When Grieving Becomes Disloyalty

When I mourn and feel pain for something that I give up for Jesus, that pain reveals a sympathy in my flesh for something that is preventing me from being fully loyal to Him. In effect I am sympathizing with the enemy of my best Friend. But how do I feel when someone who claims to love me still has sympathy for someone who only wants to hurt me and sabotage my relationships with those I love?

That is why God insisted that Aaron not mourn when two of his sons died from their acts of rebellion against God. To mourn is to sympathize and sympathy for an enemy is disloyalty to a friend.

A problem arises in this arena when one is trying to obey the convictions of the Spirit to let go of something that has very strong emotional attachments but has not taken the time to cultivate counteracting replacement attachments with God's heart. They are not using one magnetic attraction as a means of repelling the other magnetic attraction.

If you have played around with magnets you will have noticed that when two magnets are brought into close proximity to each other they will either be strongly attracted to each other or will strongly repel each other, depending on which way they are oriented. I believe there is a very important lesson built into this principle of physics put there by God to teach us a most important concept about spiritual realities.

If I am like a piece of iron with a magnet stuck to me, something that detracts from my pure loyalty to God but does not necessarily appear openly sinful, then it is going to be very hard for me to effectively get that magnet detached from me without a great deal of effort and pain. I might attempt to do it with sheer willpower or maybe use amped up fear to separate that thing from my life, but fear is not a very effective tool to encourage growth in a life of love like God designed for us to share with Him. I might accomplish externally separating myself from that item or activity but it will cause extreme separation pain, confusion and many times second thoughts later on. And I will likely be very vulnerable to having some other “magnet” replace that and take its spot that I will then have to separate myself from later on.

This is a common phenomenon familiar among circles that treat addictions. Many people work very hard to give up some addiction only to replace it with some other addiction, sometimes one that may appear much more socially acceptable. That new addiction however becomes even more difficult to deal with because it appears to not be so harmful. But addictions are like magnets and have a very similar power to stick tenaciously to our lives and resist detachment like magnets are attracted to iron.

But the more I think about it the more sense it makes to use a power outside of and greater than ourselves. Instead of just trying to use methods based on brute force to separate harmful magnets from our emotional lives it would be far more effective and possibly even less painful if we were to introduce the presence of a more powerful magnet to utilize its properties to create a revulsion that would cause us to want to get rid of compromising influences from our hearts. If we were to spend more time and effort on filling our hearts and minds with the magnetic presence of a powerfully attractive God, then to the extent that we were truly filled with that attraction at the heart level would be the extent to which sin and its addictions and attractions would start to feel repulsive to our hearts. Thus we could use the power of one magnet to push away the other instead of trying to do it all ourselves.

But there is a very interesting third factor here that I have not yet considered. Our hearts are not just like a passive piece of iron that has no bias to start with. Each of us is more like a magnet ourselves, albeit much weaker than originally created. But we have the power to turn our hearts in one direction or another which will create either an attraction or a repulsion in the direction we are facing relative to any other magnets around us. This ability to turn our hearts is the most important part of our beings and it is called by some the kingly power of choice. When this factor is entered into the equation then a lot more potential is exposed as to how each one of us can affect the outcome of our battle against the attractions of sin in our lives.

If I continue to observe the analogy of the magnets and their relationships to other magnets I can see even more useful principles that apply very well to my relationship with sin and with God. Magnets display a principle labeled as “attraction of opposites”. The rule of thumb when dealing with physical magnets is that opposites attract and like repels like. Thus the negative side of a magnet has very strong attraction for the positive side of another magnet.

As I think about it that is the same principle that seems to take place between us and God. God is perfectly good and in man can be found no natural goodness – a negative field if ever there was one. Yet God seems overwhelmingly attracted to wanting to be with us and draw us to Himself.

This seems very baffling at first to our logical minds. Why would a perfect, good, loving God be attracted to want the worst of sinners to come close to Him, especially given His intense hatred of sin? It has not only baffled people ever since sin entered this world but it has also contributed to a great deal of false and confusing beliefs about God that keep us afraid of Him. Instead of believing that He really does love us that much we tend to rewrite what He has said about Himself to make it seem that He uses threats and force and intimidation to push us toward lining up with His will instead of using magnetic attraction to draw us to His goodness and grace and love.

