ABOUT PASTOR MIKE
Mike Perkinson is Senior Pastor of New Heights Church in Boise, Idaho. He’s also co-founder of the Praxis Center for Church Development. Mike has been a mentor to me for the past twelve years now, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him.

In November, 2015, I had the occasion to sit and speak with him about one of the core components of his paradigm for discipleship and spiritual formation. I’ve transcribed the conversation below so that you may both read and watch. I believe you will find content of this conversation to be truly transformational. Enjoy!

THE INTERVIEW
Benjamin: So the key piece for me . . . is the piece about the human will, or what we call the volitional piece. You talk about “value”: how the act of ascribing value to anything sets us up then to commit ourselves to it. And then from commitment, the will follows. That whole piece on . . . we wonder why we can’t find the will power to break certain habits, but you really touch on that in way that I’ve never heard before. Could you just take a little time to talk about that a little bit?

Mike: I think when you look at the aspect of will and trying to do the things that are right, righteous, following the Father . . . it came out of a personal struggle for me, cause I’d made so many commitments to follow God, and then seemed to within 24 hours, not long thereafter . . . break my promise. And searching for a way, I mean gut it out, make a covenant, try to do these steps and somehow one way or another–two weeks later, a couple years later–I’m not doing the thing I promised. Feeling terribly bad because, surely a righteous man who loves God will do the things of God, and I couldn’t seem to maintain that.

So, trying to find everything possible, whether you pray over things, cast out things, everything that any of us would try to do . . . in the word. So stumbling on a passage in Matthew 6 where Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.” Having read that many times and missed the incredible psychological implications that lie in that.

The Hebraic understanding of heart meant that you functioned from a control center, a place deep within yourself that guided all actions, guided all your thinking processes, all your volitional world. And Jesus is a Rabbi teaching to his people this idea that when you put value on something and call it your treasure . . . and we have dumb treasures: alcohol, pornography . . . So its not that they’re great treasures, but we make them a treasure. When we make them a treasure and we value that, everything in the human heart goes to that; all volitional power is surrendered at that moment.

We’ve constructed a god. As Jeremiah 2:13 says, “My people have committed two evils; they’ve forsaken me, the fountain of living water . . . hewn out cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water.” We have a foolish propensity in us as fallen creatures to create things that we can control so that we might drink from them, even if they leak every day and at the end of the day I have anxiety, knowing I have to get up the next morning and fill this cistern with water . . . I feel good in one way because I’m controlling this . . . absolutely tired and frustrated.

If I’m doing that and I’m committed that, there’s no way I can allow myself to go to the fountain of living water, where I don’t have to do anything but drink. I’ve surrendered: the only possibility for me is to unsurrender.

So in Pentecostal circles, its why any time there’s any deliverance going on . . . so you cast out whatever demon from whoever it might be . . . any deliverance ministry, I don’t care how good or how whacked it might be . . . always seems to go to repentance. So once you get the demon cast out, you only get there by way of repentance; you have to let go of something. So they even have an understanding that you have to unsurrender something.

So what have we placed our value on? John Calvin, one of our great reformers, said the human heart is an idol-making factory. So built into our process, Jesus seems to be insinuating, is the human heart, the control center, has this treasure, it values it as a god, so to speak, we give our lives to it, we’re surrendered to it . . . so all the commitments I make, I cannot keep . . . which is why an alcoholic or addict will say, I cannot change. Well, of course you can’t, because you’re committed.

So the only way, step one of AA, you’ve got to acknowledge that there’s a power greater than you. So then you’ve got to let go of that. When you do its the first time possibility . . . if you take that treasure, untreasure it, and then revalue going back to God . . .

Benjamin: I think the key concept there is “treasuring and untreasuring,” because we don’t always understand the degree to which we have placed value in something, and we don’t understand the degree to which we have devalued the presence of the Father. So I was thinking about the prophet Isaiah said, “Why spend your money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy?” Then he says, “Listen, listen to me and eat what is good and your soul shall delight in the richest of fare.”

