KISS pt 2

Sorry this took longer to publish. I’ve had a really busy week and been helping someone move house too. Allow yourself 15 minutes to read this and perhaps longer to digest it.

This follows on from the previous blog, and both really need to be read together. I want to focus on how we do ministry in the Church, how to keep it simple and effective whilst sticking closely to what we are taught in Scripture. I also want to encourage a way of ministering to people that sets them free to live the life that Jesus bought for them, in a way that is easy, flexible, adaptable and non-professional. I think that the vast majority of our pastoral and counselling issues can be solved quite straightforwardly if we believe what God has said in His Word. I am not saying that no effort is required – far from it. It takes effort to read the scriptures, it takes effort in the form of self discipline/self training to believe and do what God has told us in the scriptures but by and large that is the route to freedom.

The culture of the world promotes instant results – quick fixes; results without effort. Sometimes the culture in the Church mimics this attitude. A quick prayer, a ministry time, an emotional high and all will be well. Then it turns out that all is not well, all is not fixed instantly. So we resort to Courses, a series of Counselling sessions or Inner Healing Ministry of one form or another. These sessions are run by people who have been trained – because obviously you wouldn’t let someone untrained practice on you would you? So we rely on trained practitioners who are trained in the latest thing to set us free until, inevitably, the next latest ‘this-will-set-you-free’ thing comes along. We have entered a complicated self-perpetuating process that has the appearance of being scriptural (because it contains bits of scripture) and perhaps has a Greek name. We have moved away from the simplicity of the answers provided in the Bible into what looks like an attempt to keep up with the world of secular counselling.

I started off thinking about all this because initially I just thought that our systems and methods were clunky and not flexible enough to be easily transferable in either a rapidly growing church or a persecuted church operating below the radar. (When I say rapidly growing church I mean hundreds or thousands of new believers, many in small groups scattered across the nation in villages and hamlets as well as towns and cities).

The more I thought about this the more I have come to the conclusion that the real problem is not that we’re doing the right thing the wrong way, but that often we’re doing the wrong thing.

God is radical. He doesn’t mess about. He also likes clarity and simplicity. Salvation, as God has designed it, is a complete plan. There’s nothing partial about it. As Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1 v 3, “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life…” EVERYTHING. No need to wait 19 centuries for Inner Healing or new counselling ministries to develop. Every need was met, every question answered, every eventuality taken care of by what Jesus achieved for us.

Too often salvation is seen simply as a change of destination, heaven instead of hell, and therefore we can miss the height and depth of what God has done for us and in us. We can miss the amazing completeness of God’s provision for us in Christ.

When you become a Christian something radical and supernatural takes place. The old ‘you’ was put to death, crucified with Christ; You become instantaneously a new person – born again. A new man, a new woman. Someone once put it like this, “It’s not a new start in life I need, it’s a new life to start with”. That’s what Jesus gives. A new life to start with. A completely fresh start. “If anyone is in Christ the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here” (2Corinthians 5 v 17). “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2 v 20). “For we know that our old self was crucified with Him, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been set free from sin” (Romans 6 v 6 – explaining very neatly that from now on we are completely free to choose not to sin).

Graphically, Romans 6 v 4 describes our baptism as a funeral service for the old you. When Satan reminds me of events from my past life in an attempt to belittle me, shame me or make me feel disqualified, I say to him, “the Kevin that did that is dead – and you saw his funeral service”. That shuts him up pronto, and I move on without a second thought because I know this is true. I decided long ago that I believed what God says to be true – full stop.

You might say, “but I still have memories from the past that disturb me, and they stir up my emotions with all sorts of feelings, and that affects who I am and how I live”. And the truth is that some of those emotions might be pretty powerful – sadness, anger, frustration, rage, bitterness, hatred etc etc. God knows this, and he has provided a simple way to freedom. I said simple. I did not say effortless!

The way out to freedom is to obey Romans 12 v 2; renew our minds and then we will be transformed. Change how we think. It will transform us and set us free. Let me explain….

Proverbs 23 v 7 says “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he”. A word of explanation here….Each of us is created as a spiritual being. We have a soul (our mind + emotions + will – the bit that makes you “you”) and we live in a body. We are spirit, soul and body. When the Bible uses the word ‘heart’ it is describing your soul; that is your mind (how you think) + your emotions (how you feel) + your will (what you choose to do). Proverbs 23 is saying that how you think affects the rest of your soul – your emotions and will – and that determines what kind of person you are. What you think is paramount.

What and how you think affects the course of your emotions and in turn affects how you choose to act. What and how you think lies at the root of it all. When we talk about things moving from our head to our heart (soul), what we really mean is a state when our thinking has become settled without question and it has become so strong that it governs the whole of our soul – our emotional response and our choices of action. Then we have come to a place where it would be unthinkable to allow our emotions or actions to run in an opposite direction to our thinking. In passing it’s worth noting that we are meant to be in charge of our emotions and our actions – never the other way round. It all starts with how we think. When a person acts wilfully or emotionally then to a greater or lesser extent, they are out of control.

Because what we think and how we think is fundamental, God tells us specifically to change how we think. We are to renew our minds, take thoughts captive, pull down strongholds of wrong arguments and pretensions that set themselves up in opposition to right thinking. Right thinking is thinking about things the way God thinks about them. The Bible is the first and obvious place to find out what God thinks. Time spent in the Bible is time spent encountering God and His ways. As I said, this is not an effortless process, but it is essential for freedom.

We are to “set our minds on the things above”, “to be made new in the attitude of our minds”, “to think about things that are noble, right, pure, lovely” etc.

Renew your mind, change how you think, and that will change you.

