I'm A Recovering Poisonous Preacher

One day when Elisha instructed one of the sons of the prophets to prepare a meal, he went out into the field and gathered wild gourds from a wild vine and cooked it in the stew. The prophets poured the stew out for all the people to eat when someone discovered, “There is death in the pot!” God’s prophets were serving poison and eating out of the same pot. (See 2 Kings 4:38-41)

That’s what I did for many years. I took the liberating gospel of God’s grace and mixed the wild gourds of religious performance in the same pot with it. The gourds came from a wild vine out in the field. Grace doesn’t grow in a wild field. It is cultivated only in the garden of grace planted and nurtured by God Himself. The idea of religious performance is a wild plant which poisons the grace of God and causes it to cease to be edible, although I did eat and serve it to my church for many years. The tragedy of this kind of poison is that it won’t kill you, but will be just toxic enough to keep you sick for the rest of your life.

The underlying foundation of all religion is performance, whether it’s a tribal dance around a campfire to satisfy the fire god or a dead religious activity performed week after week by an evangelical Christian with the intent of impressing his God. It’s all religious performance and God isn’t impressed by our performance. What impresses Him is faith. “Without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:6). He couldn’t care less about religious ritual void of life. God is in the business of Life. Nothing else interests Him. He is interested in living relationships, not dead religion.

The announcement of the gospel of grace includes the good news that God wants to deliver us from religion. He has extended His grace for the purpose of rescuing us from a lifestyle of futile, feeble efforts to make ourselves acceptable to Him. The essence of religion is man’s attempt to somehow convince himself that he has jumped through enough hoops for God to give him the approving nod. It’s the way we try to validate our own self worth through asinine acts of self righteousness which in reality, separate us from the very goal we seek to achieve. It is poison because it kills any opportunity one will ever have to experience genuine intimacy with God. Religion is a prostitute having fifty dollar sex with a man and telling him it’s love when all the while, deep in his heart, the man knows better. Religion offers false hope that somehow there is something we can do to impress God enough to cause Him to accept us on the basis of our actions. Religion is what rushes in to fill the vacuum created by the absence of personal intimacy with God.

Do my words sound too strong? If so I would encourage you to go back and read Paul’s treatment of legalism in the book of Galatians. My words pale in comparison to his tirade against those who preached circumcision. I deliberately use hard language here because religion is robbing people of Life! Keep in mind that it was religious people who hated Jesus the most. Our identity isn’t in religion, but in our relationship to Him.

I doled out a lot of poisonous preaching for many years, but I was eating out of the same pot. Thankfully, I was healed and now want nothing more than to see others experience the same healing.

Rest In Peace - It's The Only Way To Go

For many years the concept of rest was so foreign to me that I couldn’t comprehend it. I didn’t know rest was a gift from God. I thought it was a sin. The invitation of Jesus to those who would follow Him is amazing — “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

For most of my life, I sincerely believed that the only time we would find rest was when we died and went to heaven. There was a verse I used to read at funeral services to give comfort to bereaved families. I would share Hebrews 4:10 with them: “For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.”

When I shared this verse, I would tenderly point out that our beloved friend who had died “has now entered into God’s rest and ceased from his own labors.” I talked about how heaven is a place where there are no more struggles. It is a place where we simply rest in Christ and enjoy Him forever. Entering into His rest and ceasing from our own works. It sounded like dying and going to heaven to me.

Then one day I read the next verse in the passage — “Let us be therefore diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall down through following the example of disobedience.” What? Be diligent to enter that rest? Now I was in trouble. I had always taught that rest means dying. Now here I was being confronted with the verse that says to be diligent to enter that rest or else I would be disobedient to God. I knew I had better go back and reexamine that verse again and hope that my interpretation had been wrong or else I was in serious trouble! I didn’t know that I had already died with Christ and was able to cease from my own works, living instead out of His finished work.

The idea of being called by Christ to a place of rest often contradicts the default setting of contemporary Christian thought. We live in a society where people go on vacation with their cell phones, Blackberrys and laptops. To rest in Christ is a concept which often requires a radical paradigm shift for many people.

