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TARRYING IN OUR OWN PERSONAL JERUSALEM
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 12, 2022 – You can’t teach people who don’t want to learn.
Jesus said to feed his lambs and to feed his sheep, not to force-feed them.
He himself only taught and preached to those who came to him to learn.
We have to be mindful to do the same.
“But” (someone will inevitably say), “God’s Truth must be spoken both in and out of season”.
That’s true – Jesus’ brilliant responses to the religious powers-that-be are legendary, but he didn’t go looking for a fight. He didn’t seek out his enemies or confront them. He didn’t poke a stick into the proverbial hornets’ nest. His enemies attacked him with lies and provocations, and Jesus responded with just enough Truth to set the record straight. More would have been wasted on them.
I mention this as a caution against street preaching and witnessing to strangers. People get deeply discouraged by trying to force-feed God and Jesus to people who have no appetite for them. There is a misconception among many evangelical Christians that they need to harass people on public streets, shoving pamphlets in their faces and waving Bibles at them. This approach has never worked to sway people, other than to sway them to curse you.
Jesus was not an evangelical preacher, he was an itinerant one. He only went where he knew people wanted to hear what he had to say. He instructed his disciples to follow his example by moving around from village to village and staying only in those places that welcomed them. Those homes or villages that didn’t welcome them were to be avoided. God would deal with them in his time.
When Jesus, at his ascension, instructed his disciples to first wait for the “promise of my Father” and then to go out into the world to preach the Good News, he did not mean they should go out to people who did not want to hear the Word or who would feel coerced into hearing it. His earlier instruction to the disciples still stood: to go only where people wanted to hear what they had to say. He also did not mean they should go out willy-nilly, on their own steam and motivated by their own ego. These two factors – 1) only going to people who are receptive to God’s Word and 2) waiting for God’s Spirit to embolden you – are foundational tenets for preaching the Word.
I converted to Christianity from atheism, so I am intimately acquainted with how unbelievers react spiritually to the Word of God. It’s not a pretty thing, their reaction, and it shouldn’t be provoked. No-one who ever tried shoving God in my face when I was an atheist succeeded in anything but getting laughed at or cursed out for their efforts. They accomplished nothing, because God’s Spirit was not with them. They were operating on their own steam. You accomplish nothing when you attempt to preach God’s Word where it’s not welcome and on your own steam.
It’s better not to preach at all then to preach without the blessing and power and guidance of God and Jesus, through God’s Holy Spirit. It’s better to remain silent than to cheapen God’s Word. It is the highest privilege and office in the mortal universe to be a prophet of God and to preach and teach God’s Word. There is no higher privilege, but it isn’t self-bestowed or bestowed by another person: It is bestowed by God.
This is why Jesus cautioned his followers to wait for the baptism of the Holy Spirit before starting their ministry. When they initially went out in twos, Jesus was physically there with them to guide them, correct them, and oversee their progress, and they also had their partner as a fallback. But this approach to preaching was meant only to be temporary, as a form of training for the time when Jesus would not physically be among them. The baptism of the Holy Spirit, which gave them a direct line of communication with God and Jesus, later emboldened them to speak without the safety net of a partner and with miracles accompanying their witness, like they accompanied Jesus’ witness. The miracles were God’s very public seal of approval and evidence that the followers spoke not from their own power, but from God’s.
I do not know you and you do not know me, but God knows us and also knows whether or not we are equipped to preach his Word. You’ll know whether or not you’re equipped to preach the Word because you’ll open your mouth and God’s words will come out, not yours. God will speak through you. That is the very definition of a prophet – one who speaks God’s Truth – and born-again believers are prophets by spiritual nature. If they’re not a prophet, they’re not born-again.
So before you take to the streets or to a virtual format to preach and teach the Word, first make sure you’ve been sent by God – not by your Bible college or your pastor or yourself – BY GOD. If you’re unsure whether or not you’ve been sent by God, you haven’t been and should remain silent. Otherwise, the devil will put his words in your mouth and you’ll turn into a false prophet.
These words are meant to discourage you from doing something you know you shouldn’t, and to encourage you to do something you know you should. The guidance to “tarry in Jerusalem until you receive the power from on high” is as much meant for us today as it was meant for the disciples nearly 2000 years ago. We dare not go where we have not been sent, and we dare not speak in God’s name unless we do so with God’s words, put there by God himself. If we presume an office and a privilege that God has not given us, we will not succeed in our preaching and we will place ourselves firmly in the camp of Satan, who also presumed an office and a privilege, leading to his fall.
“Wait on the Lord:
be of good courage, and he will strengthen thine heart:
wait, I say, on the Lord.”
