© Copyright 1995 - Bishop T.D. Jakes All rights reserved.

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Permission will be granted upon request. Unless otherwise identified, Scripture
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Take note that the name satan and related names are not capitalized. We choose
not to acknowledge him, even to the point of violating grammatical rules.
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 DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to all the many people whose trials

and traumas have exempted them from sharing their
contributions with this world! You may often be intimidated,
but you are not isolated. The best kept secret in ministry is that
God can do so much with so little. As you find your way out of
the shadows and into the light, we await your return. The
greatest voice is the one that comes to us from the grave. I
pray that God gives you the courage to come out of the grave
clothes and go on with your life. I hope this book gives you
the greatest gift any one of us has ever known—a second
chance!
 CONTENTS

Chapter
1 THE FEAR OF THE FATHER
2 NO SECRETS IN THE SECRET PLACE
3 SUPERMAN IS DEAD
4 THE POWER OF PASSION
5 REAPING THE REWARDS OF YOUR OWN THOUGHTS
6 THE COLD KISS OF A CALLOUSED HEART
7 SURVIVE THE CRASH OF RELATIONSHIPS
8 HELP ! M Y NEW HEART IS LIVING IN AN OLD BODY
9 NO A DDITIVES : THE BLOOD A LONE
10 HE LAID A SIDE HIS GARMENTS
11 STRIPPED FOR PRAYER
 Chapter 1

THE F EAR OF THE F ATHER

Have you ever tasted that cold, acid-like taste of fear? I

mean the kind of fear that feels like a cinder block is being
dragged across the pit of your stomach. It’s the kind where
cold chills trimmed with a prickly sensation flood your body,
adorning itself in a distinct sense of nausea. No matter how
strong we are, there is always something that can cause the
heart to flutter and the pulse to weaken.
Fear is as lethal to us as paralysis of the brain. It makes our
thoughts become arthritic and our memory sluggish. It is the
kind of feeling that can make a graceful person stumble up the
stairs in a crowd. You know what I mean—the thing that makes
the articulate stutter and the rhythmic become spastic. Like an
oversized growth, fear soon becomes impossible to
camouflage. Telltale signs like trembling knees or quivering lips
betray fear even in the most disciplined person. Fear is the
nightmare of the stage; it haunts the hearts of the timid as well
as of the intimidated.
From the football field to the ski slope, fear has a visa or
entrance that allows it to access the most discriminating crowd.
It is not prejudiced, nor is it socially conscious. It can attack
the impoverished or the aristocratic. When it grips the heart of
a preacher, his notes turn into a foreign language and his
breathing becomes asthmatic.
To me, there is no fear like the fear of the innocent. This is
the fear of a child who walks into a dark basement to find the
light switch far from reach—and every mop and bucket
becomes a sinister, sleazy creature whose cold breath lurks
upon the neck of life’s little apprentice. I can remember
moments as a child when I thought my heart had turned into an
African tom-tom that was being beaten by an insane musician
whose determined beating would soon break through my chest
like the bursting of a flood-engorged dam.
Even now I can only speculate how long it took for fear to
give way to normalcy, or for the distant rumble of a racing heart
to recede into the steadiness of practical thinking and
rationality. I can’t estimate time because fear traps time and
holds it hostage in a prison of icy anxiety. Eventually, though,
like the thawing of icicles on the roof of an aged and sagging
house, my heart would gradually melt into a steady and less
pronounced beat.
I confess that maturity has chased away many of the
ghosts and goblins of my youthful closet of fear. Nevertheless,
there are still those occasional moments when reason gives
way to the fanciful imagination of the fearful little boy in me,
who peeks his head out of my now fully developed frame like a
turtle sticks his head out of its shell with caution and precision.

THE LOVE OF THE FATHER

 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again
until Christ be formed in you. Galatians 4:19

Thank God that He understands the hidden part within

each of us. He understands the child in us, and He speaks to
our blanket-clutching, thumb-sucking infantile need. In spite of
our growth, income, education, or notoriety, He still speaks to
the childhood issues of the aging heart. This is the ministry
that only a Father can give.
Have you ever noticed that you are never a grownup to the
ones who birthed you? They completely disregard the gray
hairs, crowfeet, and bulging, blossoming waistlines of
abundant life. No matter how many children call you “Dad” or
“Mom,” to your parents you are still just a child yourself. They
seem to think you have slipped into the closet to put on
grownup clothes and are really just playing a game. They must
believe that somewhere beneath the receding hairline there is
still a child, hiding in the darkness of adulthood. The worst part
about it is (keep this quiet), I think they are right!
The Lord looks beyond our facade and sees the trembling
places in our lives. He knows our innermost needs. No matter
how spiritually mature we try to appear, He is still aware that
lurking in the shadows is a discarded candy wrapper from the
childish desire we just prayed off last night—the lingering
evidence of some little temper or temptation that only the
Father can see hiding within His supposedly “all grownup”
little child.
It is He alone whom we must trust to see the very worst in
us, yet still think the very best of us. It is simply the love of a
Father. It is the unfailing love of a Father whose son should
have been old enough to receive his inheritance without acting
like a child, without wandering off into failure and stumbling
down the mine shaft of lasciviousness. Nevertheless, the
Father’s love throws a party for the prodigal and prepares a
feast for the foolish. Comprehend with childhood faith the love
of the Father we have in God!
When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, the
first thing He taught them was to acknowledge the fatherhood
of God. When we say “Our Father,” we acknowledge His
fatherhood and declare our sonship. Sonship is the basis for
our relationship with Him as it relates to the privilege of
belonging to His divine family. Similarly, one of the first words
most babies say is “Daddy.” So knowing your father helps you
understand your own identity as a son or daughter. Greater still
is the need to know not only who my father is, but how he feels
about me.
It is not good to deny a child the right to feel his father’s
love. In divorce cases, some women use the children to punish
their ex-husbands. Because of her broken covenant with the
child’s father, the mother may deny him the right to see his
child. This is not good for the child! Every child is curious
about his father.

Philip saith unto Him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it

sufficeth us. John 14:8
 Philip didn’t know who the Father was, but he longed to
see Him. I can still remember what it was like to fall asleep
watching television and have my father pick up my listless,
sleep-ridden frame from the couch and carry me up the stairs to
bed. I would wake up to the faint smell of his “Old Spice”
cologne and feel his strong arms around me, carrying me as if I
weighed nothing at all. I never felt as safe and protected as I
did in the arms of my father—that is, until he died and I was
forced to seek refuge in the arms of my heavenly Father.
What a relief to learn that God can carry the load even
better than my natural father could, and that He will never leave
me nor forsake me! Perhaps it was this holy refuge that inspired
the hymnist to pen the hymn, “What a fellowship, what a joy
divine. Leaning on the everlasting arms” (“Leaning On the
Everlasting Arms,” Elisha A. Hoffman, 1887).

FEAR OR RESPECT?
And unto man He said, Behold, the fear of the Lord,
that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is
understanding. Job 28:28

The Hebrew term for “fear” in this verse is yir’ah,

according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. It
means a moral fear, or reverence. So what attitude should we
have toward our heavenly Father? The Bible declares that we
should have a strong degree of reverence for Him. But a
distinction must be made here: there is a great deal of
difference between fear and reverence.
 The term reverence means to respect or revere; but the term
fear carries with it a certain connotation of terror and
intimidation. That kind of fear is not a healthy attitude for a
child of God to have about his heavenly Father. The term
rendered “fear” in Job 28:28 could be better translated as
“respect.” Fear will drive man away from God like it drove
Adam to hide in the bushes at the sound of the voice of his
only Deliverer. Adam said, “I heard Thy voice in the garden,
and I was afraid…” (Gen. 3:10). That is not the reaction a loving
father wants from his children. I don’t want my children to
scatter and hide like mice when I approach! I may not always
agree with what they have done, but I will always love who
they are.
I remember an occasion when some students from the
elementary school my sons attended saw me for the first time.
Because I stand a good 6-feet, 2-inches tall, and weigh 250-plus
pounds, the little children were completely astonished. The
other children told my sons, “Look at how big your Dad is! I
bet he would just about kill you. Aren’t you afraid of him?” My
sons quickly responded with glee, “Afraid of him? Naah, he’s
not mean. He’s our Dad!” They were not afraid of my stature
because they were secure in our relationship. Does that mean
they have never been punished? Of course not! What it does
mean is they have never been abused! My love holds my
judgment in balance.
As imperfect as I admit I am, if I know how to love my
children, what about God? Oh friend, He may not approve of
your conduct, but He still loves you! In fact, when you come to
understand this fact, it will help you improve your conduct.

Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness and

forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the
goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? Romans
2:4

If this text is true (and it is), then we must tell of God’s

goodness to those who need to repent. I believe the Church
has confused conviction with condemnation. The Holy Spirit
convicts us of sin. Conviction leads us to a place of
deliverance and change. Condemnation leads us to the
gallows of despair and hopelessness.
Why have we withheld from so many bleeding hearts the
good news of the gospel? We have replaced this good news
with the rambunctious ramblings of self-righteous rhetoric! I
believe that we must assume the ministry of reconciliation and
cause men to be reconciled back to their God. There is no
healing for the sins of man in the bushes of this world.
Regardless of the atrocious behavior we discover when we
work with the flawed material of human insufficiency, we must
remember that the only antidote is in the presence of the Lord. I
am convinced that the very people who need healing the most
have been driven away from the only Healer they will ever find
in this world.
 Chapter 2

NO SECRETS IN THE SECRET P LACE

There is no tiptoeing around the presence of God with

pristine daintiness—as if we could tiptoe softly enough not to
awaken a God who never sleeps nor slumbers. We shuffle in
His presence like children who were instructed not to disturb
their Father, although God isn’t sleepy and He doesn’t have to
go to work. He is alive and awake, and He is well. We blare like
trumpets announcing our successes, but we whisper our
failures through parched lips in the shadows of our
relationship with Him. We dare not air our inconsistencies with
arrogance because we know we are so underdeveloped and
dependent upon Him for everything we need.
His holiness is our objective; we have aspired to acquire it
for years, but none have attained it. Surely there is some
qualitative relationship that we imperfect sons can master in
the presence of our Holy Father! I, for one, need a Father
whose wrinkled-up eyes can see beyond my broken places and
know the longing of my heart.

NOWHERE TO HIDE
It is the nature of a fallen man to hide from God. If you will
remember, Adam also hid from God. How ridiculous it is for us
to think that we can hide from Him! His intelligence supercedes
our frail ability to be deceptive. Adam confessed (after he was
cornered by his Father), “I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I
was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Gen. 3:10).
Do you see what the first man did? He hid himself. No wonder
we are lost. We have hidden ourselves. We didn’t hide our
work or our gifts; we have hidden ourselves.
When a man hides himself from God, he loses himself.
What good is it to know where everything else is, if we cannot
find ourselves? Our loss causes a desperation that produces
sin and separation. Like the prodigal son in chapter 15 of Luke,
in our desperation we need to come to ourselves and come out
from under the bushes where we have hidden ourselves. We
need to become transparent in the presence of the Lord.
Adam’s meager attempt at morality caused him to sew
together a few leaves in a figgy little apron that was dying even
while he was sewing it. Why would a lost man cover himself
with leaves? Adam said, “I was afraid.” Fear separated this son
from his Father; fear caused him to conspire to deceive his only
Solution. This fear was not reverence. It was desperation.
If Adam had only run toward instead of away from God, he
could have been delivered! Why then do we continue to
present a God who cannot be approached to a dying world?
Many in the Christian family are still uncomfortable with their
heavenly Father. Some Christians do not feel accepted in the
beloved. They feel that their relationship with God is
meritorious, but they are intimidated because of His holiness. I
admit that His holiness all the more exposes our flawed, soiled
personhood. Yet His grace allows us to approach Him—though
we are not worthy—through the bloody skins soaked with
Christ’s blood.
We are properly draped and dressed to come into the
presence of a Holy God only because His accepted Son, Jesus
Christ, has wrapped us in His own identity. Like Adam, we are
draped by a bloody sacrifice that has made it possible for us to
approach our Father and live.

Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His

sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the
eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4:13

It is futile to hide from our Father. It is His intelligence

(often referred to as His omniscience) that exposes us! We
cannot alter His ability to see, so we need to develop enough
security to be comfortable with His intelligence. Who else
knows you like God does? If you hide from His perfect love,
you will never be able to enjoy a relationship with your
heavenly Father and be comfortable enough to sit in His lap.
Peter said, “To whom shall we go?” (Jn. 6:68) The truth is
that we have no one else to turn to; yet for some reason, we
don’t seem to know how to come to Him. We don’t realize that
we can be accepted by Him and find tender mercy and healing
for the scars of life and for our bruised hearts—until our
desperation and separation cause us to seek shelter in the
presence of the Lord.
IT TAKES TRUST
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High
shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will
say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my
God; in Him will I trust. Psalm 91:1-2

The basis of any relationship must be trust. Trusting God

with your successes isn’t really a challenge. The real test of
trust is to be able to share your secrets, your inner failures and
fears. A mutual enhancement comes into a relationship where
there is intimacy based on honesty.
Jesus told the woman at the well, a woman whose flaws and
failures He had supernaturally revealed, “…true worshippers
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father
seeketh such [real people, flawed people like the woman at the
well] to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him
must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (Jn. 4:23-24).
We have nothing to fear, for our honesty with the Father
doesn’t reveal anything to Him that He doesn’t already know!
His intellect is so keen that He doesn’t have to wait for you to
make a mistake. He knows of your failure before you fail. His
knowledge is all-inclusive, spanning the gaps between times
and incidents. He knows our thoughts even as we
unconsciously gather them together to make sense in our own
mind!

The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are

 vanity. Psalm 94:11

Once we know this, all our attempts at silence and secrecy

seem juvenile and ridiculous. He is “the all-seeing One,” and
He knows perfectly and completely what is in man. When we
pray, and more importantly, when we commune with God, we
must have the kind of confidence and assurance that neither
requires nor allows deceit. Although my Father abhors my sin,
He loves me. His love is incomprehensible, primarily because
there is nothing with which we can compare it! What we must
do is accept the riches of His grace and stand in the shade of
His loving arms.
We are balanced by our awareness of His holiness, which
would condemn us, and of His love, which esteems and
redeems us. He is far too holy for me to develop arrogance
about my humanity, yet He is far too loving for me to be
frightened by the emotional dysfunction that comes from being
raised by a father whom we can never seem to please!

GOD UNDERSTANDS US
What creates a feeling of wholeness in the heart of the
believer is the awareness that while God’s standards do not
change, neither does His compassion. One thing we search for
at every level of our relationships is “to be understood.” When
I am properly understood, I don’t always have to express and
explain. Thank You, Lord, for not asking me to explain what I
oft can scarcely express!
 We quickly grow weary when we are around anyone who
demands that we constantly qualify our statements and explain
our intent. We want to be near those who comprehend the
subtle expressions of affection, intimacy, and need—a touch, a
brief hug, a sigh emitted in the stillness of a moment.
Communication cannot be typed or taught; it must be
understood. At this level there is a communication so intense
that those who understand it can clearly speak it, even through
closed lips. As with lovers staring at each other across a
crowded and smoke-filled room, words seem so unnecessary
when there is understanding. It is with this kind of
understanding that God clearly perceives and understands our
every need.

OPEN COMMUNICATION
I believe that when the Scriptures declare that men “ought
always to pray, and not to faint” (Lk. 18:1b), that they are
speaking of living in a state of open communication with God,
not necessarily jabbering at Him nonstop for hours. Many
people say, “I am going to pray for a certain amount of time.”
They ramble on in prayer for hours on their knees, and they
end up watching the clock while they utter mindless rhetoric,
trying to get in the specified amount of time in prayer.
Let me ask you, would you want someone to talk to you
like that? True friends can drive down a road and lapse in and
out of conversation, deeply enjoying each other’s company—
all without any obligation to maintain a steady rhythm of
rhetoric. Their communication is just an awareness of the
presence of someone they know and understand. We don’t
need to labor to create what is already there. I am glad my
Savior knows what my speech and my silence suggest. I need
not labor to create what we already share in the secret place of
our hearts!
What is required of us? We are called to live in a state of
openhearted communication with the Lord. Yes, we feel
vulnerable when we realize that our hearts are completely
exposed before God. Yet every one of us desperately needs to
have someone who is able to help us, someone who is able to
understand the issues that are etched on the tablets of our
heart!

NAKED BEFORE GOD

Since we already feel exposed when we realize that there is
not one thought we have entertained that God has not seen
and heard, then there is no need for a sanctimonious
misrepresentation of who we are! We no longer need to live
under the strain of continual camouflage. Neither flagrant nor
flamboyant, we are naked before Him in the same sense that a
man sprawls naked on the operating table before a surgeon.
The man is neither boastful nor embarrassed, for he
understands that his exposed condition is a necessity of their
relationship. Whether the doctor finds good or evil, what is
there is there, and the man’s comfort lies in the conviction that
the surgeon possesses the wherewithal to restore order to any
area that may be in disarray.
 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Matthew 5:8

The purity that attracts the presence of God comes from

allowing Him to perpetually flush away the corrosion that
threatens to block the abundant arterial flow of His grace and
mercy toward us. In short, we need to show Him what is
clogging or hindering His flow of life to us so He can clean us
and keep us acceptable before Him in love.
The Greek word katheros is used here to express “purity.”
It is from this word that we have the English derivative
“catharize,” which describes medical processes used to
cleanse, flush, or release fluids from the body. God is
continually sending a deluge of His cleansing grace into the
hearts of His children, but He can’t clean or purify what we
hide in the secret corners of our hearts and minds. The
hymnist wrote a powerful verse when he penned:

“Lord Jesus, I long to be perfectly whole. I want Thee

forever to live in my soul. Break down every idol, cast
out every foe. Now wash me and I shall be whiter than
snow” (“Whiter Than Snow,” James Nicholson, 1872).

I can still remember the great joy that flooded my soul when
Christ came into my heart. I was walking on air for weeks. It
was, and in fact, still is exciting to me to know that my many
deplorable sins have been rinsed from my records by the
efficacious blood of the Lamb! I shouted and praised the Lord
with an abandonment as if it were the last time I would have to
praise the Lord.
Upon reflection, I came to understand that the slate had
been cleansed at Calvary, but the mind is being renewed from
day to day. As images came from time to time with flashbacks
of things that haunted the attic of my mind like ghosts
unexorcised, I began to seek the Lord who saved me for the
grace to keep me. It was then that I began to realize the great
truth that the blood of Christ doesn’t just reach backwards into
the bleakness of my past debauchery—it also has the power to
cover my ongoing struggles!
I hadn’t known then that Jesus paid it all! The blood of
Christ covers my past, present, and future struggles, not so I
could run through my inheritance like the prodigal son (if that
were possible), but so I might have a comfort as I lie on the
table of His grace. I must relax in this comfort and assurance
and allow the tools of day-to-day tests and struggles to
skillfully implant into my heart and mind a clearer reflection of
His divine nature in me.

CONTENTED IN HIS P RESENCE

Now, amidst the joy that I still possess, I have a growing
appreciation for the peace that comes from knowing I am His
child. I am His—even when I feel like a mess, even when I am
embarrassed to openly discuss my frailties and flaws, for His
grace is sufficient for me. I thank Him for the peace He has
given to every believer who matures into a trust-filled
relationship with Jesus Christ. My initial surgery may be
completed, but daily I remain under His intensive care as He
monitors my progressions and occasional digressions. I
wouldn’t trust my future with anybody but Him. What about
you?
Dear friend, you will never worship God correctly if you live
in the shadows, wrestling with unconfessed sin. Whatever you
do, there is an ever-increasing need for you to find a place of
comfort in the presence of the Lord. It is possible to escape my
presence, but not His. He is ever present, waiting on you to
stand before Him and be healed.
Open relationships with other people can never be attained
until you first drop the towel and stand naked before God. If
you cannot trust Him, then all hope is lost. When Mary, the
sinner, came and washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, some
mocked Jesus and discredited Him, insinuating that He lacked
the discernment to know she was a woman with a questionable
past (see Lk. 7:39). The sad truth is they had been with Jesus
and still didn’t know His heart. They had heard His
commandments but not His heart. It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t
know the hands that washed His feet had done wrong. It
wasn’t that He didn’t know the hair that dried Him had been let
down before. It was that He didn’t care!
 Chapter 3

SUPERMAN IS DEAD

The best parts of school when I was an eight-year-old were

recess and the walk home from school. I liked recess because it
gave me an opportunity to stretch my legs and play with my
friends. I liked the walk home from school because I usually
had a quarter buried deep within my pocket, hidden somewhere
beneath the bubble gum, the baseball cards, and all the other
paraphernalia that eight-year-olds think are valuable.
I would save that quarter until we walked down Troy Road
toward “old man Harless’ ” store. Now, that was what we called
him if we were sure he wasn’t around. But if we saw him, he
immediately became “Mr. Harless,” complete with “Yes, sir,”
and “No, sir,” and all the other polite things we were instructed
to say lest the seats of our pants perish in the fires of my
mother’s wrath!
That quarter of mine was saved for the brightly colored
books that were stacked in a display for all the children to see.
There were all of my old friends…Superman and Captain
Marvel, Captain America and Spiderman. I would purchase a
copy of the latest issue and hurry a little farther down Troy
Road. Once I found the old path that led up the hill behind the
house, I would start my ascent to the big rock beneath the
apple tree. There, hidden from public scrutiny, I would pull out
my prized hero magazine and imagine that I was one of these
men, a super hero who could transform as needed into
anything necessary to destroy the villain.
I know all of this sounds terribly old-fashioned. Maybe it
sounds a little too much like a scene that should include Andy
Griffith, Aunt Bea, and the whole Mayberry clan, but that was
really how it was in the days before children started carrying
guns instead of comic books. I grew up reading about heroes.
We believed in possibility, and though we were neither wealthy
nor affluent, we could escape like a bird through the window of
a full-color magazine and become anybody we wanted to be for
at least 30 minutes—before my mother’s voice would be heard
from the rickety back porch behind the house.

