Author: DwightClough

Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) But, have you noticed, many people know the truth, yet aren’t free … from anxiety, addiction, anger, you name it.

What gives? Where’s the disconnect?

A full answer would take a whole book. In fact, that’s what Spiritual Self Defense is all about.

But here’s a partial answer: God designed us to know truth on two different levels—an intellectual level, and a much deeper level—what I call gut-level truth. Many people have truth on the intellectual level, but haven’t yet received that same truth at that deeper level where freedom can take place.

Jesus wants to bring His truth to those deeper places in our souls where transformation really takes place.

BTW, wishing my wife, Kim, a happy birthday today (September 17)!

http://ssdcourage.com/spiritual-self-defense/

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Bible trivia: What was the name of Jacob’s twin brother?

“They are lazy…”
~Pharaoh speaking of the people of God (Exodus 5:8)

 

Do you want to be a better Christian? Try harder.

This advice is ubiquitous, but where does it come from? Doesn’t it come from Pharaoh?

Pharaoh says, “Oh, you don’t like being slaves? Try harder. Supply your own straw for making bricks. Try harder. Don’t reduce your quota. Try harder.” (Read the story in Exodus 5.)

But God is not another pharaoh. God calls us into freedom. Jesus has done the hard work. As Jesus said, our work is to believe (John 6:29).

This is one of the most misunderstood concepts in all of Christendom. God is not trying to build an army of exhausted, try harder Christians. On the contrary, Jesus came to free us from slavery. The best thing you can do is let yourself be loved by God. Everything else flows out of that.

Is this helpful for you? Ping me back and let me know.

Do you know others who could benefit from these messages? Spread the word! Send your friends to http://ssdcourage.com/ so they can join us.

Spiritual Self Defense

I like being right. As a Christian, truth is important to me, and I have a distaste for false teachings.

Unfortunately, this need to be right has gotten me into trouble. My stubborn insistence on being right sometimes gets in the way of God’s purposes. For many years when I saw other people—Christian and non—expressing beliefs that I knew were not right, my first impulse was to correct them. My unspoken mentality was: You’re wrong. I’m right. Let me fix you.

Outcome? I walked away convinced I had won the argument. The other person just…walked away. I lost a friend.

I bring this up, because I see this happening a lot, particularly online. The “I’m right; you’re wrong” mentality comes in many forms. “God told me to say this.” “If you disagree with me, you’re disagreeing with the word of God.” “I’m more educated, informed, intelligent than you.” Yada, yada.

Setting people straight has terrible costs. Here are a few:

• We lose friends—friends we were meant to win to Jesus.
• People walk away with a distaste for Christianity.
• We don’t grow because we lack the humility to learn from someone who disagrees with us.

We grow by asking questions. We grow by seeking to understand. We grow by listening. At the end of the day, we may still disagree, but at least we’ve all moved forward in our journey.

Each of us is a work in progress. No matter how anointed, gifted, educated or spiritual we are, at some level, we’re all right, and, at some level, we’re all wrong. It’s called being human. Every person has something to teach us—if we’re willing to learn.

Do you know about Spiritual Self Defense? Check it out here:
http://ssdcourage.com/spiritual-self-defense/

Do you know about Spiritual Self Defense? Check it out here:
http://ssdcourage.com/spiritual-self-defense/

Throughout the New Testament we receive instructions on holy living. Yet we are also told that we are not under the law, but under grace. We are told that our righteousness comes by faith, not by works. What gives? Are we supposed to straighten up or not?

This puzzled me for many years. But now it makes sense.

Here’s how I understand it. When we invite Jesus to take charge of our lives, we become new people—completely new (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is a work of grace. The instruction for holy living is merely a description of who we really are. Yet, clearly, sometimes our behavior and our desires are not consistent with this new identity. How do we account for that difference?

Deception. At some level, we are deceived. If our hearts could see things from God’s perspective, there would be no discrepancy between the holy standards set in scripture and our own everyday lives. We would always want what God wants. So when we find these instructions for holy living to be jarring, this is an opportunity for us to invite Jesus further into the broken places in our lives. There He does His work of grace to remove deception so God’s heart becomes our heart.

It’s all grace, all the time. Yet God’s holy standards are never compromised. That’s how I see it. What about you?

Do you know about Spiritual Self Defense? Check it out here:
http://ssdcourage.com/spiritual-self-defense/

Do you know about Spiritual Self Defense? Check it out here:
http://ssdcourage.com/spiritual-self-defense/

#1 You are not alone

Many, many people have gone through this same journey. They’re all around you. One in three women, one in six men are survivors. At least. I’ve had professional counselors tell me they think the actual numbers are much higher—50% or more. You are not alone.