To rest in Christ, trusting Him to express His life through us, sounds lazy and negligent after having lived in the wilderness of legalism for such a long time. Many mistakenly think of rest as some sort of passivity, which it is not. Resting in Christ simply means trusting Him to be our Life-Source, depending upon Him to empower our actions with His strength and direction.

Those Ridiculous, Religious Rules That Ruin Lives

A Boston-Globe article reported a couple of years ago that New Hampshire's state drug abuse and prevention program was turned down for a $17 million grant for one reason alone. The Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said that the state’s application for the grant was typed with smaller margins than permitted. The state of New Hampshire wasn’t given a second chance. The decision of the Administration was final. Sorry folks, no help available for drug addicts in New Hampshire. The margins weren’t right.

When I read about this incident on the Internet, it reminded me of some of the victims of legalism I’ve met along the way. The law doesn’t care about people. Rules are the only thing that matter to the legalist.

There was the pastor who told me about how one night his wife never came home from work while they were in seminary. He laid awake worrying and praying all night. He had already called the police the next morning when his wife finally called. She informed him that she had been having an affair with somebody at work and had spent the night with that man. She called to tell her seminary-student-husband that she was leaving him.

The young man went to school that morning broken hearted. Due to what had happened, he arrived late. He spoke to the professor of the class he had missed and asked permission to make up the test which had been given that day in class. Despite the fact that he shared the painful details of the night before, his professor told him that to give him a chance to make up the test would be against the rules. He advised this broken hearted student that he needed to speak to the academic dean to get special permission.

When he spoke to the academic dean, he was told that he would immediately be expelled from school because he wouldn’t be allowed to continue his preparation for the pastorate if he was divorced. After all, if he couldn’t hold a marriage together, how could he lead a church? Not so much as an encouraging word was offered.

I’m reminded of another friend – Frank. His wife’s brother was diagnosed with AIDs. Frank and Betty lovingly brought her brother into their home to care for him. Frank was a pastor. His church couldn’t handle it. After all, it was the man’s misbehavior that had brought on the AIDs disease to start with.

Even in my own family, I once asked a staff member in a church we attended years ago if he would have someone in the young adult department of the church reach out to my son who had suffered a serious, life-threatening accident. “Is he in a small group?” I was asked. “No,” I responded. “That’s what he needs to do,” I was told. “He needs to get into a small group.” Our small groups are set up to minister to each other.” My son never got the contact. I guess membership in the small group really was important in that "church."

Rules, procedures, regulations – that’s what the law is all about.

But that’s not what Jesus is about. He’s about people. His focus is relationships, not rules. What matters to Him is love, not laws.

I think Jesus would have wept over the young pastor whose wife left him. I believe that Jesus is proud of Frank and Betty for how they cared for her brother. I believe Jesus loved my son in his need even when the "church" wouldn’t give him the time of day.

I believe Jesus cares about drug addicts and gays, about divorcees and outcasts. I think Jesus passionately loves the ones that repulse the rule-keeping, self-righteous pharisees. I’m glad Jesus isn’t like some people who "go to church" every Sunday.

Do you want Jesus to live through you? Then love somebody that others don’t tend to love. Reach out to the one who has nothing to offer in return. Love them unconditionally. Love them generously. Love them passionately. When you do so, your Father will smile with pleasure – because you’ll be acting just like His Son.

Changing As I Go

I’ve changed a lot over the years, in many ways. Maybe the way I’ve changed the most is centered on how I see God. The church-god I envisioned as a child and even during the early years of my ministry is nothing like the Father I have come to know in recent years.

It’s true that God never changes. He really is the same yesterday, today and forever. But as the barnacles of the rigorous, rules-keeping, regimented religion of my yesteryears have been scrapped away by the growing revelation of His outrageous love, I’ve come to see Him in a different light than I ever knew in my past.

