Whose Money Is It Anyway? (Part 1–Stewardship)

Whoever can be trusted with small things can also be trusted with big things. Whoever is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in big things too. If you cannot be trusted with worldly riches, you will not be trusted with the true riches. And if you cannot be trusted with the things that belong to someone else, you will not be given anything of your own. Luke 16:10-12 (ERV)

Take a moment to consider this question: What do you have that wasn’t given to you?

We use words like “earn” and “create” to maintain the illusion that we alone are responsible for everything that we have. However, if these things were really ours, then we couldn’t lose them, could we?

Sure, we work for our money, but then someone else has to give it to us. Then either we give it away to someone else by spending it, or we hold onto it forever and die, at which point we don’t take it with us. There’s a reason you don’t see hearses towing U-hauls!

So if it’s not really “our” money, then whose is it? King David answered that question emphatically after taking the offering to build the temple in Jerusalem:

To you, Lord, belong greatness and power,
honor, splendor, and majesty,
because everything in heaven and on earth belongs to you.
Yours, Lord, is the kingship,
and you are honored as head of all.
You are the source of wealth and honor,
and you rule over all.
In your hand are strength and might,
and it is in your power to magnify and strengthen all.

(1 Chronicles 29:11-12 CEB)

Everything in heaven and earth (yes, even the money) belongs to God. Therefore, we don’t really “own” anything. Rather, we are stewards of everything currently in our possession.

Simply put, a steward is someone who is placed in charge of someone else’s stuff. The principle at work here is that at some point, the steward will have to give account of how he or she has managed the property belonging to the Master. A steward that proves faithful is rewarded, but those who aren’t . . . not so much.

You see, how we handle money is an indicator of how we will steward all of the other blessings in our life. Money is just the easiest one to track. So how do you track this in your own life?

The best way to gauge that for yourself is to figure out who it is that you really serve. Are you putting your trust in the provider or the provision? As Jesus said in the verse that comes right after the passage at the top of this post:

You cannot serve two masters at the same time. You will hate one master and love the other. Or you will be loyal to one and not care about the other. You cannot serve God and Money at the same time. (Luke 16:13 ERV)

If you are primarily interested in serving God by stewarding HIS wealth, then your needs will always be met.

However, if your hope is in the money itself, then you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

(Come back for Part 2—Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt)

Whatever We Ask: Part 6–Prosperity

“. . . God wants to make your life easier. He wants to assist you, to promote you, to give you advantages. He wants you to have preferential treatment.” Joel Osteen—Your Best Life Now

This quote is an example of a concept known as “prosperity gospel.” There are several variations on the theme, but the main idea is that the Bible’s references to promises of blessing and prosperity are a contract between God and His children. All Christians have to do is confess, or “speak into existence” God’s promises, and He is bound to deliver on them. Both proponents and critics of prosperity theology sometimes refer to it simply as “name it and claim it.”

Indeed, there are many examples of God promising blessings in the Bible. Here are just a couple of them:

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. (John 10:10 NLT)

And the Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. (Deut 28:11 ESV)

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We have both the right and the position to ask God for anything in prayer, but remember this. He doesn’t owe us anything, and we owe Him EVERYTHING! If we don’t keep that reality in clear focus, then we are likely to approach God with an attitude of entitlement, rather than one of humility. The result is that, in our minds, God becomes a supernatural ATM, spitting out the blessing whenever we insert our “believe to receive” card.

But wait a minute. Isn’t “believing to receive” the whole point of faith? When we ask, we are supposed to believe and not doubt, and God does promise blessings to those who believe, so what’s the problem with believing that God will keep His word regarding prosperity?

Actually, there’s nothing wrong with trusting God to keep His promises. What’s wrong is the American definition of prosperity.

Let’s face it, y’all. We are SPOILED in this country.

As I write this, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Most Americans can’t live on that. Just about nobody can raise a family on that. Fast food workers are demanding more than twice that in some areas.

And yet, our federal MINIMUM wage yields an income higher than that of 92% of the world.

Think about that for a minute. If you are working full-time and making federal minimum wage (many states are higher), then you are already doing better than six billion people are.

But do you FEEL rich? In most cases, I would expect that would be a no.

And what about those other six billion people who make less? 2.1 billion of them are Christians. Are they prospering? Is God keeping His promises to them?

