Testimonies and Glory

I went back this morning and reread the last half of the passage I have been contemplating for several months now to better see how it all fits together and look for more clues. There is still so much I am overlooking and I am loathe to move on before flushing out a few more life-changing principles or truths that can apply to my life.

Lately I have been thinking about this word glory and how much I have misunderstood what it really means most of my life. I am still trying to better grasp its true meaning and significance more clearly. Some of the things I see this morning are helping me to better understand this concept and how it is embedded into all the other facets of this passage as well as how it affects our lives. I see more patterns and connections that help to explain each other after carefully analyzing many of them individually.

There are several key words that seem very tightly linked to each other from this perspective. In John 5:44 Jesus says we receive glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from God. Immediately previous to that He just said that He Himself had not been received. So glory must be very closely associated with receiving Jesus personally.

As I look at the bigger picture in this passage it looks to me like the purpose of all the testimonies mentioned here is to attract people to seek this glory, to believe in both God and in Jesus based on the evidence presented in all these testimonies. To believe implies that there is something specific to believe as well as the existence of something that is contradicting those testimonies. There is little need of a testimony unless there is something or someone challenging the truth to start with. But clearly, Jesus is coming from the context in this passage of confronting a mass of disinformation about God and He is delineating a number of reliable sources that offer supporting testimonies about what is really true about God.

Once testimonies have been heard, the choice is unavoidable that those hearing the testimonies must make a decision as to what and who they will believe. Our problem, just as it was with these Jews, is that our immersion in religion has led us to believe that we already have the truth and anything that contradicts what we already believe must be false. Since Jesus' teachings and relationships with sinners flew in the face of common belief about how God was thought to feel about sinners and religious people, the Jews of His day found it very difficult to reconcile the life and disposition of Jesus with their deeply entrenched ideas about what God was like. And we are no different today.

When Jesus said that His works themselves were a testimony that the Father had sent Him, He was in essence saying that the way He related to people in His actions and disposition was an accurate reflection of how the Father related to them as well. Many today find an enormous tension between what they believe is the stern, harsh God of the Old Testament with the kind, humble, compassionate Jesus seen in the New Testament. Some even go to the point of overlooking the vast evidence of kindness revealed in the life of Jesus and almost exclusively focus on what they think they see in the few times that He confronted the Pharisees and leaders, like during the cleansing of the temple. They seek to project their assumptions about an angry God into such events in Jesus' life and read into some stories things that are not necessarily there.

What does it mean to seek the glory that is from the one and only God? From what I can see in this context it means several things.

In verse 43 it means to receive Jesus.

In verse 40 it means to come to Jesus that we may have life.

In verses 38-39 it means not mistaking a thorough knowledge of Scriptures as a substitute for knowing personally the Christ that is talked about all through those writings. It implies that the Scriptures need to do more than just fill our left brains. It means that the very word of God must reside in our hearts in order to bring into our lives the things that we learn and read about in Scripture.

In verse 36 it means making the life of Christ the first and foremost filter through which anything and everything else we hear or read about, the criteria which we use to perceive what God is really like. This includes the testimonies of the prophets along with all the history of God's dealings with His people as recorded for our benefit.

Verse 24 seems to sum it all up. To seek and receive the glory that only comes from God, we must hear the word of Jesus, believe the real truth about the Father who sent Him and thus enter into eternal life. By doing so we do not come into judgment but pass from death into life.

Failure to do this results in internal feelings of condemnation and accusation. When Jesus said that He would not be the one accusing these Jews before the Father in verse 45, He was implying that they were going to feel accused because of their unwillingness to believe the real truth about God and receive His glory in all the above ways mentioned. They claimed to believe the Scriptures, they claimed to follow the instructions of Moses their hero, but in reality they had such skewed pictures of God that in reality they didn't really perceive the underlying truths in his writings and the spirit that filled the life of Moses.

What they did not realize was the inevitable conflict that they would encounter when true judgment exposed their faulty views of God. Externally following the letter of Moses' laws had done little to transform their hearts. Their harsh, dark views of God prevented them from perceiving the true picture of God that Moses experienced in his own relationship with God. Because of this, when the real truth about God's love and compassion and mercy and the real truth about His justice and the way He really feels about sinners became evident to them in the life and teachings of Jesus, they felt that it was Jesus who was the one in the wrong instead of them. They felt that Jesus' ideas about what God was like were heresy and dangerous and even blasphemy.

