One of the big problems today in our culture today is that we think only in terms of contracts and never covenants. In Covenant People I explained the difference between them.

The Difference

To recap from that post:

With a contract, if one agreeing party does something in violation of the contract then it is considered broken. The whole contract becomes null and void. Basically the signers of a contract agree to hold up their ends as long as the other signatories hold up theirs too.

With a covenant, both parties agree to hold up their ends regardless of whether the other party keeps their part of the agreement. A violation of a covenant by one party doesn’t matter as far as the other party’s responsibility to continue to do what they agreed to do.

The Declaration of Independence is one of the more famous secular covenants.

Famous Secular Covenant

Perhaps one of the most famous secular covenants, at least in the United States anyway, is the Declaration of Independence that helped launch our nation.

The Declaration of Independence was signed by 56 men who all understood they were committing high treason against the British government when they signed the document. Benjamin Franklin famously highlighted that reality at the time, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

The concluding sentance of the Declaration states,

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

To the signers it didn’t matter if any one of their confederates broke or switched sides. They were still committed to their course of action regardless, even if it cost them their lives.

And most of the signers were made to pay dearly for their stand by the British.

Lost Understanding

Today in our culture, however, we have lost the understanding of covenants. We only think in terms of contracts. In our minds all of our agreements are contingent on both parties holding up their ends.

Perhaps that is why we have so many lawyers. Since everything is now based on contracts in our minds we need gobs of lawyers to tell us what we can and cannot do.

Or maybe it’s the other way around and because we have so many lawyers we have fixated on contracts and lost sight of covenants.

Either way, our lost understanding of covenants has significant repercussions in our society.

Misunderstanding God

Perhaps the biggest challenge that comes out of “contract thinking” is that we misunderstand our relationship with God.

We naturally filter everything we understand about God in terms of a contract. We assume that if we don’t hold up our end then, contractually, God won’t hold up his. As a result we find it impossible to approach a Holy God because we know we can never hold up our end of the bargain. The standard is perfection and we know we’re not perfect.

Of course organized religion would have us believe that it is a contract. Religious leaders use fear of punishment to try and keep us in line. They talk about how we must “get right with God” and keep us focused on everything we do wrong. They paint a picture of a God with a big stick just waiting to whack us when we get out of line.

Who in their right mind would want to relate to a God like that?

Religion would have us believe that sin is our big problem, when the truth is sin is not the issue any longer.

In truth we relate to God in the framework of a covenant. God has already committed to treat us in light of Jesus’ perfection even when, especially when, we don’t measure up as long as we choose to believe it.

Losing sight of God’s covenant with us and framing our relationship with God in terms of a contract completely warps our understanding of who God is and how he thinks of us. And it completely ties us down so that we never come close to meeting our full potential.

Marriage Covenant

Another big area where replacing a covenant with a contract is wreaking havoc in our society is in the area of marriage.

Jesus said this about marriage:

Marriage is rightly seen as a covenant between a man and a women which God has joined together. As a covenant marriage is “until death do us part.”

But as a contract marriage becomes, “until you do something that I don’t like.”

A contractual understanding of marriage leads to things like no-fault divorce and prenuptial agreements. People enter into marriages with the assumption that it is going to end. That attitude becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in most cases.

There’s more than that though. Once marriage is moved from a covenant to a contract and it becomes “just a legal thing” then there is no real reason why it shouldn’t be a contract between any two people who have a legal right to enter into a contract. No longer is marriage seen as a lifetime commitment before God.

Marriage Contract Defined by the State

As a contract marriage is simply a legal arrangement administered by the state. That means the state has the authority to define marriage however it wants.

This is exactly where we find ourselves today. With marriage reduced to a contract instead of the covenant relationship God originally intended it becomes much more difficult to come up with good reasons why the state can’t acknowledge arrangements beyond a man and woman as marriages.

Right now the issue is whether homosexuals should be allowed by the government to marry. But if marriage is only a legal contract, why would it logically stop there and not expand to anyone who is permitted to enter into a legal contract?

At that point, why choose to say marriage is between 2 people? Why not allow 3 people to marry? Or 4? Or 5? Or 25?

I mean it’s just a contract, right? So why the arbitrary number 2?

Of course when we get there we will have completely kicked the nuclear family, which is the fundamental building block of society, aside.

It sounds crazy, right?

