1. The God Factor: Regaining our Lost Dominion Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are conducting the world's biggest and most far-reaching tests, smashing atomic particles in an attempt to find the bottom line of what holds everything together. In this article I've attempted to show that the same laws that govern human and spiritual relationships are the same ones that govern the physical world, and in fact, are destined to control it.
2. Divorce and Remarriage--the Heart or Letter of the Law? At last, after a forty year quandary about this subject, I have finally come to what I feel is a truly biblical conclusion that enables me to truly understand the issue at its roots. Many have thrown out the law entirely in order to explain grace. But the purpose for the law is to reveal our hearts and drive us to intimacy with God. Then we’ll have the resources (love) we need to make our marriage work, even if it means laying down our lives for our mate. This takes wisdom, not dead works, or some mates could in fact end up dead or insane. Literally!
Many godly saints in ministry have been divorced and remarried and God’s grace seems to rest heavily on them. Who am I to judge, when the Bible is a book of redemption– redeeming our mistakes? On the other hand, divorce and remarriage have gotten so easy, I’m afraid we’ve misused grace for convenience. This article was approved by three jail chaplains and all the friends I asked to read it, including ministers, some of whom are divorced and remarried.
3. Buy Heavenly Real Estate Now: Cheap Now, Priceless Later This article is by far the most unpopular article I’ve ever written, but in some ways the most important. (I’ll re-write and update it some day.) It’s about seeing the priceless value of what we now think are worthless trials we're going through now. While writing it I discovered Philippians 3:7-10 for the first time, though I had memorized it more than 30 years ago and considered it my life's motto, along with Php. 2:5-8. Now I'm longing for grace to walk in that. God help me!!
4. King Saul: Awesome Beginning--Tragic End This is a study in failure to wait for God's timing. Waiting for God in darkness means death to the flesh, but the reward is that God gets to do all the work while we get to rest, enjoy, and actually have fun being "laborers together with Him." The down side is that He may do a lot less through us than our ambition and "search for significance" call for. (That will give us more time for intimacy with Him and our families.) Another catch is that waiting is not doing nothing, but being faithful in little things (Ps 123) with a listening heart for Him. This can be equally humbling, especially if "little things" means submitting to or working with "difficult" people (hence "darkness"). No wonder many of us must "labor" and be "heavy laden" before we become willing to "take His yoke" and "learn of Him" (Mt. 11:29).
5. How to Escape the Guilt Trap and Walk in the Spirit This is the first article I wrote for prison and jail inmates in an attempt to explain the freedom and grace God brought me to in 1976 after twenty years of suicidal depression. It deals with Romans three through eight. I quite giving it out because I feared people eagerly jump at any basis to enjoy grace without the responsibility that goes with it. I replaced it with a shorter, simpler one (above), Get Up: How to Use the Romans Seven Reset Button, with strong warnings against using grace as an excuse to sin.
If you don't struggle in your spiritual walk, if you enjoy it and never wrestle with feelings of inadequacy, failure, and guilt, if you have no problem feeling intimate with God and that He always loves you just as you are, then shout for joy! You certainly don't need this article. Keep walking in that rare walk, which few of us enjoy consistently.
6. How to Walk in the Spirit for Hardheads: the Mystery of the Hoof and Cud This is a sequel to the How to Escape the Guilt Trap and Walk in the Spirit, clarifying the mystery of how to walk by faith when you keep stumbling and blowing it. Based on what makes an animal "clean" (Lev. 11:3), it somewhat develops that strange covenant-cutting ritual in Genesis 15 and relates it to Hebrews 4:12-13. But the article hardly does justice to what I'm convinced is the most difficult and terrifying aspect of coming to maturity--becoming transparent and vulnerable. If you take time to study it, I'd appreciate any helpful suggestions, because I plan to re-write it, maybe into a book. Thanks.
