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THE JOY OF BEING A POOR NOBODY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 19, 2024 – I came across a mini-biography of a prominent politician the other day on a social media forum thread. It read like this:
>born into extreme poverty
>family is torn apart by drugs and abuse
>fights through this
>serves his nation as a soldier
>attends a great university
>pulls himself up
>has a family
>achieves [political prominence].
The OP was arguing that the politician’s ascendancy was evidence that the American Dream was still alive. Unfortunately, the OP missed the part where the politician is approached by an agent of the luciferian deep state, who tempts him with wealth and fame beyond his comprehension, all for the low, low price of his soul. The temptation likely occurred in the politician’s early adult years, followed by a radical change, as if a switch had been flicked.
The opposite occurs in people who are genuinely born-again. They also have that definitive 180-degree change moment, but instead of gaining worldly success in their chosen field, they become poor “failures” or nobodies (in the eyes of the world), like Jesus was before his resurrection.
You can clearly see who has or hasn’t sold their souls if you know what to look for. Some of the devil’s minions are in so deep, they’ve become household names. Tellingly, they all claim to have embraced some form of religion, usually in early adulthood, but that’s just the hook they hang the devil’s hat on.
When Jesus told us the world was under the authority of Satan, he wasn’t speaking figuratively. Nor was he speaking figuratively when he told the religious ptb in Jerusalem that their father was the devil and that they served the devil, not God. Furthermore, when Jesus relayed his experience in the desert of being tempted with wealth and power in exchange for worshiping the devil, it was to let us know that this – trading your soul for worldly success – is the devil’s MO.
The world is an ugly place for those who have eyes to see; soul-sellers are everywhere, from the local primary school all the way up to the highest political and judicial offices. They dominate, business, industry, all the professions, entertainment, education, the arts, sports, etc. Quite simply, if you live in the world, you can’t avoid interacting with soul-sellers.
What’s a poor born-again believer to do?
As I’ve written here before, God doesn’t want us to work against or even to “out” the soul-sellers. He has them firmly in his grip by having full authority over the devil (how else can God’s justice be perfect?). If we work against the soul-sellers, we’re ultimately working against God. Certainly, we need to see these people for what they are, but we also need to let them be. They have no authority over us, other than to make laws that we’re free to ignore or work around if they contradict God’s laws.
Our job as followers of Jesus is not to praise, envy, support, or “out” the condemned, but only to “do that which pleases the Father”. The reward for not selling your soul is that you’ll likely be a poor nobody – in other words, the opposite of what you would have been had you served the devil. But I’m happy to be poor and a nobody in the eyes of the world if it means I get to serve God and follow Jesus. To me, there’s no greater achievement, though I didn’t do anything to achieve it; God did it all for me, just as the devil masterminds the soul-sellers’ achievements.
The poorer you are, the more dependent you are on God; the more dependent you are on God, the closer you grow to him; the closer you grow to him, the more you get to see him in action, up close and personal. This – not fame and fortune – is the truly “good life”, and it shows the devil’s rewards for the curses they are.
GOD’S BABIES AND THE BEASTS OF THE EARTH
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 19, 2024 – We are blessed to share the earth with God’s babies. All of God’s non-human creatures are on the same homeward journey as we are. Many of us have (or have had) God’s babies as pets, and so know first-hand what it means to love them and be loved by them. It’s a love that is unlike any other in its transparency and is in fact closer in characteristic to the love we share with God than the love we share with people.
I mention our relationship with God’s babies, whether domesticated or wild, because one day most of them will turn on us. They’ll see us as enemies and prey. Imagine walking out of your house and being attacked by a flock of birds, like in a Hitchcock movie. And if you somehow manage to fight them off, you’re then surrounded by a pack of dogs, growling and snarling and moving in for the kill. Even heavily armed, you’d be hard-pressed to fend off so many animal attacks from all sides all at once, not to mention the insects that would also be swarming you, carrying deadly diseases.
