ChipBrogden
By Chip Brogden
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (I Jn 4:18).
Most of our fears are a consequence of not knowing God well enough. Fear comes from uncertainty. If we are confident, secure, and certain about who we are in Christ, and who Christ is in us, then we won’t be worried about what the devil might do, and we won’t be worried about what other people might do.
Now folks, that’s a lot off your plate. Imagine what a relief it would be to just live your life in friendship with God, unaffected by worries and fears about the devil, unmoved by worries and fears about other people – what they might think, what they might say, what they might do.
Think about all you could accomplish if you were truly unafraid. I’m not saying you go out and take foolish risks. I’m saying fear holds us back. God tells us to go but we’re afraid to go. God tells us to stay put but we’re afraid to stay put. God gives us something to say but we’re afraid to say it. God gives us a talent or a gift that will bless and encourage and help other people, but we’re afraid we’ll make a mistake, or afraid we’ll look foolish, or afraid we might fail.
Let me go ahead and allay those fears right now. Let me share something with you that will set you free from fear of failure, fear of making mistakes. I’m still relatively young, but I’ve been at this for a long time. People say, “How can you know so much and be so young?” I’ll tell you why, it’s because I’ve made enough mistakes for three people twice my age. By the time I was twenty I had made enough mistakes for someone eighty. I have failed more times than I have succeeded. I have fallen down, gotten up, fallen down, gotten up, fallen down, gotten up, and sometimes I think God created me to be an example to others of what NOT to do. I’m only just beginning to experience some victories, some successes, some fruitfulness. I’ve had to learn it the hard way.
But here’s what I want to share with you, to set you free from fear of failure, fear of making mistakes, fear of stepping out, fear of stepping up. Here’s what God showed me: His plan, and His purpose for my life, is based on my making lots of mistakes. His plan accounts for the fact that I’m going to fail. He already has that factored into the equation. We don’t take God by surprise, or derail His purpose, by anything we do or fail to do. His purpose and His plan for your life is not dependent on you never making a mistake. Not only does He know that you will make mistakes, and you will fail, He makes His plans based on the fact that things are going to come along to try and mess up His plans.
Have you ever made plans to do something? Do you plan for things to go wrong, or do you plan for things to go right? Most people come up with a plan and the plan assumes everything is going to go the way it should. But what happens? Something always goes wrong, and then the plan collapses.
For me it happens every Saturday. My wife gives me a little home repair project, and I think it’s going to be pretty simple, just need a hammer and some nails and this and that. So I plan to take five minutes to do this simple repair. Then I get five minutes into the project and realize it’s worse than I thought, I need a watchamacallit and a thingamajig and I don’t have what I need, so now I have to make a trip to the store. They don’t have what I need so I have to go somewhere else. Then I come home and the part I thought I needed doesn’t fit, I need something larger or something smaller, and now I have to go back to the store again. What should have been a five minute project becomes a five hour ordeal.
Now, do you think God is like that? Do you think He is so foolish as to have one plan that relies upon you and me doing everything perfectly, never making a mistake? Do you think you can make a mistake or fail so miserably that you can outsmart God and thwart His plan for your life?
Certainly we can delay His purpose, and we can bring a lot of unnecessary suffering on ourselves by being willfully disobedient, but if our heart is right and we’re doing the best we know how to do then God is able to work everything out for His glory, even our mistakes, even our failures, EVEN OUR SINS. I’m not saying go out and sin, because there are consequences for sin. I’m talking about your past right now. Don’t worry that your past disqualifies you, because it doesn’t. You can’t go back and undo these past mistakes, past failures, past sins. I’m saying don’t let fear about your past keep you from loving God now, living life now.
Don’t worry about being perfect in the future, because God’s purpose for your life is based on you being imperfect. God wants to show the world how He can take anything and bring good out of it, how He can take imperfect people who make mistakes and still do something good with their lives.
That is going to be the history of mankind, we’re all going to be amazed one day when we look back and see how God worked all things together for good, brought light out of darkness, and used evil for good.
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (I Jn. 4:18, ESV).
Most of our fears are a consequence of not knowing God well enough. Fear comes from uncertainty. If we are confident, secure, and certain about who we are in Christ, and who Christ is in us, then we won’t be worried about what the devil might do, and we won’t be worried about what other people might do.
Now folks, that’s a lot off your plate. Imagine what a relief it would be to just live your life in friendship with God, unaffected by worries and fears about the devil, unmoved by worries and fears about other people – what they might think, what they might say, what they might do.
Think about all you could accomplish if you were truly unafraid. I’m not saying you go out and take foolish risks. I’m saying fear holds us back. God tells us to go but we’re afraid to go. God tells us to stay put but we’re afraid to stay put. God gives us something to say but we’re afraid to say it. God gives us a talent or a gift that will bless and encourage and help other people, but we’re afraid we’ll make a mistake, or afraid we’ll look foolish, or afraid we might fail.
