The Dangerous Power of God
When I began learning about electricity, I remember being awestruck with the incredible potential it had. So many awesome things could be accomplished by simply controlling the direction of the flow of electricity. In electrical engineering, intricate systems called circuits are mapped out, plotting many little pathways much like little “rivers” which direct the flow of energy. At different points along these pathways, we find components that act like dams, reservoirs, and even little trap-doors that open and shut. Based on the layout of the circuit and how all of those components and doors work together, the circuit can do something as small as make a little blue light flash or as advanced as controlling all of the functionality on the smart phone, tablet, or computer that you’re looking at now!
One thing that I quickly noticed is that it seemed that the more power a system used, the greater its need to be what is called “grounded”. If a circuit didn’t have the right grounding or was poorly laid out, excess power would have nowhere to go and a surge would essentially flood these rivers, frying the components on the circuit. After such a flood, the whole thing ends up useless. If you’ve ever had a hairdryer or some other electrical appliance go bad, you have probably experienced this very phenomenon.
I remember one of my first lessons on this topic was around eight years old, when I found an old electronic chess board in one of the closets. I was so excited to play it! I dug around for awhile in more of our closets and storage places until I was able to find all of the pieces. Finally, I had everything that I needed; everything, that is, except the power adapter. I considered myself pretty clever, so I went in search of an adapter. I gathered up all the adapters that I could find and began trying them. After trying more than ten different adapters, I was thrilled when I felt the metal plug on the end of one slide right into place. I’d finally found one that fit! Hurrying over to the wall, I put the plug in the outlet and proceeded to connect the perfectly fitting little plug back into its new home. Sure enough, a yellow light came on. Success! I was ready to begin my game and become the next Bobby Fischer.
Unfortunately, however, my excitement was short-lived. Just a few seconds later, the light began to fade, and I began to smell a faint burnt smell in the air. I didn’t have any time to process this before the yellow light faded out, followed by a dark puff of smoke which rolled out the vents near the back. Frantically, I unplugged the device and plugged it back in several times. I even tried other adapters, but it was no use. The board was toast. Terrified, I now knew that I had to face telling my mom that I broke her chess board. Checkmate in zero moves. That defeat stung.
Following this same concept of a circuit, the enemy understands that there are certain parts of Truth that would be absolutely devastating if God’s people discovered and began to use them properly. In other words, He knows that if the life of the Believer is properly connected to the right terminals, completing the circuit of God’s True Power, it would utterly decimate his whole kingdom. Considering how many thousands of years he’s worked to build this kingdom of darkness, the thought of a a true light source is terrifying to him!
In fact, it is because of that fear that he uses his best techniques, the dichotomies and Hegelian Dialectic scenarios that we talked about in part 1, in order to separate and hide two very important pieces of power from one another.
Just like you need both the positive and negative cables to attach the right part of the battery in your car for it to run properly, there are often two critical elements in the Word that may appear to be opposite but are meant to go together for true power in the Christian walk. By dividing them into divisions in the false church, his aim is to leave people in one of two scenarios.
Those scenarios are:
- Connecting both cables to only one post – which will either fry your circuit or drain you of all power and life
- To fear both, not wanting to be grouped with the evil of either side
Today, we’re going to investigate the first scenario.
Consider the Church Today
On one side we have a group who loves to profess, “Great Grace!”
In fact, this is the message – every day, every sermon, for more than a decade. Now, before you stop reading and think that I am against Grace, remember what we’ve talked about so far! As you read on, you’ll find that our mission, today, is to discover just how truly great Grace is. In fact, it is the source of power to move the vehicle of your life into the place God has prepared for you. I encourage you to stay with me, even if the middle of this teaching is a little difficult to hear. When you do, you will see the Father’s Heart.
Let me give you a quote I heard just the other day by the most famous Grace preacher in the world, today.
“Before, when God opened His Mouth, there was commandment. Now, when God opens His mouth and there is no longer any command. Only Grace!”
Despite this, Jesus says,
“If you Love Me, keep my commandments.”
John 14:15
How can this be? How is it possible that a person who has dedicated their entire life to studying the Bible could miss it on one of the most basic points that even a new believer could understand by reading only once?
To make things more confusing, this same teacher teaches with kindness to millions, leads pilgrimages to Israel every year, and studies the Greek and Hebrew languages in order to gain more insight into the Word. Yet, here he makes a statement which is the exact opposite of what Jesus says.