But then if, back when no-fault divorce was just beginning, anyone had suggested that the logical extension of changing the understanding of marriage from a covenant to a contract would be homosexual marriage they would have probably been called nuts too.

One bad apple will ruin the bunch. But one good one won't fix a bunch of rotten apples.

One Bad Apple

We’re all familiar with the adage one bad apple spoils the bunch. If you put a rotten apple in with a bunch of good ones the rottenness will spread to the other apples relatively quickly.

However, if you put a good apple in with a bunch of rotten ones, it won’t make the rotten ones any better.

Scriptural Parallel

There’s a parallel application to this in scripture from 1 Corinthians.

I’ve heard it said that people generally tend to be the average of the 5 people they spend the most time with. Regardless, who we choose to closely associate with is has a direct impact on our own character.

Based on that, it would seem that it would seem that either goodness or evil could be, at lest in part, a function of the people we hang out with. And to a point that is true.

However there is a distinction between goodness and holiness. This may seem the long way around, but it will get us there. Stay with me.

Absence of a Positive

Evil is simply the absence of good, in the same way that darkness is the absence of light or coldness is the absence of heat. Think about that for a moment.

The negative isn’t a property by itself. They’re just terms we use to describe a lack of their positive counterpart.

You can’t make something “more dark”. All you can do is remove light. Cold is not an energy source. It is the heat that is the energy. Remove the energy and you get cold.

Evil is the same thing. We give it way too much credit as a powerful force when in reality evil is just an absence of goodness.

Religion is man’s effort to move people, himself and others, from evil to good. While it sounds incredibly noble on the face of it, think about the fall of mankind in Genesis 3 for a moment.

Wrong Tree

What was the tree that God forbade Adam to eat from?

It was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The world’s religions are working to move people from the evil branches of that tree over to the good branches.

The trouble is they’re still all up the wrong tree. What they really need is to be in the Tree of Life instead.

That’s a subject for another whole article in itself. But for now, keep in mind that the people we hang out with help determine wich branches on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil we spend our time on.

Good and Evil have to do with our outward behavior, the things we choose to do. In that way, goodness and evil are both contagious. Although, like the apple analogy, baring some outside influence (for example God) it is much more likely that good people will “rot” towards more evil than it is that evil people will “freshen” towards good.

Holiness

In contrast, holiness is being set apart by God, having a spiritually pure quality. Holiness is found at that other tree, the Tree of Life.

We don’t “get holy” by hanging around with other people. It comes directly from God. Holiness is about our position in relation to God. Goodness is about our outward behavior.

Will true holiness will certainly affect our outward behavior in a good way? Absolutely.

The difference is all about motivation.

Regardless of your opinion of the moral questions revolving around the issue there is no question that abortion has affected a very large section of our society here in the USA. The best estimate I could find, approximately 40% of American woman have had an abortion.

Abortion Leaves Many Scarred

As a result there are millions of women who have been left emotionally scarred by the whole thing. It is for these women that a video was recently produced.

The video, created by Heart of the Family, offers comfort and hope for heartbroken women by telling a simple, short, yet powerful story. I encourage you to watch it and leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

Truth is fixed and knowable.

People have been asking the question, “What is truth?” for thousands of years. For some it’s just an interesting thing to ponder while other folks haven’t given it a moment’s thought.

The thing is, finding truth, understanding it and applying it to your life with wisdom is huge and will go a long way towards a contented and successful life.

Pilot asked Jesus the question at his trial:

Untruth Truth

As a result of seeking the answer to that question there are a bunch of silly ideas out there about truth. One of the most common out there is that truth is a matter of perspective. By that way of thinking something can be truth for you, but not truth for me.

That was the implication of Pilot’s question to Jesus.

The confusion here I think is between facts and truth. Facts often do vary by perspective. This is how come it’s not unusual for various witnesses in trials to give conflicting testimonies but still be honestly accurately describing the same events to the best of their abilities.

Assuming that none of the witnesses are lying then there is an underlying true chain of events that can deconflict those apparent inconsistencies.

The true version of what actually happened is true regardless of how it was perceived by people who were present.

It’s the misdirection of perception that enables magicians to do their tricks. Invariably the facts we perceive are not what magicians are really doing.

But the facts we see, our faulty perceptions, don’t change what is true. Truth trumps facts.

Easier Answer

One of the reasons the idea of truth being relative, what’s true for you may not be true for me, is that it’s easier than believing that truth is absolute.