WHERE DID THE HEROES GO?

We need heroes today. We need someone to believe in and
look up to. We need someone who has accomplished
something to give us the courage to believe in the invisible and
feel the intangible. We need role models and men whose
shadows we may stand in, men who provide a cool refreshing
place of safety away from the despair of our oppressive
society. It’s just that all the “supermen” in the Church seem to
have somehow gotten zapped by “kryptonite.” Either they or
their reputations have wilted into the abyss of human failure.
What are we going to do as we face this generation? From
drug-using political officials to prostitute-purchasing
preachers, the stars are falling on the heads of this generation!
All of their wonder and dreams have turned into a comic book
—a comic book that somehow doesn’t seem funny anymore.
Where did the heroes go?
This isn’t just a church issue. We’re suffering from an
eroding sense of family, not just of family values. The entire
concept of the family, period, has been crumbling because of
this society’s growing acceptance of non-traditional families.
More and more women have chosen to be mothers without
choosing fathers, while others have become single parents by
necessity, not by choice. The gay community has added to the
confusion by establishing “homes” that do not reflect God’s
original plan for child-rearing. So now we have twisted homes
that are producing twisted children.
There is a cry coming up out of the city streets:
Our fathers went out for coffee and came back with
cocaine. Their hands will not tuck us in because their feet are
shackled to the prison floor.
Mother is out of milk and brother just joined a gang. Even
in the neighborhood we used to drive through and dream that
we lived in, we see ambulances.
Moving vans just moved Mommy away from Daddy, and
now we see them by appointment. The whole country has
fallen into the trash can like discarded comic books whose
story lines are out-of-date. Where are the heroes?

HONESTY BEFORE GOD

 Our healing will require more than a processional of
religious ideas that are neither potent nor relevant. We need to
understand that God is able to repair the broken places, but it
requires us to expose where those broken places are. If we
don’t say to Him, “This is where I am hurting,” then how can
He pour in the oil and the wine?
We need to lay ourselves before Him and seek His face in
the beauty of holiness—the holiness that produces wholeness.
This isn’t a matter of one denomination arguing with another
over who is right; it is a matter of a broken family seeking
healing and answers that can only come from the presence of
God. I am convinced He can heal whatever we can confess!

Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for He hath

torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will
bind us up. Hosea 6:1

It is in these moments that we are forced to reevaluate our

concepts. Have we misaligned ourselves with God, or were our
goals “out of kilter” to begin with? I really believe that we have
made the unfortunate error of Old Testament Israel, whose
attempt to attain righteousness produced a self-righteous
mentality in many.
The Old Testament expressed the righteousness of God, a
righteousness that the New Testament fully revealed in the
gospel of Jesus Christ. Although the Old Testament could not
completely reveal the righteousness of God, it certainly
introduced a concept of how God defines holiness to humanity
and Israel. God knew that the children of Israel would fail in
their attempts to achieve the morality contained in the Law.
Through their failures, God wanted the Israelites to find the
redemption that He had allocated through the blood.
Unfortunately, instead of honestly confessing to God the
enormity of their failure, they became increasingly hypocritical.
The whole purpose of the Law was spoiled because the fleshly
egos of men would not repent and seek divine assistance for
justification.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is

the power of God unto salvation to every one that
believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For
therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith
to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
Romans 1:16-17

It takes great courage to exemplify total honesty with God.

We have not even been totally released to admit our
insufficiencies with others, and sometimes even with
ourselves. How tragic! When we discover our own limitations,
we become eligible to discover the all-sufficiency of God. Here
we stand, like Israel in tainted armor, before the presence of a
God whose brilliancy dims the radiant brightness of the sun.
Yet there is a method to the madness of our predicament.
God knew who we were when He called us. Perhaps the
sharp contrast between the people God uses and the God who
uses them is to provide the worshiper with a clear distinction of
who is to be worshiped!
REAL HEROES
It is undeniable that we face faltering visions and
visionaries. Let us seek God for His divine purpose. Could it
possibly be that God’s intent is to establish believable heroes?
We need no glaring, gleaming, high-polished people for
this day! We need heroes whose tarnished suits cannot hide
their open hearts or their need to touch broken lives. The cry is
going out for something believable—for something that even
if not glorious, is at least fathomable.
The stress of trying to impress others with elitist
presentations of spiraling spiritual altitudes has produced
isolation and intimidation. No wonder our leaders are dying in
the pulpit and suffering from an epidemic of heart attacks and
strokes! It is hard to take an ordinary man from an ordinary
background, saddle him with responsibility and tremendous
visibility, and tell him, “You must be god-like.”
Writing in all honesty, the greatest of the apostles—the
writer of most of the New Testament epistles— confessed that
though he aspired to “apprehend,” he hadn’t attained (see Phil.
3:12). In what area did this apostle fail? The Holy Spirit has
granted him some semblance of diplomatic immunity that at
least affords him the right of privacy in spite of imperfections.
Yet we continually eat a perfect word from his stained hands, a
word that converts the soul and challenges the most godly
amongst us. I speak, of course, of the apostle Paul himself!

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but

 this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are
behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are
before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14

Alas, the call is a high calling. Yet it has been answered by

lowly men who had the discernment to see a God high and
lifted up. They stood on their toes like children, but still fell
short of reaching His splendor. In short, the heroes in the Bible
were not perfect, but they were powerful! They were not
superhuman, but they were revelatory. Often chastised and
corrected, they were still not discarded, for the Lord was with
them.
Jesus was forever having to correct His disciples. Their
pettiness, their anger and stinginess—these faults often
reaffirmed the fact that they were “men of like passions.” I, for
one, am glad that they were. Their human frailties encourage
the rest of us that we too can be used by God in spite of our
feeble, crippled, and fragmented attempts at piety and true
devotion.

WHAT MAKES A HERO?

At the risk of tarnishing a record that no one believes
anyway, could we reevaluate what a hero really is? Isn’t a hero
someone who puts himself at risk to help someone else? Is it
someone whose unselfish heart allows him to take dangerous
risks to accomplish definite results to help someone else? I
wonder if some of the men and women whom we say “failed”
actually tarnished their records by having the courage to climb
high enough to take the risks that others would not be willing
to take…in order to help others.
No, let’s not glamorize sin. Sin is sin and it stinks in the
nostrils of God. But have our noses become more sensitive
than God’s? Would we, like the others outside the tomb,
choose to condemn to an eternal grave the man Lazarus, whose
decomposing body had been shut up in a tomb for three days
and begun to stink? Thank God that Jesus didn’t let the stink
stop Him from saving the man.
You have to be a hero to even expose yourself to the
jealousy and cruelty of being raised up as a leader. Leaders are
ostracized by their peers and criticized by their subordinates.
They serve valiantly, though they often receive blows from
satan and stabs from friends. Through it all, they continue to
minister as if all were well.
I pause to lift to the throne every man or woman of God
who is under attack by the enemy. Whether it be a financial,
spiritual, or moral attack, I pray for you, my silent, alienated,
wounded physician. May the medicine you have given to
others come to your aid and bless you. May you recover all
that satan desires to destroy in your life! In Jesus’ name,
Amen!

These all died in faith, not having received the

promises, but having seen them afar off, and were
persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed
that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For
 they that say such things declare plainly that they seek
a country. Hebrews 11:13-14

It is imperative that our vision be both progressive and

regressive. In the forefront of our minds must be a plan that
promises bright hopes for the future. I often say that a man
cannot die with a twinkle in his eye! There must be a strong
sense of destiny lodged firmly in our minds that dispels the
despair of past failures. We must live our lives facing the rising
sun.
Although heroes don’t have to be perfect, I realize they
must be people who are resilient enough to survive tragedy
and adversity. All of us have experienced the pain of adversity
in our warfare, whether it was a physical, emotional,
economical, spiritual, or sexual attack. Regardless of which
category the attack falls under, they are very personal in
nature. Real heroes not only survive the incident, but also
overcome the lingering side effects that often come from it.
Why do I say that? If you don’t survive, you can’t save
anyone. No young man in a combat zone can carry his
wounded comrade if he himself does not survive. Live long
enough to invest the wealth of your experience in the release of
some other victim whom satan desires to bind or incapacitate!

And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from

whence they came out, they might have had
opportunity to have returned. Hebrews 11:15

The faith of these heroes sets them apart from other men. It
is your convictions that cause you to be distinctly different
from others whose complacency you can’t seem to share. The
people referred to in Hebrews 11 were not mindful of where
they came from. In other words, their minds were full of where
they were going. These valiant heroes were not perfect, but
they were convinced that what God had promised He was able
to perform. Now if their minds had been full of their origin
instead of their destiny, they would have gone back. Be
assured that people always move in the direction of their
mind. Whatever your mind is full of, that is where you
eventually move. Thank God for people who can see the
invisible, and touch with their faith the intangible promises of
God.

HEROES OF FAITH
And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me
to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of
Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the
prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms,
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the
mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped
the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made
strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the
armies of the aliens. Hebrews 11:32-34

The Scriptures declare that these heroes were made strong

out of weakness. In order to be a real success, you must be
able to be strengthened through struggle. What we need is a
hero who can, as these men did, report back to the world that
he escaped. He may have felt weak, he may have cried and
suffered, but he still made it. Look at these men mentioned in
Hebrews 11:32. Examine their lives. They were not glaring
examples of flawless character; yet they epitomized faith
toward God. Even though most of them experienced failures
and flaws, they would have made the front pages of the
newspapers in our day for their heroism. We must be careful
when judging the weak moments in their lives. Consider the
entirety of their lives and you will see that the dent in their
armor didn’t affect their performance on the battlefield.
Gideon failed the biblical faith test when he sought a sign.
Samson shined on the battlefield but had struggles in the
bedroom. This anointed judge of Israel wrestled with more than
a failed marriage that he could not seem to regain. He had an
insatiable appetite for strange flesh, which led to his demise,
yet he still made it to the list of the few, the proud, and the
brave.
Oh yes, then there is Jephthah, the illegitimate child who
was rejected by his siblings and ostracized by his family. He
went to the land of Tob where he became what we would call a
gang leader. He gathered together the “vain” fellows, a
sampling of social rejects, and became their leader. In spite of
his adolescent struggles, and his rash tendency to make wild
vows (which cost him the destruction of his daughter’s future),
he still made it to the roll of the renowned. He made it because
he believed God. He lifted himself above his circumstances and
fought the enemies without and within!
CHOSEN BY REJECTION
To me, Jephthah’s gang reveals the part of ministry that we
are missing: He built an army out of rejects. There is something
powerful about being a “chosen reject”; chosen by God but
rejected by men. There is a focus that evolves in the heart of
someone who has been rejected by men. Their rejection creates
a feeling of misplacement. Have you ever felt misplaced? Have
you ever struggled to fit into some network or order in which it
seemed you were not welcomed? It is God’s design that causes
us to experience rejection, even though it is painful.
When we have been ostracized by someone or something
that we wanted to belong to, our streaming tears cannot soften
the hard truth. Rejection tastes like bile in our gut. However,
the experience can make us bitter, or it can make us better. I
choose better. What about you?
I believe this kind of pain causes us to achieve a level of
consecration that is out of the reach of people who have never
been rejected. Why? Once the reality hits us that God
purposely chooses to use misplaced and rejected people, then
first and foremost, we experience a sense of warm gratitude that
flows through our human hearts like hot syrup. It fills every
crack and crevice of our minds, which suggested there was no
place of meaning for us. It is in the shadows of these moments
that we worship behind the veil, wrapped in His Shekinah
Glory, enveloped in the love of the sacrificed Lamb of God, the
God who created a place for the misplaced and chose us for
Himself.
 I can’t help but wonder if we have forsaken some of God’s
finest people because they were under attack, people whom
God wanted to use to make a tremendous statement in the
Body of Christ. These vicarious soldiers would have been so
glad to receive a second chance to return to active duty. They
could bring to us a voice from the grave. They could express
the truth that there is life after death.
Dead circumstances cannot hold down the body of
someone who has been chosen! If no one else embraces these
bleeding, purple heart soldiers, perhaps they should rally
together and find comfort in the commonality of their mutual
experience. Thank God for Jephthah, who reminds us of the
deep, abiding reality that even if we were thrown into a refuse
receptacle by closed minds who decided that our dry bones
couldn’t live again, God is still in the business of recycling
human lives!
I must confess that more than once I have seen His hand
pick up the pieces of this broken heart and restore back to
service my crushed emotions and murky confidence, while I
stood in awe at the fact that God can do so much with so little.
Isn’t that the gospel? Isn’t that the good news we are
supposed to preach to the poor souls of broken men? Isn’t that
where the revival must start—in the trash cans of our
churches, in the dumpsters of ministries that have discarded
what God regarded, and regarded what God has discarded?
The greatest place to preach isn’t in our great meetings
with swelling crowds and lofty recognitions. The greatest place
to preach is in the trenches, in the foxholes and the hogpens of
life. If you want a grateful audience, take your message to the
messy places of life and scrape the hog hairs off the prodigal
sons of God, who were locked away in the hog pens by the
spiritual elite.
It is here in these abominable situations that you will find
true worship being born, springing out of the hearts of men
who realize the riches of His grace. No worship seminar is
needed for someone whose tearstained face has turned from
humiliation to inspiration. Their personal degradation has
become a living demonstration of the depths of the
unfathomable love of God! My friend, this is Davidic worship!
This is the praise of David, whose critical brothers and
distracted father helped him become the canvas on which God
paints the finest picture of worship these weary eyes have ever
witnessed!
I won’t even take the time to point out the obvious
indiscretions of King David. Even his obvious anointing and
worship did not exempt him from internal conflict, or from a
lethal experience with infidelity that would have made a
heathen blush. No, I don’t want to glamorize the sins of these
supermen of faith, but I just had to discuss the fact that we
have thrown away a hundred men like them. I am afraid we
have killed our heroes because we were looking for the brightly
packaged, cartoon-clad individuals we read about.
It is time for us to redefine and redirect our gaze to find the
heroes of God among us. We must not forget that God
purposely chooses to use misplaced and rejected people, and
He may be looking in our direction.
 Chapter 4

THE POWER OF PASSION

To whom also He shewed Himself alive after His

passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them
forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the
kingdom of God. Acts 1:3

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Greek word pathos,

usually translated as “suffer” or “to feel,” is used here to
describe Christ’s crucifixion. What a strange choice of
expression for such a hideous occurrence. Yet it alludes to a
deeper truth that each of us must face. Although the inference
is toward His suffering, look a little deeper beneath the
sufferings that He experienced and understand that there was
an underlying ecstasy beneath the pain of the cross. The writer
of Hebrews alludes to it as he lifts the veil and peeks behind
the crisis of the cross and reports the purpose of the cross.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our

faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured
the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the
right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2

The cliché, “No pain no gain,” suggests that gain validates

the pain we incur. That is only true for the person who has
opened up and allowed himself to want or need something bad
enough to endure the unpleasantness attached to attaining his
goal. The problem with most people is that they stand around
like dreamers, gazing into the night at distant stars instead of
working in the day to build a ship to reach the stars.
Regardless of how far away the goal may seem, if there is a real
passion for it, we can accomplish much in His name.

WE NEED P ASSION!
Here lies the reality of fulfillment. There can be no
fulfillment where there is no passion. The passion that causes
us to achieve has to be strong enough to make us
uncomfortable. The discomfort that comes from the desire must
be intense enough to keep the obstacles between you and the
thing you desire from aborting the intensity of your desire!
Simply stated, you must want it bad enough to survive the
process required to attain it. It doesn’t matter whether it is a
good marriage, a ministry, a business, or whatever. There will
always be hindrances to overcome. It is the force of your
personal passion to achieve that gives you the force to break
down the wall between you and the thing you desire.
Jesus, our prime example of success, had a cross between
Him and His goal. The cross was not the end; it was the means.
He didn’t enjoy the means, but He endured it—His passion
was for the end. What gave Him the power to endure His
means to achieve the end? It was His passion.
The desire that burns and inflames your heart, the desire
that is forever in your thoughts, becomes the fuel that enables
you to withstand whatever life sends against you. His
suffering was for the sins of this world. It was more than
groping in the gross darkness of a feverish death. It was the
suffering of the passionate!

THE SUFFERING OF THE P ASSIONATE

There is an intense discomfort associated with passion and
desire. It is not pleasant; it is, in fact, suffering. It is an intense,
unquenched desire that gnaws at the fibers of our minds,
motivating us to actions of fulfillment. Have you ever noticed
that God mightily uses some of the most wretched sinners
whom He converted into great ministers? It is because these
characters were people who were accustomed to passion and
acquisition. They were people who dared to desire. They were
people who, although misdirected at one time, possessed such
a burning passion that, if bridled and directed, could make them
people of great accomplishment.
Oh, thou man or woman of great passion, driven by intense
feelings and desire, you often wrestle with your ambitious
nature. Hear me and hear me well: You don’t want to kill your
passion; you just need to redirect it toward a godly vision.
That is why satan has desired to have you. He knows that if
you ever line up your passion with God’s purpose, you will
become a spiritual dynamo. Then there will be no stopping you
until the flames of your passion are quenched in the streams of
your eternal destiny!
 Do not resent your passion. Control it, yes, but please
don’t kill it. Without it, you would be as limp as an overcooked
noodle, your life as bland as hospital food. God created you to
be zesty and alive! Even though you may have often
misdirected your passions, allow God to recycle your feelings.
Retrieve your passions from your dusty religious receptacle
and place them in God’s recycling program!
I realize that passions create suffering. Many people cease
to desire just to relieve themselves of the pain and struggle of
trying to attain their dreams. They become zombies trapped in
an intermediate, lukewarm state of existence that is neither hot
nor cold! Their lukewarm, placid philosophy causes them to
sink into the abyss of mediocrity. They live, marry, buy cars,
accumulate stocks, have children, and do everything that their
living counterpart does—but without passion, they just
basically go through the motions!
How sad it is to see them rise out of bed every morning,
arms extended, humming a monotone melody of melancholy
undertones. They grunt incoherent answers at others as
though they are deeply medicated. These mummies may be
mommies or daddies; they may even be preachers or teachers.
They are corpses who aren’t quite dead. Their nebulous state
of affairs exempts them from pain, but denies them pleasure.
Now they are safe from failure, but threatened by depression.

WAKE UP!
What good is life without living? Taste it, live it—even at
the risk of occasional failure and adversity! If you are going to
stand at the plate, then take a swing at the ball! “Suppose I
miss?” you say. Well, I say, “Suppose you miss out, and you
haven’t even taken a swing?” Have you any passion to
triumph? Your desire to protect yourself from further
disappointment has placed you in a comatose state. Wake up
and play! You are not dead! There may be many things about
you that are dead, but you are not dead!
I feel like God is speaking to someone who has quit. No one
knows you have quit, but inside, you have thrown in the towel
and said, “I give.” You wanted to make a difference, but since
you ran into some obstacle, some cross, you decided to adjust
your expectations to your limitations and just keep smiling!
You are wrong! I am blowing a trumpet loudly into your
rigor mortis-ridden ear! God has too much for you to do!
Arise, breathe deeply of this moment. There will never be
another moment in your life like this one! I can’t spare you
tears, fears, or traumas; each passion has its “cross of
validation.” In fact, it is the cross that validates the enormity of
the passion. It is what you endure that expresses how deeply
you desire.

And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These

things saith He that hath the seven Spirits of God, and
the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a
name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and
strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to
die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.
 Revelation 3:1-2

THE P ASSION OF JESUS CHRIST

Jesus suffered the loss of His disciples, His earthly
ministry, His friends, and even His clothes. They cast lots at
His bleeding feet for His seamless robe (see Jn. 19:23-24), but
they could not strip away His passion. Even while He was
dying He continued to minister His message. He went through
hell to reach the joy set before Him, but when He had finished
(after His passion), He got up with the keys to death and hell!
His trophies were the stinger snatched from death itself and
victory yanked from the grave. His prize was a Church
purchased by the blood He shed. But what is ultimately
important is that He accomplished it with His passion.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only

begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should
not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

He “so loved” us. That’s what He did on the cross; He “so

loved” us. This passionate lover, whose Kingdom was not of
this world, came to our world and, with unfeigned love, reached
into the jaws of damnation and caught my falling soul. His love
is exemplified in His coming, but it is consummated in His
dying. In His living He betrothed us, but in His dying He
procured us.
Jesus Christ, the greatest lover the world has ever known,
gives Himself openly and unashamedly. He has found in the
cross a mode of expression that becomes a picture of the
magnitude of His love. His suffering was a by-product of His
passion. His intense love for His ungodly creations led Him to
three nails and one tree.

THE ENEMY’S AGENDA

Where there is no passion, there simply is no power. I fear
greatly that the enemy will attempt to either steal the passion or
smother it beneath the fear of failure and rejection. If we exist
without passion, we slump into a state of stagnation that
hinders us from achieving the purpose of God in our lives.
It is the burning effect of a vision that causes us to escape
destruction. I repeat, I believe with all my heart that a man
never dies with a twinkle in his eye. A gleam of expectation
found in the faces of visionaries creates a tenacity that is not
easily vanquished. If satan could steal nothing from you but
your passion, he would have stolen much of your potency and
power in one fell swoop!
The thing you must be aware of, my friend, is that the
enemy is trying to steal something from you that is not visible.
Any time the invisible is stolen, its absence is not readily
detected. On what day does passion leave a marriage? On
which morning did the worker lose interest in his job? At what
point does the customer decide, “I am not going to buy the
product”?
Depletion comes when enthusiasm leaks out of a person
like air seeping silently out of a tire. Stealthily, the thief siphons
life from you like a minute cut saps the strength of the tire.
Suddenly, what was meant to roll and bear much weight can
now only wobble. There has been such a loss of pressure that
what was once inflated has now become deflated.

