It’s been a while since I last posted here, the reason being that I spent most of fall 2011 in Japan. To find out why, please check out my other blog, baywatchjapan.com.
I’ll soon resume posting on this blog and will alternate between the two. Stephenbay.com will be more about my thoughts on life and faith while BaywatchJapan.com will be more about, well, my adventures in Japan.
Stay tuned…
When we experience spiritual attacks (in various forms, including discouragement, sickness, loss, and demonic oppression), we often interpret it in one of two ways:
These two responses reflect pride and self-condemnation, respectively. Which one is correct? Are either of them necessarily right or wrong?
Let’s take a look at number 1. Yes, Satan sometimes tries to snatch away what God has planted (Mark 4:15), stop us from doing Kingdom work, as he did with the Apostle Paul (1 Thess. 2: 17-18), and divert our attention away from what God is doing, as when Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” (Matthew 16: 21-23). But this doesn’t mean that spiritual attacks are always an indicator that we’re “on the right track.” Sometimes, spiritual attacks are tied to our disobedience.
Nebuchadnezzar was driven mad to the point of acting like an animal because he failed to heed the warning to “Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed” (Dan.4:27). Saul lost his anointing to be king due to his disobedience (1 Sam. 15), and when he became jealous of David, whom the LORD anointed to replace him as king, God sent an evil spirit on him (1 Sam.18:10). Later, Saul was told that he and his sons would die due to yet another act of disobedience (1 Sam. 27). In 2 Chronicles 18 and 1 Kings 22, God allowed a lying spirit to speak to false prophets that would lead King Ahab to his death at Ramoth Gilead. None of these men were “on the right track.”
I do see where interpretation number 1 might have stemmed from: when we draw near to God, His holiness and His light shines on us and often reveals areas of our own lives that perhaps we’ve tried to keep hidden in darkness (1 John 1: 5-10). In this sense, drawing near to God can stir up our own junk, which may have enemy attachments to them, but rather than view this as a spiritual attack, it might be more helpful to see it as part of the sanctification process– it’s part of throwing off “everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles” in order to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Heb 12:1).
As for interpretation number 2– does everyone who undergoes a spiritual attack have unconfessed sin or a curse? Does the enemy always need a legal right to harass someone?
Did Satan have a legal right to torment Job?
One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”
Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”
Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD. (Job 1: 6-12)
God said that Job was “blameless and upright” and “shuns evil,” yet Satan took everything but his life away from him– and only with the LORD’s permission. Sometimes, spiritual attacks are allowed in order to test us, and James 1:2-3 exhorts us to “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
The next time you experience a spiritual attack, rather than react with pride (“I must be doing something right”) or self-condemnation (“I must be doing something wrong”), instead ask the LORD, “what are You doing in the midst of all this? What are You trying to show me? Is there something I can do to become more like Christ? How can I grow as a result of this?”
By reframing it this way, we take the focus off of the enemy and off of ourselves, and we shift it to God– where it should have been all along.
Fear of man will prove to be a snare,
but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe.Many seek an audience with a ruler,
but it is from the LORD that one gets justice.
(Proverbs 29:25-26)
My first year in ministry was the toughest.
I was the last person hired before a hiring freeze. We were in a budget crisis. I had no impressive credentials or prior ministry experience to justify my presence on the full-time staff. Plus, I had this sense that some of my colleagues were suspicious of me– this guy who came out of nowhere and claimed to hear God’s voice. (Mind you, this was five years ago, when Newsong was still very much a mainline Evangelical church where nobody talked openly about the supernatural, especially during a Sunday service, and the closest thing we’d get to a charismatic expression of worship was when people closed their eyes and swayed from side to side while singing along to Chris Tomlin.)
The deck was stacked against me. I thought I had to prove myself.
I thought I had to impress my supervisor, my coworkers, and my senior pastor. I worked hard, did every task I could get my hands on, and hoped that people noticed. Whenever I did something right, I’d hunger for affirmation, and whenever I made a mistake, I’d beat myself up or blame others for setting me up for failure.
