Encouragement

Presence in Our Pain

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Sara and I just returned from a wonderful time together, enjoying the fall colors in New England and Canada’s eastern provinces. Every day was a feast for the senses as we explored cities and villages in their fall splendor, walked through gardens caught between the summer and autumn, and reflected on the region’s rich history.

Even more meaningful for me was reconnecting with friends I’ve known in that region for many years. We caught up on each other’s stories and celebrated how God’s goodness has continued to unfold in our lives. One couple from Florida traveled with us for an eight-day stretch, which deepened our conversations and friendship.

I have been blessed on this journey to know so many people around the world, not just meeting in passing, but staying in their homes and becoming part of their lives. I have watched them navigate both joy and tragedy and witnessed how Jesus continues to take shape in them.  I am grateful for the people who have so graciously shared their lives and stories with me, and how their experiences have encouraged me.

We are back home now and settling into the pace of life here. It will take some time.

On Monday, Part 2 of my interview with Louise Sedgewick on Lifted to Hope was released. Here’s how she describes our conversation:

God Enters Into Our Pain

 

Wayne Jacobsen returns this week to share more of the journey he and his wife, Sara, walked through as they began to understand the effects of her unresolved trauma on their lives and marriage. As Wayne gained a deeper understanding of Sara’s past, he came to recognize that her pain had become their pain. Rather than standing at a distance, he chose to walk alongside her, seeking to understand her experiences and do what he could to help her feel safe and loved. Through this difficult season, they experienced God’s presence in the midst of their pain and discovered that healing begins when we are met with compassion, patience, and grace.

Wayne also shares the heart behind his new book, Just Love, offering a fresh perspective on righteousness and the way God draws us to Himself. God is not asking us to perform or prove our worth to earn His love. Instead, He invites us into a relationship where we can experience His mercy, comfort, and grace. Just as Wayne chose to enter into his wife’s pain rather than leave her to face it alone, God does not stand at a distance when trauma touches our lives. He comes close, meets us in our brokenness, and lovingly invites us into healing. This conversation offers a beautiful reminder that we are not alone in our suffering, and that God’s love is not something we have to earn.

You can listen here:  iTunes or on Spotify.  Or you can find it on Louise’s Website.

There’s nothing worse for us living in the chaos of this age than to let pain and difficulty compromise our connection to God’s presence within us. I’ve been down that many times in my younger years, mistakenly assuming that if God loved me, I wouldn’t know pain or tragedy. It can lead to so much shame and misguided religious activity to “earn” our way back to something we never lost. God doesn’t abandon us to pain; he’s right there with us, able to show us the way through it.

I hope the podcast above helps you relax into that love in the face of whatever despair or struggle you’re facing. You are loved, even when you lose sight of it.

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Walking Through Trauma

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When it rains, it pours. This is my second podcast to drop this week. I told you about Unshackled Faith on Tuesday with the Easier Said Podcast, which one person called “a beautiful, extraordinary autobiography in oral form.”

Now, a podcast I recorded this summer with Lifted to Hope with Louise Sedgewick, has dropped part one of a two-part conversation about how God is walking Sara and me through her trauma that surfaced a few years ago.   Here’s how they describe our discussion:

When Unresolved Trauma Hits a Marriage
When a crisis hits, what we believe about love, commitment, and ourselves often comes to the surface. Wayne Jacobsen experienced this firsthand when his wife, Sara, left him after 46 years of marriage. Neither of them fully understood how unresolved trauma from Sara’s past was shaping the way she interpreted their relationship. What Sara had believed was kindness toward others, she began to recognize as people pleasing, a pattern that had been robbing her of life. Rather than focusing on his accomplishments or responsibilities, Wayne chose to set everything else aside and seek God’s wisdom about what was happening. He wanted to understand his wife’s pain, examine his own heart, and discover how he could love her well.
In this episode, Wayne shares the journey of learning to understand Sara’s trauma, rebuild trust, and help create space for healing. Known for his work as a bestselling Christian author, founder of Lifestream Ministries, and co-host of The God Journey podcast, Wayne could have focused on the many things he had accomplished. Instead, he chose to prioritize his wife and pursue her heart with patience, humility, and love. His story is a powerful reminder that sometimes the most meaningful thing we can do is lay aside our own agendas to understand someone we love. I was deeply touched by Wayne’s choices and the way he walked through this difficult season with Sara. I hope his story encourages you to consider what love looks like when the person closest to you is hurting. 

You can listen here:  iTunes or on Spotify.  Or you can find it on Louise’s Website.