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the

wellspring of life. Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

The only solution lies in the absolute, committed guarding

of the heart. Your greatest treasure isn’t your certificate of
deposit. It isn’t your retirement, or your stocks and bonds.
Your greatest treasure is in the strength of the passion that is
locked in the recesses of your heart. Out of the heart flow the
issues of life.
You must keep a firm sobriety about you, warming your
heart with it like it was a warm coat on a wintry night. Keep a
sobriety that refuses to become drunken with fear,
discontentment, or insecurity. Wrap your godly attitude closely
around your heart, for it is the wellspring or the resource from
which comes the strength to keep on living and giving!

GOING THROUGH THE LABOR

I must be careful to say that you can’t spend the rest of
your life trying to protect yourself from the struggles of life.
They are unavoidable. All men face struggles and the seasons
of life, irregardless of their economical, spiritual, or sociological
persuasion! If you become intimidated by that fact, it will cause
you to live your life in an emotional incubator, insulated but
isolated. Having declared that, we must no longer focus on
what can be protected. It is not what we go through that must
be closely monitored. It isn’t the pain that we are adamantly
resisting—it is the loss of passion! We can no more stop pain
than we can stop labor pains from coming upon a woman who
is in travail!
Look at the birthing table of the expectant mother. It is
designed to hold her in the birth position in spite of the pain.
Can you maintain your position—even when it means that you
will be exposed to a harsh level of pain? That is what good
ministry does in our lives. It holds us in place, even when we
would have stepped out of the will of God to save ourselves
from the stress of the process. Jesus was tied to the birthing
table in the garden of Gethsemane. The Church was in Him
“from the foundation of the world,” and it was to be brought
out of His bleeding side on the cross. He was laid in the
stirrups in the garden. As the pains became greater, He prayed
to change position. He didn’t want to be in the vulnerable
position of delivery!

Saying, Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from

Me: nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done. Luke
22:42

We are tied to our destiny like a little trembling lamb is tied

to the altar for sacrifice. Like a woman lifted to the birthing bed,
trembling in pain, forehead drenched with perspiration—we
who are on the verge of miracles are always kept in a perpetual
state of vulnerability! If it were not for our passion for an
expected end, we would have just fainted away entirely,
declaring that the process is too great and the reward too
insignificant.

P ASSIONATE P RAYERS OF THE INFIRM

There has to be a certain intensity of desire to empower a
person to persevere. Even when we pray, God isn’t moved by
our vocabulary. He has answered the broken, fragmented
prayers of the illiterate mind, whose limited intellect could not
abort the childlike faith that produces miracles. He is, as the
Scriptures declare, “touched with the feeling of our infirmities”
(Heb. 4:15). The passionate God is, in fact, touched by the
passions of the prayers of the infirm.

For we have not an high priest which cannot be

touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in
all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Hebrews 4:15

The term rendered as “infirmities” is, first of all, mentioned

in its plural form to indicate that there is generally more than
one. How tragic that most of us will not even admit to the
presence of one infirmity, much less the multiplicity of our
infirmities. When God is “touched” by them, that means He is
sympathetic to the feeling of our infirmities.
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible tells us that
the Greek word astheneia means “feebleness (of mind or
body); by implication, malady; morally, frailty.” This is the word
that the Authorized Version translates as “infirmities.”
Somewhere in the most gifted heart, mind, or body, exists some
malady or frailty—whether moral, mental, or physical—that
incapacitates us to the degree that we need God’s mercies
newly bestowed upon us every morning.

WE ARE OF LIKE P ASSIONS

By God’s design, left splayed before us on the pages of the
Scriptures, are the intricate details of the life of David, whose
passions were both an asset and a liability. We openly filter
through his secret thoughts as casually as if we were reading
the evening Times. His inner struggles and childhood
dysfunctions are openly aired on the pages of the text like the
center foldout in a tabloid.
God didn’t display David’s failures in a divine attempt to
expose the secret prayers of His struggling king. Rather, His
purpose is to give us a point of reference that exhibits the
manifold grace of God. How marvelous is the message that
instructs us that if God could use a David, He also can use us,
as we are all men of like passions.
I do not dispute the passions. In fact, without them I can
never migrate from the obscure hills and shepherd fields of
yesteryear to the victorious acquisition of the palace to which I
have been called. Yet I want to issue a point of warning in the
midst of this dissertation to the one who dares to lay bare his
innermost passions and desires before God—He who has
examined the inner workings of every heart. In reality, in Acts
14:15 the phrase “like passions” comes from the Greek word
homiopathas which literally translated means “to be similarly
affected.”
Did you know that God used men who were similarly
affected (as you are) by certain stimuli and struggles? What a
joy to know that treasure can be surrounded by trash and still
not lose its value! Is a diamond less valuable if it is found in a
clogged drain? Of course not!

And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are

men of like passions with you, and preach unto you
that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living
God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and
all things that are therein. Acts 14:15

A WARNING TO THE P ASSIONATE

The same passion that makes us very good could
potentially make us very bad. Undirected passion becomes a
spawning bed for perversity and dankness. It is what we do
with what we feel that controls the direction of our lives. The
same sail that causes a ship to run before an eastward wind
through fog and rain can also push it headlong in another
direction.
Hear me, O passionate dreamer, whose passion is to walk
after God: The same drive that has become a sword wielded
against the enemy, can become a billboard of disgrace if not
carefully attended!
 The same John who preached in the desert with power and
conviction about the coming of the King and His Kingdom,
one day lay trembling on the cold, damp floor of a jail cell,
haunted by one question. Was the Christ he baptized and
called “the Lamb of God” really authentic? Under growing
pressure, he finally sent a messenger to ask the infamous
question, “Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for
another?” (Mt. 11:3)
What a wailing in prayer this truth should elicit from the
hearts of men and women! Their God-given passions have
delivered them from the mediocrity of constant procrastination
and blessed them to achieve. Now they must watch carefully,
lest the same serum that made them who they are now
perpetuate a downfall! Our defense is naked, honest, fervent
prayer. It is the mediatory power of God that so often catches
our falling souls and sets us back in the nest with the
tenderness of a mother sparrow.

HE RESTORETH MY SOUL
Passions are to be submitted to the Father, just as our Lord
submitted His all on the cross. That is the place where He
wielded all of His passion and all of His force—His passion
was aimed at the joy set before Him, the target of being a
submitted Son. God tested the power of committed passion at
Calvary. If it had not been effective, Christ would have had to
buy Joseph’s tomb instead of borrow it. This is frightening if
you read this with the mummylike mentality that preempts most
people from accomplishing anything. They neutralize their
passion with an apathy and unconcern that renders them
flaccid and ineffective.
Have you faced some tragedies that almost left you in a
state of shock? I can really relate to that feeling. I remember
going through a time of complete emptiness in my ministry. My
symptoms included a nonchalance and a complete aloofness. I
seemed to ignore things that I normally would have
straightened out. It was almost as if nothing mattered to me
anymore. I built a wall of unconcern to hide the deep
depression that had engulfed my life. If you don’t usually
attend to things with an organized plan, then you won’t be able
to relate to what I am saying. Normally I am a stickler for
details. However, during my time of depression, I became
indifferent about whether or not things were done—I simply
was “disconnected.” It seemed safe to be disconnected
because as long as I didn’t care, it didn’t hurt. I had lost the
passion to continue. I was completely disenchanted. Have you
ever experienced the loss of passion and felt no intensity to be
productive?

Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy

sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring
forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee. Genesis 3:16

When God spoke to the first woman about childbirth, He

spoke of sorrow and travail. He spoke of the violent,
tempestuous pain of labor. He forewarned her about the
billowing progression of contractions she would experience at
the end of the third trimester of pregnancy. As her pelvic bones
are literally moved apart, as if separated by the effects of an
earthquake, she is opened as the gates of her femininity
prepare for the birth of a child.
The near-deathlike pains come faster and harder as she
gets closer to delivery. The soft feminine flesh of the woman
whose petals are crushed beneath the weight of an oncoming
child is engulfed in a traumatic rush to deliver life. Afterwards,
you would expect her to vow never to know another man
again!
However, God says that at the end of all this labor and pain,
He would recycle the relationship between the woman and the
man by the return of desire! He says, “And thy desire shall be
to thy husband…” (Gen. 3:16b). God knows that there is no
cure for past pain like present desire. If the desire is strong
enough, the pain of the past will dissipate like bubbles in a
glass of water. The wounded and the weary will rise
victoriously with new desire, and the cycle continues.
Listen, my friend: Perhaps you have gone through some
earthshaking experience that affected and traumatized you. I
understand the fear of being hurt again. Once a child has been
burned, he will dread fire. But you can’t live the rest of your life
in fear and dread; God wants to renew your passion and revive
your desire!
May the passion “to be all that God wants you to be”
sweep over your soul like the powerful gusts of a trade wind
over a calm sea. As the Bible says, Jesus “shewed Himself
alive after His passion by many infallible proofs…” (Acts 1:3).
Do not hide, my friend. Show yourself alive with many
infallible proofs! As the passion to continue comes creeping
back into your life, resist the temptation to hide behind the fig
leaves of past issues. Come out of hiding and show yourself
—naked and not ashamed!
 Chapter 5

REAPING THE REWARDS OF

YOUR OWN THOUGHTS

The streaming fount of holy blood that flows from the

gaping wounds of my loving Savior has draped my
wretchedness in His holiness. He has covered me like Boaz
covered Ruth. He has covered me just like the dripping blood
of lambs covered the aged doorposts and lintels of the Hebrew
slaves in Egypt on the night of the passover.
His blood also has covered me like a warm blanket on a
cold wintry night. I found my past nestled beneath His
omnipresent banner of love and concern, taking the chill out of
my life and removing the stiffness from my heart. When I had
no one to snuggle close to, He became my eternal companion
—always seeking out what is best for me and bringing before
me great and mighty things.
I confess that I often used to resist loneliness. I filled my
life with work and with people who meant me no good at all. At
that time, I would rather have filled my life with noise than run
the risk of total silence. How foolish of me not to note the
difference between being alone and being lonely.
Have you ever wearied of people? Of course we love the
people around us and we enjoy their company, but there comes
a time in life that all the fillers we add to avoid emptiness leave
us feeling more empty than emptiness could ever be. There is
nothing more hollow than empty words and lofty clichés that
have no real meaning or compassion in them. They roll
listlessly from the mouths of people whose conversations are
designed to entertain, but have no capacity to edify.

A FIRE IN THE WINTER

I recently had the privilege of entertaining my 90-year-old
grandmother, whose robust frame and bountiful body has
deteriorated to just a mere shadow of its former presence. The
arms that were once filled with strength, that once trembled
violently while churning butter deep in the state of Mississippi,
were now hollow and frail. They felt so brittle in my hands as I
supported her faltering frame. Her hair has turned to wisps,
reminding me of the angel hair used to decorate our Christmas
tree when I was a child. Nevertheless, her spirit seemed strong
and graceful.
Grandmother’s eyes held within them the burning embers
of a fire, embers buried deep beneath the ashes of her
experiences. I realized when I looked at her now foreign frame
that, beneath her willowy arms and straggling gait, she still
possessed more flame in her winter than most people muster in
the heat of summer!
She seemed to enjoy my company, and we talked about the
old days—about people who were dead and places I only
pretended to remember. Her laughter was still there, though it
seemed more brittle than I remembered, and it faded more
easily. It left behind a faint smile on her face that suggested a
thought so private that I yearned to hear what she didn’t say
much more than what she did say.
I remembered her strong voice with that piercing edge that
had once warned us to shut that raggedy screen door she had.
I remembered her standing on her old screened-in porch, which
was supported by a patchwork of bricks and blocks laced
together interchangeably as a foundation to her old farmhouse.
She would stand at the old screen door, with its panes shaped
into craters, and call us from labor to reward. She would wave
at us to come in from the field where we played much more than
we worked, to receive her fried chicken and biscuits, baptized
in sorghum molasses.
This was the Trojan-like woman who had worked her way
through college doing laundry, studying in the wee hours of
the night. This was the Mississippi matron who had reached
high and hit hard, who captured a teaching degree in the
middle of her life and went from canning butter beans to
educating children. Now she had come to the setting of the
sun.
I could see that sun burning behind her leathery skin and
glazed eyes. It seemed that age had somehow smothered her
need to talk, and she would lapse into long periods of silence
that left me clamoring foolishly through asinine conversations.
Whenever I asked her if she was all right, she would respond
affirmatively and assure me that she was greatly enjoying my
company. Then she would flee into the counsel of her own
thoughts and come out at intervals to play with me, with some
humorous statement that would remind me of her earlier years.

A NEW LESSON LEARNED

As I pondered her different behavior and her silent, Indian-
like demeanor, I realized that her silence was not boredom. It
was, first of all, the mark of someone who has learned how to
be alone. It reflected the hours she had spent sitting in a
rocking chair, entertaining herself with her own thoughts, and
reconciling old accounts that brought the past into balance
before the books were presented to the Master Himself. My
grandmother had prepared her heart for the God who audits our
thoughts in the chambers of His own wisdom, and rewards us
according to what He finds hidden within us. She had entered
into the state where things that seemed so important when you
are young and full of days now seem trivial and unimportant.
She was at peace, with the kind of peace that comes from a firm
faith and deep resolution.
My prayer, as I looked at her, seemed almost envious—not
of her failing frame, but of her starched character and calm
repose. Her stressless eyes made my anxieties and concerns
seem like the foolish ranting of a youthful mind. She calmed me
like a sedative taken in the middle of a night. I knew that each
time I touched her, I was holding a privilege that would soon
expire, and I savored her friendship and love like a dry-
mouthed traveler savors a cool glass of water on a hot,
blistering day. He knows he will soon swallow it and it will be
gone, so he swirls the last sip around and around in his mouth,
trying desperately to make the moment last. Though his
attempts are futile, his intentions are honorable and they are
rewarded with the richness of experience.
So I, too, am rewarded. I am rewarded with a friendly
reminder from a loving God who speaks through the glazed
eyes of an aged relative, telling me to relax and enjoy life. It was
there that I made two commitments in my own mind, as my
grandmother smiled and gazed out of a window as if she were
looking at Heaven itself. I committed to a renewed faith and
trust in the ableness of God. The other commitment I made may
seem strange, but I promised to spend more time with myself,
to warm myself at the fire of my own thoughts and smile with
the contentments of the riches contained therein.

HEALING OF THE MIND

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my
heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength,
and my redeemer. Psalm 19:14

We must understand that modern medicine can heal many

afflictions of the body, and can even treat the tumors that
sometimes attach themselves to the brain, but only God
Himself can heal the mind. Do you know that many times your
thoughts need to be healed? Your thoughts are often the
product of damaged emotions, traumatic events, and vicious
opinions forced upon you by the bodacious personalities of
domineering people who continually feel it necessary to
express their opinions about you.
 One of the great challenges of our walk with God is to resist
the temptation to allow what happened in the past determine
who we are today. We each must begin to understand and
declare: “I am not what happened yesterday. I endured what
happened. I survived what happened, but I am not what
happened yesterday!”
Many people are plagued all their lives by memories of
failed marriages, broken promises, and personal calamities.
They have allowed past events to eat at their thoughts like a
cancer—a cancer that defies medical technology and continues
to devour its victim in an area that the doctor cannot find.
These negative impressions, armed with memories and
flashback “movies,” strengthen themselves by rehearsing past
failures and wounds over and over again. It is somehow like
bad television reruns—we don’t even enjoy watching them,
yet we find ourselves transfixed to the screen. Almost tied to
the chair, as if some captor was holding us down, we have to
remind ourselves about the “remote control” and free
ourselves from the bondage of watching things that do not
entertain us.
In the same sense, you must remind yourself that you don’t
have to watch the “movie” in your mind if you are not enjoying
what is being played. That’s right—hit the remote control. You
do have control over your thoughts. The Bible teaches us that
if we are going to be healed in our own mind, then we must
occasionally reprogram ourselves to “think on better
thoughts.”
 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be
any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these
things. Philippians 4:8

You must choose what you are going to meditate upon.

Choose carefully, though, for you will ultimately become
whatever it is you meditate upon. The enemy knows this, so
when he wants to destroy your morality, he doesn’t start with
an act; he starts with a thought. A thought is a seed that, if not
aborted, will produce offspring somewhere in your life.

SEEDS OF EVIL THOUGHTS

Satan plants seeds in the form of thoughts. These evil
seeds aren’t yours just because they come to mind; they
become yours when you allow those thoughts to move in and
rearrange furniture! An evil thought will rearrange your goals,
your dreams, and your ambitions (that is a very powerful house
guest). A thought left to ramble in your mind will attach itself to
an incident in your past. It will begin to feed on that incident
and grow like a tick that attaches itself to your body while you
walk through a forest. That thing isn’t a part of your body, but
it begins by attaching itself to the body and then drains
strength from it.
These evil thoughts impede progress and destroy morals.
They are as dangerous as the act of sin itself. Thoughts are
previews of coming attractions. That is why Jesus gave us
some strong teachings about lust. He knew that if an evil
thought is not aborted, if it is savored long enough, it will be
acted upon!

You have heard that it was said, “Do not commit

adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a
woman lustfully has already committed adultery with
her in his heart. Matthew 5:27-28 (NIV)

You must quickly cast down an evil thought. “Push the

remote control” before it drains away your commitment to
excellence and leaves you crying in the valley of regret. The
real temptation to entertain thoughts is in the privacy of the
mind. Who will know what you really think? You can smile at
people and never disclose your innermost thoughts.
I always laugh when I see people act as though they have
conquered the battle with the mind. I’ve asked people in my
services, “Which of you would be comfortable with having
everything that comes to mind played on a television screen
for all of your Christian friends to watch? Or which of you
would like to have all our thoughts through the week played
over the loudspeaker at church next Sunday?” I’m sure I don’t
have to tell you, they all put their hands down. Our mind is a
private battleground that can easily become a secret place for
contamination, lust, fear, low self-esteem, and God only knows
what else!
When we clean our homes we tend to focus our efforts first
on what people will see rather than on what they will not see.
Only the most ardent of housekeepers spends as much time
scrubbing the basement steps as she does the foyer or the
living room. We emphasize what will be inspected.
Can you imagine how much clutter we allow to fester in our
minds, simply because no one sits in our heads sipping tea and
examining the thoughts and imaginations of our hearts? If no
one knows what we think, why shouldn’t we allow our minds
to collect scum and clutter without any regard to cleaning and
renewing the mind? There are several reasons not to do that,
but I will give only three.

GOD KNOWS
First, a certain Someone does know what we think. God
sits in the living quarters of the minds of men and beholds their
thoughts. He knows our thoughts afar off (see Ps. 139:2). If we
are serious about entertaining His presence, we cannot lie to
Him—He sees us from the inside out. We must be honest and
admit to Him:
This is what I am being tempted with…I cannot hide from
You. I am naked before You. All my thoughts are played on the
screen before You. I want to clean up this mess so You can
replace it with a greater revelation and a stronger direction
for my life. I praise You for loving me, in spite of all You know
about me. Forgive me for condemning and judging anybody
else. I know that if it were not for Your mercy, I would be guilty
of the very things for which I have disdained others. Help me
not to be hypocritical.
This kind of prayer and confession enhances your
relationship with God as you begin to realize that you were
saved by grace; you are saved by grace; and you will be
saved by grace! Knowing this, how can you not be grateful?
You know that He loves you so much that He stays in the
house you haven’t fully cleaned. He hates the acts; He
despises the thoughts; but He loves the thinker.

Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His

sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the
eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Seeing then that
we have a great high priest, that is passed into the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our
profession. For we have not an high priest which
cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities;
but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet
without sin. Hebrews 4:13-15

Immediately after the writer of the Book of Hebrews tells us

that God knows all our business and that all our thoughts
parade around naked before His scrutinizing eyes, he mentions
the high priest that we have in Christ. He knows we are going
to need a high priest for all the garbage and information that
the Holy Spirit is privy to, yet others would never know. What
greater compassion can be displayed than when the writer
goes on to say that God, through Christ, can be touched by
how I feel. No wonder Jeremiah said His mercies are “new
every morning”! (See Lamentations 3:22-23.)
WE ARE WHAT WE THINK
Second, we need to continually purge our thoughts
because we become what we think. It is not just the lust that
we must clean out, but also low self-esteem, pride, arrogance,
hidden jealousy, and much, much more. The mind is the
“placenta” of the spirit man. It holds and nurtures the seeds it
has been impregnated with until their time of delivery. If you
don’t want the child that that seed of thought produces, your
only recourse is to abort before it is carried to full term.
If you don’t want depression, why do you continue to
regurgitate those same sickening thoughts that lead you down
the tunnel of emotional depravity? You don’t need a famous
minister to lay hands on you to win the battle over your mind!
The truth is, generally speaking, those fantastic
demonstrations of public power seldom accomplish deliverance
from mental images. What you need is the inner discipline
required of all disciples to resist evil thoughts before they
become evidenced in your life.
Most people who are unsuccessful in their lives do not lack
talent. Some of the most talented people I have ever known
weren’t successful, even in the area of their talent. Why? There
always seemed to be some little thought they entertained that
affected their tenacity or their commitment to excellence. Some
dwarfed self-image, or worse still, some over-inflated ego
preempted them from reaching their aspirations and sent them
plummeting to the ground of failure and the rocks of
frustration. If you can see traces of this in your own life (and
most of us can), abort the seeds that are causing you to miss
the mark and press on! Don’t you realize that anything you
stop feeding is sure to die?!