The same is always true. When we cling to our dark views of God as either a stern judge or a wimpy, wishy-washy fickle Father who indulges us in any way we want and allows us to live apart from His principles without consequences, either of these belief systems will bring us face to face with feelings of condemnation when the real truth about God's mercy and justice come into view. We may think that we are being unjustly accused, that God is unfair with us, that we have been mistreated. But all of these beliefs are simply more evidence that we have been unwilling to seek the real truth, the authentic glory that only comes from an intimate knowledge of the one and only source of real life, the God who sent His Son, not to condemn the world but to save it by revealing the truth about what God is really like.

Far too often we think that salvation is all about making us good enough to go to heaven. Our notions of religion revolve around behavior and external issues of right and wrong and about rules and infractions of laws. But the real issue in this controversy we are caught up in between Christ and Satan is not about whether sinners can get to heaven or not, but is totally about what each of us are going to believe about what God is like. God has been lied about, slandered, maligned and misrepresented to the max. The judgment is all about vindicating God's reputation, not about determining how good or bad we might be. Humanity is only participating in this judgment as witnesses, not the ones who are on trial. Understanding this is vital to appreciating how we fit into this picture. Otherwise we come up with weird notions of what is going on and all sorts of crazy religions and cults develop as a consequence.

The core issue in this trial is the glory of God. His character has been seriously called into question by the greatest prosecutor ever to exist. God has chosen to never seek to vindicate Himself, for to do so would be to violate the very principles He instituted in justice. When someone seeks to justify themselves, to vindicate themselves before others, they immediately come under suspicion and their testimony is doubted because it appears that their self-vindication is evidence of selfishness and self-protection in their heart. It is assumed that anyone who tries to vindicate themselves is likely trying to cover up the real truth by masking all evidence that might indict or incriminate them.

So for someone to be properly vindicated they have to have outside testimony to corroborate their innocence. That is why Jesus stated in verse 31 that if He alone testified about Himself that His testimony would not be true (or valid). Does this mean that in so doing He would be lying about Himself? Not really. It just explains the principle that vindication can only happen through the testimonies of outside witnesses.

All of us are called to testify in God's trial. We will either be exposed as false witnesses or we will bear truthful testimonies about God's claims as to His real character and how He has dealt with us in our own lives.

In verse 42 Jesus makes a very important statement about witnesses. If the witness does not have the love of God in them, then they are not reflecting the real truth about the very essence of who God is. As such they will be exposed as false witnesses because the testimony they give about what God is like is something other than love. God is love. If my life or beliefs contradict that fundamental fact, then to that extent I am still bearing false witness against God.

A false witness feels defensive because their testimony is in conflict with what God says about Himself and what all the other truthful witnesses say about Him. In that position that witness starts to feel accused and condemned. They feel like it is God condemning them because their testimony disagrees with His. But in reality it is their own heart that is condemning them and that very condemnation becomes the fuel that will torture them in the end when truth is finally and fully revealed in the final Judgment.

The glory of God is in essence the identity of God, the truth about His character and His dealings with all His created beings. So to seek the glory that comes from God is to seek the truth about Him and as a result to come to reflect that truth in our own lives. The way I come to reflect His character is to let go of all my resistance to His love and to believe what He and all truthful witnesses are saying about Him. As I do that my life will become more and more free of condemnation and feelings of guilt as I become more aligned with His character and as His presence within me transforms me more and more into His image.

Glory to Believe

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 5:44)

Evidently, part of entering into real belief involves seeking glory that is from God. What does that really mean?

Again, the very first thing I am confronted with is to properly understand the words that are being used, at least enough to begin to make sense of what Jesus is really trying to convey here. The word that jumps out at me, begging for definition is the word 'glory'. I have spent time in the past exploring and trying to unpack this word before and here I am again trying to remember what I discovered last time.

I just went back and read my recent post on glory to refresh my memory of what I uncovered. That was very helpful as I now want to take this one step further and see how that relates to this most important issue of personal belief. Because I want to do much more than simply grow in intellectual understanding of these things; I want to really experience them personally, I want to see how I can enter into much deeper levels of true belief in Jesus and His Father through seeking the kind of glory that can only be found there.

As I began to explore last time, glory seems to describe something like a fuel that increases our sense of worth and causes us to become more alive. It is the kind of input that makes us thrive and feel more fulfilled and whole. Because of this, it is vitally important that we learn to seek the only pure Source of this fuel and learn to turn away from the many competing sources that sometimes seem to offer quicker results but only end in greater emptiness.

