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THE SWORD OF OUR MOUTH
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 9, 2025 – Jesus never engages in hand-to-hand combat anywhere in scripture. We don’t see him pull a knife, brandish a sword, hurl stones, or even gently push anyone. Sure, he turned over a few tables in the temple to get the message across to the moneychangers (and whipped a few of them who weren’t paying close enough attention), but the only thing he really hurt was their pride. When push came to shove, it was always other people doing the pushing and shoving. It was never Jesus. He didn’t promote physical violence, and he stood by the motto that those who live by the sword, die by the sword.
Which is why his advice to his followers to arm themselves can be confusing to the casual Christian. Surely if Jesus told us to get weapons, he meant for us to use them? And surely he intended that we should defend ourselves with those weapons, or why else should we get them?
Jesus is nothing if not consistent with his message. When he said that those who live by the sword die by the sword, he wasn’t contradicting his advice for us to arm ourselves. He was explaining why and to what purpose we needed to arm ourselves: for deterrence, and only if we become outcasts from society and so have to live without the protection of law enforcement. Unarmed people are sitting ducks among the lawless, whereas people armed with even one weapon are less attractive targets (which explains why Jesus told his disciples that the one sword they had was enough). When someone openly displays a weapon, it gives the impression that he or she intends to use it. That’s the impression Jesus wants us to convey with our weapon. But at the same time, he doesn’t want us to use the weapon to physically hurt anyone.
How do we know this? Because again, Jesus was consistent with his message. He never contradicted himself. He taught us to keep the Commandments, which includes the Commandment not to kill. Any vengeance we want to exact, we’re to leave in God’s hands: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay.”
So, we’re to get weapons for deterrence purposes if and when we’re banished from mainstream society and forced to live among the lawless, but we don’t have permission to use those weapons to hurt others. The only slaying we have God’s permission to do is with the sword of our mouth. That’s how Jesus fights his battles, and that’s how we’re to fight ours.
THE TWO STATES OF BEING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 6, 2025 – We need to remember, as born-again believers, that Jesus came to set a sword between us and the world. We cannot be “yoked together” with the world because it’s not our spiritual realm: It’s Satan’s. We’re strangers here just passing through, even though our Father created Heaven and Earth and ultimately controls the world through the limitations and permissions of his justice. Being a child of God doesn’t grant us privileges in Satan’s realm. It guarantees us God’s comprehensive and powerful protection, but it doesn’t grant us any of the privileges that God allows Satan to bestow on his children. And we know who Satan’s children are: They’re everyone who isn’t born-again.
You’re either a child of God or a child of Satan: There is no third option. That’s a Truth that only born-again believers and fully committed Satanists can embrace. Most of the world will tell you they have nothing to do with either God or Satan. They say this because they’re deceived and spiritually blind. We were all like that before we were born-again, so we can empathize. I remember believing I was free of religion, not being able to see the massive chains binding me to the darkness that I saw as light. Unless we fully isolate ourselves from the world (which Jesus does not recommend we do), we interact every day with children of Satan, most of whom don’t know whose spiritual children they are. But if they’re not born-again, by default they’re Satan’s. This is a hard but necessary Truth we need not only to acknowledge but embrace.
It’s a necessary Truth because we need to be careful what we do and say around Satan’s children. We’ve all had the experience of saying something off-hand to someone who wasn’t born-again, and then later having that little tidbit come back to bite us on the butt when we least needed it. The demons are always watching and listening through Satan’s children. Unbelievers are not just the mouthpieces of demons; they’re also their eyes and ears and their hands. The demons know who we are and so are always watching and listening, baiting us and waiting for us to say an idle or thoughtless word they can then use against us. When we fall for their bait (and let’s be frank, we all have on occasion), they gleefully tuck our misstep into their back pocket as future ammo.
The world is a spiritual minefield for born-again believers. It’s a war out there, and we are the despised enemy. Never forget that. And the ones who hate us the most and want us gone the most are the ones who claim to love and serve our Father the most. Jesus’ worst enemies during his ministry years were not the heathen Romans but the temple elders, high priests, scribes, etc. – people who should have known who Jesus was and so embraced him but instead chose to “do the lusts of their Father, the devil”. Our worst enemies are likewise those who claim to be Jesus’ closest adherents, as martyrs throughout the ages have experienced up close and personal. The worst enemies of born-again believers are not Muslims or atheists – our worst enemies occupy the highest offices of the worldly church.