The old man is dead – and buried. You are born again. A new person. The new man is here, but he (or she) needs to learn to think differently, and in such a settled and irrevocable way that emotions/feelings and choices of action are governed by that thinking. So much so, that it would be unthinkable to be any other way.

James warns about being ‘double-minded’. Thinking two opposing things at the same time. For instance thinking like this: “God loves; he loved the world so much that he was prepared to suffer and die for us…..but I don’t think he loves me that much because I’m not very nice and not very lovable.” A double-minded man is unstable and his thinking will undermine him – or her. Other common examples of double-minded thinking are “God answers prayer….but he won’t want to answer any of my prayers” or “I understand that I am saved….but I just need to keep making more effort in order to please God and keep my salvation”. We need to get to a place where it would be unthinkable to think like that. How do we do that? Jesus said “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. The word used for know means to be aware of and be sure about, be resolved about and understand. Being resolved about the Truth is a decision. I choose to believe God, despite my feelings or any impulsive desire to act. My bottom line decision is that I choose to believe God, what He says and how He views things. How God thinks about things forms the Truth that I need to base my thinking and my life on.

I said earlier that when Satan tries to remind me of the awful things I did before Jesus found me, I remind Satan that the Kevin who did those things is dead. The old Kevin was crucified with Christ and no longer lives (Galatians 2 v 20). The Kevin you see now is a new creation, born again, (a new life to start with); the old has gone. The new is here.

Now let me tell you a little about Kevin. I was an unwanted (surprise-but-not-in-a-good-way) baby and I suffered a lot of rejection and forms of cruelty as a child and young man. A lot of that experience formed my character; how I thought, how I behaved and the lens that I saw life through. Aged 28, a bitter and quite unpleasant man in some ways, I became a Christian. Now it’s time for change. But how? Being born again does something radical on the inside, but on the outside years of learned responses may still manifest. What is the answer?

I have been in ministry situations where I have been asked to recall moments of deepest hurt in the past, re-visit those scenes of rejection or cruelty, picture Jesus standing watching and ask what He was thinking or saying in the hope that somehow that would ‘heal’ me. Whilst for some that might all be very comforting at an emotional level, it’s not biblical.

Worse still, over my many years as a believer I have received training in and used quite a few forms of counselling/inner healing ministry (there’s always something new to keep up with). Here’s the problem. If the old Kevin is dead when Satan comes knocking, why does the old Kevin need ministering to. The old Kevin is dead. We don’t minister to corpses except to raise them from the dead – and there’s no way anyone in their right mind would want to raise the old Kevin from the dead!

There’s no need to go back to the old Kevin and resurrect feelings and emotions, re-live scenes or anything else. If the old Kevin is dead (and he is) then we need to deal with the new Kevin. The new man is what is important. The new man needs to grow up into maturity and begin to think like the new man that he is. As the new man thinks in his heart (soul) so is he, As the New man is resolved to think the way God thinks, the Truth sets him free from the past influencing his/her present and future. As soon as we start digging up the old man to look for things ‘to deal with’ we risk starting a never ending trail that leads us away from the simple solution that God put in place.

Past events and history are relevant only insofar as they point to what is wrong in our responses learned over many years, and illustrate how we need to change our thinking so that it becomes unthinkable to respond any other way but God’s way from now on. For me, I know the temptation (and I mean temptation) to see things through a lens of rejection. Now I think differently. I don’t react in hurt and assume rejection when things go wrong. If I do catch myself slipping into those fallen ways of thinking I go to God with it, I recognise it as wrong, say sorry, and move on. This is not effortless. It takes work and application but it’s all part of becoming more like Jesus. I have a way to go yet but I will persevere. The 11th commandment comes in here…’Thou shalt bash on’.

When we do things this way, the way God planned and purposed, we realise His greatness and His power. With each step forward in the new life our faith (trust) in Him increases.

The big danger with ministries and forms of healing that go back into the past is that at the time, they appear to work. The individual feels better and feels able to move on. They have gone through basically a ceremony or a ritual which gives them cause to believe that the past is now dealt with. They believe that the past is dealt with because of the ministry they received, and so their faith (trust) is in the ministry and the person who ministered and not in the God who really dealt with their past (but in a way that they have not had explained to them).

The pragmatist might say “horses for courses’ – if it works, what’s the problem. I can think of two problems:

• “I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another”. Some forms of ministry in a subtle way deflect some of the Glory that belongs to God. What was a problem that had a simple solution in the application of God’s word, became a deep problem that needed trained ministries to unearth and rectify. Often people will need some help, but that should be to direct them to what God has said, what He has already done for them, and encourage them to begin to believe that and walk in that. (Often forgiveness or deliverance may be necessary, but that is simple, straightforward and does not require a lot of digging into the past).
• Ministry like this can make people ministry dependent. They are not able to grow and flourish independently.

To conclude, often the end result is that skilled Christian Ministries are substituted for the the work of Jesus. Countless hours are spent training many counsellors to spend countless hours with people to take them three quarters of the way round the block instead of taking them straight to the answer. We end up with trained Professionals and Ministries and dependant people – a new form of the clergy/laity divide. The sad thing is, that having had “ministry” for one issue, the next time an issue comes up the person joins the queue for more ministry perhaps from another trained source. If only they had learned the first time round that the answer to their issues is in what God did, the New Man/woman that they are, and that they need to learn to change how they think. It’s time to learn to believe what God says until it is unthinkable to seriously think any other way. Then they will be able to live the new life and they will have learned the key to resolving other issues as they come up. They may need help and encouragement but there is nothing skilled or professional about this. This is true ministry, flexible, portable and authentic. The Jews have a word for it – kosher.