I've changed my blog

Kevin's blog has moved. It is now on the Gathering His People website - http://www.gatheringhispeople.org/

You can still follow the blog via Facebook (Kevin's Blog @ GHP) or simply subscribe to the new blog at the site.

I'm sorry for the change, but I decided that Wordpress suited my needs better than blogger did.

I will keep this blog sitting here, but it will be inactive. All new posts will be on the other site.

Genuine Holiness

It amazes me how much time and energy is spent in the pulpit trying to make people behave properly when Jesus says so clearly that it is our heart that really matters (Mt. 15:19). Now, this does not mean that our behavior is unimportant. God is holy and He calls us to be holy (1 Peter 1:16). But it does mean that true holiness must extend beyond behavior and into the condition of our hearts.

If we behave absolutely in accordance with the Biblical teaching, but have the wrong motivation in our hearts, then our holiness amounts to nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). The holiness God is looking for is right behavior motivated by love. That is true holiness.

So, how do we get there? Certainly, we can’t do it on our own. Our hearts are deceitful and we cannot even understand them fully (Jeremiah 17:9). The only way is have our hearts transformed by God – cleansed of all its ugliness and filled instead with His love. It is only then that we are able to truly love others and to walk in true holiness. It is only then that we are really Christlike.

Of course, allowing God to transform our hearts can mean that we engage in prayer, Bible study and other Christian activities. However, each of these only works to the extent that the Holy Spirit is active in the moment transforming us. That said, it is so much easier just to seek the presence of God directly than it is to engage in these other activities. It is in His presence that hearts are changed and nowhere else.

Experiencing the Father’s Love

I have been asked to talk a bit more about how to experience the love and presence of God. My reply is too big for a blog comment, so here it is as a post. This is an exerpt from my book, The Gospel of Freedom.

Romans 8:38-39

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

James 4:8a

Come near to God and he will come near to you.

In Romans, we are given an ironclad guarantee that there is nothing in all creation that will prevent us from experiencing the love (or presence) of God. We also have a wonderful promise in James that as we seek God, we will find Him. Imagine that! We are even promised that as we seek to come closer to God, He will actually come closer to us! That’s because God wants to be in our presence more than we want to be in His.

The difficulty in these verses is that they do not tell us how we are supposed to come near to God. However, what at first appears to be a challenge is actually a blessing of great freedom. Drawing near to God is an act of the heart, not a specific outward activity. Jesus alludes to this great truth in the following verses:

John 4:23-24

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

Worshiping God in spirit is the inward cry of the heart expressing its love and longing for God. This inward cry may be expressed outwardly in many different ways. We have been given great freedom in deciding how we will choose to seek the presence of God.

Perhaps the simplest way to seek Him is to do it as you go about all of your daily activities. Even washing the dishes can be done as a cry of our hearts to experience the presence of God. This is because what matters is the state of our heart as we seek Him, not the particular activity.

Therefore, it is possible to seek after the presence of God by doing many of the Christian activities that we are used to doing – prayer, worship, Bible study, church attendance, etc. The difference is that these activities now have a new purpose – to encounter the living God and experience His presence. The exciting part is that we are promised that nothing will prevent it if our hearts are right.

Isaiah 57:15

For this is what the high and lofty One says-- he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Isaiah 66:2b

This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.

Humility is the essential heart attitude to encounter the presence of God. In fact, God will oppose us if we are proud.

Although experiencing the presence of God is a heart endeavor, there are some practical steps we can take that may be beneficial to us.

1. Fast. When we fast, we can break down barriers that otherwise don’t seem to go away.

2. Spend time with others who experience God’s presence and ask them to pray for you.

3. Identify and renounce any false beliefs or theologies about the active working of God in your life.

4. Decide in your heart that knowing Jesus intimately is all that matters. Don’t allow your preconceptions to hinder you from seeking Him. Be willing to let Him offend you if He so chooses.

5. Read Scripture looking for God’s love in it, not guilt, shame and rebuke.

6. Decide to let God love you as you are if that’s what He wants to do.

7. Learn how to really worship Him and not just have a sing-along.

8. Make room in your life to seek the Lord. Build the time into your schedule, if needed.

9. Rest in the assurance that everything you do to seek the presence of God will succeed, not because of your efforts, but because of His love.

