Blind Captivity

"The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will."  2 Timothy 2:24-26

I've been praying this passage as a prayer for a Christian woman who has abandoned and divorced her husband.  And every time I pray it seems backwards.  I would expect a knowledge of the truth to lead to repentance.  Wouldn't you?  The devil has you confused ("held captive by him to do his will").  So the Holy Spirit begins to reason with you.  He helps you to understand what you are doing is wrong and why it is wrong.  And because of this you repent.

That's not what the passage says.  The passage says that the repentance is a gift from God and the knowledge comes after the repentance.  You don't repent because you came to your senses, you come to your sense after you repent!  Does this mean that the devil can build some kind of a stronghold in my life (a "snare" that holds me "captive to do his will") that is so strong that I can't think my way out of it?  Does he bring us into a state of pure moral blindness where we simply can not see the truth any longer (at least as it applies to the sin that binds us)?


So all of a sudden, while praying for this woman, I find myself asking if I shouldn't begin to pray this for me!  In what areas of my life am I so blind, so completely given over to Satan's control, that I can't even begin to see things from a godly perspective until God Himself rescues me by giving me the gift of repentance?  Where am I acting so irrationally that I literally need God's help so that I can come to my senses?


Let us pray.

3 X 5's Carried for frequent mediation

Freedom is when we embrace the God who is embracing us. Clinging tightly to each other we rise and begin to soar through the stratosphere of life. It all begins when we are entranced by the beauty of God’s perfect mind. How could we not trust Him? How could we fail to flow in perfect harmony with Him? His genius is unfathomable. His decisions are always exactly, perfectly right. We begin by loving and embracing. We progress as we soar into the ecstasy of perfect love – the perfect balance between pure, infinite reason and indescribable bliss.

3 X 5's Carried for frequent mediation

Sin is always about idolatry. Instead of thinking about the desire that I want to satisfy, I must think about the damage that Satan has done to my heart to bring me to the place where I even want this thing. I must attach the desire for the sin to the consequences until I grow to hate sin. At the same time I must detach whatever part of my heart that is connected to this thing and refocus that love on the most beautiful being of all, the Lord God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

3 X 5's Carried for frequent mediation

All Satan wants me to think about is the relationship between the temptation and desire. As long as I limit my thoughts in this way, I will remain defeated. In the very moment of temptation I must always ask myself, what are the consequences of this action? Depression, the surrender of some measure of authority to evil powers, and a dimming of the light of my testimony are always consequences of sin. I will do well if I bring this to mind every time I am tempted along with all the specific consequences of any given sin.

3 X 5's -- Carried around for frequent mediation

Every sinful desire is either a direct attack of an evil spirit or a programmed response that an evil spirit has built into me. We are the victims of devious sadists who have thousands of years of practice in the manipulation and training of human beings. Their pure, venomous hatred of us is equaled only by the utter contempt with which they hold us. They treat us like dogs, holding a cookie in one hand an a rolled up newspaper in the other as they train us to do what they want. We will never have victory as long as we limit ourselves to thinking about what they want us to think about and feeling what they want us to feel.

3 X 5"s -- Carried on cards for frequent meditation

“You can be good the rest of the time, but in this one area you may take your pleasure and do as you please,” the demons purr in my ear. But when speaking to each other they say, “We will use this captured territory that this fool has just surrendered to us as a base from which we will launch relentless attacks as we seek to take over more and more of his soul. We will keep him from the peace and joy that are his birthright and keep him in a half-alive condition. If he let’s us, we will eventually bring him to the depths of despair where he will take his own life.”

3 X 5's -- carried on cards for frequent meditation

This isn’t an opportunity to be free. This is a sophisticated attempt to enslave me. Satan is not trying to help me move out of God’s house so that I can have my own apartment where I can do whatever I want. If I look closely enough I will see that this tempting morsel has a hook concealed inside of it. Satan longs for me to take the bait so that he can set the hook firmly in my jaw.

