Encouragement

How the Early Church Viewed Salvation

Leave a Comment / Encouragement / / , ,

[Note: There is still room in our first Just Love Zoom Discussion if you still want to join us. We will meet six times over the next eight weeks to take a practical look at how love fills us with his goodness and writes his justice on our hearts. That will change every human interaction we have in the world. This is not a book study of the content of Just Love, but a conversation about applying love and fullness to the interactions in our lives. We have room for eight more. If you’re interested, email me.]

I know many of you have questions about how AI will affect our future, concerned that it may well destroy human society in the long run. I share that. But as a research tool in the short term, it can be incredibly helpful.

Recently, I asked ChatGPT to scan through the writings of the early church fathers (up to AD 200) and synthesize how the concept of justice played into their message and their view of salvation. I did not prompt it with anything from our new book, but just wanted to know how the theme of justice played into the early church.

Here’s how it responded:

Up to about 200 AD, the early fathers did not treat justice mainly as an abstract legal principle or a later courtroom theory of salvation. They usually spoke of it as the way God makes things right: truthfulness, mercy, judgment, generosity, and restored human life that flow from God’s own character and are embodied in Christ.

Then it called out six specific ways that justice impacted their perceptions. Here is my summary below.

  1. To the earliest Christians, justice was not a side issue. It was one of the visible signs that someone had entered Jesus’s way of life. They saw justification as the process by which God makes people just from the inside, not a works-oriented approach to personal righteousness. That is why the Didache begins the Christian life with “two ways”: the way of life and the way of death. The way of life is love of God, love of neighbor, nonviolence, truthful speech, sexual faithfulness, economic integrity, and care for the vulnerable. Its justice is practical and relational: do not murder, steal, covet, exploit, bear false witness, or speak deceitfully. Almsgiving is also treated as morally serious, both for the giver and the receiver.
  2. Thus, salvation meant being rescued into a just and loving way of life. The fathers did not usually separate salvation from transformation. To be saved was not merely to be acquitted; it was to be healed, reordered, and made capable of living in God’s life. That is a very early view of Christian salvation: Christ saves by drawing people into the love of God, and that love expresses itself as a community free of rivalry, factionalism, arrogance, and self-seeking. Justice is what love looks like when it flows into relationships.
  3. Justice was not opposed to mercy; it was mercy’s public shape. The early fathers do not set up a hard contrast between God’s justice and God’s mercy, as if mercy softens justice or justice restrains mercy. God’s justice is often restorative because God’s purpose is to save, heal, and renew. Justice is not merely punishment for wrongdoers. It includes the restoration of truthful speech, generous economics, reconciliation, and purity of heart. The just life is the healed life.
  4. The early fathers believed God judges the world and that human choices matter. Salvation is a gift, but not a trivial one. To receive Christ is to be drawn by love into a new way of living. The fathers warned against presuming one being “called” while continuing to treat others unjustly.
  5. Christ’s work was understood as right-making, not merely penalty-bearing. The early writers often describe salvation through Christ as sanctification, forgiveness, liberation, healing, recapitulation, and participation in divine life. God’s justice is not simply that sin receives a penalty. It is that creation is not abandoned, the body is not discarded, the victims’ blood is not forgotten, and humanity is recovered in Christ.
  6. Living justly is the fruit of a life that love is transforming. It is how we participate in God’s own character. That is perhaps the richest early formulation: God’s justice is not merely retributive. It is medicinal, pedagogical, and restorative. It makes things right by bringing persons and creation toward their intended end.

It’s conclusion:

For the early fathers before 200 AD, justice was not a separate doctrine alongside salvation. So, if we translate their instinct into a single sentence:

Justice is what God’s love does when it confronts evil, heals the damaged,
restores right relationship, and forms a people who embody the life of the coming kingdom.

They would likely have found it strange to separate “being saved” from “being made just.” Salvation was not merely a change in legal status before God; it was the beginning of God’s justice being written into human beings, communities, and ultimately creation itself.

I then asked ChatGPT what Christianity lost when it substituted a preoccupation with righteousness for learning to live in the rich bounty of his love. The answer was as breathtaking as it was shocking.  I’ll share that in my next blog.

Of course, none of this would be good news if we think of justice as something we have to achieve by self-effort.

In the context of the new covenant, justice is the gift love writes on our hearts. In Just Love, Tobie and I describe how justice flows out of our lives naturally when love fills us with God’s presence, untwists injustice inside our own hearts, and makes us as aware of others as we are of ourselves.

In that reality, embracing God’s heart for justice becomes the joyful passion of a lifetime and the ultimate hope of the universe as Jesus returns and God’s justice is spread over all of creation.

Is it ever time for that! 

How the Early Church Viewed Salvation Read More »

In Pursuit of Legacy

3 Comments / Encouragement /

When I was invited to speak to Loma Linda University Health’s Transformational Leadership Program about building a personal legacy, I told them they had the wrong person.

Few things have complicated my spiritual journey more than the pursuit of significance. What I once mistook for a divine calling often became twisted with ambition—the need to accomplish something important, be noticed, and leave a lasting mark. It became a tyranny.

In thirty years of learning to live in Father’s love, I’ve discovered that it is also a mask for personal emptiness. As I came to rest in his love, I watched this inner drive for significance fade away. I’m convinced that those who pursue legacy, seek to be significant, or seek popularity all come from a place of brokenness. I’ve seen it too often with politicians, authors, influencers, entrepreneurs, and anyone who tries to measure their worth at the expense of others.

When I explained that to the man inviting me, I told him I did not want to help wire another generation to chase significance as I had. To my surprise, he said that was exactly why they wanted me to come. So, on Wednesday, I sat down with a group of leaders in the health industry who wanted to hear my journey from the tyranny of seeking significance to the contentment of simply following Jesus.

