Eating your Spiritual Vegetables

So I have become aware that I am an excitement addict.  I need things to be exciting.  In fact, I come from a generation of excitement addicts.  We basically have continuous entertainment opportunities all the time.  We are raised from the beginning on this excitement diet.  Whether it be video games, sex, food, or even things in the church the bottom line is that we want it to be exciting.  This is because we were raised to chase a high.

This concept has recently been ported over into the Christian world as “Christian Hedonism” most notably promoted by John Piper and to a lesser extent Mike Bickle and Sam Storms.  It’s a great revelation that the joy of knowing God surpasses the pleasures of the world.  On the other hand the pleasure of the world and the pleasures of God work in fundamentally different ways.  The pleasure of the world feeds the self and reinforces the self.  The pleasure of the world comes with an intense kick right up front.  That’s designed to get you hooked.  The other thing though is that the pleasure of the world always comes with a “hangover.”  It comes with the negative consequences of what you did.  These may be in your heart, in your body, in your relationships, in your finances or all of the above.

Look at physical intimacy.   Sinful physical intimacy may come with a huge rush right up front, but in the end you have total destruction.  There may be an abortion, an STD, and a broken heart coming just to name a few possibilities.  If you are married, it may include divorce, devastated children, and child support payments.   These are life long “consequences.”   Physical intimacy in marriage may not always have the same “rush” but it is part of building a lifelong relationship and has the potential to develop dimensions that sinful intimacy can never have because it is part of reinforcing a lifelong trust relationship.

God’s pleasures come with time.  A lot like vegetables.  You get no “high” from eating vegetables, but if you eat a lot of them, and cut out the sugar and caffeine, you’ll have a lot more energy.  Now God is certainly a lot better than vegetables.  But it’s a similar flow.  When we pack into a service looking for the spiritual “high” we’re treating God like our worldly idols.  When we come to him looking for a “high” we’re treating him like a worldly idol.

How do we exit the cycle of looking for the next “high” of some kind.  Well of course there is dying to self, but dying to self is not denying yourself something you really really want.  It is learning to stop wanting what will kill you and start wanting what will save you.  It is learning to stop eating of the forbidden fruit and to start eating of the tree of life.

Look, this even applies to learning.  For me it is easier to feed my mind than to feed my spirit.  But feeding my mind makes me just smart, it doesn’t make me effective.   If you fathom all mysteries but have not love….  But when you get in God’s presence and stay there you actually become something different.  You don’t just know something different.  Eating of the tree of life of the presence of Jesus is the gift that keeps on giving, a lot like a good vegetable diet J   It can even be very exciting, but if excitement is your goal you’re going to burn out.

What I am starting to learn (very slowly) is the “simple pleasure” of the unexciting things in life.  Working hard during the work day, going to bed on time, eat right, etc, are all the “less exciting options” but they pay off major dividends over time.   As your life gets in order, there is more room for God.   The devil works hard to keep your life out of order so you can’t stay in the flow with God.   The bait he uses is excitement.  That first rush of the forbidden fruit masks its deadly nature.   But every time you walk in what is right, you sow a harvest of good things to come.   And there is a joy of the good harvest that is much richer than the guilty and temporal pleasure of the exciting whirlwind.   I never heard anyone say “man I wish had eaten more fatty foods yesterday.”   That’s because later on you are in harvest time.  Do you get a harvest of corruption after a short high, or do you get a harvest of joy after “eating your vegetables?”

What the Devil Says

We continue to wade deeper into the waters of demonic deliverance.  And I certainly don’t have “the answers” as it comes to this topic, but I learn more and more all the time.   Talking to other people about how their bondage works has definitely been eye opening about how to get more freedom myself, and even others who are “healthy.”

Jesus says that “my sheep hear my voice.”  This is a great promise, but the problem is that we also hear the devil’s voice, and we have to learn to totally reject and disfellowship from it.  How do we do that?  A lot has been written in Charismatic movement about hearing God’s voice, but none of that stuff has really worked for me.  I think it is because I need to do more “eviction” of the devil.

Of course the devil has basic tricks like making good things seem evil, and evil seem good.  He “speaks” by giving you negative emotions about Godly things and euphoric emotions about sin.  This feeling is followed by him giving you a script like “I really want that.”  So you will come into agreement with him and he’ll have power.   These feeling have power because you believe the lies.  When you see a pretty girl and you have all of these emotions and you want to act on it, that’s because you are letting the devil play his script in your head.   The devil always lies about the consequences.  He likes you to think that there are no negative consequences of your action, but of course that’s dead wrong.

While those things are tricky, they are more obvious because we know they are obviously wrong.    The hard ones really are the “religious lies” like the ones that Jesus had to face in the wilderness.  Most demons are very well versed in the religious.   I had a friend the other day start praying for a guy on the phone who didn’t believe in demons.  That was until my friend started casting one out of him and he was screaming and choking on the phone.  The devil loves the theology that he doesn’t exist.

The first thing you need to know about the devil’s voice is that it is demanding and “loud”. The devil is glad to talk all the time.  He wants to talk about everything because anything you listen to will lead you into bondage.   God by contrast is not loud and demanding.    One of the keys to knowing God’s voice is that there is grace released when you hear it.   You hear the word and there is something within you desiring to do it.  Now there is often conflict between your flesh and carrying out God’s will, but one of the signs of God speaking is this sense of “yes” and being carried along in that direction.   God’s voice is speaking “in” you as much as he speaks “to” you – after all Christ and the Holy Spirit are living inside of you.  We know someone whose constantly chattering demon says “ask God to speak to you like this.” I believe that is taunt because God doesn’t speak like that.   God doesn’t speak with lots of constant “conversational” dos and don’ts.