3 X 5's -- Carried on cards for frequent meditation

The temporary pleasure that I receive from this sin will not make me happy – it will leave me depressed. The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Every Christian who lacks this supernatural peace and joy is depressed whether they know it or not. If I commit this sin I will temporarily cut myself off from the flow of God life which is also the flow of love, joy, and peace into my dry and thirsty soul.

3 X 5's Carried for frequent mediation

For the most part we exist in a kind of balance of power with sin. We think, “I like to play with my sin toy, but that is as far as it goes. I am holding off the enemy in the other areas of my life. I will not allow myself to go completely out of control.” This is totally irrational. Your return to sanity begins with the chilling realization that sooner or later the enemy may break through and take more control over your life. Your beloved sin toy is a breach in your defenses. Vile madness reaches through the breach with slimy tentacles that seek to burrow ever deeper into your soul. A sane mind would find this to be a terrifying prospect and do whatever it took to seal up that breach in your defenses.

3 X 5's -- Thoughts Mark carries around on cards and reviews

The only real freedom I have ever had is to choose who will be my master. Something inside of me is designed to surrender to a higher power. With every decision I make I put my self more firmly under the control of either the light or the darkness. I am not going to surrender myself to morally crippled, fiendishly twisted fallen angels who hate me with a hatred that is just as pure as the love with which my heavenly Father loves me. I will not be a slave to sin; I am a servant of the Lord.

Tactics #4

How can I access the power of the Holy Spirit in my daily walk with God? How can I obtain His help as I reprogram my mind? Let me start by telling you what you don’t have to do.

You don’t have to speak in tongues. I’m not opposed to it, but you don’t have to be able to do that. You don’t have to come through some sort of a crises experience that dramatically, instantaneously transforms you.

Here is the secret that can transform your life. If you want to encounter the Holy Spirit, go someplace where you know you can find Him. I ride my bike when the weather is nice. We have a lovely bike path right on the Mississippi River. If you want to hang with me, wait around on the bike path. Sooner or later I’ll be by.

There area lot of metaphors in the Bible that describe the work of the Holy Spirit. You can be sealed by the Spirit, baptized in the Spirit, baptized by the Spirit (not the same thing), and be filled by the Spirit. But my favorite expression is from Galatians 5:16. “Walk by the Spirit.” (NASB) If you can find out where the Holy Spirit likes to walk, and then hang out on the path, you’ll encounter Him. As a matter of fact, if you hang out in the right neighborhood and know what to do, you won’t have to find Him. He’ll find you.

When you decide to respond to temptation by thinking the way God wants you to think the Holy Spirit will release His power within you. When you determine to see sin the way God sees it and try to live a holy life the Holy Spirit will be right there to help you. So this isn’t psychology or positive thinking; it isn’t something you can do in your own strength. When you are tempted and you dig into your wallet for that little card that reminds you of what you need to be thinking about to see this whole situation from God's point of view, the Spirit of God will graciously manifest Himself to you and you will be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Tactics #3

So what is a tactic in the spiritual life? How do I actually get into this fight? What am I supposed to do? The answer is found in Romans 12:2. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (NASB)

The devil conditions and trains us by developing thought patterns within us. A sinful impulse can arise from the direct influence of a fallen angel or it can arise from the sin infection that taints our natures. Most of the time when people say, “I feel tempted to so something,” they are not being subject to direct satanic manipulation at that moment; they are dealing with a programmed, habitual response built into their sin nature by the evil ones.

The concept is very simple. A thought comes into your mind. This thought is connected in some way with pleasure. You want to feel pleasure. You know you shouldn’t even think about that thing, but it seems hard to stop. The longer you think about it, the harder it gets to resist the impulse. And eventually, you give in. You give in because you have no plan. You don’t know any tactics. You have no idea what concrete steps you might take to win the battle.

What we are going to do is to teach you what to think about when you are tempted. It’s just that simple, and just that hard. For this to work, you’re going to have to memorize some of these ideas, or carry them around on note cards or a PDA. You are going to have to build a new habit by thinking about the same things over and over again when you are tempted. Through grit and determination you will learn to fight the good fight of faith and you will start to win some of these battles.

