Christian Philosophy: Everyone Has a Philosophy. It's The Lens Through Which They View The World and Make Decisions. (13 page)

God made us to desire relationship with Him. People who don’t know God try to satisfy that desire with substitute pleasures; they lust after sexual relationships, take drugs, or drink alcohol. They look for happiness in collecting material possessions and in the praise of others. They continually search for a sense of fulfillment in achieving the next big goal. None of those things are ultimately satisfying. What every human being needs is relationship with God.

After God created Adam, He breathed His Spirit into him. We were designed to be filled with God’s presence, but when Adam and Eve rebelled, they kicked God out of their lives. God wasn’t only talking about physical death when He commanded Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit. The Lord said, “…for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17), but Adam and Eve lived on earth for many years after their rebellion. The death they experienced was spiritual, which eventually resulted in physical death. Adam and Eve’s rebellion caused a God-shaped vacuum to be formed inside of every person. Sex, drugs, money, success, fame, and the other pursuits society is caught up in, are just human attempts to fill the void caused by spiritual death.

We were made for relationship with God, and the only way to fill our spiritual void is to be born again and enter into relationship with Him. The reason I don’t do drugs is that I’m not miserable. My born-again spirit allows me to enter into the presence of God and enjoy relationship with Him. In the presence of God is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). You can get so full of God that you won’t feel the need to be filled with anything else. The lust for other things will disappear. Once you have a real relationship with God, every day with Jesus can be sweeter than the day before.

Surface-level knowledge of God’s love is not the same thing as plunging into the reality of His love. Real relationship with God involves going beyond a mere intellectual awareness of His love. Of all the things the apostle Paul could have prayed for the Ephesians, he prayed for them to know the love of God. He said:

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

Ephesians 3:14-19

This scripture shows that God’s love has multiple dimensions; it isn’t merely a fact that you memorize like trivia. You can be overwhelmed by the height, depth, length, and breadth of God’s love so that it “passes knowledge,” and becomes an experience of being filled with the grace and peace of God. It’s one thing to say, “Oh yeah, I know God loves me.” It’s something else altogether to be filled with the fullness of God.

Do you know what it means to be filled with the fullness of God? God isn’t depressed, discouraged, fearful, or anxious. He isn’t poor or starving. The fullness of God is healing, prosperity, joy, peace, anointing, purpose, and total satisfaction. You get all of those things by
knowing
God experientially. In biblical language, “to know” is used to infer sexual intimacy. As in, “Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain” (Genesis 4:1). The Greek word Paul used in his prayer for the Ephesians is the same word used to describe how Joseph abstained from intimate relations with Mary until after the birth of Jesus (Matthew 1:25). Paul prayed for an intimate personal knowledge of the love of Christ, one that passes mere knowledge, because that is how you get filled with the fullness of God.

Fear, loneliness, anger, frustration, poverty, sickness and anxiety simply reflect a lack of the fullness of God. The remedy for those things is a revelation of how much God loves you. You just need a deeper relationship with God; one that allows you to experience the love of Christ beyond mere knowledge
about
Him. Of the thousands of people I counsel and pray for, nearly all of them are struggling because they lack a deep personal relationship with God.

Religion teaches people an approach to God that emphasizes personal effort, but no one can be perfect, and the frustration of failure leaves people feeling unlovable and separated from God. The Good News of Jesus Christ is that you don’t have to
earn
relationship with God. Jesus earned it for us by dying on the cross and rising again. All of us were spiritually dead, unable to save ourselves, so Jesus came and died on our behalf to save us. He took our sin and gave us His righteousness. Salvation has nothing to do with what you deserve. God did this because He loves us and desires an intimate relationship with us.

Not every Christian has a deep personal relationship with God, but that isn’t God’s fault. It’s because we’ve been lied to. We’ve been taught that we have to earn relationship with God by living a holy life, going to church every week, paying a tithe, and studying the Word. Most believers are stuck on a treadmill of trying to live up to the requirements of being a good Christian, falling short, and then getting back up to try harder. Their own hearts are condemning them and keeping them from entering into an intimate relationship. This is a wrong philosophy. Jesus paid for all of our sins—past, present, and future—and our shortcomings don’t separate us from God. Scripture says,

For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.

Galatians 5:5-6

Trying to earn God’s love isn’t going to get you anywhere. We’re saved by faith, not by works. Once you rid yourself of the burden of thinking you have to be good enough and simply accept how much God loves you, your faith will go through the roof. Faith works by love, and faith is what releases the ability and the power of God. Knowing God’s love will heal your body and bring peace to your mind. It will make your finances increase and your relationships flourish. Letting the love of God flow in you will bless you even beyond what you can imagine.

Maybe this sounds too good to be true. You might think there has to be more to it—some complicated step to perform—but it really is as simple as knowing God. Adam and Eve never experienced rejection or punishment from God prior to the Fall, but they never experienced the breadth, length, depth, and height of His love either. If they had known the fullness of God’s love, then Satan would never have been able to tempt them.