Again – “There is no longer command. Only Grace.”
The truth is, our natural reaction is to rationalize it away, saying that it must not be what he meant. But if we stopped to ask ourselves how often we have to make these excuses for our beloved teachers, the truth may hurt too much to want to face it.
If you are like me, you may be feeling a bit stung in the heart, right now. Or, maybe you’re even feeling some anger rising up toward me. If so, please understand that I get it. The reality is, this is a hard subject, and we love our teachers. They’ve taught us many things we didn’t know about Hebrew and the Bible. They’ve given us ways of seeing things that we hadn’t seen before. So many of them speak with love and affection.
I’ve heard many genuine people of faith say something along the lines of, “His teaching just made me fall in love with God!”
How, then, can I dare speak against them? Am I one of the cruel legalists who loves to condemn? I can promise you that I am not.
In point of fact, this is truly the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write, and it breaks my heart to even write it to you. But if you stay with me, you will see that my heart is for the church, not against it.
One Message – Two Roads
The reason writing this breaks my heart is because I have learned from the Word that once His Truth is spoken, those to whom it is released are left to travel one of two roads, and both are difficult to cross. Yet in the end, one leads to Life and the other ends in death.
The first road will eventually break your heart when you come to realize that the teacher you love is actually secretly poisoning the well of living water. And although you may be strong enough in the Word to not be harmed, you will begin to see that many new believers are dying from the poison because they do not know the Truth yet. The simple fact is, even when so much of the rest of what the teacher teaches is or seems to be right, there is a hard Truth we must come to face.
No good teacher serves poisoned water.
In full honesty, I need to tell you that I most likely listened to all of the same teachers that you have. I found good things and some truth in nearly all of them. However, it was not until I asked the Lord to guide me into all Truth, no matter what the cost, that I began to read His Word more and more. As I read, I began to recognize His Voice. Suddenly, I found myself more and more shocked by the things being spoken by the teachers. I saw just how different the subject matter and tone was from the teachings of Jesus, the Apostles, Prophets, and other figures in the Bible. This began a confusing journey in which I tried to understand or rationalize how there could be so much apparent error, yet these people were “God’s chosen”. At least, that’s what most of the world thought.
To make matters more confusing, when I would come across anyone that claimed to “expose the error” in the other teachers, their messages were nearly always filled to the brim full of overbearing pride, mockery, name calling, scoffing, and sneers of glee as they condemned people to hell. The error in their teaching was even worse, and the spirit was awful.
Nevertheless, I continued reading the Word and not listening to either side. As I did, I found no excuse for my own foolish behaviours, and all of the sudden, fleshly desires and addictions that were once so difficult to get rid of began to melt away. It was only then that true transformation began to take place in my life. It hurt, but it was pain that cleansed and healed the incurable wounds in my soul. So while I hate to imagine you feeling that same pain, I will gladly lead you into it, because I know that it leads to Life. Furthermore, I know how destructive the second road is.
Knowing that many will take the second road is even more sad for me. This is the road taken by the people to whom Jeremiah delivered uncomfortable messages which demanded change. Time after time, his messages fell on deaf ears, as they demanded that people depart from listening to the prophets and teachers who taught lies. Instead of hearing God’s message, the people decided that they preferred the words their teachers, who spoke what they wanted to hear, over the Words of the Father, Himself. Even as all the warnings the prophet gave them continued to come true, they still chose to ignore Jeremiah. At the end, they even took him prisoner, dragging him along with them into their rebellion.
The problem with prophecy is, when God speaks the Truth, which is done in His Mercy as a warning, the people can no longer claim ignorance. Instead, in becoming aware of the Truth, they become responsible for it, leaving them a choice.
They can either crucify their flesh or crucify the Truth.
Quick Note:
Please hear me – The Father is not against Grace, He is the Author of Grace, but you must understand what Grace is and what it’s purpose is.
Although this is a somber message, I beg you to stay with me a little longer. Liberty does not come cheaply, and power comes only to those brave enough to investigate and seek out Truth, even when it hurts.
Press forward and you will find the Truth in God’s Word as we learn about the Circuit of Power in the Word of God.