To some of you, this may sound like psychology. This may sound like something a human being can do in his own strength, and most of you have been taught that you can’t do anything in your own strength. It all has to be done through the Holy Spirit’s power. I couldn’t agree more. We have to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, and that power can only come through the Holy Spirit.

Long time readers of this blog will remember that I place a major emphasis on the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. There is a time and a place for deeply emotional experiences. I’m not opposed to any of that. But the basic function of the Holy Spirit is to impart truth to your inner being. Truth and life are synonymous in the Kingdom of God. Jesus said that He was the truth and the life. Living truth breathed into our innermost man by the Holy Spirit will set us free.

But how does this connect with the grit and determination needed to learn new thought habits? Is this something I have to do myself or does the Holy Spirit do it for me? The answer is that you do it together.

Tactics #2

The New Testament teaches us that we are in a battle with dark, spiritual powers. We sometimes act on a strategic level when we pray. About twenty years ago I was led to start praying that God would appear to people in closed Muslim countries in dreams and visions to give them the gospel. Years later I started receiving reports from a number of organizations who export gospel materials into some of those nations. They were hearing from a significant number of people from a wide array of closed, Muslim countries, who were all telling the same story. A man appeared to them in a vision. He said His name was Jesus. He told them some of the basic facts about Himself. The people who had these experiences were writing to ask for more information about this Jesus person. I suspect that many of you could share stories with me about how God has used you in some small way in strategic prayer.

But what about tactics? As I never tire of pointing out, the fallen angels know what they are going to do. Do you know what you are going to do?

The New Testament tells me that the truth can set me free as I am renewed by the transformation of my mind. How can I transform my mind?

The Bible tells me that with every temptation there is a way of escape (I Cor. 10:13). Can you give me three examples of ways you’ve found that help you escape from a temptation? The enemy knows how to tempt. Do you know how to escape?

I can be snared by the devil and held captive to do his will. What is a snare and how do I escape?

In 2 Cor. 2:10-12 Paul reminds the Corinthians that they were not ignorant about Satan’s schemes. How about us? Could you, off the top of your head, explain two or three tactics of Satan and what you might do to combat them? It’s like the church is calling people to get in the army and go through that door of the building where enemy troops might be, but it is failing to train the troops exactly how they might go about doing that.

Any theory of holiness that doesn’t stress these things is out of balance or incomplete. Whatever it means to be “dead to sin,” it does not mean that I don’t have a fight on my hands. I may or may not be able to enter into John Wesley’s perfect love, but there is no state I can enter into where I won’t need the full armor of God as I engage in the struggle. I don’t care if you can speak in six different kinds of tongues and sing in four more, you need to be able to detect, avoid, or escape from the snares of the devil.

I was taught a little bit about wrestling in gym class as a kid. Basically wrestling is about moves and counter moves. Back and forth, back and forth, for everything that you try and do to me there is a counter move I can use to defend myself. The guy who can think and act most quickly will probably win because he can come up with attacks faster than his opponent can remember how to come up with the counter moves.

Wrestling is up close and personal. And it’s just like spiritual warfare. Satan knows what he’s going to do. Do you know what you’re going to do? I hope you will stick with me as I continue to develop this topic. Pray for me that I will get it right. And whatever theories of holiness you have been taught, always remember that while we are in this life we “wrestle against . . . principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.” (Eph. 6:12 KJV)

Tactics #1

Goodness is neither easy nor automatic. We are born in sin, which means that sin is in our natures like some sort of an infection. When the fallen angels attempt to manipulate us, they find the poison in our natures acting like an ally, helping them in all they do. So what to do? How can I find the power to live a holy life?

There are a lot of theories out there. You may never have heard of the deeper life or the Keswick teaching or of the Wesleyan doctrine of perfect love because the church is not much interested in teaching holiness in these days. And that’s not a good thing.

I’m not going to bore you with a blow by blow analysis of all of the theologies of holiness out there. What I am going to insist on is something that seems very simple, and very clear to me. Any teaching that disregards or ignores the importance of good tactics in spiritual warfare is either unbalanced or incomplete.

