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WHAT GOD PERMITS: ON THE RECENT JESUS REVIVALS
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 1, 2023 – Lots of Christians have been questioning whether the current popular “Jesus movement” is from God or not.
They’re right to question it. All mass movements that seem to have come out of the blue and yet still appear to be orchestrated should be questioned.
My response to “is it from God?” would be that whoever or whatever is behind the latest Jesus fad, God is permitting it. If God weren’t permitting it, it wouldn’t be happening. Nothing happens without God’s permission.
Nothing.
But just because God permits something doesn’t mean he supports it. It means he’s letting it happen as a means to an end. And anything God permits, he ultimately intends for the benefit of his Kingdom, even if in the short-term it looks like the opposite is happening.
When I was first born-again from atheism nearly 24 years ago, the first church service I went to was a “Marian apparition” pilgrimage, where Mary was supposed to have appeared in the shape of a water stain on the wall. Of course, in hindsight, it was all nonsense, but I ended up going to the service because someone recommended it to me. I was in Australia at the time, and the pastor at the church was a Canadian, so the person referring me thought it would be nice if I, as a Canadian, had another Canadian to talk to about my rebirth experience. All I remember about the service was that I cried all the way through it, and then afterward had a brief but very insightful conversation with the Canadian pastor. His kind and cautionary words remain with me to this day. When I returned to Canada a few months after my rebirth, I started going to Roman Catholic masses, because I thought that’s where I belonged, having been baptised a Roman Catholic as an infant. I attended Roman Catholic masses all across Canada for the next three and a half years. I went nearly every day until God knew I was strong enough to be on my own, and sprung me.
My point in mentioning my experiences with the Marian apparition church and the Roman Catholic church, is that while neither of them (I believe) are genuine houses of God led by genuinely reborn ministers, they still serve a purpose. They gave me a place where I felt I belonged and offered me structured pastoral instruction at a time when I needed it, as I was a very spiritually young believer. Remember that Jesus approves the teachings of those who “sit on the seat of Moses”, though he cautions his followers to do as they say, not as they do. He also tells us that anyone who speaks in his name or performs miracles in his name, cannot easily “speak evil” of him, so we should let those people be, even if we doubt their spiritual pedigree.
I believe the same words of caution that Jesus gave to his disciples should be applied to this most recent outbreak of Jesus-mania.
In other words, we should be less concerned about whether or not God’s Holy Spirit is enlivening the latest batch of Jesus freaks and more concerned about helping those few (likely very few, but still some) genuine converts who are hungry and thirsty for the Word. That should be our concern – being there for the genuine converts. The movement itself, I believe, serves as an incubator for those few who have newly joined us in the Kingdom. The Marian apparition church and Roman Catholic church were my incubators, and I’m grateful to God that he provided them to me.
Still, I would recommend steering clear of these populist movements. Condemn them, no (again, God is using them for the Kingdom’s benefit), but join them, definitely not. Any genuine converts that may come out of the movement will eventually make their way to us, and we should be waiting for them and welcoming them. The rest, as Jesus would say, already have their reward. When they get bored of being Jesus freaks, they’ll just move on to the next mass fad, the same way that most of Jesus’ nominal followers left him when they got bored or when the demands got too great for them. He let them go, and we should let them go, too.
But those who genuinely want what God wants for them will never get bored of following Jesus and will only crave more and more demands put on them. The harder it gets, the more (they know) to lean on God; the more they lean on God, the closer they grow to him and to Jesus, and the closer they get to Home.
ON LIVING PAIN-FREE
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 1, 2023 – In that moment outside of time just before my rebirth and just after I’d chosen to forgive someone I thought I could never forgive, God told me that the pain I’d felt was the pain I’d earned. He hadn’t done anything to me that I first hadn’t done to someone else.
And then he healed me.
I didn’t know at the time that it was God teaching me about the nature of pain because I still didn’t believe in God. I was an atheist before I was reborn. But his statement “The pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned” was so deeply seared into my consciousness that even today – nearly 24 years later – it is more a part of me than my own name.
Most Christians don’t understand the origin or purpose of the pain they feel. Contrary to scripture, they’re taught that God permits them to suffer because he’s drawing them closer to him or strengthening them in some way. Rarely are they taught that they brought the suffering on themselves through their words, thoughts, or actions. Rarely are they taught that the pain they feel is the pain they’ve earned.
Most Christians strongly reject being told they’ve brought emotional suffering on themselves. They consider it a judgement on them in some way, and most Christians hate being judged. They prefer to be told they’re victims either of someone’s carelessness or evil intent or a target of the devil himself. The devil gets a lot of credit that he hasn’t earned in that regard. I guess it’s easier to blame the devil when things go wrong than to blame yourself.
That’s not to say that the devil doesn’t on occasion look for ways to trip you up. He does; God permitted him to do it even to Jesus. But emotional (that is, spiritual) pain is not from the devil. It’s God’s way of letting you know that you immediately need to take time out to soul-search and repent, the same way as you would immediately stop walking if you twisted your ankle. Spiritual pain is as much a red flag as physical pain, and both need your immediate attention.
Repentance is not something we should do once a year or once a month or even once a week – we should do it every day, if necessary, or whenever we feel spiritual (emotional) pain. Repentance first sheds light on the source of our pain (wrongs we’ve done to others, whether in word, deed, or thought) and then brings us back into close relationship with God and Jesus. Repentance almost always requires us to choose to forgive someone.
Running to anyone (or anything) other than to God and Jesus to complain about how we feel will not take our pain away, because running to anyone (or anything) other than to God and Jesus is not repenting. Only repentance can wash us clean the way we need to be washed clean to live pain-free and in God’s presence, because God can only clean us through our self-acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Where there is no self-acknowledgment of wrongdoing, there is no repentance, and where there is no repentance, there is no forgiveness, and where there is no forgiveness, there is no healing: The pain remains. God can only forgive us if we first choose to repent and forgive. We need to forgive others before God can forgive us. There’s no way around that. And it’s God’s forgiveness that heals us and takes our pain away. So if you want your pain gone, you first need to repent and forgive.