As I am seeing it more clearly now, glory has to do with worth, with value and with describing the attributes that make up a person's identity and character. Glory can be affirmation and praise, particularly when it is focused on God. Because we are created in God's image we are designed to reflect His glory. That means that we will only ever find real fulfillment, fullness of joy and wholeness as we come closer and closer to perfectly reflecting the character of God and His Son Jesus Christ.

Of course, that will result in our lives reflecting the very essence of who God is, which is love itself. Love is unselfish and other-focused. Love lives to serve others more than ourselves. Love is described in detail in 1 Corinthians 13 and is a description of what God is like. The expression and essence of love is one and the same as the essence of God's glory.

Sin is in denial that God is love in its purest and most complete form. Satan, the author of sin, claims that God is inherently selfish behind all His claims to the contrary. Satan has caused all of us to believe that God is looking out for Himself ahead of us and that He is willing to resort to force, intimidation, threats and even torture to get His way when necessary. Because of this our ideas about glory have become very confused and we fail to realize how much we need the real glory of God in our lives.

From this perspective I can now see that to seek the glory that comes from the one and only God is to choose to go to the only real source of love to find our identity, our true worth, and fulfillment for what our hearts were designed to thrive on. God created us to live off of Him, to rely totally on Him for value and purpose and to thrive in the joy of His presence. All of this is to be completely free of any taint of selfishness, for selfishness is the very essence of sin which is independence from God.

But we are born into sin. We inherited selfishness from our parents and have reinforced it through years of training and indulgence. We live in a world that offers to supply us with all sorts of alternate glory sources suited to fit any fancy we may have to feel good. We lust for all sorts of things and activities that will make us feel more alive or to have more power. Many think that having more power over others will make them more important and then experience the glory that they crave. Others seek sensory pleasure in attempts to feel more alive, often at the expense of others. But all of these counterfeit attempts to thrive and enhance life fall short of the real glory of God.

I am starting to see more clearly that sin is the compulsion to seek value, worth, identity and fulfillment from any source other than the only true Source. What we are really looking for is glory, the very thing we were designed to have all along. But when we turn away from the only true Source of glory to any other sources we find that our cravings have been perverted into lusts that end up consuming and destroying us instead of enriching and inspiring us to reflect God's glory of love.

I am now seeing more clearly the real meaning of Romans 3:23. All have sinned and have fallen short of God's glory, for the glory of God is the power of love – pure, unselfish love that is the opposite of what Satan has led all humanity to believe about Him. To seek glory from God is not only to seek our sense of identity from Him, to experience His love and resulting power to transform our lives, but in seeking this glory from God we will unavoidably reflect that glory back to Him which will turn us into authentic and truthful witnesses as to the actual truth about God's character of selfless love.

Jesus came to reveal the glory of God to humanity by demonstrating the totally selfless, serving attitude of the one and only true God. Satan has done everything he can think of to distort our perceptions of that demonstration and to cause us to believe all sorts of lies about why Jesus came to this earth. The Jews of Jesus' day had similar confusion about what God is like just as we do and Jesus was addressing that confusion in this passage. He was pointing out how dangerous it is to seek glory from others while failing to seek glory from the only real Source of glory, the One who created us for His glory.

In all of this it is also starting to clarify in my mind how seeking glory from the right source is linked to saving belief. I must embrace some level of belief that what Jesus said and demonstrated about the love of His Father for me is true and reliable if I am to choose to go to God as my sole source of glory, of identity, and to discover my real worth as a child of the King. But this must be much, much more than just an intellectual exercise or a doctrinal claim. For love, if it is not experienced at the heart level becomes nothing more than an empty sham denying the reality of what it claims to believe.

What I choose to believe about how God feels about me will largely determine whether I am willing to come to Him and seek glory from Him. Reciprocally, as I fail to seek my identity and worth from Him and experience His life-changing, unearned, undeserved love for me personally, I will not be motivated to come to Him to seek the only kind of authentic glory that can fuel my recovery and restoration from the enormous damage that sin has wreaked in my soul. But if I focus on His glory and dwell on His love and the real truth about His character, then my life can be filled with His glory and light and love.

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?

Father, give me this real glory that I so desperately need and crave. Make me a reflection of Your glory, Your love, Your character, Your selfless passion to serve and bless others. Do this for Your glory.

What and Where is Glory?