What a horror show it will be! We can only pray that God will take us Home before this happens, because happen it will. When the time comes and Hell empties out, all the disembodied demon spirits will be looking for live bodies to inhabit, and once all the humans without God’s seal are possessed, they’ll start taking over animals and insects.
Jesus once famously allowed demon spirits to enter pigs, so there is scriptural precedence for it. But animals don’t necessarily need to be inhabited by demon spirits to carry out the nasty part of God’s justice, because animals do God’s will without question. The best examples of animal compliance to God in the Bible can be found in the animals and insects that played a role in the plagues of Egypt, in the ass that refused to budge (even when beaten by its master), in the ravens that fed Elijah, and in the lion that killed the children who mocked Elisha. Even from these few examples we can see that God uses “the beasts of the Earth” to carry out his will, whether for good or evil. Animals simply do as they’re told by God, and to the precise measure.
Animals occupy an important place in God’s economy as well as in his plan of salvation. They’re so important, God spared far more animals during the flood than humans. God’s babies serve us through their labour, their companionship, and yes, even through their sacrifice so that we can be fed and clothed.
But one day, God’s babies will serve a much darker purpose. Then we’ll understand why God made them with such strength and such speed and such teeth and such claws, and why even just a pinprick of venom from a tiny spider can kill a grown man. When all these weapons are given into the hand of Satan and collectively turned against us, we’d better pray that we have God’s seal, or better yet, we’d better pray we’re not still here.
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If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the beasts…. Though [Noah, Daniel, and Job] were in it, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they only shall be delivered themselves. (Ezekiel 14:15, 18)
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And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. (Revelation 6:8)
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Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. (Amos 5:18-19)
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For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world…. (Matthew 24: 21)
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ON JESUS’ THIRD COMING: CHATTING WITH LUCY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 19, 2024
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[Phone ringing.]
Hi, this is Lucy. How can I serve the Lord by serving you today?
Have I reached Raptures R Us™?
Yes, you have reached Raptures R Us™. This is Lucy. How can I serve the Lord by serving you today?
I have a question about the raptures.
Which one?
That was kinda my question. I was hoping that you could clarify something for me.
I’ll try.
In the Gospels, Jesus says he’ll come back at the end of time to gather his church after the great tribulation. Is that correct?
Yes, that’s correct. Was that your question?
No, I was just confirming that Jesus is coming back after the tribulation. Raptures R Us™ also claims that Jesus is coming back before the great tribulation. Is that correct?
Yes, that’s correct. Was THAT your question?
No, again I’m just confirming that we both have the same information. According to Raptures R Us™, Jesus is coming back both before the tribulation and after the tribulation. Is that correct?
Yes, it is. I already confirmed that.
So which one is his second coming?
[Silence.]
Was that your question?
Yes, that’s my question. If Jesus is coming back twice (before the tribulation and after the tribulation), which of his two returns will be his second coming? Is the one before the tribulation his second coming or is the one after the tribulation his second coming? Because Jesus says in the Gospels that he’ll come again, and the angels confirm it in Acts, but none of them mention that Jesus will come back twice, only once. So, if he comes back already before the tribulation and then comes back again after the tribulation, will that be his second and third comings? Or are both of his returns considered his second coming, as in “Second Coming: Part A” and “Second Coming: Part B”?
[Silence.]
Hello? Lucy? Are you still there?
[Silence.]
Lucy??
Yes, I’m still here. I was just consulting with my team. We’ll have to get back to you about this. Could you please give us your full name and address and let us the best time we can meet with you in person at your place of residence?
You want to meet with me in person just to answer a question?
Yes, the personal touch is very important to us here at Raptures R Us™. We’ll send a personal van team to your place of residence at your earliest possible convenience.
That sounds kind of complicated. How about if I just drop by your office instead?
Sorry, that won’t be possible. We don’t give out our physical address.
Neither do I. Thank you for answering my question.
But… I didn’t answer it yet.