Are you feeling any spiritual/emotional pain? If so, when did you last take time out to soul-search and repent? When we’re hungry, we need to eat, when we’re tired, we need to sleep, and when we’re hurting, we need to repent. Repentance should be as much a part of our daily life as eating and sleeping. It shouldn’t be something special we do only on occasion, as a religious ritual, but something we do as a matter of course throughout our day. Because I can guarantee you that at some point between the time you wake up in the morning and the time you go to sleep at night, you’re going to say, think, or do something that’s going to cause you emotional/spiritual pain. And when that happens, you need to repent. You should never delay repenting; you should repent right away.
If you’re not in the habit of repenting on an as-needed basis, get into that habit. It will keep you spiritually pain-free and close to God and Jesus. Had I not, all those years ago, chosen to forgive someone I thought was unforgivable, I might not have come to understand that the pain I’d felt at the time – the pain that had grown so excruciating that it killed me – was pain I’d earned by how I’d treated others for many, many years. No-one had done anything to me that I hadn’t first done to them or to someone else. This was the most important lesson I’ve ever learned, and the second most important lesson is that I’ve learned to renew the remembrance of that most important lesson every day.
Daily repenting and forgiving keeps me close to God and Jesus and keeps me pain-free.
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 1, 2023 – No-one could ever accuse Jesus of living a glamorous life while on Earth. Even during his ministry years, when his fame grew to the point where it threatened the status quo of the powers-that-be in Jerusalem, Jesus lived a hard life characterized mainly by work, work, and more work. Sure, he spent occasional evenings at pubs or at hoity-toity dinners hosted by the local religious elite, but hanging out with people who either didn’t understand him or outright despised him and wanted him dead was hardly a night off. There was little if no room at all in Jesus’ social calendar for pleasure. And when he needed a break from work, he didn’t go out partying with the boys or head down to a Club Med; he went off by himself for a few days to a mountain to spend one-on-one time with God.
And note that he didn’t fly his private jet to the mountain. He walked.
Paul’s ministry years were much the same as those of Jesus. Paul wrote that being a Christian was like running a race to win, and he didn’t mean the 100-yard dash. After our rebirth, we run a marathon, not a sprint. And like running a marathon, our “run with God” has definitive and increasingly more difficult stages, all culminating in our final breathless collapse over the spiritual finish line, if we make it that far.
I mention the hard slogging aspect of being a born-again believer, because far too many Christians these days, influenced perhaps by prosperity preachers and feel-good ‘Christian movies’, have the impression that living the Christian life should be a cross between living la vida loca and living la dolce vita. If their life doesn’t look like that, they are (according to those preachers) missing out on all that God wants to give them while they’re here on Earth.
But the truth of the matter is that living the Christian life is a cross, full stop.
Jesus told us to pick up our cross and follow him, not pick up a 2-4 of Coors and a couple of chicks and meet him at the beach.
Christian life is hard slogging. Like running a marathon, it starts out with a burst of energy and enthusiasm. This euphoric stage is followed by a long period of ups and downs and increasingly hard work. But unlike athletes running a marathon, born-again believers running a spiritual marathon do their training while running the race (not before it), and so make all of their mistakes during the race (not during practice). As a born-again believer, you only have one shot and one race, and if you don’t finish it God’s way and in God’s time, you lose.
That’s not to say that the ups and downs and hard slogging is unpleasant. It isn’t. I’ve lived as an adult atheist and I’ve lived as an adult born-again believer, and by far my life as a born-again believer has been immeasurably more enjoyable, thanks to the constant presence of God’s Holy Spirit. I’ve never once regretted being a Christian since my rebirth 24 years ago, even when I made some major boo-boos and suffered accordingly for them, including spending time on the street. No matter how bad things got, God and Jesus were always right there with me, helping me through it. As Paul wrote, “I’ve learned to rejoice whether I’m abased or abounding”. The only way to learn to rejoice while abased is to be abased. There’s no shortcut around that one. And you don’t have to purposely try to be abased; God will arrange it for you.
I don’t write these things to discourage you or to commiserate with you; I write them because it’s the boots-on-the-ground reality of what it means to live the Christian life. I cannot imagine living any other way and I do not want to live any other way. It’s how Jesus lived his life during his ministry years and how Paul lived his life during his ministry years, so clearly it’s how the Christian life should be. Our reward is not here, in this time and space, but in the hereafter, when we’ve finished our work. This makes sense to me. We’re not here for a good time (and hopefully also not for a long time); we’re here to get our work done and then to go Home.
Nothing else should matter to us.
*****
There’s a dreaded stage in the marathon race called “hitting the wall”. That’s the point where the runner’s body has run out of its more easily obtainable energy source (glycogen) and has to start burning its fat instead. The fat-burning process takes longer than the glycogen-burning process, so the runner’s brain responds by telling him to slow down, in some cases to a crawl or even to a collapse. Once he’s hit the invisible wall, the runner’s legs (the source of his being as a runner) get torturously heavy and he feels like he’s wading through freshly poured concrete. All he wants to do is give up, quit, drop out, lay down and die – anything but keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Hitting the wall usually happens during the last quarter of the marathon. There are tactics a runner can use to mitigate it and get through it, but only sheer determination will get him to the finish line from that point onward. The negative physical and mental effects of hitting the wall stay with the runner for the rest of the race.
I am not a fan of vanity projects like running a marathon. Still, lessons can be learned from the stages most marathon runners claim to experience. I’ll detail these stages below so you can see if they resonate with your “run with God”.
The race starts with a burst of energy and euphoria that fuels the first few miles. Runners describe this stage as “effortless” and “floating”, and they claim to feel like they could run forever.
This initial stage is followed by a slow but steady decline in euphoria that lasts until around the thirteenth mile, which is the half-way point of the race (a marathon being 26.2 miles). During the come-down from the initial high, the runner stays focussed by reaffirming his pre-set goals, such as pacing, hydration, and in-race nutrition. Note that during this stage, the runner still feels relatively fresh and confident. He has no thoughts of dropping out or even of slowing down. There is only the steady rhythm of his footfalls, interspersed by occasional slacking in pace to grab a bottle of water or something to eat from the sidelines.
The confidence stage, however, is eventually followed by the beginnings of the sensation of mental and physical discomfort. This usually occurs as the runner enters the second half of the race. He may still be going strong, but it takes more of an effort to maintain his pace and stay on track with his pre-set goals. As the runner works through his increasing discomfort levels, pain points begin to be triggered. Old muscle and tendon injuries prickle and in some cases roar back. These issues aren’t enough in themselves to significantly slow the runner or cause him to drop out of the race, but they do make the prospect of running another 10 or more miles less and less appealing.
