Exceptional Belief

You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. (John 5:38)

I find myself confronted yet again with this verse and my similarity to the condition of the men Jesus was talking to here. These people were very sure that they knew God, yet they found it nearly impossible to believe in the very personification of God in the man Christ Jesus. They stumbled at the very idea that God could have a clone so to speak, just as many Muslims today find that idea untenable. But the real problem even beyond that which is a stumbling block for all of us is that the way Jesus was portraying what God was really like was so radically different than what they believed and taught that they were deeply offended.

I suspect that in these verses Jesus was addressing issue after issue regarding claims or beliefs that these religious leaders had regarding their relationship to God. They were confident that they knew God themselves, that they were relatively expert in being able to share the religion of God with others, that they were so knowledgeable about the Scriptures that they were the world's premier authorities on the subject. It seems from the context that possibly some of them may have even insinuated that they had somehow seen God or had heard His voice which gave them even more clout with the people they swayed with their influence. They were very sure that they had the Word of God abiding in them because they had spent so many years gaining a specialized education in the Scriptures.

Yet Jesus dismantled many of their claims by categorically stating that they didn't really know God like they claimed to know Him. He also caused them to feel insulted by saying that they didn't really have His Word abiding in them like they thought they did regardless of all their degrees or titles. All of the education in religious training universities had proven pointless as far as God was concerned because of one thing – they did not believe the most explicit revelation of the Father ever given to the universe in the life of Jesus, the Son of God become human.

This moves me right back to the main reason why I am immersing myself in this book to start with. I came here wanting to gain a heart experience in knowing God more deeply and believing in Him the way I need to believe. I realize that having my head filled with useful facts about the Bible is not a bad thing and can be a wonderful blessing. I have also been richly privileged to have training from religious schools that taught me much truth about the Bible. But my own personal knowledge of God and the real truth about reality has been only a recent encounter that I feel is only just beginning as I find one thing after another about my assumptions being dismantled by the leading of the Spirit. This continues as I expose myself more intimately to the Word in my quest for the real experience behind religion.

I am back where I started long ago asking the same question, What does it really mean to believe in Jesus? I have thought that I believed for most of my life, but as God has radically readjusted my beliefs about Him, His character, the way He deals with humanity and sinners, I find myself in flux much of the time and very much out of sync with pretty much all other religion as it is commonly practiced. Sometimes I feel the thrill of discovery as I encounter incredible truths that expand my horizons about God and the way He set up things and how He relates to His children. But there are many other times when doubts erode away my assurance and I find myself asking more questions rather than resting in the peace of assurance. It is then that I find myself wondering what I really do believe.

The boldness and even aggressive way that others assert what they insist is the truth about the Bible and about God tends to arouse more questions as I feel uneasy with the spirit in which they present Bible truths many times. I then become aware that my own spirit is in dire need of reform and conversion itself. I feel convicted that though I have been privileged to know a great deal of truth as it is in Jesus beyond what many others may have seen, that these wonderful insights have yet to do the thorough internal work of transformation needed to align my own spirit with what I have been learning about God. I then begin to question whether I have really learned anything at all or if I have just been chasing rabbit trails or am just trying to be unique and distinguish myself from others for self-interest. I am quite confident that many would readily agree with that conclusion, but what I want to know is what God feels about all of this.

It appears to me that part of the problem of these Jews is that they had been caught in the trap of group-think. They had been so carefully trained by others in the educational system that they reflected the same attitudes and prejudices and had the same blind areas that everyone around them had. Schools generally train people to reflect the pervasive beliefs about reality that mark that institution and produce graduates who are more reflectors of other's views of life than producing people who actually learn to listen to what God be saying. The problem lies in that most people are taught that they are actually learning their facts from God through the system while in reality they are merely reflecting the beliefs of those who taught them.

Of course there is always danger of living in constant reaction against the common beliefs held by the majority which can lead to its own set of problems. I have been listening to some speakers recently who have some pretty amazing information about certain churches and organizations that are very compelling and probably are mostly true. However, the spin that they put on that information and the subtle spirit I sense of fault-finding betrays prejudices that are all too familiar to me. I see them pushing an agenda that too often produces more fear and prejudice than it does a deeper intimacy with Jesus and the heart of the Father. This actually causes me some confusion because it seems that while the insights they share are very helpful in sorting out history and clarifying certain areas of deception, the spirit in which some of the material is delivered at times almost counteracts the intended results.

