Generational Faith

I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.
2 Timothy 1:5

Timothy’s faith was something that came to him through his mother and grandmother. God always intended faith to be generational. Over and over in the Old and New Testaments, God reminds us that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Exodus 3:6, 15; Matthew 22:32; Acts 3:13). He is the God who passes blessing from one generation to the next. He is the God who remembers the promises He made to the last generation in order to fulfill them in the present generation.

Yet, the enemy tries to exploit this generational truth. If an ancestor of ours sins and that sin goes unaccounted for by the blood of Jesus, the enemy uses that as a legal precedent to invade the family line and pass down generational curses. This is one reason why we see common patters of sin passed down in families from one generation to the next (alcoholism, sexual sin, abuse, anger, poverty, curses from Freemasonry and other cults and false religions, etc).

The good news of the gospel is that we now have the authority, in Christ, to apply the blood of Jesus to any sin of our ancestor and see it canceled in Jesus’ name! That is our new inheritance in Christ. But we must be intentional about it.

The Lord warned the Hebrew people about the cost of disobedience in the family line:

The Lord passed by before him and proclaimed: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, keeping loyal love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. But he by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children and children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.”
Exodus 34:5-7

God’s character is described clearly here. He is compassionate and gracious. He is slow to anger and abounding in unconditional love. He is loyal and loves to pass blessing down from one generation to the next. He loves to forgive and show grace.

Yet, God is also perfectly just. It is impossible for Him to be unjust. Sin must be accounted for. That is why He sent His own Son to die for us. So that when we apply the blood of Jesus to the doorframe of our lives, the enemy will have no access. But if we are unaware that the enemy will sometimes try to use the sin of our parents, grandparents and ancestors against us, we don’t know to apply the blood of Jesus to it.

Below is a simple prayer you can pray to separate you from the sin of each preceding generation in your family line. Do this back to the 4th generation as a biblical precedent.

“In the name of Jesus, I declare the blood of Jesus to stand between me and (my parents, my grandparents, the 3rd, the 4th) generation as a wall of separation. I cancel every assignment of darkness. I remove every right of the demonic to afflict me because of the sin of that generation. And I call to me my righteous inheritance and blessings of that generation.”
(Rodney Hogue, Empowered)

Paradox of Faith

But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
1 Timothy 6:11-12

Paul encourages Timothy not to spend all of his time pursuing material wealth. Instead, Paul wants Timothy (and the rest of us) to pursue the riches of the Spirit. Righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness are things we must go after. They are things we must pursue and fight for. This is what it looks like to “take hold” of the eternal life that we have in Christ.

Yet, righteousness is also something we’ve been given. Godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness are also fruits of the Spirit. They are not only things we pursue but things that are birthed within us by the Spirit. And this is the mystery and the tension of the Christian life. This is the paradox of faith–the place where God’s work in us and our participation with God meet together.

It’s like when Paul said of his own ministry, “To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me”(Colossians 1:29). It is the Holy Spirit working within us, yet we must cooperate with Him. God already made us righteous in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21), and yet we must pursue righteousness and godliness. We are already new creations in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17-18), and yet we must “put on” the new self and “put off” the old self (Ephesians 4:22-24). The Father pours His love into our heart through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5), and yet we must pursue love. We were saved by grace through faith in Jesus which is a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8), and yet we must pursue greater measures of faith in our own life (2 Timothy 2:22).

This dynamic is not an either/or but a both/and. It is God’s activity, and it is our response to God’s activity. It is His work in us, and it is our cooperation with His work in us. It is His grace, and it is our obedience. The paradox of faith is all of this working together. This is what it looks like to fight the good fight of faith and take hold of the eternal life that we’ve been given in Christ.

Deceiving spirits

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.
1 Timothy 4:1

One of the primary roles of demons is not just to tempt but also to deceive. The goal is to first lead people away from orthodoxy and then away from faith in Jesus altogether.

But how does it happen?

Just as we can “hear” the Holy Spirit whisper to us in our own thought-life, so too do demons inject their thoughts into our own. If we don’t know the truth of scripture and if we have little spiritual discernment, we can’t tell the difference between the whispers of demonic deception and our own thoughts. Sometimes demons over-play their hand and the thoughts are so jarring that we wonder, “Where did that thought come from?” Many times, that thought didn’t come from us at all but from a deceiver.