Two Cables
Returning to the example of the car battery, we remember that there are two cables. One is labeled Positive and the other is Negative. While it seems that these two are opposites, the truth is that they work together! Let me show you what I mean.
Just like in the ground wire scenario we already talked about, the reason a battery needs two cables is because power comes in through one cable, and it flows out into the second cable.
If we do not have both attached, we have a problem!
You see, God does not give us power in order for it to remain in us. In that same way, Grace which does not lead to repentance isn’t Grace.
These secret serpents teach you that Grace is there to relieve your conscience and make you feel good. The clever among them will even tell you that Grace leads to change, but in the same sermon they say things like, “Your spirit can’t sin, and your body can’t help it.” Others like to say, “While you’re sinning, just say, ‘I am the righteousness of God,’ and eventually you’ll stop.”
Indeed, Grace does produce righteousness, when properly used! Yet, I beg you to consider a few challenging questions, in light of the Word of God:
- Is it by saying, “I AM righteous” that a man becomes righteous, or is it by learning what righteousness is through the study of the Word?
- More simply, do your words make you righteous or does His Word?
- How can you obey when there is no command?
- How can you miss the mark, when the target is removed?
- How can you find the target, except someone shows you where it is?
You may know where to find the definition of sin in the Word, but how will a new believer who does not read the Word find it when they trust the teacher to tell them all that they need to know? All they hear is “Grace”, “Freedom”, and “There is no Law!” Never are they told, “Here is sin. Do not do it.” What do they hear instead?
“There is no command. Only Grace.”
In light of this, our rationalizing that the teacher misspoke seems less effective. If you would never tell a new Christian something like this, why do those who the church calls spiritual fathers? What father spends every day sitting his children down to tell them, “There is no Law! You’re free!” and yet expects them to obey when he makes rules. Will they not use his words against him and do what they want to do? Also, why is it that so many teachers today teach only repentance or grace? Is this not the very division we talked about in part 1?
Just a few months ago, I heard another man, among the top three grace teachers in the world, make the following statement:
“Before Grace was the Law. And the law was like a speed limit. When you’re driving your car, you know that you can’t go fast and enjoy yourself, because you’re scared of the police! But Grace came and took away the law, so that now you can enjoy the things of God.”
What an unbelievably shocking statement.
This is not a small name preacher. Most likely, if I gave you his name, you’d be surprised. Yet, he made this statement boldly and casually, and he makes more just like it every single week. Now, I need to be honest. I listened to him for years, and I knew the Word very well. Yet, somehow, I never really took notice of all of the anti-Biblical statements being made. How is it that even followers of God who know the Word miss this?
This is a problem that we suffer that psychology calls “cognitive dissonance”. Basically, in this context, it means that we trust that this person is a man of God and that he is righteous, so when he says something that doesn’t line up with our belief of him, we convince ourselves that it was just misunderstood or taken out of context, choosing to forget it as quickly as we can.
We’re going to examine that in a little depth in just a moment, but before we do, I have to ask you, children of God, what other context can there be in this example?
If the Law was created to prevent sin, and the “speed limit” in his example represents the Law, then it is clear that speeding represents sin. Yet, incredibly, at the end of his analogy, he now calls speeding “the things of God,” encouraging you to enjoy them, because the speed limit is gone.
Wise as Serpents
You may be wondering why I’ve gone into this. Maybe you’re thinking that I’ve derailed the teaching in order to complain or throw stones at others. However, I’ve told you that I do not like to speak on this topic. The reason that I must is because it is important to understand why this teaching is called secret serpents. If they were easy to see, it would not be an effective strategy. The point of this section is not to tear down people but rather to build up the Kingdom by equipping you with the knowledge of how the enemy operates. We are able to understand by seeing examples, and when we come to understand, we can resist the devil. As the Scripture promises, when we resist the devil, he will run from us as a result! (James 4:7)
What follows in this section reveals two more very powerful tactics that the enemy and his agents of deception use in order to reinforce cognitive dissonance and keep people sitting in front of a poisoned well for far too long.
Almost always, after making several or many heretical statements, the teacher will briefly quote a verse or two that opposes their own teaching.
This is done in order to reinforce your belief that they simply chose a poor example or misspoke. For example, the teacher teaching on the speed limit often quickly quotes Paul saying, “Shall we sin so grace abounds? No!” and then he moves on.