The next stage is apparently when thoughts of dropping out do start to surface in the runner’s mind. As the various triggered pain-points push past the tolerable threshold, dropping out not only starts to seem logical but also necessary for overall health. The runner has to counteract these thoughts by reminding himself of his goals and that thoughts of dropping out were anticipated during training and not to be given into.
Then, as the runner works through these increasingly laborious physical and mental challenges, somewhere between mile 18 and 22, he hits the wall. This is when the body switches from getting its energy from easily available stores in the liver to the more difficult task of converting it from fat stores. To accommodate this change-over, the brain essentially orders the body to stop moving until the switch from glycogen to fat is accomplished. Hitting the wall means the runner has to keep running against the forceful commands of his brain.
Runners describe the wall as either your legs feeling like bricks or wading through freshly poured concrete. It is quite literally will over mind over matter at this point, because your mind is screaming at your body to stop, so your will has to override your mind. Note that when most runners hit the wall, the finish line is still nowhere in sight.
The final miles of the marathon are torture for most runners. The will-over-mind-over-matter strategy is the only way they can make it to the end. The initial euphoria and confidence are long gone, and mild discomfort is but a distant rosy memory, replaced by full-body pain and exhaustion. To push through, the runner has to rely on emotional strategies rather than physical ones, like dedicating miles to his loved ones (“I’m running this mile for my son”, “I’m running this mile for my mother”, etc.). It’s no longer about the physical preparation and training, but about the force of sheer will.
Ultimately, it’s the runner’s sheer will that brings him over the finish line. But when he reaches the other side, he’s flooded with a euphoria that exceeds even the initial energy burst in the starting mile. Marathoners claim that nothing compares to those precious moments of victory at the finish line, regardless of their clocked time. At that point, it’s no longer about where they rank in the race, but only that they finished it.
All that matters is that they finished.
*****
Considering the above, we can see why Paul compared the Christian life to running a marathon. We don’t win solely by being in the race and having a strong start or a confident middle; we win by continuing to run to the very end, even when everything inside us is screaming to give up and drop out. It’s not mentioned in the polite retellings of marathon sagas, but many of the runners in their final miles are vomiting, soiling themselves, and babbling or wailing incoherently. Yet even these extreme physical phenomena (and the very public humiliation that accompanies them) don’t stop the runners from continuing to aim for the finish line.
This superhuman display of willpower and focus is something we ourselves will likely need to emulate someday, so we should pay attention to how it’s done. Just because you feel you have nothing left to give doesn’t mean that you don’t still have something to offer. Just because your brain is screaming that you’re running on empty doesn’t mean there isn’t still a drop or two left in the tank. Marathoners prove time and time again that humans can go far above and beyond even what they perceive as being as their physical and mental limits. When they hit the wall, they don’t go around it; they pick the wall up and carry it with them to the end. The wall is the runner’s cross.
We all have a cross to carry in our Christian life, no matter what the prosperity preachers claim. Our cross grows increasingly heavy as we near our own personal finish line. Our tests won’t get easier, they’ll get harder. Think of what Jesus had to endure up to his last breath in his human body. He told us that what he went through, we’ll have to go through also.
But before we get there, we’ll most likely hit a point in our Christian life that is similar to the wall hit by marathon runners. We’ll be tempted to pull back, compromise, give in. We’ll be tempted to backslide to the ways of the world rather than stay the course and follow God’s Way. But that’s all these things are – temptations. They test us to see if we want what God is offering us or what the world is offering us. If we know this in advance (and we should know it, we need to know it), we can stay the course, no matter how hard things get. We need to know that things will get hard and prepare accordingly (spiritually), the same way that marathon racers prepare their minds to reject the temptation to give up when they hit the wall.
Prosperity preachers do their flocks a grave disservice by not preparing them for the difficulties that surely lie ahead in their cross walk. It’s easy to get discouraged when you encounter troubles seemingly out of nowhere and don’t have an anchor to keep you from drifting away. Your anchor, in these situations, is the knowledge and understanding that difficulties and tests are part and parcel of the Christian life, and that if God didn’t love you and want you to come Home, he wouldn’t be refining you like gold is refined, to burn off the impurities.
Recall that the very first marathoner promptly died upon reaching Athens with the joyous news of the victory at Marathon. He was motivated not by money or fame, but by doing his job as a messenger and herald. He delivered the message that was entrusted to him, completing the task to the best of his ability. That his efforts ultimately killed him was of little consequence to him. The important thing was that he finished the task and delivered the message.
This is what it means to live the Christian life.
CONFESSIONS OF A LITTLE SISTER
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 1, 2023 – I’m a Canadian. I’m also a little sister. These two identities are connected, so bear with me.
I have a big sister who’s also a Canadian.
Canadians have a reputation both inside and outside the country for being polite. Sometimes our politeness is misconstrued as weakness. We are, as they say, polite to a fault.
Until we’re not.
Politeness and patience tend to go hand in hand, along with tolerance and mercy. To be polite, patient, tolerant, and merciful are certainly not qualities of a weak soul. On the contrary, it takes immense strength of character to be any of those things let alone all of them, especially in the face of abuse.
I was a typical little sister when I was a kid – always trying to push boundaries but ending up pushing people’s buttons instead. I lived by my own rules (I was an atheist) and I did what I wanted. It was my way or the highway, so I spent a good deal of my teenage years hitchhiking alone along lonely roads, never really knowing where I was going, but at least believing I was going somewhere… until I ended up right back where I started, with a few more enemies under my belt.
This is where my sister comes in. My sister, as I mentioned, is Canadian, but she’s not only Canadian, she’s quintessentially Canadian – polite to a fault, patient, tolerant, etc. That is, she’s all those things until you push her too far, and then she goes all Jesus in the temple, whipping the moneychangers and overturning tables. Very few have seen my sister make the switch from polite Canadian to furious Jesus, but I have. I, her little sister, know that change well. I’ve only seen it a few times in my life, but those few times were enough for me. I learned never to push her to that point again.
