Tag Archives: heartwords

What Is Sanctification?

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - What Is Sanctification

Sanctification is learning to love God and to hate everything else.

Does this offend you?

Consider Deuteronomy 6:5,

“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

And, Luke 14:26,

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”

My prayer has been to be set free even from a desire for my wife, who is most dear and precious to me.

I want my only desire to be for my wife who is in Christ.

See the difference?

Loving who is begotten by God, including those not yet made manifest, is one and the same as loving God.

“And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.”
— 1 John 4:21

When the affection and desire of my heart is singular, I become “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58)

I can then be like Jesus, who hated Simon, but loved Peter, who in one breath calls Him blessed and in the next call Him Satan, because one was in God and the other was without.

Matthew 16:17, after Peter’s confession of faith,

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.’”

Matthew 16:23, six verses later,

”But He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.’”

When the affection and desire of my heart is singular, I become pure (oneness) in heart—a prerequisite to see God.

Learning to love God and to hate everything else is the process of being made holy, set apart and fit for service, which is sanctification.

#sanctification #heartwords

What Is Forgiveness?

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - What Is Forgiveness?

Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting.

If I cannot forget how do I forgive?

For the concept of forgiveness to really click, I must understand and accept that everything God provides me is for the Father’s business—good works, which are the glory and administration of God’s Kingdom: executing God’s mission, caring for God’s beloved people, and maintaining God’s great house (Luke 12:42-48).

Forgiveness is an accounting concept.

Imagine you’re a business owner, as we’re all outlets of God’s manifold grace.

The wares of your store are made available on credit.

But, someone takes something without honoring its worth. This results in a loss for you, otherwise known as hurt, and results in a debt for them, also known as an offense or a trespass.

You have a choice to make. You can either shut down their account, so they can no longer do business. Or, you can forgive the debt so they can continue to do business.

The decision usually comes down to what we’re working for and who. What do we want? What are we attempting to accomplish with our store? Are we working for our own personal profit or another’s? What is “profit”, and what does it look like?

The complexion of the matter completely changes when we’re operating from an economy where:

1. It’s the Father’s business (Luke 2:49),
2. We’re already rich (Ephesians 2:4-7, 1 John 4:26),
3. He’s paid it all (Colossians 2:13-14),
4. His endgame is unrivaled glory: 100% market penetration, to be the only name in the game through domination of all rivals and the redemption of all creation (1 Corinthians 15:22-28),
5. My payoff is My Father being pleased (John 8:29, Luke 19:17, Philippians 2:5-11).

In the normal course of business, when someone receives something of value, they reciprocate that value.

However, every so often we encounter someone who takes but has nothing with which to pay. They’re bankrupt and poor.

The Father’s business model accounts for this: grace.

Even in earthly economies, proprietors go into business ready to accept a certain amount of loss. They have a general ledger account dedicated to it called “Bad Debt” which they will write off at the end of each fiscal year.

But God has left us a blank check, constantly making available to us the boundless riches of His love and grace, so that we do not operate from a loss but have an abundance to continue His work (2 Corinthians 9:8).

God’s mandate is save the lost at any cost for His glory (John 3:16, John 15:8). His desire is that all men might be saved, that all would come to His supper, that His house may be full and that they all would commune with God (1 Timothy 2:4, Luke 14:15-24, Revelation 19:9, 22:17).

Profit is a soul delivered from the kingdom of darkness and brought into His house (Colossians 1:13).

“I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.”
— Luke 15:7

So when someone takes something without honoring its worth, we have a column in our ledger to account their debt to: God’s ocean and immeasurable wealth of grace.

And, I can forgive.

And, I can continue doing business with them in hopes of heavenly profit.

God’s business strategy was to give it all away anyway to establish brand recognition and ultimately for the purpose of exchanging our dead existence for eternal life where He is made known through us that He may be glorified (Isaiah 11:1-9).

Therefore,
“Freely you have received, freely give”
— Matthew 10:8

Coming full circle to our original question, “If I cannot forget, how do I forgive?”

The answer is proper accounting.

The key to forgiveness is accounting the offense to the proper account, to the account overflowing with the riches of Christ that God had credited to me.

When someone offends me, it hurts and pain can be hard to forget.

So when I remember that hurt, I should let that serve as a reminder to get my books and recall where that debt is accounted to, and I should find next to their account: In Good Standing. PAID by the Father through Jesus Christ.

My greatest hope is that’s how I appear in God’s Book, understanding that when I do not forgive I lose that credit line (Mark 11:25-26, Matthew 18:21-35).

Consider Christ who, on the cross suffering the most egregious offense, in Luke 23:34 says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

With that He, through forgiveness, extends us grace.

Now Christ entrusts us with His enterprise and charges us:

“Do business until I come.”
— Luke 19:13

#forgiveness #heartwords

What Is Love?

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - What Is Love?

Love is God’s government.

Not a government of rules and task lists,

But a government that flows from God’s heart in us received by faith in Jesus Christ,

Government that produces the approach, resources, services, security, and harmony that makes its subjects whole.

Love is God’s government that makes its subjects whole.

#love #heartwords

What Is Grace?

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - What Is Grace?

Image Copyright CG817 | CG817 on Flickr

My understanding of grace had previously been mostly academic, but it took on new meaning for me yesterday in a moment of failure and weakness where I desperately needed it.

I now find a particular aspect of grace to be like, in engineering terms, fault tolerance or perhaps better said—fault accounting.

When an engineer designs a thing, say your phone for example, they account for imperfections.

Despite being milled by machines, all the pieces are imperfect; they all deviate from the engineer’s design within a certain margin of error.

But the engineer anticipates and accounts for these imperfections in the design so that the pieces still fit and work together to achieve the desired outcome.