So we end up spending our money on what is not bread because we see what is not bread as valuable. We put value in it; we put stock in it, and so we are willing to spend our wages on it and we don’t even know we’re doing that.

So would you say that a part of this process is discovering the place at which, or the moment at which even at times, we ascribed value to something that’s valueless . . . what is that process of unvalueing something that we have valued, or devaluing something that we have valued?

Mike: Well, part of that is coming to a recognition of places of great pain and fear. The core emotion for all of us is fear. So we have a place of fear and hurt that we somehow medicate, or think this thing will make me better. It doesn’t make me better, it makes me worse.

And so I have locked onto something, which is why we get addicted. Now, I believe there is an addictive personality. But sin is pretty addictive; I keep doing it. And so its only broken in Christ, so we have these habitual needs to do things that make ourselves feel better. The only thing hell can do in his power is to deceive us. So his game is to get us to harm ourselves, which then is one of the greatest insults he can throw at the Father, to have his creation harm themselves and do things that are not helpful to their walk with the Lord.

So if we’re gonna ever get unsurrendered or untreasure something, I’ve got to be able to admit that this thing that I’ve been holding onto all my life is more than just a habit; its what I nurse my life with . . . its what I hide in, its what I’m trying to find life in. There’s only one God on the planet that returns life; it’s the God of the universe who manifests himself in Jesus. Every other god we create takes everything from us and leaves us with nothing so we are bankrupt emotionally, physically, financially with these gods that we create.

And so when we get to that place, it’s a place of great fear. It’s also the place of great deliverance; when the saint is able to let go of that and surrender to the God who loves–the empowering and the healing–we move from a spirit of fear now to a spirit of love. We’re not dominated by what the earth tells us or what hell tells us, what mom and dad or society tells us. We’re dominated now by what God told us and love showers us, bathes us and births us . . . washes us.

And to get to that place to realize the exchange is radical . . . here’s death that’s operating in me; here’s life that’s operating because of the death of the Son, that I’m able to now live. But to [be] able to make that transition, it only can happen when I recognize the grace of my Father that loves me, alongside a brother or sister who’s walking with me. It’s not a process we do alone; God has built us for community. So the church has to be able to come alongside.

We don’t do well at it because most of us haven’t faced our stuff and we’re not untreasured, and so we don’t even want to go to those places, because those places are often our places. I can deal with an addict because I’m not an addict anymore. But the things close to my spirit, I don’t want to talk about, because they’re too much like me. And so we end up teaching to those things, but we don’t engage in those. So its a cognitive . . . here’s 14 great principles, 37 bible verses, go at it; find some healing . . . rather than, I’ll walk with you into this dark place, and we will crush this idol, you will destroy it, and I will walk with you out of it.

Benjamin: So in other words, what we’re getting to the bottom of is, why do I think I’m gonna get life from this thing? What is there in me that has been deceived into thinking there’s life in this thing? And then, how do I learn how to draw my life from the Lord, rather than from this thing? How do I uncommit from this thing and recommit myself to the Lord in this area of my life? And that takes vulnerability . . . that takes relationship . . . that takes a willingness to be confronted, to sit with my stuff, and to acknowledge that this is where I am, and then new life can come out of that.

Mike: See the odd lie that comes out of this idiotic treasure is that I’m not elevating the treasure; I’m devaluing me or I’m devaluing you. So I will vacillate from self-contempt to other-centered contempt. That’s what this treasure does to me. Well I suck, I can’t do this, no one loves me . . . So it drives my pain to make me medicate, whatever that is. Cause all sin patterns are some form self-medication, self-idolatry to help me recover from this terrible feeling. Or, I judge you, and the reason I live like this is no one can be trusted.

