Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

SECTION 1 - Dethroning the Carnal Mind

Chapter 1 - KEEPING THE BEAST DEAD

THE DEPTHS OF THE BATTLE

WHEN LONG-DEAD THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS RETURN

THE DISCIPLINE EVERY BORN-ANEW CHRISTIAN MUST LEARN

THE DISLODGING OF THE CARNAL MIND

LACK OF TRUST

THE MOST DIFFICULT THING FOR CHRISTIANS TO LEARN

Chapter 2 - COMPREHENDING THE WAY THE LORD HEALS

DISCERNING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUE AND FALSE FEELINGS

DEALING WITH THE ROOTS

MOMENT-BY-MOMENT ABIDING IN JESUS

TURNING AWAY

HOLY FEAR

Chapter 3 - DEVELOPING MENTAL DISCIPLINES AND HABITS OF CONSTANT PRAYER

THE IMPORTANCE OF PRAYER

THE ROLE OF DISCIPLINE

WHERE THE WARFARE IS

Chapter 4 - PRAYER GROUPS AND SERVICES

RECEIVING FROM OTHERS

THE GOD OF NICENESS

THE PRICE OF CORPORATENESS

SPIRITUAL SERVICE

LEARNING TO LOVE THE MIND OF CHRIST WITHIN

SECTION 2 - The Depths of the Problem

Chapter 5 - DEEP RUTS

FINDING FREEDOM FROM THE FLESH

DEEP RUTS—DEEP ROOTS

INHERITED ROOTS

Chapter 6 - INHERITED ROOTS AND CONSEQUENT RUTS FROM ADAM AND EVE’S SINS IN THE ...

ORIGINAL SIN

THE TREE OF LIFE

ENGRAMS IN OUR NATURE

STEADINESS AND FAITHFULNESS

BAD COMPANY

THE BATTLE FOR THE CONTROL OF MEN’S MINDS

MASS DEFILEMENT

ROOTED IN LOVE

Chapter 7 - ROOTS AND RUTS FROM THE GARDEN OF EDEN

FEAR OF GOD’S PRESENCE

PATTERNS OF FLIGHT AND ALIBIS

EVIL MOTIVES—EVIL DEEDS

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

PASSING THE BUCK

A MAN’S TWO WORLDS

PUTTING OUR PRIORITIES IN ORDER

SINNING CANNOT PRODUCE GOOD

Chapter 8 - RESTORING THE FUNCTIONS OF MIND AND HEART

THE FUNCTION OF THE HEART

THE FUNCTION OF THE MIND

THE RENEWED MIND

THE BEGINNING OF MATURITY

THE TASK OF THE MIND

Chapter 9 - RIGHT THINKING ABOUT THE CHURCH AND AUTHORITY

RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM

CHILDREN OF DIVORCE AND ABSENTEE PARENTS

THE PASSIVE GENERATION

BALANCING OUR CORPORATE AND PRIVATE WORSHIP

ARTISTS IN MINISTRY

“LONE-STRANGER” CHRISTIANS

COVENANTAL COMMITMENT

ACCEPTING DIFFERENCES

SUBJECTION TO ONE ANOTHER

LISTENING TO OTHERS

HOLINESS IN RELATIONSHIPS

REBELLION

SECTION 3 - The Solution

Chapter 10 - ACCORDING TO THY WORD

GOD’S INTENDED IMPACT OF THE WORD IN OUR LIVES

CONTINUING DEATH AND RESURRECTION

MOVING GOD’S WORD FROM THE MIND TO THE HEART

Chapter 11 - LETTING GOD LOVE US

GOD WANTS OUR FELLOWSHIP

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LIFE TRANSFORMED by John Loren Sandford and R. Loren Sandford Published by Charisma House A Strang Company 600 Rinehart Road Lake Mary, Florida 32746 www.strangbookgroup.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

Design Director: Bill Johnson Cover design by Justin Evans

Copyright © 2009 by John Loren Sandford and R. Loren Sandford All rights reserved

Previously published as The Renewal of the Mind by Victory House Publishers, copyright © 1991, ISBN: 978-0-93208-127-8.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Sandford, John Loren.

Life transformed / John Loren Sandford and R. Loren Sandford. -- 1st ed. p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-59979-600-0

1. Thought and thinking--Religious aspects--Christianity. 2. Habit breaking--Religious aspects--Christianity. I. Sandford, R. Loren. II. Title.

BV4598.4.S36 2009

248.4--dc22 2009004697

First Edition

09 10 11 12 13—9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION

TO OUR FRIENDS of more than forty-five years, Ken and Donna Campbell.

From 1987 to 1989, Ken was the business manager of Elijah House, and from 1989 to 1995, he was our CEO and president. He established our schedule, ran the business of Elijah House, conducted meetings, and wrestled through the days and in the long nights to dream up and think through the countless details and plans so needed to keep Elijah House moving forward to accomplish the purposes for which our Lord has called us into being.

At the same time, Donna was the secretary who answered the phone and discerned what applicants for counseling ought to see which prayer ministers, answered mountains of correspondence, copied our teaching videos for VCRs, and counseled and prayed for people over the phone when they interrupted her work.

Together they ran Elijah House so well that Paula and I never had to give the home front a second thought while we traveled and taught around the world; our minds and hearts were free to minister because they were in charge. They were a great blessing—and credit and thanks to them are overdue. Therefore...

In gratitude and love, I dedicate this book to them.

FOREWORD

I THOROUGHLY ENJOYED READING this book. When a person runs across a work that so beautifully expresses his or her own deep convictions and feelings, it is very affirming and heartwarming. I found myself wishing that this book were required reading for new believers as well as Bible study groups. It would save a lot of grief and anguish if folks would understand and practice the principles of a Life Transformed.

Let me wax personal for a few paragraphs so you know where I am coming from. I grew up in a second-generation, American-German, Lutheran family. There was no such thing as adolescent rebellion in our house. It just so happened that during my early adolescence, the whole country of America was consumed with winning World War II. Everyone was patriotic and in some way contributing to the war effort. We were part of the farmers of America producing food for our country—preparing soil, growing crops, making hay and silage, harvesting oats, tending to chickens and pigs, and milking cows. Life was very serious, and rebellion was far from the minds of us four kids, and in spite of the dark clouds over America, our family was together and we had a good life.

When I was thirteen years old, I ran across the phrase “You must be born again.” That began a diligent search for an explanation of exactly how one gets “born again.” At seventeen, I had a dramatic “born-again” experience, and when it was time for me to leave home, I decided to become a missionary.

One week after my born-again experience, I met my future husband, Peter, and we got married the next year. He finished university, and we headed off to seminary and Bible School. Afterward in 1956, we went to Bolivia for the next sixteen years as field missionaries. We became parents of three wonderful girls, and in 1971 Peter accepted a teaching position in Fuller Seminary School of World Mission in Pasadena, California.

Needless to say, we came back to a different America. People were filled with rebellion, anger, and hatred. The definitions of love and lust were backward. Marriages were falling apart, and couples were becoming parents without the covenant of marriage. Promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases were rapidly rising. Drugs had come upon the scene, and violence and riots had erupted. Media and entertainment had skidded downhill rapidly. The “sexual revolution” and homosexual agenda had permeated and soured society. Our kids weren’t safe from sexual predators anymore.

I began to see Satan working much more openly and got swept into deliverance and inner healing, certainly not by choice, but by necessity. Peter and I began praying for the sick, and we soon discovered that peoples’ emotions were sick too. Some began asking me for ministry, and I was so heartbroken to see their pitiful needs that I studied and began to minister as best I could. God honored my feeble attempts, and people were set free and helped.

Somehow John and Paula Sandford’s (and now Loren’s) books just never came my way in the mid-eighties when I was starting out. I was discipled in the field by a YWAM (Youth With a Mission) couple from Australia. We were all doing the exact same thing with slightly different verbiage attached. I was practicing “whole personality ministry” while the Sandfords were doing “inner healing.” The idea is to get to the root of the problem and minister to those hurts.

I met John and Paula as my husband, Peter, and I began to pull together those working in the field of deliverance and inner healing, to search out the textbooks others had written and to share and discuss areas of ministry and mutual concern. That was in the mid-nineties. Out of that has evolved the International Society of Deliverance Ministers. John and Paula are members of the Founders’ Circle of that professional society. Members of that group often do seminars together in order to minister to large groups at one time.

What I love most about the book you hold in your hands is that it uses the Scriptures so convincingly and profusely throughout its pages. Since it was one little phrase of Scripture that burned in my heart and led me on my quest for the entire truth, it makes it easy for me to see why many have given their very lives to put the Bible into the hands of the common people. Scripture is explained in a manner that is scholarly, refreshing, profound, and easily understood.

The many examples of actual cases drive home the teaching in a warm, personal way. How to gain victory over past problems is thoroughly discussed. I really enjoyed the discussion concerning the development of mental disciplines and constant prayer, how to make wise choices, as well as the necessity of finding freedom from the flesh. There is an excellent chapter concerning the sensible treatment of male/female and husband/wife issues.

What spoke to me most was Loren’s chapter on “Restoring the Functions of Mind and Heart.” When I was suffering from “reverse culture shock” back in 1971, what abounded was the phrase “If it feels good, do it!” I felt like screaming, “No, no, no! It will get you into trouble, and you will pay for that later on! You’ll be sorry!” The explanation of emotions, the will, the heart, and the mind as they line up with the Word of God made such complete sense. It brought everything concerning the mind and heart into focus for me. I loved this statement: “The mind is designed to identify the facts of the Word of God and then demand that the heart obey.” What a good word!

This is a “now” message that is greatly needed in these days!

—DORIS M. WAGNER, DOCTOR OF PRACTICAL MINISTRY COFOUNDER, INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF DELIVERANCE MINISTERS EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL HARVEST MINISTRIES COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

OUR OLDEST SON, Loren, contributed far more to this book than chapters 8 and 9. His insights and sermons expanded our awareness time and again during the writing of these pages. In the latter half of 1989, while the book was gestating into its final form, Loren found new depths of pressing into Jesus, and his subsequent sermons breathed new life into our own devotions and worship and all our thinking.

Our son-in-law, Tony Lincoln, spent diligent hours trying to pare down my rambling wordiness into readable material.

Countless brothers and sisters in Christ have given us timely gentle and not-so-gentle reproofs over the years, and for the discipline that it forced us into, I am most grateful. “Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Prov. 27:17). Without the corrections of my brothers and sisters, I would still be fumbling about in the darkness of my carnal mind far more than I yet am. Much of the contents of this book owe their origin to lessons learned in sharing with the body of Christ and returning to revamp my mind and heart into alignment with our Lord’s ways, according to what encounters with others revealed.

Paula was at work writing Healing Women’s Emotions as I composed this book, but she took valuable time to read and edit and suggest, refining my work within her unique kind of wisdom.

Finally, hundreds of loving Christians responded to pleas in our Elijah House newsletters and appeal letters, donating their hard-earned cash so that we could have more time to write. I feel deeply the blessing of their choosing to give so that this work might continue, and I want to thank all for their generous support.

No acknowledgment and thanksgiving could be considered complete, however, so long as praise and thanks have not been rendered to our wonderful, gracious Lord and friend, Jesus Christ, the Son of God and our brother. The six months preceding the writing of this book were the best we had seen in our Christian walk, as He wooed us daily more and more to love Him first, last, and always. What a joy and blessing it is to know Him and to realize that He has saved the best wine for last—both here in this life and in the ages of blessing to come in heaven.

—JOHN LOREN SANDFORD

INTRODUCTION

I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of

God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice,

acceptable to God, which is your spiritual

service of worship. And do not be conformed to this

world, but be transformed by the renewing of your

mind, that you may prove what the will of God is,

that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

ROMANS 12:1-2

OUR MINDS ARE like computers. Once the mind has ingrained a way of thinking, it maintains a kind of inertia, a habitual track it never leaves unless jolted or forced off track.

In the 1950s, as a young pastor, I served a congregation that included many elderly shut-ins. It was a delight to listen to their stories as I made the rounds serving Communion. One little old lady told me an identical set of stories at least forty times a year! It never ceased to amaze me, as she told and retold the stories of her years as a foreman in a silk factory, that she never seemed to realize she had repeated those same accounts hundreds of times before! Forty times a year I heard how she outwitted her biased, stupid boss! Each time the routine was identical, as though a needle had been dropped into the groove of a phonograph record! I heard the same inflections, pauses, intakes of breath, nods and giggles, and hands to the mouth in mock surprise.

Those pastoral visits began to disturb my liberal (at the time) bandwagon, which had trumpeted the realities and virtues of freedom of thought. Like many liberals, I had believed that I was the master of my own thoughts, that I could study a matter and freely and objectively arrive at conclusions and consequent actions. The supposed freedom of the rational mind to cogitate, decide, and philosophize had been eulogized and trained into us from earliest Sunday schools to the previous Sunday’s sermon. I might have been able to rationalize that stages of senility had locked some of my elderly parishioners onto their tracks, had I not been shaken often in dealing with committees of alert, intelligent, healthy people in their prime. It had stunned me to watch educated, well-mannered “Christian” people give their services to the Lord, unaware that their ideas, methods, and motivations were often saturated in and circumscribed almost totally by secular humanistic modes of thought! That realization was part of what caused me to become a most conservative evangelical!

Since then, in fifty years of prayer ministry, Paula and I have seen that it is habitual tracks of the mind that defeat the fruits of ministry more than anything else. We discovered the hard way that it is not enough to wash long-forgotten sins in the blood, nor enough to apply the Cross to habitual patterns of behavior. The mind must learn to think in new ways. Habitual tracks of thought must be overcome before the new way of Christ can be built.

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17, emphasis added). Inversely, where His Spirit is not, there is no freedom.

Paula and I finally came to see that the carnal mind is not capable of true objectivity. Our minds are informed either by the Spirit or by cesspools of the flesh!

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

—ROMANS 8:5-8, EMPHASIS ADDED

Every Christian must deal with a twofold problem in his mind. First, he must root out and destroy the practiced tracks of thinking he may never have realized are bondages. Without help he cannot do this. Secondly, he must seek to build new roots in the Spirit, in the mind of Christ.

St. Paul said, “ . . . we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). What a blessed truth. A fact! His mind is in us! But the carnal mind does not surrender its rule easily.

The mind of Christ in us is a fountain of eternal wisdom and freedom of thought, but we must let go of old tracks of thought and learn to sink our roots into Jesus and build ways of letting His mind fill all the channels of our thinking processes. It is the “how-to” of that learning that is the subject matter of this book.

It is no easy task to transform all our thinking according to the Word of God. It involves both exterior and interior warfare. Our carnal mind is a Herod that would kill the Christ child being formed in us if it could only discern where and how.

Early in life we assigned to our minds the task of guarding and keeping all our ways. Now that we are born anew and have invited the Holy Spirit to rule us, our carnal mind does not willingly relinquish its rule. Rather, the servant becomes the master, and like the man of lawlessness, our carnal mind “ . . . takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thess. 2:4, RSV). We are the temple of God.

Psychologically, the first task of our minds is not to think or to plan or regulate. It is to block out. In the present moment, countless stimuli bombard us—from our seats, the lighting, sounds in the house, worries nagging at the back of our consciousness, heat and cold, hunger, thirst, aches and pains, and so on. If our mind did not block out most stimuli and decide which to heed and act upon, we would be in intolerable chaos—trying to respond to hundreds of stimuli all at once!

This is a good gift of God; without it we would lose our sanity. But our sinful minds twist that good gift toward evil purposes. Witness the typical response many intellectuals have toward allowing the Holy Spirit to move freely in their lives. They’ll argue that any such moves are not of God. They will construct elaborate arguments that decry every possible abuse of the spiritual gifts, while ignoring examples of their proper use. Likewise, their carnal minds will block out any Bible texts that might undermine their presuppositions. The real issue of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not the gifts we receive or even initially what fruits we can produce. The important thing is who is in control. The struggle is for headship. It is for this reason that the most brilliant are often the last to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Their minds employ more arsenals of cleverness to avoid loss of control to the rule of the Holy Spirit! Our death on the cross at conversion poses utter threat to that ruling carnal center of decision making within us. The primary purpose of the Holy Spirit is to install Jesus as Lord in every area of our lives. The baptism of the Holy Spirit does not therefore end the mental war—it begins it!

As you read, each chapter in this book may be far more than an intellectual exercise. It will likely be a game of “upset the fruit basket,” in which your carnal mind must learn not to find a chair to be comfortable in but to be aced out again and again until it loses the game entirely and has no place from which to sit and rule. It may be an invitation to conflict—and death.

Our carnal minds are often the last enemy to die within us. Jesus came to deliver all those who “through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Heb. 2:15, RSV). It is not physical death we fear. That for Christians would be release and reward. The death we fear is death of self. Nor is our fear so much about the death of bad practices we have come to see as destructive to our witness. We long for that death too, even though fear twinges the process. It is the threat of death to our supposed self-control, our carnal mind’s predominance over all that we think and do, fear of what awful things we suspect we might do if we let go—that is what chains us to the lifelong bondage of our fleshly ways of thinking! It is significant that Jesus was crucified upon Golgotha, “the skull,” the residence of the mind, the first residence of sin in mankind, which is depicted in Genesis 3:6: “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate” (emphasis added).

The process of dying to our carnal mind’s rule of us is like being asked to jump off a cliff with seemingly no guarantee of hands to catch us and hold on to us. We want to cry out, “Is there anyone else up there we can talk to, Lord?” But the paradox is that whoever hangs on to his life at this point loses it (Matt. 16:25), for when we maintain carnal, mental self-control, we reinstall self upon the throne and succumb to Satan’s first temptation all over again!

Whoever lets go finds true freedom. Even the least intellectually gifted finds true brilliance and wisdom, for the mind set on the Spirit truly is attuned to “the things of the Spirit.”

SECTION 1

Dethroning the Carnal Mind

1

KEEPING THE BEAST DEAD

This I say therefore, and affirm together with the

Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also

walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in

their understanding, excluded from the life of God,

because of the ignorance that is in them, because of

the hardness of their heart; and they, having become

callous, have given themselves over to sensuality, for

the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you

have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just

as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former

manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is

being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,

and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

EPHESIANS 4:17-23, EMPHASIS ADDED

SEE TO IT that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled” (Heb. 12:15). Roots lie beneath the surface. In our four-book Transformation Series—Transforming the Inner Man, God’s Power to Change, Growing Pains, and Letting Go of Your Past—we taught how to lay the axe to the roots of our sinfulness. Others have taught well about the same things. Many have been set free, but too many have returned to their sins. When we cried out “Why?” the Lord answered that many have never fully understood the way of His healing or grasped the necessity to wage warfare to overcome continuing habits of thoughts and feelings, or the need to build new ways of thinking and feeling.

THE DEPTHS OF THE BATTLE

Few have yet comprehended the depths of the battle to renew the conscious mind. It is not merely a matter of deciding to change the way we think. Our mind owns deep ruts—long practiced ways of thinking that are not overcome that easily. What so often has happened has been that when the people to whom we minister begin to talk in new ways, we have celebrated, “Aha! They’ve got it!” but many times it was not so. Their conscious minds had begun to find new tracks, but the old ruts had never been fully dislodged. Much akin to a newly overhauled engine, the new rings of thought had not yet had time to seat themselves, so in the pressures of life, the motor blew the new and returned to the familiar tracks of the old. Behind that was the carnal mind, seeking to regain control.

Fred came because he could not cease being insanely jealous of his wife. True enough, she was an exceptionally beautiful woman, and men were quick to notice her. Though she protested she was not doing anything to provoke their interest and couldn’t help what they were doing, he would fly into accusatory rages: “You’re flirting, making men pay attention to you! You want to go to bed with these guys—they’re picking that up from you and coming on to you. It’s your fault. You’ve got a seductive spirit. There’s something wrong with you.”

We got at the few expectations in Gloria’s heart that could in fact have been tempting men to approach her wrongly, and things changed—but that didn’t stop Fred’s rages. He was still after her as though she could hardly wait to be unfaithful. So we tracked out the roots in Fred’s early life. His mother had been unfaithful to his father. Fred had been more than merely aware of her illicit lovers. He had often been deeply shamed as these men came to the home when his father was out of town. It was easy to see that until he forgave his mother, he would project onto his wife that she would do what his mother did. He forgave his mother. We reckoned as dead on the cross his pattern of expecting that the woman of his life would betray his trust and attract illicit lovers to her bed.

For a while Fred was free. When he would take Gloria out for dinner and men’s heads would swivel, he was only proud that he possessed such a gloriously beautiful wife. But no one had ever taught him about the ongoing discipline every Christian must undergo even after praying to bring roots to death on the cross. He thought his old ways of feeling and thinking were dead once and for all and would never trouble him again.

Of course they were dead. But they remained in the ground of his heart and mind, dead but ever present. When the pressures of work and children came upon him, and he let his prayer life slip, the old feelings and thoughts arose again. Fred then made the mistake so common among Christians (and non-Christians alike) that it is one of the primary reasons this book is being written—he believed his freshly rekindled feelings and thoughts were what he actually felt and thought, and so began to wrestle with them again, thus giving power and life to those old, dead things to which they had no right. He soon had his problems back again, full-blown!

What actually had happened was merely that his old habitual ways of thinking and feeling had flicked back into action. But let’s think about it for a moment. We have the heart and mind of Christ. Our old nature has died with Him on the cross, and He is now living His feelings and thoughts within us, for us, as us: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me . . . ” (Gal. 2:20, emphasis added).

Fred had wrestled those old feelings and ways of thinking to effective death on the cross. He had been living in new and honorable ways of feeling and thinking about his wife. Therefore, those old ways of thinking and feeling that were coming back to haunt him had no true reality. They were simply habitual ways of thinking and feeling, not what he as a born-anew Christian really thought in the present at all, though they claimed to be.

Fred had erroneously believed that because those old thoughts and feelings came into his mind and heart they must really be what he thought and felt. That belief gave them life and power they had no right to possess—and so he reanimated his once-dead flesh and had to struggle unnecessarily with his problems all over again, as though he had never been healed. Our carnal mind and heart would rather plunge us into the depths of recurrent troubles than let go of its control of us and die.

WHEN LONG-DEAD THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS RETURN

The first lesson to be learned in the renewal of the mind is not to believe old carnal feelings and thoughts when they come back after prayers for healing. How many prayer ministers have wanted to drill this lesson into people’s heads! (We use the term “prayer minister” instead of “counselor” to describe persons who administer inner healing, to distinguish them from secular therapists.) Old long-dead feelings and thoughts will return. If we believe these thoughts and feelings are what we really feel or think, we will have our problems back again—because we have reanimated what was dead and have given it power in our life again.

Please hear it, body of Christ: you have the heart and mind of Christ. When the old returns, it is only an echo of the old self, only an old, practiced habitual way sounding off again with no real intention or life behind it. It is not what you really feel or think—unless you believe it and give it life and power. The purpose behind it is the desire of the old self to regain its mastery of you.

Some may be having difficulty understanding or accepting one or both of the concepts that our feelings and thoughts have a life of their own and do not want to die, and that sometimes what we think and feel is not really what we think and feel. Let me give you an example that may bring these concepts down out of theory to simple reality for you.

A two-year-old boy was being raised by parents who had swallowed the unbiblical notion that children younger than four or five ought not to be disciplined. One day he threw a temper tantrum. His parents leaped to comfort him. (They simply should have hauled him up short and corralled his rampaging emotions for him.) This happened several times. Now the boy had learned a powerful tool—he knew how to make those great big giants jump!

From then on, whenever he wanted something, all he had to do was throw a temper tantrum and his parents would give in to his wishes. After a while he no longer knew whether or not he was in fact angry. Family and friends could easily see what was going on, even if the parents couldn’t.

The manipulative habit of producing anger to get whatever he wanted had developed a life of its own within him. He now thought his angers were real and honest, though everyone else, by then even his parents, could see that what he thought he was thinking and feeling was not at all what he really thought and felt.

So we see that in fact sometimes what we think and feel is not at all what we really think and feel. But you say that was just a childish thing, not something adults would do. Right there is the major point of this chapter; listen again to that most familiar scripture nearly everyone can quote: “When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things” (1 Cor. 13:11, emphasis added).

Our practiced ways of thinking and feeling that reanimate after being slain on the cross are precisely that—the ways we used to think and reason as children. Under pressure, we tend to regress to the familiar ways of the past. They may not have worked, may indeed have been a prison, but at least they were familiar—and by falling back into them, we have reinstalled our carnal, old self in control—even if paradoxically that means being out of control in our emotions and thoughts!

THE DISCIPLINE EVERY BORN-ANEW CHRISTIAN MUST LEARN

The discipline every born-anew Christian must learn is how to recognize when he is reanimating an old fallen practice, so as to haul it restfully back to the cross again. We are crucifying anew, daily, the childish ways of thinking and feeling, which our carnal nature would use to regain the throne of our life. For this reason St. Paul wrote, “I die daily” (1 Cor. 15:31).

We are created in the image of God. God is free. We have free will and a life of our own. The same is true of whatever we create within our own nature. Our self has a life of its own. Our emotions have a life of their own. So too our carnal mind has a life of its own. Neither our feelings nor our thoughts want to die or to let go of their control of us. Our carnal mind refuses to lie down and quit its rule over us just because we have invited the Holy Spirit to take charge of us. “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so” (Rom. 8:6-7, emphasis added). Notice that this verse clearly says that our minds do have a life of their own—a life involving will, desire, and intention. The carnal mind is hostile and does not submit. And remember, that chapter from Romans was addressed to born-anew Christians!

THE DISLODGING OF THE CARNAL MIND

The rule of the carnal mind begins to be dislodged when we receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, and when we read the Word of God, pray, receive truth when confronted by brothers and sisters in Christ, minister to others in the Spirit, choose sound thinking in Christ, and so forth. Therefore, our carnal mind fights back. It seeks any pretext to break out against sound judgment (Prov. 18:1, RSV). It casts up seemingly wise thoughts, objections, and skepticisms, trying to involve us in unnecessary reasoning, clever sophistries, and “foolish . . . speculations” (2 Tim. 2:23). “It isn’t logical to believe that.” “You aren’t making sense.” “You have no business trying to help anyone else when you’re a mess yourself.” Anything will do—any thought, any seeming contradiction that must be resolved, any feelings that have to be settled. The most brilliant create the most clever smoke screens.

Our mind demands intellectual integrity, a tight system with no loopholes, no contradictions. But in actual fact our mind couldn’t care two hills of beans whether everything is kosher or not. It only wants to keep the Holy Spirit from becoming seated as the ruler of our heart and mind. Who has not noticed that it is often the most brilliant who are the last to experience the infilling of the Spirit? Or the gift of speaking in tongues?

The Holy Spirit breaks through and you utter a few syllables in your new heavenly language, and what does your mind do? “Cut that out. You’re only making that up!” “You’re making a fool of yourself!” “This is silly.” Nothing dislodges the carnal mind and embarrasses it more than for us to start spouting words it can’t understand or control! What our mind actually wants is to keep its mental game going so that it won’t have to relinquish the throne of our life.

That old saying, “The child shall be the father of the man,” means to me that our spirit is to rule our mind. When the Holy Spirit enters, He intends to rule our spirit. Through our spirit, the Holy Spirit intends to govern our mind, and by our renewed mind, to corral and direct our passions. That is God’s plan, His order for our interior being. But from our infancy, we have installed our conscious, carnal mind in control of our flesh to rationalize our desires, protect our feelings, think our thoughts, and plan our steps. Whereas the scripture says, “The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps” (Prov. 16:9, emphasis added). Our mind relishes its importance and does not readily succumb to its death and retirement from control.

It is our lack of trust in God that our carnal mind uses to retain its throne. We are afraid if we let go, the Holy Spirit won’t really take charge, and we will run amok and embarrass ourselves!