Sin also has a similar way of attracting and attaching itself to our lives. While sin at its core is evil and repulsive if it didn't cloak itself behind a very appealing facade, it most often presents itself to our minds and hearts initially as something greatly to be desired, something that will satisfy some craving in our life, something that will make us feel more alive. This external attractiveness that is often so overwhelmingly compelling is what draws us into trouble most of the time because it appears that this thing or activity or relationship is going to meet some emptiness that we are feeling – the negative side of our own magnet. But in embracing the magnets of sin to cover our negative deficiencies we block God from having a place to attach firmly to our hearts. When God comes to us to connect with our heart and mind, the place where He needs to attach is littered with magnets of sin that promise to do for us what only God can effectively accomplish. Thus there is this irreconcilable competition between sin and God for the negative places on our soul.

So why does God hate sin so much?

God hates sin because it is sin that keeps us believing lies about Him. And these lies within us block Him from having full access to our hearts. God created us for the most intimate fellowship with Him, much closer than a man and woman might ever experience in the most fantastical marriage one could ever imagine. But sin has created the diversion of an adulterous mindset and causes us to look to other sources to fulfill our needs for love and fulfillment and satisfaction. So when these things block God's love from ravishing our hearts and connecting us with His heart exclusively, God sees sin as the competition and the worst enemy that has stolen His children from loving allegiance to their true family.

So if I apply this magnet analogy to the principle that I started out with in the beginning about feeling pain while letting go of something God asks me to release, it alerts me to the reality that maybe I am making the wrong choices in how I orient my own magnet in relationship to the ones offered me by sin. I am also failing to allow God's magnetic field to dwell close enough to the center of my heart that could create a repulsive power to push away those sources of evil. Instead I am trying to do it some other way, trying to get rid of sin and get my act together before I allow God full access. But by trying to get rid of sin without allowing the magnetism of God to fill my soul, I am really betraying my own choices that resist His love and the truth about His character and I am sympathizing with at least some of the lies of the enemy that claim that God is not as good as He says He is. When I remain in sympathy with the lies of Satan about God, to that same extent I am choosing to remain in disloyalty to God while at the same time thinking I want to get closer to Him.

The millions of lies about God that infect our hearts and minds and assumptions are like millions of small and large magnets all scattered throughout our internal makeup but all oriented in the same direction – oriented to repel the real truth about how God feels towards sinners. We may be able to fill our minds with factual truths about God and attach truths to certain parts of our brain that can begin to counteract the magnet field created by all of these lies. But as long as those lies remain firmly embedded deep in our thinking and subconsciousness we will feel continued resistance to the things God is trying to reveal to us about Himself. There is going to be continued tension internally between what we are learning about God and what our gut-level beliefs cause us to feel that contradict what we are being shown by His Spirit.

I certainly don't know how all of this works, but I can now begin to see that applying this analogy to my own experience makes it suddenly have much more sense. It helps explain why I have such confusing and conflicting emotions on my journey toward freedom and a true belief in God's goodness and love. I can definitely see where the powers of competing magnets are causing pressure and tension and competing attractions at the heart level. But I also think that if I better understand these principles and learn how to exercise my power of choice to affect the outcome of this internal conflict that it might become easier to know how to make choices that will leverage God's magnetic power to expose and expel sin from my life instead of spending so much wasted effort in trying to do it myself.

This can also come to be a means of measuring the orientation of my own heart in relation to both sin and God by observing which of these has the greater attraction for me. If I sense God is asking me to let go of something so He can replace it with Himself and His provisions for me, and yet I find it very painful to let go of that thing, then that pain in itself can alert me that maybe I am not facing the right direction. I may need to pay more attention to how I might add the effect of my magnet to the power of God's magnet and create a repulsive field toward the elements in my life that are blocking God's presence and power from me. If that is the situation, then I have just uncovered another area of my life where rebellion and disloyalty is still firmly in place.