We Canadians are a strange people. Even as we’re told by those paid to lead us that we’re a “post-nation” with no national culture or character, we collectively stoically accept the denunciation in a quintessentially Canadian way – we smile politely and tolerate it, though we don’t agree with it. Our silence in the face of our leaders’ mockery is likely misconstrued as weakness. Let it be so misconstrued. My sister is a Canadian and most Canadians are like my sister. They tolerate and tolerate and tolerate until they don’t. And just like Jesus in the temple – and just like God, when he’s finally had enough – the unleashing of our righteous Canadian anger will be, when it comes, Biblical.
*****
It was only as an adult that I learned about all the times my sister wheeled-and-dealed behind the scenes to persuade kids not to beat me up after school or talk smack about me in the cafeteria. My sister, you see, as well as being quintessentially politely Canadian, was also a top athlete, a straight-A student, model pretty, and a party girl in the cool crowd. This gave her street cred with all the cliques at school as well as with the teachers. So people listened to her and tolerated me for no other reason than I was her little sister.
She’s since moved on and is applying her protector skills to her own offspring, some of whom seem to have inherited the same rebellious streak as I have and so need the same wheeling-and-dealing behind the scenes. And she continues to do what needs to be done with the same gracious smile and the same persuasive politeness she displayed all those years ago, with the same good results.
God and Jesus are now my big sister. That is, God and Jesus now play the role my big sister used to play. That is, God and Jesus no longer hide behind my big sister, pretending they’re not there protecting me through her. Now they just outright protect me. They feed me their words and direct my steps. My lonely road is now their High Way, but I don’t walk alone anymore: God and Jesus are always with me.
*****
The takeaway from all this?
I’m a Canadian.
I’m also Jesus’ little sister.
You mess with me, you mess with God.
__________
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:6
ARE YOU HOLY?
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 1, 2023 – There are few things more misunderstood than holiness. Even some Christians have a hard time with the concept. Maybe that’s because holiness has gotten such a bad rap over the years, which is unfortunate, because the state of holiness is the state of being born-again – that is, living in the state of grace – and there’s nothing better in this world than living in God’s grace.
When you’re born-again, God’s Holy Spirit enters into you. The spirits of the world get booted out, and God’s Spirit enters in. God’s Spirit is holy, which is why it’s called the Holy Spirit. So when God’s Holy Spirit enters into you at rebirth, you become holy not because of anything you’ve done, but because of the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in you. That is the source of your holiness.
God’s Holy Spirit confers holiness on you. You are only holy because of the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. In and of yourself, you are not holy. You cannot do anything to make yourself holy. You cannot say anything to make yourself holy. You cannot stand or kneel or lay face down to make yourself holy. But if God’s Spirit is with you, you’re holy by default. You cannot NOT be holy when God’s Holy Spirit is with you. You cannot NOT be holy when you’re living in a state of grace as a born-again follower of Jesus.
Not everyone is holy to the same degree. That’s because not everyone has the same measure of God’s Holy Spirit. Jesus, scripture tells us, had the full measure of God’s Spirit while he was on Earth in human form. No-one before or since has had the full measure of God’s Spirit, so that means no-one before or since has been as holy as Jesus. That’s a spiritual fact.
If you’re genuinely born-again, you’re holy. That’s also a spiritual fact. The fact of their holiness sometimes blows people away because they think “What? Me?!!! I can’t possibly be holy!” But again, it’s important to remember that you’re not holy because of anything you do or anything you say – you’re holy solely because of the presence of God’s Spirit in you. There’s no other way to become holy.
Holiness, over the centuries, has gotten a bad rap from people trying to be holy when they’re not (or worse, pretending to be holy). Holy is not something that you can try to be; holy is something that you either are or are not. And again, you cannot be holy by your own efforts. If you try to be holy by your own efforts, you’ll end up like the “holier than thou” guy in the temple who gave himself airs because he fasted and tithed. That’s the sort of guy that gives holiness a bad rap.
The hypocritical Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees were also good at being fake-holy. Jesus warned us about their hypocrisy – they considered themselves holy and therefore above everyone else, but they were just blowing spiritual hot air. They might have fooled themselves and others around them, but they couldn’t fool Jesus and they didn’t fool God. God knows who’s holy and who isn’t because he knows who has his Spirit and who doesn’t.
We see the same attempt to appear holy in mainstream established churches today, with the priests and ministers adorned in elaborate costumes that designate them as holy. But wearing certain clothing can’t make a person holy any more than fasting or paying tithes can. Only God’s Holy Spirit can make a person holy, and only by God’s decision. The same principle holds true for so-called holy water and so-called holy artifacts, including so-called holy places.
There are no holy places anymore, only holy people who have been made holy by the presence of God’s Spirit in them. Jesus taught us that we won’t have to go to a specific location anymore (like the temple in Jerusalem, which housed the holy of holies) to worship God, because God will come to those who worship him in Spirit and in Truth. We don’t have to go to God; God will come to us. Those who live in God’s grace become temples by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in them. They become walking talking holies of holies.
Again, you are holy not by anything you do or say or think or wear, or by the office you hold (priest, minister, pope, etc.), or by your location – you can only be holy by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in you, and that through spiritual rebirth. God’s Holy Spirit is the source of all holiness.
So if you’re genuinely born-again, you’re holy.
“And they shall call them The holy people,
The redeemed of the Lord.”
Isaiah 62:12
I WANT IT ALL: ON BEING SPIRITUALLY GREEDY
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 1, 2023 – I don’t know about you, but I want everything God wants to give me. I don’t want to be like King Ahaz who was afraid to ask God for anything even when God specifically demanded that he ask – I want everything that God wants to give me. Jesus told his disciples that they have not because they ask not. We also know that Jesus had the fulness of God’s Spirit because he was born sinless, lived sinlessly, and was willfully submissive to God, and we know that Jesus knew his reward was waiting for him in Heaven, not on Earth. That’s what I want – the best eternity God has to offer me, according to my capacity and ability. I don’t want just a little sliver of what God wants for me: I want it all.
At the same time, I don’t want to squander my eternity by asking for my reward here and now – I want to store up my treasures in Heaven. I know God will provide for me here on Earth, one way or another, if I free-willingly choose to be willfully submissive to him, like Jesus was. I know God will provide, and I know God is generous in his provision, because I live and witness God’s generosity every day. I don’t want to worry about what I have or don’t have in the here and now; my sights are on eternity. Whatever God wants for me, that’s what I want. I want it all, not just a small portion of it. I want everything that God wants to give me.