LACK OF TRUST

Lack of trust begins in the womb, when our spirit was first shocked at the smog of mankind’s sin and unclean-ness that seeped through our mother’s body and nauseated our nascent spirit. (See the first four chapters of our book Growing Pains.) Having been created within the purity of God, having some kind of rudimentary recollection of His holiness, we were shattered by waves of mankind’s sickness in sin as our own fallenness allowed it to invade and destroy the clarity and beauty of our spirit.

If we could have made cognizant our spirit’s cry from within the womb, it would have been, “Where are You, Lord? Why are You letting this happen to me? You sent me to do a job for You, and now I am getting all mixed up and messed up. It isn’t fair!” Our spirit “knew” that Ephesians 2:10 was true of us before our brain was formed: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Our cry would be, “I’m becoming all messed up in this stinking morass of sin, and now how am I going to be able to do what You sent me here to do?”

Our ability to trust His lordship was lost even as we were formed in the womb! As adults we think, at deepest levels, “He wasn’t there for me then. He won’t be there for me now.” In truth He was there with us, even in the womb (Ps. 139), but we lost the ability to grasp that with telling reality. Unless a special gift of God’s grace enables, we can’t trust that if we surrender our carnal control of ourselves, He will rule us in safety and in peace.

If parents, who represent God to our childish mind (see the chapter “Seeing God With an Unbelieving Heart” in Transforming the Inner Man), fail to apply appropriate discipline to corral our rampaging emotions, we may be even more tempted as adults to think that God won’t be there for us if we relinquish control of ourselves to His Holy Spirit.

More and more frequently, many parents have failed to be as present as their children have needed them to be. Our society has increasingly lost its bearings, and family structures have disintegrated. Therefore, more and more people find it increasingly difficult to trust enough to let the Spirit govern their lives, even though they may have invited Him to do so.

Betty came to us for prayer ministry because fear gripped her whenever anyone in authority addressed her directly or when loud sounds in the night awoke her. It wasn’t difficult to reveal to her that her loud and abusive father had only spoken to her when he wanted to shout at her for supposed failures around the house, and that he was apt to come home at any hour of the night, drunk and abusive. She could easily see the source of her fearfulness. After listening to and empathizing with a lifetime of pent-up sorrows, it was not hard to induce her to forgive her father or to repent for judging him. We could then reckon as dead on the cross her built-in alarm and tension-producing system. She had simply conditioned herself to go into panic whenever anything reminded her of those early experiences. Prayer set her free. She confessed she was no longer afraid in my presence, or in the presence of her boss, or anyone else—and she had even been sleeping like a baby.

But one day someone in authority spoke crossly to her. Whereas for several weeks she had been rejoicing that she hadn’t succumbed to fear, this day she did. It threw her. She thought, “The prayers haven’t worked after all. Maybe they have only been like a veneer that has now peeled off.” She reasoned it was our fault.

She had come to us before we learned not to release someone like her before training her how to handle such things. All she had needed was to say to herself, “That’s not really who I am. I’m not that fearful creature anymore. That one died with Jesus. I don’t have to let these feelings get to me. This is just that old habit kicking up. I’ll just ignore those feelings and go on about my business.”

Our old habitual ways of feeling act like a bully with a little girl. If he can tease and pester enough to get her feelings riled up, he’ll keep it up until she is frazzled out of her wits. But if a girl learns to stand up to a bully, telling him he can’t bother her and is only making a fool of himself, and then ignores him, pretty soon he grows weary of the fruitless game and goes away. Had Betty responded in that manner, her feelings would soon have subsided. They weren’t truly her feelings. She was a new creature in Christ, with all the courage and strength of Jesus inside her. (See Colossians 1:11.) But when she believed that because she felt that same old fear, it must be real, she let her feelings bully her right back into the same old series of panic attacks.

THE MOST DIFFICULT THING FOR CHRISTIANS TO LEARN

Perhaps the most difficult thing for Christians to learn is that just because they feel or think something doesn’t mean they really feel or think that thing. Parents soon learn to discern when a child cries out from bed, “I’m thirsty,” that sometimes he actually is—but most of the time he only thinks he’s thirsty because he has learned that’s one way he can get some attention and prevent himself from going to sleep.

To the child, it can be very real. He has convinced himself he’s really thirsty. What we feel or think may have no more reality than a child’s practiced habit of fooling himself at bedtime. It’s that simple. Our old pre-Christian way of feeling or thinking kicks back into action, and we don’t realize that it has no more reality than a child’s manipulative cry in the night!

Stan had a lot of anger that often cost him jobs and now threatened to undo his marriage. Together we dealt with the roots. It doesn’t matter what it is: anger can result from frustrations with parents, suppressed anger at members of the family, birth traumas, playground experiences, whatever. The point is that in his case, it had become a habitual way of feeling and expressing. The anger itself was not the problem. Ephesians 4:26-27 says, “Be angry and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity” (emphasis added). The problem was that as a child, once the sun had gone down on otherwise healthy angers, they soured into roots of bitterness. We enabled Stan to see who he really was angry with—not co-workers, his boss, or his wife, but childhood oppressors he thought he had long forgotten about. We took the lid off, drained away a lifetime of seething angers, and brought calcified roots of bitterness to death on the cross.

For a while Stan was free. But when the anger began to return, he was so upset that in fact his explosions increased worse than before! He too had not learned not to automatically believe his feelings. Our feelings and thoughts have such a life of their own that they are fully capable of waiting until just the right moment to flare back to life so that we will take them up and adopt them again—without the aid of the devil (though whenever he is around, you can bet he is delighted to take advantage of our naïveté to get us going again).

When feelings and thoughts recur, and they surely will in all of us, then if we do not know what I’ve been teaching here, we can be grabbed by fear that we weren’t healed after all! Beneath our built-in distrust of God is fear that our faith won’t prove to have worked after all. So when the old way acts up again, that proves to our doubting mind what we thought all along—it doesn’t work! Our carnal mind uses that fear and lack of faith to retain its hold over us.

For this reason St. Paul wrote:

The mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.

—ROMANS 8:7

Janice had learned how to defeat herself. Remember how often the Holy Spirit said through John in Revelation, “To him who overcomes, I will give . . . ”? (Rev. 2:7, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21). Overcomes what? His own recurring, self-resurrecting dead nature!

Janice had been molested as a child. She had learned to defeat men by turning off, dead to all natural responses. Though she was (and still is) a gloriously beautiful woman, she would just as soon hope her husband, Chris, didn’t bother her sexually. Marital sex contained no glory for her. It was just a duty to be endured. She could feel nothing good during it. And she felt horribly guilty for what she was doing to Chris, who was a good and kindly man, and a considerate lover. Then she was converted and filled with the Spirit. Many things changed overnight, but her sexual problems remained untouched. She still couldn’t feel anything good during sex, though her newfound faith told her she should.

After many tears and the sharing of much grief, she forgave the man who molested her, and we hauled to death on the cross that practiced pattern of turning off to defeat the man. But the next several times when Chris approached her, she found rising in her the same old habitual thoughts and feelings, threatening to shut her down and plunge them into frustration again. By then, however, we had learned to train her in how to handle such things.

She merely recognized them for what they were—old dead things trying to regain life. And she said within herself, “That’s not where I am anymore. I don’t choose those feelings. I choose to be open to Chris and to feel good things in his embrace.” After a little persistent effort, she broke through into a glorious time with Chris. Ever since then, they have enjoyed their sexual life more every year.

The tragedy is that so many Christians have never been taught the simple lessons of this chapter. They have never understood the continuing battle to subdue their own thoughts and feelings, so they plunge needlessly back into their ancient troubles and seem to have no recourse but to blame and shout at the devil. He may use whatever handles we give him, but he is not the primary problem. Our own lack of understanding and discipline is what destroys us in these cases.

Sometimes a phrase from Revelation rings in my head: “And I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain, and his fatal wound was healed” (Rev. 13:3, emphasis added). Of course the text is talking about a beast who is something altogether different from our subject, but it grabs me as a figurative or rhema word. Our carnal mind is surely a beast that received a mortal wound when we received Jesus as Lord and Savior! Note that it was a “head” that was slain, and the head was healed—it came back to life. Our problem is to keep the beast of our carnal mind dead; it keeps coming back to life!

The solution is simple. Just recognize its games. You don’t have to struggle with its resurrected old thoughts and feelings all over again. Just do what Janice did. Merely relax, and say to yourself, “That’s not what I really feel or think. I don’t have to wrestle with that or give it any power. I choose (whatever new feelings and thoughts are appropriate in Christ). That’s who I really am. I’ll ignore these feelings and thoughts until they go away. Lord, I choose Your way, and I banish those old things from my heart and mind.”

By now, you might be wondering, “But what if old thoughts and feelings are not just an empty habit? What if they keep coming back because of hidden roots that have not yet been discovered?” This calls for humble dependence upon the Holy Spirit for discernment, for Scripture says, “You [God] alone know the hearts of all men” (1 Kings 8:39, NIV). Many times, we have found that undiscovered roots were indeed the culprit. In such cases, to insist on continuing to ignore feelings would only have reinforced the original problem. For it has often been said that feelings are like the engine light on a dashboard. When that light goes on, you don’t take out a hammer and smash it! You heed it, for it’s telling you to fix the engine. But there does come a time when your feelings are telling you to fix an engine that no longer needs fixing. In that case, it’s time to fix a broken engine light! Patient questioning, along with spiritual discernment, should reveal what is actually occurring.

In the cases of Betty and Stan, it appeared that recurring thoughts and feelings no longer indicated an “engine” in need of repair. By the time we dealt with Janice, we had discovered the principles outlined in this chapter. When we applied them, we were proven right by the fruit that appeared in her life.

If you are a “Janice,” don’t get in a sweat trying to make it happen all at once. Your mind and feelings would love to continue tossing up junk just to get you involved in struggling and striving. Pay those old feelings and thoughts no mind. You don’t have to act on them just because they came into your head and heart. They have no real life unless you give it to them. Rest, and enjoy your new life in Christ!

2

COMPREHENDING THE WAY THE LORD HEALS

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

2 TIMOTHY 1:7, KJV, EMPHASIS ADDED

See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled.

HEBREWS 12:15

FOR THE SAKE of clarity, we repeat a word of balance mentioned in the first chapter: there are occasions when what we think and feel are actually what we are thinking and feeling. That probably happens so much more often than what we were speaking of in the first chapter that fake feelings and thoughts are the exception rather than the rule. So, how are we to know the difference?

DISCERNING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUE AND FALSE FEELINGS

We cannot simply ignore, as having no reality, whatever we have not yet brought to effective death on the cross. Whatever we feel or think, which Jesus would not entertain as His, is a signal to us that we need to track that thing to its roots and bring them to death on the cross.

But if we have already wrestled an old way to the cross, its reappearance is no more than the self trying to regain the throne of control within us.

Whatever has not found its way to the cross has tremendous impact when we think it or feel it. It’s sweaty business. It grabs hold of us. But after a while, Christians who learn this lesson begin to discern when old dead feelings and thoughts pop up that those areas aren’t gripping them like they used to—unless they choose to believe them and give them reality and power.

Those old feelings and thoughts are more like flotsam and jetsam floating in the sea of awareness, whereas, before they died on the cross, they were like a powerfully erupting volcano demanding attention! If a Christian will just stop a moment and reflect on what he is thinking and feeling, it will become progressively easier to discern what has reality and what doesn’t simply by the lack of driving power in the old habitual way.

It is necessary to learn this distinction, because the way the Lord heals ensures that old feelings and thoughts will crop up again and again as we grow in Him! In the last chapter, we spoke of old ways recurring some time after our healing, but the impression could have been taken that it only happens once or twice and then no more. Nothing could be further from the truth. Old ways can and do rebound to life countless times and ways, for years and years, though not with the same power as they did before roots were dealt with; and they do become progressively easier to detect and defeat.

DEALING WITH THE ROOTS

St. Paul wrote, “See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled” (Heb. 12:15, emphasis added). If what causes them has been brought to death on the cross, old ways of acting and feeling have truly died, but they have not thereby ceased to exist. That won’t occur until after Christ’s coming, when we will be transformed “in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet” (1 Cor. 15:52). Meanwhile, Romans 6:6 says, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless” (NIV). The Greek word for “powerless,” katargeo, literally means, “reduced to inactivity,” not “reduced to nonexistence.” According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, “not loss of being is implied, but loss of well-being.”[1]

That which has been “reduced to inactivity” can be made active again. For that reason, Romans 6 goes on to say, “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness” (vv. 11-13). Thus, when we bring the roots of a problem to the cross, they become like the roots of a tree that have been chopped down. But as it says in Job 14:7, “Though its roots grow old in the ground, and its stump dies in the dry soil, at the scent of water it will flourish and put forth sprigs like a plant.” The old patterns have died, but their roots have been left there in the soil of our life, fully capable of “springing up” to cause trouble again.

Why? Why didn’t God jerk them out once and for all and be done with it? Because in His wisdom, He knew we would have to be forced to stay close to Him in devotion. If He were to remove our problematic flesh altogether and replace it with something Christlike, our confidence would be in ourselves. We would soon succumb to the greater sin of pride, and we would quickly drift away from dependence on Him, thinking, “I can do it myself.”

By leaving our old practiced way there, intact inside us, dead but present, He installs an automatic thermometer of our distance from His fire of love. The moment we walk away from private devotions and/or from worship with others, our old man begins to revive, and we are driven back to our knees in prayer. So God leaves our flesh intact within our roots.

Later, we’ll show more reasons why God leaves our problems intact within us. For now, the point is that if we do not comprehend the way of our Lord’s healing, two difficulties may arise.

The first is that we may wonder, “If I still have them in my root system, capable of resurrection at any moment, what good did my healing do? Just what was accomplished through those prayers for healing?” In the story of Stan, in the last chapter, that was the depth of his fury. He was enraged that he had gone through all that soul-searching and prayer, seemingly to no lasting effect!

Before we face our carnal flesh and die to it on the cross, it has us. We act impulsively and sometimes compulsively, blindsided by forces within us of which we have little or no awareness—and we possess no power to overcome whatever we are aware of! When we have repented, received forgiveness, and reckoned that aspect of our flesh as dead on the cross, it can no longer control us. We’re aware of its con games. We catch our self-delusions before they impel us into sinful actions. We are no longer impelled into wrong decisions and actions. We are free—so long as we remain humbly dependent on Him at the foot of His cross.

Our transformation is simply in our newfound freedom to choose the way of Christ and the power by His Holy Spirit to live it, not something set in concrete in ourselves, never again requiring personal discipline and choice.

The second thing that may assail us, if we don’t comprehend the way our Lord heals, is the haunting fear that after all, we may not have been healed at all. Our carnal mind then uses that fear to regain its hold on us. St. Paul wrote 2 Timothy 1:7 to counter that: “ . . . God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (KJV, emphasis added). The Revised Standard Version puts it this way: “ . . . but a spirit of power and love and self-control ” (emphasis added). The New American Standard Bible also translates this verse: “ . . . power and love, and discipline” (emphasis added). And the New International Version says, “ . . . of power, of love and of self-discipline” (emphasis added).

What the King James Version translates as a “sound mind,” all three modern versions render as “self-control” and “self-discipline”! When we cannot trust, overcome by a spirit of timidity, or “fear” (KJV), our carnal mind usurps the functions of the renewed mind and maintains its own fleshly self-discipline and control of us—or lack of control.

Our mind is one part of our soul. God has no other plan for our soul than to slay, resurrect, and reform it in Christ. Our carnal mind must come to its death on the cross if we are to find freedom to think and feel in new ways. But many Christians have failed to comprehend the radicalness of that death. Too many still think in terms of “mending.” Healing still means to them that something was merely broken and God fixes it, like repairing a machine so it will run again. In that sense, there is no healing for the soul.

Psalm 23:3 does say, “He restores my soul,” and Psalm 19:7 says, “The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul,” but we must understand that all Christian “restoring” proceeds by the work of the Cross. God has only one answer for sin. “The soul who sins will die” (Ezek. 18:4). Our Lord Jesus has become that death for us. Therefore, for us, healing and restoration are the same as crucifixion and rebirth, not mending. That means that our carnal mind cannot be adjusted or “retaught”; it can only be slain and resurrected.

When Paula and I have heard of those who have truly been helped by ministry and prayer returning to their sinful ways sometime later, we have grieved even as St. Peter lamented:

For if after they have escaped the defilements of

the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior

Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them

and are overcome, the last state has become worse

for them than the first. For it would be better for

them not to have known the way of righteousness,

than having known it, to turn away from

the holy commandment delivered to them. It has

happened to them according to the true proverb,

“A dog returns to its own vomit,” and “A sow, after

washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.”

—2 PETER 2:20-22

Seeing that happen, we have cried out to the Lord to explain to us more fully (than what we have shared so far), why did they fall? Or more to the point of our own cry, “How did we fail them? What didn’t we do? What did we do wrong?”

The Lord made us aware that the first cause is their failure to comprehend His way of transforming. He added that since they thought they had become something in themselves, these people had become filled with pride in their flesh and so needed humbling. “For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself ” (Gal. 6:3).

The second cause, He said, is pride and self-confidence in knowledge: “I’ve learned the hard way. Now that I know myself, I’ll never do that again.” They thought themselves protected by knowledge—which in a measure was true, but not when pride and reliance upon self-knowledge supplant the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is not “Father, Son, and Knowledge.” It is only the Holy Spirit, not knowledge, who keeps us walking uprightly in Him.

“Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know” (1 Cor. 8:1-2). Pride of intellect had managed to reinstall the carnal mind as king of their lives. Self, rather than Jesus, had again become the master. God had to humble them. “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:14).

It was humbling to realize that we had connected them more with knowledge than with our wonderful Lord Jesus Christ! The Scriptures say, “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out” (Prov. 20:5, NIV). It is the task of prayer ministers to “look at the heart,” “ . . . for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7, emphasis added). We are like detectives, searching for the real “whodunits” in the depths of the human heart. The search to track out the real roots of problems can become so enticing that unwittingly we entrap ourselves and the people to whom we minister in gnosticism—the fallacy that we are saved by knowledge rather than the person of Jesus Christ! When that happens, our carnal minds have again found a way to install themselves in control, both in us and in the people to whom we minister.

MOMENT-BY-MOMENT ABIDING IN JESUS

The only antidote we know to the carnal mind’s desire to control is to abide moment by moment in our Lord through prayer so that however incisive the insights by which the Lord sets him free, the person knows it happened by His grace and not first by keys of knowledge. Our Lord’s love must so overwhelm our ministry and prayers that both we who minister and all who receive our ministry cannot help but know and celebrate that it was the wonderful presence and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that did the work.

It also helps to keep things as simple as possible. The more clever and involved our diagnosis and our prayers, to that degree the more opportunity exists for the mind to reinstate itself as the champion of our salvation. Avoid complexity. Remember that our Lord refused to teach by any other means than by stories and parables (Matt. 13:34). Could it possibly have been partly because He had become determined not to let the minds of His disciples grab center stage?

We repented and prayed, “Lord, let Your love so overwhelm us that whatever clues we discover in people’s hearts, they know themselves to have been loved to life only by You.”

TURNING AWAY

The third cause our Lord revealed is simply the habit of turning away. Detaching ourselves from nurture in Him inevitably reattaches us to our carnal roots and reanimates the carnal mind to rule our “tree of flesh.”

HOLY FEAR

In this chapter, the lesson we must learn in renewing the mind is to develop holy fear of its power to reestablish its kingdom. “Christ was faithful as a Son over His house whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end” (Heb. 3:6, emphasis added)—confidence in His faithfulness, not confidence in ourselves. We must come to see our carnal mind as our enemy, not our friend. We must gain a healthy respect for its cleverness, a holy fear of its ability to seduce us again and again.

On the one hand, our Lord wants us to rest confidently in Him. On the other, we need to retain holy fear for our salvation’s sake. May I suggest that our confidence should be unshakable in His love for us, in certainty beyond a shadow of doubt that our salvation is guaranteed in heaven, that we are permanently sealed in Him (Eph. 4:30). But as to whether we will come into the fullness of the abundant life He has for us here on Earth, we need to cherish the fear that keeps us pressing into Jesus, calling for repentance and change.

Because we operate so much by our thinking, I know nothing more insidiously persistent at slipping back into wrongful prominence in our lives than our own carnal minds! “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Prov. 9:10). A little holy fear of our own mind’s ability to deceive us might just be an essential part of that beginning of wisdom.

3

DEVELOPING MENTAL DISCIPLINES AND HABITS OF CONSTANT PRAYER

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

ROMANS 8:5-8

THE FIRST LESSON of this chapter is prayer, done constantly and continuously. I studied at Drury College, Springfield, Missouri, one of the finest liberal arts colleges of its day. Then I went to Chicago Theological Seminary, known then as the mecca of liberalism, modernism, and intellectualism. Like Daniel and his three companions who were instructed in all the “ . . . literature and language of the Chaldeans...educated three years” (Dan. 1:3-6), and like St. Paul, trained at the feet of Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), I had received the best the world had to offer!

But when I received the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, by revelation I saw the seductiveness of the worldly knowledge I had acquired (Col. 2:8), and I declared, “Lord, I don’t want my mind. I want Your mind. I believe I have Your mind within me. Let Your mind live and rule all my thinking and feeling. I don’t want my knowledge. I want Your truth. Purge my mind according to Your Word. Take me on a never-ending Emmaus walk, and open Your Word to me daily, upsetting and replacing whatever I have learned in the world. Bring my mind to death in all its knowledge and ways of thinking and ways of controlling my feelings, in all the ways I have learned to think and feel in the world.”

I found it was necessary to say that prayer many times, and I renew it every once in a while. The Lord heard it the first time, but I have to say it again and again so that everything in me hears it anew each time.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PRAYER

We have found that many Christians have somehow just assumed that once they were born anew, their minds were automatically overhauled. Nothing could be further from the truth! Very many have never said the kind of mental “sinner’s prayer” I’ve outlined above. I strongly urge you to take time right now to make that prayer your own. Say it in your own way, or make up your own prayer, but do it! You’ll have to come back to it many times, but you’ll begin to find revelations breaking through like never before!

Our gracious Lord waits eagerly for the opportunity to take each of us on our own personal Emmaus walk so that He can open to us the things in the Scriptures concerning Himself (Luke 24:27). It is our traditions that make void the Word of God (Matt. 15:2-6; Mark 7:5-13). All of us possess countless traditional ways of thinking that we have assumed are Christian but may not be at all.

When I began to say that prayer, the Lord began to open to me the wondrous revelations out of which have come our books and our ministry for Him. But the prayers did not end the war; they began it! Years later a great saint of the Lord prayed over me, “Lord, we thank You for the keen mind You have given John. We thank You for all its labor in accumulating knowledge. But now, Lord, it exaggerates its task and does too much. Still John’s mind, Lord! Quiet it. Take it off center stage so that the Holy Spirit can rule it through John’s spirit. Turn his mind down for a while, Lord. It won’t lose power. He won’t become dumb or stupid. After a while it will have more power than ever before, but then it will be ruled only by Your mind, not his. It will be Your servant, ruled by You, no longer the master but the slave.”

That prayer brought great relief to me. My questions and doubts abated. Mental distractions possessed less ability to interrupt my prayer times and sermon preparations. It became easier to recognize the anointing of the Holy Spirit and stay within its leadings. Discernment was no longer confused by picayune questioning. Revelations of insight and knowledge came much more frequently and easily. My ability to catch my carnal mind in its smoke screens and deceptions increased until it became fun—and the carnal mind tired of sending up flak!

I strongly urge the reader to pray that prayer also, hauling the unregenerate mind to its effective death on the cross. This also may have to be done many times. Our pesky minds have to be made sure we mean it! It would be better to have someone else pray that prayer for you.

Our mind naturally responds to authority and will recognize and obey the authority of the Lord when spoken through another much more readily than through ourselves. Otherwise, it says to itself, “Well, I’ll wait awhile. Maybe he’ll change his mind.” It can’t get away with that game when another person voices the prayer—besides, the greatest problem of our minds is pride, and when others pray for us, that humbles us and helps to set the mind aside so that the Spirit can rule.

THE ROLE OF DISCIPLINE

The second lesson of this chapter is discipline, specifically self-discipline in the Holy Spirit.

The prayer for your carnal mind to be slain, transformed, and subjugated to the mind of Christ must be followed by a discipline of constant flash prayers. The Christian life is not a matter of feelings. It is a matter of continual choices within the stresses of living. Abiding in Christ demands moment-by-moment choices to live by His Word and by His example.

Early on, the Lord began to set the parameters for my mind and heart: first came the laws of God, boundaries I could not pass. And then He impressed on Paula and me that we were to check every thought before we accepted it, every feeling before we embraced it (and gave it life within us), and every action before we did it, by asking some simple questions.

If thoughts were forming, we would ask, “Is this the way Jesus would think?” If emotions were rising, “Is this what Jesus would feel?” If actions seemed to be prompted, “Is this what Jesus would do?” There was always to be only one answer: “If Jesus wouldn’t think it or feel it or do it, neither will I.”

By this, we are not advocating that you become a Pollyanna, avoiding all “negative” emotions entirely. God Himself displays righteous anger (Ps. 7:6) and hates evil (Ps. 45:7). He tells us to fear Him (Ps. 76:7) and affirms the righteous jealousy of a protective husband (Song of Sol. 8:6). The ways we use these emotions is what makes them good or evil.

If we put the same questions the positive way, it is, “I will think, feel, and do what Jesus would.” We soon discovered that it was relatively easy, if we happened to be abiding in Jesus, not to think, feel, or do what He wouldn’t. But it was much tougher to do the positive. We found that we could more often stop ourselves from doing wrongly than we could make ourselves do that which was loving and considerate! The discipline of trying to live positively like Christ is what brings us to our knees and to death of self faster than anything else we have tried so far.

Again, I suggest that you stop for a while to take time to pray that the Lord set that track into the deepest reaches of your heart and mind. “I will not think what You would not think, Lord Jesus. I will not let myself feel what You wouldn’t allow in Your emotions. I will not do what You wouldn’t do.”

I think you’ll soon discover, if these prayers are a first for you, that they are somewhat like asking for the gift of patience! Say that prayer—and duck! Kidding aside, they’ll set you on a path of adventure from which we hope you’ll never recover!

I have forced myself (see Matthew 11:12) to live by that discipline until it has become somewhat automatic. I no longer have to think to remind myself. It pains me that my old self all too often reasserts itself; I’m still so often a stinker, and wish I could be as loving and kind as I see so many others being—but the difference is that now I can’t get away with it! Automatically that discipline catches me up short and brings me to repentance. If I miss it, the Holy Spirit much more quickly and easily catches me, directly or through others.

Our mind ceases to be our enemy when we discipline it in Christ and give it good channels to run in. If we do not pay the price of building such a discipline in prayer, we cannot defeat the fleshly rule of our minds. In this regard, as in others, there are no instant-on saints. In this area, there can be no substitutes for our own efforts, no matter how much our Lord generously gives us through His grace. He has paid the price, once and for all. But in His wisdom, He leaves some areas for us to conquer with Him, in Him. And this is one of those areas in which He will not do everything for us with no corresponding discipline and effort on our part.

Some Christians remain immature. Paula and I have observed that they are always those who refuse the discipline of flash prayers and the constant daily habit of checking every feeling and thought and action by the example of Jesus.

For me, 2 Corinthians 4:10-11 (being crucified with Christ) happens most effectively and frequently by flash prayers, instantly, silently, before responding to people and circumstances. If I slip up and react before I can catch myself, prayers immediately after the event accomplish repentance and that same death of the mind and heart.

But some confess that they can’t manage to pray in that instant right in the midst of a happening. Our son Loren is a most effective minister who has confessed that he is not good at that kind of instantaneous praying. So he uses his will to stop his mind and feelings or actions and makes himself do what is Christlike. Later on, when he can find time, he prays it through. Either way—whatever way anyone can collar his mind, feelings, and actions, sooner or later it is prayer that must be employed to nail our flesh to the cross or the flesh will eventually conquer our walk in Christ.