When we believe that truth is relative then we can be lazy and just believe whatever comes in our mind without making the effort to discern whether it is, in fact, true.

The understanding that truth is relative also gives some people license to hold onto ideas that are patently false and present them on the same level, with the same authority, as ideas that are actually true.

Not only that, but the idea of relative truth is often perceived as “nicer” because it removes potential conflict between ideas. Rather than people taking a stand on truth they can simply dismiss the conflict all together. “Well that’s true for you, but not for me.”

But that’s a boatload of crap.

Looking Inward

That whole line of thought stems from a narcissistic inward searching for answers. The trouble is we’re fundamentally flawed and looking inward ultimately doesn’t work.

One of the things I learned in all my navigation training (both in merchant ships and military jets) is that in order to figure out exactly where you are you need to look to external fixed reference points. There are 2 parts to that.

First, your navigation reference points have to be external.

When people look inward for answers they end up relying wholly on their own mind, will and emotions. Trying to correct your course to get where you want to go based on an internal reference point is like trying to figure out your ship’s position by looking at the foremast. “I’m doing good. The mast is still in the front part of the ship.”

It doesn’t work because meanwhile the front part of the ship is headed towards the rocks.

The second thing needed to navigate successfully is to be sure the reference points you are using are fixed and not moving.

If you tried to take a bearing off of something that isn’t where you think it is then you’ll fix your position wrong on the chart, and then apply the wrong course to get where you want to go, with potentially very bad results.

That’s why lighthouses blink in specific patterns – so you can tell them apart and know for sure which one you are looking at.

Truth Simply Is

It’s also why the whole concept of relative truth is bunk. Truth simply is. Anything that isn’t true, by definition is false.

Just like no one can be be sorta pregnant, things can’t be “sorta” true.

Sure a statement can have bits and pieces of truth mixed in with untruths. That is where things get especially dangerous because the untruths contaminate everything they come in contact with. Jesus and Paul compared that “blending” of truth with untruth with yeast. A little bit affects the entire batch of dough.

Whatever doesn’t line up with truth is, by definition not truth. It’s a binary thing.

• Truth is true whether I believe it or not.
• Truth is true before I come to believe it.
• Truth is true even if I refuse to agree with it or acknowledge it.
• Truth is true even though I didn’t vote on it.
• Truth doesn’t need me to make it true.
• Truth is so much bigger than I thought or imagined.

The trouble comes in when people try to draw conclusions with incomplete information. Because it can be challenging at times to get to the underlying truth many people take the easy way out and choose to believe that truth is relative and we all have different truths.

Source of Truth

As a Jesus Freak, obviously I believe truth is found in the pages of the Bible. When I was searching for truth I did a reasonably thorough investigation and that’s where the evidence took me. Over the years I’ve seen the evidence continue to pile up that reinforces my belief.

The Bible is the external fixed reference point I use to guide my life.

Now you can say I’m off my nut. You could argue that the Bible is bunk and truth is found somewhere else.

But please don’t be intellectually dishonest and say that it’s true for me, but not for you. It’s either true or it’s not true – for both of us.

My earlier post explaining that God does NOT bring calamity has stimulated some questions. That makes sense because it is a huge topic. Not only does it cover a wide ranging area, but is is also critical in understanding who God is and how we relate to him.

There are many covenants in the Bible starting with the one God made with Noah.

Today, in an effort to begin shedding more light on the topic, let’s talk about Covenants and how they affect our understanding of scripture.

Covenants vs. Contracts

It is important to understand a what a covenant is. The closet thing we have in our culture today to covenants are contracts. But those two concepts differ in at least one very important point.

With a contract, if one agreeing party does something in violation of the contract then it is considered broken. The whole contract becomes null and void. Basically the signers of a contract agree to hold up their ends as long as the other signatories hold up theirs too.

With a covenant, both parties agree to hold up their ends regardless of whether the other party keeps their part of the agreement. A violation of a covenant by one party doesn’t matter as far as the other party’s responsibility to continue to do what they agreed to do.

(This is why marriage is a covenant not a contract, but that’s a subject for another time.)

Bible Covenants

There are several covenants mentioned in the Bible. For example God made a covenant with Noah after the flood.

David made a covenant with his friend Jonathan (1 Samuel 18:3). God made a covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15).

