The Millstone of Discouraging Doctrine

I just saw a Spirit-filled preacher spend 13 minutes telling people how hard life is. I am not happy about it. People are going to believe him, and when life makes them miserable, they will assume it’s God’s will. They won’t fight it and find solutions.

If you want to know what God says about suffering in this life, read Psalm 91. It’s all about victory and deliverance.

Take a look at this passage:

A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;

There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

It’s impossible to reconcile that with, “Life is hard.”

If you want a hard life, serve your flesh. That brings things like disease, addiction, strife, poverty, and prison. It brings wife-beating, bullying, incest, divorce, child molestation, and insanity. It brings demonic infestation and possession. Those things are hard.

If you’re a Christian, you should be free of things like that. Your problems will mainly fall into the realm of persecution. Relatives will desert you. Churches will drive you out. People will say mean things about you. So what? Things like that happen in junior high every day; we all get over it. Man up. Sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you.

There are places in the world where persecution really means something, but in America and Europe, you should be able to bear it, and presumably, God is just as willing to protect his children in places like Burma, Indonesia, and China. I don’t see why he wouldn’t be; surely he will defend as vigorously as Satan attacks.

It’s true, you may be martyred eventually, but until that happens, you should live in victory. Jesus was crucified, but that was his choice, and until it happened, we have no record of him living a miserable defeated life.

Here are things we don’t see in the Bible: Jesus lacking money. Jesus lacking shelter. Jesus lacking food. Jesus working hard. Jesus having any type of illness. Jesus suffering with dysfunctional relatives or friends who poisoned his life. Jesus having an addiction. Jesus going to prison. Jesus losing an argument. Jesus having an accident. Jesus being disappointed. Jesus being startled. Jesus being rushed. Jesus being embarrassed. Jesus having his plans ruined. Jesus being physically harmed in any way prior to his consensual submission to crucifixion.

Jesus won every argument he ever had. We never see him lose at anything; not once. We never see him express despair, except when he became a curse for us on the cross. We never see him worry or doubt. We never see him compromise to build an audience. We never see him say he was wrong. We never see him suffer with a venomous, bloodsucking wife. He lived in complete victory.

When your life is a mess, it means you’re doing something wrong in your relationship with God. If you can’t accept that, then you can’t accept the knowledge that will bring you out of the mess. If you say God wants your life to be a mess, he will let you live that way. When God gives you a way out, you have to acknowledge the truth or stay where you are.

God’s criticism is not punishment or condemnation. It is his way of showing us the way to freedom. A criticism from God is a diagnosis that precedes a healing. The purpose is to expose problems and show us the things we need to do to get rid of them.

When you say, “Life is hard,” you pity yourself, and you also exalt yourself. “Look at all the things I suffer for God. Look at what I do for God. Look how he OWES me.” Jesus told us to hide our suffering. He told us to dress up and look nice when we fast. He told us to hide our alms. He doesn’t want us to go around fishing for praise, when not one of us has done right. No one has ever failed to let Jesus down, so why are we exalting ourselves?

Christians say, “Life is hard.” Jesus says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Christians say, “Life is hard.” Jesus says, “For thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield.”

Who is telling the truth? Christians or Jesus?

If the Christian life is hard, why have so many millions of people accepted Jesus in order to end their suffering? He has healed people. He has freed them from addiction. He has taken the toxic people out of their lives. He has given them financial help. He has defeated the spirits that are against them. We testify about these things all the time, to make other people understand that God makes life better. How can we then turn around and say the Christian life is hard?

No one ever approached Jesus and said, “Whatever you do, don’t take these demons out of me, because life with them is fantastic.”

One way is harder than the other. Which is it? Let’s make up our minds and quit complaining about what God has given us. We are slandering him.

Before I straightened up, rotten, vicious people got victory over me all the time. I could not get healing; I had to go to greedy, bumbling doctors who caused me pain and embarrassment. When I had problems, I often failed to find solutions. I felt alone a lot of the time. I was full of compulsions like lust, anger, covetousness, and the love of food. I was depressed for most of the first 30 years of my life. How can I look at what I have now and say it’s hard? I would be a fool and a disgrace.

I cause my own problems, and so do you. If you want relief, admit it. Ask God to show you what you’re doing wrong. Ask him to help you stop. It works.

God told me some things. He said, “Carnality leads to humiliation.” He said, “My iniquities are humiliating.” He said, “Peace comes from authority.” He said, “Authority comes from time spent in the presence of God.” Christians who don’t spend time in God’s presence, especially praying in tongues, lack authority, so they lack peace. Instead of letting the Holy Spirit tell them what to do for God, they let their flesh tell them; they guess. This puts them in carnality and iniquity, and that brings them humiliation. When that happens, yes, life is hard. They shouldn’t respond by telling people it’s normal. They should look for the way out.