(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but

mighty through God to the pulling down of strong
holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high
thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of
God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the
obedience of Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5

The mind is continually being reconstructed by the Holy

Spirit. He wants to perpetuate a new mentality within you that
enables you to soar above your past. He impregnates us with
hope and fills us with destiny. The Scriptures challenge us with
the exhortation, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not
robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no
reputation…” (Phil. 2:5-7).
Simply stated, Christ has a balanced mind. He doesn’t
suffer from low self-esteem. He “thought it not robbery” to be
equal with God. For Him, being equal with God was and is a
reality. That might be a little extreme for you and me, but the
point is that He was comfortable with His exaltation. He didn’t
allow the controversial opinions of other men to determine who
He “thought” He was. His inner perception was fixed.
The miracle of His strength is that, unlike most people who
are that strong about their inner worth, Christ Jesus did not
wrestle with arrogance. He knew who He was, yet He “made
Himself of no reputation” (Phil. 2:7a). When you have healthy
thoughts about your own identity, it frees you from the need to
impress other people. Their opinion ceases to be the shrine
where you worship!
Most of us come to the Lord damaged. We’re dead
spiritually, damaged emotionally, and decaying physically.
When He saved you, He quickened, or made alive, your dead
spirit. He also promised you a new body. Then He began the
massive renovation necessary to repair your damaged
thoughts about life, about others, and about yourself—here
come all types of nails, saws, levels, bricks, and blocks.
While we dress and smell nice outwardly, people do not
hear the constant hammering and sawing going on inwardly, as
the Lord works within us, trying desperately to meet a deadline
and present us as a newly constructed masterpiece fit for the
Master’s use.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus

unto good works, which God hath before ordained that
we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10

Beneath our pasted smiles and pleasant greetings, we alone

hear the rumblings of the midnight shift. God is constantly
excommunicating lethal thoughts that hinder us from grasping
the many-faceted callings and giftings buried beneath the
rubble of our minds. No matter who we meet, once we get to
know them, we begin to realize that they have their own
challenges. Have you ever met someone and thought he had it
all together? Once you become closely involved with that
person, you will begin to notice a twisted board here, a loose
nail there, or even a squeaky frame!
Yes, we all need the Lord to help us with ourselves. We
came to Him as condemned buildings, and He reopened the
places that satan thought would never be inhabited. The Holy
Spirit moved in, but He brought His hammers and His saw with
Him. He will challenge the thoughts of men.

TO BECOME MORE LIKE HIM

Third, we need to renew our minds daily in God’s presence,
for I believe that as we hear the thoughts of God, His thinking
becomes increasingly contagious. It is so important that we
have a relationship with Him. His Word becomes a lifeline
thrown to a man who would otherwise drown in the swirling
whirlpool of his own thoughts. Peter was so addicted to
hearing Jesus speak that when other men walked away, Peter
said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of
eternal life” (Jn. 6:68).
Peter recognized his need to keep hearing the Word of God.
Many years before Peter, Job said that he esteemed God’s
Word more than his necessary food (see Job 23:12). As for me,
God is my counselor. He talks with me about my deepest,
darkest issues; He comforts the raging tide of my fears and
inhibitions. What would we be if He would wax silent and
cease to guide us through this perilous maze of mental mania?
It is His soft words that turn away the wrath of our nagging
memories. If He speaks to me, His words become symphonies
of enlightenment falling like soft rain on a tin roof. They give
rest and peace.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are

your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens
are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than
your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. For
as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven,
and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and
maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to
the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall My word be
that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return
unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I
please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent
it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with
peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth
before you into singing, and all the trees of the field
shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come
up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up
the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. Isaiah
55:8-13

God’s Word will accomplish what it is sent out to do. God

says, “I won’t stop in the middle of the job. I will not give up
on you. I will keep hammering until you are balanced in your
thinking and whole in your judgments.” The greatest part is, no
one would ever believe that you were initially in such a
deplorable state! He covers you with His precious blood even
while His Word works on you. The benefit is that you are
simultaneously privileged with privacy and challenged to
change.
In a world where people seem void of commitment and so
easily become distracted, it is comforting to know that God
won’t give up on you. He will persevere and labor with you
until His will is accomplished in your life. If anybody ought to
praise the Lord, it ought to be those who have a deep
appreciation for His unfailing love. It is to them He has spoken
His word and changed their thoughts and directions. He has
healed the bitter waters of a turbulent mind!
Human thoughts are healed by the Word of God. By the
“foolishness of preaching” (see 1 Cor. 1:21), God filters into the
dark places of our diseased or oppressed minds and
reconstructs thought patterns by sharing His own mind with
us. We must, at all cost, maintain an appetite for preaching.
Why? “So then faith [a change of mind] cometh by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). It boggles the
mind of secular scholars to see the power of God’s Word
transforming dysfunctional members of our society into
productive and affluent parts of our community. They are
amazed—and that is without knowing our whole stories.
Most of the time God delivers us (or is in the process of
delivering us) while we maintain a veil of secrecy to protect our
reputations and public perceptions. These secular scholars
would be appalled if they knew how many of us were in serious
trouble when we came to our wit’s end and submitted to the
redemptive work of the Lord. It was He who delivered us out
from under the stress and the strain of our crises. His power
forces open the fowler’s snare that entrapped the mind. His
Word gives us the grace to seize the opportunity to escape and
go on with our lives!

He sent forth His word and healed them; He rescued

them from the grave. Let them give thanks to the Lord
for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for men.
Psalm 107:20-21 (NIV)

THOUGHTS RESULT IN ACTIONS

As we journey deeper into the dregs of this subject, let us
consider the power of thought itself. There is a strong tie
between thought and action. Some time ago, when we
discovered the power of our words, we began to teach
Christians to speak positively. That is good. The only problem
is, we were thinking one thing while the mouth was confessing
something else. The results were not rewarding.
The Scriptures tell us that “with the heart man believeth
unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made
unto salvation” (Rom. 10:10). There is a strong tie between
what is believed and what is confessed. Your thoughts have to
align with your confession—otherwise your house is divided
against itself! Even God works out of the reservoir of His own
thoughts. He does not consider what others think about you.
Some of those people don’t even believe in God. Nevertheless,
He doesn’t work out of their thoughts; He works out of His
own! Quit trying to change the minds of other people—change
your own. Your works will come out of the healing of your
thoughts!

How great are Your works, O Lord, how profound Your

thoughts! Psalm 92:5 (NIV)

Yes, our God is reaping the rewards of His own thoughts—

and so are you. Whether that is good or bad depends on what
you are thinking. Whether you are thinking of a secret lust that
will eventually become fornication, or thinking of violent
aggression that will become an act of physical domination over
another, you are reaping the rewards of your own thoughts. No
wonder the Bible warns us, “Where there is no vision, the
people perish” (Prov. 29:18a)!
You need to allow new meditations to dwell in your heart
by faith, for your life will ultimately take on the direction of
your thinking. Many weaknesses, such as procrastination and
laziness, are just draperies that cover up poor self-esteem and a
lack of motivation. They are often symptoms of the
subconscious avoiding the risk of failure. Remember that
“nothing shall be impossible unto you” if you will only believe!
(See Matthew 17:20.)
God creates by speaking, but He speaks out of His own
thoughts. Since God’s Word says “out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh” (Mt. 12:34b), then we go beyond the
mouth to bring correction to the words we speak. We have to
begin with the thoughts we think.
I pray that somehow the Spirit will reveal the areas where
you need Him to heal your thinking so you can possess what
God wants you to have. Then you will be able to fully enjoy
what He has given you. Many people have the blessing and
still don’t enjoy it because they conquered every foe except
the enemy within!

The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have

thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have
purposed, so shall it stand. Isaiah 14:24

YOUR P ERCEPTION COUNTS

When at King David’s command Ziba returned from
Lodebar with Mephibosheth, the crippled son of Jonathan, to
David’s palace, Mephibosheth couldn’t sit at the table without
falling to the floor. He struggled with his position because of
his condition. His problem wasn’t merely his twisted feet or his
crippled body. It was his dysfunctional mentality. Even after he
had been raised from the deplorable condition he was in, he
was still so oppressed in his mind that he described himself as
a “dead dog” (see 2 Sam. 9:8). He was a king’s kid, but he saw
himself as a dead dog!
Perception is everything. Mephibosheth thought of himself
as a dead dog, so he lay on the floor like one. I feel a word
going out from the Lord to you: You have been on the floor
long enough! It is time for a resurrection, and it is going to
start in your mind. Has God blessed you with something you
are afraid of losing? Could it be that you think you are going to
lose it because you don’t feel worthy? I realize that living in the
palace can be a real shock to someone who is accustomed to
being rejected and ostracized. Without realizing it, you will
accept being treated as though you were a dog. Mephibosheth
had been through so much that he began to think himself a
dead dog.
Understand this one fact: Just because you’ve been treated
like a dog doesn’t make you one! Get up off the floor and take
a seat at the Master’s table—you are worthy. You have a right
to be in the place and position you are in, not because of your
goodness, but by virtue of His invitation. I pray that God will
heal your thoughts until you are able to enjoy and rest in what
God is doing in your life right now!

KEEP THOSE SEEDS!

Your confession is great. You’ve fought and defended
yourself against attackers, and you have seen some increase;
but when you allow God to heal your thoughts, you will
explode into another dimension. Sometimes we have been
strong because we had great struggles. We fought valiantly in
the face of the enemies of life. However, when sunset falls on
the battlefield, and after the troops have gone home, we hang
up our gear and wish we were as valiant inwardly as we
displayed outwardly! Perceive and believe what God is doing
in you. If you can get that in your head, you can reap it in your
life!
 The harvest field that God wants to plant is in your head.
Amidst all your troubles, hold onto your field of dreams. If you
can water your own field when men are trying to command a
drought in your life, God will mightily sustain you. Now I know
why my grandmother smiled quietly and looked distantly. She
had learned the art of being her own company. She had learned
how to irrigate her own mind and entertain her own hours. She
was simply self-reliant, not independent (we all need other
people). She had learned how to rely on her own thoughts,
how to motivate her own smiles, and how to find a place of
confidence and serenity within herself as she privately
communed with God. There is still much to be accomplished in
the person who has maintained thoughts of greatness in the
midst of degrading dilemmas. These are the smiles that paint
the faces of people who know something greater and deeper,
who see beyond their circumstances. They look out of the
window, but they see far down the road.
If in your thoughts you see something beyond where you
are, if you see a dream, a goal, or an aspiration that others
would think impossible, you may have to hold it. Sometimes
you may have to hide it, and most of the time you will have to
water it as a farmer waters his crops to sustain the life in them.
But always remember they are your fields. You must eat from
the garden of your own thoughts, so don’t grow anything you
don’t want to eat. As you ponder and daydream, receive grace
for the hard places and healing for the damaged soil. Just know
that whenever your children, your friends, or anyone else
comes to the table of your wisdom, you can only feed them
what you have grown in your own fields. Your wisdom is so
flavorful and its texture so rich that it can’t be “store bought”;
it must be homegrown.
A whispering prayer lies on my lips: I pray that this word
God has given me be so powerful and personal, so intimate
and applicable, that it leaves behind it a barren mind made
pregnant. This seed of greatness will explode in your life and
harvest in your children, feeding the generations to come and
changing the winds of destiny.
As I move on to other issues and as we face our inner
selves, we strip away our facades and see ourselves as we
really are. I am not fearful of our nakedness nor discouraged by
our flaws. I see the dark rich potentials of Son-drenched minds,
and I recognize the fragrance in the atmosphere right now.
Breathe deeply. Don’t you remember that aroma? You can feel it
through the pores of your skin.
In my heart I smell the indescribable smell of an
approaching rain. Moisture is in the air and the clouds have
gathered. Our fields have been chosen for the next rain and the
wind has already started to blow. Run swiftly into the field with
your precious seeds and plant them in the soft ground of your
fertile mind. Whatever you plant in the evening will be reaped
in the morning. My friend, I am so excited for you. I just heard a
clap of thunder…in just another moment, there’ll be rain!
 Chapter 6

THE COLD KISS OF A

CALLOUSED HEART

Friendship is the last remaining sign of our fleeting

childhood dreams. It is the final symptom of our youth that
lingers around the shadows of our adult mind. It reminds us of
the sweet taste of a chosen love. Different from family love,
which is not chosen but accepted, this love develops like moss
on the slippery edges of a creek. It emerges without warning.
There is no date to remember. It just gradually grows until one
day an acquaintance has graduated into a friend. Love is the
graduation diploma, whether discussed or hinted.
It is real and powerful, sweet and bitter. It is fanciful,
idealistic, and iridescent enough to shine in the chilly night of
an aloof world that has somehow lost the ability to interpret or
appreciate the value of a friend. Only occasionally in the
course of a lifetime do we meet the kind of friend that is more
than an acquaintance. This kind of kindred spirit feels as warm
and fitting as an old house shoe, with its personalized contours
impressed upon soft fabric for the benefit of weary feet.

THE SEARCH FOR TRUE FRIENDSHIP

The tragedy is that we all yearn for, but seldom acquire,
true trust and covenant. The truth is that real relationship is
hard work. Let no man deceive you; contouring the heart to
beat with another requires extensive whittling to trim away the
self-centeredness with which many of us have enveloped
ourselves. It is like riding the bus. If you are going to have
company riding with you, you must be willing to scoot over
and rearrange to accommodate another person and the many
parcels that he brings. Your actions in doing this express the
importance of the other person.
Every relationship undergoes adjustments. The reason one
relationship becomes more valuable than others is found in its
ability to survive circumstances and endure realignments. We
never know the magnitude of a relationship’s strength until it is
tested by some threatening force. There must be a strong
adhesive that can withstand the pressure and not be weakened
by outside forces.

FRIENDS DESPITE IMPERFECTIONS

Isn’t that part of what we want from relationships? To know
that you won’t leave, regardless of what is encountered—even
if you discover my worst imperfection and I disclose my
deepest scars! Isn’t the real question, “Can I be transparent
with you, and be assured that my nudity has not altered your
commitment to be my friend?” I know that someone reading
this chapter has given up on friendship, with its many
expenses and desertions. If you will not believe me, then
believe the Word of God. It is possible to attain real abiding
friendship.
 A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there
is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs
18:24 (NIV)

Incidentally, notice that this proverb clearly warns against

many companions. It is dangerous to be polygamous—even
with friendship. Having too many companions creates jealousy,
absorbs time, and cheapens commitment. How many friends
can you handle? The object is quality and not quantity. As we
share with one another, we must be prepared to love each
other’s imperfections, even when those imperfections
challenge our commitment. We must decide, at some point,
whether or not we can love like God. God sees every
imperfection we have (He cannot be deceived), yet He
maintains His commitment to love the unlovely. Isn’t that why
we love Him so much? We are completely vulnerable to Him.
He knows us, yet He understands and loves us!
Even natural blood ties don’t always wear as well as heart
ties. The Bible says there is a kind of friend that “sticketh
closer than a brother” (Prov. 18:24b). What a tremendous
statement. This is why we must not allow our friendships to be
easily uprooted—not only in our individual lives, but also
collectively as the Body of Christ. Too often we have thrown
away good people who did a bad thing. The tragedy is in the
fact that we usually forget all the good a friend has done and
dwell only on the one bad thing he did to damage us. Have you
ever done something like that? The deeper question is this: Are
you throwing away the whole car over a bad battery? Is there
any possibility of repair? No way, huh? Then how does God
ever love you? If He ever forgave you of your debts as you
forgave your debtors, could you stand?
The obvious friend is the one who stands by you,
honoring and affirming you. The obvious friend affirms your
marriage and family. You cannot be a friend and not uphold the
institution of marriage and family. A true friend should desire to
see me prosper in my marriage, in my finances, and in my health
and spirituality. If these virtues are present in the relationship,
then we can easily climb over the hurdles of personal
imperfection and, generally, are mature enough to support what
supports us. We, in turn, transmit through fleeting smiles,
handshakes, hugs and warm exchanges of mutual affection, our
celebration of friendship and appreciation.

ACCEPTANCE WITHOUT MEASURE

What we all need is the unique gift of acceptance. Most of
us fear the bitter taste of rejection, but perhaps worse than
rejection is the naked pain that attacks an exposed heart when
a relationship is challenged by some struggle.
Suppose I share my heart, my innermost thoughts, with
someone who betrays me, and I am wounded again? The
distress of betrayal can become a wall that insulates us, but it
also isolates us from those around us. Yes, I must admit that
there are good reasons for being protective and careful. I also
admit that love is always a risk. Yet I still suggest that the risk
is worth the reward! What a privilege to have savored the
contemplations of idle moments with the tender eyes of
someone whose glistening expression invites you like the
glowing embers of a crackling fire.
Communication becomes needless between people who
need no audible speech. Their speech is the quick glance and
the soft pat on a shoulder. Their communication is a concerned
glance when all is not well with you. If you have ever sunken
down into the rich lather of a real covenant relationship, then
you are wealthy.
This relationship is the wealth that causes street people to
smile in the rain and laugh in the snow. They have no coats to
warm them; their only flame is the friendship of someone who
relates to the plight of daily living. In this regard, many wealthy
people are impoverished. They have things, but they lack
camaraderie. The greatest blessings are often void of expense,
yet they provide memories that enrich the credibility of life’s
dreary existence.

You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not

need a thing.” But you do not realize that you are
wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. Revelation
3:17 (NIV)

Children understand the rich art of relationship. They are

often angry, but their anger quickly dissipates in the glaring
sunshine of a fresh opportunity to laugh and jest a day away.
The hearts of most adults, however, have been blackened by
unforgiveness. They will hold a club of remembered infractions
against one another for long periods of time, perhaps for a
lifetime. There is a vacancy in the hearts of most men that
causes them to be narrow and superficial. This vacancy is the
vast gap between casual relationships and intimate
attachments. It is the gift of friendship that should fill the gap
between these wide designated points of human relationship.

A COMMON BOND
Since there is no blood to form the basis of relativity
between friends, the bond must exist through some other mode
of reality. A commonality is needed to anchor the relationship
of two individuals against the chilly winds of passing
observers, whose suspicious minds activate and attempt to
terminate any of your relationships. They are not accustomed
to relationships outside of the junglelike, carnivorous stalkings
of one another as prey. However, this bond may exist in an area
that outsiders would never understand, but thank God their
confusion doesn’t dilute the intensity of admiration that exists
between true friends.
Many people are surrounded by crowds of business
people, coworkers, and even family members—yet they are
alone. Disenchanted with life, they become professional actors
on the stage of life. They do not allow anyone to get close,
fearing to risk the pain and bleeding of a disappointed heart.
Whether they be battered wives or distraught husbands, some
among us have given up—not daring to be transparent with
anyone for any reason. These have decided to present a
fictitious, fragmented appearance among us that never
solidifies or really alters us in any way!
 I must admit there is no shield for broken hearts that will
protect us from the flaws of those whom we dare to befriend.
At best, there will be times of trembling need and emotional
debates, yet we need to make the investment and even face the
risk of depletion rather than live in a glass bubble all our lives!
IT IS P ART OF YOUR DESTINY
I know that betrayal can be painful. It is hard to receive
disloyalty from hands and hearts you trusted. The fear of a
“Judas” has caused many preachers, leaders, as well as the
general masses to avoid the attack. Now if you understand
anything about God, then you know that God can give
direction out of rejection. It was Judas’ ministry that brought
Christ to the cross! Although this betrayal was painful, it was
an essential part of His destiny.
It is important to understand destiny as it relates to
relationships. God is too wise to have His plans aborted by the
petty acts of men. We have to rely on God’s divine
administration as we become involved with people. Their
access to our future is limited by the shield of divine purpose
that God Himself has placed on our lives!

I hate double-minded men, but I love Your law. You are

my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in Your
word. Psalm 119:113-114 (NIV)

The extent of damage that mortal men can do to the upright

is limited by the purposes of God. What a privilege it is to
know that and understand it in your heart. It destroys the
constant paranoia that restricts many of us from exploring
possible friendships and covenant relationships. Let me be
very clear, though; the possibility of getting hurt in a
relationship is always present. Any time you make an
investment, there is the possibility of a loss. But there is a
difference between being hurt and being altered or destroyed.
You belong to God, and He watches over you every day.
He monitors your affairs, and acts as your protection.
Sometimes He opens doors (we always get excited about God
opening doors). But the same God who opens doors also
closes doors. I am, perhaps, more grateful for the doors He has
closed in my life than I am for the ones He has opened. Had I
been allowed to enter some of the doors He closed, I would
surely have been destroyed! God doesn’t intend for every
relationship to flourish. There are some human cliques and
social groups in which He doesn’t want you to be included!

GOD WORKS FOR YOUR GOOD

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write;
These things saith He that is holy, He that is true, He
that hath the key of David, He that openeth, and no
man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth.
Revelation 3:7

The letter to the Philadelphia church, the church of

brotherly love, basically ends with the words, “I am the One
who closes doors.” The art to surviving painful moments is
living in the “yes” zone. We need to learn to respond to God
with a yes when the doors are open, and a yes when they are
closed. Our prayer must be:
I trust Your decisions, Lord; and I know that if this
relationship is good for me, You will allow it to continue. I
know that if the door is closed, then it is also for my good. So I
say “yes” to You as I go into this relationship. I appreciate
brotherly love, and I still say “yes” if You close the door.
This is the epitome of a trust that is seldom achieved, but is
to be greatly sought after. In so doing, you will be able to savor
the gift of companionship without the fear of reprisal!
If God allows a relationship to continue, and some
negative, painful betrayals come from it, you must realize that
He will only allow what ultimately works for your good.
Sometimes such a betrayal ushers you into the next level of
consecration, a level you could never reach on your own. For
that we give thanks! What a privilege to live in the assurance
that God is in control of you, and of everyone whom He allows
to get behind “the shield” of His purposes for your life! He
intimately knows every person whom He cherishes enough to
call His child. Any good parent tries to ensure that his or her
children are surrounded by positive influences. The unique
thing about God’s parenting is that He sometimes uses a
negative to bring about a positive. If no good can come out of
a relationship or situation, then God will not allow it. This
knowledge sets us free from internal struggle and allows us to
be transparent.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,

and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. James
1:17
 If you don’t understand the sovereignty of God, then all is
lost. There must be an inner awareness within your heart, a
deep knowledge that God is in control and that He is able to
reverse the adverse. When we believe in His sovereignty, we
can overcome every humanly induced trial because we realize
that they are divinely permitted and supernaturally
orchestrated. He orchestrates them in such a way that the
things that could have paralyzed us only motivate us.
God delights in bestowing His abundant grace upon us so
we can live with men without fear. In Christ, we come to the
table of human relationships feeling like we are standing before
a great “smorgasbord” or buffet table. There will be some
relationships whose “taste” we prefer over others, but the
richness of life is in the opportunity to explore the options.
What a dull plate we would face if everything on it was
duplicated without distinction. God creates different types of
people, and all are His handiwork.
Even in the most harmonious of relationships there are
injuries and adversity. If you live in a cocoon, you will miss all
the different levels of love God has for you. God allows
different people to come into your life to accomplish His
purposes. Your friends are ultimately the ones who will help
you become all that God wants you to be in Him. When you
consider it in that light, you have many friends—some of them
expressed friends, and some implied friends.