I cannot remember a time when I did not want to be in the spotlight. But that hunger continually collided with the life Jesus was inviting me to live. Through much pain—disappointed expectations, betrayal, family deception, and opportunities he asked me to decline—he gradually loosened my need to be noticed. The more I found my identity in being the beloved son of a gracious Father, the more of his fullness I could see. That alone slowly unraveled my desire for significance and legacy. It has been one of God’s greatest freedoms to me.

I began to understand why he sought obscurity and how that opened wider doors to really help people know him. Freedom from recognition made room for love.

I told them about my lifelong desire to love one woman well—and how, four years ago, I thought I had utterly failed. Then the story turned. Loving Sara well meant walking with her through the pain and distortions of trauma while God healed something buried deep within her.

That journey reminded me that life moves at the speed of relationships. Healed and whole relationships are among the greatest treasures we are given.

The group responded with warmth and tenderness. They saw hope in the fact that God can be deeply present in life’s most painful places, bringing healing and freedom where we least expect it.

Together, we explored a better pursuit than notoriety: the wholehearted life Jesus offers. When we no longer need to use others to fill what is empty within us, we are free to live from fullness. Then creativity, calling, and passion can unfold without comparison or competition. Our lives can be marked by the kindness of serving rather than exploiting, the quiet faithfulness of caring for a spouse, coworker, neighbor, child, or friend.

Afterward, people described the conversation as inspiring and hopeful. One spoke of “loving without anger” as a healing power. Another said that no matter how deep the hurt, hope remains.

How different might our world become if we found our fullness in God and gave his love away freely, instead of being consumed with our own need to matter?

When people think of legacy, they usually imagine achievement, influence, and notoriety. Few think of a life shaped by love.

And yet, there may be no greater legacy to leave.

In Pursuit of Legacy Read More »

My Disturbing Relationship with Righteousness

1 Comment / Encouragement / / , , , ,

You can’t grow up in Christianity without thinking that righteousness is a big deal to God. The Scriptures were full of it. Our faith was structured around it. And dealing with our sin became a daily preoccupation—trying to avoid it when we could, confessing it when we failed, and promising God we would never do it again.

At best, that promise lasted a few days.

It was exhausting and confusing. Even on our best day, we knew we could never be righteous enough to earn anything from God—not in our thoughts, our deeds, or even our reactions to circumstances and people. So, we learned to minimize our failures, justify our motives, or compare ourselves to others whose sins seemed worse than ours.

Perhaps that’s why our ancestors found such comfort in the idea of imputed righteousness. If I believe in Jesus, God declares me righteous. That became justification by faith. I could be righteous in God’s eyes and finally free of guilt.

Really? If so, that’s the best deal in the universe.

But even as a child, something about that didn’t sit right with me. It felt too much like a theological mind game. Even though I still gave in to desires and thoughts that were not aligned with God’s heart, I was told I could still think of myself as righteous. At the same time, I was urged to “be holy as he is holy,” which we called sanctification. In our scheme of things, holiness was preferable, but not essential if the real goal was only to get into heaven.

Still, I pursued righteousness. After all, didn’t Jesus tell us to seek it first in Matthew 6:33? Though it didn’t seem to affect my salvation, I assumed it was the doorway to deeper engagement with Father, Son, and Spirit—or at least a way to make God more inclined to answer my prayers.

So I tried to be as holy as I could and kept careful account of my shortcomings. But my sins didn’t lose much power over me. Fear helped for a while. So did accountability sometimes, though often it only made me better at hiding what was really going on or justifying myself so my failures could look noble to others. When that doesn’t improve over time, you eventually stop trying so hard and settle for keeping your failures to the least embarrassing kinds.

That’s why I have so loved Tobie van der Westhuizen’s assertion that righteousness, as we have come to understand it today, isn’t actually in the Bible. That discovery has liberated me from the last vestiges of my preoccupation with righteousness and sin.

I know that scares people. They fear that if we don’t keep a constant eye on our sin, it will overrun us. But I’ve found the opposite to be true. The more we focus on the flesh, the more it owns us. The freer we are to focus on the Spirit, the more we experience his life. Cultivating a passion for God’s justice inside his love is what begins to free us from the flesh’s preoccupation with ourselves.

For some, this feels like taking away a security blanket. But why isn’t Jesus’s atoning death, his love, and his forgiveness enough to settle our guilt and shame? Why isn’t his presence sufficient to assure us that we are safe with him? Our confidence was never meant to rest in a theological decree, but in the experience of his presence living in us.

I’ve heard some complain that Just Love simply changes the requirement for salvation from righteousness to justice. That’s not what we’re saying at all. Salvation and acceptance by God come by his grace alone. Acting justly is not a new requirement; it is the fruit of a life lived loved. The more we engage his love, the more his justice is produced in our hearts and reflected in our actions. It is neither the origin of our salvation nor the proof of it.

Freed from our obsession with righteousness and sin, we can finally learn the way of love unimpeded by a preoccupation with the flesh. And that is a slow, beautiful transformation over time.

This is the heart and soul behind Just Love. It’s why Jesus and Paul both said that love fulfills the law. Instead of our deficiencies dragging us into condemnation and renewed efforts to try harder, they simply unmask our need for his love. The path to his justice runs through his affection, not our performance.

His love makes us safe in his presence. As that presence begins to fill us from the inside, the lies of darkness lose their grip. The need to find life outside of him slowly dissipates. And as his fullness grows in us, we begin to see the people around us differently, regarding them with the same tenderness and care we have discovered in him.

This is the relational justice Jesus invited us into, and the place where his transformation becomes real in us. Godliness doesn’t come from trying to be righteous, but in experiencing the depths of his love.

And it’s the part of the Gospel we don’t want to miss.