Before any of us can be tempted to sin, Satan first has to make us dissatisfied with what we already have. Adam and Eve were living in a sinless and perfect world, yet a talking snake convinced them God was holding out on them. Think about that. The temperature was perfect, the food was perfect, they didn’t have any financial problems, and Adam and Eve were both perfect. They weren’t constantly being bombarded by media reports of killing and strife all over the world. They couldn’t even complain about each other. Everything was perfect. Yet Satan was able to make Adam and Eve feel discontent in the middle of paradise. Imagine, then, how easy it is for him to make people in our fallen world feel unhappy.

We live in a world where there is plenty to be displeased about, but the truth is that through Jesus, we can experience the love of God to a greater degree than Adam and Eve ever did. We can be filled with all the fullness of God and feel completely satisfied. What a powerful truth! All of the things you desire from God come freely through a heart that knows how wide, how long, how high, and how deep God’s love is. Relationship with God is the pathway to everything He desires to give you.

Even though Adam and Eve were living in sinless perfection, they had a deficiency in their relationship with God—they didn’t know how much He loved them. Today, the shortages in our relationships with God are not because He hasn’t communicated the depths of His love or His great desire to know us intimately. Our problem is that most of us aren’t entering into the intimacy God is calling us to. Often, it’s because we have a wrong philosophy and believe that we have to earn holiness in order to enter God’s presence. The traditions and doctrines of men have made God’s Word of no effect (Mark 7:13). Other times, we are simply too caught up in the things of this world to notice God calling us.

As a society, we are busy with many pursuits. So much stuff is being thrown at us every day that we don’t have time to be still and know God (Psalm 46:10), and to know the greatness of His love for us. But it’s within our power to change that. We can renew our minds and toss out the old religious philosophies that have damaged our relationship with God. We can set aside time to spend with God and get to know His love. The promise of God’s Word is that if we draw close to God, He will draw close to us (James 4:8). Jesus said,

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Matthew 7:7-8

God wants a relationship with you more than you desire a relationship with Him, so it’s not a matter of you trying hard enough and forcing God to acknowledge you. It’s simply a matter of allowing God to love you. God desires intimacy with you, but you have to let it happen. You do that by seeking Him and yielding to His love. This understanding is essential to any Christian philosophy, and it will make a huge difference in the quality of life you experience.

Is God Angry with Me?

I remember watching an old game show on TV when I was a kid called
To Tell the Truth.
Three guests sat in front of a panel of four celebrity judges. All three of the guests claimed the same identity, but only one of them was the real person—the other two people were imposters trying to confuse the judges. For instance, all three of them would claim to be Joe Smith, a heavy weight boxer. One of the guests really would be Joe Smith, but the other two were just acting. After the judges asked a lot of questions, they would make guesses about which one of the guests they thought was telling the truth. When the judges were done guessing, the announcer would say, “Would the real ‘Joe Smith’ please stand up!” They would always have one person start to stand up and then another, and finally, the real Joe Smith would stand.

I think God is being represented in so many contrasting ways by so many different groups in society, that many people are frustrated and confused. They want to say, “Would the real God please stand up!” They read Old Testament scriptures that talk about God smiting people with leprosy, and then they hear someone like me say God is love and He would never use evil against us, and they wonder, “Which one is the real God?” They wonder if God is schizophrenic or something, but God has never changed. He has always been the same loving God we see manifested in the life and ministry of Jesus.

God is on our side, yet a lot of people think of Him as an old man with a long grey beard, leaning over a banister in heaven with a lightning bolt in His hand, ready to sock it to us the minute we step out of line. They imagine a harsh and angry God who is eager to judge us for the wrong we’ve done. Religion is even teaching that suffering and disease are a blessing in disguise—they say God uses evil to teach us a lesson (Isaiah 5:20). None of those statements are true, but many people are confused about what the truth really is.

To begin with, we have to understand the difference between the way God dealt with people under the Old Covenant, and the way He deals with us as born-again believers under the New Covenant. God revealed a mercy and grace through Jesus that you don’t see in the Old Testament scriptures—but God hasn’t changed, He has just changed the way He relates to mankind because of the transformation in
us
.

The Gospel of John tells the story of a woman who was caught in adultery by the Pharisees and brought to Jesus for judgment. It says,

Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

John 8:1-5

On the surface, the Pharisees appear to have been seeking justice by bringing the adulteress before Jesus, but they were really just trying to entrap Him. It’s interesting that the woman was caught in the act of adultery, yet the Pharisees didn’t apprehend the man she was with. Although we don’t know for sure, I can think of two possible reasons for this. First, the man might have been someone the Pharisees enlisted to help capture the woman in the middle of the act—specifically for the purpose of setting this trap for Jesus. So they let the man escape because he was part of the deal. Second, if it really was a randomly discovered act of adultery, maybe they only brought the woman because we tend to be easier on women when it comes to sentencing people to death. The Old Testament Law said that a person caught in adultery should be stoned to death (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22), and they might have thought bringing just the woman suited their purpose of entrapment better—figuring it would be harder for Jesus to condemn a woman than a man.