In2Freedom

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Morning Sharing: A ‘No Fault’ Ministry Claim

This morning, my focus has been on this claim from Paul: “We put no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry”.[1]

I can get how Paul could say that even though people found fault with his ministry (the super-apostles were maligning him all the time, as were brothers who were envious of the success of his ministry).

The question is, can I say this?

I think I can answer that, as far as I know, I have not objectively put an obstacle in front of anyone regarding the gospel of the kingdom of God. I will leave it at that since I can’t prove anything. But I imagine there are many pastors who have faced things similar to Paul’s experience and know in their hearts they have not done anything to cause people to stumble even if some claim that they have. Or they know that if anything has come up as an obstacle, they have been very quick to remove it and reconcile.

What is so clear is that the ministry Paul was always concerned about was “the gospel of the kingdom” because, if people believed what he later called, “another Jesus,” “a different spirit,” and, “a different gospel,”[2] it meant they were not saved. People had to believe the gospel Paul taught, the gospel all the apostles taught, because it was the only one that revealed the finished work of Christ in the “by grace through faith without works” purity.[3] The false gospel of the super-apostles was leading people to hell because it did not provide the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God.

I did present my heart to God about specific scenarios to assess whether I could say I have a clear conscience as Paul did. At the very least, my willingness to, “practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress”[4] has been a way of life for me, and hearing people out when I do something to trigger their Enemy Mode or trip their Relational Circuit breaker has been my practice.[5]

I have taken great comfort many times in Nehemiah’s declaration, “No such things as you say have been done, for you are inventing them out of your own mind.”[6] That is exactly how I have felt on many occasions.

Anyway, I say this simply because it feels like God is speaking to me about the integrity of my ministry because I need to be bold in continuing to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom as given by Jesus and the apostles, and to lead the church of Jesus Christ that meets in our home. It is “the favorable time” and “the day of salvation”, so we must make Jesus known to everyone without wavering just because our world (and so many church-folk) is so easily offended.

I can see that joining God in his work involves being “strong and courageous” in ministry of the “no matter what it takes” kind of way, perhaps after the pattern of Joseph who was unjustly enslaved and falsely accused. And so, I share this in the hope that it encourages others to persevere in the ministry of the gospel handed down from the apostles, to constantly examine ourselves to see that we are pursuing the agapè-love of the kingdom with all our hearts, and to receive the counsel of other believers when there is need to work through the “multitude of sins” God says we will find in every congregation.[7]

Bottom line:

“preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”[8]

If Paul was dealing with that already in his day, we can be sure we need to be true to this with all our hearts in our day.

Added note: Because readers may not know me in person, I understand that this could just as easily come across as a narcissistic-pastor-in-denial kind of way as a genuine encouragement from Paul’s testimony for someone who has been faithful in keeping short-accounts with God about everything. I am not sharing this to prove I am right about anything or everything, nor is it a claim that I haven’t had to apologize for making mistakes or unintentionally hurting someone. Rather, Paul’s testimony is just what I came across in God’s word this morning, it was a huge comfort to my heart in an area of so much heartache and sorrow, and maybe there is someone reading this who has taken quite a beating in ministry but knows in his heart that he has proclaimed the gospel without fail, has sought to hear people out when there are conflicts, and wants to continue doing so with the boldness of a “more than conqueror” kind of faith and the humility of knowing that no one in the church is fully like Jesus.

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

[1] II Corinthians 6:3

[2] II Corinthians 11:4

[3] Summarizing what Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:8-10

[4] I Timothy 4:15

[5] I have been learning about the “Relational Circuits” God designed into our brains to match the relational realities of our souls, and also the “Enemy Mode” brain reactions that reflect what sin has done to corrupt our “in the image of God” creation. I recommend “The Joy Switch” by Chris Coursey, and “Escaping Enemy Mode” by Jim Wilder. They do a good job of showing how our brains struggle through relational conflicts, and how the church is uniquely equipped with the agapè-love that enables us to love our enemies, and so to agapè-love those in the church who go into Enemy Mode against us.

