E-mails from Heaven

Dear Struggler,
I don’t want you to be confused by anyone who simultaneously claims to be a disciple of mine and also condemns you. You shouldn’t even concern yourself with what their motivation is. I want you to concentrate on one thing, and one thing only.

But just so you’ll know what I think about what people like that do, I want you to read what my servant Paul wrote. Read it in II Corinthians 1:1-11.

The whole point was that I wanted the church to embrace the immoral brother again since he head repented of his sin. I felt for him because, even though I never did sin, I did know what it was like to be tempted to sin. This might make you uncomfortable, but something in me wanted to sin. And because I was not only a man but the son of God, the pressure was intense. So even though I hated what the guy did, I identified with him. Same with you. I know your pain except mine was worse. I could not sin – for your sake.

Anyhow, back to II Corinthians. You need to know that people who do not forgive you or find your sin too repulsive have missed the point on two counts. One, they have forgotten that they have been cleansed by my blood of their past sins. They are nearsighted and blind. The second point they have missed is that by not forgiving you, they stand in danger of working for Satan. Think about it: I’m all about forgiveness. Satan is not. Those who forgive are doing my work. Those who don’t are doing his. Don’t let them discourage you.

And now for the thing I want you concentrate on. I said it to the church at Smyrna. Check it out:

Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.

Let me assure you of one thing, dear sufferer – if I didn’t think the price of staying faithful was worth it, I wouldn’t have gone through it myself. I know the temptation to think that the here and now is the only reality there is, but you would be mistaken to act on that feeling. The reality of the crown of life is as real as it gets, and it is so valuable that there are no words to describe it to you.

So hang in there. Do NOT give up. When the going gets tough, just look at me, and keep on looking at me. Think about me. Think about what I suffered for you. Think about the home I have prepared for you. You already are my princess; one day I’ll give you the crown I promised you and everyone else will know it, too.

I love you,
Jesus

Dear Struggler,
I wanted to follow up on my e-mail from yesterday with a thought that might be of help to you.
The problem with people like you (People who have turned to me and rejected the world) is that even though you have made the decision to walk with me, your feelings often lag behind. You still feel the same way you did before you made the commitment to follow, only it’s worse now. Now those feelings are coupled with self-doubt, and confusion, and shame, and a host of other negative emotions. Remember this – those feelings did not come from me or our father.

As a matter of fact, if you noticed, I don’t address the issue of feelings too much except that they are unreliable. Don’t get me wrong, I like emotion – I created you to have them, remember. It’s just that with the influence of Satan, the struggles of life, and the constant conflict between the flesh and the spirit, feelings and emotions can deceive you. So instead of trusting your heart,
trust me.

I will remind you of what I had the Apostle John write down. Read it and be encouraged:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

I know it sounds ironic, but in order to put your heart to rest, you have to understand that this gift I have given you – the gift of eternal life and love, cannot be enjoyed until you begin to look at people the same way I do. Take the focus off of yourself and put it other people. Follow my example and serve others in word and action and truth. Look for another struggler, identify her needs, and meet them.

I can assure you – it’s how I lived my life on earth, and my heart was always at peace. There were no exceptions.

Try me out on this. You’ll never regret it, and it won’t be long before those emotions that plague you will be a distant memory.

Oh, and remember this: I love you.

Your brother and Lord,
Jesus

Dear Fellow Disciple;
I’ve been asked to follow up on a previous correspondence that the Lord sent to you regarding your attitude toward “sinners.” Of course, once I committed my life and mind to him, I have been committed to seeing other folks the same way Jesus does. On that point, I have never wavered.

Perhaps you felt as though the Lord was a little harsh on you, but let me remind you that it was only people like you that he was ever harsh with. You know your type, the religious, self-promoting, self-righteous types who liked to “lord” it over others. You should be glad you weren’t there when he put the Seven-Woes sermon on the Pharisees. Peter tells me that was a tough one. He called them graves, and snake pits and all kinds of horrible stuff. I guess he wanted to get their attention. You’d better be glad he thought he could get through to you with a little rebuke.

But believe you me, I know all of your tricks. I even know your motivation. You like the sense that you have accomplished something in Christ that no one, or very few ever have. You think you’ve conquered the flesh while the “sinners” have not. Whenever you get to feeling a little down-in-the-mouth, you just look around you and find another one of the unrighteous ones. Then, with a little wrangling and twisting of the scriptures, there you are – better than the next fellow.

It won’t work, you know. You can’t be good enough by being better than someone else. But the worst part of your little game is that you have worked it out where your sin wasn’t as costly to the Lord as those people you look down on. What kind of value do you place on your sin? How much of the Lord’s blood did it take to cleanse you of your sin? Would you say, maybe a few ounces? And what about the adulteress? What would it take (in your mind) to redeem her? Maybe a gallon? I hate to know how much it cost to wash a homosexual clean.
Whatever it is, you are wrong to think that your sin was any less responsible for the death of Jesus than anyone else’s. I don’t care what he or she did. It doesn’t matter. You were in desperate need of redemption just like anyone else. No more, no less.

