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What does it mean to follow Jesus? If you were going to boil it down to its core, what’s it all about? The Apostle Paul answers that question in Romans 14:17: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit…”

Wow!

As I share in this video, following God is 2/3 emotion! Peace and joy are emotions.

This was news to me. I always thought God didn’t care about how we feel. He just wanted to make sure we behave. But that’s not what it says. Yes, righteousness is part of it, but righteousness comes as part of a package. In fact, the implication seens to be that if we don’t have peace and joy, we may not have righteousness either.

Hmm. Once upon a time, I would have been very discouraged about this. I would have thought: Oh, no. Not only do I need to behave, but I also gotta conjure up some kind of peace and joy. How am I going to do that?

But that’s not the idea. Rather this is an invitation. We can do a survey of what’s going on inside. Where am I struggling to feel at peace? Where am I missing joy? Where do I struggle with righteousness? We find those gaps, and then we invite Jesus in.

That’s the idea. God isn’t calling us to some try hard performance. He’s offering what we cannot manufacture on our own. He’s offering freedom. And that will be the subject I’ll be covering with our Inner Wealth subscribers starting 4/13/2019.

Be encouraged. Righteousness, peace, and joy is a gift from God. It’s yours. Just keep inviting Jesus in.

Dwight

Short video here, and/or read on:

A friend of ours was quite frightened by storms. Whenever it would storm, she would gather her children together and huddle in the basement. One day she was processing some of her fears with the Lord, and ended up in a memory where she was at a rest area (my wife says it was a campsite) with her large family of origin when a strong storm came in quite suddenly. It was her job to bring her little brother to the station wagon. As she took his hand, the wind started blowing so violently that it lifted her brother right off his feet. If she had not been holding on to him, he literally would have blown away.

Jesus brought peace, calm, and truth to her in this memory. The next time it stormed, no fear! In fact, she sat out in the yard in a chair enjoying the beauty and the majesty of the storm!

I like this story because it reminds us that who we are today is deeply linked to our past experiences. The present is rooted in the past. If we’re to move forward with God, we can’t ignore the past. Instead, we need to make peace with our past by taking Jesus to those painful places. I discuss this with our Inner Wealth subscribers starting 4/6/2019. Check out the Inner Wealth subscription here if you would like to learn more. 🙂

Have a super day!

Dwight

When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind Him at His feet weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. Luke 7:37-38

See short video here, and/or read on:

I don’t think this woman was stupid. I think she knew very well that she would be scorned by the Pharisee. She didn’t expect welcome, but something compelled her to break through the crowd, and risk being thrown out, in order to fall at Jesus’ feet, weeping.

She lived a sinful life. In her flight from pain and her search for happiness, she made choices that offended God, hurt herself and created pain for others. There was no easy road back. The religious leaders had her typecast; she was pariah.

But now Someone arrived with a different message. There is a way back. No, there is something better than a way back. There is a redeemer who can start new and build a whole new life. A life free from shame, from fear, from sin, from alienation.

Was it too good to be true? She had to find out. And there at the feet of Jesus she found her answer. There at the feet of Jesus, she, and you, and I are transformed.

Dwight

PS. What role does the past play in your transformation? How do you overcome a painful past? Should you forget the past? Why doesn’t that work, and what can you do instead? How do you safely process painful memories? We’ll be addressing these questions for Inner Wealth subscribers starting 4/6/2019.

Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so He went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. Luke 7:36

Jesus feasted while others starved. I know that may seem discomforting or even sacrilegious, but it is a truth that must be looked at.

See 4-minute video here, and/or read on:

We know that Jesus is our ultimate example of compassion and love. So we know that His actions did not stem from indifference or disregard. Let’s see if we can unravel what is going on here.

Many people feast while others starve. Most of these people feast because they live a self-centered life. They refuse to allow the needs of others to take them out of their comfort zone. They have trained their emotions to shut out the cries of the needy.