This all came to a head when I worked on my first big event: a conference for 700 people, held at Biola, featuring Brennan Manning. A lot was riding on this. And a lot was going wrong, from the planning stages to the registration process to the execution of the actual event. It was so stressful that during one of the general sessions, while everyone else was enjoying our main speaker, I stormed into the restroom and blew off some steam by punching the walls and repeatedly muttering a word that I am not proud of.
I then went outside and sat under a tree to pull myself together. That’s when the LORD spoke to me and said, “Be motivated by love, not fear.”
Fear? What did He mean by that? I prayed for insight, and I began to see that I had indeed been motivated by fear ever since my very first day on the job. Fear of disapproval. Fear of losing my job. Fear of not being able to provide for my family. Fear of failure. Fear of looking stupid. Fear that anyone who ever thought I was a loser would be right.
I was motivated by fear of man.
I began to question myself. Why am I here? To serve God or to please people? Who is my true Boss? The exhortation to be motivated by love rather than fear started to make sense to me– I should be serving God out of my love for Him, not out of fear of losing my family’s health insurance. Once I came to understand and embrace this, an enormous burden was lifted off me and I felt tremendous freedom– I no longer worried about being fired because I knew that if God is the One who called me into ministry, He’ll move me around and take me out if He wants to. Knowing this freed me up to make decisions based on what I sensed was right and in God’s will rather than what I thought other people wanted out of me.
I stopped seeing ministry as a job. Instead, it became an expression of love to the One who loved me first (1 Jn. 4:19).
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”
(John 21:15-17)
When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s secret plan. (1 Cor. 2:1 NLT)
When I was a new Christian, I read an email in which the writer, a “more mature brother,” said that he was “convicted.”
“Convicted?” I thought. “Of what? Is he in trouble with the law? What exactly does that mean?” I was afraid to ask anyone what “convicted” meant in a Christian context, as I thought I’d look like an ignorant heathen for not being in-the-know.
I’d then read other emails and articles written by Christians and be stumped by more of the language– why did “believers” want to “fellowship” outside of a “seeker-sensitive” gathering? Why was every other email signed off with “in him” or “under the blood” or “for his glory”? What did they mean when they’d say the worship on Sunday was “anointed” and caused them to “lift hands”?
I felt like an idiot.
But over time, I grew savvy to the lingo. It became a second language to me- as a church staffer, I’d regularly write emails about anointed worship, the need for fellowship among believers, and the pros and cons of having seeker-sensitive services. I even picked up fancier terminology such as “dispensational premillennialism,” “ecumenicalism,” “eschatology,” and “propitiation vs. expiation.”
I had mastered Christianese.
And now that I’m preparing to leave my church staff position to become a missionary, I clearly see a need for me to put aside the exclusive language and be able to communicate these very same concepts in much simpler terms, terms that can be easily grasped by people who might not have ever been to a church before (or in Christianese, “the unchurched,” “non-believers,” “seekers,” or “pagans.”)
At a recent conference, veteran film producer Ralph Winter talked about how we Christians often try to share our faith with those who don’t know Jesus yet but do so using our own vernacular, which means little (or nothing) to people outside of the Church. He likened it to making foreign films with bad subtitles: the intended audience doesn’t get what’s going on and the message is lost.
Growing up in the midwest as the son of immigrants, I would speak Indonesian (my parents’ main language) at home but English while out in public, as very few people in Ohio would understand me were I to speak to them in Indonesian. Similarly, using Christian language is fine when we’re in a Church context- it’s like being at home with our siblings, speaking the language of Our Father- but when we venture outside of the house, we could more effectively share the good news of God’s love for the lost if we communicated in ways they could actually understand.
When I am with the Gentiles who do not follow the Jewish law, I too live apart from that law so I can bring them to Christ. But I do not ignore the law of God; I obey the law of Christ. When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness, for I want to bring the weak to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some. I do everything to spread the Good News and share in its blessings. (1 Cor. 9:21-23 NLT)
(from AW Tozer’s Whatever Happened to Worship?)