TL;DR: The whole world is a battlefield, and we are the target. Watch what you say around unbelievers and be careful what you do. Any and every misstep will be used against you in the spiritual realm. You are not exempt just because you’re a child of God; you’re held to a higher standard because you’re a child of God.
Knowing this, proceed carefully and accordingly.
THE ONE WHERE SHE TALKS ABOUT WOMEN IN THE CHURCH
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 4, 2025 – I don’t generally like women. When I say “I don’t generally like women”, I mean I don’t generally like women who are not born-again. On the other hand, I’ve yet to meet a born-again woman I didn’t like. That’s just my personal experience as a born-again woman.
I’m not sure my experience as a born-again woman can be applied to anyone except me and I caution against anyone viewing it as a general statement that reflects every born-again woman’s experience. It’s just mine, my personal experience. And whether ironic or not, my personal experience is also that I generally like men, but that could just be because men generally treat me better than women treat me. It could also be that because I’m a woman, women let their guard down around me, showing me aspects of themselves that are not pretty, whereas most men put on their best face for me simply because I’m a woman. But again, that’s just my personal experience and perception.
When it comes to women in the Church (and here I’m talking about born-again women in God’s Church, not the worldly church), there is no distinction between them and men. Paul notoriously talked about the need for women to remain silent in the church and to be subject to men in matters of authority, but these directives are not applicable to God’s Church, just to the worldly church. I would die on that hill.
In God’s Church, there are no distinctions based on race, age, sex, or any other categorical division that muddles the world. The sole criteria to be in God’s Church are genuine spiritual rebirth and right standing with God. There is also no real authority beyond Jesus and God in the Church. Jesus said to call no-one on Earth “Father”, as God is our Father, and to call no-one on Earth “Rabbi”, as he is our rabbi (teacher and master). So, Jesus and God are our sole authorities in the Church, mediated through God’s Holy Spirit, which we received at our rebirth and signifies by its abiding presence with us that we are genuinely reborn.
If God is our Father and Jesus is our teacher and master, there’s no cause for anyone else assuming any position of authority in God’s Church. Having and speaking an opinion or a revelation, as I do here on this blog? Absolutely. God expects and enables us to do that. But holding authority over other members of the Church? No. I do not believe that God wants any of us to do that, and I believe that Jesus’ teachings support my opinion. Peter’s job, as stipulated by Jesus, was to “strengthen the brethren” and to “feed” them, not hold a position of authority over them. We don’t need any authority in the Church beyond God and Jesus.
If this is the case (and I firmly believe it is), then there should be no question of women in the Church being silent or being subject to men. We are all the same in God’s eyes, all under God’s authority and taught by Jesus. If you don’t want to listen to me because you don’t agree with me or don’t believe me, that’s your prerogative and free will choice, but if you don’t want to listen to me solely because I’m a woman, that shows that you’re not genuinely born-again and so don’t belong here.
I could not care less what the world thinks of women. I only care what Jesus and God think of them, and I know both from personal experience as a born-again woman and from what Jesus showed and taught us in the gospels that God and Jesus make no distinction between women and men in the Church. Their voices are equal.
JESUS UNLEASHED
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 3, 2025 – Up until about a week before his resurrection, Jesus was very quiet about who he was. If he revealed his Messiahship at all, it was very hush-hush and to his disciples only, and that obliquely, never directly. If he knew he was targeted for arrest in one place, he avoided it and went to another. He kept a low profile and was always on the move, always looking over his shoulder and cautious in his words. He cautioned his disciples to keep certain things quiet. He cautioned those he healed not to tell anyone who’d healed them. He commanded the demons to shut the hell up about him. He proceeded steadily through his ministry, steadily, steadily, but at times as if walking on eggshells, not on water, and always keeping within the strict bounds dictated by God.
And then about a week before his glorification, Jesus was unleashed. It started with his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding a colt over an impromptu red carpet of strewn palm branches and bystanders’ garments, fit for a king. Because he was a king – JESUS IS KING! – and from that moment, he openly assumed his rightful role.