Oh, yes you did.
[Click, and dial tone.]
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OUR HOLY FIREWALL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 11, 2024 – Were the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness a social experiment conducted by God as a way to kill off several generations of unrepentant sinners while allowing their offspring to be formed under the newly minted religious laws?
It certainly looks that way.
Less than three months after God had miraculously rescued the Hebrews from their cruel Egyptian taskmasters, the Hebrews started setting up their demon idols in the wilderness. Nice way to thank God, people!
Were the Hebrews even worth saving?
God didn’t think so, and if it weren’t for Moses’ interventions and pleadings, all of them (except for Moses, Joshua, and Caleb) would have been wiped out in an instant. Still, God was willing to give the children of the Hebrews a chance, which meant that anyone under the age of 20 at the time of exodus would be allowed to enter the promised land 40 years later, whereas anyone 20 years or older would die in the wilderness, with the sole exceptions of Joshua and Caleb.
The idea behind this social experiment was to see whether the Hebrew children, who would be raised in near total isolation from the demon-worshiping cultures of the heathens, would become godly adults who were fully obedient to God and his laws or if they would continue in their parents’ sinful ways. I believe that the laws and statutes given to Moses by God were unduly plentiful and the punishments unduly harsh in order to form the young ones appropriately (like at a boot camp) while at the same time punishing the parents for their disobedience. The parents were still in charge of raising their kids, but they would do it knowing that God (or one of his agents) was perpetually breathing down their necks to make sure they were doing everything right. If they didn’t do everything right, they could potentially forfeit not only their own lives, but also the lives of their children, which would mean the end of their bloodline.
The outcome of this social experiment has clear implications for us today. During the 40 years in the wilderness, the youngest generations willingly absorbed God’s laws and statutes and were generally obedient. In fact, after all the people who were slated to die did die, and their adult offspring were preparing to enter the promised land under the leadership of Joshua, there was total consensus that they would do whatever they were instructed to do, and would do it to the letter and with no murmuring. So far, so good, and this must have pleased God immensely.
However, after they’d entered the promised land and taken over the cities and towns Joshua had instructed them to take over, the children of Israel began to disobey God and his laws. The more they interacted with the heathen, the worse they became, until eventually the children of Israel were indistinguishable from the devil worshipers they lived among.
We can see from this social experiment the benefits of living in relative isolation from unbelievers. We can also see the benefits of living under stringent laws that have unduly harsh punishments. If God (or Moses, or some other godly person) were my taskmaster, I frankly would have no problem living under either of those conditions (i.e., in total isolation and under strict laws with brutal punishments) and would in fact welcome such a living environment: I’d see it as being for my ultimate (i.e., eternal) benefit. The dispersion of the children of Israel among the heathens meant that not only were the laws and statutes mostly a personal choice from that point onward, but the punishments were also sporadically and unevenly applied by the religious PTB. The social contract between God and his people was broken, as it takes all affected parties to agree to a contract, and the Hebrews had, by their creeping disobedience, effectively bowed out.
This may surprise some of you who are reading this, but we, as born-again believers, are under contract with God today. The Kingdom of God, the spiritual Zion where born-again believers spiritually live and breathe, is the new promised land. Our contract is no less rigorous than the one entered into by the children of the children of Israel and the terms of agreement are the same: Be obedient to God and his laws, and you will prosper spiritually; be disobedient, and you will die spiritually, and there’s no coming back from that death.
In this latest of God’s social experiments, which began at Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago, God has given us – his adopted children – massive leeway to live among the heathen, all while trusting us not to become like the heathen. To enable us to remain loyal to him, he’s given us his Spirit through rebirth, opening up a 24/7 communication line that is a combined hotline, helpline, and spiritual 911, and he’s always there to answer. This is how God is breathing down our necks now, and I thank God that he is.