 

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Unshackled Faith

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I’m going to interrupt my wonderful vacation to let you know about this podcast that dropped on Sunday. It was recorded in June with Brock Roggie, host of the Easier Said Podcast.

View the trailer
Watch the Entire Podcast on YouTube
Listen on iTunes

Here’s the description of our conversation from the Easier Said Podcast:

In this episode, best-selling author Wayne Jacobsen joins the show to trace his winding path from institutional pastoral ministry to a freer, grace-centered life of faith. Wayne opens up about his early family dynamics, the collapse of traditional ministry, and how navigating deep control forced a complete reimagining of what it means to walk with God. He unpacks how understanding God’s heart transforms our approach to human suffering, shifting our perspective from performance-based religion to simply living loved within a genuine community.

The conversation also pulls back the curtain on the turbulent, grassroots journey behind The Shack from its unexpected origins and controversies to its transition to the big screen. Beyond literary success, Wayne gets personal about the severe life trials, health challenges, and relational fractures he faced along the way. He explores how trauma and adversity become the catalysts for deep healing, resilience, and a revolutionary understanding of love and justice.

Ultimately, Wayne offers a powerful look at marriage, conflict, and redemption, showing how to move past control and cherish one another through life’s most profound storms. Tune in for an inspiring reminder that real growth isn’t about avoiding pain, but learning how to face life’s challenges together.

———- Show Log ———-

00:00 Personal Background and Family Dynamics
05:59 Understanding Stories and Relationships
08:45 The Journey of Faith and Ministry
11:54 Navigating Control and Uncertainty
14:56 Marriage and Cherishing Relationships
26:27 Navigating Conflict in Marriage
32:04 The Journey of Pastoral Ministry
41:58 Pain and Redemption in Relationships
48:42 Understanding God’s Pain and Our Own
54:44 Desires and the Human Condition
56:51 Living Loved and Community Building
01:00:21 The Birth of Podcasting and Self-Publishing
01:02:00 The Journey of ‘The Shack’ from Concept to Creation
01:07:11 The Struggles of Publishing and Controversy
01:11:20 The Transition from Book to Film
01:16:53 The Impact and Reception of the Film
01:20:04 Personal Trials and Transformation
01:28:44 Rebuilding Relationships and Healing
01:29:12 Unfolding Memories and Healing Journeys
01:32:09 Love Through Trauma and Redemption
01:35:14 Facing Life’s Challenges Together
01:39:59 Navigating Health Challenges and Resilience
01:49:03 Transformative Insights on Love and Justice
01:55:10 Closing Remarks

Now, back to our vacation…

 

 

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Living in Gracious Space

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[Note: I’m taking a rest from my responsibilities at Lifestream over the next three weeks, so this will be the last blog I’ll post until later in October unless something important comes up. And please be patient with my response to your emails as well.]

We finished our last Just Love class with the question that guided our journey: How does love make things right?

That’s not a question we answer by trying harder to be loving. In fact, one of the most important things we explored together is that love is not something we generate from our own best intentions. It is something we receive, abide in, and then find flowing through us in ways we could never have produced on our own.

That may sound simple, but it is not easy for those of us who were taught to live by self-effort. We can even turn love into another performance—another burden to carry, another standard by which to judge ourselves or others. But God’s love does not begin with our lack. It begins with his fullness. When we live from lack, we grasp for significance, defend ourselves, and try to get others to meet needs only God can fill. When we live from fullness, something settles inside us. We are less driven to prove we are right, less desperate to control outcomes, and more available to see the person in front of us.

That became especially clear as we talked about conflict. Love does not ignore what is wrong, nor does it rush to fix everything. It listens. It seeks to understand. It owns the unintended consequences of my own actions. It looks for the path of repair without needing to win the argument. Sometimes love begins with a simple question: What is this like for the other person?

One of the most moving stories in our conversation came from someone who had been caught in a painful family conflict for years. The breakthrough didn’t come when she finally proved her point, but when she could empathize with what her daughter had experienced. That shift did not erase the pain, but it opened a door that trying to be right never opened.

That is where love-informed justice takes us. It doesn’t ask, “How do I win?” It asks, “What would make this whole?”

It doesn’t look for a neighbor worthy of our love, but invites us to become a neighbor wherever love is needed. That’s the beauty of the Good Samaritan story. Jesus didn’t answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” by helping us figure out who deserves our care. He showed us a man moved by compassion, willing to cross the road and his cultural biases to enter another person’s pain and do what love made obvious in that moment.

Just love is not a new standard to meet; it is the fruit of abiding in Father’s love. When you are loved well, you will love well.