But really, my brother or sister, we are brought to God and to faith and to salvation that we might worship and adore Him. We do not come to God that we might be automatic Christians, cookie-cutter Christians, Christians stamped out with a die.
God has provided His salvation that we might be, individually and personally, vibrant children of God, loving God with all our hearts and worshiping Him in the beauty of holiness.
This does not mean, and I am not saying, that we must all worship alike. The Holy Spirit does not operate by anyone’s preconceived idea or formula. But this I know: when the Holy Spirit of God comes among us with His anointing, we become a worshiping people. This may be hard for some to admit, but when we are truly worshiping and adoring the God of all grace and of all love and of all mercy and of all truth, we may not be quiet enough to please everyone.
I recall Luke’s description of the throngs on that first Palm Sunday:
The whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen; saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.
And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.
And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out (19:37-40).
Let me say two things here. First, I do not believe it is necessarily true that we are worshiping God when we are making a lot of racket. But not infrequently worship is audible. When Jesus came into Jerusalem presenting Himself as Messiah there was a great multitude and there was a great noise. Doubtless many who joined in the singing and the praise had never been able to sing in the right key. When you have a group of people singing anywhere, you know that some of them will not be in tune.
But this is the point to their worship: they were united in praises to God.
Second, I would warn those who are cultured, quiet, self-possessed, poised and sophisticated, that if they are embarrassed in church when some happy Christian says “Amen!” they may actually be in need of some spiritual enlightenment. The worshiping saints of God in the Body of Christ have often been a little bit noisy.
I hope you have read some of the devotionals left us by that dear old English saint, Lady Julian, who lived more than 600 years ago.
She wrote that one day she had been thinking about how high and lofty Jesus was, and yet how He Himself meets the humblest part of our human desire. She received such blessing within her being that she could not control herself. She let go with a shout and praised God out loud in Latin.
Translated into English, it would have come out “Well, glory to God!”
Now, if that bothers you, friend, it may be because you do not know the kind of spiritual blessings and delight the Holy Spirit is waiting to provide among God’s worshiping saints. Did you notice what Luke said about the Pharisees and their request that Jesus should rebuke His disciples for praising God with loud voices? Their ritual rules probably allowed them to whisper the words “Glory to God!”, but it really pained them to hear anyone saying them out loud.
Jesus told the Pharisees in effect: “They are doing the right thing. God my Father and I and the Holy Ghost are to be worshiped. If men and women will not worship me, the very rocks will shout my praises!”
Those religious Pharisees, polished and smoothed and polished again, would have died right there in their tracks if they had heard a rock given a voice and praising the Lord.
Well, we have great churches and we have beautiful sanctuaries and we join in the chorus, “We have need of nothing.” But there is every indication that we are in need of worshipers.
What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! (Romans 6:21)
In the 1996 film Fargo, the main character plots a crime that was “supposed to be a no rough stuff type deal,” but (SPOILER ALERT) when his accomplices attempt to cover up their mistakes, their crime spree grows increasingly heinous and there’s a significant body count by the end of the film.
The Oscar-winning screenplay reminded me of how, when I was a kid, I’d tell “one little white lie” to cover up something I’d done, thinking it was harmless, then find myself having to spin a whole web of lies to help support the first lie I told.
I guess it’s human nature to cover up our mistakes and try to hide them- even for David, a man after God’s own heart.
In 2 Samuel 11, David peeks at the married Bathsheba while she’s bathing and lusts after her. He later gets her pregnant, and to cover up their indiscretion, he arranges for her husband Uriah to come back from battle, hoping that he’ll sleep with Bathsheba to make it look like the child is his. Uriah doesn’t take the bait (primarily out of loyalty to his king, David), so David sends the loyal but unwitting soldier to his death. With Bathsheba now a widow, David takes her as his own wife and they have the child they conceived.
He tried to cover up his sin by committing even more sins.
What started out as lust led to adultery, which snowballed into deceit, an abuse of power, and ultimately, murder– David had another human being killed simply to cover up his own moral shortcomings. He successfully hid his mistakes from others for a while, but he could never hide what he’d done from the LORD. The prophet Nathan later called him out, “then David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the LORD’” (2 Sam. 12:13a).
