Living Loved

It may not have been intentional, but it is a great loss, nonetheless.

The Bible is full of God’s passion for justice, not in the sense of vengeance for bad deeds, but as a way for his creation to live together in compassion, fairness, and mercy—treating others as we would want to be treated. And that’s with half the verses that refer to justice left out of the English Scriptures because translators switched the word justice to righteousness. Making matters worse, over the last 500 years, the meaning of righteousness shifted away from living justly to a status conferred on us if we believe in Jesus.

In my new book with Tobie van der Westhuizen, Just Love, we show how that simple change distorted the Gospel that invited us into a process of transformation that only grace could achieve by the power of love. We lost our ability to grow in that love as we became preoccupied with our personal righteousness, whether we believed enough to be declared righteous or we acted well enough to qualify for grace. What a mess we made!

And in doing so, we lost so much.

For instance, how do you read I John 1:9? Most English translations read something like, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” How would it differ if the verse read, “and purify us from all injustice?”  That’s how John wrote it in the original. The same word translated as “just” to describe God early in the verse is the same root for the word he wants to cleanse us from—injustice.

Do you notice the shift in meaning here? I used to read that verse as if my confession to God allowed him to cleanse my unrighteousness so that he saw me as pure. It conferred a status. But if the word is injustice, that cannot be a matter of status, only the fruit of transformation. My confession to a forgiving God opens the door for him to remove injustice from my heart, so that I am not just forgiven, but free. I love that.

By changing the word to righteousness, we lost our focus on the powerful work of the Gospel to reshape the human heart.

But that’s not the only thing we lost when we severed justice from the work of Christ in us. Here are four others:

1. We lost the Gospel’s connection to its Old Covenant roots— God’s passion for justice. The Law revealed what it means to honor God and treat others around us justly. When we no longer allow love to transform our hearts, we lose sight of its power. Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. How? By reconnecting us with his love that not only unites us with him but also raises our awareness of others to the awareness we have of ourselves. When that happens, we will naturally treat them the way we’d want them to treat us. Fairness, kindness, and mercy become the fruit of his work in us. The Law expressed God’s desires in ways human performance could never fulfill. But Jesus’s love in us can, and by being so preoccupied with sin management and our failures at it, we’ve missed the power of belovedness that will not only transform our lives, but the world around us.

2. We lost what salvation meant in this life. We relegated salvation to assure our eternal destiny, guaranteeing us a place in heaven, rather than the work of God to deliver us from the tyranny of our narcissistic flesh. So, even though many believe they are going to heaven, they have no connection to what it means to embrace eternal life while still living on earth.

3. We lost the wonder of affection-sourced transformation. When salvation became about eternity, transformation became optional. All we needed to do was believe in him and follow enough rituals to maintain our salvation. That robbed people of engaging God by the power of the Spirit, so they could actually become just from the inside. So much of Christian experience is not engaging his love, but using our efforts to try to live better for him. When those efforts prove fruitless, even when we’re able to act better than people around us, we doubt whether we’re really saved. Only the transformation love provides can change the way we think and live in the world—with greater freedom and compassion for people around us, whether they believe like we do or not. The just life is the fruit of a healed life.

4. We lost the relational community that only love can produce. When the people God is transforming with love connect with others who are on a similar path, community flourishes. It doesn’t need to be managed by religious systems that seek to maintain order, because they live honoring and preferring each other, bearing with each other in weakness, forgiving each other’s offenses, and serving each other with joy. This is how the kingdom becomes visible. No human relationships are more powerful or enjoyable than those that grow out of his love and justice. There is no competition or need to fight for power. They are safe, supportive, and a joy to be part of.

5. We lost our mutual identity with the poor, the marginalized, and the wounded, and our efforts on their behalf became an obligation, not a natural overflow of his love at work in us. Actions that truly help others don’t rise out of compulsion, but heartfelt affection and compassion.

The early church would 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 the creation itself.

When we put God’s justice back into our understanding of the Gospel, not as a fearful standard lorded over us with threats of punishment, but as the outworking of experiencing the love of a gracious Father, it becomes so much more powerful. By setting us free from our own efforts to please God, it allows his love to flow into us. There, it will rewire our inner life away from fear and the need to perform, and then it will flow out to let God’s life fill the world.

