Apocalypse

Note: This is the tenth in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. Once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. You can access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to make sure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

__________________________________

In your last letter you wrote, “The performance-based approach to God blinds us to the relational journey.” Can you unpack that more? Every day, I succumb to temptation, when I know better, struggle to apply godly disciplines, and feel his disappointment far more than I feel his love. I’ve been at this for over twenty-five years and want to find my footing on an authentic journey with Jesus.
Leo, surgical sales rep, and father of two in Tennessee

Thanks for writing, Leo. Your email makes my heart sad because I hear it so often. As much as Christianity teaches that Jesus has “paid the price for our sin” or “met all the requirements of the law,” it still loads us up with behavioral expectations that keeps us focused on our failures and blinds us to his love growing in our hearts. 

Even those who believe Jesus declared them righteous still labor under the obligation to appease him. Intuitively they know that the cross had to be about more than perpetual immunity that lets us live by our own desires without consequence. However, all our solutions to mitigate that put people back on the performance treadmill, which fails to yield the fruit Scripture says are ours—love irresistible, life in abundance, peace through trouble, and fullness of joy even in desperate times. Then we’re left to wonder where we went wrong or how God failed us? 

Let me see if I can help you get off that treadmill, Leo. It is well-designed to keep us so preoccupied with our personal righteousness that we miss the only thing that matters. Like the serpent’s lie in the garden, it preys on our best intentions. Who wouldn’t want to be like God, which is what our preoccupation with trying to be righteous seeks to do? It just doesn’t work because it depends on our effort.

A Different Way of Living

Jesus showed us how to live differently and then gave us everything we needed to walk as he did. He was not preoccupied with sin or living in fear of God’s punishment. He didn’t pursue personal piety or think himself excluded from God by the lack of it. 

But he was God, some might argue, so he didn’t battle the same temptations we do. Scripture tells us he did. Though he never gave into sin, it came for him unrelentingly, in ways we could never imagine. He experienced every temptation we do, and yet they couldn’t win over him. Why? Was he just strong enough to resist? Or did he hold a place inside his Father’s heart where temptation lost its appeal? 

I’m convinced it is the latter, and that is exactly what he offers us. Trying to gain personal righteousness is the greatest distraction I know to true discipleship. Those who focus on sin, especially those who work to abstain from it, will find themselves in a perpetual whirlpool of failed effort and its resulting shame, or they will pretend to have success in “major” sins as they seek refuge in the delusion of self-righteous arrogance. The second of those is far worse than the first. 

Both scenarios completely miss the point of God saving us from wherever our lives got twisted or broken. The salvation Jesus offered is to give us freedom from darkness and invite us into his life. By making it about heaven and hell instead, we emptied the cross of its power. We were taught that a “sinner’s prayer”, a commitment of faith, inviting Jesus into our heart, or being baptized, seals the deal. Having our eternal destiny secured, knowing his love became optional and no longer connected to the essence of salvation.  

You can’t live long in Christianity without being plagued by a call to righteousness and the competitiveness and comparisons it engenders that pit fellow believers against each other. And when we tie God’s favor to that, it gets even more destructive. If we do enough, he will bless us, answer our prayers, and keep us from harm. So, any time we endure hardship, we can blame ourselves for falling short of his righteousness, which leads to endless self-effort and second guessing our motives, or God’s. 

That’s why people can campaign for a biblical morality even as they treat people around them with indifference, anger, or deceit. The religious view of righteousness cannot produce a life of love. Perhaps Paul himself is the greatest example of that. Even though he was faultless as to the law, he became the “worst of sinners” by murdering God’s people. 

Aren’t We Supposed to Seek Righteousness?

Given all that Scripture says about righteousness, these may be difficult words for many to swallow. Christianity has landed on a fixation with righteousness that produces the opposite of what it intends. Personal godliness is not the goal of our faith; it is the fruit of a life lived inside God’s love. If you’re not living in that love, nothing you do externally will make any difference for you or for God. 

I have long known that our preoccupation with personal piety and trying to fight temptation is the greatest distraction to people experiencing the love and life of Jesus and the fruit that bears. And yet, the quest for righteousness fits so well into our religious paradigm. Of course, God wants us to be holy. So, we think that means we must work against sin by devotion, commitment, and accountability. And while those can help us overcome specific sins, they will not lead us to his fullness. 

What if the word ‘righteousness’ is not even in the Bible? I know what you’re thinking, and I thought it too when I first heard that from a South African theologian. His email couldn’t have been timelier, since I was already well into this chapter when I got it. Even still, it took a while for me to understand what he was saying. At first, I was ready to delete the email, thinking this was yet another nutjob spouting some weird doctrine. Of course, righteousness is in the Bible. I could think of at least fifteen verses mentioning righteousness just off the top of my head and knew there were dozens more. In fact, it is difficult to talk about the Gospel or Christianity in our day without using the word righteous. 

But what if it is a mistranslation of a Greek word? That’s what Tobie van der Westhuizen from Bloemfontein, South Africa had concluded after eight years of study. The more I read, the more convinced I became that he was on to something. His research could have profound implications in what the Reformation left incomplete. With his permission, I share a bit of it here. 

How did he come to such a conclusion? Part of it was by reading Plato’s Republic in Greek. More than three hundred-and-fifty-times Plato uses the word our Bibles translate as righteousness. But reading Plato’s book with that in mind, it made no sense. Then he found English translations of that text that used ‘just’ and ‘justice’ instead of ‘righteous’ and righteousness’. Except for a few exceptions, only in the Bible is this word translated as ‘righteousness.’ 

Tobie began to read the Scriptures substituting the word ‘justice’ and ‘just’ for ‘righteousness’ and ‘righteous’, and it made much more sense. As I read the Scriptures that way, I realized God’s love had already won me into that reality even though I hadn’t had this language for it. We are currently airing some of my conversations with Tobie on my podcast at TheGodJourney.com. 

Any Bible scholar will tell you that righteousness and justice are related words, and most Greek dictionaries use justice as one of its definitions. However, justice offers a wider lens than our popular ideas about righteousness. Whatever you love about God’s righteousness is already inside justice, though justice expands it to include how we treat others. That’s why Jesus could say that love will fulfill the whole law. You can’t lie about or steal from someone you love. 

To most people, righteousness speaks of sinlessness, personal piety and devotion. Focusing on those things is a valuable tool for the religion we’ve sculpted around Christianity, but it puts people on the religious treadmill, striving for something they can never attain. It keeps them guilty and in fear, and thus much easier to manipulate. The only way to survive guilt is to take Martin Luther’s tack that our righteousness is imputed in Christ. Thus, we are declared righteous, no matter how we live. It allows people to live under a perpetual immunity at an abstract level, while still captive to darkness of their flesh. 

God’s Kind of Justice

That’s why people focused on righteousness never experience the life of God growing inside them. Jesus’s kingdom was not about a declaration; it was about a transformation. If God is focused on justice in an unjust world, it changes the emphasis throughout Scripture. Jesus’s new command to love one another as we are loved by him makes more sense. Instead of being focused on our personal piety, the gospel becomes relational—experiencing his love for us and sharing it with others. 

If you’re equating God’s justice with human justice, you’ll still misunderstand my point. Many think of justice as a legal proceeding often wrapped in vengeance—people getting what they deserve. But God’s justice is not about law at all, and no law could ever bring it about, even his own. God’s justice is laced with love, forgiveness, and mercy as he is more interested in setting things right by resolving our injustices through love. 

Think less about legal systems and more about the power of a just man or just woman living in the earth. I like to think of the “justness” of God—always for what is true, right, and fair, but in a context of mercy and grace. The outworking of forgiveness is not amnesty or immunity, but the opportunity to make right what damage we have caused another. That’s why God’s justice could never come through a system of law one can fulfill by checking the boxes. 

Take three verses for example, substituting justice for righteousness: 

• Matthew 5:20-21 – For I tell you that unless your justice surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven…
• Matthew 6:33 – Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice and all these things will be added to you.” 
• Romans 1:17 For in the gospel the justice of God is revealed—a justice that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The just will live by faith.” 

Do you see how the emphasis changes? As our hearts are shaped by his love, we find ourselves empathetic for others instead of using them to our benefit. That’s why Jesus said that doing to others what we would have them do to us would fulfill all the law and the prophets. This is how we participate in God’s justice—putting ourselves in the place of the other and treating them the way we would want to be treated if you were them. We all hate being treated unfairly but so easily miss when we do it to others. 

Of course, our preoccupation with justice can be just as much a distraction as a quest for righteousness, especially when we do it by our own effort. God’s justice flows out of a heart won into his love. Thus, our passion for God’s kind of justness fulfills itself in growing closer to him, not trying to act better. So, we seek justice by reveling in his love and watching it flow out of us to others. In the end, our preoccupation is with the Father, Son, and Spirit from whom all love and justice flow. Only by seeing how God sets things right in us with his love can we joyfully share that mercy, wisdom, and grace with others. 

In the end, it’s all about love. Give up thinking you can earn God’s, or that your struggles with sin negate it. God’s love is not something we attain; it’s a reality we relax into. It is the very essence of the Gospel itself. That’s why Paul wrote: “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” Galatians 5:6. 

All other preoccupations are decoys, and religion has given us many. When we focus on personal piety, missions, pleasing a religious leader, or our calling in the world, or even how the church should function, we lose sight of the Head. All those things are simply the fruit of a life of growing trust in God’s love that manifests itself in caring for others. 

Leo, I know this is going to sound strange, but if you are seeking to find the essence of godliness, don’t focus on righteousness or trying to abstain from sin. It won’t lead you to God or his life. What will do that is your awareness of his magnificence and discovering how deeply he loves you.

If our forebears had understood that, they would not have wasted all the time, money, and effort creating religious systems to try to manage people. Our focus on love would have engaged the world even more than our arrogant piety alienated them. Imagine a world where everyone is treated fairly and one that champions mercy above sacrifice. Is it possible in this fallen world? I hope so, but it is possible for me and you to do it in our corner of the world. Our wisdom and generosity can make up for the injustice others have suffered, as is true of God for us. 

