- Create a vision board
- Meditate with Christ
- Forgive
- Change your relationship to money.
The chapters on the origin of sinful nature (the sense of separation from Spirit) is below. If you woulld like to download the whole book, please go to www.bruceoom.wordpress.com and download the file from the front blog...
To God be the Glory, Great things He has done (and will continue to do so).
Matthew 6:33, Christ says “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Introduction
After a long journey through many difficult experiences, Christ presented himself to me in a series of visions, in which I came to realize that Christ, through his deep Love for us, wants us to have beautiful and full lives. Christ came to give us life and to show us the way to our radiant abundance.
During that time, the Holy Spirit worked within me, showing me how I was caught up in my fears, my doubts, seeing money as the source of my security, and how much pride I had as I tried to keep control and do things my way. I had been selfish, and wanted abundance so I could consume and feel good. God had to strip me of my self-serving ideas of who I was and what was important to me, and of my beliefs that my security was based in having money or doing something. As I was healed, or made whole, I was shown to come more into God’s presence by surrendering my fears, doubts and my self-centeredness (not an easy task). I realized I could trust God more than I could trust myself or the world, and I felt tremendous relief in that.
The Holy Spirit began to show me that there is another way to abundance, a way of contribution and service, guided by Love, expressed through our talents. I was shown that I must seek first God’s kingdom and the fruit of the Spirit, among which are qualities such as love, joy, patience, kindness and gentleness, would be my guide that I am in God’s presence. I would come into His presence through surrendering my pride and my judgments, both of which separated me from God and caused me to want to sin.
It became clear that everything is done through Christ, and I am a vehicle for the expression of Christ’s kingdom on this earth. Christ wants the best for us, and the best for us is the unique desire that each of us holds in our hearts. The heart is a place of expansion, of goodness and of beauty, and when I tap into the truth of our hearts desire, I want to share, contribute, love and experience that which is good and true and beautiful. In this way, through allowing Christ to work his power through my life while honoring my heart, His kingdom and glory are furthered.
It is a huge revelation to realize that Christ will put His entire creative loving power behind us to help us reach our dreams, if we will simply surrender to Him and allow Him to help us. With Christ, we don’t have to live small lives of separation and aloneness, of limitation, fear and scarcity, of dreams that were long ago buried. We don’t have to stay trapped in situations which we are too afraid to leave, and so we learn to accept our suffering as being necessary to survive. With Christ, we can be free of suffering, and we can live the big life our heart yearns for, and with Him as our best friend, it becomes more than possible. It becomes real.
This little book is about helping you also live lives of Christ centered abundance. The principles which I talk about have been revealed to me through the Holy Spirit, embodied and taken to heart, and have been found to work. They are principles that show you the route towards living your abundance.
The book begins with an introduction to living in the fruit of the Spirit, then offers an understanding of sinful nature, and subsequently gives some simple practical guidelines and practices for living a life of conscious abundance. Through Christ there is more than enough for everyone, if we would only seek His way first.
Chapter 2 The Sinful Nature
1 John 4:18 ”There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
James 113When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
We continue our journey into the sinful nature before exploring how to live abundantly in Christ in the chapters thereafter. The journey in the next 10 pages becomes a little more complicated, yet the complexity is essential, and thankfully short lived. I have written these pages not as theology, but as practical wisdom. This understanding and these techniques are the way I am continually freed from my sin and released into God’s grace. I have done this hundreds, thousands of times, and know it works.
My prayer is that this wisdom will be useful to you and guide you in your quest for freedom and life. Without the understanding of sinful nature, which is how the devil keeps us trapped by hiding what he is doing, it’s too easy to stay trapped in bondage. As CS Lewis, the great Christian writer said, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”. When we see how the devil exists, the trick loses its power and the magician is shown to be an illusionist. Once this is understood, and we can see the devils game, we can step out of the game, and there will be a quick return to simplicity. What I am hoping to do in these pages is to show you how the devil plays his game within us, and how Christ’s gift of forgiveness, given to us through Him at the cross, is the way to end the game. If you want to just jump straight ahead to start creating abundantly, then feel free, although I do suggest you at least try this chapter as without seeing how you may be getting stuck, it’s impossible to live in freedom.