When he does this, your mind is set at ease. You think, “Ah, good. He didn’t mean what it sounded like he said.”
But the Truth is, he did say it, and he did teach it.
One other technique that I’ve noticed is that many almost immediately follow these quick verse mentions with scoffing at the “legalists” who “misunderstand the things of God”. They make a joke out of those rigid, no-fun types, who just don’t get it. This is a tactic which reminds you of the undeniably evil legalists you’ve seen holding picket signs, ranting on youtube, etc. Make no mistake, those people are evil, prideful, and hateful. Jesus even referred to them as the synagogue of satan! Here is where we need to remember the division method we talked about in part 1.
In essence, this is actually an occult ideology called ‘anchoring’. In speaking the antithesis verse in their sermon, they get the benefit of appearing balanced theologically to those who cringe and desperately want want to believe that the teacher is righteous. However, they also generally do not waste the opportunity to take this verse that hurts their teaching and mentally attach (or anchor it in your mind) to the “other camp”, which they remind you is filled with hateful legalists. Are you starting to see the the paradigm we talked of in part 1?
Was I Not Joking?
One of the two teachers I mentioned before loves to mock and say, “Some people say, ‘We need Balance. We are still are under Moral law,’ (he uses a liturgical, mocking tone and waits for the crowd to laugh) But God set us free, so we are now free from all Law!”
The second once said, “I say we get all the deacons together and we line up all the non-tithers and shoot them. (he gives more graphic detail on this process) Then we throw their bodies in a ditch out back. (the crowd nervously laughs) I’m serious.”
Later on a radio interview he said, “Well. You had to hear the context. I was just joking.”
Today, he brushes the statement off and says his stance is changed. Incredibly, he’s now in the top three grace preachers in the world. I suppose it beats being shot!
This actually reminds me of a lot of many of the music artists and actors when I was growing up. They’d make all kinds of media, aimed at kids and teenagers, showing how much fun it was to use drugs or do other things that were inherently known to be destructive. Inevitably, there would come a point on a talk show or even right in the middle of one of their songs or movies where they’d say, “Don’t use drugs, though. Be cool, stay in school.” It was always something like a big joke. Incredibly, especially on talk shows, the parents would laugh right along with them, smiling. Anyone who thought that the content being pushed was potentially harmful was ridiculed in the exact same way. They were mocked as a no-fun stuck up type who “didn’t get the joke.”
The thing was, the adults could laugh. They weren’t going to go pick up the pipe. They had jobs and they knew better. But what they didn’t realize was, their kids were watching the same thing. The truth is, it was never marketed for adults to begin with.
Proverbs has this to say
Like a madman shooting firebrands and deadly arrows, so is he who deceives his neighbor and says, “I was only joking!”
Proverbs 26:19
Now you may think that the two are different, but consider this.
If I spend a half hour speaking heresy and follow it with quick mention or a single verse that makes it seem like I know the Truth, I still got you to swallow every drop of poison that I fed. Over time, this can cause damage, but I admit that it is likely that it won’t kill you, because you know the Truth from reading your Bible.
But now I need to ask you an uncomfortable question. What about the children?
What do you think a new Christian would think, who isn’t already grounded in the Truth? Could ‘misunderstanding’ the teacher destroy him or her?
Taking it one step further, I urge you to consider where your tithe and offering dollars are going. Are they paying to fill a poisoned well?
As a church we stand united against the abortion of children, which is good. Yet from God’s perspective, so many of us are shoveling our money into the very offering plate which funds the spiritual abortions of baby Christians by failing to teach them the whole Truth of both Love and Truth – Grace and Repentance, and Giving instead of greed. In no small way, we actually help poison His newborns before they have a chance to be formed, and just like the world does, we rationalize it away and say, “It’s not murder, it’s compassion.”
And with that difficult statement, we got the hard part out of the way.
Halftime Message
If you’re still with me, I want to tell you that I am so grateful for spending this time with me. While there are many who take pleasure in writing about this subject, it tends to make my stomach uneasy. With that said, I’m unable to keep it from you. I understand that it may seem foreign, so I encourage you to pray and ask the Father. Even if you don’t believe that I am right, I hope you’ll take a moment after you finish reading and simply ask Him to tell you if it is True. I trust Him, and I hope that you do as well. In the end, it’s only His Voice that we want to hear.
