5.24.2007

Old E-Mail #4


Feeling guilty is taking the side of the devil.

Think about the worn out verses of Romans 7 where Paul is saying that he does not do what he wants to do, and he does what he doesn’t want to do, and so on. Do you sense he feels guilty? I do not think so. He acknowledges in that in his physical person there is a struggle that occurs between his evil flesh, and the holy spirit of God. Notice how he removes himself entirely from the conflict. He takes no credit for righteousness, and no blame for unrighteousness. God himself is at war with Paul’s flesh. The same is true of anyone who has been born of God.

Now if we feel guilty, our mind is saying ‘I am taking my stand on the side of the flesh’ and there is guilt because God assaults the flesh. The mind is attached to the flesh and feels as though God is assaulting it as well. Yet if we operate under a clear conscience we welcome God’s assault on the flesh and we take the side of God.

So should we go on sinning with a clear conscience and just say, “I side with God?” God forbid. If we side with the Spirit why would we desire to go on sinning? It is conceivable for us to say it is no longer we that sin, but sin that dwells in us, yet in the very same breath we must say we have no righteous acts, but that which Christ acts through us. We too often want to take all the credit for our evil, and none of the credit for the good, and thus we are left feeling perpetually guilty. We should take credit for neither, that is if we are born of God, through Christ.

Paul talks about walking in the spirit, and not after the flesh. So with our minds we must constantly consider what the spirit is doing, the moment we consider the flesh our guilt condemns us. When we find that we are following the flesh and with our minds, and feeding the flesh and its desires we must repent. Repentance is taking sides again with the spirit.

This principle of ‘taking sides’ is evident in confession of sin. What is confession, it means ‘to speak the same of’. In other words confession is simply saying ‘God what you say about my flesh is true, and I am in agreement with you.’ Confession is taking God’s side against your flesh. Repentance then is turning to serve the spirit as opposed to the flesh with our mind.

Because of Christ’s sacrifice God welcomes us in taking His side because we are His. We were bought with a price, in fact he rejoices when we side against our flesh with Him. Our problem is that we sometimes think He wants us to reform our flesh, or bring it into submission, but that is not the case. The flesh does not need reformed, or corrected, it is evil to its very core, and it needs crucified. Now we (our old man) were crucified with Christ, so we are dead, yet we live. There is no room for guilt, guilt was the property of the old man, and he has been crucified. When we wallow in guilt we are trying to resurrect the old man.

The one thing that makes this all hard to comprehend for me is the time element. The cross was one moment in time that is effectual for all eternity. It is hard to accept the death of the old man on the cross with Christ when we can see the fruit of the old man’s labor every day.

I know this all seems like high thought, but it is very practical. Guilt hinders everything. When we feel guilty, we attempt to pacify our guilty conscience with our own acts of righteousness. Our righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). It is the righteousness of Christ we need. Should we feel remorse for sin? I do not think so. Instead we accept that sin is the deed of the old man who has been crucified, and we leave him behind, and move on toward righteousness.

This morning you and I talked about seeking out our sin, this is the best thing I think we can do. We are telling God when we ask to see our sin that we are on His side, and we desire the flesh to be destroyed. We are then actively participating in God’s act of sanctifying us. We are truly moving towards holiness because we are becoming more and more in accord with God concerning ourselves.

Quite possibly none of that made sense, but it helped me, so it was worth writing. The last thing I want to do is get all philosophical and intellectual so I hope this doesn’t seem that way. I think God is moving us somewhere on this topic, and I am kind of hoping He doesn’t divert us off of it anytime soon. But I choose to be on His side, so if it the topic changes so be it.

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Continued in another message

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The conversation on guilt is interesting, but it tends toward moving in a bad direction. When we acknowledge the fact that we should bear no guilt for our sin because of the atonement we will too often go one step further and have no remorse over sin. I think there is a distinct difference between remorse and guilt. It should bother us that sin dwells so easily in such close proximity to us, yea even in us, and that is cause for remorse. We know that if we were holy sin could have no part of us, the flesh would be utterly cut off and have no power.