Maybe that is why Jesus could simplify everything so profoundly: Do to others what you would have them do to you. Be loved by God. Love one another. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with your God. We often make faith more complicated because we are still trying to earn what has already been given. The life and love of God is not a burden we carry; it is a river we can walk into, and a flow we can ride.

As we finished this series, I was grateful for the honest stories, the thoughtful questions, and the way people wrestled with these things not as theory, but in the real situations they face. That’s where love becomes more than an idea. It finds its way into our families, friendships, disagreements, disappointments, and wounds—not because we finally become good at love, but because we find ourselves at rest in his.

That is where his justice can find its expression through us. Not in our striving, not in our need to be right, and not in our attempts to fix everyone else, but in the quiet fullness of Father’s affection. Love makes things around us right by first making us whole enough to see, to listen, to care, and to respond with grace.

And that is a beautiful place to live.

I’m pretty sure that’s what Paul had in mind when he called ambassadors of reconciliation.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.
And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

2 Corinthians 5:18-20

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When Love Meets Injustice

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First, I used this graphic to remind you that the audio version of Just Love is available now. Someone shared last week how fun it was to hear Tobie read Chapter 3 about his conversation with the classroom. That it is!

Second, I don’t get to travel as much as I used to, so it makes it all the more special when I do. I want to make sure people in New England have heard that I’ll be coming to the Boston area next weekend (October 2 -4).  I’ll be facilitating casual conversations, helping people process things I’ve said or written that they want to understand better.  On Saturday, October 3, I’ll be in Reading, and on Sunday and Monday, October 4-5, I’ll be in the Sutton/Worcester area. You can get all the details on my Travel Page.)

Now, on to today’s blog:

What does love do when it is wronged?

That was the question at the heart of a most recent Just Love conversation online. It is one thing to talk about love in the abstract, where it sounds beautiful and inviting. It is another thing to ask what love looks like when someone lies about you, betrays you, abuses you, takes advantage of you, or leaves wreckage in the lives of people you care about.

That is where love is tested. And that is where our understanding of God’s justice either becomes a doorway into healing or a justification for our own vengeance.

We explored Matthew 5, Romans 12, and even the often-misunderstood Old Testament phrase, “an eye for an eye.” Most of us have heard that as a call to vengeance, but in its original setting, it was actually a restraint on vengeance. It was meant to keep punishment proportionate—to stop the endless escalation of retaliation that destroys families, communities, and nations.

Jesus takes us even deeper. He doesn’t invite us to a more refined vengeance, but into a love that refuses to answer evil with evil. Paul echoes the same theme in Romans 12: “Do not take revenge… but leave room for God’s wrath.” That doesn’t mean God is itching to punish people. It means justice is safer in his hands than in ours. Human vengeance is almost always distorted by fear, anger, shame, or the need to make someone pay. God’s justice is different. It is redemptive. It seeks to make things right, not simply to even the score.

Love does not mean we pretend evil didn’t happen. It does not mean we allow abuse to continue. It does not mean we ignore wisdom, boundaries, or the safety of those who are vulnerable. Some in our group shared deeply personal stories of betrayal, abuse, family conflict, and the long road toward forgiveness. Those stories reminded us that love is not sentimental, nor is it passive. Sometimes love turns the other cheek. Sometimes love draws a boundary. Sometimes love walks away from a destructive situation. Sometimes love confronts. The difference is not found in a rulebook, but in learning to listen to the Spirit as he reshapes our hearts.

One of the themes that emerged was the difference between transactional love and transformational love. Transactional love keeps score. It asks, “What do you owe me?” or “What must I do to get God to bless me?” Transformational love begins somewhere else entirely. It starts with the love we have already received from God and lets that love change the way we see ourselves, our enemies, and the injustice we suffer.

That’s why forgiveness can never be reduced to a demand. “You have to forgive” has often been used to heap shame on people who are already wounded. Real forgiveness grows best in the soil of being forgiven. The more secure we become in Father’s love, the less we need vengeance to protect us. Forgiveness doesn’t excuse the wrong or erase the need for boundaries. It simply releases our demand to make another person pay and entrusts justice to the only One who can hold it rightly.

This is where the gospel becomes so practical. Love does not call us to be doormats, nor does it permit us to exact revenge. It invites us into a different way of being in the world. Might does not make right. Love does.

And love makes right first in us. When we process our pain through his love, we are better able to see how the Spirit would lead us to respond.

Love frees us from the need to control outcomes, defend our image, or satisfy the rage that injustice awakens in us. It teaches us to respond rather than react. It gives us courage to protect the vulnerable without hatred, to tell the truth without contempt, and to set boundaries without vengeance.

