Author: DwightClough

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52 NIV)

You may know the story. Jesus had been arrested. This would never do. Hands off! This is God’s man! Peter jumps into the crowd with a sword and starts swinging. In the process, he manages to lop off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the high priest. Jesus tells Peter to put the sword away, and He reaches out and heals Malchus.

There’s an old saying: You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. In other words, you gotta know what kind of battle you’re facing and arm accordingly.

Peter didn’t know what kind of battle he was facing. The real battle was the hatred of humanity vs. the love of God, the sin of the world vs. the spotless Lamb of God, the schemes of the enemy vs. the triumphant Son of God.

He was way out of his league.

Anyway, sometimes you need a different weapon. Let me give you an example. There was a person in my life who had a problem with alcohol. This made me angry. Alcohol was destroying the life of someone I loved. So I tried to intervene to stop it. I bullied her into giving me her booze. She gave it to me. I begged her to get help. I yelled at her for getting drunk.

Her response? She drank even more. I was with her in the emergency room once when the doctor said to me, “Based on her blood alcohol level, I don’t know how she’s still alive.”

Anyway, I was fighting with the wrong weapons. Like Peter, I was only making things worse. I can’t tell you the whole story, but I can tell you that God slowly started changing my heart. He helped me to see that she and I weren’t really that different. She was looking for a little bit of peace in her life just like I was. She made some dumb choices, but then so did I.

I tried out a different arsenal. Understanding. Respect. Patience. Kindness. Listening. Forgiving. Love.

Much stronger weapons. Much better results.

May God give us wisdom to know what kind of fight we’re fighting, and what weapons will really win.

Dwight

PS. We talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But what does that mean? How do you cultivate a meaningful relationship with God? The Inner Wealth resources for Saturday, 6/1/2019 will cover beginning a relationship with God, elements of a healthy relationship, sacred pathways, and how to hear the voice of God.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. (Ephesians 6:5-9 NIV)

Okay, we have this troubling question: If slavery is wrong—and I think we can all agree that it is—then why didn’t the New Testament writers take more of a stand against it?

First this: Every troubling question you take to God. I’ll give you the answer that works for me, but I don’t pretend it will work for you. To get the answer that works for you, you need to get it from God.

Much of the Old Testament was addressed to national leaders, to people in power. By contrast, the New Testament was directed to people with little or no political power. The New Testament is a guide for marginalized peoples.

And in this passage, the author brings up the question: How do you deal with a bad situation you don’t have the power to change?

Here’s his answer (in Dwightspeak). Imagine you are on the beach in Hawaii. You hold in your hand a tiny drop of liquid. When you drop that drop of liquid into the Pacific Ocean, the entire ocean will change color.

Take a moment and imagine that.

This is the difference between your earthly life and eternal life. That drop of liquid in your hand is your earthly life. It’s very, very small compared to the vast Pacific Ocean. But it has the power to color your eternity. So take this very small life, this drop of liquid in your hand, and make the best of it because pretty soon you’ll be swimming in the ocean of your making.

Dwight

PS. We talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But what does that mean? How do you cultivate a meaningful relationship with God? The Inner Wealth resources for Saturday, 6/1/2019 will cover beginning a relationship with God, elements of a healthy relationship, sacred pathways, and how to hear the voice of God.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise—“so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:1-4 NIV

We look across the generational divide, and we know this: No parent is perfect. No child is perfect. Painful truth.

Yet we are to honor. When we are young, we are to obey.

Did you ever notice how much of the New Testament is written to people who have little or no power?

And God calls on us to use our lack of power as a tool of influence—not through uprisings and revolts—but by quietly winning over those who do have the power.

But I digress.

Of course there are evil and abusive parents, and children who need to be protected from them; there are misguided social justice warriors who want to “protect” children from good parents—the whole thing is muddled.

But I’ll stick to the main course and say this: Learning to honor my parents is one of the main ways in which I have grown as a person. Learning to embrace their humanity, see beyond their imperfections, and comprehend what a gift from God they were to me—all of this has helped me land in a settled place where I can be patient with my own shortcomings, and find ways to respect those around me.