____________________

Tobie and I will be in Kansas City next month (July 9-12) to host the Just Love Conversations, three days of conversation, connection, and discovery around the themes of this book. There’s no cost to attend, though donations are welcome to help cover expenses. If you’re coming from out-of-town, reservations must be made by June 16 to qualify for our reduced group rate. Click on this link for all the details. We only have a few spots remaining. To reserve your place, email wa****@********am.org with the names of those coming. If we run out of room, we’ll start a waitlist in case others have to cancel.

My Disturbing Relationship with Righteousness Read More »

Anticipate with Me

Leave a Comment / Encouragement / / , , , ,

Over the last few years, I’ve shared on TheGodJourney, on this blog, and in It’s Time about God allowing me to taste his agony for the brokenness of his Creation. Every day, he sees the suffering and pain that permeates our world—war, starvation, abuse, oppression, exploitation, arrogance, and greed. And he doesn’t process it at the macro scale as we often think of it, but experiences it individually, in the pain and sorrow of each person.

As this age approaches it’s end point, I’ve spent some time with God in his agony. This is what it means to lament with God as he helps us recognize how the sin and injustice of his creation impacts him. You might think that would be overwhelmingly depressing. It hasn’t been. It’s been rich and has taught me the joy of sitting with God, gazing at the distress of the world, as well as rejoicing with him. It’s changed my heart, breathing more compassion into my life and letting me see ways I can help alleviate that pain in the people who cross my path.

Last week, as Sara and I were finishing our most recent trip through Isaiah in The Message, we came across these verses:

Pay close attention now:
I’m creating new heavens and a new earth.
All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten.
Look ahead with joy.
Anticipate what I’m creating:
I’ll create Jerusalem as sheer joy, create my people as pure delight.  Isaiah 65:17-19

“Anticipate what I’m creating,” leapt off the page as if a voice were shouting it to my brain. I have feasted on these verses ever since. Through them, God has opened up a way to be with him that complements my experience with his agony.  Yes, God holds the pain of the creation inside himself, but at the same time, he is moving forward with his redemptive purpose. That is the “joy set before him” that allows him to endure the agony of its fall.

Now, I get to taste that, too, and this whole passage has come alive.

“Pay close attention now.” It takes a specific focus to see what he is doing, or else my anticipation will only reflect my idealized desires, which have so often led me astray. This is not the heavens and new earth I want, but something far grander than my natural mind would conceive by itself.

“I’m creating new heavens and a new earth.” That’s not his future plan; it’s what he is doing now. This plan is already unfolding, even though it looks to us like things might be getting worse. They are being remade, and much must be laid waste for the new to emerge.

“All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten.” For those who suffer, those words may sound like a pipe dream. But they are our hope. The pain you hold today will one day belong to your past and won’t even be remembered when it is overrun by his glory. Maybe you can’t see it yet, but as sure as the dawn, that day is coming.

“Look ahead with joy.” When I stay focused on the pain of the present, I can be owned by it. God invites us to look down the road to see where joy might come from. The present does not define us, nor do our disappointments define who God is. The coming dawn will set all things right, and the wonder of those days will swallow up the pain of these.

“Anticipate what I’m creating.” How do we do that? It is so far beyond us. But as I sit or walk with him, I find my heart is expanding to consider what that might mean. What will the new heavens and new earth look like? I doubt streets of gold lined by mansions will do it justice. Paul said in I Corinthians 15 that what we are here is only the seed of what we’ll be in the Resurrection. If you didn’t know about apple trees, you wouldn’t see one inside an apple seed.  So, life past the resurrection will be as different for us as an apple tree is from its seed.  Doesn’t that spark your anticipation?  I don’t think anticipating with him is to figure out what it will be, but to make room for a greater glory that will make sense of everything you’ve been through here.  

“I’ll create Jerusalem as sheer joy, create my people as pure delight.”  Sheer joy and pure delight define the reality we’re headed for. There’s no need to cling to the good parts here or be fearful of the unknown, for it will delight you more than the best of times you’ve had here.

And here is the kicker to all of that. Not only is that true of the age to come, but it is also true for whatever pain or despair wars against your soul today. Read this again. This time, think about God engaging you in the midst of whatever pain or fear you find yourself in. Let him find you there and begin to walk you down a path that will put your pain in the past and lead you to his delight.

That doesn’t just await the end of the age. That’s what salvation means for you today. He wants to rescue you in ways you can’t conceive. But if you can anticipate with him, hope will win this day, and that will allow you to participate in his purpose unfolding in you. No matter how long it takes to walk you into his joy, you can anticipate what he’s doing right now.

Lord Jesus, please give us eyes to see and ears to hear.

__________________

Wayne’s latest book, written with Tobie van der Westhuizen, is called Just Love: How One Mistranslated Word Distorted the Gospel. It will help you envision a world made right, and show you how to live in that reality today. Tobie is coming to Kansas City in July, and we are facilitating the Just Love Conversations there for those who want to explore this book with Tobie and me. There is still room for a few more sign-ups, and for those coming from outside the area, we have group rates at a nearby hotel. I know that can cost a bit, but the connections you make here could last a lifetime.

Anticipate with Me Read More »

Navigating Difficult Times

Encouragement /

Sara and I are going into stealth mode this week as we celebrate our 51st anniversary. Each one is more precious than the last, as we celebrate God’s goodness in all that he has done in us. As we go, I want to leave you with something that touched our lives last week. 

This year, Sara and I are doing a daily reading from my devotional book, Live Loved Free Full. It’s weird to be encouraged by my own words, but we have enjoyed the daily nudges to lean into a life of love instead of being swept away by the challenges of life in this age. (And as a side note, I’ve also been amazed at how many times in this little book I link love and justice. It makes me smile to see the seeds planted long ago for what would become Just Love.)