I can’t struggle and try and be a good Christian, for in the Spirit there is no law, and there is no struggle. Life in the Spirit flows with ease and spontaneity, whereas life in the sinful nature has the feeling of being blocked, trapped, and of not having enough. Life in the sinful nature is one of resistance, struggle and suffering. Peace and love are the antithesis of struggle, so what if struggle is the problem and not the solution? And struggling to love and trying to maintain peace in an uncertain and changing world? This is just digging the hole of suffering deeper, as true peace and love is like natural breathing; it is without struggle and without conditions. In my experience, after gaffing things up too many times and failing spectacularly, I realized that the only way I could experience the fruit of Christ was to give up my way and accept His Grace, and when I am struggling, it’s hard to accept anything!! When I struggle, I want things my way, not Gods way. Often when I tried to do something through my own planning and efforts, I would fail, it wouldn’t last long or the opposite would happen as to what I intended. Yet, not being able to see the roots of how I struggled, I was unable to be free of my struggle. I finally realized that I had to deeply understand sinful nature before it could be crucified, as without understanding it and by struggling to find happiness my way, I was trying to take painkillers for the pain without ever treating the disease. Without finding the origins of my sinful nature, which gave rise to my feeling of struggle, the devil continued to play the trick of making me believe that he didn’t exist. The reason I struggled lay deep within me, was born from sinful nature, and had nothing to do with my outer circumstances.
Galatians 5: 16-26: So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.
19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
This explained why so often what I wanted didn’t happen. ‘17For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.’ My sinful nature was stopping me doing what I desired. When I acted from sinful nature my life failed, and so I had to learn to understand and drop sinful nature, I had to learn to see the Devil’s trick.
Let’s look again at Galatians 5:19. ‘The acts of the sinful nature are obvious.’
There is a clear distinction here between the acts of the sinful nature, and the sinful nature itself. In that sense, the sinful nature gives rise to the acts, and so by crucifying the sinful nature, these acts fall away. The sinful nature is not the sinful acts. The sinful nature is separate from the sinful acts.
This is where many Christians get Christianity all horribly wrong. They think that by obeying the Ten Commandments and not acting in accordance with sinful nature, then they will be good Christians and have God’s blessings. They think that by obeying the Law, they will be saved, yet when we are in the fruit of the Spirit, there is no Law, there is only expression of the fruit. They think that by acting and behaving in an ideal way, they will enter the kingdom of God. Entering the kingdom has nothing to do with behavior, for there is nothing we can do under our own power to gain salvation as we saw in Acts 4:12 “Salvation is found in no-one else, for there is nothing under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
Entering the kingdom is about seeing and relinquishing sinful nature, about seeing how the Devil tricks us, and opening to God’s grace.
The righteous Christians do their best, and invariably end up suffering or feeling deprived or somehow feeling that they deserved a little more than the tidbits that they have been thrown. And then they write books, like ‘Why do bad things happen to good people’. By doing this they are taking painkillers without treating the disease. Suffering happens only when God’s way is resisted. (This is not to say that we don’t feel emotions such as pain, grief, loneliness and so on, it’s just that these emotions only become suffering when we resist them, which we will explore later)
‘Oh, it’s ok’ they say, ‘I am saved and when I get to heaven I will live a wonderful life’. They are tired of the challenge of this life, have accepted mediocrity and feel that God owes them something for being good. Bollocks!!! God owes you nothing. God loves you and in love there is no debt. Look around. Look at creation, at the millions of species, of the stars in the sky, at the wind and the rain, at people living extraordinary lives. Do you think an abundant God meant you to live a little insignificant life of scarcity? God wants lions, not pussycats! Christ is a God of abundance, and he wants you to live fully, renouncing your limitations and rising up and accepting the full splendor of his Grace and fully fully fully living the fruit of the Spirit according to that which is placed in your heart. Yet if you stay locked up in the smallness of your self-centered needs and the shackles of your pride and righteousness and your ideas of right and wrong, you will live a small life and you will suffer when the world is not how you want it to be. Let go of yourself; the freedom is in letting go.