Others have awakened to human need. Something got their attention. It may have been the plight of 10-year-old Christian girls in Sudan who are sold as concubines by captors from the North. It may be the children who die because they lack an antibiotic injection that costs less than an American soft drink.

When we are awakened to need, we want like anything to shake other people out of their deep sleep of complacency.

But God chooses a different route. God calls us out of a guilt-driven, need-centered life just as surely as He calls us out of a complacent, self-centered life. He calls us to Himself—to a love-driven, God-centered life. Our lives are not measured, then, by our depth of sacrifice, but rather by our attachment to the Father. We can feast—even if our finances allow us only the feast of looking at a beautiful sunset, or listening to the song of birds. We can feast, drinking in and celebrating the love of God. And we can sacrifice, giving what we have to spread the love of God.

I suggest that Jesus lived a God-centered life. He met needs, and He left needs unmet. His attachment to the Father enabled Him to know when to give and when to receive. There is joy in both, and God designs for us to experience the full joy of giving and receiving. He also means for us to experience the freedom of letting Him be God. He will concern Himself with the needs He has not called us to meet.

Dwight

PS. What role does the past play in your transformation? How do you overcome a painful past? Should you forget the past? Why doesn’t that work, and what can you do instead? How do you safely process painful memories? We’ll be addressing these questions for Inner Wealth subscribers starting 4/6/2019.

See video here, and/or read on:

Some people seem to think that we shouldn’t ask God for much. If we ask for a lot, we’re being greedy, so God will disapprove and turn down our requests. But that isn’t what the Bible teaches. “Ask of Me,” God says, “and I will give you the nations as your inheritance.” (Psalm 2:8) God is able to do “exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or imagine. (Ephesians 3:20)

So … then, we should all ask for a mansion and a fleet of Cadillacs, right?

Not exactly. The key is in 1 John 5:14-15: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” (NIV)

Getting what we want from God becomes so much easier when we start wanting what He wants.

Dwight

PS. What role does the past play in your transformation? How do you overcome a painful past? Should you forget the past? Why doesn’t that work, and what can you do instead? How do you safely process painful memories? We’ll be addressing these questions for Inner Wealth subscribers starting 4/6/2019.

I was shopping with my young adult daughters a few weeks ago when one of them started sharing about some difficulties she had experienced at work with her supervisor.

Feeling protective as a dad, I went home and stewed for a while, angry with the supervisor. I knew I needed to forgive her, so I started processing my feelings with God. As I was doing that, I remembered a run in I had with the same supervisor many months earlier. I thought I had dealt with it, and then I realized I was still angry.

Here’s a four-minute video explaining how I processed that, and/or read on…

So I went to God to get His perspective. I knew I would need it in order to forgive. He shared two things with me:

(1) “I am training your daughter.” Anybody else could have said that to me, and it would have made zero difference. But when Jesus said it, it was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t need to protect my daughter by getting angry with the supervisor. God had everything under control.

(2) About the run in I had with the supervisor, the Spirit of God spoke to me: “She didn’t have the big picture in view.” Okay, I could understand that. Often I do stupid things when I don’t have all the facts or have a handle on the big picture. With this perspective, I was able to release her and forgive her.

In my life, I’ve found it virtually impossible to forgive unless and until I get God’s perspective on things. Once I do, then it becomes easy. How about you?

If you’d like more information on forgiving others, we will be covering this topic with our Inner Wealth subscribers, and I do offer an online course in how to forgive.

“Don’t cry.” Luke 7:13

Three minute video here, and/or read on…

I go around and around the Bible and I keep coming back to this verse. A widow has lost her only son. The funeral procession carries his dead body to the grave. Everyone is clothed with sadness.

Everyone but Jesus. “Don’t cry,” He says.

Call it audacity. Call it power. Call it compassion. Jesus slices through human tragedy and brings to us what we didn’t dare imagine: life from the dead.

This time when I visit this verse, I ask God the question that troubles me. “Why did You only raise one widow’s son? There were many. Why did you leave the rest?”