I used to get depressed about what the Catholics blandly call “Holy Week”, the days leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion. I hated thinking about what was done to Jesus, and the closer the memorial of that event drew near, the more depressed I got. And then one day God showed me another way to think about that week. He showed me not to focus on the crucifixion but on all the events leading up to the resurrection, as relayed in the gospels. From that perspective – God’s perspective – I came to see those days as the most action-packed and exhilarating of Jesus’ entire ministry.
After his triumphal entry, Jesus tore through the temple like a cleansing whirlwind, overturning the tables of the moneychangers and whipping any of them who refused to leave. He also stopped anyone from carrying vessels through the temple proper, commanding them to respect God’s temple as a house of prayer, not a place of commerce. And in that cleansed temple that he now rightfully lorded over, Jesus taught like he’d never taught before. He rebuked the hypocrites for being hypocrites. He directed to give God what is due God and to Caesar what is due Caesar. He told the temple elders and chief priests that by whose authority he did what he did was none of their business and accused them of being like greedy and murderous workers who’d been tasked by their master to maintain his property but instead had destroyed it. He set the Sadducees straight on the resurrection doctrine. He declared himself to be greater than David’s son. He declared the widow’s farthing to be of higher value than everyone else’s contributions to the treasury. And he gave his famed and detailed run-down of what to expect during Earth’s final days.
In short, Jesus owned that week in the same way he owned the temple – fully, unapologetically, and rightfully. The King had ascended his throne – the Highest Priest had entered the Holiest of Holies – and he danced like no-one was watching, like David danced when he brought the Ark of the Covenant into the City of David. And with Jesus’ every word and every movement during that most glorious of all weeks, God was not only fully onboard, he willed it, showing his signature and seal of approval by having his prophets record it in scripture long before it happened.
Jesus unleashed was God’s greatest creation. No-one before or since has come anywhere close to that breathtaking display of power and glory. Still, as Jesus’ followers, we should pray to be unleashed like Jesus was when our hour comes.
So consider this fair warning, all you hypocrites out there: Maybe not today, but one day… we’re coming for you.
UNCHANGING AND NON-NEGOTIABLE: ON ADULTERY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 30, 2025 – Let me ask you a question. It’s not going to be an easy one for some of you to answer, any more than it would have been easy for some of Jesus’ followers to answer 2000 years ago when Jesus first taught on marriage and divorce. The teaching hasn’t changed over the years and is just as relevant and valid today as it was back then.
Here’s the question: If you’re living in an adulterous marriage, which by Jesus’ definition is a marriage where one or both of the spouses is/are divorced from someone who is still alive and the grounds for ending the marriage was something other than fornication – if you’re living in an adulterous union that is in violation of the Commandment not to commit adultery, would you end it because Jesus says it’s sinful?
The teaching is very clear and unequivocal. Even more convincing (or in some cases, even more damning) is that Jesus based this teaching on the book of Genesis, which describes marriage as a lifelong union of a man and a woman that God sanctions by making them “one flesh” and therefore inseparable until death parts them. In other words, Jesus based his teaching on God’s teaching, giving it an authority that cannot be denied.
Many Christians are extremely uncomfortable with God’s and Jesus’ teaching on adultery, and in some cases are even hostile to it. Perhaps they’re uncomfortable because the teaching convicts them, which in turn creates an inner conflict between knowing what’s right and yet choosing what’s wrong, with most people continuing to choose to live in an adulterous union rather than ending it.
What about you? If you’re genuinely born-again, you know about Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce, and you also know that Jesus based his teaching on God’s teaching in Genesis, making it the ultimate and final authority. If you’re genuinely born-again, the question I posed at the outset of this article wouldn’t apply to you because you wouldn’t be living in an adulterous union – you wouldn’t be able to. God’s Holy Spirit would be convicting you so strongly night and day, you’d either have to end the union cold turkey or you’d have to turn from God, and if you’d turned from God after being genuinely born-again, I doubt you’d be reading this because you’d either be dead and on your way to the lake of fire or you’d be too busy serving the devil after signing on with him in a last-ditch attempt to avoid the lake of fire (sadly, you were misinformed about using the sell-your-soul card to avoid that final unavoidable destination). What I’m saying here is that no genuine born-again believer can persist in an adulterous union – enter into one, yes, possibly (we all make mistakes, some of them real humdingers), but persist in it after realizing it’s wrong? No. A genuinely born-again believer would not do that.
