Developing Godly Character Pt 4 – Embracing the test, accepting the results

Remember school? Yeah, unfortunately so do I!

Tests came in two kinds, announced and unannounced. The announced were dreaded, yet because we could see them coming in advance we could either choose to prepare for it or ignore it. The unannounced, well, hopefully we were prepared and if not we would find out.

Life in Messiah is much the same. He is our Teacher, our Rabbi, our High Priest, and it is our job to listen to Him, to learn from Him by following Him, reading His Word and obeying it. It is our job to cooperate with Him, to walk with Him in His ways. His tests rarely come down to having Bible verses memorized, unfortunately, because then it would all be fairly academic and straightforward when the tests came. His tests are of a more eternal quality, boiling down to character issues, and specifically about revealing where it is lacking in maturity and producing bad fruit. Those are the tests for which we cannot study at the last minute — if we aren’t living in such a way as to pass it, in complete surrender to becoming conformed to His character, then we are not going to even have a chance of passing His pop quizzes.

Some pop quizzes are there to shock us and show us how far we’ve come.

“Wow, I remember how I used to react in that sort of situation!”

Some pop quizzes are there to alert us that our problem areas are being neglected.

“Won’t I ever change? UGH!”

Some pop quizzes are a mixture.

“Okay, I did better that time, it took me a lot longer than usual before I screwed up.”

Some pop quizzes are there so we can find out how we will react to entirely new situations.

“What? What just happened? I don’t even know what hit me! What the heck was I even supposed to do?”

But all pop quizzes have one thing in common — they are all preparing us for the big tests later, and they will prepare us, if we recognize them for that they are and if we embrace the testing process. Making excuses for the results is a common mistake. If we blow the test, we need to face it and repent and learn in a manner which sends us forward. Sulking and denial will not help, blaming the test will not help, blaming the people used in the test is fultile — we will simply keep failing the test until we die or change, and at the expense of those around us and whatever fruit God prepared us to produce ahead of time. When we refuse to accept the results, the whole Kingdom suffers loss and so does the world around us. Note that I didn’t say that the Kingdom and the world suffers when we fail the occasional test, but instead when we refuse to accept the results. Why is that?

The other night, after coming through a very intense three day test where I did exceptionally well, until the very end — God shared something amazing with me.

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“You are going to get it wrong before you can get it right,”

And in that simple statement I saw that my failure at the end was not a disaster or a condemnation so much as it was a “heads up.” The test showed me how far He had brought me, and that I had cause for thanksgiving and rejoicing. I had a reason to see that promises made a long time ago had been faithfully kept. And in His mercy, His test was designed to show me what I still tend to do when I am under stress — even though I didn’t do any of the other things I used to do. I had been given valuable information, information I could kick myself over, or information I could be thrilled to possess,

I call it “enemy intelligence” — what I learned about myself. “Enemy Intelligence” is spy-jargon for classified information about your enemy. My way of doing things, in the flesh, is my enemy, and my enemy likes to hide from me. I will share what happened with you briefly so that I can put real concepts behind what I am saying.

Saturday night, before the end of the Sabbath, I thought it was my idea to start a 3 day fast in order to pray for some ladies who were going through some tough circumstances. Sunday morning, I got up and spread out my new topsoil and put down grass seed. Within an hour it was pouring down torrential rain for the first time in a month and it started to wash away in areas. In the past would get angry and resentful and start complaining, but because of the changes I started to submit to back in June when He gave me notice, not only was I not complaining, but He was also able to eliminate anger and resentment as well (at least compared to how I was before). So I watched as a deep gully was cut through my new topsoil and I just started laughing. I mean, why get angry, why complain, what on earth would it do anyway? Might as well just thank Him that the rest of the yard was being watered. So I did and since I could not do any more work outside, I got to enjoy my day. That was, until people started acting weird. And over the course of the next three days, I had these weird situations pop up that were entirely out of my control, but I did not handle them the way I used to handle them.

