Louder doesn't mean truer: Why your false desires shout false things.

"But it feels like I really want that.  How can I enjoy my good and noble heart when I still want the things that trip me up?"

What happens when you hear the message that your heart has been made good and true in Christ, yet your desires pull you in the opposite direction?

• That desire that seduces you?


• That pseudo-addiction you "can't help"?


• The anger at your kids that seems so...automatic?

Here's the problem: 
We've been taught that powerful feelings and attachments must be true of us.  The louder those feelings shout, the more true we think they are.  We've allowed feelings to be the cornerstone of our identity, rather than God's redemptive assessment of us. 

We mistakenly think that:

If I feel I want that other woman, it must be true that I want her.

If I can't let go of anger, it means my anger must be stronger than my patience.

If I can't let go of control, it means I must be a controlling person who can't let go.

It's destructive circular thinking:  "Because I experience a powerful pull, I must want that.  Worse, I must be the kind of person that wants that."

Here's the lie:  "Yeah, the 'good and noble heart' is a nice ideal; but you're not there yet.  There's no real power in it."

We've forgotten what God knows about us:  That those dishonorable desires are no longer us.  We have a new set of desires waiting to be released within our new hearts.  More accurately, the Holy Spirit is right now in the process of releasing those new and noble desires within us.

Here's how God might answer your doubts:

"You are my son [daughter] in whom I am SO-pleased!  Yes, you may have those wayward desires, but they are no longer you.  You have them, but they no longer have you.  Celebrate the new power, new resources, and new desires I'm now releasing in your good heart."

Indulge Your New Nature

A friend of mine told me that because of the message he was hearing in church each week, he expected to sin.  He didn't expect to love well, follow in Christ's footsteps, or live in the strength of the Holy Spirit.  He expected to sin.

His Christian leaders taught him to expect that.

And this is the message being offered most Christians on any given week.

It's like a Christian suffering with an addiction,  confirming the worst [and least important] thing about him at the weekly meeting:

"Hi.  My name is _______, and I'm an alcoholic."

Stop right there:  Your behavior and struggle is no longer a reliable indicator of your identity.  No matter how it feels to you, you are under a different, more powerful influence. 

The problem with the expectation to sin is that it contradicts the already-remarkable work of Jesus in the Christian.  Rather than fearing we'll indulge dangerous desires, seductive temptations, or selfish ambitions, we ought to think about indulging our new nature. 

• Bing on our new goodness.


• Dote on our new, God-given passions and desires.


• Cater to our circumcized hearts.


• Nourish our new purity.


• Pander to our new heart's super-natural potency.

By the way, this is exactly what the Holy Spirit is up to in you:  he is releasing the new and noble goodness he's birthed in your new heart.  He's inviting you to the bash he's throwing there and waiting to see what kinds of unadulterated love gets stirred up in you, spilling and splashing onto those who need your life.  Your new heart is a wellspring of life cascading out and advancing into barren places.  Indulge your new goodness and let it come out and play.


Parenting with the good and noble heart

You can grow up under 'Christian' parents, in a household devoted to Scripture and faithful church attendance, and still develop a debilitating sense of shame.  As a child, your motives and actions will be nitpicked with the sharp stick of displeasure.  Your motives and behavior will be picked apart with forensic and relentless scrutiny by your parents.  You'll conclude that you are not nor ever will be fully-pleasing to somebody -- your family or to God. 

And the parent does this because they believe it is an act of love.

I don't doubt these Christian parents deeply love their children.  I've had to take a close look at my own approach to my children.  We simply have been given a wrong set of assumptions about our kids [and our own] hearts. 

So here's a better set of assumptions you can have about your children who know Christ:

1.  They do not have a rebellious nature any longer.

2.  They are not setting out to make your life difficult:  There's always something going on underneath the "bad behavior."  Is it fear?  Hurt?  Exhaustion?  Do they feel harassed by constant nitpicking?

3.  They need to know Jesus has made their hearts genuinely good.

4.  They need to know that their heart matters more than their behavior.

5.  They need to know that your primary focus is not on their sin or misbehavior:  This is not a fault-finding expedition. Even if their actions need to be exposed because they are dangerous or violate relationship, our highest intent is to draw out the power and resources of their new hearts.  Not every mistake or fault needs to be pointed out.