[6] Nehemiah 6:8

[7] I Peter 4:8, hence the need to “keep agapè-loving one another earnestly”!

[8] II Timothy 4:2-4

Monday, June 19, 2023

Morning Sharing: To Be Trained by Grace

Well, I pushed through my first thoughts and meditations on the word this morning and came to another genuine experience of God teaching me and ministering to me by his Spirit. It was one of those “brought tears to my eyes” moments, and I am so thankful.

It is interesting to reread my journaling and see how negative I felt about myself at the beginning of my time with God. This past year has done quite a number on me, not only with such a grievous loss, but also the pain of the horrid things people I have loved are able to believe about me.

So, I stood again on this foundational verse as of late:

“In a time of favor I have answered you;
in a day of salvation I have helped you;”[1]

I told God how I want to experience this, such an outpouring of his “favor” that we would see “answers” to our prayers for people’s salvation, revival, and spiritual awakening, and such an outpouring of “salvation” that our home church would feel “helped” to bring people to Christ.

And when I stood again on this scripture to see what the view looked like this morning, “Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain”,[2] I suddenly found myself feeling very personal with Paul like he was answering me himself about my longing to not receive the grace of God in vain. What he said was,[3]

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age…[4]

As I began meditating on this, praying it through with God, feeling amazed and delighted and thankful that he would speak such a clear answer to my soul, the Spirit of God taught me something in a very real and personal way. It was the deep realization that what it means to bear fruit in the kingdom of God is not measured by how many souls I save!

In other words, to NOT receive the grace of God in vain is seen by us learning to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions”. It is seen by a growing and maturing reality of living “self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age”.

I can’t explain this well enough, but it was like a huge burden was lifted from my heart as Jesus’ teaching that “a tree is known by its own fruit”[5] changed from the weight of guilt and shame that I have no “fruit” of souls that I have brought into the kingdom, to the comforting grace of God that is at work to lead me in things THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ME!!!

In other words, to measure myself by what seems to be happening (or not happening) in others is a bad goal. It is okay to bemoan that the church is not winning souls, but the measure of how we are doing with God is just that, how WE are doing with God, not how OTHERS are doing with God.

I guess one more thing to add is that I did some processing of this through the Beatitudinal Valley[6] and was reminded that the “blessed are those who hunger and thirst” is not followed by “for soul-winning”, but, “for RIGHTEOUSNESS”. THAT is what the grace of God is working in me, and so it is clear how to avoid receiving the grace of God in vain, and how to receive it to the full, by letting it do exactly what Paul said it came to do.

I know I will be camped at this viewpoint for a bit as God makes it all the more real to me, but I testify that God truly lifted my heart as I admitted to him how I was doing, and his grace spoke into that need with “truth in love”[7] so I am feeling at rest that everything looks so different now that the Spirit turned me around to see what I was missing. And I hope the encouragement of this was worth the extra read!

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

[1] I came across this in Isaiah 49:8, and in II Corinthians 6:2 is the only place it is quoted in the New Testament, so I have been meditating on the context for weeks now.

[2] II Corinthians 6:1

[3] I mean this in a personified way, that what I was learning from the word was like Paul teaching it to me in person, or at least in a personal letter.

[4] Titus 2:11-12

[5] Luke 6:43-44

[6] Based on the Beatitudes at the introduction to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1-12

[7] God taught us to do this in Ephesians 4:15-16 because that is who he is and how he communicates with his children

Friday, June 16, 2023

Morning Sharing: The Triune Salvation of the Triune God

Well, I was up way too early. I have way too much on my mind. And the topic of interest in God’s word has way too much to say!!!

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.[1]

Yesterday, my focus was on how Jesus was “made… to be sin”, and how utterly remarkable that is. Today I am considering the other side of that which is, “that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

One theme in all of this is to see a contrast between worldly religions like Islam that portray the Bible as false based on their inability to understand it. I have seen some videos where converts to Islam say that it is how it “makes sense” to them that convinced them it is true.