As we read the May 3rd entry this year, I was particularly touched by the words and a desire to share this entry on my blog. The italicized sentences are the ones I thought those of you going through difficult or perplexing times might benefit from the reminder.

May 3: Keeping Reality Straight

Dreams are an intense experience for me. I’ve awoken from many a dream in sorrow over someone’s death or in anxiety over a challenging circumstance. So real do they seem that the emotions often linger long after realizing it was only a dream.

However, what we see and feel when we’re awake is not the real world either, at least not all of it. We so easily mistake the dictates of this world and our interpretation of them as reality itself. It isn’t. The real world is in Father’s heart, where what’s eternal has more weight than the things we see and touch here. He has invited us to be at home in him in everything we do and in every circumstance that confronts us.

We have to live in this world, but he invites us to see beyond it.

Behind every circumstance is a loving Father at work.

Through every disappointment is a greater truth yet to be explored.

Beyond every confusion is wisdom waiting to be discovered.

Instead of interpreting who God is through the things we see, we will be far wiser to interpret every event through that which God values. When we lose sight of that, the distractions and routines of living in this world will define our reality and diminish our awareness of him.

As this world is far more real than our dreams, so is God’s reality far more significant than what we experience in this one. I’m sure you’ve touched it in moments of prayer and reflection where fears vanished, and you could see possibilities beyond your strength and wisdom.

That’s the real world. Do your best not to awaken from that one as you go about your life in this one.

The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow.
But the things we can’t see now will last forever.

2 CORINTHIANS 4:18 (MSG)

 

Do you see those bold sentences above? That reality is why I’m still standing after the last five years. How Jesus rescues us from “this present evil age” is by walking us through the challenges life throws at us. He is not the cause of every circumstance, but he is behind them, offering us a way through. He is not the source of our disappointments, but they can reveal the lies we believe and the joy he offers us. He does not want us to be consumed by confusion, but to seek the greater wisdom that will allow us to make our next steps with confidence.

I was with a friend yesterday who is traversing some painful circumstances. As we talked about them, I asked how God was being revealed in them. To my surprise, he started laughing. He shook his head, “I haven’t asked him.” I paused, and then he spoke again. “Why haven’t I asked him?”

It’s easy for any of us to put our heads down and keep plowing through the struggles that face us. We may even ask him to help us, without holding our concerns and worries in his presence, until his insight and strength give us his way through them. He not only wants to bring us freedom in our circumstances, but wholeness in his heart while he does so.

Navigating Difficult Times Read More »

Where Prayer and Pain Meet

Encouragement /

After my recent blog about finding God’s presence inside our pain, several people wrote to express how they have navigated this in their own lives. One was a friend, Jack Salter, from South Carolina, who shared a piece with me from his journal, written shortly after he suffered a major stroke that compromised his eyesight. I share it here with his permission.

This struck me as similar to what David often does in the Psalms, sorting through his questions of God until trust emerges greater than his distress:

I’m not really sure where to begin here, where pain and prayers meet. The place where my dreams for a good thing, an outcome of my choosing for what I think is right, and the tear-soaked place where my pain and my prayers last met.

Not able to make sense out of anything becomes my reality… where my seemingly silly prayers for selfish things and my recognition of such, face off like old dusty cowboys in a western movie.

Looking over my shoulder and wishing for some good thing to happen, and still, my pain becomes more real than it is supposed to be. My hope is tied to an outcome for my good, and the enchantment of such makes me lean into a form of “lucky sayings”, practice, old wives’ tales, and the like. All of which sounds like religious quackery.

Does my pain become me? Does it articulate my mouth and influence each word and motive I have? Does it become me?

Pain becomes the way I see things, you, and everything beyond the captive man in the tower I am standing in.

My prayers seem to rise from a place beyond any known depth. Words that sound more like moanings and mumblings. Pleadings roll off my tongue, and often I stop to see if there is an answer, a reply, but there is only silence. Is this the place where pain and prayer meet?

Then, ever so subtly, there is a nudge. A small current of persuasion that dances like leaves in a gentle breeze somewhere next to the place where my moanings emanate.

I have seen small streams that flow out of the side of a mountain; if not but a small trickle, water amazingly gushes out from a source that is profoundly unseen. It’s as if there was an unseen force that said to the side of the mountain, “Let the water flow out.” This is the place where earth and water meet, and it defies my simple mind in how this happens.

And so is the nudging that comes from some hidden force beyond my knowing.

Wondering if my pain and prayer are bound together by some invisible force. What holds these two together and why? Am I the only one who has ever fumbled their way into this chasm? What little hope I muster seems like dipping my finger in a bowl of boiling water—mostly unsure.

How long have I been here, with the clatter of teeth for sound and fumbling fingers that seem to touch nothing? Listening, “Try listening,” I say to myself. Try to just plain stop and persuade yourself to listen. Stop. Listen.

The small nudge was the stream flowing out of the mountain. The mountain of my pain, perhaps the mountain of my doing, that has left me undone. Groping fingers that muddle in the little flow of water find nothing to hold but register something different, something unique, and something real. It is Fresh and Alive!

My station will stay here, by the small stream, where if only small comfort comes,… I at last can rest in hope. I will stay by the small strea, and the small stream will stay with me. 

And we will rest together.

I have found a similar progression in my own times of extremity. After I’ve exhausted myself trying to get God to fix it the way I want, I can finally stop. Settle. No longer fighting the pain or even trying to deny it, I can now sit in it and invite him to come. “Meet me here in the midst of my disappointments, grief, pain, or sorrow.” No longer struggling for what I want, I find myself surrendering to his love. Embracing him in my tears, I sense the trickle of Presence, inviting me to see with different eyes. The trickle grows; my capacity to trust grows with it. That’s when I discover plans that are bigger than my plans, what God dreams instead of my dreams.