Making Disciples

Wouldn’t this completely alter the way we try to make disciples? By focusing primarily on theological knowledge, disciplines, or sinlessness, religion draws us back to the Law, even if cloaked as “New Testament principles.” Conversion, according to Tobie is not believing the right set of doctrines; it is an engagement with love that converts us from slavery to our narcissistic flesh to an others-focused life of love and mercy. 

Thus, the kingdom Jesus envisioned is not an enclave of like-minded religious thinkers cloistered away from the world while holding fast to doctrines and rituals for comfort. He saw a growing company of just men and just women who would embody his love in the world, living as ambassadors of God’s kingdom in a world gone mad. 

What would discipleship look like then? It would most certainly be less about disciplines, rituals, checklists, and accountability to stop from sinning. It would mean coaching people to recognize and yield to the revelation of Jesus’s love in their own hearts and how to embrace that love as it renews their mind. Then it would encourage them to discover how to share that love freely with people they encounter. And where we struggle, we know that God’s love has still more to teach us. 

That’s it. It may be hard to believe but engaging that kind of love will change your life, freeing you to live inside God’s nature. You’ll discover the Scriptures are a valuable resource to help you know him, learn to engage God in prayer, and discover the conversations of community that will nurture our journey, but you will learn it relationally, not just as an obligation. 

That’s where you will find the connection you seek, Leo. Learning how to participate in his love will accomplish all that the law and prophets were meant to do, and it will happen where it does not depend on human effort. Slowly, you will find yourself living differently in the world because this love will change you at your core. It’s not an excuse to hide your dishonest and selfish ways but will increase our empathy for others so that we can no longer use them for our benefit or watch them suffer unjustly. That’s how love and grace will teach you to say no to fear, selfish ambition, and vain conceit. 

Then you can embody his kingdom in the world by living out easily and freely what Hosea said God wanted.  

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8) 

Let love teach you the power of living justly, the wonder of sharing mercy, and the gentleness of walking humbly, just as God does with you. There is no greater joy than discovering that freedom and no greater purpose than being a light for justice and fairness in a world desperately craving for both. When the end of days comes upon us, those are the people who will bear his light and love in the darkness.

_________________________

You can access previous chapters here.  Stay Tuned for Chapter 11.

Note: This is the ninth in a series of letters written for those living at the end of the age, whenever that comes in the next fifteen years or the next one hundred and fifty years. Once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. You can access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to make sure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

__________________________________

I know there is a supernatural world all around us, but I don’t seem to be tuned into it. What did Jesus mean when he said some were given to know the mysteries of the kingdom and others were not? Would he leave me out? 

— Marcus, former pastor, now car detailer and father of 3 teenagers in Arizona

Marcus, 

I love your hunger and appreciate your concern, but you can rest assured that Jesus wants you to see into his reality more than you want it. 

Unfortunately, many followers of Jesus have only learned to follow the Scriptures or some leader and not his Spirit who guides us into God’s reality. It is so easy to look with our physical eyes or listen with our physical ears and think with our own reasoning, that most people never learn the joy of life in the Spirit. 

Our physical senses and scientific instruments can only measure the physical world, and the more advanced science becomes, the harder it is to recognize the spiritual dimension affecting everything around us. But there is. And yet, our view of the supernatural has been so over-sensationalized in Christian sermons and novels most people miss the genuine while seeking after audible voices or physical engagements with angels and demons.

As mysterious and powerful as the supernatural can be, it mostly doesn’t come to us that way. My encounters are far more normal and natural when they happen than most people would think. It’s only when I look back that I am awed by all that God did. In the retelling, it is easy to embellish and exaggerate stories in a way that cause people to think they are made up, and reject the supernatural or discourage them from seeing it in their own lives. That’s not to say some encounters can’t be awe-inspiring in the moment, but those are extremely rare by design, and if you’re looking for those to be normalized, you will miss just how his Spirit works. 

I’m glad you haven’t given up that hunger, Marcus. There are no rituals or principles, even biblical ones, that can replace a life of perceiving and responding to his work in you. The wind of the Spirit blows across our lives every day inviting us beyond the world that is temporal, and fraught with pain, illusions, and selfishness, so that we can anchor our hearts in the kingdom that is eternal, unshakeable, and true. Learning to sense his movements around us will lead to a growing fullness in his presence as well as provide the courage and wisdom to navigate any difficulties we face.  

He can show you what he wants you to know, feel the emotions God wants you to feel, and to ensure that you see what you need to see to know how to respond to what’s going on around you. I wish more people were tuned to the realm of the Spirit, which is what this letter is about.  

What Many Long to See

Jesus told his disciples that “Many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.” (Matthew 13:16-17) What an amazing gift we’ve been given to see the world around us as God sees it. That hasn’t always been true. Before Jesus’s redemption on the cross that removed our shame and allowed us to rest confidently in his presence, people could not behold him. Still, spiritual blindness can be a problem. 

That’s why Jesus said things like, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them (Matthew 13:11),” or, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Mark 4:23, et al).” It is easy to conclude that only a selected few get to see into the supernatural world. So, Marcus, your question about being left out is a fair one. Many don’t see Jesus engaging them in a way they can recognize, and wonder the same thing. 

Looking closer, however, the ability to perceive was not in Jesus’s hands. He was aware that the realities he was bringing inside the human experience were so incredibly different from the world they lived in, that most people would miss them. That’s what he meant when he talked about a narrow road, “Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Mark 7:14). He wasn’t distinguishing between saved and unsaved, but recognizing that those who learn to follow are going to be few. 

That’s not to say he would only reveal himself to a select group of people, but that only a few would be ready to see and follow. I’ve no doubt Jesus wanted to include everyone, but not everyone was ready to be included. Having eyes and ears that can perceive spiritual reality is available to anyone who is ready. Tuning into that frequency is where we discover what’s true about God, ourselves, and the choices we face, as I talked about in my last letter. 

He wants you to have eyes that see and ears to glimpse into that world enough so that we can live freely in truth. In these ever-darkening days, we will need to be more sensitive to him than ever. 

Calluses and Veils

So how do we cultivate a heart that can see and hear the secrets of the kingdom? Let’s look at how Jesus spoke of it. 

He said those who could not see had “callused hearts.” (Matthew 13). By that he meant their hearts were hardened to what’s true because they lived so long by their own wisdom and desires, even using the Scriptures to make doctrines of their own preferences. 

So, while seeing, they couldn’t really see, and hearing, they couldn’t really hear. They interpreted everything in their own self-interest. Thus, Jesus disguised his words in parables, so they wouldn’t have to reject him yet again. Each time they ignored his leading, the calluses grew thicker. Those who were ready, he pulled aside for more detailed explanations. 

This same problem impacted the early believers as Paul warned them, in the last days hardened hearts would embrace “a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). It’s easy to turn religion into a practice at the expense of presence. He also wrote of false teachers who acted with hypocrisy and lied habitually because their “consciences have been seared” (1 Timothy 4:2). 

The callused heart or seared conscience seems to result from bypassing the overtures of the Spirit in deference to our own ambitions. This is not people making honest mistakes, but those who persistently ignore the Spirit’s overtures to them until it becomes nearly impossible to recognize him anymore. 

So, it is possible for us to be near God’s things but be blind to his reality. In I Corinthians 3 and 4, Paul spoke of a veil that blinds us to his working. This result from substituting religious performance and arrogance for the desire to know him. He specifically tied it to the reading of Moses, which brings a veil over our hearts (3:14-16) The performance-based approach to God blinds us to the relational journey. And yet, many Christians today want to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms or promote Moses’s example of leadership as a guide for church life. That’s the veil, trying to see God through a legalistic lens.

In the next chapter, Paul wrote of how a similar veil influences the world. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ…” (4:2-4). It is why he preached Christ, because only he can lift the veil to let them see clearly, which is exactly what he wants to do for us. 

So, if you find yourself unable to sense his presence in and around you, or feel you’ve been ignoring his nudges, you may need to turn back to him and ask him to soften your heart. He forgives so readily and over time you’ll begin to recognize his nudges again. But for most people like you, Marcus, I suspect that you’ve not had the opportunity to discover how his Spirit is making himself known to you. 

The Prayer

The prayer Paul held in his heart for the Colossians (1:9-14 Message), is often one I pray for myself and others:

“(I am) asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works…. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work…. (with) strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.

There is so much in those few words; let them capture you. Holding them in my heart helps me tune to the Spirit’s frequency as I recognize how he is working around me. This is where guilt, self-blame, and desperation are not helpful. Trying to be good for God or filling your head with Bible instruction won’t help either. 

Asking him and being patient will help you discern the spiritual world around you and how his Spirit blows through it. This is less about miraculous signs than it is a growing discernment of what he is doing around you and how he is revealing Jesus to you. Celebrate each nudge you feel, each bit of his wisdom that he puts in your mind, and follow where he seems to be leading you.

Rest and quiet are your friends here. Desperation in prayer or action puts us right back in human-effort mode. Staying relaxed in Jesus’s love allows him to show us what we need to know when we need to know it. If he’s not revealing anything to me today, all I need to do is stay open so I’m ready when he does. Trusting him with timing will help immensely; begging for answers we want will only distract you. His timing isn’t anywhere close to what we’d expect. 

Seeing his world in yours is a slow process with a glorious arc. Don’t pressure yourself for quick results, and let him relieve you of unrealistic expectations. This counsel from Julian of Norwich, who lived in the latter half of the 14^th Century, is helpful. “We need not worry if we cannot “find” God, for we are only responsible for seeking; no formula exists for finding. The revelation of the Divine Presence is always unpredictable and surprising.” (All Shall Be Well by Ellyn Sanna)

Don’t look for “words” and visions, bells or whistles. What you’re looking for are glimpses into his kingdom in thoughts and nudges that cause you to think differently than your natural inclinations. As you begin this journey, his Spirit will want to help you discover just how deeply loved by God you are, and free you from shame, guilt, and fear that makes it more difficult to see. That’s how he removes the calluses. 

As you awaken further to the Spirit’s work, you’ll have a growing sense of what’s really going on around you and not just what you think might be true. Seeing into his world will be a powerful source of comfort, peace, and courage in the face of your most challenging circumstances.