Mind you, the devil is also betting that the demonic influences around us will be our undoing, as they were the children of Israel’s undoing, but it’s up to each one of us to prove the devil wrong. The Church established by God and lorded over by Jesus is impenetrable to the forces of evil. So, as long as we remain behind our holy firewall by remaining obedient to God and following Jesus, we’ll be fine. We’ll live and thrive spiritually.
But if, like the descendants of the children of Israel, we allow ourselves to slip-slide away from God by taking on the cares and concerns and interests and characteristics of unbelievers and of those in the worldly church, we’ll give the devil the victory. We must never do that.
God has given us every motivation and every means possible to remain loyal to him, so let us remain loyal behind our holy firewall.
IF THE GOOD LORD IS WILLING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 11, 2024 – I don’t think Jesus sat down every night before going to bed and wrote out a list of things he wanted to do the next day. I don’t think he wrote out a list of resolutions, either, at the Jewish version of New Year’s Eve (if there was such a thing back then). I don’t even think he wrote grocery lists.
What I do think Jesus did during his ministry years is fall asleep every night with a clear conscience, with nothing to repent. He would almost always sleep deeply and well – even on heaving boats in the middle of a storm – and when he woke up refreshed in the morning, God let him know what he had to do that day. Jesus rarely knew in advance what his daily tasks were. He woke up and waited for God to inform him.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
As a young believer, I often wondered how Jesus’ ministry could possibly have spanned three years when the gospels don’t seem to relay three years’ worth of activity. But as I matured as a believer, I came to understand that Jesus wasn’t on the move 24/7. Like the Israelites staying put in the desert for long periods of time until God gave them the signal to strike camp and move on, Jesus sometimes stayed put wherever he was, like in the desert during his temptation or during his stint at Capernaum. Mind you, he didn’t laze around playing video games and eating pizza pockets during those times, as John attests (“if everything Jesus did was written down, I reckon the whole world couldn’t hold all those books”); he probably just did the same things over and over, like healing the sick and teaching at the local synagogue. He would do those things in the same place until God told him it was time to move on.
It’s critically important to note that the decision to stay put or to move on never fell on Jesus. It was never Jesus’ decision. It was always God’s decision and Jesus always obeyed: “I always do that which pleases the Father”.
I mention this because how Jesus lived his life is how we need to live ours, which is why I can’t emphasize enough that Jesus waited for God to direct his plans. Many of us make up physical or mental to-do lists about all the “godly” things we want to accomplish within a certain period of time. We set these tasks for ourselves, sometimes on our own initiative and sometimes at the goading of others who have questionable motives. But, like Jesus, we need to be waiting for God and God only to set our tasks for us. We should never run ahead of God. Sure, we can let God know what we’d like to do (he always wants to hear our ideas), but we should only follow through on our plans if we get the clear go-ahead directly from God.
Throughout scripture, we’re reminded again and again to let God handle our reins and direct our steps. This includes doing whatever we do at God’s direction and in God’s time, not just in God’s way. In his letter, James teaches us that we’re to say: “if the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that,” rather than simply to state we’ll go here or there in such and such a time to do such and such. I remember my grandmother being fond of saying: “If the Good Lord is willing”, and then stating what it is she wanted to do and when she wanted to do it. This phrase – “if the Good Lord is willing” – used to be common among believers in adherence to James’s teaching, but it’s fallen out of fashion in favour of self-directed to-do lists.
We need to go back to letting God and God only plan our lives and finalize our tasks, even if it means we wake up every morning with no clue whatsoever what we’re going to do that day.
“Wait on the Lord: be of good courage and he will strengthen your heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”
(Psalm 27)
VOTE EARLY AND VOTE OFTEN!
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 5, 2024 – Just a reminder that God’s justice is perfect. Whichever new leader America ends up with today, America deserves, whether for good or for evil. You can’t override God’s justice by voting this way or that (or not at all) in an election, any more than you can override God’s justice by committing voter fraud, because the fact is that you vote every single day, all day, in everything you do.
Your entire life is one big vote.