Here is a verse that is NOT frequently quoted by prosperity gospel adherents, “Beloved, I pray that with respect to all things you may prosper and be healthy, just as your soul is prospering (3 John 1:2 DLNT).”

The folks that would have you believe that it’s God’s job to make your life easier are putting a period in place of the comma in the verse above. Prosper and be healthy in all things! Sounds great!

But there’s something else there—a “just,” sometimes translated as “even.” John’s assumption is that physical and material prosperity will follow and accompany spiritual prosperity.

So what does that look like?

You need look no further than Paul. First, consider this rundown of his physical circumstances:

Five times the Jews have given me their punishment of thirty-nine lashes with a whip. Three different times I was beaten with rods. One time I was almost stoned to death. Three times I was in ships that wrecked, and one of those times I spent a night and a day in the sea. I have gone on many travels and have been in danger from rivers, thieves, my own people, the Jews, and those who are not Jews. I have been in danger in cities, in places where no one lives, and on the sea. And I have been in danger with false Christians. I have done hard and tiring work, and many times I did not sleep. I have been hungry and thirsty, and many times I have been without food. I have been cold and without clothes. (2 Cor 11:24-27 NCV)

And yet, the same man says this:

I’m not saying that because I need anything. I have learned to be content no matter what happens to me.I know what it’s like not to have what I need. I also know what it’s like to have more than I need. I have learned the secret of being content no matter what happens. I am content whether I am well fed or hungry. I am content whether I have more than enough or not enough. I can do everything by the power of Christ. He gives me strength. (Php 4:11-13 NIRV)

Contentedness is the secret to a prospering soul. And this comes from trusting not that God will give you everything you want for your purposes, but that you will have everything you need for His.

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So how about it? Is your soul prospering? If so, then you are already living “Your Best Life Now.” You don’t have to “believe God” for the biggest house in the neighborhood to make it better.

Whatever We Ask: Part 5–Unstable

But if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will be given it. But he should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind.For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:5-8 NABRE)

Last August, we discussed that doubt could be healthy if you put it to work for you by testing new information in your search for Truth.

Nevertheless, doubt is not always a healthy thing. It is one matter to doubt one person’s interpretation of scripture or another individual’s worldview. It is quite another to doubt God Himself.

God knows what you need. He knows it before you know it. He is not only capable, but also willing to meet your needs. Yet, it is not your need that He responds to when you pray. It is your faith.

Prayer is based on trust. We ask God to meet our needs and hear our petitions because we believe and trust that He will handle the situation. If we didn’t believe that, why pray at all?

But we still do that sometimes, don’t we? Have you ever offered up a prayer because it seemed like the thing to do, but you didn’t really expect that your prayer would be answered?

Moulin Rouge Tickets

Unstable in all our ways…

Jesus’ brother James is not one to mince words, as you can see in the passage above. He explicitly says that someone who doubts when he prays will not get the answer to their prayer that they hope for. The key word there is “hope.”

There are two different kinds of hope. There is expectant hope, where you are welcoming an event in advance that has not yet come to pass, and there is “I don’t know if this is going to work or not, but I sure HOPE it does.”

Again, what is the point of praying if you don’t expect an answer? Do you believe that God is God or don’t you? If we offer up a prayer from a position of worry, then we are literally “of two minds.” One mind is thinking of God answering the prayer, and the other is thinking of a Plan B.

When we do this, what we are really doing is making God the Plan B, because worry and anxiety will always cut in line ahead of whatever else is present.

So clearly, it is a daunting task to hold both kinds of “hope” in your mind at the same time. Just as you cannot serve two masters, you cannot persevere on two different paths in life simultaneously.

So when James says that a person who does this is “unstable in all his ways,” he is not only saying that this person is indecisive, but by extension, that he cannot be trusted.

That sounds inordinately harsh, but think about it. We’re talking about Christians here. If we can’t even make up our minds about relying on the God we claim to serve, then who would ever rely on US to follow through on anything? A person who spends their life in an endless “What If?” loop never gets anything done that needs doing.

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So if that’s what unstable looks like, then what about stable?

Throughout the Bible, the image of a rock is used to denote stability. God Himself is referred to as the Rock on many occasions. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also uses this image to describe a life lived by faith:

Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock. (Matthew 7:24-5 HCSB)

Notice the “and” in Jesus’ statement. It’s not enough to hear what He’s saying and answer with a “yeah, but. . .” Stability and security come not from passive hearing, but from active LISTENING and the follow-through that accompanies it.