10. Learn to be a receiver from God and not a doer for God.

Over time, you will experience the presence of God more and more. You will also experience His love for you in greater measure. Whether you meet that love in dramatic encounters or experience it like a soft blanket resting on your shoulders, it will transform your life. Eventually, drawing near to God will mean nothing more than inclining your heart toward Him. No external efforts or formulas will be necessary any more.

The Gospel of Freedom

My newest book, The Gospel of Freedom, is finished! To whet your appetite, here is the introduction:

1 Corinthians 3:10-15

By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.

If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

Living the Christian life is like constructing a building. The foundation is faith in Christ, but it is up to us what we build upon it. It is possible to build a Christian life that is a mansion adorned with gold, silver and costly stones. It is also possible to build a Biblically-based life that consists of scrap lumber with hay and straw filling in the cracks between the boards.

How can this be? How can I follow God with a sincere heart and still miss the joy and satisfaction Scripture says is mine? One reason is that a great many Christians and churches have lost sight of the core truths of Scripture and have highlighted peripheral issues in their place.

Matthew 23:23-24

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”

As these verses in Matthew demonstrate, the Jewish people in Jesus’ day had the same problem. They had placed the lesser provisions of the Old Testament ahead of the more important ones. As a result, they focused on issues of little consequence while they ignored what really mattered.

We do the same thing today. Instead of mint, dill and cummin, however, we focus on church attendance, Scripture memory and acts of service, among others. When we focus on the lesser truths of the Bible instead of the greater truths, the result is a building where roofing materials are used as flooring and carpet is used to keep out the rain. In the end, we are left with a Christian life that is far less functional and satisfying than what God offers to us in the Bible.

And yet, because what we are doing is good, we fool ourselves into thinking that what we are doing is right. You see, Christian activities are not bad in themselves, but by usurping the top place in our lives, they have caused us to build shacks instead of mansions, personal prisons instead of cathedrals of praise.

We need to build (or rebuild) our lives so that the core truths of the Bible receive the most emphasis and the lesser truths are understood in light of the greater ones. What are these core truths? Freedom and love.

Like the framework of a house, freedom and love support and hold together all of the different aspects of our lives in Christ. Without these truths at the center of our lives, we end up living out a Gospel that is disfigured at best and harmful at worst.

In this book, we will examine the roles of freedom and love as the framework of the Christian life. New Christians may find many truths presented here for the first time. Older believers will find familiar truths aligned so that they breathe life into our Christian experience. Let’s begin by defining three key words: Gospel, love and freedom.

Gospel – The Gospel is the intervention by God in human affairs through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus, and all of the benefits that come to us through that. It includes salvation and much more.

Love­ – Love is an emotion. It is a strong affection for another that results in self-sacrifice on their behalf. Freedom is an essential prerequisite to love because love can only exist where there is freedom. In an atmosphere of obligation, love gives way to fear and servitude. It is no longer love.

Freedom – Freedom is the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross has given us complete freedom from all external and internal constraints that would limit our choices and our behavior. Christian freedom is a place where we are able to live free from concern for our needs and without any external rules, coercion or constraints. It is a complete freedom. In fact, Christians should be the freest people in the world.

This freedom, however, is not a license for sin. Instead, God has given it to us so that we might grasp, even in a small way, His love for us. When we truly experience the love of the Father, our response is to love Him back by doing what pleases Him. In this life of love, freedom and holiness live in harmony and neither is limited by the other.

There is a dramatic difference between a life walking in freedom and love, and a life walking in constraint and obligation. Even though they both may result in the same behavior, one is a mansion built with gold, silver and costly stones. The other is a caricature of what God has for His children – a tumbledown shack made of wood, hay and straw.

This book is meant to be read slowly, so that the truth of our freedom may permeate our minds and transform our lives. As we enter into true freedom, we will also develop a greater love and passion for Jesus. As this love becomes our motivation for life, it will overflow in a life of freedom and holiness far greater than we could ever imagine. We will truly have life “to the full.” (John 10:10)

Copies of The Gospel of Freedom are available at periecopublishing.com and amazon.com

Living From a Place of Fullness

Ever wonder about when Jesus says we are supposed to love our enemies? (Matthew 5:44)

It sounds good in theory, but I don’t know that I could count very many people I know who have actually managed it. And when we do try to love our enemies (or even love those who hurt us just a little bit), it is usually a bitter love – the right action perhaps, but full of any emotion but love.