Psalm 27
THE TEMPTATION OF ROMANTIC LOVE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 12, 2022 – We are to love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength. That is a Commandment. If we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, we don’t need romantic love. We have no room for it; we have no desire for it; we have no time for it. Romantic love is just another filthy worldly rag that we throw away.
Jesus said that if we don’t hate everyone except God, we’re not worthy of him. What on Earth did he mean by that? He meant precisely what he said: God and God only should be our focus. God and God only should have all our love.
God and God only.
In our all-consuming relationship with God, there’s no room for anyone else. That would be someone coming between us. That would be spiritual adultery.
Jesus did not have a girlfriend or a wife during his time on Earth. He also did not have a boyfriend. All his love he gave to God and God only. To be a follower of Jesus means to be like Jesus in whom we choose to love.
Born-again believers don’t form romantic attachments. That doesn’t mean we’re not still attracted to people or are not attractive to them. I experience both, as temptations. I have no intention of giving into those temptations. A romantic attachment has zero value to me. It’s like I’m standing on the side of a mountain, with the peak within easy viewing range, having reached that point with phenomenal effort over a long period of time, only to have someone call to me from the canyon below to come down and join them. It would be stupid of me to traipse down the mountain to join them, to give up everything I’ve learned and experienced and accomplished over the years for a few seconds of fluttery feels. I can’t think of anything less worth losing grace over than romantic love.
Listen carefully to the words of popular love songs. Imagine that instead of a man singing them to a woman or a woman to a man, demons are singing those words to God. Because that’s what popular love songs are – demons mocking God by claiming to be heartbroken over his rejection of them, and demons inciting people to replace their natural desire to love God with an unnatural desire to love others rather than God, to love created beings rather than the Creator who made them.
Love is only love when it comes from God, the source of all love. Otherwise, it’s fake love. It’s a sham. Most of what people call love is actually a sham. Real love never dies.
When Jesus told us we are to love God more than our family, he was basing his teaching on examples such as Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac and Aaron’s refusal to mourn his sons when they violated their priestly office and were killed for it. There are numerous instances in the Old Testament of people choosing God over their families or their people, even to the point of deserting wives and children. Regardless of the collateral damage, choosing God is always the right choice. It is never wrong to choose God, just as it is never wrong to follow the examples set by Jesus.
Jesus advised us to become eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake. With this, he not only promoted celibacy but the stage beyond celibacy, which is not the denial of sexuality but the dismissal of it. Sexual desire has no value to born-again believers living in the Kingdom, any more than gluttony has any value or coveting has any value. These are all appetites that we leave behind us when we enter the Kingdom. We will be tempted by them, certainly (even Jesus was), but it shouldn’t be any problem for us to overcome them once we identify them as temptations and then lean on God and his Word to strengthen us against them.
When we look to people to give us what only God can give us – perfect loyalty and unconditional love – we will fail in our pursuit. Romantic love is a cheap, imperfect knock-off of God’s love. It is often demon-inspired, and born-again believers have no reason to be involved in romantic love or to seek it out. Yes, romantic love will seek us out (we are lightning rods for the devil’s temptations), but we don’t need to give into it. There is no value for us in romantic love. It is a diversion off the narrow Way and a possible trigger for our fall from grace.
God’s love is all you need. The more you open yourself to God, the more he can satisfy you and fulfill all your God-given need for love. No-one can love you better or deeper or longer or stronger or more unconditionally than God, because God is the source of love. He is love. Love is what he does, and he does it perfectly.
Give God all your love and open your heart to him and him only, and you will have no need or time or inclination ever again for romantic love.
UNHOLY CURIOSITY: VIDEOS ABOUT DEMONS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 6, 2022 – Based on my online activity, YouTube algorithms routinely “recommend” videos by allegedly Christian pastors. I don’t watch the recommended videos, but I can’t avoid reading the titles as I scan through the AI-generated offerings. What I’ve noticed is that videos about demons have far more views than videos about, for instance, entering at the strait gait or living the sober Christian life. Significantly more. One series of videos by the same author consistently shows views of around 16,000 for non-demon-themed videos, while postings about demons generate 64,000+ views. This is not an insignificant difference. I see the same trend in videos by other pastors.
What is the draw to videos about demons? Why are so many Christians more likely to click on a video when fallen beings are the theme?
The answer is: unholy curiosity, which reveals a chink in the armor of faith. Jesus spent very little time preaching on fallen beings, and that for a reason. We don’t need to know about them, beyond knowing they exist and that we should have nothing to do with them other than to cast them out as God guides and enables us to do. Wanting to know more about them is spiritually unhealthy and even dangerous. It is a form of spiritual adultery; a man may at first be drawn to look at a woman who is not his wife, then to speak to the woman, then to fantasize about the woman, then to be drawn into a physical relationship with her, all the while knowing what he is doing is wrong but somehow unable to stop himself. One step almost inevitably leads to the next. The same happens with spiritual adultery: demonic oppression can be gate-wayed by something as seemingly innocuous as clicking on a “Christian video” about demons.