Now having used the word “security” there, I am reminded of one more issue regarding the answering of prayers. One that is particularly sticky to us here in the USA.

(Come back for the conclusion in Part 6—Prosperity)

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Whatever We Ask: Part 4–(Un)answered Prayers

All prayers are answered. Sometimes the answer is, “No.”—Bono

One of the pitfalls of the Christian life is how easy it is to backslide from “highly favored child of God” to “spoiled brat.”

We have seasons of life where everything seems to be going our way, and we give God the glory for that. But then life throws us a curveball, and the whining starts.

“Why isn’t God answering my prayer? He said He’d give me anything I ask for. Haven’t I been ‘doing it right’?”

The truth is that God does answer prayer, but not always in the way that we expect.

Sometimes we get excited and run up ahead when He needs us to hold back and notice something He wants to show us. Sometimes selfishness creeps in and the “desires of our hearts” become more like the cravings of our appetites. And sometimes, we simply don’t recognize the answer for what it is when it comes.

God is not a vending machine or an ATM. We exist to serve Him, not the other way around. For this reason, the point of prayer isn’t primarily to address our own needs. Jesus explained it this way:

Don’t worry and say, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ The people who don’t know God keep trying to get these things, and your Father in heaven knows you need them. Seek first God’s kingdom and what God wants. Then all your other needs will be met as well. (Matthew 6:31-33 NCV)

Prayer is your Out box. When you put something in your Out box at work, do you pull it back and put it in your In box again? No, you put it in the Out box because you are finished with it.

Whatever it is that you are praying for, God has a plan for it. It may not be the plan you would have scripted for yourself, but think for a minute. Who’s smarter, you or God? Don’t you think it might be possible that Father knows best?

There’s more to it than that though. Logic alone will tell you that God is bigger, more powerful and more able to meet your needs. The question is, “Do you TRUST Him to do that?” Do you believe that He not only knows what’s best for you, but that He WANTS what’s best for you?

How you answer that question will determine how you respond to His answers. If you really believe that God’s way will lead to a better result than anything you could have come up with, then it becomes a lot easier to roll with the changes when they do come.

(But what happens if we don’t? Come back for Part 5—Unstable)

Whatever We Ask: Part 3–The Desires of our Hearts

Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4 NIV)

This is one of the more misunderstood passages in the Bible. It’s easy to see why. Who doesn’t want to get the desires of his or her heart? Who has ever watched an Aladdin movie without wondering what it would be like to be able to rub a magic lamp and have a genie pop out to grant your wishes?

Unfortunately, many people have looked at that verse above, keyed in on that last part, and subsequently transformed God in their minds to little more than a genie in a lamp.

If you’ll notice though, this verse is a conditional statement. To get the desires of our hearts, we must first “take delight in the Lord.” So maybe we should be focusing more on what that means instead of our own selfish desires?

To “take delight” obviously means, “to enjoy.” But what is it we should be enjoying exactly?

It is the relationship that we have with God as our Father.

In this life, we may have great memories of time spent with our dads. Dad can be our fishing buddy, our baseball coach, our source of worldly wisdom, etc. Many people, of course, have never been able to have a relationship like this with their fathers, but many of those wish that they had.

The relationship with our heavenly Father is different though. He is Abba, but He is also Adonai, which means, “Lord.” As Lord, we serve Him, but as Daddy, we serve Him out of grateful love, not just reverent fear.

When we realize that our service to God is not to avoid punishment but to please our Daddy, then the service itself becomes a joy. God isn’t looking for slaves to command. He wants His kids to look up to Him as if to say, “Did I do a good job, Daddy?”

To be able to hear God answer in the affirmative, we would of course have to have done what He wanted us to do. And to have doing God’s work be a delight instead of a chore, we would first have to WANT what He wants.

Looking at it this way, we begin to see that “the desires of our hearts” have little to do with our desires, but more to do with our hearts.

When we trust Jesus to be the Lord of our lives, He begins a transformation process inside us, gradually conforming us to His image. As we change, our hearts change to become more like His. As we see things more and more from His perspective, we begin to want what He wants—for ourselves, for others and for the world.