The most important key for dethroning the carnal mind is prayer. Brother Lawrence prayed as he washed dishes. The late Mother Teresa, whose order of charity ministers every day around the world in more than three hundred places, constantly prayed as she scrubbed a floor or rode a train.

The habit of prayer, not merely in flash prayers, must become the normal life-breath of every Christian. Jesus lives in our heart. Hebrews 7:25 tells us, “He always lives to make intercession . . . ” So what is He doing in our hearts? Praying! Interceding for others! The only way we can abide in Him is to allow Him to live His life in us, and that means that the only way He can live His life in us—as us, for us—is if we are continually involved in intercessory prayer for others.

Basketball players practice dribbling and passing until those actions become so automatic that they don’t have to think about them in the incessant rush of playing. It must be so, for sometimes actions on the court happen too fast for thought. In the same way, Christians need to practice “praying without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17) until they no longer have to remind themselves to pray; they will just automatically do it.

Can anyone imagine a person suddenly involved in a professional basketball game who never had spent the required hours of practice dribbling and passing? “Help!” he would cry. “Quick, somebody teach me how!” But by then it would be too late. It can’t be learned that fast. In the same way, there is no way to victorious living in Christ other than to set oneself to practice to pray, before the game gets hectic and it’s too late.

Prayer takes the ball out of the hands of our carnal mind. Doubtless all of us have seen some people pray absolutely carnally, out of nothing but their own minds. But the longer one practices praying, the more the carnal mind finds it increasingly difficult to maintain its rule—especially when our prayers are coupled with the disciplines above, which would translate here, “I will not pray whatever Jesus would not pray, neither in thought, feelings, or what I ask Him to do.”

However, many have said to us, “I can’t think fast enough to pray on the spot in English (or whatever language is native to them). But I can pray in the Spirit, so that’s what I do.” They mean that they pray silently in tongues. Great!

The first purpose of the gift of tongues is to refresh us. We see this in Isaiah 28:12: “Here is rest, give rest to the weary, and here is repose.” The antecedent to “here” is found in verse 11: “Indeed, He will speak to this people through stammering lips and a foreign tongue.” We know verse 11 is about tongues because St. Paul quoted that verse in 1 Corinthians 14:21 while teaching about the gift of tongues.

The gift of tongues is for refreshment—we grow tired in prayer, trying to think what to say next, whereas we can pray on and on when we don’t have to think about what we are saying. And when our emotions are on fire, stirring the carnal mind to justify its passions, praying in tongues is intended to bring us into rest. Prayer, in known or unknown tongues, stills our passions and gives our spirit opportunity to rule us so that our renewed mind, the mind of Christ within us, can rise to ascendancy and find right ways to answer.

One of the primary purposes of the gift of tongues is to dethrone the carnal mind. Nothing embarrasses and frustrates our carnal mind more than for us to be mouthing words it can’t understand or control! Every time we pray in a tongue, we lessen the hold of our carnal mind over all that we think or do. We exercise faith beyond our mind and strengthen our spirit to reign under the discipline of the Holy Spirit.

But that is also why too many Christians seldom pray in tongues. “Oh, it happened once a long time ago, but it’s never happened again.” What a tragic misunderstanding of the Scriptures! Our carnal mind finds hundreds of theological, quasi-biblical, and other reasons not to pray in tongues—or simply distracts by “important” thoughts—because the carnal mind knows that if we pray in tongues often enough, its rule will be broken!

Who has not noticed that it is frequently the most logical and rationalistic people who profess to have little use for the gift of tongues? “Oh, I suppose it has some value for some people, but I’ve just never seen much use for it.” (The implication is that if you were only as strong or smart in your faith as he, you wouldn’t think you needed that gift much either.)

Maybe such a person has spoken in tongues once or twice to prove he has received the baptism of the Spirit, but he hasn’t ever done it since. He thinks the gifts are something ecstatic that have to happen to him in a way that usurps his conscious involvement and cooperation. Therefore his educated intellect is offended. His carnal mind has blocked out all the teachings that say the prophets’ spirits are subject to the prophets (1 Cor. 14:32) and that we can consciously choose to speak in tongues or to be silent (albeit not apart from the Lord’s prompting) (1 Cor. 4:19). Some say, “I’d rather have the gift of knowledge or wisdom” (as though having the one excluded the other! Do we see how deceitful the carnal mind can be, all the while trying to sound so logical and wise?). The truth is that these people’s minds desperately throw up smoke screens, lest the Holy Spirit be allowed to dislodge their minds’ carnal rule.

WHERE THE WARFARE IS

Anyone who has sat down to hold morning devotions has discovered where the warfare is. We can hardly meditate a moment or enter into the first words of prayer before our minds interrupt with something—anything! The more logical, important, or obviously needful the better.

If we turn and wrestle with our mind, trying to get it to shut up, then our mind has distracted us from prayer, busied us, and kept itself on center stage. Successful people of prayer have learned to ignore whatever their minds interject, however seemingly important. They don’t wrestle with the mind, talk to it, or pay it any heed at all. They go right on blessing and praising God and interceding.

The more we learn to concentrate on praying, the more we lessen the hold of our mind’s carnality. It is this struggle to fight our way clear of the static and jamming of our own minds in prayer that also makes us ripe for repentance and change. There must be a ripeness. Ripeness means powerfully coming to see the frantic battle of the carnal mind to stay in control and growing to virulently hate its tricks and deceptions. I am certain that St. Paul must have gone through this same mental warfare:

Those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh . . . the mind set on the flesh is death . . . because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God . . . does not subject itself... is not even able to do so.

—ROMANS 8:5-7

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception.

—COLOSSIANS 2:8

We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word.

—2 CORINTHIANS 4:2, RSV

Abhor what is evil.

—ROMANS 12:9

It is difficult to see our own mind as evil. After all, it has been the tool by which we have lived all our life. It has so often warned us or guided us successfully into good things. But any prayer minister who has sat for hours penetrating the deceptions of a person’s mind, batting down their distractions and clearing away their smoke screens, is well aware of the iniquity of the mind! The difficulty is acknowledging its sinfulness sufficiently to accomplish effective repentance.

Whoever struggles daily to move past the objections and interferences of his mind to learn to center in our Lord in prayer grows daily more disgusted with his mind. But if that isn’t enough to inspire disgust, the next chapter might be just the medicine the doctor ordered.

4

PRAYER GROUPS AND SERVICES

The first to plead his case seems just, until another comes and examines him.

PROVERBS 18:17

Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

PROVERBS 27:17

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel.

PROVERBS 12:15

For by wise guidance you will wage war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory.

PROVERBS 24:6

Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.

PROVERBS 13:10, NIV

IF THE STRUGGLE to learn to pray is not enough to bring us to ripeness, the next best way I know, and perhaps the only remaining avenue for those not given to prayer, is to become an active, regular member of a small Christian fellowship group.

RECEIVING FROM OTHERS

If the first step in dethroning the carnal mind is fear, then the second is prayer and discipline, and the third is counsel. In this case, not formal counseling, but the continual, loving confrontations of brothers and sisters who love us too much to let us get by with our practiced deceits. When our brothers and sisters in the faith, who know us well enough not to be fooled by our con games, confront us again and again, when they smash our deceptions, “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15), we begin to see the “old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,” and we commence to become willing to “be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph. 4:22-23). Group life is intended by our Lord to make us ripe for change.

Sometimes we fail to apply appropriate scriptures to ourselves because we delimit words too much. We may see the word lust and think it refers only to sexual passions. But the word here refers as aptly to the greediness of our mind for control. Our fleshly mind lusts after power to rule all our emotions, thoughts, and actions. Notice that the next words of that text talk about the mind—to be “renewed in the spirit of your mind.” So it is that we are being corrupted by the lusts of our mind. Since we live behind the screen of our own thoughts, we seldom can see without aid how our own thoughts are corrupting us. That is why we need to be deeply involved and exposed to the scrutiny of a group who loves us. They can see what we can’t—how our mind seduces us into its own tight little circles.

THE GOD OF NICENESS

Our group must meet often enough, with regularity, having permission to accost us with truth in love, if we are to see incisively enough to learn to hate our minds’ deceptions. Unfortunately, many groups succumb to the god of niceness, until too few tell one another the truth anymore. The carnal mind fights honesty, vulnerability, openness, and corporateness even as it fights prayer. “Don’t be so open; it’s too risky. You’ll get hurt.” “You don’t have to tell everything, you know.” “They can’t handle it.” “What’s your business is your business. Don’t go telling all your private things.” “He ought to keep his nose out of my business.” “You don’t really like those people anyway. They keep hurting you.” “You don’t have to listen to them.”

Years ago, in our small group, we had decided that we would become vulnerable and would allow anyone in the group to speak truth to us and minister to the depths of our hearts. I set out to do that. Soon the group pointed out that not only was I controlling how much, what about, and just how they would minister to me, but also each time I would subtly turn the ministry around until I was ministering to everyone else! Behind that was not merely fear to become vulnerable and an overdose of parental inversion, but a carnal mind cleverly masking its determination to protect its domain behind a façade of concern for others. My carnal mind shot up smoke screens, lest it be dethroned by truth.

THE PRICE OF CORPORATENESS

Whoever truly has the mind of Christ must pay the price of corporateness. The price is the pain and fear of openness, especially since people often make mistakes and sometimes intend to hurt. The price is also the humility of being formed by others. “And coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:4-5, emphasis added. Note the passive voice—not building ourselves but “being built up.”) Only if brothers and sisters are allowed, often enough, to shatter our petty world of thoughts, do we break free from our carnal mind’s hold over us.

There is no other antidote to the pride and isolationism of our carnal mind than becoming determined to submit ourselves to the ministry of others, however faulty we may fear them to be. A brother pastor I loved consented to be prayed for in our ministerial fellowship. The pastors prayed under great anointing. Knowing his heart, I recognized that every word they said was right on, straight to the mark of his needs. When they had finished, my friend stood and said, “Brothers, I know you meant well, but I must be the arbiter of my own soul. It seems you have missed me, so I’ll have to reject that prayer.” My heart sank! Within a few months, that pastor became mentally ill! We must become willing to listen, or else our carnal minds will weave webs that keep us ever in bondage.

SPIRITUAL SERVICE

Service is the final way I want to discuss for dethroning the carnal mind. “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it” (Luke 9:24). The theme text of this book, Romans 12:2: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” was set in the context of Romans 12:1: “I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship” (emphasis added).

Whoever sets out to serve the Lord in any capacity—as prophet, pastor, teacher, intercessor, whatever—soon discovers that his one-time friend is now his sometime enemy. Our fleshly mind frequently distracts more than it helps.

Any pastor or teacher who has set time aside to prepare a message has wrestled with straying, vagrant thoughts and inability to concentrate until all his time has been frittered away. The carnal mind knows that if we become heavily engaged in serving, anointing will take over and nudge the carnal mind off the throne. If we persist in serving, the mind’s carnal impulses will eventually be starved out and replaced altogether by the way Christ would think.

The carnal mind senses its coming demise and hauls in every kind of disruption it can think of. Again, we defeat it best by ignoring it. If we turn to castigate ourselves for becoming distracted, the mind has won even while we repent; we are distracted from selfless serving.

Whoever sets out to minister to others soon becomes keenly aware of how the mind dodges truth and finds silly rationalizations and excuses. That awareness of sin in others then reflects like a mirror until we cannot help but face our own deceptions. Whoever sets out to heal—be it physical or inner healing—learns to hate how Satan’s deceptions operate to rob people of their healings (John 10:10).

Our friend leaves our presence, having received prayers that tore at the roots of rejection that caused fear and anxiety. Satan drops a dollop of fear into his heart, tempting him to believe the prayers didn’t work. His carnal mind leaps to find reasons why the prayers “weren’t right.” “That prayer minister didn’t really understand me.” “Oh, I just don’t have faith enough to make this work.” “That stuff may work for others, but it sure doesn’t work for me.” And so the carnal mind gleefully dismantles the prayers for healing. One has to witness that process only a very few times to come to hate the carnal mind’s interference! Laterally, that rapidly makes us aware of our own con games.

LEARNING TO LOVE THE MIND OF CHRIST WITHIN

The greatest effect of serving is that we learn to love the mind of Christ in us. As we serve, inspired by the Holy Spirit, we are often surprised and overjoyed at the wondrous insights our renewed mind uncovers. Practicing to serve thus builds into us Christ’s way of thinking; it installs His mind upon the throne of our life—if we remember: “Do not be haughty in mind. . . . Do not be wise in your own estimation” (Rom. 12:16). “For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith” (v. 3).

SECTION 2

The Depths of the Problem

5

DEEP RUTS

See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled.

HEBREWS 12:15

And the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

MATTHEW 3:10

THE QUESTION THAT cries for an answer is: How shall our renewed minds find sufficient freedom from the flesh so as to set truly righteous directions for the heart to follow? We have all heard bigoted Christians wrongly spouting scriptures, unaware that their minds were not yet renewed and still serving the foul passions of their hearts. Who has not been grieved to see born-anew people warping scriptures to suit decisions their renewed minds had little part in making? So the question is: What holds the renewed mind on the track of the Lord’s nature despite the storms and deceptions of the heart? In the end, just what is it that enables our minds to choose His righteousness?

FINDING FREEDOM FROM THE FLESH

To me, there are at least two primary answers: (1) we who are Christians must persistently crucify the flesh daily so that the storms of our hearts are settled, and (2) devotion and service in the Spirit must be so tender and full that a Christian can truly be “diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15, emphasis added).

Inner healing seems to be the obvious way to accomplish number one, and, of course, all inner healing does help to reduce the pressure of our deceptive heart’s attempt to rule. But many have gone through a lot of inner healing and have not yet obtained much objectivity. There remains a need to crucify the mind itself in all its deepest ruts.

What are “deep ruts”? There are two kinds. The first are tracks, thought patterns in our minds that were not trained into us, nor chosen in experience, but are part of us as “givens,” inherited simply because we are descendants of Adam and Eve. The second are our ways of thinking we built into ourselves in infancy and early childhood, so deep that we may not be aware they exist, though they guide us daily and can entrap us.

There are also combinations of both inherited and developed ruts. Deep mental ruts exist in all of us, whether born anew or not. All too often they serve as channels for rivers of fleshly passions to rise nearly unchecked into dominance and control. Deep mental ruts may be one of the primary reasons St. Paul commanded us not to be conformed to this world but rather to be transformed according to the Word of God!

When I was a boy, few paved roads existed outside of major highways. Rains made quagmires of most country roads. Vehicles soon carved deep ruts, sometimes for miles on end. A favorite joke was, “Choose your rut carefully; you’ll be in it for seven miles!”

Our minds inherit and build the same kind of deep tracks. In those days, if a driver were not careful when ruts became too deep, the slightest bump could tear out the oil pan. Similarly, when the ruts of our minds run so deep that we lose our flexibility (can’t turn out of them), the slightest bump in life threatens to tear out the “oil” of joy in the Spirit. Turning out of deep ruts in the mind requires the same kind of tough and careful “steering” that country driving did then. We accomplish it only by the grace of Jesus and the toughness of determination.

Henry came to the Lord in a burst of deep emotion. He loved Jesus with every part of himself that he could command. But Henry had spent years developing ways of thinking about and obtaining money and ways of thinking about taking revenge whenever anybody stepped on his favorite projects or hurt his friends. When he became a member of the trustees’ board of the church, try as he would, there was no way he could get his mind to wrap around and embrace concepts of faithful giving to others. He kept thinking in businessmen’s hardheaded terms and demanding that the rest of the board think “as practically” as he did. His mind ran in that kind of rut, no matter how hard he tried to understand men of faith. (What pastor has not struggled with that mental rut in the members of his church?)

When a young lad took advantage of his daughter and then came to Henry begging forgiveness, Henry was put squarely on a pinnacle of sweaty choices! His newfound faith told him that he should forgive. The love of Jesus welled up within him, prompting him to open his arms and embrace his wounded daughter and her frightened friend. But his will jerked around in the deep ruts of his mind. It took a tremendous miracle of the Lord’s own personal touch to break Henry out of the grip of his mind.

A friend of mine grew up in a very liberal church, in which dignity and privateness of conscience were burned into the depths of members’ minds and hearts. Our ministerial alliance brought in an evangelist from South Africa for a countywide series of evangelistic meetings. One night I happened to be standing across the aisle from my friend while the evangelist was giving the altar call and the power of the Holy Spirit was falling like a downpour over the congregation.

My friend had already been struggling before the meetings just to make himself decide to come to such a thing, where public displays of emotion might happen and people might be induced to say things that might be very private and embarrassing. He didn’t believe in that sort of thing. He believed that religion ought to be private and that there should be no sideshow of emotion.

My friend stood at the aisle, one foot halfway out, physically swaying back and forth, as he wrestled with the conviction of the Holy Spirit. I knew this was his moment before God, and I began praying—fervently. The Holy Spirit had run smack up against the deep mental ruts of his upbringing, and the interior battle within his mind was fierce. It broke my heart that his carnal mind won that battle. He sat down. I saw, with equally fierce determination to destroy his resolve, the enemy of his spirit—his deep mental ruts, holding him captive when his spirit knew which way he should go. I have hated mental ruts with utter passion since those days.

DEEP RUTS—DEEP ROOTS

Deep ruts are also often the mental shape of deep roots within us. What are roots? Roots are practiced hidden ways of drinking nurture and fulfillment from God, from others, from self, and from nature. A root is a habitual manner of receiving. It is a system for getting, not for giving. A root is a way our inner being has developed to obtain whatever it deems is necessary for survival and well-being.

Roots are hidden in the same way that we as tiny children built ways of walking and talking until they became automatic systems requiring no continued, conscious effort. That is God’s economy. If we had to concentrate on how to walk and talk, we would wear ourselves out trying to do the simplest functions. If we had learned to walk in Texas, we might have built an unconscious habit of walking with a long, free-swinging step. If in Japan, we might walk with quick, determined steps. If we had learned our speech patterns in Georgia, we might say with a drawl, “Y’all come back now, y’heah?” In Connecticut, we might speak of our “daag” having leaped over a “lag” to get into our neighbor’s “pahty”—of all things for him to be “theah!” The very “idear”!

We drawl or clip our speech because that was built in by the time we were six. Those formations happened so long ago we have forgotten or never really knew we learned them. Thus, our practiced ways are hidden to us. Only when we become exposed to others do we see that our way is not always everyone else’s.

It takes great effort to change roots and/or deep ruts. For instance, we may succeed in overcoming accents, only to flash back to childhood patterns of speech in moments of excitement. Akin to that, emotional and behavioral roots and mental ruts remain hidden and often reassert themselves whenever passion overcomes.

The analogy is misleading in one respect, however. Walking and talking are things within ourselves, ways of moving and expressing. But roots are ways of reaching beyond ourselves to drink from others what we need. Roots are the practiced and long-forgotten ways by which we have come to automatically receive nurture from all around us. Roots of a tree reach into the earth to send water and nutrients racing through cambium cells into every branch and leaf. Just so, through our root systems, our spirit reaches to God, others, our own inner wells, and nature to drink affection, acceptance, love, approval, embrace, and so on—or, unfortunately, to feed on rejection, refusal, criticism, bitterness, and aloofness!

Some root systems are part of us because of Adam and Eve, as we will see shortly. Other systems we established in the very first experiences of life. Even from within the womb, our spirit is keenly sensitive. It reaches to our mother and father and senses invitation, welcome, and embrace—or rejection. Our spirit has built its first taproots long before our birth. (For further information, see the first four chapters of our book Growing Pains.)

Parents, siblings, and others confirm or upset and rebuild the root systems we inherit and those we originate. By the time we are six, both kinds of roots are firmly established. From then on, until about twelve, we are busy building and establishing the strong trunk of character on which the limbs and leaves of our personality will depend for the remainder of our lives.

As part of our root system, deep ruts bless, inhibit, or prevent altogether our reception of nurture. There are good roots and ruts. But even these need to find their death on the cross, lest our righteousness be of the flesh rather than the Holy Spirit. But throughout these chapters, we will speak only of bad roots and ruts.

As we said above, roots are what our spirit uses to drink nurture, and deep ruts are the mental shape of those roots. For example, if an infant receives little cuddling but much harsh discipline, his spirit can be crippled in its ability to drink nurture, and his mind most likely will have accrued built-in thoughts about what authority figures and loved ones will do. That way of thinking may strangle whatever good roots remain. Deep ruts cause him not to notice touches of love in adulthood or may twist true touches of love into paranoid notions of neglect or abuse. Long after his conversion, years after his conscious mind has received the saving love of Jesus and acknowledged with delightful surprise the thousandfold loving embraces of spouse, children, and friends, his deep mind may still wallow in ruts of misconceptions and self-pity. Deep ruts reside in the heart. Truly, “for out of the heart come evil thoughts” (Matt. 15:19, emphasis added).

INHERITED ROOTS

Root systems inherited from Adam and Eve are common to all; no one has escaped having them. We share equally in original sin (Rom. 5:12); no one has received unique dosages. What we do with inherited roots is unique.

In primary school we learned that fractions have common denominators and multiple numerators. So it is with roots. Inherited roots are like denominators, common to all. Numerators can be compared to how they are starved or developed, remain single and simple or become combined and complex, wax weak or powerful, are consciously recognized or become unconscious drivers. They are varied and diverse, unique to each person’s history.

Roots and deep ruts are strongly established in all of us. They are so stubbornly persistent in functioning the way we first inherited or constructed them that that fact alone reveals the need to renew our minds—and a major reason for the continued pain of sanctification and transformation long after we receive our Lord Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

Years ago the Sunshine Silver Mine at Kellogg, Idaho, suffered the most unlikely tragedy ever to happen in a hard-rock mine—a wood fire! Wooden support beams and rail ties, which had become soaked with oil, smoldered and burned. That sent carbon monoxide throughout all the stopes. Ninety-one men died. Medical rescue teams said to our ministerial group, “Human blood is so foolish it will accept carbon monoxide over oxygen three hundred times to one!” That was what caused the ninety-one to die. Though plenty of oxygen had been present within the smoke, their blood had chosen death-dealing carbon monoxide rather than life-giving oxygen!

In the same way, once our roots have learned to seek and feed on rejection, hatred, or criticism, though plenty of love, encouragement, affection, and approval may abound, our root system may pick out that which brings misery and death rather than life. Three hundred people may compliment and affirm us, but if one alone criticizes, we can become horribly upset!

Fortunately, our root system operates less stupidly than the blood in those ninety-one. It does not always choose death over life three hundred to one! We do accept some nurture. Nevertheless, all too many people have so often unconsciously chosen to receive death and have mixed so much death into life as to remain emotionally crippled in the normal, “smoke-filled” nurture we must all dwell in. In most Christian homes, even in some without Christ, enough “oxygen” of love was present to have made life abundant and happy, but too often we have failed to be able to choose it. That is why renewal of the mind must continue long after practices of behavior have found their effective death on the cross, lest our carnal minds reattach to our sick roots and warp our choosing into sickness. For this reason St. Paul wrote, “Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God” (Heb. 3:12, emphasis added). As with ruts, it is in the heart that our roots live—and cause us to choose wrongly.

Notice that in Hebrews 12:15, St. Paul does not advise us to pull up roots. He only says that we should keep them from springing up: “See to it that... no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled.”

Inner healing, therefore, never uproots a root. Faith builds strength the same way a muscle does, by continual exercise. The strong habit of depending on Him is made perfect by wrestling with roots of weakness. Thus, “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9, KJV). Prayer for inner healing slays the power of bad character sustained by bitter roots. But the continued existence of death-seeking taproots in the soil of our life ensures the continuance of fleshly weakness—which builds the muscle of faith by continued struggle!

That struggle is a battle to overcome the way we feel and subsequently think in our carnal minds. When roots of character have been dealt a deathblow and have been cut off from refreshment, it is fleshly feelings and consequent habitual wrong ways of thinking that reattach dead trees to roots and resurrect bad behavior. Therefore, it is imperative to learn to renew the mind so as not to be reconformed to the world. We come into rest and enjoy abundant life in Christ when we build into ourselves disciplines of perceiving the seductive actions of bitter roots and ruts, and quickly and easily reckon them as dead on the cross (Rom. 6:11).

6

INHERITED ROOTS AND CONSEQUENT RUTS FROM ADAM AND EVE’S SINS IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

ROMANS 5:14, EMPHASIS ADDED

For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned

through the one, much more those who receive the

abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness

will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

So then as through one transgression there resulted

condemnation to all men, even so through one act of

righteousness there resulted justification of life to all

men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the

many were made sinners, even so through the obedience

of the One the many will be made righteous.

ROMANS 5:17-19, EMPHASIS ADDED

EVERY HUMAN BEING possesses many deep spiritual taproots as part of our heritage from Adam and Eve. Original sin is not merely legal descendancy from generation to generation (Deut. 5:9). Sin also descends physically through inherited roots, gene to gene, age to age. Already in the womb we know how to drink in rudimentary ways from God and from evil as instinctively as a newborn baby knows to suckle at its mother’s breast.

Likewise, our spirit instinctively looks to God. Because of Adamic sin, that instinct is infected by root ways of alternately seeking and fleeing, loving and rebelling, accepting and rejecting, searching and hiding, wanting and not wanting, desiring God and choosing instead “messes of pottage.”

As Augustine said, “We were created in God and we are restless until we return to Him.” Countless ambivalent patterns inhabit us as part of the package of becoming inhuman in the track of Adam and Eve. We do not have to invite them, seek them, or choose them. Root rituals and deep ruts of thought exist a priori; they are part of us before we learn or build anything into ourselves.

ORIGINAL SIN

Let’s make real the concept of original sin expressed in those familiar scriptures quoted on the previous page. It seems to me that Christians often give lip service to the idea of original sin without real comprehension. We need to see that St. Paul was not merely expounding a theory or merely proving logically that we are sinners so that we will accept salvation. He was teaching about the devastating reality of our sinfulness from age to age, person to person, willy-nilly. We transform that understanding from theory to actuality when we comprehend the fact of the reality and power of roots and deep ruts in our minds, as we will show in the rest of these chapters.

But first, let us see that St. Paul also taught that we know God instinctively in our heart and that that knowing is corrupted by sin:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven

against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of

men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,

because that which is known about God is evident

within them; for God made it evident to them. For

since the creation of the world His invisible attributes,

His eternal power and divine nature, have

been clearly seen, being understood through what

has been made, so that they are without excuse.

For even though they knew God, they did not honor

Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile

in their speculations, and their foolish heart was

darkened.

—ROMANS 1:18-21, EMPHASIS ADDED

Let’s look to the story as God tells it to see how and when our sinful roots began and how they function:

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the

ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath

of life; and man became a living being. And the

LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in

Eden; and there He placed the man whom He

had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God

caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the

sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the

midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge

of good and evil.

—GENESIS 2:7-9, EMPHASIS ADDED

Observe that the writer of Genesis makes a distinction between those trees that grew “out of the ground,” contrasted to “the tree of life” and “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” These appear to offer a different kind of fruit than other trees.

THE TREE OF LIFE

The tree of life appears throughout the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, and so also does the symbolism of trees. In Psalm 1:3 the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the path of sinners “will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.” In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar was frightened by a dream that none of his soothsayers had been able to interpret. But Daniel made it clear that the great tree in his dream referred to the king who would lose his mind and be cut down because of pride, until “you recognize that it is Heaven that rules” (v. 26). I believe the symbol of the tree can be compared with the “tree” of character within every person.

In the Garden of Eden, the tree of life is the Word who became our Lord Jesus Christ (Rev. 2:7). Therefore the tree of life is His matchless character and graciousness, available as nurture for Adam and Eve. In us, since the Fall, some trees symbolize our evil character that the Lord must cut down, as in Matthew 3:10: “The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

The story of God and man and of heaven and earth culminates in the vision of the great tree of life in Revelation 22:1-2:

And he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. And on either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

—REVELATION 22:1-2, EMPHASIS ADDED

Here we see unmistakably that the tree of life is our Lord Jesus Christ, His character, and the fruits of His nature. Moreover, we have become His “leaves” “for the healing of the nations.” The promise is that His character shall become our character, and He will heal others through us.

