No Exceptions Ministries, Inc

One of the more offensive beliefs espoused by western evangelicalism (and there are many) is the notion that all expressions of the Christian faith preceding it - Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Reformed, et al - were in such gross and debauched error as to render them outside the familial participation of Jesus Christ and indeed worshippers of ‘another Jesus’ altogether.  They espouse this without really considering the ramifications of what they are saying.  If these traditional veins are indeed disconnected from the one true Vine of the church, that would mean that the assembled family of God was absent from the earth for over a thousand years.  Taking it a step further in logical progression, it would be asserting that all of the voices informing our current understanding of the nature of God and His Church are irrelevant as why would we rely on those worshipping ‘another Jesus’ for guidance of any kind?!  So that would mean… The doctrine of penal substitutionary atoneme...

“Deconstruction”, when done correctly, is a refiner’s fire burning away that which is faulty or harmful, a gardener’s pruning cutting off those elements contributing to pain and death.  It should never consume the whole nor should it attempt to disconnect the branches from the vine.   While much needs removed, much warrants preservation.  Indeed, like pulling weeds from among the flowers, the purpose of subtracting the faulty is to enable the healthy multiplication of the pure.   A deconstruction process that burns the whole edifice to the ground isn’t healthy and it isn’t helpful.  It’s a form of mass suicide that, by inflicting the same fate on the wheat and the chaff alike, results in the same end as would have been obtained had we never deconstructed at all: misery and death.  (Note: I’m aware there are other, far better terms for the healthy form of ‘deconstruction’.  But I am equally aware that this is the word most commonly used and have adopted...

Theology - much like change, the mind, the heart, politics, or social media - is neutral.  It can be a tool of oppression OR a source of awakening.  To discard the practice entirely, merely because the misinformed habitually misuse it, would be like doing away with the institution of marriage because some husbands beat their wives or cars because accidents happen.   The truth is, we are incapable of NOT engaging in theology.  For theology is not limited to ‘the study of God’, but extends to all that God does and all in whom He is found.  If Acts 17:28 is correct when Paul tells the pagan Athenians, “for in Him we live and move and have our being,” and John was on point when he said that “all things came into being through Him” (1:3), then each and every thing we do (and are) is in reality an act of theology! When you gaze upon a sunrise and it warms your heart.  That’s theology.   When you hold a newborn for the very first time and experience the full...

Ok, people.  It’s time for some real talk.   Words can be triggering.  I know this.  But at some point we need to REDEEM THE WORDS rather than exert all of our energy avoiding what may be misunderstood or offensive.   Here’s what I mean: ‘Church’.  Yes the word is misused.  And yes, its misused form has been abusive.  But rather than dream up endless alternative terms, let’s REDEEM THE WORD to its original meaning.  The Church is not a building, nor is it a container for a religion.  It is those members of the collective family of God, across all time and space, who assemble together for mutual edification and encouragement.  It is essentially a family meeting.   ‘Evangelical’.  Yes the word has mutated into representing a decidedly western, punitive theological system that is works-based and legalistic.  But we can REDEEM THE WORD!  Its original meaning is simply to share and reveal the Good News.  And what...

The God of the Illuminated Journey The faith we experience is not our own or somehow under our manipulative control, to expand or shrink based on our effort or will, but originates from the Source: Father, Son, and Spirit.  As that faith grows, changes, and matures, it remains HIS faith at work in-and-through us.  We cannot multiply it or enlarge its borders.  We cannot order its comings and goings as if it were our subject, obliged to obey our command.  We simply discover it a little bit more each day.   We have, through the fear and intimidation of fundamentalist evangelicalism, substituted the journey with a destination.  By centering the argument on the false dichotomies (or, stated more accurately, false dichotomies as evangelicalism understands and articulates them) of heaven vs hell, saved vs unsaved, right vs wrong, the sunrise has been forfeited for a light switch.  Rather than experience Father, Son, and Spirit through a gradual unveiling of ...

Much of social media is devoted to a ‘my experience’ style of conversation. In some ways functioning as a public diary, its pages have become a convenient receptacle for otherwise internal thoughts, musings, admissions, and admonitions. Which produces a bit of a two-edged sword.  While it — I believe, correctly — bolsters the idea that everyone has something valuable to add in the marketplace ideas, it misleads us into thinking this should be universally applied to all subjects. Or stated more plainly: yes, everyone ‘has something to say’…but not necessarily something to say about each and every subject that comes up.  But because we’ve overemphasized the value of our opinions to such a degree that we feel entitled - or even pressured - to opine on just about everything, it results in us running our mouths (or keyboards, as the case may be) on things we don’t know anything about. Or at least, we don’t know anything about beyond our own experiences.  I’ve read several post...