Do not click on those videos. Do not be curious as to what the pastor has to say. Do not be drawn into the study of fallen beings. Do not be lured, tempted, or seduced by pastors who do not have your best interests at heart. No-one sent by God will post a video about demons, unless it is to warn you against watching such videos.
Similarly, do not be drawn into “comparative religion” studies where you are tasked with reading the so-called holy books of other belief systems. Refuse to have anything to do with those books. Treat them, as the Old Testament prophets would say, as a “menstruous cloth” – unclean spiritual disease vectors that are to be given a wide berth. To do otherwise may lead you into spiritual adultery.
God hates spiritual adultery. It is more repugnant to him than physical adultery. All our love, as born-again believers, should be for God and God alone. That is the Commandment. If our love for God wavers for whatever reason, our attention will be drawn to other spiritual beings. This is a sign of faith that has been weakened by unrepented sin. If you find yourself drawn to spiritual entities other than God (even just through curiosity about them), you need IMMEDIATELY to repent and get back 100% with God.
What is the draw to a menstruous cloth? It is a filthy thing teeming with bacteria and potentially with disease. It holds spent blood that has no value. Only the spiritually unwell would be drawn to such a thing; only the spiritually unwell would hold it out for you to touch and feel and smell.
Do not be curious about the fallen beings. Let them alone. Never invite them in, even through allegedly Christian videos. Shun any pastor who tries to lead you down the path of spiritual adultery.
The Way is narrow for a reason. We need to set tight boundaries for ourselves. Temptation is everywhere, all the time, even through AI-generated viewing recommendations. If we don’t set and adhere to tight boundaries as we walk along the narrow Way, we will not survive spiritually. A click is not just a click if it opens the door to damnation.
THE PRIVILEGE OF POVERTY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 3, 2022 – God has granted me the very great privilege of being poor.
Being poor is the financial version of being on the spiritual strait and narrow.
Straitened financial circumstances narrow your options, which means you are less likely to do something you shouldn’t (mainly because you can’t afford to).
I was raised in comfort and lived in comfort for most of my life. Comfort became my default, and I assumed life was meant to be comfortable. I couldn’t imagine being uncomfortable, and the few times I was, I rushed to feel comfortable again.
Comfort and doing God’s will do not always align, at least not during our time on Earth.
Jesus lived a relatively comfortable life in Nazareth as a carpenter. When he became a full-time minister, his comfort years ended. Then he only occasionally lived in comfort, while the rest of the time he slept rough. He dined well, though, at the homes of the wealthy hypocrites (too bad about the dinner companions).
Scripture says that God’s children will be a “poor and afflicted” people, and so we are. When we struggle against our condition of being poor by trying to earn more money, we are essentially struggling against God. We are throwing God’s great gift of poverty back in his face.
We shouldn’t do that.
If God grants us a life of poverty, it’s because he trusts us to know how to handle it and to embrace it. As Paul says: “I have learned to rejoice whether I’m abased or abounding.” The key word here is not “rejoice” but “learned”. Learning requires an immersive experience. You can’t learn to rejoice over being abased unless you’ve actually live abased and learned the right way to handle it. God, of course, will guide you in that.
Immigrants who move from third- to first-world countries typically experience an increase in comfort but a decrease in overall well-being. Comfort, it seems, isn’t good for your health. Nietzsche loathed “wretched comfort” and blamed it for the stagnation of people’s philosophical (that is, proto-spiritual) aspirations. He wasn’t wrong in that. I know people who refuse to travel because they don’t want to leave the comfort of their own bed. They trade experiencing the invigorating wonders of God’s creation for a few hours of unconsciousness. That, to me, is not a good trade-off.
When God first introduced me to my life of poverty, I fought against it. I railed against it. I tried to figure ways around it. But God was firm with me, even while allowing me space and time to get used to it.
Now I can honestly say that I prefer poverty. I see how much better I am in every aspect of my life when I have enough for my needs but not more than enough. When I have more than enough, it just gets me into trouble. Pride creeps in – pride in consumerism, pride in being able to afford more than you or you, pride in what I have achieved rather than in what God has blessed me with. I am not a pleasant person when I have more than enough.