If you need to, you have my blessing to take a pause, stretch your legs, and come back to read the rest of this after a break. I decided to release this book, an entire chapter at a time, which makes for longer reading than your average blog post!
With that said, I can promise you that there is some great information that follows, so I hope you’ll come back.
So What is Grace?
Imagine it this way.
If Grace is the Power Source, than what is the Power meant to do? Does anyone take a car battery and hook it up to a tree? What use would it be? Or does he bury it in the ground?
A car battery is meant to power the vehicle, and the vehicle is meant to carry you somewhere new. In the same way, Grace does not leave you where you were found, but it also does not continue to flow power when none comes back. Let’s take a look at the Divine circuitry of God’s True Power.
The Circuit
At the beginning of this teaching, we talked about the word “circuit”. If you look up the definition for the word, you’ll find:
- “A movement that starts and finishes in the same place”
- “[To] move all the way around”
This is the very same picture of the Power of God, which emanates from His Word and from Jesus, who is the Word which became flesh.
You can see this clearly explained to us in Isaiah, where God tells us:
The rain and snow comes down from the sky, and it does not return to Me immediately. Instead, it first waters the earth, making the plants grow …
Isaiah 55:10-11
In the same way, My Word goes out of my mouth, and it does not return to Me empty and fruitless. Instead, it first accomplishes what I planned, and it works where I send it.
Herein, we see the circuit of the Power of God. Power flows from God to accomplish a Purpose, and those who Love Him allow that Purpose to do its work. After it has completed, that same power returns to God with either a good or an evil report.
The simple answer the question is that Grace is like the positive cable. It’s sent to you as a gift in order to produce change and to transform you from Glory to Glory, into the image of the Son, whose Blood paid the energy bill. Without the Blood, you’d have no access to this Power which produces change.
But if we do not allow change, we in fact waste the Blood, gobbling up every ounce of energy (one feel-good Grace sermon at a time!) Effectively, we drain the battery, without ever letting the power do its work so it can return to the source with a good report.
Just like leaving the negative cable detached from your car, without a complete circuit, the power may flow for awhile, but there comes a point where it dies and your vehicle will no longer move. We’ll talk more on that possibility a little later.
Opposites Attract
You may be wondering, “If Grace is the positive cable, what is the negative?”
What are the supposed opposites which are all a part of this circuit-like flow from Heaven to earth and back again?
For this, we will look to the Book of Psalms, which paints a strange, if not an almost uncomfortably close, union between several should-be opposites.
In Psalm 85:10, David writes, by the leading of the Holy Spirit:
“Grace and Truth have met together. Righteousness and Peace have kissed.”
Psalm 85:10
A knowledge of the Hebrew words used here makes this strange picture even more peculiar. Like our positive and negative cables, these words would normally seem to be opposite or at odds with one another.
For example, the words for Truth and Righteousness are so often used in a demonstration of the strength and power of God. They carry with them what can be described in no lighter terms than the terrifying weight of the Glory of God. It is by these things that a man is weighed and found lacking. The fact is, their power is unmistakable, and they are too great for us to even comprehend. It is because of them that we are condemned. By them, we are proven to dramatically fall short. Our sin is unmistakable and unexcusable.
Yet, with that, the second set of words comes into view:
- Hesed – meaning Grace, Love, and Mercy.
- Shalom – meaning Peace
You will notice that it is not Hesed and Shalom getting together to host Love Conference 2029. Likewise, Truth and Righteousness haven’t joined forces in order to hunt you down and throw you in prison. Instead, these things which seem to be opposites, attract and unite with one another in intimate union. That union is powerful enough to catch us when we fall and preserve our lives, even though we’ve failed.
Like any good circuit, the positive flow of power from God (Grace & Peace) provides Life, and the negative draw of God (Truth & Righteousness) receives the weakness and the things that they demand from us. Those things are displaced by the power of Grace.
Maybe you’ve heard of the medical term “Dialysis”. As it turns out, this process is very similar to what we’re talking about. Medically, when a person’s kidneys fail to remove the toxins from their body, a person is hooked up to a machine by two tubes to undergo this type of treatment. In the first tube, blood flows from the patient into the machine. The machine proceeds to purify the deadly, contaminated blood and removes all of the poison. After the blood is clean, it is transported through the second tube, back in to the patient’s body. In the simplest sense of the word, this could be called a circuit, and it is another great representation of what Grace and Truth do for you, the Believer, when they are both attached to your life.
