Here’s good news: If you’re fighting a big fight against sin so you can have a good life, you may well be fighting the wrong fight.

Sometimes we are tricked into fighting in an ineffective and immature way. For example, if we struggle with anger, we assume we should fight against it. If we’re prone to lust or covetousness or envy, “Well, stop it! Fight it, man!” Then we make up ways to fight. But that’s not the main fight.

The apostle Paul helped a young Christian, Timothy, to fight the right way, the one way by which God’s life prevails for us.

1 Timothy 6:12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, . . .

Paul knew what we must know if we’re going to mature in Christ. The fight, the one main fight, is to take hold, to enjoy, to be fascinated with the life that has no beginning or end, “the eternal life” of God Himself—now given, now shared with you and with me. “Keep this one command of faith. Fight for this—the gift of God’s life in you.”

The thing is, Colossians 2:20-23 tells us that you and I have died to the way this world does things and fights to be effective. Christians are not of this world, having been placed into the new world, the new creation, the new existence of the body of Jesus. Romans 6 tells us that there, in the new reality and existence, we have died to sin and become free of it already!

How crazy is it, then, for us to be lured into fighting sinful cravings and sinful ways in the same way that everybody else does? We don’t do it that way! That’s not our fight. That’s not the one command to cherish and to keep: “Take hold of the eternal life of God.” That’s the fight for the immature Timothy and for the mature Paul. And for you. And for me.

In his last letter to Timothy, Paul writes this: “. . . the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 6:6-7). And that good fight of faith meant God’s life kept Paul.

How do we really live? How do we resist the sinful and crazy stuff that clamors for us in this world and wars against our souls? We fight to know and believe that God’s eternal life is our reality NOW. That’s the way by which God’s life prevails for us.

Let’s help each other take hold. Amen?

(What if you believe you have to do something to “break through” into Christian maturity, but God knows He’s already accomplished it for you? How can you live by faith when you’re wrong? Here’s the truth that will encourage you!)

What do you think of the term, “dependence upon God”? Is it important to you and your Christian life? Has anyone ever urged you to “give up your independence from God so you can become dependent upon Him”? If so, you’ve been urged to do something you cannot do. It’s impossible. But if you try anyway, you’ll be magnificently frustrated in judging your own level, your own quality of success, because independence from God is an illusion for the Christian. An impossibility!

You will never be independent from Him in any way—not for one moment—since He lives in you and you live in Him—forever together, united. One in the Spirit of God, One in the body of Christ Himself. You know, God. What you want is to believe you are not independent and never will be, and to enjoy and trust in that new life, that new existence with the Spirit. Hooray! He did it! And He’s going to wake you up to it every day. He’ll be saying in effect to you, “We’re together! Let’s go, into our day together!”

1 Corinthians 6:17 Whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

See you later.

What happens when your thinking goes off wandering into things that are not true?

A tiny, early in the day post of mine from several years ago was this: “Good morning! God is with you – and what if He’s actually happy about that? What if being with you is His big time plan for today?”

Well that’s nice. However.

My first-moment thoughts of the day are not always clean and sparkling, shiny and noble. Sunshine! Sometimes they are heavy and foreboding, dark and twisted. Fortunately, I have another Thinker, Who doesn’t always wait for my thinker to get thinking in the right direction.

Just this morning, as I was being lulled into reasons for being downcast in the day ahead (“I won’t succeed.” “I’ll never get it done.” “It won’t be any good…because I’m not any good.”), the following words appeared in my mind as though my own: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). “Aha! There you are!” I thought. “You’re here, right here with me. And we’ll be together today, just as fruitful as you intend. Thank you for thinking for me, Lord. Will you think with me throughout the day?” His response was, “What do you think?” I loved it.

Now those are good thoughts.