JUDAS—A FRIEND?
 Implied friendship describes your relationship with those
who weren’t consciously or obviously trying to help you, yet
their actions—though painful—were ultimately purposeful.
Therefore, we glory in tribulation! We now understand that
God used their negativity to accomplish His will for our lives.
Now, because our ultimate goal is to please Him, we must
widen our definition of friendship to include the betrayer if his
betrayal ushered us into the next step of God’s plan for our
lives.

And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master;

and kissed Him. And Jesus said unto him, Friend,
wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid
hands on Jesus, and took Him. And, behold, one of
them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand,
and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high
priest’s, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him,
Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that
take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest
thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He
shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of
angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled,
that thus it must be? Matthew 26:49-54

I understand that in its narrow sense, a friend is one who

has good intentions. However, because of the sovereignty of
God, I have come to realize that there are some who were
actually instrumental in my blessing, although they never really
embraced or affirmed me as a person! They played a crucial
part in my well-being. These kinds of “friends” are the “Judas
sector” that exists in the life of every child of God.
Every child of God not only has, but also desperately
needs, a “Judas” to carry out certain aspects of divine
providence in his life! In the passage quoted above, Judas was
more of a friend than Peter! Although Peter was certainly more
amiable and admirable, Judas was the one God selected to
usher in the next step of the process. Peter’s love was almost a
deterrent to the purpose of God. Sometimes your friends are
the ones who can cause you the most pain. They wound you
and betray you, but through their betrayal God’s will can be
executed in your life.
Judas was no mistake. He was handpicked and selected.
His role was crucial to the death and resurrection of Christ. No
one helped Christ reach His goal like Judas. If God allowed
certain types of people to come into our lives, they would
hinder us from His divine purpose. “Thank You, Lord, for my
mysterious friends whose venomous assault led me to lean on
You more explicitly than I would have, had they not tried to
destroy me!” This is the prayer of the seasoned heart that has
been exercised by the tragedies of life. It has reduced and
controlled the fatty feelings and emotions that cause us to
always seek those whose actions tickle our ears.
We all want to be surrounded by a friend like John, whose
loving head lay firmly on Jesus’ breast. We may long for the
protective instincts of a friend like Peter, who stood ready to
attack every negative force that would come against Jesus. In
his misdirected love, Peter even withstood Jesus to His face
over His determination to die for mankind. But the truth of the
matter is, Jesus could have accomplished His goal without
Peter, James, or John; but without Judas He would never have
reached the hope of His calling!
Leave my Judas alone. I need him in my life. He is my
mysterious friend, the one who aids me without even knowing
it. When you encounter a Judas in your life, remember that it is
his actions that carry out the purpose of God in your life! Look
back over your life and understand that it is persecution that
strengthens you. It is the struggles and the trauma we face that
help us persevere.
Thank God for your friends and family and their support,
but remember that it is often your relationship with that
mysterious friend of malice and strife, weakness and defective
behavior, that becomes the catalyst for greatness in your life! It
is much easier to forgive the actions of men when you know
the purposes of God! Not only should we refuse to fear their
actions—we should release them.
What happens when friendship takes an unusual form? Did
you know that God, our ultimate Friend, sometimes manipulates
the actions of our enemies to cause them to work as friends in
order to accomplish His will in our lives? God can bless you
through the worst of relationships! That is why we must learn
how to accept even the relationships that seem to be painful or
negative. The time, effort, and pain we invest in them is not
wasted because God knows how to make adversity feed
destiny into your life!
 In short, the bleeding trail of broken hearts and wounded
relationships ultimately leads us to the richness of God’s
purpose in us. Periodically each of us will hear a knock on the
door. It is the knock of our old friend Judas, whose cold kiss
and calloused heart usher us into the will of God. To be sure,
these betrayals call bloody tears to our eyes and nail us to a
cold cross. Nevertheless, the sweet kiss of betrayal can never
abort the precious promises of God in our life! The challenge is
to sit at the table with Judas on one side and John on the other,
and to treat one no differently from the other, even though we
are distinctly aware of each one’s identity and agenda. If you
have been betrayed or wounded by someone you brought too
close, please forgive them. They really were a blessing. You will
only be better when you cease to be bitter!

It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might

learn Thy statutes. Psalm 119:71

I cannot stop your hurts from coming; neither can I promise

that everyone who sits at the table with you is loyal. But I can
suggest that the sufferings of success give us direction and
build character within us. Finally, as you find the grace to
reevaluate your enemies and realize that many of them were
friends in disguise, I can only place a warm hand of solace on
your sobbing shoulders and wipe the gentle rain of soft tears
from your eyes. As God heals what hurt you have, I want to
whisper gently in your ears, “Betrayal is only sweetened when
it is accompanied by survival. Live on, my friend, live on!”
 Chapter 7

SURVIVE THE CRASH OF

RELATIONSHIPS

There is a deep-seated need in all of us to sense purpose—

even out of calamity. Out of this thirst for meaning is born the
simplistic yet crucial prayer, “Why?” Most of us have faced
tense moments where this urgent prayer has exploded from our
lips. It is a cry for purpose, not solutions. It suggests that if we
can only find meaning to the madness, then the strength to
endure would quickly rise up in us.
Many times, we want to know and understand. It is part of
our superior creative ability. It separates us from lower forms of
life that tend to accept events as they come. There is within us
this insatiable need to understand. On the other hand, we seem
to draw some degree of solace from our very quest to know
why. No matter how painful the quest, we will still search
through the rubbish of broken dreams, broken promises, and
twisted childhood issues looking for clues.
We ambitiously pursue these clues because we believe
there is a reward for the discovery. This emotional autopsy
often takes us through the bowels of human attitudes and
dysfunctional behavior. We don’t have to necessarily erase the
cause of our pain; we mainly just want to find some reason or
justification for the pain and discomfort.

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man

with him until the breaking of the day. Genesis 32:24

Like Jacob, all of us know what it means to be left alone.

Whether through death, desertion, or even disagreement, we
have all been left alone at times. We are sometimes
disillusioned when we find out how easily people will leave us.
Generally they leave us when we think that we need them. For
some strange reason, human beings love to clamor around the
successful more than around the struggling. They love the
accomplished, but they flee the aspiring.
This may be difficult, but it is all part of God’s “scholastic-
achievement program” for strong believers. He is determined to
strip us of our strong tendency to be dependent on others,
thereby teaching us self-reliance and God-reliance. Thus the
struggle truly begins not when men surround us, but rather
when they forsake us. It is then that we begin to discover our
own identity and self-worth!
It is unrealistic to expect no pain when there is
disappointment or rejection. No matter how spiritual we may
be, when covenants are broken and trust is betrayed, even the
most stoic person will wince at the pain!

WE NEED FEELINGS
We went through a phase once when we thought real faith
meant having no feelings. Now I believe that life without
feelings is like a riverbed without water. The water is what
makes the river a place of activity and life. You don’t want to
destroy the water, but you do need to control it. Feelings that
are out of control are like the floodwaters of a river. The
gushing currents of boisterous waters over their banks can
bring death and destruction. They must be held at bay by
restrictions and limitations. Although we don’t want to be
controlled by feelings, we must have access to our emotions.
We need to allow ourselves the pleasure and pain of life.
Emotional pain is to the spirit what physical pain is to the
body. Pain warns us that something is out of order and may
require attention. Pain warns us that something in our body is
not healed. In the same way, when pain fills our heart, we know
that we have an area where healing or restoration is needed.
We dare not ignore these signals, and neither dare we let them
control us.
Above all, we need to allow the Spirit of God to counsel us
and guide us through the challenges of realignment when
upheavals occur in our lives. Even the finest limousine requires
a regular schedule of tune-ups or realignments. Minor
adjustments increase performance and productivity.
It is important to understand the difference between minor
and major adjustments. The removal of a person from our lives
is painful, but it is not a major adjustment. Whether you realize
it or not, people are being born and dying every day. They are
coming and going, marrying and divorcing, falling in love and
falling out of love. You can survive the loss of people, but you
can’t survive without God! He is the force that allows you to
overcome when people have taken you under. His grace
enables you to overcome!

DECIDE TO KEEP GOING

Like a child who has fallen from his bicycle needs to find a
place out of the view of his peers where he can honestly say,
“Ouch! That hurt more than I showed in front of other people,”
we too need a private place of honesty. We need to be honest
with ourselves. We need a place where we can sit down, reflect,
and mourn. However, we must be careful not to mourn over the
past longer than necessary. After the funeral, there is always a
burial. The burial separates the survivor from the deceased,
and it is as far as we can go. So you must come to a place of
separation and decide to live on.

And the Lord said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou
mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from
reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I
will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have
provided Me a king among his sons. 1 Samuel 16:1

In spite of the pain and distaste of adversity, it is

impossible not to notice that each adverse event leaves sweet
nectar behind, which, in turn, can produce its own rich honey
in the character of the survivor. It is this bittersweet honey that
allows us to enrich the lives of others through our experiences
and testimonies. There is absolutely no substitute for the
syrupy nectar of human experiences. It is these experiences
that season the future relationships God has in store for us.
Unfortunately, many people leave their situation bitter and
not better. Be careful to bring the richness of the experience to
the hurting, not the unresolved bitterness. This kind of
bitterness is a sign that the healing process in you is not over
and, therefore, is not ready to be shared. When we have gone
through the full cycle of survival, the situations and
experiences in our lives will produce no pain, only peace.

And He arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the
sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there
was a great calm. Mark 4:39

Have you allowed God to stand in the bow of your ship

and speak peace to the thing that once terrified you? We can
only benefit from resolved issues. The great tragedy is that
most of us keep our pain active. Consequently, our power is
never activated because our past remains unresolved. If we
want to see God’s power come from the pain of an experience,
we must allow the process of healing to take us far beyond
bitterness into a resolution that releases us from the prison and
sets us free.
God’s healing process makes us free to taste life again, free
to trust again, and free to live without the restrictive force of
threatening fears. Someone may say, “I don’t want to trust
again.” That is only because you are not healed. To never trust
again is to live on the pinnacle of a tower. You are safe from
life’s threatening grasp, but you are so detached from life that
you soon lose consciousness of people, places, dates, and
events. You become locked into a time warp. You always talk
about the past because you stopped living years ago. Listen to
your speech. You discuss the past as if it were the present
because the past has stolen the present right out of your hand!
In the name of Jesus, get it back!

CELEBRATE NOW !
Celebration is in order. Yes, it is time to celebrate—
regardless of whether you’ve lost a marriage, a partnership, or
a personal friend. Celebration is in order because you were split
from your Siamese twin and you are not dead. You are still
alive! (Or at least you will be the moment you decide to be.)
Are you ready to live, or do you still need to subject all your
friends to a history class? Will you continue your incessant
raging and blubbering about that which no one can change—
the past?
Step into the present. Your friends will celebrate—and so
will your own mind! It has been locked down, tightly tied to
dead issues, and it wants to be creative and inspired again!
Could it be possible that there are still those around you who
want to be a part of your life, now that you have chosen to
stop dwelling among the dead and in the tombs?
Perhaps I have been hard on you, but I am only trying to
jump-start your heart and put you back into the presence of a
real experience, far from the dank, dark valley of regret and
remorse. It is easy to unconsciously live in an euphoric, almost
historical mirage that causes current opportunities to evade
you.

ARE YOU ALONE?

All too often, our thoughts and conversations reveal that
we wrestle with characters who have moved on and events that
don’t really matter. The people who surround us are kept on
hold while we invest massive amounts of attention to areas of
the past that are dead and possess no ability to reward. It is
like slow dancing alone, or singing harmony when there is no
melody. There is something missing that causes our
presentation to lose its luster. Stop the music! Your partner is
gone and you are waiting by yourself!
I think that the greatest of all depressions comes when we
live and gather our successes just to prove something to
someone who isn’t even looking. The problem is we can’t really
appreciate our successes because they are done by us but not
for us. They are done in the name of a person, place, or thing
that has moved on, leaving us trapped in a time warp,
wondering why we are not fulfilled by our job, ministry, or
good fortune.
God did most of His work on creation with no one around
to applaud His accomplishments. So He praised Himself. He
said, “It was good!” Have you stopped to appreciate what God
has allowed you to accomplish, or have you been too busy
trying to make an impression on someone? No one paints for
the blind or sings for the deaf. Their level of appreciation is
hindered by their physical limitations. Although they may be
fine connoisseurs in some other arena, they will never
appreciate what they can’t detect.
Let’s clap and cheer for the people whose absence teaches
us the gift of being alone. Somewhere beyond loneliness there
is contentment, and contentment is born out of necessity. It
springs up in the hum of the heart that lives in an empty house,
and in the smirk and smile that comes on the face of a person
who has amused himself with his own thoughts.

P AT YOURSELF ON THE BACK

Have you reached that place in life where you enjoy your
own company? Have you taken the time to enjoy your own
personhood? Have you massaged lotion into your own skin, or
set the dinner table for yourself? Drive yourself to the mall and
spend an afternoon picking out a gift for yourself. These self-
affirming ministries can never be given to you by someone
else. When other people give it, it reflects their opinion about
you. When they leave, you may feel worthless and
insignificant. But when you speak comfort and blessings to
yourself, it reflects your own opinion about yourself. The best
scenario is to enjoy both kinds of affirmation.

YOU ARE WALKING OUT A P LAN

There are three reasons to give yourself a standing
ovation. The first is the fact that your steps are carefully
observed and arranged by God Himself. They are designed to
achieve a special purpose in your life. He brings people in and
out of your life, yet you are blessed going in and going out
(see Deut. 28:6). That is to say, your blessing has not and
never will be predicated upon the action of another. The Bible
says, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31b)
So you must rejoice because you are in step with the beat of
Heaven and the purposes of God.

YOU ARE A P ERSON OF P URPOSE

Second, you ought to rejoice because you are pursuing a
goal that defies human manipulation. Your blessing rests in
accomplishing the will of God. Jesus went to Samaria in John 4
to minister to a hostile, religiously indifferent woman who
initially had little appreciation for Him. Yet, He was nourished
even by her defensive demeanor because He clearly
understood that His purpose for being there was greater than
the need of any one woman. Her comments lost their meaning
when He weighed them against His purpose. He knew that her
struggle to understand and affirm Him was of little
consequence because He had a mission, yet He knew she was
a part of the plan. He wasn’t there to pass the time away. He
was there to provoke destiny!

YOU HAVE THE P OWER

It is wonderful to have a plan, but that means nothing if
you have no power to perform the plan and accomplish the
purpose. God sends people in and out of your life to exercise
your faith and develop your character. When they are gone,
they leave you with the enriched reality that your God is with
you to deliver you wherever you go! Moses died and left
Joshua in charge, but God told him, “As I was with Moses, so I
will be with thee” (Josh. 1:5b). Joshua never would have
learned that while Moses was there. You learn this kind of
thing when “Moses” is gone. Power is developed in the
absence of human assistance. Then we can test the limits of
our resourcefulness and the magnitude of the favor of God.

WE CAN DO IT!
As we go further, you may want to reevaluate who your
real friends are. You see more clearly that the people who
treated you the worst were actually preparing you for the best.
They stripped from you the cumbersome weights and
entanglements that hindered the birth of inner resilience. Yes,
such friends leave us feeling naked and even vulnerable, but it
is through those feelings that we begin to adapt and see our
survival instincts peak. There is within the most timid person—
beneath that soft, flaccid demeanor—a God-given strength that
supercedes any weakness he appeared to have. The Bible puts
it this way: “I can do all things through Christ which
strengthenth me” (Phil. 4:13)!
Greater still is the fact that we gain great direction through
rejection. Rejection helps us focus on new horizons without
the hindrances of wondering, “What if?” Buried deep within
the broken heart is a vital need to release and resolve.
Although we feel pain when we fail at any task, there is a sweet
resolve that delivers us from the cold clutches of uncertainty. If
we had not been through some degree of rejection, we would
have never been selected by God. Do you realize that God
chooses people that others reject?! From a rejected son like
David to a nearly murdered son like Joseph, God gathers the
castaways of men and recycles them for Kingdom building.
What frustration exists in the lives of people who want to
be used of God, but who cannot endure rejection from men. I
admit I haven’t always possessed the personality profile that
calloused me and offered some protection from the backlash of
public opinion. This ability to endure is similar to having a
taste for steak tartare—it must be acquired! If you want to be
tenacious, you must be able to walk in the light of God’s
selection rather than dwell in the darkness of people’s
rejection. These critics are usually just a part of God’s purpose
in your life.
Focus is everything in ministry. If your attention is
distracted by the constant thirst of other people, or if you are
always trying to win people over, you will never be able to
minister to the Lord—not if you are trying to win people. It
seems almost as though He orchestrates your rejections to
keep you from idolatry. We can easily make idols out of other
people. However, God is too wise to build a house that is
divided against itself. Against this rough canvas of rejection
and the pain it produces, God paints the greatest sunrise the
world has ever seen!

IT’S ALL FOR OUR GOOD

 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the
scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the
same is become the head of the corner: this is the
Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?
Matthew 21:42

Jesus concluded that the rejections of men He experienced

were the doings of the Lord! As Joseph so aptly put it, “…Ye
thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Gen.
50:20a). The Lord orchestrates what the enemy does and makes
it accomplish His purpose in your life. This is the Lord’s doing!
How many times have “evil” things happened in your life that
later you realized were necessary? If I hadn’t faced trials like
these, I know that I wouldn’t have been ready for the blessings
I now enjoy.
In the hands of God, even our most painful circumstances
become marvelous in our eyes! When we see how perfectly
God has constructed His plan, we can laugh in the face of
failure. However, rejection is only marvelous in the eyes of
someone whose heart has wholly trusted in the Lord! Have
you wholly trusted in the Lord, or are you grieving over
something that someone has done—as though you have no
God to direct it and no grace to correct it?
This is an important question because it challenges the
perspectives you have chosen to take for your life. The
statement, “It is marvelous in our eyes” simply means that from
our perspective, the worst things look good! That is what you
need faith to do! Faith is not needed just to remove problems;
it is also needed to endure problems that seem immovable. Rest
assured that even if God didn’t move it, He is able! If your able
God chose to stand passively by and watch someone come
whose actions left you in pain, you still must trust in His
sovereign grace and immutable character. He works for your
good. Someone wrote a song that said, “If life hands you a
lemon, just make lemonade.” That’s cute, but the truth is, if you
walk with God, He will do the squeezing and the mixing that
turns lemons into lemonade!

P UT YOUR SEAT BELT ON

Normally, anytime there is a crash, there is an injury. If one
person collides with another, they generally damage everything
associated with them. In the same way, a crashing relationship
affects everyone associated with it, whether it is in a corporate
office, a ministry, or a family. That jarring and shaking does
varying degrees of damage to everyone involved. Whether we
like to admit it or not, we are affected by the actions of others
to various degrees. The amount of the effect, though, depends
on the nature of the relationship.
What is important is the fact that we don’t have to die in
the crashes and collisions of life. We must learn to live life with
a seat belt in place, even though it is annoying to wear.
Similarly, we need spiritual and emotional seat belts as well. We
don’t need the kind that harness us in and make us live like a
mannequin; rather, we need the kind that are invisible, but
greatly appreciated in a crash.
 Inner assurance is the seat belt that stops you from going
through the roof when you are rejected. It is inner assurance
that holds you in place. It is the assurance that God is in
control and that what He has determined no one can disallow!
If He said He was going to bless you, then disregard the mess
and believe a God who cannot lie. The rubbish can be cleared
and the bruises can be healed. Just be sure that when the
smoke clears, you are still standing. You are too important to
the purpose of God to be destroyed by a situation that is only
meant to give you character and direction. No matter how
painful, devastated, or disappointed you may feel, you are still
here. Praise God, for He will use the cornerstone developed
through rejections and failed relationships to perfect what He
has prepared!
Lift your voice above the screaming sirens and alarms of
men whose hearts have panicked! Lift your eyes above the
billowing smoke and spiraling emotions. Pull yourself up—it
could have killed you, but it didn’t. Announce to yourself, “I
am alive. I can laugh. I can cry, and by God’s grace, I can
survive!”
 Chapter 8

HELP! MY NEW HEART

IS LIVING IN AN OLD B ODY!

As we move onward, let’s make the gradual transition from

outer relationships to inward revelation. It isn’t an easy step,
but it is vital to our development. Eventually we learn to focus
on Christ.
I remember, in my early days as a new Christian, that I tried
to become what I thought all the other Christians were. I
didn’t understand that my goal should have been to achieve
God’s purpose for my life. I was young and so impressionable.
Secretly suffering from low self-esteem, I thought that the
Christians around me had mastered a level of holiness that
seemed to evade me. I groaned in the night; I cried out to God
to create in me a robotlike piety that would satisfy what I
thought was required of me. I deeply admired those virtuous
“faith heroes” whose flowery testimonies loftily hung around
the ceiling like steam gathering above a shower. They seemed
so changed, so sure, and so stable! I admired their standards
and their purity, and I earnestly prayed, Make me better, Lord!
I don’t think I have changed that prayer, but I have
changed the motivation behind it. Suddenly, I began to realize
that God knew me and loved me as I was, although I had never
been taught about perfect love. I had always been surrounded
by a love that was based upon performance. So I thought
God’s love was doled out according to a merit system. If I did
well today, God loved me. However, if I failed, He did not love
me. What a roller-coaster ride! I didn’t know from moment to
moment whether I was accepted in the beloved, or not!
I viewed my friends as paragons, or ultimate examples of
what I should be, and I attacked my carnality with brutality. I
didn’t realize that everything that is born has to grow and
develop to maturity. I was expecting an immediate, powerful,
all-inclusive metamorphosis that would transform me into a
new creature of perfection. Granted, I had never realized this
goal, but I was also sure it was possible, and that this perfect
creature must be much better than I. Surely God was waiting on
him to come forth so He could really love me.