So I’m rockin’ up to the spiritual superstore with my spiritual shopping cart and my spiritual platinum VISA that’s on God’s account, and I’m going to fill my cart to overflowing, because that’s what God wants me to do. That’s what he invites me to do and urges me to do. That’s what he’s prepared for me to do, like he’s preparing the Party Of All Parties. And it’s a big cart, my spiritual shopping cart. It’s not one of those little child-sized rinky-dinky models like at the dollar store, and it’s not a basket you sling over your arm. It’s bigger than even one of those big honkin’ Costco or IKEA carts, meant to haul gigantic purchases and family-sized packs of whatever. That’s what my spiritual shopping cart looks like.
Spiritual greed is good. We know it is because Jesus told us that we have not because we ask not. And when his disciples told him they wanted to sit next to him in Heaven, he didn’t tell them they were greedy and it was the wrong thing to ask for; he just told them it wasn’t his decision to make. And he also reminded them that the higher up they aim, the more will be required of them.
The higher up we aim, the more will be required of us.
Sounds fair.
We saw how that played out with Jesus, and then we saw how that played out with Stephen and Andrew and Peter and Paul and all of Jesus’ faithful followers who looked for their reward in Heaven, not on Earth. Once we set our sights on getting everything God wants to give us, the tests and blessings and persecutions follow like night follows day. These are the terms of the agreement. You don’t want tests and blessings and persecutions, you don’t ask God for everything he wants to give you.
Simple as.
The greatest reward we can get in the here and now is a close relationship with God and Jesus. There’s nothing better. Spiritual rebirth enables that relationship, which is why Jesus says we must be reborn. In spiritual rebirth, the spirits of the fallen world are expelled and God’s Holy Spirit rushes in to fill the void. It’s the presence of God’s Spirit in a soul that enables one-on-one communication with God and Jesus. Our soul was made to be filled with God’s Holy Spirit. The spirits of the world that inhabit a pre-reborn soul are spiritual trespassers and squatters. You weren’t made for spiritual trespassers and squatters to inhabit you; you were made for God’s Holy Spirit to inhabit you. Only with God’s Holy Spirit in you are you healed and made whole.
Only with God’s Holy Spirit in you can you heal others.
WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 14, 2022 – Back when the term was first coined, “Christian” was synonymous with “death sentence”, which is why anyone who identified as Christian in those days lived undercover and on the run. Jesus warned his followers that they’d be considered outlaws, and so they were. Most were killed for the sole reason that they were Christians, but they willingly chose death rather than renounce their faith and lose their place in God’s Kingdom. This shows how highly valued being a Christian once was to those who were Christians.
Nowadays, the standard definition of “Christian” has significantly changed from the original incarnation. A Christian in today’s post-modern world is someone who attends church on Sundays, follows the Commandments (more or less), gives to charity, lives a comfortable if somewhat bland life, but is otherwise indistinguishable from non-Christians. Post-modern Christians easily blend in with the same world that once persecuted and killed them. They marry, they divorce, they have careers, they have children, they have mortgages, they have pensions, they have investments, they retire, until finally they go to their eternal reward never really understanding or even wanting to know what it means to be born-again or to follow Jesus. This is a standard-issue Christian in the 21st century.
So what happened? How did Christians go from being #1 enemies of the state to being dismissed as inconsequential?
We could say “the devil happened”. Without a doubt, the worldly church has been infiltrated by the devil to the point that it is now more the congregation of Satan than of God, but that’s only part of the equation. The devil can influence, tempt, coerce and threaten, but he can’t force people to do anything against their will. He can’t force people to stop being Christians in the original meaning of the term (that is, he can’t stop them from being born-again followers of Jesus). He can’t force people to water down their faith or adjust their lifestyle to where it is indistinguishable from that of unbelievers or even outright Satanists. Only individual Christians themselves can choose to do that.
Which brings us back to the question: What is a Christian?
Christians were persecuted and killed because their beliefs were considered a threat to the status quo of the powers-that-be, who were then (as now) under the authority of Satan. Jesus, whose most violent act was to overturn a few tables, was considered such a major threat that he had to be eliminated, on the assumption that eliminating him would also kill the movement he’d started. Ironically, eliminating Jesus in the mortal realm only succeeded in unleashing him in the spiritual one, where his influence was exponentially stronger. You can’t kill God’s Spirit; get rid of one genuine believer, and others will stand up in his place.
Knowing that he was not going to succeed at eliminating Christians, the devil focussed instead on compromising them to the point where they would no longer be a threat to him. He did this through infiltrating the worldly church with anti-Christ doctrine and splitting into denominational factions what was originally the same church at different locations. He also did this by making Christianity the official religion of many countries and regions, which was accomplished by blending Christian traditions and beliefs with pagan traditions and beliefs, so that the “NEW & IMPROVED!” Christianity would be more easily accepted by the non-Christian masses.
Somewhere along the line, being born-again and following Jesus were dropped from the definition of being a Christian. Those prerequisites were still in scripture, but they weren’t in the state-created, state-sanctioned, mainstream church. Instead, you were a Christian if you lived in a certain country or region, or you were a born a Christian if your mother was a Christian. Genuine spiritual rebirth was no longer needed, because allegedly you were automatically reborn at baptism (a few weeks after birth) or at confirmation (around age 12 or 13). As for following Jesus, the Gospel was essentially replaced by creeds that differed from denomination to denomination, but were the same in that they introduced lies that denominational adherents were forced to recite, memorize, and regurgitate. Some of the creeds even stated that if you didn’t believe them, you were eternally damned.
Again, the devil can seduce and bully you, but he can’t force you to do something you don’t want to do. Sometimes the consequence of not doing the devil’s bidding is torture and death at the hands of the state or other worldly authority, but that’s how it is. Jesus warned us it would be that way, so we shouldn’t be surprised when it is. He also taught us that the world is under the authority of Satan, so we shouldn’t be surprised when we find that to be the case. The Catholic organization’s nearly 1000-year reign of terror against genuine Christians, called the Inquisition, was dressed up to look like a holy war, with the papacy and its adherents heralded as the good guys and genuine Christians framed as the bad guys. The torture inflicted by the so-called good guys on the so-called bad was so heinous, I refuse to describe it here. Let’s just say it involved demon-level atrocities that only demon-infested people could have devised and carried out. And yet the people promoting the torture and those carrying it out considered themselves to be Christians doing God’s will.