I was also not a pleasant person when I first started to have just enough and no more. It was initially unnerving. Even though God assured me I’d always have enough for my needs, I was too used to having more than enough to find having “just enough” sufficient. Having just enough didn’t seem like enough. But it was, and it is, and it will continue to be for the rest of my time here.
Those outside the Kingdom dream and scheme about ways to make more money, while we inside the Kingdom put aside those thoughts and let God provide for us. On nights when I don’t officially have a place to lay my head, God guides me past snoring security guards and through open doors that should be locked to find temporary shelter waiting for me. I’m constantly in awe at where I end up. It’s not always comfortable, but it is sufficient. I get the rest I need.
Poverty keeps me active, alert, and always on the move, whereas comfort tends to make me inactive, dull-minded, and stationary. For those reasons alone, I far prefer poverty. Jesus taught us to pray “Give us this day our daily bread”, not “Give us this day enough bread for the next six months”. If we truly mean that prayer (and we should always mean our prayers), we would embrace the godly concept of “just enough” and reject comfort.
A life of ease is no life for a follower of Jesus.
THE LONGEST FALL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 29, 2022 – I hate this topic.
It’s the only thing that frightens me.
It’s like walking across a narrow bridge spanning a bottomless pit and being told not to look down. Everything will be OK as long as you don’t look down.
And then your eyes are drawn downward, and you look down.
That’s what I think about when I think about this topic.
I hate the thought of turning against God, but some born-again believers do leave him, do betray him. I can’t imagine it, and yet the very angels in Heaven once turned against God and fell off that bridge.
We know from scripture that the phase of spiritual rebirth is not permanent. It’s conditional and can be forfeited. If we remain in God’s grace to our last breath on Earth, we’ll move on to the next phase, which is going Home. If we turn away from God – if we willfully and persistently and with full intent do what God warns us not to do – we will lose our grace. And if we lose our grace, there is no getting it back.
Without grace, we cannot go Home.
This possibility of losing our grace must always remain at the back of our minds. We cannot dismiss it or sugar-coat it or write it off as non-scriptural, as some who are not born again claim. But they simply do not know. We must be aware that our grace is probationary, not guaranteed. This understanding is a major motivator for us to remain on the strait and narrow.
Those who say they’re Christians but who then turn from God and continue their lives as Buddhists or atheists or Muslims or whatever were never really Christians to begin with, not in the true sense of the word. If you’re genuinely a Christian (that is, born again and with God’s Spirit living in you), leaving God means your certain and swift earthly demise, followed by eternal damnation. Think of Judas Iscariot. Think of how long he remained alive after betraying Jesus. Think of how he died.
Well, you say, Judas Iscariot wasn’t born-again because Jesus hadn’t finished his job yet. True, he wasn’t born-again, but while he was with Jesus, he had the same abilities and privileges born-again believers have. The disciples lived a prototype of spiritual rebirth, with Jesus always with them, and so God was always with them through his Spirit. In John, Jesus told the disciples that they were clean, except for Judas. Obviously he mean spiritually clean. Spiritual rebirth is a form of cleansing.
Ironically, shortly after Jesus’ pronouncement, all the disciples ran away in fear for their lives. Note that in running away they didn’t reject Jesus or God. They were motivated by fear to distance themselves, but they still loved Jesus and God. True, they didn’t at that time love them more than their own lives, but the time would come when they would. So their fear-motivated flight was entirely different from Judas’ betrayal and subsequent damnation. What Judas did was unforgivable.
We make mistakes, as born-again believers. We don’t always treat others as we’d want to be treated. We don’t always (initially) love our enemies. We sometimes delay doing something God has asked us to do. We sometimes even get mad at God, as stupid as that sounds. We make mistakes. The disciples made mistakes, too, but not enough to lose the prototypical grace they were under at the time through the presence of Jesus. They made what we would call “honest mistakes”.
Judas, on the other hand, betrayed Jesus with full intent. It was no mistake, what he did, honest or otherwise. It wasn’t a misstep; it was deliberate. I can imagine that he was warned at some point by God that he was approaching the edge of the narrow bridge and to pull back and look up, but he ignored the warning. I am certain that God warned him. It would not have been fair of God not to do that, and God is as perfect in his fairness as he is in everything else.
We, as born-again believers, are on that narrow bridge. As we walk along it, it disappears behind us, so that the only way is forward. If we try to go backward, we fall.
There is no going back to the lifeless lives we once lived before our rebirth. There is the possibility and potential to go back, but there is no wisdom in going back. The instant we reject God, we sign and seal our own death warrant, and the demons come for us like they came for Judas. The only way out of that predicament is to hastily sign an agreement with Satan as a temporary reprieve. It delays our earthly death, but ensures that we suffer the same end as Satan in the lake of fire. Those are our only options if we turn from God.
