Get Someone Strong on Your Side

This morning I thought about what “good news” means, in the context of the Bible.

A lot of people still get enraged when you talk about the grace which comes via the baptism of the Holy Spirit. By “grace” I mean the God-given power to control your own behavior. They shout that every Christian gets filled with the Holy Spirit at salvation, and that it’s EVIL to say the devil makes you do things, and that it’s HERESY to say you need help changing your attitudes and actions or that God will supernaturally enable you to do these things.

Why do they get so upset? I think it’s because the god of this world hates the Holy Spirit message, and he goads them. He tells them a righteous and pious and holy person will not expect God to help him behave. You have to do it all yourself! You have to make pilgrimages on bloody knees. You have to be poor. You can’t have any fun. Suffer, suffer, suffer. Pleasure and success are for the next life.

What good is that message? Seriously. Is that “good news,” which is what “gospel” means? Good news, people! Accept Jesus, and you’ll go to heaven! Way off in the future! Until then, you’ll be poor and sick and miserable, and everyone else will have fun! Great news! Rejoice!

Come on. Be serious. That’s not good news. If eternal life is all you get, why not spend your entire youth having as much sex as possible, accumulating money, gorging on food, and binging on alcohol and drugs? That would seem to be the logical thing to do. Convert on your deathbed. The Bible says you can do that, so why bother now? Jesus promised eternal life to a career criminal who was hanging on a cross. That proves you don’t have to be good for a substantial period in order to make it.

You want to hear good news? I lost 17 pounds without trying, and I’m never going to be fat again. THAT is good news. God did that for me. And he does other stuff. God will take away your addictions and your diseases. He may not make you rich, but he will see to it that you are never poor. He will erase your debts. He will give you peace. He will defeat your enemies. He’ll help your family, too. You’ll have challenges and persecution, but you’ll have a victorious life. That’s good news. I think that’s what “gospel” really means.

My pastor says his dad told him something very perceptive. We preach eternal salvation, but most people aren’t thinking about that. They want to know how to make it to Thursday. I think I have it right; I don’t have him here so I can ask him.

Isn’t he correct?

Satan hates this message. I’m sure of it. He hates it because it brings God’s will from heaven to earth, which is Satan’s playground. Jesus prayed that God’s will would be done here “as it is in heaven.” That’s what happens when you get filled with the Spirit and God fixes your life and empowers you to teach others to get what he gave you. Obviously, Satan is going to bust his hump, persecuting people who acknowledge this before others. And he’s going to use the church to do it. Sour, pinch-faced, sanctimonious people in impressive robes will say, “Knock off that TBN talk. You have to do it all yourself, or it’s not righteousness.” They’ll think they’re helping God when they say that. And they’ve done a dynamite job for about 1800 years. They helped us achieve great things like the Inquisition.

The Bible says our “righteousness” is filthy rags, and it says salvation comes by faith. It doesn’t just say that about Christians. It says it about Abraham. Faith was imputed to him as righteousness. Faith is what put Isaac on the altar. You can say it was obedience, but which comes first? Who would obey a command that harsh without faith? I certainly wouldn’t. If I had been Abraham, and I had not had faith that God would make things right, I would have run back to Iraq and apologized to my demon idols. Our actions, performed in the limited power and limited knowledge of the flesh, are not what fixes our lives. You cannot free yourself from addiction or compulsion unless you are a truly rare and remarkable person (ask Jenny Craig), and you will still have other problems God would have fixed.

I think Christians are supposed to live well. I don’t mean we’re supposed to have huge homes and yachts. I think we’re supposed to be healthy, calm, optimistic, free of debt, and successful. You can’t have it on your terms, in the exact way you want it. You have to sell your soul to God and count everything you have as his. You have to repent, pray, fast, give, try to behave, and so on. You have to examine yourself over and over, as you would clean a boat’s hull to keep it moving without hindrance. But you CAN have it. I really believe that. If not, what exactly is the good news? If life is supposed to stink, I should pray I get struck by lightning, because otherwise, I have thirty or thirty-five years to go, and it will be a drag.

I’m trying to get the kinks out of the pipeline, so God can continue building me up. I am concerned that I am not sufficiently empathetic, which is a big deal, since a big part of my purpose is to help others. I have nagging iniquities I’m trying to get rid of. I expect to succeed, because I’m attacking these problems using God’s power more than my own. My own power never got me anywhere, and it wasn’t designed to. If a person is the Starship Enterprise, human effort is impulse power. The Holy Spirit is warp drive.

All I want right now is to see one person delivered from a chronic sin because he or she listened to me. That would be a fantastic start on the next stage of my life. Just one person. One fat person. One alcoholic. One smoker. One person who can’t stop gossiping or lying. One hothead (that’s a major sin and bondage). And I know a few people who need to get their butts to church. I hope I will be empowered to do what has to be done, in order to achieve that goal.

I got good news. I can’t be the only one who was supposed to get it.