Don’t think this happens in a five-minute prayer. Finding our way home to Presence may take weeks, sometimes even months. Don’t be discouraged by that; all the while, God is untangling stuff in your heart that gets in the way of you seeing him. And over time, you’ll become more comfortable in your pain, and it won’t take so long.

Now I move ahead, not only more aware of his work, but also somehow more transformed by his goodness. Is this not his abundance?

Sara and I read this in my own devotional this morning…

He is there in our simplest joys and in our most crushing circumstances, always inviting us closer, always transforming us so that we can live more freely in him. If this isn’t at least a piece of that abundant life, it is more like it than anything I’ve known to date. from Live Loved Free Full

 

 

 

Where Prayer and Pain Meet Read More »

JUST LOVE Now in Stock and On Sale

Encouragement /

This past weekend, I was invited to appear on Great Day Colorado, a morning show in Denver, to share about my new book, Just Love. The host, Denise Plante, was a fan of The Shack and wanted to know if the message of Just Love is a continuation of the same theme. She had read my new book, and we had a great conversation about how Just Love is the other side of the coin. The Shack and my previous book, He Loves Me, deal with how we each get to experience God’s love.

Just Love builds on that theme by helping people understand how God’s love not only wins us into God’s life but also invites us into the flow of love that shapes every relationship we have. If love just comes into us and we try to hold it there, it will stagnate. Love is not a possession; it is a river. We can’t own it, but we can jump in it and frolic in his delight even as we begin to see others as potential recipients of that same love.

What I have enjoyed most since writing this book with Tobie is how it has reframed God’s purpose throughout human history. Scripture has taken on a new clarity as the themes of love and justice are the bloodstream coursing through the text. We see God’s disdain for injustice, arrogance, and the exploitation of others. Adam and Eve lost life because they reached outside of God to try to find fulfillment. That compromised their relationship with God and each other. God has been working ever since to restore the connection humanity lost.

The connection between the Law of Moses, the power of the Gospel, and the reality of God’s Kingdom in the world today has never made more sense. We aren’t saved just to get into heaven, but we are rescued from the narcissism of flesh by the love of an awesome Father.

The Law told Israel how to honor God and each other in a way that would allow them to live in peace and joy. They couldn’t do it, however, because humanity was too self-focused in its fallenness. Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill his justice in his people through love. When we connect with God’s love and become one with that love, it will flow through us as we will treat others with the same compassion and justice he gives to us.

That’s why he said if we love others like we’ve been loved, the whole world would know who he is. Love manifested in God’s children would change the world. And yet, we haven’t seen that come to fruition because those who claim to be Christian are often just as self-focused as the world is, even exploiting their faith to take advantage of others.

I’ll be honest, this is quite a shift in thinking for those who have been schooled in traditional views of righteousness and salvation. I love it when I hear that people I know are taking time to process the meaning of this book. They may be hesitant at first, but they are willing to take a hard look and see if these things are so. Tobie and I tried to keep it as simple as we could so that others could grasp what we’re saying and explore it in their own relationship with Jesus. And if you have questions about all of this, feel free to send them to me, and we can tackle them on a future blog or podcast.

This is an even more amazing adventure than I knew it to be. Living loved and loving makes us part of his unfolding kingdom in the world, where God’s love and justice reign. Human justice can only come after the fact, trying to impose punishment or derive recompense from perpetrators. God’s justice works in people before they act in hurtful and harmful ways. By putting us in the place of the other, love will not allow us to do harm or take advantage of someone.

That’s the mark of one who follows Jesus; they love well and treat others with fairness and compassion. Nothing brings greater joy to our Father.

If you haven’t gotten your copy of Just Love yet, you can now order it directly from Lifestream. We finally have books in stock. To celebrate, we’re offering it on sale for $13.99 per book. And, if you want extra books to share with friends or to start a book study, you can get them for $10.00 per book when you order in quantities of five or more.

One last note, this weekend I’ll be in the Minneapolis area with some more former 2x2ers and other friends from the area. If you want to join us, it’s not too late.

_________________________________________________________________

"Just Love" - How One Mistranslated Word Distorted the GospelJust Love:
How One Mistranslated Word Distorted the Gospel
by Wayne Jacobsen and Tobie van der Westhuizen
174 pages
Trailview Media
Available now in paperback from Lifestream for $13.99. Or, if you want to order five or more, you can get them for $10.00 each.
Or from Amazon:  in Kindle ($10.99),  paperback ($16.99), or hardcover ($24.99)

JUST LOVE Now in Stock and On Sale Read More »

Find Him Inside Your Pain

8 Comments / Encouragement / / , , , ,

Can we know God’s presence as deeply in our pain as we can when things are good?

I’ll admit it is easier to feel blessed when all is going well, but it is in the dark valleys where we need his presence most. So much bad teaching and a reliance on “cherry-picked” promises from Scripture have conspired against us knowing his love in the darkness. Our prayers go to God as we ask him to take away our trouble, anxiety, fear, grief, and pain, instead of recognizing him inside of those things with us. Recognizing God with us in such moments is how the light comes. Don’t miss that part of the journey

Here’s an email exchange I had recently with someone struggling to know they are loved while battling chronic illness and pain. These are champions of our faith. It is easy to believe when all is well. The real challenge comes when darkness settles in. Can we relax into his presence then? This is my encouragement to her, and I hope it helps some others.

Finding our way to the light may not be easy, but the process will transform us in wonderful ways.

I had long-haul COVID. I have never experienced such darkness. I never gave up on God, but I wondered often if she had given up on me.  In Jan 2023, as I was beginning to find my normal life again, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  In April, while undergoing radiation, I was diagnosed with a lung disease, the same lung disease that I watched my mother endure for 15 years. I have struggled so much, crying out to God constantly, yet feeling a void between us.