The preacher I listened to talked about things he had done for God, which had backfired. For example, he had been evicted because a pastor swindled him after signing a contract. If you do things for God, and he hasn’t told you to do them, you can expect things like this to happen regularly. My best guess, based on what happened, is that the preacher let his flesh tell him what to do. He got himself into arrangements God had nothing to do with, and God didn’t back him up.

I can’t imagine reading that God sent Joshua against a Canaanite city, and that Joshua did everything right and then had his behind handed to him. Can you?

“Joshua, my faithful servant, you have obeyed me in all my commandments, and therefore I have given you and your house to the people of Ai to be slaughtered like sheep.” Never happened.

In the Old Testament, when the Hebrews were defeated, it was always caused by sin, and they got relief by repenting. The Egyptians got relief from their plagues by repenting. God took a plague of hemorrhoids off the Philistines when they repented. God chose not to destroy Nineveh because the people repented. God sent the Hebrews to Babylon because of sin. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of sin, and he spared Lot because he served God.

Does the connection between error and suffering no longer exist? If it does exist, are we immune to it simply because we listen to Chris Tomlin and put chrome fish on our cars?

In the New Testament, a demoniac stripped seven men naked and ran them off with injuries because they tried to deliver him in a carnal way instead of waiting for God’s command. Peter tried to save Jesus and failed, because God wasn’t with him. Paul was stricken blind for three days because he sinned. Judas committed suicide and splattered all over the ground because he rebelled. Herod was eaten by worms because he sinned.

The apostles had problems, but we don’t read that they were sick all the time or that they lived in poverty. We don’t read that they were miserable. They gave up a lot, and they had some harsh persecution, but I don’t see any evidence that they generally had hard lives.

We know that they made mistakes, by the way. For example, Paul and Barnabas had a sharp dispute which would not have been possible had they both listened to the Holy Spirit. It is likely that a good deal of the suffering of the apostles was caused not by their obedience to God, but by getting ahead of the Holy Spirit.

Paul was warned that he would be taken captive if he went to Jerusalem, but he went anyway, and the Bible doesn’t say God told him to go.

When I was heavily involved in church, I saw harebrained schemes all the time. It was rare for preachers to do things that were clearly inspired by God. They thrived on gimmicks and promotions. They got into business deals that looked good to them, when God wanted them to do other things.

Preachers buy big buildings on credit, when God is against debt, and then they lay guilt trips on church members when they can’t make their mortgage payments (sometimes because they overpay themselves). They go on mission trips to dangerous areas when God hasn’t told them to, and they get hurt or killed. They do all sorts of impulsive things, and then when they don’t work out, they tell us they’re sticking it out for God because they’re on fire for him. Nonsense.

I read a story about a preacher who did a fire walk in order to show up a heathen who was claiming his gods protected him from the coals. The preacher walked out onto the fire, insisting God would deliver him, and he got severe burns. He put God to the test with his own carnal plan, and suddenly, his life was hard.

Carnal plans put God to the test. Don’t jump off the temple roof unless you’re willing to fly solo.

The fact that something you want to do seems like it ought to please God means nothing. You have to be commanded, if you want backup.

The bad news is that the church is very messed up and that Christians don’t hear from God. The good news is that if we admit these things and look for help, we can end a lot of our problems and suffer less.

If you can’t see correction as the priceless gift it is, don’t expect your life to improve much.

For the rest of my life, I expect more love, more peace, more healing, less worry and fear, and freedom from lack. I expect things to get better and better until I die.

I expect to be corrected a lot, and I ask for it all the time. I expect to have to admit fault a lot, and I look forward to the opportunity.

Maybe people–mostly Christians–will say mean things about me (they already do). Ho hum; I’m used to it, and I have no respect for their opinions. Maybe some day after America really falls apart, I’ll be executed along with other believers. So what? We all die. They can only kill me once, and after that, I will live in peace and love forever.

My policy is to ask God what I’m doing wrong when I have problems, and I will continue until God himself appears to me and tells me to knock it off. I will never consider a problem to be normal or acceptable unless God says it is.

If you pray in tongues a lot every day, your life will go more smoothly. If you don’t, you should expect a fairly rough life, with nasty surprises. The book of Acts calls tongues “the word of God.” You need it. It’s not optional; it’s a mandatory part of the Christian walk. If something is blocking it in you, check your fundamentals. Do you have unrepented sin? Are you angry at anyone? Have you had a proper water baptism? Have you firmly decided to give your life to God? Have you simply been unwilling to open your mouth and start? God won’t grab your lips and move them for you.

If you pray in tongues a lot, you will hear from God more clearly, and you will have more authority. God’s kingdom will grow in you, and you will do better.

The alternative is to spend your life guessing, like the pope, the imams, and the rabbis. God has not provided a second option which works just as well.

God tells the truth, and he promises us good lives. I believe him. I hope you will, too.