Dwight

PS. On 5/25/2019 our Inner Wealth topic will be how to overcome guilt, shame, and condemnation. Since many people don’t understand the difference between true and false guilt, and the very different strategies we use to resolve each, we’ll be explaining that in detail.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:25-33 NIV

Marriage is a lifelong educational process; the main subjects are understanding, respect, trust, and love. And sometimes we men are slow learners. I certainly have been at times.

Yeah, several months after we got married, the love drug wore off in my brain just like it does for everybody. I remember my supervisor at work saying to me, “You used to talk about your wife all the time. Now you don’t talk about her any more. Why is that?”

I don’t know. Maybe I was trying to fix her. Maybe I was trying to change her so my brain chemistry would change and I would feel in love again, just like the beginning.

As you might imagine, that didn’t go well. Spouses are not objects to be fixed. They are people with whom we journey through life. They change. We change. We learn to fall in love with that new person they have become.

How do we do that? For me, I found the answer in a place I didn’t expect. I let myself be loved by God. Instead of fixing my wife, I let God fix me. Along the way, everything changed. When I no longer needed my wife to be a little god who made me feel good about myself, then my eyes were opened to see what a beautiful gift God gave me by allowing me to live my life with Kim. Wow!

I feel like this blog post needs to be a book, and, in a way, it is. My book, The Gift of Transformation, talks about how God healed our marriage, and helped me fall in love once again. You can find out more here.

Dwight

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” Ephesians 5:21-24 NIV

Some passages take a lifetime to understand. This is one of them.

We live in a broken world filled with broken people. As a consequence, we constantly feel the need to defend our turf, to assert our own independence, to protect ourselves from being hurt again, to hang on to whatever little bit of power we might have.

Into this reality comes the counter-intuitive command: Submit.

Our minds imagine abuse, oppression, dominance, bullying. It can take years—decades even—to come to the place of trusting God enough to submit to Him. But to submit to another human being, one that we can see is riddled with flaws, why would God ask us to do such a thing?

As I say, the full answer takes a lifetime to understand. But I’ll give you one small piece of it:

A few years ago, I was negotiating a business deal with some men who held more power than I did. The terms they were offering were—in my mind—unfair. I needed them, they knew it, and, as a consequence, I was getting the short end of the deal. This bothered me. A lot. But then I talked it over with God. And He said something to me that changed everything for me:

“These guys can’t hurt you.”

I signed the deal. I went along with what I had no power to change. In the end, I walked away with money I wouldn’t have otherwise had. It worked out okay.

I don’t pretend that little story will solve everybody’s hangups with the “S” word. But I want to give you a place to start. Talk it over with God. See what He has to say.

Dwight

PS. On 5/25/2019 our Inner Wealth topic will be how to overcome guilt, shame, and condemnation. Since many people don’t understand the difference between true and false guilt, and the very different strategies we use to resolve each, we’ll be explaining that in detail.

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” Matthew 24:36 NASB

This is a tough passage that brings up challenging theological questions: How does the Father (God) know something the Son (Jesus) doesn’t know? Is Jesus speaking as a man or as God the Son? Does God exist inside time or outside time? Could the Father exist outside of time and the Son inside of time? If God exists outside of time, then does He know everything that will ever happen? If He knows it, did He predestine it? If He predestined it, then do we have free will? Or, like Dr. Strange of the Marvel Universe, does He just know all the things that could happen?

Without attempting to answer all of those questions, let me offer two takeaways:

(1) The return of Jesus Christ to this earth is the Father’s gift to His Son and to all of us who follow Jesus. In some way, this gift is gift wrapped, and it will only be opened at the last moment.

(2) Always be ready. We don’t know when Jesus will return. But, until He does, we are His representatives on this earth. The only Jesus some people will ever know is the Jesus they see when they look at you.

How do we be ready? Open the door. Let Him in. Let Him be who He wants to be, and do what He wants to do. He is returning to this earth. No one can stop that. But we can be ready by making room for Him in our lives today, right now.

Dwight

PS. On 5/25/2019 our Inner Wealth topic will be how to overcome guilt, shame, and condemnation. Since many people don’t understand the difference between true and false guilt, and the very different strategies we use to resolve each, we’ll be explaining that in detail.

Now I’m a dad of adult children. And I hear stories of their lives, and sometimes I hear stories of how they’ve been bullied in the workplace.