Coming clean doesn’t come easily when we fear the consequences– “the wages of sin is death“ (Rom 6:23)– but the good news is that, by God’s grace, we no longer face the consequences that we deserve; instead, we’ve been set free from sin and have eternal life in Christ (Rom. 6:22). Upon David’s confession, “Nathan replied, ‘The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die’” (2 Sam. 12:13b).
There’s grace when we simply come clean.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10)
(An excerpt from Whatever Happened to Worship? by A.W. Tozer)
Because we are not truly worshipers, we spend a lot of time in the churches just spinning our wheels, burning the gasoline, making a noise but not getting anywhere.
Oh, brother or sister, God calls us to worship, but in many instances we are in entertainment, just running a poor second to the theaters.
That is where we are, even in the evangelical churches, and I don’t mind telling you that most of the people we say we are trying to reach will never come to a church to see a lot of amateur actors putting on a home-talent show.
I tell you, outside of politics there is not another field of activity that has more words and fewer deeds, more wind and less rain.
What are we going to do about this awesome, beautiful worship that God calls for? I would rather worship God than do any other thing I know of in all this wide world.
I would not even attempt to tell you how many hymnbooks are piled up in my study. I cannot sing a lick, but that is nobody’s business. God thinks I am an opera star!
God listens while I sing to Him the old French hymns in translation, the old Latin hymns in translation. God listens while I sing the old Greek hymns from the Eastern church as well as the beautiful psalms done in meter and some of the simpler songs of Watts and Wesley and the rest.
I mean it when I say that I would rather worship God than to do anything else. You may reply, “If you worship God you do nothing else!”
But that only reveals that you have not done your homework. The beautiful part of worship is that it prepares you and enables you to zero in on the important things that must be done for God.
Listen to me! Practically every great deed done in the church of Christ all the way back to the apostle Paul was done by people blazing with the radiant worship of their God.
A survey of church history will prove that it was those who were the yearning worshipers who also became the great workers. Those great saints whose hymns we so tenderly sing were active in their faith to the point that we must wonder how they ever did it all.
The great hospitals have grown out of the hearts of worshiping men. The mental institutions grew out of the hearts of worshiping and compassionate men and women. We should say, too, that wherever the church has come out of her lethargy, rising from her sleep and into the tides of revival and spiritual renewal, always the worshipers were back of it.
We will be making a mistake if we just stand back and say, “But if we give ourselves to worship, no one will do anything!”
On the contrary, if we give ourselves to God’s call to worship, everyone will do more than he or she is doing now. Only, what he or she does will have significance and meaning to it. It will have the quality of eternity in it—it will be gold, silver and precious stones, not wood, hay and stubble.
I cannot speak for you, but I want to be among those who worship. I do not want just to be a part of some great ecclesiastical machine where the pastor turns the crank and the machine runs. You know— the pastor loves everybody and everybody loves him. He has to do it. He is paid to do it.
I wish that we might get back to worship again. Then when people come into the church they will instantly sense that they have come among holy people, God’s people. They can testify, “Of a truth God is in this place.”
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? (Hebrews 12:7)
I love my kids. And I love a good bargain. So whenever I find a great deal on toys that I think one of my sons will like, I’ll buy them while the price is right and save the goods for later, to be given as future birthday gifts or rewards for when my oldest son does an exceptional job in the discipline department. The problem is, he’s a preschooler and discipline is such a challenge these days…
We now have a stockpile of toys just waiting to be released to him.
It’s not that I bought a lot of things for him– it’s that whenever he does need to be disciplined, his mom and I put his existing toys on time-out, one at a time. And before he can get any of the new toys as a reward, he first has to earn back the timed-out toys, one by one.
As his father, I know that he needs to be disciplined for his own sake, so I try to be firm with him outwardly, but inwardly, I’m rooting for him to do a good job because, in addition to wanting him to grow into a productive member of society, I really want to give him the toys I bought– the gifts that are now stockpiled in a cupboard, gathering dust as they wait to be awarded.