As I said at the outset, I hate this topic. I hate it because I, as a human being, still have the capacity – not necessarily the likelihood, but the capacity – to betray God. Free will is part of the human condition that cannot be overwritten. And because it can’t be overwritten, it needs to be overcome. We do that by remaining as close as we can to God and Jesus, through God’s Spirit; we do that by daily renewing our faith, daily reading scripture, daily searching our heart, daily repenting and doing whatever is required to remain “clean” and on the bridge. We dare not go backward. There is nothing behind us but pain.
We need to remain mindful that while going backward is an option for us, we must never, ever do it.
DO YOU FELLOWSHIP WITH HYPOCRITES?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 25, 2022 – Many people still go to church on Sundays because they think they need to fellowship with other Christians. Even knowing that most of the people in the church aren’t genuine believers doesn’t stop them from thinking they have to fellowship with them.
But do we, as born-again believers, really need to fellowship with unbelievers?
Or put another way, HOW can we fellowship with unbelievers?
I would rather sit alone than be with people who pretend to believe. I have sat alone for nearly 20 years. Every now and then I venture into a church building, hoping to hear the Word preached live, but I always end up leaving after only a few minutes, more bitter than ever at what has become of mainstream Christianity.
The life of a born-again believer is a solitary one. I am never alone (God and Jesus are always with me), but human companionship is not part of the job description. I interact with people of necessity (you live in the world, you have to interact with people), but it’s always at arm’s length, and I trust no-one. Unbelievers are easy tools of the devil and can turn on you in an instant.
Jesus trusted no-one – not even his disciples – and for good reason: He knew their thoughts. I don’t always know the thoughts of those around me, but I can read their faces and hear their voice intonation and note their body language, and that gives me reasonably accurate insight into what they’re thinking. I can hear what they’re saying and then read between the lines. Most people rarely say what they’re thinking, which is to everyone’s benefit. Imagine the insanity of everyday conversation if unbelievers actually said aloud everything the devil put into their mind.
Jesus directed us to go out into the world and preach the Good News. He didn’t say to preach it to the world. The world, by definition, doesn’t want to hear the Word. The world, by definition, has rejected the Word. Jesus wants us to seek out those who are hungry and thirsty for the Word, not to force-feed those who are not. Make yourself available, and those who are hungry and thirsty will come to you, even if only by cover of night.
I have not made a secret of my loathing for mainstream Christianity. I’ve written about it here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here, etc. I hated mainstream Christianity when I was an atheist, and I still hate it as a born-again believer. If it doesn’t have the whiff of pretense, it has the full-blown stench of hypocrisy. Jesus also loathed those who said they believed and yet showed by their actions that they didn’t. To be accused by Jesus of being a hypocrite is about as bad an insult as you can get.
True believers are few and far between these days. We mostly find each other via the internet. God always makes a way for his children to fellowship, though maybe not always in person. For the personal touch, we have God and Jesus with us 24/7.
There’s no need to settle for unbelievers. There’s no need to fellowship with hypocrites.
We have God and Jesus, and we have each other, even though we’ve never met in person and perhaps don’t even know that the other exists. A genuine born-again believer has a true friend in every genuine born-again believer, so that’s quite a few friends, even in this wicked age. Paul called it a cloud of witnesses: I’m out here praying for you and you’re out there praying for me, and our touchstone is God’s Holy Spirit. I can’t see you, but I can feel your prayers; I don’t know you, but I know you’re there. This is a comfort to me. Knowing that out there somewhere are others who believe as I believe is a comfort to me. This is part of my faith, and I know it’s as real as these words that I’m typing and you’re reading.
God may not bring believers together in person, but he lets them know that others like them exist, that they’re not entirely bereft of human companionship, that they needn’t settle for hypocrites.
We don’t need to go into a church building because we live in our church 24/7.
We don’t need to seek out unbelievers who say they believe because we have each other in our cloud of witnesses.
And we have God and Jesus, who are always with us through God’s Spirit.
Surely that’s enough.
IMPROVING ON PERFECTION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 21, 2022 – Paul says that when we love our enemies, we heap burning coals on their heads.
In other words, helping people get good rewards they haven’t earned ultimately has a negative effect on them, although initially it might look positive.
God’s justice is perfect, which means the way the world is – in all its alleged inequality and inequity – is God’s justice playing out in real time. People’s lives are a reflection of what they’ve earned through their thoughts and actions. If you’ve earned a crappy life, you’re going to get it. Just because you don’t like the crappy life you’ve earned doesn’t mean you haven’t earned it. If you try to escape it on your own initiative through, for instance, immigration or becoming a refugee, your crappy life will follow you. Jesus says the measure you mete is the measure you get in return. We cannot improve on God’s perfect justice; our efforts to “improve” it can only fail.
