Humans are the apple of my eye and Im not looking to make apple stew.

A mind filled with legalism and rules is not a mind filled with love.

God is talking to you like this the right thing this morning?

Mark look at what’s happening in your life as a result.

I guess that’s true God, but it seems a bit weird?

It is.

Explain?

It’s not normal. It’s out of place in normal Christianity. People do not have a conversation with me normally. Whether they believe in me or not, a back and forward conversation is not the norm.

Ok so where are we going with this this morning? I worry that coming and having a conversation with you is just a rest thing, selfish, a place to hide from the moment to moment responsibilities of talking to people and chores etc. I feel like maybe it’s a cop out God.

Mark everyone needs that. Even the famous and the wealthy. Listen to Van Morrison’s ‘If ever I needed someone I need you.’

You really said that? What do you mean by that?

Everyone needs a place to go where they can centre themselves, slow down, relax their thinking and rest. A place they can trust. A place to remember innocence, a place to remember their enjoyment of being alive. A place to be childlike. A place to remember that THEY ARE, and that being them is good.

God listening to you talk like that is great, it’s restful. I find that concerns and problems fade and life feels good, but isn’t it a little ‘me-focused’?

What could possibly be wrong with that? I am you focused, haven’t you noticed that?

Well I guess I’m just aware that some Christians feel that if it’s not about you God then it must be wrong. They think that if we want to focus on how we feel that’s somehow sinful.

Mark you do it with good friends, it’s a relief just to sit with them and talk about whatever they want to talk about. It’s nice when they ask how you’re doing, compliment you and build you up, remind you that you’re doing ok, nice to feel again the joy of being alive. And it’s good. It’s good for you to do it with others, and it’s even better when you do it with me.

God there’s two things missing though; as you’ve just said it’s not normal to have any sort of conversation with you, whether it be about our sin or about things that build us up. And the other thing that’s missing is people are convinced you’re angry, convinced they have to remember lots of laws and that to say otherwise is somehow furthering the case of the evil one.

That’s because they’ve been taught that I’m angry – angry at sin, angry at them, even angry at my son because he took your sin. Mark I can be angry, but I’m not. Angry is not my normal disposition. And my anger is always directed at your enemy, not you. Humans are the apple of my eye and I’m not looking to make apple stew.

I don’t know God, I’m sorry to admit this but when I hear you talk like this I think about all those people who want you to be focused on self-sacrifice and being well behaved and I worry about their opinion. I know I shouldn’t care what they think but I do. God it’s sort of understandable what they think too. An angry God focused on how bad my behaviour is feels wrong to the heart, but often that seems to be the picture painted in scripture. I find it difficult to argue with those people. Parts of scripture certainly seem to suggest that we have to make personal sacrifices, give things up, focus only on you.

And you do.

Ok so there you go, I’m totally confused now. Am I getting it wrong when I hear you say things like you did above? Am I misconstruing what you’re saying when I think you’re saying to rest, to enjoy being me, to relish the fact that I’m alive?

Not at all. That’s what I’m saying. If you listen to me you’ll hear me talk and the things you’ll hear me say will often be about you and seldom about me. I’ll be saying good things not bad things about you.

But God those critics say that you’re not like that. They say that you’ll always talk about you, that you don’t want us to be focused on ourselves.

Aaah Mark that’s legalism and rules are not often happy bed partners with love. A mind full of rules and legalism is not a mind filled with love. The nature of love is that you tend to talk about the other person. That’s me I want to talk about you not me. The more you love me the more you’ll naturally want to talk about me, but once again the nature of love is that I never demand that. In love the other talks about you and never demands you talk about them. That a surprise isn’t it. Doesn’t really fit with what you think scripture teaches, however it does fit with what scripture teaches. The summary? I’d love you to talk about me, but I never demand it, and I always talk about you. You’ll find that’s bible 101 Mark.

So what about sin? I get in trouble because you’re not always on about it when we talk, and they say that means the voice I hear cannot be you.