You can move towards your children with these assumptions because you have a good and noble heart.  You already want to love them in this new way. 

THE HEART TAKES FLIGHT -- new e-book

My newest e-book.  It's free, and short [five pages]; but gives what I think is the rest of the 'grace' message:
E-book - The Rest of the Grace Message-Jim Robbins

Trusting your heart is the biblical thing to do.

It's o.k. to trust your heart now.  In fact, Jesus wants you to.

Your heart can be trusted now because it is no longer 'deceitfully wicked.'  If you follow Christ, it would be wrong to mistrust your heart:  It would be at cross-purposes with what God is doing in your life to constantly hold your desires under suspicion.

I recently asked a group of men to raise their hands if they thought that trusting their hearts was the right thing to do.  About a third of the hands went up.  The majority thought that holding their heart under suspicion was the biblical thing to do.  As we unpacked the truth of their new hearts, given to them when they said 'yes' to Jesus, we exposed the debilitating assumptions they were taught about their hearts.

I explained that within the new heart Jesus gave them came new and noble desires -- and that dismissing those desires as selfish or inherently wicked would prevent them from doing certain things like:

• discovering their unique calling
• loving God and loving each other

But not all desires are created equal
There are, of course, competing desires that can be whispered to us, but those desires are not ours.  They are either whispered by the Enemy, or our culture, or our 'flesh' (which is no longer us, not our real self);  but those desires are not our desires.  False desires are like thorns lodged in the skin -- they are embedded in our bodies, but not of our bodies.  The thorns cry out for our attention, but our health lies in the vitality already present in our bodies.  Our concern must focus on what's most alive and already present within us.  That's where God focuses his energy.

Ask God to reveal the desires of your heart. 
Stay with the process.  It's what he's up to in your life.  Trusting your heart is biblical.

Being 'accepted' by God isn't enough.

One of the members of The Good and Noble Heart community I moderate asked a great question.  The core of her question goes to real the offer of Jesus.  Here's her question:

What exactly did Jesus accomplish for us? I really believe that He brought us to a place of being able to be with the Father, unrestricted and free. That's how I life my everyday life with Him. But I really don't know how to see myself...am I really good now and therefore can go to the Father, or still the same old me, but completely accepted through Christ's dying on the cross, and that being accepted as I am gives me the hope and strength to be able then to change.

Her confusion is understandable and common to many Christians:  Am I merely accepted by Jesus (which is a beautiful thing in itself) but am still essentially the same person I was before I met him; or did he do something to me -- making me truly good and pure of heart? 

The trouble with seeing ourselves as only forgiven and accepted is that is doesn't solve the root problem -- a diseased and fatally-incapacitated heart.  If Jesus were to 'accept' us without giving us the capacity to love and relate well to him, we would not be able to live or love as he did -- unable to fulfill the command to "love God with all your heart...."  It would be a cruel and unfair expectation on God's part. 

Further, we would be debilitatated and diminished in our capacity to love others:  "Love one another as I have loved you." You can't love like Jesus unless you have his heart.  And that's exactly why his offer includes acceptance ... and a gloriously new heart.

The salvation Jesus offers is a rescue of the heart. It has to be.  There is no loving and living well without a reborn, alive and supernaturally-vibrant heart. 
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Is this understanding of the Gospel what you were taught?

Podcast - RECOVERING OUR DESIRE

Recovering our desire -- Jim is a guest again on Joel Brueseke's Growing in Grace Together  podcast.  They talk about our fears to trust our desires, because we've mistrusted our hearts.  They also talked about the various sources of desires and the consequences of not trusting the desires that are in our new and good hearts.

Here's Joel's podcast site

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Get the podcasts on iTunes here.

LISTEN NOW --new podcast - 'The Heart and the New Covenant'

Joel Brueseke, who hosts the Growing in Grace Together podcast, is a good friend and a guy who really gets the good and noble heart.  Joel interviewed me today for a two-part series.  Here is part one.

Listen in for some great conversation about why Christians tend to walk around in guilt and shame, and why there seems to be such a focus in the church on behavior management and sin management - and how living with a New Covenant mentality rather than an Old Covenant mentality, as well as a proper view of the new heart, will overcome all of that.

