Your will is decision making, and your willpower is your carrying out of the decisions you make.

Satan wants you to have a very weak will – a weak decision making ability, and a very strong willpower. He does this by the world system that is in place – its a world system that defines what is important for you and pressures you into giving up your will in order to fulfill what society (the world) defines that you need to do. For instance, you may feel like the world is pushing you in a certain direction in a job or career, and if you don’t go that direction, then your life is inferior to others. Or, you may be with your friends and you may feel pressure to get into the things they get into. All of this attacks your will – your decision making ability, and makes you weak in deciding things for yourself.

At the same time, the world pushes you to work harder, be stronger, be more independent and to make your own way.  Be all that you can be – work as hard as you can.

God’s intention is the exact opposite. First he wants you to choose Him. Then He wants you to let Him work it out.

A good picture of this is Abraham. God called Abraham out of his homeland. Abraham’s going was his choosing God. God also promised a seed and a land to Abraham. This promise was up to God to fulfill – yet Abraham ‘worked’ for his seed, bringing Lot, then choosing Eliazer, then producing Ishmael. Finally the Lord showed him that he could do nothing and that the Lord would give Him Isaac, the seed, to fulfill his promise.

What did Abraham do to gain Isaac? He didn’t do nothing – He gave up his natural strength. Although He chose to follow God, he still tried to do God’s will by his own power. Actually, when Abraham was stripped of all his power to do anything for God, God came in and produced Isaac.

God wants to choose Him – but once we choose Him, He wants us to stop and give up our natural strength to do His will, and let him do it in us and through us. This is opposed to Satan, who befuddles our ability to choose but compels us to try our hardest to carry out whatever we didn’t choose to do. A big part of the Christian life is God’s stripping of our natural strength in order to let Him work in us.

Pleasure is versus fulfillment. This is because the more you feed your pleasure, the less pleasurable it is and the more empty it becomes. In actuality, fulfillment comes through suffering. The Christian life is all about fulfillment; small wonder then that suffering is a major topic in the bible.

First, Christ suffered to gain his church. Second, the believers must make up the afflictions of Christ to build up the church. Finally, the believers take up the cross to crucify their natural life – their love of their self – to follow Him.

The absolute seeking and fulfillment of pleasure eventually leads to vanity. You can have all the pleasure in the world, but the more pleasure you have and the more you seek to fulfill the temporary delights, the more empty you feel.

However, the absolute suffering for a purpose that doesn’t lead to something eternal leads to vanity as well. If you are suffering for something that doesn’t have lasting value, then that leads to emptiness.

In between the two there is the narrow path of God’s way.

Matt 7:14 Because narrow is the gate and constricted is the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it.

I used to love immediate pleasure, and I almost can’t believe I’m writing this post because my self a year ago would never have written something like this. I am a man that loves pleasure, and it takes a very, very strong force to break it.

As one who has often asked myself, “How can a person of no willpower will to develop some willpower?”, I can now finally answer this question: you don’t. God really has to do it for you.

It takes a lot to pull someone out of pleasure seeking. (In the P/J dichotomy, P stands for Pleasure)

First, you need someone who you can rant at.

Second, you need a motivation.

For me, that motivation for me is love, which is the greatest irrational force in the universe. Falling in love makes you do crazy things, like putting away all your sillies and becoming responsible. And that’s only human love. God’s love is much stronger.

Third, you need a perfect arrangement of outward circumstances to perfect you and train you. That happens to be where I’m at – the Full Time Training. Its really a great place to be.

The American culture is one of convenience. Convenience is not a ‘bad thing’, but it’s a tool for pleasure to be so easily accessible. Everything you covet is 1 click away. The convenience itself does not lead to vanity, but the over-indulgence of pleasure does. Watch out for it.

Like, for instance – Does God judge Gay people? What if, as they claim, they’re born with it?

Can gay people help themselves?

Can God save gay people? Does he do it by stopping them from being Gay? Can they ever be straight? Etc.

As a young boy, I had no real way to tackle these questions, but now that I’m older, I want to. I think its important to be able to look at the past and ask God about it – to let God come in to the past and heal it. I actually still value my friend, and think about him – wonder how he’s doing, etc. But I never actually reconnected… maybe the time isn’t right.

Anyways, here’s some answers to the questions above:

Does God judge Gay people? What if, as they claim, they’re born with it?

We are all born sinners. This is a realization that has hit me really hard – no matter who the person is, they are a sinner. God judges all men because all have sinned. This includes gay people, so yes, God judges Gay people. However, this judgment is not like hypocritical society that condemns gay people for being gay. God condemns gay people for being sinners just like he condemns sinners for being sinners.