So both of those drive me, which is why the instrument of healing has to be–not just the power of the Spirit alone in a moment–the power of the Spirit in another human being . . . its gotta wash that out, because I didn’t get hurt by a bottle; I got hurt by a person. I’m in this mess not because of some joint or whatever it is, a pill . . . I’m hurt because of what a father or mother or a person did to me. So I’ve got to re-engage relationally.

So, the vehicle of relationship that is required for healing is getting back in that same car, cause you got hurt by a person in the vehicle of relationship, so you gotta get back in the car to get healed. And so without that engagement of the person of the Holy Spirit and the person of the Holy Spirit in a human person, healing doesn’t go deep; we won’t go there.

Benjamin: I really like what you said yesterday; I had never heard it quite spoken that way before. You were talking about confession, and you said, people say, “I can confess to God . . . that’s easy . . . but I’m too afraid to confess to you.” And your response is, “well wait a minute, if confessing to God is cool, and he’s the King of kings, Lord of lords, and the Judge of all people, then confessing to little ole’ me should not be a problem. And if we think that it’s much easier to confess to God than it is to people, then maybe we don’t understand how awesome and holy and mighty he is . . . maybe we have not been truly contrite in our confession to the Lord if we cannot confess to one another that we might be healed, as James says.”

Mike: Well its the pattern Adam set for us. So Adam gets confronted by God who comes and says “Adam, where are you,” after the sin. So Adam is now hiding behind the bush, has a fig leaf to cover his shame. And when he’s pushed in the situation, he says to God, “It’s the woman you gave me.” So, he doesn’t blame the woman; he essentially puts it on God. The way we take that psychologically is he takes no responsibility.

So we, when we confess to God, I think metaphorically, I’m behind a fig-leaf, I got my shame, I’m behind a bush, and I’m somehow fabricating a statement that doesn’t allow my heart vulnerability. So God can’t touch me. Not that God’s powerless, but God will not move beyond my volitional surrender. So I need to come from behind the bush, face God straight on, take off my fig-leaf, and say like King David, “Against you and you only have I sinned,” risk that he’ll annihilate me . . . rather he forgives me, bathes me, and gives me a new set of clothes in Jesus.

But most of us won’t do that, and if we stay behind that bush, then we stay forever trapped to our treasure. And then confession’s not true confession, because I didn’t truly confess to God in my private time. Cause, like you said, if I did, then telling a little ole’ human what I’ve done is no big deal, cause the God of the universe who’s holy and perfect heard my stuff and didn’t kill me, so I’m not afraid of you.

And, confess your sins one to another and you’ll be healed. So, the Catholics get the process down. Maybe you don’t have to go to a priest of a church necessarily, but since we’re all priests, a universal priesthood, I can go to you, a brother and just confess, and when I truly come from behind the bush, take off the fig-leaf and I’m vulnerable before you, healing comes. So I’m suspicious then, healing doesn’t happen because confession really doesn’t take place.

Benjamin: Right! Now, the prior piece is the actual moment of deception. Bishop Kirby Clements says that Satan only has three tools; he deceives in three ways. The first way he deceives is by asking questions, the second is by making suggestions, and then the third is by leveling accusations. So he comes to Eve and first he asks a question, “did God really say . . . ?” And then he makes a suggestion, “you will not surely die . . .” And then makes an accusation, “the Lord knows the day you eat of it, you’ll be like him.” In other words, the Lord is holding out on you.

And so that deception piece I think is important. It almost seems that we have to understand the ways in which we have been deceived, or the places in which we have been deceived, so that we can be led back into the truth. That is, the Holy Spirit exposes the lie and then brings us back into the truth so that we can be free. Would you agree with that?

Mike: Yeah, there’s great power when you acknowledge your place of vulnerability. Every human being has one. We have different places, and that place of vulnerability is the door by which hell accesses us. It’s the place that’s consistent, it’s the place we’re most easily able to look away from the Father, turn our head, and get trapped into a lie. It’s the place of great pain, great loss, abandonment, whatever that issue might be that hell plays.