Then of course there were my 13 year old twin boys, who decided on one of the mornings to just push each others buttons and I did erupt suddenly, although I was able to shut it down quickly, but not before taking some Excedrin on a stomach that had been empty for 2 1/2 days, poisoning me. Add to that the death of a young friend, and on the last day I did something that showed me exactly what YHVH had wanted me to see in the first place. In the final hours of my test, I went backwards to the initial behavior He had warned me about in early June, I started complaining and it was a few hours before I realized it and stopped. Now, I only griped to a few friends, but what the entire test was about was revealing how I react under stress, and how much stress I can take before I buckle beneath the pressure — especially when my normal avenues of blowing off steam have been removed from me.

The test was there to reveal my flesh, to show me how far I have come and to show me what I still need to work on. And I had a choice to be irritated at that “enemy intelligence” revealed during those three surprise days of testing, or to use it to gain a victory later. I choose victory, because if I don’t, then the test was just there to torture me. End result: I know that many of my bad behaviors are rooted in not having healthy habits for dealing with stress. I had been blaming them on this or that character flaw, but they were all really rooted in stress. I wouldn’t have known that without the test. Now instead of having five problems to attack, I only have one. Vaulable intelligence indeed!

Now back in June, when I was given my warning in the midst of a dream, I really had been given fore-warning that a test was coming. In fact, every time He points out a behavior, know that a test is coming. And oftentimes, we don’t know how to address the problems He brings to our attention — but He does, so we have to ask Him to start making those changes and we have to promise to cooperate as much as possible. And a really good start is whenever we fall into those problem areas, we need to stop and submit ourselves by saying, “Okay God, what are You trying to teach me here, what do You want me to learn from this?”

Testing is only punitive if we refuse to learn from it. Unfortunately, modern education has done us a disservice in the area of testing. If we fail, we either have to repeat everything or we move on ahead anyway. But with God’s tests, we only repeat what we got wrong until we get it right and He is not content to just move us forward anyway. The steps are important, or He would not keep testing us. We must be determined not to allow failures to crush us, but to allow them to serve as guideposts towards progress.

We have to get it wrong before we can get it right, otherwise we will become prideful and what need would we have of God at all? Of course we are not born with His character! Nor do we have it when we call on Yeshua (Jesus) to be our Master. Nor does a diploma from Divinity School impart it. You know, He has to show us, step by step, that we don’t have His character and we should not be offended by that. When He does show us, we should not despair but instead be excited, because it means that He is calling us closer to Him, closer to being conformed to His character.

Failing a test is a challenge, showing us that we are not perfectly walking that narrow path. Imagine each failure as a necessary step towards the right direction.

“No, a step to your right, that’s it, much closer. Try not to step over there again, keep your eye out. Now try that, doesn’t that make it easier to follow Me?”

Avoiding Cultish Leaders – Expecting Outrageous Consequences

Avoiding Cultish Leaders

Proverbs 14:16 16 A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident.

When I see people raging, loudly and confidently — accusing and ranting over and over again, month after month, year after year, always claiming innocence, never admitting any fault and claiming persecuted status, I just have to ask myself — did Yeshua (Jesus) ever display such behavior? Or Paul? Or even Peter? How about Moses? Do you know how much real opposition they faced???

To grumble, rage, complain and rant about things, to incite hatred without evidence, not in a moment of weakness but as a pattern of behavior — when do we look at that person and really start to wonder if everyone else is really the problem? When it’s a family member or a neighbor it is bad enough, but what happens when it is a minister? That is how cults get started.

The pattern is generally the same every time. Gather followers with something interesting, keep feeding them brain candy, claim persecution when anyone challenges (painting oneself in Messianic terms), present oneself as desperately needed, as someone extra set apart, make your supporters feel like a special remnant and damn your detractors to hell. People get slowly sucked in, even really smart people because it has nothing to do with intelligence but manipulation, and if the person is good enough at it, the followers feel persecuted when he is persecuted, and they actually feel guilty about even daring to question him. They want the special secret teachings (even if they have to pretend like they understand when they really don’t), they want to be the special remnant, they don’t want to be the ones in danger of hell fire. And if they are lucky, really lucky, they start to see that they are in a trap, that no one is allowed to question and no one is allowed to walk away unscathed. There is fear over not being under the tutelage of the leader, as well as fear over what will happen if they leave, a paralyzing fear that can be mistaken for the leading of the Holy Spirit.