Then the LORD God took the man and put him

into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying,

“From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;

but from the tree of the knowledge of good and

evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat

from it you shall surely die.”

—GENESIS 2:15-17

Note there was no proscription regarding the tree of life. Adam could eat freely of any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This means that before sin prevented him, he was at liberty, even enjoined, to partake of the tree of life! Note also that eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was disobedience, thus sin, and recall that “the soul who sins will die” (Ezek. 18:4). Observe particularly that when the command was given, Eve had not yet been created!

In His wisdom, God has never let it be known whether Adam carefully told Eve and she forgot, or whether he failed to tell her accurately—or at all. If he was like me, he probably forgot to tell her! In any case, she made some drastic mistakes.

The first mistake was that she talked with the serpent at all (lest we judge unfairly, let’s remember that hindsight is cheap and we have the benefit of history’s wisdom). The second was that apparently Eve visited with Satan and made her decision apart from Adam, or else he was silent.

Genesis 3:6 says that “she gave also to her husband with her” (emphasis added), so either he was present or else he arrived at that moment. Again the wisdom of God does not answer whether Adam walked apart from Eve and failed her, or she left his shelter, or both. Whatever did in fact happen, from that lack of cohesiveness and attention to one another comes the first of our inherited deep roots and ruts. Perhaps the most common problem we deal with in ministering to married couples is that they do not communicate properly.

Before Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute-mile, no one could break the four-minute barrier.[2] Now, hundreds of competent milers can run the mile under four minutes! Forerunners set patterns, enabling others to follow. In the same way, everything Adam and Eve did established the tracks in which our spirits and minds and hearts would run.

ENGRAMS IN OUR NATURE

Worse, the sins of Adam and Eve acted like engrams in our nature. According to Reader’s Digest Illustrated Encyclopedia Dictionary, an engram is “a persistent protoplasmic alteration hypothesized to occur on stimulation of living neural tissue and to account for memory. Also called ‘memory engram,’ ‘neurogram’” (emphasis added). Engrams are caused by blows so traumatic they create patterns that our motor reflexes and even our physical cells repeat automatically from then on.

When I was in high school, I worked after hours and Saturdays for Joplin Furniture Company. One day I was doing some painting next to the linoleum department. A lady wanted to see the pattern of a tightly rolled coil of linoleum, standing on end near me. Wanting to be helpful but having paint on my hands, unaware that the roll weighed over four hundred pounds, I attempted to lower it to the floor while holding on to it with nothing but my wrists. It toppled with a resounding crash onto my right big toe, instantly pulverizing the tip of the bone! Ever since then, that toe has produced nothing but a yellowed, gnarled, ugly toenail.

That is what an engram is—a blow that causes the body to set itself into unchanging patterns. In like manner, every action of Adam and Eve set into our flesh roots and ruts so deeply and firmly established that only the Cross of Christ can overcome them and enable us to change! That is how original sin affects us all in the present, through tendencies and stubborn practices set like engrams onto our flesh, still effective long after we come to Jesus, until we bring them to death on the cross.

So it is that because Adam and Eve failed to communicate, you and I suffer the same tendency, the same mental rut. The “blow” of Adam and Eve’s failure has stamped into us such an engram that every marital couple since then must struggle against the ruts of their flesh to keep the lines of communication open and flowing.

Herein lies the first and most important healing lesson of these chapters, for how shall we deal with that fact? Not merely by becoming determined to try harder, nor by trying to remember always to talk things out. That may help, but it won’t solve the problem.

Each root and each rut we discuss as we proceed through these chapters needs to be brought to the cross in prayer if we are to be set free in any lasting way. I know that we learn best by repetition, so I’ll repeat this admonition again and again, hoping by that to build into us a new rut of thought and healing practice.

Satan, being the wily deceiver he is, approaches gullible people today in the same manner of a salesman. In order to encourage confidence in the flesh so that potential customers will purchase without waiting to consult their spouses, salesmen ask a number of questions people ought to be able to answer easily. So Satan asked Eve a question I’m sure he thought she would answer correctly. “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1, emphasis added). Not being omniscient (all-knowing), even Satan might have been surprised when she answered:

From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, “You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.”

—GENESIS 3:2, EMPHASIS ADDED

There had been no command not to touch. Eve added to God’s command. That kind of error has become instinctive, a deep rut of thought in all of us. How frequently we add to God’s commands and so weary ourselves with dry disobedience! For example, many early Pentecostals added to God’s Word about modesty of dress (1 Pet. 3:3-6) until it became tantamount to holiness! Makeup was forbidden. Dresses and sleeves had to be of prescribed lengths. Even moderate necklines were forbidden. Hair had to be done up just so. Missing the intent for simple modesty, they added rules and regulations until obedience became odious. The next generation filled our ministry offices as we struggled to keep them from rejecting the church and sometimes the Lord as well!

From before Jesus’s day until now, many of us have tended to make the Sabbath day a prison instead of a rest. We add to God’s Word concerning the Sabbath. And we have added such rules as, “Thou shalt not play cards,” “Thou shalt not go to movies,” “Thou shalt not dance.” Good advice, considering what most of those things have become these days—but these rules are not found in God’s Word.

Psalm 19 informs us, “The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul” (v. 7), and “The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart” (v. 8). Obedience to God’s law would always be refreshing to us, were we free from the engram of original sin. If we are to become able to interpret God’s Word rightly and so enjoy obedience, the remedy is simple. Not “I will make myself obey every jot and tittle of the law!” But “Lord, bring me to death in my practiced, hidden ways of reading Your Law. Bring to death on the cross the mind I inherited from Adam and Eve, and renew in me the mind of Christ, so I may see as He saw and obey as He obeyed.”

Eve made another more drastic error. She said the tree whose fruit they were commanded not to eat was “the tree which is in the middle of the garden” (Gen. 3:3). But Genesis 2:9 says that the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were both “in the midst of the garden,” and verse 17 says that only the latter was forbidden. Eve so confused the command that she didn’t know which tree was actually the forbidden one! This means that she had not been feeding where she should, on the Lord Jesus Christ! She had been feeding everywhere else.

Because she had not been feeding on the tree of life, and thus was not being nurtured by the source of life who became our Lord Jesus Christ, her spirit had become weak and, therefore, vulnerable to delusion. From that error we inherit our root tendency to feed everywhere else than on Jesus! Who has not battled to keep his mind on track nearly every time he tries to have morning devotions? Who has not at some time struggled to stay awake while reading that most exciting book of all books, the Bible? Who has not found his mind wandering during intercessory prayers? Or while listening to good sermons? Or trying to plan next week’s Sunday school lesson? Where did that troublesome rut come from? In Eve’s (and Adam’s) wandering to everything other than the tree of life, of course. That mistake set the mold for our minds to follow from then on.

How can we get free from it? Prayer.

Lord, crucify my habit of wandering everywhere else than to You. Teach my heart anew to center in You. Fasten my mind to feed on the tree of life who is my Lord Jesus Christ.

We may have to say that prayer dozens of times before our minds take hold of it in earnest.

A worse consequence of Eve’s error was idolatry. Eve failed to see the tree of life (Jesus) as the center of all life. When we do not put God at the center of life, something else has to fill that vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. We will fill the center of life with something. Thus Eve was ripe for temptation. Satan stepped in to fill her hunger for truth. Just so, idolatry has become the most besetting sin of all mankind.

Idolatry lies behind every other sin, for whatever we choose rather than God’s command has become more important to us than God. Throughout the Old Testament, the constant theme of the prophets was to thunder against the idols to which Israel returned as regularly as night follows day.

Who among us today could withstand the charge that we worship the television? Or prosperity? Or our own good life (the most common guise the god of mammon wears today)? It is a powerful rut within us all to make anything and everything rather than Jesus the center of life. The answer?

Father God, lay the axe of truth to my mind’s wandering ways. Center me anew and afresh in my Lord Jesus Christ.

(I suggest the reader take a moment to pray each of these prayers as we go through them paragraph by paragraph.) A third consequence of that error is that Eve inadvertently placed Satan at the center of her life. When the tree of life was not seen as the center, Satan could and did, through disobedience, elevate the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to fill that vacuum. Since he was the manipulator of her feelings and decisions, this put Satan at the center of her sight. From that error we inherit the mental rut of placing too much importance on the devil. Satan is not at the center of life. He is not God’s opposite equal. His power was never anywhere near equal to God’s.

Life is not a battle between the forces of light and darkness. That is the Manichaean heresy. In Jerusalem there is a museum that houses the Dead Sea scrolls. Outside its walls is a huge, upright slab of white rock, opposed by several slabs of black. These are the sculptor’s portrayal of the beliefs of the Essenes of that day. They believed that life is a contest between the forces of light (which the rocks represented) and the forces of darkness. But that is heresy both to Jews and Christians. Life is a pilgrimage in which Father God is raising children with whom to have fellowship in eternity.

There happens also to be a struggle with the devil and his cohorts, but that is a detail of history, not the grand theme. The grand theme is the perfection of God’s sons and daughters.

The devil did not necessitate the Cross; sin did. And that was not a slipup that caused God to insert the Cross as “Plan B” because Satan tempted Eve. Father God knew from the ground plan of creation that the price for His creatures to have free will in order to become sons and daughters would have to be the Cross of Christ. Jesus accomplished the Cross (Luke 9:31; John 10:18). He did not succumb to it because Satan “won a round” in the Garden of Eden. God’s plan of transformation means that Satan wins nothing. He is not the moving force of history, nor is sin. God, and only God, is.

But Eve’s error has set an engram of delusion into all our minds. How easy it is to celebrate the strength of the flesh rather than God’s transforming power! When the Holy Spirit fell on mainline churches in the sixties and seven-ties, and we soon discovered that demons are real and that they do inhabit people, how quickly we saw demons in every person and behind every bush, whether they were there or not! All too often we still hear ourselves saying, “The devil made me do it.” Or worship leaders routinely command the devil away so that people can worship, when a little discernment would have revealed that in many cases he was nowhere around!

Or, worst of all from my point of view, too many times ministries have wrongly concluded that devils were present and have shouted at supposed demons in people, wounding and frightening those poor hurting people, whereas in many cases it was not demons but only flesh that should have been taken gently by repentance to the cross in prayer. (Paula and I have been involved in many exorcisms, perhaps more than most servants of Christ alive today. We are not speaking against recognizing the reality of demonization and the need for real deliverances, but against foolish overemphasis. See our book A Complete Guide to Deliverance and Inner Healing.) Mistaken overemphasis happens for many reasons, but first because Eve’s error created that track in our minds.

The remedy is not to spend more time than is needed shouting at the devil to leave us alone but to overcome him by the blood and the word of our testimony (Rev. 12:11). That means simply to haul our “out-of-balancedness” to the cross and to believe that the battle has been won for us by our Lord once and for all (Col. 2:15). We need only to fasten our eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ and celebrate His victory. When we simply turn to praise the Lord, He inhabits the praises of His people—and the devil will have to flee, without garnering any attention to himself.

When we make evil more prevalent and powerful than it is, behind that is Eve’s addition of the words, “ . . . or touch it,” to God’s admonition not to eat the fruit (Gen. 3:3). Fear lies beneath that. Fear clouds the clarity of the mind and helps to prevent accurate recall of commands. Placing Satan at the center enhances the world of fear. Fear breeds lack of trust in those who protect us, most especially in our Father God. As we will see in a moment, Satan used that distrust to further beguile Eve. But for now, let us see that the root of fear and distrust in us began at this point in history. Trust, openness, courage, freedom to venture, even naïveté are the natural instincts of our spirit by creation. From Eve’s error came deep ruts of distrust in all of us, stimulating false closure, creating hearts of stone, fearfulness, patterns of flight, and unnatural deviousness and cleverness.

Therefore, we are at root ambivalent—alternately trusting and doubting, becoming vulnerable and closing off, possessing lion hearts, and fleeing when no enemy pursues (Prov. 28:1). We step out boldly where angels fear to tread, and in the next moment, like Elijah, flee from a mere woman (1 Kings 19:3)! One moment we walk blindly by faith as we should, and the next moment we demand to know what is what before we will take one more step (Hab. 2:4). Thus we are constantly at war:

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is,

in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but

the doing of the good is not. For the good that I

wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that

I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing I

do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but

sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle

that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to

do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God

in the inner man, but I see a different law in the

members of my body, waging war against the law

of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law

of sin which is in my members.

—ROMANS 7:18-23, EMPHASIS ADDED

St. Paul was talking, in his terms, of what we have called engrams, deep ruts that cause ambivalence at the core, leading us to “practice” the very evils we deplore. But God has said, through His apostle, in James 1:5-8 (emphasis added):

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

STEADINESS AND FAITHFULNESS

We need to be steadfast. Steadiness and faithfulness are absolute prerequisites for anyone who would mature in Christ. Therefore, this mental rut of fear and root of distrust lie at the very core of destructiveness to our faith! Right there is the foundation of backsliding. Ambivalence, what the Bible calls double-mindedness, is one of the strongest, most firmly founded conditions in our carnal flesh.

We must win the war for the renewal of our minds on this battleground—or forget about vital and victorious faith. The answer could not be simpler:

Lord, let Your perfect love cast out my fear (1 John 4:18), for You did not give me a spirit of timidity again to fear but “of power and love and discipline” (2 Tim. 1:7)! Lord, bring all that mentality of confusion and ambivalence to death on Your cross, for You are not the author of my ambivalence and confusion (1 Cor. 14:33).

That prayer may have to be reinforced many times, not because God didn’t hear but because we don’t want to let the prayer have full effect in us, “who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (Heb. 2:15). Our minds fear to let go of control and so prefer bondage rather than freedom! But “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee” (Isa. 26:3, KJV, emphasis added). Note: when prayer has settled the issue, our mind is kept in peace and rest by the Lord Himself.

Eve’s next error was induced by Satan, whether or not Adam properly instructed her. Having perceived fear behind Eve’s mistakes, Satan moved to use that fear to his advantage. What he said was so obviously wrong that, had Eve retained her rightful mind, she would have responded immediately, “That’s not so. That’s wrong. You’re telling me a lie.” He said, “You surely shall not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4-5). In saying, “You surely shall not die,” Satan was directly telling Eve that God was lying to Adam when He said the penalty would be death.

Had Eve been feeding from the fruit of the tree of life, she would have felt within her our Lord’s righteousness, His truthfulness and goodness. She would instantly have sensed something wrong, even if she did not recognize it mentally. Satan’s saying that “God knows” implied that of course it would be good to have that fruit to eat, so “God just doesn’t want the best for you like I do.” Had she been filled with the fruit of the tree of life, she would have easily rejected Satan’s lies for what they were: “I know Him. He visits with us every night. I feed on His nature every day. He’s not like what you are implying. You’re a liar. I don’t think I like you.” But she had not been feeding where she should, so she was vulnerable to Satan’s lies and temptation.

In her defense, it should be said that this conversation was not at all fair, even had she been feeding rightly on Jesus. She was standing in the presence of the father of all lies and liars (John 8:44). There was nothing clean and objective about their conversation. Any woman who has experienced a lecherous man looking her up and down with lust knows what it is to feel defiled from head to toe. Any person who has done only a few exorcisms knows what it is to feel the nausea Satan’s presence engenders. Defilement a thousand times worse than those small touches was flooding over Eve all the while she talked with Satan! His evil presence was more and more effectively robbing her of her willpower and clarity of thought the longer their conversation continued.

From this we can see our own vulnerability to defilement and temptation. Deep bitter roots and false mental ruts have been handed down to us in two ways: first from the lack of feeding discussed earlier and the consequent weakness of spirit, and second from inherited tracks of defilement, both as bitter roots from drinking from Satan’s nature and as twisted ruts of thoughts about God and His nature.

From Eve’s deception, it is a “given” in us not to trust fully that God is as good as the Bible reveals Him to be. At root level, from Eve’s deposit in us and our own poor choices, we don’t tap into His presence sufficiently or frequently enough to cause every cell of our being to resonate with His goodness. If we did, we would for the most part be greatly immune to temptation and delusion. But we don’t yet know Him as we should. A large part of the reason for that lies in inherited, hidden habits of slothfulness in devotion and thoughts of mistrust below the level of conscious thought. We will not successfully recover freedom by mere determination to keep our prayer life going or by fighting to keep our thoughts pure toward Him, though those will help. Again, confession is in order:

Father, I fail to be with You as I ought. Therefore, I don’t trust You as I should. Bring my spiritually slothful and wandering ways to death on the cross. Give me a new heart of devotion and a new mind of trust.

St. Paul warns:

Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good

morals.” Become sober-minded as you ought, and

stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God.

I speak this to your shame.

—1 CORINTHIANS 15:33-34, EMPHASIS ADDED

BAD COMPANY

Because Eve kept bad company in the garden, it has become a root tendency in all of us to ally ourselves with people who do us little good! What parent has not been grieved and puzzled to see his otherwise normal and emotionally healthy child taking up with “orangutans” and other undesirable characters? We parents do the same, however. We know that there are people with whom we ought not to fellowship, but sometimes we seem to be fatally attracted to the very people who are apt to influence us wrongly.

In our mental ruts, we try to excuse our behavior or think faint-heartedly that we ought to flee out of some of our relationships. But we fail to act as we should, much as Eve may have entertained second thoughts while she talked with Satan but did not follow through.

Freedom is not achieved merely by determining to find better friends, though that may help. We need to crucify that in us which seeks the flattery of friendship with people weaker in grace and wisdom than ourselves and to pray for the humility to seek out friends whose fellowship will make us stretch to improve.

On his part, Satan was attempting to disengage Eve’s roots from the righteous nurture of the Lord and to attach her roots to himself. It needs to be understood that in direct ratio to the time and increase of defilement that much less was she able to think her own thoughts. Defilement works that way.

One moment we may rightly and perhaps pridefully congratulate ourselves that we are withstanding corruption and thinking our own thoughts clearly, and the next we may be totally swept away without knowing it. I learned that the hard way. At Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, my older brother Hal and I became involved in the only “panty raids” that had ever happened in Drury’s history! A panty raid was a massive invasion of women’s dorms by male students for fun and mischief, which sometimes fell to vandalism.

Having been called out in the night to join in the fracas and seeing what was going on, I decided to participate partially, hoping to help keep some order. At first I did. Having gained entrance to McCullough Cottage along with a score of others through a rear upstairs window, I merely watched as young men tossed beds upside down, swiped panties and bras from drying lines for trophies, teased the women, and generally made mayhem. I remember seeing, with the calm detachment of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, that instead of simply opening the front door and walking out, my friends ran to a front window, not bothering to raise the venetian blinds, and stepped through them, out onto the front porch! I stopped, raised the blinds, visited with Mrs. Giles, the dorm mother, apologizing for the behavior of us all, said good night, and stepped onto the porch. So far so good; I was still in control of myself.

But then mob rule took over. I found myself marching with the crowd to the next dorm, shouting with them their obscenities—and wound up throwing gravel on the president’s roof, laughing demonically. Later, when I returned to my senses, I repented and asked for forgiveness of the Lord, as well as a few dozen others! Now, I praise God for that experience, for by it I can comprehend to some degree what happened to Eve—and how good people today can become carried away by such things as lynch mobs to do things that normally would be abhorrent to their conscience. At one moment we can be proceeding securely within our own thoughts, and the next, swept away in the onslaught of mob defilement, entirely overcome by satanic winds of feeling and thinking (Eph. 4:14).

THE BATTLE FOR THE CONTROL OF MEN’S MINDS

The great warfare is the battle for the control of men’s minds, especially in this modern day. Propagandists have learned to manipulate the media until entire masses of people have become brainwashed into doing whatever demagogues want them to do. Khomeini’s religious fanatics sent mere children rushing mindlessly into mine fields, believing they would enter paradise through martyrdom in their leader’s false jihad (religious war).

Multitudes in the sixties tore apart Detroit and other cities in racial turmoil until those cities looked like battle-fields in the aftermath of war. Today, we Christians often catch one another up in the latest delusion trumpeted in the mass media. For example, there was the hype and foolishness we went through when the teaching about prosperity went off balance for a while.

Worse, Satan works through principalities and world rulers of this present darkness (Eph. 6:12) to imprison and control all our thinking processes so as to prevent the church from gaining the freedom and wisdom by which to crush his head as prophesied in Genesis 3:15.

Few Christians today realize how seldom the thoughts they think are truly their own in Christ and how often they are unwittingly conformed to the world while thinking they are serving only the Lord. The plea here is for discipline, to be resolved to haul the mind daily to death in our fleshly feelings and thoughts, no longer carried to and fro by the cunning of men in deceitful wiles (Eph. 4:14). Our propensity to be overtaken and made captive to do someone else’s will began right there in Eve’s succumbing to Satan’s defilement. It is dangerous to think oneself too educated or too wise to fall. We must daily take our own thoughts captive to obedience to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).

MASS DEFILEMENT

I intentionally belabor this point because I know prophetically that the warfare for the control of men’s minds through mass defilement will increase and become the major battleground of our day. That is certainly one strong message we can take as a rhema word from Revelation 12:15: “And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood.”

Today, for the first time, the ever-increasing capability to influence people through mass media has given the devil real opportunity to sweep the church away in a veritable flood from his mouth—pornography, propaganda, false teachings, and so on. For just one example, today countless Christian couples think nothing of living together without benefit of marriage, something that would have been unthinkable a generation ago! Their minds have been swept away in the flood. The day is coming when only those who pay the price of constant vigilance and daily death on the cross will stand free in our Lord Jesus Christ.

ROOTED IN LOVE

One antidote to delusion deserves more attention. Had Eve been feeding on the tree of life, she would have been rooted in love, empowered to comprehend “what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:17-19, emphasis added). The strength of her spirit would have arisen to throw off Satan’s defilement.

How truly our Lord said, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4). Love not only casts off fear (1 John 4:18), but it also enables us to throw off defilement and delusion.

I have known many saints in the Lord who were neither educated nor very intelligent but were the wisest, most stable Christians I have met, more impervious to delusion and temptation than many brilliant scholars and theologians. Theirs were hearts of simple devotion and service to the Lord. Above all, they were loving people. Not so with those who feed on the tree of knowledge:

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

—GENESIS 3:6

With whose eyes was Eve now seeing? Satan’s, of course. Defilement had run its course in her. She was no longer thinking her own thoughts. Presumably, the tree was a delight to behold. If sin didn’t look good, who would do it?

God had probably intended that later on, when they had become mature enough, they would be given permission to eat its fruit. For example, when children are small, we do not tell them everything we know about sex. Not that there is anything wrong with sex, but our children are too young and immature to handle such knowledge rightly. In the same way, I suspect our loving heavenly Father would have given us the fullness of knowledge of good and evil in His own time and way.

If this supposition is true, then Satan tempted Adam and Eve to take by force of sin what God would have given at the right time by grace. It is at least certain that ever since then we have all been powerfully influenced by root tendencies and mental ruts to take again and again by force of sin what God would have given at the right time by grace.

A fiancé who takes his beloved sexually before the marriage ceremony has taken by force of sin that which God would have given him in holiness in the right time and way. A thief takes by force of sin the provision God could have given him in righteous ways. A liar tries to obtain by his lies what God might have found for him in godly ways.

Every sin we commit has behind it distrust that God will provide what is best for us in His own time and way. That habit of falsely grabbing what we want, rather than waiting for the goodness of God to provide the best, is a mental rut of distrust we have all inherited from both Adam and Eve.

Prayers for patience will help but won’t get it done unless we also pray the following:

Lord, slay my false desires and my distrust. Although I am already born anew, enable my heart to live out that gift. Let it be equipped and empowered by Your heart of trust in our heavenly Father.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

—GENESIS 3:7

It is good for eyes to be opened. God never said that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was bad, only that Adam and Eve should not eat from its fruit. But if we remember that God had commanded them not to eat of that tree, and now we see that their disobedience brought about something good, we have a problem! Matthew 7:17 says, “Even so, every good tree bears good fruit; but the bad tree bears bad fruit.” From our confusion has come the mistaken notion that if we sin, something good will come of it! Thinking to experience peace or to heighten their sensitivities, people get hooked on drugs! Men and women excuse their extramarital affairs, saying, “I’m coming alive like never before!” (Actually, they’re dying in their souls while being emotionally excited and turned on.) “This is wonderful! Surely something this good can’t be bad.” That sinful and foolish mental rut has seduced untold thousands into misery.

Let it be known once and for all, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:7-8). Nothing good ever comes from sin! Our Lord’s grace may transform the results to better than what was before, but that is at the cost of His suffering, not the product of our sin.

Let’s clear up the confusion. Adam and Eve now saw good and evil in the warped way Satan sees, not in the pure and wise way God perceives good and evil! Nothing good came from their sin. All their knowing and all mankind’s to follow was unremittingly tainted from then on until redemption centuries later, with Satan’s sick delusions of right and wrong! All our confused mental tracks about wrongdoing stem from this one disobedience. Let us never again think that any good thing comes from sinning! In this sense, their eyes were closed, not opened—closed to God’s pure way of seeing and opened to Satan’s insane versions of reality. And so are ours until the Father gives us the mind of Christ.

“ . . . and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened” (Gen. 3:6- 7, emphasis added). What a dramatic fact that until Adam also ate, nothing happened! Adam was in headship, both by being created first and by being her husband. Therefore, until his disobedience agreed with her sin, nothing resulted. Eve was deceived; Adam was not. God’s gift of Eve to Adam had become such an idol to him that he chose her before God! From this sin derives our rut of choosing the woman in place of God.

Anytime a man listens inappropriately to his wife rather than to God, he has committed Adam’s sin all over again. Whoever sins sexually with any woman has surrendered again to that track of placing a woman before God in importance, a rut built by Adam in this first sin of mankind. That rut has been the basic first cause for every man’s sexual sins. All of us have it in us to fall to seduction. No one is safe. We cannot secure ourselves from making women too important or from sexual sin by castrating ourselves, by fleeing to a monastery, or by gritting our teeth to hang on to moral virtue, though the latter may help. Rather, we need to pray:

Dear God, bring to death my mind’s inclination to fall into such ruts. Set me free in You to feel, think, and act in relation to women as only You would have me do.

“ . . . and they knew that they were naked” (v. 7). As Genesis 2:25 carefully states it, “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” But now they viewed their nakedness as Satan viewed it—in lust and filthiness! Now they were ashamed. We see the change in them immediately—they covered themselves with fig leaves.

From this mental rut has originated all of our tendencies to pornography, “adult” bookstores (in actuality, they are quite juvenile), R-rated and X-rated movies, and so on. Porn can seduce primarily because that rut is there from Adam’s immediate wrong beholding of Eve when Satan’s sinful way entered their hearts: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world” (1 John 2:16, emphasis added). St. John could have as easily said, “ . . . is from that deposit into our characters from Adam and Eve’s sin.”

We have ministered to so many who have pitifully struggled by their own determination for years, failing again and again to find freedom from whatever form lust took in their lives. They discovered joyous freedom when they stopped struggling in the flesh and simply prayed, “Lord, You have already won this battle for me. I claim that victory, and I rest in Your ability to keep me safe from harm.” To be sure, they had to exercise some willpower, but now their will was being directed to stand in Jesus rather than merely to struggle futilely in the flesh. They had to learn not to empower the flesh by the strength of the Law (Rom. 7:8) and how to believe and trust in Jesus, but they got free.

7

ROOTS AND RUTS FROM THE GARDEN OF EDEN

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking

in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and

his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD

God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God

called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”

GENESIS 3:8-9, EMPHASIS ADDED

COULD ANYONE SUPPOSE that the omniscient Lord of all the universe did not in fact know where Adam was? When a psychiatrist enters the room of a mentally ill patient, he may say, “Where are you today?” and/or “Who are you today?” If the person can respond, “I’m Sam Smith and I’m in ____________ Mental Institution” and that is in fact who and where he is, his declaration has strengthened his hold on reality and has informed the psychiatrist about his state of health. Of course our loving heavenly Father knew where Adam and Eve were; He was attempting to give them a chance to come forward and confess what they had done. Had they done so, all of history would have been different! However, God in His foreknowledge knew that they would not. Nevertheless, He gave them every opportunity.