So, if the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned and the measure you mete is the measure you receive, and you want better leaders – be better people.
SPIRITUAL RESISTANCE TRAINING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 4, 2024 – If you’ve ever been involved in physical training, you know that the best way to build strength and endurance is to introduce progressive resistance or opposition into your exercise regime. Weightlifters (like my sister) well know this. But the resistance needs to be proportional to the person being opposed – too much resistance, and the person is overwhelmed; too little resistance, and the person is unchallenged. Both cases lead to zero growth.
This blog is an effort to build the spiritual strength and endurance of born-again believers through progressive spiritual resistance. It’s meant to challenge you spiritually so that day by day you improve. This blog is not intended to stroke your spiritual ego and leave you unchallenged. You’d be hard-pressed to find even one article on this blog that strokes your spiritual ego.
If you want your ego stroked, go to a church service. Nearly every church service I’ve attended over the past 25 years since my rebirth has been an exercise in feel-goodism. It’s a lullaby from the moment you walk through the door, with attendees lulled into a state just awake enough to reach into their wallets and fork over whatever they’re guilted into forking over. Otherwise, they’re encouraged to nod and snooze throughout the proceedings or wave their arms in the air like they’re at a rock concert. Never are they taught the grittier spiritual facts of life. Never are they scolded for watering down or compromising the gospel message. Never are they purposely convicted of sin. Most of the things that Jesus taught his disciples and followers are glaringly absent from today’s church services. Instead, the sleepwalking attendees are offered cherry-picked scriptural quotes and sanitized sermons crafted to assure them that everything is fine, just fine, and they should continue exactly as they are. No improvements necessary.
Absent, too, are the hellfire and brimstone preaching of yesteryear. Not that those sermons helped much with resistance building. On the contrary, they tended to drive people into submission to God not out of love for God but out of mortal fear of him. It was a physical fear more than a spiritual fear. Contrast these sermons with, for instance, the psalms, where the psalmists write of their love for God’s laws. There’s no fear in their expressed love but only a willing submission to God and his laws that is a manifestation of their deep and abiding love for God. Hellfire and brimstone preaching might have been effective in keeping the sheep in line, but it did little to help build either spiritual endurance or a loving relationship with God as our Father.
This blog is in large part a response to the inadequate offerings of today’s church services. The Gospel from start to finish poses a resistance that challenges us, as does the Old Testament. Scripture is not meant to soothe you or lull you to sleep, nor is it meant to leave you spinning your wheels, patting yourself on the back, cowering in fear, or resting on your lees. Jesus warned us about resting on our lees, but I’ve never once heard that message preached in a church service. Scripture constantly challenges us, and when read through the lens of God’s Holy Spirit (which is the right and only way to read scripture), it progressively and continuously challenges us to do better and be better than we were yesterday.
It’s not a steady uphill climb, though, this spiritual resistance training we undergo as born-again believers. It’s not like that fabled ever-upward line on an earnings chart that’s flashed to investors with promises of significant gains in the near future. No. Our spiritual progression line is more like currency valuations – going up a little and then down a little, and then back up a little followed by a major slide downward and a largish spike upwards, only to be followed by an unexpected plunge and eventual (Thank God) rebound, with a slight but solid gain. That’s how we progress through our resistance training and that’s how God expects us to progress as he allows us to undergo tests and trials that resist us to the appropriate measure, each of us getting tailor-made tests and trials when we need them and the time is right.
Our spiritual progress is never steadily upward because it’s not meant to be. Still, the overall general trajectory should be upward, which is the whole point of resistance training. Little by little, we build our spiritual strength and endurance so that things that used to overwhelm us don’t overwhelm us as much anymore… until one day they don’t overwhelm us at all, because we’ve learned first and foremost and always to lean entirely on God, with Jesus as our one and only example.
This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.