FROM CHILD TO ADULT

Why did God bring this miraculous new creature so easily
into the lives of some people when it seemed so far removed
from others (like me)? I didn’t realize that the “new man” starts
out as a child, a child that has to grow into the mature character
and nature of the Lord. No one shared with me that they had
experienced struggles before they obtained victories. No one
told me that wars come before success.
I was saved, but I was miserable. My misery deepened as I
tried to measure up to others and answer all the concerns that
plagued my heart. I was in a desperate search before anyone
else realized that I wasn’t always on the mountaintop like those
around me seemed to be. I felt ashamed. My heart cried out,
What must I do to be perfected in the Lord?
It is a tormenting experience for us to try to accomplish
through ourselves what only God and maturity can accomplish
in time. No matter how much my young son wants to wear my
clothes, he cannot wear them today because he isn’t old
enough or developed enough to wear them. Yet, there is
absolutely nothing wrong with him. He is as big as he should
be for his age. Sometimes we are expected to be further along
than we should be for the age we are in God!

LET GOD MATURE YOU

It is important for us to let God mature us—without our
self-help efforts to impress others with a false sense of piety.
That kind of do-it-yourself righteousness and religion keeps us
from being naked before God and from being comfortable with
our own level of growth. Yes, I want to be all that God wants
me to be. But while I am developing at the rate He has chosen, I
will certainly thank Him for His rich grace and bountiful mercy
along the way. This is the divine mercy that lets us mature
naturally.
Many Christians struggle to produce a premature change
when God-ordained change can only be accomplished
according to His time. We cannot expect to change the flesh. It
will not respond to therapy. God intends for us to grow
spiritually while we live in our vile, corrupt flesh. It is His will
that our treasure be displayed in a cabinet of putrid,
unregenerated flesh—openly displaying the strange
dichotomy between the temporal and the eternal.
It is amazing that God would put so much in so little. The
true wonder of His glory is painted on the dark canvas of our
old personhood. What a glorious backdrop our weakness
makes for His strength! This backdrop is absolutely crucial.
“Paul’s thorn,” the glaring symbol of human weakness
contrasted with God’s greatness, was given as a humbling
reminder to the great apostle to insure him against arrogance
and pride (see 2 Cor. 12:7).
Paul wanted the thorn removed, but God wanted it
“endured.” Many times we, like Paul, ask God to remove what
He wants us to endure. There is a great deal of power released
through the friction of the holy graces of God grating against
the dry, gritty surface of human incapacities and limitations.
We sharpen our testimonies whenever we press His glory
against our struggles. Although Paul sought diligently for the
removal of his thorn, the reality is that Paul’s thorn was as
much in God’s plan for the apostle’s life as any other trial,
victory, or accomplishment in ministry.
God’s sovereignty allocates the grace necessary for us to
know Him in “the fellowship of His sufferings” (see Phil. 3:10).
What suffering? Well, we are not being asked (at this time,
anyway) to lay down our physical lives for the gospel. No one
has stripped the clothes from our overweight backsides and
beaten our pampered, lotion-softened skin. Our sunglass-
covered eyes haven’t been gouged out of their sockets. No, it
is enough for now that we are asked to live in an unchanged
body!
The problem is that while we are changed in our spirit by
the new birth, our old corruptible body and fleshly desires are
not. They are spirit-controlled, but not spirit-destroyed! The
Holy Spirit is living with us in a stinking clay pot—a putrid,
decaying, clay-covered, vile body. Its stench is so bad that we
must continually wash and perfume it just to endure living
there ourselves. Yet God Himself, the epitome of purity, has
forsaken the rich, robust pavilions of His holy domain to live in
a failing, decaying, deteriorating, collapsing, and corroding
shell.

GOD INHABITS AN OLD HOUSE

Within our decaying shells, we constantly peel away, by
faith, the lusts and jealousies that adorn the walls of our hearts.
If the angels were to stroll through the earth with the Creator
and ask, “Which house is Yours?” He would pass by all the
mansions and cathedrals, all the temples and castles.
Unashamedly, He would point at you and me and say, “That
house is Mine!” Imagine the shock and disdain of the heavenly
host to think that the God whose face they fan with their wings
would choose to live in such a shack and shanty! We know
where our greatest conflict lies. We who blunder and stumble
in our humanity, we who stagger through our frail existence—
we continually wrestle with the knowledge that our God has
put so much in so little!
 Yes, it is true: Despite all our washing and painting, all our
grooming and exercising, this old house is still falling apart! We
train it and teach it. We buy books and tapes, and we
desperately try to convince it to at least think differently. But
like a squeaky hinge on a swollen door, the results of our
efforts, at best, come slowly. There is no doubt that we have
been saved, and there is no doubt that the house is haunted.
The Holy Ghost Himself resides beneath this sagging roof.
(Although the tenant is prestigious, the accommodations are
still substandard.)
This divine occupation is not an act of a desperate guest
who, having no place else to stay, chose this impoverished site
as a temporary place to “ride out” the storm of some deplorable
situation. No, God Himself has—of His own free will and
predetermined purpose—put us in the embarrassing situation
of entertaining a Guest whose lofty stature so far exceeds us
that we hardly know how to serve Him!
The very best of us camouflage the very worst in us with
religious colloquialisms that reduce Christianity to more of an
act than an attitude. Even the most pious among us—while in
the quiet booth of some confessional or kneeling in solitude at
the edge of our beds—must murmur our confession before
God: We have earnestly pursued a place in You that we have
not attained.
Our struggle continues to feed the ravenous appetite of our
holy Guest, whose divine hunger requires us to perpetually
feed Him a sacrificial life. He daily consumes, and continually
requires, that which we alone know God wants from us. Paul
battled to bring into submission the hidden things in his life
that could bring destruction. Perhaps they were putrid
thoughts, or vain imaginations, or pride; but whatever they
were, he declared war on them if they resisted change. He says,
in essence, that as he waits for the change, he keeps his body
in chains, beating back the forces of evil.

But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection:

lest that by any means, when I have preached to others,
I myself should be a castaway. 1 Corinthians 9:27

This is the struggle of the same man who wrote the majority
of the New Testament! With a testimony like this, I pay very
little attention to those among us who feel obligated to impress
us with the ludicrous idea that they have already attained what
is meant to be a lifelong pursuit. The renewal of the old man is
a daily exercise of the heart. It progressively strengthens the
character day by day, not overnight!
I remember some of those wonderful gospel songs that we
used to sing that said, “I looked at my hands and my hands
looked new, I looked at my feet and they did too….” Those are
wonderful lyrics, but they are completely erroneous. They
sounded exciting, but they were tragically misleading. If you
want to know the truth, if you had a bunion on your foot before
you got saved, and you were to take your shoes off and check
it after you got saved, it would still be holding on!

INSIDE THAT OLD HOUSE

 So the bad news is that the old house is still a death trap;
it’s still infested with rodents. A legion of thoughts and pesky
memories crawl around in our heads like roaches that come out
in the night and boldly parade around the house. Add to this
pestilence an occasional groaning in the dungeon, and you will
have a picturesque view of the inner workings of a Christian!
That should not negate our joy, though; it merely confesses
our struggles.
What do I mean by “groaning”? The occasional groaning
you hear is not demonic. Rather, it is a painful groan that
pierces our nights like the whelping cry of a wounded animal.
We have not been taught about the crying of the Spirit, but I
tell you that the Holy Spirit can be grieved. He has the capacity
and ability to groan within us until His groaning emerges as
conviction in the heart of the humble. Yes, it is bad news, but
the Guest we entertain desires more for us than what we have
in us! He enjoys neither the house nor the clothing we offer
Him. He just suffers it like a lover suffers adversity to be in the
company of the one he loves.
The good news is that the bad news won’t last long! Jesus
said, “…every city or house divided against itself shall not
stand” (Mt. 12:25). Ever since we were saved, there has been a
division in the house. Eventually the old house will have to
yield to the new one! Yes, we are constantly renovating
through the Word of God, but the truth is that God will
eventually recycle what you and I have been trying to
renovate! It is then that the groaning of the regenerated spirit
within us will transform into sheer glory!
 For we know that if our earthly house of this
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God,
an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed
upon with our house which is from heaven: if so be that
being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we
that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened:
not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon,
that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now He
that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who
also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. 2
Corinthians 5:1-5

AN INTERNAL CONFLICT
Christianity means conflict. At the least, if it doesn’t mean
conflict, it certainly creates conflict! The question is, why are
we so silent? Why do we seldom hear anyone say that “living
holy” isn’t natural? It isn’t natural—it is spiritual! Unless we
walk consistently in the spirit, living holy is difficult. No, it is
impossible! It isn’t natural to “do good to them that hate you”
(see Mt. 5:44). You don’t see one dog steal another one’s bone
and then see the betrayed dog wag his tail in happiness! No,
forgiveness isn’t natural.
Without God it cannot be done! Being a Christian means
that one part of you is constantly wanting to do the right thing
while the other part of you is desperately campaigning for you
to walk in your old habits. We often talk about how God saved
us from sin. I agree. I am grateful for the terribly wicked things
that He saved me from. Because I was saved, I didn’t commit
those wicked sins, but I would have had He not set up a
protest in my heart! He brought my trembling soul to His
bleeding side and cleansed my very imaginations, intentions,
and ambitions! Yes, the Christian life is a life of conflict, and I
thank God that He groans and protests my sinful behavior. It is
because He challenges my proclivities that growth begins!

Now there was long war between the house of Saul

and the house of David: but David waxed stronger and
stronger, and the house of Saul waxed weaker and
weaker. 2 Samuel 3:1

Transformation is a process! It takes faith and patience to

see the results that bring out the true nature of Christ in any of
us. It is when we strip away the facade of the superficial and
ask God to bring about the supernatural that we experience the
real power of God. God wants to transport us from the
superficial to the supernatural!

WHO WAS MORE A KING?

Saul was anointed by God to be king. He was more moral
than David in that he didn’t struggle in some of the areas that
plagued David. His weakness wasn’t outward; it was inward.
Saul looked like a king, whereas David looked like an underage
juvenile delinquent who should have been home taking care of
the flocks. But David wasn’t in the palace; he was out there
with the men, fighting the giants and bringing about change.
Saul’s armor shined in the noonday sun. David had no armor.
He fought naked, free from the entanglements of trying to be
impressive. He was not ashamed. Even his weapon looked
substandard; it was just an old, ragged, shepherd’s slingshot.
Although David’s weapon was outwardly substandard, it
was nevertheless lethal; it led to the destruction of the giant.
We can never destroy our enemy with the superficial armor of a
pious king. We don’t need the superficial. We need the
supernatural! David’s naked, transparent demeanor was so
translucent that he often seems extremely vulnerable. He seems
almost naive at times. When he worships, he does it with holy
abandonment. When he lusts, he does it to obsessive
dimensions. You would almost think he was unfit, except that
when he repents, there is something so powerful in his prayer
that even his most adamant critic must admire his openness
with God!

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy

lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of Thy
tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me
thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my
sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin
is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have I
sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight: that Thou
mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear
when Thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity;
and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, Thou
desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden
part Thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me
 with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall
be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and
gladness; that the bones which Thou hast broken may
rejoice. Hide Thy face from my sins, and blot out all
mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God;
and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away
from Thy presence; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from
me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and
uphold me with Thy free spirit. Then will I teach
transgressors Thy ways; and sinners shall be converted
unto Thee. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
Thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing
aloud of Thy righteousness. Psalm 51:1-14

What a sharp contrast there is between David and King

Saul, whose stately demeanor and pompous gait didn’t stop
him from being an incredible deceiver. Even when he was face-
to-face with Samuel the prophet, Saul lied at a time he should
have repented! The problem with Saul and people like him is
that they are more interested in their image than they are
concerned about being immaculate in their hearts.
While Saul stood arrayed in his kingly attire, boasting of
his conquest over an enemy king and lying about his real
struggles, the heathen king whom Saul had been commanded
to kill was still alive. The sheep that he had been ordered to
destroy were still bleating in the valley. God did not destroy
Saul for not killing what he should have killed; that wasn’t the
biggest problem. God can work with weakness; in fact, His
strength is made perfect in our human weakness (see 2 Cor.
12:9). The central problem was that Saul’s deceitfulness had
become a breach too wide to bridge. David might have been
weak, and struggled with moral issues, but at least he was
naked before God!

And Saul said, They have brought them from the

Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep
and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God;
and the rest we have utterly destroyed. Then Samuel
said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what the Lord
hath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say
on. And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine
own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of
Israel, and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel?
And the Lord sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and
utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight
against them until they be consumed. Wherefore then
didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord, but didst fly
upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the Lord?
And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the
voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the
Lord sent me, and have brought Agag the king of
Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.
But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the
chief of the things which should have been utterly
destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal.
And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in
burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice
of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
 and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as
the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity
and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of
the Lord, He hath also rejected thee from being king.
And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have
transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy
words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their
voice. 1 Samuel 15:15-24

Saul represents that part of all of us that must be

overthrown. It is the leadership of Saul in us that must be
renounced if we are to go beyond the superficial and fulfill our
destiny in the supernatural. God knows who we are. He can
deliver us from ourselves, but we must be honest enough to
say, This is all You have to work with, God. What can You do
with what I have presented? Misrepresentation will not be
tolerated! There must be an open confession that enables
God’s grace to be allocated to your need.

BE HONEST!
Now hear this, you who would allow the spirit of Saul to
reign in your life: The house of Saul represents those fleshly
areas that we war against. These are areas that hide in religious
clothes but do not worship God in honesty—not perfection,
just honesty. Saul was perhaps “more moral” than David, but
David was by far “more honest.” Consequently, the house of
Saul grew weaker and weaker and the house of David grew
stronger and stronger!
 There is a gradual and perpetual transference of authority
as we walk with God. We move from the Saullike rule of
superficial religion to a Davidic anointing based on honesty
and transparency. Like a chick pecking through its shell, we
press through our concerns and over other people’s opinions,
and break into the light to know God in a more definitive way!
“My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until
Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). Only God knows the
process it will take for the Christ who saved you to be formed
in you. He is taking each of us to that place where the child
begins to bear a greater resemblance to his Father. Be assured
that this only occurs at the end of travailing prayer and
openness of heart, as we confess and forsake every trace of
Saul’s rule in our lives.
 Chapter 9

NO ADDITIVES : THE B LOOD ALONE

The blood is the only element in the body that reaches,

affects, and fuels all other parts of the body. This rich, reddish-
purple elixer flows silently through the cardiovascular system
like high-powered cars moving on interstate highways. It
carries the cargo of much-needed oxygen molecules and
nutrients that are necessary to sustain life in every cell of the
body. If the blood is restricted long enough from any member
of the body, that member will internally asphyxiate, and begin
to change colors. Its asphyxiated cells can quickly die—even
without an external assailant—for their affliction is the result of
internal deprivation.
Every member, every limb and organ in the human body,
needs the blood. Along with its culinary duty of delivering
soluble dietary contents throughout the body, our blood has
the additional responsibility of functioning as a paramedic. Its
white blood cells stand ready to attack adverse intruders in the
form of bacteria or foreign cells, or any other foreign substance
that may try to disrupt the vitality of the body. The white blood
cells are the body’s “militia.” These cells are uniquely equipped
to fight off attacking bacteria and expel it from the body—
stripping it of its power and robbing it of its spoils.
 For as we have many members in one body, and all
members have not the same office: so we, being many,
are one body in Christ, and every one members one of
another. Romans 12:4-5

The physical body echoes and illustrates the power of the

blood in the Church, the mystical Body of Christ. Every
member of the Body of Christ—regardless of morality, maturity,
or position—needs the life-giving blood of Jesus. Without the
blood, we cease to have the proof of our sonship. Isn’t the
blood what physicians test to determine and verify who is the
father of a child? Without the blood, we are only bastard sons
camouflaged as real sons. Without His blood, we are pseudo-
heirs trying to receive the promises reserved for the legitimate
sons of God!

WE STILL NEED THE BLOOD!

We did not need the blood only for when we cried out to
the Lord to come into our hearts by faith and rescue us from
impending danger. On the contrary, we still need that same
blood today. All our strength and nourishment and every
promise and miracle must flow to us through the blood. Satan
hates the blood—not only because it redeemed us, but also
because it continues to give us life from day to day!

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through

the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God,
purge your conscience from dead works to serve the
 living God? And for this cause He is the mediator of
the new testament, that by means of death, for the
redemption of the transgressions that were under the
first testament, they which are called might receive the
promise of eternal inheritance. Hebrews 9:14-15

We have lost our teaching of the blood in this age of

Pentecostalism (of which I am adamantly a part). We have
learned about the Spirit of God, but we failed to teach believers
about the blood. Consequently, we have produced a
generation of believers who are empowered by the Spirit but do
not feel forgiven! They are empowered, yet they are insecure.
They are operating in the gifts, but living in guilt!
Oh, hear me today! The blood must be preached. Without it
we have no life. No, the preaching of the blood will not weaken
the Church! To the contrary, it will relieve us of a prepaid debt.
Why are we wasting the power of God on the problems of our
past? The blood has already totally destroyed the past
bondages that held us down! It was through the eternal Spirit
of God that Jesus was able to offer up His blood. The Spirit
always refers us back to the blood. There can be no Pentecost
where there is no Passover!

THE BLOOD IS FOR ALL

There is a devilish prejudice in the Church that denies the
blood to its uncomely members. If a person has a failure in an
area we relate to because we have a similar weakness, we
immediately praise God for the blood that cleanses us from all
unrighteousness. If they are unfortunate enough to fail where
we are very strong, then we condemn them. We tie a string
around those members to mark them, and we deny them the
blood.
The spirit of Cain is loose in the Church! We have spilled
our brother’s blood because he is different, because his skin or
his sin is different from ours. Untie them right now, in the name
of the Lord, and restore to them the opportunity to experience
the life that only comes to the flesh through the blood. Without
the blood all flesh dies—black, white, rich, poor, homosexual,
heterosexual, drug addict, or alcoholic. Without the blood of
Christ to save it and the Holy Spirit to empower it, no flesh can
be saved.
But by the blood of the Lamb, any man, regardless of his
failures or past sin, can come equally and unashamedly to the
foot of the cross and allow the drops of Jesus’ blood to
invigorate the soul that sin has lacerated and destroyed. We
will never experience massive revival until we allow all sinners
to come to the fountain filled with blood, drawn from
Emmanuel’s veins!
Have you ever been guilty of having a condescending
attitude about another person’s weakness? I am ashamed to
admit it, but I have. How can we dare to think we can access
the soul-cleansing blood that delivers us from the cesspool of
our secret sins, and then look down on another member of
Christ’s Body in disdain? How can we forbid them access to
the only answer to the massive problems that consume our
generation?
THE ANTIDOTE
The blood of Christ is God’s antidote to the plague of sin
that has attacked the world and, yes, even the Body of Christ!
We may have different symptoms, just as a flu virus may
produce different symptoms in different people, but we all
suffer from a fatal infection of sin! Sin has affected us
differently according to our backgrounds and circumstances,
but regardless of the symptoms, it is still the same disease.
There is but one cure: the blood. “Come to the fountain so full
and free. Cast your poor soul at the Savior’s feet. Come in
today and be made complete. Glory to His name!” (“Down at
the Cross,” Elisha A. Hoffman, 1878).

Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make
coats of skins, and clothed them. Genesis 3:21

We have presented no solution to the tragedies of life that

afflict our members. We have offered them no balm for the
injuries that come from inner flaws and failure. Because we
have offered no provision for the sons and daughters who fall,
many of our Adams and our Eves are hiding in the bushes. Our
fallen brethren hear our message, but they cannot come out to
a preacher or a crowd that merely points out their nakedness
and has nothing in hand to cover them. We need to offer the
perfect sacrifice to the sons of God as well as to the world.
Adam was God’s son. He was fallen and he was foolish, but he
was the son of God!

Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth,
 which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
Luke 3:38

The blood of Christ will even reach the falling, faltering son
who hides in the bushes of our churches. He has fig leaves all
around him. He is illicit and immoral. Who will walk the cool of
the garden to find him? Even harder yet, who will walk the heat
of the jungle to cover him? Many of us are taking the first walk
to discover the fallen, but they have not taken the deeper walk
to cover the fallen. How can this son stand naked and
unashamed if we offer no sanctity or holiness in exchange for
his failure, yet have great mercy for our own shortcomings?
When God covered Adam and Eve’s nakedness, He covered
what He discovered with the bloody skins of an innocent
animal, giving Himself the first sacrifice to atone for their sin.

