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.

Snared! #3

Let’s say that you are struggling with a sin. You are praying for the Lord to deliver you. What exactly is it that you expect to happen? Do you expect to have some kind of a power experience that reduces the fire in the evil desire?

What might we expect on the basis of 2 Tim. 2:24-26? We would expect the Holy Spirit to help us to see things in a new light. The reason I am feeling what I am feeling is that I am thinking what I’m thinking. If I change my thinking, I will have a different emotional response. I may actually end up with feelings and emotions that don’t even want to do the sin any more.

“My name is Cain. I used to have a real problem with bitterness toward my younger brother. It seemed like than whenever I saw my brother I would be reminded of things about him that made me angry. Mom and dad always seemed to prefer him over me. I would brood about the times when it seemed like he was getting attention that should have been going to me.”

“Then one day I found out that God liked my little brother more than He liked me. It wasn’t just my parents, it was God! God accepted my little brother’s worship, but He rejected mine. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I started fantasizing about something awful, some kind of accident happening to my little brother. Then, I’m so ashamed to think this, I started to fantasize about doing harm to him.”

“But then God spoke to me. He told me that sin was crouching at my door, like an animal planning to kill and eat me. He told me that if I did not master sin that it would master me. So I decided to pray. I got really desperate and I cried out to God.”

“And suddenly I found myself thinking about things in a new way. What would it do to my parents and to the rest of my family if anything happened to Able? They would be heartbroken. And how would they feel about me if they found out what I did? Every human relationship I had would be at risk. They might even decide to do to me what I was thinking about doing to Able!”

“Then I got to thinking about this whole sacrifice thing. I’m a farmer. I love to work the soil. Able doesn’t have a green thumb. He can’t make things grow. But he has an affinity to animals. It just seemed natural to both of us to make a sacrifice to God from the fruit of our labors. So Able offered a lamb. But when I offered produce, God rejected my offering. But when I stopped being angry and really started to think about it, I realized that God wasn’t playing favorites. He demands a blood sacrifice for sin. If Able had been the farmer and I had been the herdsman, Able would have made the same mistake I did. All I had to do was trade some grain to Able for a lamb and offer the lamb to God. And my offering was accepted.”

“I’m terrified now when I think about what almost happened to me. It was like I was obsessed with hating my brother. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. But when I started to think about it from a different perspective, and I saw where my emotions were about to lead me, it changed everything.”

“I think the real breakthrough came when I realized that this thing was actually trying to control me. I thought I was in control. I was angry at Able. I liked being angry with him. But God warned me that this sin thing was crouching, about to spring on me and take me captive. I wasn’t really in control. As long as I allowed my mind to dwell on hating Able, the power of the hatred got stronger and stronger.”

“There is something out there and it almost got me. I know you may find this hard to believe, but I really think I was going to kill Able. I was planning to get him to come out in the field where no one else was around and hit him on the back of his head with a rock when his back was turned to me. As I look back on it, it’s almost as if I was loosing my mind. I mean, really, think about it. Hitting your brother on the head with a rock and killing him. I’m glad that I took the time to really, really think about that warning God gave me. Now, when I’m tempted to think hateful thoughts about Able, I force myself to think about something good about my brother. And then I remind myself at how close I came to killing him and imagine the look on my mother’s face if she heard that he was dead. If she heard that I had killed him. When I think of these thoughts, it’s as if I were pouring a bucket of ice water of the fire of my desire to kill him.”

“I’m so very glad God spoke to me and I listened. It’s almost as if I was loosing my mind, and then I returned to the land of sanity.”

Snared! #2

Let’s talk about snares. A snare is one of the simplest forms of a trap. It’s a simple noose suspended over a path at the proper level to cause the noose to close on a part of a rabbit’s body as it passes by. The other end of the rope or cord is tied to a tree or a stake in the ground. As soon as the rabbit feels the noose it panics. It exerts all of its energy to get away. But the harder it struggles, the tighter the noose is drawn. If the noose ends up around the rabbits neck, the rabbit will choke itself to death.

I think it’s highly significant that the Holy Spirit choose to use the word snare. There are other kinds of traps that aren’t so easy to get out of. Take a pit, for instance. You’re walking along and you see some leaves on the path. What you don’t know is that the leaves are resting on thin sticks covering a deep hole in the ground. As you step on the leaves, you suddenly find yourself falling into the pit. If the pit is deep enough, and you won’t be able to climb out.