That doesn’t mean that people won’t try. Instead of dealing with the root of their problems (sin-laden soul out of alignment with God’s will), they frantically look around them to find someone or something else to blame other than themselves. The world loves pointing fingers of blame. People are generally pliable and compliant, so if you tell them, via mass media, that White people and their various traditional cultures are to blame for all the world’s problems, the majority of people will believe that lie and repeat it. That’s where we are now.
As a born-again believer stuck in a body that of necessity has to move through the world, you need to guard against getting caught up in the world’s frenzy of blame. At the same time, don’t fall into the trap of believing that you can improve on God’s justice. Yes, we’re to help those who specifically come to us for help (if God sends them to us for help, he will enable us to help them), but looking for people to help is going to backfire on you and on them.
Conversely, when God sends us someone to help, it’s because he’s working on them. He knows that the help we give them will draw them closer to him not by easing their misery but by worsening it. I know through personal experience that the best way to bring some personality types back into alignment with God is to break them. This approach doesn’t work on everyone, but it sure works wonders on headstrong people like me.
The truth is – the world is in perfect balance at all times. God’s justice never fails and never falters. Jesus didn’t come to change the world, but to show those who were in the world the best way to get Home – through repentance and believing the Gospel. Most people reject Jesus because they’d rather blame others for their problems than blame themselves. The world supports them in blaming others. This should not be surprising, considering that the world is under the authority and direction of Satan, who himself is a master at deflecting and reassigning blame in order to frame himself as a victim. The world models this mindset.
But we are not the world. We know that there are no “innocent victims” other than Jesus. Jesus is the only person in all of history who suffered for sins he hadn’t committed. He chose to suffer, and in so choosing, paid the sin debt and opened the door for us to have a close relationship with God again. This is the greatest of all human achievements. If the rest of us suffer, it’s because we’ve brought it on ourselves one way or another.
We are to be patient in suffering not because we are some great saint clasping our hands in prayer and gazing heavenwards like a cheesy religious painting, but because we should know that our lives are God’s perfect justice in action, which means our suffering is earned. To rail against earned suffering is just stupid. I know, because I’ve done it and learned the hard way about this particular brand of stupidity. Maybe you’re smarter. Hopefully you’re smarter.
Beware of people who try to thrust their help on you. Discern whether or not the help is from God or from the devil. Help that comes from God is swift, timely, and perfect in its execution, whereas help that comes from the devil is cloaked in confusion and leaves you wondering whether or not you should accept it. If you have to mull it over, it’s not from God.
We heap burning coals on our enemies’ heads not to destroy them but to jolt them back into reality. If God specifically guides you to help someone, help them. If he guides someone to help you, accept the help. Otherwise, don’t be guilted into supporting the devil’s lies about inequality, inequity, social justice, etc. God’s justice is perfect. The world is a reflection of God’s perfect justice: It cannot be improved.
HOW NOT TO FORGIVE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 16, 2022 – You can’t get into Heaven with unforgiveness in your heart. No unrepentant soul ever makes it Home. And since we never know when our time on Earth is up, we need to live every minute of every day with a heart clean of grudges, resentment, and sin.
I was born-again when I made the choice to forgive. It wasn’t a feeling, it was a choice – a conscious decision of the will. I didn’t want to forgive the person I was advised to forgive, but I wanted the reward of making the choice to forgive. And so I forgave that person and I continue to forgive others, based on that initial model.
Mercy is forgiveness, and forgiveness is mercy. In fact, mercy is one of the most renowned and characteristic of God’s personality features. When we forgive, we model God.
But there’s a right way to forgive and a wrong to forgive, and unfortunately the wrong way to forgive is what most people end up doing.
Here is how NOT to forgive:
- You tell the person you’ve forgiven that you’ve forgiven him or her.
- You tell other people that you’ve forgiven that particular person (you name and shame them).
- You tell other people precisely what you forgave that particular person for, providing all the gory details.
- You call the offences to mind and mull over them occasionally.
- You continue to talk in detail about the offences and your forgiveness, long after you allegedly forgave.
- You hold resentment against people.
- You hold grudges against people.
- You consider this or that offence against you to be “unforgiveable”.
- You tell people what others have done to you, whether recently or in the past.
- You call to mind and mull over what others have done to you, whether recently or in the past.
This is how you successfully fail at forgiving. This is how you remain with resentment and grudges in your heart, and this is how your soul remains unrepentant and therefore unfit for Heaven.