If your thinker goes screwy sometimes, you’re not alone. And oftentimes the way through it is to rethink what you’re thinking: “Wait! Why am I thinking lies? I know the truth, I live by the truth, and the truth is . . .” That’s guarding your thinker. That’s important. (See Colossians 3:1-4.) But sometimes the Perfect Thinker Himself thinks for us, proving Himself in us and for us, guarding us. Oh, how I love that. I like being guarded by the Spirit, don’t you? We’re not alone. We’re not the only guard. And He proves again that being with us is His big time plan for the day.

Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Who’s peace is it? It’s His peace. It’s Him guarding you.

2 Timothy 1:14 Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you – guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

I’m glad that He is my Perfect Thinker. See you later.

Why be thankful?

“Thankfulness” has been taught for many years as a tool to be nicer and feel better. And I can say that when I’m thankful, I do feel better. But I think true thankfulness comes from enjoying my favorite four letter word, “WITH.”

Yes, we rightly make a big deal out of the four letter word, “love.” But love doesn’t happen unless there’s with. The most valuable and influential “with” I know is the with I enjoy with God. From Isaiah to Matthew, God has been telling us about His delight to one day be with us through the birth of Jesus, which means, “Immanuel; God with us” (Matthew 1:23). That was the beginning of what would become God’s favorite, current and ongoing miracle, the birth of Jesus into us—The Ultimate With.

The Ultimate With—Christ in me—has become the miracle influence of every other with I’ve known and will ever know. As soon as God made Immanuel personal with me, my relationship with this world took on His nature. In the early days of with, my relationship with school, alcohol, women, opportunity, friends, enemies, money, judgments, appearances, all changed—sometimes dramatically—because I knew He was with me, influencing me, proving we were compatible and together inside.

I knew love Himself for the first time. And it was all because of with. Am I thankful? Dear God, yes. Every day. All the time.

So as we enter a season of merry-making and feasting, I want to remind you that God isn’t asking you to have an attitude of gratitude, as if that’s most pleasing to Him. He’s proving the grace and power of with, because that’s most pleasing to Him. And He’ll do it as you go amongst family and friends, enemies and supporters, shoppers, drivers, neighbors, servers, politicians and publicans, left and right. That’ll mean “with” all over the place! In case I haven’t made it clear enough, this is Christianity—God with us; The Ultimate With.

See you later.

Did you enjoy the Narnia books and movies? I sure did. There was a moment in Prince Caspian that was particularly powerful and memorable for me.

To explain, I have to go back to the first Narnia story, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. In it, bears had voices, and were good and loyal to Aslan. They walked side by side with the just-introduced kings and queens of Narnia—Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy. But fifteen hundred years have passed between that story and Prince Caspian, and the royalty of Narnia were just discovering how different and ugly things were when Lucy comes upon a bear.

Naturally, she assumes a kinship with the beast. “Hello there, Mr. Bear!” However, the bear, intending to kill Lucy, charges her only to be stopped by the arrow of a Narnian dwarf. Shocked, Lucy asks, “What’s happened to the animals?” to which the dwarf replies, “Treat them like mere animals long enough, and they’ll forget who they are.”

I think the same thing has happened to us—the sons and daughters of God. Oftentimes our enemy seeks to hinder us not by rejecting us overtly and outright, but by slowly and persistently inducing us to abide by this world’s vision, methods and goals, one day to believe we are little different than those of this world. To borrow the dwarf’s response to Lucy, “Treat them like mere men long enough and they’ll forget who they are.”

In my little world of experience, here’s how Christians who have forgotten who they are (or never knew it to begin with) sometimes sound: “I’m only human, aren’t I?” To be succinct, here’s my response: “Hell, no.” That’s where that thinking comes from.

The apostle Paul chided the Corinthians for just this kind of thinking and behaving: “You are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not fleshly? Are you not acting like mere humans?” (1 Corinthians 3:3.)