Like most people, I suppose, most of the criticisms leveled at me are, if I admit it, quite fair. Am I too quick to argue and defend my ideas rather than listen? Sure. Do I have a — completely undeserved — aristocratic bent from time to time? Yes, I own that. Do I love words to such an excessive degree that I frequently use far too many of them to make my point when fewer would do perfectly well? Ok…ouch! But yes, this is 100% true. It all the more shocks me then that the criticism most often charged against me is not at all true: “Matt, you’re just cherry picking scripture to make God in your image rather than allowing yourself to be confirmed to His.” The accusation is indeed so inaccurate that I, perhaps naively, wonder if it is because I have not adequately explained myself. So let me give it a whirl… ALL SCRIPTURE [γράφω - graphē] IS INSPIRED (literally ‘god-breathed’) is a far cry from equal, inerrant, infallible, or universally applicable. Scripture never bestows those a...

Beloved, oh how we love our counterproductive extremes!  Rather than find the truth that lies most often in the middle, we seesaw back and forth from one excess to another, missing out entirely on the balance the Spirit is ever-faithful to reveal.  Perhaps this is nowhere so obvious as it relates to ‘charging’ for anything in connection to ministry services.   Side A:  Insists that a professional clergy class, separate and distinct from the common/lay practitioner, is a God-ordained necessity for the functioning of the church.  To justify their wage, they typically require advanced education, special anointing or spiritual powers, and a veneer of selflessness that makes those same laymen count their lucky stars that they aren’t called upon to suffer as a vicar of Christ.   Side B:  Its adherents are equally insistent in their belief — that the ministry of the gospel should never have a price tag.  To expect compensation or fiscal participation fro...

Perseverate - to repeat or prolong an action, thought, or utterance after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased.  To extend focus past the point of productivity.   To ignore the evil in the world is a form of denial no less destructive than the opposite extreme: to perseverate on it.   Our 24/7 news cycle and its nearly instantaneous flow of information in real time is the perfect storm for perseveration.  Packaged for the express purpose of captivating — and maintaining — attention, the barrage of media assaults our senses without reprieve.   Until we shut it off.   So what then is a person of conscience to do?   The answer, I believe, is found in pondering these two passages in tandem: Matthew 6:22-34 (NASB) 22 “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.  23 “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is th...

Are labels themselves the problem or is it our tendency to use them to define us - and justify our actions to both ourselves and others - rather than as an aide to understanding?  Conversation necessitates agreed upon definitions, which in a sense are just ‘labels’ by another name.  Without them, meaningful discourse is next to impossible.  Spend any length of time on social media and that lesson will be obvious.  So perhaps it’s our intended use of the labels that warrants reconsideration more so than the concept of labels itself.  Maybe, just maybe, all labels should have the implied limitation: in so far as conscience allows. For example… My political label is conservative.  As my voting record, candidate preference, and ideological outlook reflect, that is a fair definition of my politics.  But my ‘conservatism’ must bow to the supremacy of Christ.  So the label is then valid only in so far as conscience allows.  When conservatism attempt...

‘Coming to God’ is the subjective response to that which is already settled objectively: that He came to us in our disoriented, broken thinking and made us whole, erasing the enmity that we perceived existed between us and Him.  So deep were the roots of this distortion that a grand gesture of divine benevolence was needed to reset the heart of humanity from separate to included.   The tragedy is that it took nothing less than Christ’s death to convince us of this; made all the more astounding when we remember that God is ONE.  In the death of Jesus Christ, who is eternally in an inseparable union with the Father and the Spirit, it was not Christ alone upon the cross, but the Godhead in total, and all of humanity found within them.  For it is in Him that we live and move and have our very being.   AND, when we consider that the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world, our true worth to God is made manifest: He loves us so much He created us knowing ful...

The Gospel was, is, and always will be a simple message: Love.  And the Bible is essentially a story arc depicting mankind’s insecurities with that simplicity…and habitual over-complication of it…colliding with the continual counterbalance of the Father, Son, and Spirit to unveil just how effortless and disconnected from human effort it truly is.  

With each prompting of the Spirit we have the opportunity to eat afresh from the Tree of Life.  It’s fruit magnifies our peace and joy, increasing our awareness of His emphatic declaration: ‘you are now righteous!’   For years I heard that still, small voice, but opted to ignore it.  Instead I fed on the Tree of the Knowledge of God and Evil, carefully weighing and measuring the pros and cons, calculating the cost of surrender to the Voice.  And there I sat, for years, performing this bizarre spiritual mathematics alongside the rote motions of performance and duty, refusing to give into what I knew in my heart was the path of life.  I was afraid.  Afraid of the unknown.  Afraid of losing what was in my hands as I groped in the dark for the new.  Afraid that my so carefully polished reputation would be tarnished, or lost altogether, if I was wrong.   Sometimes the greatest discernment we need in is the ability to tell when a season is over...a...

Mankind has an obnoxious habit of see-sawing from one extreme to another, detouring entirely from the balance and equilibrium of healthy perception.  While there are many examples of this, perhaps none is so obvious as it relates to giving.   There is no single doctrine I hate quite so much as tithing.  Given the cornucopia of foolishness that infiltrated the western church, I can feel your incredulity as you read that last sentence; but it’s true!  What makes tithing so malicious is that it interjects the utterly false premise that there are parts of the Law we are to retain amidst Grace and other parts we are to omit.  That opens wide the door of misinterpretation wherein we weigh and judge each and every old covenant rule against the measuring stick of Jesus.  Interestingly, He never asks us to do that!  His fulfillment of the Law did away with the entirely ineffective, impersonal, separation-causing system birthed from the Tree of the Knowledge of ...