Old Covenant

Then there is the covenant that God made with Moses and the Children of Israel. This covenant is embodied by the Law. There are the Ten Commandments and a whole book of rules and regulations that lay out how Israel was to relate to God in Leviticus.

The easiest way to explain that covenant is by looking at Deuteronomy chapter 28. There God spells out a list of blessings and cursings. The blessings are what will result from keeping the law, doing all that it says and not doing all that it prohibits.

There are 14 verses of blessings and they are pretty powerful. For example,

• Your enemies will come at you one direction and flee 7 directions. (vs. 7)
• God will command a blessing on your storehouses and the work of your hands. (vs. 8)
• All the people of the earth will see that you blessed by God and be afraid of you. (vs. 10)
• You’ll be wealthy and never lack material goods. (vs. 11)
• You will lend to many nations and not borrow. (vs. 12)

Those are some exciting promises.

At the same time the curses promised for not following the law were pretty powerful too. For example, confusion and rebuke in all you put your hand to, disease, inflammation, and fever until you perish, draught and famine, defeat before your enemies, madness, oppression, blindness and confusion of heart… I mean it goes on and on and on – for 54 verses!

Once someone entered that covenant, breaking it had some serious consequences. And the people of Israel entered into that covenant with God while Moses was leading them.

Curse of the Law

At first blush it sounds like a good deal. Receiving amazing blessings is pretty straight forward under the old covenant. Just do the things that God said to do.

The trouble is it’s really hard impossible to keep God’s law. There’s a whole bunch of reasons for this. But mostly it has to do with how selfish we are.

We all mess up from time to time no matter how hard we try not to. And it doesn’t help that rules have a natural tendency to stir up the desire in us to break them. Paul explains this in Romans 7:7-12. God’s law awakens sin in us. We slip up and do something wrong. And as James said, if we keep the whole law and only miss it on one point, we’re still in violation of the whole thing.

That’s why Paul tells us that those who think that following a list of rules will make them right with God are under a curse.

So when you get right down to it, even though it seemed like a good idea the Old Covenant was a bad deal in the end.

A New Covenant

Fortunately for the world Jesus stepped into that situation with a solution. He lived a life without sin completely fulfilling the law.

Then he died in our place, paying the price for our sin.

Our sin is placed in his account. And we receive all the righteousness of Jesus, with just a couple conditions:

That’s it. No list of rules to keep. It couldn’t be more simple.

1. Confess out loud that Jesus is Lord.
2. Believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead.

We make following Jesus WAY to complicated.

That’s why Hebrews says we have a better covenant established on better promises.

Anyone who does those two things above becomes a new creation. Jesus said it was like being born all over again. The Bible says we are then “in Christ.”

And that’s a very good place to be because then we are entitled to all the promised blessings of God. Paul said it this way.

More to Come

While doesn’t really explain how it is that God doesn’t bring calamity, it is crucial background for that topic.

Unless we understand that there are two very different covenants in the Bible, things are very hard grasp. When we miss this important truth it’s easy to think that God is schizophrenic or that maybe God got saved in the New Testament.

But the truth is the two different covenants have very different paramaters. They define how God relates to us as much as how we relate to him.

Bible study is valuable, but until we have revelation knowledge it will have little impact on our lives.

It’s true. Especially spiritually.

On the one hand there are things that we learn and can know with our minds. Facts, figures, words, phrases, how things relate to one another – these are all things we can learn naturally. We know this stuff with our brains.

Then there are things that we know with our hearts. The Bible says this stuff is spiritually discerned.

Acquiring Head Knowledge

It’s relatively easy to gain head knowledge. You can just study and spend time learning and then eventually over time your brain will collect more data.

Many people approach the Bible this way. They strive to learn facts and figures about the Bible, the history behind it, or parse the esoteric meanings of the original languages.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of this. But in and of itself it only goes so far where spiritual knowledge is concerned.

Heart Knowledge

In contrast, heart knowledge is something that you just know. This kind of knowledge is sometimes called revelation knowledge because it is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

Often revelation knowledge is built on head knowledge. But not always.

This is why we can read the same passage of scripture that we’ve read a bagillion times before and then suddenly get a new insight about what it means. When we get revelation knowledge about a scripture it comes alive for us.

As the writer of Hebrews said,

Soul vs. Spirit

Our intellect is part of our natural mind and therefore it is part of our soul. And that passage in Hebrews tells us that the Bible can reveal things to our natural minds and also to our spirits.