Don’t get me wrong here; this is not about letting your life fall apart and giving up all responsibility. This is about giving up your way of doing things and earnestly seeking God’s way through seeking first the Kingdom of God. This is about a profound relationship with the Creator of the Universe who is radiant love and wants your highest good and highest freedom. Christ is not limited, you are. When you drop your judgments, you drop your limitations and your suffering. Christ is not limited; Christ had no problem feeding ten thousand people from five fish and two loaves.
‘Oh’ you say ‘that’s just a story in the bible. It didn’t really happen. They made it up.’ Ok, so what about the stars in the sky at night, or this planet? Who made that up? There must be some infinite source from which this was produced, and if He could make Earth, aren’t a few more fish possible?
So our story is really one of moving from the scarcity of self-obsession and from the limitation of ‘I know the right answer and no-one else does’, which is a story of moving from sinful nature and this is what the following pages explore. Our story is paradoxically not trying to stop doing sinful acts, as this is your righteous self effort and probably won’t last long, but rather deeply understanding sinful nature and allowing Christ to forgive you. The ending of sinful nature is in Christ’s forgiveness, not in our efforts. To understand something, it must be seen and studied with curiosity, and when sinful nature is properly studied, seen and confessed, then simply allow the grace and presence of God to rain upon it, removing your stains, washing you whiter than snow. Or to crucify it, in the words of Galatians 5:24 “24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.”
Why is sinful nature so linked to scarcity? The origins of sin come to mind. In Genesis 2:9 ‘And the lord God made all kinds of trees grow out the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’.
So, there were these two really important trees, and God commanded man not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for if he did, he would surely die. And what did man do? According to the bible, in Genesis 3, the snake tempted Eve, the fruit looked good to her and so did wisdom, so she took some fruit and ate it, gave some to Adam who also ate it, and they chose to break Gods commandment. This is important, as it shows that God gave man free will, to obey or disobey God’s way, to choose sin or to choose God. God said (Genesis 3:22) ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever,’ and so He threw Adam and Eve out the garden. This set in motion man’s life of suffering driven by sin, and the subsequent search for liberation from the sinful nature through receiving redemption and wholeness in God’s grace. The key to the search for liberation was eventually demonstrated by Christ’s message on the cross, which we will explore shortly.
Let’s go a little further into sinful nature and the knowledge of good and evil, why it’s incompatible with eternal life and why it’s so important to understand it. When we sin, we are concerned with ourselves, with selfish desire. We look after our own interests at the expense of another, such as in theft, adultery, murder and so on. Sometimes we sin by trying to be someone special when compared to others, by trying to be the richest, the fastest or the cleverest, and we base our sense of self on what we achieve and who we want to be. We may say we love but it’s often manipulation to get what we want. Through gratifying our sin, we entrench our feelings of separation from God. Gratifying sin is all about being glorified through your own efforts, about being raised up as being someone special apart from God.
One of the most important questions is “How does sin arise”? When we have the impulse to sin, we have a convincing feeling, such as doubt or worry or anxiety, that our world is not ok as it is, and we need to do something in order to make it ok. We feel we need the money or the girl or an extra hamburger or power, and we act out this feeling to make ourselves feel ok and to get what we think we need in order to make ourselves feel fine and make our world fine. Looking deeper, we see that sin is an attempt at self-preservation and self-glorification, and we often sin driven by fear of our own suffering. We sin because we have felt uncomfortable and made a judgment about the world as it is, we have labeled the world or ourselves as ‘not good’ and so we act to try and make it good. Is ‘not good’ the same as evil? It’s an interesting question, so have we labeled the world as ‘evil’ and we try to make it good? And then, all we are concerned about is that our judgment is shown to be correct. It doesn’t matter if we suffer, so long as we can be right and validate ourselves. This attachment to self-validation is the expression of sinful nature, of wanting to be separate from God, of wanting to be special.