Did you catch that? You and I will never again be merely men or merely women, never again once-born human. We’re the twice-born! Anyone who has believed and received Jesus has not only had a change in standing with God, but a re-born change in nature—a change in our spiritual DNA! When the Bible says that we’ve become a “new creation,” God is not trumpeting a new way of behaving better, or that we’ve been granted a new kind of good manners for good relationships. He’s telling us that we are now actual Spirit-born sons and daughters of God by nature. We have been born by and of the Spirit. Our humanity has forever been altered because “the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17; see also john 3:5,7,8; 2 Peter 1:3,4.)

That takes some getting used to, I know.

If you’re familiar with the C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series, then you know that virtually all of the books are about the growing awareness of the kings and queens of Narnia—that they are, in fact, kings and queens already. Everyone in Narnia recognizes them, some in awe and delight, some with fear and dread. The more the kings and queens believe it, the more their behavior is affected, to the delight of Aslan. They act like the nobility they are.

It’s the same with us. This is not a burden you must do, but a truth you must know.

Ask God to show you yourself, the self He sees because He remade you. Quit praying things like, “Oh Lord, you know what a lousy sinner I am!”—He disagrees with you! That’s not what He remade you. Stop lamenting in prayer, “Oh God, I know I should be a better person than I am now!”—you ARE a better person because you’re a new person! You just don’t know how to live in Christ and by the Spirit. And stop saying, “Father, change me.” Father HAS already changed you! Besides, you’ve never heard Him answer those prayers, so don’t you think it’s time to change them?

Give it, oh, two weeks—don’t say any of that stuff. Instead ask God during prayer, “Father, did you change me already?” “Jesus, how well related to you am I right now?” “Holy Spirit, what do you like about me?” “God, have you secured me with you forever?” “Lord, am I really an authentic son of yours right now?”

In the same way that the kings and queens of Narnia struggled to believe they were the royalty of the realm, it’s likely that you will too. So get help! Get after it. Go read or watch the Narnia series, get and read my books (God’s Astounding Opinion of You, and Life According to Perfect), get and read anything Andrew Farley has written, or David Gregory, John Lynch, Jeremy White, Andrew Nelson or Mark Maulding, because they will help you grow up into who you already are. You’ve got to believe it before you’ll see it.

To borrow one more time on the dwarf’s response to Lucy, think of God instructing the angels toward us: “Treat them like the sons and daughters of God they are for long enough, and they’ll know who they are.” That’s what your Father is doing to you right now. Turn your attention to Him, and you’ll know—you’re royalty already.

See you later.

Are you looking for a great self-improvement course? You know, a really effective workout with terrific results? Here’s the best one I know: “Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).

And here’s the follow-up question: How often is that your consideration?

Motivated by fault-finding questions, some of us have learned to live from one self-improvement course to the next, even though failure follows. What that ever-failing cycle reveals is that we’ve been set up to live from the truth of what Someone Else did for us that ends the cycle of self-defeat.

Here is that truth: there is no need to wrestle with self. There is no prosecution and painful crucifixion of an evil you that has yet to be accomplished. There is no need of getting a better you or of getting rid of a badder you, and there is no work of fashioning a you that stands against sin FINALLY.

There is no self-improvement course needed. You can give up on all that effort.

Jesus took care of all that because He took care of you when He died—He took you with Him on the cross. All that remains is to consider what He did in making you dead to sin through the cross, and alive to God through the resurrection. That’s where you’ll find yourself. That’s where your life is. That’s the workout that works because that’s how life for you works.

You live by faith in Jesus. You live by faith that Someone Else’s workout worked—that it was perfect and that it was for you; the old you that’s gone, and the new you that has arrived.

Consider that—again and again and again. There’s your workout.

For many years, most of my Christian friends thought I had changed if I acted like it; they placed their faith about me in their view of me, in their assessment of me and how I seemed, rather than in how God had changed me. In other words, I held their view and He did not. Have you ever done that? Has that ever happened to you? What they saw determined their interaction with me, rather than what they knew about me—about me and God, and how we’d gotten together and were really close. Unfortunately, I believed they were right and that I hadn’t really been changed—changed by God—so we were all deceived. And that meant all of us were hurt because of it. But not anymore.