So I am repeatedly forced to go back to ask the same questions again and again. What is God really like? How does He want to convey the truth about Himself to us? How valid and necessary is our emotional involvement with God – if any?

When it comes to the subject of music I feel particularly uneasy with most of the teachings from nearly every source. Either people dismiss the importance and effects of music and just go along with whatever feels good to them or fits their traditional preferences, or they go to the other extreme and condemn others who don't fit their views of what they are sure God demands of His children in this area. Ironically the ones who insist that most everyone else is dangerously deceived (which may well be the case) do little better in providing compelling new ideas and generally rely on their own preferences and prejudices instead of really producing life-giving suggestions.

So I go back to the verse quoted at the beginning and ask in each situation, What does it really mean to believe in Jesus? Does it mean I have to subscribe to the preachers and teachers who have the most convincing arguments? And interestingly, those who are most adamant that we should not allow our emotions to get entangled in our religion are themselves using the emotion of fear to make their points and convince others to follow their lead.

Now that I think of it, maybe that is one of the very things involved in real belief. For it seems to me that the way Jesus related to people was so radically different than the fear-based teachings of both the right and the left that people found Him hard to believe because He was so out of step with how everyone else taught about God.

The liberals talk about love to the exclusion of uncomfortable realities about God and the conservatives almost scorn love, redefining the word and relying mostly on fear to present a God who wants to intimidate people into serving and somehow loving Him. But I find both of them out of harmony with what I have been finding in my own pursuit of truth as it is in Jesus.

So, is my uneasiness and lack of confidence due to chasing down a path of error as many would assert, or is it primarily because I am out of harmony with the spirit of people claiming to be teaching the truth while their rigid attitudes seem out of sync with what I have learning about Jesus myself? And having said that, I am often convicted that my own spirit is very much out of line with the very things I myself have been learning about Jesus as well. This is no small disturbance for my own heart when it becomes evident to me on a frequent basis.

I truly want to know God as it is my privilege to know Him. I want to experience the transformation of life, of spirit, of attitudes in that personal encounter with God that will cause all of my relationships to reveal the real truths about Him like as seen in the interactions of Jesus with those who came in contact with Him. Yet I see this insistent body of flesh, this ever-present spirit of selfishness, this principle of self-preservation always sabotaging what God is doing in me. I find myself struggling to really believe at the depth which I know must happen to really begin to have any significant affect on my witness.

Father, I continue to fill my mind with Scriptures, but I see here that it is nearly useless unless it is constantly accompanied by real belief in the revelation of You in the person of Jesus Christ my Savior. Father, my heart is very resistant to this kind of belief as You know better than I. Each time I come to this place the only option I seem to have, other than giving up altogether, is to throw myself on Your mercy and trust in Your providence to guide my life into a more genuine relationship with You in Your way and in Your time.

Many times I feel like I am not growing at all – and maybe I am not. My heart is so complex that I seldom feel able to even perceive what it actually does believe. You have said that I need to believe with my heart in order to be saved. I sure want to be saved but getting to that place of real belief seems so evasive to me. About all I know to do is simply express how I feel about this and look to You for whatever it takes to bring me into alignment with the real truth about You as revealed in the life and death of Jesus.

So I again cast myself upon Your mercy and ask for greater capacity and willingness to experience the reality of Your kindness. For Your Word says that it is Your kindness that is most effective in bringing me to true repentance. Cause me to really know and embrace Your kindness more than anything else so I can rest in the safety of knowing Your heart and remaining in Your presence no matter what is going on around me.

Scriptures or Word

You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. (John 5:38-40)

I find the basic truth in this set of verses challenging to some of the assumptions that I was trained to believe. There are many yet today who still put great emphasis on knowing the Scriptures, on memorizing them, on learning strings of proof texts to win arguments while at the same time minimizing the role of the Holy Spirit's leading from within.

I understand why they say these things. They are reacting to the excuses that many give for rejecting truths of God's Word by saying that God told them not to read some book or not to believe certain doctrines. Such simplistic thinking – believing that feelings or prejudices are somehow the leading of the Spirit and should take precedence over submitting to the authority of the Word of God – that sort of religion is a counterfeit of the true leading of the Spirit which will never be out of harmony with the Word of God that is inspired by the same Author. Sensational religion is certainly one of the most effective schemes of the enemy to deceive millions of souls and to keep them in blindness about the truths of God necessary for salvation.