Who would want to miss that?

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Just Love is available in paperback from Lifestream for $13.99 each. But, if you want to order five or more, you can purchase them for $10.00 each.

As we approach the end of the calendar year we thought it would be good to highlight a few of Wayne’s books available here through Lifestream, and we’re offering a couple ways to save a little bit, too. Over the next few weeks we’ll highlight a couple books per week, and offer bulk discounts on each of those, and a coupon for a 25% discount on any order over $75.

Today we’re featuring Live Loved Free Full, 365 daily reflections to draw you deeper into the desires Jesus has for you. For the next week, this book will be 25% off, or you can order in bulk, and save even more (Box of 10, or Box of 20). In addition, through the end of the year, use the coupon code 25off75 when you checkout to save 25% off any order over $75. Merry Christmas early from Lifestream!

Isn’t it easier to awaken each morning pressed by the demands of life rather than aware of Jesus’s presence and his perspective to carry you through the day? This book was written to flip that narrative.

As you relax into his affection, you will find it easier to recognize his fingerprints in your circumstances and his whispers in your heart. That’s where you will discover the peace of living loved, the joy of living free in his desires for you, and the power of living in his fullness.

These nuggets represent the best insights Wayne has had during the last twenty-five years of his journey to live loved. Each offers an insight that will inspire your confidence in God and focus your heart on what he is doing in you. By knowing him, you’ll have a better perspective to navigate your life with greater wisdom, confidence, and peace, no matter what circumstances you face.

Ordering Options:

• Purchase the individual book here at Lifestream
• Purchase in bulk: Box of 10, or Box of 20 (These also include free shipping)

Other purchasing options such as Amazon, Kindle, Apple Books (all without special pricing), are available on any of those linked pages above.

This post was written by Greg Campbell for Wayne Jacobsen and Lifestream.

Why is it easier for us to believe that God doesn’t love us than to rest in the reality that he does?

And why are we more easily dragged into the obligation of religious performance than we are drawn into a growing trust in God’s love?

Both have much to do with the nature of darkness and how the enemy loves to lure us away from the intimacy God extends to us. We’ve all fallen for his traps, so you don’t need to be embarrassed when you are. In those times, remind yourself that you are his beloved and you don’t have the power to change yourself or resist sin without him, and then come and learn what it means to live loved by Jesus and his Father.

Last Sunday, we began our discussion of He Loves Me in the He Loves Me Book Club. You can watch our conversation about the first chapter here if you missed it. You can join the Facebook Group here if you want to stay in touch with future gatherings.

I wrote that book almost twenty-five years ago, and yet the things in there are the ones dearest to my heart. Here are some of the quotes that touched me in re-reading the Introduction and the first chapter:

What the Father showed us in the gift of his Son is that he was unwilling to settle for the indentured servitude of fearful slaves. He preferred instead the intimate affection of sons and daughters.

I hope you, too, come to the end of these pages convinced that he loves you with a deep and unrelenting affection.

For long after we’ve put away our daisies many of us continue to play the game with God. This time we don’t pluck flower petals, but probe through our circumstances trying to figure out exactly how God feels about us.

(With my religious background) I had become like the schizophrenic child of an abusive father, never certain what God I’d meet on any given day—the one who wanted to scoop me up in his arms with laughter, or the one who would ignore me or punish me for reasons I could never understand.

Many people carry scars and disappointments that can appear to be convincing evidence that the God of love might not exist or, if he does, maintains a safe distance from them and leaves them to the whim of other people’s sins.

When he seems to callously disregard our most noble prayers, our trust in him can be easily shattered and we wonder if he cares for us. We can even come up with a list of our own failures that can seemingly justify God’s indifference and beckon us into a dark whirlpool of self-loathing.

He does love you more deeply than you’ve ever imagined; he has done so throughout your entire life. Once you embrace that truth, your troubles will never again drive you to question God’s affection for you or whether you’ve done enough to merit it. Instead of fearing he has turned his back on you, you will be able to trust his love at the moments you need him most.