But it is actually the other way around. A religion that “makes sense” to the natural man is proof it is manmade! The only belief in the world that transcends man’s understanding (as is obvious from how it contrasts with every other worldview) is the revelation in the Bible that God is Triune, and that the salvation God has provided is Triune.

I was also drawn to what Paul says about these things, how, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (which explains why people can’t see the truth), and, “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (which explains why believers do see and understand what is revealed in God’s word).[2]

The Triunity of salvation is in the fact that it begins with our “justification” by grace through faith whereby God credits to our account with him the righteousness of his Son so that we can be treated as righteous in their sight. Romans and Galatians are where Paul makes justification very clear. Here is one sample:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.[3]

Once we enter this salvation by our justification, we begin the journey of “sanctification” in which we are constantly changed from the unrighteous side to the fully righteous side over the course of our lifetimes. I love the way Paul describes it:

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.[4]

And the third dimension of our Triune salvation is “glorification” when our personal righteousness will finally match the righteousness of Christ in every aspect. John’s description is what my heart longs to experience:

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.[5]

Part of what God is speaking to me about is the glorious way he has done things so that we will truly “become the righteousness of God” in every way, and part of what he is emphasizing is how all the complexities of his incomprehensibleness builds our faith in how glorious and good he is even while we are mocked by the spiritually blind who have no idea what we see in Jesus Christ our Lord.

The application for me is to focus on making this Triune salvation of the Triune God known to everyone and wait on the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of the blind to see it and believe. For now, God appears to be teaching me to be faithful in proclaiming the gospel in all its glory and goodness even while not having any soul-winning fruit to encourage me along. Trusting God for such things when we see nothing happening is worshipping him in spirit and in truth, and I am resting in that today.

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

[1] II Corinthians 5:21

[2] II Corinthians 4:4,6

[3] Romans 5:1

[4] II Corinthians 3:18

[5] I John 3:2

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Morning Sharing: "Begging and Pleading as Ambassadors"

This:

20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (II Corinthians 5)

follows what I shared yesterday about the church (through the foundation laid for us by the apostles) has both “the ministry of reconciliation” and “the message of reconciliation”, so we as the church are as much “ambassadors for Christ” as the apostles were.

NOTE: this is NOT an appeal to lost sinners (although it can be so applied). It is an appeal to the Corinthian Christians who have been lured away from their “sincere and pure devotion to Christ” by the not-true teachings of the “super apostles”.

First application: are we presently fully reconciled to God so that we are experiencing and enjoying everything Jesus has given us for walking in “the newness of life” in this present age?

Second application: are we (as the body of Christ together) surrendering to God “making his appeal through us”, calling sinful and deceived Christians to “be reconciled to God”?

Third application: is our church identified by our activity in “the ministry of reconciliation” and our proclamation of “the message of reconciliation” as “peacemakers” to the world around us so that we are finding the lost sheep of God to bring into the salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

The Father’s Heart for his Broken Children

GOD INTENDS that us reading his word should be just as real and personal as if we were talking with him in person. I mean by this that God is concerned that we hear him speaking to us what is precisely what he considers best for a given day in direct relation to how we are doing and what we are going through.

HOW DO I know this? Because the whole Bible is the collection of one experience after another where the people were going through specific circumstances, facing and feeling specific things, and God spoke precisely what he wanted them to know right then and there matching thought-to-thought and feeling-to-feeling.

IT HAS BEEN thirty-plus years now that I have approached the word of God with my best expression of honesty about how I am doing in order to receive my best experience of what God my Father is speaking to me about in his word. And in these three decades, I can testify to how real and personal God has been in helping me come to him as I am so I can hear how precisely he addresses my need while drawing me into his will.

THIS MORNING, he got me up crazy early and turned the diamond of Isaiah 49 in his hands so that the exact same verse that spoke to me yesterday revealed another facet of truth that was both precisely personal in speaking to my need and so graciously revealing of his love for me in showing me where he is working and how I can join him.