Imagine time and silence as God waited, loving Adam, willing him to come forward, and knowing all along where he was and what he had done.

But Adam was afraid.

I doubt that this was the first time God had come walking in the cool of the day. The context indicates a habit of relaxing in the garden, visiting with Adam and Eve. Each time before, Adam and Eve most likely had come running as delighted children do when their daddy comes home from work. How Adam and Eve’s hearts must have leaped with joy at the sound of His coming! Nothing heretofore had clouded their spirits’ perception of His love and graciousness. They knew Him. As an old Latvian hymn says, they could “walk and talk and jest with Him, as good friends should and do.”

But now their roots had become dislodged from God’s gentle nurture by sin, and Satan’s doubt and guiltiness had perverted their comprehension of Him. His presence now brought fear rather than the comfort of homecoming.

Early on in my walk with Christ, I came to understand a bit of what Adam and Eve felt. God heard my prayer, and soon after my conversion, He caught me up into the very glory of His presence before His throne in heaven. But I was too young in faith to trust fully in the blood of Jesus to cover all my sin. His awesome, utterly holy golden glory shot all through me, revealing in its passage my sinfulness and shame. I was terrified! Whatever God might have revealed or said to me, I never knew. I fought to escape from that terrible holy presence until I found myself sitting again at my desk in my office.

But I had two thousand years of Christianity behind me, plus a most recent experience of salvation. To catch a glimmer of Adam and Eve’s situation, remove from your mind those centuries of God’s expressed forgiveness through the blood of the Cross, mix in a most recent experience of Satan’s defiling presence, and add the terror of their guilt before anything was known about forgiveness—perhaps then we can begin to understand why they fled from the very personification of forgiveness and healing!

(The Scriptures don’t tell us whether God had taught them what to do if they sinned in some way or even if they happened to sin unintentionally.)

FEAR OF GOD’S PRESENCE

Out of their flight from God came one of the most powerful ruts in all our thinking! We say we want God to meet us in our corporate worship and private devotions, but the truth is that we don’t want Him to come any closer than we can control and feel comfortable about. We’re afraid of His awesome presence.

If God revealed to us how many times He has wanted to approach us and how often we have fled away from prayer before He could, we would probably be shocked beyond belief!

Frequently, while traveling to church after church, Paula and I have participated in worship services in which we could sense the imminent approach of God upon His people—and have witnessed how often congregations and leaders have changed the subject and fled away before He could come in His fullness! Has anyone failed to notice that in Scripture almost every time an angel appeared to a servant of God, the first words out of his mouth were “Fear not”? No wonder! We’re terrified of the holy!

We’re not merely afraid of His presence—we’re afraid to come forward and confess our sins. Any prayer minister probably can recall instances of people calling to cancel appointments because, as they later admitted, they knew in their hearts that things were surfacing that needed to be confessed that day. Often, when a person has been ripening to face some “awful” thing, he or she has fled out of the ministry office—or did not come at all that day. We come by those “flight patterns” honestly—we got them from Adam and Eve before we were born!

PATTERNS OF FLIGHT AND ALIBIS

For every flight pattern, we possess built-in excuses. Did you ever notice how easy it is to find a reason not to confess something? “Perfect” alibis pop out of our mouths before we even have a chance to think. We don’t have to strive to make alibis; they just pop out! Mental ruts of flight and alibi making supply our tongues with words from data banks as old as Adam standing before God, saying:

I heard the sound of Thee in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.

—GENESIS 3:10, EMPHASIS ADDED

Is that why Adam was afraid? Of course not. He was afraid because he had sinned, and Satan had robbed him of ability to trust in God’s loving nature. So he put the wrong reason on his foolish actions. That deception built into all mankind the deep mental track of putting lying reasons behind foolish deeds. From this, let me lay out a maxim for all of us to follow: Never allow a noble reason for foolishness or sin. Good produces good. Evil produces evil. More to the point, good cannot produce evil, and evil cannot produce good.

For example, a wife insists that her husband talk with us because “he has been punishing the children too heavily. Sometimes his discipline is really abuse!”

He says, “Well, I got into a lot of trouble as a kid, and I know what can happen. I guess I just love my kids too much. I’m determined to keep them out of trouble.”

True determination, born of love, would have created compassion and teaching rather than abuse. Our probing soon reveals that his father greatly abused him when he was a child. Unforgiveness now caused him to do the same thing to his own children (Rom. 2:1). Evil created the abuse; loving-kindness cannot act that way.

A wife brought her husband (Fred, in the first chapter) to us because at a party the night before, when a man made some lewd advances toward her, he reacted with horrible violence rather than with protective wisdom. “I guess I just love her too much, so I lost my head when that guy treated her like that.” Love, being good, can never produce evil. The Holy Spirit soon uncovered that his mother had been unfaithful. He had never yet dealt with his angers at the man who had seduced his mother or with his disappointment and judgments toward her, now projected upon his wife.

The most common example by far is: “I just couldn’t help myself when I went to bed with [someone in fornication or adultery]; I’m just head over heels in love.” Wrong! Nothing but lust overcame moral conscience! Truly Christian love would have carried with it respect for the other in the sight of God.

EVIL MOTIVES—EVIL DEEDS

The understanding that evil motives always lie behind evil deeds can serve as a most effective lie detector. “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12, emphasis added). “The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple” (Ps. 19:7, emphasis added). The simple truth that good things can never lie behind bad deeds has helped me unravel thousands of Gordian knots in prayer ministry!

We learned the track of lying to ourselves before we learned anything, because we never had to “learn” it; it came with the package of being human, an engram from Adam’s first lie to God: “ . . . because I was naked.” There is no other way to get rid of it than by the Cross. God doesn’t intend to fix it; He intends to slay it—and has done so already on the Cross of Christ. Our response? “Slay it in me, Lord. Set me free from deceiving myself and others. Give me a heart and mind of truth and honesty.”

God saw the deception in Adam’s reply but said nothing about it. I doubt He needed to. I can remember being a ten-year-old, standing before my dad, having trotted out my latest lamebrain excuses. The silence had been deafening with the thunder of revelation! Kindness and sternness flickered alternately across his face, teased by barely repressed chuckles. I couldn’t help but see the lies behind my protestations. And likewise, Adam knew his lie hadn’t worked!

So God tried again, this time a little more directly: “Who told you that you were naked?” (Gen. 3:11). Picture God waiting patiently again—let’s not press on to His next question for a while. Imagine our loving heavenly Father standing there pouring love throughout Adam’s heart and mind and spirit, wooing him, hoping, like so many earthly fathers later on, to endow his child with enough courage to confess what he had done. God was trying to reattach Adam’s roots to Himself, his heavenly Father.

We know from Adam’s silence, and his wrong answer to the next question, that Adam was not won over. So we might ask, “Why?” God has all the power of the universe. Why did Satan succeed in keeping Adam’s mind enthralled? Because God is a gentleman, and Satan is not! God will never force His good will on any person or use His power to control, overinfluence, or manipulate, even though He knows that not to use His power may allow a dearly beloved child to fall to ever greater suffering in sin. That is the price even an omnipotent (all-powerful) God must pay if He would have sons and daughters rather than robots.

But Satan will use anything he can lay hold of to get his own selfish way—possession, blinding (2 Cor. 4:4), spell casting (Deut. 18:11), manipulation, trickery and cunning in misinterpreting God’s Word (2 Cor. 4:2), temptation, thought control, whatever. There was nothing fair about the contest for the free will of Adam, just as there is nothing fair in the warfare for men’s souls today. But what a comfort that “this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:39, emphasis added).

From Adam’s silence toward God’s question, we inherit our own reluctance and rebellious resistance to responding as we should in hundreds of situations! How about all those times we have seen brothers and sisters actually swaying back and forth physically as they fought not to respond to God during an altar call? Or the times when we knew God’s Holy Spirit was prompting us to give a word or make a confession, and we stood there silently sweating while our heart pumped harder and harder? Or all those occasions when we knew in our spirit, and even at the edges of our mind, that it was really God who was prompting us to make an apology to our mate or some other loved one—but we stood stubbornly, fearfully silent? We suffer that kind of mental imprisonment from deep ruts installed by Adam’s silence before the patience of God!

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

However, we can’t get away with blaming it all on poor old Adam, as though we were nothing but victims. We inherit mental ruts of seduction without asking for them, but they do not become controlling forces until we surrender to them and act upon them. We are always responsible for our sin. We choose to act upon the evil promptings of our hearts. To find freedom, we need to see that the propensity to stubborn silence and withdrawal started there in Eden. It ends by the Cross of Christ when we see its rootage in our own selfishness and fear and determine to kill its power over us.

As children, we added another dimension to this habit, or at least I did. I learned how to get my mother’s goat by “turning off” and remaining silent while she upbraided me and demanded answers. I learned that by not showing any kind of emotion at all, I could push her clean out of control—and that kind of wicked power felt good! Later, as a Christian trying to become more like my Lord, I found that I had to become willing to see my malicious delight for what it was and to come to hate it enough to quit using that childish technique on Paula and others close to me. Do you suppose I am the only sinner who has done that? I doubt it.

When Adam didn’t answer, God tried again, this time much more directly: “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gen. 3:11). Can anyone believe our omniscient Lord didn’t already know the answer to His question? Why, then, did He ask? He wanted to give Adam and Eve every chance to come clean before Him.

Can anyone who knows the Lord believe He shouted His questions with fury and rancor, as a human father sometimes might? No. With pain in His heart for Adam and Eve, how gently He must have questioned them. But Adam and Eve were now under the influence of Satan. Have we not all seen how often frightened and guilty children perceive their parents’ tender and gentle questioning as vehemence and threats? Adam and Eve had become deaf to the real nature of God’s voice. They now dreaded what ought to have comforted them.

Just so, today, innumerable parishioners hear malicious attacks in loving rebukes from pastors whose hearts are breaking for them! That deep rut of the mind wreaks havoc in church after church, Sunday after Sunday. Not that some pastors don’t do some faulty accusatory preaching, but if we were free from this rut inherited from the first ones who listened to God, we would be capable of hearing God’s truth no matter how faulty His vessels, and so we would be grateful to God for caring enough to discipline us (Heb. 12:5-11).

That same rut works rebellion and hatred between parents and children, bosses and employees, officers and enlisted personnel, and so on, ad nauseam. God is waiting for a people willing to pay the price of self-death in order to grow up into a mighty army united in Him rather than peevish children who continue to quibble in self-justifying, self-seeking ways.

PASSING THE BUCK

Finally, Adam knew he had to respond—and so he came up with the first instance of buck-passing in the history of the world! “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12, emphasis added). Adam actually passed the buck twice—first to Eve, and second to God Himself!

God, being the essence of kindness He is, passed over Adam’s foolish response and turned to the woman: “What is this you have done?” (Gen. 3:13)—as though He didn’t know already. But Eve only came up with history’s second instance of buck-passing! “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Gen. 3:13).

Thus, we inherit a double dose of buck-passing! We get it from both our progenitors. Rare is the man or woman who can stand and take even the mildest accusations without attempting to alibi, excuse, rationalize, or pass the buck somewhere. Silly excuses and blaming others just seem to flow so easily out of our mouths! That habit never had to be taught to us; it came with our skin and bones, grafted into our character. Again, we’ll not get free by fleshy determination “never to do that again.” Mark 8:34 and Romans 6:6-13 are the only answer. We must persistently attempt to crucify our buck-passing ways.

Adam’s words, “whom Thou gavest to be with me,” were of course an attempt to blame God for Adam’s own sin. What a pervasive and powerful rut that has been built in all of us! Unwilling to deal with the divisiveness in each of their own hearts, a married couple divorces. When their children react by rebelling and choosing sinful lifestyles, the parents blame each other for their children’s downfall and ask, “Why did God do this to me?” When the children reap broken relationships or contract venereal diseases, the children likewise exclaim, “Why did God do this to me?” Proverbs 19:3 says, “When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the LORD” (RSV).

In the depths of our spirit, as we said earlier, we want to tell God that life and His purposes aren’t fair. For this reason, St. Paul wrote, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20, emphasis added). Note that in this instance, the Word does not speak of God being reconciled to us but the other way around—as though we need to forgive God. Of course God has never done anything deserving to be forgiven, but that doesn’t keep us from being perfectly angry at a perfect God.

When my brother Hal was in kindergarten, all members of his class were to bring hard-boiled eggs to school for an Easter celebration. Hal came home that day furious at Mom because she had never taught him how to break eggs against his forehead, and he was afraid that the yellow and white would run all down his face, and he didn’t know how to keep that from happening, so he didn’t get to eat any, and it was all her fault! Our anger at God is just that silly but also terribly real to us.

We need to express “forgiveness” to God, knowing that what actually happens is that we receive forgiveness for our own foolish judgments against Him. We should pray, “Lord, bring this habit of blaming You in my heart to death on Your cross (whether I can admit it in my mind or not), and resurrect trust and honor for You until that becomes second nature to me.”

Let’s pass over what God said to the serpent and move on to examine what He said to Eve:

I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall bring forth children; yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

—GENESIS 3:16, EMPHASIS ADDED

Some think that God was exacting vengeance or punishing Eve. I doubt that. When I had done some sinful thing as a child and my father had found out about it, he would sit me down and we would have a little talk. If he saw that I would have to reap some terrible consequences for what I had done, that was the end of his disciplining me. He would just tell me, “Son, this is what you are going to have to reap.” He would explain to me in compassion what was going to happen, wanting me to understand and wishing me to derive the benefit of what I was about to learn through the “school of hard knocks.” Far kinder than my earthly father, God was laying out before Adam and Eve what would be the consequences of their actions so that they would understand and grow in wisdom from their experiences.

There is some pain in all childbirth. God was explaining to Eve that her sin had set such tension into her body that her pain would increase. So it is that Eve’s sin has set such a mold in our deep minds that women suffer great pains in childbirth. Today, Lamaze and Bradley methods are teaching women how to relax, lessening the pain of childbirth—but the best relaxer is still a clear conscience, made so by the art of confessing life’s daily irritations and sins as they happen, moment by moment, abiding in the love of Jesus.

“Yet your desire shall be for your husband.” Eve’s desire for her husband already existed, both because she had been created from his rib and naturally felt incomplete without him and because she had known no life without Adam. In His wisdom, God gave Adam only enough time without Eve to become lonely enough to want her. But Eve knew no life apart from her husband! Now God was revealing to her that her sin would cause her desire for her husband to become inordinate. Therefore, she and her descendants would reap a perpetual rut of striving to please men rather than God!

So many times Paula and I have heard women who thought they loved the Lord with all their hearts brokenly confessing to adultery. The common rut of needing to please the man had overcome their best intentions. Or they shared that they recognized that they had so often discarded their own better judgment and had done some wrong thing their husbands had talked them into.

Worse yet, we have often grieved to hear of preachers and elders telling women they must do whatever their husbands dictate, believing that is what a truly submissive Christian wife must do—and some wives, beguiled by this deep rut of desire to please the man, submit and agree to that nonsense! God expects every person to use his own conscience and his own good common sense. We see this in principle in His advice concerning listening to prophets:

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among

you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign

or wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke

to you, saying, “Let us go after other gods (whom

you have not known) and let us serve them,” you

shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that

dreamer of dreams [or husband]; for the LORD your

God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD

your God with all your heart and with all your

soul. You shall follow the LORD your God and fear

Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen

to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.

—DEUTERONOMY 13:1-4, EMPHASIS ADDED

If we can see that we ought not to listen to any prophet, pastor, or teacher who teaches wrongly or to do what he says if it is scripturally wrong, can we not see that the same principle applies to the obedience of wives to their husbands? When a command of the Lord is clear, a wife must follow God first rather than her husband. This means that when a husband tells his wife, for example, that she is forbidden to attend church, he is out of line. A husband cannot be allowed to exercise authority that overrides the commandments of God. He cannot be allowed to force her to lie, cheat, steal, or give herself sexually in wrong ways. Let every woman surrender to the Lord her tendency to please and obey her husband rather than God, and let her ask to be set free from idolatry.

“And he shall rule over you.” Adam was already established in headship over Eve, both by being the first created and by being her husband. In true godly rule, leaders lay down their lives in order to set free and enable all within their domain to become the most they can be in the Lord. A husband must never dominate and control, use his position for personal advantage, or disrespect and treat his wife as an object or chattel to be used as he sees fit.

Historically, what God was prophesying to Eve has come to pass wherever the grace of Christ has not yet personally overcome the results of this first sin. Men have dominated and controlled women the world over! In most Muslim countries a woman cannot vote, and her words will not even be heard in court, much less ever be allowed to override any man’s testimony. She is her husband’s possession. If he beats her, the courts will say nothing; she is only a woman, and he has a right to do anything he wants to her. Her children do not belong to her, or even to them, but only to him.

Wherever heresy enters a Christian group, one of the first and most telling signs is that women immediately lose their rights as free and equal partners and become second-class citizens from whom only slavish obedience is to be expected—in meek and submissive silence! Witness what happened when shepherding and disciplining went off balance many years ago. We are still mopping up after that destruction of Christian family roles.

Eight months before I was born, before my mother knew she was pregnant with me, God spoke to her and told her that she was to have a son who would be His servant in many places and ways. Eliciting only a grunt from my father when she woke him to tell him what had happened, she thereby gained some wisdom and told no one, least of all me. At eighteen, I declared interest in ministry and preached my first sermon. That afternoon she sat me down and told me how I had been called from before my birth.

When it began to appear that Paula and I were becoming serious about one another, I told her there was a call on my life and I would follow that call no matter what else. If that responsibility called me away from her, she needed to understand that at the outset. I thought I alone had a call and Paula shared it only by being married to me.

The Lord then began to work on my male arrogance. After a while, He showed me that Paula is my partner in the gospel. But I still thought it was my mission and she had come along to be my helper. But Paula is my helpmeet, not my helper. Finally, the Lord showed me that from the ground plan of Creation we had been created for the same mission. It had always been ours, not mine with a helper. She is my full and equal partner.

Headship means that the buck stops with me and that when we have not had sufficient time or cannot arrive at a decision together, I must make it and face the consequences. From the struggle God went through to break me out of that rut of male dominance over women inherited from Adam and Eve. I know in some small part how deeply ingrained it is in all men to put women down, ever so subtly sometimes, but down nevertheless!

Our Lord Jesus Christ intends to restore woman to more than she was in Eden. He is the greatest “women’s libber” of all time! But He intends to do it by bringing mental ruts of dominance and control to death on His cross, not merely by marches and demonstrations. He changes us from the inside out. Any other changes, in government, cultural patterns, theological and societal beliefs, and the like will have no lasting effect without death and rebirth. That is the meat and importance of these chapters and the reason for this entire book!

To Adam, God said:

Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat from it”; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

—GENESIS 3:17-19

Adam had already been toiling. Before Eve came to join him, he was at work taking care of the garden. Labor was meant to be nothing but blessing. Heretofore, it had been. God had enjoyed creating and had pronounced each day’s work “good” (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), and when all had been created, “very good” (Gen. 1:31, emphasis added). But sin’s results would fill labor with anxiety and tension, creating “sweat.” Physically, sweat is good. Whoever cannot sweat in hot climates is in trouble. God was saying that this kind of sweat would not be good since it originated from false struggles in the flesh from fear, anger, and hatred. Later, priests in the temple were required to wear linen to prevent sweating in the Lord’s service (Ezek. 44:18). From Adam’s time until redemption in our Lord, labor has been corrupted by the curse of the mental rut of strain that God prophesied here.

A MAN’S TWO WORLDS

It is greatly significant that Adam knew the blessing of labor before Eve appeared, especially that he knew labor as a secure blessing before his abdication to her got him into sin. Because of sinful ruts in men’s thinking, from then until now men tend to flee from their wives into the security and manageable satisfaction of their work! A man has two worlds—work and family—and all too often his family comes in a distant second. A woman, desiring her husband, even if her job also becomes a career, is still more likely to keep her priorities straight and put her family first.

Early on, the Lord took pains to make Paula and me aware of the seduction of the call of labor away from family. Though He had called us to be among those who work to restore the office of the prophet in the church today, to rediscover and define inner healing, and to labor to return families to biblical living, He made it unmistakably clear that our first calling was and is to raise our six children unto the Lord!

Presidents soon will be almost forgotten. Best-selling novels will soon gather dust. Empires will crumble. However, if a man and his wife have but two children, whatever they build into them in the nature of precious stones, gold, and silver (Christian character, wisdom, and knowledge) will last forever in the hearts and minds of those children in heaven (1 Cor. 3:12). Forming our children in the Lord may be our only truly eternal work.

Whether it was due to the seductive call of labor or some other causes, Adam and Eve probably did not do a good job of parenting—their first child committed the first murder! I grieve as I counsel leaders and their families. Far too frequently their children’s lives have been sacrificed to the call of labor. PKs (preachers’ kids) and MKs (missionaries’ kids) are known throughout Christendom for the frequency of rebellion and trouble in their lives.

PUTTING OUR PRIORITIES IN ORDER

Though labor for Adam became filled with strain and sweat, for many of us men it has become our first love. I plead with you, every brother and sister in Christ, to put your priorities in order. Place your children next only to God in importance—God will not call you to serve Him in ways that destroy your children’s lives. I plead with men, don’t frustrate your wife’s love for you by making her an occupational widow, jealous of your work. Bring to death on the cross that practiced rut that came from the fall of Adam. Love your wife and family first after God, not your work.

Sin separates. Immediately after they had sinned, guilt, fear, and lies separated Adam and Eve from God. Then they were separated from each other by Eve’s inordinate desire and the corruption of Adam’s headship. Finally they were separated from nature by thorns and thistles and unrewarding labor.

It became a vicious cycle that we inherit through roots and ruts today. Men spend too much time and energy at work. That frustrates their wives’ desire to be with them. So wives scold, harangue, or manipulate, trying to cause their husbands to pay them more attention. That tempts husbands to flee to the office, farm, or factory, where they can feel more competent and composed, where they know how to make things happen and feel the satisfaction of seeing a job well done. That in turn disappoints their wives all the more, and their resultant bitterness, loneliness, and tension tempt them to act in ways that can only separate them further!

It is important for husbands and wives to see this cycle and come to hate it until both can haul it to the cross together. We need to repent of it as our own sin and as a death-dealing cycle we have all inherited from our forefathers, generation to generation, back to Adam and Eve. It needs to be broken at the foot of the cross in repentance.

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever...

—GENESIS 3:22

This text is perhaps the most greatly misunderstood passage in the Bible. Most of us have heard Sunday school teachers proclaiming that Adam and Eve had now become like God, knowing good and evil. I have heard professors in seminary courses on theology and biblical exegesis declare that Adam and Eve’s sin was “a fall upstairs, necessary if we were to become knowledgeable and wise!” Nothing could be more mistaken! Through this confusion we have built into ourselves at subconscious levels the foolish notion that if we sin, somehow we will become nobler and wiser, more like God.

Let us set the record straight. The scenario is as follows: God tried to save Adam and Eve from their error. But every time God asked Adam and Eve a question, their answers were fraught with deception, lies, alibis, and buck-passing.

Satan long before had become corrupt and had fallen from grace, but he was still allowed access to heaven. God said to him, “From where do you come?” And Satan answered, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it” (Job 1:7). Satan was not finally cast out of heaven until the Lord sent out the seventy to preach the kingdom and they returned with rejoicing, and the Lord exclaimed, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning” (Luke 10:18).

Therefore, the examination of Adam and Eve being concluded, God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us” (Gen. 3:22). Adam and Eve now knew good and evil, but not in the pure way God knows good and evil. They had come to know good and evil only as Satan knows good and evil. Their lies and sins had caused them to become spiritually, emotionally, and mentally like Satan, not like God.

Please let us hear it once and for all: we can never become more like God by sinning! Sin makes us childish, not child-like. Evil produces only evil. Sin never makes people nobler and wiser; it only makes them more foolish and rebellious.

SINNING CANNOT PRODUCE GOOD

From the misinterpretation of that text has descended a most persistent lie, a rut of deception that has done untold harm in the lives of countless people—that sinning somehow produces good. That lie weakens our resolve to stand in righteousness—after all, if I am going to become more like God by giving in to this or that temptation, why not?

This erodes belief that God’s laws mean what they say—after all, if Adam and Eve were rewarded by becoming like God through sinning, why should I expect to reap anything bad by doing something forbidden? That lie destroys trust in the nature of God—“He said that they would surely die, but they only became more like Him! I guess He didn’t mean what He said.”

In my earlier years as a conservative voice in a liberal denomination, I had many colleagues who actually believed this! Of course, most conservative Christians would reject this idea outright, but do their hearts reject it? How many have magnified knowledge of their spouses’ faults while ignoring their own, and used this knowledge to justify divorce? How many have focused on the knowledge that God wants us to prosper, using that to justify hoarding wealth while ignoring the poor, or working long hours unnecessarily while ignoring their wives and children? How many have done such things and called it “wisdom,” convincing themselves that no spiritual death would result?

When we have taught this lesson in seminars, I have been amazed to see how few realize the seriousness and tremendous impact of this error in the minds and lives of men and women everywhere. Let me encourage you to think long and hard and meditate deeply about these things. You may see that this mental rut acts like a slimy snake slithering through the corridors of your mind, offering the same temptations to you as to Adam and Eve, until you see whatever sin looms before you as “desirable to make one wise,” “a delight to the eyes,” and “good for food.”

We sin because whatever forbidden thing we want seems to be worth the price of sin to get it. The lure of it, the lie that there won’t be any bad consequences, and the foolishness of unconsciously thinking that we will be better people because of it—all come from this mental rut of thinking that God said that Adam and Eve had become more like Him by sinning!

If we need more proof, had Adam and Eve truly become more like one of the Trinity, why put them out of the garden, away from the tree of life? God had to put them out. Before they had sinned, their eating from the tree of life would have strengthened them in righteousness. But when sin corrupted their characters to become like Satan’s, God could not let them feed again, lest their error be made eternal.

God could not let them return to the garden until His Son’s cross could purify them to live again among holy things. Here lies the crux of all our teaching: it is not enough merely to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That does get us to heaven. But conversion only begins the process of death and rebirth required to prepare us for fullness of life in Jesus. Positionally it is all done (John 19:30). Experientially we must daily make His death for us more and more our own. Scripture speaks of a process both finished and ongoing: “Because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:14, NIV, emphasis added). These chapters have been an effort to reveal to the body of Christ what it is that needs to be called to death at the deepest levels in all of us.

If readers do not make a conscious discipline of praying these things to death on the cross, the entire three chapters on roots and ruts shall have only entertained—or bored. Therefore, I suggest that now that you have read them through once, go back through these chapters at your leisure. Take time to think through how each root and mental rut has had effect in your own life, and wrestle each one to the cross in prayer. It’s wisest to do that in the company of other pilgrims who can reveal to you how well you are doing.

At the foot of the cross, moment by moment, day by day, is where we are either transformed according to God’s Word—or conformed to the world! Let’s fight the battle where it counts—in the deep recesses of the mind!

8

RESTORING THE FUNCTIONS OF MIND AND HEART

By R. Loren Sandford

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man

except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so

the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of

God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world,

but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the

things freely given to us by God, which things we also

speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in

those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts

with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept

the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness

to him, and he cannot understand them, because they

are spiritually appraised. . . . yet he himself is appraised by

no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that

he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.

1 CORINTHIANS 2:11-16, EMPHASIS ADDED

IF WE HAVE the mind of Christ, what needs to be renewed? What is dysfunctional in our minds? And what does this renewal have to do with proving the will of God? Our major problem is that the relationship between our minds and hearts has been perverted, the roles confused. The proper function of the mind in relation to the heart is to make decisions, while the heart is to sense and feel things as the servant of the Spirit-renewed mind.