But the goal for a spirit of deception is not to get noticed. So the lies have to be just subtle enough–just believable enough–to make us think they are our own thoughts. Once we get led down this road, full-scale strongholds of deception start to get built. Even when people speak truth to us, the words bounce right off the walls of the stronghold–walls meant to protect the deception within.

Another tactic of the enemy is to spread a spirit of offense. Have you noticed how easily people are offended at each other these days? Ever wonder why the politically correct police get more and more oppressive with their ever growing list of things that can be considered offensive? All of this is a strategy of the enemy.

Demons pluck nerves. If you have a hurt or wound in a particular area of your life, and someone says something anywhere in the general vicinity of that wound, demons then pluck that nerve. It doesn’t matter that the person didn’t say anything offensive. It only matters that what was said could be misconstrued to be offensive. That’s enough for the demon to get a foothold, misconstrue what was said, and whisper lies of offense.

Have you ever had someone get offended at something you never said? Instead, the offense was at what they thought you said or what they thought you implied? Again, this is part of the strategy of the enemy. Satan has created a playground for himself out of our culture that is constantly living in offense and perpetually in a victim mentality. In a culture where the most offended person wins the argument, which is pretty much the case today, the enemy has full reign to plant seeds of offense, self-righteousness, pride and self-pity.

The purpose of a spirit of offense is the same as a spirit of deception. If I am offended by the truth, I certainly don’t have to listen to it. Truth is inherently life-giving and has the capacity to bring freedom to all who embrace it. But if the truth offends me, I now have an emotional barrier that keeps me from having to face it. If I live with the constant truth-repellent of “offense” then I will never be free.

We see this most clearly with the Pharisees. Jesus would do the most incredible miracles, but they would get offended that He broke a sabbath law in order to do it (Luke 6:6-11; Matthew 15:12). They couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Rather than celebrate the incredible miracle, they got offended and angry at Jesus. That’s what a spirit of offense does. It distracts people with a minor offense so that they can’t see the major work of God right in front of them.

All People

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and humankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.
1 Timothy 2:1-6

Paul urged Timothy to pray for all people.

Why?

Because God wants all people to be saved.

How?

Through the one mediator between God and humanity, Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.

What this reveals is that in this broken and fallen world, God’s will is not always done. Jesus gave himself for all people and God wants all people to be saved, and yet not all people are saved. This is why we were taught to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”(Matthew 6:10). We have to pray that God’s will be done on earth because it’s not always done on earth. His will is always done in the heavenly realms but not always on earth.

Why?

Because there are forces that resist God’s will being done on the earth. Ephesians 2 lists three forces that push against God’s will being done on earth.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.
Ephesians 2:1-3

The three forces that push against the will of God being done on earth are: 1) our flesh–our old self riddled with cravings, desires and thoughts that are sinful; 2) Satan (a.k.a. the ruler of the kingdom of the air)–the one who works in the hearts and minds of those who are disobedient (see Ephesians 6:12); and 3) the ways of the world–the collective societal deception and disobedience that the enemy uses to create corporate strongholds of lies and unbelief.

God did not create humanity to be marionettes. He gave us the freedom to be in an authentic love relationship with Him. Yet, we continually abuse this freedom and usher evil into the world. When we sin and rebel against God, we hand the authority God gave us to rule (Genesis 1:28) to our enemy, and he uses it to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). This is why what God wants to happen on the earth doesn’t always happen.

We have to stop blaming God when hard things happen. We need a better understanding of His sovereignty that factors in human freedom and the forces at work against God’s Kingdom coming to earth as it is in heaven.

Total Recall

Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well, holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith.
1 Timothy 1:18-19

Paul wrote to Timothy as his spiritual son knowing the prophetic words that had been spoken over Timothy’s life. In order for Timothy to fight the good fight and continue in the faith through hardship, he would have to remember the words spoken over his life.

Sometimes prophetic words–words from the Lord about who we are and who we are becoming–come to us through our alone time with God. Sometimes God speaks to us through a highlighted passage of scripture that the Holy Spirit illuminates. Sometimes God speaks to us in our prayer time, calling us into our future through His still, small voice. And sometimes prophetic words come to us through other people who speak a word from the Lord about our lives.

Life can come at us in a way that makes us forget what God has said about us, our identity, and our future. The Israelites were continually getting into trouble because they forgot–forgot what God said, what God did and who they were called to be. Paul needed Timothy to remember the prophetic words spoken about his life so that he would have the confidence to move forward in faith. Remembering what God says about us emboldens us to break through what everyone else is saying about us.