That is not easy. No one in our conversation pretended it was. These are not answers we master in a single class session. They are learned slowly, in the real circumstances of our lives, as we keep bringing our pain, anger, confusion, and desire for justice into the presence of Jesus.

But this much became clear: the justice of God does not grow in the soil of vengeance. It grows in the soil of love.d

And when his love begins to win the battle inside us, we become part of his healing in the world around us.

__________

We will end our first class this Sunday, and later in October, start another one. We are going to make this next one more accessible to people in Australia and Asia. So, we will be starting at 7 pm Pacific Time on Saturday, which will get Tobie up at 4:00 am South African time. But that will put us around mid-day in Asia, depending on your exact location. We are planning to do this on Sunday for people in Australia and Asia, but if Saturday works better for those who want to join us, we could switch. So let me know which would work best for you.

So if you’re interested in being in our next Just Love Conversation, please let me know. We will meet over six sessions and try to get them in before Christmas. If you want to join us, wherever you are in the world, please email me.  We limit these sessions to the first 40 people who sign up.

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The Love that Changes Everything

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[A Special Note:  Thanks to all of you who so quickly responded to our new need in Kenya last week. It helped immensely. However, we are still about $5,000 short of what we need to meet the current need and opportunity. If you are willing to help us, please visit our Donation Page at Lifestream. Check the box for “Kenya Relief”. You can also Venmo contributions to “@LifestreamMinistries” or mail a check to Lifestream Ministries  • 107 N. Reino Rd, PMB# 411 • Newbury Park, CA 91320-3710. Or, if you prefer, I can take your donation over the phone at (805) 990-8780. As always, we send every dime you give to Kenya, and Lifestream covers all the administrative fees.]

Tobie and I spent yesterday morning with 30 people who signed up for our Zoom class, How Does Love Make this Right? Using Just Love as a backdrop, we are exploring what love in us and love through us can do to change the world we live in.

For those who could not attend, we explored the importance of coming to difficult circumstances in our lives, not out of our lack, but out of fullness. Much of interpersonal injustice begins with an inner sense of lack. When we believe another person possesses something we need—approval, respect, affection, security, agreement, or control—we may manipulate, pressure, punish, or diminish them to obtain it.

Fullness does not come from getting everything we want; it grows through connection with the loving presence of God that fills us from the inside.

Perhaps you, too, would like to contemplate some of the questions we asked:

  • What do I believe I need from other people to feel whole?
  • How does my sense of scarcity affect the way I treat them?
  • How can I become more aware of God’s presence each day?
  • What would it take for me to enter conflict from fullness rather than desperation?

And some of the Scriptures we explored:

John 7:37-39 – “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this, he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.”

Ephesians 3:14-21 — “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

One practical way to live this out might be when we are entering a difficult circumstance or conversation, we would take a fullness pause before we react. It would take just a moment to veer into a moment of quiet and ask God.

  1. What do I feel I am lacking right now?
  2. What am I trying to get from this person?
  3. What would your love give me now for this situation, and how would that change my response?

And let me close with this email I received last week. It’s exactly how Tobie and I hope Just Love settles into the heart of every person who reads the book.  This is from Vivian:

I finished Just Love last night, and I sat with it for a long while after closing it. Not because it was difficult to read, though the weight of a single mistranslated word distorting the Gospel for centuries is as heavy as any I have encountered, but because of the freedom. The quiet, liberating freedom that runs through every page and refuses to be diminished, even by the centuries of religious performance that have so often robbed the Gospel of its power to transform us from within.

You have written something rare: a book about the Gospel that does not simply critique the past but also does not let the distortion have the final word. The exploration of how one mistranslated word has shifted the focus of Christianity from a love so vast it would transform us with joy to a religion of managing sin, performing deeds, and trying to reach heaven, that is where this book becomes more than a theological work. It becomes an invitation. A hand reaching across the page to anyone who has ever sensed that something was missing from their faith, and to anyone who believes that restoring the word Jesus used could alter the course of Christianity.

And you did not let the distortion have the final word. You took the harder path, the one that says restoring the word Jesus used reconnects our salvation with His unfolding kingdom, that the Gospel is not about managing sin but exploring love, and that this message could alter the course of Christianity. Thank you for having the courage to write with both historical insight and prophetic hope. Thank you for the invitation to discover the love that changes everything.

I hope that’s how the book touches people—as an invitation to discover a love so powerful it changes everything and quietly shapes the way they live in the world, not out of performance but the fruit of a settledness in the Father’s love and the fullness that brings.

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How the Early Church Viewed Salvation

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[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! 

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In Pursuit of Legacy

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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.

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My Disturbing Relationship with Righteousness

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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.

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Anticipate with Me

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 »

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