THE FUNCTION OF THE HEART

Let’s first look at the function of the heart. Throughout the Scriptures, the heart is represented as merry, glad, stubborn, exultant, hateful, spiteful, loving, and so on. In other words, the heart feels, intuits, and understands things in a way unique among our other faculties. The heart also serves a pondering function and can achieve a level of understanding deeper than comprehension of mere facts. “Incline your heart to understanding” (Prov. 2:2). “The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer” (Prov. 15:28).

It may surprise Western readers that in both Hebrew and Greek thinking, another function of the heart is to originate thoughts. For instance, Ecclesiastes 2:1 says, “I thought in my heart... ” (NIV). Paul said, “It is with your heart that you believe . . . ” (Rom. 10:10, NIV). Even our Lord Jesus affirmed this: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts . . . ” (Matt. 15:19, NIV). We are accustomed to thinking that thoughts come from the mind and feelings from the heart, but both originate in the heart, and both are expressed by the mind. The heart’s thoughts begin in its own dark recesses, as a kind of deep pondering. Proverbs 15:28 says, “The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer.” Then its thoughts rise into the mind, which brings the heart’s fuzzy thoughts into sharp, logical focus and expresses them with clarity. That ability to gain clarity and perspective qualifies the conscious mind to make the decisions because the heart’s powerful emotions and wayward impulses often distort the heart’s thoughts even as they form. When emotions can take over as the center of decision making, we run amok.

Our culture has bought in to the idea that emotions are always truth and therefore to be validated at all costs. There is a right way to validate them: through comfort and understanding. At times, they can even act as a servant to the mind in helping to locate truth (for instance, when a feeling of uneasiness alerts a child to avoid a molester, or when righteous anger, tempered by a renewed mind, enables a battered wife to firmly but respectfully say no to her abuser). But many have exalted emotions to the level of standard setter for all truth, justifying actions completely out of line with God’s Word. For that reason, the heart needs the mind to discipline it. For instance, when the heart feels like fornicating, the mind must tell it to obey our biblical belief and refrain from sinning. It must tell the heart that when it feels like taking revenge, it must obey our belief—that we must forgive. Because so many succumb to our culture’s mind-set, although we have the mind of Christ, too many of us don’t yet walk in it.

Scripture specifically instructs us not to follow after our hearts. Numbers 15:39 commands us not to follow after our own hearts but to seek after the commandments of the Lord. Proverbs 28:26 says, “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool.” The heart left to its own devices is not to be trusted. Clearly the heart must not become the decision maker in our lives. Feelings change with daily body chemistry—what you ate for breakfast, how much sleep you got the night before, or whether your spouse picked on you today. Hardly the stuff of solid decision making!

In fact, “the heart is more deceitful than all else” (Jer. 17:9). What an extreme statement! Although every aspect of the human condition has fallen from its original glory, the Scriptures tell us that the heart is more deceitful than any other part of us, more likely to mislead and more likely to misrepresent itself and to tell lies. Left to itself, the heart is the most selfish and, therefore, the most dishonest instrument we possess.

THE FUNCTION OF THE MIND

What about the mind? The function of the mind is to know objectively and then to decide what to do with what is known. The mind, not the heart, functions to set direction, to make decisions, and then to summon all other faculties to follow after. In order to accomplish this task on balance, the mind should be “set on the Spirit” (Rom. 8:6), which is a decision, something the mind is designed for. In God’s plan, the Holy Spirit rules the mind, while the mind directs the heart and disciplines its expression.

Romans 12:2 says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Here, the Greek word for “mind” is nous. It is the faculty that simultaneously expresses and disciplines the feelings and thoughts of the heart, sifting through them until truth and lies are separated. Thus, by renewing the mind, we transform and redirect the heart and the entire person. The function of the mind is to plan, to set a righteous direction, and then to marshal all of the other parts of the person to pursue the chosen direction. In Romans 7 Paul laments the war going on within him. The law of sin wages war against the law of his mind. Again, it is the mind attempting to function properly in setting a righteous direction.

The will of God is proved by a renewed mind because such a mind seeks out the truth and fulfills its function as the decision maker, demanding that the other faculties, and especially the heart, live and function within the boundaries set by the decision. So the heart originates thoughts and feelings while the mind corrals those thoughts and feelings, makes them obedient to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), and decides accordingly.

We get into trouble when the heart is allowed to become the decision maker and judge of truth and the mind becomes carnal and a servant of the heart to justify and fortify what the heart has purposed. The mind must set borders and limits for the heart so that the heart becomes the compassionate servant of the renewed mind. When the mind fails to provide such discipline, the heart runs amok with desires, emotions, and urges until it makes living a shipwreck. Not that we should become a heartless, mental people. We need rather to become a balanced people.

THE RENEWED MIND

Whenever we base our lives on feeling rather than on the objective, righteous truth of the Word of God, we’re in desperate trouble. The renewed mind, by contrast, objectively identifies the truth of the Word of God, absorbs it, studies it, binds the whole being to it, and then sets the whole self on a course of obedience, tolerating no deviation from its course.

Under such discipline the heart is trained to become an obedient servant of the truth, providing law with compassion, righteousness with tenderness, and objective knowing with gentle intuition. As we learn this balance, we become more merciful, more loving, and more compassionate toward others. Personal satisfaction and happiness result from such a balance. Left to itself, the heart always turns to selfishness and self-centeredness.

A heart running amok as the decision maker twists all perceptions to fit its own selfish frames of reference, makes everyone else responsible for its misery (“You did this to me!”), creates delusions (“God told me to . . . ,” though He didn’t), and so much more. But the heart disciplined by a renewed mind is freed to become a tool for gentleness and for discerning the needs of others for the sake of ministry in compassion.

One day when my daughter was about thirteen years old, she came home from school in tears. She had been assigned to play for a year on a sports team with two girls who were known to use drugs. Overly concerned to be personally liked by others, she didn’t want to be identified with them. Caught up in a teenage desperation for popularity, her heart raced along unchecked while her mind obediently justified what she felt: “I didn’t ask to be on their team. It’s important to be popular. I have a right to be hurt. I’m not going to have any fun all term . . . ”

When the heart is permitted to rule and to make the decisions, the carnal mind becomes the enforcer and justifier of selfishness. We had a little talk together, in which I gently but insistently made her think through the situation until she gained perspective—a function of the mind—and directed her heart to identify with the feelings of those two girls. I wanted her to set a direction with her mind and discipline her heart to see them in a different way, to feel with them rather than only for herself. But the mind had to tell the heart to take that action. It would very rarely do so on its own. The paradox is that the heart is happy to function as the servant of the mind in compassion but miserable when allowed to run amok—although initially it may attempt to rebel at the instructions it receives.

My daughter’s heart felt strongly about her dislike of those girls, but it was the function of her mind to decide what to do with what she felt, not to justify what the heart had already decided. When we reestablished righteous compassion and brought her runaway emotions under control, she was restored to happiness, and we heard not another complaint about her teammates that year.

Suppose that your mate does something that really hurts you. Anger results, and you act on it by snapping back with a cutting remark. You believe you did it because you were hurt. You tell your friend who saw it, “Well, I’m just hurt, and it made me angry. What do you expect me to do? Don’t I have a right?” But you didn’t snap at your spouse because you were hurt. You did it because you let your heart decide your course of action rather than the mind inspired by the Holy Spirit. You used your mind to justify what your heart had already decided rather than to rule over your inner self for a righteous response. And no, you didn’t have a “right.”

We’re not talking about suppressing emotions. If you suppress your feelings, sooner or later you’ll lose control. Emotions will express themselves, either in healthy ways as we share with and confess to friends or in unhealthy explosions, sins, and physical illnesses. Ephesians 4:26 says to be angry but not to sin. In other words, feel the anger, but decide to behave righteously. You have the right to feel but not to hurt others, to have emotions but then call the mind to decide on a course of action based on the Word of God.

THE BEGINNING OF MATURITY

Maturity begins when we purpose with our mind to do right and then make our heart come along for the ride. For instance, I can choose not to snap back at my wife in an argument because my mind, steeped in the righteous truth of the Word of God, knows the truth and remembers James 1:19-20. It, therefore, instructs my heart to feel with Beth before acting on my anger and to place her needs before my own.

But let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

—JAMES 1:19-20

Left to itself, not only is the heart the most selfish instrument we own, but it will also captivate every other aspect of ourselves. But when ruled by a renewed mind, functioning according to the revealed Word of God, it becomes a marvelous instrument of compassion. My heart then becomes a tool for compassion and not a decision maker running amok. How amazingly quickly we settle our arguments when this principle is in force!

Arrayed against us in this matter is a major shift going on in the way our society thinks. Call it the New Age if you like. New Age thinking first says to us that all is God. Therefore, by extension at least, man is God. Therefore, hidden in every human being is infinite potential because man is innately divine. In order to be redeemed and create a new order, we must only realize our innate divinity and allow our inner voice to speak so that we can unfold as divine creatures. This is a form of the very heresy that got Eve into trouble! It’s idolatry!

The real message behind New Age thinking is to do and be what you feel. We hear and see it on every side—in the media, in what we read, in movies, in college courses, and in private conversation. Feeling is being presented as truth. As a result, we have become self-centered, asking the whole world to satisfy our need to feed our own feelings. We are being sold a way of thinking designed to subjectivize the Word of God until there is no more clear word from Him and to unleash the heart as the master of our destiny. Exalting our personal urges above the Word of God—this way of thinking comes from hell and leads back to hell!

In this perverted way of thinking, as feelings become truth and the heart is exalted as the decision maker, the phrase “I love” becomes a definition of feeling only, rather than a purposed direction for behavior as God intended, to which feelings must be harnessed.

“Marital communication”—a common term in our emotion-centered society—becomes a catchphrase for my effort to cause my spouse to make me feel good. If my words succeed in manipulating her into doing the things that I think will make me happy, she’s heard me. If not, then we haven’t communicated. My mind has become the servant of my heart, seeking ways to control my wife’s behavior for my own emotional gratification.

“Turning my life over to Jesus” means that Jesus has made me feel good—and had better continue to do so! If He doesn’t, then I’ll conclude that “it didn’t work,” and my mind, wrongly functioning as the servant of the heart, will provide all the hollow excuses I need for my apostasy.

“Being sensitive” means that I am easily and selfishly hurt rather than considerate of the feelings of others. That capacity to be easily and selfishly hurt turns into warm and gentle compassion when the mind is functioning righteously as the decision maker set on the Spirit and steeped in the Word of God. In dysfunction, the mind provides excuses and justifications for the selfishness of a heart without discipline. It simply makes others responsible for its own misery.

“Sexual morality” comes to mean jumping into bed only with people I am “committed to.” The truth is, an undisciplined heart wanted to do it and the mind provided the justification rather than serving its intended role of holding the heart to the revealed truth of the Word of God.

But since the society in which we live is telling us that we are innately divine, we concluded that whatever we felt or heard from our inner voice was the truth. The mind then provided the framework of justifications. Thus we idolatrously deify our feelings.

The problem can be almost impossible to deal with. The subconscious agenda of most couples in counseling concerning marital problems is, “Make us feel good so we can like each other again.” They really don’t want the truth because that would mean their minds would have to discipline their hearts to obey. Our hearts don’t want to do that, and our minds are lazy. So if I, as a counselor, try to make the mind of one see the other’s pain and call the heart to identify it, I become the bad guy! “You’re against me!”

A young wife from a poor background constantly questions her husband concerning his business ventures. He sells used furniture from a store he owns. “You didn’t ask enough for this piece.” “You paid too much for that one.” “This one can’t be fixed.” He always makes money, but she broadcasts to him that it’s never enough. He reacts in anger because he feels his efforts on her behalf, his sacrifices of labor and love, are being downgraded. His reaction is intensified because he hears her through the filter of his unresolved judgments of his critical mother. In the face of his anger she retreats into silence, which enrages him all the more.

The roots of the problem are clear. If they can both see why they react the way they do, we can pray together, forgiving parents and mouthing repentances for judgments that grew from those childhood relationships. Tears are shed, and everything looks good. I then ask the husband, “Can you now understand why she reacts the way she does?” I ask the wife the same question.

Now each one thinks I have taken sides against him or her. Why? Because in each of them the mind is still justifying sinful reactions instead of directing the heart into real forgiveness and godly compassion. Therefore, in spite of the prayers, there is no healing. As the prayer minister, I have become the enemy because I called their hearts to account for selfishness. Neither party wished to change personally. In reality, each one wanted the other to be different so that he or she could “feel good.” For them, personal feelings were truth. The mind was merely a servant to provide a framework of defense for what the heart had already decided.

I can’t count the times I have suffered through a session in which the couple spent an entire hour disagreeing over what actually happened in some conflict situation. “You said . . . ” “No I didn’t. It was you who said . . . ” It’s almost impossible to get them stopped long enough to do some mature communicating. Each one believes what he or she is saying. Neither is consciously lying, but neither is telling the truth. Nor is either of them willing to hear the truth. Both are interested only in establishing that what he or she is feeling is the truth. Each wants only to be the winner at the other’s expense.

Ask either combatant, “Can you understand why he [or she] is so angry?” and, for the moment, you become the enemy because you have challenged their sacred cow by suggesting that someone’s heart might not be telling the truth. You are the enemy also because you have at least hinted that it might be wise to give up control. You have called the mind to demand that the heart abandon selfishness and begin to have empathy for the other. But that’s hard. It takes self-sacrificial effort. It means that the heart can no longer be allowed to run amok, reacting unhindered, and allowed to feel without discipline or righteous direction. It means that the mind, renewed by the Spirit, must take its rightful place as the servant of righteousness and call the heart to account. But the heart is desperately wicked, more deceitful than all else. “It’s too hard,” it lies, “so I’ll be mad at the prayer minister.”

In most cases, after you spend time identifying with the hurt feelings of each partner, hearts begin to melt, and spouses are reconciled. But for a few, the mind, serving rather than directing the heart, begins to justify hatred for the prayer minister. Every prayer minister knows that occasionally some wildly creative versions of what has been said in ministry are passed around by sick people. Repeatedly I have called two people to account, only to have both of them flee the office to accuse me of saying it was, “ . . . all my fault? What about him?” or “What about her?” The mind and the heart remained in dysfunctional relationship, and so my statements of mutual responsibility could not be heard. They could pay only lip service to the acceptance of personal guilt.

As a child I had a problem with moods—and not just with having them. I had to make everyone else miserable with me. When my father and our family with him had suffered enough, he would swat my bottom and in his best stern voice command, “Now you be happy!”

Even as a child I thought, “What a dumb thing to say!” In a sense, I was right. It truly was unwise. You can’t make yourself feel happy, and sometimes a little commiseration is needed to help make the heart decide for the right. But in another sense, the message was on target. “Stop letting your feelings lead you around by the nose. Decide with your mind now how you will live, and then demand that your heart follow along. Get it in order.”

Somehow the message sank in. I can’t live for my emotions, but neither can I nor should I make them go away. I can, however, live for righteous actions. I can have emotions but act righteously on the basis of the eternal, revealed Word of God.

Sunday after Sunday that skill gets me through worship services and sermons, joyful for the sake of my people no matter what my heart might be feeling. I still have a melancholic temperament, unable to generate right and positive emotions on command. But with my Spirit-renewed mind I can set the kind of direction for righteous behavior that summons my heart to give sensitivity and life to what I’ve decided to do. The discipline of a transformed and renewed mind turns the heart into an instrument of power and compassion. I might be miserable in a corner of my being, but I can be genuinely “up” for my people when the ministry demands it. I can simply put my melancholic feelings in another “room” and then choose to live out the joy of the Holy Spirit in me.

(Proud father note: Since Loren wrote these words, he has had a tremendous breakthrough into abiding moment by moment every day in the presence of the Lord! His melancholic nature is no longer a source of unhappiness but rather a source of quiet, peaceful pondering of God’s deep truths—and he is filled with the joy of the Lord. But the advice is still valid for those who do still become excessively moody, or for those times when one has a “down day” anyway.)

THE TASK OF THE MIND

In our broken thinking, we really believe emotions are strength. Left to their own devices, they’re not. We believe anger is protection. It isn’t. We believe feelings are honest. They can lie. The mind is designed to identify the facts of the Word of God and then demand that the heart obey. The task of the mind is to provide the heart with a framework of objective truths within which to operate. The result is righteousness tempered with the gentleness of God. It is power blessed with compassion.

Proverbs 16:32 says, “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city.” Proverbs 17:27, “He who restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.” Proverbs 25:28, “Like a city that is broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit.” Proverbs 17:20, “He who has a crooked mind [in the Hebrew, the word is actually lev or “heart”] finds no good.” If the renewed mind blessed by the Holy Spirit is not the boss, a man has no capacity to rule over negativity. Trapped in negativity, he can see little good in anything or anyone.

I believe we have much teaching to do. It won’t be easy because we’re running against the mainstream of our modern culture. It won’t be easy because most children aren’t being raised today with godly discipline of the heart. We must teach persistently and expect to win few popularity contests. But if we can convince a person to agree to the struggle and stay in it, we’ve won. Next to receiving Jesus for the first time, that simple decision can be the most important turning point in any individual’s life.

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

—2 CORINTHIANS 10:3-5

Emotions are important. As Christians, we should respond to them with a listening ear, affirmation, and comfort. But when they become the decision maker, we need to remember that our ultimate goal is not to make people feel good but to take thoughts captive that the heart might follow after.

9

RIGHT THINKING ABOUT THE CHURCH AND AUTHORITY

By R. Loren Sandford

As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for building up of itself in love. This I say therefore, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind.

EPHESIANS 4:14-17, EMPHASIS ADDED

THIS CHAPTER WAS given originally as a teaching titled “The Renewal of the Mind” at an Elijah House seminar in Spokane, Washington, in October 1987. I went into that teaching with a bare minimum of notes, uncertain of what I would be saying, knowing only that the Lord had led me to “shoot from the hip” and trust His Spirit for guidance. What came out was an impassioned plea to the body of Christ to grow up and change its immature patterns of thinking about relationships among brothers and sisters.

In the writing of this chapter, I hope to preserve some of the spontaneous and passionate flavor of that anointed moment. More than imparting information, I want to communicate a new attitude, a new intensity of love for the glory of this messy miracle we call “the church.”

In considering the broken, unbiblical thinking so many of us have concerning the body of Christ and authority, I am led again to the problem of the inversion of the roles of the mind and heart. Again, I see the mind too often serving the heart to justify what the heart feels rather than functioning as it ought in understanding the truth, making decisions, and setting parameters. Our thoughts about the body of Christ and about authority too frequently reflect our feelings and judgments rather than determining them according to God’s Word.

RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM

Let’s begin with our broken thinking concerning the body of Christ. Our Anglo-American tradition of rugged individualism was great for the frontier. Rugged individualism goes back hundreds of years and helped us explore a continent and build a nation, but it can be a poison to the body of Christ. “I’m going to go into the wilderness, away from people, and I’ll build my own place there with no help from you, thanks! And when it gets too crowded, I’m going to move farther out, and I’m going to be an entrepreneur, and I’m going to build my own empire, and it’s going to be all mine. I’m a self-made man!” How deeply rooted in our culture is that attitude! And so common, even among servants of the Lord!

Therefore, the fact that we believers are baptized by the Spirit into one body (1 Cor. 12:13) doesn’t find a lodging place in our understanding. Too many of us don’t comprehend it because we’ve missed what it means to be corporate, one with others. Instead of the mind then seeking to comprehend what this passage really implies in terms of commitment and behavior, it justifies what the heart has already told us: “I’m just a rugged individualist. I can have faith on my own, and I can worship Jesus on my own. Of course I believe in Christ! I don’t need to go to church to believe in Christ!”

That’s rotten thinking, not because it isn’t true, but because it is misapplied—right thoughts justifying wrong attitudes and actions. It’s true that I can have faith in Him without going to church. But it is sin to use those truths as justifications for avoiding fellowship. When we think that way, the mind is serving what the heart already believes rather than binding all to the Word of God.

Many of us are children of divorce, and the numbers are increasing. In such people, often the concept of wholesome, healthy corporateness has been shattered. They’re not going to risk emotional vulnerability. They’re not going to truly commit themselves anywhere or let themselves become a part of anyone else’s flow.

I was raised in a whole family, the oldest of six children. I knew that Mom and Dad were permanent, that if the world blew up tomorrow, “MomandDad” would still be one word. I also learned that I couldn’t sleep in the same bedroom with three brothers without learning to give. In those crowded quarters I was forced to take some of the rough edges off my own behavior so that I could guarantee myself survival. With discouraging regularity my brothers broke things that belonged to me, so I had to learn to forgive. At least once a week I brushed my teeth with a wet toothbrush because someone else had used it! Although I spoke up about it, and rightly so, I also had no choice but to learn to let resentment go by for the sake of the peace of the whole.

Mom and Dad were never very secret about their arguments, although I’m certain they thought they were. We could see Mom’s frustrations blossom as thirty minutes grew to an hour and still there was no sign of our father coming home for supper. I can still hear her muttering to herself in mounting anger as she held dinner for the whole family and asked us kids to, “Send thoughts at your father.” No occult practices here. Just an angry joke.

We all knew something was amiss because of the way her frustration showed. But we also saw that as soon as Dad was through sinning by being late and she was through sinning back at him in her frustration, they hugged each other and forgave. We learned important lifetime skills by witnessing both the tension and the inevitable resolution.

All of these situations were precious practical lessons in corporateness. They were instructions on how to be one with others without ceasing to be myself and how to live in a covenant household made up of people from whom God will not let me escape. Life with three brothers and two sisters taught me to do whatever had to be done to resolve conflicts without selling myself out. No matter how hard we fought, we were still family and always would be.

CHILDREN OF DIVORCE AND ABSENTEE PARENTS

Divorces shatter that built-up trust. Children come out of it wounded with something in them saying, “I will never be one with another human being again. I won’t risk that.” Then, when confronted with the call to become one with another family, the body of Christ, the same inner voice says, “I’m not going to risk it.” They’re not going to involve the real self. They’ll be excited for a while by the presence of the Lord in worship and by the warmth of the fellowship, but as soon as things get down to the real “nitty-gritty”—when there’s an argument or when someone’s personality or behavior really stinks—they will leave because it isn’t fun anymore. They will have too few skills in oneness with others. Tragically, they won’t know how to embrace the crucible of relationships that produces sanctification.

An increasing number of us are being raised by absentee parents—even when our families stay together. I can understand when both the mother and father of families with small children must work outside the home. In some cases a double income is necessary just to feed and clothe the family properly, but I strenuously object when both parents choose to work in order to support affluence. Already our society reaps the whirlwind for this sin against our children’s security.

Our rising crime rate and escalating number of divorces are indicative of the destruction our modern societal patterns are bringing on us. Children have watched their parents pursuing materialistic, self-oriented priorities and have learned that commitment to relationships is less important than possession of things.

Children are too often left on their own while parents are away all day, and in that environment of loneliness, they work through life’s obstacles without the guidance of those whose years have given them the understanding of life’s experiences needed for balance. Even when a child is placed in a good day-care situation, those who mean the most—Mom and Dad—aren’t present.

The child then faces critical obstacles and important milestones by himself until somewhere in his heart he determines, “Authority doesn’t look out for me, so I’m not ever going to let authority look out for me. I’m not going to be corporate with anybody! I’m on my own, and, by God, I’m going to be on my own. You weren’t there when I needed you; I’m not ever going to let you be there! I’ll never risk needing others again!”

I’m describing what the heart takes hold of, because without the grace of Christ, sooner or later the dysfunctional carnal mind obeys the heart and justifies its fears and resolutions.

THE PASSIVE GENERATION

We are the passive generation. I’m ashamed to say that my household has four active television screens in it. My wife and I, therefore, frequently find ourselves running “basement patrol”—where we keep our big screen—kicking children out so that they won’t become “couch potatoes.” We of the postwar baby boom are the first of the TV generation, trained to receive passively, to be entertained rather than actively participate in and affect life. We’re lazy, mentally and emotionally.

Since I pastor a church in which the average member’s age lies between thirty-five and forty, I can speak with authority. By and large, we don’t know how to give of ourselves consistently or participate effectively with others in collective endeavors. It’s too much work. It’s easier to sit and be fed, to have all the work done for us. As a result, we’re a society of church hoppers and “lone-stranger” Christians seeking one source of spiritual entertainment after another, erroneously calling our meanderings “the leading of the Lord.”

Many of the largest churches in our nation border too closely on becoming mere weekly spectator events where polished professional entertainers make it work. In many such churches, too little discipleship goes on during the week. Our generation doesn’t know how to be corporate in the church or in any other setting because we’ve learned to be corporate only with the television set or with someone who adequately entertains us while we sit idly watching.

In all of this, the mind does not become the direction setter or that which disciplines our inner urges but rather the servant of the heart, obediently justifying and fortifying whatever the heart is feeling. So we come up with all kinds of excuses for not being corporate and for not being fully a part of a local expression of the body of Christ. Some such excuses sound like they were invented by fine minds, and some are just plain stupid. All of them are heresy straight from hell.

One of the worst lines I’ve heard is “The church is full of hypocrites, so I just can’t be there.” Whenever I hear this excuse, I want to shake the speaker and say, “You’re the biggest hypocrite of all! You prideful Pharisee! If you want to be an honest Christian, then learn what it means to forbear. Learn what it means to forgive. Learn what it means to walk with the broken and the lost and to include yourself among the sinners. How dare you separate yourself from God’s people as though you were better than they!” That excuse doesn’t hold water in the kingdom of heaven, and it will never stand up before the Lord’s throne.

Another popular excuse is, “The pastor doesn’t talk to me, so I’m never going back.” It may be that I will hear this statement more and more the larger my church becomes. It seems to me a very selfish and immature thing to say. Another form of the same objection is, “The pastor never came to visit me.” But is that what the pastor is called to do? Or should visitation be a function primarily of the body of Christ, leaving the pastor free to be the teacher and equipper he is called to be in Ephesians 4:11? I don’t hear the Scriptures saying very loudly that the pastor should be consumed with taking care of all the individuals in the church one on one. What I hear is that the pastor should be an equipper who trains the saints to do the work of ministry. Pastors aren’t called to do the frontline ministry, except as they take others along to train them in it. “The pastor didn’t visit me” is just another excuse invented by carnal minds to justify unwillingness to be one with the body of Christ.

Another excuse I’ve heard is, “I just can’t find a place where I’m comfortable.” Where does the Word of God ever lead us to believe that a church should be a place where we feel “comfortable”? Glory to God if it is comfortable, but the point of kingdom living and of union with Christ is to learn to love sinners as Christ did by laying down our lives for them. Although it can be deeply satisfying, seldom have I known such work to be comfortable.

Babies need to be comfortable, but mature persons in the Spirit need to be doing ministry. Those who buy in to this objection usually mean that they don’t feel comfortable submitting themselves anywhere to anyone. They’re not going to be one with any group of people, nor do they truly want to find a place of commitment to corporateness. Their carnal minds make up excuses for what their hearts already have decided.

The silliest objection of all comes in varying forms but usually sounds something like, “I don’t come to church because I can worship on a mountaintop better than I can in church!” Whenever I hear that excuse, I want to retort, “Then why aren’t you out on some mountaintop every Sunday morning?” Let’s have a little integrity in our rebellion! If I were to visit on any given Sunday morning in the home of one who makes such an objection, I’d probably find him watching football rather than worshiping God on a mountaintop—or anywhere else. Furthermore, Hebrews 10:23-25 admonishes:

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near.

—HEBREWS 10:23-25

BALANCING OUR CORPORATE AND PRIVATE WORSHIP

How can we possibly be about the business of encouraging our brothers and sisters in the Lord when we’re alone on a mountaintop? Understand that I myself worship the Lord alone on mountaintops from time to time. There’s nothing wrong with spending private, personal time with God. In fact, we need a balance of corporate and private worship in order to be spiritually healthy. But we run off the track when our private, personal worship is used as an excuse to avoid commitment to corporate worship and fellowship with others in the body of Christ. Corporate worship with other believers on the Lord’s Day in the Lord’s house is a divine command and therefore constitutes a moral issue. Let’s learn to think biblically and to bind our hearts to biblical truth.