GOD SAYS,

“In a time of favor I have answered you;

in a day of salvation I have helped you…”[1]

FIRST, God blesses this little child with the delights of rhyming his thoughts. Yes, he customizes this to my delight in words, perhaps as a kind of love-language between us (that probably applies to all his children but he always makes sure it feels extremely special to me), but with a sense of wonder that he has personally chosen something to say 2700 years ago that speaks to me this morning like the ink is still wet on the scroll on which it is written.

THE RHYMING thoughts are like this:

When	What	How
In a time	of favor	I have answered you
In a day	of salvation	I have helped you

WE COULD linger all day on the beautiful sound of these parallels and find ourselves falling deeper into these treasures of thought as they seem to expand microscopically into one scripture after another. But we could also close our eyes and listen to the rhyming sound of the song as its music plays into our souls and tells us what is on the heart of our heavenly Father as he sings over us with joy.[2]

SECONDLY, the WHEN stands out because it says there is one. There is a WHEN with God. It rarely comes as quickly as we impatiently wish, but my own dealings with children remind me that I myself often must tell the little ones that it isn’t time for something they want. God uses such things as this (probably with a smile filled with understanding and compassion beyond my comprehension) to teach me to feel trust in him while I see nothing happening. Trusting him WHILE I see something happening is a small thing. It is good, and he will do such things, but it is not the best we can feel. To genuinely feel trust in the dark, and in the quiet, and in the loneliness, and in the sorrow, brings us to feel a treasure of wisdom and knowledge that makes us thankful for these gifts that did not feel as gifts at the start.

THIRDLY, the WHAT tells me the character of what God has in mind. In this case (and these would always be in the works even in the time and on the day of discipline), WHAT Father has in mind is turning the page to a chapter of favor and salvation. It strikes me that it is never his intention for his favor and salvation to come intermittently. His word makes clear that his preference would be that his children live constantly under his blessing. Even the first covenant made this abundantly clear when he directed the priests to constantly pronounce this over the people of God:

“The LORD (Yahweh) bless you and keep you;

the LORD (Yahweh) make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD (Yahweh) lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

So shall they put my name (Yahweh) upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”[3]

OKAY, so the rhyming thoughts there are CAPTIVATING! But look at God’s desire to bless his children! And whenever he must bless us with loving discipline, the time of favor and the day of salvation will follow shortly.

AND FOURTHLY, the HOW tells me that the people were finally calling out to God after their season of discipline (a significant way God knows it is time to act favorably instead of disciplinarily), and so his help is prepared in direct answer to their prayers (which is also another testimony of how precisely God matches what he speaks to us about each day to what we are admitting to him and ourselves about how we are doing in whatever we are going through).

WHAT’S THE POINT?

THAT GOD speaks to us about what he is doing before he does it! In fact, he even says that exact thing! “For the Lord GOD (Lord Yahweh) does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.”[4] And now we have the word and the Spirit to speak God’s heart to his children every day of our lives!

GOD WILL work through circumstances to discipline us where we are rebelling, or resisting his Spirit, or doing our own thing. And when he sees repentance has caused us to surrender to him about something because we finally ask for HIS name to be hallowed, and HIS kingdom to come, and HIS will to be done in us as it is done in heaven,[5] he speaks to us through his word about the way he wants to help us with favor and salvation.

DOES THIS favor and salvation apply to those who are already saved and adopted as the children of God?

THAT’S THE WAY Paul saw it when he quoted this verse to the Corinthian Christians.[6] He first said, “Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” The church (assembly of believers) in Corinth is being addressed, not some unsaved people outside the church.

THEN HE quoted this verse from Isaiah and added, “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” To Paul, this applied to the people of God in his day and in their particular situation as surely as it applied to God’s children in Isaiah’s day.

PAUL NEXT listed his credentials in suffering for the gospel of Jesus Christ and proving himself faithful in his ministry to the church (in contrast to the “super-apostles” who were trying to lead the church astray), and concluded with, “We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.”