But I have also observed another equally dangerous trend over the years that is just as blinded in the opposite direction. It is an attitude that anything that can be seen as a counterfeit must be so wrong that only the extreme opposite can be trusted to be truth. This too is a very common method of arriving at belief but can be a very blinding error that is all too common among religious people. I have had to deal with the results of this thinking in my own life for many years because of being raised to discredit or marginalize things like grace, love, and joy simply because they were emphasized or misinterpreted by others who were refusing to accept our biblical truths.

Those who pride themselves in being experts in biblical knowledge and assure themselves that they know all the truth and that truth is going to save them, are in grave danger of missing the most important aspect of the ministry of Jesus to our hearts. They are caught in the same self-deception that gripped the lives of these Jews long ago and still keeps Jews today very resistant to embracing Jesus as the true Messiah. But the Jews do not have a corner on self-deception and unbelief; that is just as prevalent among Christians as it is with everyone else. All of us have blind spots in our lives and were it not for the covering grace of God none of us would ever be prepared to exist in the presence of a Holy God.

Jesus speaks here of the Word abiding within a person. He says this to the world's premier experts on the Scriptures but who did not really have the Word in them like they were sure they did. They were certain that knowing the Word of God sufficiently was what they needed in order to gain eternal life. Evidently they wanted eternal life or they would not have spent so much effort immersing themselves in the Word. They felt they knew the Scriptures forwards and backwards and thus were prepared to defend it and explain it and have greater understandings of truth than anyone around them. But Jesus says that without something called 'abiding', which is much different than intellectual absorption, that no amount of biblical expertise will prove beneficial when it comes to salvation.

This description sounds strikingly familiar. I was raised to give high priority to the Scriptures very much like these Jews did. Note that I am not saying the opposite should be the case. Having a thorough knowledge of Scriptures is very valuable and important and ignoring them can definitely cost one their eternal life. But it is not enough to just be an expert in the Word of God in order for it to have the saving effect on our lives and our future. Knowing all the proof texts, being able to read the original languages and properly interpret them into modern language has little effect on the condition of the heart. In fact, being an expert on the Word can potentially have the opposite effect on the heart as it was designed to have if it is not accompanied with a right-brain, experiential relationship involving our emotions and affections becoming deeply entwined with the heart of our Savior.

I believe that many will be saved in heaven who have had no knowledge or exposure to the Word of God in the Scriptures whatsoever. God does not make availability to the Bible a prerequisite to salvation no matter how valuable that is. Many will be saved who only followed to the best of their ability the promptings of the Holy Spirit in their hearts but were never given opportunities to know many of the things that we take for granted from the Word of God.

But if we have been granted opportunities to learn truth directly from the Scriptures and turn away from that duty due to laziness or discomfort that it might expose things we don't want to know about in our lives, then we become liable to suffer the consequences of such deliberate failure to get into the Scriptures. But getting into the Scriptures and learning lots of facts and doctrines and logic is still a danger in itself when the heart is not at the same time engaged in a serious encounter of knowing Jesus personally – which is the whole purpose of the Scriptures to start with.

Jesus states unequivocally here that a knowledge of the Scriptures without a heart connection to Him is a serious problem that can cost us our life, both here and for eternity. A knowledge of the Word without personally knowing the embodiment of the Word in the person of Jesus Christ can prove to be just as fatal as a rejection of the Scriptures in favor of following our feelings. There are many who have fallen into the trap of a left-brain-based religion and who believe that anything outside of that sterile religion of biblical knowledge is somehow wrong and even dangerous. They are keen to come up with formulas from their study that they insist must be followed if one is to be saved. The put great emphasis on believing in certain favorite doctrines and sticking to only facts while avoiding anything emotional or contemplative or heart-related. Unknowingly they are advocating that people should steel their hearts against impressions from the Spirit of God in favor of staunchly defending the truth intellectually.

These people – and they are everywhere and in every religion quite likely – strongly advocate an intellectual religion devoid of emotion and based strictly on facts. They sternly warn everyone of the dangers of meditation and of certain forms of prayer because they are certain that such things are sure to lead one into hopeless deception. I do not deny that there are many subtle forms of deceptions circulating in this world designed to draw people away from the plain teachings of the Scriptures. However, a counterfeit is only as effective as it mimics something that is true. So instead of trying to get as far opposite as we can from a counterfeit as many propose we should, I would suggest that we might try to discover just what the counterfeit is trying to mimic and find that the genuine may be much closer in appearance to the counterfeit than we would prefer.

