1 John 4:16-21

We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

There is often a time in the early stages of the reborn spirit where “GOD LOVES ME” seems to just naturally resonate. It would seem the new born sons and daughters of God are suddenly liberated from fear and commissioned to go out with a joy and innocent faith that would seemingly conquer the world. It is as though life is flowing directly up through the root system into the new heart and flowers and fragrances are everywhere. Yet, even though the word of God will never fade nor wither, new Christians, too often, seem to eventually wilt. Its as though a winter overtakes the new plant, causing the flower to die, leaving the once festively adorned landscape without color or aroma. What has happened? Is our destiny to be an annual plant or a perennial plant?

An annual plant is enjoyed only for one season. When the first freeze comes it perishes. Perennial plants also appear to die at the first frost but they return each year because their root systems remain alive. I believe we are like perennial plants except that our above ground beauty and fragrance appear in much less predictable cycles than plants. I believe, because our root system lives, that we can bloom, provide color and aroma even in times of drought and harsh weather. (Think of Paul and Silas in prison.)

Many problems for the plant are created by a misunderstanding of the word “abide.”  While this abiding process was initialy accomplished by the Master’s grafting skills, we get the notion (from religion) that it our job to cling to the root in order to abide. We are told to work this clinging- thing out with fear and trembling. Yikes! What happens if I can’t cling tight enough. Religion stands ready to offer input to this question as well.

In a thousand spoken and unspoken ways that are deeply embedded into our traditions, techniques and codes, religion informs us that if we do not comply with the established practices a cost will be incurred. It is this often vague (sometimes vivid) cost that we fear. The sentence revealing fear (which is seldom articulated in our conscious thoughts) goes something like this….

“If I do not do this right thing, then (……cost……)”  Or, “If I do this wrong thing, then (….cost….)” Write the perceived cost in the blank from your own experience. If you are struggling with this exercise, identify your most hallowed practices or traditions (church attendance, baptism, bible study, prayer, the Rosary, Eucharist, Baptism of the Holy Spirit, that thing (or things) you think makes Christianity work for you). Now, project what would happen to your relationship with God if you were to cease this activity. The degree to which we begin sweating is the measure to which we are clinging to the root by our own strength. Thinking we could ever cling tight enough to secure ourselves to the root is folly. We cannot sustain in our own strength what God has miraculously done in his. We can’t sustain with works what was begun by grace. Just ask the Galatians.

We then may ask, “What is the Christian life if it is not working out these right’s and wrong’s in fear and trembling, always uncertain about the temporal and the eternal outcome. Isn’t this the fear of God?”

Back to abiding. We must abide to draw life from the root, but we first need to deliver this word from its service to religion. Until we do the flow of Life will be cut off. Abide means simply to remain in, to continue on in, to dwell in. To make my point I am going to recruit Wayne Jacobson (WB) – a great dispeller of the fear-laden, we-must-cling myth. I will be borrowing a paragraph from His book, He Loves Me. This book did as much as anything I have ever read or heard in terms of casting out fear and relieving me of the sweaty work of vine-clinging. Note: Instead of clinging-to-the-vine, WJ uses the emotional fallout of the clinging myth – our perception of how God feels about us when our right doing/wrong avoiding – clinging efforts falter and fail.

                              He loves me. He loves me not….He loves me. He loves me not.

A little girl stands in the backyard chanting as she plucks petals one by one from the daisy and drops them to the ground. At games end, the last petal tells all: whether or not the person desired returns the affection. (From Chapter 1; Daisy Petal Christianity)

This simple picture mirrors the alternating conscience that is driven by fear and manipulated by the enemy to undermine the natural joy and innocent faith that is the birthright of all God’s children. We must permanently break stride with our habit of thinking our behavior (good or bad) alters God’s love for us or our security in it. The “costs” were all paid by Jesus on the Cross.  In honor of Jesus’ finished work at Calvary we should never subject our spirits to the shockwave of condemnation that Daisy Petal Christianity imposes.

I would like to introduce you to a new understanding of abiding. Abiding is not clinging. Its simply remaining and continuing in harmony with and resting in God’s grafting initiative. It means that (if we must pick daisies at all), that after every petal plucked we hear the same refrain, “He loves me. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.”

Casting out the fearful religious spirit that would say, “He loves me not” will redeem 50% of our inner dialogue from the fear of doing wrong and the other 50% from the pride of thinking we are doing right. This creates a place of glorious rest where hearing God’s voice is not hard, recognizing his presence and enjoying his love is natural. When this happens saints graduate from Daisy Petal / Sin-Management Christianity to Abiding / Fruit Bearing Christianity because the blockage has been removed and the nutrients from the root can now flow upward into the plant making it strong, beautiful and fragrant.

Perhaps the most colorful and fragrant outcome of being free of religion is that we can come to rest in who we actually are. When we truly abide in Christ, we actually think of ourselves as his, with zero outstanding debts. Our identities are not created here at this religion-to-Life threshold; they are just revealed. Our identities were established back when we were grafted in. Every religious effort to please God or fear him only undermined our conscious appreciation of this established reality. Free of the back-breaking burden of religion, we realize we are permanently alive by virtue of Christ in us. We live out of the fundamental reality that Jesus Christ is our life as opposed to some flimsy scheme that is dependent on our right-knowing and doing or our ignorance and wrong-avoidance.

Father, let this be the day and the hour that you put your foot on religion’s neck. Expose every place this spirit has its clutches into your Bride. Liberate us from the constricting strongholds that works-oriented Christianity have placed upon us. Where evil has abounded in this way let grace abound all the more, revealing your sons and daughters in all of their predestined, Christ energized works and glory. Clarify to our deepest selves that in your love there is no basis for fear.  Let us walk as you walked in this world, confident in the love of God that it has preceded and will conquer and outlast all things.

Addendum

Have you ever felt like Pastor was the quarterback in the kingdom of God and that you were more of a third string equipment manager? Well……listen to John Fogarty’s advise.

Well, a-beat the drum and hold the phone /  The sun came out today /  We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field……Oh, put me in coach, I’m ready to play today /  Put me in coach, I’m ready to play today!

Three years ago a friend brought me a copy of He Loves Me. It so meshed with God’s work in my life and spoke such a clear and healing word to me about God’s love I got up off the bench and put myself in the lineup! I decided the implications of God’s word to me was that I could not wait for pastor to either feed me or commission me to go into all the wold to make disciples. I was just going to go out and see if I could put the bat on the ball. I bought a case of the book He Loves Me and distributed to anyone and everyone in my relational network.  After all, He loves me! Even if I strike out, I’ll get another turn at bat.

If you like John Fogarty’s attitude, check out his song “Gunslinger”.