STANDING IN THE BLOOD-SOAKED SKINS

Before Adam could receive the covering God had provided,
though, he had to disrobe himself of what he had contrived. It
is in this process that many believers are trapped. We are so
uncomfortable with our humanity that we are afraid to risk
removing our contrived religious facade long enough for God
to bring us, as the hymnist so aptly declared, “dressed in His
righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne!”
(“My Hope Is Built,” Edward Mote, 1832).
Adam stripped himself before a holy God, admitted his
tragic sins, and still maintained his position as a son in the
presence of God. Adam and Eve realized at that moment that
the only solution for their sin was in the perfect provision of
their loving God. That same loving God now reaches out to us
as we are, and refashions us into what we should become!
Adam stood as I do, in the warm skins of a freshly slain
sacrifice that made it possible for him to continue to live. It was
actually no more Adam who lived; rather, he was now living the
life of the innocent lamb. Just as surely as the innocent lamb
had taken Adam’s place in death, Adam continued to live on,
wrapped in the coverings of the lamb’s life! Can you
understand more clearly what Paul means when he says,
“accepted in the beloved”? (See Ephesians 1:6.) If Adam were
seen out from under the covering of those bloody skins, he
could not be accepted. But because of the shedding of
innocent blood, there was remission of sin for him!
We hear no further mention of blame or guilt concerning
the first family as they walked away from the worst moment in
the history of humanity. Why? They were wrapped and
protected in the provision of God. We can find no more
arguments, fault-finding, or condemnation in Scripture. I have
not read where Adam blamed Eve anymore. Neither did Eve
judge Adam, for they both realized that had it not been for the
blood, neither would have been there.
We too need to have this knowledge—regardless of the
differences in our specific flaws; regardless of whom we would
want to blame or belittle. If the blood had failed to reach the liar,
then he would be as lost as the child molester! The symptoms
are different, but the disease and its prognosis are the same.
The disease is sin, the wage or prognosis is death, and the
antidote prescribed is the blood and the blood alone. Never
forget the blood, for without it we have no good news at all!

BECOMING HONEST AND OPEN

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we would
ever love like Jesus loves. I know it seems impossible, but I
believe that all of creation is waiting for the sons of God to
come to themselves. Creation is yearning for us to become
what we were meant to be in terms of honesty and
transparency. Even the best of us have failed to completely
disrobe and dislodge ourselves from the many-layered clothes
of vain religiosity. However, as we peel away layer by layer, as
we become more comfortable with our God and our own
humanity, we become increasingly transparent. We are
surprised to find that there are not nearly as many significant
differences between us as we were led to believe.
Perhaps we can learn how to be as open about our failures
as we are about our successes. Without that kind of honesty,
we create a false image that causes others to needlessly
struggle. When others hear our one-sided testimony of
successes with no failure, they become discouraged. They
realize that they are wrestling while we seem to “have it
together.” They feel that they don’t qualify to receive what
God has done for us because we have falsified the records and
failed to tell the truth!
Adam found himself stripped of his fig leaves. He stood
naked before his wife and his God. Those are two important
areas. We must wrestle to achieve a level of honesty that will
keep us from being estranged from the ones we are connected
to. We have to love and be loved by someone to the degree
that we can say, This is who I am, and it is all that I am. Love
me and be patient with me. There is no telling what I will
become, but today this is who I am.
When you find someone who can see your flaws and your
underdeveloped character, and love you in spite of it all, you
are blessed. If the only way you can love me is after I have
perfected my imperfections, then you really don’t love me. As I
progress I will always wonder, “Do you love me for who I am?”
Many marriages seem to pass the test as long as both
parties are perfect in the major areas. But when one party
becomes defective in one of those major areas, the relationship
is often destroyed. God was too wise to wait until you
perfected the defective. He loved you while you were
unlovable so you would never have to hide in the bushes
again! He has loved you with an everlasting love!

THE GREATNESS OF GOD’S GOODNESS

But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

It sounds mushy, and to the religious zealot it may sound

too loose and simplistic, but we need to remember that it is the
goodness of God that leads to repentance (see Rom. 2:4).
Repentance doesn’t come because of the scare tactics and
threats of raging ministers who need mercy themselves.
Repentance comes because of the unfailing love of a perfect
God, a God who cares for the cracked vases that others would
have discarded. It is His great love that causes a decision to be
made in the heart: I must live for Him!
There is no way that you can see Him stand with you when
all others forsake you, and not want to please Him! There is no
way you can weather a storm in His loving arms and not say, “I
am Yours, O Lord. Such as I have I give to You.” One gaze into
His holiness will bring the sinner crashing to the floor on
bended knees, confessing and forsaking, wrestling and
controlling every issue that would have engulfed him before
his wandering eye affixed itself on the manifold graces of God!
In other words, God is too good for us to experience His
love and then be contented to abuse that love. Accepting the
rejected is not the weakness of the gospel; it is its strength!
No, we cannot shelter hardened criminals who are content to
live as outlaws from the Word of the Lord. But there is a great
deal of difference between the cold callousness of a rebellious
heart and the deeply troubled heart of a transforming Christian
whose whispered prayer is, “God, save me from myself.” It is to
the distraught heart that seeks so desperately for a place of
refuge that we extend soft hands and tender words.
To the survivors of wrecked ships and damaged homes, we
hold out our arms. As we do, they will come—the halt and the
lame, the deaf and dumb. They will need much of the Word and
much time before their marriages cease to tremble and their self-
images improve. They will have flashbacks and relapses, and
require intensive care. Yet we swing wide the doors of ministry
and admit, at the risk of being blatantly naked, that most of our
doctors have at one time been patients, and that many of them
are still being treated. Still we say, “Come,” for we are not the
medicine—it is Christ who is the cure!
To the overlooked and the castaway, to the downtrodden
and the wayfaring, we cry, “Come into this shelter; come out of
the cold. If nowhere else, and by no one else, you are accepted
in the beloved!”

WHAT ABOUT THE CHURCH?

How can we then define the Church, with its rising divorce
rate and afflicted leadership? Doesn’t the Church need to bathe
itself in its own message? Yes, it does. But then who said the
Church would not? This “dippity-doo, a little dab will do you”
mentality that we preach is not scriptural at all. We need
treatment every day. We have strengths and struggles. We
have conflicts and conquests, conquerings and challenges. We
are not a finished product. Why have we boxed ourselves in
and lifted ourselves up as the epitome of sanctity? Beneath our
stained glass windows and padded pews lay broken hearts and
torn families, those who chose to wait in the aisle of His
presence rather than die in the stables of our wretchedness!
We have no right to be blessed, in ourselves. We are
neither worthy nor deserving of it. Yet He has blessed us “in
spite of us.” Our testimony must change. Away with the
polished brass words from silver-spooned lips that suggest
anonymity from failure and fear. If we tell the truth (and we
seldom do), it was the blood that brought us here. Beneath the
streaming tears of a grateful heart, through our trembling lips
must emerge the birthing thoughts that Christ has done it all,
and that we have nothing to boast in but His precious blood—
and His blood alone!

CHRIST ON THE CROSS

Before I close this chapter on the precious effect of His
blood, I must take one final, longing look back at Calvary’s
bloody banks. As the eclipsed sun tucked itself behind the
trembling ground, a ground still wet with the cascading blood
of a loving Savior, Jesus’ love was so awesome that it could
only be depicted by the morbidity of His dying. Allow this
country preacher, this West Virginia hillbilly, a final glimpse at
the only hope his soul has of Heaven. Brush a tear from a face
full of thanksgiving and look at His bruised, mutilated, and
lacerated body. Look at the 33-year-old body that could have
been the object of some loving lady’s desire. The body that
was filled with such youth and potential now hangs from the
cross like a slab of unused meat. From His beaten back to His
ripped torso, we see a wounded knight without armor. His
garments lay crumbled on the ground, the object of the desires
of His villainous guards who now gamble up their leisure
moments, waiting on the death angel to flap his wings in the
face of the Savior.
Ignore the ice-cream social pictures of modern artists who
portray a sunning Savior, basking in divine light before an
alabaster sky as He gazes listlessly and lovingly out at a dying
world. Ignore their imagery of a prince clad in some magical
loincloth that seems, even in the pictures, to be somehow
superimposed on the body of this spiritual celebrity. When you
look at this icon of grace, remove your religious glasses and
you will see a sweat-drenched, trembling, bleeding offering.
That crucifixion was a debauchery and degradation so horrible
that it embarrassed the sun into hiding its face and made the
ground tremble at the nervous sight of the King of glory. He
hung dying as if He were the bastard son of Mary, not the King
that He was—dying like a thief in the night! His body, twisted
and mangled, was held to a tree and suspended by nails as if
some Marquis de Sade-type sadist had relished torturing the
innocent.

And they stripped Him, and put on Him a scarlet robe.

And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put
it upon His head, and a reed in His right hand: and
they bowed the knee before Him, and mocked Him,
saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon Him,
and took the reed, and smote Him on the head. And
after that they had mocked Him, they took the robe off
from Him, and put His own raiment on Him, and led
Him away to crucify Him. And as they came out, they
found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they
compelled to bear His cross. And when they were come
unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of
a skull, they gave Him vinegar to drink mingled with
gall: and when He had tasted thereof, He would not
 drink. And they crucified Him, and parted His
garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the prophet, They parted My garments
among them, and upon My vesture did they cast lots.
And sitting down they watched Him there. Matthew
27:28-36

To me, Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace. But to them, He

was the entertainment for the evening. They stripped Him
completely and totally. They humiliated Him by placing a robe
upon His nude body and a crown upon His weary head, and
then they amused themselves with Him. When they could do
no more, they stripped Him of the robe and put His own
clothes upon Him and led Him away to the cross. At the cross,
Jesus again was stripped of His own clothes like the innocent
animal in the Book of Genesis was stripped of its coat of skin.
Likewise, Jesus was made bare that I might be covered.
Climbing naked upon the cross, He lay nailed to a tree! They
then parted His garments among themselves and watched Him,
naked and not ashamed! They watched until grace grew weary
and mercifully draped a curtain over the sun, allowing darkness
to veil Him from the watchful eyes of unconcerned hearts.
These are the eyes of cold-hearted men, men whose eyes are
still darkened today lest they behold the wonder of His glory.
That is why they can’t quite see what we see when we look at
Calvary!
The Savior’s head is pricked with the thorns of every issue
that would ever rest on my mind. His hands are nailed through
for every vile thing I have ever used mine to do. His feet are
nailed to the tree for every illicit, immoral place you and I have
ever walked in! Sweat and blood race down His tortured frame.
His oozing, gaping wounds are tormented by the abrasive bark
of that old rugged cross, and are assaulted by the salty sweat
of a dying man. In spite of His pain and abuse, in spite of His
torment and His nudity, He was still preaching as they watched
Him dying—naked and not ashamed!
Oh preacher, you say you’ve been through some things
and that you’ve been hurt—still you must not stop preaching.
Even though you have been stripped and others have beheld
your nakedness, there are still some who will hear your words.
Some dying thief will relate to you—if you can preach through
your nudity and minister through your pain. Someone will
relate to you and be saved because you stayed at your post
and did what you were called to do!

SO WHAT ABOUT THE LOINCLOTH?

Yes, the tormentors unveiled Him as if they were unmasking
a painting. His nailed hands were denied the privilege of hiding
Himself. He was exposed. So what about the issue of the
loincloth? Where did this loincloth come from? Why is it
painted on most of the pictures I see of the cross? Isn’t that
what hinders us now? Are we, the Body of Christ, hiding
beneath a loincloth that has stifled our testimony and blocked
our ability to be transparent, even with one another? There is
seemingly some secret order whereby we have not been
allowed to share our struggles as well as our successes. Our
ministers are dying of loneliness because they feel obligated to
maintain some false image of perfection in order to be
serviceable in our society. We have no one to laugh with, no
one to cry with, and no one who will sit down and share a
sandwich with us. Beneath the loincloth of human expectation
and excessive demands, many men and women are bleeding to
death!
The greater tragedy is the fact that the loincloth represents
all those things that are humanly imposed upon us, things that
God does not require! The loincloth, regardless of how
appropriate, moral, or sanctimonious it might seem, only exists
in the minds of the artists who, in turn, painted what they
thought we could stand to see. The Bible, on the other hand,
says, “The Lord hath made bare His holy arm…” (Is. 52:10)!
I resent the loincloth because it is almost prophetic of what
the Church, the mystical Body of Christ, has done today. We
have hidden our humanity beneath the man-made cloths of
religiosity. We have covered up what God has made bare! Now
we have to face secular news reporters who are trying to
expose what should have been uncovered from the beginning.
We are not God! We are men—men made of clay who have the
power of God. We should apologize for ever trying to pass
ourselves off as anything more. We need no loincloth; the
Body of Christ was meant to be naked and not ashamed. Like
the physical body of Christ, we have been camouflaged
beneath religious loincloths. Like Adam’s fig leaves, our
loincloth is our attempt to cover what only God can cover.
Was the body of Christ covered? Yes, but not with any
man-made material. The body of Christ was meant to be
covered with nothing but the blood of Christ. Anything else is
vain and ineffective. The cascading blood that flowed from His
gaping wounds was the dressing of the Lord. His provision for
our nudity was His blood. He knew that the death angel would
soon pass by, and loincloths do not impress him. But that
angel said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”
I hope you have only one defense when it is your turn to
go on trial. Do not submit a loincloth for evidence; it is
inadmissible. But my wounded, hurting, healing, helping,
giving and needing friend, when they try your case (and they
surely will), open your mouth, clear your throat, and plead, No
additives; the blood alone!
 Chapter 10

HE LAID ASIDE HIS G ARMENTS

And supper being ended, the devil having now put into
the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him;
Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things
into His hands, and that He was come from God, and
went to God; He riseth from supper, and laid aside His
garments; and took a towel and girded Himself. After
that He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash
the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel
wherewith He was girded. John 13:2-5

Supper is over and the dishes are cleared away. Supper is

also over for those of us who have had a “reality check”
through the unveiling of Judas. We now realize that our
ultimate purpose for gathering isn’t really for fellowship. He
gathers us to sharpen and prune us through our attempts at
fellowship. He often uses the people with whom we worship to
prune us. They become the utensils the Lord uses to perfect
those whom He has called. As lavishly garnished as the table
is, and as decorative as it may appear to the youthful gaze of
the new Christian, it is only a matter of time before they begin
the stage-by-stage unmasking and realize that the guests
around the table of the Lord are bleeding.
A SHOCKING GUEST LIST
Imagine how shocked you would be to find yourself invited
to a prestigious dinner party like this one. You have been so
careful to respond appropriately. Now shaven and manicured,
clean and perfumed, you carefully begin the laborious task of
attiring yourself in an elegant, yet tasteful manner. You
desperately want to make a positive impression on the Host, as
well as on the guests. After arriving on time, you hasten
toward the door where you are announced and then ushered
into the banqueting room of your dreams.
The Host is dazzling—more splendid than your imagination
could have ever concocted. In fact, He is so awesome that you
scarcely notice the guests at all. As the evening wears on and
the supper is presented by course, each one more exquisite
than the first, you begin to focus your attention on the other
guests.
As your eyes begin to warily make the rounds across the
table, a bitter taste of bile begins to rise and lodge in your
throat. Each guest has some sort of gross deformity beneath
their gracious smile. Neither rubies nor diamonds, neither
tuxedos nor tails can camouflage the scars and gaping wounds
represented around the table. You are shocked that you spent
all evening trying to prepare yourself to meet people who have
more flaws than you have ever imagined! The only spotless
splendor for the human eye to gaze upon is the Host Himself—
all others are merely patients; just mutilated, torn, dilapidated,
disfigured caricatures of social grace and ambiance.
 So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things.
Then the master of the house being angry said to his
servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the
city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and
the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is
done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.
And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the
highways and hedges, and compel them to come in,
that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, That
none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my
supper. Luke 14:21-24

These harsh realities are merely a semblance of what we

gradually encounter as we face the rude awakenings of
ministry. We learn to understand Peter’s anger and his
occasional tendency to lie. We feel the constant insecurities of
Thomas, whose doubtful warnings seem to come against every
attempt we would make toward progress. We encounter the
painful betrayal of our old friend, Judas Iscariot, whose twisted
way of loving us never seems to stop him from killing us.
This is a fine dinner, indeed! If it weren’t for the glorious
splendor of the Host Himself, who would subject himself to the
trauma? When we see Jesus, we can only sit in splendor and
thank God that He is gracious enough to invite the impaired
and the impoverished—lest the very seat in which we sit be
emptied as well!

SUPPERTIME IS COMING TO AN END

 The truth of the matter is that no one prepares a meal to last
forever. There is a time when we must move beyond
suppertime. We must move beyond the stage in our
development where we come to a ministry just to be fed, where
our whole focus for coming to the table is always to receive.
We must make the transition that every believer must make—
some call it the transition from believership to discipleship, but
I just call it the transition from suppertime to service time.
We don’t need to leave the fellowship just because we’ve
taken a closer look at the membership. If we do leave, we will
only discover the sad fact that every ministry, regardless of its
size or structure, has its own incapacities. God only opens your
eyes so you can get up from the table and give someone else a
turn in the seat. It is time for you to learn the art of service and
move beyond the gluttony of supper.
“And supper being ended…” the Scripture says in John
13:2. I sense that in someone’s life, supper has ended. You
want desperately to go back to your original naiveté. You can
no more do that than you can go back to believing in Santa
Claus! Once your eyes have been opened, squeezing your
eyelids together will not close them again!
What do you do? First, you must understand that
suppertime is coming to an end. When you are being betrayed
by those you trust, it is a sign that suppertime is coming to an
end. When you reach the point where the hand that dips with
you points an accusation against you, supper is coming to an
end. When you want to stay where you are, but you’ve got to
go where He calls, supper is over.
 There is no need to hold on to the plate and spoon like a
toddler who refuses to release his tray. Understand that God
gave you that period of innocence in a time of need to
accomplish what was necessary. But “supper being ended,” He
is clearing away the dishes. Supper is over! It is finished!
Jesus then rises from supper. I am afraid that most of us
have never risen from supper. We are still trying to “get all we
can, and can all we get.” We have never risen from supper;
instead, we are resting on the laurels of indifference and
contentment. It reminds me of people who go to a restaurant
and fellowship throughout the meal. Then, though the evening
wanes, the candles collapse, and the flames flicker out, the
crowd still sits around a cluttered table, oblivious to the need
to move on.
I wonder if we have chattered away the age and jested
away a generation. Are we still sitting around the cluttered
dishes of dead programs whose crushed crumbs are not
enough to feed the impoverished age in which we have been
called? Shouldn’t we have quit shouting long enough to rise
from the table? Hold the music and turn up the lights! Even the
waiter is gone home, and here we sit in the same spot,
rehearsing the same excuses! We need men and women who
will rise from supper.

ARISE TO DISROBE!
The Master now rises from the table in the presence of
these, His guests, and begins the unnerving process of
disrobing in a room where all others are clothed. I must tell you
—after playing football in school and spending many hours in
musty locker rooms with strangers—it is much easier to
undress when others are undressing than it is to walk into an
executive boardroom and unbuckle your belt and disrobe! This
would be true even if that room was filled with the same men
whom you work out with in the health spa. It is not who they
are that matters. It is that your comfort zone is destroyed when
you feel as though you are the only one who is naked.
Jesus taught a powerful lesson about ministry as He rose
from supper and began to disrobe in front of men who were still
clothed. Isn’t our problem the fact that we don’t want to be
seen as the only one? The fear of being different can lock you
in a vault. It can close you in a prison of disobedience because
you are afraid of being alone.
We will never have real ministry until someone changes the
atmosphere in our boring little conferences and conventions.
Real ministry will start the moment we stop trying to impress
each other and say, “Look! This is how I really look beneath
my name, my reputation, or my success. This is who I really
am!”
Jesus paid the price. He took the leap that few would ever
dare to take. He laid aside His garments before those whom He
had labored to inspire. Yet we have not followed His example.
The closer we get to leaders, the more they hide! They are
afraid, and understandably so. We have asked them to be God!
We have asked them to be flawless! We have asked them to be
more than what we could ever be, and we have imprisoned
them in their callings and chained them to their giftings.
Wailing, shrieks of broken hearts, and screams of terror
echo behind our stiffly starched shirts and satiny smooth
dresses. The words have increased; the technology has
improved; but the power of ministry will never be unleashed
until those who are called to deliver it find the grace, or
perhaps the mercy, that will allow them to lay aside their
garments!
“Is He mad? Has He lost His mind?” Can you imagine what
the disciples thought as Jesus changed the atmosphere of the
feast by disrobing before them? How could a person of His
stature stoop so low? I tell you, He never stood as tall as He
did when He stooped so low to bless the men whom He had
taught. Even Peter said, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my
hands and my head” (Jn. 13:9).
We are still squirming and fuming over exposing, forgiving,
and washing one another’s feet! We need the whole of us
cleansed! We have never accepted people in the Church. We
take in numbers and we teach them to project an image, but we
have never allowed people—real people—to find a place at our
table!
Jesus was running out of time. He had no more time for fun
and games. He ended the supper and laid aside His garments.
Hear me, my friend; we too are running out of time! We have a
generation before us that has not been moved by our lavish
banquets or by the glamorous buildings we have built.
Someone, quick! Call the supper to an end and tell us who
you really are beneath your churchy look and your pious
posture. Tell us something that makes us comfortable with our
own nudity. We have carefully hidden our struggles and
paraded only our victories, but the whole country is falling
asleep at the parade!

