Hands-on Knowledge

“If you love me, you will obey my commands. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” – John 8:31b-32

When I was in college, I had a chemistry class. The chapter happened to be on chemical reactions and there was the formula for touch explosive there, along with information about the chemical reaction that caused the explosion. I called my brother, who was an avid fan of explosives and said,

“Dude, I know how to make touch explosive”.

His response? “It’s easier in deer hunting season.”

“Huh?” I thought… “What does he mean by that?”

He went on, “Yeah, the hardest to get chemical is then at Walmart, because people use it to cover their scent when hunting. Oh, and don’t make too much of it at one time, otherwise it can set itself off on the toaster oven and scare your roommate half to death.”

Who really knew touch explosive? Sure, I had read about it in a textbook and 100% of what I learned was factual, but I didn’t really understand it. I didn’t have the experience my brother had. I think that’s like a lot of believers today. There’s an understanding of God and a deep understanding of scripture, but nothing replaces that experiential practice of living out the word of God.

We want to know the truth before we act. We want God to convince us that what He’s told us to do is right, but Jesus said it doesn’t work like that… It’s only after you obey that you’ll understand. When you read a scripture, are you looking for more head knowledge? Are you looking for scriptures that say what you already believe? Or are you looking for answers for how to live? 

When you read about Abraham being told to sacrifice Isaac, are you glad He hasn’t asked you to do that, or do you search yourself for the things he is asking you to give up? The real power of the Gospel isn’t found in the words, but in the application and the obedience. We can say we know Christ like I thought when I read that formula in a textbook, or we can really get to know him, daily, with all of the reality and pain that entails.

My health has been deteriorating over the past couple weeks and I realized that my workload was the #1 thing I could do to fix it. There was really no way around the fact that I was doing too much stuff. The past two weeks, I have spent quite a bit of time telling people no. I have called to cancel a couple key contracts, including the one that was keeping our family financially afloat. It was good money but the stress and always-on hours inevitably occurred during my quiet time or on vacation. Carla has complained that many vacations had been ruined by it, and I struggled to delegate it. A phone call could be in multiple languages from multiple countries about anything from networking to system analysis to a crashed server, and unlike our website business, it was 100% on my shoulders. I knew it was bad when she said she would support me cutting the contract even if it meant moving into a smaller house or getting by without a personal car, but thank God for that kind of support.

I am again in a place where I need faith, again in a place where I am waiting for the Lord to break through. But instead of dreading that place, I think we should all greatly desire it. After all, when things are going well, I end up spending less time with God, and my prayers aren’t as fervent!

 

Vision of My Idols

In prayer I realized I had been making an idol out of achievement. Everything else had taken second place to it, even relationships with God and my family. I justified it because what we are doing is for the Kingdom and many people are being helped. But it's not God's way and I had made an idol out of it.

I asked God to show me this idol in my life and I got a picture of a room. I was expecting a control room or other location where some steering is going on in my life, but this room seemed to be underground - like a hobbit hole. There were multiple rooms and they were filled floor to ceiling with junk, trash, and foul-smelling things. I was quite surprised that's what my idol of achievements looked like.
I asked God to clean it out, and slowly we started dealing with the buildup. As we got lower and lower through the junk, to my surprise I realized this wasn't just a couple of rooms, but a tunnel. Not only had I held up achievement as an idol but I used it to block people out of my life. We kept cleaning and I realized there were two lanes to this tunnel - some of the rooms were in one lane, some were in the other.
I started to realize why this place felt like it was underground and the lowest part of my life - we were cleaning out my connections to the Vine (John 15)- Jesus and the rest of the body of Christ. It's like I knew I was plowing ahead at an unhealthy speed so in order to not be discouraged by others, I blocked them out.
This tied in closely with the revelation a guy in my Bible study shared yesterday that connection to the vine is two-way - not only do you get life from the vine but you get garbage collection - the bad and rotten things get swept away to be dealt with in another part of the tree. By cutting myself off from others, I had unknowingly allowed tons of trash to start piling up in my life.
I am afraid that I won't have the same drive in life now that I have given my main tools up to the Lord. But I was putting achievement as more important than my relationship with God or what He wanted - like I was saying I'll sacrifice myself for the Kingdom of God when He wasn't asking for that. I also need to see accomplishment through God's eyes, not just through the world's eyes.

 

It Doesn't Take a Prophet to See Sin

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is - that she is a sinner.”

Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” 

"Tell me, teacher," he said. -Luke 7:39-40 (NIV)

I find these verses are a key paradigm shift for most people. Most of us think exactly the way Simon does - that hearing from God means seeing someone’s sin. That if you see with God’s eyes, then we are dirty, filthy, and dreadfully sinful. They are afraid of getting too close to God for exactly this reason. However, God is standing in the room, and he has different thoughts. Yes he sees the sin but he sees much more than that. He sees beyond the sin and into her transformation and love.

Simon thinks exactly like most people do today - that God sees us principally with our sin. That it takes God to see our sin. However, it doesn’t take a prophet to see sin - in fact, most people can see it and everyone in that room knew the kind of woman that was there. What does take God’s perspective for is to see deeper into the person, to see what God’s plans for them are and to call them to it.

This is my favorite part of being a believer - in Christ, we can pray and see things that do not yet exist in the physical. We can see what God is calling people to, not just what they are or what they’ve done. We can see with the eyes of heaven and have hope where others have none.