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 5:44)

This is a question that I have been asking for years, both of myself and of others. How can I believe? That is the whole reason that I have come to study this gospel of John so intently over the past few months, in order to not only find out what real belief is but far more importantly to begin to experience it at a much deeper level for myself more than ever before.

There are times when it feels like I am finally starting to grasp what it means to believe. But then there are many other times when I wonder if I am even scratching the surface at all, if I have ever even been converted at all or if I am just living a hypocritical illusion of being a Christian. I usually settle for the fact that likely I am in a growing process that is neither non-existent but at the same time is a great way off from being matured very far. I am incrementally learning truths about belief and about reality but my heart is both very dull and very resistant to absorbing many things that my mind gets excited about as I expose myself to a combination of the Word of God and the Spirit of God.

I began realizing that I didn't really have a very good handle on belief many years ago when I felt there was simply too much inconsistency between what I was supposed to be experiencing and the 'beliefs' I was taught that were supposed to correspond to being a professed Christian. As soon as I would begin to read about the heart motives that should be seen inside of those who were truly born again, those who were genuine children of God following in the example of Jesus and growing into His image, I would realize that I had very few of those motives active in my own heart. I might be able to 'put on' some of the fruit for awhile, but I couldn't hide from the fact that my heart was much more in tune with the principles of selfishness than with what I was starting to see in the heart of Jesus.

Even today, I can still deeply resonate with the words of Paul in Romans 7 when he declares that what he discovers inside is another law, a law of sin and death that is in constant war with the law of life in Christ Jesus. These two principles called laws are not just at war with each other but are both diametrically opposed to each other while fighting for the place inside of me where I define who I really am and what motivates me in given situations. This battle is so intense at times that I begin to wonder if I ever will know the real truth about my identity. The messages that I hear from the law of sin are so logical and compelling that they seem impossible to ignore. Yet the messages about my true value and identity that I sometimes see more clearly from the other law directly contradict in many ways the compelling assumptions that seem so logical from the opposing side.

So, what does this have to do with believing? Well, I don't think it is as unrelated as it first might seem. For the battle going on inside of me everyday is largely the battle over what I am going to believe about my true identity, particularly in relationship to my perceptions about my beliefs about God and His attitude and disposition towards me. For ultimately, my perceptions of who I am and thus how I am going to act and respond to others around me are rooted deeply in my beliefs of what God is really like and how He feels about me. I learned long ago that the way we react toward others always reflects the way our heart believes about how God treats us. And when I take that principle and apply it to my own situation many times it becomes very frightening to realize how bad my internal picture of God still must be given the way I initially react internally toward others many times.

But it is so hard to unmask the hidden beliefs of my heart compared to analyzing my left-brain, intellectual beliefs that I can much more easily adjust from day to day. My left-brain belief system is much easier to deal with for it can more easily respond to compelling logic, good study of the Word and input from others who have important insights that are helpful for my increasing growth. But I am painfully aware that the gut-level beliefs that are deeply entrenched and hidden in my heart are the much more important beliefs that too often overrule my logical beliefs when times of crisis burst upon my life. And those hidden beliefs are very often far more cynical than the cognitive beliefs that I have carefully cultivated over many years and I find myself literally terrified when some of those sinister beliefs began surfacing from time to time.

Yet I am sure that Jesus is far more interested in exposing the beliefs of my heart just as much as the mistaken beliefs of my mind when He talks about my need to change my beliefs over and over in these passages. While it is true that there are many mistaken beliefs that remain stuck in my head and need to be thrown out in favor of more truthful beliefs about God, the beliefs that cause the most trouble are the more subtle and hidden beliefs that control my heart, that drive my emotions, that determine my knee-jerk reactions when I am blind-sided by traumatic circumstances. God wants to change both of these belief systems and make them not only reflective of real truth but make them congruent with each other.

I am still trying to grasp the real message in this verse that is not yet very clear to me. I sense that Jesus is putting His finger on something that must have a great deal to do with my resistance to changing my beliefs, particularly my heart-level beliefs. And whatever that is it has something to do with where I turn to seek for glory – whatever that word means.

For the sake of honesty I have to now raise the issue of semantics once again. Unless I have it clearer that I know what the words mean that are being tossed about it makes little sense to press on to discover the deeper meaning in these statements. Without a reasonable comprehension of the intended meaning of the words involved it does little good to argue about what the rest of the passage is trying to convey. I have spent far too many hours arguing with religious people about topics that only went in circles and got us nowhere because we were making very different assumptions about the meaning of the words we were using. We might have even been trying to say nearly the same thing but because we held such different notions of what certain key words meant we often appeared to be taking opposite positions which only tended to trigger both of us to resist each others arguments.