So, if you get a word from the Lord, either through other people or through your alone time with Him, write it down. Keep a journal. And make it a practice to go back and read through them, remembering the words that God has spoken to you and about you. This is essential in fighting the good fight of faith. This is essential is avoiding a shipwreck of faith.

Ignorance and Unbelief

Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
1 Timothy 1:13-14

The apostle Paul gives us a short, two-sentence description of his own testimony. He was once a bunch of things that were outside of God’s design for his life, but then he was shown mercy. God interrupted his life with mercy, grace, faith and love; Paul has never been the same. This is true for so many of us who follow Jesus.

Notice that he lists two things that kept him from fully embracing the gospel of Jesus in his former life: 1) ignorance, and 2) unbelief. These two have the same effect but are very different in terms of what is happening in our hearts.

The first, ignorance, in the Greek is the word “to know” with a negative prefix attached to it. So it literally just means “not knowing.” Sometimes we don’t believe something because we’ve never been taught it. We’ve never had someone take the time to explain it to us. We didn’t lack faith, we just lacked understanding. This is why teaching about the Kingdom of God in all its facets is so important. A huge portion of Jesus’s own ministry was teaching. He knew He had to help people embrace the truth with their minds so that they could embrace the truth with their lives. Hosea 4:6 says, “my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.”

When we don’t embrace the truth of the gospel or a truth of the Kingdom because of a lack of knowledge, I believe God has patience for that. He woos us and invites us into understanding. He sends opportunities to learn and grow. He sends people to challenge us with new ideas even if they are hard for us to embrace at first.

The second, however, is very different. The word translated as unbelief in the Greek is simply the word “faith” with a negative prefix attached. Literally it means “no faith, no belief.” It is one thing to be unaware of a truth; it’s another to be aware of it and simply reject it because of unbelief. This is when we allow doubt to dominate our thinking rather than faith. Doubt and skepticism are cheep imitations for real spiritual discernment. Over and over again in the scriptures we discover that God does not look kindly upon unbelief.

Unbelief is often equated with a hardness of heart in scripture (Mark 16:14; Hebrews 3:15-19). Unbelief is not an issue of the mind but an issue of our heart posture. It’s less about not agreeing with the right arguments and more about being unwilling to trust. Hebrews 3:12 says, “See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.”

Unbelief is often the result of a wound of the heart that never proper healed and instead calcified to protect itself. This calcification, this hardness of heart, then becomes unbelief. Unbelief and a hard heart don’t get softened from convincing theological arguments. Instead, unbelief must be surrendered so that God can do the softening. In other words, it is not a surrender of the mind but a surrender of the will that allows faith to emerge through the hard ground of unbelief.

He Has Risen

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
1 Corinthians 15:3-7

First, Paul lays out the simple gospel of Jesus Christ. Then he states the reality that the truth of the gospel hinges entirely on the reality of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead…
1 Corinthians 15:13-20

If we reject the truth of Jesus’s bodily resurrection from the dead, we reject the gospel–the whole of the Christian faith. We can call ourselves whatever we want, but if we leave behind the resurrection, we leave behind Jesus Himself. We might be able to construct a nice religious facade without the resurrection, a pseudo-Christian facsimile, but Jesus won’t be found anywhere inside. If we don’t embrace the resurrection, our faith is useless and we are still mired in our sin.

“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead,” and that changes everything! HE IS RISEN! HE IS ALIVE! Death and sin have been defeated and our victory has been won!

Not Like The Rest

Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

Saturday.

Jesus is why we don’t grieve like everyone else. The apostle Paul admits that we will grieve. We should grieve. Grieving is a healthy process of dealing with loss. Not to grieve would simple push the pain down and cause problems deep in our heart that would leak out in the future.

Jesus died. He experienced death. He’s been there. That Saturday after His crucifixion was the Sabbath. It was the Jewish day of rest. And for the disciples a day of deep grieving (Luke 24:17).

We have to grieve, but we don’t have to grieve like the rest of humanity. Our grief is infused with hope. It’s infused with life. Because Jesus died and rose again, death has transitioned from a dead end to a blinking yellow light. Death used to be a “The End” slide at the end of a movie, but now it’s simply the Netflix countdown between episodes as we move from this life into the next.