Glimpses of God’s World

Most people have misconceptions about the supernatural that limit their ability to engage with it. This is often complicated by those who claim to listen to the Spirit as they manipulate others or build a following. There are many charlatans afoot who dazzle people with their miracle stories, contrived smoke-and-mirror “encounters”, or made-up prophecies. It is easy to fake such things with a crowd, either to build a following or harvest a financial windfall, but it confuses the genuine seeker who doesn’t see the Spirit working like that in their daily lives.

Don’t be fooled by the counterfeit and be careful not to use it as an excuse to reject the genuine. Pretenders can be spotted when you see their “prophecies” don’t come to pass, honest questions provoke their arrogance and anger, and how extravagantly they indulge themselves. The true work of the Spirit leads to increasing authenticity, humility, generosity, tenderness, and an honest portrayal of the supernatural in which everyone can participate. 

Thinking of God as “up there” somewhere as your prayers bounce off the ceiling will impair your ability to glimpse into his kingdom. Heaven, where God dwells, is not primarily a geographical place but a spiritual dimension that surrounds us at every moment. Beholding that world will continually shape in a wonderful way how you live, see, and listen. 

Putting Together a Puzzle

I hope this can help you, Marcus. Recognizing the spiritual world around us is more like assembling a puzzle than a list of instructions or a crystal-clear vision. We sense it in bits and pieces as we go about our day and then watch his Spirit fit them together to help us understand what he wants us to know. 

Certainty isn’t even possible here. Paul admitted his own limited perspective, “We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist” (I Corinthians 13:12). Don’t you love his honesty? Those who claim to see spiritual things with absolute confidence are making it up. Perfect clarity will only come when our redemption is complete at the appearing of Jesus. 

Until then, we peer into realities greater than us all, not trying to figure it all out, but simply to recognize what the Spirit might be showing us each day. Paul used the word ‘enigma’ to describe how we see his kingdom. It’s like a puzzle or a riddle for us to explore as he gives us greater understanding. Watch for the fingerprints and nudges of the Spirit; make note of them, but avoid rushing to your own conclusions. That’s what we often do and then we’ll find ourselves chasing our own wisdom again instead of being more settled in his. 

Discerning the Spirit or the times we’re in is not about “getting a word” from God; it’s about letting the wisdom of the Spirit seep into our consciousness. It will seem like a puzzle with lots of clues until the penny drops and we see what he has for us. It’s extraordinary, how the nudges, glimpses, and conversations help us see into his world. Pieces of insight will come from Scripture, random thoughts he brings to our consciousness, conversations, observations in nature, dreams, song lyrics that jump at us, or movie scenes that move us deeply.  

Resist the urge to read into things on your own, as if everything is a piece of that puzzle. Doing so, you’ll contrive your own insights again. Let the Spirit highlight what is from him. Look less to get specific questions answered as seeing what he is revealing. The first puts our focus on him, the latter puts it on us. What the Spirit reveals may have nothing to do with what we are asking of him. He is simply showing you the way things truly are, so you’ll know how to live. He will give you a different way to think about him or something you’re facing. 

Why does God choose to engage it this way? Couldn’t he just be clearer from the outset? I don’t know that God has chosen to speak to us in riddles, I just think it looks that way from our side. The Creator connecting with his creation is a reality all its own and we wake to it like a small child growing to appreciate the world she is in. Everything comes in bits and pieces as she learns to navigate the world outside the womb. 

When glimpses come, ponder them in your heart and see what other clues or confirmation the Spirit might bring to clarify his work in you. As the Spirit shows you where God is working, he will confirm in multiple ways what he wants you to know. 

Having a community of friends who are on a similar journey and comparing notes is incredibly helpful. Don’t look for people who are spooky or super spiritual with “revelations” about God that put others down, but find down-to-earth, genuine people who are learning to embrace Father’s love and being honest about their uncertainties and mistakes. 

If you find one or two who have more experience than you, all the better. Ask if they’ll help you learn to see better. I’ve been fortunate over my lifetime to have continuing engagements with “older” followers of Jesus who encouraged me in different ways to relax into the flow of the Spirit. They didn’t teach me techniques or try to control me; they just allowed me to watch as they followed, gave me honest feedback about my perceptions, and encouraged my spiritual hunger. 

I realize people get nervous whenever someone encourages others to sense and follow his Spirit. They, like me, know too many people who claim to be following God’s voice when they were pushing their own agenda. Most people who use “God told me to…”, use it to justify their own desires or to end an uncomfortable conversation. Don’t fall for it. Don’t let anyone else tell you what God wants of you unless it confirms how he’s already been leading you. People who know God would never say, “God told me to tell you,” but instead would express, “I had a thought the other day and I’m wondering if it might be helpful to you.” 

Maybe the value of uncertainty in the Spirit’s leading is how easily it exposes those who speak with false confidence. Those who are really learning to listen hold their conclusions more lightly and would never tell someone else to do what they think is best. They actively seek the input of others to help them wrestle with what the Spirit might be saying. Over time, you will become more confident in following the Spirit’s nudges, but far from certain that you have it all right. 

In the meantime, know that he will never lead you in a way that violates God’s nature as the Scripture reveals it. He won’t direct you to lie, betray, cheat, injure, or accuse others of malicious motives. He’ll be teaching you how to live in his love. He will show you the way the world is, God’s order to the universe beneath the games of darkness that broken humans play. You’ll discover the power of gossip and jealousy destroys relationships, the lengths people in pain will go to survive, even if they hurt people they love. You’ll recognize the controlling cadence of political speech and religious services, the empty formulas behind popular entertainment that dulls our hearts to God, and the hype used to manipulate the emotions of a crowd. And you will know these things because you’ll recognize them first in yourself. Doing so will transform you to a wiser and kinder you, easier on others’ mistakes because you’re aware of your own. You’ll find the freedom to apologize for bad choices instead of doubling down on them to justify yourself. 

Life in the Spirit

It is said that people are either motivated by their intellect or by their emotions. Knowing which will allow you to manipulate them for your own ends. Jesus had something different in mind; that is, living out of our spirit instead of just our thoughts or feelings. Our spirit lies at the core of our being where his Spirit makes connection with us. 

Paul talked about life in the “Spirit” as the way we walk in the world. In the Greek, there are no capital letters, so translating that phrase with a capital “S” may have changed his meaning. When I was growing up, life in the Spirit meant obeying God’s instructions. In effect, we would become robots following preprogramed instructions from God, which were often Scriptures we had interpreted to our own comfort. 

What if Paul was inviting the followers of Jesus to live out of their spirit instead of their thoughts or emotions? What’s the difference? Instead of living by principles our intellect can understand, or being controlled by our capricious feelings, we would live out of that part of us that connects to God. Getting in touch with our spirit is where we gain the eyes to see and ears to hear. 

That fits the journey I’ve been on for some time. It allows us to participate in transformation so that our intellect and our emotions are informed by God’s reality and his purpose in us. When our spirit comes alive with his, we are partners in the joy of an ever-growing relationship—our person merging with his.

Living by “the spirit” is what flows out of that union. It isn’t following our intuition; it is deriving our motivations from eyes that see a better kingdom. This is where we come to know we are loved, begin to recognize his nudges, and find reserves of strength that go beyond our own. He doesn’t want to tell us what to do, but for us to become one with us, so that we’ll see his character increasingly reflected in our nature.

Having eyes to see and ears to hear will take us on an ever-unfolding adventure of his Spirit adding insight and freedom to our journey as we live by what’s true and what’s loving in the world of chaos. 

_________________________

You can access previous chapters here.  Stay Tuned for Chapter 10.

Note: This is the seventh in a series of letters written for those who will be living at the end of the age, whenever that comes. Once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. You can access the previous chapters here.  If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to make sure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

“Since I got back from Afghanistan, I have noticed a growing anger and aggression among my Christian friends. They seem to want to force God’s kingdom on others, some are even taking weapon training to prepare for what’s next. I want to see the kingdom come, but something inside me is unsettled by this. Where is Jesus here?  

Aaron, 38, VA mental health counselor near Dallas, TX

Hi Aaron, 

In my last letter, I wrote about the joy in learning to follow the Lamb wherever he goes. It’s not lost on me that the book most centered on the end of the age uses the image of a lamb almost exclusively to describe Jesus’s final redemption of the earth.  

Only in the first chapter of Revelation does Jesus appear as the Lion of Judah. In every reference thereafter, he is portrayed as one like “a Lamb who had been slain.” He is the one worthy of worship and to unseal the scroll of the last days. The Lamb overcomes darkness and introduces a future free of it. In the end, all of that is celebrated at the marriage feast of the Lamb.  

And yet, “Lions not Lambs” is a popular meme for many Christians today on bumper stickers, t-shirts, and social media. I get it. Sick and tired of losing to a secular agenda and belittled by a left-leaning press, many conservative Christians want to assert whatever power they can muster to bend culture back to their preferences. Thus, they seek political power, often by less-than-honest means, or adopt a Seven Mountain Mandate to dominate the culture with their beliefs. 

There is no end of so-called prophets or apostles tapping into that frustration. Their anger and their war metaphors run counter to the nature of Jesus. They have yet to realize that when you seek to dominate the world, you will become like the world, and in doing so, unwittingly leave the true power of the Gospel behind. When you chart your course by anger, it is impossible to stay inside his love and recognize how God works far better through our kindness than our belligerence.  

It is a message long lost in the realms of Christianity where many see themselves as another interest group vying for control of the culture. Though their desire to spread the life of Jesus may be genuine, they have taken up the wrong tools. They assume the conquering hero at the end of the age will look more like a roaring lion than a wounded lamb, but Jesus’s kingdom doesn’t work that way. The nature of the Lamb will prevail, winning by love what coercion can never repair. 

There is no better image to keep in mind to warn us away from putting our hope in human effort. Compelling others to do what we think they should do, even in the name of God, will make us despots in the end. Few human leaders have held on to their honor or their kindness to others in the wake of rising human power—political, military, or religious.[PD1]  Amassing power will invariably drive us to compromise our character and make horrific alliances with ungodly elements in our society that will render the Gospel impotent. We can attain our agenda at the same time we subvert his kingdom.

True Power

Aaron, to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, we will need to see power in a different way. True power is found in loving, even to the giving up of our lives for the welfare of others. It looks weak, of course, when arrogance and bullying seem to win so easily over kindness and compassion. But the meek will inherit the earth, and until we choose to lay our lives down instead of forcing our agendas, we will never discover the greater power that has the capacity to transform this world.

