Our love of God directly impacts our love of neighbor. When we receive God’s love for what it is, it becomes possible to love our neighbor as Jesus does. Not for what I can get out of them, but out of genuine generosity. Through this process, the five parts of who I am (heart, mind, body, social relationships, soul) come into proper alignment. More and more I am living as I am designed to live.

The choices I make out of my heart are for the benefit of others. My mind is filled with thoughts and feelings that focus on good rather than tempt me toward evil. My body is used to worship and glorify God rather than pursue pleasure and power. All of this affects the people I choose to hang out with. In this way my soul is in harmony with God’s intentions.

Specifically, as I am dying to myself, I am becoming the kind of person who does not have a crisis when I don’t get my own way. It does not surprise me or bother me. I am confident that I am perfectly safe in God’s hands and will face life centered within his presence.

As I become an apprentice of Jesus, I am able to live in his kingdom now. Instead of feeling I belong away from God and becoming more and more a person who cannot want him, through death to self I am at home with Jesus and living my life as he would lead it if he were me. This is a reality waiting to be discovered.

Renovation of the heart is possible and it is the only option to truly live, when you think about it. I will live as I have been designed to live all along and will be at home with Jesus. I will be my best, true self.

Now where do I start?

When do you support unhealthy life being lived out by a friend?

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How do you move from a life of radical ruin to a life of radical goodness? You have to get off the throne of your life where you are the ruler and god, and allow Jesus to take his rightful place on the throne. You need to transform all five parts of heart, mind, body, social life, and soul.

That should be easy, right? Just get a little more focused? Just try harder? Actually, you can’t change using the direct approach at all. Either you won’t think you are capable of changing, or your instinct will be you don’t need to change. Self-worship is a powerful force. Everything that makes you, “you,” will scream out, “No!”

We need to take a different approach. Just like in athletics and the arts we need to practice. We need to take a disciplined approach. There are age old spiritual practices that have been effective for those who have become more like Jesus over the centuries. These “spiritual disciplines,” as they are called, take what is unnatural, self-denial, and make it natural. We address ourselves indirectly, because the direct way will fail. The devil and our own sinful selves’ gang up on us to convince us that there is no way this denial is possible or it is not necessary.

Spiritual disciplines like silence and solitude, prayer, Bible reading, study, journaling, practicing simplicity, worship, and the like, make it possible to become more and more like Jesus. This indirect approach to transformation distracts our natural tendencies to rule in our own lives. Let me give you one example. You are experiencing one of the disciplines right now.

By reading this blog, you are practicing the discipline of study, and I trust it is helpful Yet, I’ll let you in on a little secret. This is one of my key spiritual disciplines, as well. I study and think about what I am studying and pass that on to you in a form of journaling, the blog. This has been a good discipline for me and I share it with you, because whoever you are, if I can be any influence on your expanding as a disciple, I expand, as well.

Why is it so important that we encourage each other in transformation?

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What is the central focus of our lives as we are following Jesus? God and neighbor.

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Walked the dog with my son, David. Talked about leadership, spiritual leadership, and listening to God and each other. Not profound…Just don’t stop talking with your kids…

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The path to radical ruin is wide and easy. It is made possible by following our own desires.

It looks like this:

-Make choices based on your interests.
-Do what you think best.
-Do whatever your gut instinct tells you.
-Do whatever makes you feel good.
-Don’t worry about how you affect someone else.
-Don’t think about the consequences about anything. Just do it.

This is the life of radical ruin. It looks strangely like the normal life of an animal. Yet, you are not an animal, in that you have a choice. There is another path you can join. The path to radical goodness.

Created in the image of God, in part, means you can choose.

Here is the choice. Either you choose a life apart from God or a life set apart by God. This is the meaning of the word “holy.” “To be set apart.”

The way to holy living begins and ends with self-denial. This is the anecdote to self-worship. Now, this doesn’t mean self-rejection. It is not designed to take away our dignity so we can become a doormat for the world; allowing everyone to step all over us.

Self-denial is dying to having to be the center of the universe and allowing Jesus to rule on the throne of our lives. Death to self brings life in Christ. The ultimate reference point in our lives becomes God. We live according to what he wants rather than what we want.

Living with Jesus on the throne of your life, where he lives for you and through you, brings about a restoration of your very soul. You can do what he wants rather than what you want. You can become the kind of person who lives in his Kingdom now as he desires you to live. As the words of the ancient psalm proclaim,

Psalm 23:3 (KJV)
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

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Sermon 23 August 2009 by Pastor Dana Hanson  
Download now or listen on posterous

the hem of his garment.mp3 (7806 KB)

When you touch the hem of his garment, power is released (Luke 8:46). What does this mean for us today?