Eve was perfect, so she had to be tricked in her state of perfection as a child, playing on her innocence to get her to want to be something she already was. We are not that. So we have to go after something we are not. So we go from deficiency, Eve was sufficient. So the game starts unfair with us, I’m already deficient.

I have a place of deficiency where those where those questions now come. In the question is the solution. So, is God good? That’s the question that comes out of Genesis 3. If he’s not good, then why? So we start to have answers to that, we have to have a conclusion, so we have to go to a place to fix it. And then we come up with, well he’s not good to me because I’m not worth anything, I’ve sinned way too much, we come up with these different thoughts about ourselves, so there’s a place of vulnerability.

The man or woman of God that finds freedom understands that deep within me is this place; I guard it. Guard your heart, its the well-spring of life. God has healed it, but I have double-locked the doors. Because the one place hell will play in me is an Asian-American who’s not felt like he’s belonged, never felt like he had a family, I don’t know what country’s mine. Its always that I’m dislocated and feel homeless. That’s the place it always plays. The lie is always the same lie; different criticisms, different actions, its the same thing. And if it gets me, it gets me there. So I have to double lock that, I’ve got to triple lock it, I’ve got to set barriers to it, I’ve got to remind myself of who I am, cause that’s where he’s gonna play me. It’s the same thing; the questions start coming. “They only love you because you do things. They only care about you . . . ”

And so, the frustrating part is you would think, man at some point I’d get over that. But it’s also the place of my weakness, in my weakness I am made very strong. But I’ve got to own the weakness. So it’s Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The more I become poor, the greater my wealth becomes, because I’m able to access all of the kingdom’s resources. But I don’t want to be poor and vulnerable, because poor and vulnerable means I get rejected. But that’s the lie; poor and vulnerable is the place I become accepted, healed, and I walk in great strength. But to live there, I’ve got to acknowledge that place . . . most of us don’t want to acknowledge it. We want healing and we want it to go away. It’s still here. It’s called the flesh man; he’ll come back to life if I let him. I just don’t let him. So, you have to kind of commit a murder every day where you put him to death, so that man will not rise. But I’m aware of where he’s going to rise.

Benjamin: I really like what you said, I believe it was last night or this morning, about being tethered to the Lord. You talked about how in certain places where there were big hurricanes or storms, farmers would tie a rope around themselves to the kitchen when they went out to the barn. So that even if I get blown around out there I can just grab the rope and pull my way back in. Can you talk about that just a little bit?

Mike: Yeah, and that came out of my wackiness in my own life. So in the midwest when they have those great storms and the blizzards in the winter, they tie that rope. Cause a lot of times its so bad they can’t see ten feet in front of them. If they get too far out and the storm hits, they don’t know where they are. So they wander and they end up getting lost and then they freeze to death. So you tether yourself to the kitchen, so that no matter where you are if you get lost and its too much of a storm, you just pull yourself back. Most of us aren’t centered in Christ, we’re not tethered. So we get blown away.

I was blown away all the time. Me and Jesus are doing great things, next thing I know I’m 30 feet out of nowhere, confused, don’t know where I am, the storm’s hitting so hard, I’m lost, I’m sucking eggs, the Spirit’s gone, I feel terrible, defeated, and I don’t know how to get back. And then I’m really frustrated when the storm goes away [because] I’m only 30 feet away. Well, how come I couldn’t get back? I couldn’t see!

So rather than beating myself up, I just thought, well farmer’s do it, it’s probably a good spiritual principle. So how do I tether myself? And then I have to admit that there’s a weakness, so my tether’s like 8 – 12 ft long. I can’t get very far. Cause when I get a little bit far out, I get lost. So this way when I’m tethered, I’m blown around but I’m not blown away. But I’ve got to do that every morning; I call it anchoring. Me and Jesus have a moment where I fix myself back, and I say to myself, the treasure of my life is this. There are other treasures I have had; this is the treasure.

