Backing Off

Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more ..., He left... and went away.... (John 4:1-3)

One of the most liberating and yet frightening things about God that I have learned in the past few years is the fact that God never, ever uses force or compulsion to get people to come to Him. God is not interested at all in others having a relationship with Him based on any force or coercion because that eliminates the ability to have a love relationship in the heart. God only wants love to be the basis of all relationships and without that the relationship will be based on something less than faith that works by love; and whatever is not of faith is sin. (Romans 14:23 WEB)

As evidenced in the above verse, Jesus did not stay and impose Himself onto the Pharisees to get them to change their minds about Him and His motives. When it became clear that they might make a big deal out of Jesus' rising popularity in comparison that of John the Baptist, instead of trying to explain His actions or even reason with them, Jesus simply withdrew from the growing tension and went to the far end of the country. God always led Jesus around by His Spirit and there were plenty of other things for Him to do and people to minister to that were far more effective at that time than to waste His efforts with religious people stuck in their own stubborn, righteous pride.

However, this does not imply in the slightest that Jesus loved the Pharisees less than others. The most amazing thing about Jesus is His constant and never-wavering love for everyone no matter how they feel about Him. And while He had to relate to different people in different ways because of their attitudes and perceptions, everything He did and said was calculated to induce the greatest possible attraction to Himself and toward His Father. Whether they chose to respond to that attraction positively or to put up greater resistance to His revelation of love was a choice completely up to them. But for Jesus' part He never had one thought of resentment or bitterness for the way He was misrepresented or maligned. He simply went straight forward loving every single individual as much as was possible.

Sometimes this meant that He had to withdraw from their presence so that His love would not create undue discomfort because of their stubborn resistance to truth. Instead of using confrontation He chose to give them their space. And what was the truth that created so much resentment in some hearts? It was the truth about how God treats sinners and relates to them. This truth about God was the most volatile revelation in the life of Jesus that in turn produced the most hostility and anger in religious people more than anything else. And it still has the very same effect today whenever it becomes evident.

This is one reason why it is so easy to misunderstand God's love. God has a real dilemma on His hands. His heart yearns to bond with us in love, and yet God has to protect us from Himself in order to continue to attract us to Him without overwhelming or frightening us away. For real love is so powerful, so intense and so easily misunderstood that if one believes lies about the motives of the lover, the result can often be just the opposite of the desires of the one who is so loving. So in order for a deceived person to be allowed the time and space to possibly change their perceptions and perspective about the one who desires to love them it is necessary to veil most of the love and only allow them to see a little bit until they begin to warm up to the real truth about the heart of the one seeking their affections.

Continued resistance to love means that the one who is trying to love has to keep withdrawn, has to keep at a great distance and if this goes on too long the heart that is resisting becomes so entrenched in lies about the other person that it eventually becomes impossible to change its opinions at all. This is the end condition of all who will be lost. It is not some arbitrary decision on God's part whether we are saved or lost based on our performance or our righteousness, it is simply a natural outworking of the decisions that we make each day as to how we are going to relate to the revealed love and invitations of the greatest Lover of all seeking to change our minds and heart about Him.

And this brings me back to the frightening part of this whole thing. It is so easy to take advantage of that kind of love, to rely on unconditional forgiveness so much that I indulge in sin which causes deeper damage to my own ability to respond to love. Sometimes I actually wish God would use force to draw me into His love, but the reality is that force and love are completely incompatible; to use one is to exterminate the other.

Thus, in my own experience and pursuit of knowing God I find it too easy to exploit His love and to take it for granted. Not that He will ever withdraw it from me, that part needs to be taken much more for granted. But just because His love is never-changing and His forgiveness is unconditional does not mean that it will continue to have the same saving potential to transform me if I resist its softening influence deep inside of me. If I choose over and over to disobey the principles of reality and love as revealed to me by the Creator of love Himself, then I end up destroying my own ability bit by bit to be transformed by that love and will cause Him to have to withdraw from me just as Jesus did at times with those who resisted His love when He was here on earth.