The Lord reminds me that the show isn’t over. This world is too small and this life is too short for God to show us the whole load of kindness. The book doesn’t end in chapter one, though God shows us enough about Himself so that we start to have a pretty good idea of how things are going to turn out.

Dwight

PS. One of the most difficult—and misunderstood—requirements of the Christian faith is to forgive those who have hurt us. This week in Inner Wealth, we’re exploring why God asks us to forgive, how it’s commonly approached or understood in the wrong way, and how you can find God’s grace in the real world to forgive even terrible offenses.

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Luke 6:38

Three minute video here, and/or read on…

I’m not much of a TV watcher, but years ago I used to watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. For those of you not familiar with the show, people contact the network explaining why they need their home remodeled—often there’s an illness or some other tragedy or disaster that requires a change in the person’s living environment. The network got 1,000 applications a day and, of course, can choose no more than one family per week.

In one episode, an eight-year-old cancer survivor, Kassandra, sent a tape to the network explaining that she didn’t want her home remodeled. She only wanted help going back to the children’s cancer ward to brighten it up and make it a happier place for the children who were there.

The network sent Kassandra and her family to the hospital with a team of Disney animators to create beautiful murals on the walls in every room of that children’s ward. They remodeled the play room and made it beautiful for those who were suffering.

What Kassandra and her family did not know was this: While they were busy painting rooms and encouraging patients, over 300 people were busy with their home. They tore it down and built a beautiful mansion in its place. Kassandra, her mom and dad, and her five brothers and sisters came home to the surprise of their lives.

Well, I cried. This is so much like God. While we are busy losing ourselves caring for others, God is building a mansion. Some day the door of that limo will open, the crowd will cheer, the bus will move, and we will experience far more than we could ever ask or imagine.

Dwight

PS. Need help forgiving others? That will be our Inner Wealth topic starting this Saturday.

Three minute video here, or read on…

How do you get God to answer your prayers?

Lots could be written here, but here’s one thing: Husbands, be nice to your wife. (1 Peter 3:7)

Years ago, there was a rocky time in our marriage when I wasn’t treating my wife with much kindness or gentleness. That really cooled down my relationship with God. Most of the things I was angry with Kim about weren’t her fault anyway—they were my own problems that I was pinning on her.

As God started showing me my wife through His eyes, I realized two things, no three things: (1) I had been a real jerk. (2) God gave me a really good wife. (3) I can’t expect to waltz up to God, ask Him for something, and expect Him to hand it over to me when I’m treating His daughter poorly. He cares about things like that. And, in retrospect, I’m glad He does.

Dwight

PS. I needed to learn to forgive my wife, and forgive others for their offenses—real and imaginary. In the process of learning how to do that, I learned some amazing, but little-known, techniques that I will be sharing with my Inner Wealth subscribers next Saturday.

Video here, or read on …

For many years, I didn’t understand how real change takes place. We think we can just modify our behavior. But it goes much deeper than that. Here’s an example:

In the past, when my wife got sick, I got angry. I really treated her poorly. Here she was sick, in bed, trying to get better, and I was demanding to know when she would be better, accusing her of trying to push her responsibilities off on me, yada yada. I really was being a jerk. And, like most of us, I was mostly blind to what a huge jerk I was being.

At some point, I started processing why I was feeling upset when she was sick. I discovered—no big surprise—that it stemmed from something that happened in my childhood. When my mom got sick, I felt terribly unsafe. As a result, this message got drilled into my heart: When the woman in your life is sick, you are not safe.

I didn’t even realize I was walking around with this message in my heart.

But God did. I don’t remember the exact way God replaced that message with truth, but He did. As a result, I was no longer controlled by that belief.

This change in perspective brought me to this experiential belief: I am perfectly safe even though the woman in my life might be sick.

The next time my wife got sick, instead of browbeating her, I was compassionate and helpful without being filled with resentment. That change was NOT a result of me setting some goal to change my behavior. It was 100% a gift from God.

If you’d like to better understand this process of how we change, I invite you to check out my Inner Wealth subscription.