God is the Ultimate Engineer.
He is the Supreme Creator.

His design not only accounts for our imperfection but His assembly of these imperfect pieces and their interaction in operation subject the pieces to a Force that transform them, making them more and more perfect as they function until, both individually and collectively, His perfect product is produced: Christ.

“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;”
— Ephesians 4:11-13

“The LORD will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O LORD, endures forever; Do not forsake the works of Your hands.”
— Psalm 138:8

God is both committed to perfection and to involving us, imperfect creatures, in the final product. And in God’s unsearchable wisdom, He achieves a straight path with crooked lines.

And part of His genius is grace.

Grace meets me where I am and loves me to where I am supposed to be.

Grace accounts for the fact that I’m messed up, that sin has done a number on me, that I’m haunted by hurt, that I’m deceived by lies and it doesn’t throw me away when I naturally mess up.

Grace allows me to be fully human while holding me accountable to the high calling.

Could this be what is meant when John writes of Jesus that He was full of grace and truth?

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
— John 1:14

His grace accounts for sin but never makes sin ok.

God deals with me in that grace.

I don’t have to worry about being abandoned. He has accounted for my shortcomings.

I stumble but He lifts me up and keeps me in The Way.

God is utterly committed to seeing His glory shine through me through His finished work of Christ in me.

“being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;”
— Philippians 1:6

God’s grace accounts for sin but never makes sin ok.

God’s grace allows me to be fully human while holding me accountable to the high calling.

Consider Hebrews 4:15-16,

“For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
— Hebrews 4:15-16

The first aspect of grace I find is that it compassionately accounts for my shortcomings. It doesn’t give up on me when I mess up but it finds ways to keep working with me towards perfection.

This Hebrews passage reveals a second aspect of grace: the generous allocation of resources to achieve that perfection.

And, “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” — 1 John 4:11

Hopefully my own desperate need for grace has afforded me a slightly better understanding of it and perhaps now I can do a better job of extending it to others.

I do not claim to have apprehended, but I press.

What Is Hope?

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - What Is Hope?

Hope is a desire for something better and having reason to expect that it will be attained.

I’m still camped out at Hebrews 11:1,

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

My “hope” is for the kingdom that results from Jesus being King.

My “faith” is the evidence because of the observable effect of His government in my life.

A test of my faith is that His Kingdom should be evident in my life.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, but perfect is the goal and it should be more perfect, year by year.

In my marriage, in my family, in my dealings with my neighbors, in my work, it should be evident that His Kingdom has come. It is “the substance of things hoped for”.

So, my “hope” is for a world where He rules, and the abundant life, love, peace, joy, justice and the glorious harmony that results from that.

I hope because I’ve had a piece of that.

I can’t go back.

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.

But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”
— Hebrews 11:13-16

#hope #heartwords #heartdictionary

What Is Faith?

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - What Is Faith?

What is “faith”?

Many think that faith is just believing something.

Even Merriam Webster defines faith as “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.”

But that’s not faith at all.

Hebrews 11 offers a different definition. It begins, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” — Hebrews 11:1.

It says faith is “substantive”, not just some flimsy belief with no evidence. But perhaps most remarkably it claims that faith itself IS the evidence— “the evidence of things not seen.”

That’s a lot to take in. And to truly grasp a concept, I believe it is important to pray and ask God to show me what He means. When I’ve caught a glimpse of it, either through it being “taught or caught”, I put what it means to me in my own words so I can look back on how God has grown my understanding over time. I call these #heartwords.

Considering the whole of scripture, illuminated by my own walk with the Lord, I would define faith as this:

Faith is the product of a conviction about a hope that comes from experiences that have built trust.

I believe there are five essential elements to spiritual faith:

1. Experience – faith is always initiated by an encounter with God. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” — Romans 10:17. God expresses His Word and we can encounter it in many ways by His Spirit: scripture, preaching, love, etc… We know we’ve had an encounter when it is facilitated by His Spirit and echoes His Word (Message).

2. Hope – A desire that is a result of the encounter and is given by God.

3. Conviction – Convinced to action. This is not just intellectual assent to an idea, but an assertion that is born from the encounter and results in an internal drive that demands action.

4. Trust – Experience with something or someone that gives you reason to have confidence.

5. Product – Fruit, an observable expression of faith. The product is more than just doing, it’s a state of being which expresses in doing.

Crises of faith, I believe, is due to an absence or distortion of one of these five elements.

I believe the most common faith problems are lack of personal experience which is prevalent among Cultural Christians where people simply adopt the beliefs of people around them (therefore they lack the conviction and trust that come with experience), and misplaced hope where people pursue things other than what God is offering.

It is important that we each have our own experience with God, a point that we can refer to that began our trust in God.

The hope of every believer is ultimately to be with God ultimately which is synonymous with His ultimate glory. This alone is what Christ offers. Hope anywhere else is misplaced and will lead to despair.

I have faith because I’ve had an encounter with God that has given me hope of something incomparably better than what I had. The encounter came with a message -a word that matches His Word found in scripture. It’s like meeting a Person and not knowing their name until you come across a picture that identifies them. For me, that encounter was the meeting and the picture was the Word. The encounter was the beginning of my trust that the Person exists. It was so wonderful, it created in me a yearning and a burning that I have to act upon. Each time I act upon His Word, in pursuit of the true hope, it proves to be true, building my trust.

This very way of living, this state of being, is faith. And, these experiences with God—consciousness to even comprehend these encounters ARE THE EVIDENCE. (See John 1:5, 2 Corinthians 4:6)

So, faith, is not just empty philosophy that I believe, it’s substantive. And, faith is not belief in the absence of evidence, it’s a state of being that arises from evidence, producing more evidence, and becoming evidence itself.

#faith #heartwords