Why did God allow all of this? How could He love me? I have cried so many tears and begged God to fix me, to speak to me, to let me find Him. I have judged Him as unfair to me. I told Him the other day that I thought I knew Him as He was, but I realize I don’t.  I was a religious woman for many, many years, and I thought I had begun to break through, but I’ve seen that just this week, I’m trying to qualify Him in circumstances, not His character. Isn’t that what religion taught me?

My response:

I’m so sorry for all the physical ailments you’ve had to battle and for the loss of your mom. It’s got to be hard navigating the same disease that your mom went through.

Your struggle could be some religious conditioning or misguided expectations about how God wants to engage you.  Suffering can throw us off-balance and leave us with unresolvable questions.

First, I don’t believe God “allowed” any of this. He didn’t cause or allow the long COVID or cancer; it’s just what life dealt out to you. We live in a fallen world, and difficult things happen to all of us, whether they are physical, relational, or emotional. If we can’t hear God say, “I’m sorry this happened to you,” because he caused or allowed it, where do we go from there?  I don’t know all the answers to how God helps us navigate our needs, but I know he is bigger than anything that happens to us.

I was diagnosed with incurable cancer eighteen months ago, but I know that didn’t change anything about God’s love for me, or that my every breath is in his hands. My life may not last as long now as I thought it might, but we really don’t know any of that, do we? I could die in an accident tomorrow, so we just don’t know. And what is death anyway, except the fulfillment of redemption I have longed for all my life? What we can do is find joy in each day we have, even as we battle the physical ailments and the mental struggles they bring to us. I promise he is with you, but this suffering will allow you to look deeper and find him in ways that will change who you are and make you more like him, much more compassionate and dependent on him.

Don’t let God’s “fixing you” become the test of his love. Just let him walk with you, through the fears, and hold you in your tears.  I imagine myself crawling on his lap sometimes, knowing he’s got me. Sometimes I feel something when that happens, and sometimes I don’t, but it’s true nonetheless. Focus less on loss, because for all of us, the outer body is wasting away, but the inner heart is being renewed day by day.  Let God be with you in this journey, whether it leads to healing or to navigating the disease with him. You’re right, he doesn’t change.

You have known him in the past; it’s just that your current circumstances have taken you beyond what your relationship with him could bear.  This is the time to deepen that relationship. Ask him, “What is it about your love, Father, that I don’t know that would let me be at rest in what’s happening?”  Don’t look for a list of lessons to learn here; just look for your awareness of him to grow so he’s greater than the losses you have suffered.  This is a process.  Change doesn’t happen quickly or easily, but there is peace for you, even in the midst of what you’re going through.

Where do you best sense his presence with you? In a walk in the woods? Sitting in a garden or a favorite chair? Listening to worship music? Find a place where you are able to be more aware of him and let that grow.

Another question: You have a cancer for which there is no cure.  I have a lung disease for which there is no cure. My lungs have been damaged; they won’t heal. I just try to keep them from worsening.  Lately, I’ve been waking up with the reality of it all.  I choose to trust God as I know Jesus walks through me in every moment and what I experience. But it’s hard experiencing my body struggling along.  I have a cough every day and will until God heals me.  How do you set your mind amidst health issues that won’t go away?

I’m listening now to your podcast, Observations from a Pit, and these words you said are sitting with me. You talked about trying to get instead of asking Jesus what He wanted to give you every day. When the thoughts come at me, I try to get out of them. I pray, I sing songs in my head—I’m trying to get. Then you talked about telling Jesus something when your pain was so great: “This is on you. I can’t handle it.” I’ve been trying to get a revelation of His love. I’ve been trying to get unblocked from whatever it is that’s keeping me from just being loved. I’ve looked for Him in all the wrong places, and I’ve expected much of myself and Him, I believe.  I just want to sit in His love, not sure how that looks though.

And then this, “Trying to pray the right prayer to get God to move,” and you talked about self-analysis. Yes, plenty of that in these last 3+ years and plenty of trying to pray the right prayer/incantation and think the right way and do the right thing to get a revelation of His love.

Thank you… I’m seeing some things here.

My response:

I’m glad you are seeing more clearly.  Learning to walk with Jesus amid pain and disappointment is not an easy task.  Our view of God is so warped toward our own comfort instead of letting him come to us in the way he desires and walk us through the tough places.  I got this from a friend last week, and loved it:

Don’t worship the mountain top! Strangely, freedom is found in the struggle leading there. The struggle that leads us to a different kind of dependency, not on ourselves but on the one who joins us in the struggle, in the valley, the dark and lonely place, the scary places.  His presence becomes our mountain top, rarely seen as it is, cherished by those who know it as they become fearless.

He gets it, and I’m glad you’re learning that too.  His love is there for you every morning, perhaps not in the package in which you’re expecting it, but he can be no less than absolute love toward you. When we don’t see that, it’s because our perception of his love needs to adjust.  He’s big enough to help you get it and find his freedom even where life hurts.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.  I’m having a very difficult time just knowing He is with me and taking care of me. I have lost sight of His love and don’t know how to get back there, quite honestly. I try to tell myself that He loves me, but I’m having difficulty at times just speaking to Him.  I am upset with myself that I can’t just “get it”…I try to cry out to Him when the scary thoughts hit, but I still get so overwhelmed. I don’t know what His love looks like when the scary thoughts and the anxieties hit me. I often wonder if something happened to my brain with Covid, as it’s often just hard to locate my beliefs and my confidence in Him and His love and care.