Let me go ahead and allay those fears right now. Let me share something with you that will set you free from fear of failure, fear of making mistakes. I’m still relatively young, but I’ve been at this for a long time. People say, “How can you know so much and be so young?” I’ll tell you why, it’s because I’ve made enough mistakes for three people twice my age. By the time I was twenty I had made enough mistakes for someone eighty. I have failed more times than I have succeeded. I have fallen down, gotten up, fallen down, gotten up, fallen down, gotten up, and sometimes I think God created me to be an example to others of what NOT to do. I’m only just beginning to experience some victories, some successes, some fruitfulness. I’ve had to learn it the hard way.
But here’s what I want to share with you, to set you free from fear of failure, fear of making mistakes, fear of stepping out, fear of stepping up. Here’s what God showed me: His plan, and His purpose for my life, is based on my making lots of mistakes. His plan accounts for the fact that I’m going to fail. He already has that factored into the equation. We don’t take God by surprise, or derail His purpose, by anything we do or fail to do. His purpose and His plan for your life is not dependent on you never making a mistake. Not only does He know that you will make mistakes, and you will fail, He makes His plans based on the fact that things are going to come along to try and mess up His plans.
Have you ever made plans to do something? Do you plan for things to go wrong, or do you plan for things to go right? Most people come up with a plan and the plan assumes everything is going to go the way it should. But what happens? Something always goes wrong, and then the plan collapses.
For me it happens every Saturday. My wife gives me a little home repair project, and I think it’s going to be pretty simple, just need a hammer and some nails and this and that. So I plan to take five minutes to do this simple repair. Then I get five minutes into the project and realize it’s worse than I thought, I need a watchamacallit and a thingamajig and I don’t have what I need, so now I have to make a trip to the store. They don’t have what I need so I have to go somewhere else. Then I come home and the part I thought I needed doesn’t fit, I need something larger or something smaller, and now I have to go back to the store again. What should have been a five minute project becomes a five hour ordeal.
Now, do you think God is like that? Do you think He is so foolish as to have one plan that relies upon you and me doing everything perfectly, never making a mistake? Do you think you can make a mistake or fail so miserably that you can outsmart God and thwart His plan for your life?
Certainly we can delay His purpose, and we can bring a lot of unnecessary suffering on ourselves by being willfully disobedient, but if our heart is right and we’re doing the best we know how to do then God is able to work everything out for His glory, even our mistakes, even our failures, EVEN OUR SINS. I’m not saying go out and sin, because there are consequences for sin. I’m talking about your past right now. Don’t worry that your past disqualifies you, because it doesn’t. You can’t go back and undo these past mistakes, past failures, past sins. I’m saying don’t let fear about your past keep you from loving God now, living life now.
Don’t worry about being perfect in the future, because God’s purpose for your life is based on you being imperfect. God wants to show the world how He can take anything and bring good out of it, how He can take imperfect people who make mistakes and still do something good with their lives.
That is going to be the history of mankind, we’re all going to be amazed one day when we look back and see how God worked all things together for good, brought light out of darkness, and used evil for good.
The article is based on an audio series titled “Overcoming Fear and Worry: Spiritual Principles for Victorious Living.”
DISMANTLING THE RELIGIOUS MACHINE
Chip Brogden
Machines are used to do repetitive or difficult work more quickly and efficiently, giving people more leisure and free time to pursue something besides work.
Once upon a time a group of people saw that a machine was needed to make something hard and difficult more easily done. They put their heads together and came up with a handy little machine called “Religion.”
The Religion Machine would make life easier for everyone they said. With the Machine, we don’t have to waste precious time relating to a real God Who loves us. The machine would take these complex processes and break them down into a simple three-step process that anyone could follow, reducing God to a faceless, personless ideology of good works. The result would be a mass-production of religious people who all spoke, thought, acted, and believed the same way.
Things went very well for a while. The Religion Machine worked just like it was supposed to. Churches were built, movements were started, crusades were held, programs were implemented. The inventors congratulated themselves on making Religion so efficient.
But you and I know that machines require a lot of maintenance. Parts have to be replaced. People wanted the Religion Machine to be bigger, better, and faster each year. Research and development expense was incurred, testing expenses, raw materials and warehousing. The Religion Machine had to have qualified people to work on it, qualified people to run it, qualified people to supervise the people who run it, and so on.
With all the improvements and modifications to the original design, the Religion Machine got so big that they had to house it someplace; now they had factory overhead: the property, the specialized plant equipment, the electrical and water requirements, more work crews, the support staff, the management, still more parts, upgrades, routine maintenance, all the hidden costs associated with keeping the Machine running.