If that is something you are “fuzzy” about, maybe you aren’t even a disciple after all. Think about what he said:

Anyone who does take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

If you’re still thinking that you can move yourself into a more advantageous position simply by jumping ahead of the other guy, you don’t have a clue what a cross is or what it is used for. I guess you missed the point about what I said when I wrote to the Romans:

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

You need to get this on straight, just like the Lord told you. If you have crucified the old you, then you don’t have any business looking back on how “good” you were before. If you were good, you didn’t need him. If you didn’t crucify the old self, you don’t have him. And even if you did crucify the old man but are trying to be better than the next fellow by elevating yourself above him, you’ve lost him (Jesus, that is).

I won’t be seeing you until the resurrection, but you can rest assured that the Lord is looking at you. I know him to be a very understanding man, but he’s got little patience for the impatient, and I’m afraid you’ve fallen into that category lately.

I’ll be talking to you soon.
Paul (You might remember me as Saul)

Dear Struggling Disciple,
You might not believe this, but I’ve been watching after you for a long time. And lately, I’ve really been working overtime to protect you from danger. But I can’t protect you if you leave my flock.

Furthermore, I heard you tell some of your friends that you feel that God is a long way away from you right now. Well, whose fault is that? Every time I inch closer to you, you run further away. So stop running and trust me that I always tell the truth. And if I say that your life can be put back together better than it ever was, you should believe me.

And oh, by the way, as a matter of fact, I was disappointed in what you did. In fact, I was livid. But now that you’ve made a move toward me instead of away from me, I want to let you know how to avoid falling into the pit the evil one dug for you again.

To begin with, why don’t you try to remember what I said when I was on earth about folks in your condition:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

That seems like a good place to start because I know for a fact that your burdens are so heavy that you can barely stand it. How well does the word “weary” describe where you are right now? You’re tired. You’re fed up with the battle. You want to throw in the towel. Don’t do it. Give me a chance to work on your heart. I’ve done some amazing things for folks before. Besides, you aren’t the worst case I’ve ever worked with.

Even though you think you’ve messed up your life permanently, and even though you can’t see how it could ever be any better, you need to recognize that thought as a lie. And that lie didn’t just pop up in your brain from nowhere. Our adversary, the father of lies, put it there, so refuse to believe it and come to me. Come to me weary! Come to me burdened! Come to me sinful and broken and filled with doubt and confusion. My father and I can handle it! I promise. Besides, that’s the only way you can come to me. If you were not a broken, sad, confused, weary, burdened person, I wouldn’t take you.

You look like a good candidate to me. Go ahead! Trust me! Place all your burdens and anxiety on me. I can handle it – I promise.
Love,
Jesus

E-mails from Heaven
Dear Follower:

When I left you in charge of my kingdom on earth, I thought you understood what I wanted. Instead, you have turned my grace into a law and my mercy into judgment. So let me go over it one more time.

First of all, what did you think I meant when I said that I didn’t come into the world to condemn the world but to save it? Apparently, you must have imagined that what I really said was that I would leave you with one mission only – to find every wretched sinner you could find and make him or her feel really nasty and guilty. You must have thought that I wanted you to heap guilt upon guilt so that they would spend the rest of their days writhing in the dirt. After all, that’s what you’ve been doing.

Well, you were wrong!

Hold on! Don’t stop reading – I’m just getting started.

Do you remember that little story I told about the boy who wasted his father’s money with sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll? Remember how he came crawling back to his father in shame thinking that maybe his father would have enough pity on him to give him a job on the farm? I want to ask you, Miss Super-Christian, what part of “his father saw him while he was a long way off and told the servants to get the party cranking” did you not understand? The boy knew he messed up. He was at rock-bottom. So, why bring it up again? Do you get some perverse pleasure out of making him feel worse than he already does?

The point I was trying to make – a point you obviously missed – was that I am looking for folks who are willing to continue my mission of dispensing mercy to the people who need it them most.

But not you – oh, no. Somehow you have turned it all upside down. Do you think it really makes you a better person to repel the very people I came to serve?
So let me continue. Let’s see…, oh yeah… remember the time the “sinners” kept coming to me and the Pharisees got all bent out of shape about it? Do you remember the mini-sermon I laid on them? How I used the text from Hosea to make my point? I hope so because I’m really proud of that one.

Just in case you did forget, here it is again: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

It sounds pretty plain to me. What’s your problem? Why can’t you understand this?

You do need to understand this: I’m coming back soon. Get it right, for once. I don’t care one bit about you playing church. I’m only interested in how well you represent me by administrating grace and mercy to a world that is headed full-speed toward destruction. Go back and look at the record of my life. I had four biographies written about me, for goodness sakes, and I endorse all four of them. You never once saw me acting like you do toward “sinners,” and I’m the son of God. If I didn’t get all snooty with sinners, who do you think you are to do so? Do you think you’re better than me? Do you think that sin could possibly offend you more than it does me? Give me a break.

I’ll leave it with you for now and give you some time to think about what I’ve said. If there is any further confusion on this matter, just remember that day when the “good” people who look down their noses at everyone else brought that whore to me who had been caught in bed with another man. Do you remember how I defended her and how I treated her after the “righteous” dudes had walked away? You do remember, don’t you?

Why don’t you try doing it like I did. Defend the defenseless like I did. Reach out and touch the guilty like I did. Treat them like you would treat your favorite preacher if he were to knock on your door and ask if he could share an important message with you. Tell them that they can be restored. Let them know that they can get their lives right with me.

Think about it.

Your Brother and Your Lord,
Jesus

PS – Why don’t you get rid of those church buildings? You’re sending the wrong message.