Drawing in the Sand

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In the past when I have considered the story of Jesus defending the adulterous woman in John 8, I have wondered, “What was He writing in the dirt?” Today as I was doing my normal household work, I recalled this story with a new focal point: He was writing. The what does not matter so much as the action itself.

It is interesting to me that Jesus does not inquire about this woman’s past or present circumstances. She had been caught in the act of adultery–an especially big deal for her setting, which insinuates all is not well with this woman without defining whether the problem is within herself or brought on by an external force (e.g. in the matter of sexual abuse). Beyond her punishable actions, she likely has emotional hurts, needs, and a life reflecting those areas of brokenness. As God, Jesus would have known these things; as man, His knowledge of her circumstances may have been limited. Either way, it appears He chooses to see her future rather than her past.

There is a parallel here to the story of creation: man being formed from the dust compared to Jesus writing in the dust. Writing is an act of creation. It is the release of a word. In the beginning God created by releasing His word (and BTW the word for spirit/Spirit is the same as the word for breath in both Hebrew and Greek, so the process of speaking words is also a release of His Spirit). Jesus now re-creates this woman’s life in a similar manner. He draws/writes in the dirt His word regarding the situation, or perhaps about her, or perhaps about Him. And through this His Spirit is also released: a spirit who desires creation, re-creation, reconciliation, and love beyond any other thing.

Jesus’ judgment for this situation–His ruling–overlooks the problem of the past/present in order to present a vision of the future. The further surprise is that although Jesus is without sin, He too is not willing to stone this women. He says, “Neither do I [condemn you]. Go and sin no more” (verse 11). It is natural that the sinful religious authorities be denied the right to stone her for her sins; but Jesus, having true authority and the prerogative to carry out retribution, chooses re-creation instead of extermination.

If judgment is defined as making wrong things right, His judgment is against the accusations and religious traps of these particular religious leaders and for the restoration of this woman’s full being (her internal feelings, and her external actions). Love propels this restoration; accusation solidifies the problem and hinders positive growth. Love carries the authority to say, “Go. Be renewed,” because it provides a vision for that future renewal.

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Emphasis on the First Commandment

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There are two commandments that stand out within the entire Bible and are particularly emphasized by Jesus in the New Testament.  The first commandment is to love God and the second is to love other people.  The first is first and the second is second–they aren’t equal.  If we forget to love God, it really doesn’t matter how much we love people (1 Cor 13).  The first commandment is a requirement for the second, and it is greater (Mat 22:37-38).

I’ve mentioned these commandments before, but it’s very important to recognize the difference between them.  They wouldn’t be highlighted separately if they were the same; thus, we do not love God BY loving other people, we love God THEN we love other people.  This is not a subtle difference.

So how do we love God?  Scripture says we love God by keeping His commandments–we completely submit ourselves to God in obedience of whatever He has for us (John 15:1-11).

This is why loving God has to happen before the loving of people: God has a specific design for how we should individually love those in our spheres of influence.  We aren’t called to random acts of kindness; we’re called to specific works which He prepared beforehand for us to do (Eph 2:10)!

If we neglect to focus on a relationship with the Lord foremost (on truly and wholeheartedly loving Him), then instead of being led by His voice to pour out His love, we become recklessly attempting to earn or prove our salvation to God, ourselves and the world.  We may help people to feel good in the now, but aren’t able to offer them insight toward a stable relationship with the Lord because we don’t have it for ourselves; what is Christianity unless Christians can offer both?  This ‘being good’ wears us out, makes us feel constantly inadequate or in competition with others, and most importantly, it doesn’t work–God knows our heart.

The ‘goodness’ has to come from the inside out.  As we spend time with Him, we know Him and love Him.  He gives us a heart to love Him–more and more as we seek Him–because He knows how small we are.  And as we completely submit to Him in love, we can’t help but be stirred in our spirits to help His other loves.  It really does happen naturally.  And it brings with it a confidence of being a true heir and son or daughter to the Most High God.

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The Holy Spirit

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The Holy Spirit is literally the Spirit of God.  1 Corinthians 2:10-16 tells us that just as we have a spirit in us that knows the depths of our thoughts, so does God have a Spirit that knows the depths of His being–and that’s the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the same Spirit that resides in God the Father and Jesus themselves.  He’s the third person in the trinity God.