And yet we all know many self-styled Christians who are living in adulterous marriages and other forms of adulterous unions. Some are even leaders and pastors within their congregations, and some are rich, famous, and powerful. Why does God permit these people to openly persist in and flaunt their sin? Is it his way of saying it doesn’t matter, that “love is love” and love trumps everything, including his teachings?
Of course not. God permits sin, he doesn’t will it. He’s not giving his stamp of approval to adultery any more than he’s giving his stamp of approval to any other sin. God and his laws are the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If adulterous unions, as defined by Jesus and God, were sinful thousands of years ago, they’re still sinful today, because God’s Truth never changes.
In all the years I attended denominational church services, not once did a minister preach on marriage and divorce. It’s as if, to the worldly church, that pivotal Gospel message doesn’t exist. It’s obvious to me why the worldly church avoids preaching on adulterous unions – so many of their paying customers are neck-deep in adultery that if they offend (i.e., convict) them, they might lose half their congregation. And so it’s safer from a financial point of view to avoid the contentious topic than to potentially shrink the church’s income. Jesus described this as either serving God or serving mammon, seeing that you cannot serve both. It’s clear who the worldly church serves.
I sincerely hope that this article has no relevance to you because you’re not living in adultery, as defined by Jesus in the Gospel. I sincerely hope that this is the case. But if you are entangled in an adulterous marriage or some other adulterous union, remember how the disciples left their wives and children solely because Jesus told them that was a condition of their becoming his disciples. Remember, too, how the remnant who returned to Jerusalem after the exile in Babylon left their “strange” (i.e., non-Jewish) wives and children behind when told that was a condition of their return. Neither the disciples nor the returnees questioned these terms, and both groups unhesitatingly did as they were advised. They are our examples.
You cannot serve God and mammon.
You cannot persist in sin and be a child of God.
You cannot live in adultery and make it to Heaven.
These are the terms, and they are unchanging and non-negotiable.
COME UP HIGHER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 29, 2025 – You don’t have to do any of it – none of it. God hasn’t ordered you to serve him. He hasn’t forced you or coerced you, any more than he forced or coerced Jesus do give himself as a sacrifice for many. God made Jesus an offer, he invited Jesus, he gave Jesus the opportunity to come up higher, just like he gives us the same opportunity. No guns are pressed against temples, no arms twisted behind backs. It’s an invitation that no-one but God can extend – the chance to come up higher for all eternity.
Jesus was insistent, particularly during his final days among us in mortal form – Jesus was insistent that we understand that the trial he agreed to endure was his choice and his choice only. God had not forced him into it. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus was begging his Father to find another way to get done what needed to be done, God would have let him off the hook if he’d said he wanted off, only the terms could not be changed because prophecy had to be fulfilled. The sacrifice had to proceed as laid out in scripture or God would have to extend the offer to someone else. Yet even so, God mitigated the suffering that Jesus agreed to go through, allowing him to die so soon in the proceedings, it caught the guards by surprise. God softened each blow against Jesus as much as he could (even arranging for someone to carry the cross the final distance) while still keeping up his end of the bargain.
And it was a bargain, what happened that day, a bet made by the devil that Jesus wouldn’t make it all the way through. It was the devil who set the terms that God agreed to. It wasn’t God’s will that Jesus suffer; God permitted it, all the while betting that Jesus would indeed make it all the way through, which he did, and in so doing came up as high as he or anyone possibly could.
We, too, are in the process of coming up higher. With each test and each round of suffering that we don’t solicit but agree to endure, we inch up higher on the heavenly rewards scale. We come up higher. Sometimes it’s by a little bit and sometimes it’s by leaps and bounds. But just as we can come up higher, we can also slide down lower. God does everything in his power to prevent that from happening (the alarms ring loud and clear; trust me, you cannot not hear those alarms when you’re in danger of sliding), but it’s still up to us whether we want to go up or down, to say “yay” or “nay” to God. Heavenly rewards are not a guarantee until our time here is done. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, and until it’s over, the upward trajectory can just as easily go downward.
Being born-again doesn’t prevent that slide. We still have free will. We can still say “no” to God. We can still go our own way or even the devil’s way. We’re fine now reading this, comfortable in our seats and with a full belly, but some day when the pain gets too extreme, some of us may choose to do or say whatever it takes to make the pain stop, including denying and betraying the Very Ones we now claim we’d die for. It’s happened before to others and will happen again, maybe to us. We need to pray and pray hard that it doesn’t.