Today we see by faith in Christ, not by faith in appearances. Faith in Christ and in the profound changes He has made to us invigorates and fits us and leads us into the day—the sons of God. The other faith, assessing people and situations by appearances, confuses us and wears us out. It’s the only possible result. Christianity then seems to become impractical to us when we’re focused upon appearances, and we’ll say things like, “Well, I have to live in the real world; you know, in reality,” we’ll say. And that’s where the confusion takes hold of us, aliens in this world, and shakes us to misery. Even though we cannot live as this world does, we’re duped into believing we should make the attempt.

If you and I are going to enjoy eternal life—not life made longer, but the real life of God given to us in Christ—then we will want to accept the Spirit’s leading to view our days (and the people in our days) from our true vantage place—in Christ. It will be invigorating and adventurous for us, because we’ll be living by faith in Christ, which is normal for us now. And it will be encouraging to others, who will see upon our faces at least occasional glimpses of the hope of life by Jesus. We’ll know what’s actually going on—and that’s tremendous—and they’ll have the hope of something better than what they see alone.

That will open a whole new way of life to us. And that’s the life that counts—life by Jesus.

In my posts and videos, books and speaking gigs, I emphasize knowing God, more so than serving Him. That bothers some people, I know. Sorry.

While the two are certainly not contradictory—they go together—serving Him without knowing Him will drive you mad…and empty…and bitter…and broken. It’s the same with knowing God’s love. If you try to “be loving” without knowing His love for you, you’ll eventually go mad…and empty…and bitter…and broken. I’ve seen it. I’ve known it. Haven’t you?

Consider the famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. Before the description of what God’s love is like (verses 4-8), the writer (Paul) emphasizes the same distinction: knowing or “having” God’s love is far more important than serving Him. In fact, doing anything without HAVING the love of God is worthless.

1 Corinthians 13:1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not HAVE LOVE, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not HAVE LOVE, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not HAVE LOVE, it profits me nothing. (Caps mine.)

Wow. That’s a lot of personal gifts, talents, knowledge, effort and self-sacrifice down the drain of worthlessness because someone was deluded into thinking that the love of God—the greatest joy and motivator of life—wasn’t worth having. Fortunately, you and I are not so deluded.

If just now you’ve gotten lost in this world’s insistence of measurable productivity and responsible contribution, and love—God’s love—has gotten away from you, I know what that’s like. I do. But much of the story that God is writing through your days is about His love for you and the result of it. He knows that, as you know and have His deeply satisfying love, you’ll do pretty much whatever it takes to remain in it—or come back to it. You won’t even need to worry about obedience and productivity and fruitfulness because you’ll be in love—God’s love for you. That makes everything work right.

Have you got that? That’s what our days are about. And what comes from that is the great work of Love with you.

See you later.

For many years I have heard and read people’s warnings to uninvolved, passionless, heatless believers. Always the cure prescribed was to get more involved, to get heated and fired-up for Jesus by doing more things for Him. In other words, “Get busy. Here’s how . . .”

However, whatever is heatless, whatever is lukewarm, be it water or human, cannot heat itself. It requires something else for heat.

Works do not provide the heat for the non-Christian of what is lacking; belief in the gospel provides what is missing. Works do not provide the heat for the Christian of what is lacking; belief in the gospel provides what is missing.

Yes, it’s the same for both. Faith without works is certainly dead, but works without faith are just as dead.

A focus upon works requires the skilled judgment of motivation, effectiveness, frequency and number. Some church gatherings have postured heat through a works focus, and everybody examines everybody. What fun. Judgments galore. But even if the pastor or speaker tells the listener to examine his own works—not the works of anyone else—the works focused person will have put himself into the position of Pharisee to himself. Nobody does well from there. Who among us could accurately estimate works sufficient to pass a works or heat test with God? (Shudder.) The only test, and the only thing upon which we rest is whether or not we are “in the faith” (see 2 Corinthians 13:5-6). In other words, do you believe? That’s it.