Since the Holy Spirit is the inner Spirit of God Himself, He knows all things.  This more than qualifies Him to be the Spirit of truth, the Helper, who Jesus promises will teach us all things (John 14:17 & 26) and guide us into all truth (John 16:13).

This is really exciting!  And it means that when we ask for more of the Holy Spirit, what we’re getting is the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16)!  Even recognizing only the surface level issues of our flesh, we know that the mind of Christ is something we need much more of; we should be diligently pursuing the Holy Spirit so that we can closely partner and connect with God in the way He intended.

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Jesus IS the Word; the Bible is His transcript.

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The Bible is the key to the heart of God.  There’s power in it, because it’s the testimony of the true God, and He Himself speaks in and through it (literally).  It’s a powerful thing to capture the words of the Lord–and this is just what the Bible has done.  It’s the transcript of dialogs with God throughout history.

A friend asked me once whether we can trust the Bible since the translations vary slightly from language to language and version to version.  She, being linguistic minded, felt it wrong to credit God for potential human errors–and how can we say that each are the inspired Word of God when they aren’t exactly the same?

All good questions.  But here’s the thing: it is the HOLY SPIRIT who reveals the Word to us (John 14 & 16).

Well, wait!  What about the Bible?  Yes, it starts with the Bible.  Our lives should revolve around the Bible because it IS the inspired Word of God–it’s His transcript to us.  But Jesus is the Word that became flesh (John 1).  The Holy Spirit is the spirit of God Himself, and it’s the Holy Spirit speaking through the Bible that makes the Word come alive for us (1 Cor 2)!  In essense, it’s the Bible plus the Holy Spirit–the Bible is the living Word only when read with the Holy Spirit’s divine guidance.  So, it’s all about the Bible (which is Jesus, the Word, as a lingual transcription for us); and it’s all about Jesus, who is the Word Himself and still speaks through His Spirit!

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Does God love everyone?

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God not only loves everyone, but He loves all of us with the same fervor with which He loves Jesus!!!  Jesus Himself tells us that “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in my love” (John 15:9)!

Isn’t this excellent!?!  There is nothing we can do to fall out of the love of God.  He can’t love us more and He can’t love us less.  His love is already at full saturation for us whether or not we know Him or have pursued a relationship with Him!

We may not always feel like He likes us (let alone loves us), but this is a lack of perspective on our part.  God sees us within an eternal perspective: He knows where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.  So, we can’t let our circumstances convince us that God doesn’t care.  God does allow us (and in some cases, causes us) to go through difficult circumstances in order to expose our weaknesses that we might cry out to Him.  He wants a relationship with us.  He wants to be a Father to us.  And because He knows the eternal consequences for our choices, He will do whatever it takes to shake us now so that when eternity comes we might receive His full blessing.

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What’s the point of Jesus?

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God created.  His creations chose to sin (disobey God).  The world was no longer good.  But God STILL wanted a relationship with us, so He chose the smallest and weakest of the people groups (the Jews) and gave them extraordinary favor that they may demonstrate His glory to the nations.  God always wanted the nations, but He chose the Jews to be the evangelical messengers.

To the Jews, God made four covenants (with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David).  In the covenant with Moses, God gave 613 commands for His people to follow, and the idea was that by acting out righteousness, their hearts would begin to manifest a burning desire for God.  Unfortunately (and quite fortunately for us gentiles!), there were very few Jewish people who really developed that love.  And sacrifice without love is meaningless.  That’s where Jesus comes in.

Jesus is God.  He’s the physical representation of the invisible God (Col 1:15).  He’s the outward manifestation–the exact representation–of God (Heb 1:3).  And He’s God’s Son (Matt 3:17, Matt 17:5, Mark 9:7, Luke 9:35).

When God saw that the Jewish people struggled to keep His commandments and develop true love for Him, He spoke to His prophets about a new covenant that He would bring.  The new covenant would allow the people to really connect with Him because His commandments would be written on their hearts (internally) instead of on stone (externally).  And though Christians are still to follow the commands of the Lord, Jesus promises that we would find rest for our souls, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matt 11:29-30).

Jesus came to earth for several reasons (He tells us many in the gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).  But these I want to highlight:

Without Jesus, it would be impossible for us to overcome; but when He died, was buried, and was resurrected for our sins, He also sent power through the Holy Spirit that we may intimately connect with Him and the Father (John 16:7).  It is such a powerful promise that we would be able to intimately communicate with the God of the universe!