It’s easy to see why we do it. When someone takes advantage of us, it’s only natural to want to fight back. Fighting for a righteous cause may seem like our duty on the surface, but your restlessness is the Spirit warning you away from such tactics. Jesus’s words to Pilate explain why: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest. My kingdom is from another place.”

Take a beat and sit with those words. It’s one of the most profound things he said. 

Like us, his own followers missed the point. James and John wanted fire from heaven to consume a group of Samaritans, and Peter cut off an ear of the high priest’s servant. Acting out of our human aggressions will make it harder to recognize how Jesus leads us. Our fears will seek a Lion-Redeemer to right the wrongs done to us, and we’ll find ourselves more distant from Jesus. Only a growing trust in him will put us in touch with the Lamb-Redeemer and the power of humility, kindness, and compassion. None of the fruits of the Spirit encourage us to get even with those who mistreat us or take control of others for God’s sake. Instead, the fruit of his love in us leads to peace, patience, kindness goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness. 

That does not mean that nations don’t have the authority to make laws and police them nor that a military cannot restrain the power of evil growing in the world. God has sanctioned such things, even if they often lead to injustice and corruption. The levers of power, however, will never bring redemption to humanity. 

Yielding to the urge to dominate only makes sense to those who have lost sight of the power of his love. When you learn to serve the world as Jesus did (Mark 10:42), instead of dominating it, then you’ll find the true power of redemption. Only he can teach you how to embrace tender-heartedness in the face of your fears, but here are some of the things that help me: 

1.     Separate yourself from angry voices. 

That’s not easy in our day because there is so much outrage just under the surface of so many in these ever-darkening days. 

The media have discovered that tapping our anger or fear will hold our gaze. Denigrating our perceived enemies helps garner votes and raise funds. It’s also true in our pulpits and those who claim prophetic gifts—whether they are railing against the ways of the world or the failure of Christians to live up to God’s standards. Even when sharing good news, their countenance is twisted with anger and their voice is pitched with rage.

While anger can provoke people to action, it does not endear them to Jesus or his purpose in the world. Righteous indignation is a great way to justify turning our fears into hatred. The voice of Jesus comes with tenderness and invitation, even when he clears out the temple or confronts religious leaders for their hypocrisy.  

So, if you have fallen for the voice of the angry prophets and preachers, even if they promise revival, walk away! If they grasp for political power and the rule of law, they are building an earthly kingdom, not Jesus’s. If they justify lies and anger to restore Christianity’s power, they have missed God’s heart. God’s kingdom does not impose morality on a hostile people but invites the broken and traumatized into the wonder of his love. 

God would say similar words to them that he spoke to the false prophets and teachers of Jeremiah’s day: “I did not send you; you’re not speaking my words and you are causing great hurt and destruction by deceiving my people. Stop it.” But they won’t; building personal networks and raking in money is too intoxicating. So, it’s up to you to separate yourself from angry voices. 

One of the best decisions I made was to turn off those voices that didn’t speak with the tenderness of his love. I unsubscribed from a Christian magazine whose worship of celebrity constantly frustrated me. I spend less time with people who simmer in anger and those who mock and scoff. You don’t need to confront them; just take your distance and marinate yourself in the love of a Father who agonizes over the lost. 

Pride and arrogance are easier to recognize when you don’t take in a steady diet of them. Never trust the words of an angry person, no matter what “truth” they may be expounding. Whatever they have learned, they did so without engaging Truth himself and thus their heart is not refined in love. There is no anger in God’s redemption for the lost and broken.

2.     Think reconciliation, not payback. 

I grew up thinking God only loved the home team, those who follow his commands, and was vengeful to the away team who did not. I worked hard to ensure I stayed on the home team, and this dualistic thinking allowed me to take up the language of vengeance with any who didn’t serve God the way I did. 

The Old Testament set me up for that, but I began to discover how incomplete it was without Jesus showing us a very different picture of God. The conclusion that he is a vengeful deity toward those who fail him is a misunderstanding of his nature, which is why he shocked the Pharisees. “Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.” Why would we do that? Because that’s what his Father does: “He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:35-36)

I never heard that in Sunday School. And yet, in the middle of his torturous death, Jesus asked for the forgiveness of his enemies, not their punishment. He took their vengeance into himself and paid them back with grace and forgiveness. In doing so, he showed us how to embrace his Father’s love in a way that brings his kingdom into our world.

So, when someone angers you, take a breath. Ask yourself how you might respond graciously. Don’t ask how you can get even; find a way to be kind. We are ambassadors of reconciliation, not purveyors of vengeance. You can even practice turning from anger when other drivers provoke your rage. Instead of ranting at them, even internally, discover what it means to drive graciously, then do in everything.

That’s the way God has treated me. He seeks reconciliation, not retribution. He has never bullied me into obedience. He’s not overbearing or manipulative and is even kind to me in my mistakes and failures. His goodness opens the door to knowing him, and yet he always leaves the choice in our hands. That’s how love works, even when others abuse it. 

Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries thinks of it this way: “Kindness is the only non-delusional response to everything, which is to say all other responses—rage, anger, self-righteousness, high horsiness—everything else is delusional. Kindness isn’t.”

It takes more wisdom and grace to live inside love than it takes to give in to your fear, anger, or desire for vengeance, and fight the world on its terms. Nothing disturbs our fleshly inclinations or our religious prerogatives more than choosing a path of tenderness in the face of hostility.

3.     Entrust outcomes to God

From our youth we’ve learned how to use every resource at our disposal to manipulate others to the outcome we want. It doesn’t always work, but not for lack of trying. However, we are not responsible for the outcome of anything, only our response to him. 

The One who loves you most and wants the best for you has relinquished the power to make you follow him. Redemption can only happen where people embrace it freely and discover a love so compelling that they want to be a part of it. That’s why we can’t live this way without leaving the outcome to God. It takes more strength and wisdom to give up power in our relationships than it does to manipulate them. 

I would not be married today if Jesus hadn’t taught me that lesson over the last twenty years. When I came home from a trip a few years ago, and discovered Sara had left me, cut off all communication, and was initiating a divorce, I couldn’t have been more shocked. I had no clue this was coming, especially since I knew of no conflict between us. From those actions and the note she left me, I knew she was in trouble. I’m not a perfect husband, but I knew I wasn’t the person in her letter. 

Without ever talking to me, her therapist had assumed her rising PTSD was caused by an abusive husband, and coached Sara into leaving me to escape the horrible pain that raged in her body. From the start, the counsel I received was not to rush after her and confront her. “Keep your heart open; let her come back to you in her time” was the most difficult counsel I’ve ever followed, but I’m glad I did. 

When I had contact with Sara, I assured her that I loved her and would be willing to work through anything, but I forced nothing. The first time I saw her three weeks after she left, she only wanted to discuss how we would handle the grandchildren post-divorce, and that’s all we talked about. I left a hundred questions unasked and a ton of comments unspoken. I let her have the conversation she wanted, and when we parted, she asked if I wanted to spend more time together. I was both shocked and thrilled. 

The next day, she came over and stayed for six hours. Again, I let her shape the conversation. She said later that my tenderness caused her to reconsider everything her therapist had convinced her to be true about me. In a few weeks, we were finding our way back and, with a new therapist, discovered that Sara’s PTSD had been caused by childhood trauma that had lain hidden in her memories for over sixty years.  

Our love eventually triumphed over her trauma. Didn’t Jesus do the same when he brought us his kingdom? He didn’t force himself on broken humanity, but gently demonstrated the love of his Father, letting each decide whether they would embrace him or not. Even though it eventually cost him his life as the powers that be rejected his message and his kingdom, he knew the only hope of reconciliation could come from the free choice of loved people. 

4.     Learn the Path of Least Control 

My first experience with this came over 30 years ago when my co-pastor and a small group of elders lied about a resignation I had not offered. My first inclination was to come back and fix the lie. I had the power and affection to right the wrong. However, I also had this nagging thought that I later identified as Jesus’s leading: “I have more to teach you if you walk away than if you stay.” I had no idea what that meant and eventually conceded to it partly because I didn’t have the will to do to them what they had done to me, even if I was in the right.  

Unfortunately, that didn’t bring reconciliation with them. But whatever they stole from me, and it was significant, Jesus repaid many times over and made me more resilient in tragedy by teaching me a different way to live inside his love. It’s the only way to overturn darkness in the world; vengeance can only meet pain with more pain. 

If you hear these words calling you to be a doormat for the abuse of others or a whipping post for their rage, you’re not ready for them. Giving up control doesn’t diminish our authenticity nor prevent us from establishing boundaries where others seek to harm us. Jesus didn’t let the Pharisees co-opt him, nor did he react to their threats. 

That would be easy for Jesus, right? He knew God had his back, regardless of what others hurled at him, and it would all give way to a greater redemption. And it will be easier for you when you discover that God has your back and hasn’t left you to your own devices. Until you have enough security inside God’s love, you won’t be able to stop trying to take control. This is a steep learning curve to realize control is an illusion and Jesus’s ability to care for you can lead you through the injustice or accusations of others. 

Giving up control to others does not mean giving into their control. “Religious” people often have an agenda and will use any means necessary to force it on others. In doing so, they operate in the wrong spirit and do more harm than good. When you discover that people are lying to you or about you, or trying to control you with guilt or shame, walk away!

Learn to say, “I am not treating you this way, and I hope you’ll stop doing it to me.” Even though Jesus didn’t seek to control others, you would never have called him a push over. He submitted to their abuse only when his Father asked him to, and when he had the internal strength to endure it for a greater purpose. Even on the cross, he wasn’t powerless.  By loving in the face of their dishonesty, forgiving their abuse, and allowing their evil to crush him, he opened wide the doors of redemption.

Aaron, you can’t lay down your life if you don’t have the freedom not to. Giving up control is not weakness. You can be firm in kindness and say no to whatever is not in your heart to do. Being firm in what’s true and kind in the face of rejection is the greatest nightmare for those who seek to control you. It may make them even angrier, but it will set you free to honor the work of Jesus in you.  