I know I can’t go to their place of employment and put those bullies in their place. (Although part of me would really enjoy doing it.) Instead, what I desire most for my children is for them to be cheerfully victorious.

What I want for my children is for them to be so filled with peace, and wisdom, and fun, that they take on these bullies as just another challenge they will dispatch with ease.

I want them to win.

Hear me. I’m not saying I want them to make someone else lose; I’m saying I want them to win. There’s a difference. It’s the internal mindset that says, “You don’t have the power to get to me.”

And here we have lesson #3: God wants us to win.

He coaches us. He celebrates us, and is working to make sure that each one of us is the best version of ourselves. He prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies because He is that confident. In Himself. And in us.

God is coaching the winning team. And we—His kids—are on it.

I’m skipping over a lot—like how God brags about us (Job 1:8, 2:3), how He heals our hurts (2 Corinthians 1:3-4), and the list goes on. But these last few blog posts cover three things that stand out in my mind.

How about you? When you think of the father heart of God, what comes to your mind?

Dwight

PS. On May 18, the Inner Wealth topic will be neutralizing unpleasant emotions. We’ll talk about where unpleasant emotions come from, two categories of unpleasant emotions, and step-by-step tactics you can take to return to peace and joy.

Our son Hans was a polar bear. Even in the coldest weather, if he could, he would escape the confines of the house and wander around outside with bare feet and no coat. I was afraid that Child Protective Services would see the little bare footprints in the snow and charge us with child abuse.

He was never cold. Or so I thought. So one day we went sledding. While everyone else was wearing snowsuits, extra socks, gloves—the whole winter get out, he was wearing a thin coat and little yellow rubber rain boots. Hans never gets cold, I reasoned.

And then I saw him shivering.

“What an idiot I’ve been!” I told myself, as I scooped him up and rushed him to the car where I turned on the heater full blast.

And so here we have lesson #2: When we hurt, God hurts.

Instantly. Completely. Without reservation. He feels our pain. He cares. More deeply than we will ever know.

Dwight

PS. On May 18, the Inner Wealth topic will be neutralizing unpleasant emotions. We’ll talk about where unpleasant emotions come from, two categories of unpleasant emotions, and step-by-step tactics you can take to return to peace and joy.

“Boy, if I ever have kids I’m gonna teach ‘em to behave.” That was my pre-fatherhood concept of fathering.

Then our daughter—our first child—was born. One tenth of a second after she was born, my whole idea of making my kids obey went right out the window.

Wow! I was overwhelmed. I never knew what an honor it was to hold in my own arms a child—a life God had entrusted to me. To me! Why had this secret of fatherhood been so long withheld from me?

I found myself standing there, filled with wonder that I couldn’t put into words.

What an honor it was to be someone’s dad.

So that was my first lesson. God loves being our father.

Dwight

PS. On May 18, the Inner Wealth topic will be neutralizing unpleasant emotions. We’ll talk about where unpleasant emotions come from, two categories of unpleasant emotions, and step-by-step tactics you can take to return to peace and joy.

I start here. I was terrified of my dad. As a child, yes, he was my protector. But I never felt safe with him.

It took me a long time to understand that my dad and I are the same person:

• Sometimes, he lost his temper. Sometimes, I lost my temper.
• Sometimes he didn’t understand me. Sometimes I didn’t understand my own children.
• I sometimes misinterpreted his actions and misunderstood his motives. My own children have sometimes misinterpreted my actions and misunderstood my motives.

Into this tangled up journey of understanding my own father and learning to honor him, has come a connected journey: understanding the father heart of God.

So, who is He? Who is this Father who towers above all other fathers?

Is He interested purely in controlling our behavior—getting us to obey? Is He disgusted with our failures? Does He regret forgiving us of our sins? Is He unhappy with us? Are we a nuisance to Him?

I once believed all those things. Learning to unlearn those things has been my journey, and I’ll share snapshots of that over the next three blog posts.

Dwight

PS. On May 18, the Inner Wealth topic will be neutralizing unpleasant emotions. We’ll talk about where unpleasant emotions come from, two categories of unpleasant emotions, and step-by-step tactics you can take to return to peace and joy.