Her bright eyes shone without apology. This was new for her. She told me about how she was learning and growing. She told me how her life was changing. She used to apologize after almost every sentence. Read more…

She stood defiantly in the face of her past and shouted it down.  God had healed another heart.  One by one she named the moments of her past when darkness had tried to snuff out the life God intended for her.  The moments were big and dark.  Most of us have not lived through the things she lived through.  God was bigger, kinder and more powerful than all that the darkness had thrown at her, and she stood up to proclaim it to everyone in the room.

God had visited this room full of leaders in a tangible way.  Something about when we turn our minds and our hearts toward Him seems to invite His presence and He had come like mist into the room.  You could feel the shift.  We were discussing His Nature and His Love.  We were declaring His Power.  He seemed to like that because He came to show us.  And when He did He climbed inside this woman’s heart and burned out from her years of rejection, shame fear and loneliness.  Then she stood to declare it.

The force of her words seemed to move the air in the room like thunder.  She spoke a language I did not understand, but the look on her face and movement of her heart transcended things like words.   She would name an incident and then climb victoriously on top of it.  Moment by moment by moment, the trauma of her life bowed to God’s Breath and her reception of it.  With each declaration He seemed to increase His presence through her and among us.  We were on Holy Ground.  She was in Holy Hands.

When she finished casting down this life time of trauma, she began to express what He was doing in her.  Rejection became ultimate Acceptance.  Shame became Love.  Pain became Joy and darkness became Light.  The same God who had created the cosmos with His voice was speaking to her and through her.  And as He did He was creating again.  We watched in wonder.

He said to her, “I will never leave you or forsake you”.  She believed Him.  So did we.  It changed me, and I will never forget what I saw.

He is risen.  He is risen indeed. Notice the sentence that changes everything doesn’t mention your name.  Not even a pronoun about you.   Because “He is risen indeed” is enough.  Before we turn this celebration of Easter into more knowledge of good, I want to point out a great sounding deception that has ensnared many followers of Jesus.  Here is how we say, or think this subtle trap.  “He died for me, I should live for Him.”  What if you shouldn’t?  What if God isn’t even asking for that?

Well meaning encouragement and admonition can often urge us deeply into one of the greatest traps that Jesus’ followers face;  the trap of self-effort on behalf of One who has given His life to free us from “self-anything”.  So often we try to “do for” God.  In my counseling practice my primary role was to help people change.  The challenge was to help people change the right thing in the right way.  The right way was the most difficult aspect of change.  The right change from the wrong source was destined for long-term failure.

It has been my observation that often “Christian Counsel” has strong roots in Humanism.  You know, humanism.  The ‘ism’ that says humans are the center of life and outcomes originate from and are completed by humans.  It sounds so contrary to the Christian faith right?  That is because it IS!.  The problem is we don’t always recognize humanism when it is wrapped in lots of Christian language.

Any change that is not empowered by the death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the movement of the Holy Spirit, is ultimately humanism. Another name for this is “our knowledge of good”.  The impulse and power source of our thought, our effort, our  emotional state must originate “from God”.  The only other option is that your thoughts, efforts and emotions originate from your soul, or from some other spiritual force.  Neither can produce life.

He is risen.  He is risen in you.

A friend of mine recently told me this story.  She was praying with friends, and one of them asked God what He wanted to do for this friend of mine.  As she relays the story, the eyes of her heart saw God, the Father, embrace her and pull her into a tight embrace.  He placed her heart against His and she suddenly felt like a defibrillator shocked her.   She describes that in that moment power filled her, emanating from her chest spreading through the rest of her being.  More than what she says…the way she tells the story is captivating.

Her eyes light up.  Her countenance relaxes and light seems to come from her features.  Her smile grows every time she tells someone else.  Something has changed in her since that moment.  Listen to her words.  “I was dead, and now I am alive”, she says.  I have heard her say it a few times now, and every time she says it I feel more alive.  Almost like overflow, from her experience.  Almost like she is now the recipient of Living Water, and people around her get wet.

God is not asking you to do something  for Him.  He is offering to do life through you.  Have you been wondering why your “Christian walk” seems un-fulfilling, or less than you had hoped for?  Perhaps it is because it has been your christian walk.  The significance of Easter is not simply that God brought Jesus back from the dead.  The significance of Easter is that He brings you and I back from the dead.  If you do not know that you are dead it will be difficult for you to receive life.  If you think your study, your rule following, your quiet times, your attendance or obedience are life then it will be unlikely that you will receive that which you believe you already have.

He is alive…how about you?

Yesterday we celebrated something which, at the time of the actual event, was not celebrated but mourned.  The death of Jesus was, to most, a shocking and devastating end to a soaring hope.   Read more…