This is a depressing article for me to write, knowing that some of you reading this have already made the deal that cannot be undone and that you’re only here to find a chink in my armour that you can use against me. It’s depressing knowing that some of you who haven’t sold your souls still resolutely refuse to accept any of God’s offers and that you’re only reading this because it amuses you and you look forward to mocking me afterwards. It was depressing for Jesus to dine with the hypocrites and to argue with them and endure their insults, but he did it because it was part of his duties, depressing or not. To get through these and similarly distasteful chores, Jesus always kept his eyes on the prize of his heavenly reward, knowing that with each sling he deflected and every arrow he endured, he moved up higher and therefore closer to God.
You have no idea how close Jesus was to God on that cross. No mortal being has ever been closer to God than Jesus was during his time of suffering. That’s how he got through it – putting himself entirely into God’s hands and letting God guide him, step by step, breath by breath.
You cannot endure what you have coming unless you do the same.
ISRAEL 2.0
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 28, 2025 – According to the results of several recent DNA studies, a large and increasing percentage of people today who identify as Jewish are not descended from Biblical Hebrews but from a mish-mash of other peoples, including Eastern Europeans, Iranians, and even Russians. If these results are accurate, it at the very least raises some compelling questions about the validity of claims regarding Jews’ Biblical right, based primarily on genetics, to the so-called Promised Land.
It is not, however, the role of this blog to get involved in geopolitics. Jesus never got involved beyond the odd comment now and then, and so I don’t get involved, either. But he did advise us to watch, and that I do, and what I see in the ebb and flow of the fortunes and misfortunes of the past and present state of Israel is fascinating. The drama never seems to end (although we know it will some day), with Israel perpetually painting itself as the victim perpetually owed special status and reparations of one sort or another. And woe betide anyone who comes against that resurrected state, not because God is fighting its battles, but because the devil is. You don’t want to go up against the devil, because whatever he does, he’s gotten prior permission from God to do, which means that if you fight against the devil you’re essentially fighting against God.
Not a smart move. Not gonna win that war.
Which is why Jesus steered clear of geopolitics. Let the fallen and the worldly duke it out among themselves. We in the spiritual Kingdom of Israel have better things to do.
And we are the spiritual Kingdom of Israel. We are the prophesied remnant whose pedigree is unquestionable. Israel 2.0 is not a geopolitical realm but a spiritual one, and the entrance to that realm is by rebirth, not natural birth. In the Kingdom, our natural genetics are all over the place, which is fine (and scriptural) because genetics don’t matter here. All that matters if that we’re genuinely born-again. Rebirth – and rebirth alone – constitutes the basis for citizenship in Israel 2.0.
Despite being the valid inheritors of God’s Biblical promises, we claim no right to any land or worldly wealth here. In Heaven, literally endless land and wealth await us, but here on Earth we’re promised only that our daily needs will be met and that we’ll have access to the appropriate resources when required. We are the prophesied poor and afflicted remnant, so we should expect to be poor and afflicted, though never destitute, never without hope, and always blessed. You would think that being poor and afflicted would negate the being blessed part, but miraculously it doesn’t. There’s joy solely in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, and if you’re genuinely reborn, God’s Spirit is always with you to a certain measure, sometimes more and sometimes less. The greater the measure of God’s Spirit, the closer you are to God and the greater your abiding joy.
In the end, then, it wouldn’t really matter even if 100% of modern Jews were found to be genetically identical to the Hebrews of Old Testament times. Your genetics don’t grant you entrance to the prophesied Israel 2.0; the presence of God’s Holy Spirit does.
GOD’S WILL AND GOD’S PERMISSION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 24, 2025 – There’s a difference between what God wills and what God permits.
This is important, so listen up here.
Jesus always did that which pleases the Father. We know that Jesus always did that which pleases the Father because he told us he did: “I always do that which pleases the Father.” When he said he always did that which pleases the Father, Jesus meant he always did God’s will. Again, this is important, so listen up here. It’s important because God’s will is not the same as what God permits, and we need to know the difference.
GOD’S WILL
God’s will is that everyone should do what pleases him. God states multiple times in scripture that if we only do that which pleases him, life will be good for us, because then he can give us all the blessings he wants to give us during our time here. Doing God’s will and doing what pleases the Father is the same thing.