Once we get to this place, it is much easier to discern what God’s will is. THEN, when we pray, knowing that our will is in agreement with His, He gives us what we ask for, because it was what He wanted for us in the first place.

And yet, sometimes things STILL don’t go the way we expected. So what does that mean?

(Come back for Part 4—(Un) answered prayers)

Whatever We Ask: Part 2–Ask, Seek and Knock

Ask, and you will be given what you ask for. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened. (Matt 7:7 TLB)

Sometimes, that seems too good to be true. God really gives us anything we ask for?

If that were the case, then it would be all too easy for us to make selfish requests of Him. Just as James and John asked to sit at Jesus’ left and right hand, it seems logical that being tapped into the greatest power source in the universe could make us a tad greedy and ambitious.

So why does Jesus tell us to ask then?

If you think about it, when do we ask anyone for anything? It’s when the one we are asking either has or can get something we want but don’t have. When Jesus tells us to ask, He is simply giving us permission to do so.

Along with asking, Jesus tells us to seek. He tells us this to let us know that God not only can be found, but He WANTS to be found.

For this reason, Jesus also tells us to knock, not just once, but persistently and insistently. Jesus is basically giving us carte blanche to be a pest in seeking out God and petitioning Him with our requests.

He is telling us that we aren’t going to wear God out or bore Him to death by bothering Him with our concerns. This is because God wants us to see Him as someone that we can approach.

But really. . .ANYTHING we ask for?

It is clear from the context that it isn’t so much the substance of our entreaties to the Lord as our motivation for asking that is more significant.

Remember, we are not God’s spoiled brats, but His adopted children. He chose us for His family, but we also had to choose Him as our Father.

The very nature of the relationship that Christians have with God is one of complete submission. We ask of Him because He has not only the power and authority but also the WILL to give us what we ask.

However, the more we are in submission to God, the less likely we are to ask for something selfishly. If our primary motivation is to please Him, then we would be more likely to ask for the kinds of things that He would want us to have.

(So what kinds of things are those? Come back for Part 3—The Desires of our Hearts.)

DN=: Part 14–Equal Opportunity

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .

(Declaration of Independence)

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

(George Orwell—Animal Farm)

“Equal opportunity” is another way of saying that everyone has the same chance to succeed or fail.

However, instead of designating an equal chance at success or failure, “equal opportunity” has become synonymous in our culture with entitlement. Success is now assumed, and if a person does not succeed, well then that person has been denied “equal opportunity.”

But if equal opportunity in the true sense means the same as fair play and justice, then it would make sense that everyone already HAS equal opportunity. If justice is universal, then so is opportunity.

Oh, but wait a minute. Justice also means getting what we deserve. So we have equal opportunity to make our own choices, but we also have equal responsibility to own the consequences of those choices. Sometimes, those consequences are not favorable.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY DN= EQUAL RESULTS

So it should be plain by now that the “=”movement is not really about equal opportunity at all. What the “=” community is really after is a life and a world that is free from consequences.

The irony is that if the “=” community actually got what it wanted, then it would be UN-equal, since having freedom from consequences would set it apart from the justice that everyone else would receive from making the wrong choice.

“=” DN= EQUAL

Let me pause for a moment here, because I know a lot of you are wondering: “Why does he keep saying ‘the “=” community,’ when he’s obviously talking about the LGBT community?”

The answer is that gay marriage isn’t the real issue here. Sure, the media and our politicians would like to make it the issue, but in the big picture, it all comes back to a problem that plagues everyone, gay or straight—self-righteousness.

Paul makes it clear in his letter to the Romans that homosexuality is not the disease, but merely one of many symptoms:

What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life.

Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.

Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best! (Romans 1:21-22, 26-32 The Message)

Now that sounds awfully harsh, particularly in the Message paraphrase, but can you deny the reality of that in 21^st-century America?

One of the saddest things that I have yet seen is when churches water down or discard this message. It is not a church’s job to provide a safe space for sinners of any kind to come together and “be who they are.” A church’s function is to bring people together to find out who they are in Christ.

Faith in Christ Jesus is what makes each of you equal with each other, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman. (Galatians 3:28 CEV)

That’s right. The Truth is that we all have an equal opportunity to be equal in Christ. We have always had it and always will.

Sounds simple enough, but ah, there’s that pride thing getting in the way again. The problem with this simple solution is that it involves surrendering your will, and it is not in our nature to want to do that.