I would not have survived the events of the last two years without having learned how to live inside the affection of the Father. The most challenging circumstances I could imagine didn’t cause me to question his love. Instead, they only deepened my appreciation for his love as he skillfully guided me through them with his wisdom and courage. It wasn’t easy, and there were days I grieved deeply. Ultimately, however, I discovered that my pain doesn’t discount God’s love; it just gives me another environment to explore its vastness.

The first thing I want a new believer to know is how to recognize God’s love as he reveals it to them. Instead, we too often pour on the expectations for what a “good Christian” does or doesn’t do, and they become embedded in human effort without ever knowing how loved they are. How much would it have changed in the world if knowing Christ meant growing to trust his love, not trying to perform to earn his favor?

Many have found reading or re-reading He Loves Me or its companion devotional, Live Loved, Free, Full, to be incredibly helpful in building a life inside his love. I began this study to invite a new generation of people into the conversation of living loved.

Also, ten years ago, I recorded twenty-four short coaching videos to help people explore how God is connecting with them. We called it Engage. No, this is not a discipleship program. We called it an anti-discipleship strategy—this is not how you build a relationship with God; this is how to recognize him building one with you. They are 8-12 minutes in length, each containing a nugget of insight to help you explore how Jesus is revealing himself to you. You can listen to the first one here.

No matter what resource you find helpful, learning to live loved is what Jesus wants to teach you. Books and recordings can encourage us, but only he, by the power of his Spirit, can reveal his Father’s love to us at the core of our being. For his love is not primarily a principle to believe in; it is a reality in which he wants us to swim through the most difficult challenges we face.

Discover how to recognize his love and lean into it each day, and nothing will be able to win over you ever again.

Important Change for Blog Subscribers

If you have been subscribing to this blog via WordPress, we will soon be discontinuing that subscription base because of continuing problems with it. We are hoping to import your subscription into our Lifestream database so you can continue to be notified of new postings. However, if you don’t hear from us in a while, it may be because something glitched in that process.  To be sure, you can now sign up for subscriptions to this blog here. Include your address on this form if you want to get travel updates when Wayne is in the area.

We’ve had a tough roll-out on this book, with production delays and then internal problems at Amazon that showed our book wasn’t available even though they had copies.  Fortunately, all that has worked out now and this little book is finding its way into the world. I’ve been touched by so many who have written me to tell me how much they appreciate these daily thoughts, and many sending their favorite quotes from the book. Some of you are even in July already, unable to stop after just one bite.  I love that.

If you’re enjoying the book, I’d appreciate it if you would help us get the word out to others.  Some take screenshots of a favorite paragraph or page and send it to someone they think it might encourage. Quote a paragraph or recommend it on Facebook, Instagram, TicTok to Twitter. You can share the video above on your social feed or with your friends. The link is:  https://vimeo.com/513869403

Many of you have written reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.  That’s incredibly helpful and I appreciate your gracious words there.

I hope you get a chance to view the video, and if that was too short for you, we also have a longer version (7 minutes) here: https://vimeo.com/513869671

My prayer is the this will help you settle your heart each day in Father has in mind for you, rather than letting the world’s demands or your own anxieties define the day. Learning to live loved, free, and full is a lifetime adventure and I hope this provides some helpful encouragement along the way.

If you don’t have your copy yet, you can order Live Loved Free Full here.  E-book versions are also available at your favorite distributor

I don’t expect my closest friends to listen to all 781 of the podcasts I’ve recorded, or even most of them. I don’t expect them to listen week after week, and I find it awkward when someone apologizes to me for not keeping up with the podcasts. Most people over our fifteen-year run listen for a few months or years to find the trailhead of their own God Journey and then move on to other things. I’m fine with that. I do this podcast because I enjoy the conversations I stumble into, not as an obligation for people to keep up with but bless people in whatever season they find themselves.

That said, however, I don’t want anyone to miss the most recent one. It’s called Becoming One with Love and shares the journey of a good friend of mine from South Africa, Stephan Vosloo. If you’ve been on a journey of living loved for a while, you especially will want to hear from a brother who has discovered some really remarkable things about the joy of others-centered living and learning to love himself in his own brokenness and others in theirs. No, he hasn’t arrived and he will be the first to say he has a long way to go but this is a breath-taking view from his vantage point on the trail.