Growing up in a religious atmosphere where force and intimidation were simply assumed to be part of religion, it is still very difficult for me to assimilate or appreciate the ways of God in this area yet today. My mental wiring is so accustomed to resorting to force whenever I believe it is necessary that I find it downright baffling whenever I observe others using quite different methods to deal with tense situations. Even in trying to change my own attitudes and behaviors I am accustomed to resorting to force, insults and even intimidation of my own heart based on fear to get myself to change. But I am learning that whether coercion comes from others or from myself it is still never part of God's ways of dealing with the heart. These are reflective of old misconceptions about God that still lurk all over my internal emotional makeup. But God never changes and God's ways are always the ways of love.

He will however, use warnings and appeals and anything possible within the realm of truth and awareness of consequences to get my attention to the dangers of resisting real love. But He simply cannot utilize the common methods of mingling force with attractions like we so often take for granted in our ways of dealing with each other. God's ways are not our ways and love has far more than enough power and resources inherently to overcome in the long run without changing its fundamental essence and practices.

The real problem is always our perceptions about God, never His attitudes and feelings about us. It is never God's mind or heart that needs to be changed in the slightest when there is tension between us, it is always the subtle and deeply ingrained lies still resident in our hearts that need to be exposed and exchanged for the real truth about Him. When we come to more completely appreciate His ways and His heart, it will become easier for us to respond to His love with hearts eager to obey even when it doesn't make sense to our heads. It is God's plan to win us heart-first for it is with the heart that we must believe if we are to enter into a vital relationship with the Source of our salvation.

Father, I find it all too easy to take advantage of You. You are so polite it frightens me at times. You respect my choices to take advantage of You and to push away Your circle of protection to some extent. You let me plunge into indulging my sinful desires without forcing me to stop and You are always ready to accept me back in a moment. But what happens during those escapades is that my heart is reignited with old lies about You that make me believe You reduce Your love for me when that happens. The condemnation I feel seems to come from You even though Your word says otherwise. Then my internal picture of how You feel about me is once again seriously distorted and I have to re-travel the path back into the truth about You that I have been over repeatedly.

It is far too easy to do this again and again. Sometimes I wish You would stop me from going down that road again, but then I realize that Your respect for my freedom to choose is crucial to my long-term trust in You if we are to bond properly and effectively. The more I see how You relate to me with respect and freedom the more in awe I am of Your love. But I still have far too little appreciation or understanding of this.

Please open my eyes and my heart to see myself as You see me. I know I am terribly blind to my own condition even if others around me can see some of it much easier. Send Your Spirit to soften me, to alert me, to warn me and to win my heart and affections to Your heart. Thank-you so much for Your patience and long-suffering with me. Keep showing me more of Your heart and Your ways and Your face.

Sitting Thus by the Well

and Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. (John 4:6)

I am often fascinated by little words and phrases that are commonly overlooked that contain surprising and sometimes significant items of great interest in the Bible. I suppose I could be accused of trying to read in more than what is there, but that is not my intention at all. However, I have noticed that a great deal of truth has been buried either in the way translations render a text or simply the common and superficial way in which most of us tend to read the Word.

When I read over this passage again this morning listening for God to talk to me through the Word in whatever way He chose, I saw this little word thus that seemed to be a bit odd compared to the way most of us would usually express ourselves. Unless I was physically showing someone how one sat while telling the story I wouldn't tend to use this word in the sentence this way. So I began to wonder what might be going on here.

I started out by checking various translations to see how they approached this and found that many of them simply ignored it and didn't put it in. But the KJV and the NASB, which are generally recognized as being a little more faithful to the original manuscripts, both used this odd phrasing. So I decided to look at the original Greek words and see what they might have to offer.

What seems to be emerging is that John is apparently trying to make a specific point that he doesn't want us to miss. The original words support the idea that Jesus was not just in the proximity of the well but seemed to be intentionally placing Himself either right on the well or at least so close to it that He simply could not be missed by anyone who might do anything related to that well. Of course it becomes quite obvious that He would want to do this when the rest of the story is looked at. But it is interesting that at the beginning of the story this little word sets up the context for what is to come.