I will fully agree that the facts and doctrines we believe must always be tested against the Scriptures above any emotional preferences that we may have. But to run away completely from emotions and not allow our hearts to thrive and connect in ways they were designed to do and respond to the affections of Jesus for us is even more dangerous in my opinion. For the deceptions hidden under the cloak of a formula-based religion can be even more subtle than a religion based more on emotions that avoid a careful study of the Scriptures. All doctrine must be submitted to them as the authoritative expression of the truths about God. But we need much more than just doctrine in order to experience real life.

I spent years in a style of religion where it was assumed that having God's word abiding in you meant memorizing great quantities of Bible verses. We were quoted texts about hiding God's Word in our heart as reasons for making memorization of Scriptures mandatory for passing certain subjects in school. I am not against memorization of Scriptures in any way. That is a wonderful advantage for anyone and I certainly have been greatly blessed because of my own solid foundation growing up with much exposure to the Word of God.

However, having said that I will have to confess that my relationship with Jesus was anything but healthy for much of my life. Most of my early years were spent in suppressed terror of God and were anything but pleasant, much less producing fond memories for me. Many today are still promoting that same attitude by steering people away from having a heart-felt emotional connection with Jesus while insisting that we must stick to the facts of the Bible as our only safe means of salvation. But this flies directly in the face of these words of Jesus that I am seeing here today.

Another subtle twist of truth I have seen over the years is the notion that learning factual truths about doctrines and knowing the right religious formulas or answers is somehow equivalent to knowing Jesus. The two ideas are very often interchanged without any distinction that they can be very different things but closely linked together. I have noticed that often when people say they brought someone to know Jesus that what they really meant was that someone was convinced to believe a particular set of doctrines and became members of a certain church. Knowing Jesus and joining a church may be radically different things, but the difference between the two is often extremely blurred and obscured.

These Jews that Jesus was speaking to actually had all the right doctrines as far as we can tell. They had the right Scriptures and knew it better than nearly anyone else on earth. They kept the right day of worship and they were following the instructions God had given to His people concerning the right forms of worship. They believed the right doctrines and enforced them rigorously on those around them. Yet when the living, breathing Embodiment of those same Scriptures showed up in person and began living out the reality described in the same Bible they claimed to believe in, they found themselves in constant conflict with Him as to the real meaning of the very same Scriptures He used.

When I hear someone discounting the idea of being led by the Spirit in favor of living in a factual-based form of religion I become very alarmed. I realize they are reacting to other false exhibitions of religion based on emotionalism instead of accountability to the authority of the Word of God. But I also know that this path of logic can lead one back into a trap of legalism while at the same time denying that it is doing so. There are ditches on both sides of the road, but interestingly I sometimes discover that the answer is not to find the happy medium between the two assuming that this is where truth must be found. That may not be truth but may simply be a debilitating compromise.

The truth as it is in Jesus may well be a completely different road altogether than what religion usually portrays from the perspective of one ditch or the other. Real truth, as I have been learning it over the past few years, must be solidly based on a heart encounter with a real person in the form of the real Jesus sent to reveal the real truth about our Father in heaven. Having a heart relationship that is growing, thriving and accountable will always involve allowing the Scriptures to be the objective source of error-checking in our lives. But it will not be a factual, sterile, doctrinal experience but will be one engaging the emotions and affections while still remaining in harmony with true doctrines.

Eternal life can only be experienced from inside the Son of God. The Word is more a person than it is a series of words on paper, though it is partially revealed in that form. I must be willing to allow God to lead me by His Spirit that may appear to be quite unpredictable at times the way Jesus told Nicodemus it would be in John 3. But that leading of the Spirit will never take us away from the Scriptures but will enlighten us as to the much deeper significance of the real meaning of those Scriptures.

The attractions of a counterfeit, as compelling as they might be, only indicate that the far greater glory of the genuine is something to move toward, not away from. We must be careful of deceptions on both sides of these issues, but we can catch clues from what attracts us to either deception as to the nature of what we may find when we encounter the real truth as it is in Jesus. Let us never settle for lesser light and glory when God is calling us far beyond those cheap imitations to a relationship of the heart built on a secure identity received in close fellowship with Jesus through His Spirit.