It’s easy to imagine the problems that would be caused by not having both tubes hooked up in this example. However, in our battery scenario, what does it look like if we do not have both the supplying and the drawing cables securely attached to the power source?
- Without the force of Life which comes from Grace & Peace, the draw of Truth & Righteousness would demand from us more than we could give.
- Without Truth & Righteousness as our grounding, the power would kill us or would eventually stop flowing.
If you wouldn’t hook a battery to a tree or bury it in the dirt, why would you expect God to hook it to something does not use the power He provides?
Let’s have a look at some of the wiring problems we can encounter that will stop the Power of God from working in our lives…
Grounding Without Power
Some people mistakenly hook their vehicles up with two cables on the negative. They boast of how “grounded” they are, yet in doing this, they expect to have enough power in themselves to meet the demand of Righteousness and Truth. Either by foolishness or sheer arrogance, they do not understand that true Righteousness apart from the supply of Grace is impossible.
Maybe many of you have seen the common science experiment taught to kids where a potato is hooked to a lightbulb with several different types of metal involved. Strangely, this mysterious combination produces power and the lightbulb illuminates! As it turns out, the chemical reactions produced by the metals and the juices in the potato create just enough power to make the bulb go off.
This is like what happens when we think that by hooking both our cables up to Truth and Righteousness, we have the energy it takes to satisfy God’s requirements. In the eyes of God, the one who believes this is like the child who lived in the massive city of New York (or Mumbai). When the enormous city experienced a power blackout, the child confidently retrieved his potato from his closet and set off for the power station, ready to solve the problem.
It is not enough to merely have the Truth; you must also have Love and Mercy as the source of Power.
Shorting the Circuit
On the other hand, some will hook both cables up to the positive. These are the people who only desire the “Power of God”. They spend their lives dedicated to looking for services where they can feel the power and fall in with groups where movement can be felt. They want to feel “the spirit”, but they don’t care about changing their own lives, at least, not if it’s going to hurt or feel bad.
Many even reason, in their hearts, “If it doesn’t feel good, it isn’t God!” These people are all about feeling. In fact, most of them do experience a power, but it is not the kind of Power that leads to transformation into the Image of the Son.
The simple truth is, if it doesn’t move the vehicle to the destination that God set, It isn’t God’s Power.
It’s easy to see this in the people who just want to get tingling sensations, run laps, and roll around on the floor, but there are many places which are calm, collected, and controlled who have a similar spirit. These set their intentions on receiving God’s provision, love, and money; however, they have no intention of giving anything up. They will find a teacher who tells them that God will never lead them into pain and that He’s only there to give them what they want. They may not shake and shout, but they’ll give standing ovation after standing ovation if you tell them only good.
Imagine a person who just loves the feeling of going fast.
They like the rush and excitement of it all. Maybe you’ve felt this way, too. When I was younger and bought my first new car, I admit that I enjoyed the rush of getting up to a higher speed, occasionally even pushing beyond what I was supposed to.
Maybe this person even happened to hear the teacher from earlier. “Going fast” is now just “enjoying the things of God!” Thankfully it’s not sin anymore. Grace took care of that.
One day, he decided that he was “hungry for the things of God,” and he knew that he needed more of it. So, he confidently threw open the hood of his car. He didn’t know anything about electricity or cars, but he was filled with the “faith” of chanting all of the “I AM …” statements his church taught him about himself. He didn’t need knowledge; he spoke his own reality into being. Looking down, he saw two cables. He recognized the red and black cables and saw two markings next to each. One was a plus sign, and the other was negative.
“Aha!” he thought. “There is the problem. That pesky negative draw is taking back some of my power!”
He smirked at his brilliance as he unhooked the black cable and attached it to the same positive pole to which red cable was affixed. Getting into his car, he wondered if he was the first brilliant man to discover this terrible design flaw in vehicles.
Thanking God for his “I AM” affirmations, which had clearly given him more favour than the heathen engineers who designed the system, he thought, “I’ll teach the engineers their error later – right after I go for a spin at high speed.”
He turned the key, and with that, the circuit was shorted and his car was destroyed. Not only would he never go fast again, but that vehicle was never going to go anywhere, ever again.