I have a love-hate relationship with the word “Christian”. Jesus never used the word, but the early born-again believers claimed it. So the love part of my love-hate relationship is using “Christian” the way the early believers used it – to identify genuine born-again followers of Jesus who were so committed to serving God in Jesus’ name, they would rather be killed than renounce their faith. These were true believers who were worthy of being called followers of Jesus, and of calling God their Father and Jesus their friend.
On the other hand, the “hate” part of my relationship with the word “Christian” flows from how watered down to the point of meaningless the term has become today. What value is there in identifying as a Christian if the word is synonymous with someone who is, at best, well-meaning but impotent or, at worst, a hypocrite or con artist?
So what is a Christian? Is it time to reclaim the term, to bring it back to its roots and original meaning, or is it too late for that? Has too much damage been done, too much water flowed under the bridge for the notion of Christian ever again to mean what it did 2000 years ago? The devil has been busy over the millennia, knowing that while he can’t prevent conversions and rebirths, he can muddy the waters and poison the wells so that the converted and reborn have a hard go of it and nominal Christians just spin their wheels, getting nowhere.
If you ask me, as a born-again believer, what a Christian is, I’ll tell you this: It means, first and foremost, to be genuinely reborn through a genuine rebirth experience. Being genuinely reborn, Christians then have God’s Spirit with them 24/7, to varying degrees (never as much as Jesus had, but still enough to guide them in the Truth along the Way and to enable them to communicate with God and Jesus constantly and directly, through prayer). Being reborn and having God’s Spirit with them 24/7, Christians can then take their place in the Kingdom of God, surrounded by their brothers and sisters in Spirit in the cloud of witnesses mentioned by Paul and described by John. They can also either prepare to teach and preach the Word, or actually teach and preach it. They should be doing one or the other: preparing to teach and preach, and then, when emboldened by the Spirit, actually doing it.
Born-again Spirit-filled Christians who live in the Kingdom and who are either preparing to teach and preach or are actually doing it also take their cue entirely from Jesus on how to act in and interact with the world (e.g., follow the Commandments, love their enemies, treat others as they’d want to be treated, etc.). Christians, in the truest sense of the term, don’t make choices based on how they feel or what the world says is OK to do – they look to Jesus to see what he did when he was on Earth in a human body. Jesus is their sole example of how to live their lives. In the Gospels, Jesus first taught them theoretically what they should do, and then he walked it out practically for them to see the theory in action. He told them, and then he showed them; he told them, and then he showed them. This is the hallmark of a great teacher and preacher.
Finally, Christians always have their eyes on the prize, which is Heaven. Living their lives day by day, as Jesus showed them to do, the only long-range plan they make is getting to Heaven. Making it to Heaven is the overarching goal and guiding light that draws them ever forward and upward, no matter how bad things get on Earth.
This, then, is what a Christian is – one who is a born-again, Spirit-filled believer who lives in the Kingdom and is always consciously in the presence of God and Jesus, who either teaches and preaches the Word or is preparing to do so, who follows in Jesus’ footsteps according to his example of how to live in the world, and who is aiming for Heaven and therefore only does and says those things that are worthy of someone aiming for Heaven. This, to me, is a Christian, and I base my definition on scripture.
Even so, I also know that the term “Christian” will never again mean to the world what it meant at its inception, and that lamenting how cheapened the worldly definition of Christian has become will not change worldly Christians into authentic ones. Only they can choose, on an individual basis, to want that change to happen, and only God can make it happen. So while I distance myself from using the word “Christian” to describe myself to the world, I still use it with God and Jesus; I still stand among my Christian brothers and sisters in the cloud of witnesses as one of countless Christians who have stood before God throughout the ages, following Jesus’ example of how to live in the world and being guided and emboldened by God’s Spirit as I make my way carefully, carefully, and with fear and trembling, Home.
A SHOUT-OUT TO THE REAL CHILDREN OF ISRAEL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 14, 2022 – There is a dangerous trend in mainstream Christianity that we, as born-again believers, need to beware: Equating the current nation state of Israel with the favoured Israel of Bible prophecy. Remember that God blesses those who do his will and keep his Commands, and the nation state of Israel has recently declared, by census, that it is majority (65%) atheist. Despite this unapologetic acknowledgement by Israelis themselves that most of them don’t even believe God exists, many Christians continue to see Israel as “the holy land” occupied by “God’s chosen people” who not only deserve our obeisance as “elder brothers and sisters in the faith”, but also our financial and moral support.
“Gotta get that temple built, or Jesus won’t come back!”
The truth is that the spiritual lineage of God’s chosen people flows through Jesus. That means genuine Spirit-filled followers of Jesus are the spiritual descendants of the Old Testament children of Israel. Physical genetics has nothing to do with it. You can’t get into God’s Kingdom on Earth based on your genetics; you can only get in through spiritual rebirth. When Christians by-pass scripture and uphold people of a certain genetics or belief system as being favoured by God based solely on their genetics or belief system, they crucify Jesus all over again and nullify the Gospel.
Don’t do that.
The worst offenders are, not surprisingly, the pastors in the megabucks megachurches. Gathering donations for Israel is an ongoing pet project that always keeps the money flowing, as who wouldn’t want to be part of “a work in progress” that the nation-state of Israel allegedly is? Who wouldn’t want to contribute to the mass conversion of Israelis that is allegedly supposed to occur just before Jesus allegedly comes back and sets up his 1000-year worldly kingdom, headquartered in Jerusalem?
Never mind that Jesus himself has told us he’s coming back in glory (that is, in his glorified body) for the sole purpose of gathering the last of his faithful to take them home to Heaven. Never mind that scripture says “those who pierced him” will mourn as they realize who Jesus is and that it’s too late (at that point) for them to repent just like it was too late for Judas Iscariot. Never mind that Jesus stressed how his Kingdom is not of this world and was in fact established already during his ministry years nearly 2000 years ago. Never mind scripture or the words of Jesus: the megabuck megachurch pastors have the real insider scoop. They know better even than God.
That being said, it’s also important to remember that, while there’s still time, Israelis have the same opportunity to become born-again followers of Jesus as everyone else. Whatever favouritism God showed to them as a people ended with their wholesale rejection of Jesus as the Messiah, not to mention their general across-the-board rejection of God and his Commandments. However, God’s offer is the same to them as to everyone: If they, as individuals, repent and believe the Gospel, they will be brought back into right relationship with God.