Mark if you listen you’ll hear me talk about reassuring and confidence building things. The zealots and legalists and naysayers are right in so much that I don’t like it when you harm yourself and others with the things you do and say. But I am not quick to point out your poor behaviour because that is not often productive. Changing bad habits can take a lifetime, and the thing the zealots over look with their legalism is that if I remind you every time you make a mistake it simply enslaves you in feelings of guilt and hopelessness.  

The zealots would do well to listen to the experts in human behaviour, the doctors of the mind. They would quickly learn that those feelings of guilt and hopelessness make a man return to his sin. You listen to the doctors of the body, you are happy to rely on their advice, so why not rely on the advice of the doctors of the mind? If you did you would quickly discover that it has been proven that a nagging parent does not help their child to improve, human nature is such that nagging just doesn’t work. I designed human nature so am very conversant with that fact and so my approach when faced with your unproductive behaviours is to focus on the things that are good about you. Nagging and focusing on your faults does not lead you away from them. The zealots and legalists want me to nag, but I don’t. I make the rules they don’t. And I make very few, far fewer than they do.

So God what about where scripture says we are sinful?

You are.

And that we need to overcome our sin?

You do.

This is very confusing God.

Mark your lives are not what they should be and the perfect option is for you to be better people. But you’re not perfect and neither is the world. The zealots and legalists can’t accept that easily, but I can. I saw this coming. If you listen to me talking about you, building you up rather than criticising you, you’ll find that ever so slowly you improve. Improvement is definitely the goal, it’s just that my methods do not line up with their understanding of scripture. They line up with scripture, just not their understanding of it.

But God we think that the bible teaches that we need to improve quickly, that it will be hard to do but we need to make the tough calls and improve.

Yes that’s where your enemy steps in. He wants you to set goals for self-improvement that are unattainable. You believe his lie that those goals are from me. You are convinced a goal to overcome a sin must be from me. But many such goals are not. They didn’t like that I socialised with people obviously caught in sin, and they won’t like it when you say that I’m still the same. But they miss a key point. You don’t set unrealistic goals for your children and neither do I. Some parents do, you have done so yourself at times, and when you do your children feel constantly that they are failures and that their parents are not happy with them. Rather than empower them to improve, such feelings see them spiral further and further downwards into their mistakes and errors.

Yes God but what about the scriptures that seem to say you’re angry about sin?

Hmmm. You need to remember all the other scriptures that say I overlook it and then you need just to listen to me. Nobody but me understands scripture, without me to teach you how to apply it and where to apply it you’re lost. Peter couldn’t accept it was me when I told him to eat all the animals that scripture had taught him not to eat. He wanted me to be a God of rules and he couldn’t accept that I would change the rules handed down in the older laws and scriptures. You can never run your life by simply reading scripture, you need to hear me speak specifically to you and when it comes to scripture you do best to ask me to interpret.

Interpreting scripture on your own leads to legalism. Sorry but that’s just how it is. If you so badly want rules, then make that one. Bible Rule # 1: Get me to interpret the scripture for you and hear me explain in sentences you can understand.

PRAISE FOR THE FREEDOM DIARIES

The Freedom Diaries will stretch you. It describes Mark’s real life struggle with Doubt as he discovered that he could hear God’s voice every day.Dr Mark Virkler. Author of 4 Keys to hearing God’s Voice. Buffalo. New York.

Like a child on Christmas morning, I was delighted to discover how simple yet wonderful it is to place my hand into the hand of God and listen to his whispers and enjoy his affection.  I could only ask why no one had ever told me he was this good and this close.  I wish I had read this book a long, long time ago.  Daniel Walker. Founder and Executive Director of Nvader. Author of God in a brothel.

This is new and exciting. It’s not the idea of hearing from God that’s new, it’s having conversations back and forth, question and answers. That’s new for most of us. Now I am enjoying my own conversations with God, which always leave me with hope. David Garratt of Scripture in Song. Hawaii.