WHY YOU WANT TO READ THE BIBLE

 

Dr. Dan Montgomery

As a Clinical Psychologist for 40 years, as well as an ordained Christian minister and theologian, I offer up my lifetime assessment of Homo Sapiens historically and today: 

That apart from God’s grace and guidance, 

we human beings are vain, fickle, and recalcitrant. 

I share this view with world famous existential psychologist Rollo May, who coined this phrase and personally shared it with me 40 years ago.
 

I still commend these classic Rollo May books: The Art of Counseling; Psychology and the Human Dilemma; Love and Will; Power and Innocence; Courage to Create); and The Discovery of Being. 

Are Dr. May and I alone in this assessment? Are we overly pessimistic? 

Or are we reflecting the view of humankind revealed in the Bible, the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis through Revelation? 

Read the Bible cover to cover this month, 

without rationalist, humanist, or liberal-progressive agendas, 

and find out for yourself. 

The New International Version (NIV), New Living Testament (NLT), and The Message (MSG) are solid and current translations. BibleGateway offers excellent online resources. 

The Bible portrays the universal human condition as sin-filled and estranged from the holiness and purposes of God: individuals who do what’s right in their own eyes:

 "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes 

and clever in their own sight"  
(Isaiah 5:21 NIV)

They follow a pathway that seems rational or ethical or religious to them, but lacks a holy relationship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: A personal relationship, one that replaces rote lip service to a static image of the Trinity for the vibrant Triune God who created this Cosmos, yes, but who longs for each person of every culture or belief or DNA or sex, to know Him personally and trust him in all life choices.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Three Persons in One God, invite us to live a Spirit-led daily life in conversation with Him about the most intimate goings on in our lives. 

“Lord, I pray to you for help in my relationship with my daughter. We’re picking at each other too much. Please reveal a path for us that I can understand.” 

The Trinitarian God invites us, beseeches us, to engage Him twenty fours hours a day, 365 days a year, decade after decade—until in death we each meet Him face to face. 

At that point, we are either excluded from His eternal presence as a consequence of impenitent lifelong sin (Hell), or we are included in the glorious company of the redeemed, born again individuals who know, trust, and obey the Lord God Almighty (Heaven).
 
My suggestion to all seven billion or so persons who currently inhabit Planet Earth? 

Seek the Lord while He may be found, 

for today is the day of salvation.

 

SEEKING JESUS

If you haven’t received His blood atonement for your sins, pray for this free gift of new life in the Spirit and grace-filled reconciliation to God. 

This gift comes if you confess in your mind and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ gave his Life and Blood on the Cross as a once-and-for-all atonement for your sins so that you can: 

• have life in Him, and have it more abundantly.
• know the truth that sets you free
• follow the resurrected and spiritually ascended Jesus

 You make Jesus the Lord of your life by doing the Father’s will in loving God with your whole human nature, and loving your neighbor (the Family of Humanity) as you love yourself” (Luke 10:27).

God himself put it this way:

“I’ll live in them, move into them;
    I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
    leave it for good,” says God. 
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
    I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
    you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God. 

2 Corinthians: 6:16-18 (MSG)

Should You Witness as A Christian?

Among Jesus' last words, meant to guide Christians from his resurrection until his Second Coming, are these: "All authority in heaven has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" (Mt 28:18-19).

Jesus Christ's Great Commission

But isn't it antiquated, and even presumptuous, to believe that the divine Trinity has commissioned a worldwide outreach that remains in force in the 21st century?

Wouldn't Christians do better to act in the spirit of pluralism whereby people keep their religious beliefs to themselves out of respect for those who differ? Isn't it both arrogant and immature to assume that a core dimension of the Christian faith, the Trinity, should be shared with all people throughout the world?

Not from the perspective of the original Abrahamic covenant in which God swore by his name that he would make Abraham a blessing to all nations. Abraham had faith in God and God accounted it to him as righteousness, not requiring the sacrifice of Abraham's own son of the covenant, Isaac, because God foreknew that he would sacrifice his own Son to actualize this covenant with humanity.
 