I don’t care how much you claim to “believe” in Jesus and are washed in the blood of Jesus, you will not get into Heaven with unforgiveness in your heart, as a grudging heart indicates an unrepentant soul, and an unrepentant soul is a soul in sin.
We shouldn’t let even one hour pass without searching our heart for grudges or resentment. They can creep up seemingly out of nowhere, so we always need to be on our guard against them. Unforgiveness is a spiritual poison that taints our relationship with God and Jesus as well as with others in the Kingdom and with the world in general.
The simplest way to keep your heart and soul clean of unforgiveness is to have no expectations of anyone at any time, and therefore to be grateful for whatever comes your way. Most grudges and resentment are the result of unmet expectations, so don’t have any expectations, and you won’t have any reason to be resentful or grudging.
Unforgiveness will keep you out of Heaven.
Don’t let that happen to you.
So how do you forgive?
- DON’T tell the person you’ve forgiven that you’ve forgiven him or her. Keep it between you and God.
- DON’T tell other people that you’ve forgiven that particular person (DON’T name and shame them). Keep it between you and God.
- DON’T tell other people precisely what you forgave that particular person for, and DON’T provide all the gory details.
- DON’T call the offences to mind and mull over them occasionally. Cast them behind you as if they don’t exist.
- DON’T continue to talk in detail about the offences and your forgiveness, long after you allegedly forgave. Cast them behind you as if they don’t exist.
- DON’T hold resentment against people.
- DON’T hold grudges against people.
- DON’T consider this or that offence against you to be “unforgiveable”. Nothing should be unforgiveable to you.
- DON’T tell people what others have done to you, whether recently or in the past.
- DON’T call to mind and mull over what others have done to you, whether recently or in the past.
But learn from the offences, the way you learned not to touch a hot stove element after you burned yourself on one. Forgiving doesn’t mean putting yourself back into the situation to be offended again. Learn from the offences. Let the unforgiveness go, but don’t put yourself back into the situation to be burned again.
Forgive like this, and your soul will always be ready for Home.
APPROACHING JESUS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 15, 2022 – Jesus is by far my one and only hero, but I don’t hero-worship him: He’s my brother. Yes, he’s also my Lord and Messiah and teacher, but our closest relationship is of brother and sister.
We are both God’s children. He was born a son of God, whereas I was adopted into the family through spiritual rebirth. Still, when we stand before God, he makes no distinction between those who were born his children and those who later became his children. He loves us all the same. He sees us as different in the ways that we are different, but he still loves us all the same.
This is a great comfort to me.
I love Jesus, but not with a cloying, sickly, sycophantic kind of love. It would be out of place and inappropriate. Jesus doesn’t want to be hero-worshiped; he doesn’t want us to pretend-marry him, like nuns do; he wants us to learn from him, the way younger siblings learn from older ones, and at the same time he’s offering to be the best friend we’ll ever have. I know, because he’s been my brother and best friend for over 23 years. He’s all the other things that scripture says of him, but I know him simply as my brother and my best friend.
And like a brother, he doesn’t hold back when it comes to setting me straight when I go wrong. We don’t stand on ceremony. He’ll spiritually tussle me to the ground if he has to, to stop me from doing or saying something I shouldn’t.
I don’t think there are any words for the kind and depth of love I have for Jesus. It’s not a love that I’ve felt for anyone else in my life. It’s unique and suited only to Jesus, mainly because he’s not only the only brother I have, but also the only Messiah.
Like John, I could spend all day – all my life – talking about Jesus and what he’s accomplished, what he’s done and is doing by the grace of God. John is right in saying that everything Jesus has done would fill so many books, the entire world wouldn’t be able to contain them, were everything written down. Our understanding of Jesus’ involvement in our day-to-day lives barely scratches the surface. I guess there’s a reason for God limiting our understanding. Maybe it would freak us out (we’re generally pretty easily freaked) if we knew how omnipresent Jesus is in our lives, the same way as God is omnipresent. Jesus promised us that both he and God would come live with us, so that we could have the same relationship with God that he had while on Earth.
He’s kept his promise, and it’s a beautiful thing.
I love my big brother. I’m proud of him and I dote on him (the way little sisters do) and I bug the you-know-what out of him occasionally (the way little sisters do), but I’m so happy that he’s my brother and best friend and Messiah. Even before I was born again, I thought Jesus was the coolest guy who ever lived. Nothing fazed him, not even being falsely accused and crucified. I liked how he stood up for people who were being kicked down. I admired his courage and his ability to cut through the crap. He didn’t take anything from anyone, and he was always bang-on in his assessment of situations and people. This is how I saw him when I was an atheist, and I still see him like this. I still admire all these characteristics that make Jesus Jesus and now do my best to emulate them.