I grew up seeing God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as a team who each had their own unique perspective and approach to me. My view was that God hated sin and, since that was one thing I was good at doing, I needed help to know how to keep Him at bay. That’s where the Holy Spirit came in. His role was to come to me and tell me in no uncertain terms to "stop it!" Sometimes He would use feelings of guilt and shame. At other times He would sternly remind me that God brought me into this world and He could just as easily take me out if I didn’t straighten up and fly right.

Then came Jesus — my view was that He came to keep God from doing what He was itching to do — zap me. I felt like God had one last nerve and I had gotten on it. Jesus was there to shush God when He was about to go off on me by holding up His hands and saying, "Father, remember — the scars, the scars!" "Oh, yeah," God would say and then He would calm down for a while until I screwed up royally again and it became necessary for Jesus to repeat the whole thing.

Is it any wonder I had trouble feeling intimacy with God? The sad thing is that I don’t think my perspective was unique. I meet many people today who still believe that there is somehow a dichotomy between the Father and Son when it comes to their acceptance of us. Many think that the Father is the nervous, on-edge type and that Jesus is the One who sits by His right hand to calm Him down. The Holy Spirit? They see Him as the behavior-policeman.

In reality, it’s not like that at all. The good news is that, contrary to what many have believed, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are really all on the same team. There has never been one moment when they weren’t of the same mind and heart toward you.

In the inner sanctum that exists between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there has always been nothing less than a loving intimacy that defies human definition or even description. Think of the most passionate and tender and touching and enduring love relationship you’ve ever had with another person in this world and multiply it by an infinite number and you won’t even begin to get close to the love shared among the Trinity.

The amazing news of the gospel of grace is that this divine dance isn’t a closed party. Their love is so great that it’s too big to be contained and too intense to be restrained so the Trinity threw the doors of this private club wide open at the cross and cried out across time and eternity, calling in "the poor and maimed and blind and lame.

The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all see things the same way, do things the same way and see you the same way. They’re all on your side. There’s a party going on right now and, by His grace, you’re in.

Is that how you see God? I hope so, because it’s true. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit love you and want you to relax and enjoy the party. That’s what abundant living is all about.

(This article came from my ministry newsletter, The Grace Vine. If you'd like to receive it either online or through the mail (U.S. only), click here. http://www.gracewalk.org/web/pageid/49197/pages.asp

Walking The Walk

Watch this week's broadcast here: www.gracewalk.org

Let's Do Less For God

Let’s do less for God. I believe we would be much more content and He would be pleased by our making that decision. Before you call me a heretic, consider this fact: God never asks us to do anything for Him. He doesn’t need us to do anything for Him. The Bible says that “He is not served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives life and breath to all things” (Acts 17:25) God doesn’t need anything. And even if He did, He wouldn’t let us know about it. “If I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you,” He says in Psalms 50:12. Our call as believers isn’t to do something for God, but rather is a call to God Himself.

The essence of the Christian life isn’t doing things for Him. It’s all about knowing Him. Jesus defined the meaning of salvation when He prayed to His Father, “This is eternal life, that they many know You and the One whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Christianity is knowing Him. We are called to be the bride of Christ, not His maid.

Does this mean that Christian service is somehow unimportant? Of course not! However, service is to be the overflow of the intimate relationship we enjoy with Him. It comes naturally (or more accurately, supernaturally ) for us to serve Christ when we love Him. The early disciples didn’t evangelize for God. They said, “We cannot [help] but speak the things we have seen and heard” (Acts 4"20). Service is to the life of one who is in love with Jesus as planting is to a farmer or sailing is to a sailor. The activity flows from our identity.

We aren’t to do things for God. We are to rest in Him and allow Him to do it Himself through us. “Faithful is He who calls you, who will also do it ” says the Bible. Dead religion demands that we do more. Grace calls us to rest in His life and love and trust Him to do through us whatever He wants. We are simply the vessel through which He operates. Let’s do less for God and watch Him do more through us.