Often folks will talk about the soul and spirit as though they are interchangeable. But they’re not. Our soul is simply our mind, will and emotions. It is everything that makes up our personality and how we relate to one another.

Our spirit, on the other hand is that part of us that comes alive when we are born again. We can know things with our natural minds in our soul and we can know things with in our spirit.

Living Word

The Bible is called the Living Word. And it is not until scripture actually becomes alive to us personally that it really has the power to affect change in our lives.

Until a passage of scripture comes alive to us and we have that revelation knowledge the change in our lives will be limited. Up to that point we are trying to change ourselves and that is limited to the ability of our own will power.

But once we have that revelation knowledge it has power to affect positive change in our lives. That’s the point where we start to really grow.

Until we have revelation knowledge in an area we can only live out a truth to the extent that our own will power is able to do it. And our will power always breaks down at some point.

But once we have that heart knowledge and we know it in our spirit it will affect real change in our lives. And it will happen naturally. We won’t have to “try” to make it happen anymore.

Another benefit of revelation knowledge is that it is unshakable. Because it is all the way down in our spirits and deeper into our being than just head knowledge, heart knowledge becomes part of who we are. It’s not as susceptible to peer pressure and other factors as our other opinions often are.

Bottom Line

Once I realized that there are these two kinds of knowledge it took so much of the pressure off of me for living a godly life. Instead of asking God for more will power so that I do the things I want to do and avoid the things I don’t want to do, I’m asking God for more revelation.

When you know that you know that you know what you believe everything else gets much easier.

The consequences of sin often reach far beyond the people who do the actual sinful acts.

Some people have trouble with that truth. There are those who see think that unless they portray God as raging mad about the sin we commit throughout our lives then there is no reason not to engage in sinful behavior.

Except that there is a huge reason not to sin. (Actually there are several reasons. But today let’s look at just one.)

Consequences

You see, even though as far as God is concerned our individual sins were paid for by Jesus way back when, there are still consequences when we sin.

Sin may no longer be an issue between us and God anymore. But it still causes big problems between us an other people down here on earth.

The sinful things we do all have consequences attached.

Winning Football Coach

For example, Joe Paterno died today. He was the winingest (is that a word?) college football coach in the history of the game. In his 46 years as head coach of Penn State he had an impressive record of 409 wins, 136 losses, and 3 ties.

Paterno had an impressive career and piled up many football awards. Unfortunately that’s not what he’ll likely be remembered for.

Fired in Disgrace

Just a few short weeks ago, Paterno was fired from the head coaching job that he held for decades even though he did nothing illegal. It could possibly even be argued by some (though not by me) that he did nothing wrong.

However one of his assistant coaches was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting young boys. The resulting scandal got Paterno fired in disgrace.

Many Lives Hurt

If the accusations are true then this assistant coach hurt a great many lives with his sin. Most obviously are the victims of his abuse.

Sexually abusing children is a horrible thing. Depending on how long it was going on, there may very well be victims who are adults now.

There’s the victim’s families. I can’t imagine the pain of having a child sexually assaulted.

The perpetrating coach’s life is in ruins now too.

And then there’s Paterno. The assaults happened on his watch and he appears to have done the bare minimum required by law to report the crime.

As a result he was fired just weeks before he died and this scandal will likely become his legacy instead of coaching greatness.

Avoiding Sin

It is true that we should live morally pure and holy lives. But the reason we should do so has nothing to do with being more acceptable to God.

One of the biggest reasons we should strive for a holy lifestyle is so that we don’t leave a wake of destruction through the lives of people around us or destroy our own lives.

Sin has consequences. But we never have to expose ourselves to those consequences when we simply refrain from that sin in our lives.

Our world is a very religious place

Our world is full of religions. I’ve got to say, I’m not much a fan. Of any of them.

That probably sounds like a huge contradiction coming from from someone who claims to be a “Jesus Freak” and uprooted his family to move across the country to attend a Bible College too.

But it’s not.

Jesus Treated People Differently

When we think of Jesus, we usually think of a soft spoken kumbayah guy who never got excited and was overwhelmingly nice to everyone. However, when you actually read through the Biblical accounts of Jesus you see a bit of a different picture.

Jesus behaved very differently towards different types of people. On the one hand he was incredibly compassionate towards the outcasts of society. Whenever people came to him acknowledging their own shortcomings he lifted them up, healed their sicknesses and diseases.