I’m so tired, Wayne, it’s been almost 4 years of this, and I’m weary and tired.  My counselor told me last week that I needed to give up my rights, and I have done that this week.  I will do anything to just be confident in His love for me, but I’m really struggling.  I don’t know that fear of dying as much as I fear living like this.  I just want to be at rest to dwell in His love when things hit. When another thing goes wrong with my body or the stuck fight or flight hits me or the awakenings to hard thoughts and stress, I just don’t know how to rest in His love. I don’t even know how to locate His love at these times. I don’t know how to believe and receive my way out of this mental/emotional/spiritual struggle. It’s been a very long road.

My response:

I am so sorry you’re dealing with cancer and the coughing that reminds you of it every day.  I, like you, believe in a God who heals, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do to make that happen.  I do talk to him about it, but I have not put my hope there. My hope is in him, as my Father and I know that every breath is in his hands.  I have no idea how long I’ll live, but no one really does. Someone could be in a car accident today. I have had many friends die young, who were God-loving people.  So I know God doesn’t owe me healing, nor is there anything I can do to procure it.

So, I simply live each moment in the joy of knowing I’m cared for by him.  I do not fear death; in fact, I look forward to seeing him and myself in the fullness of who I really am, and the eternal life that God has prepared for us. I look at life here as being in the lobby of a great theater, waiting for the real show to begin. Death is the door into the theater where the real stuff begins. I may be a bit weird, but every time someone I love dies, my first thought is, “I wish I knew what they know now.”

That doesn’t mean I’m trying to die. I take every precaution to embrace the life God’s given me here and those I love until the day when he invites me into the theater.  That calms and comforts me. The anticipation is like flying home to see Sara after I’ve been away on a trip for a couple of weeks.  Someday, we will get to see him face-to-face.

Paul wrote, “Though the outer body is wasting away, the inner man is being renewed day by day.”  Our physical bodies are not who we really are. They are simply a temporary dwelling for what really makes you, you. I look at my cancer as a reality that he and I get to walk with now.  As I do, I find he shapes my heart in new ways because of this challenge. I don’t believe he gave me cancer or even “allowed it.” It’s the rain that falls on the just and the unjust. Stuff happens. Life in a broken world is a struggle, and I get to live in it with him now. He can heal me any time he wants, or he can use this to invite me into the theater.  It’s in his hands, not mine, and I’m content to leave it there.

I’m coming to realize that His presence with me and his care bring comfort to my soul, but my body still feels the discomfort of what it’s dealing with, whether it’s gut issues, a difficult cough, or the dumping of hormones when the fight or flight kicks in, or just the tired, weary body. After all, people still experience chronic pain. I think I thought He would comfort my body. And when it didn’t happen well, I think I took that as some type of rejection.  But then I see that it’s not the way things work in this broken world.  We still suffer, and I’m not a great sufferer.

I’m learning (very slowly it seems) at these moments when my body is weary, I try to imagine myself being held in his arms.  It takes me back to memories with my own kids as they suffered with an earache or an illness.  I could hold them, but they still had the pain.  My holding them comforted them somehow.

This morning I woke lying in bed, talking to him about issues with my gut that I’m experiencing, and in my mind I heard “I’ve got you.  I’m in this with you.”  I’m not sure what that looks like, but I received it.

Instead of trying to pray away whatever tries to overwhelm you, look for him inside of it. That’s the best way for him to unravel its power over you and deal with it however he deems best.

_________________

For those who are in the midst of this kind of struggle yourself, consider reading He Loves Me, asking his Spirit to set you at rest in his love, and let the religious teachings of performance drain out of your body so that you can behold him inside your pain.

 

 

Find Him Inside Your Pain Read More »

The Very Same Love

Encouragement / / , , ,

The following is an excerpt from Just Love, written by Wayne Jacobsen and Tobie van der Westhuizen:

The events at Jesus’s baptism and later at Pentecost opened the heavens so that this love could be given to all humanity. By God’s plan, Jesus became the “firstborn among many sons and daughters” (Romans 8:29). This gift was not the mere status of childhood, but a full adoption into his family.

If all of this sounds just too good to be true, consider that Jesus said it was so: “You loved Me before the foundation of the world . . . You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”

The very same love.

Thus, we enter the Kingdom the same way Jesus did—as a beloved son or daughter! Embracing that belovedness is what it means to be saved.

When the Spirit descended on Jesus at his baptism, the very nature of God was deposited into human flesh. Jesus was, in the words of the author to the Hebrews, “the exact imprint of [God’s] nature” (Hebrews 1:3). The reason for this is not that Jesus perfected the art of keeping the Law, but that God had deposited his own nature into Jesus.

Jesus had become a partaker of the divine nature—the perfect expression of love, manifesting itself as justice. He became an image bearer, carrier, and eventual distributor of that life, offering the same reality to us. The only way to do that is to receive the life-spirit of the Father.

The cross took God’s confession of love, proclaimed to his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, and offered it to the world of sinners, those traumatized by the darkness of living outside the love of the Father and committing unspeakable atrocities against one another in an attempt to overcome their emptiness. At the cross, God the Father, through Jesus the Son, gave his life to the world. Jesus did not die to satisfy what was lacking in God. He died so that the love of God could become God’s love in us, allowing us to share in his life and live by his love. The cross did not make God love us; rather, it put his love into us.

Humans struggle to wrap their minds around that. God’s love does not need to be earned! It is not a reciprocation of our love or service. Here’s how John described it: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God” (I John 4:7).

The only way humans can ever love others so as to fulfill justice is for God’s love to be in them. For God’s love to enter them, they must be born of God; that is, they must be born of the Spirit and become sons and daughters of God, sharing in his very nature. That’s why Jesus told Nicodemus he had to be born again—a spiritual rebirth inside his nature.