And what is God’s will as it plays out in our everyday lives? Keep the Commandments. Choose the good. Follow Jesus’ example in everything you do, say, and think. Keep your eyes on the prize of your eternal reward, not the earthly ones. Suffer what you need to suffer, whether as an earned reward or a test. Suffer patiently and in silence. Give what God commands you to give, speak what God commands you to speak, be silent when God commands you to be silent. Do whatever God advises you to do one-on-one. Help those he explicitly directs you to help. And remember that not everything God tells you needs to be told to others. Most of what God told Jesus he kept to himself.
GOD’S PERMISSION
God’s permission is not God’s will: God’s permission is our free will intersecting with God’s justice. Doing what God permits is not the same as doing God’s will. Jesus didn’t say he always did that which the Father permits; he said he always did that which pleases the Father; he always did God’s will.
Satan does what God permits. Once upon a time (actually, once upon an eternity), Satan did God’s will, but that all ended with the rebellion in Heaven. Now Satan can only do what God permits: that’s his one and only job description. Satan and all those who follow him can only do what God permits. They cannot do more than what God permits, and you can bet the bank they won’t do less. They hate us and want only for us to suffer during our time here and then lose the reward of Heaven. No matter what they tell their human recruits when they’re enticing them into their ranks, Satan and his horde want only for us to suffer to the most extreme degree, ending with our eternal damnation. God wants the best for us and Satan wants the worst, which is why God strictly limits what Satan is permitted to do, as we see in Job.
God permits suffering as a reward for bad choices, but he also permits suffering as a test. He doesn’t will that we suffer; he permits us to suffer, but always with the proviso that our suffering, if we handle it righteously, will be to our benefit.
When God permits you to suffer, don’t try to avoid it. Don’t revel in it, either (it’s not God’s will that you revel in suffering; reveling in suffering is not a godly response: nor is boasting about it). Endure your suffering. Get through it. Come out the other side. Be silent in the face of God’s tests and negative rewards. If you have them coming, you have no right to complain; if you’re undergoing a test, you have no reason to complain, because “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called.”
God created evil and permits it to thrive only when and where it’s been earned. He doesn’t will evil; he permits it. He uses the forces of evil as a reward for bad choices and as temptations and tests, all of whose end goal is to bring us up higher. Even babies can be on the receiving end of evil, bearing in mind that souls come into the world already sin-stained. The only one who arrived here sin-free was Jesus.
TL;DR
God’s will is that we do what pleases him, like Jesus did, so that everything will be good for us. Jesus is our best and greatest example of how to do God’s will. But because not everyone chooses to do his will, God permits an earned and precise measure of evil to exist in the form of temptations, tests, and suffering, with the aim of bringing us up higher. God wills that we not only to come to knowledge of him – the ultimate good – but form a close and loving bond with him, like he has with Jesus. This can only happen if we do God’s will.
GUARANTEED BUZZKILL?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 22, 2025 – The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is not convincing the world he doesn’t exist but convincing the world that sin doesn’t exist. In convincing the world that sin doesn’t exist, the devil created a disconnect between cause and effect, action and reaction, sin and suffering, crime and punishment. In so doing, he birthed the Age of Victimhood, whose motto is Thou Shalt Do Whatever You Want and whose symbol is an accusatory finger pointing at everyone and everything except back at itself.
When you take away the fundamental truth that the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned, you’re left only with lies, and you can’t make sense of your pain if you’re basing your explanation for it on lies. You also can’t find a solution for it if you’re blind to its cause. There is no pain and no suffering that can’t be explained by the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned, including pain that comes from tests and temptations, because tests and temptations are themselves a form of paying forward for the promised reward of a future pain-free existence, if you deal with the tests and temptations righteously, like Job did.
The most unpopular truth that will instantaneously lose you the most friends, listeners, readers, upvotes, etc., is the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned. It’s such a guaranteed buzzkill for anyone who’s not ready to receive it, Jesus didn’t teach it directly but instead used phrases like “the measure you mete is the measure you get in return”. Even in softened form, this truth irks and in some cases outrages people who aren’t ready receive it.