To the woman caught in adultery – which the law said was punishable by death – Jesus simply says, “Go and sin no more.”

He offered healing and restoration to anyone who came to him and believed he could give it to them. Plain and simple.

Jesus Trashed the Religious

But when it came to the religious people of his day… Oh. My. Gosh.

There was nothing nice about what he said. He called them vipers and whitewashed tombs full of dead man’s bones. He told his disciples they were like yeast – a little bit of their religious ways would corrupt the whole loaf.

In fact, one time Jesus got invited to a fancy dinner by a bunch of the leading religious people of his day, and a pretty amazing thing happens. (You can read about it in Luke 11:37-54.)

I mean think about this for a moment. Jesus is one of the most significant figures in religion in the history of mankind, right? And here is is at dinner with a bunch of the most influential religious people of his day. It might be a good time to suck up a little and get on their good side, right?

Well Jesus doesn’t do that.

The first thing these guys notice is that Jesus doesn’t wash his hands before he eats. Now there‘s a scandal, right? “Ooh… Dirty hands!”

How does Jesus respond? What he has to say is not very “nice” at all.

He lights into them for being hypocrites! Says they’re fixated on appearances and ignore the truth.

He points out that all their religion and their rules don’t do anything to make people’s lives better. All religion does is weigh people down with burdens they can never cary.

Jesus even goes so far as to imply that they are murderers and because he says they approve of the killing of God’s prophets.

That’s not a good way to get invited back to dinner. (I’m just saying.)

Jesus had very little nice to say about religion.

Video Worth Watching

Jefferson Bethke made a video where he recorded a poem he wrote about this very thing. I’m not into poetry but this is an excellent video and well worth the 4 minutes to watch.

It’s very possible you may have seen it already because as I write this well over 9 million people world wide have watched it. And that’s pretty amazing considering he only posted the video 4 days ago. Yes it is pretty powerful.

Take a look:

Reactions

Jefferson is spot on, I think.

What I find interesting is how many of the 100,000+ commenters on this video don’t understand how Jesus ≠ Religion. I think that’s a subject worthy of it’s own separate article. I’ll post that another time.

What do you think of the video? It is on track or off base?

Map image from Wikipedia

If we don't heed the signs we may end up at the wrong destination.

It happened to me in Kansas City when we were moving out here to Colorado. Or maybe it was St. Louis. That trip was a blur.

In my case I saw the sign for the exit I needed but I was in the wrong lane to get the moving truck over by the time I saw it. (And why would I have to take an exit to stay on the same highway is beyond me.)

Course Correction

When you realize you are on the wrong road you have to change course and find a way back to where you want to go. In my case there was a loop around the city that we took and didn’t loose much time at all.

However, what if you keep motoring down the wrong highway and don’t realize it?

Then eventually you’ll get somewhere. But it won’t be where you expected to go.

Most people are looking to succeed. I mean no one sets out saying, “I hope I’ll be a huge failure one day!”

Pursuing success is a worthy undertaking. The trick is knowing what success really is.

Looking Back

I got thinking about this reading a year end article by someone I know. He looked back over the past year and a something jumped out to me.

I met this guy years ago and then we were at similar places in our businesses. Since then he’s accomplished quite a bit. He has built up a huge social media following and travels all over the world speaking for large audiences (he now pulls in a 5 figure speaking fee, from what I understand.) He’s published a bestseller and is working on others. He’s also launched several successful online ventures.

Over the years as I watched his business grow I sometimes felt like I wasn’t measuring up because I wasn’t travelling the world and doing all the things that he’s been doing.

Then I read his year-in-review post.

In it he mentioned that he’s now separated from his wife.

Un-Success

Now I realize that there is a ton I don’t know about his situation. But I do know this. No amount of “success” is worth it to me if it tears my family apart.

In fact, that’s not success at all. It’s the opposite of success. Un-success.

Or failure.

Another guy I counted as a friend killed himself this year. He had a huge social media following and traveled the world speaking to all kinds of groups too.

There was a ton that went into his family life falling apart.

But no matter how you slice it, a path that ends with you taking your own life is not the road to success.

Real Success

I’m sure their work choices were not the only factor in the family dynamics of these two guys I know. But they sure didn’t help.

And I’m not saying that their relationship struggles mean that it is better to hang back in mediocrity either.