We couldn’t if it all into one podcast, so this Friday morning another piece of that conversation will air on The God Journey.  You won’t want to miss that either.

Though the podcasts are always listed in the upper left of the Lifestream.org page, I rarely refer to a podcast in the blog here. To do so says I think something significant is going on here. I came away from my conversation with Stephan refreshed, encouraged, and challenged in some specific areas of my own journey. It’s like God opened a door to a new field of his love I’d yet discovered.  Judging by the email I’ve received and the conversations I’ve had since airing the first part of our conversation, I know I’m not alone.

I’m not going to say much else, other than you will most likely thank me if you can take the time to listen to it.

The email below is one of the best I’ve received because I know it comes out of real struggle and pain and into a reality that is available to all of us.

I started corresponding with Amy this summer, first over a crisis that happened at work, and then with trouble in her marriage. In her first email, she signed off  ‘Confused,’ in her second, ‘Heartbroken and Stunned.’ It has been an amazing eight months for her, but through it all, Jesus helped her discover the life that is life:

After telling me he no longer loves me, my husband left me in September of last year, and we are still separated. The last several months (8 months since he told me he no longer believes in God, 5 months since he left me) have been the most excruciatingly painful, yet spectacularly amazing, months I ever could have imagined. The freedom you talk and write about…it’s real.

I took your book He Loves Me! on a whim from the library at the church my husband and I were attending several years ago. I brought it home but never opened it…until June 24, 2018, when my world came crashing down around me. Since then, I have read it at least seven times and have sent 8 copies to friends and family members. Father is using that little book to change the lives of many, Wayne, and I’m so grateful to be one of the “many”.

There have been many moments since last June when I have wondered if “living loved” was a pipe dream. Now I know that it is not. I come from a family of Pharisees, albeit very well-intentioned ones, and the re-wiring of my understanding about God has been intensely difficult. I have experienced more heartache, more uncertainty, more insecurity, more fear…more confidence, more peace, more love, more safety, more hope…than I ever dreamed was possible. My husband claims unerringly that he is “done” with us and that there is no hope for our restoration. This from a man who treated me for sixteen years like every woman longs to be treated by her husband.

And yet, I am not destroyed by his certain distaste for me. While I can attest to the fact that emotions are extremely fickle creatures (and I certainly have run the gamut of them) I also can attest to the fact that the confidence, peace, and freedom that come from living in Father’s affection make it possible for me to rest in Him, in spite of my circumstances. I feel as if I’m living in a pocket of impenetrable grace.

I cannot thank you enough for sharing with the world, the God of love. My life and that of my Pharisaic family has been forever changed by this monumental truth—that God loves us and desires an actual relationship with us. I no longer am afraid of Him or regard Him as mean and spiteful, eager to destroy the very people He created. I no longer (even subconsciously) think I have to “earn” His affection or approval.

Ironically, since I stopped “trying” to produce fruit and started living in the certainty of His affection for me, I am shocked at the fruit HE is producing!!! WOW! Who’d have thought?!? I only wish that I could go back in time and know Him like this from the beginning. Perhaps then I would have known how to love my husband the way God wants him to be loved. Regardless, I am learning to surrender even that to His capable hands. He is completely trustworthy; of this I am certain.

God bless you, brother. I hope I meet you in person one day to thank you for showing me the way to the real Jesus.

I love that. He is real, especially in the darkest places. This life in Christ can help us overcome any wicked curveballs this world may throw at us and draw us into the fullness of his joy and hold us there.

To do that, however, we have to give up our agenda and expectations for the outcome we desire. When we pray for the result we want, It’s easy to grow disappointed when God doesn’t do it, or even begin to doubt that he loves us at all. That could have happened here. Amy could have spent the last five months begging God to bring her husband back and feeling unloved when he didn’t. I’m sure she asked, but when it didn’t happen, she discovered a love that was bigger than the outcome she wanted.

God won’t make her husband come back against his will; he isn’t like that. Isn’t it glorious that our peace and security don’t rest in the circumstance we want, but in the Father who loves us more than anyone on this planet ever has or ever will?