In warfare strategy deals with the big picture. I’ll surround your nation with a sea blockade to keep you from receiving vital resources needed to fuel your war machine. I’ll put some of my nukes on submarines so that if you wipe out my land based forces in a surprise attack I can still rain destruction back on you. These are examples of strategy. Strategy is big picture stuff.

Tactics are how the little guy in the field learns to fight and survive. We’re in a four man rifle squad and we are under fire. Unfortunately, we have orders to advance even though we are under fire. How can we move ahead without all of us getting shot? Three of us will fire at the enemy, hopping to discourage or diminish their fire, as the four guy advances. We always have three firing as one advances. This greatly increases our chances of survival. That’s a tactic.

You have to enter a house in a town that may contain enemy combatants. You will kick in or blow open the door. This is followed by a grenade or two thrown into the first room of the house. Three or four guys rush in as soon as the grenades explode. You had better believe that each and every one of those guys know exactly which corner of the room his weapon is supposed to be pointed at as they go through the door. This is another example of tactics.

Troops doing house to house searches know what they are going to do when they go through a door. The devil knows what he’s going to do. Do you have any idea what you should do? (To be continued)

Always Adore the Perfect Mind #3

(Still reflecting back on my days at the Prairie Bible Institute. If you haven’t been reading along, please go back to the May 12 posting and start there so the whole thing will make sense.)

Am I sorry I went? No. Did I receive some awful, awful emotional wounds because of the interaction of the deeper life theology, my youthful idealism, and seasonal affective disorder? Yes. When I was unable to “enter in” to the deeper life, I could only conclude that I was sinfully unwilling to surrender some part of my life. The guilt that accompanied this made the seasonal depression much, much worse.

Did I hear clearly from God and obey correctly? Would He really lead an idealistic kid with seasonal affective disorder to go north to school where I would receive less sunshine in the winter? Wasn’t there someplace in the sun belt where I could have learned the same things?

As far as I can determine, I believe God did call me to go north to school. Why? Let me tell you what I do know, what I am sure of. Never argue with the Perfect Mind. Obey Him as best you can. Understand that you are never going to understand any more than a tiny fraction of what He knows. Obey. Adore. Worship. God is the most beautiful of all beings, and His perfect mind is indescribably beautiful and infinite in perfection. Always love and trust the Perfect Mind. Always obey Him as best you can.

Always Adore the Perfect Mind #2

(Continuing my look back on my college days at Prairie Bible Institute. In order to make good sense out of this you should have read the posts starting with May 12 leading up to this one.)

On a less important note, I really enjoyed the western prairies of Canada. I would have appreciated more trees, but it was still beautiful. My first year it stayed below zero for the entire month of February. A warm day might get to -5. Lows were in the -20 to -30 range. One unforgettable night I stood outside and watched the thermometer record a temperature of -50. We’re talking the Fahrenheit scale here.

My best buddy, Dave Wright, got me into horseback riding. Out of the many rides we took, two are unforgettable. The one was a three day ride way up north by Edmonton. The wheat had been harvested. The farms were huge and way, way far apart. I don’t remember encountering a single fence. We rode around like Cossacks on the prairies for three days. I was the least experienced rider and I had the horse with the roughest gait. I can still remember how proud I was to be the least sore person in the days following the ride. It turns out that the muscles used to ride a bike come in very handy when you are going on long horseback rides, and I had spent a lot of time on my bike that summer.

The second memorable ride was in answer to a cry for help. A couple girls from the neighborhood had gone riding, and as the sun set, it got too cold for them to make it back home. So they called my buddy Dave. (For reasons that still aren’t clear to me, Dave was much more likely to have contacts with surrounding females than I was.) “We’re freezing. Could you boys come out and ride our horses back to town, letting us drive the car back in?” Of course we could.