“Well, I’m just part of the universal body of Christ, and I attend a lot of different churches! I’m just a kind of prophet to all these churches, and I really can’t join any particular one.” Do you know what pastors think of one who claims to be a prophet to all these different churches? “Oh, dear Lord! Here he comes again!”

Such “prophets” don’t visit my church very often anymore because we don’t allow them to speak. They understand nothing of corporateness or of submission to local authority—nor do they wish to. What they really want is to exalt themselves at others’ expense and to condemn those who won’t listen to them. Their hearts are sin-filled in relation to the body of Christ, and their minds find ways to justify their sin. They go from place to place bloodying sheep with phony and often condemning words because that makes them feel important. The messages they give actually reflect judgments in their own hearts rather than the reality of the eternal Word of God. “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:15-16).

Time for Bible study. What does the Word of God have to say concerning our oneness and our functioning together? It’s important to know the answer because the mind is renewed largely by feeding it the pure Word of God until our thinking processes conform to those of the Scriptures.

Scripture expresses the mind of Christ all believers have received. The passage is Ephesians 4:11-12: “He gave some as apostles [church planters and builders], and some as prophets [building inspectors and watchmen on the wall who see what the Lord is doing and pray for it, sometimes speaking publicly], and some as evangelists [for the bringing in of new believers], and some as pastors and teachers [two offices for caring for the sheep], for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.”

ARTISTS IN MINISTRY

In the original Greek, the word for “equipping” is katartisis . Kata is a prefix intensifying whatever it’s attached to. Artis is related to our word artist. It is therefore the task of leaders in the body of Christ to make the saints into consummate artists in ministry, to equip believers in such a way that they become supremely skilled artisans in the “work of service.” I’ve learned that when I’m doing frontline ministry in my church, I’m often taking it away from some layperson who should be doing it—unless I have others with me to be trained. I’m not called to do all the ministry but to train others in it.

“Building up” comes from a word in the original Greek that derives from oikodome (oy-koh-doh-may). The meaning of oikodome is “house” or “household,” so the phrase “building up” means not just that the body of Christ grows larger, and not merely that the individuals in it become stronger, but that it becomes a household in strength.

“LONE-STRANGER” CHRISTIANS

In my heart growing up, a household was where two parents and six kids lived without the right to run away from one another, where we learned what it took to live in some semblance of peace because for us there were no other options. By disciplining ourselves to read this passage as Paul structured it, one concept depending upon the previous for its fulfillment, we see that the body of Christ becomes a household in strength only by working together at the task of ministry.

How in heaven’s name are we going to participate in that process as “lone-stranger” Christians? Whatever the excuses for avoiding covenant commitment to a local expression of the church, they’re invalid. God has called all of us to become skilled artisans in the body of Christ, working intimately with brothers and sisters in the Lord until we become a household with hearts beating as one, given to the ministry and to one another.

I discovered how this process works in a worldly way while performing professionally as a rock musician during my high school years. The group I worked with learned to play our instruments as beginners together, and for four years we traveled across three states and two provinces of Canada. Before those four years ended, we knew one another so well we could “jam” for an hour and a half, nonstop, totally unrehearsed, instinctively knowing where the music was going without even looking at one another. This became possible because of the many hours we had spent together, working at our music, each of us committed to a common goal.

The body of Christ ought to be like that, only more wondrously so because the power of the Holy Spirit draws us together and makes our music! It’s the work we share in the Holy Spirit that binds our hearts together! Not the pastor’s love taking care of the sheep one by one. Not whether your small group treated you rightly. Not compatible personalities. But did you work together at this marvelous task of building up the body of Christ? Were you struggling for the gospel as one with your brothers and sisters? Is there anything more important to be doing?

As a couple, my wife, Beth, and I lay on one another no other obligation than that we work together, partners in the ministry. She’s not obligated to make me happy or to perform for me in any way, nor I for her, though in Jesus we do try to bless and please one another. The glue that binds us together and keeps our marriage on track isn’t based on our capacity to make each other feel good. We’re thankful for that because sometimes we don’t make one another very happy!

What binds us together and keeps us communicating and growing in the same direction is the work we perform together for the sake of the gospel. The task we accept and pursue together builds us into a household. We understand that sometimes through no fault of the one, the other is unable to join him or her in ministry—but the point is not only about earthly marriage. I testify about Beth and me as a parable of that greater marriage that is the Lord and His church. Again I say, the task we accept and pursue together as a people builds us into a household.

COVENANTAL COMMITMENT

“Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God . . . ” (Eph. 4:13). We become a household in the church because of joint labors, and the result is unity. Unity in turn brings us to a more complete knowledge of the Son of God. On the basis of Ephesians 4:13, I’m going to make a statement to which some in the past have responded in anger. If you don’t agree with me, then I submit that you have the clear meaning of God’s Word to argue with.

Beyond spiritual infancy, no Christian can know Jesus without being committed to working with other Christians in covenant as part of a specific local expression of the body of Christ. A covenant is an agreement I make with God in relation to you. It is not an agreement we make with one another to bind and imprison one another. Apart from commitment as outlined in Ephesians 4, you may know Him as a baby knows its mother, but you will never attain a truly adult relationship with Him.

Children don’t really “know” their parents. They lack the wisdom and perception that come only from years of living and experiencing. My father and I can labor together in the writing of this book, hashing out our disagreements in harmony, because we know one another through years of serving together in harness for the Lord in our adulthood. The kinds of experiences that enable any of us to know Jesus in a mature way are found only in covenant with other believers as we work together for the sake of the gospel.

Apart from such involvement we might come to know a mere idea about Jesus, or some sentimental feeling about Him, but we won’t really know Him. We truly know Him only as we have lived and labored with Him. But we only labor with Him and dwell in His household as we work and live with other believers as part of a local expression of the body of Christ.

The second half of Ephesians 4:13 reads, “ . . . to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” People have actually said to me, “I’m just too mature for any church I’ve been in.” What arrogance! I want to shout, “Brother, you don’t understand anything! There is no maturity until you’ve learned to work with others and come to unity so that you know Jesus.”

Romans 15:1 defines maturity for us: “Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves” (emphasis added). These people in their arrogance have missed those Scriptures that say, “For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Gal. 6:3), and “Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation” (Rom. 12:16, emphasis added).

Ephesians 4 continues through verse 16:

As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

Find me a reason for avoiding involvement in a local church that can stand up to that scripture! We need to feed our dysfunctional minds on this kind of Word so that our renewed minds can provide godly bounds within which our hearts can be made to thrive. Don’t tell me you’re a biblical Christian if you’re not committed to a local church! Let’s learn to think rightly—and that means biblically only!

ACCEPTING DIFFERENCES

How about this one? “Well, I just can’t agree with everything they believe!” Read Romans 14. Paul addresses those who are arguing about worship days and what kinds of foods Christians ought or ought not to eat. According to Sandford’s twentieth-century paraphrase, Paul is saying, “I don’t care what day you worship on! I don’t give a rip what you eat! Let every man be convicted in his own mind that he is doing what God has called him to do. But in your freedom to choose, be careful not to cause your brother to stumble. Whatever choices you make, do what you do as to the Lord and stop judging others for their convictions.”

Minor doctrinal differences are unimportant. We are to come together in and for the person of Jesus, and we are to do all things for His glory. God doesn’t ask that you agree with everything your church does or believes, but He does ask that you be invested in serving and that you do it for Him. Above all, have enough humility not to require your church to agree with every point of your personal doctrine!

“Well, I’m not being fed!” is another mental justification for the perversion of the heart. Very occasionally God does call a dying babe out of a place of spiritual famine. Normally, however, if you’re so strong (or so weak) that you need superior food, and if you’ve decided not to attend anywhere unless you can find gourmet spiritual nutrition, then I suggest you may already have become spiritually obese. Perhaps you need to lose weight by exercising what you know! Feed someone else and so be fed yourself. Only babies and sick people have a need to be passively fed. Adults have both the ability and sense of responsibility to feed themselves and others as well.

“I’m not going to share with my small group while ‘that person’ is present, so I’m not even going to attend until he’s gone.” James 5:16 reads, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” Unless so-and-so is present? No. The Word of God doesn’t include qualifiers. I see none here—or anywhere else in the Scriptures.

What does it really matter if so-and-so misunderstands? You won’t die from it. You might even learn from it—something about forbearance, patience, and forgiveness. “She’ll tell everybody!” Maybe she will. But is that so important? You’ll survive, and before it’s over she’ll be the one with egg on her face, not you. The good fruit in your life will be that you will have nothing more to hide—if you allow the embarrassment and pain of it to be borne. Concealed sins will be deprived of their power over you because they have at last been divested of their cloak of secrecy. After all, what do we legitimately need to hide from sight in the presence of the redeemed? Aren’t we all sinners saved by the same grace?

“It just drives me crazy to listen to all those people complaining week after week about the same things. They never change, and we always give them advice, and they never do anything about it, and I don’t know why they just can’t learn! So I’m not going.” Such statements are nothing less than prideful unwillingness to identify with others for the sake of ministry. You’re saying, “I’m better than these other fools, and I don’t have time for them.” What happened to corporate sensitivities? Didn’t Jesus surrender His personal urges and preferences for the sake of others? Wasn’t He patient with those whose brokenness made them spiritual pests? Are we not called to do the same?

Worst of all is when over a period of time, someone fills his inner storehouse with judgments concerning how a group or a church is functioning and then unloads it all in one great, biting, and bloody “prophetic word.” These streams of vituperation always seem to begin with some form of, “Thus saith the Lord,” and continue with accusations like, “You people aren’t following the Spirit. You aren’t praying rightly . . . ” It goes on and on while the assembled members of the fellowship sit wide-eyed with shock, bleeding with every stroke of the knife.

The reality of this situation is that most often the heart of the speaker has begun to judge and condemn self-righteously. Rather than demand that the heart obey the Word of the Lord concerning forgiveness, patience, and nurture of the weak, the unrenewed carnal mind produces bloody confrontations. It blasts the group with their real or imagined sins in a spirit clearly not from God. The fellowship suffers wounding and confusion and reacts negatively to what could only be perceived as attack.

The negative reaction in return is perceived by the self-styled prophet as persecution for his godly word so that he develops a prideful spirit of martyrdom: “All I did was say what God told me to say.” His carnal mind then cooks up whatever rationalizations justify leaving the fellowship. No receiving of correction. No courageous examining of his own fruit. No questioning whether it could have been his own fault that beloved brothers and sisters were so wounded. No true examination of self.

I believe that by and large the attitude of the body of Christ toward corporateness and authority is a stench in the nostrils of the Lord! I don’t believe that any saint of the Lord could present any of these aforementioned attitudes or excuses before the throne of the Lord and receive anything but a thundering rebuke. All our ridiculous rationalizations constitute nothing but refusal to be one with other sinners or to take any real risks at the level of the heart.

The heart wants to flee, so the mind obediently provides false justifications. The renewed mind should take hold of the truth of the whole Word of God with regard to forgiveness, forbearance, perseverance, laying down one’s life, and serving the weak. On the basis of that truth, it should call the heart to become a tool of compassion and nurture.

SUBJECTION TO ONE ANOTHER

“Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ” (Eph. 5:21). What does subjection “to one another” mean in practical terms? One thing it implies is that every individual Christian should subordinate his own personal vision for ministry to that of his local church. No church can survive with one hundred twenty conflicting visions for its ministry.

Each fellowship must, therefore, pursue one overall vision into which each personal vision for ministry fits. The same submission to the overall vision goes for the varied missions the members of the church pursue corporately. Otherwise, ugly disharmony and frantic paralysis set in, like a horse whose four legs want to run in four different directions. “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing” (James 3:16). So we submit ourselves to the local vision and adjust ourselves to fit into it.

In no way do I mean to imply that anyone should surrender his right to think in order to fit into a local church vision. I do not mean that we should give up the right to raise questions or voice objections. None of us should allow ourselves to give up our personal visions for ministry. Nowhere does the Word of God grant authority figures the right to dominate and control the individual lives of members of the body of Christ. I insist, however, that there are certain adjustments each of us must make in order to labor effectively alongside others.

LISTENING TO OTHERS

Submission also means that I must listen to what my brothers and sisters have to say about me. For instance, it won’t do for me to complain that I’m a persecuted prophet and then run away to find another place. God hasn’t given me that right. I must listen to what my brothers and sisters say to me. God Himself may genuinely call me out of a place, but only after I’ve listened, and usually not even then. The Book of Proverbs is filled with admonitions concerning correction and reproof as the way of life: “He who neglects discipline despises himself, but he who listens to reproof acquires understanding” (Prov. 15:32).

The elders of my church have been known to order me home on a Sunday morning when I determined to be there even though I was too ill. God has called me to submit to my brothers. I must listen even when I’m accused of wrongdoing, or when I’m opposed in my plans or teaching by those who haven’t truly heard me.

In listening I may find that my original position has been strengthened or refined. That’s good fruit that would not have been produced had I not been challenged. I may be falsely accused by sick and confused people, but I find more accurate or tactful ways to say things as I listen to and wrestle with what’s being said. I may gain wisdom concerning how to avoid leaving myself open to misunderstanding in the future. That too is good fruit.

Then there are times when the correction my brothers and sisters bring is valid. If I turn from it, I go on sinning and making mistakes. Too many of us flee the body of Christ whenever confrontation appears, but I have discovered there’s something good in it for me.

For a time we had a man in our fellowship who was bound up in a legalistic approach to Old Testament Law, and he wanted me to teach our fellowship accordingly. Week after week he hounded me, even to the point of writing me angry notes on offering envelopes, criticizing my sermons. I fully agree that the Law is still God’s Word and that Jesus did not set aside the Old Testament (“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law . . . ” [Matt. 5:17]), but there are problems with living under the Law as a legal system that any student of New Testament grace can see.

Our legalistic brother was wrong because his mind was serving the hidden desires of his heart to blame and condemn. I could have reacted defensively to him—and often did—but God has called me to submit to my brothers and sisters and has never allowed me to back off from that commitment for very long. I was therefore compelled to submit to my brother in the Lord by listening to him. As I did, I reexamined Old Testament Law in a wholesome way. I learned new things, but I never would have done it without the prodding of the brother who was wrong. Through his wrongness God said something to me to which I needed to submit.

What if someone accuses you of being a critical gossiper but you know you aren’t and that you haven’t been? What will you do, knowing that God has called you to submit to your brothers and sisters? If you’re being biblically submissive, you’ll examine what you have done with your tongue, and you’ll take such a hard look at it that it becomes a much more refined instrument than before—even though the accusation may indeed have been false. Your speech will be more “seasoned with salt.”

As the years have passed and I have pondered how to become more Christlike—how to embrace the Cross for renewal in the spirit of my mind in resurrection power—I have come to treasure above all earthly things the correction provided me by my brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. Their encouragement, their reproofs when I sin, and even their false accusations, all serve to form and reinforce my capacity to exercise balanced objectivity concerning the Word of God so that I might govern my heart more effectively with a Spirit-renewed mind. I haven’t always liked what they do and say to me, but I have determined to embrace what they bring me in whatever form they present it.

Jesus Himself speaks to me and disciples me by means of my beloved brothers and sisters—and also by means of not-so-beloved brothers and sisters! No “lone-stranger” Christian will ever be balanced, mind and heart, in the Word of God. God designed and purposed that we would be “with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” as the word of Christ is made to “richly dwell” within us (Col. 3:16).

There can be no lasting healing apart from relationships. Every covenant made between God and man and recorded in Scripture is a definition of the relationship between the divine and the human. Consistently, the relationship between divinity and humanity governs relationships with God, and therefore I love my neighbor. Our hearts often fear relationship, so our minds keep inventing nice-sounding theological excuses for avoiding it.

HOLINESS IN RELATIONSHIPS

All biblical concepts of holiness are bound up in relationships, seen in the way we treat and respond to others. Therefore, if one wishes to be holy, he cannot avoid involvement in ongoing covenant relationships. For instance, the entire Book of 1 Peter is comprised of teaching concerning holiness. The first thing Peter says concerning holiness is that we should fervently love one another from the heart (1 Pet. 1:22). Love is relational. One could say, “I don’t have to go to church to be a Christian!” but how can you possibly love anyone in relationship as Christ commanded unless you’re in relationship?

Peter went on to command us to put away malice (1 Pet. 2:1). What is malice if not a failure of relationship? No one hates empty space! If we hate, we hate people! That’s relationship. And if we put aside malice, then are we not required to return to relationships of love with those we hated?

After this, Peter continued for nearly a chapter and a half teaching submission to human authorities, including everything from civil government to the structure of the home. Peter’s reason for submission? That “you may silence the ignorance of foolish men” (1 Pet. 2:15). Again, the concern of the passage is for others. The indicators point once more to relationships. Peter was reminding us of the kind of relationships we have with foolish men and of our responsibility for them.

Now that we have looked at relationships, the following are some areas in which our attitudes concerning authority need renewing. (Once again, these are attitudes and judgments the heart falls into and the carnal mind justifies.)

REBELLION

First, many of us have parents who reared us in ways that ignited and fostered our rebellion. In reaction, we formed judgments that authority would be insensitive and unreasonable, that it would not keep its promises, and that it would be abusive. Therefore, we concluded, “I’m not going to submit to authority anywhere.” Our carnal minds then supplied whatever justifications were necessary to maintain the judgments our hearts had already made. Minds set on the Spirit should have set righteous directions for rebellious hearts and sought healing.

One of the more theological rationalizations for rebellion I’ve heard is, “I just submit to Jesus. I don’t have to submit to any man!” The statement contains just enough truth to lead us astray, but on balance that isn’t what the Word of God says. The Word says to submit to every human institution (1 Pet. 2:13-25) and to your leaders in the church as those who must give an account for your souls (Heb. 13:17). There’s truth in that statement that I must submit only to Jesus and not to follow idolatrously and blindly after human leaders, but that’s not the whole truth. Let’s learn to apply the Scriptures in the Spirit and context God intended.

A third attitude of the heart reflected in mental rationalizations is, “Submission to authority diminishes me,” as though authority implied superiority. “He’s no better than I am. I don’t have to listen to him!” Our society as a whole seems to have bought into this superiority/inferiority deception. Multitudes are falling into it and living its destructive effects as though it were a contagious disease. It’s one of the roots from which we seem to be compelled to knock our leaders down.

Godly authority means that authority serves and lays down its life for those in its care. Authority has nothing to do with the value of persons but only with position and order and with anointing from the Lord by grace. We honor authority figures, therefore, as other sinners like ourselves, saved by grace. They are normal human beings who just happen to be called to occupy sensitive positions where mistakes stand out in bold relief. That at least deserves a little compassion!

A fourth attitude springs from the fact that many of us were abused as children in our parental homes. Abused children often will not allow authority to protect or defend them, much less exercise authority over them—even in childhood. The judgment is, “Authority will violate me,” followed by an inner vow, “so I’m going to do everything I can to circumvent and make authority look foolish. I’m going to declare war on authority until I can produce reactions that prove how foolish authority is.”

Let an inner vow like that loose in a church and see what disaster results! Once a body of believers becomes invested in trying to prove its leadership is unrighteous, all manner of carnage becomes inevitable. Holy and righteous men can be destroyed in a very short period of time, along with a number of innocent sheep whose faith suffers shipwreck in the ensuing confusion and disillusionment.

We’ve become a society that cannot see leaders as human beings. How morbidly gleeful we are at the discovery of past sins in a leader’s life! While our basic morality as a people has deteriorated to the point that living with one another before marriage has become socially acceptable, in past years we drove a man from the race for the presidency because we saw a woman on his lap who was not his wife! (I don’t believe immoral people should occupy the White House. I merely point out our hypocrisy and inconsistency.)

At the same time that marijuana became generally accepted as a “safe” recreational drug (which it isn’t), we declared a potential Supreme Court judge to be unfit for office because he had smoked pot once or twice more than ten years before! If this were really born out of concern for righteous leadership, we could all have rejoiced, but the truth of the matter is that we called this kind of attitude “righteousness” because that’s how our minds justified and covered up the illnesses of our own hearts.

I’m disgusted with what we do to leaders, both in the body of Christ and out of it. As I was writing this chapter, my father reminded me of a time when President Reagan appeared on a national talk show, discussing an imminent summit conference and his hopes for disarmament agreements with Mr. Gorbachev. Immediately, many arch-conservatives disagreed with his attempts, which was their right, but some of these men went on to call him names and proclaimed him “a weak man with a strong wife.” That kind of disrespect for leadership is entirely reprehensible and a shame upon our nation!

Pastoral burnout has become epidemic in the last decade or so, and the lion’s share of the blame must rest on the body of Christ for its sick attitudes concerning authority. It is as if we can’t feel safe unless we can find something to use against our leaders. I can think of no national or local authority figure in or out of the church who has been exempt from this kind of pressure. We’ve become so sick with attitudes of dishonor toward authority that if no legitimate sin or character flaws can be found, we fabricate some and use them to weaken the position of anyone in authority.

This is one way of obtaining a sense of control over anyone who occupies a position of power. We set up unreasonable demands and then hate our leaders because of their inability to meet them. We set them on pedestals and hate them for being there. Then our carnal minds, as sinfully obedient servants of the heart, decide the leaders are unrighteous because they can’t meet our demands. Our hearts find or invent faults, and our pharisaical minds provide frameworks of justification.

A group of people in the early years of our church had such a need to bring me down. In one episode of attack, they began with the premise that a pastor should care for the sheep, but their list of what a caring pastor should do included the requirement that he know all of the children of all of his parishioners by name. I’ve never been good with names, and I never could keep all the children straight. That was the justification these people needed for concluding that I didn’t care for the flock and was, therefore, a bad shepherd! “Our pastor doesn’t know all the children’s names. Therefore, he doesn’t love us.” My father was declared a rebel and a bad pastor because the socks he wore beneath his pulpit robe were not always black! And he worked in his garden with bare feet—“of all things!” Any pretext will do to bring the pastor down!

Any pastor is a human being with human limitations. If he doesn’t relate well to certain kinds of people, then you have a choice. You can do whatever your heart dictates and condemn him while you justify condemnation with your unredeemed mind, or you can direct your heart to ask, “Why does he have that trouble? How can I understand him? How can I honor him and maximize his position? How can I make my heart into an instrument of compassion for him as authority over me?”

Because we haven’t learned to rule over hearts with renewed minds in our relationships to authority figures, we’ve lost our own ability to exercise authority wholesomely over others. We often end up doing it in the strength of our own unredeemed emotions rather than in the righteousness of God’s Word. Authority can be properly exercised only when the renewed mind objectively recognizes truth and calls the heart into actions consistent with that truth. Authority becomes domination and control of others when the mind will not order the heart to die for others’ sakes. Left to itself, the heart invariably seeks to manipulate others for selfish ends. The carnal mind supplies the means of doing so.

There are those who confuse anger with strength and so yell at their families or dominate them with outbursts of rage, thinking they’re exercising their God-ordained mandate to lead. They confuse strong feelings with authority or power.

When the family doesn’t respond to this approach, they become angrier and employ their unredeemed minds to justify their behavior by protesting, “I try to be gentle, but they don’t respect anything I say.” That’s a lie. Respect was withheld because they too often exercised their authority in anger. Authority can be exercised in a healthy way only when the heart is obedient to the renewed mind functioning properly as the decision maker, calling the heart to become a tool for compassion.

Feelings are not truth. Truth is the objective reality of God’s Word shedding light on events in the real world. Truth is God’s Word that says that “the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God” (James 1:20, RSV). Bind your heart to that truth. Make it obey by choosing righteous behavior, whether you are under authority or in authority.

SECTION 3

The Solution

10

ACCORDING TO THY WORD

How can a young man keep his way pure? By

keeping it according to Thy word. With all my heart

I have sought Thee; do not let me wander from

Thy commandments. Thy word I have treasured

in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee.

PSALM 119:9-11, EMPHASIS ADDED

Thy testimonies are wonderful; therefore my soul observes them. The unfolding of Thy words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple. I opened my mouth wide and panted, for I longed for Thy commandments. Turn to me and be gracious to me, after Thy manner with those who love Thy name. Establish my footsteps in Thy word, and do not let any iniquity have dominion over me. Redeem me from the oppression of man, that I may keep Thy precepts. . . . My eyes shed streams of water, because they do not keep Thy law.

PSALM 119:129-134, 136, EMPHASIS ADDED

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.

PHILIPPIANS 4:8, EMPHASIS ADDED

MUCH OF THE solution to the problem of dethroning the carnal mind and installing the renewed mind has already been presented. In the first chapter we pointed out that we must learn not to believe and thus revivify long-ago crucified ways of feeling and thinking when they pop back into our minds and hearts. Crucified ways of thinking and feeling will come back to life, but if we refuse to choose them and do not entertain them, they will soon subside. A corollary message of chapter 1 is that we should not enter into struggling with recurring feelings and thoughts, lest that conflict allow them to assume center stage again in our lives, but once they have been crucified, to ignore them, thus denying them life.

In chapter 2, we pointed out that some feelings and thoughts are in fact what we are feeling and thinking. We taught that we must learn to distinguish between old, dead ways and what still has reality in the present because of roots of bitterness we have not yet discovered. The main point of discernment is that whatever feelings and thoughts plague us from the past, having already been crucified, have no real force or passion in them, unless we give it to them by believing them and choosing to act on them. The lesson of that chapter was that the way our Lord heals ensures that long-dead feelings and thoughts will try to come back and that we must understand how and why. We must learn to guard against the heart and mind’s tendency to repossess the control center of our lives and turn toward God with fear and trembling, because He alone can enable us to do that—such holy fear is the beginning of wisdom.

The message of chapter 3 was that we must resolve to live within discipline and constant prayer. The discipline is first mental: “I will not allow myself to feel, think, or do whatever Jesus would not.” Put positively, it is, “I will feel, think, and do whatever Jesus would.” And second, dethroning the carnal mind is a matter of constant prayer. Not “how often have I returned to Thee, sweet minute and a half of prayer,” but “sweet hour of prayer,” a daily life not only of flash prayers but also of continual intercession for others for God’s purposes.

In chapter 3 we also said that the greatest antidote to the carnal mind’s propensity to regain the control center of our lives is nothing other than a life given over to constant prayer.

Chapter 4 was devoted first to encouraging all to get into small groups in which to become more open, vulnerable, and corporate. If we do not allow others to crack into us with truth, our deceptive minds will sooner or later find a way to reinstall the carnal in control of us. We must learn to listen humbly to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

The second import of chapter 4 was to call us all to self-sacrificial service. The teaching of that chapter pointed out that only as we pour ourselves out in service do we come to recognize and love the mind of Christ at work within us.

Section 2 attempted to reveal the depths of the problem of unseating the incumbent carnal mind and installing the new. Chapters 5-7 exposed the depths of roots and ruts, both inherited and self-made, that must be adamantly forced to the cross again and again if we are to become free in Christ to walk His way.

The message of these chapters, so often reiterated, was that mere striving to change the way we think and feel will affect little help and that all things within us must be made to find their complete death on the cross daily. These chapters are an attempt to identify to us what are the deep inherited and created ways of feeling and thinking that we must pray to death.

Chapter 8 presented a teaching by Loren to distinguish what are the functions of the mind and heart and to show what destructive things happen when we allow the heart, or our feelings, to become the decision-making force in our lives rather than our renewed mind in Christ. Loren showed that we must learn to rule ourselves under the Holy Spirit through the dictates of our renewed mind, not by our carnal feelings—and that we do not always want to undergo that discipline.

Chapter 9 expanded that revelation into many areas of life in our society, showing the corruptions that occur whenever we allow our feelings to overwhelm what our renewed mind knows is right in the Lord.

I have reviewed these chapters not only for the value of recalling the total picture of what we have learned so far but also in order to pose some vital questions, because we might ask, “Then, for those of us who have done all that, why can’t we live the life of Christ more steadfastly and faithfully?” Or, “What’s still lacking that so few really take hold to win the battle in the deep mind where it counts?” We see so few really winning the battle against the old carnal feelings and thoughts when they rise back up. Why?