I have been mulling over for some time what this word glory might mean in this context. Jesus gives some indications here of what He might be talking about. He mentions both seeking glory from men and our need to turn away from that to seek glory from God. I have visited this before recently but it is something that needs much more unpacking because it is such a misunderstood word to start with among most groups. I feel that it is necessary to know better what it is that we naturally tend to seek from others and that we naturally resist seeking to receive from God. That is part of the message that I am getting from this context.

Upon further research into the original Greek term for this word I perceive that this has a great deal to do with the positive feelings and emotions that we get from having our reputation praised or enhanced. That in turn improves our sense of dignity which is also directly tied to our internal sense of worth, of value, of relationship to those thus admiring us. I am starting to see that I need to immerse myself more thoroughly in a greater appreciation for this term for it looks like it may be one of the missing links that has dropped out of sight for most people like me who have been so jaded by misuse of religious terminology that too many words have lost nearly all of their meaning and impact on our lives.

According to this verse, glory seems to be something that we naturally need in life, not something that is only given to God. Jesus states here that we are to seek glory from God, so it must mean that it is not wrong to crave glory in some legitimate sense of the concept. There is nothing wrong with desiring to be admired, cherished, valued, loved, appreciated and recognized by someone else. But evidently the problem arises in how we go about getting those things and from what sources we try to get them.

The immediate previous context implies that these people thought they could get this recognition from being experts in the Scriptures. The surrounding verses mention several other factors involved in our desires to experience glory. These include love, life, the credibility of the sources we look to and our fear of being accused by others. That last factor makes sense when one realizes that being accused involves condemnation and shame which are ways of making us feel stripped of our sense of worth and value. Jesus seemed to imply that these men were starting to feel like Jesus intended to accuse them of something before God, so He preempted their assumptions about Him by identifying the real cause of those fears. He said that the very source that they were basing their sense of worth on – the writings of Moses – would turn out to be the greatest liability for them when the truth would finally be exposed.

But most important of all, Jesus lays out here that the only reliable source that any of us will ever be able to access to feel genuinely valued, loved, dignified and fulfilled is from our God and from our Savior, Jesus Himself. The whole reason that God sent His Son into the world was to radically realign our assumptions about how God felt about us all along and to reconnect our hearts with the only viable source of worth and reputation that can be found anywhere. Sin has caused us to look to anything or anyone other than God to feel alive, to be recharged in our spirit, to give us a sense of identity and life. But Jesus clearly states here that unless we are willing to come directly to Him to find these vital ingredients for our lives that we will only end up in a dead-end ally trapped and vulnerable to the final meltdown that sin and deception always produces in those who turn in that direction to receive life.

Jesus, I come to You to find the kind of glory that my heart craves and yearns for every day. I feel an enormous deficit of worthiness, of value, of love, of feeling cherished and connected. It is so easy to look to other human beings to supply those needs for me for they are so close by and seem to have the many things that I crave for myself emotionally. But You keep telling me that those intensely attractive people or things will only end in deeper pain, in greater emptiness after an initial rush of potential pleasure, and I will find myself only in deeper emotional debt than before.

Jesus, there is no question that I need to experience glory, to feel loved and valued and to sense more dignity in my life. I crave for others to think well of me so I constantly try to perform in ways that will get others to like me, to admire me, to value me more. Yet I keep hearing You say here that these needs can only be satisfied by a more dependent reliance on You, a more intimate connection with Your heart.

But You remain physically invisible to me and thus Your beauty and attractiveness have to be perceived with different senses for now than with my eyes or nose, my ears or my touch. I am always drawn to crave more tangible sources of affection and sensory stimulation, yet I hear You repeatedly saying that real satisfaction can only be found in the spirit side of life, that I need to learn to perceive You more clearly with my heart instead of depending so much on the more familiar physical world to bring me value.

Jesus, mentor me much more thoroughly in how to seek and receive the kind of glory that You are talking about here in this verse. It is easy to see how I too often seek glory from others, but I want to experience the satisfaction that comes from receiving glory from You. Train both my right and my left brain to more consistently seek the real glory from You, that brings fulfillment now and that will last me for eternity instead of grasping for the illusive and slippery glory that comes from those around me.

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.