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How do we know the Bible is true?

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I’ve been asked how I know the Bible is true, and before I returned to the Lord, I went through a whole lot of investigating (especially to pull together science and the Bible) before deciding I could believe it 100%.  I would encourage anyone with this question to also do research and especially recommend Answers in Genesis as a great resource regarding the Creation/Evolution debate.  But here’s what it really comes down to:

Jesus promised that His sheep will hear His voice (John 10) and would be able to discern true teaching from false teaching (John 7:14-18).  I do hear His voice, and I have discerned that the protestant Bible is inspired by God (though I like some translations better than others, and a couple, I absolutely couldn’t recommend).

I have not, as a Spirit-filled Christian, read any of the Apocrypha (catholic and orthodox Bibles have additional books), so whether they are also inspired by God is outside of my jurisdiction.

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Moving from belief to faith

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In my time with the Lord yesterday it hit me that all three of these verses reveal a common pattern of spiritual growth:

  • “So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, ‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31-32).
  • “So, faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17).
  • “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near” (Rev 1:3).

We can’t expect to grow in intimacy with the Lord if we don’t actively spend the time to cultivate that growth.  As these verses show, we grow in our faith by reading the Bible, which moves into us being able to hear the Lord’s voice, then solidifies as an active faith (i.e. we go from simply ‘believing’ He’s real to being able to keep/heed the prophecy as faithful witnesses).

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Individual faith; intimate relationship

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This is a short segment of an email I wrote today responding to a discussion based on an article about hearing from the Lord (the author of the article argues that dreams and visions have no place among today’s Christians and therefore, come from a demonic or natural source when experienced):

In the Old Testament, God’s relationship with the people was corporate—if the husband of the family was saved, the rest of the family would also be saved and so on.  It was because of the people’s sin that they could not interact personally with the Father, and, in fact, the Glory of the Lord acts so powerfully against sin that they could not safely approach the places where the Lord would choose to rest His presence (the Mountain, the Holy of Holies, etc).

The Holy Spirit was not fully available, so God would pick only one or a couple of the most righteous people to send the Holy Spirit to, that they would be able to speak to His people.  Notice that in Numbers 11, Moses wanted the burden of prophet/judge to be split among other men because it was so much for him to bear, so God led him to appoint seven elders to share leadership.  And God does something surprising: He says, “I will take of the Spirit that is upon you, and will put Him upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you will not bear it alone.”  The Holy Spirit wasn’t fully available yet—and couldn’t be under the Mosaic Covenant—so God the Father split the portion He gave to Moses so that they each had a piece of the responsibility (for that instance; after they had prophesied once, they never did again: Num 11:25).

Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection was the sealing factor in a new covenant—the Messianic Covenant—and as a result, He promised that the Holy Spirit would now be available to every believer.  Not only that, but because God could now communicate with each individual person, people would be judged individually for their sins.  We’re now entirely responsible for our own relationship to the Lord; and Jesus promises that His sheep will hear His voice (John 10) and that the Holy Spirit would be with us to lead us into all Truth (John 14 and John 16), but we do have to diligently ask to receive the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13)—not just one time, but consistently so that we can truly walk in the Spirit.  The power of the Holy Spirit became fully available at Pentecost, but we can only receive as much as we can handle and as much as we want, and since we are continuously sanctified and growing in faith, we need to continue to ask for Him so that the world doesn’t seep into us instead.

Also, God does speak to us through the Bible, and we should always compare everything to it.  However, it’s important to realize that when Hebrews 1:2 says God speaks to us through His SON, it means exactly that—Jesus is Living and He speaks.  He speaks to us through the scriptures (which are the inspired Word of God through the Holy Spirit), but He also speaks to us through prayer, dreams, visions, the gift of tongues with interpretation, and even through other people as they are led by the Holy Spirit.  I agree that we should test every spirit to see if it is of God—the devil is speaking too, and since he doesn’t have the power to create as God does, he uses the gifts that God has already set up for his purposes.  Many people think they’re hearing from Jesus through dreams, visions, pastors, prayer, tongues and a variety of other sources when they’re really hearing from deceptive spirits or false prophets!  That’s why it’s so important to stay in the Bible (John 8:31-32) and to spend lots of time practicing hearing the Lord’s voice.  We can’t assume that all of the God-given gifts are bad, but we do have to be very aware so that we can discern whether the voice being heard is from God or the devil.

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