Update on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 2:03PM by Jim Robbins

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All of my podcasts are also available on iTunes.  Here's the link:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=332568931

LISTEN NOW: 'The Naked Gospel' interview with Andrew Farley

Andrew and I talked about his fantastic new book, The Naked Gospel - the truth you may never hear in church.  Find out what Andrew says about our new identity and freedom.  It really is a lot better than we've been told.

• Should Christians really obey the moral law in the Ten Commandments?
• Do we really have pure and good hearts - the very same that Jesus had?
• Can Christians trust their hearts?

The answers may surprise you!

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Click player below to listen.

As always, feel free to leave your comments below!

LISTEN 'live' tonight -- podcast special guest Aida Calder talks about spiritual abuse and the new heart

Aida Calder is the blogger who writes the Forgetting the Former Things blog, which has an international audience.

Join us tonight as we talk about her journey, the new heart, and spiritual abuse.  Listen 'live' at 6:30 pm EST or download the podcast shortly after the show.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO TONIGHT'S PODCAST PAGE.  (I use Blogtalk radio when I have podcasts guests.  You can even ask for show reminders at the show's page.)

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As always, feel free to leave your comments below.

Changing our nature...what has already occurred within

Why does God insist on making us loveable, lovely, whole?  For certainly he has always loved us, even when we were unlovable; yet this wasn't enough for him, says C.S. Lewis:

"...it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less."  - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

"We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses - that he would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves:  but once again, we are asking not for more Love, but for less."  -- C.S.  Lewis, The Problem of Pain

I want to answer Lewis here (not knowing how he might respond)...   In order to fashion us into the supernaturally glorious creatures he desires and loves into wholeness, God indeed did change our natural selves, our natural impulses -- from unlovely to noble and good.  This he did at the level of the heart. 

We need not wait for heaven for this.  It has already happened.  It is the promise of Ezekiel 36:26 fulfilled (and in other places throughout Scripture).  We now grow out of that new and noble nature with its noble impulses.  We practice our new nature.  Discipleship is learning how to live from that good heart.

Staying with the message of the new heart

Quite frankly, it's difficult to believe I have a good heart sometimes. The evidence against it seems too strong.

Lately, there's been almost an unseen pull downwards, a drain-circling suck towards hopeless futility.  That dark undertow almost got me to draw some fatal conclusions about my own heart.  That pull is towards shame:

I've blown it with my kids a lot lately;  not given myself to my wife as she needs.  I'm actually craving the goodness of Jesus and his choices, begging him to give me his own maturity.  (If you think holiness is hard, try out your favorite addiction or uncontrolled craving for a while.  That's harder to live with.)

In these moments, we have two choices:  fatalism or freedom:

• Fatalism says:  I am the sum of my failures.  My heart cannot be good -- just look at the evidence against it.
• Freedom says:  My heart is my hope.  I am a new creation (my heart is now supernaturally restored by Christ.)  Despite the external evidence, there is a new internal reality.  My failures are no longer the truest me.  (Even the apostle Paul says this - Romans 7:20)

• You can't go by your failures.
• You can't go by what others think of you.
  
  
• You may not even be able to go by what you've been told by church leaders in the past.

Stay with the truth:  your heart is good now.  Jesus made it so.
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To understand your new heart more, Recover Your Good Heart -- Living free from religious guilt and the shame of not good-enough unpacks what Scripture says about your new heart.

Or you can start with the FREE e-book I wrote:  click here.

A better way to read the Old Testament - without shame

For decades, the manner in which I read the Old Testament only furthered my shame.
 
I had forgotten to make the critical shift from the Old Way to the New Way--  the old heart to the new heart.  For example, if you read an Old Testament passage like the one below, and forget that something has changed inside you as a result of Christ's work, what would you feel?

"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."  - Psalm 51:10

My reaction would be:  "Wow, maybe I should be feeling what David is here; I guess I'm supposed to be confessing my sin, examining my selfish heart and repenting about something.  It sounds pretty spiritual and pretty important.  What, exactly, am I supposed to be feeling bad about?  I'm not sure, but I'd better get to work on this repenting thing and ask God to fix my heart."