When someone doesn’t thank you and you feel upset, when you lose and get depressed, when you aren’t noticed at a party, when you feel no-one wants to hear your opinion and you feel left out, when you have a trophy girlfriend, when you need a new car to show to your friends, when you get lost in the story of your unhappiness, when you are fearful of your financial situation, when you have to be right in an discussion, when you win and look down on the loser, when you think you are special because you went to a private school, when you won’t open to another’s viewpoint, when you feel you don’t have the power to do anything, when your body doesn’t look how you want it to be, when your happiness is dependent on things being how you want them to be, these are all examples of sinful nature expressing itself. In and of themselves, these experiences are neutral, yet when we get caught up inside them and feel them and not God as being essential to our wellbeing, we are caught up in ourselves and not connected to God. We are worshipping ourselves, and not God, and Christ warns us against holding anything to be more important than God. In Matthew 4:8-10:
“The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will fall down and worship me." Jesus said to him, "Away from me Satan! For it is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only."
It’s never the world that is not ok. It’s our reaction that’s the problem. Imagine an avid surfer who only has one day holiday each year, and on that holiday, he is looking at the wave report and he sees that there will be no waves. He feels very disappointed, gets caught up in a story about how unlucky he is, and is unable to enjoy himself and ends up having a bad day. The sea itself is neutral; it’s the reaction of the surfer that makes it good or bad, exacerbated by his sense of scarcity around his vacation time. This judgment of ‘not good’ is linked to a powerful emotional compulsion to act (or inability to act) which is often difficult to deal with. Yet, God made creation good. In Genesis 1:31 ‘God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.’ If God made it good, is it maybe man’s judgment and reaction that made it bad? Is it maybe our self-imposed wisdom of ‘right and wrong’ that is the origin of our sinful nature? And wasn’t the devil thrown out of heaven because he wanted to be equal to God as a separate being?
Am I saying that it is man’s ability to judge which makes him a false God? Genesis 3:22 “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil”. Man, through his desire for wisdom, has learned to judge right and wrong, good and evil, and it is man’s act of choosing the right to be able to judge good and evil that makes God throw him out of the garden of Eden, for true judgment belongs to God. “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” It is the cessation of the right of judgment, as illustrated by the fruits of the spirit of love and joy and peace which show the pathway to the return of a life in Spirit, a return to the Garden of Eden. The return to the Garden is giving up judgment, and in return, God gives up judgment of us, as in Christ’s words in Matthew 7:1 ‘Judge not, or you too will be judged’.
The message of Christ is one of forgiveness. Christ died on the cross to forgive us our sins, to show us that God would not hold any sin against us if we would relinquish our sins, and Christ also bought a message of love, in Luke 13:34 ‘A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, you must love one another’. Christ loved us so deeply that he died so we would be forgiven. If we love one another as He loved us, we must, in a way, like Him, die to ourselves to enable the forgiveness others. ‘As I have loved you, you must love one another.’ This is His commandment, and it’s unequivocal, and we will come back to the centrality of forgiveness and self-death as entry into the Kingdom in a moment, and how it relates to the inner relinquishment of judgment.