But they’d better hurry. The way things are going, God’s mercy will be coming to an end soon, and that includes for those who were once (but are no longer) “the chosen”. Once God’s mercy ends, his judgement begins, and there will be no further conversions at that time or ever again.
WOMEN IN GOD’S CHURCH
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 29, 2022 – When Jesus first burst on the scene, he was conciliatory towards all, healed all who came to him, and welcomed all who wanted to hear him, stressing the benefits of being his follower. But as his ministry progressed, he started to weed out those who were only there for the benefits. He began instead to stress the challenges that his followers would face on Earth, and many early followers then stopped following him. Towards the end of his ministry, Jesus became even more demanding in what he required of his followers; the result was that he alienated nearly everyone, including one of his twelve disciples. The only followers who remained with Jesus were those who genuinely wanted what he was offering.
Interestingly, it was also towards the end of his ministry that some people became Jesus’ followers for the first time, and most of these newcomers were women. Far from being deterred by Jesus’ warnings that they would live as outcasts and be persecuted, they were more than willing to suffer whatever was required for the Word.
I am a woman and this is my blog. Other than for one article published several years ago, I have steered clear of purposely adopting a “woman’s perspective” on the lived experience of being a born-again follower of Jesus, but a woman’s perspective still leaks through. It’s unavoidable because, as I mentioned, I am a woman. My relationship with God (as my Dad) and Jesus (as my Lord, Savior, Master, and big brother) is different in many respects from a man’s relationship with God and Jesus, and that’s fine. It was meant to be that way. It’s hardwired into us genetically for men and women to have different relationships with God and Jesus. That wasn’t a mistake or a fluke on God’s part: It was meant to be that way.
Even so, I think it’s important to point out that most of the followers who joined later in the ministry were women. Men were leaving, and women were joining. And women were not only joining, they were staying.
I am a woman, yet I’d be hard-pressed to call myself a feminist. Yes, I live alone. Yes, I travel alone. Yes, I earn my own living, and yes, I have my own business. I can do these things because I was raised (and still live) in a Western country, and it is now acceptable for women here to do all these things. It’s also acceptable now for women to remain unmarried and childless, without the stigma that used to be attached to unmarried childless women. In many Eastern countries, on the other hand, particularly the Middle East, I would not be able to live or travel alone, let alone earn my own living from my own business, and I would be heavily stigmatized by my unmarried and childless status.
I have had some exposure to the Eastern mindset when I was living in Toronto after my rebirth. I had a series of prospective landlords from Eastern countries who openly questioned why I wasn’t married and didn’t have children. These were not questions I’d fielded any time before in my life. The landlords did not ask in a polite way, but instead were gruff and demanding, as if speaking down to me. Initially, I would try my best to answer their questions, but eventually I decided it was none of their business, so I politely chose not to answer. Most of them then chose not to rent to me.
I mention this because while I say I’m not a feminist, I’ve been able to live my life, both prior to and since my rebirth, thanks in large part to feminist doctrine taking root and flourishing in Western society. Most of feminist doctrine I’m not a fan of, but women being able to live alone, travel alone, and earn their own keep from their own business I’m obviously on board with, as these things both define and benefit me in the world, and they support my Kingdom work. I’ve been independent all my life and I generally take it for granted that I can go here or there or wherever on a whim, because it’s my choice to do so. But after working closely with Muslim female clients, I realize how my independence is a not a “given” but rather a “taken”. So, to the feminists who fought for my right to live however I choose to live, you have my respect and gratitude.
*****
Many of the women who followed Jesus during the latter part of his ministry provided financial and logistical support. In other words, they paid for things and did the cooking, cleaning, etc. Despite their somewhat unglamorous role, the women still learned about the Kingdom from Jesus. We know this from Jesus’ interchanges with Mary and about Mary. At times, it seems that some of the male disciples were a bit resentful of Jesus’ obvious affection for Mary, which was especially clear in how he constantly defended her and took her side whenever there was a dispute involving her. Interestingly, she never started these disputes; they arose because others objected to something she was doing (e.g., sitting at Jesus’ feet learning from him rather than tending to household tasks, or applying oil to Jesus’ feet rather than selling it and giving the money to the poor). The disciples’ churlishness over Mary reminds me of my own experience with Eastern landlords in Toronto who looked down at me and then punished me by refusing to rent to me.
*****
This blog piece is not going where you might be thinking it’s going. I’m not here to bash men or certain cultural norms. I’m just pointing out that women through the ages have played a very specific (not special, specific) role in both the building and sustaining of God’s Church. Jesus went out of his way on several occasions to defend women, and there’s a reason why he did it. There’s a reason why Jesus did everything he did, considering that he only did what God guided him to do.
I believe the state of mind and soul of the women who joined in the ministry was different than that of most of the men. Recall that many of the men who joined were expecting Jesus to overthrow the occupying Roman forces in order to establish his Kingdom, so they were motivated to follow Jesus the way they’d follow a military leader. They didn’t come to him through repentance; they came to him wanting to fight for their cause. When it eventually dawned on these men that Jesus had no intention of overthrowing the Roman occupiers or of setting up an earthly kingdom, they moved on. That’s not what they’d signed up for.
On the other hand, many of the women became Jesus’ followers through repentance. They repented, God forgave them, and they found no other course than to follow and support Jesus. To them, it was self-evident that this is what they had to do with the rest of their lives, the same as it is for me. Since my rebirth 23 years ago, nothing else makes sense to me but to follow Jesus. If you come to God through repentance, your commitment to Jesus is going to be entirely different than if you come to God as a cultural norm, or as an intellectual or ideological pursuit, or as a familial obligation.
Women also bring a different set of emotional and perspective tools to the spiritual table, which God can then use to the benefit of his Kingdom. Because women are emotionally hard-wired (physiologically) and soft-wired (culturally) differently than men, they approach the Kingdom and spiritual matters somewhat differently. They are generally more intuitive and less pedantic. I believe that what Jesus was doing in defending Mary was validating her witness. Jesus was showing that women should not stay silent in the church, but instead should be taught and listened to.