As I mentioned, the devil has been very successful in making us believe we’re all innocent victims. If we’re innocent, then there’s no sin. If there’s no sin, there’s no cause for guilt; if there’s no guilt, there’s no repentance; if there’s no repentance, there’s no turning back to God. And this ultimately is what the devil is aiming for – keeping souls alienated from God for as long as possible, until they reach the point of no more return.
I know that if you’re genuinely born-again, you eagerly embrace the truth that the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned. You don’t shun it; you don’t question it; and it doesn’t anger you. Instead (and perhaps strangely) it comforts you because it serves as a guide, like rumble strips along the side of the highway that jolt you into straightening your course back onto the road. You accept the unpleasant jolt as earned and so you willingly – even automatically – submit to it not because you’re masochistic but because you understand that God’s rod and staff are meant to comfort you through correction. They’re meant to comfort you.
They’re there to comfort you.
God corrects us by allowing us to suffer the consequences of our actions, and he does this because he loves us and wants us to come home. We can’t go home if we let sin separate us from God. And so he lets us know that the pain we feel is the pain we’ve earned, and he asks us to accept the pain, and submit to it, and get it over with, and learn whatever lesson we need to learn so that we don’t have to go through it ever again.
And he does all this for one purpose and one purpose only: to prepare our souls for Heaven.
ONE OF A CITY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 20, 2025 – We born-again believers are the rarest of rare breeds. Even though, as Jesus promises, God will give his Holy Spirit to anyone who asks in sincerity and in truth, most people – including self-identifying Christians – have given God’s offer a hard pass. Sure, they want the peace and the joy that come with being a card-carrying member of the prophesied remnant (who wouldn’t?), but they don’t want the persecutions. They don’t want the afflictions. They don’t want the poverty. They don’t want to give up all the things they would naturally and without effort give up as a believer.
And they don’t want the whispers.
Jesus well knew those whispers, even from his own family. On one occasion, his mother and sisters came to ‘rescue’ him in Capernaum as if he were suffering a mental illness episode, and his brother James goaded him for not publicly revealing himself as a prophet. First-born males at that time were traditionally afforded a position of honor, respect, and privilege within the family, but Jesus, from these two brief glimpses into his home life, appeared to have foregone the familial deference. He had instead become an object of pity and ridicule, foreshadowing what we all experience as born-again believers amidst unbelievers.
Tie me to a stake and burn me, but I would never not want to be born-again, I would never not want God’s Spirit in me, no matter the cost. There is no temptation or threat that would make me turn my back on God and deny Jesus and return to the earthly hell of living without God’s Spirit. I’ve done my time as an atheist, and I’m forever done with it. Offer me all the wealth and power in the world, and that still wouldn’t be enough. Offer me beauty sufficient to launch ships and bring down nations, and even that wouldn’t turn my head. I already have all the wealth and power that has any value, through the abiding presence of God’s Holy Spirit, and I’m holding out for the promised perfected beauty that comes with my place in Heaven and lasts not for a time or a lifetime, but forever.
There is no temptation and no threat that would make me not want to be born-again. And I know I’m not alone in knowing this. I know that you, my brothers and sisters reading this, feel the same. I know that your grounding in God is not skin deep, is not for upvotes and likes, is not just for the time being until (what appears to be) a better offer comes along or the price of being a Jesus follower becomes too high or too inconvenient. I’ve seen the superficial believers fall away to other beliefs as easily as someone picks the pie rather than the pudding in a cafeteria line-up. But we don’t pick God; he picks us. We are the pie in the cafeteria line-up, the apple pie, the apple pie of God’s eye.
You will not know what it means to be truly alive until you’re born-again. We are one of a city, two of a family, as rare as hen’s teeth and for many just as mythical: “Who are these born-again believers that you speak of? Bring them to me! I wish to examine them!” The curious and curiouser approach me cautiously, as you would a rare bird borne by a storm far from its native habitat. They’re afraid to startle me into flight and so weigh their every word. We talk about the weather. We talk about the past. We talk about the weather again while they search my face for clues to a mystery they’re certain I must be hiding. I watch them searching, though I hide nothing. They cannot see what they cannot see.
It’s not my doing. It’s God’s.
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There is no threat or temptation that would make me not want to be born-again. I have thrown down this gauntlet. I have stated my position: It will not change.
“Jesus is King!” God is my everything.
I patiently await your response.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 