“What exactly should I believe in order to be saved?” We are now ready for the answer: “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us” (I John 3:16). No amount of believing in God or the historical Jesus or doctrinal creeds can do any good if it does not also include a fundamental knowing that God the Father loves me. This is the fulfillment of his justice and this alone is salvation.

Adapted from:

"Just Love" - How One Mistranslated Word Distorted the GospelJust Love:
How One Mistranslated Word Distorted the Gospel
by Wayne Jacobsen and *Tobie van der Westhuizen
174 pages
Trailview Media
Available from Amazon
in Kindle ($10.99)
or in Paperback ($16.99)

Here’s the new video we released yesterday:

 

If video doesn’t play, click here.

The Very Same Love Read More »

The Sequel to He Loves Me

Encouragement / / , , ,

Love is not a commodity you can possess; it is a river of life, flowing from the Father in which he invites you to dwell.

It’s not just a doctrine to comfort the intellect, but a way of engaging God’s presence as you go about your day. Resting in his affection makes it easier for us to entertain his presence, and living in that flow of life will change you over time. Love will not only define how he engages you, but also how you treat others—all others, not just those who think as you do.

Those who seek to contain love in themselves will find that it will wither away like day-old manna. That’s why it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone—not because he needed a wife, per se—but because the love God poured into him needed a recipient to flow out to. God’s love is easy to preach or write about since nothing is truer in all the world than that God is love and that he deeply loves those he created. What I find troubling is that so many people who teach and write about love in the vertical sense are some of the worst practitioners when it comes to sharing that love with others. They treat others, even their own staff, with anger and impatience. They constantly push past other people to be noticed or to build a following. They can even ignore others being abused around them, because they only love certain types of people.

As you live in the love of the Father, you will notice that it cannot be apportioned out to people you like best. Love is love, and you can’t truly live in it without it changing you to be as aware of others as you are yourself.  You don’t have to try to love; it becomes part of your being.

That’s why I’m so excited that this new book is finally finished. Just Love wasn’t even in my heart fifteen months ago. But through an intriguing email, I began a relationship with Tobie van der Westhuizen from South Africa, and out of that growing friendship, the idea for this book was born. His research into a mistaken translation in the Greek captured my heart because this was what love had been teaching me throughout the three previous decades. Now, I have biblical language to make sense of it and a better understanding of what Jesus accomplished to share his love with the world through people made just by their growing trust in him.

I’ve often said that He Loves Me is the most significant book I’ll ever write. If people only read one book of mine, that’s the one I would choose for them. It represents the most poignant shift in my spiritual journey—from trying to appease God so he would love me, to discovering that he already did. I didn’t have to wake up every day trying to be loved by God, but instead woke up as his beloved. That journey for me began over thirty years ago, and it continues to bear fruit in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I started. I want everyone to go on that journey.

However, in the last few years, when I would say it was the most significant book I’ll ever right, I’d feel a nudge inside saying, “So far.” I’d chuckle and dismiss it because I couldn’t think of anything on my radar screen of future writing that would come close. Now, I wonder where those words came from. Advanced readers of Just Love tell me that this is the most important book they’ve ever read, and I don’t disagree. While He Loves Me deals with our vertical connection to the Father through the Son, Just Love couldn’t be a more appropriate sequel. It is about how love flows through us to fulfill all that Jesus hoped for in demonstrating the glory of his kingdom amid the chaos of this age.

It is about God’s hope fulfilled in his justice, not by people performing better for him, but as the inevitable byproduct of people delighting in his love. How has Christendom missed this for so long?  Because of an unfortunate mistranslation of a single word in the Scriptures took our focus off of God’s justice revealed in the world, and instead preoccupied us with sin management and personal piety. I can’t wait for you to read this book, not only how it will change your reading of Scripture to be more true to what the authors intended, but also because we outline this amazing process where love works out God’s life in us. This makes the connection between the Old Covenant law, salvation, transformation, and kingdom.

It has been an absolute delight to work with Tobie to coauthor this book, and I am excited to introduce you to him in this book and in future podcasts. I wholeheartedly embrace what he wrote in our dedication:

Whoever reads this book will soon realize it could not have been written by either of us alone. It is the shared witness of two lives who followed Christ on different continents for nearly a century between them. It reminds us that true community reaches beyond the limits of one mind or one lifetime. In these pages, two worlds merge—the world of reflection and the world of lived experience—and that meeting is no accident.

The publication date is March 3. In a few days, you’ll be able to pre-order the book on Amazon.com and have it delivered as soon as it drops. I’ll be sharing some of that content here in future blog posts, as well as the comments some of our advance readers made about this book.

Just Love completes beautifully what He Loves Me started over twenty-five years ago. I’m so glad this has come about, and can’t wait to hear what you think or take on some of your questions as you process this significant shift in our understanding of the work of salvation.

As Brad said in his endorsement above, the content of this book could really change everything.

_________

And a couple of announcements before I go.

We are updating our mailing list and have found a significant number that did not check “marketing permissions” when they signed up on our list. Yes, I know it’s crazy, but it’s a MailChimp issue. Even though you are signing up for a subscription to my blog or to The God Journey, you also need to check that box as their permission to send email on my behalf. I promise it wasn’t about including you in a lot of marketing emails. So, if you are not getting the email notices you signed up for, that may be why. Please go to your MailChimp account and update your preferences.  (If you received this blog update in your email inbox, you’re all set.)

Also, I wanted to remind you that I’ll be in Bradenton, Florida, this weekend. If you’re nearby, you can join me.  Check my travel listing for details. On Saturday, I’ll be hosting a six-hour conversation focused on It’s Time: Letters to the Bride of Christ at the end of the Age. It will be broadcast via Zoom from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. If you’d like to join in, you can use the Zoom Link here.

 

The Sequel to He Loves Me Read More »

MENU