We are not guilty, our guilt was nailed to the cross, yet we are not holy so we end up cohabitating with sin in our mortal bodies. Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? Christ. He can make me so holy that sin and the flesh will have no dominion in my mortal body. I need him to do that. My only goal in life should be to obtain that holiness from Him, to diligently seek Him and obey Him until sin is utterly destroyed.

We need to be so careful not pervert the blessed truth guiltlessness into authorized unholiness.

Well, those are my thoughts for today.

Jay Miklovic

Old E-mail #3

Here is a thought for you, I heard this preached on a little bit today and thought it was interesting. Jesus said “you are the salt of the earth.” This is a declaration, and not a command. It is a statement of fact. You are the salt of the earth. As a Christian God declares you salt. Salt is not what we aspire to be, it is not what we are commanded to be, it is not a suggestion, it is not even a teaching as to how we are to be, it is what we are. We are the flavoring, we are everything that salt is. We are not becoming salt, we are salt.

Now as salt, if we lose our savor we are good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under the foot of men. What then is our savor, or saltiness? The lovey-dovey liberal says our savor is the peace, love, and justice we bring to the world, and maybe so. Still the fire breathing fundamentalist focuses on the salt’s preserving aspects, and its stinging and cleansing aspects. Maybe they are both right… or maybe they are wrong. I think they are both wrong.

Think of where this passage falls, what precedes it? Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are they that mourn… blessed are the meek… blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness… blessed are the merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted. These are the savor of the Christian life.

We are always so focused on doing so many things, which is not all bad, but we are also called just to be. I just realized something as I am typing here, do you know why we struggle so much with the beatitudes? I just figured it out. It is because they are not commands. We cannot go out and do ‘poor in spirit’. They reach so much past what we do, and they reach into who we are. The Christian life is not the life of a busybody constantly looking for something to do. We must wait. God wants us to fellowship with Him, more than He desires our service. He can accomplish His means with a donkey, or a stick, or a rock, and probably get the job done better with them than us. It is an amazing act of love that He would allow us to carry out His perfect will despite all of our imperfections. It is almost like when the coach of a team gives the ball to the handicapped kid to shoot so that he can be part of the victory.

Gods love and His fellowship are amazing things, but I fear some people (myself included) are too busy trying to conquer injustice, or warn people of hellfire to even see the blessed life. We are too busy trying to work our way out of spiritual poverty, and ignoring the first beatitude that calls the spiritually poor blessed. We are so busy seeking our Christian joy that we do not mourn, and so on.

I guess I ran myself in circles again, but that is what I have been thinking today.

With Love, In Him,

Jay Miklovic

Old E-Mail #2


This old mail was a rant to a good friend of mine concerning church growth strategies. This man is so patient for listening to all of these.

We serve a mighty God. Our conversation this morning was not all bad, but we have been so beaten down by the failure which we see that we forget the victory He has won. I think the problem we encounter is that we judge God on the basis of the professing church. When everyone says ‘God is present here,’ or ‘we are spirit led here,’ or ‘revival is happening here’ and whatever else gets said, we assume what they are saying is true. If it is true then this god is pathetic. If all of our claims of how powerfully God is moving in our midst are true, then I want nothing to do with that god, because he is a god we have created. We invented him, and he is so weak. We have taken our works and called them his movements. The god of today’s evangelicalism is lame. At least Baal seemed to be able to help crops grow, this god cannot even make a man turn off his television for a minute or two.