#2 It’s not your fault

No matter what you’ve been led to believe—it’s not your fault. You did not sin. The person who did this to you is the person who did wrong. You did nothing to cause it. You are not at fault—even if part of you “enjoyed” it or part of you “wanted” it. You are not the one in the wrong.

#3 It’s okay to be angry

Yes, it’s okay to be angry. Guess what? God is angry. He doesn’t want his precious daughters and sons molested or abused. Abuse is not God’s plan for you, and He is angry that it happened. You have a right to be angry. An injustice has been committed against you.

Having said that, there will come a day when the anger no longer serves you. When that day comes, Jesus is ready to take that anger from you if you’re willing to give it to Him.

#4 Jesus hurts with you

Jesus feels your pain. He weeps when you weep. He hurts with you.

#5 There is a way out

Through your experience of abuse, the enemy intended to implant all kinds of painful lies to cause shame, fear, panic, rage, temptation, twisted thinking, messed up relationships, and damaged lives. But Jesus is about fixing things that are broken. There are good people out there who can help you connect with Jesus in a way that will heal and set you free from a painful past.

Dwight Clough

Dwight Clough is the author of Spiritual Self Defense: How to use the Christian faith to defend yourself against anxiety, anger, addiction and all kinds of bullies. He and his wife Kim have ministered to many survivors of sexual abuse.

Photo: Kathy, Flickr, Creative Commons

The church is about three things:

• Friends
• Faith
• Support to make a difference

Let me elaborate.

Friends

We start with the greatest commandments:

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40 NIV

Church without friendship is not church. It might be a lecture hall. It might be a concert. It might be a show. But it’s not a church. Church is where we learn to love God by loving our neighbors.

Friendship/relationship is the currency of Christ’s kingdom. Nearly all New Testament instructions (including all the instructions relating to the local church) center around loving one another. Without relationships, love is never expressed.

Friendship validates our message. We live in a culture where there are thousands of competing messages all vying for our attention. To survive, we must ignore most of them. How do we decide which to pay attention to? The dividing line is relationship. We listen to people who care about us. The old saying is true: “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care [about them].” Jesus put it this way:

“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:35 NASB

Healthy relationships are characterized by understanding, trust, respect and love.

Nobody wants to be a project. But everybody wants a friend. Friends accept and love one another, even when they disagree. The goal of friendship is friendship. Love is unconditional. We don’t love people on the condition they convert, agree or change. We love them as they are for who they are: a person much loved by God.

Christian culture often divides church people into the ministers (those who have something of value to share) and the needy (those who need help). This creates roadblocks to friendship. We all have something to share. We all have needs. We each are both ministers and needy.

Friendships provide opportunity for us to grow. People challenge us on multiple levels. This is a good thing. We take those challenges to God and cash them in for patience, kindness, self control, peace, joy and love.

Putting people on the same bench listening to the same sermon does not create friendships.

Leaving friendship to chance does not create friendship. Some people have difficulty forming friendships; it is the responsibility of the church to help these folks into meaningful relationships.

One of the primary reasons people leave the church is they find (from their perspective) judgment instead of friendship. One of the big reasons people in their early twenties leave the church is this: They have no close friends in the church. One of the biggest things we can do to ensure the success of the local church is to prioritize friendship.

Most churches have a small group program, but most churches struggle to get more than 20% of their congregation enrolled. We need to do some troubleshooting to find out why that is, and we shouldn’t assume that it is the fault of the people who choose not to enroll. Maybe we need to approach the small group thing a different way.

Faith

We start here with the Great Commission:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 NIV

Faith means that we bring people into a meaningful relationship with Jesus.

Discipleship thrives when people come into a meaningful relationship with Jesus. By that, I do NOT mean they said a prayer, and they’re set. Suppose a husband and wife said “I do” at the marriage altar, and then went on to have nothing to do with each other for the rest of their lives. Would you call that a marriage? I wouldn’t. It certainly is not a meaningful relationship.

A meaningful relationship with Jesus will look a little different for each person. But here are some defining characteristics:

A meaningful relationship with God means that no part of our lives is off limits for God. We share every part of our lives with Him, and we submit every part of our lives to Him.

A meaningful relationship means that we have faith to believe God for answers to prayer and faith to trust God when our prayers are not answered according to our wishes.