I’m not complaining. Rather, I put it this way to dramatize the fact that something crucial is missing.

GOD’S INTENDED IMPACT OF THE WORD IN OUR LIVES

I believe there are two vital elements lacking from our discussion so far. The second will be the subject matter of the next and final chapter. The first is God’s intended impact of His Word upon our lives. I realize that this statement implies that His Word has not yet had His intended effect in our lives. And that again leaves us with the question, “Why?” Or, “What do you mean?”

I mean more than the simple, sad fact that too many of us seldom read the Bible. Of course that’s true. Most Christians use their Bibles mainly as a dust cover for the table or shelf. If I could shake us all up some way to drive us into regular, disciplined daily Bible study, I would—at times including myself. But there’s something even more important to be learned here if we would dislodge the carnal mind and conform our renewed minds to the ways of the Lord.

Look again at the first scripture quoted at the beginning of this chapter (taken this time from the New International Version), and notice the emphases: “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Ps. 119:11, NIV, emphasis added).

The Lord came along one day and in His still, small voice did His usual refrain with me: “John, you didn’t understand that scripture.”

“What scripture, Lord?”

“Psalm 119:11. Let Me put it for you the way you misread it: ‘I have put Your Word in my mind, that I might not sin against You.’” He went on to say, “John, it doesn’t say that if we put the Word into our minds, we’ll be able to keep from sinning. The Word must get into the heart: ‘For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he’ (Prov. 23:7, KJV).”

That set me to thinking—rather, as Mary did, to ponder these things in my heart (Luke 2:19). After a while, I realized that all of us who minister to Christians have ministered to literally hundreds of born-anew Christians who know the Word of God mentally inside and out, perhaps better than we do, and yet their lives are in shambles!

God was telling me that it is not enough to know His Word mentally, and I believe that He wanted me to reflect until I saw that He was saying that inner healing and dedication alone wouldn’t get it done either. He was saying that somehow the Word must move from the mind to the heart if it is to be effective in keeping us from sinning.

But as I meditated further, I realized that the word hidden (NIV) or treasured (NAS) was important, a clue to a secret of power in the Christian walk.

Finally, I had to go back to the Lord and simply ask, “Lord, how does the Word become part of the heart rather than just the mind?” His answer was equally simple: “John, if a man merely reads the Word, even if he memorizes it, that does not make it part of his heart. It is only in his mind. But if a man acts it out in self-sacrificial service to others, that moves the Word from the mind into the heart.”

Again, it was time to muse awhile. We all know that what He told me is right; it rang with truth in our hearts. But we also know too many who have tried hard to serve the Lord and who know the Bible very well but whose ways are so un-Christlike that people shy away from their advances! Some of these have received a lot of inner healing. More are extremely determined to be like Him—and yet they aren’t. The Word obviously hasn’t moved very potently from their mind into the ruling center of their feelings and inner thoughts, though they try to serve Him every day.

As I was pondering these things, a couple came to me. They had seen some abuses in their church, specifically in the way they thought their pastor related to some people in the church. This couple read the Word assiduously every day. They loved the Lord and His church passionately. They strove with everything in them to walk in Jesus’s way. They felt that the Lord had given them a word for the pastor, but he had rejected it. When they persisted, he rejected not only the word but them also and put them out of the church.

The Lord quickly let me know it was irrelevant whether theirs had been a true word from Him (I suspected it wasn’t). As I visited with them, since my mind was already in that gear, it rapidly became apparent that God’s Word was clearly in their heads but not in their hearts. Their way was so appalling to the pastor, I could understand why he reacted as he did—I would have too. I was left with the poignant question, “Why? What’s still missing in their lives?”

The answer lies in that other word from the quote—hidden or treasured. It is not enough to know His Word mentally. One must serve others and act on His Word until it has become lodged securely in the heart. But even more important than that, the Word must be treasured!

What does that mean? More than valued, I’m sure. More than appreciated, even than loving the Bible. It speaks something of commitment but more than that, of an experience so profound it may beggar my ability to describe it.

By analogy, making love with Paula is far more for me than sensation. It is not merely a matter of experiencing delight and pleasure in her embrace. It involves rapturous meeting and commitment to one another. There is a wholehearted giving of one’s self to bless the other and a consequential irrevocable welding of two lives as one.

Hiding or treasuring the Word in one’s heart involves that kind of wholehearted embrace. It bonds the heart and mind eternally and unchangeably to God’s Word until the renewed mind sighs and says to itself, “I’ve found my resting place. I’m home.”

Treasuring God’s Word is an irrevocable setting of the inner computer of one’s mind, much like a marriage: “I absolutely will not have any other thoughts than these. Here I stay; this is the death knell and rising song of my heart. Whatever I see within these pages calls to death every philosophy and thought I have garnered in all my existence, and it resurrects my mind to track forever in God’s ways.”

That kind of seeing truth within His Word creates a paroxysm, a shudder of instant embrace and simultaneous death. There is a never-ending bonding, an eternal directive sent into the entire being, that says as Luther said at the Diet of Worms, “Hier stehe Ich. Ich kann nicht anders. Gott hilf mir.” (“Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me.”)

I am not speaking of a momentary ephemeral experience or of something mystical. I am testifying of a union, a commitment, a determination, a setting of life’s course, a coming to rest for the mind that says, “I am free to ask and inquire about whatever I want. I can roam the universe of investigation and delight in what I find, but the decision about where I will settle and what will govern my actions has been established once and for all. I am at rest.”

Augustine said of the soul that we are created in God and restless until we return to Him. The same is true of our mind. It is built with an heurism (which means ever-insistently seeking for eternal truths to rest in) ingrained in its very fiber. Our mind quests for truth from its inception to its ending. We are restless until we find it. But when our born-anew spirit hears or sees the truth of God’s Word, something of recognition leaps within.

It is almost as though we somehow knew its truth long before, and like a homecoming child who has been there before and now sees his beloved grandfather’s home moving into sight around the bend, it leaps in recognition to celebrate, “I’m home. I’m home.” Akin to his parents, it breathes a sigh of relief and settles back to rest, saying, “These are my roots. This is who I am.”

Once that kind of marriage of the heart and mind to the truth of God’s Word has happened, a bit more of 1 John 3:9 has become reality: “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” Of course, we don’t want to confuse our being born anew in our spirit with what we are describing here. What I am saying is that every part of us must die and be born anew. Within our born-anew experience there is also a dying to our mind and a rising to resurrection life within His mind.

When I completed my seminary career and was ordained in the summer of 1958, I decided that despite what my professors had said, I would believe that the Bible is true from cover to cover, that Jesus is who He said He is, that the miracles of the Bible did occur as written, that He did die on the cross and was raised from the dead, and that we do in fact need to be born again. (For those who are shocked about my seminary professors, remember that it was a most liberal and modernistic seminary.) In October of that year, I awoke from a sound sleep speaking in tongues and didn’t even know what it was—the Holy Spirit knew in His wisdom that He would have to bypass my conscious mind and so fell on me while I slept!

After that I locked myself in my study every second I could spare from the duties of the parish and devoured the Word of God hour by hour, for three years nonstop. Whereas it had been a struggle to read and understand the Bible, now it leaped off the pages into my mind and heart! That blessed recognition of truth, death, rebirth, and inner marriage went on day after day, moment by moment. My mind was finding and cherishing its eternal home. Time and again, discovery by discovery, I prayed those prayers discussed in earlier chapters: “Lord, I don’t want my mind. Bring my mind to death. Give me Your mind. I renounce what I have thought and known, and I receive what I see here.”

Naturally, I assumed that my experience had been similar to everyone else’s. It is only lately that I have seen what has happened to so many Christians. Perhaps they had been raised in a less-apostate expression of the faith. For whatever reason, they apparently assumed that when they received Jesus as Lord and Savior, their minds had fully appropriated death and resurrection into the mind of Christ.

CONTINUING DEATH AND RESURRECTION

It did not take me long after my conversion to see that our old self, our carnal character, has to be hustled to its death again and again after we receive Him. All our books and tapes on sanctification and transformation have had that realization as their base and necessity. But years of futile striving to cause some people to hold on to their healing have driven me at last to see that just as our pestilent character reanimates after its death and must be hog-tied again and again to the cross, so our rebellious carnal minds must also be slain and born anew, again and again, daily.

The sad realization is that very few Christians have thought along these lines. When Paula and I have taught about the necessity of continuing death and resurrection within our minds, and I have asked congregations whether they have ever asked Jesus to slay their minds and regird them in His Word, only three or four out of several hundred in attendance have raised their hands!

It just seems to have been a hole in our thinking about what it is to be born anew. No wonder Christians continue to think in the world’s ways and don’t even know they do! In a sense, their minds have never been fully born anew. They are still walking in the old ways of feeling and thinking, assuming that they think rightly because they are new creatures in Christ. The irony is that they are in fact new creatures mentally—positionally. But they haven’t yet made it their own in the depths of their minds. They haven’t gone through their own “three years” of daily experiencing death, resurrection, and mental marriage to the Word of God.

Somehow, people must come to see the possibility and the need. Our minds must be crucified and born anew as insistently as our flesh needs to be brought through the process of sanctification and transformation after conversion. At the deepest level, where the will arises to take hold of life, there needs to be a blessed marriage of the Word of God with the mind’s grasp of life. Within all the recesses of the mind, there needs to resonate, “This [the Word of God] is reality! I will adhere to this with everything in me.”

The unfortunate truth is that that kind of inner marriage of the mind to God’s revealed Word does not just automatically happen. We have to invite it. Only our Lord can cause it. It is our part to seek it fervently.

May I plead with you? Do not merely read the Bible—though it would greatly help if you would do at least that regularly. But as you read, pray fervently that your own mind be brought to death on His cross and that your mind and heart be fastened to His truths irrevocably to feel, think, and do what His Word says. Pray for the conversion of your own mind a thousand times. It only takes once to obtain Jesus as the Lord and Savior of our soul, but it takes persistent thousands of times to weld all our living to what the Word says.

MOVING GOD’S WORD FROM THE MIND TO THE HEART

Now let us return to the concept of serving until the Word has been moved from the mind to the heart. Perhaps the quandary can be solved. There is an answer to why my friends who tried so hard to serve the Lord had to be put out of the church because their ways were so offensive. The answer is simple—lack of death.

When they read and acted on the Word, it fastened itself into their heart, their unrenewed heart. Now, their perverted understandings of the Word only fueled their confusions with rationalisms backed up with eternal truths—“How dare you question what the Bible says! I’m right and you know it.” As Loren made clear in the eighth chapter, their carnal minds busily justified what arose from the perversions of their hearts—with the finality of Scriptures to back them up!

This is why the two words must go together: “Thy Word have I treasured in my heart . . . ” Within that word treasured are a thousand experiences of humble dying to old ruts and ways of thinking. When death of self and entropy (union with God, thus with His Word) accompany service, the heart and mind are raptured with the blessedness of His thoughts.

It works this way: I ministered to a lady beset by a pattern of rejection. Her husband unaccountably had left her. Friends had abandoned her, though she continually served as a self-sacrificial Dorcas for them, and I knew they wanted to befriend her. The Bible says that what we sow we shall surely reap (Gal. 6:7). Therefore, I looked to see what she may have sown and discovered that her father died when she was six, and one by one her brothers grew up and left her at home.

She had formed a bitter-root judgment that all men and friends would leave her. That expectation so beamed at people that they found themselves obeying it without knowing why. She confessed her judgment as sin, and we brought to death on the cross her pattern of expecting that life would go that way. Her husband came home; her friends returned. Joy radiated from her face—and I knew and celebrated the Lord’s own joy that His child was restored!

That kind of experience, multiplied by hundreds of others, bonds my heart and mind in joy and love to the Lord and His Word. I see it work, and my heart thrills to be made a partner of Christ in His love for God’s children. Therefore, I love His Word, and my mind is bonded ever more firmly to His mind.

A man berates me unfairly, but I have cemented my heart and mind to the Lord and His Word and have treasured His Word in my heart. Therefore, my renewed heart in a flash recalls to my mind the passages pertinent to what I need to do: “Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness . . . ” (Gal. 6:1). “If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him . . . ” (Luke 17:3) “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Prov. 15:1). “If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men” (Rom. 12:18). “Never pay back evil for evil to anyone” (Rom. 12:17). “The one who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him” (1 John 2:9-10). The Word guides my mind in the ways of peace, and each experience of living it increases my heart’s love for His ways.

The more I pour myself out in tandem with my Lord to love others to life and see His truths work to help and heal those whom He loves, the more my heart bursts with gratitude for Him and His Word. Just as the Cross brought my old ways of thinking and feeling to death, so now ministry in His resurrection power according to His Word brings the mind and heart of Christ daily more to life in me. I can do nothing but praise and thank Him for His mercy in choosing me to serve Him. He causes me to serve despite my sinful self, does it all in me and through me, and then blesses me as though I alone had done it all! What a wonderful Lord!

11

LETTING GOD LOVE US

See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon

us, that we should be called children of God; and

such we are. For this reason the world does not

know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved,

now we are children of God, and it has not appeared

as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He

appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see

Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope

fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

1 JOHN 3:1-3, EMPHASIS ADDED

OVER A PERIOD of perhaps more than a year, the Holy Spirit gave Paula and me the same two Bible verses in our morning devotions, at least four or fives times a month. He prompted us each day to look up scriptures by chapter and verse number. Usually we didn’t know what they said until we looked them up, but these became so familiar we would groan and say, “Oh no, not again. What could He be trying to tell us?” The verses were Psalm 102:6-7:

I resemble a pelican of the wilderness;

I have become like an owl of the waste places.

I lie awake,

I have become like a lonely bird on a housetop.

And Mark 8:18:

Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember . . . ?

We kept praying for whoever might be feeling lonely and rejected. We thought of friends who were suffering persecution or rejection. We interceded for anyone and everyone we could think of whose condition might fit those verses. But we could sense in our spirits that we hadn’t yet understood what the Lord was trying to tell us—and He kept recalling whose verses to our minds again and again. It got to be embarrassing and downright exasperating; we just couldn’t hear what He was really talking about.

Then our son Loren preached a sermon about how Jesus wants to be allowed to love us. How it hurts His heart when He has so much love for us and we won’t let Him express it. In Jesus God wants to gather us in His arms, and though He is God and needs no one, He yearns for our love. Loren talked about how, as an earthly father, he ached sometimes to hold and hug his children, and now that they were becoming teenagers, they didn’t want him to hug them as often as they used to (or they thought or pretended they didn’t), and how that sometimes left him wounded and hungry for their love. He said, “God is like that, only so much more. God is wounded and lonely when we won’t allow Him into daily fellowship with us so He can love up on us.”

Lights went on in our minds—and our tears flowed! How patiently and tenderly God had been trying to tell us. We were pouring ourselves out in service and in love to Him, but we never thought to take the time to let Him enjoy loving us! We never really knew He craved it. That was why we couldn’t grasp what He was trying to tell us. It was too mind-boggling to think that the very God of all the universe could yearn for fellowship with us just to enjoy loving up on us! But He does. That’s the great mystery and glory of His love for us; He “longs to be gracious to you, and therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you” (Isa. 30:18, emphasis added).

We had made Him feel like a lonely bird on a housetop, like an owl of the waste places or a pelican in the wilderness! We couldn’t see. We couldn’t hear. We had hurt His heart of love for us.

Scriptures and scraps of verses flooded into our minds: “For God so loved the world . . . ” (John 3:16). “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:8, emphasis added). “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us . . . ” (1 John 3:1, KJV). “We know love by this, that He laid down His life . . . ” (1 John 3:16). “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling” (Matt. 23:37). He wants, longs, to gather us into His embrace, the way a mother longs to hold her infant child to herself.

GOD WANTS OUR FELLOWSHIP

Eventually we came to see that, yes, we had known God loves us; after all, He had sent His Son to die for us personally. But somehow that had gotten locked up in history somewhere. We knew He loved us personally—from afar, somewhere in His heavens. All that knowledge that He truly loves us hadn’t gotten connected in our minds with the revelation that He desires to have close, present, intimate fellowship with us! He had loved us in Jesus on the cross, and that was that.

We hadn’t heard it when we ourselves quoted, “For the LORD delights in you . . . ” (Isa. 62:4). We had mentally mistranslated it, “...is delighted about you.” It seemed somehow presumptuous, or maybe arrogant, to admit the possibility that God Himself delights in us, longs to be with us, and that He revels in our fellowship.

Since that sermon, it has been an indescribable blessing to rise early in the morning and sit down to let Him enjoy loving me! I feel His grace and glory catching me up to Himself, and I bask like a child on a warm beach in the sunlight of His love. It’s so restful, easy, and wonderful.

“And indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). I had never heard it—“fellowship”—present, active meeting and embracing, “with” the Father and the Son! Those had been beautiful words—that maybe talked about history. Now they describe a present reality! They celebrate His being present and available—no, more than available—aggressively choosing and seeking me every day, giving me powerfully impacting and very personal affectionate touches! The Lord of all life and love Himself aching to be allowed to cherish me—and what a wonder beyond belief that allowing Him to express His love to me delights and blesses Him!

That overwhelms our minds and stretches them beyond their capacity to comprehend in rational terms. His love, more than all else, dethrones the carnal and installs the redeemed mind. Only a mind renewed in Jesus can withstand the impact of such a revelation, that the God of all the universe Himself longs to cherish this one little person in this tiny little earth—me!

Perhaps we’re “Johnny-come-latelies,” and most everybody else has already known these things. But I doubt it.

Let’s look at the significance of this kind of loving fellowship for what we have been talking about concerning the renewal of the mind. We have been questioning why so many grasp the Word of God intellectually but can’t get it into the heart and out to where they live moment by moment. In the last chapter, we said that there is a need to “treasure the Word in the heart” until our entire inner being marries itself to His Word in commitment to live by His commandments. However, we pointed out that some can bond the Word not to the redeemed heart but to the old! The answer here is in letting Jesus love us. When we let Him love us, we come to know Him. Our spirit meets His and soaks in His goodness. We discern instantly then, and easily, when something doesn’t square with who He is.

It is not enough to have fed on His love last week. As Satan poured his defilements over Eve until she forgot what she knew, so his defilements in the world erode our energies, our “rememberer,” and our think tank, until we are again subject to confusions and delusions. We do not remain neutral long. Either our roots are sunk deeply, daily, moment by moment, into His refreshing love, or they begin to quest elsewhere, anywhere, for nurture. “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4).

When a circumstance confronts me, what determines what my heart will send to influence my mind? What deep false motives may grab my mind’s thinking facilities and try to bend its logic to suit their purposes? What ensures that my heart will fetch to my mind just those scriptures that will bless it with data to heal and help rather than to justify my carnal heart’s desire to sin? What sets my renewed mind on a solidly balanced and wise Christian course as it attempts to corral my passions and direct my entire being to obey His Word? What fuels my mind with virtue?

Can anyone miss the answer? My mind, heart, and spirit must have been soaked so freshly in His love for me that His loving nature wells up through everything I feel and think! We cannot manifest His loving nature unless, as He said, we abide in Him.

I learn that someone has gossiped and lied about me. If I am freshly come from letting Jesus fill me with His love for me, my spirit sings His love through my heart and recalls to my mind wondrous scriptures of compassion and forgiveness. But if I have been neglecting to allow Him time to hold me in His embrace, my weakened spirit slumps under the onslaught of hate, and I find myself making up speeches, planning how to tell that person off. My mind has now become carnal, serving rather than leading my recalcitrant heart.

Paula used to get angry under pressure and didn’t realize that her words and gestures had obtained a cutting edge. If I had been away from Jesus, I wanted to flee to my cave and shut her out. I could feel my heart closing its steel doors. It would be a long time before I would open to let her in again if my flesh was allowed to continue to have its way. I would take perverse delight in punishing her by withdrawing and ignoring—nothing made her madder, and I knew that!

But if I allowed our tender and gracious Lord to infuse me with His loving presence, I didn’t want to flee. My steel gates didn’t even begin to budge to close. His Spirit sent love through my spirit into my mind and settled it upon its foundations in Him. I rested securely in Him, and my mind dutifully reflected that posture in all its thoughts.

Look at it as the necessity for power. It takes strength of spirit to stand and do what is right when everything we have learned in the world prompts us to react in the flesh. Perhaps in this regard we are not much different from a car engine. No matter how expensive the automobile, how high the octane we purchase, or how finely tuned its engine, if we don’t remember to fill up the gas tank, sooner or later we are going to go no farther. Just so, no matter how well developed our Christian character, how brilliant our minds in Scripture and theology, or how good our emotional life usually is, without continuous abiding in Him, our old flesh will reanimate and manifest its corruptions not long after we forget to let Him love us enough.

We have the mind of Christ; does it have us? We have the heart of our loving Lord; does His heart recently, today, have us? We have the Spirit of God; does His Spirit freshly inundate and rule ours? “Unless you abide in Me . . . ”

The question from so many is, “How can we come easily and regularly into His presence? I don’t want to fill myself with empty striving. I’ve never yet been able to feel that He is right beside me, filling me with His love.”

What we are talking about is not a matter of trying to climb past our barriers to find God and experience Him. It is the other way around. It is an easy discipline of letting Him find us. You may or may not be able to feel His presence and anointing. It would be great if you could, even best, but it is not of utmost importance. What is important is that you decide to believe that He is there, loving you, whether you can feel it or not, and that you tarry long enough with Him to grant His Holy Spirit sufficient time to permeate your entire being with His nature.

What is needful is to believe that God is present, wanting to love you. Determine to give Him time. Not necessarily in one hunk during the day, but realize and celebrate that He is there, enjoying every wholesome activity we do. When we greet a friend, God is in our fellowship, enjoying our reunion. When our child lifts his arms to say, “Pick me up,” our Lord is in our arms, loving His child. Whenever we do whatever we do that is “ . . . true . . . honorable . . . right . . . pure . . . lovely . . . of good repute . . . [excellent] and... worthy of praise . . . ” (Phil. 4:8), our blessed Lord Jesus is in it, living it joyfully in us, with us.

For six days God created, and each evening, He saw that His work was “good.” And on that last day, when He formed man, male and female, “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31, emphasis added). Our Lord is a Creator who delights in all that He has made.

That means He will be chuckling over us and weeping for us whether we are aware of it or not. But the good news of this chapter is that His joy and ours are greatly magnified when we are aware and invite Him to share life with us. The key is our free will. Our loving Lord Jesus is such a gentleman that He will never in any way violate our will.

When we do not know or become callous to the fact that He is present in every good thing we do, He does not feel invited to suffuse all our deep mind and motives with His Spirit. But when we believe and appreciate the fact that He is there, He welcomes and delights in that invitation to imbue all of our heart, mind, and spirit with His love and, therefore, with His nature.

When we know that He is in all that we do, it not only suffuses the deep mind with His Spirit, but it also puts a check on everything we do: “Do You like this R-rated show we’re watching, Lord? Are You enjoying Yourself?” “How did You like the way I told that guy off? Are we having fun?” I have even discovered it immediately influencing the way I drive! The moment my speedometer nudges above the limit, I sense His displeasure and repent as my foot lifts from the pedal, and I feel His pleasure as we cruise in righteous ways. Living righteously becomes easy and a joy. I want so much to please Him, to cause Him to have unmixed delight in all that I do—in my car, in conversation with others, financially, or in whatever choices I make, ethically and morally.

Knowing in every fiber of our being that our Lord’s Spirit flows through each thoughtful act—through every gentle and compassionate word, every kindness, every forgiveness—takes the burden from us and brings us into rest. We apprehend the reality that “My yoke is easy, and My load is light” (Matt. 11:30, emphasis added). Our mind rests in His wisdom. Our heart rests in His feelings: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (Isa. 26:3, KJV, emphasis added).

This is what it is to walk as sons of God in His Spirit (Rom. 8:14), to know and celebrate that our holy and awesome Creator God is also our ever-present, intimate friend, delighting in us as we go about the simple daily tasks and joys of life.

It doesn’t require vast spiritual experiences to abide in Him; it only demands that we know and believe that He is there, in us, living as us, for us, in everything we do. That awareness invites Him to share His life with ours, and our mind is thereby transformed as His Spirit pervades all the pathways of our thinking and feeling.

1

W. E. Vine, MA, Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (Iowa Falls, IA: Riverside Book and Bible House, n.d.), 15.

2

Academy of Achievement, “Sir Roger Bannister,” http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/ban0bio-1 (accessed November 17, 2008).

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

SECTION 1 - Dethroning the Carnal Mind

Chapter 1 - KEEPING THE BEAST DEAD

THE DEPTHS OF THE BATTLE

WHEN LONG-DEAD THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS RETURN

THE DISCIPLINE EVERY BORN-ANEW CHRISTIAN MUST LEARN

THE DISLODGING OF THE CARNAL MIND

LACK OF TRUST

THE MOST DIFFICULT THING FOR CHRISTIANS TO LEARN

Chapter 2 - COMPREHENDING THE WAY THE LORD HEALS

DISCERNING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUE AND FALSE FEELINGS

DEALING WITH THE ROOTS

MOMENT-BY-MOMENT ABIDING IN JESUS

TURNING AWAY

HOLY FEAR

Chapter 3 - DEVELOPING MENTAL DISCIPLINES AND HABITS OF CONSTANT PRAYER

THE IMPORTANCE OF PRAYER

THE ROLE OF DISCIPLINE

WHERE THE WARFARE IS

Chapter 4 - PRAYER GROUPS AND SERVICES

RECEIVING FROM OTHERS

THE GOD OF NICENESS

THE PRICE OF CORPORATENESS

SPIRITUAL SERVICE

LEARNING TO LOVE THE MIND OF CHRIST WITHIN

SECTION 2 - The Depths of the Problem

Chapter 5 - DEEP RUTS

FINDING FREEDOM FROM THE FLESH

DEEP RUTS—DEEP ROOTS

INHERITED ROOTS

Chapter 6 - INHERITED ROOTS AND CONSEQUENT RUTS FROM ADAM AND EVE’S SINS IN THE ...

ORIGINAL SIN

THE TREE OF LIFE

ENGRAMS IN OUR NATURE

STEADINESS AND FAITHFULNESS

BAD COMPANY

THE BATTLE FOR THE CONTROL OF MEN’S MINDS

MASS DEFILEMENT

ROOTED IN LOVE

Chapter 7 - ROOTS AND RUTS FROM THE GARDEN OF EDEN

FEAR OF GOD’S PRESENCE

PATTERNS OF FLIGHT AND ALIBIS

EVIL MOTIVES—EVIL DEEDS

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

PASSING THE BUCK

A MAN’S TWO WORLDS

PUTTING OUR PRIORITIES IN ORDER

SINNING CANNOT PRODUCE GOOD

Chapter 8 - RESTORING THE FUNCTIONS OF MIND AND HEART

THE FUNCTION OF THE HEART

THE FUNCTION OF THE MIND

THE RENEWED MIND

THE BEGINNING OF MATURITY

THE TASK OF THE MIND

Chapter 9 - RIGHT THINKING ABOUT THE CHURCH AND AUTHORITY

RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM

CHILDREN OF DIVORCE AND ABSENTEE PARENTS

THE PASSIVE GENERATION

BALANCING OUR CORPORATE AND PRIVATE WORSHIP

ARTISTS IN MINISTRY

“LONE-STRANGER” CHRISTIANS

COVENANTAL COMMITMENT

ACCEPTING DIFFERENCES

SUBJECTION TO ONE ANOTHER

LISTENING TO OTHERS

HOLINESS IN RELATIONSHIPS

REBELLION

SECTION 3 - The Solution

Chapter 10 - ACCORDING TO THY WORD

GOD’S INTENDED IMPACT OF THE WORD IN OUR LIVES

CONTINUING DEATH AND RESURRECTION

MOVING GOD’S WORD FROM THE MIND TO THE HEART

Chapter 11 - LETTING GOD LOVE US

GOD WANTS OUR FELLOWSHIP