Let’s explore how judgment, which is the knowledge of good and evil, begins, and this exploration will clearly show the mechanism of the arising of sinful nature, of the devil catching us in his trap. We have an experience, such as someone cutting us off in the traffic, or someone jumping a queue. The experience may be one which happens repeatedly over time, such as habitual patterns of not having any money and struggling to pay the bills, or it may be an unexpected experience, like an accident. The experience may be big like losing a business, or much less invasive, such as the wind blowing a little too hard for afternoon tennis. If we turn our attention to our inner experience and notice our inner world at the moment of the experience, and if we were to slow down this sequence of events in our inner world, we will notice that the outer incident triggers an inner emotional response. The response is a feeling of tension or dis-ease somewhere in our body, and we find ourselves having what we will call an unpleasant experience. There are many thoughts linked to this inner tension that arise that tell us a compelling story, often a story of how we are right and the other is wrong, or how we are good and the situation is bad, or how bad things will happen to us if we don’t obey our fear. When we have been acting this way for many years, we become so habituated to these inner reactions and feelings that they feel like a normal part of us, and we don’t notice this cycle happening. For many of us, this cycle of feeling and reaction is unconscious, and all we are conscious of is our suffering and our habitual way of expressing ourselves.
And here lies the key point. We have a feeling arising somewhere in our body, we unconsciously identify with the tension-feeling, we get caught up in the feeling, and from identifying with our feeling, we disidentify with God, we get caught up in our separate-from-God self, judgment arises and we label our experience as good or bad. Because our process of forming judgment is unconscious, we can’t see this happening and so we think the devil doesn’t exist, and we have fallen for his trick. We have unconsciously taken it upon ourselves to decide what is good and evil (not-ok). And then, particularly when we feel something to be not ok, we try under our own efforts, and not through God, to make things ok again. This self-effort, born from hidden attachment to our judgment, further alienates us from Spirit. We have lost the fruits of the Spirit, our peace and wellbeing, and at this moment we have eaten from the apple. This tension and ensuing judgment causes us to feel separate from our world. If someone cuts you off in the traffic, do you feel separate from them or connected to them? The opposite is being in love; when you are in love, do you feel separate or connected? The beauty of love is that it connects that which is separate. This tension/judgment also makes us feel separate from God, and when we are separate from God, we intuit something to be fundamentally wrong. This is a critical point. Our hidden inner judgment, based on what we feel to be right and wrong, separates us from God and His love. We get caught up in our (separate from God) selves, and we forget about God. We have just dropped out of the Spirit, we have dropped out of peace and love and joy and all those wonderful emotional states that indicate life lived in the Garden of Eden. We have become aware of ourselves, and being aware of ourselves, we try and do to ourselves, under our own efforts, what we think is good and will protect us and prevent us shame and further suffering, as represented by Adam and Eve wearing fig leaves in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 3:7 “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”
This feeling of separation from God, and being caught up in our separate sense of self, is inherently painful, and this pain arises from a longing to return to the Garden of Eden, to God’s presence and wholeness. The longing for love and completion in human relationship is really a deeper longing for love and completion in God. Because we feel separate from our Source, God, we know that as an isolated human, we are limited and deficient, lacking something essential, and we know that we need something to feel okay again. We want to return to the unlimited fullness of the Garden of Eden, yet, not being conscious of the inner tension of deficiency and subsequent judgment as being the problem, we go out and try and make the world okay for ourselves through satisfying the tension. We steal and lie and cheat and kill and accumulate and have plastic surgery in the hopes of altering our world so we can feel okay, yet this misses the fundamental issue. It’s our initial feeling of judgment, our initial unconscious contraction around our sense of being right or wrong, our initial sense of self-awareness and that pride that comes with having to be a separate-defined individual, that is the root of sin.
The trick is to learn to make this process conscious, to see how this tension arises within you. Being aware of it with choiceless awareness and not acting from it, it will stop controlling you. Once you see the devils trick, it loses its power. And then give thanks to God for showing you the root of your suffering.
This is the equivalent of choosing not to have the wisdom of good and evil, of choosing not to play God, and of honoring Gods hand in perfectly creating every situation. Not seeing that this tension, this root feeling of separation from God is the source of our suffering, we tend to run into the world and try and make things ok. This just makes things worse. We don’t need to do anything. If we try and act to make things okay, we are acting from our judgment and we are reinforcing the system that produced the problem. Simply allow the tension to be there and don’t get lost in the story, don’t get caught up in deciding what is right and wrong. And then give thanks to God for providing you with this experience, and ask for His hand to unfold. (This letting go of the sinful nature is the first step in conscious creation. In the rest of the book, we will explore how to create the life you want from the relaxed foundation of being in the fruit of the Spirit).
