Truth or Consequences

          Exploring God's justice system on earth:  MAIN HEALING LESSON 2

This teaching on the realities of choice is just one of the 24 lessons in our workbook for personal transformation, "Matters of the Heart."  All 24 lessons will be helpful to the person seeking restoration and freedom and have been posted on this web site. They are available as a complete set in our workbook which can be purchased as a download or ordered through the mail. The lessons are also available on CD and DVD as 24, 1/2 hour teachings. All scriptures are from the NKJV unless otherwise noted.
 

Introduction 

We saw in the last lesson that there is hope for becoming free of many illnesses since they are rooted in negative emotions that we can learn to overcome. And yet this knowledge could become a heavy burden to bear for it means recognizing things we thought were “just emotions” as sins. What is God the Father thinking and feeling about us—who fall into these emotional sins so easily and so often? Is He angry? Is He losing patience? Is He withdrawing from us? Unless we can discover something about our Father God that will put our hearts to rest, this view of sin could well become cause for even more stress! Happily, we have in God the perfect home our hearts have been searching for.

Teaching summary

Why does God let us suffer?
Issues of health raise questions about suffering, such as: why does a good God allow evil and suffering to exist? This series takes the following positions:

A. God is a thoroughly good God—unconditionally loving and yet completely just.
B. All suffering exists because evil exists—and God is NOT the source or cause of evil.
C. All evil exists because of the free will decision (sin) of Satan to go a separate way from God.
D. Therefore, all suffering is due to three things:

1) human free will (our sinful choices of thought, word or deed),
2) a real world setting (natural consequences) and
3) the sins of an invisible enemy.

Free and God's sovereignty
There has to be balance and an allowance for mystery when attempting to understand the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human free will—as well as the painful issues of why this disease, why this suffering came about. Nevertheless the boundaries are clear: God is not the author of evil, Satan is. In heaven there is a complete absence of sin and suffering, because in heaven everyone is perfectly surrendered to God.

The real issue--what we allow
Our lack of surrender, our sinful choices, give the enemy countless open doors to bring sin and its consequences into our world. God allows us to say “No!” to Him and to His ways—for the sake of preserving our free wills as He works to restore us to love and to our lost humanity. Fortunately, He has many ways of turning our no’s back into yes’s, but in the interval much suffering can happen. This is what we mean by saying our lives are a matter of truth or consequences. We can say Yes! to the One who is Truth and whose ways are true or face the inevitable consequences.

We want our will to be free, but not the will of others—especially if they are about to hurt us with it! Or we may want our wills to be free, but don’t want the real world consequences that go along with it. God, on the other hand, has placed all of us in a real world in which even the devils have freedom of choice. To live with a free will in a real world under assault by a real enemy, we will have to learn to love God’s ways or face the consequences.

Sovereigns over our hearts
We have been given freedom of will and are therefore sovereigns over our own hearts. What we choose to believe in our mind and in our heart determines how we will react or respond to people and events (Proverbs 23:7; Matthew 12:34). Every emotion we have is springing up from the core of what we deeply believe. There is no neutral zone. We are either coming into agreement with God’s truth in our thoughts, attitudes, words and actions, or we are moving into agreement with the enemy’s lies (John 8:44). Tragically, we have to make our decisions on faulty or incomplete understandings of Truth iand its consequences—and an invisible enemy is taking full advantage of our lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6; Isaiah 5:13).

Truth or consequences

Every thought we have—conscious or unconscious—has consequences in our bodies in terms of neurological or hormonal responses that affect our organs and even individual cells. That is the universe within. But our inner life also affects the universe beyond our body through our words, actions and prayers. Our choices truly matter.

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days…" Deuteronomy 30:19-20

Dressed in stress
From the Bible’s perspective, every negative emotion is a sin issue. When negative emotions turn our hearts away from trusting God and loving others, we are not clothed in Christ—which may be very often for some of us. How does the Father see us?

Our Father covers us with great grace
In revealing His glory to Moses, God could have shown him the starry heavens which declare His glory (Psalm 19:1) or He could have sent down the glory cloud that would one day fill the tabernacle and the temple (Exodus 40:35; 2 Chronicles 5:14). But He didn’t. Instead, He chose to reveal all that is magnificent about who He is. 

And he [Moses] said, "Please, show me Your glory." Then He said, "I will make all My goodness pass before you… And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin..." Exodus 33:18-34:7

The incredible gift of reconciliation
We are also shown the Father’s glorious grace in the New Testament. The Father is fully reconciled to us! He has seen all that will be needed of suffering and sacrifice, of patience, mercy and grace and He is “OK” with what saving us requires. In fact the Father was in Jesus not only reconciling the world to Himself, but He did this by not holding our sins against us. Instead He held them against Jesus, so that we could receive newness of life (Romans 6:4).