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)

For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. (Romans 8:14)

If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. (John 15:7-8)

Testimony Content

...the very works that I do – testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me. (John 5:36)

...you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. (John 5:40)

I have been documenting the various testimonies, the list of witnesses that Jesus has referred to here over the past few weeks. What I seeing more now in these verses and others in this context is the purpose and content of these testimonies.

One thing that was and is resisted in these testimonies is the truth that God the Father actually sent Jesus to us to reveal and represent Him. Why is that resistance? What do we find it so difficult to believe that the Father sent Jesus to us in love as a human being?

Secondly, Jesus says here that we resist coming to Him in order to receive life from Him. Again, what is the core cause of our resistance to doing this? Why do we find it so onerous to come to Jesus to receive the kind of real life that He wants to give to us?

Let me go back and add a few more statements from this passage that are part of what it is we need to believe about Jesus from the testimonies of these witnesses.

For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. (John 5:16)

Jesus disrupted the establishment's claim to authority as to who was supposed to define what true Sabbath-keeping was supposed to look like.

Jesus was calling God His own Father. (v. 18)

...the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. (v. 19)

...the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel. (v. 20)

Particularly for people who claim to know God and claim to represent Him to the world, these statements could prove to be rather disconcerting and threatening. For when the actions and words of Jesus tend to present a God radically different than what the religious establishment – whichever one we happen to belong to or endorse – might embrace, then the abilities of that establishment to control the lives of those under their influence and jurisdiction comes into question. Then the church or group or leaders or whatever is involved begins to lose their grasp over the minds and hearts of their followers and even their incomes and livelihood comes into risk.

I would like to point out here that the phrase, the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing, strikes at the very core of the origin of sin as it started in heaven long ago. Lucifer first became jealous of Christ when the councils of the Godhead included Him in their plans to create this earth before any of what we see now ever came into existence. Lucifer was excluded from those secret meetings and he began to allow jealously to sprout in his heart and refused to resist it or let go of it. As a result, according to the Bible, iniquity was found in his heart that eventually grew into full-blown rebellion that infected trillions of angels and eventually moved on to this planet and took it over as a beachhead of rebellion against God's government.

Lucifer believed that he was worthy enough and smart enough that he should rightfully have been included in the councils of heaven. When Jesus spoke these words I believe that the Jews were not necessarily the primary recipient of them even though it likely rankled their egos. Satan, who used to be Lucifer until he was cast out of heaven long ago, was reminded of his own deep-seated resentment against this same Christ who had now become a human subject to his ability to tempt and harass. He remembered how much he had come to hate Christ and how that had caused his expulsion from heaven – all because the Father had shared with Jesus everything He was doing and planning to do while not allowing Lucifer into His secret confidences.

As a result, these religious people who shared in the same spirit as their mentor Satan, the accuser, felt the same resentment and anger that had filled his heart for so long before them. Jesus had come to expose the contrast between Satan's spirit and methods and God's spirit and methods and this confrontation was one of those key events of exposure. In effect, judgment was already beginning to take place, for the light was beginning to expose what was in the darkness and those who loved the darkness and deceptions of Satan bitterly resented that exposing light.

What is more of the content that these witnesses were testifying about Jesus?

...the Son also gives life to whom He wishes.

...He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father.

...he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. (v.21-24)

Each of these statements tears away at the facade of Satan's kingdom and threatens the claims to authority by many who administer religion even today. Religious institutions most all want people to come to them in order to receive life under their supervision, not go to Jesus to get it directly. In addition, most all of us secretly enjoy judging others around us and are very reticent to forgo judging people by our standards or leave all judgment in the hands of Jesus. And this issue of giving honor to the Son particularly rankled in the ears of Satan and continues to threaten the assertions of many who claim to be following God while teaching and acting in ways that contradict what Jesus revealed about the heart of the Father.

...He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.

...He gave Him authority to execute judgment.

...all who are in the tombs will hear His voice...

...As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just. (v. 26-30)

It might be easy for us to accept most of these statements theologically because we intellectually know what we are supposed to say for the 'right' answers. But when it comes right down to it, can we really say with true heart honesty that we believe that Jesus has the life in Himself that we so desperately crave and usually seek in all the wrong places? Are we really willing to submit to His authority in every area of our lives or just show up once a week in some church building and think that this is what it means to be under the authority of Christ in our lives?