No one gets to simply leave the cult without being demonized.

It is vitally important that we know the character of God through His Messiah intimately, personally, apart from any leader. We need to know His word and what He did and did not do. We need to see how He acted and how He did not act, in context. We need to have a whole picture of Him. Because if we do not know His character, we will always be deceived by those who misrepresent it — as long as they are interesting or offer us something we desire — like approval. And I can tell you that every single time I have been deceived by a ministry leader is was because I did not know His character well enough to recognize the behavior that was not godly.

Torah alone doesn’t protect people from getting sucked in to a cult, and neither does salvation — but knowing the character of God does. Someone who knows His character may get fooled for a while, but in the end they will see.

Why did Thomas say that he wouldn’t believe Yeshua had risen until He touched Him? Because he had been warned by Yeshua not to just believe any Tom, Dick or Harry who said, “Look, He is here.” Thomas knew Yeshua intimately, and wasn’t going to risk following anyone but Yeshua. Thomas wasn’t a doubter, Thomas simply wanted to make sure it really was Yeshua he was following.

We should do no less. That isn’t a lack of faith, it is wisdom to know exactly who it is we are following, and what that says about our ideas concerning the character of our King.

Expecting Outrageous Consequences

Don’t give the rebukes that Messiah gave unless you are willing to die the death that Yeshua died — for the very people He was rebuking. I mean, really. Don’t overturn tables unless you are willing to be scourged without complaint. Don’t preach unless you are willing to be rejected and take it gracefully.

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Don’t go doing the stuff that is easy in the flesh until you are able to lay down that flesh.

It makes me mad to see people throwing around insults, overturning tables, and preaching hell fire and damnation when they aren’t willing to suffer with grace. You want to use Messiah as an excuse? Then you had better be imitating ALL of His behaviors, or else you are just doing what you want to do and using a few episodes of His life to justify it. You want to do the outrageous stuff? You need to be willing to suffer the outrageous consequences.

Developing Godly Character Part 3: Weeping with those who weep

Full disclosure: I struggle with this one. Not so much with the weeping with those who weep part of Romans 12:15, but the rejoicing with those who rejoice. And it has been my experience that people often struggle with one or the other, and sometimes both, so this is not uncommon. If it was uncommon, Paul wouldn’t have wasted the ink it took to write it down.

I am going to be blunt — it’s the jealousy and ingratitude still in my heart that makes it difficult for me to rejoice with people on some things. I refuse to rejoice, and in doing so, I deny my Heavenly Father the praise He deserves for blessing someone — pure and simple. I am not going to sugar coat it one bit.

I will expound more on that shameful admission in another blog post, but now I want to introduce the flip side of the coin — refusing to mourn with those who mourn.

I think that when I was repeatedly losing babies due to miscarriage (I was born with multiple reproductive birth defects), what hurt more than most anything else was the unwillingness of others to mourn with me. I would be sad, and someone would ask why and I would tell them, and the response would be, “It was just a miscarriage, not a real baby!” Not only were they unwilling to mourn with me, they also tried to guilt me out of my right to be a grieving mother, and when we refuse to mourn with someone, that is exactly what we are doing — denying them dignity within their grief by telling them they have insufficient cause to mourn.

Or we can show them how little we esteem their pain by saying, “At least…”

“At least it wasn’t a real baby yet.”

“At least it wasn’t born disabled.”

“At least you are married and have Jesus, having Him is better than having kids.”

In other words, “Your grief is not important to me, and it really shouldn’t be important to you either.”