This leads to my second observation about the devil’s voice.  He loves to “pile it on.”  Whatever you are doing is not enough.  He loves to find something he knows you won’t do and then condemn you for it.  “Sell all you have and give it to the poor” and then when you don’t do it, you feel guilty.   It’s not God.   If God wants you to sell all, it won’t feel like that.   If God wants you to do it, you’ll have a deep desire to do it, even if it is a struggle.   There is no condemnation in Christ, but the devil’s goal is to find something to condemn you for.  This is because if you are condemned you are in works, and that means he’s in control.  Basically you have to know that you are forgiven and free whether or not you pray, read your Bible, or anything else.  If I worship God tonight, that’s great for me, and great for God, but it has nothing to do with my “rightness” with God.  No “rules” can add or subtract from that because Jesus paid it all.  And if I sin, I repent and am forgiven.   God takes it off, he doesn’t pile it on.

John G. Lake once said that “hell is distraction” and that is the next observation about the devil: he is distraction.  He has all kinds of things you need to do and worry about all the time.  Basically anything to keep you from dealing with your real self, and getting in contact with God.  You’ll know this when you get down to pray and you become worried about all kinds of random things.  That’s the devil.   God is when you get to that place of layer after layer of focus, to the point where you are “lost in the Spirit” and you don’t even know you’re in the room.   You’re caught up in focus on God.   You are carried there by His presence in you which is calling out to His presence in heaven.

And of course we must remember that the devil used Scripture in the temptation of Jesus.   Even if the devil says something that is “true” — such as a Scripture verse — it’s still really a lie designed to bring death.  It’s a lie because of context, and a lie because of intent.   You know it’s a lie because of where it came from.   The devil can only lie and only destroy.  We have to proactively evict the devil’s voice from each of our lives.  We have to evict the voice of guilt and condemnation.  We have to evict the voice that demands we do this and that and this.   Kick it out, and listen to God’s voice of perfect love coming from the Holy Spirit within you.

Faith and The Word of Faith

A recent commenter was trying to understand why Charismatics seem to be particularly open to the Word of Faith movement and assume that if you are anti-Word of Faith you are anti-Charismatic.   When I was in high school, before I became Charismatic, I remember staying up late with my brother and watching one of the TV ministries with my brother.  It was completely ridiculous.  I had a hard time even recognizing it as Christian.   Yet these guys are raising enough money to stay on the air.   It was several more years before I was introduced to the Faith teaching in the church where I came into the Charismatic movement.   At the time it seemed that the pastors of that church were more interested in the Holy Spirit than the money and I saw the Faith teaching as something separate from what I had rejected on TV.  I saw it as part of believing God.  I was believing Him to be a supernatural and victorious person and that entailed an attitude of victory, overcoming and faith.   Declaring Scriptures over myself made sense and I was glad to do it.   It never got me the breakthrough from lifelong sin patterns, but it gave me a much more victorious mindset.   I later found out that the church pastors were in fact not much different from the TV preachers and were making incredible salaries while expecting very high sums out of the congregation in many different ways.

Which leads to my first observation:  it’s funny how “faith” always gets tied in with money.    I do not think it is supposed to be.   When you start going after the money, you end up with “name it and claim it” and a very selfish version of Christianity.   That was never what I wanted — perhaps because I had never lacked money or status, or perhaps because I had already put it all on the altar when I accepted Christ.    Yet, these faith teachings about money always end up in “give to get.”   Instead of giving to speed the gospel, you are now giving to increase your bank account.   Count me out.  I’m trying to build a heavenly bank account.

My second observation is that the Word-Faith teaching quickly becomes a kind of Gnosticism, much like Christian Science.  You are declaring yourself healed even though you are sick.   You are declaring yourself free even though you are in bondage.  You end up starting by denying reality.  This is a fundamental problem that keeps it from “working.”   Instead of exposing and confronting you end up denying.

But does that mean I am completely anti-Faith?  Actually it doesn’t.   After a number of years of not listening to that kind of teaching, I’ve realized that I’ve lost an important part of my Christian identity that I need to bring back in a healthy way.   I don’t think that I could listen to the main teachers on this subject for the two reasons above, yet I think that the “Attitude of Faith” is absolutely critical.   What would a “Faith” teaching look like without the money stuff and the denying of reality?   Hard to imagine isn’t it??

Well for starters, I think it would become focused on victory over sin, demons, and disease, which are the things that I think I remember Jesus focusing on.   I think it would also focus on confidence in the face of danger and intimidation.   It would focus on bold proclamation of the truth and walking in the full stature of Christ.    Secondly, I think that it would begin by recognition of a problem and THEN asserting the will of Christ over it.   You are sick but — Jesus makes you well.   Instead of Gnosticism we have declarations of victory on behalf of an almighty God.   Real Faith is about stepping into the attitude and position of Jesus on the Earth.  Hebrews 11 does truly paint a fabulous picture of the “man of faith” that God wants us to be.  Is the money really that exciting?  Can’t you get hyped about that on a late night infomercial?

Which leaves a question — where do the “confessions” that form the heart of the WoF teaching come in?  Actually these Scriptural confessions were part of why it was attractive to me in the first place.   The idea of quoting a Scripture to take authority over my problem made a lot of sense to my evangelical-fundamentalist ears.   I moved away from them because I felt that they weren’t really getting the job done and because of the “Gnosticism” issue of denial of reality.  I am thinking about bringing them back, but with a different focus — expose the issue, and assert God’s dominion over it.