Benjamin: Yeah, its about gazing upon the treasure. Like Scrooge McDuck, right. He would jump in his money bin, and he would count all of his money every day to make sure every coin was there. His treasure was so important that he had to keep it near him and he had to gaze upon it every day. He had to swim in the treasure, and he would swim all the way to the bottom of it and swim all the way to the top.

What you said yesterday when we talked about, “Behold what manner of love the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called sons of God.” You are held by what you behold; what you behold will hold you. And so if we don’t behold the Lord enough, then beholding the treasure is what facilitates the increase of the value that we ascribe to it. We don’t know how valuable it is because we haven’t looked at it!

I was struck by, when you did our Young Adults retreat in August, I hadn’t seen you in years, but I’m listening to you talk and I’m thinking, “Man, I forgot how much I learned from this guy. I forgot how valuable this man is to my life because I have not gazed upon him.” And we’re like that with the Lord. For some of us the tether is so long.

So I was thinking about that this morning; if we are believers in Jesus Christ, we are tethered to the Lord. But for some of us the tether is way too long . . . it’s like, I’ve got a 50 ft tether. Yeah, I know I’m connected to the Lord, but I haven’t pulled myself back in there in so long that I don’t really know what that kitchen looks like. And for others of us, the tether is just too flimsy, like a rubber band. Yeah, I’m tethered to the Lord, but its so flimsy that if the wind blows strong enough, the tether’s gonna snap.

And then for others of us, the tether is just not thick enough. We need to thicken the tether so that we can grab it and get some traction as we’re pulling ourselves closer to the Lord. So learning to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple . . . I think that’s such an important component of learning how to value the presence of the Lord above all things.

Mike: I think that tether functions in some ways like a little baby, you have that moment of separation anxiety and the baby, as they’re crawling away, they look back . . . cause we’re a “we” before an “I.” So the baby looks back to mom, because that’s where the identity is, and then it smiles and goes off. And so, that’s what the tether is; as we grow, we venture out and then there’s this little separation anxiety, but if you’re too far away from the Lord, you can’t see him. Not that we can ever be too far away, because he’s omnipresent. But the idea is that you’ve got to be a place in which you can turn back and look back at the Father and realize, I’m his son; he’s with me.

Most of us haven’t had that moment, so if you’re 100 feet out with a great tether, you’re this “Man of God,” you’ve lost yourself. So we have to have those moments where we’re crawling away in life and doing his bidding and I look back and I see the gaze of my Father that tells me, it’s all ok. Because see in this world, we are a we. I don’t become an I unless I join the Father in the we. The Trinitarian community; it’s his presence that stabilizes me. Then I’m able to venture out, and then that tether, that cord, goes with me because I understand he’s with me. So I don’t have to run back to him, I just need to turn and gaze.

And some of us need to do it more, I need to do it more, I need to know he’s there, cause the way that I’m emotionally built, I get lost and I start to get confused about who I am, and so I might look at something that might take away my understanding of being a son. So the money illustration; I look at all the money and the coins and I put value in them thinking I’ll feel better, but it doesn’t do anything, its empty. But when I look at the Father, it reminds me of the fullness of who I am. So I stay in this deep intimate connection relationally, and then I’m able to love his people. It’s not as painful to love people . . . you hurt for them in a way that you didn’t hurt . . . It’s always about how they hurt me and always about what they didn’t do. Well, of course they hurt you and of course they don’t know what to do. They’re sheep without a shepherd, they haven’t grown up with it, so this is why our Father sent us to them. This is why he came in the first place. So, you kind of get over all the stuff you’re not getting, cause I’ve got a ton already. And I need to help you, because if you can get this you can get what I’m getting. And then you and I can do this together and go get the other ten thousand people that we know. And then get those ten thousand to get the other hundred thousand people. And its a revolution of reconciliation.