But the Bible tells us to mourn with those who mourn, and as we know that every Biblical law and counsel hangs either from the commandment to love God or love our neighbor or both — we can see that mourning with someone is loving them in a very intimate way.

So someone’s dad died, who they had a great relationship with, and they feel like their world is falling apart. Mourn with them, or say nothing at all. It isn’t the time to remind them about the fact that you would have killed to have that kind of relationship with your dad for even one day. After all, isn’t that the sort of blessing we wish every child had? If so, then mourn for the loss of that sort of relationship because something good in the world has passed away.

Judging the grief of another based upon what we think they should be thankful for only brings judgment down upon ourselves — because one day we will grieve for the loss of something that someone else covets.

Yes, covetousness. The tenth commandment. When we deny others our sorrow because they have what we want, that is the very heart of coveting in action. And when we want something so badly that we hate those who have it through our actions, we are breaking the whole of Torah. And we broke it because we hated them for having what God gave to them. We judge God because we figure we should have that blessing for ourselves, and then we compound that selfishness by feeling they shouldn’t have if we don’t have it. If I am not blessed, no one should be.

That attitude leads into another sinful attitude as well, and it is self-righteousness — being “too good” to mourn for this or that person because of this or that.

Yesterday I saw that a friend had commented on a fb status on my little sidebar and I clicked on it. I was shocked to see that someone who I did not know was railing against the people who were mourning over the death of comedian/actor Robin Williams. Rebuking them, telling them why they should not be mourning, etc. But who are we to refuse to mourn with people who mourn, or to judge people for their grief?

Robin Williams as my children knew him, but I will always remember him as Mork from Ork

I mourn Robin Williams, knowing very little about him personally. I am grieved that a man was so incredibly depressed that he cut his wrists and hung himself. And nothing else matters. A human being was hurting more deeply than I can imagine, and he died without finding relief. And people just like him die every day, hurting — and will we not mourn for them because we do not feel they are righteous enough to merit our attention?

Ez 18:23a Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?

If He doesn’t take pleasure in the deaths even of the wicked (and I am not casting aspersions on Mr Williams), then do we even dare rejoice and withhold mourning? Does defiantly not mourning make us more or less righteous? Does proclaiming our refusal to mourn portray us as loving or petty and spiteful? More importantly, how does it represent the character of our King who said, “Blessed are those who mourn?”

If you hated Robin Williams and what he did and what he stood for, I guess you won. He died miserable and alone and in a terribly dark place. But when someone dies like that, no one wins, and even just for that reason alone — we should all weep.

Developing Godly Character Pt 2: Wanting to be wrong

Well, none of us actually WANT to be wrong but it is a very healthy thing to be willing to be exposed as wrong. People who cannot (in their own minds) be wrong are very dangerous and when that is coupled with the ministry it can be deadly.

Imagine a parent never admitting error, or a teacher, or a doctor, or (insert profession here).

A parent who does not admit error is a parent who will never apologize, never exhibit humility, and who will invariably pass on lies to their children. As the child grows, he will begin to notice errors and will lose respect for the parent. Worse comes to worse, the child will exhibit the same behaviors as an adult.

A teacher who does not admit error will lead people astray, unable to even conceive of being wrong. They will not learn, and they will squash any dissenters, as well as those who ask the really good questions.

A doctor who does not admit error can and will endanger, sicken and kill people.

A minister who does not admit error will do all of the above on a far more serious scale – an eternal scale.

There are a ton of anointed people out there, but the anointing doesn’t come with infallibility. In fact, if anything, the anointing can often exacerbate a person’s failings. Those to whom much is given are going to be put through the wringer, and they will either come out humbled and cleaner or twisted. And the difference between the two outcomes comes down to a willingness to admit fallibility. Not in the theoretical but in the actual.

I have issues that need fixed. I will never be perfect this side of eternity, I will always be subject to sin. When I am compromised emotionally, I will always be susceptible to doing evil.