There are other kinds of traps that cause some kind of a spear or sharp instrument to pierce your body as you step on the trigger. Even if you can pull the spear loose, you are still in a great deal of trouble because you have a serious wound.

Snares are another matter all together. If you get caught in a noose, you can easily escape if you take the time to think about what has happened to you. Understand that a snare is not attached to a mechanical device to cause the noose to tighten. It is the panicked, unthinking struggling of the prey that tightens the snare.

Snared! #1

In the parable of the prodigal son, the Lord Jesus said that the beginning of repentance was a return to sanity. Before he could be helped the prodigal had to “return to his senses.” That’s not the only place in the New Testament where that phrase is used.

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 NASB, underlining mine)

Please note all of the references to information and the ability to think clearly in this passage. The Lord’s servant must be “able to teach” so that he can “correct” people. Through this process they may enter into “repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.” All of this depends of them coming “to their senses.” If all of these things take place, they will have come to a knowledge of the truth that will set them free. (John 8:32) They will be free because they have escaped from “the snare of the devil.”

A Busby story

Busby was the first dog of our marriage, and probably our all time favorite. I have a lot of funny, heartwarming Busby stories. Probably my all time favorite was something I didn’t actually get a chance to see because I was at church when it happened.

Nancy had let Busby out to take care of “business” when Busby saw the female skunk. At least we think it was a female. Could have been a male, now that I think about it. It wouldn’t have made any difference.

Busby had just entered into that stage in a male dog’s life when he was absolutely convinced that every entity he encountered either was a female dog or had a female dog concealed somewhere on his or her person. So what Nancy saw to be a skunk, Busby saw as being a very attractive, small, black, female dog.

I will have to say this for the skunk. He/she showed great restraint. The skunk looks up and sees this dog coming, so it begins to waddle off toward the woods in a very dignified manner. The only problem is that it is hard to waddle in a dignified manner with a dog’s nose attached to your rear end. I have to confess that I made up the dialogue of the encounter. No actually words were spoken. But I think I caught the essence of the exchange, as it were.

Busby: “Excuse me while I stick my nose up against your rear end, but are you by any chance a small black female dog in a romantic frame of mind?”

Skunk waddling away: “No, sorry, wrong species. Not interested.”

Busby in hot pursuit, still attached, as it were, to the back end of the skunk: “But are you sure? You look like you could be a small black dog. And I find that to be very romantic.”

Skunk, waddling faster: “I don’t find one single thing about this whole episode to be romantic, and if you don’t get lost, Buster, you are going to regret it!”

Busby, still in hot pursuit: “I not sure why, but I can’t seem to get the idea that you are perhaps a small back female dog out of my mind. Would you be willing to visit a veterinarian with me so that we could get a professional, medical opinion on this matter?”

Skunk, reading the edge of the woods: “Okay, idiot, I tried to warn you . . .”

I could smell the results of the encounter when I got within 20 feet of our apartment door. I think the skunk was right. It sure didn’t smell romantic to me. Have you ever tried to coat a small, smelly dog with tomato juice while standing in the shower?

Busby was great company, and we loved him. He just wasn’t very thoughtful. And we found we could use that to our advantage. It enabled us to train Busby. I taught him to do the whole range of tricks, including rolling over. The only problem was, Busby decided that he didn’t like to roll over. I was offering him little dog treats (cookies) as an inducement, and he would sit, stay, and shake hands for a dog biscuit, but he wouldn’t roll over. The power of the cookie wasn’t strong enough, so I looked for a more powerful cookie.

This was back during the Carter administration. Does anyone else remember the free government cheese given out when Jimmy was president? The stuff we got was incredibly sharp, aged cheddar. It had a really strong odor to it. And I had already found out that Busby loved cheese.

So I offered him sharp, aged cheddar cheese to roll over. You could tell he was tempted, but he stood on his manly principles and refused to yield. What to do? You pick the poor little fellow up, and you begin rubbing the cheese on his nose. Then you slide it under his lips and rub it against his teeth. Keep doing this for awhile, then put the dog back down and offer him cheese if he rolls over.