CAN YOU IMAGINE a pastor talking to a congregation like that! The believers were being deceived by Satan’s age-old deception to get them thinking God couldn’t be trusted in what he said through the gospel because someone smarter had come with a better gospel, one that combined the New Covenant with the Old.

PAUL IS desperately calling them back to the supremacy of the New Covenant alone, telling them the sufficiency of what Jesus did on the cross to save them in the “It is finished” salvation he purchased by his blood. And in the midst of all the confusion, he tells them that he is pouring his heart out liberally towards them in love and grace and longing while lamenting that they have closed their hearts to him by drinking the poison of the false teachers.

AND SO IT IS that when God speaks, he is invariably addressing us where we have closed our hearts to him. He knows when his servants have spoken to us and we resisted. He knows when his Spirit was leading a pastor to preach the word and we said nothing was required of us in what we heard. He knows when his Watchmen have come into his presence weeping that people he has loved and cared for have closed their hearts to him because they do not want to hear from Jesus.

AND GOD says to us all,

“In a time of favor I have answered you;

in a day of salvation I have helped you…”

AND THOSE who are listening, say, “Yes, Father, I need this, and I wait for it in expectation.”

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

[1] Isaiah 49:8

[2] YES, that is in the Bible! “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).

[3] Numbers 6:22-27

[4] Amos 3:7

[5] From the “Disciples’ Prayer” of Matthew 6:9-13 (in the context of Matthew 6:7-15, and the larger context of the Sermon on the Mount of Matthew 5-7)

[6] II Corinthians 6:1-13

Monday, May 8, 2023

To Be a Learner of God’s Peace

All this is today is an effort to glorify God for his exceedingly good grace in speaking to his children through his word.

As I am sure you know, I do not agree with those on the one pendulum-extreme who claim that God doesn’t speak to his children today, and I don’t agree with those on the opposite pendulum-extreme who claim that God speaks today with thoughts and ideas in people’s’ minds that are like new revelations of scripture.

However, God speaking to his children is all through his word, and it is through his word that he continues to speak to us today. I picture it like my heavenly Father taking me on his lap with his word open before me and directing my attention to what he has already written so he can show me how that will work in my life today. The more we receive our daily lessons from the word like it is God speaking to us, the more we will know the Holy Spirit doing exactly what Jesus promised:

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”[1]

So, to the point: I have been on an incredible journey through Isaiah 54. It has felt slow in some ways, and hugely and overwhelmingly fast in others. Going one-verse-at-a-time is like covering chapters of God’s thoughts and knowing we would learn more every time we returned.

At the same time, I have gone to my prayer-spot in a gulley just outside of town and prayed through chapters of Isaiah at a time, pouring out my heart to God about what I am reading, how it ministers to me, how it convicts me, what I need, what I want for me, what I want for others, and I am in awe of God’s gift of grace and love to me.

This morning, I travelled into this beautiful verse:

All your children shall be taught by the LORD (Yahweh),

and great shall be the peace of your children.[2]

If you are following what the world is doing to the children of this generation for their harm, and the way the world is inventing evil against children just as scripture prophesied,[3] doesn’t your heart thrill with the thought of joining God in such a work as this? Don’t you want this for children in your life (young and old) that would have “great peace” if only they were taught by God?

It gets even better!!!

The word “taught” isn’t a verb, as in emphasizing God’s action of doing the teaching. He does that, but it isn’t the emphasis here. The word is actually a noun, which means it is telling us what kind of people these children are; they are “the learned”.

We know what it is like to try to teach something to someone and they just don’t get it, or they refuse to learn it, or they don’t have the capacity to receive it. But God chose a word here that indicates that the children are learners.

In other words, the meaning is that the generation of children God is talking about would be active “learners” of Yahweh-God, and because God’s active teaching would enter their hearts, and they would learn it for real, God’s peace will rest upon them, and within them.

It is as God had already said in Isaiah:

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”[4]

This is what God wants, and his prophecy was that the children following that generation would become learners of Yahweh-God (contrary to their parents who refused and rebelled against everything), and they would come into God’s peace as promised.