And this last one is possibly one of the most difficult statements to swallow for most of us. How often we find ourselves seriously questioning the decisions of God when things start to go horribly wrong in our lives? How quickly most people begin to blame God or to rationalize bad situations by impugning His motives and distorting what He has said about His character to fit their warped ideas of religion and reality? How often I find myself questioning what God might be doing in my own life when things get uncomfortable. I am quick to begin thinking that God may be punishing me for some hidden sin in my life and maybe even threatening my salvation and my standing with Him until I figure out what it is that I need to correct in my life. This mode of thinking is often reinforced by religious leaders who want to maintain their influence over my life. But how much of this is in God's will and how much is a distortion of the witness I am reading here about the true Savior of the world?

God's fairness is probably one of the most tenuous issues that most of us have to grapple with on a regular basis. We either openly question God's fairness in what is happening in our lives or we hide behind religious platitudes in fear of openly questioning His love and the seeming contradictions of that claim with what is going on in our lives. I know that I have spent many years of my life so intimidated by a powerful, fear-inducing God that no one could mess with that I could not even admit to myself, much less to anyone else or even to God, that in my heart I was really resentful about how I felt He was treating me. I could intellectually assent that God was supposedly just and right and good, whatever that was supposed to mean. But in my heart my secret opinions about Him were very much the opposite – but so well hidden that I didn't dare to ever go there consciously for fear He would become offended with me.

Given that context, whenever I read verses like John 3:16, 17 I secretly disconnected from those words because they simply made no sense whatsoever in my own experience with God. I memorized the words right along with everyone else because that was part of keeping this God from hurting me too much. But inside, my heart was screaming out in pain and isolation and desperation for expressions of real love, affirmation, comfort and encouragement from those who claimed to represent God. But instead, most of what I received were more rules to follow, more formulas to learn and more punishments threatened if I did not conform enough to their nebulous standards of conduct.

As a result of that externalized religion of my past, I still find my internal wiring seriously damaged and malfunctioning, particularly when times get tough. I have learned a great deal of new truth about God over the past few years that has challenged most of the beliefs about Him I learned in my early years. But I still find myself too much in sympathy with these religious people Jesus was addressing in this chapter more than with the open acceptance I saw in the story of the woman at the well of Samaria. I long to have that kind of encounter with Jesus and to experience the abandon and joy of embracing His love for me so spontaneously as she did. But I am coming from a different direction and my story seems to move much more heavily and slowly as I gradually absorb these revelations about both Jesus and this Father He claimed to represent.

I too was trainded to search the Scriptures and I assumed to find eternal life by doing so, much like these Jews did that Jesus was speaking to here. But Jesus makes it clear that unless I come to Him personally and get far beyond just immersion in the Scriptures alone, that I will never really experience the kind of life that I long for so much. So I explore what it really means to come to Jesus, because I really do want that life much more in my own experience. I crave that rest and peace that Jesus promises to those who come to Him. I desperately want the protection of heaven in my life and to be free of the fear of pain and death that oppresses me so much of the time. At times I enjoy that experience in His presence and it feels so wonderful. But too much of the time I find myself not close enough to Him and feeling very unstable and even tentative in my relationship to Him more than I know I should.

Father, keep teaching me, mentoring me, drawing me and transforming me for Your glory and name's sake.

What is Glory?

I do not receive glory from men.

How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God? (John 5:41,44)

I have puzzled for many years over the true meaning of this word glory. Yesterday after church we got into a discussion about this and explored it a bit which in turn helped me to flush out the meaning of this term a little more into the open.

There are several concepts involved in this word which at first sometimes seem to almost seem disconnected. One is the definition that says that glory equals character. That is true in some way, but it does not seem to be very complete or even fit well in some instances. Take for example when Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration. I asked someone if all the disciples saw was a clearer revelation of the character of Jesus. What did that have to do with the overwhelming light that they reported seeing? I am not suggesting that the two have nothing to do with each other, but I sense that there is much more to this word than we have typically thought about.