I hope this blog challenges you. I hope at times it’s irritated and annoyed you and left you with what amounts to a virtual thorn in your side that’s pricked at you and made you think twice about something you otherwise would have overlooked or dismissed. I hope it’s made you run to consult scripture or your pastor to prove me wrong. I aim to be like the least favorite teacher at school, the one who makes you work hard in class and then gives you homework, too; the one who’s a hard marker on tests and essays, making her even more unliked. The least favorite teacher tends only to be appreciated (if ever) years later, when you realize you learned something valuable from her and that she actually cared that you learn something valuable. That’s the kind of spiritual resistance training I hope this blog offers because its the only kind of training that will get you the results you need.
As a born-again believer, you need to constantly build your spiritual strength and endurance, but you can’t do that without being challenged and resisted day by day. God challenges us throughout the Bible, and he does so in perfect proportion and measure to what we need at any given time, thanks to his Holy Spirit; it’s up to us to constantly accept his challenge. God also challenges us through our own personal tests and trials, which we then have to endure if we’re to move ever onward and upward, because ever onward and upward is where we need to go. On a chart, our progress might look more like a zigzag than a straight line, but as long as it’s an upward-moving zigzag, we’re heading in the right direction.
As long as we’re trailing close behind Jesus, we’re heading in the right direction.
THE ONLY WAY FORWARD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 2, 2024 – Becoming more like Jesus doesn’t mean we have to grow our hair long and wear sandals. It means we make the same choices he did and embrace the same values he did, not because we’re trying to mimic him for the sake of mimicking him, but because he did things right.
If you’re genuinely born-again, you want to do things right. The desire to do things right is your default position in everything you do. You don’t consciously make it your default position; it becomes your default position at rebirth.
I was born-again from atheism, so I don’t share the mindset of people who are happy to remain in churchianity. When I say I don’t share their mindset, I mean I don’t understand it. I’ve never experienced it. For me, it’s been either zero belief or 100% belief. For me, there was never anything in between, by which I mean that in-between place where most people in churchianity dwell who say they believe but don’t live their belief.
When Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead, he took only three of his disciples and the dead girl’s parents into the girl’s room. There is a reason why Jesus did this and why it was meticulously recorded in the Gospels. Outside were crowds of people who mocked Jesus for saying the girl was not dead, just sleeping, but also outside and far far away were the rest of Jesus’ disciples whose faith wasn’t as strong as Peter’s and James’s and John’s. I wonder how they felt when Jesus looked past them and chose instead those three disciples to accompany him for the miracle. Was it a wake-up call for them, an incentive to grow their faith? Or did it shame them? Hurt them? (Maybe even get them a little angry?) All the disciples had been called at the same time to follow Jesus, but some had become much stronger in their faith than others. Why was that? Why did some grow fast and deep in faith, while others lagged behind?
We know it wasn’t for lack of opportunity that some of the disciples progressed more slowly than others. I mean, they were all living and working with Jesus. I can’t imagine a better opportunity to become more like Jesus than by watching him and hearing him and interacting with him day after day. So what makes people drag their heels in their faith journey? What side-tracks them? What makes them draw the belief line this far and no further?
Jesus gives us the answer:
If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
This is not the first or the only time that Jesus tells people they have to leave their old life behind if they want to be his follower. It’s a theme that runs through the gospels from start to finish. But Jesus didn’t tell people to leave their families, quit their jobs, and give up all their possessions for his sake. Jesus wasn’t gaining anything from having them do these things. It wasn’t for his benefit that Jesus had them walk away from their old lives – it was for their own benefit. They were the ones who would gain from it.
And what would they gain? A closer relationship with God and everything that goes with having a close relationship with God. And how would they gain it? By relying more and more on God than on people and possessions. By leaving their minds undistracted and unburdened by “the cares of this world”, they’d be free to focus fully on the task at hand, as directed by Jesus.