God’s power at the end of the age is not boast and bluster, threats and anger; it is the gentleness of a Lamb. It is in the power of love and lives laid down that God makes himself known in our world, which is why Jesus told us to be “as wise as serpents, but as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Let’s join him. 

Centuries of Old Testament stories conditioned us to expect a God that comes to exact vengeance. That’s what Israel’s leaders hoped for its enemies, and they missed his first coming. We are in a similar danger if we look for God’s vengeance instead of his redemption for the world he deeply loves. 

_________________________

You can access previous chapters here.  Stay Tuned for Chapter 8.

Note: This is the fifth in a series of letters written for the Bride of Christ who are alive at the end of the age. Once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. You can start with Chapter 1 here. If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to make sure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

________________

I’m not sure I know what you mean by the bride. Are you referring to Israel, as some suggest, or to the church, and if so which church? I want to be part of her, whoever and wherever she is, but I’ll admit that my spiritual hunger has been almost nonexistent lately.  How can I make sure I’m included?

— Miguel, 34-year-old pharmaceutical representative in Alabama

Miguel,

I love your questions and I love that your heart yearns to be part of what God is doing to make her ready. 

Jesus is calling her, a drawing across time and space to every human heart, awakening whatever passion there might be for Jesus and his presence with them. You sense it first in the heart even if you can’t recognize the source or know what exactly you’re feeling. Soon, new passions become more important to you than the dead ones that have preoccupied your attention without leading you to life. The bride is stirring, even out of great darkness and disillusionment—and she is everywhere! 

Don’t worry about being left out, Miguel, it is not in God’s nature to do so for anyone who desires him. I taste that passion in your note to me. 

So, who is this bride? There are differences of opinion on that question. In the Old Testament, Israel is often referred to as God’s bride, rescued out of great anguish and darkness and then invited into his light and joy. Restoring her to health and beauty, God takes her as his wife, the delight of his heart. 

The metaphor of romance and marriage are often used to express not only the depth and closeness of the relationship God wanted with Israel, but also the festive joy and celebration that such a union would evoke. Sadly, as powerful and inviting as that might sound, Israel was never able to sustain that relationship for any significant length of time. Thus, she repeatedly fell back into the slavery of her own fears and appetites and became the adulteress woman, and God the forsaken husband. 

The lure of promiscuous sex and the promised security of the false gods of the civilizations that surrounded them, tripped them up again and again. Instead of enjoying God they found these images overlapping as twisted expressions of sex were incorporated into their idol worship. She proved faithless to the one who was completely faithful to her, even though he always invited her to return to him where all would be forgiven. 

In the New Testament two things shift inside this metaphor. First, the bride now includes the followers of Jesus in his Church where distinctions between Jew and Greek, and male and female no longer have meaning. Secondly, Jesus is specifically identified as the bridegroom, and all human history culminates in a marriage celebration between Jesus and his bride as all things are made new. 

I see the bride as all of God’s people across time who embrace him as the lover of their souls and follow him with delight and joy. And notice that there’s only one bride, not many. In this metaphor, we are not brides individually; we are the bride collectively. It’s not just individual redemption he is after, but as the Spirit transforms us, he is also knitting together the hearts and minds of diverse people from every group on the planet. They will come to act as one, not because they are loyal to the same leadership structure but because they manifest his glory in the world and to the  powers beyond it. (Ephesians 3:10-11)

One of the joys of responding to his call is to recognize that same Spirit in others whose paths you cross. You’ll find an instant camaraderie with them, not because you believe all the same things, but because you recognize the nature of Jesus in them. They are easy people to be around, with an infectious spirit—graciously authentic, even in weakness, and tender with love and kindness.  

So, where is that bride? She is scattered to the four corners of the earth. When I pray for his bride, I do not imagine a specific person or group of people. I don’t think of her as the religious institutions we call churches either, but as something far less defined by human convention. She is a living, breathing, entity that is being shaped even as you read this. 

I’m not sure who comprises this bride, but Paul told us that the foundation of God’s work in the earth is that “The Lord knows those who are his.” (2 Timothy 2:19) I don’t even begin to try to figure out who they are. If he knows, I don’t have to and all our human attempts to define those who are in with God and those who are out are woefully misguided and horribly inaccurate. I find his people in all sorts of places. 

Of course, I see her most easily among those who have allowed the Father’s love to shape their lives over multiple decades and through painful circumstances. In every generation, you will find people who have discovered such a depth of love inside of God that they have learned to follow him, often in conflict with their own self-interest, and it will often cost them dearly—reputation, position, money, friends, and family.  

The bride does not flourish in environments of manipulation and conformity and thus, she will follow him outside of the conventional paths others demand. Thus, they are often rejected and lied about by those who find their unwavering loyalty to Jesus threatening to their attempts to control them. Though they are viewed with suspicion, their pain only invites them deeper into the love that heals all wounds. 

Instead of becoming defensive or bitter, they are marked by tenderness and humility and a deep wisdom that easily admits that they haven’t figured everything out. They will point the way to him without taking his place by telling people what they should do. Since they find their joy in him, they are unconcerned about legacies or building a following, and are mostly unknown, often tucked away in hidden places where their strength and wisdom can be an encouragement to others in the last days.  

If you want to be part of his bride, you are on a similar trajectory even if you don’t know it yet, or it has barely begun. The call to the bride is a tender, repeated invitation to draw near to the One who loves you and offers you his light and courage. No matter how many fits and starts you’ve had in that journey, his heart is always open to you. 

To the uninformed, it may be a fascination with the transcendent. They have sensed his presence though they don’t know its source or may have misidentified it. Their heart is touched in ways they can’t explain but they taste his love and insights that will draw them, if they don’t get sidetracked by the wiles of darkness. 

To those who have been crushed by the powers of darkness through extreme suffering or pain, it is often a deep but certain drawing into the warmth of his light and the safety of his love. My heart goes out to those of you who have been traumatized by abuse or abandonment or suffered through great loss or sickness that may have sapped your will to live. 

The damage done to your soul may make it difficult to see him and thus, you may feel abandoned by Jesus. But he is right there with you; he always has been. You are his beloved even if everything in you argues to the contrary. Your pain is not his doing, and he has a path for healing and restoration that will overcome the darkness set on destroying you. When you find him in the midst of your pain, you’ll not only find your pathway to freedom, you’ll also be a gift to others who’ve endured similar pain. 

For the religiously disillusioned, his call is an invitation back to first love—not how much you loved God but how free you felt inside his love at the beginning. Do you remember those early days before religious performance spoiled it? That’s not a blanket condemnation of those engaged in religious expressions, it’s simply a recognition that the routines of such systems often distract from him. If you find a meaningful engagement with Jesus in the rituals of your congregation, be grateful; many others have not. They continue the course in drudgery, hoping there is some salvation in the effort. Don’t blame Jesus or yourself for its failures, return to his love. Jesus is wanting to hold you again in his arms, caress you with his tenderness, and to show you that conformity to religious principles is not the path to the intimacy you seek.  

To the religiously abused, whose hunger for Jesus was hijacked and exploited by insecure leader-types who saw your beauty and your gifts and wanted to use you to build their own kingdom, it’s a drawing of your spiritual eyes back to him. Even though your abusers claimed to do it in his name, they were not acting on his behalf. You became a cog in their vision, rather than a disciple ready to recognize and follow the voice of the Shepherd. You were so hungry for him, but it all came to such disappointment. 

You were born in freedom but raised in captivity under the lie that God wanted to use your works. No wonder things felt dead and lifeless. You came to believe things about him that were not worthy of him. He agonized over every lie you were told and now wants to rekindle your hunger and sate it with his genuine presence. He wants to love you into a way of living that will lead to his increasing glory finding a home in you. He is ready to fulfill those longings that ignited your heart as he teaches you how to walk in his love and listen to his voice. 

To the wayward bride who lost track of the Jesus you once pursued when your passion was overrun by the worries of this life or the pursuit of wealth, his call is a drawing back to simpler times. You got so busy with work, responsibilities, and family activities, that he would have shared with you had you not forgotten him. The pleasure of the world’s amusements and the illusion of freedom quickly faded and now you keep busy to mask a growing sense of emptiness. Did I miss something back there? 

Who can be part of this amazing bride? Anybody who wants to. Jesus is not exclusive or looking for a special kind of person. We are all special to him, all you have to do is hear respond to his tender call.  

Take a pause now and then and listen for him. You will find Jesus in the quiet moments; busyness and feeling of guilt will be your greatest enemies. You will not hear his call in the angry, shaming, try-harder voices of false preachers or prophets. His call is not harsh or condemning; it is a soft and tender entreaty to come home. He makes no threats or ultimatums. He is not angry or disappointed in you. He knows how easily we all get distracted and that the only path home is a soft and secure invitation into the safest place in the universe—his kind and caring heart for you.

Even in the depths of Israel’s rejection of him, he reminded Isaiah how to speak to his people: 

Comfort, comfort
my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem . . . (Isaiah 40:1-2)

Let me suggest some of what it might sound like today: 

My beloved Bride, there is none like you. You are my delight, and I long for the day we can reconnect and you can know my heart as well as I know yours. Nothing you have done is a bridge too far; we can find our way back from this. It doesn’t matter to me how you got lost, or what mistakes you made, I don’t need your shame and I don’t want your guilt; I only want you. 

When you’re ready to come home, I’ll be waiting right here. Don’t try to fix yourself up first; I will restore your beauty and your innocence. Let our love for each other write a new chapter on your heart—one filled with love and kindness. I don’t want to use you or control you; I simply want to share all my goodness and glory with you and show you how to live in the fullness of my joy. 

His voice will be the one that comforts you in your fears, forgives your mistakes, and sets you at rest in the deepest chambers of your heart. Learn to listen to that tender voice and home in on it, like a plane following the landing lights to the runway. 

Even amid worries, regrets, and fears, lean toward his kindness. You will not long follow what you fear, and fear will never draw you to his love. 

Come away, my beloved.

Do you hear him? Like the lover to his beloved in Song of Songs?

As we’ll see in chapters ahead, that invitation both draws you away from those things that spoil his love and blind your eyes to his reality and it will draw you to a way of living that lets his love write the next chapter of your life. 

No longer victims of darkness; we can spend the rest of our days dancing with him in the fields of his delight.   