On the other hand, many think of this word only in the context of something along the lines of a bright light and not much more. Whenever someone speaks of glory they sometimes think only of a physical glow around someone, an aura, or maybe even an old-fashioned halo of some sort. The morbid middle ages paintings of sadly pious-looking people with halos around their heads (that have disgusted me for most of my life) are supposed to portray some sort of religiosity or superior value about certain people that is a complete counterfeit of the kind of true glory spoken of in the Bible.

When I noticed the interesting contrasts between sources of glory that Jesus points out in the quoted verses here, I began to see clues as to what true glory must involve. Apparently from the context here it must have a great deal to do with identity and reputation and self-perception all wrapped up together. What I am starting to see here is that Jesus is distancing Himself from relying on what men think about Him as a reliable source of defining His true identity. (see John 2:24,25) On the other hand, Jesus totally and exclusively relied on what His Father in heaven believed about Him as the only reliable source of defining His true identity and reputation.

Reputation seems to be very much involved in this concept of glory as far as I can tell so far. There is competition between various sources that try to define what we think and feel about ourselves. This is likely another clear example of where Jesus is relating how we should think of ourselves just as much as how we should think about Him. What are we relying on as far as how we think of ourselves, our worth, our value? For what we perceive about our own value has an enormous impact on how we live, how we react to outside pressures and how we respond to attacks and insinuations about our true identity.

Our sense of identity and worth seems to lie at the very core of the whole problem of sin right along with what we feel about God. Many of us have such a low sense of personal value that we find it nearly impossible to believe that anyone could love us, even God. On the other hand, the world has attempted to address this problem by emphasizing techniques of elevating self-worth through arbitrary exercises or mental gymnastics designed to make us feel proud of ourselves independent of what anyone else may think of us. But the problem with that is that it is always disconnected from any reference to what God might think about us. This is understandable given that religions of the world generally paint God in such perverted ways that He is not a reliable source of consistent value for our hearts.

Most Christians tend to portray God as one who is more eager to make sure we feel worthless and wicked so that we will feel motivated by so much fear of His wrath that we will run to Jesus in terror to hide from the punishments threatened against the lost. This picture of a schizo Godhead has done more damage to the human race than nearly any other belief and has produced the widespread levels of unbelief that we see in the world today. It is no wonder that people would prefer to look to each other or inside themselves to find better sources of self-worth instead of to a God who has been characterized as primarily one who is interested in exposing and condemning all of our faults and failings and making us feel shamed and devalued.

Another aspect of these verses in relation to the idea of glory is the act of receiving that Jesus spoke of here. He said that He did not receive glory from men but that the Jews were receiving glory from other men. He also spoke of the need for seeking glory when He spoke of their failure to seek glory from the only reliable Source of true glory. Thus I see that not only is glory something that we tend to receive but is something that we need to actively seek out.

What I am perceiving so far here is that Jesus might be talking about two different kinds of glory as well as two different sources. The glory that comes from men – what people think about my value, how good my reputation is among the people who hear about me – that kind of glory is most likely the unreliable, counterfeit sort of glory that is not going to be very satisfying for very long. If I am depending on what others think or feel about me as my source of value, worth and identity at the heart level, then I am always going to be subject to having serious doubts about myself and am going to be constantly trying to manage my image and manipulate what others think about me in attempts to make myself feel valuable.

The reason that Jesus gave us this example of rejecting others around Him as a source of any glory that He would accept is for that very reason. It is a very dangerous thing at best to rely on the opinions and fickle feelings of anyone in this world to define my real worth or sense of value. But having said that, I also am painfully aware that every one of us have a strong tendency to do that anyway because it is just hard-wired into our psyche by sin to do so. Because of the skewed pictures of God we have grown up with we all have naturally turned to additional sources to make us feel valuable as we seek to perform in various ways to be good enough to earn respect and love for ourselves.

When Jesus talks here about God as the only safe source of glory, He is making a most important point that might be very easy to miss in a quick reading of this passage. I am starting to see that very likely the concept of glory and what we crave for self-worth are nearly identical in many respects. The reason that we seek glory from people is because we want to feel better, to extinguish much of the emptiness that we often feel deep inside and to bask in the affirmations and adoration of others who praise us. This is one way to at least temporarily feel like we are worth loving and that life is worth living. Love and respect are the fundamental deep cravings of every one of our hearts and we will do nearly anything to get as much as possible of this kind of glory for ourselves any way that we can.