So why is Christ’s message of forgiveness crucially important? When we forgive, we relinquish our judgment that we are right and another is wrong, and through relinquishing judgment and our separate self-righteousness, our connection and wholeness in God is re-established. We return to the fruit, to the Garden of Eden. How many times do we say ‘I am right’ or ‘I didn’t deserve this’. If we are to love as Christ loved, then we must die to the part of ourselves that is caught up in judgment. Our sinful nature, the nature that judges, must be crucified as payment for our sin. Forgiveness is much more than the simple action of saying ‘You are forgiven’. We must be forgiven and forgive by the grace of Christ, and this not done so much by our action, as by holding our judgment up to Christ and being still, waiting for Him to remove it.
This is painful sometimes, and when we feel very justified in our being right, it’s difficult to let go. It feels like a part of ourselves is dying and this may be slow and painful. We crucify the judging part by literally ‘letting it hang there’. Christ, even though he suffered, totally trusted God’s hand in his crucifixion, knowing He would be released from suffering in His rebirth. Christ died to the sin of humanity, and by dying, he found true freedom. Outwardly, as we relinquish sinful nature, we give up the need to argue, to be defensive, to have to explain ourselves, to act driven by doubt, worry and control.
Just as important is the inner process. Inwardly, we let the tension be there, without feeding it or giving it water, we name it, we hold the tension in place with the cross of our awareness and we give thanks to God for the blessing of our suffering. As the hold of sin upon us gets closer to being broken, the situation often becomes painfully unbearable. Eventually, of its own accord, the tension dies, or is crucified and disappears. With that death, we are reborn back into the fruits of the Spirit which are peace, joy, love and wellbeing. Giving thanks for suffering is powerful; it reverses the thinking that ‘life is all about me’ to an orientation that ‘God is control and has my best interests at heart, even though it may not seem that way at the time’. As the hold of sin is about to be broken, as the devil fights with his last efforts, there may be an intense feeling of desperation and alienation from God, as exemplified by Christ in Mark 15:34 ‘And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in such a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani?” – which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
The more that we can simply be with our tendencies to judge, without feeding them by acting on them, the more we can see judgments arising as a result of tensions in our bodies. As we stay present to the tensions without indulging in the stories, we slowly crucify our sinful nature, the more we drop our attachment to the knowledge of good and evil, and the more we remain in God’s abundance. God’s abundance is one of love, joy, and infinite creativity. Christ said Matthew 18:3 ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’. The entry into the kingdom is gained by innocence, trust and spontaneity and relinquishing the right to judge, which is the process of forgiveness. We relinquish the right to judge ourselves and to judge others, letting go and moving on.
Yet, as long as we stay caught up in the pride of our judgments, in our beliefs of what it means to be an ideal human being, the more we feel separate from God. As long as we are stuck wearing our metaphorical fig leaves through trying to be something or somebody, we are banished from the Garden of Eden. And in this place of separate identity and separation from God, we intuit we are mortal and will die, as we were not allowed to eat from the tree of life. This means that anything which is separate from its source will soon perish, and in this way, the punishment of sin is death. The sense of self that is identified with sin, in other words the self that has unconsciously fallen into judgment, and feels separate from God, will die one day. The thought of our death is terrifying, and it’s only terrifying because we feel the fundamental disconnect from God. From that place of disconnect, the penalty of sin is death and we intuitively know this. God is eternal, and when we are living the fruits of the Spirit, when we are connected to Spirit which is our source, we feel into that eternity and we are not threatened by death. Our body is simply an experience we are having and it will pass, yet when it does, our connection to Spirit will remain.