What I am saying is that there is a better way.

Upside Down

God's ways are not our ways. He often turns things completely upside down from what we do.

We never would have stepped down from heaven and snuck into the world via a barn somewhere. But that’s how God showed up.

No. We would have made some sky splitting grand entrance. Put on a big show. Lot’s of lights. And maybe a fog machine or some pyrotechnics for good measure.

But not God.

The same is true for how we truly see success. Jesus said it this way.

The Right Road

Jesus told us that when we put our priority on him and learning his ways then the rest of it will fall into place. That’s the right road.

And I am seeing that in my own life. We came out here to attend a Bible college because we looked through the book of Acts and saw a huge difference between the believers on those pages and our own lives.

We want to make a difference in this world. So we made the choice to prioritize that over my business.

But here’s the thing. My business is already starting to grow in ways that we couldn’t have predicted just a few short months ago.

I wish I could say I planned it this way. But honestly, I’m not that smart.

I thought I was setting aside “success.” But the truth is my business is already more successful than it’s ever been. And now I can clearly see the growth path out in front of me.

And the best part? I won’t have to choose between my family and my work.

Now that’s not what I expected. But it is true success.

You can see it too. Just focus on knowing Jesus first. Then the rest will follow.

Money itself is not evil. But loving money is the source of much evil.

Money is not the root of all evil.

Many people think that being poor is a virtue because the Bible says that money is evil.

But that’s not what the Bible says. It’s close to what the Bible says. But close only counts in horse shoes, hand grenades and nuclear weapons. When we’re talking about the Bible, “close” often completely twists the meaning.

Here is the actual verse that people are referring to.

As you can see, money is not the root of all evil. The Bible actually says that the love of money is the root of all evil.

Money is Neutral

Like many things, money itself is neither good nor evil. It is neutral.

What people do with money can be good or it can be evil, although much that is done with money doesn’t fall on either extreme.

As human beings we have this natural tendency to want to avoid personal responsibility by blaming the objects that people use to do bad things when the real issue is in our own hearts.

For example, many people see strictly limiting access to guns as a good thing. However the truth is that guns don’t murder people. People murder people, and guns are one of the weapons they use to commit those murders.

Eliminating guns would not eliminate murder. People were being murdered in the middle ages long before guns even existed. Even if we were able to find a way to go back to the middle ages before guns existed, people will still find ways to commit murder without guns.

As with guns and murder, the issue of money and evil is really about the human heart. It’s not about the object.

In Context

We see that even better when we put that verse back in the context of the what Paul was writing to Timothy.

That word “desire” in verse 9 is talking about a longing or a craving to be rich. Paul is talking about priorities here.

Proper Priorities

We will quickly get into trouble when we prioritize getting rich above other things in our lives. And that’s what the Bible means when it says the love of money is the root of all evil.

It should be obvious that when we prioritize acquiring money above God we’ll get into trouble. In fact, when we prioritize anything above God there will be problems for us. The way Jesus explained it is that when we prioritize God first everything else will be provided for us.

So then, putting the pursuit of riches above other things will cause problems for us too. That’s exactly what Paul is saying in 1 Timothy.

Removing the Love of Money

So if money itself is not the issue, how do we remove the love of money from our lives?

The answer is simple, though often times it may not be very easy. Here’s how we do it.

To remove the love of money from our lives simply make the choice to always prioritize relationships with other people over financial gain.

Even though it is a simple thing, it won’t always be easy to choose relationships over financial gain. However God honors that choice.

For example, if you remember in Genesis 13 Abraham and Lot had both grown so wealthy that the land they were on wasn’t able to support the herds of both of them. Their employees were starting to get into fights about the limited resources that were available.

Abraham decided that the best answer was for him and Lot to part ways. And even though Abraham had the right to choose the best land for himself because he was Lot’s uncle he deferred to Lot and let him choose which way to go. Lot selfishly chose the more desirable land and headed off in that direction.

Abraham chose his relationship with Lot over the financial gain of the best resources. Contrast that with Lot who chose to prioritize his own financial gain and in the process ended up on Sodom.

In the end Abraham was blessed by God and grew far wealthier than he was when he and Lot parted ways. However Lot didn’t fare so well. He lost everything when he barely escaped the destruction of Sodom with his life.

We will do well to make Abraham’s choice and prioritize relationships over financial gain. By doing so we will remove the love of money from our lives.