About twenty below. Dead calm. Not a cloud in the sky. No moon. Have you ever seen the stars in a place where it can get really, really dark? No street lights near by. A population density of less than one person per square mile. The heavens were declaring the glory of God. Radiant night sky. The Milky Way was dazzling. We had just received a new dusting of snow. I can still hear the crunching sound of the horses hooves in the dry snow on the road as we rode at a walk beneath that amazing sky. The girls had been riding bareback, so I was nice and warm in the parts of my body in direct contact of the horse. We would get off to walk every once and awhile to keep the circulation in our extremities going, but we didn’t want to stay off the horses too long because the horse sweat on the inside legs of our blue jeans had a tendency to freeze up. The town of Three Hills, where the school was, was somewhat above us, almost as if it was on a ridge from where we were at. It was all lit up with street lights and it looked like the New Jerusalem just descended from heaven. (To be continued . . .)

Always Adore the Perfect Mind #1

(Please make sure you read the previous three posts “I was bad” before you begin this one.)

When I graduated from high school I went to the Prairie Bible Institute at what I thought was the leading of the Holy Spirit so that I could learn to become a better Christian. This had mixed results.

Years later I came to the conclusion that there were some serious theological mistakes with the deeper life teaching and with any other teaching that includes any kind of crises experience as the ultimate key to holiness. So the purpose of these posts is to deal with the whole issue of crises experiences, not to knock my former school. With that in mind I want to pause to sing the praises of the Prairie Bible Institute and the people who trained me back in the early 1970’s before I go back to the original argument I am attempting to make..

My first year it cost me $350 American for seven months of board, room, and tuition at PBI. A state subsidized University would have cost more than ten times that amount. One of the reasons that they could so this was the incredible sacrifice and dedication of the faculty and the staff. If I had graduated, gotten married, and joined the Prairie staff as a janitor, I would have made the exact same pay as the President and founder of the institute. Everybody got paid the same. Very little. So you could get a very inexpensive education there.

They taught me the Bible, they taught me a great deal about prayer, and they trained me for the ministry. I wonder if there has been a single day of my life where I haven’t used or applied something that I learned during those four years. I got to see idealistic adults really trying to live what they believed. Would I have ever taken the time to wrestle with the Old Testament prophets if I hadn’t gone to Prairie? I doubt it. And I wonder if anyone I studied with would have had the balance and good sense that Ted Rendall showed as he guided us through Isaiah and Jeremiah. Where else would I have spent the time I spent there pondering the relationship between law and grace?

It wasn’t only what I learned there, I got the foundation for almost everything I’ve studied ever since. I lift my eyes up from the computer screen to the wall of books behind it and I see names like Matthew Henry, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and JC Ryle. I got acquainted with them all at Prairie, and they have been my companions ever since.

And the people! I made some of the best friends I have ever had at Prairie. Wonderful people. Idealistic people. Some friends were students and some were on staff. Such lovely, lovely people. Three of my four years there my Uncle Forest and Aunt Minnie lived in Three Hills. Their home was always open to me. The fellowship was wonderful. And Aunt Minnie is one of the most accomplished cooks in the history of Western Civilization.

I was bad #3

In my sophomore year, this guy came by preaching the AAA commitment. You had to be willing to do Anything for God at Anytime Anywhere (like go to Africa as a missionary). When you answered the altar call, he had an AAA card to give you that you could sign as an physical expression of your inner consecration to God.

I had this idea come into my mind as I was preparing to go forward. It was as if I could see the path down to the front of the church covered with broken glass. Thick, sharp broken glass, like pop bottle broken glass. If God called you to crawl across broken glass on your hands and knees, that would take quite a commitment, wouldn’t it? That would require Anything, Anytime, Anywhere commitment.

I am really, really glad there was no broken glass on the floor. As God is my witness I truly believe that I would have crawled through it. Fortunately there was no broken glass. I was able to walk up and sign the card. And as far as I could tell, I really, really, really meant it.

And it had absolutely no effect on my life whatsoever. Something was wrong here. Maybe I wasn’t really surrendering hard enough. Maybe it was all my fault. But after two years of answering virtually every altar call to surrender your life to God that was offered (and there were many) I decided that I wasn’t going to go forward any more until God helped me to understand what I was doing wrong.