And every time I see this stash of toys, I wonder if God also roots for us to learn our lessons so that He can release more of what He already has in store for us.
There might be times in our lives where it seems like the LORD is withholding blessings. Maybe He is, but perhaps there’s something we can or need to learn through the process. There might be old habits or sinful behaviors that we keep falling back into, and while the LORD might be patient and gracious with us as He waits for us to work through them, what we might fail to realize is that greater things lie ahead and we might not get there if we don’t “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles” (Heb. 12:1).
God disciplines His children
4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! 10 They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
(Hebrews 12:4-11)
For Christ didn’t send me to baptize, but to preach the Good News—and not with clever speech, for fear that the cross of Christ would lose its power. (1 Cor. 1:17 NLT)
I’ve always had a lot of stories to tell. Stories of what God has done in my life. Stories of what I’d done in my life before God ruled it. Funny stories, sad stories, outrageous but true stories– these personal tales all came in handy whenever I taught at Sola Dei or was invited to speak at venues outside of my regular area of ministry. They became a highlight of my teaching time.
And therein lies the problem.
One day, as I was preparing to speak at an event, I came to the sobering realization that I had exhausted my supply of stories and had none left to share. I panicked, wracked my brain, tried to squeeze just one more anecdote out of it…
I couldn’t hide from it anymore– The LORD convicted me in His still, small voice: ”It shouldn’t be about your stories in the first place.”
Personal stories and anecdotes can make for great illustrations of Biblical truths, but when they take the focus off The Story– The Greatest Story Ever Told, the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ– the message of Christ crucified loses power. Jesus doesn’t need our help to hype up or spin His message, “for the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Heb. 4:12 NLT)
This is not to say that we shouldn’t share personal stories when we teach Bible studies or share our faith with others, because our own experiences often make for excellent testimonies and help illustrate Biblical truths; we just need to make sure that the stories point to God and testify to who He is without putting ourselves in the spotlight. I struggled with what this meant until a mentor gave me a bit of sage advice: “It’s all right to share stories as long as you’re not the hero of them.” Though we might not be the hero, we don’t need to be the villain, either.
Perhaps our role in The Story is to simply be the helpless victim who gets rescued by The Hero.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1:18 NLT)
But Samuel replied,
“What is more pleasing to the Lord:
your burnt offerings and sacrifices
or your obedience to his voice?”
(1 Sam 15: 22a NLT)
Early on in our marriage, my wife would ask me to have her car washed on a regular basis, and as a newlywed, I was good about having it washed and waxed to a glossy shine each and every week. But over time, a week between car washes became two weeks, then a month, then two months, then three… My wife would keep asking me when I’d wash the car, and I’d always have an excuse: I didn’t have time because I was too busy; it was going to rain in a few days anyway; I forgot to do it and now it’s too late, etc.
After a while, my wife simply stopped asking. It’s not that she didn’t want her car washed anymore– there was just no point for her to ask if I wasn’t going to listen and respond.
I find that it’s the same with God- I seem to discern His voice more clearly when I am actively listening and responding to what He’s saying (such as when I’m on a Treasure Hunt or mission trip); conversely, I seem to hear Him less when I choose not to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes, I’ll get a word or impression about somebody but will be too embarrassed to deliver it (such as with this encounter in Japan), but more often than not, ignoring the still, small voice of God happens when the Holy Spirit- our Counselor- tries to steer us away from temptation and sin (1 Cor. 10:13) but we cover our ears, pretend He’s not there, and revert to old, bad habits. If I ignore Him enough, I’ll stop hearing from Him for a while, just like I stopped hearing my wife asking for a car wash when I failed to respond to her repeated requests.
I don’t mean to imply that prophetic gifts are earned or lost by merit– the gifts of the Spirit are distributed as He determines (1 Cor. 12: 7-11)– but I do believe that it pleases our Father when we obey Him.
Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice,
and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.
Rebellion is as sinful as witchcraft,
and stubbornness as bad as worshiping idols.
So because you have rejected the command of the Lord,
he has rejected you as king.” (1 Sam 15: 22b-23 NLT)