This reminds me that nothing in Jesus life was coincidental. And while that might be easy for us to believe it also follows that anyone who is filled with the Spirit of Jesus will likewise realize that nothing in their life is coincidental either. Every encounter with other human beings becomes part of the choreography of God for their life so that God can use them as a channel through which to speak His love and demonstrate His grace to that person. And even though we may not know ahead of time how these encounters are supposed to happen, God still arranges them and then entrusts us with these opportunities to choose to listen to His Spirit and follow its promptings as to what to do and say.

I have to admit that I have noticed a few times that an encounter with some person is obviously arranged by God but that I seem impotent in the moment as to how to minister to them effectively. I find myself crying out to God to give me words but I also find a different spirit inside of me blocking me from being able to express real love, compassion or reveal the true Spirit of Jesus toward them. Instead, most of what I find for motives inside of me are self-centered, infected with religious pride and sadly deficient in true love and humility. In those moments I am embarrassed and chagrined that I do not have the baptism of the Holy Spirit that I so need to be used by God to effectively represent Him in that situation. I may have been placed near the well close enough to see the woman coming but my potential interactions with the woman are not nearly as full of hope and life-producing as what Jesus demonstrated in His encounter with her.

I do not want to remain in this frustrating condition. My heart wants to be used by the Spirit to bring life to others, not just talk about it and expostulate on it. I want to be a channel of hope, of healing, a reliable pipe or flexible tubing through which God can pump His passionate love into the lives of those starving for love like I am. That is the place I want to live, the person I want to be, but I have to confess that right now I am not there yet.

But God is not through with me yet either. I am learning enough about His heart to know that He wants me to be a clear channel for Him far more intensely than I want to. In fact, any desire on my part for this is coming from His Spirit in the first place and I am just responding to His promptings. As I continue to seek His face, to experience His love and grace in my own life and to encounter healing myself, then the tubing of my own soul that is so clogged with pain and fear and lies from my own past can become unplugged and His grace and love and truth can begin to flow through me much more freely to others.

And as that power begins to flow through me to others it will continue to cleanse my own heart and soul as it increases its flow through me. It will continue to purify the walls of my tubing like scouring the walls of my arteries removing the plaque and cholesterol that threatens to starve my own heart from life-giving blood. The blood and grace of Jesus that ministers to others through my testimony must be the very same grace that is saving and restoring my own heart.

I am currently listening to some recorded sermons by Bill Liversidge which are along the same lines as what I have been talking about here. My heart is waking up even more as I hear incredible stories of miracles and changed lives through his ministry. People are waking up to the real truth about God and are responding to the call to be baptized by the Holy Spirit the way God intended us to be. This is not a call to emotionalism or ecstasy but a call to complete humility and submission, to be used by God in any way He desires. The fruit seen in the lives of those who are responding thus is sometimes startling but always inspiring. They are suddenly becoming involved in ministry to the hearts and lives of all sorts of people around them in ways far more effective than they ever imagined possible before. But the common thread through all of these stories is that it is the power of God working through people's lives, not plans that they have come up with and then asked God to bless and make successful.

Father, You know my heart far better than I do. You are in the process of showing me more and more of the obstacles that still prevent You from using me very effectively to channel Your blessings to others. I again give You permission to flush out my pipes, to cleanse me from all resistance, to soften my heart much more and to heal all the damage and weakness inside of my soul so that You can use me much more efficiently and effectively.

Father, most of all I want to learn how to receive Your love as a real healing and cleansing element deep into the darkness and fears that still permeate my own heart. You told me this morning that one of the most effective ways to receive love is to express gratitude for it even when I don't feel like it. That is an act of faith that takes hold of the unseen and unfelt and turns it into reality that can be seen and felt. Thank-you for that reminder and keep working in my life without giving up. I know You never give up as long as there is any hope of response and I praise You for that because that is just what You are like.

I choose to trust my complete life to You today. I ask for Your protection, to surround me with Your grace, to make me much more aware of Your passionate and unconditional love for me. Clean out my ears and give me Your eye salve so that I can see life from heaven's perspective. I trust you to do all of this because I ask it in the name and authority of Your Son who gave His life to give me this privilege.