But all things are from God, who through Jesus Christ reconciled us to Himself [received us into favor, brought us into harmony with Himself] and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation… It was God [personally present] in Christ, reconciling and restoring the world to favor with Himself, not counting up and holding against [men] their trespasses [but canceling them], and committing to us the message of reconciliation (of the restoration to favor). 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 AMP

Apply this to negative emotions
God the Father is not “holding it against” us that we have so many negative emotions stressing us or depressing us. He is perfectly able to love us even when we are in the negative emotion “pig pen” feeding the swine! And He is sending word to us to come home to His loving embrace (Luke 15:11-32; Hebrews 4:16). We may have squandered our inheritance, trading away the peace and joy He gave us in our faith filled moments fora bowl of porridge, but His heart towards us is perfect.

Then how does God correct the world?
Will not the Judge of all the earth do right (Genesis 18:25)? And yet He refuses to accuse or condemn us (Romans 8:34), He refuses to terrify or threaten us (1 John 4:18) and He isn’t counting our sins against us (2 Corinthians 5:19). What is left? Love, truth and consequences. He draws all who are willing by His love and leads all who are willing by His Word (in conscience, in nature, in scripture, through others). If we are not turned into His ways by these, then He allows some of the consequences of our wrong choices to help us realize that we are heading in a wrong direction. Heart peace, trust and mercy-giving love are the way of life offered to us. Things that represent the “curse of the Law” (the consequence of sin) don’t come to us accidentally.

As the bird by wandering… so the curse causeless shall not come. Proverbs 26:2 KJV

The necessity of our repentance
In the same passage in which He reveals His glorious grace, God also tells us that He “by no means clears the guilty” (Exodus 33:7). There is only one way of removing sin and its consequences: repentance. Until we repent and return to Him He keeps mercy for us (Exodus 33:7), but mercy cannot do its full work until we return to receive it.  When the children of Israel were about to enter into their Promised Land, the Lord instructed them to create a visual picture by having some stand on Mt. Ebal calling down the curses that would come to those who would not listen and obey Him and others to stand on Mt. Gerazim calling down the blessings on those who would (Deuteronomy 27:1-10). Truly the choice is ours!

 
How the curse of disease enters

The curse of the Law may enter our lives through three ways: the sins of others, un-repented sins of our forefathers (generational sins in the family or on the land), or our own sins of thought, word or deed, known or unknown, including things done or left undone. It is a wonder any of us are healthy!

Sin’s consequences lead to death
No one gets away with any sin (Exodus 34:7). The law of sowing and reaping applies until repentance comes and even repentance doesn’t remove all consequences (Galatians 6:7-8), but it does allow God opportunity to bring restoration and redemption (Romans 8:28). For more scriptures and a free download see Sowing, Reaping, Recompense and Afflict, Chasten, Discipline. Consider the “little” sin of simple unforgiveness:

1) The first consequence of unforgiveness is that it immediately begins to rob you of joy.
2) Then you will discover your peace slipping away whenever you think of what happened.
3) And you will discover the relationship being affected negatively.
4) The longer you hold on to it, the more the remembered pain of the event may intensify.
5) You will begin to become more critical not only of the person, but of other people in general.
6) As your walls go up you begin to feel cut off from God’s presence, His peace and joy.
7) As more walls go up, other relationships begin to be affected.
8) More of your time is fruitlessly robbed from you by dwelling on the past.
9) Unforgiveness increases the stress load upon the body and can lead into illnesses.
10) And on and on…

Jesus gives us keys (see The Keys to the Kingdom (Main Healing Lesson 3))
His summary of the Law is about the necessity of maintaining relationships of trust and love with God, yourself and others (Matthew 22:36-40). When relationships are correct and loving, the blessings can come (Deuteronomy 27-28). The curse of disease comes when there is a breach or break-down in one or more of these relationships. This means that there is hope that if we will do what is needed to get things right in our hearts, our bodies may return to full health! Let this message about truth or consequences motivate you to live by all the Truth you can find in God to both believe in and to obey, thereby reducing the negative consequences and increasing the positive ones. You can take charge over your own heart--it is your main realm of authority and the center of your sphere of influence on the earth.

Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. Proverbs 4:23

Fortunately, the one consequence
we never have to fear is losing His love! 

(Romans 8:31-39)
 

Interested in going deeper?

Don't just give these truths a "head bob"!
For further study and for help working these truths into your heart and life, see Truth or Consequences part 2 (Head to Heart Guide 2) and "work out" with exercises, discussion questions, review of main points, digging deeper, more scriptures, model prayers, renunciations/affirmations and practical steps of life application.

Or better yet, let us minister to you in person
          --at one of our Savannah Seminars...