Deep inside human beings is the innate desire for sin. Is having feelings that you can’t control toward the same sex “bad”? Well, yes it is. Its also bad to have feelings beyond your control for another person that is not your wife – and that happens a lot too. Its also bad to want so many material things – but that happens all the time. The point is, we all have the desire to do ‘sin’ – we all have feelings to do things that are sinful. None of us are immune to the desires of sin. Even the most respected person has the desire for sin.

Its presumptuous and hypocritical to condemn gay people because you never know when lust will stir in you to cause you to do all manner of things. God condemns gay people as much as he condemns all sinners, including non-gay people.

Can gay people help themselves?

Can gay people stop themselves from being gay? I don’t know. Maybe not. However, can sinners help themselves? The answer to that is a resounding no! Sinners can try to be good but will always be sinners.

What I do know is that God’s way of changing a person is through an intrinsic change of nature. Before, we were all joined to sin – we are all one with sin. Paul calls this state the ‘old man’. However, when we believed in Christ, our old man was crucified on the cross, and the new man was joined to Christ in His resurrection.

God changes people from within, not from without. By God’s life we are able to overcome sin. Without God’s life, no overcoming of sin. So, for gay people, when they enjoy God’s life their old nature is washed away.

Why does God hate the sin of being gay?

God hates this sin because His heart’s desire is to be joined to man in a marriage union. The relationship between husband and wife is compared with the relationship between Christ and the church – this is His heart’s desire. This is why marriage is holy – because it reflect’s God’s heart’s desire. Having an improper union offends God very much – that is why fornication is very disliked by God as well.

What should our speaking be towards gay people?

(What kind of attitude should we have? Should we tell them that God hates the sin of being gay? Can God reach them?)

Well, first, in all matters of judgment, it is of God and not out of us. However, sometimes God wants man to exhort man to repent. This is not in a ‘holier than thou’ way, but rather in a way that would bring them into God’s light and life supply and cause them to turn to God. In ourselves, we have no authority, right, or position to condemn or rebuke others. The word of God is always to enlighten and expose ourselves first. But God may give us a burden to say something – if He does, then it is our responsibility to speak to them something that would convict and rebuke, but also supply and nourish.

For gay people, they are sinners first. Our responsibility with sinners is to tell them about how God’s reaching of man is through love and shepherding, not condemnation and judgment. If they touch God’s love, then they are finished. Sinners who have touched God’s love can no longer go back to whatever has held them before, be it idols, the world, money, fornication, or being attracted to the same sex. Because God is living and God’s love is reaching, Christianity is not a set of teachings on how to do good, but a living under God’s rule and care.

It is by the Lord’s mercy and God’s love that has reached men through Jesus that we are not bound by the chains of the world and its pleasure, but we are freed to love God and to be filled with God for the increase and spread of God’s testimony on the earth, which issues the growth of the Body of Christ, culminating in God’s coming again for His lovely bride.

Well, to be honest, that was my thought too. Sever all the ties – cast off all the past – its time to give myself to God and to carry out whatever His work is!

I’ve been appreciating that this is not what Bible school does to you. Loving God doesn’t mean working for God. This thought about ‘finding work that you love to do’ is no longer really my motto because when you stop loving it, you’re still doing it – and that just sucks.

The result of people who devote their lives to working for God as an occupation is that if they stop loving God, they are stuck working for God. This is probably the reason why there’s so many cases of priests who commit gross sin – they lost their reason to serve the Lord but are chained to do the Lord’s work. Then, they lose their vision, cast off all restraint, and try to do something to fill their emptiness.

Bible school doesn’t make you a worker of the Lord, but a lover of the Lord. This is much better!

With this in mind, I’ve been considering what I want to do after Bible school. One of the big goals that I want to do is to learn to be human. This is a principle of the New Testament – In the Old Testament, God is mostly just a judge and almost like a force that you call upon when you need help. However, in the new Testament, God came as a man, Jesus. This person was very approachable, was a friend of drunkards and partiers (tax collectors and sinners), came to those who were in need of healing – those depressed, empty persons who were struggling to find joy in the world. Those who were upright, self-righteous (godly) people God had nothing to do with.

The fact that Jesus was so human amazes me so much.  He resisted being uplifted to attain a status. The Jews wanted Him to be ‘king’, but sorry, you cannot have a personal relationship with a king. Try to consider if you could meet with Pres. Obama in a normal, casual way – its impossible. He’s the president. There’s a barrier just because of that status.