7. The Leaven of Pentecost: Don't Let It Sour Your Spirit This is for those who are turned off by the weirdness in some Pentecostal churches. I hope it gives understanding to those who struggle with it as I did for so many years and still do. Until I see things with my spiritual eyes. Then I either have grace to forgive and “bear with one another in love,” or enter in and enjoy.
8. Five Reasons Why David Was a Man after God's Own Heart This is not an article but an outline study, designed to look up the scriptures relating to each of the five points. David is mentioned more times in the Bible than any other man. His kingdom is a model for God’s kingdom. Jesus came as “the Son of David” and will come again as “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the root of David.” What is it about David that God called him “a man after My own heart, who will do all My will”? (1 Sam. 13:14, Acts 13;22)
The Seven Point Checklist is for people straddling the fence and need to know if they are even saved. This article about David is for the spiritually mature, who need to compare their walk, not with some preacher who’s living in sin, but with the king who sinned horribly, but climbed his way back to an even deeper relationship with God than He had before.
It’s our best example in the Bible, a guide to spiritual recovery and daily maintenance if we’re serious about knowing God.
9. Use It or Lose It: how faithful are you as a steward in the eight areas of opportunity available to you? Our character, our heart, is who we really are behind what people see. Yet God will judge every one of us by our works, because we do what’s in our heart. He will separate people, the “sheep” from the “goats,” who end up in “everlasting fire,” by how they responded to the needs of others. It’s frightening because statistics say that between 2 and 10 percent of church members do the work of the other 90 to 98 percent.
This article breaks down the eight areas of stewardship in everyone’s life. A steward is a person in charge of something or someone. These eight areas are all around and within us. But our responsibility toward them is the measurement of our inward character, which is why we’ll be judged by our works. You are reading this because your spiritual need is what God has placed in my heart; you are part of my stewardship. I want to help you walk out your obedience in Christ.
10. Eat Your Way to Royalty The manna God fed Israel in the desert was the key to their spiritual growth and identity as a nation. But they never saw its value and missed their visitation from God. This article traces the manna in its spiritual meaning from the Old to the New Testament and down to our time. It’s the one thing by which we rise or fall spiritually, yet the most difficult (but easy) thing about our Christian walk.
11. Joab and the Horns of Power Joab was the head of David’s army, the one who conquered Jerusalem for David, won all his wars, and made him the most powerful king in the Middle East, next to Egypt. He advised David against unwise decisions and actions that would have and did cost David serious consequences. Joab did what a lot of people do when government leaders get too lax and let people get away with murder. Joab should have been listed in the catalog of David’s greatest military officers (2 Sam 23:8-39). But he was disqualified completely at the end. For “the end of a thing is better than its beginning; the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit” (Ecc 7:8). This is a complement to the Jonathan article (They Wept Together, but David More So), though Joab’s problem was much worse.
This article is actually a chapter in an unpublished book on the Tabernacle I wrote in the mid 1980s; the “horns of power” are the horns of the brass alter in the outer court of the Tabernacle. The book is all dialogue, like this chapter/article, to make a boring subject interesting.
12. Haman: Amalek’s Last Stand Ancient Amalek, according to some Jewish sources, corresponds with modern terrorism, spiritually. Jonathan Cahn says terrorism’s roots go back to Assyria, and that’s no doubt also true. It’s similar, but since terrorism is a “back door enemy” which comes from behind, not face to face, Amalek is a more perfect picture of this spiritual root.The book of Esther is the story of the Amalek’s destruction in the person of Haman. It’s an uncanny parallel to what we are facing today and how to prepare spiritually.
13. Unparanoid Jeremy Schmut This is a short, one page fictional story about a young deformed man whose outlook got transformed,
14. My Genesis 15 horror of darkness This is the lowest pit of my entire life: November 1978, the result of my disobedience after God had revealed Himself so clearly to me. It had been the ending of my You Can Make It Without Hustling article, but it made the article too long and the print too small for one legal-size sheet of paper. Besides, I felt it might be a little to deep for the style of the hustling content.