So what is left then for those whose pride prevents them from humbling themselves before God and admitting their failure?

They find someone else to attack.

Christians.

Since there is no Truth or common sense in their argument, based as it is upon their own self-righteousness, then the only avenue left to them is to tear down Truthseekers in order to maintain their perception of superiority.

And since PC code words are their forte, they have come up with the ultimate man-made nonsense word.

(And for that, you’ll have to come back for Part 15)

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DN=: Part 12–Civil Liberties

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Corinthians 6:12 NIV)

I’m free to choose who I see any old time

I’m free to bring who I choose any old time

Love me hold me love me hold me

I’m free any old time to get what I want

“I’m Free” Mick Jagger/Keith Richards

One of the main functions of a father is to establish and enforce boundaries for his children. The intent of setting these boundaries is to protect his children, because he knows more than they do.

There is no condemnation in this, only a sense of love and protection. The child picks up on this, and remains content within the security of the boundary.

Now if an earthly father can manage to set healthy boundaries in love, how much more effective and useful are our heavenly Father’s boundaries! Would it not stand to reason that an omniscient God, who knows every possible outcome of every possible choice we could make, would know what’s good for us and what isn’t?

The most obvious example of this is the 10 Commandments. A lot of people are put off by them because of the “Thou shalt not” tone that most of them have. So why would a loving Father God put such restrictions on the freedom of His children?

One word—consequences.

LIBERTY DN= FREEDOM FROM CONSEQUENCES

Some consequences of violating God’s boundaries are obvious. Take for example “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” If you break that commandment, the most obvious and immediate consequence is generally the breakup of a marriage.

Long-term and indirect consequences are difficult to predict, however. We can’t know for certain how young children will be affected by the divorce—how they will cope with the sense of loss, how they will develop socially as they grow, what baggage they might carry into their future relationships and marriages.

God sees every potential negative consequence, and wants to protect us from them. Nevertheless, our nature instinctively reacts to any kind of boundary as a restriction on our freedom. Christian or not, nobody likes being told what to do, or to have their “freedom of choice” taken away.

But when you stop to think about it, this is a ridiculous notion. NOBODY can take away your freedom of choice, not even God. He’s the one who gave it to you in the first place.

Boundaries

God doesn’t set boundaries to take away our choice. He places them there to assist us in making the right choice, because he knows which choices will have good consequences and which will have bad consequences.

However, somewhere along the line our culture developed a callous disregard for sin, or crossing God’s boundary lines, and its consequences. Our culture has been brainwashed to believe that God’s boundaries, as set forth in the Bible, are out of date and out of touch with progress.

Since the Bible is God’s Word, and therefore our most definitive written source of Truth, this Truth gets dismissed along with the Bible. Inside this moral vacuum, people get the idea that they can create their own truth—a moving target that is relative to whatever suits their whims at any given moment—and anything contrary to that amorphous worldview then becomes a violation of their civil liberties.

Only here’s the problem. Since Truth is universal, and it’s found in the same place where God’s “restrictive” boundaries are, then it would follow that the consequences of crossing those boundaries are also universal.

The consequence of mentally turning sin into civil liberties is that to do so, the concept of civil responsibility is totally abandoned. You can’t be “free to do what you want any old time” and be your brother’s keeper at the same time.

Fortunately, God has a way of evening things out.

(To find out how, come back for Part 13–Fair Play)

DN=: Part 5–Discrimination

Discernment is the divine enablement to distinguish between truth and error, good and evil, right and wrong. A person with this gift can differentiate pure from impure motives, identify deception in others, determine authenticity of messages from God, recognize false teaching and sense the presence of evil. (Paraphrased from “Network” by Bruce Bugbee and Don Cousins.)

In other words, discernment is God’s B.S. detector.

Have you ever known someone who accurately saw something fake or sinister in a person’s character before anyone else did? Have you ever had a friend who told you what you were thinking when you couldn’t even explain it yourself? This is discernment at work.

(Remember back at the beginning of this series when I talked about people talking in code? I didn’t forget about that. From here on out, we’re going to defuse political correctness one code-bomb at a time.)

Another word with a meaning similar to discernment, in the literal sense of having the ability to distinguish differences, is discrimination.

While discernment is a spiritual gift, given by God to whomever He chooses, discrimination is a natural skill that can be learned and developed by anybody through careful observation and judicious contemplation.

