Journey to the Father on the Agape Road By Bob Mumford ® P.O. Box 3709 Cookeville, TN 38502 931.520.3730 [email protected] The Scripture quotations contained in this book are from: The New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. The Amplified Bible Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by The Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified New Testament copyright © 1958, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. The Holy Bible: New Living Translation, Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, © 1997. The New Testament in the Moffatt Translation by James Moffatt, Hodder and Stoughton, 1913-1935.The Message: New Testament With Psalms and Proverbs, by Eugene H. Peterson, Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress, © 1995. UBS Handbook Series, United Bible Societies Copyright © 1961- 1997. The Darby Bible, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database. Copyright © 2003, by Biblesoft, Inc. The Letters of St. Paul, the Arthur S. Way translation Copyright © 1953, Chicago: Moody Press. James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Electronic Ed. Ontario: Woodside Bible Fellowship, 1996). Plumbline Published by: l i b r a r y s e r i e s ® P.O. Box 3709 | Cookeville, TN 38502 (800) 521-5676 | www.lifechangers.org All Rights Reserved ISBN 1-884004-98-9 © 2013 Lifechangers All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America Journey to the Father on the Agape Road -3- -4- Journey to the Father on the Agape Road Contents Preface .............................................................7 Journey to the Father .......................................9 Serious Consequences....................................10 The Agape Road .............................................11 Intimacy ........................................................13 How God Wants to be Known ......................14 Jesus, Revealer of God’s Glory .......................17 The Name .....................................................20 Coming Short of the Glory ...........................22 The Human Dilemma ...................................23 Agape .............................................................24 Eros ...............................................................25 Three Arrows .................................................28 Eros Toxicity ..................................................31 Eros Capacity to Mutate ................................32 Eros as Lawlessness.........................................34 The Nature of Agape ......................................38 Loving Others ...............................................45 Hooks and Bible Verses .................................46 The Eros Prison ..............................................47 Spiral Downward ..........................................51 The Eros Payoff ..............................................53 -5- Freedom from the Eros Payoff ........................55 The Seven Giants: the Real Cause of Failure ..58 The Giants’ Triggers .......................................63 Governed and Ungoverned Desires ...............67 Predator or Parasite .......................................73 The Healing Power of Agape ..........................75 The Wedding Feast ........................................77 The Wedding Garment ..................................79 Practical Use of the Wedding Garment ..........85 Nourishing the Eternal Seed ..........................88 The Wheat and the Tares ...............................90 Learning to Abide..........................................93 Abiding in the Gospel of John .......................95 Keeping Ourselves in God’s Love ................100 The Skill of Abiding ....................................102 Results of Abiding .......................................106 Becoming a Father-Pleaser ...........................107 Father Waits for the Eternal Seed .................110 Conclusion ..................................................111 About the Author ........................................112 Other Titles by Bob Mumford .....................114 -6- Preface This Plumbline is different. It is an abridged version of the original book The Agape Road. We were asked by a friend, Jim Yarbrough, who has an outreach in China associated with Dallas Theological Seminary to abridge the book for publication in China by the Beijing Theological Seminary. The publishing council there is the authority that provides the solitary endorsement that allows the book to be published with Chinese governmental approval for distribution in all churches all over the nation. In addition to this book being translated into Mandarin, it is also being made available for translation in many other nations including Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Taiwan. Keren Kilgore, our daughter and editor for Lifechangers, edited the original book and abridged this version with amazing skill. We would like to ask three things of you, our readers: First, would you carry the publication and distribution of this abridged version in intercessory prayer? We know of no other theme that would be of more help and significance to the emerging believers in the great nation of China as well as in other lands. Second, would you re-read this shorter version as if you had never read the original one? Even after several readings, we continue to discover new and -7- impacting ideas and thoughts never seen the first time we embraced these concepts. I can guarantee that a fresh reading of the Agape theme will make it seem as if you have never read the original! Third, would you send this abridged version to a few friends and family? It may be that our having been asked to abridge this book for readers in China would serve all of us in a way that we may never have considered. This Plumbline contains the essence of the principles and concepts of Agape on which we have built our very lives. It will lead readers up the Agape Road to intimacy with their Father. This book was not just written, it was birthed. We have made an effort to take you on a journey called the Agape Road. You will soon realize that, like blind Bartimaeus, Jesus is wanting to heal your spiritual blindness so that you can walk in intimacy with Him. Thank you for engaging the nations with us on behalf of the Kingdom! May Father’s glory be revealed in the earth. Bob and Eric Mumford and the Lifechangers Family -8- Journey to the Father When I was 13 years old, my father abandoned me. My parents were in the middle of an ugly divorce. I had been visiting my father in Tampa, Florida, and he was driving me home to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where I lived with my mother and five sisters. Like a typical know- it-all teenager, I was arguing with my Dad and heatedly defending my mother. We were nearing Baltimore, Maryland, when the argument became overly intense. Suddenly, he stopped the car and said, “Get out.” I thought he wanted me to see if we had a flat tire, so I walked around the car to check out the problem. When I got to his window, he rolled it down and I leaned toward him so he could tell me what he thought was wrong with the car. With rage on his face he looked at me and said, “You are no good. You never have been any good. You never will be any good.” He rolled up the window and drove away, leaving me standing by the side of the road more than 100 miles from home with less than a dollar in my pocket. Stunned by what had just happened, I stood in the street for the longest time feeling absolutely abandoned, trying to figure out what I was going to do. My sense of what it meant to be a Mumford was severely shaken. My street-kid survival skills kicked in, and I hitchhiked home, subtly trying to let the different drivers know I had not eaten. I made it to Atlantic City about 15 hours later very -9- hungry. This experience left deep impressions in my person. Serious Consequences When I arrived home, something deep and unexplainable had changed in me; I felt like an entirely different person. In order to deal with my rejection, shame, and sense of failure and loss, I chose anger and superiority as a cover up. Like many young people, I remember making a childhood vow to never, ever trust another person as long as I lived. The following year, I dropped out of school, taking menial employment in order to support my Mom and five sisters in my father’s absence. I finished my High School GED in the Navy, graduated from college, and earned my Masters of Divinity Degree, but even after several decades of successful ministry, the consequences of my father’s rejection were very much alive. Eventually, I was forced to recognize that I had deep, internal anger directed at no one in particular, accompanied by fear, more accurately free-floating anxiety––both without any obvious source or cause. The fear and anger revealed themselves in a critical mouth and false superiority. These problems were very real, and I knew they were displeasing to God, but I was unable to get free from them. Reading more Bible verses or ministering to more people certainly did not deal with the issues. I knew that -10- anger, fear, and a critical mouth were not normal and that these problems would always present a barrier to the intimacy with God for which my heart longed. Like many who have preceded me in this search, I felt bound in heart and conscience to find answers to these problems both for me personally and for others. Because we must live in a less than perfect world, human failure, mistakes, and injuries, like my Dad’s rejection of me, take their toll on us, often appearing and