_________________________

You can access previous chapters here. or Continue to Chapter 6.

Note: This is the fourth in a series of letters written for the Bride of Christ who are alive at the end of the age. Once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. You can start with Chapter 1 here. If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to make sure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here.

________________

I am asking as a friend, not an adversary. I love that you’re doing this, but I am really curious how you came around to writing this book? It seems a bit out of your norm. I’d love to hear how you decided to tackle this project and why you think you’re qualified to write a book to those who will be alive at the end of the age?

—Trevor, mathematics professor and father of four from Massachusetts

Hi Trevor,

It’s great to hear from you again after so long. The last time we talked we were driving through New Hampshire in the vivid fall color. I’ll never forget those amazing chocolate cupcakes we stumbled upon in that small village.

Thank you for raising this issue; it’s an important one to be sure, especially for people who have no idea who I am. And you’re not asking me anything I have not wrestled out with God before starting this task.

So, I chuckled at your word, ‘qualified.’ Who could possibly qualify for this, or really most anything Father asks of us? But perhaps, knowing I’m not, may be the best quality I have going for me. I claim no credibility beyond being a beloved son of a gracious Father and close friend of Jesus, with whom I’ve walked for over sixty years.

For those who want to know, I grew up on a grape vineyard in Central California, and Jesus was an engaging presence in my life from a young age. I had my faults and struggles like anyone else and doubted him often. It took me decades to sort out the difference between well-intentioned religious activities and what it means to follow Jesus. They are not the same thing. One will wear us out on the proverbial performance treadmill and the other is a life-long adventure of learning to tune to Jesus’s frequency, recognize his voice, and follow him fearlessly.

So, after pastoring for twenty years with two different congregations, I came to conclude that the religious overlay we had put on the Gospel was woefully inadequate to help people discover how to listen to God’s heart and cooperate with his unfolding purpose in them and in the world around them. I still embraced the core beliefs of the Christian faith—namely, that God Created the heavens and the earth, was incarnated in his begotten Son who preached the message of the kingdom, offered himself as an atoning sacrifice to reconnect us to God, and rose from the dead to be the firstborn of a new creation and the head of his Church—those who live as ambassadors of his love until he returns to earth to set things right. Until then we have his Spirit to guide us into the truth that sets us free and the Scriptures, which when rightly interpreted, show us the nature of God and how he works.

Over the past thirty years, I’ve met thousands of people all over the world who had come to similar conclusions through incredibly different paths and have learned to follow Jesus even when it led them beyond their comfort zone. The depth of sharing I have enjoyed with them has fulfilled the deepest hungers that were planted in my heart as a young man.

So, how did I come to write a book preparing the last generation for his coming? It started four years ago with a thought in my head that seemingly came out of nowhere. “Will you speak for me again?” I was taken aback by the thought. It seemed like God’s voice more than my thoughts, though I didn’t know what he was referring to. I took the ‘again’ to refer to my book He Loves Me, which I wrote out of the most profound shift in my spiritual trajectory that came through the most painful season of my life to that point. I still consider it the most valuable words I’ve put into the world.

I promised God a long time ago I would follow him wherever he asked me to go. He gets a global yes to everything, once I conclude he’s the one asking. I thought it would take some time to unfold, so I began working on a sequel to, So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, picking up Jake’s journey ten years later. I was well into that project, when the gravity of unforeseen circumstances began to shift the trajectory of my life.

My first indication, though I was oblivious to its meaning at the time, was how my personal engagement with Jesus took a more sober tone. I didn’t know why then, but during times with him, I had a forbidding sense that a crisis was headed my way. I knew that when it did, I would have to follow the wisdom he would give me, rather than react in my own wisdom or anger. I needed to watch and pray, so that I would be prepared when the moment came, even though I had no idea what I was waiting for.

Over the months that followed, I began to recognize random events that made it seem as if our world was coming apart at the seams and read Scriptures that made me wonder if his coming was more imminent than I had supposed. Moreover, I went through a series of intense conflicts that challenged me to my core and Jesus gave me wisdom as to how to lean on him. It wasn’t any one of those things, but the accumulated weight of them all, that formed the idea of this book. Help people find a connection to Jesus that would sustain them through anything, even the end of this age. While this may be for a generation yet unborn, I don’t suspect that it is not.

So, does any of this make me the one to write the definitive book on preparing for the last days? Of course not, and this is not that book. I won’t be identifying potential antichrist candidates, figuring out the mark of the Beast, or arguing over amillennialism or whether Scripture points to pre-trib, mid-trib, or post-trib.

Instead, I am going to help encourage and equip those who may be in the last generation of Christ-followers who will face the joys and challenges in the days of his appearing, and none of those other things are of first importance in that endeavor. There is a way to live inside of him that will overcome any fear and teach you how to trust him regardless of what circumstances come. I’ve known Jesus to hold me in the deepest darkness and light a path for me to follow him through it more at rest in his love, more confident in the ways in which he works, and more transformed by his grace.

Deciding to actually write this, however, has been an intense struggle. I didn’t think I had the chops to do it, and I know my thoughts on this topic will offend people I love, who would prefer me to stick to my lane. But I am a man who listens to God as best I discern him. That has been the source of some of my most painful experiences and my greatest joys. I love him; I trust him and I am confident that he is bigger than my blind spots and weaknesses.

As I was still processing this project with God, I often wondered, “Why me? Haven’t you got someone better positioned to do this?” His response seemed to be, “Who? Give me a name.” Immediately names begin to come to mind of people I love, speakers and writers I respect. And yet with each one came a twitch in my Yuck Meter. This one is too embedded with a publisher who will distort the message to mass market it. That one is still building a brand or a community to find his identity or income. Others had yet to understand the nature of God’s love and might use these things to manipulate people’s fears or appeal to the flesh’s need of false validation.

So, I came up empty and ended up convinced that for whatever reason, he was asking this of me, not because I’m the best to do it but perhaps because I’m the least encumbered. Even still, I hope I’m not the only one to speak into this space but one of many voices, each fulfilling their part.

Over months, I became convinced that God had put this in my hands. Some of what convinced me provided a template for how I would go about it:

1. I am going to focus on Jesus and how he works in us to transform our hearts. I’m not going to appeal to anyone’s fear or shame or demand they double-down on trying harder. I remember the days of “radical” discipleship, which was about our own efforts to read, meet, pray, study, and memorize in a flurry of activity that was more illusion that substance. Human power will not take you where the Spirit invites you. This is a work he does in willing hearts, not a plan even the most well-intentioned can implement.

2. I’m going to help people discover how they can follow Jesus in these days. I’m not going to use the false need of belonging to build a community of last-day followers who are more committed or more special than others. Anything that sets you above others around you has to be suspect from its inception.

3. I’m going to be free to speak my heart and not have to filter this message through the publishing trade who will shape the message with an eye toward sales and marketing. By the time something wonderful goes through that process it is often less about following Jesus than it is copying someone’s story, which will never yield the fruit we hope for.

4. I’m not going to monetize the message for my own profit. Every app on my iPhone has gotten worse the more it has been restructured for financial gain. There’s nothing about God’s truth that won’t be twisted by the desire for a good financial return. I’m giving this book away from the very beginning by posting it here on my blog. The book form will most likely sell for a modest fee, but the content will always be free online.

5. I am not beholden to a congregation or a constituency that I need to please to keep my job or income. I’m in my 70s with an amazing family and wonderful friends; if people want to attack me for what I write, I’ll be fine with that. I don’t need this material to build an audience or to make me popular. I only want to convey in simple and honest words what he has shown me.

6. I am not writing this alone. I’m the repository of hundreds of thousands of conversations with people all over the world in varying expressions of Christianity who have learned to live in the love of Jesus and follow his voice. It’s the fruit of talking with people instead of speaking at them. I don’t take that lightly; it is a great treasure.Everything I share in these pages has been vetted with others I’ve walked with for a significant season and whose hearts I trust. They have full freedom to speak into my life where they feel like I’m missing it, and yet they would never ask me to follow their thoughts above my conviction of what God wants of me. As these chapters take shape, I will be drawing on those conversations and what I hear throughout the body of Christ by people who have learned to live in his love, rest in his work, and listen to Jesus with humility.

7. I will write these things in the full light of day, not cloistered in my studio. Each chapter will appear on-line and bear the scrutiny of whoever reads them. Others can comment and where that helps clarify what I’m hoping to convey, I will rewrite the chapters to say it in the most accessible way.

8. I know part of the gift God has given me is to express his thoughts in ways that help other people recognize what he’s already been saying to them. The greatest compliment I have ever received, and I have heard it often, is this: “You put words to ideas I already know in my heart and did not know how to express them.” My prayer is that this will do the same to help awaken the Bride to her destiny.

9. My words will be gentle, an invitation to people who already want to see what’s true, not a debate for those I think will disagree. I will write with tender counsel and comfort, not authoritative screeds. Jesus is wooing his Bride into these days, not threatening her and thus I write for friends who are already experiencing the power of love, rather than adversaries who would prefer to debate for a more legalistic path.

I’m also convinced this is the audience Jesus wanted to share these things with. For a long time, I’ve recognized that many people who hang around Lifestream or The God Journey are some high-caliber followers of Jesus whose wisdom and love touch many others. I’m not alone in that conclusion. Whenever I introduce some of the people I know to others, I often hear back, “You have some of the most amazing friends.” I do, and for that I’m grateful. Perhaps many of you are positioned to understand what I’m writing and to help others hear his call as well.

Even so, starting this book has been a challenge. How do I find the tone and format to share these things that burn on my heart? I started it many times and had to discard what I wrote. None of it sounded the way I’d hoped.

On an early morning walk an image came to mind. What if one day a group of young people who were touched by some of my writings invited me to spend a weekend with them. Specifically, they asked, “Wayne, if we would happen to be the generation that’s alive when Jesus returns, what thoughts would you have to help us prepare for those days?”

Now, I could write that book, and those are the people I would long to write it for. This is what I would share with them as the most valuable lessons of my journey. Without a vibrant and active connection to him, the end of the world would not be survivable. You cannot navigate those times by the principles others have taught, only by a Presence who will walk with you.