Jesus resisted the Jew’s attempt to exalt Him as a king because He wanted to come to people as a friend. He had something that He could give to people – joy, comfort, healing, love – but what people need is just a friend who can come to you without making you feel self-conscious, condemned, unworthy, and altogether not peaceful – how can you be comforted or healed through that?

Ultimately, Jesus is the most normal human being who ever existed on the earth. He is the Friend of friends, the Lover of lovers, the top teacher, the closest brother. He is someone that you just want to hang out with, and eventually someone that you love. This is what it means to be a normal Christian – someone who loves the Lord.

I used to think that God had banned me from pursuing after a business, or that God had wanted me to drop all that I learned and just come and serve Him. However, this is not true at all. I love God a lot, and this love has freed me from a life of dead service to God. Now, He is giving me the option to go wherever I want to – be it graduate school, a business, or to work some practical things for Him a bit – it doesn’t matter because I love God and God loves me.

I have the full assurance in my being that no matter what I do outwardly as an occupation, I will grow in my love for the Lord and whatever I will do will be profitable. This is because God is with me.

The Greek word means household law, implying distribution. It denotes a household management, a household administration, a household government, and, derivatively, a dispensation, a plan, or an economy for administration (distribution); hence, it is also a household economy.

God’s economy is a distribution – a dispensing. What is he distributing? He is distributing the divine life.

John 10:10b – “I came that they may have life and may have it abundantly.”

God’s economy differs from our real world economy in several ways:

Our real world economy has a limited supply. This means that the structure of the economy is that of a top-down one – the higher you are the more you have, whereas the lower you are, the less you have. This also implies that at some point (the poverty line), you have less than is able to sustain yourself. This also implies that if you want to give your supply away to help others – you will go lower in the economic ladder.

However, God’s economy is a bottom up economy. Jesus, full of the unlimited supply of the divine life, came to dispense or distribute it. He came as a grain of wheat, who died, and in his resurrection released the divine life for to partake. We who are Christians are now stewards – butlers – in God’s house, commissioned to feed others with the supply that we have received. Because the supply is unlimited, the more you give, the more you receive because God wants to supply Himself to all men.

Several verses powerfully speak this -

Jesus being the unlimited supply of life

John 6:35 - Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall by no means hunger, and he who believes into Me shall by no means ever thirst.

John 5:40 - Yet you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.

John 7:37 - Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.

Us being stewards – dispensers of the divine life

Eph 3:2 - If indeed you have heard of the stewardship of the grace of God which was given to me for you,

1 Pet 4:10 - Each one, as he has received a gift, ministering it among yourselves as good stewards of the varied grace of God.

John 21:17 - He said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love Me? Peter was grieved that He said to him the third time, Do you love Me? And he said to Him, Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You. Jesus said to him, Feed My sheep.

How to receive divine life, and what happens when we receive it – becoming members of God’s household

John 1:12 - But as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name, John 1:13 - Who were begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

This is what God wants. God wants us to receive the divine life and to come into His household. In His household, we are in a position to receive the unlimited supply that God is distributing.

1. You shall love the Lord your God.
2. You shall not make any idols for yourself.
3. You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath.
5. Honor your Father and mother, that your days may be extended.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not give false testimony.
10. You shall not covet.

God gave them to the children of Israel with a simple command – keep them. This is a simple command with surprising depth. For how long? Certainly the law is possible to keep for a day or even a week. With good training and in the right environment, the law even seems easy to keep indefinitely. What can go wrong in a controlled, settled routine where nothing changes?

Well, the law shows its true colors when the environment is not in your control (and it rarely is). If you possessed everything in the world, coveting would not really be a problem; however, more than likely this is not the case. It is those few cases of injustice that try you – for instance, a lazy ignorant person who manages to get a better job than you or even marry your high school sweetheart – this is where and when the law tests man.

Conventional religious and ethical teachings suggest that you need to hold yourself back. You are not immune to the impulses of the emotion, but you are the boss of them. To keep the law is to control these emotions through training. My own method of controlling these emotions was by tricking my gullible mind, which didn’t need too much convincing, to produce a positive outcome from a negative situation. This, at first, seems to be a good answer to the question of the fulfillment of law (or ethics and morality in general) – it can be done through training.

However, the New Testament uplifts the law, ethics, and morality to another standard. In the Old Testament, you shall not kill – in the NT you shall not hate. In the OT, you shall not commit adultery, in the NT, you shall not look at a woman with lust. In the OT, you need to love your neighbor as yourself. In the NT, you need to love the enemies as yourself. This is the moral standard of the New Testament. Is it doable?