Jesus Christ is the Trinity's sign and seal of an eternal covenant that brings reconciliation to God to all who receive him (Jn 3:16-17). Life in Christ is everlasting Trinitarian communion. God has removed all barriers from the God side for this life to be received and lived. But on the human side there are many barriers, some religious, some political, some social, and some psychological.
 

While it is true that no one holds a corner on God, and no religions fully have their act together, including Judaism and Christianity, nevertheless Christ seeks witnesses who stand up and are counted among those who have discovered that God as human takes his place among us, God as holy judges us for our sins, and God as divine requires persons who know him to surrender to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit.
 

It is not enough for religions to have rituals or codes of law for ethical behavior. God wants people changed from the inside out. This can happen with or without religion, but not without the knowledge that God yearns to encounter repentant hearts, welcome persons into Trinitarian love, indwell their human nature, and develop righteous wholeness in their personalities and relationships.

Faithful Servants

A Trinity mission statement today might include spreading the Gospel as a faithful servant in one's chosen profession, perhaps as scientist, entertainer, athlete, clergy, teacher, homemaker, politician, factory worker, coach, journalist, or a thousand other occupations where one quietly lives one's faith and fashions friendships with co-workers that emulate Trinity life.

Since the Holy Spirit takes the lead in establishing new churches from Pentecost through today, one might expect, too, that the Spirit is calling new generations of pastors, evangelists, therapists, religious teachers, musicians, and parishioners to celebrate the growing cloud of witnesses from every tongue and ethnic group that come to know and love Jesus as Lord, taking the Father as their very own "Papa," and experiencing the love of God poured through their inner cores by the Holy Spirit.

Cloud of Witnesses

In fact, there is no such thing as static Christianity, other than when Christians lapse into apostasy or become lax and forget their prime calling. Christianity worldwide, however, is growing as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit create opportunities for friendship with God and fellowship with others as compelling as when Jesus said, "Go and make disciples of all the nations."

For more, read:

TRUSTING IN THE TRINITY:

A Self Compass for Humanity

How Facing Doubt Leads to Greater Faith

Too great an emphasis on perfect faith actually blocks growth instead of facilitating it, creating the unconscious expectation that without perfect faith God will be disappointed and reject a person.

But God has more patience and maturity than that, for as Jesus said, a tiny mustard seed of faith is sufficient for the Lord to work within a person (Mt 17:20). The Trinity wants to help people face, feel, and process their doubts, which in turn leads to greater faith.

Even John the Baptist, whom Christ held in the highest regard, sent a messenger from his prison cell to ask Jesus once again if in fact he was the Messiah. Jesus sent back the answer that “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised,” all signs from Isaiah’s prophecy attesting to the Messiah’s arrival (Lk 7:22).

John the Baptist

So if individuals are trusting Christ for their right standing with God, then God makes room for occasional doubts as they experiment with:

• how prayer does and doesn’t work
• what to do when they feel uninvolved in a worship service
• how to handle it when they can’t meet a homeless person’s needs
• what to do about behavior they feel is wrong but have to seek God’s help over months or years to overcome

Natural rhythms of faith and doubt ultimately bring people closer to the Lord. For all the doubts they endure, although people can’t always hold onto God, he nevertheless holds onto them. As Jesus promises, “No one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:28-30).

During Christ’s ordeal, Peter struggles with intense doubt about whether to claim friendship with Jesus or deny knowing him. He temporarily opts for denial just when Jesus needs him most. And after the resurrection, Peter reaches the point where he throws up his hands and says, “Come on boys, let’s go back to Galilee and start fishing.” He stands at the place all human beings know from time to time, even when they also know and love the Lord, where life just does not make sense. There are too many setbacks, too much confusion, and too little guidance from the Holy Spirit.

But then it does make sense. For Jesus follows his weary fishing crew to the Sea of Tiberius, and there he makes a little campfire on the shore and grills some fish, shouting to Peter and the others in the boat, “Have you caught anything yet?” (Jn 21:5).