The call to walk away from your old life is as loud and clear as it was when Jesus chose his first disciples. The call has not changed, even though some claim it was only for the early church, not for us today. But I disagree. Clinging to your old life lies at the root of weak and superficial faith, and weak and superficial faith explains why so many people who say they believe end up spinning their wheels in churchianity. Not making God their priority, they can’t receive what God wants to give them. Sure, they’ll have their family, but at what cost? Sure, they’ll keep their job and their possessions, but at what price and for how long?
Rebirth is like a birth: you arrive with nothing and are given everything you need to survive. But imagine a newborn refusing to let go of its placenta and umbilical cord. Imagine a newborn refusing to use its lungs to breathe. Imagine a newborn refusing to suck on a breast but instead crying for the blood transference that fed it in the womb. That newborn wouldn’t survive very long.
Yet that newborn is not unlike a Christian who refuses to let go of his old life.
Becoming more and more like Jesus is a call we need to answer every day. We do this by making the same choices Jesus did and for no other reason than that they were and are the right choices. If Jesus unequivocally says we’re to leave everything behind, we leave everything behind, and we do so not for Jesus’ sake, but for ours. We can’t claim to have a close relationship with God if we’re hanging onto the world’s umbilical cord. Letting go of our old life – giving it all up for God – is not only the best way forward for genuine believers, it’s the only way forward.
ARE YOU PRAYING TO GOD OR TO THE WALL?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 28, 2024 – Jesus taught us to love our enemies. He also reminded us that before we petition God in prayer, we need to make sure we’re not holding anything against anyone or God will not hear us. He will simply refuse to allow our petition to be heard. That’s a pretty bold statement, that God will refuse to hear us. Did Jesus really mean that, or was he just speaking figuratively?
I believe that Jesus really meant what he said. God will not hear our prayers if we go before him holding a grudge. Even worse, when we go to God in repentance, God will refuse to forgive us unless we first forgive others. We can go through all the motions of repentance as loudly and elaborately as we want, or as quietly and humbly, but either way we’ll accomplish nothing if we’re harbouring so much as a smidge of unforgiveness. In other words, we might as well be talking to the wall if we come before God holding a grudge, as our prayers will go nowhere.
God outright refusing to forgive us is also a bold statement. Nonetheless, I believe it’s true and vitally important to the repentance equation, although it’s nearly always left out of sermons about repentance. We’re told by our pastors that it’s good to repent and that we need to repent and that we should do so often, as if the act of repenting in and of itself is all it takes for God to forgive us. Rarely, if ever, are we reminded that we must first resolve our grudges or our repentance cannot be accomplished. In other words, if you go before God with hate in your heart, God will not only not forgive you, he won’t even acknowledge your petition, no matter how many times you pester him.
Repentance only works if you first forgive. That’s what Jesus taught us.
Then why do so many people beg God’s forgiveness while holding onto grudges? Some people are even holding onto grudges against God while asking God to forgive them! But as Jesus taught us, there’s no point in asking for forgiveness if you haven’t first forgiven. This includes forgiving people you know personally as well as (and just as importantly) those you don’t know personally, like politicians or people you’ve read about in the news.
When you go before God, your heart should be squeaky clean of any form of grudge or judgement whatsoever. You should be holding nothing against anyone, including the neighbour down the street who has a habit of firing up his lawnmower at 7 in the morning. So many Christians wonder why God doesn’t seem to hear their prayers let alone answer them, and there’s the reason why – grudges. If you want God to hear you loud and clear and to answer your prayers as they’re leaving your mouth, come to him with a clean heart. Love your enemies by praying for them and blessing them.
Hold nothing against anyone, and God will hold nothing against you.
SPIRITUAL AIR FRESHENER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 24, 2024 – Ideally, we as Christians should be able to walk into any Christian-designated church building or service or organization anywhere in the world and feel not only welcome but “at home”. We should feel like family to the people working or worshiping there. We should never feel alien or as if we don’t belong. We should never feel “othered”. This is my ideal take on being a Christian in the world.