If however, we are feeling separate due to sinful nature, which is simply getting caught up and identifying our separate sense of wellbeing with our feelings, we do our best to avoid death and create our own eternity as long as we can through building security on earth so we can avoid pain and feel good, we build security through power, control, money and relationships. Yet, no matter how successful we are with our personal happiness projects, the inevitability of death cannot be avoided. The only way out of this trap is to surrender oneself, accept Christ, and relax.
For many, their sinful nature drives their relationship to God. In their suffering they call out to God to save them through providing them with what they want, whereas what they are asking God to do is to validate their judgment of what they think they need in order to feel ok. They are inadvertently calling on God to validate their sinful nature. You may have heard the saying ‘Let go and let God’. In that relaxation, in dropping the sense of ‘I want it my way and I know how it should be’, an opening to God’s love, His intelligence, His help and support is created and He is allowed to work in your life. To do this, you will need to trust an unseen force that acts only at the right moment, and not according to our ideas of right and wrong and control and certainty. You will need to trust God more than you trust yourself. In trust and surrender we allow Christ to do His work in our lives and we open to His abundance as we act from our hearts. Christ wants nothing more than to bless us endlessly, yet it’s our judgments, our sinful nature, that stops Him doing this.
The story of Job is a wonderful example of this. Job is taken into suffering and becomes critical and judgmental. His fear becomes manifest. Job 3:25 ‘What I feared has come upon me. What I dreaded has happened to me’. Finally, God says to him in Job 40:8 ‘Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?” How often do we criticize God so we can be right and so we don’t have to change? Every time we resist our experience of this world and of ourselves, we are justifying ourselves and condemning God. We are saying that God is not in control and things should be different, and we know how they should be. God finally brings Job to realize how weak he really is, and Job, humbled, drops his judgments and accepts Gods way, which simply means Job accepts reality and gives the wisdom of right and wrong back to God. And then, the miracle happens. God then blesses Job more than ever.
So, sinful nature must be understood as the inner tension around which we identify and from which we judge, and which makes us feel separate from creation through trapping us in the cage of our own righteousness. In our attempt to feel okay, we sin, and if we won’t allow ourselves to openly sin or if we don’t have the resources to sin, we ask God to give us what we want so we can feel okay again. Yet, Gods promise is that you are already ok and He will give you more than you ever wanted, if you would only learn to relax. Simply observe sinful nature long enough, give thanks for your life, and sinful nature will drop away. For in giving thanks, judgment is dropped. If sinful nature is not understood as the fall from Grace into judgment, and this fall, which happens repeatedly, moment by moment in our inner experience, is not stopped, then we will stay banned from the garden of Eden and will not find our way back into eternal life, instead looking for eternity through the substitute gratifications of the world and falling for the devils trick of not thinking he exists. “Again I tell you; it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
We cannot get caught up in our judgments and be eternal at the same time. This can be quite tricky to understand, as to say ‘I am going to stop judging’ is in itself a judgment that judging is not ok and I have to do something in order to stop it. Things are perfect just as they are, even though they may not appear and feel that way. The message of Christ is you are forgiven. You are exactly ok just how you are, no matter if you are judging or caught in sin. Whatever happens, just allow it go. If you try and make something go away, you lose the point. Simply forgive, relax and know that you are worthy, and then get on with life. Trying to attain Gods grace is like standing in the rain and trying to get wet while holding an umbrella above you. Your effort keeps the rain away. When you drop your effort and lower the umbrella, and simply stand there, you become drenched. There is nothing you need to do to be soaked by His presence. Just watch your judgments arise and let God wash them away.
And even the effort to stop judging is itself an effort. You must know that the kingdom is within you. If judgment happens, let it happen like a cloud blowing across the sky. If you wait long enough the cloud will disappear. And a cloudy sky is as a beautiful as a clear sky. Don’t try and change the sky.
Allow yourself to relax. Always.