Jesus Appears to the Disciples

Peter starts to yell back that the fishing is as dismal as his own life, when suddenly he recognizes Jesus and dives headlong into the sea to swim ashore. The Bible says the disciples don’t say much at that meal, perhaps too busy internally absorbing the rhythm of doubt and faith, crisis and deliverance, self-consciousness and joy—and feeling mostly awe, not only that they had been right in choosing to follow Jesus, but that they had chosen, for the most part, to believe all he had told them.

Rather than trying to secure a flawless platform of witness that one is adamantly Christian and proud of it, a wiser stance might allow that all human beings, including one’s self, hold even cherished beliefs somewhat precariously, and therefore stand in need of God’s continuous provision to remain close to him.

Once persons accept that they are both strong and weak, hardy and frail, capable of moments of shimmering faith and times where all seems lost, then they can relax, breathe, and trust in God’s faithfulness and providential care. Add to this the hundreds of scriptures that attest to the transcendent power whereby God saves those who hide themselves in him, and people can enjoy a degree of equanimity, knowing that Christ is there for them in faith or doubt.

In seasons of celebrating God or times of questioning, the “I AM” of God faithfully indwells the “i am” of the believer. For the same Peter who denies even knowing the Lord, later writes to all who would follow Christ, “Now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Pet 1: 6-9).

For more, read:

TRUSTING IN THE TRINITY:

A Self Compass for Humanity

 

Does Jesus Want You To Be Spontaneous?

Spontaneity means responding to immediate circumstances in the present moment, experiencing the present as an existential moment of “now”—a capability that requires both mental flexibility and spiritual openness.

The power of spontaneity, if a person gives into it and cultivates it as a way of responding to the Holy Spirit, allows for serendipitous experiences otherwise missed if preoccupied by the past or worried about the future.

When Jesus called each of his disciples, they responded spontaneously to the calls, all but the rich young ruler who met the invitation with an excuse that he had many properties to manage and many responsibilities to oversee, and therefore, sadly, was simply too busy to respond to God. Jesus didn’t try to convince him otherwise by pleading for him to consider all that he would miss, but rather turned away in search of the next person who would hear his invitation and welcome it.

Too Busy to Respond to God

Spontaneity, needless to say, is different from impulsivity and irresponsibility. Christ doesn’t want persons to act rashly on the spur of the moment, doing things they will regret the next day. That is why the Holy Spirit works to build a rapport with a person’s whole human nature: your mind and heart, body and spirit—and this evolves over the years.

God desires for his people to learn to trust his presence in their whole being, so they can sense when he is guiding them in novel directions, or affirming the way they are headed. Sound thinking, genuine feeling, bodily sensing, and spiritual prayer combine to keep you zestful in faith, sensitive to the moment, and responsive to God’s dynamic way of guiding you.

 

Seeking God's Guidance

In times of unusual stress, Jesus declares, the Holy Spirit intervenes at a core level: “But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand, or premeditate what you will speak. But whatever is given you in that hour, speak that; for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit” (Mk 13:10-11).

The same principle applies to private Bible reading, group Bible study, or church worship. Opening your being to the biblical narrative allows the Holy Spirit to sometimes augment the general meaning with a more specific application to your life.

Christ walks and talks among individuals today as surely as he did with his twelve disciples, and his spontaneous interaction with the contemporary believer requires just as much flexibility on the part of the person as it did for the disciples.

 

Jesus Today

By listening afresh for the spontaneous ways the Spirit is speaking, you can truly hear a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, or a prophetic word that brings counsel in an area of need or a creative idea in an area of quandary. 

In this way the Holy Spirit, the wellspring of creativity and spontaneity, crafts nuanced love poems aimed at your heart, letting you know how cherished you are, “I AM” encountering “i am” with blessing and sustenance for each day.