I swear, the dog spun like a top. Rolled over four or five times in a row non-stop. But he got the cheese. And I got a dog that was conditioned to roll over, even if I didn’t have aged cheddar cheese to offer him. Once the resistance was broken, he was trained. I never had a problem getting him to roll over after that.

The good news is that I loved Busby. I was his friend. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. And it seemed like a fair deal. Someone new would come over, and I’d get a slice of baloney out of the fridge and show them our amazing performing dog. (He could absolutely fly through a hula-hoop.) Our visitor got entertained. I got to show off my amazing dog. And Busby got the baloney. Everyone was happy.

But what if I didn’t really love Busby? What if I was a famous NFL quarterback who loved to watch dogs tear each other to pieces for my entertainment in fighting rings? The same principles used to teach Busby to sit and stay would work just as well if I was programming the dog for destruction. This is because dogs don’t have the capacity to think about the big picture and the long term consequences. All they do is respond to stimuli.

Very early on the fallen angels figured out they could train us the same way we train our dogs. Maybe the actually learned it by watching Adam train a dog while they were watching Cain learn to use a spoon (see the second post in this thread). Cain may very well have been a pilot project. The evil spirits we engage in spiritual war have had thousands of years of experience in training humans, but way back then the whole thing must have seemed very new to them.

Some twisted, evil being noticed that Cain was jealous of all the attention his baby brother Able was getting. And he decided to develop that. Just sort of hang around Cain and try to direct his attention, to focus his thinking on everything annoying about his little brother. It’s kind of like building a fire. You start off by transferring the flame of the match to something that is very, very small. Then you slowly add to the fire, piece by piece, until you get a bonfire going.

“Just look at that, young Cain. Your brother got a piece of cake that was 1/16^th of an inch bigger than your piece last night. Do you think that was an accident? You know your mother likes him better than she likes you. One of these days Able is going to get what he deserves.”

Eventually God himself had to intervene to warn Cain. “Sin is crouching at the door, and it’s desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Gen. 4:7) But Cain didn’t master sin because he didn’t think about the big picture and the long term consequences. He didn’t think about how Able’s death would break his mother’s heart. He didn’t think about the judgment of God. He didn’t think about how his conduct would terrify all of his relatives to the point where they might seek to rise up in judgment and kill him.

All Cain thought about was what Satan wanted to think about and because of that all Cain felt was what Satan wanted him to feel. And the result of all of this was the first murder.

I had to walk away from the keyboard just now. I was overcome by emotion. I knew where I was going when I started to write this piece, but now that it’s time to say what really needs to be said, I’m almost to ashamed to put it into words. Strangely enough, when I walked away from the keyboard, I ended up in the living room. You know what I found there? Three dogs. How ironic is that? So I rubbed some bellies and dolled out some love and here I am now, back at the keyboard. This is what I didn’t want to write. This is what I didn’t want to put in black and white.

There have been times in my life when Satan has grabbed my head and smeared the aged cheddar cheese across my nose. He has stuck it under my lips and rubbed it on my teeth. He has brought me to the point where the cheese was all I was willing to think bout, until I wanted the cheese so bad that I was willing to jump right through Satan’s little hula-hoop like a good doggy so that I could get that piece of cheese.

One of our late night comedians has a little feature he does that he calls “Stupid Pet Tricks.” I almost weep as I write this. He could have fallen angels as guests on his program and they could show him videos of “Stupid Human Tricks.” And I could be in one or more of those videos.

Remember when I told you that the very essence of sin is a kind of moral insanity? Have you ever noticed the first step in the process of repentance in the story of the prodigal son? He was slowly starving to death as he worked as a pig herder. But when he began to think about it, he realized that he could go back to his father’s house and work for him as a hired man. At least he would have enough to eat! He wasn’t worthy to be a son any longer, but he would be infinitely better off if he went back and lived there as a hired hand on the family farm.

What words did our wonderful, all wise Savior use to describe to us the beginning of this repentance process? These words give us deep, deep insight into Jesus’ view of sin. “But when he came to his senses.” (Luke 15:17) He had been acting irrationally. He was mastered by a form of moral insanity. But then he came to his senses!

Let me tell you what I would like to be when I grow up. I would like to be a man who acts less and less like a trained animal, and more and more like a son of the living God.