No one knew just how big the Religion Machine would get. The inventors would have never dreamed that their little invention would one day turn into a big business, but it did. People picked up their families and moved to live and work close to the Machine. There’s money there, a chance to get ahead, a chance to settle down, a nice place to raise their kids. The Machine is a boost to the local economy because it produces jobs and goods. It’s in everyone’s interest to keep the Machine running along.
The people took great pride in their work. Take a drive with them to any part of the country and they would point to the impressive array of expensive church buildings, sprawling seminaries, and mega-church outreach centers. “We helped put that one together,” they’d say. “Thank God for the Religion Machine! How did we get along without it before?”
But there’s another side to the story. Oh, the work is simple enough. “Do what you’re told. Push this button, pull that lever, flip that switch.” Keep producing, keep the Machine running. But there’s a human toll being exacted on the people who are running the Machine. Just another cog in the wheel, they begin to stop thinking for themselves; they depend on the supervisors to tell them what to do. They go home tired day after day (their busiest day is Sunday). They always work overtime and their family life is non-existent. Even when they’re home they think about work. Production is the name of the game; keep the Machine running no matter what; produce more with less.
People always get injured on the job. It’s hot, dirty work. And noisy. The Machine makes so much noise that all the workers eventually develop acute hearing loss. The light is so dim that the employees have become very narrow-eyed and squinty, not able to withstand bright light. But somehow the security that comes from getting paid each week is more important than the side-effects. So the work goes on.
Besides, where else could they go? What else could they do? Financial commitments based on that paycheck have been made: houses mortgaged, cars financed, durable goods charged. If the Machine stops running, the paychecks stop coming, and it means bankruptcy for the workers and the community. So on and on it goes.
Every once in awhile a pay raise comes. Some live long enough to retire, but most of the workers die young from stress, are injured on the job and permanently disabled, or have nervous breakdowns. But no matter what, the Machine kept running.
Then the unexpected happened.
The Religion Machine used a synthetic, man-made oil for fuel to keep it running.
The oil ran out. The Machine ground to a halt.
The workers were in a panic. No more fuel? How would the Machine run? What about their job? What about their paycheck? Who would take care of their families?
“What about natural oil?” someone asked. No that wouldn’t work. They tried that years ago. Genuine oil would not run the Religion Machine.
The supervisors cursed and swore. How could they get the Machine running again?
There was only one thing left to do.
The doors were locked, and the gates closed tight. Armed security gathered the workers together and had them form a line leading up to the top of the combustion chamber, the fiery inferno which fueled the Religion Machine.
One by one they were cast into the fuel tank. The Machine sparked and began to hum again.
“More people! We need more people over here!” Like lambs being led to the slaughter, the deaf, dumb, and blind workers were pushed over the precipice to be used as fuel for the Religion Machine. Next it was their wives, husbands, children, parents, brothers, sisters, all thrown alive and screaming into the Machine. The houses and cars, the clothing and jewelry, the furniture and possessions were all confiscated and dumped into to the Religion Machine to add more fuel for it to run.
At last everything that could be used for fuel had been used. It would not be enough, and it had all been in vain. Once again the Religion Machine ground to a halt, and no one was around to start it up again. The supervisors went out into the community to try and recruit new workers, but after hearing what had happened to the last shift no one would take the job.
Today those supervisors are dead and gone. The Religion Machine was dismantled by the townspeople, the parts scattered to the four winds, never to be assembled again.
The problem with the Religion Machine was that it started out as a neat invention designed to help people, but it wound up hurting them. The Machine was made for man, but soon man lived for the Machine and became dependent upon it.
Once upon a time another group of people saw that a machine was needed to make something hard and difficult more easily done and give them more leisure time. They were even more talented, technologically advanced, and affluent than the first group of inventors. So they put their heads together and came up with a handy little machine called “American Christianity”…
By Chip Brogden
“And they overcame [the dragon] by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their Testimony, and they loved not their own lives unto the death” (Revelation 12:11).
Whenever I speak or write on the subject of the Overcomers I always preface my remarks by saying that overcoming is the normal Christian life. God has not created an elite group of super-spiritual people within the Church who have some special “anointing” or power.
I am well aware that some people teach and believe that the Overcomers are a special class of people that will rise up and exercise great authority over the earthly kingdoms of this world – even over their spiritually immature brothers and sisters. We reject that on the basis that every believer, whether they know it or not, is already complete and is already blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Colossians 2:10; Ephesians 1:3).
I pray God will open our eyes to see that God’s purpose for the Overcomers is not to establish an earthly kingdom, but to enlarge and increase a spiritual kingdom that is not seen outwardly, but is hidden within each believer (Luke 17:20,21). This is no earthly kingdom, for it is “not of this world” (John 18:36). When Jesus perceived that the people were going to take Him by force and make Him an earthly king, He left them and went up into a mountain, alone (John 6:15). When Peter drew his sword, Jesus told him to put it away. From these examples it should be obvious that overcoming is a heavenly reality, not an earthly achievement or accomplishment.