For more, read:

TRUSTING IN THE TRINITY:

Compass Psychotheology Applied

 

Trusting in the Trinity

What To Do When Evil Lurks Around You

While some Christians are obsessed with the devil and demons, I don’t recommend thinking much about these emotionally disturbed creatures. However, if you ever feel oppressed or bothered by a seemingly evil presence that you can’t put your finger on, enter a quiet time of prayer. 

Begin praising Christ for his blessings in your life and his absolute mastery over the devil; then rebuke Satan face-to-face: “Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ. I command you to withdraw all influence in my life. Now Holy Spirit, please fill me with your presence. In the name of Jesus, amen.”

That’s all there is to it. It is Jesus who has defeated the devil and the Holy Spirit who makes Satan tremble. Scripture promises, “When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him” (Is 59:19).

If you are troubled by a nightmare, ask God to illuminate the meaning of your dream. Is there something you are avoiding, some choice you need to make? Or is it the devil making you fearful? Either way, I recommend placing a Bible in plain sight by your bed as a symbol that you belong to Christ alone. Pray for the Holy Spirit to fill your bedroom at night, comfort you as you go off to sleep, and exert influence in your dreams.

If someone develops a vendetta toward you, a specific intent to harm you, you know this is not from God. Pray, “Lord, help this person get hung by the noose they are hanging for me.” “Christ, deliver me from this person’s evil schemes and gossip.” “Father, I cover myself with the blood of Christ. Thank you for protecting me and bringing about justice in this situation.”

You can develop a relaxed vigilance regarding Satan, and though you stand ready to command him to desist and depart, it is wise to recognize that a fair portion of the negative tensions you experience in life are not demonic, but rather psychological in origin.

If you have needs that require clinical or pastoral counseling, I encourage you to seek out a qualified professional to help you. You may benefit from perusing the principles of personality found in my book, The Self Compass: Charting Your Personality in Christ. Further, you might search out a book study that concentrates on personality transformation and relationship healing.

If you suffer from significant bouts of depression that extend over months and years, you may have a biochemical deficiency that is genetic in origin, and which will respond favorably to medication issued by a physician or psychiatrist. 

Don’t hold back from making an appointment for evaluation. Then tell that person about your history of struggles with depression, or with periodic mood swings. Be sure and explore what you’ve tried that has and hasn’t helped. An appropriate antidepressant or medication for bipolar disorder can be a godsend in the same way that glasses can transform nearsighted or farsighted eye conditions into 20/20 vision.

When you assess the situation with these tools, you are taking steps so that evil will have no hold on you. 

How Does Prayer Work?

I can't speak for other world religions, even though I respect aspects of what they teach and uphold. But I can speak for Christianity because I met Jesus Christ fifty years ago. If it wasn't for Jesus, Christianity would be just a religion, and I wouldn't have much interest in it. My lifetime work as a psychologist for Lord has only intensified my fascination with prayer.

What does Jesus teach us about prayer? First of all, he teaches us that through the doorway he provides, God the Father becomes our personal Father. Christ teaches us to pray to God like he did, which means to pray all the time, everywhere, about anything that truly concerns us. And he teaches us to pray in his name, which means that we submit to his authority and trust in his guidance.

How does this translate into practical prayer? Wonderfully. You see, I was trained as a scientist in my graduate and undergraduate education, and I learned to have an inquisitive mind, to try out novel experiments and gather research about how the natural laws of the universe work.

So when I met Jesus, when I asked him to enter my life and reveal more about God to me, I found a freedom to pray in his name and see how prayer works. One of my first prayer experiments got an unexpected answer. My girlfriend, who had graduated from high school a year ahead of me, fell in love with a college guy, a beefy football player whom I personally detested.

The week of their marriage I stood in my bedroom and lay my broken heart before the Lord. "I can't stand this pain, Lord, and I can't stand losing this woman I love. Will you please show me how to get through this?"

I waited. Nothing seemed to happen. But when I turned around, my eyes fell on a Bible sitting on my dresser. I felt compelled by an invisible force to cross the room and placed both hands upon the Bible. With that action a peace infused my whole being, and a calm inner voice said, "Dan, you can stand it, because I am standing with you."