Because God IS Love, each time He releases love to the creation, He is giving a part of Himself, dispensing a portion of His very essence and nature.  In this manner, divine love is first and foremost a sacrificial act.  So then, as miraculous and wondrous as the death of Jesus Christ is, it can be perceived as a type and shadow of a still bigger picture: that every moment of every day - indeed, every moment before there were moments and every day before there even were days - with each act of love, Love sacrifices Himself anew, breaking off a piece of Himself, and sowing it to you and I, literally investing Himself to us by which right we are then called His BODY.   The Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world.  While that is a fully accomplished act from which I desire to rob not one ounce of glory, we nonetheless experience the continuation of that same selfless love with each breath we draw.  And perhaps most mesmerizing, the supply from which He dr...

I AM.   Not ‘I was’.  Not ‘I will be’.   But, I AM.  Father, Son, and Spirit are the ever-present-tense I AM.  Past, present, and future are terms only relevant to a temporal (chronos) world and He who fashioned that very world is distinct from it, existing first and foremost in kairos time.   Consider… - He was crucified ‘before the foundation of the world’.  Yes, that eternal, ever-present reality still had to be carried out in chronos time.  But because He is always ‘now’, spiritually speaking, there was never a time in which the Lamb wasn’t slain.   - His first miracle was to disregard the natural order of time (‘My time has not yet come.’) and operate out of the eternal realm where the time is always NOW.  Jesus’ chronos time had not yet come, but Christ’s kairos time was unaffected. [I am in no way attempting to separate Jesus from Christ.  They are one in the same.  What I am attempting to convey is the fullness of His h...

Words matter.  Their definition, origin, tense of usage, and evolution over time all matter.  This is true of the words we read, write, and speak in our common language…as well as those we encounter in scripture.   The foundation of honest debate, occurring in good faith, is accurately using words.  You cannot simply redefine them to fit your narrative or superimpose your subjective interpretation onto the objective definition itself.  Whether you start your personal study process with definition (via study resources) or with interpretation (via the Spirit) is entirely your choice.   When done correctly, both roads lead to the same outcome: an application based on BOTH interpretation (subjective) and definition (objective).   But this doesn’t change the fact that words mean what they mean.  And for the purpose of academic debate, it is from that place of agreed-upon definition we can THEN discuss their application and correct interpretation. ...

When people are hurting, what they need from us is compassion birthed from unconditional Love…not a defense of God or a theological treatise justifying ‘why bad things happen’.  Listen to them.  Feel their pain with them.  And yes, encourage them!  But encourage from a position of Love, not the mistaken posture of the self-appointed apologist of the Divine.  The God who willingly, voluntarily, and completely relinquished Himself to the angry mob of our mistaken identity so as to appease our perceived need for blood is surely not so easily offended.  He does not need, nor want, our defense.  The Architect of all that is can take care of Himself without our help.  He prioritizes His nature (Love) above all else…and so should we.   Passages to Consider: Romans 8:32 (NASB95) He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?  Luke 9:51–56 (NASB95): 51 When the days w...

A dear brother asked me a question yesterday that I’ve been pondering ever since.  He has operated in a strong prophetic gifting for many years.  But, since coming into a deeper awareness of grace, he has been challenged by how the gift fits in alongside his improved understanding of our in-Christ union with Father, Son, and Spirit.   And with so much of what passes for prophetic ministry being rooted in a mindset of separation, it’s a great question to consider.   With the lavish new wine of pure grace springing forth like an oasis in a dry desert, it can be quite tempting to try and consolidate this into old paradigms.  After all, that always worked before, ‘don’t reinvent the wheel’, and ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’!  But not so with this new awareness.  It refuses to bend itself to our preconceptions nor will it modulate itself or round its edges to fit the slot in which we attempt to file it away amidst our impressive collection of theologies...

Oppression comes in many forms but all can be divided into three main categories: 👉 Direct 👉 Indirect 👉 Self-Imposed Direct is that textbook servitude wherein another person strips you of your basic human right to agency and self-directed choice.  Think slavery, wrongful imprisonment, and rape. Indirect is more subtle, but no less an assault on agency, in that it gives the appearance of freedom but in actuality produces subjugation.  The chains are not literal, but institutional, metaphoric, or nuanced.  Think Jim Crow, manipulation, and psychological abuse.   And then there is the oft-forgotten self-imposed variety.  This is the oppression which, ultimately, you impose on yourself.  Self-doubt, inferiority complex, limiting thinking; all are its diseased fruit.   So why do I bring this up?  Because most of what the church has taught is exclusively centered on confronting direct slavery with only a cursory acknowledgement of the indirect. ...