I also made a vow to God that I wouldn’t do too much teaching on holiness until I understood how to enter in and until I had a message that others could understand and apply. I wasn’t going to offer altar calls that didn’t work. This thread in the blog is the answer to the vow I took over 30 years ago. I know, I’m slow—sinful—unconsecrated (pick one). I won’t even try to defend myself. Forgiven sinners shouldn’t go around defending themselves anyway. It shouldn’t have taken this long to understand these things.

But it did.

Better late than never.

(To be continued)

I was bad #2

The key to entering in to the deeper life was absolute, complete, and total surrender of your will to God. If you got to the place where you were willing to do anything God asked you to do then you entered into this holier state. If you didn’t enter in, it was because there was something that you were holding back from God.

I was determined to enter in. They would have people give sermons on the deeper life and then they would invite you to come forward to pray and make total surrender to God. I answered virtually every altar call for the first three semesters. And I didn’t enter in. I didn’t become experientially dead to sin. Which meant, according to the theory, that I was holding something back from God. Which gave me an incredible burden of guilt.

Which was exactly the wrong thing to have happening as I entered into my first experiences of full blown winter depression due to seasonal effective disorder. For the record, I had no idea what was going on. Seasonal effective disorder wasn’t even identified as a diagnosis for more than a decade after I started to be afflicted by it and anti-depressant drugs hadn’t even been invented yet.

Depression effects me like a slow leak in the tire of my self control. It just gets harder and harder and harder to do everything you are supposed to be doing, including things like spending the amount of time in prayer you would like to spend. All I could figure out was that I was a bad person who was on the road to getting worse. If I could just surrender everything to God, I would be given the power to do good. I didn’t have the power, so there was some aspect of sin I loved more than I loved the Lord. What a perfect formula for turning mild depression into deep depression!

I was bad #1

The following is the first of a three part account of my experience seeking the power to live a holier life at Prairie Bible Institute in the early 1970's. I don't want anyone to think I'm knocking the school or the people who sacrificed so much to train me. But I do have issues with the concept of some kind of second blessing that can create instant holiness apart from a deep understanding of the strategy and tactics of spiritual warfare. I suspect that many of my readers will be able to identify with this story.

I was eighteen years old and I don’t know how I could have been more idealistic. I had a good GPA in high school, good test scores, and some very nice scholarship offers. Everyone was encouraging me to go to a college or university. My mom wanted me to be a lawyer because I was very verbal and pretty sharp in an argument. But I wasn’t headed to college.

I felt called to go to Bible School. Bible School is college without an accredited degree and without the general education courses you need to get a bachelor’s degree. With the exception of a few English courses, everything I studied would be Bible or theology. The only problem was, when I got done I would have pretty much the equivalent of a seminary education, only I wouldn’t have a bachelor’s degree much less a master’s.

The closest thing I could find to an adult who didn’t think I was crazy was one man who had heard of the school, the Prairie Bible Institute. His very encouraging comment was that he “didn’t think that it would do me any harm to go there.” Every other adult in my life told me not to go. But I thought God was leading me, so I went.

What a transition it was. This was in 1971. Blue jeans, tee shirts, and rock and roll. And then all of a sudden I was wearing a tie to class, rock and roll was forbidden, and you weren’t allowed to talk to the girls, much less date them.

It was all about holiness at PBI in those days. To be honest with you, I welcomed the emphasis. I had already begun to experience some of the effects of what was going to become full blown seasonal effective disorder during my high school winters. I knew that something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure just what it was. I just felt like I should be able to drive myself to do the right thing. Every single time. All the time. Did I mention that I was idealistic?

They had something called the “Deeper Life” teaching. As best I was able to understand it, it worked something like this. God would give you the power to be more holy by making you “dead” to sin” and “alive to God.” Depending on who was doing the teaching, “dead to sin” either meant you simply weren’t feeling the power of the temptation any longer, or that the power of the desire was greatly weakened. The most vivid illustration I remember was of a dead man in a coffin. You could tempt the corpse with anything you could think of. Money, drugs, sex, whatever. But you couldn’t get the corpse to sin because it didn’t feel the power of the temptation. I longed to achieve that state.