When we enter conversation with God, we can actively expect his attentiveness, and trust in the great care with which he will answer us, sometimes immediately, sometimes within the week, and sometimes twenty years later.

Go ahead and pray about anything that brings you anxiety, depression, or stress. Ask for God's divine intervention. For his wisdom to flow into a situation and change the outcome in constructive ways. For his presence to positively influence a troubled relationship. For his will to be done in your life.

And don't forget to thank him for all the good things he does. It warms his heart, just like his companionship through the years warms yours.

For more about prayer and companionship with God, read  

Trusting In The Trinity: Compass Psychotheology Applied

Will God Take Care of Me?

Christianity is at heart a mystery. I don't pretend to fathom its depth that reaches down into the fabric of being, encompassing the salvation of those who trust in Christ and the divine purpose of the cosmos.

For the two billion plus individuals who identify ourselves as Christian, the mystery of Christ's atonement for sin speaks to our personal depths, the discovery of grace and love as a foundation for living, and the emerging selves in Christ that we are becoming.

I lay on a sofa pondering this mystery one night, while also worrying that my wife Kate and I had little money to live on, barely paying the rent, food and gas. Yet at the same time, I realized, we were fully surrendering to the task at hand: writing the next book in our Compass Series.

On the one hand, unexpected reversals had financially devastated us. On the other hand, the anointing of the Holy Spirit had placed fire in our bones to write a book called, Trusting in the Trinity.

On this very night, with our faith in God tested to the max, and mood alternating wildly between psychological anxiety and spiritual ecstasy, a sentence composed itself in my mind—a sentence about the atonement of Jesus Christ for human sin and doorway to God's grace. I got up from the sofa, wrote the sentence on my laptop, and pondered its meaning, still not knowing how we would survive next month's bills.

Here is that sentence:

"Knowing that human beings learn from practical object lessons, God called a people to himself after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, a people now living in tents below Mount Sinai, a newly constructed tabernacle with its Holy of Holies in their midst, with Aaron, the high priest divinely appointed to fulfill God’s instruction through Moses that once every year on the day of atonement, he would select a bull without spot or blemish, which would represent the people, and sword in hand, he would lay hands on the bull’s head, a picture of vicarious identification with the children of Israel, followed by a sharp slash to cut the bull’s throat; a bowl underneath filling with spurts of blood, Aaron would sprinkle this blood on the mercy seat atop the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies, specially crafted for the purpose that without blood there is no remission of sin; a blood offering given in obedience to God’s command that by faith in the sin offering the people would find forgiveness, the bull dying in place of the nation, the blood holding a historical place until, in the fullness of time, Jesus Christ offered his own blood, our hands upon his head, his throat figuratively slashed like the bull’s, a vicarious atonement for the sins of the whole human race, and the curtain in the Jerusalem temple separating humanity from the Holy of Holies rent from top to bottom, signifying that through the sacrifice of Christ for the Trinity’s love of humanity, individuals can become sons and daughters of the living God (Heb 10)."

I left a note on the kitchen table, asking Kate to read it the next morning, and see if it made any sense to her. The next day she responded positively, and we both agreed that it helped us see the connection between the Old and New Testaments, and between the Jewish sacrificial system and the new covenant that came through the death and resurrection of Jesus, our personal Passover Lamb.

Not only this, but it seemed to offer us emotional comfort, because it somehow conveyed that delivering human beings from the penalty of sin cost God everything, yet opened the doorway to full and liberating fellowship with God.

Now about the bills. We ate a lot of oatmeal and beans, and received two years of free housing in a very gracious friend's retirement home. We gave away most of our worldly possessions, but were happy in this monastic existence, knowing that we did have food, shelter, and gas, and just as important as these earthly provisions, we had the peace of Christ in our souls. We knew that God was taking care of us—we had what we needed.

 For more help in understanding the atonement of Christ:

Trusting in The Trinity: Compass Psychotheology Applied