I realize much of this content will be challenging, especially for people with more religious backgrounds. If it has no meaning to you, or proves hurtful, feel free to disregard those things. I’m not forcing this on you. In these pages, I want you to find that which draws your heart closer to God’s and helps you recognize his tender call to his bride and lets him prepare your heart for whatever might lie ahead.

Perhaps you, too, have a sneaking suspicion that the days of our world’s destruction are coming to an end and that Jesus stands at the threshold of human history to complete the redemption that he began with his birth in Bethlehem, then purchased at Calvary, ratified by his Resurrection from the dead, and will finally consummate when he stands on the Mount of Olives once again.

I can almost taste the moment. If it happens in my lifetime, I’ll be thrilled to be part of such days. And if not, I’ll be cheering from the other side those of you for whom the end of the days has come.

_________________________

You can access previous chapters here. or Continue to Chapter 5.

NOTE: This is the second in a series of letters written for the bride of Christ who are alive at the end of the age. I don’t know how often they will appear, but once complete, I’ll combine them into a book. If you are not already subscribed to this blog and want to make sure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here. The quotes that begin each chapter are a compilation from the many letters and conversations I receive and are not from the specific person I’ve made up to hold those words. They are designed to express the heart’s cry of those who are yearning to be part of what God is doing in our day and open the door to the content of that chapter.

_________________

Do you really think we could be living in the last days and that Jesus still may come in your lifetime? I’ve heard all that talk for over fifty years, and I’ve got to say I’m a bit jaded at the thought and surprised to hear you joining those ranks.

—Lloyd, 77-year-old retired engineer in Texas

Lloyd,

Even Paul, the Apostle, was concerned that too many expectations of Jesus’s coming by his followers would lead to discouragement if he delayed longer than their hope could last.

Like you, I’ve lived through a lot of false predictions of the Lord’s coming. As a child, I heard there’s no way this planet could survive the anger, drugs, and open sexuality of the 1960s and that Jesus would certainly come by 1970. I hated that talk, because I would turn 17 in 1970 and I hoped for a taste of adulthood before the end of it all.

Hal Lindsay convinced many that The European Common Market would provide the seed of the one-world government as it resisted the power of Communism. Then, of course there was the 88 reasons Jesus would come in 1988, and when that failed, the same author told us he got it wrong, and he now had 89 reasons why he would come in 1989.

Many predicted Y2K at the turn of the century would lead into a worldwide depression out of which the end of the age would come. Various Rosh Hashanah dates in the 1990s and 2000s were identified as dates for his coming, usually tied to some astronomical event to affirm the date. I even had some friends quit jobs and forego their daily responsibilities convinced that his coming was a month or two away.

All those dates turned out to be dead wrong, well-intentioned though they may have been. What I learned from all of that is anyone who sets a date is a fool. They may be wealthy fools with so many buying their books and attending their seminars, but fools, nonetheless.

So, no, I don’t have any aspirations to join those ranks and I am not making any predictions about him coming in my lifetime or the next hundred years. I don’t know if the times we are living through now portend the end, I’m merely asking myself, what if they do? I don’t have a sign. I don’t have a word from Jesus. I’ve not got some new interpretation of Scripture that finally reveals the secret.

So, let me assure you up front that I’ll not be telling anyone to quit their jobs, sell their homes, stop paying taxes, give up their dreams, buy guns, move to a private island with me, or to neglect any of the regular activities your days require. We won’t need to preplan, but simply respond to him as circumstances might unfold.

When the Jewish leaders asked Jesus for a sign, he thought it remarkable that they could so easily predict the weather by the color of the sky at night but couldn’t read the signs of the times. He indicated that spiritual indicators were easier to read than the weather, and yet, Lloyd, our generation has been fooled by so many false predictions and timetables ostensibly given by God or encoded in the Scriptures.

Today, we have apps that track the weather down to the minute with surprising accuracy, and yet we seem less discerning about what Jesus is doing behind the curtain of our daily lives or in world events. And when we lose sight of the Head, we’re only left to extrapolate our interpretation of Scripture or events into conclusions that prove false.

However, it is growing more difficult for me to ignore that many of the indicators Jesus gave us are aligning in some interesting ways. I listened to a podcast called The End of the Earth, which unpacks from a purely scientific perspective the dozen or so existential threats that humanity will have to solve in the next 150 years to survive. Some of those threats come from forces outside our control, such as asteroid impacts, super volcano eruptions, stellar explosions, or the collapse of a vital ecosystem. There are man-made risks such as nuclear war or radiation from a dirty bomb, environmental damage, climate change, an engineered pandemic, or artificial intelligence. Any of these could render humanity extinct or wipe out huge numbers of people in the quantities the book of Revelation attaches to the end of the age.

To be certain, the odds of most of these risks are infinitesimally small and there is always the possibility that some technological advance may reverse or overcome some of them. More concerning, however, are the handful of these that could be unleashed by a singular rogue scientist or desperate despot. And, to overcome some of them would require a level of unselfishness across a broad swath of humanity that we’ve not seen in our history. And yet, so many people I know rarely think about how humanity has plundered the planet with so little care for future generations.

In addition, we are witnessing four significant international conflicts that are more fraught with peril than that which spawned our first two World Wars, and this time nuclear weapons are in play. Two of which are already full-scale wars with mass casualties and two others could easily escalate to that. Furthermore, the international cohesiveness needed to resolve such conflicts is currently at a low ebb.

Of course, if I had been alive in 1940, I might have been convinced that Adolf Hitler was the Antichrist and the armies of good and evil were lined up in battle. Who in history was more set on world domination and committed genocide on such a massive scale? He used people’s religious fervor and feeling inferior after the Great War to seduce a nation into his narcissism and the evils it perpetuated.

But I would have been wrong, so I am reluctant to draw any firm conclusions here, I simply have my eye on what may yet unfold. What if our democracy fails or the current animosity degenerates into civil war? What if China triggers a war over Taiwan or their claims to South Pacific shipping lanes? What if our system of law and order breaks down into the tribal alliances we toy with now or collapses with an onrush of refugees from failed states?

I also can’t ignore other troubling trends in the rise of autocratic governments, terrorist activities, gangs, and cartels as well as increasing mass delusions fed by misinformation campaigns. Leaders focus on amassing power any way they can without regard for morality and goodwill. Our societies are becoming ever-more polarized and hostile with a bent to force others into the “right” way of thinking. Journalism has given way to advocacy and click-seeking content such that there are no longer any resources that enough people trust to even begin to build a common ground.

Many of our societal systems have broken down or been corrupted by the wealthy so that people have little hope of justice. Honesty is at an all-time low since everyone spins to their own desire or profit. Mass shootings continue to proliferate, and world debt is reaching unsustainable highs.

I also find many descriptions of last-days behavior in the Scriptures, to be as current as the morning news, like this from 2 Timothy 3:1-5 (NIV):

“There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”

Doesn’t that describe most of our social media, as well as our politicians, celebrities, and Wall Street bankers, as well as those who would be like them?

What’s intriguing to me is not any one of these things but all of them converging in our time. It is difficult to imagine a way out of all these challenges without the intervention of the One to whom all authority belongs. Is Jesus at the doorway to finalize his redemption of the Creation or are these only another set of birth pangs for a distant resolution? If these are not the beginning of those days, someday the beginning will look a lot like this.

Two thousand years ago, the early believers lived with an eye toward the day of redemption of all things, when the earth would be liberated from decay and God’s glory would make all things new. If that was true two thousand years ago, how much more today? That’s the joy growing in my heart, whether it happens in my lifetime or not.

Yet, with all the missed predictions and seemingly endless delays, I understand, Lloyd, how  hard it is not to give in to cynicism, especially when such talk has been filled with the immediacy of fear and threats of what would happen if we are an unworthy follower when he shows. These letters are for the bride, however. These are not days of gloom, but anticipation of joy. The groom just may be at the threshold and his coming is not a day of sorrow or anguish for his beloved; it’s a cause for celebration and unbridled joy. Like the Creation itself, we long for the day of the redemption of all things with expectancy and wonder.

What would it be like if Jesus’s coming comes in the next decade or two? The bride will emerge from all over the world, made ready by his love and dazzling the world with her beauty amid its chaos. That is hard to imagine if you’re thinking of Christianity as the religion it has become—broken and competing institutions trying to make people righteous with their rules and rituals. Instead, think of it as people from around the planet who are learning to live deeply in his love and are being transformed by that love to embrace others around them, both fellow-believers and those lost in the world.

I find world events curious enough to at least ask the question, “What if?” What are world events telling us? Is there a shift in the Spirit’s working to prepare hearts for that day? In the rhythm of the Spirit is there a fearless call for his bride to come closer? I’m holding those possibilities in my heart, but my expectancy is not on his second coming primarily, but how he wants to come now to share his life with me.

It’s time to lean into him more intentionally, listen to his heartbeat more carefully, and follow joyfully whatever he shows us. When I do that in light of his coming, I have greater clarity and make better decisions. I’ll not be writing here about geopolitical politics, identifying the antichrist, or decoding what the mark of the beast might be. These letters will be about who Jesus is for his bride and how we can live deeply in him so that we’re prepared for anything that may come.

I will write as if we are that generation, and if we’re not, perhaps some future generation will find these thoughts helpful. By publishing these letters, I want to put my voice alongside others who may be sensing similar things. My hope is that this spawns a wider conversation in the comment section or through emails that will allow us to look together at that which God is doing in our day and how these times may play into his purpose for the redemption of the whole Creation.

Blessed are they who don’t lose their hope in the Lord’s appearing because of the disappointed hopes of days past. And blessed are those who are not so distracted by what the future may hold that they miss his voice today. Realizing that the future of everything is in his hands, we can with delighted hearts invite him to continue to appear in us until the day he makes himself known to all.

As I’ll discuss in the next letter, this is not a time for fear. Even if the days of humanity’s indulgence are drawing to an end, Jesus will not let the world come to naught and he will not let you be devoured in the chaos. Challenging times will come at the end, but when we trust him, we will have all that we need. Our part is not figuring out the big picture, but responding each day to how he draws us to himself and that will prepare us for when the plan of redemption reaches its final page.

Then, the end will come with shouts of joy from all the beloved who have yearned for his coming.