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Self-worship affects every part of us. The final impact is on everything we are. The soul, that holds it all together, is in ruin. When we mistake ourselves for God, then God becomes meaningless or an enemy. We cannot want him. If we work against God in every part our being we become the kind of people who cannot want God.

Jesus speaks about hell often. “Hell” is to be separated from the presence of God forever. When you have soul ruin, hell is the destination. It is not so much God sends people to hell. In many ways, hell becomes a choice. It is the logical destination for those who cannot want God. We are given the choice of being in relationship with God and if we choose to turn away, God honors that. He will never force himself on us.

Often people will speak of death bed conversions where someone denies God all their life, and before they die they repent and seek him. Is this authentic? That person may have been seeking all along and it just finally surfaced in the light of day, so, yes, I think it is possible.

Yet, probable? No, not likely. If life away from God is the life we are living, being with God is not an option that is within our realm of choice. God has an infinitely flexible will; we do not. No one “just misses out” of heaven. Life without God is a constant choice that keeps a person focused in a destructive direction. In the end, God is faithful to our choices.

To paraphrase a thought from C.S. Lewis, Instead of one who trusts saying, “Thy will be done,” God says to the person in soul ruin, “Thy will be done.”

Why do we spend so much emotional energy and make excuses for those who don’t want God which results in less focus and energy reaching out to those who do?

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Sermon 16 August 2009 by Pastor Dana Hanson  
Download now or listen on posterous

Satan and demons.mp3 (8653 KB)

Is there such a thing as Satan and demons? Jesus thinks so…

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When we are turned from God, our bodies become the place where sin is lived out. The path of self-worship goes directly through what we look like and how we physically feel. We can see this obsession everywhere.

Look at any issue of a fitness magazine like Men’s Health or Shape. What do the models look like? Carved statues of the “ideal.” Abs and diet on every cover. People like myself who have a “one pack” are invited to know that life is transformed with a “six pack.” It’s never too early to start. Page through any issue of Seventeen and you may notice a slight obsession over looks?!

Then there is physical feeling. According to advertisers, I am invited to try any product with the understanding that I am going to be sexually satisfied as a result. Other than a touchy/ feely family love theme, every product out there is marketed on sex. God-given creativity and imagination seems to be stuck in the public arena on how many different ways I can make sex my god.

Pornography, alcohol, and drug abuse all are pure body ruin. We are bombarded with the message of feel good or don’t feel at all. Without a good spam blocker, the two “V’s”, Viagra and Vicodin seem to be the solution to all my problems. Giving in to the search for pleasure is a direct result of heart and mind ruin. Social ruin follows because I don’t need you unless it means I can use you for pleasure. Even anger is not exempt from body ruin. Anger is lived out physically, as well. This is another warped way of the body. Getting a “rush” over rage.

So if heart, mind, body and social relationships are all on the path to ruin, what happens to me?

Notice sexual themes in all the media and advertising you come into contact with today.

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As we experience mind ruin and the emotional ruin that goes along with it, our interaction with other people is never really authentically beneficial. I liken it to a dance where we try to move each other around the dance floor. If both partners are trying to lead at the same time, it doesn’t work.

Social life ruin is seen in the lack of depth of our friendships. It is seen in the struggles of marriage. It is a key source of the dissatisfaction so many have for their jobs. If I am trying to remain in charge of my life, when things don’t go my way I will respond in one of two ways.

Author M. Scott Peck considers these two responses in his classic work, The Road Less Traveled. When I am struggling in life, I place the blame on myself or others in an exaggerated way. When I am always wrong, it is neurosis. When someone else is always wrong it is character disorder. Here is how it works.

For a neurotic person I try to remain in control by putting huge demands of perfection upon myself, coupled with low expectations. In this way when someone fails me, I can always blame it on me. In this way I stay in control because life is happening just like I predicted. Eeyore, from Winnie the Pooh, is an example of this neurotic response.

For a character disorder person, I try to remain in control by placing the blame for anything that goes wrong in my life squarely where it belongs. On you. Or anyone else. On the government. On multi-national corporations. On society in general. On the “man.” Never, in any waking moment, would my problems be owned up to as “my problems.” In character disorder, I am always the victim. After all, if I am the center of my own universe, how can any conflict, failure or disappointment be my doing?

In our relationships, then, we may operate out of character disorder or neurosis, but the results are the same. A life turned from God.

Do you function more with neurosis or character disorder? (Actually, if it is character disorder, you probably disagree with what is being said in the first place!)

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