To reconcile this hypocrisy in our behavior with what we see Scripture, we intellectualize love so that it is reduced to only being a decision. “It doesn’t matter how you feel,” says the logic, “so long as you do what is right.” Somehow, we swallow such statements without even realizing how absurd they are.

Imagine a husband and wife who base their marriage on correct behavior without ever being concerned for the emotional state of their relationship. That’s silly! It is equally silly to imagine loving others in an antiseptic, unemotional way and still calling it love.

Here is what we have missed: Simple human love cannot accomplish what is only meant to be done by divine love.

You see, our love is limited, conditional and focused in the wrong direction. We try to love others out of our own emotional emptiness. The result is that we give love freely to those who love us back, but we struggle at loving the unlovable. The unlovable are unlovable because we rely on the way others treat us to give us the ability to love them. It is a needy, self-focused love.

The alternative that Jesus offers us, however, is to be able to pour out on others the same kind of love that He has for us. How? By experiencing His love for us first. Then, when we are filled with the love of the Father, we are able to love others regardless of how they treat us. Our love is no longer based on their behavior, but on the love of God that has been poured into us.

Therefore, the most import thing we can do as Christians each day is to allow ourselves to be loved by God – to set aside our guilt, shame, performance issues, rejection garbage and whatever else keeps us from simply letting God love us. As we do that, two amazing things will happen.

First, we will discover that god really does love us in a deeply passionate and emotional way.

Second, we will discover ourselves loving others freely and unconditionally because we have no need to be loved in return.

It is in this place of love that we enter into the abundant life Jesus has promised us.

Being Spiritually Dry

Have you ever felt spiritually dry even though you have been doing all the right things?

When that happens we often make one of two choices. We either blame our church because it no longer meets our needs ("There's too much milk and not enough meat") or we blame ourselves. In this second instance, we decide that we need to fix the problem - often by doing more - more Bible study, more prayer, more acts of service, etc.

Maybe, just maybe, there is no problem that needs to be fixed at all. Could it be that the God who made you and loves you has pulled Himself away just a bit to create in your heart a greater hunger for Him? Is it possible that instead of being chronically disappointed in you, He actually wants to be closer to you?

Could it be that spiritual dryness is an invitation for intimacy and not an opportunity for guilt and criticism?

I think so.

The Plan of the Enemy

What do you suppose Satan's chief strategy is?

Does he want everyone to ruin their lives with addictions?

Is he content to keep people from salvation through constant the distractions of life around us?

Or does he hope to see us waste ourselves in a messy stew of fear, pride and self-absorption?

Here's my vote: The chief aim of Satan is to keep us from falling in love with God. If he can do that, then we are never able to enter into the Christian life in its fullness and probably won't desire to become Christians in the first place.

How does Satan keep us from falling in love? By ruining our capacity to love. Addictions, abuse, emotional wounds, performance-based relationships, nearly everything harmful in life helps to destroy our ability to give and to receive love. Without that ability, we will never truly know God.

Emotional healing can sometimes be a long and painful process. And yet, as we become healthy emotionally, it is then that we can experience the great love that the Father has for us. Once we know that love, we enter into real life. We may not understand the things that happen to us, but because we know we are deeply loved, the need to understand no longer has the same power.

Being loved beats understanding every time.

What are we missing today?

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. At the core of his dispute with the Catholic Church was Luther's contention that salvation was by faith alone, not works of any kind. The declarations made by Luther caused such an uproar that they resulted in the Protestant Reformation.

There are two things I find troubling by this story:

1. From a few centuries after the apostles until the Reformation, one of the key foundations of Christianity, salvation by faith, was lost to much of the Church and not understood.

2. Many of the average church-goers in Luther's day sided vehemently with the Catholic Church. They had been taught that the truth was one thing for so long that it was difficult (if not impossible) for them to consider another alternative.

Why do these things trouble me?

I am troubled because I wonder how many of the things I believe so strongly will be later revealed as untrue. I am afraid that it will probably be quite a few.

Why do I say that?

Because there are too many Bible verses that don't fit in my life yet. For example:

- I still don't get everything I ask the Father for (John 16:23)
- I'm not doing greater works than Jesus did (John 14:12)
- My life is not yet littered with the evidence of the power of God (Mark 16:20; 1 Corinthians 4:19-20)

This lack in my life is a clear message that things are not right. I (and most of the Church) am not walking in the fullness of what it means to be a Christian.