As I meditated further on the word “taught” I found this verse a bit earlier:

The Lord GOD (Yahweh) has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.[5]

Again, being “those who are taught” means those who have learned. Look at the picture: Isaiah had a relationship with God in which he woke every morning to hear from his Father in heaven. His ear was awakened to hear while the majority of his nation refused to listen. He knew he was one of “those who are taught”.

And because of this, he knew that God had “given me the tongue” of a learned one. Can’t you see Jesus’ imagery of the vine and the branches, that if we abide in him as a branch in the vine, we will bear much fruit?[6] Isaiah felt that what he had received from God had so filled him that he was “learned-up”, so to speak, and it was now flowing out of him so his tongue was passing on the learning whether or not that generation would listen. He was one of those “who are taught”, and so he had to speak what he knew as one of the ways Yahweh-God would teach it to others.

There is so much more, but all of this attached to a verse that stood out to me at my prayer-spot yesterday, something we shared in home church time:

But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.[7]

What a gift of grace! Those who are “learned” of Yahweh-God are not the religious elite, or those who can understand the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic of the original Bible manuscripts, or those who can answer the questions on a catechism without fail, or those who can win a Bible-verse quiz (as good as any of those things may be). Rather, the ones God looks to as those who will be his “taught-ones” are humble in their hearts, contrite within their spirits, and tremble with awe and wonder at the words our God speaks to us.

My encouragement in sharing this is that any of us can be the people God is talking about. Jesus said:

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”[8]

Don’t be sheepish (sorry!). When you hear Jesus’ voice, praise him for that! Thank him for knowing you (because you know you could never have known him if he did not know you first[9]). And follow him in whatever he is saying. Don’t be one who is actively taught but never learns (Jesus warned about that when he was here the first time[10]). Be the wise man, “who hears these words of mine and does them”.[11]

Because, when we hear and do, we never know how our words and deeds will be the way God turns someone else into one of those children who are taught by the Holy Spirit of Yahweh-God and experience his peace that surpasses understanding.

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

[1] John 16:13

[2] Isaiah 56:13

[3] Romans 1:30

[4] Isaiah 26:3

[5] Isaiah 50:4

[6] John 15:5 (context is John 15:1-17)

[7] Isaiah 66:2

[8] John 10:27

[9] I John 4:19

[10] Matthew 13:13

[11] Matthew 7:24 (in context of the wise and foolish builders in Matthew 7:24-27)

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

For Men Only: Men Unashamed of Their Shame

SHAME IS a healthy emotion. It is there to tell us when we have screwed up. It calls us to apologize and reconcile with people we have wronged. And it always calls us to make things right with God in both repentance and faith.

HOWEVER, shame is a horribly debilitating emotion because we hate feeling that way. We learn early on in life that shame can feel like the worst attachment-pain ever because it is often partnered with rejection and demoralizing criticism.[1]

THIS MORNING, God got me up early, so I asked him what he wanted me to pray about and who he wanted me to pray for. It wasn’t long before I found myself praying for all kinds of men in my life, some close and some distant, that God would deal with our shame so we would be healed and free to fully join his work as beloved sons of the Almighty.

IN A BOOK I recently started reading, I was confronted with this quote: “Boys and men need to know that the foundation of life is to be able to receive what we have not earned without shame."[2] I am one of the many men who have never been given such a foundation, so what do we do?

THAT’S WHERE prayer comes in. I was led to begin praying through this verse again, not only for me, but especially for all the men who were coming to mind: “Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.”[3]

YES, I KNOW that the imagery is a simile of God as a husband relating to his sinful people as an abandoned wife, a widow who has shamed herself. But we can just as much make this a real-life picture of God as Father speaking to his boys who have screwed up in life and left a trail of shameful sins and relationships. The promises definitely apply in the New Covenant we have with Jesus Christ our Lord.

SO HOW do we pray this comforting expression from God our Father (and, yes, this easily applies to any women who carry a shame-based reaction to God as Father)?