Religion's Rubber Checks

It was the very beginning of Grace Walk Ministries. I had been on television for the past hour hosting a “Christian talk show,” as a guest host when someone from the station came to me during a break. They gave me a telephone number and said, “This man just called. He said he saw you on the air and wants to talk to you about making a large donation to your ministry. Give him a call when you’re off the air.”

My mind raced as I wondered about who the man was and why he would call me with such an offer, since we had never met. The program ended and I tentatively dialed the number. When he answered, I introduced myself. “ Oh yes! Dr. McVey! My name is . . . and I want to talk to you as soon as possible. I’ve recently received a large sum of money from a law settlement and have been praying about how to disburse it. I’ve seen you on TV before, but tonight I realized that your ministry should receive a part of this money.”

We arranged to meet in the lobby of the hotel where I was staying. When I met the man, he was friendly and obviously enthused about my ministry. He explained how he was giving a part of the money to Grace Walk, part of it to Focus on the Family and part to the Billy Graham Association. He explained how he had won an injury lawsuit and felt that he should give fifty thousand dollars to each of these ministries. Fifty thousand dollars? my mind excitedly asked. That would cover every expense necessary to get Grace Walk Ministries going and even leave money to develop conference materials, tapes, . . . in my mind I began to spend the money.

We talked for about a half hour. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his checkbook. I watched in disbelief, barely about to contain myself as he wrote a check payable to Grace Walk Ministries, in the amount of $50,000. He handed me the check. At that time, that was a larger check than I’d ever seen in my life. I profusely thanked him and he left.

I slept little that night. My mind raced as I thought about the miracle I had just seen. I couldn’t wait to fly home the next day and deposit the check and tell my family about what had happened and call the printer to tell him to go ahead with the job I hadn’t been able to afford until now and by needed office equipment and . . . The list of how the money could be used raced through my mind.

The next morning, for “some reason” I thought about calling the bank where the man’s account was held before leaving Pittsburgh to return to Atlanta. I found the number in the telephone book and dialed the number. After several recorded voice prompts, I reached an automated voice asking for the account number on the check I wanted to verify. I nervously pressed in the number on the check. “Please enter the amount of the check,” the prompt continued. 5-0-0-0-0 I excitedly pressed. “We’re sorry, but there are no sufficient funds for this check.” the cold, computer voice responded.

My heart began to sink. Nervously I tried again, this time using the number 40,000 dollars. “We’re sorry, but there are no sufficient funds for this check,” the voice answered again. I tired again – 30,000. Same response. 20,000? No. 10,000? Sorry. 1,000? I finally worked my way down to discover that the check would have only been good if it had been written for less than a hundred dollars.

Did this guy knowingly write me a bad check? I thought. Maybe he has to transfer some funds and hasn’t had a chance to do it yet. I immediately decided that I would call him and ask about it because I couldn’t stand the prolonged suspense of waiting. I dialed the number I had used the first time I called and he immediately answered.

As calmly as I could speak, I explained to him what had happened. What? he answered in disbelief. I wrote that check to you in faith! My Father owns everything and if that bank doesn’t realize that, then this world is in worse shape than even I have known!

“So you don’t have money in the bank to cover the check?” I asked. Money in the bank? I told you – my Father owns everything! That means that I own everything, he answered. Those people are in serious trouble if they don’t even recognize God’s authority!

I quickly thanked him and hung up. Later I thought that I should have felt sorry for the man at that moment. But I didn’t. I only felt sorry for me. My hopes had been dashed as quickly as they had been raised. It was a rubber check and there was no hope that it would ever be any good.

That man’s check reminds me of the promises of empty religion. Dead religion makes great promises about how it can change your life. It offers great hope that things can be different, that it can meet all your needs. But in reality, it is bankrupt. It attempts to draw from an empty account.

An authentic relationship with Jesus Christ is the answer to our needs. Only He can satisfy the deepest longings of our heart. Does your life seem empty? Don’t try to get your needs met from religious activity. Only Jesus can satisfy your hunger. Look to Him. He’ll never give you a rubber check. He always keeps His promises. In Him, you are rich.