A meaningful relationship with Jesus means that we find comfort from Him in those places where we are hurting, and we find coaching/encouragement/instruction from Him in those places where we are trying to find our way. He heals our hearts and renews our minds.

A meaningful relationship with Jesus means we love soaking up what He has to say to us through His word and through His Spirit.

A meaningful relationship with Jesus means that we have confidence in Him for His provision for us to be forgiven, to be brought into God’s family, to receive the gift of eternal life.

Needless to say, a meaningful relationship with Christ is something far different than try-harder behavior modification and sign-on-the-dotted-line doctrinal uniformity. Leaders must be able to show their followers how to “taste and see that God is good” and experience a moment-by-moment relationship with Christ.

Support to make a difference

Here we start with this instruction from the Apostle Paul:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-13 NIV [emphasis mine]

What are those “works of service”? They could include starting a food pantry, building earthquake resistant houses for displaced people in Nepal, writing blog posts and books, working in the church nursery, praying with people for emotional healing, starting an NGO to rescue people from human trafficking, adopting a child, volunteering at a rescue mission, planting a new church, being a companion to an elderly person, sharing one’s story with an audience, recording music, starting a coffee shop to create a meeting place for Christians, raising funds to buy an airplane for a missions organization, creating mission-focused internships for students, distributing gloves to the homeless, writing letters to persecuted Christians or any of a thousand different things. Please note that these works of service might or might not have anything to do with perpetuating a Sunday morning church meeting. But they all matter, and they all need to be validated, affirmed, encouraged, supported, mentored, coached and celebrated by church leaders.

Unfortunately, research shows that the people who are the most motivated to make a difference in their world sometimes run into the most resistance and opposition from the bureaucracy in their own church. Many of these people end up walking away from church because they can make a bigger difference on their own.

To be fair, church leaders are reluctant to endorse outside ministries because they have no control over what those outside ministries might do. And church leaders are likewise reluctant to hand over too much responsibility too early within the church to the wrong person. While I understand these concerns, there are still plenty of options for celebrating, affirming, validating and coaching people who desire to make a difference. A mentoring program, a Sunday morning commissioning service, a newsletter with updates, and any of a thousand other options are available and should be employed to move the church from a sermon-centered event to an empowering community.

Church leaders need to remember that the real Kingdom footprint of a congregation extends outside the four walls of the church building and way beyond an hour or two on Sunday. Cultivating and deploying that Kingdom potential is Mission #1 for the church leader. This requires a vision that goes way beyond perpetuating a Sunday morning event.

Photo credit: Don O’Brien, Flickr, Creative Commons License

I want to suggest a little wisdom:

Don’t get your worldview from an angry person.

Before you swallow someone’s politics, theology, philosophy, science, economics or other perspectives, it pays to look at how well that person has resolved issues arising from their childhood.

Here’s why:

It’s common knowledge that our view of God is shaped in childhood by the gods of early childhood, namely Mommy and Daddy. There’s just one problem with that: Our parents make mistakes. Even if they didn’t, we tend to misinterpret their actions and misunderstand their motives. On top of that, some people have genuinely horrible parents who did not even try to act in the best interests of their children.

As a result, all of us grow up with issues to overcome relating to our parents and to our childhood. That’s just the way life is in a fallen world. If we fail to overcome these issues, then, at a very primal level, our view of life and our view of God will be skewed.

The problem is this: We tend to build an intellectual superstructure on that primal foundation. This is why incredibly intelligent people put together very smart sounding perspectives on life that are just wrong. Someone with unresolved anger, especially toward abusive or absent parents or other authority figures is going to see everything in their world through the lens of that anger. That anger will color how they see politics, economics, science, sex, marriage, philosophy and, most importantly, God.

Once upon a time, I thought that education, wisdom, knowledge, intelligence and maturity were rough equivalents. I no longer believe that. The Bible speaks of those who are “ever learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).

The Bible also says that anger gives the enemy a foothold (Ephesians 4:27), and that bitterness contaminates not only ourselves but others around us (Hebrews 12:15).

Maybe this is why Peter tells us to add to our faith first virtue (goodness) and then knowledge (2 Peter 1:5). Paul likewise says knowledge puff us while love builds up (2 Corinthians 8:1). And Solomon says, “Don’t make friends with an angry person, or you will learn his ways and fall into a trap.” (Proverbs 22:24-25)

Education, knowledge and intelligence are wonderful gifts. Built on the right foundation, they can bring much good into many lives. But don’t be seduced by them if they are in the hands of an angry person.

My two cents. Your thoughts?

Photo credit: Rick, Flickr, Creative Commons License