Don’t get me wrong. If you cease judging, you will still have preferences for what is better and worse, for what is helpful and what is unhelpful. You will just not get all emotionally caught up in those preferences. God will start to speak into your heart about what is right and wrong and you can trust that and you will start to flow and act appropriately and enjoy life. And now, once you have figured out that being relaxed is the key to connection to God, is the key to abundance, we can start to simply live according to His Will, which is what the next few sections are about.
Chapter 3: Contribution, not consumption.
If we follow our story, we see that sinful nature is inherently deficient. There is a feeling around which we contract and identify (and yes, sometimes the feeling is very powerful), we feel a sense of deficiency due to our separation from God, and we try and preserve our righteousness and act from that tension/feeling state to return ourselves to a state of peace or wellbeing.
For an individual identified with this feeling of deficiency, they will see abundance as the ability to endlessly consume. Sinful nature (and deficiency) feels it needs something and so abundance will represent an endless ability to get, to accumulate and to use, and will be all about them satisfying their individual interests.
The sinful nature is itself inherently terrified, as being separate from God, it will die. The Devil holds us in his group by making us feel separate from God, and giving us a false sense of security through our judgment. The Devil knows that God will finally destroy him. Through the judgment of original sin and the ensuing feeling of being separate from God, and having being denied eating from the tree of life, there is a deep intuition of mortality, which terrifies the separate self. Due to the feeling of lack and limitation arising from feeling separate to God, this lack is projected onto the world, and a world is perceived of lack, scarcity and one in which there is a deep and rightful fear of survival. From this perspective, survival is always the issue, as the separate (sinful) self will die. Yet, if we are awake to the Christ within, then our body will go, but we will continue into eternity as we have accepted Christ as our savior and are dwelling in the fruit of the Spirit. If we are genuinely awake to Christ, survival is not such a driving issue as we know we have eternal life in Christ, and we can live freely as sons and daughters of Christ, given life, taken care of, loved and guided.
Once we are in the fruit of the Spirit, we are full and we realize through our radical freedom in Christ, that there is nothing we lack. We have such trust in God that we know our needs will always be met, as promised by Christ in the sermon on the mount, Matthew 6:15-34. 25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life[a]?
28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
We are radiant with love and joy and peace when we deeply know we are lack nothing and are secure in our freedom, and then we are free to contribute. Abundance comes from a willingness and ability to contribute our gifts to others in service. In 1 Peter 4:7-10
“The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. 8Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. “
We are clearly told that we are called to use our gift to serve others. This is the key to abundance; being grounded in the Spirit, we must use our gifts to add to the world. Through giving our gifts in service to others, we contribute. Contribution implies that we have something valuable to give, contribution implies that we are full, not deficient. Contribution is directly opposite to endless acquisition and consumption, which are the signs of sinful nature.
Does this mean that we only contribute and stay poor, that others benefit at our expense? Not at all; this means that the primary joy arises from service to others, and it is right to expect reward for that. In Matthew 10:9-10, Christ himself tells us that we don’t need to accumulate unnecessarily, yet we deserve to be paid for what we do. “Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; 10take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep.”
This is a very different focus from asking God to give to us to satisfy our lack so that we may feel ok. In 2 Corinthians 9:6-8, we are again told to contribute through sowing bountifully from that which is purposed in our heart, which is our gift. If we do that, we will have grace and abundance.
“Now this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed.”
We are promised that if we do as is purposed in our hearts, God will give us sufficiency in everything. And so, the key to abundance is to ask “How can I be of value? How can I serve others?” We are told in Corinthians to give cheerfully, and from the heart. If there is a sense of grudge or compulsion, then we are told not to do it. If there is a grudge or compulsion, then often the giver becomes a loser, we get taken advantage of, and God wants everyone to be blessed, including the giver.
As we explore deeper, we realize that we do not save anyone through using our gifts in service; they are saved by the Grace of Christ. We enrich others through meeting their needs with our gifts, and in return our needs are met through financial exchange.