Benjamin: That’s excellent. I really like the way you spin this out because to me it comes across as completely non-legalistic; it’s all relational. In other words, I’m staying tethered to the Father number one because I’m aware of my personal weaknesses. Like, maybe its ok for everybody else to sit down and have a beer at dinner. I don’t do it because I know my weakness. I know that that might lead me to a dark place . . . that might open a door that would lead me to a place that I can’t afford to go. And so understanding that I don’t do these things because I’m strong. The things that I abstain from, I don’t abstain from them because I’m strong; I abstain from them because I’m weak, and I’m acknowledging that.

What that does is it takes away my propensity to judge others, and it also takes away my propensity to feel superior in my heart because of the things that I do. My spiritual life is not about being strong; its about acknowledging my weakness before the Lord.

I was in prayer a couple of weeks ago and I said, Lord, I am at your mercy. And the Lord spoke to me and said, Then remain at my mercy. It’s about remaining at the mercy of the Lord. We don’t go beyond his mercy. At a certain point he doesn’t say, You know what, that mercy thing, you did it, now you’re strong and you’re here because you deserve to be. It’s always us falling upon his mercy and remaining there.

And in that way, what I see with Jesus is that he walked the line between compromise and judgment perfectly. There was no judgement; he could sit with the worst sinner and just be unconditionally loving. And yet there was no compromise whatsoever. And we tend to go to one side or the other. Either I’ll compromise because I want to make my spiritual life more palatable to the people who aren’t walking at that level, or I’ll judge because I’m so spiritual and so holy and righteous and all these sinners here are so wicked and they don’t get it.

But Jesus never was anything other than himself. In every setting he neither compromised nor judged. He was loving, but it was a holy love. He brought grace and truth. And I feel like as we grow up in the Lord, that’s what we begin to model for the world.

Mike: You just said a mouthful, Benjamin. I think one of the things that’s so beautiful about God is he’s holy and sin can’t be in his midst . . . we get all that. But love judges always to reconcile. And so if God judges us in love, he seeks to reconcile, and he’s done so in Christ. Fear judges to exclude, so one behavior is inclusive, one is exclusive. So Jesus could say on a cross, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Well, you don’t have to know Greek to realize, I think they knew what they were doing; they were murdering him. How could he say they don’t know what they do? They knew exactly what they were doing! But they really didn’t know what they were doing. So there’s mercy. I don’t understand that mercy.

I would think people who know what they’re doing should die . . . be punished, or whatever it is . . . be disciplined appropriately. But that’s not our Father. So surely there should be a discipline; surely there should be a punishment for the horrible behaviors we’ve done. But when we’re righteous in Christ we judge to reconcile; it’s a different judgment. I’m not excluding you. Of course, what you’ve done is horrible. How can I help you? How can I find a way to tell you about the reconciliation of God so that that would be washed away. So my heart is always towards you.

Benjamin: Yes! I was thinking of Jesus and Zacchaeus. Imagine, Jesus stops under his tree and looks up and goes, Zacchaeus, come down here. He calls him by name and then says, I’ve got to go to your house today. And Zacchaeus is probably thinking, did they tell him about me? You know, like Jesus is walking into the city and somebody says, you see that little midget up in that tree right there? He robbed everybody out here! Wait till you see his house; on a government salary, he’s got this huge mansion!

But Jesus just knows him by the word of the Lord. And he goes to his house and never confronts him . . . never says, “Nice house you’ve got here Zacchaeus!” But his presence . . . the holiness of his presence . . . Zacchaeus just can’t handle it anymore. He goes, I’m going to pay everybody back! I’m going to give it all back! It’s the kindness of the Lord that brings him to repentance. But that kindness of the Lord is also confrontational. What Jesus did by coming into Zacchaeus’ house was he brought holy love right into the presence of his sin, and he was so overpowered by that holy love that he said, I’ve got to change; I’m going to do right! And Jesus says, look at this, salvation just came to this man’s home. He also is a child of Abraham. That just never ceases to amaze me, to see Jesus do that!