The problem with that sort of reaction is that it is out of date.  It is an Old Covenant response to a problem that was solved for you in the New Covenant.  Meaning....David's cry for a clean heart has already been answered in the work on Jesus for you.  You've been given a new and pure heart already because you said 'yes' to him.  (Ezekiel 36:26 -- "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you...") 

As we read the Old Covenant, we must now read it from a new heart perspective (you now have a clean heart that does want what God wants).  We make the shift from guilt and shame...to restoration and freedom of heart.

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For more on this, my book Recover Your Good Heart goes into more detail on what Scripture says about our new hearts.

Free e-book from Jim - "THE GOSPEL OF THE HEART"

I'm making this e-book free of charge.  Download or share it as much as you want.
This short e-book exposes the false gospel that manages the externals and sabotages our hearts.

E-Book-The Gospel of the Heart-Author Jim Robbins

"A Better Way to Relate to God - Part 2" - podcast archives

”A Better Way to Relate to God - part two - Better Assumptions” 9/6/07

Many of us have been taught to relate to God with wrong assumptions — particularly assumptions about the heart (will, spirit) of a Christian. For example, are we really “Just sinners, saved by grace?” Are we really “prone to wander?” Jim continues to explore some more accurate, hopeful assumptions Christians can have about their heart as they relate to God.

Hearing the podcast with Darin Hufford -- solution

Click here to hear the interview.

Darin is the author of The Misunderstood God, and the creator of The Free Believers Network. We talked about his book, how religious thinking (vs. the Gospel) has distorted love, and what it means to be a free believer.

New podcast: "A truer authenticity"

" A truer authenticity:"  6/5/09
Grace without restoration is cruel, like releasing a man from prison without giving him new desires and strength.  Grace must go beyond forgiveness (pardon) to the giving of a new and supernaturally-good heart.  Otherwise, it is stunted grace.

Simply seeing ourselves as a miserable mess - yet forgiven- doesn't help a person in the long run.  We need a new kind of "real."  A new authenticity.

Loading glitch:  My apologies to those who've already tried to listen to the podcast and found it got cut off half-way through.  I've now reloaded it and it should play in its entirety.

Misguided "authenticity"

Here's a quote from a missional church leader I have a great deal of respect for.  However, notice his self-description:  Is it biblical?...meaning, is it a true and accurate description of his identity in Christ?

I consider myself as the most miserable of all human beings, covered with sores, foul, and guilty of all sorts of crimes committed against my King; moved by sincere remorse I confess all my sins to him.  I ask him pardon and abandon myself into his hands so he can do with me as he pleases.  Far from chastising me, this King, full of goodness and mercy, lovingly embraces me, seats me at his table, waits on me himself, gives me the keys to his treasures, and treats me in all things as his favorite; he converses with me and takes delight in my countless ways ....Although I beg him to fashion me according to his heart, I see myself still weaker and miserable, yet even more caressed by God.

There's certainly a lot of grace here, but little restoration.  (At least, not mentioned here.)  What kind of God would pardon a person, then refuse to change them at the most basic level (the level of the heart), so that they need not repeat those crimes; and in fact, no longer have it in their nature to do so?

In fact, God has already met this person's longing to "fashing me according to his heart"  ..."I will give you a new heart."  (Ezek. 36:26).  That new heart is pregnant with new life, new desires, and a new will.  How else would he be able to relate well, if not for a transformed heart?  Sure, it will take time to learn to live from that new and supernaturally good heart -- but that will come. 

I'm concerned with a brand of 'authenticity' and 'realness' out there that takes grace seriously ("You're forgiven and loved"), but is unaware of the gracious gift of a new and radically good heart.  These attempts at being real are noble and certainly well-intended, but have missed the core of the New Covenant promise of a new heart -- a heart on which the ways of God are now written.  Why do we keep rehearsing our mess?

We must be urged to make the shift from external and behavioral compliance to internal and supernaturally-capable desire to love and relate well.  Most Christians are unaware that that shift has already happened ...within their own hearts. The desire and the ability to relate well and love wholly are there.