It’s sad to me that 2000 years later, there are still men and women who call themselves Christian and yet who still think that women shouldn’t preach, based solely on a misinterpreted line in one of Paul’s letters. Women taking an active part in ministry work is part of the Gospel message. If you believe the Gospel, then you necessarily have to believe that Jesus wanted women to be his witnesses as much as he wanted men to be. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have first appeared to Mary after his resurrection and urged her to tell others what she had seen. And if he wanted women to be his witnesses, that necessarily means that he wanted them to preach and teach, just as his male followers and witnesses did.
*****
As I mentioned, I don’t want this piece to be a “man vs woman” tirade. I have nothing against men. In fact, I (mostly) admire them. That being said, anyone who thinks I should keep quiet in the Church can take their opinion to God, because I don’t want to hear it. Jesus, through his at the time controversial (and sadly for some still controversial) elevation of women to follower and even disciple status, clearly showed that women not only belonged in his Church, but needed to take a leading role in it, which meant taking on the job of preaching and teaching the Word. Despite the enmity of some of the male disciples, Mary continued on the path laid out for her by God and supported by Jesus.
Once born again, we’re all on that same path with the same mandate, which is to go out into all the world and preach the Good News. There isn’t one mandate for women and another for men; or one mandate for converted Jews and another for converted atheists: We all have the same mandate and directive, regardless of our sex or heritage or other background distinctions. When we become Christians through rebirth, all of those distinctions disappear, and we all have the same job description.
When you level the playing field like that, there is no more acting in a male or a female way, but in a Jesus way. By elevating and defending women during his ministry years, Jesus not only brought them into the fold, but delegated them to the position of witness, and if to position of witness, then to the role of teacher and preacher.
*****
I will never be silent in the Church, as that would be a disservice to God and Jesus and a renouncing of my rebirth status. However, while I’m still on Earth and in a woman’s body, I will relate to God and Jesus and the Gospel message from a woman’s perspective; that is unavoidable. Even so, my woman-ness should never get in the way of or in any way alter the Gospel message, any more than it should alter the mandate or job description Jesus gave to his followers.
I am a woman. This blog is written by a woman. But the Gospel message is neither male nor female. Salvation is open to all. The Great Commission was given to all. I know that when people look at me, they see a woman, but I pray that when they listen to me, they hear God.
AMPLIFYING THE STILL SMALL VOICE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 29, 2022 – One of the main pleasures of being a born-again believer is talking to God every day. And I’m talking conversations, not one-way petitions that are sent off like messages in a bottle, never really expected to be received. God and I talk every day, just like Jesus talked with God every day and Adam talked with God every day before he got booted from the Garden. God and I talk. Formally, it’s known as prayer, but I just think of it as talking. Sometimes I hog the conversation and sometimes God hogs the conversation, and every now and then Jesus butts in with a comment that at times makes me laugh and at times gives me pause. I never come away from the conversations without having learned something, which means I learn something new every day, simply by talking to God.
But you have to listen to hear God. He’s not going to shout over your headphones or earbuds. He’s not going to interrupt your movie streaming. He’s not going to talk over your conversations with your friends and family. You purposely open yourself to God to hear him. You purposely seek him out, the way that Moses climbed the mountain to talk to God. You make the effort, and God rewards you with his presence.
This is his promise to his children, a promise which he delivered through Jesus and is recorded in John’s Gospel. If you’re genuinely born-again, you are a child of God. Jesus said we would have the same relationship with God that he had – that of Father and child. This was a promise Jesus made to us on behalf of God, and God always keeps his promises.
*****
Unfortunately, today’s world does all it can to drown out the still small voice. Even God’s children are being lured away to listen to anything other than God. We are tempted with music and movies, videos and podcasts, TV and radio, and a seemingly endless assortment of audio distractions that spill over into cars with automated wayfinder systems and even onto elevators with tinkling muzak, lest we mistake the elevators for the closet that Jesus said we should go into to pray.
If you live in the world (I mean, if you’re not a child of God), the soundscape is perpetual and loud, with audio distractions being delivered through speakers in every building, loudspeakers on every street, and headphones on every head. Added to that, combustion engines are everywhere. Living in the world means never finding any peace and quiet and always being surrounded by some kind of intrusive noise, including ubiquitous white noise that you only realize is there when the power goes out.
I was startled awake this morning by a piercing fire alarm. After it stopped (it was a false alarm), it occurred to me that I haven’t heard many birds outside my window this year. What I do hear is the roar of vehicles and construction machinery, and the groaning whirr of the industrial-sized HVAC system housed a few hundred feet away from my university residence.
This time last year, I was living in a house in the country. I was in a community of six or seven houses amounting to about 15 people, myself included. Between us and the next communities were woods on all sides stretching for miles. You would think, with so few people in such an isolated environment, that it would be quiet. You would think. But even with so few people living in the middle of nowhere, we sure managed to make a lot of noise.
All-terrain vehicles, as I found out last summer, are the travel mode of choice in the country. Added to that, most of the residents in the little community were related to each other and visited each other several times a day. Despite living no more than a few minutes’ walk from each other, no-one seemed to want to stroll down their driveway and up the neighbouring one or to cut across lawns. No-one seemed to own a bicycle, not even the two children living there. So dozens of times a day I was serenaded with the growl and sputter of ten lawnmowers combined into one obnoxious ATV engine roaring past my country kitchen windows.
Sometimes, my neighbours would even get into their car and drive across the street to make their visit, and this on a sunny summer day. I thought at first that they were taking their car because they were delivering something that was too big or too heavy to carry, but no. They were just taking their car because it was easier to drive 100 feet than to walk 100 feet.
I don’t drive (not even ATVs), so I wasn’t able to contribute to the cacophony, other than when my delivery guys from the city pulled up in their mini vans a few times a week. About halfway through the summer, the dad of the two kids bought a 1940s pick-up truck whose main feature was that it backfired every few seconds. He then did something to amplify the muffler. By August, I had given up my fight against the noise and just kept my windows shut most of the day.
The nights were quiet, though.
*****
The world contrives to keep us overwhelmed by so much noise, that the still small voice of God gets drowned out unless we consciously and purposely listen for it. I would be lost without talking to God every day. The Bible is a comfort, but it pales in comparison to just being with God. The irony is that, when you’re in the God bubble, you don’t hear the noise anymore. It’s still there, but distant: It gets blocked out.
When you talk to God, his voice and your voice (and occasionally Jesus’ voice) are all you really hear.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 