God designed our hearts to crave love and respect. (It has been noted that men's deepest craving is for respect and women's deepest need is for love.) He knows that this is the basic fuel that we must have in order to thrive and grow in life. Without this fuel we sputter along on empty most of our life and finally give up in hopeless despair sooner or later depending on how successful our efforts were in life to attract attention to ourselves. Without realizing what this word really means, our hearts are all seeking glory from those around us because glory just may be the label of the fuel that we need the most in order to live life successfully.

God does not condemn us for craving glory, but He is trying to get us to see that the places we look to get this heart fuel can have a dramatic effect on the outcome of the use of those fuels for our lives. If we fail all of our lives to come to the only true Source of this vital fuel for our hearts, we will be in danger of losing out on real life completely for all the rest of eternity.

But how does all of this fit in with the commands in the Bible to give glory to God? Is God dependent on our opinions or feelings about Him to thrive like the needs that we have? Does He need our glory to feel better about Himself? Of course not, and it sounds patently absurd at first to even pose such questions. But not allowing them can cause such questions and related issues to percolate inside of our minds and cause us to be confused about how we are to relate to these seeming contradictions in the Bible.

Most Christians would agree that God is the source from which all love originates. As such, God is not not dependent on anyone to love Him in order to keep Him from starting to feel less valuable in some way. That is a given, but in turn I think that sometimes it is very helpful to state what might seem obvious to flush out other important issues. God in that sense does not need our glory in the way that we need His glory and affirmation. But on the other hand there is another very important aspect about glory that I have not even touched on yet. Just because God does not need affirmations from His created beings to feel good about Himself or to prop up His sense of self-worth does not mean that we do not have a vital need to participate in glorifying God for our benefit.

This is very close to our relationship with prayer. Many find it almost silly to talk to God about things that He already fully knows about before we even think or say them ourselves. When people talk to us we tend to feel impatient when they start telling us things that we already know about. So we might project that emotion onto our views of God at times and wonder why He would have any interest in listening to us pray to Him when He knows every detail of our thoughts and words even before we ever knew them ourselves. Yet given that, we are still instructed to pour out our hearts to God and are told He is keenly interested in accepting our prayers, so it must be for some other reason than just getting Him informed about things He might have been unaware of before we brought them to His attention.

The primary purpose of prayer is never to change God's mind or heart about us but is always and totally to change our minds and hearts about Him. In addition, intercessory prayer also releases God's ability to act and work in others lives by giving Him supernatural permissions that He needs to get past the barricades that Satan has established preventing others from hearing God's voice or experiencing His actions in their lives. That is another topic altogether, but I mention it because I see parallels between that dynamic and our relationship to receiving glory from God as Jesus speaks of here in these verses.

God never changes. He does not need to change His mind about how He feels about us for He has never held grudges against anyone at anytime. God has always been forgiving, compassionate, loving and merciful as well as just and fair and He always will be. However, that does not mean that there are not blocks that prevent Him from effecting His presence into our lives, preventing us from really believing all those things about Him. He needs permissive access to our hearts to transform us into His image by revealing to us the real truth about His heart.

The purpose of both prayer and seeking glory from God is to expose and remove the obstacles in our own hearts and lives that are preventing us from experiencing the life-changing power of God's love in our experience. To both seek and receive glory from the only Source of real glory is to have the truth of our real value in God's eyes infused deeply into our own hearts that will in turn produce fresh fuel for our hearts to come alive and thrive as they were designed do.

Seeking glory from men, which is what we do most often whether consciously or unconsciously, is to use inferior or false fuels for our hearts. It might seem to work for awhile but we soon find ourselves filled with complications, addictions and even more emptiness. Until we turn to the only real fuel that our hearts were designed to run on and allow that fuel to clean out our systems over time, we are only going to foul up our internal functioning and suffer more pain and eventually death as a result.

So I am seeing that glory is really a description of the fuel of self-worth and affirmation of value that our hearts were designed to live on in order to and grow and thrive. But in addition, like a lake that needs constant input from a reliable and clean source of water, it also needs an outlet to stay healthy and vibrant. Just so, our hearts need the outlet of giving glory to God as a means of keeping our hearts joyful and alive and thriving as we continue to more deeply bond both with the heart of the Father and with all those who are likewise giving true honor and glory to the same Father. As we both receive glory from God and give glory to God, we will find that our lives are becoming more and more perfectly synchronized with the character of God which is another aspect of the word glory to start with.