Let's bring this good news back to the center of our teaching, preaching and relating.  Only then will we see more of the transformation we long for.  Let's stop rehearsing our shame, and begin indulging our new appetites -- the desires of Jesus now resident in our new hearts.
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Update on Monday, May 11, 2009 at 6:15PM by Jim Robbins

For those who are wondering...I do think authenticity and being real is a good thing. In fact, I think we need more of it in some cases. But the kind we need now is an authenticity that more accurately honors our new and noble nature. It is a realness that goes beyond forgiveness and explores the richness, splendor and supernatural desires of a new and good heart -- the one we received when we first trusted Christ.

• "True humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit--it is but a right estimate of ourselves as God sees us."--Tryon Edwards
• "The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is."--Phillips Brooks

"...and please, try not to sin."

I've spent much of the last 43 years trying not to sin.

I think it's because I'm afraid.  There's been an uneasyness with sin because there's been an uneasyness with God:  "Am I really safe? Safe-enough to screw up?  Safe-enough to really blow it and remain highly-favored and in good standing with the Father?  Or will he be...disappointed?

The Church, in a wonderful journey of co-dependence, has helped me avoid sin and to fear it.  We've turned God into a behavior-modification therapist.  Most sermons are about getting people to avoid or discontinue sin.  Avoid the wrong thing, and try harder to do the right thing.  As a result, we've taught people that God is more interested in managing externals, rather than in nourishing, strengthening and encouraging a new internal reality -- the wholly new and good hearts we received when we became apprentices to Jesus.  No wonder we haven't seen the spiritual transformation we're looking for:  you can't get there from here.

Of course it is good not to yield to sin; but if that becomes the point, then most of our energies will be consumed by avoiding something, rather than living in something stronger and more life-giving.

Most parents are afraid of their children's sin and work really hard to manage their kids (think "control") so that they don't err.  As Danny Silk, author of Loving Our Kids on Purpose -- Making a Heart-to-Heart Connection indicates:  "What this reveals is that we are terrified by our children's poor choices.  We try to eliminate as many as possible."  As Silk points out, perhaps the way in which we handle our children is how we believe God handles us:  Be afraid of sin, because this isn't a safe place to fall.

But fear is never an appropriate method of transformation.  It may produce external conformity, but never inward maturity.  It certainly can't produce love itself.

I've also been enslaved to the notion that sin is more powerful than me.  As Silk indicates in Loving Our Kids On Purpose, "We still believe that sin is more powerful than we are.  When children grow up in an environment where their parents are scared of sin, they learn to fear failure."

This fear carries with it the assumption that what's exterior to me has more control over me than what is interior to me.  It's the mistaken idea that what is least true of me (I still have the capacitiy to sin, but no longer the nature to sin) is more true and powerful than an already-present and growing holiness -- a supernatural goodness -- now present within me.  That's the real me.  Ezekiel 36:26 ("I will give you a new heart and new spirit) has come to pass, in me, at the deepest level.

Fear can constrain behavior -- for a while; but it can never restore freedom.

How spiritual transformation happens

What are the mechanics behind how we change; particularly how the new heart within us is strengthened, nourished and released?  How do we end up doing the things our restored hearts really want to do, while not yielding to false substitutes?

Invitation to the Jesus Life - Experiments in Christ-likeness, by Jan Johnson, is refreshing, gracious and full of well-textured thinking on the spiritual life.  The author suggests that God "loves [us] into goodness, drawing [us] with irresistable grace."   Loves us into goodness.

Isn't it true that when we feel most loved, pursued or valued, we are least likely to fall for lesser things?  So how do we access this loving-into-goodness life?

The means is through new habits of the heart, mind and body (spiritual disciplines), but the goal is not to become better Christians, the author surprisingly points out.  The goal is connecting with God.  When we connect, we receive love, and the Spirit does the transforming.  We, as Dallas Willard suggests, are then becoming the kinds of persons who naturally do and say the things Jesus did and said.  It is an outflow of experiencing love, not conjuring up good religious behavior.

Though the author of Invitation to the Jesus Life doesn't necessarily frame the process in the following way, I would suggest that as we connect with God (through redemptive habits) we experience his affection, and the Spirit nourishes and releases the goodness he seeded within our new hearts at conversion.  The point is connecting with God, not trying to become a better Christian.