Realistically, though, there are few if any Christian church buildings, services, or organizations where you feel welcome or at home if you’re a stranger to the people in them. You’ll be received more like Paul just after his conversion than like Jesus after his resurrection, or at least that’s been my experience over the years since my rebirth. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman or because I always show up at these places alone. Maybe being a woman on my own makes me suspect. I don’t know. I generally find the men and the children to be somewhat warmer and more welcoming than the women, but again that might just be because I’m a woman. When they see me, the wives tend to pull their husbands closer (lol) and pepper me with questions, the main one being “And is your husband coming, too?….”
As I mentioned a few articles back, God has me doing the rounds of churches and church-run organizations again. It’s always an eye-opener, attending services and partaking of the hospitality of these places. I make a concerted effort to enter them as if I have the right to be in them, because I do have the right to be in them. Every Christian has the right to be in a place designated as a Christian space or organization. There are zero exceptions to this rule. Sometimes I have to say outright to whoever is giving me the stink-eye and third-degree: “I’m a Christian”, and let that proclamation sink into their hearts and minds and hopefully soften them a bit towards me. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I haven’t (yet) been chased out of any place, like Jesus was chased out of his hometown synagogue, but I have walked out on numerous occasions, mostly when things were being said or done that I didn’t agree with, or when the sad state of the people and the space was too much for me to bear.
You can feel when a church or organization is on life support, the same way you can tell when a sick animal is nearing death or a business is about to go bankrupt. There’s a pall of leanness that hangs over the proceedings, darkening and dimming and dampening, even though the official word is that everything is just fine. The first thing you notice when an end is nearing is the lack of cleanliness, like the smell of old product left moldering on store shelves or the heaviness of a room that hasn’t been aired out in years. Animals stop cleaning themselves in the days leading up to their death, either because they’re too unwell to do it or they don’t care about doing it anymore or they have more important things to attend to than grooming (Heaven now being in their sights). Sometimes I think I should be taking cleaning products with me when I go to church services so I can do some impromptu wiping and dusting when no-one’s looking.
I remember, when I was first reborn, that I wanted to clean the bathroom in the church I was attending. I was there every day, and I considered it would be an honor to clean that bathroom. But the priest wouldn’t let me do it, without giving me a reason why. Only later did I find out it was because the bathroom, which was readily accessible from the sidewalk outside the church’s front doors, was habitually used by drug addicts to get their fix. Sometimes they’d be found passed out. Sometimes they’d be found dead. It was basically a hazmat zone, that bathroom. Still, every now and then I would drop by the dollar store to get some air fresheners for it. I felt that the least I could do was make the place smell a little better, even if the filth went too deep to remove.
Sometimes that’s all we can do now as born-again believers – place spiritual air fresheners here and there to give the impression that things aren’t as dire as they are. The same thing was done in the decades leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem, both before and after Jesus’ first coming. The few who cared did what they could to turn people back to God, but the majority wanted nothing to do with him. Did they know their efforts were in vain, those few who cared? I think they did, the same way Moses knew that only two among the millions of adults who streamed out of Egypt would ultimately make it to the promised land. But like Jeremiah trying to stop himself from preaching about God, the people who cared couldn’t help themselves. They couldn’t contain their love for God; it just burst out of them, even if they knew that all their efforts (or most of them) were in vain.
So they rolled with it. And rolling with it, they were maligned, mocked, threatened, hated, expelled, persecuted, imprisoned, and sometimes even killed, and nearly always by the very people they were trying to help. It didn’t stop them, though, those few who cared. They considered it a privilege and a good sign to suffer for the Word.
As God leads me, I will continue to roll into whatever building, service, or organization that is officially designated as Christian, expecting not to be particularly welcome but also not letting the stink-eye stop me. Every designated Christian space (and the resources offered there) is a space that’s been set aside for me – for us – and I will gratefully make use of them for as long as they exist. I encourage you to do the same, though you might want to pack a few baby wipes and some spiritual air freshener, just in case.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 