Now, we can come up with all kinds of theologies that can explain away verses such as this. But I am left wondering if, like salvation by faith, we are missing the truth and developing false theologies to justify our shortcoming. Then, our lack of faith validates the false theology we are clinging to.

Maybe it is time to stop coming up with ways to justify our lack and to begin to seek after everything we are promised. I'm willing. Are you?

Two Random Thoughts on Emotions

Just because they're in my head . . .

Thought #1

The secret to emotional survival is to become soft-hearted, not hard hearted. Avoiding pain keeps it around. Experiencing it lets it go.

Thought #2 - from a friend

The enemy wants to hang as much emotional pain as he can on the door to your freedom.

Faith and Unbelief

In general, we think of faith and unbelief as being two separate things. What we miss, though is that there are a couple of different types of unbelief.

The first type is ignorant unbelief. In this situation, we don't believe something because we don't know that we could believe it. For example, before we hear the Gospel, we are ignorant unbelievers.

At some point, though, we may discover our lack of faith. Then, we enter a place of conscious unbelief. Now we know what we do not believe. Our lack of faith may be a purposeful rejection or a simple inability to believe. For example, some people do not become Christians because they reject it while others cannot bring themselves to believe the message.

The most dangerous type of unbelief, though, is intellectual acceptance. In this situation, we know about something and we agree with it intellectually. But the fact is that we do not have faith. We have an intellectual appreciation combined with wishful thinking. It is a soul-generated faith. This type of unbelief is so dangerous because we can deceive ourselves into thinking we actually believe and because it is so prevalent in the Church today.

We must leave behind this false faith and enter into the faith of Jesus. This is a faith of which He alone is the Author. He deposits this faith in our hearts and we truly believe. It is not a faith we have to muster up.

Many of our problems in the Church today are because we lack real faith. We masquerade around in intellectual acceptance and do not really believe the truths we hear. If we did believe them, things would not look the way they do.

Walking with God Honestly

Jesus said that He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).

One of the implications of this verse is that, because He is truth, we will experience the presence of God on a consistent basis only as we live in truth. In this case, truth means far more than simple honesty. It speaks to being genuine and truly yourself. This is difficult to do in a world that expects each of us to be and to behave certain ways. In addition, we live in a church culture that places its own burdens of performance on us.

In response to these pressures, and out of a desire to be a good Christian, we learn early on how to behave properly - often at the cost of being ourselves. We no longer feel safe in church being ourselves, so we hide ourselves and put on a show of acceptability to those around us.

I have decided that one of the most precious gifts I have in my life are the people who are safe enough that I am able to be myself with them. They help reconcile me to myself and draw me closer to God. I wonder what would happen if we decided to leave behind the dysfunctional rules of how we ought to behave and decided to be genuine, to walk in truth.

Maybe we would find that sense of community and belonging that we long for.

Maybe we would come to terms with our struggles instead of hiding from them.

Maybe we would find God in a deeper way.

Lessons of the Trinity

I have been spending some time in the past few weeks pondering the Trinity.

From all eternity, there has been one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These three are distinct, yet inseparable.

What does that have to do with life today? Here are a few thoughts:

1. Because the Trinity has existed since the beginning, this means that the very nature of God is one of relationship. Before He did anything, the members of the Trinity were in relationship with each other. Relationship existed before task. It is at the very core of the nature of God.

2. The Trinity functions based on a relationship of love. In other words, the Son does not obey the Father because the Father has a higher place in the hierarchy. The Son obeys the Father because the Son loves the Father and the Father loves the Son.

3. It is our calling to enter into this same relationship of love. The Lord is the majestic, awesome God of all creation, before Whom we are nothing at all. He could rightfully demand our service and obedience. Yet, He lays all that aside and seeks a people who will:

- follow and obey Him purely out of love for Him and for no other reason.
- lay aside all tasks as secondary and take the more difficult and perilous journey of intimacy with the Holy One.

These are people who have fallen so deeply in love with the Lord that they have abandoned all else to have Him.

The Trinity lives continually in a relationship of love and intimacy. When Jesus says to abide in Him and He in us, He is calling us to dare to seek that same level of communion that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit enjoy with one another. It is a much more difficult journey than mere outward obedience, but it is in this journey of the heart that we truly find God. And when we do, nothing else matters anymore.