STRIPPED DOWN TO THE ETERNAL

Jesus laid aside His garments. That is what ministry is all
about. It requires you to lay aside your garments. Lay aside
your personal ambitions and visions of grandeur. Gifted people
tend to be some of the most egotistical, self-aggrandizing,
eccentric individuals the world has ever seen. That is why
“being gifted” in itself will never deliver anybody. Ministry is
birthed when you are stripped down to your heart’s desire,
when beneath every other thread of whimsical grandeur,
something in your heart says more than anything else, I want
my life to have counted for something. I want to accomplish
something for God.
Have you ever prayed the kind of prayer that pleads, “Oh
God, don’t let me impress anyone else but the One to whom I
gave my life”?
Have we given our lives to the Lord? I am absolutely
serious—I’m talking to those of us who witness and work in
the Kingdom trying to bring souls to God. Have we given our
lives to the God we teach about? If we have, then why are we
still standing around the table arguing over who is going to sit
on the left and who is going to sit on the right?! Why have we
not laid aside our garments?
The garment represents different things to different people.
It is whatever camouflages our realness, whatever hinders us
from really affecting our environment. Our garments are the
personal agendas that we have set for ourselves (many of
which God was never consulted about). Like the fig leaves
sewn together in the garden, we have contrived our own
coverings. The terrible tragedy of it all is that, sooner or later,
whatever we have sown together will ultimately be stripped
away.
The Lord often uses trials to realign us. The strong winds
of adversity will attack everything in us that can be shaken.
Weaned by the wind, we release every idol in His presence.
Every person who finds real purpose will, sooner or later, go
through some series of adversities that will cause them to let
go of the temporal and cleave to the eternal. Some awaken in
hospital rooms with respirators and monitors beeping in their
ears. There, beneath the quiet canopy of painted ceilings and
with the soft smell of disinfectant, they realize that many of the
things that seemed important mean nothing at all.
Left with nothing of importance but the simplicity of a
second chance, they lay there. Their certificates of deposit in
the bank, their cars in the garage, and their clothes somewhere
in a closet, have all lost their importance. Beneath those thin,
frail hospital sheets, they discover they are really no different
from “Joe Poor” down the hall, who is there on his Medicaid
card. They are stripped beneath the sheets and, for the first
time, they don’t care to read the paper, check the stocks, or
catch the news. At least for a while, they are naked and not
ashamed!
Others discover in the heated battle of a divorce court that
the person they thought was everything can walk away and
leave them for anything. With hot tears and strong angry
words, they are stripped down to what they had before. Job
discusses this terrible stripping that seems to be characteristic
of the call. He goes through a brief but painful period that
yanks away everything that appeared to be important in his
life. He used to be very successful, but now he is naked and
sick. His home is in shambles, his marriage is a joke, and his
children—his precious children—are dead.
What word of wisdom falls from his encrusted lips? What
grain of comfort does he afford himself in the vanity of his own
thoughts? His only shade beneath the blistering sun of
adverse circumstances is found in the fact that he can only be
stripped down to what he started with before. He can be
stripped of the temporal, but not the eternal.
Some things you never have to lose. I’m not talking about
friends, wealth, or fame. We often forget that all of these things
are mere threads and imitations of life, just shallow images of
status. Character, class, and Christianity are at least three
things that can survive the strippings of life!

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his
head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
and said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and
naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the
 Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
Job 1:20-22

THE WORSHIP OF SACRIFICE

True worship is born when true sacrifice occurs. When we
lay upon the altar some bleeding object that we thought we
would keep for ourselves (but realized it was God’s all the
while), that’s worship. You can never be really anointed until
you personally experience a situation that calls you to lay aside
your garments. It is from this river that the tears of worship are
born. They fall lavishly down a face that has been pulled from
behind its covering and laid bare before God. Who can help
but worship Him, once we see Him aside from every distraction
and weight?
People who see you worship will never be able to determine
why you worship by looking at things you have. It is what you
left behind and laid aside that seasons you into the real aroma
of worship. How much does it cost to be the “real” you? What
did you lay aside to follow Him? Whatever you have laid aside,
or will lay aside, determines the effectiveness of your ability to
touch the world at its feet and speak to its heart!

LAY ASIDE YOUR GARMENTS

Jesus, in one final blaze of teaching excellence, did an
illustrated sermon in the nude. He showed the disciples that
they can never change the atmosphere or wash the feet of
anybody until they had gone through sacrifice and endured
risk and rejection. Do you have great ambitions or plans? Lay
them aside—the Lord has need of you.
Laying aside your garment requires you to say:

“Here are my grudges and my unforgiveness. Here is

my need to impress and be acknowledged. Here’s my
time, and here is my overtime. Here’s my second job.
Here is anything that I may be wrapped up in that
hinders me from receiving new glory.

“You will never have to take these things, Lord. You will
not have to snatch them from my clenched fist as I
wrestle in rebellion with Your tender whispers in the
night. I have heard the soft brush of Your voice like
wind across my face. I will give You what it takes to be
who You want me to be. Even if I have to be the only
one who stands in crowds of religious indifference, I
will lay aside my garments!”

Jesus did the same thing in the garden of Gethsemane that

He did at the end of the supper. At the supper, He laid aside
His garments; in the garden, He laid aside His will!
Thank God for all the Kathryn Kuhlmans, the Oral Roberts,
and the Benny Hinns whose lives have touched the world. The
hot blaze of camera lights never caught the true basis of their
ministry. It was the things they laid aside that made them who
they were. Thank God they laid them aside. Thousands are
healed because they did. Thousands were saved because they
did.
What about “Pastor Littlechurch” and “Evangelist
Nobody” who never sold a tape or wrote a book? They paid
the price nonetheless, and for the souls they touched they are
unsung heroes. Like Noah, their membership roll never
exceeded eight souls, but they faithfully led them nonetheless.
They wanted to do more. They thought they would go farther
than they did, but they had laid aside their garments. They
said, “If I am not called to help everybody, then please, God, let
me help somebody!” This is the cost of Christianity stripped
down to one desire, stripped to the simplicity of bareness.
The truth of the matter is that when men are stripped bare,
there is no difference between the executive and the janitor.
When they are stripped bare, there is no difference between
the usher and the pastor. Is that why we are afraid to let
anyone see who we really are? Have we become so addicted to
our distinctions that we have lost our commonality?
Come down from the lofty perches of superiority and wash
the feet of the hurting. There are no differences in the feet of
the washed and the feet of the one who washes them. They all
look the same. Your ministry truly becomes effective when you
know that there is precious little difference between the people
you serve and yourself. Then and only then have you laid
aside your garments!
This message will save a ministry. It will also save a
marriage. Marriages are failing all over the country because
couples are reciting vows before an overworked preacher, and
an overspent family, promising to do what they will never be
able to do! Why? You can’t love anybody like that until you
lay aside your garments and allow their needs to supercede
your needs. Somewhere in the night, beneath the crumpled
sheets of consummation, they will act out with their bodies
what must happen in their hearts. They can never be one until
they have laid aside their garments. Then and only then can
they come together as one. There actually are people who have
been married for years who have never laid aside their
garments.

OUR EXAMPLE: JESUS IN A TOWEL

Jesus so loved those men that He didn’t wait on them to
make the first move. He taught them by going first. He rose up!
He laid aside His garments and He washed their feet! He didn’t
respond to their actions—He initiated their actions. Are you
always going to be a responder who only reacts to what others
dictate, or are you going to initiate change in the Body? If you
are going to change it, then you must be willing to be a
trendsetter! You must be naked and not ashamed.
Now I know some wise theologian is thinking, “Jesus
served with a towel gird about Himself.” Yes, you are right. No
one can work without covering! But please remember that
somewhere between His evening dinner wear and the servant’s
towel with which He was to be girded—somewhere in the
process—Jesus stood before them naked. They witnessed the
scene as their Master stepped down to become a servant. He
laid aside His garments—not only for them, but for us all. He
came to earth and stripped Himself of the glory He had with the
Father before the foundations of the world!

For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that,

though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became
poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich. 2
Corinthians 8:9

Jesus normally dressed with distinction. He was such a

fashion statement that even while He was dying on the cross,
affluent Roman soldiers were gambling to win the prize of
Jesus’ seamless robe. But this was not a time for form. Neither
was it a time for fashion, for real ministry is done with a
complete loss of distinction. If He were to leave a lasting
impact on these men in the upper room, He must cover Himself
only in a plain towel!
The glamorous Prince of Peace stripped Himself to appear
before them in only a common towel. As He knelt down on the
floor and began to wash the disciples’ feet, He looked so lowly
that it was embarrassing. Peter almost refused to allow Him to
be seen in that light! To think that the One he called Master
would appear in a towel! One moment He was as stately as a
prince, and the next moment He knelt naked before them as just
a man!
The final touch of God was delivered through a Man who
had humbled Himself and wrapped His vulnerabilities up in His
ministry. He was covered like a servant, ready to help the
hurting. His suit, His clerical attire, was neither His seamless
robe nor His nakedness. His ministry was best seen when He
wrapped Himself in a towel!

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ

Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not
robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no
reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant,
and was made in the likeness of men: and being found
in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and
given Him a name which is above every name.
Philippians 2:5-9

If you believe that God would exalt you, if you believe that
you have the ability to wash the dusty sands of life from the
feet of this world, then please don’t join the spiritual elitists
who are impressed with their own speech!
Lay aside every distraction. Lay aside your garments, wrap
every naked human flaw in the warm towel of servanthood as
you help others, and draw the water! With joy we draw water
from the wells of salvation! (See Isaiah 12:3.) But what good is
that water if we fail to use it to wash away the weariness of
someone’s journey? I can almost hear the cascading sound of
the cooling waters. They fall like mountains of water
plummeting from the Rock. God has enough water. He just
needs someone who will take the risk of being the first one. He
is searching for someone to end the long supper and lay aside
his garments. You may be the only one at your table who
knows that the hour has come and the supper is ended. Wait
no longer—we are losing our generation! Lay aside your
garments! The waters are drawn, my friend; we are waiting…on
you!
 Chapter 11

STRIPPED FOR P RAYER

It is late in the evening. The sufferer walks the floor with

his passion, his goals, and his ambitions. Silence envelops the
house like a warm blanket around cold feet. There is a gentle
caress of tranquillity holding the house in an interlude of
submissive bliss. The solace of the evening has crept onto the
faces of the sleeping family, softly illuminated by the moon’s
quiet beams.
While others sleep, there are those of us who walk the floor
as a mother with a suckling child. While others enter into the
bliss of calmness and lie in the warmth of peaceful beds, there
are those who have a conversation where there are no ears to
hear. There are those who find no solace in ordinary things in
the middle of the night. They have a restlessness, almost an
anticipation, that something is about to happen.
Rising like spoke from a chimney, thoughts float and
ascend into the conscious mind with all the grace of a ballerina.
Who can log the moment when thought becomes prayer?
Sometimes it changes in the middle of a sentence. In the
stillness of the night, these nightwalkers move across their
rooms and stare blankly out of their windows into the dark
nothingness of night. They look at something beyond vision.
They speak the inaudible to the Intangible, birthing a prayer—
fleeting vaporous thoughts whose pattern defies grammar.
Oratorical nightmares, they are just the feeble cries of a heart
whose conflict has pushed the head to bow in humble
submission to One greater than itself.

FOR GOD’S EARS ALONE

Understand that real prayer was not made for human ears.
If you have a problem that can be easily prayed through in
public, then it is not a problem. When we earnestly pray, we are
surprised at how inner feelings we didn’t even know we had
come to the surface. In that regard, prayer is a nausea of the
mind. It brings up the unresolved past that swirls around and
around inside us.
Who of us would want others to hear us as we release our
inner groanings before the throne? Religion and its images do
not relieve the heart of its brokenness. There is much more
involved here than the pious sputterings of religious
refinement. This is a midnight cry for divine assistance! Often
what we convey around others is more like a plastic-covered
superficial replica of what real prayer is all about. It is a
dressed-up, Sunday-go-to-meeting counterfeit that is
impressive, but completely inconsequential!

THE CHURCH’S ADVANCEMENTS

Heaven sees the hands that tightly clasp their nice
gleaming Bibles in leather cases. Heaven sees the 14-karat gold
necklaces draped carefully across the napes of necks held high
in the glistening sunlight on Sunday morning. Only Heaven
can see the liturgical order of pious hearts whose heads have
contrived a method that seems spiritually edifying. The
grandstands of Heaven behold the attempts of the righteous at
piety and honor. How impressive are our sanctuaries—each
more glamorous than the other. How stately are the auditoriums
and how distinguished are the people who rush in to fill them
for a punctual hour of spiritual rhetoric!
There is nothing quite comparable to the pomp and
circumstance of a well-orchestrated service. Never before in the
history of the New Testament Church has there been such an
emphasis placed on facilities and sanctuaries. As glamorous as
the old Catholic churches were in earlier years, they can’t even
compare to these space age monuments, these brass and glass
superstructures as picturesque as the rocky crest of mountain
ridges. Our jet-set, microwave age has produced some
elaborate and intricately designed places of worship. We have
manned them with people displaying the finest of
administrative, musical, and oratorical abilities. Our cabinets are
filled with resumés, statistics, and ledgers. We have arrived!
Please don’t misunderstand me. I am neither commending
nor criticizing these advances. My purpose is to point out the
inconsistency that blares in my heart like a trumpet. I have
heard the swelling tones of well-orchestrated, carefully
implemented musical and theatrical presentations. However, I
am often distracted by the bleating of the sheep.
Can you hear the hollow moans of sheep who bleed behind
the stained glass and upon the padded pew? I do not blame
our success as the cause for their pain; neither do I suggest
that the absence of ornateness would cure the ills of our
society. I can’t help but wonder, though, if we have majored on
the minor and consequently minored on the major!

P RAYER IS…
Now understand, nothing fuels prayer like need. Neither
the tranquil mood of a calming organ nor a dimly lit room with
hallowed walls can promote the power of prayer like the aching
of a heart that says, “I need Thee every hour.” The presence of
need will produce the power of prayer. Even the agnostic will
make a feeble attempt at prayer in the crisis of a moment. The
alcoholic who staggers toward a car he knows he shouldn’t
drive will, before the night is over, find himself attempting to
dial the number of Heaven and sputter in slurred speech a
fleeting prayer in the presence of near-mishap and malady.
Prayer is man’s confession, “I do not have it all.” Prayer is
man admitting to himself that, in spite of his architectural
designs and his scientific accomplishments, he needs a higher
power. Prayer is the humbling experience of the most arrogant
mind confessing, “There are still some things I cannot
resolve.”
The presence of prayer is, in itself, the birthplace of praise.
Prayer is man acknowledging the sovereign authority of a God
“who can!” You ask, “Can what?” God can do whatever He
wants to do, whenever He wants to do it. What a subliminal
solace to know the sovereignty of God!

KEEP P ERSEVERING
If there is a tragedy to this declaration, if there is any truth
that numbs the glimmering joy of this theological presentation,
it is that we live among men who have replaced creations for
the Creator. Their brilliant minds grasp facts, but fail to
perceive truth. The truth is not clearly seen in the facts, for the
facts can suggest that you have arrived, while the truth says
you are still searching! Until men come to truth, they will
escape the thing that humbles the heart and bends the will to
the posture of prayer.

And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans

write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and
true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I
know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I
would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art
lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee
out of My mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and
increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and
knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable,
and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy
of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich;
and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and
that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and
anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see.
As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous
 therefore, and repent. Revelation 3:14-19

Each of us must have the curiosity and the inner thirst to

move beyond our images into our realities. It is difficult,
sometimes even painful, to face the truth about our
circumstances and then possess the courage to ask for God’s
best for our lives. If prayer is to be meaningful, it cannot be
fictitious. It must be born out of the pantings of a heart that
can admit its need. If we refrain from airing our particular
dilemmas with anyone else, at least we must be honest enough
to come before God with an open heart and a willing mind to
receive the “whatsoevers” that He promised to the
“whosoevers” in His Word!

BE OPEN IN TRIAL
Wrapped in the sanctity of what we profess, we often hide
the nudity of what we possess. In short, we can easily find
ourselves professing much more than we honestly possess.
Nothing disrobes us as effectively as a trial, though. It exposes
what is still lacking in our hearts and character! Although we
appear to be in control in the spectators’ eyes, we are often in
great turmoil inside.
You would be surprised at the people who miss wonderful
opportunities for God’s blessing because they have “an image
to uphold.” They miss God’s blessing because they lack the
humility to assume a posture of receiving and accept God’s gift
through other men. Spiritual arrogance will not allow them to
open their hearts to the flawed vessels that God uses. They
insist on being “beyond ministry.” Yet, my friend, there is a trial
whose sting is as painful as the thousand darts in a beehive
and as deadly as the venom of a viper.
When trials come in extreme intensity, you must adapt and
be able to open your heart. Not only must we be open to the
Lord, but we also must learn to be available to receive from
whomever He chooses to use.

RECEIVE FROM THE UNEXPECTED AND

THE ORDINARY
I remember reading in the Gospels how Jesus needed
ministry after being savagely attacked by the enemy at a very
vulnerable moment. After 40 days of fasting, He was hungry
(see Mt. 4:2; Lk. 4:2). Satan makes his attack when you are
hungry. Hunger is a legitimate need that satan offers to satisfy
in a perverted way. The extreme test of faith is to stand fast
when you have a legitimate need you could satisfy in an
illegitimate way.
The added danger of that scenario is the victim’s feeling of
being justified in using illicit methods because he has a
legitimate need! Have you ever had a nagging, gnawing need
that seemed to haunt you like a ghost? It taints your success
and taunts your goals. It is this wrestling, this period of
agonizing struggle, that teaches us how to receive ministry.
Christ seemed to have no problem rebuking the enemy who
came against Him. It was after the victory was won that He
needed the ministry of angels to continue His vision. There are
some people who have not been released from old trials yet
because they will not allow God to heal them through the
angels of ministry He has chosen to use. Some have been
through so much that they simply don’t trust anymore. They
need someone, but they don’t trust anyone.

And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted

of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels
ministered unto Him. Mark 1:13

What impresses me the most is that in order for Christ to

receive the ministry of angels, He had to allow the lesser (the
angels) to minister to the greater (the Christ). He allowed the
angels whom He created, the same angels He commanded as
Captain of the host, to minister to Him. My friend, when pain
peaks, you don’t care who God uses! You just want to be
healed and blessed. If you were in an automobile accident and
you needed help, you wouldn’t care who the paramedics were.
Their education, denomination, or ethnic background would
mean nothing to you because of the enormity of your need.
Whenever we seek His will, we must be prepared to receive
His way! Many times it is not the will of God that causes us to
struggle as much as it is the way in which He accomplishes His
will. However, if the winds beat fiercely enough and if the rains
plummet down with enough thunderous force, then we are
stripped by the struggle and brought to a place of open, naked
prayer.
I realize that the average person can’t relate to this word.
But this is not a message for the ordinary. This is a message for
the super-ordinary person who knows there are some trials that
peel away inhibition like the rind from an orange. If you ever
visit someone in the hospital and they are sitting up in bed
wearing a cute gown with their hair curled, then you know they
are either well cared for or they are not that sick!

A P LACE OF NAKED P RAYER

There is a level of sickness where a suffering victim’s
hospital gown rides up on her body. Her hair has fallen down,
and her body emits an odor. This patient knows there is
someone in the room, but she just doesn’t care anymore.
We need to get to the point where we lose our self-
consciousness because we are sick and tired of allowing the
enemy to subdue what God has given to us. We need to get to
the point where all we want is to get well, the point where
“getting well” is the only thing that really matters. Why?
Stripped down somewhere below our image and our name,
even beyond the opinions of others, there is a power that
boggles the mind. It may just be that you can’t get what you
need from the Lord because you are too cognizant of people
and too oblivious to the presence of God.
There is a place of naked prayer that we occasionally read
about in the Word of God. Hannah came to the Lord in the
temple and poured out her bitterness before the Lord (see 1
Sam. 1:12-18). There was so much locked up in her that when
she began to empty herself out, she appeared drunk—even to
the aristocracy of the church. God is raising up some people
who will even blow the minds of religious people!
Radical Christians are coming to the forefront. These
people have nothing to lose. Like Christ, they have been
stripped on the cross and are speaking the truth under the
threat of nails and spears. When we pray, we can commend not
only our spirit, but also our job, home, family, finances, and
everything else to the Father. We have been stripped! “Let
anyone gamble for my clothes who wants them! I have learned
the power of transparency and the strength of being backed in
a corner.”
Besides all this, we learn faith when our options diminish.
Who needs faith for water anymore? We just go to the tap and
get a drink. Who needs faith for the parting of the sea when
there are bridges standing strong and erect? Faith is reserved
for those times when there are no options, when “push” has
collided with “shove”! There is nothing we can do but be
crushed by the inevitable—or look unto the Invisible to do the
impossible! Your crisis is a privilege because God has given
you an opportunity to experience a deeper realm of miracle-
working power!

DON’T STOP NOW !

If you are going through a test and all your options are
closing in without any way out, then you should get up and
start shouting! You have been chosen for a miracle. Faith must
have the incubator of impossibility to exhibit its illustrious
ability. In other words, don’t panic. It’s just a test! However, it
is a test with a reward. So don’t stop short of the prize. The
greater the conflict is, the greater the conquest! After all, there
is a certain tightness needed to cause faith to be secreted. You
can’t even get toothpaste out of a tube without a firm squeeze.
There is something good in you, and God knows how to get it
out.
Now the pressure is mounting. The devil wants you to cry
“Uncle!” He is squeezing you every way he can, but he is a liar.
Let’s discard what we don’t need so we can activate what we
do need.
Let us lay aside every sin that would so easily beset us.
Now that we took that off, let’s forgive everyone who ever hurt
us or disappointed us. Let’s just dismiss it. That’s right—throw
the case out of court. There is to be no more deliberating over
the acts of men. We are about to see an act of God!
Slip the spirit of heaviness off your shoulders. That old
depression is weighing you down! But don’t put on the
garment of praise just yet. That is what is wrong today—we
have more shouters than we do prayers. Save the garment of
praise, though; you’re going to need it soon. Now that you are
stripped to nothing but prayer, let your request be made known
unto God.
I know this is radical, but you may have to walk the floor
and pray. You may have to confess some issues that you have
not wanted to confront, but this is naked prayer. You may
have to forgive someone who didn’t even do you the courtesy
of asking to be forgiven! Do it anyway. Considering what God
has done for you, you can’t afford to have anything in your
way.
Let the cool waters of His Word rinse the residue from your
past. The Word is cascading down upon you in torrents.
Spread before Him every issue. He can’t cleanse what you will
not expose. Bathe your mind in the streams of His mercy. There
is no need to put on the “helmet of salvation” over the
confusion of rejection. This kind of bathing is as holy as a
christening and as refreshing as a shower.
This kind of renewal can only occur in the heart of
someone who has been through enough to open his heart, to
close up his past, to stand in the rain of His grace, and to tell
the next generation the truth. Tell them that the only way you
can dress up for God is to lay before Him as a naked offering, a
living sacrifice offered up at the altar in naked prayer!
 Best-Selling Author T.D. Jakes

WOMAN, THOU ART LOOSED GIFT SET

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