–> Continue here to Chapter 3

Wayne, a couple of years ago you posted a video from the remains of a wildfire about something God put on your heart regarding Creation groaning in its futility for the sons and daughters to be revealed. What you heard was, “It’s time.” Do you remember that? I have had the same stirring on my heart. What do you see now looking back?”
— Layna, 25-year-old college student from North Carolina

Layna,

I don’t know how you find time to write me as demanding as your university courses are these days but I’m glad you did. Are you still thinking of starting on your doctorate next year?

Knowing these same words stir in your heart in the midst of your studies encourages me. To find young people with a heart for God’s reality in this ever-darkening age makes me rejoice. You are a treasure and I pray God continues to draw you closer to his heart and reveal to you the mysteries of his love and care for you as the future unfolds.

Few days go by when I don’t contemplate the message behind that video I recorded on March 29, 2021. As I stood in the burn scar of the Creek Wildfire that destroyed 400,000 acres of forested mountains in the Sierra Nevada mountains around Shaver Lake, the devastation and sorrow of Creation disturbed me. That’s when those two words popped into mind: “It’s time!” Like a cool, refreshing breeze on a hot day, they raised the hair on my arms, and caused something deep within to rise.

At that point, I had no idea what they meant even though I felt hope that new life was already at work beneath the ashes surrounding my feet. I knew seeds were already germinating unseen, but in a matter of weeks, they would burst forth out of the charred landscape and over time replenish the forest with trees and wildflowers.

I held the mystery and anticipation of those words overnight. Where did they come from and what was I supposed to take away from them? On a walk the next morning through an unburned part of the forest, I invited God into my musings as I happened upon a small meadow. “It’s time for what?”

Instantly, the words from Romans 8:19 sprang to mind, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” In an instant, I knew what had troubled me the day before was not just the devastated landscape I witnessed, but also holding it as a broader metaphor of how broken humanity has devasted God’s Creation. Not only have we scarred and polluted the physical world, but we have also wounded each other with the jealousy, greed, and hostility that shatter human relationships. Even more, those who claim to follow him are not shining lights in the world as they demonstrate the same anger and arrogance it does.

Do those words still stir my heart today, Layna? They do, and even more deeply than they did at first. I can sense the Creation cheering for people like you who are finding a growing hunger to live deeply connected to him. As I see it now, “It’s time” is a tender invitation from Jesus to his bride to draw closer, to let our love and trust in him deepen so that his glory can once again be revealed on the earth.

So, what have I seen in the almost three years since?

I have watched the darkness expand, working its way into every stratum of our culture. I see it growing in the polarization and animosity of politics as well as in global hostilities. We now have two active wars and two ever-heightening conflicts, any of which could escalate into World War III, or provoke a desperate nation to go nuclear. The planet is convulsing with natural disasters unthinkable a decade ago. The COVID pandemic, possibly escaping from a lab, showed we are only one simple step away from a madman or careless scientist unleashing a virus that cannot be disarmed so easily.

In addition, God’s name continues to be disfigured by many of his self-proclaimed followers who have no idea who he is nor has their inner life been shaped by his nature. They filled their lives with religious busywork, and when it did not satisfy, they became fearful and angry people, desperate to leverage the power of a fallen world to achieve the hope that eludes them. Thus, there has been a great falling away by many who hide behind a religious veneer and by those who deconstructed their spiritual life so completely, they no longer can see God in it. They have gone their own way, having never met a God more engaging than the failures of their religious leaders and institutions.

In contrast, I also see an undeniable hunger growing in others to have an authentic connection to God, unmediated by human convention and ritual. Their religious constructs failed them at the time they needed God most. No longer able to mask their doubts, ignore their discontent, or pretend the false comfort of empty rituals, their hearts still seek to be united with the God who made them.

And I am greatly encouraged by young people like you, Layna, who sense the same breeze blowing. I see more people becoming attuned to God’s whispers and fingerprints in their daily lives as they learn how to trust his love and wisdom above their own. They are discovering that he can guide them through any disaster or hardship they face and, in the process, make them freer as they embrace his ways. They now know that Father’s purpose, and their own, are best served not by changing their circumstances to make life easy but by embracing a love that will stand with them in the darkest places.

The winds of his Spirit are shifting. As I walk the hills where I live, rising amidst the rustling leaves and the quiet of a starlit night or the warm glow of a burgeoning dawn, I hear the refrain of the song the Lamb—Jesus calling to his beloved. You can hear it too in those moments of stillness just before you fall asleep, or sense it in the drawing of your heart to something greater when you’ve put aside your media.

It is a soothing melody with tender words and a restful rhythm. He’s not angry at those who got lost in the world or their religious performance; he’s simply inviting them to return to him. Some hearing that melody don’t even know it’s coming from Jesus. Their hearts are being drawn into the sweetness of his presence, even though they don’t yet know what to call him. They will eventually learn his name, but they are already following him as they yield to the growing revelation inside them.

Listen. Jesus is calling your name, even if you got lost in the world’s amusements and empty promises or the delusion of a religious fury that did not satisfy either. Like the Prodigal, you can return to the God you always hoped was there. You have heard his song too in the hunger you feel that quiet moments expose. He’s wanting to win you back, and when you turn again toward him, you will find healing from the lies of darkness that have shamed, condemned, and accused you.

He is revealing himself, and yes, that is a double-edged sword for those who dare to look. It often comes first with the disillusionment—the painful unmasking of false thinking and selfish motives. But soon, that is followed by the growing awareness of God present with you and a growing appreciation for the way he works, which is so different from our human expectations.

This is the best meaning of the word ‘apocalypse’—the fresh unveiling of God’s hand and purpose in these sons and daughters who are learning the power of love. I know it conjures up end-of-the age imagery for most, which may not be a comforting thought for many. However, the root of the word doesn’t mean judgment, but a “revelation” or “unveiling.” Apocalypse is the lifting of the veil from our eyes that obscures our view of God’s reality. It’s an apocalypse of the willing heart now, and someday soon perhaps, an apocalypse for the whole world.

Only Jesus can hold our tears, resolve our disappointed expectations, and show us how he perfects his love in us through the very circumstances we desperately resist. In years since I heard, “It’s time,”  Sara and I have been drawn into a deeper journey than we would ever have imagined, through the dishonesty and betrayal of people we loved and respected, then in the revelation of her trauma, and finally in the path to healing that only Jesus could have accomplished. We are finding a deeper faith that mere agreement with theological principles could never achieve.

When you find his faithfulness in those places where you had previously thought him faithless, you are on the cusp of seeing the path that love lights. That’s where his glory inhabits our lives in profound and wonderful ways and where that beauty seeps out of our hearts in spontaneous encounters, so others can behold it as well. Like those plants that were growing beneath the ashes of the wildfire-scarred wilderness, the beauty of his transformation will emerge more visibly. Each green shoot brings hope to the creation and as more of them let Father’s glory find a home in their heart, the flow of color from far-flung wildflowers will color the earth.

No, these followers will not be perfect, nor will they need to be. They’ll be fully human, even letting God be revealed in their weaknesses and mistakes because their character and words will reflect God’s kindness, compassion, and redemption instead of judgment, vengeance, and condemnation. They will not seek to gain and use power to advance their own desires but will graciously lay down their lives to serve others, even those who treat them as enemies.

So, yes, we are standing on the precipice of an apocalypse—a revealing of Jesus in the world and an exposing of those illusions that keep people captive from knowing God as he is. I don’t know if this is the final apocalypse John wrote about, but I am convinced that what the Spirit wants to stir in the bride won’t look like anything that has come before.

It’s time . . .

It’s time for the bride to awaken and find the rhythm of Jesus’s heartbeat for these days and learn to follow him fearlessly. The bridegroom is at hand; he is not only with you now but will also soon come in bodily form to reclaim what is his.

And it’s time for her to arise, not in human power and wisdom, drawing attention to herself with bluster and demands on the culture, but in the quiet reality of a love-transformed life sharing his goodness with those we meet.

It’s time for his followers to embrace…

• a love stronger than anything someone can do to us
• a light greater than the lies of darkness
• a resilient faith that is only strengthened in adverse circumstances, and
• an undeniable hope in a future of God’s choosing rather than chasing our own plans.

Over the course of these letters, I want to share with you how we lean toward him in these days, so the bride is ready to meet her groom. This is the time for you to listen and discern how he is making himself known to you. Don’t grab the old conventions or commit yourself to more Bible reading, church attendance, and prayer. This is about discovering him as he makes himself known to you, not jumping on the performance treadmill that will only wear you out yet again.

I am convinced, after great soul-searching, that Jesus has invited me to share with you the thoughts he has put in my mind about the times we live in. Honestly, I have resisted doing so for reasons I’ll share in the future. But I do want to offer encouragement to those who want to be part of reflecting his glory in the world. Thus, this is the first of a series of “Letters to the Bride at the End of the Age.” I’m calling it, It’s Time!

Subsequent letters will appear on this blog until I can combine them into a book. Each will respond to a different question and focus on what we will need to live in freedom and protection while being an ambassador of his love in these ever-darkening days. I’m going to respond to questions like yours, Layna, so you may want to follow along. Do I really think the end of days is upon us? What about those of you for whom that might provoke fear? How do we live at rest in uncertainty, trusting in Father’s care for us.

What if his coming to redeem the planet is meant to happen in the next 10-15 years? What might we want to know and how might we want to live? I don’t know if the real audience for this book is in this generation or if it will come eighty years from now when someone finds it on a lost corner of the Internet. Either way, I hope this little book encourages someone to respond to his call.

That said, I do know this: If following Jesus with a full heart and a certain faith will serve us well at the end of days, wouldn’t it also serve us even better today?

–>  Continue here to Chapter 2.

_______________________________________________

This is the first in a series of letters written for the bride of Christ at the end of the age. I don’t’ know how often they will appear, but once complete I’ll combine them into a book. If you are not already subscribed to this blog, and want to make sure you don’t miss any, you can add your name here. 

The quotes that begin each chapter are a compilation from the many letters and conversations I have experienced, and are not from the specific person I’ve made up to embody those words. They are designed to express the heart’s cry of those who are yearning to be part of what God is doing in our day and open the door to the content of that chapter. For each one, however, I have a specific person in mind who I know or have met recently.