I assure you God is not pathetic, the problem is us. We are not what we claim to be, both as a church and as individuals. We claim to witness powerful workings of God, when really they are usually psychological manipulations of the flesh. I say this with extreme caution because the last thing I want to do is call what actually is a work of the spirit something else. If I say a genuine work of the Spirit is really a work of sinful flesh then I am coming very close to blaspheming the Holy Spirit, I certainly do not want to tread there. I say God is not pathetic because He does move powerfully in His children, he really does. Praying last night in the middle of that field, He met me there, yes the world crept in and I ran, but He met me there, I have no doubt. Seeing him change Kristin’s life direction against her will and desire, He is there. Changing all of my desires, putting this new heart in me, He is there. Taking the burden of this world off of my shoulders and giving me His burden, oh He is a mighty God, and He is mighty to save. Men and women of old, and even today give everything for Him in expectation of nothing in return, but give it all simply because He is worthy. We don’t care about a state of ‘nirvana’ or 72 virgins, or coming back as some cow or something. No! a thousand times no! God has put in His children a love and adoration for Him. We desire heaven because we have perfect fellowship with Him there, nothing else. We do not desire some heaven of our own creation where God is not present.

This God of ours is mighty, and we need Him to break us, and to bring us as a congregation into His fold. As long as we can continue in our own power we will not seek Him, period end of story. Gary this is why that whole thing had me so mad, I am sick of it, seriously sick of it. I cannot do purpose driven, I cannot even do spirit led spirit fed, I just cannot, it is so cheap. IF GODS POWER WAS REALLY MANIFEST IN OUR CHURCH WE WOULD NOT HAVE TO LABEL IT!!! WE WOULD NOT NEED A CLICHÉ TO DESCRIBE IT!!! I was glancing through a magazine Kristin had from the Church about all these new tools and ministry ideas and so on and it makes me start to feel sick, literally. I get frustrated beyond words. It is everywhere, if I thought I could go elsewhere to other churches to avoid it I would leave in a heartbeat.

Well this was a rant, I think you can see that it is love for God and His people that brings me to this point, at least I hope you see that. There are a lot of good things of God I want to discuss, but for now this is place where I am, and I am without power to change it, and praise God it is not my responsibility, but I am to be His willing instrument. I fear what would happen if God used me in a pulpit at xxxx or anywhere else that suffers our plague. I can see how Wesley got kicked out of so many churches.

Well I hope I was not a total downer

Thanks for listening

Jay Miklovic

Old Email #1

Sent 02-20-2007

Just a quick thought on purity. While we are seeking to impart Christ’s will for sexual purity to the children and youth of our church, we must also seek our own purity. Seems obvious right? While we may not struggle so much as youth with sexual purity, our life is nonetheless to be a life of complete purity. Purity in the way we work, the way we talk, the way we interact with our friends, our spouse, our church, and so on.

Think about what all the things in the temple were overlaid with, was it not gold? No, it was pure gold. What about that old law about not having garments made of two different types of material? What is with that? These garments were supposed to be pure. You can go through tons of examples of purity in the Levitical laws and they show us the desires of God. The requirement of purity has not changed since Leviticus, do not fool yourself into thinking it has. The change from old to New Testament is how we become pure. This holy purity is a separation from all the things of this world that spot us. This purity is required and the Lord certainly deserves a holy and pure people.

“Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart…” Psalm 24.

The question we must ask ourselves is: Are we really serious about purity? If so, if we desire to teach the children and youth about sexual purity we to must place ourselves in the refiners fire that our dross may be removed, and we would be as pure gold. We must separate from television that glorifies violence, sex, love of money, and idol worship (we might as well just turn the TV off). We must separate ourselves from the conversations that tend toward lewd joking, lying, bragging, bitterness, and so on. We must drop our grudges, confess our sin, and repent toward holiness. God demands it, “without holiness no one will see the Lord”. Is our life spotted with impurities that we are well aware of? If we know we are impure in an area of our life, then we are being disobedient and must repent. If can live with our impurities and refuse to deal with them, then we cannot expect a move of God through this purity event or anywhere else in our life. God demands a holy people. A people that are repentant and broken when they sin, and a people that are not perfect, but are progressing in sanctification towards that ever distant perfection.

I just bring this up because we desire to bring pure water to cleanse a younger generation, but it will do little good if we try to bring that pure water yet contaminate it with our own filthy vessels.

Warmest Regards In Him,

Jay Miklovic