FIRST, we ask that God would speak his “fear not” into the hearts of every shame-filled heart we are praying for. We pray that God would speak an end to fear into our storms of shame as obviously as he spoke his peace into the storm that had stirred his disciples to hopeless despair.

SECOND, we pray that God would fulfill in all these men we are praying for (and more) his promise that we “will not be ashamed” after all. We are not asking God to make it so we haven’t done shameful things. It is far too late for that! In Isaiah’s time, God was not saying that the people would not do anything shameful. Rather, he was promising that after their horribly shameful sin and rebellion, the end of the matter was that they would not be ashamed. They would be so restored to him that their shame would be gone.

AND THAT is what so many men need, not Good-Boy Christianity that says we can only be free of shame if we act like good Christians and don’t do anything wrong, but Good-God Christianity that says that every instance of shameful sin in our lives will be cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ so that, when we repent and return to God, we will not be ashamed any longer because all our sins are forgiven in Jesus Christ.

THIRD, we ask God to proclaim over all these men his, “be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced.” Some men have abused their children and need to be called to Jesus with this promise of cleansing that, even if they must bear the disgrace of what they have done in one way, they will not be disgraced before the throne of grace where they will receive the help they need to walk through reconciliation and healing with those they have wronged.

BUT WE ALSO have men who are simply carrying so many shame-wounds, perhaps because of what was done to them instead of what they have done, and they need to know that if they open their hearts to Jesus about it, and surrender the cesspools of secret-hearted shame to him, they will not be left in a state of confoundedness, and nor will they live a life of disgrace with God and his Spirit-filled boys.

FOURTH, we pray that God would speak into the hearts of all these men his promise, “you will forget the shame of your youth”. In fact, David gives us help in how to pray about this with a ready-made prayer request when he says, “Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O LORD!”[4] We join him by praying that God would assure men that their repentance and faith and reconciliation will result in everyone forgetting the sins of our youth, or whatever sins are in focus, because they are forgiven and covered by the blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.

FIFTH, while the last phrase speaks of “widowhood” as a simile of what things were like for the disciplined people of God, we can pray it specifically for men something like, “Father, assure all these men that the reproach of their disconnect from you will be remembered no more.” We are asking God to do such a work on attachment-pain, abandonment issues, hidden worlds of self-protection, even the painful self-justifying of narcissism, so that men will face their reproach, the sins they have committed against others, and bring them so honestly before God and whoever they have wronged that the reproach of anything shameful at all would be forgiven and cleansed and washed away into the sea of God’s forgetfulness, as they say.[5]

I KNOW it would be easy to expand this verse into even more in-depth prayer for specific situations, for both men and women, based on the real-life stories of what has happened in our lives. I share this as an example of how God ministered it to me this morning, even getting me up quite early to direct me into this kind of prayer. And when I go out on my prayer walk in a bit, I will pour my heart out all the more for all the men (and women) God brings to mind.

AND YES, for any women who have read this far, men need you praying for them like this as well. And pray for women who have been shamed by men to experience all these things so they can forgive the men who repent of their shameful acts and seek to reconcile with the people of God.

THE BOTTOM LINE is that God has revealed his heart in his word with scriptures like this one from Isaiah, and we can pray his word back to him in confidence that he will guide us into his will as we do so, and then will answer the prayers we pray.

FOR ME, this has been a morning of prayer that almost demanded that I share this to try and get others to join me, or to join with others where you are, so the horrible wounds of shame would be healed, and all the ground we have surrendered to the evil one by hiding our shame from God would be restored to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and life-after-life, and generation-after-generation, would experience the powerful and wonderful work of Jesus setting the prisoners free.

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

[1] No, I don’t believe little boys are as resilient as the experts claim.

[2] Jim Wilder, the Stages of a Man’s Life

[3] Isaiah 54:8

[4] Psalm 25:7

[5] https://www.gotquestions.org/sea-of-forgetfulness.html

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Wednesday, May 3, 2023

For Men Only: Men Unashamed of Their Shame

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