We don't believe it

If we had to identify the 10 least believed verses in Scripture — least believed, that is, by Bible-believing American Christians — Jesus' words in Matthew 11:28 would rank somewhere near the top: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

We read Jesus' invitation. We recognize our own exhaustion. We know we desperately need what he offers. Leaning into his words, we savor them. We long to believe them. We may even try to live them.

But for all our longing and trying, most of us have not experienced what Jesus invites us to experience. We've found his words sweet and lovely, but impractical and frustrating. Because we haven't succeeded in living them, deep down we do not believe they are true.

So was Jesus naïve? Did he lie? Did his promise work in another time and place, but not in ours? Or have we got some things BACKWARDS?

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excerpt from "Return to Your Rest," Key truths, Open Gates e-column,

Nov. 2006

So I don't need religion?

The last verse in chapter 20 of the book of John says, “and that by believing you may have life in his name.” I finished our Tuesday Bible study with the statement that we are eternal beings and even after our body dies our soul will live either with God or separated from Him. Beatriz looked at me rather shocked and said, “I want to be with God!” Carmen followed up with, “How scary.” I then asked them why they were not sure, and why they were scared.

Beatriz said she had to earn eternal life with God by doing good things. I looked at her and asked her which verse in John, the book we have studied for the last year-and-a-half, says she has to earn this life. With a puzzled look on her face she said she did not know.

I asked her what Jesus had said over and over and over again to have life with Him. Believe in me, follow me, love me . . . those where the things we have seen. She was still a little puzzled so we read Romans 10:9-10.

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.”

I asked them if this was not what Jesus had been saying. Beatriz looked up at me with her eyes as wide as I have ever seen and said, “So I don’t need religion, I need Him.” She realized for the first time Jesus is the only way.

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By Laura Otalora, Bogotà, Colombia, women’s blog entry at www.bogotametroteam.com

Novel comments: The Shack #2, answers

Mack is talking with the Holy Spirit, called Sarayu in the book. Here are excerpts from their conversation.

Mack: "It feels like living out of relationship - you know, trusting and talking to you - is a bit more complicated than just following rules."

Sarayu: "While words may tell you what God is like and even what he may want from you, you cannot do any of it on your own. Life and living is in him and in no other. My goodness, you didn't think you could live the righteousness of God on your own, did you?"

Mack: "Well, I thought so, sorta . . . But you gotta admit, rules and principles are simpler than relationships."

Sarayu: "It is true that relationships are a whole lot messier than rules, but rules will never give you answers to the deep questions of the heart and they will never love you."

Mack: "I'm realizing how few answers I have . . . to anything. You know, you've turned me upside down or inside out or something."

Sarayu: "Mackenzie, religion is about having the right answers and some of their answers are right. But I am about the process that takes you to the living answer and once you get to him, he will change you from the inside. There are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all. . . . So even though they might be right, they are still wrong."

Mack: "So please, help me live in the truth."

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The Shack, by William P. Young (Los Angeles: Windblown Media, 2007), pp. 197-199

Seeing me

Wanting to please Christ, I bowed before a system that promises everything Christ promised, but always holds it just out of reach; a system that propels us into activity, rather than drawing us into rest; that applauds pivotal involvement in God’s purposes, yet relegates to the periphery all but a chosen few.

I wore the veil this system handed me. I accepted the place this system assigned me. Deep inside, I longed to fulfill my true identity in Christ, but the real and the counterfeit so comingled that I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. When my true identity did try to express itself, a system I associated with Christ used any means it found convenient – persuasion, promises, bribes, threats, intimidation, accusation, attack – to readjust the veil.

Yet, God kept going after that veil. When he removed it, I saw.

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excerpt from "Lookin' Good," Key truths, Open gates e-column, Feb 2008

© 2008, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.

Prayer of Graham Cooke

Father, thank you that this is our time and season to fight back - to war against a religious spirit that has bound up your people in legalism, judgment, and an earthly logic that prevents discovery of the realm of Your Spirit.

Thank you that we can war against a religious system that teaches rules, performance and duty but does not allow us to have ongoing encounters with the Living God.

Thank you that we have a joyful, legal right, because of Christ's sacrifice, to wage war on the enemy wherever we may find him. Thank you for favor and vengeance combined. That, in our freedom in Christ, you not only deliver us from being victims but you give us a ministry in the very areas where we have been robbed and ashamed.

Everyone that we in turn set free is a sign of our payback on the enemy. To destroy the works of the devil is the evidence of Your power at work.

I pray that You would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. That you would cause our eyes to be opened into enlightenment of the glory of Heaven here on earth. On earth as it is in Heaven - no more, no less.

Be our tutor, lead us into a revelatory experience of the power of the Christ-life within. In His Name and for His glory. Amen.

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from Qualities of a Spiritual Warrior, by Graham Cooke (Vacaville, CA: Brilliant Book House, 2008), "Invocation," p. 7.

Getaways with God

Jesus says, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion?
Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.”
(Matt. 1:28 MSG)

How many people would say, “Yes!” to all three of Jesus’ questions – yet do not see a way to answer his invitation? To help people do just that, Key Truths, Open Gates sponsors two- and three-day Getaways with God with the following focus . . .

You Get Your Life Back

Experience . . .
time alone with God
encouragement in small groups
teaching sessions led by Deborah Brunt

Expose . . .
four “plexiglass walls” religion uses to fool and imprison:
relentless activity
dependence on “experts” to hear from God
confused loyalties
invalidation

Explore . . .
The wonder of release into a spacious place where you encounter God more fully and become who he created you to be more completely than you ever dreamed possible.

See details of next scheduled Getaway with God near top of right column.

Religion kills

“Religion almost killed me.”

The woman who made that statement paused, waiting for my response. As I sat in my own home, I recalled standing in the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France. My daughter and I had visited the monstrous shell of a palace several months earlier. Walking through the stark, bare, massive rooms, we listened by audioguide to the story of the nine popes who ruled from there in the 1300’s. We saw the hollow wreckage of religion.

Little wonder that Bill Myers set a strategic scene of his novel, The Face of God, in that palace. In this scene, a conservative pastor named Daniel, his son Tyler, a female Jewish anthropologist and a young Muslim woman engage in a heated discussion. Earlier, the son has shocked his dad by saying that religion kills, that in fact religion killed Jesus – and it killed the wife and mom both men loved.

Standing in the Palace of the Popes, Tyler brings up the subject again. “Religion is religion, Dad. It doesn’t matter how you disguise it. It’s all about guys in charge wanting to stay in charge. Get your little God machine built, stay as comfortable as possible, keep it running as long as possible.”

Daniel the pastor father protests. He talks of “defending truth” and having “a responsibility to the people.”

“All religion cares about is being right and being in charge,” Tyler insists. “Being in charge and making sure everyone who disagrees is either converted or destroyed.”

Before you take a swing at Tyler, I’d recommend reading Myers’ book. It’s fascinating and enlightening. The story will keep you on the edge of your seat, and the ending will have you shouting. Even before reading the book, would you ponder with me this startling concept: Religion kills – even religion coupled with Christianity.

Indeed, religion is tragically adept at entwining itself with true relationship to Christ and squeezing the life out of us. Not discerning the difference between the true thing and the counterfeit, many who call themselves Christians are bound, comatose, and even dead.

If we are to rise up and walk in the power of God’s life and purpose, we must learn to “extract the precious from the worthless” (Jer. 15:19 NASU) – to discern in ourselves and in others what is Christ and what is religion.

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excerpt from "Religion vs God," Key truths, Open gates e-column, Jan 2008

© 2008, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.