It would seem, then, that discrimination should actually be a positive thing, since being UN-able to recognize differences would be a sign of a lack of intelligence or observance.

Nevertheless, this word has gradually become associated with “bigotry,” even though those two words really aren’t connected.

DISCRIMINATION DN= BIGOTRY

There’s a big difference between distinguishing the differences in people and treating people differently. Paul wrote:

In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ. (Galatians 3:28 MSG)

And also:

[In this new creation all distinctions vanish.] There is no room for and there can be neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, [nor difference between nations whether alien] barbarians or Scythians [who are the most savage of all], nor slave or free man; but Christ is all and in all, everything and everywhere, to all men, without distinction of person]. (Colossians 3:11 AMP)

In making these statements, Paul is instructing these early churches that although the Church is made up of all kinds of different people from different backgrounds, it is much more significant that Christ is our common ground. Being the original Truthseeker, Paul discriminates by noting the differences, but does not show favoritism, because Christ does not show favoritism.

Looking at it this way, we can clearly see that bigotry is defined by emphasizing differences with the motive of boosting one’s own status over that of another based solely upon those differences. Bigotry may START with discrimination, but it ends somewhere else entirely.

So how do you know when you’ve crossed the line?

Labels

Whenever you refer to another person with a label instead of their name, that’s a pretty clear sign that you are crossing over to the dark side of discrimination, because you are now seeing that person not as an individual, but as part of a subset of humanity, most likely one to which you do not belong yourself.

Once you have identified the difference and affixed a label to it, the emphasis of that difference comes naturally. From there, it’s a very short walk to bigotry, simply because our human nature is to justify ourselves, and the easiest way to do that is to lower our view of others. Labels just streamline that process.

So how does discernment fit into this?

From the definitions we have already discussed, discernment is essentially God-level discrimination. But since we have already seen that God sees all of His followers as equal in Christ, then it should be obvious that the purpose of discernment is not to enable bigotry by labeling humans and dividing them into groups.

Discernment is not about judging character or outward appearances, but rather motives and the behavior that arises from them. Which leads me to my next DN=.

(Come back for Part 6–Judgmental)

Deliverance

No, not THAT kind of Deliverance!

(Yeah, that’s more like it.)

Have you ever found yourself in a situation that seemed hopeless? Did you pray to God for deliverance? I have found myself in that place on numerous occasions.

God always answers prayers for deliverance, but sometimes it’s not the answer we were expecting. We have a tendency to treat God like an ATM—swipe our prayer card, and out come the blessings.

But sometimes the answer is “no.” And sometimes it’s “not yet.” And sometimes, it’s “Yes, but not the way you’re thinking.”

God wants us to live life to the full; however, He is always more interested in our holiness than our happiness. We would love for our deliverance from trials and tribulations to be as quick and painless as possible.

But more often than not, God’s plan is to deliver us through the trial, rather than from it. And painless isn’t always part of the plan. In fact, sometimes the pain is the plan.

The trials we undergo may seem like the end of the world while they’re happening, and yet, we always come out the other side, maybe not totally unscathed, but still standing nonetheless. We may have some scar tissue, but we also frequently have a sense of liberation. We got THROUGH this! And it didn’t kill us!

Here’s the thing about deliverance though. The process of being delivered through a trial is supposed to be a lesson about reliance on God’s strength when our own is failing.

After all, why did we cry out to Him in the first place? Because we knew that we were at the end of ourselves and it was only His strength that could deliver us.

So naturally, what do we do first when the next trial comes along? That’s right, we try to fix our own problems and rely on our own strength. Again. Although we know we should never take God’s deliverance for granted, we do it anyway, because it is in our nature to forget things like that.

Fortunately God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, anticipates this, and is always there to pick up the pieces AGAIN (and again, and again). What a great thing it is to know that we can always fall back on His patience and mercy!

Still, I think we ought to make more of an intentional effort to remember why God delivers us in the first place—because He is with us, and He is for us. If He was in our corner the last time we had a problem, and we know that He doesn’t change, then it makes sense that He will go to bat for us again the next time we have a problem.

So instead of having a high-speed come-apart the next time life beats us down or backs us up against the wall, we should approach our trial with confidence, knowing that we will be delivered, and that we won’t have to rely on our own strength to get it done.