One of the striking things about this standard is that it all deals with the intrinsic cause of breaking the law (otherwise known as sin). The OT deals with the outward manifestation of man’s inward being, the NT deals with the inward nature of man. In the OT, your hatred did not break the law, but your acting on the hate did. In the NT, the very act of hating someone breaks the law. In the OT, you could lust, but restrain yourself. Can you restrain yourself from the very emotion that causes us to act in the first place?

Many, many religions have hit this point – the recognition that the nature of man is one that breaks the law. There are 2 categories of solutions that religions give to this matter – the first is that man is able to buffet his inward nature to one that no longer breaks the law – He is able to be free not just from the outward works of sin, but the inward source of sin. These religions use meditation, asceticism, teachings, and training to try to purge away the law-breaking nature of man. The second category admits that the sinful nature of man is impossible to change or overcome, but that your sinful acts can be paid for by doing good works. As long as your good works outweigh the bad, you have ‘overcome’ your sinful nature.

Christianity oftentimes falls into the latter category, although this is not the thought in the bible. The major thought in the New Testament concerning these matters are – first, that it is impossible for man to be free from his sinful nature, and second, that no amount of good works can justify man from the condemnation of sin. For the first, a quick check is to read the first 7 chapters of Romans, where Paul speaks about the hopelessness of man in following the law, culminating in Rom 7:24 – Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? For the second, read Galatians – it is only 4 chapters, and clearly shows that a man is not justified out of works of law, but through faith in Jesus Christ (Gal 2:16).

It is very clear in the New Testament that man has not the ability to free himself from his sinful nature, nor the option of doing works to free himself from the condemnation of sin. If these were the only two options, man is in a hopeless state indeed! He is utterly without a way out, and has no choice but to suffer under the condemnation of sin. However, the New Testament unveils a third option, which has to do with God’s divine nature.

part 2 later…

A righteous judge has to condemn a thief to repay how much he stole, has to enforce an agreed upon contract, and has execute judgement. Certainly, the sour case of an unrighteous system was experienced when the bankers on Wall Street were bailed out without the promise of repaying the American people. Without righteousness, there is no ground for administration. Righteousness is the foundation of God’s throne – he has to administrate based on his righteousness.

In our case, His righteousness condemns any sin unto death. It doesn’t matter how great or small the sin it – it is unto death. The reason why we feel condemnation is that God is bound by his righteousness to condemn us and to put us under judgement. Even the smartest, most honorable, decorated, and loved person alive, if he has committed one sin, is condemned to death.

This means that we are all under the same condemnation, regardless of how good or bad that we are. Our thought is that the wicked deserve more punishment – but God’s righteousness puts everyone who has sinned in one category, and condemns them all equally.

I believe that everyone has some condemnation or some heavy burden that sin puts on them. We get so good at justifying ourselves because of this – no matter what we do, we feel condemnation by our past actions or even our current course of actions. We try to do good to free ourselves from condemnation, but eventually we just do our best to ignore this condemnation, writing it off as an animal instinct that evolution has yet to purge out of our system. Condemnation is a big part of our happiness or lack of happiness – it always is around us and always affects us. It is a weight that puts a very heavy burden on us and really haunts us in times of silence or introspection.

The main concept of most people in the Old Testament is that God is the judge of the world. He is the mediator – he punishes those who are wicked and makes those who are righteous prosper.

This is especially seen in the book of Job. Job is an upright, righteous man, fearful of God and upholding his own righteousness. He is also wealthy and prosperous in life. However, in one day his wealth and livelihood is taken away to the point that he is in continual suffering having boils on his skin that leave him in a lot of pain.

Job’s four friends all condemn him, saying that since Job is under such suffering and curse, he surely must have done something evil and wicked, and he needed to repent to God and he will be restored. Job, who had done nothing wicked at all, denies it vehemently and questions God because of his condition.

To them, God was the judge of the world – as long as you were righteous, God would be good to you and allow you to prosper. If you were wicked, God will punish you. This was what they knew of God – but God isn’t like that. At the end of the book of Job, Job realizes that he knows nothing of who God is, and he says a very famous verse -

Job 42:5 - I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, | But now my eye has seen You; Job 42:6 - Therefore I abhor myself, and I repent | In dust and ashes.

In the Old Testament, God’s plan was not revealed yet. However, we know who God is today. The God we have today is a dispensing God.

He’s not a doctrine or a set of teachings.

He hides proof of His existence because He doesn’t want you to just know He exists. He wants you to know Him. He hates it when you want to see miracles for the miracle’s sake alone. He loves it when we appreciate who He is in all of His rich grace, mercy and love and all that He has done.

He reveals Himself in Christ, and we can know Christ in the word. The whole bible reveals Christ, including the Old Testament. The more we see who Christ is, the more precious God is to us.