That is called a shorted circuit.
All power and no grounding will compromise your chess game before you’ve even moved a single piece. Like the would-be Bobby Fischer 8 year old me, the only game you’ll be playing is go sit in the corner. I promise you, it’s not fun.
The Slow Drain
Last but not least there’s one other wiring mishap that we can encounter. We can hook up one cable to the power and leave the negative unhooked. Unfortunately, in this scenario, we still end up slowly draining the life out of the battery. Let’s take a look at how this looks.
Maybe we’ve managed to avoid sensationalism which exalts feeling over everything else, and maybe we’re not getting greedy or trying to go too fast. However, if we anchor on to Grace and avoid Truth, we slowly sap the power from the battery. Before long, it stops supplying any power at all and the vehicle won’t move.
This is a real risk. If you wouldn’t hook your battery to a tree or bury it in the dirt, why would you expect God to keep providing Power when it isn’t moving your vehicle? Just as physics were set before the earth was formed, so, too, was the circuit of His Word.
Grace without grounding in Truth runs out, which is why He tells us in Isaiah:
Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Isaiah 55:6-7
I know that this may run contrary to what you may have been taught. For this, I encourage you to read, read, read the Word. In both the “Old Testament” and the New Testament, we see that all things have their allotted time periods. If it were not true, no one would die. All would be given endless Mercy for eternity. And if that were so, Jesus would not need to die, because, as the top grace teacher in the world will tell you, “There is no longer any demand. Only supply.”
But make no mistake. Whether we attach the negative cable or not, we cannot stop the Word from returning to God, and it carries with it either a good report or a bad report concerning you. In other words, it tells whether you chose to obey the Word and use the Power you were given or whether you chose to run after your own desire and ambition.
One verse that false teachers love to quote is where Jesus said, “I have not come to judge the world but to save it.” Let’s have a look at it alongside the very next sentence (verse) that he said.
And if any man hears my words and doesn’t believe, I do not judge him: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. Whoever rejects me, and doesn’t receive my words has one that judges him [already]: The Word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.
John 12:47-48
Here, in Jesus’s own Words, we see this circuit of God’s Power. The devil divides these two verses into two camps, but Jesus has united them like David in the Psalms. His Life provides, and His Words demand. Only through Faith and Obedience, by Grace, do we complete the circuit and attain Salvation!
This does not mean that you cannot ever fall. It means that He will pick you up when you fall. But only a heart which is for Him desires to obey, and whoever has no desire to obey Him does not Love him, instead, he simply loves his own life and himself.
Remembering our example of the dialysis machine, how silly would it be if we refused to hook up the line that drew the blood out? If we’re not willing to give up our toxic blood, we can’t receive the pure, and it won’t be long before we die.
Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.
These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
John 14:23-24
Summary
In the last lesson, we learned about how the enemy uses tactics to divide and hide two very important components of the True Power of God from the saints using clever false teachers.
In today’s teaching, we learned that these powerful components seem like opposites, but in fact, like the positive and negative poles on a power source, they both supply and draw the Power of God to make a complete circuit in your Life.
We learned from Isaiah that just as the rain comes from the heavens, waters the earth, and makes things grow before returning to Him again, it is His Word that does this same thing in us.
If you search the Scriptures, you will find this cycle (or circuit) encoded all throughout, and you now are equipped with the knowledge that His Word does not return to Him void (having accomplished nothing). You know, now, that when you are evaluating the words of a teacher, even if you like them, you can ask yourself this very important question:
“Does this focus too much on supply over demand or demand over supply?”
If it focuses on one over the other – run, and do not fund them. The person teaching this is not your friend.
Please Remember
- Smiles and soft speech alone do not always represent genuine Peace.
- Angry shouts and fingers pointed in the camera do not represent Truth.
Remember David’s Words, written by the Holy Spirit:
“Grace and Truth have met together. Righteousness and Peace have kissed.”
Psalm 85:10
Plug in to Truth. The only true Ground is the whole Scripture.
When a teacher starts talking about the “Old Testament” being less important or implying that God changed His nature in the New, remember this verse:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
I hope you will join me again, next Monday, where we will address that idea in depth as well as learn more about how being in the “Lifeless Middle” that we talked about is stealing the fullness of the Power of God from your life!
God bless you!