This hope we have is because of Jesus and only because of Jesus. Death doesn’t have the final word over us because death didn’t have the final word over Him. And if we find ourselves in Him, we live the same victory He lived.

“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:55-57

Torn

With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”
Mark 15:37-39

The Temple had three main parts to it. First, the priests would put burnt offerings on the bronze altar in the courtyard. The courtyard is also where they would then wash with water in the wash basin made of polished bronze mirrors.

Then they would go from the courtyard into the second part of the Temple: the Holy Place. The Holy Place had gold plating all over the walls. There weren’t any windows in there, so the whole place was illuminated by the burning lamps on the lampstands. In addition to the lampstands, there was also the golden table that held the bread of Presence and the altar of incense just in front of the large curtain at the front of the room. They would burn incense every morning and every evening on the small altar of incense as a symbol of prayers going up continually before the Lord.

The priests would keep the lamps burning, light the incense morning and night, and replace the bread of Presence every sabbath, but they would never go beyond the curtain. Only the High Priest could go beyond the curtain into the Most Holy Place, and he would only do it once a year on the Day of Atonement. The very Presence of God was resting on the ark of the covenant in the Most Holy Place. To enter in an unsanctified way without permission would have resulted in the priest dropping dead before our awesome and holy God.

When Jesus paid the price on the cross for our sin, He forever removed the separation between us and God. That curtain between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place was torn in two from top to bottom. The people were no longer separated from God, and God was no longer separated from the people. “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ”(2 Corinthians 5:19).

And now, not only can we approach the throne of grace with confidence (Hebrews 4:16), but God Himself has busted out of the Most Holy Place to establish a new Temple. Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”(1 Corinthians 3:16).

The new Most Holy Place, where the very Presence of God dwells, is our spirit. Our spirit “marries” and becomes one with the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17).

The new Holy Place is our soul–our mind, will and emotions. Our mind is the new altar of incense where our thoughts and prayers continually rise to the Father (Colossians 3:2; Philipians 4:8) . Our will is the new bread of Presence as we get nourished by doing the Father’s will, not our own (John 4:31-34). Our heart/emotions are the new lampstands giving light to the rest of our soul. The “eyes of our heart” become “enlightened”(Ephesians 1:19) and the purity of the oil burning in our heart gives us eyes to see God (Matthew 5:8).

The new courtyard is our body, the place we offer our bodies as a “living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God”(Romans 12:1). This is the place where we are not only forgiven of our sin but also “cleansed from all unrighteousness”(1 John 1:9) as we are “washed with water through the word”(Ephesians 5:26).

The curtain tearing from top to bottom not only gave us full access to God, but gave Him full access to us. “You are not your own; you were bought at a price”(1 Corinthians 6:19-20). In Christ, you are a Temple of the Holy Spirit, the new Temple of the Living God.

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5:23

The Last Supper

When evening came, Jesus arrived with the Twelve. While they were reclining at the table eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.”
They were saddened, and one by one they said to him, “Surely you don’t mean me?”
“It is one of the Twelve,” he replied, “one who dips bread into the bowl with me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.”
Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. “Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
Mark 14:17-25

The Last Supper infused every element of the Passover meal with new meaning.

The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.
This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.
Exodus 12:5-8, 11

Bread made without yeast, bitter herbs, roasted lamb and wine all now have new meaning. The original bread without yeast was to remind the people of how they left Egypt in haste without the yeast of Egypt mixed into it. Jesus’s body became the unleavened bread, without the yeast of the Pharisees mixed in (John 6:53). He also became the manna from heaven and the bread of Presence from the Temple.

The original bitter herbs were to remind the people of the bitter labor of slavery. Thought the Last Supper passages don’t mention the bitter herbs, they would have been a part of every Passover meal. Jesus tastes the bitterness of betrayal from both Judas and Peter (John 13:27-38). He bears the weight of the bitterness of slavery to sin so that we could be set free.

The original roasted lamb was to be without blemish. Jesus, without sin or blemish, became the Passover lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), the Lamb who was slain (Revelation 5:6).

The blood of the original lamb was to be painted onto the doorframes of their houses so that the Hebrew people would be protected from the final deathblow to Egypt. Now it is the blood of Jesus, painted on the vertical and horizontal beams of the cross, that purifies us from sin and brings us salvation (1 Peter 1:18-19).

Thank you, Jesus, for becoming the ultimate fulfillment of the Passover!