary of the core problem of sin overall. Sin is any way in which we try to bring life into our lives without receiving it from the only valid Source of real life. It is the counterfeit system of living that seems very often to get much more immediate results as far as our feelings go but in the long run leave us with more pain and eventually destroys us completely. No matter whether we are willing to admit the truth of it or not, God's word is unfailingly accurate in this matter. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 RSV)

While all of this is true, how does that relate to me when I find myself quite resistant to waking up in the morning? I'm not talking about when I simply have had a very short night's sleep and have not had enough time realistically to recoup from a hard day's work. I am talking about those times when I become aware that my resistance to waking up has more to do with emotional hiding than it has to do with legitimate rest. I think most of us are aware of times when we find ourselves wishing we could just stay asleep permanently and continue to hide from life but without committing suicide. But really, this kind of feeling is a precursor to thinking about suicide.

What does this passage have to say to me in regards to this part of my life? How can I open my heart to the words of Jesus here and allow them to re-orient my thinking and choices when it comes to those times when I would rather hide from waking up than to face life when it is not something I want to face? And what relationship do evil deeds and fear of being exposed have to do with this? Is it possible that maybe my situation is actually quite different in God's eyes than I perceive it to be when I would rather hide in sleep than to live and have to face the day?

Maybe what I really need is a complete overhaul of my perception of reality. Maybe it is very possible that the things that I fear and would rather imagine were not there are not really the most important things in my life as they assert themselves to be. In fact, I believe that it is in those times that my real problem is not what I think my problem is at all but is the issue of having a picture of God that is far too small and weak and incompetent to deal with the problems that are asserting themselves in my life.

I realize that intellectually, with my mind, I can believe that God is big enough to handle any problem. I have been trained all my life to give the right answers to these questions and even back them up with Bible verses at times. But when it comes right down to actually facing real-life problems and trials that threaten to cause me pain and discomfort or even death, it is a whole different matter as to really knowing what my true beliefs are, that are much deeper and reside in a different part of my brain.

This is where it starts to become quite evident that I often am a double-minded person as described in James chapter 1. Being double-minded means to hold two opposing opinions at the same time. It is very much like trying to drive a care with the front steering wheels aimed radically in two different directions. It not only becomes extremely difficult to drive in a desired direction consistently but it can become downright dangerous or even deadly if one were to try to drive at high speeds under these conditions.

Ed Smith explains this very well in his video teaching series called Theophostic Prayer and the Refining of Belief. This is a three-part presentation on this passage in James about trials and is one of the best that I have ever heard. We watched the first part again yesterday with another person after church which reminded me of these things in relation to the verses I am now looking at. I find it very relevant to put these two important truths together to expose some of the areas where I am still stymied in my desires to live more in peace and harmony with God under highly stressful situations.

I recently found myself confronted with a situation that caused me intense fear and continues to pressure me with fear each day. Once again I had to start reminding myself to focus on God and His attributes as a way of dealing with the debilitating effects of that intense fear in my life. But it also highlighted the fact that I still have not dealt with the much deeper hidden roots that allow this fear to so easily ignite again and again. I cannot blame the current triggers for this fear as the real cause of my lack of peace if I really want to live free. I must have God take me to the original sources of these fears and receive the needed healing required by receiving His truth if I want to successfully face these kinds of situations in the future without being taken down by them so easily.

This is part of what has brought this issue of hiding in sleep to my attention at this time. I have noticed this pattern in my life for a number of years now and have wondered about it in various ways. I have even observed at times that under certain situations of very uncomfortable confrontation I am tempted to suddenly become very sleepy. This also happens sometimes when I come under conviction I would rather avoid. I think that this is not at all unlike how the disciples must have felt when Jesus asked them to pray with Him for one hour in the Garden of Gethsemane. It says that their eyes were very heavy with sleep.

I don't think this heaviness was just due to the fact that it was nighttime and thus was bedtime for them. I believer firmly that this was clearly a situation where sleep was a convenient escape for them from the intense emotional and spiritual pressure they were under and because they did not resist it firmly in favor of seeking God and remembering the words of Jesus, it overtook them and robbed them of the very preparation needed for what happened immediately following. In essence, they were loving darkness rather than light. They loved sleep more than they loved Jesus and the result was that they did not have the perspective or the courage to remain loyal to Jesus when things really began popping around them with fear.

Again, I am not implying in the slightest that we should rob ourselves of needed rest and sleep when sleep is appropriate and needed. But because sleep seems so innocuous and innocent it can easily become a Trojan Horse of sorts in our lives when used as a means of escape when we should be turning to God for true perspective and needed joy strength. Just as at certain times drugs may have a legitimate purpose for restoration of health in our lives but are often abused to give us pleasure or escape, so too can sleep be used in a similar way. These are all part of the same pattern described in these verses as ways to gravitate toward darkness instead of moving uncomfortably toward the light that will expose us.

But it is only in choosing to move closer to the Light no matter how uncomfortable it initially feels that we will discover that the Light is the only place where we can find real satisfaction, peace and security. Only the light of heaven can give us the kind of life and hope and resolution to the pain that we are trying so desperately to hide from in sleep, in addictions or in any other kind of avoidance behaviors.

...those who perish... did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. (2 Thessalonians 2:10)

But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. (John 3:21 NIV)