And being fallible bothers me, but I can’t deny it. And I can’t allow my embarrassment over it to get in the way of getting it exposed and dealt with. I can’t lash out at the people who notice what I am doing and call me on it. I can’t blame them for seeing the things my behavior made obvious. My faults are not their fault.

So I screw up. And then I have to let people tell me that I screwed up. And then I have to apologize. Although, in general, God Himself tells me I have screwed up almost right away. But it wasn’t always like that — it used to be that I didn’t want to hear it and people had to tell me.

So what changed? I had to start caring about the people around me more than I cared about the illusion of being right. I could fool myself, but no one else was fooled. Once I realized that, all my pretending seemed pretty ludicrous. Once I got my ego out of the way, I started seeing how my being wrong was impacting so many people on so many different levels and I began to want it exposed.

Wanting to be right was about me. Wanting to know that I was wrong was about you.

Maybe that is the first step towards being a servant, a real servant. After all, our ability to do good is only effective if we know enough about our bad to get it out of the way. We have to see that bad, and we have to hate it without hating ourselves.

I love myself, but I haven’t always. I want to be a safe person someday, because I love myself. I want to find out absolutely every one of my faults so that they can be dealt with — not the stuff people think is wrong with me, but the stuff that really is wrong with me, the deep stuff that people can’t even see — the deep stuff that makes the shallow stuff happen.

It isn’t enough to want our wrongs exposed for the sake of others, but also for our own sake, so that we can walk as people of integrity. Not as people who think they are right, but as people who know when they are wrong and do something about it.

What Bobbi-Jo taught me on the day she didn’t die

I didn’t get the word that she was being taken off life-support until it was already happening.

Honesty time, my first response was guilt because I hadn’t been spending much time on my fb newsfeed and didn’t even know she had been placed on it three days previously after a long battle fighting breast cancer. I felt badly because I hadn’t been praying as much for her as I would have if I had known. And when an extended family member announced her death half an hour later I felt such a sense of hopelessness.

But then I got a wake up call from God.

“Do you honestly think you can honor someone like Bobbi-Jo with your tears? You don’t really know her.”

It was like being struck with lightning — of course, it was absolutely true. Bobbi-Jo was a fighter, and faithful, and not given to complaining (which was what my tears really amounted to). And so, Bobbi-Jo taught me, by example, how to praise God that night. And I started by stopping the crying, and started smiling and laughing because it was great having lived in a world with someone like Bobbi-Jo, even though I never met her personally.

And I started being really, truly grateful that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was her God. I was so thankful that she walked with Messiah. I could see that her death wasn’t death, because of Who her God was, is and will be. I was genuinely happy.

Then we found out from her husband that she wasn’t actually dead, but breathing on her own. And that’s when the party started. That’s when the music got turned on and many of us just started making a party out of it, praising Him individually in our homes and rejoicing in her life and in her God.

Now, days later, she is still alive and fighting. And I have an entirely new perspective on life. I have a sense of gratitude for something that never even occurred to me before, to simply be thrilled that YHVH is my God, and her God, and the God of my husband and sons. And if He is your God I am thrilled about that too. Really, if we think about who He is, it is a relief that outweighs our everyday worries and allows us to overcome even death and despair with time.

Because there is no such thing as utter hopelessness if He is your hope. There is no tragedy greater than His greatness. There is nothing so sorrowful that outweighs the joy He promises.

And that isn’t to say that we will not experience despair, or loss, or tragedy, or persecution, or even death. But He is our God, and in those conditions He is sovereign, in those temporary circumstances, He gives us eternity.

And that is what Bobbi-Jo taught me on the day she didn’t die. I pray that you will join me in praying, and praising God for being her God.

Update: August 18, Bobbi-Jo breathed her last breath this morning in her temporary body, at home, released from the hospital. She doesn’t have cancer anymore, and she will never have it again because the old has passed. Her next breath will be in a body that knows no decay or disease. Her next breath will be as the citizen of a world whose King is Messiah. Her feet will walk and run and dance on the streets of the City of our King. That was her goal, and she pursued it to the end. Well done.