But instead of attempting to get my own act together in order to comply with God's orientation, I now can see more clearly that it might be more effective to get with God, to draw closer to Him instead of trying to get rid of sin myself. If I submit myself to God and draw closer to Him and allow His attractions and magnetic power to fill my life and orient my heart, then His presence can create a hostile atmosphere against the sins that normally might have great attraction for me.

My choices in these things are going to reveal how much I am still dependent on things of this world to satisfy my heart. But those attractions are going to be exposed as areas of disloyalty to the heart of God just as they would be seen in a marriage relationship. Anything or anyone that detracts from total and pure loyalty to my spouse is something that has inherent power to pull me away from them sooner or later. And likewise, anything that I cling to in resistance to God's Spirit asking me to let it go is really something that betrays the presence of disloyalty to God's claim over my soul. And in the Bible this kind of disloyalty is called adultery.

Yes, there may be many times when I am going to have to pry loose something or even someone from my heart to clear place for God to take that spot and become my source of provision in that area. And I may have to do it very painfully because I can't see God's provision. Maybe I am blinded by the close proximity of that counterfeit provision that is so familiar to me. But somehow I feel that I can at least help to reduce the level of that separation pain if not completely eliminate it soon after the separation by focusing much more on the replacement provision of God's presence and the real truth about His character and His desires for me.

What's In It For Me?

It is generally viewed as being quite selfish to come to the Christian life with an attitude of “what's in it for me”. This is sometimes met with quick reprimands using Jesus' admonitions about getting focused on what God wants or serving other people's needs and other such things designed to induce a sense of shame and guilt for ever slipping into such a base way of thinking.

But as I think about it this morning I am not so sure that God may not have designed us to operate from this motive at least to some degree. As I contemplate many of the teachings of Jesus there seems to be a common thread of making offers to us to offset whatever it is God is asking us to give up in order to enjoy them. Even the example of Jesus Himself in going to the cross seems clearly to involve a desire to secure what was in it for Him as a means of bolstering His heart to endure that horrendous experience. ...Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

And what about the whole issue of rewards promised to those who are overcomers? It cannot be discounted that God does offer rewards for certain things, even though that concept has been seriously misrepresented and abused by Christian leaders throughout the ages. There really are benefits for living a healthful lifestyle, for treating others with respect and love, for obeying God and all sorts of other things. Sin offers quite a few rewards of its own in order to induce us to indulge in its pleasures but in the end it all results in the final wages of death. But that is almost never obvious at the beginning of that path.

But the real issue I want to ponder is whether the fundamental idea of making decisions from the basic motive of benefiting myself is tainted with too much selfishness or whether it might be something that is legitimate and is part of God's original design for humanity. Is it really wrong to use a cost/benefit analysis as one means of deciding what direction we want to go, or are we supposed to eventually become completely weaned away from all such thinking and only act strictly on principle? But even that, when analyzed more closely is still based on what is in it for me. For even people who claim that we should act only from altruistic motives at root are still choosing that principle because they believe in the end it is going to be the best way to produce a better outcome for themselves.

So what I am seeing here is a somewhat confusing conflict between living from motives of self-preservation that underlies many of the desires that cause us to sin, and this seemingly inherent principle of making long-term choices that will result in finally bringing about the very same thing – my eternal existence, preservation and happiness. It is starting to appear that maybe the real problem is not so much rooted in our desires to stay alive and avoid pain and death but is in the path that we choose to arrive there. What way will I choose to get there from here?

This is where Satan has so confused and distorted things that it has become nearly impossible to sort it all out. Many things that God warns us to avoid seem to be along the lines of self-preservation, and yet at the same time He offers us incentives that appear to appeal to the very same part of our thinking. That is what is leading me to believe that maybe it is not our fundamental desire to stay alive that is our problem but is our desire to do it apart from total dependence on the only Source that can keep us alive.

This may seem like a non-issue for many people and maybe it is. But for me this has been a point of confusion that has been perpetuated by insinuations and assertions in religion from all of my life. It also can be mistakenly assumed from an improper evaluation of some of Jesus' statements if not viewed in context of everything else God has revealed.

Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. (Luke 17:33) If this is read isolated from everything else it might be construed to mean that we should quit caring about staying alive at all. It could even become a motivation for suicide if taken literally by an immature mind or a literalistic reading. And yet it seems to me that the effect of this kind of logic actually pervades much of our thinking without really being challenged seriously.

What God seems to be saying as far as I can see so far is that I must let go of my own methods and formulas for keeping alive or planning for my future if I am ever going to be capable of embracing His ways and plans for accomplishing the very same thing for me. As long as I think I know better than God, or maybe think that I know what God is thinking without really letting Him speak for Himself, then I block my own ability to hear His counsel and warnings and directions for me properly and my own carefully laid plans will not accomplish what I thought they would do.

No matter how many Bible texts I can arrange to prove my opinions about how to preserve my life both here and for eternity, I must be open to listening to the frequent corrections and insights and promptings of His Spirit that may at times require the dismantlement of long-held beliefs that I thought would never be questioned. I must be willing to allow all of my opinions, beliefs, doctrines and everything else to be constantly accessible to the updates and revisions that the Spirit is sent to provide for those who are honest of heart. The nature of deception is so subtle that many will firmly believe they know and follow the truth when in fact they are clinging to what was true for them some time back but is in serious need of updating if they had just been willing to receive it.

We cannot afford to be using an outdated operating system in our minds and hearts when God wants us to be constantly willing to receive constant updates and new revisions of what is needed as things change. Truth is not static. And while we claim to believe that, our actions and thinking and prejudices betray that we feel otherwise.

So I can see that I may need this part of my fundamental assumptions revised as God shows me how my thinking on this has been based on opinions and insinuations by religious people instead of on revelations from Him and His Word. I am starting to see that maybe God intends for me to want to live, to thrive and to relish life even when He makes statements about my being willing to die in order to get there. This is one of the great dichotomies that have to be embraced by a growing Christian and that might be a source of confusion if not understood correctly. But when I see it better it can be a source of positive motivation and a great help in seeing the heart of God more clearly.

Investing Talents

Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest. (Matthew 25:27)

Options for use of the money:

Ask for a loan for the same amount as the money you have using the money itself as collateral. Then take the double amount and buy something that has good promise of increase.

Give the money to a loan company so that they have money to loan others and owe you some of the interest.

Doing nothing with the money but protect it.

Spend the money on yourself with little thought of the consequences.

Look for some project that needs investment money, study that project for its viability and the integrity of the people involved and then invest in a high return idea. This implies that the higher the return potential that the risk is equally higher of losing your investment.

Look for very safe investments that typically have lower returns than the high risk investments that may leave you hanging out to dry.

Leverage your money using option one but do it repeatedly so that you end up with very high amounts of borrowed money to invest in much larger projects with very high risks and return potentials.

The high risk options to be reasonably successful require discernment, wisdom and careful analysis and planning to have a reasonable promise of return. How much are you willing to use your own brain, intuition and facing down of your fears to invest in something that has little guarantees?

How does this apply to me in practical, explainable ways?

What is the spiritual application of this for me?

How does this fit in with leaving everything in God's hands including all plans?

How much does skill and experience factor into this?

What about humility and connection with God?

Is sharing my experience and ideas about spiritual life and God a way of investing in the spiritual growth of other people?

Is that a legitimate investment?

Is the way I am doing it producing healthy returns or am I too self-centered in my witness?

How are my investments in others helping them to focus on God more than on me or on doctrines?

Is the selfishness content of my testimony a factor that determines whether I am a high risk investment for God or a lower return investment?

God is doing the same thing by investing in me that He wants me to do in others.

What is the real object or goal of a valid investment?

What do the returns look like? In the story it was cash or money. But what did Jesus really have in mind?

If I invest time am I expecting to get more time in return?

If I invest love am I trying to produce fruit of love from others in return?

How do I know if I am getting good returns on my investments if I don't have some idea of what those returns are really supposed to be or look like?

Likewise, how can I make investments if I don't even know what it is I have that can be invested?

What is involved in careless investing?

Who determines that criteria?

High-risk investments are almost always considered a bad idea by the majority of people. So if one decides to invest in a high-risk project or person they should expect to be out of sync with the common wisdom of those around them.

What is the difference between investing and just spending money – spiritually?