If and when the “fire” or the motivation of passion for a Christian should grow cold, works are not the wood that will heat the hearth of the heart. Works are the result of the Holy Spirit fanning to flame the heart that takes in the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps the worst thing we can do to a presumably passionless or “heatless” believer is to tell him to have heat. The best he can do is to try for the appearance of heat, which does nothing for the heart. What he needs, what we need, is the great gospel—over and over again. The gospel is that because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus, we have no worries with God; we may approach Him as a friend, with confidence and without fear, and have been given all things already in Christ for free. That is the wood for a genuine, heart-held fire made by the Spirit.

If you or someone you know, Christian or not, appears to lack heat, add the kindling that is the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus—take time with it and with them—and the Spirit will take care of the heat and the works. That’s what He does, and He’s pretty good at that. Right?

Do you like being shallow?

One should not believe that because I have not said anything about which candidate I support for the Presidency that I do not care which one is elected. I care. I will vote. Okay?

Sadly and tragically, it has been my experience that talking very much about current issues, specific candidates and the like quickly draws people into the shallow end of relationship, and it then becomes difficult, if not impossible, to talk deeply and of the heart. We lose each other and become “pancake people.” We become shallow, have heat only for a moment, and lack any real value.

We abandon our inner selves in favor of an attractive and nicely positioned look or prosecuted argument, which then becomes our exterior identity. Although the apostle Paul warned us against viewing people from a worldly and surface view because it isn’t true, it isn’t enough and it will hurt us if that’s all we get (2 Corinthians 5:16-21), we take hold of it anyway while our depths remain remote and malnourished. We’re starving ourselves.

Some of us have become quite accomplished as pancake makers, flattening people into shallow, issue-oriented identities like Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal, heterosexual and homosexual, global warming alarmist, global warming skeptic, and on and on it goes. If I accept you as any one of those things, you’re a pancake to me.

There are those who have already made me into a pancake by placing me into a category (Republican, wacko-Christian, white male or whatever), and that has become for them more real and more important than my true, below the surface identity:

I am a son of God, who has been loved, hurt, rejected, rescued, betrayed, accepted, disappointed, hurt again, healed and loved again—both battered and buoyed over and over again. I’ve lived a lot. I have quite a story. And those people can’t know me or hear me anymore because they think of me with a worldly ID emblazoned upon my forehead: “Republican.” “Wacko Christian.” Whatever. Frankly, we’ve lost each other, even if we see each other every day. We’re pancake people, like it or not.

I don’t like it. Actually, I hate it. I despise it.

I post this in the hope that a few people will be awakened by a good kind of pain found in discovering that they, too, do not like pancake relationships—even if they’ve been the pancake makers, they recognize that they’re starving. Perhaps they will wonder why people do not talk heart to heart with them—maybe with you. Why they don’t share their inner fears. Why they’d never confess failure or admit weakness because they’ve never ventured into anything deeper than shallow-end stuff. Pancakes are the daily special, and the only thing on the menu. Is that clear enough?

I like playing around in the shallows of humor and cartoons, and post pictures of seasonal beauty and stuff like that, which you’ll sometimes see on my Facebook and Instagram. Some of you post pictures of your lunch, and I’m actually interested…a little…well, sometimes.

But I would much rather get out of the shallows with you so we can actually get somewhere that counts, somewhere that’s deeply true and real. Life is found there, and I want to share.

And if you and I can’t share because we’re too far apart or something, I hope you hunger enough to start telling Jesus how badly you want to be real with Him and with people. He will be with you in that! Oh, there’s fear and some pain involved—yes—but there’s real food for real life that you’re supposed to have and give away, because none of us can live on pancakes.