I never saw him as meek and mild. I never saw him as a pushover or a hypocrite, but I sure as heck knew a lot of Christians (know a lot of Christians) who are pushovers and hypocrites, who are meek and mild. They do Jesus a disservice being like that while claiming to be his followers. Most Christians these days are more like Judas Iscariot than Jesus, more like the early followers who walked away when the going got too tough.
I follow no-one but Jesus. Why would I? Why would anyone, given the choice? Who is more worthy to follow than Jesus? The world throws option after option at us, trying to get us if not to switch our loyalty, then at least to spread it around a bit, to apportion a bit to Jesus and also some to this or that deeply flawed star or superhero. Romantic love is one such contrivance to get us to divide our loyalty, as is the near idol-worship of some parents for their children. Even some born-again believers get caught up in these diversions, which is one of the reasons why Jesus had his disciples leave their families when they became his followers.
There is no room for division of loyalty in God’s Kingdom. Your focus is on God and God only; your love is to God and God only, and to Jesus, as his Messiah. God and Jesus are your family, if you’re born-again. They should have all your love, just as their love should satisfy all your need for love. There is no need to look beyond God and Jesus for love. Why would you seek out imperfect and conditional feelings when you have perfect and unconditional love straight from the source?
Jesus is first and foremost my brother, who also happens to be my best friend and Messiah. He teaches me God’s Way so I’ll make it home to Heaven. This was his purpose in coming to Earth – to redeem the lost and fallen, and then to guide them home. He’s still redeeming and guiding, but from his seat of glory at the right hand of God.
I have no idea what I’ll say to Jesus if and when I make it Home. I guess “thank you for everything” would be a good start. For the time being, I’m just glad that he’s with me in Spirit while I’m still here. I can’t imagine going even one second without God and Jesus: they are every breath I breathe. They keep me honest. They keep me focused. They tickle a smile out of me even when I’m cranky. I love them so much that there are no words to describe the love. There are only tears, which God then gently wipes away.
We born-agains are blessed beyond measure to share in the very great gift that Jesus’ sacrifice enabled us to have – the gift of his and God’s presence while we’re yet here on Earth. I love my brother and I love my Father, and if I know nothing beyond my love for them, I know enough.
SPIRITUAL WAKE-UP SLAP
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 14, 2022 – Daily reminder that the state of Christianity today is similar to the state of Judaism during Jesus’ ministry years. In other words, Christianity has reached the end of its run. That doesn’t mean that everything Jesus established is disappearing – far from it. In fact, the opposite is occurring – everything that Jesus DIDN’T establish is disappearing into the spiritual sinkhole it deserves, whereas Jesus’ accomplishments will remain eternally.
Also a daily reminder that you need to be born-again to see the Kingdom. I know many of you reading this are not born-again and that you struggle with many of the things I write here. That’s fine; struggle away: this blog isn’t meant for you. If you know you’re not born-again but you still consider yourself a Christian, then you’re part of the problem. You’re part of the problem that has watered down God’s Word to the point of inanity, as without spiritual rebirth, Christianity makes no sense and is D.O.A.
You have a choice: You can continue to be part of the problem, or you can get down on your face and tell God you want to be born-again because Jesus said you need to be. It’s your choice. I’m not going hold your hand and tell you everything will be fine; if you hold out your hand to me, I’ll grab it and use it to slap you in the face, hard, so you’ll know to get serious about what needs to be done.
Consider it a spiritual wake-up slap.
I’m frankly sick and tired of dilettantes playing at being Christian. So is God. So is Jesus. You’re either a Christian or you’re not. You’re either born-again or you’re not. If you’re not born-again, you’re not a Christian. You’re a fake Christian.
And fake Christians aren’t welcome here.
Another daily reminder that to be a follower of Jesus means to live your life as Jesus lived his, because that’s what it means to be a follower. If you’ve been dragging your heels living the life of the world while daydreaming of working in the Kingdom, do yourself a favour and slap yourself hard. Maybe slap yourself a few times hard, whatever it takes to wake yourself up. How much time do you think you have left on Earth? Do you think you forever to make up your mind about who you want to serve? Do you know your life can be cut off in an instant? And if it is, and you’re still daydreaming rather than doing, where exactly do you think you’ll end up for all eternity? Do you think Paradise is so cheaply won that all it takes are good intentions to get in?
Remember the two sons – the one who said he’d do his father’s will, and then didn’t, and the son who said he wouldn’t do it, but eventually did it? If you’re still living the life of the world, you’re the son who said he would do his father’s will, but in reality didn’t. And that’s not a tag anyone wants to be wearing come Judgement Day.
Consider this your spiritual wake-up slap.
You’re welcome.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 