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BIBLE-BURNING: HOW JESUS RESPONDS
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 19, 2023 – Someone sent me a video yesterday featuring a group of teen-agers burning Bibles. The person was outraged and assumed I would be, too. I can’t say I was happy to see the video, but I wasn’t outraged. I was deeply sad for the kids doing the burning and advised the person who sent me the video to pray for them, not be angry with them.
As Christians – and especially as born-again believers with God’s Holy Spirit with us 24/7 – we can’t respond to provocations the way the world does. Jesus tells us not to be offended in ANYTHING, and that includes Bible-burnings. The devil does these things (with God’s permission, by the way) to provoke us to hate rather than love, to curse rather than bless, and to dismiss certain people as being unworthy of our prayers rather than pray for them. The reason Jesus taught us to love our enemies specifically through prayers and blessings is that he knew we would be tempted to hate them and therefore not to pray for them and not to bless them.
And it is a temptation, the burning of a Bible. It’s a test to see whether you respond with love or with hate to the ones doing the burning. The devil’s betting that you’ll respond with hate, and God’s doing everything he can to get you to respond with love, including sending me to remind you how to react to the devil’s provocations.
It’s the devil’s job to provoke us, and he does it very well. Our job is to see the provocations as tests and temptations and to respond as Jesus taught us to respond, not as the world or our emotions goad us to respond.
I said a prayer for those kids yesterday, and I’m saying another one for them again today. I invite you to pray for them, too. They clearly need prayers.
If we don’t pray for them, who will?
I was blessed to have a grandmother who prayed for me for 36 years until I was finally freed from the devil’s bondage. I like to think that other people also prayed for me throughout the years, people I knew and maybe a few strangers, too, righteous people who saw in me a need for prayer and simply filled it. We need to remember that praying, not protesting and not outrage, is the most powerful force in the universe, and scripture says that the prayers of a righteous man availeth much. If we’re born-again, we’re righteous by default through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit with us. So it’s our job to pray, as much as it’s the devil’s job to tempt.
As you watch this video, please focus on the kids, not the Bibles. The Bibles can be replaced; the souls of the kids can’t. Even if all the Bibles in the world were burned, God’s Word would remain because it doesn’t live in a book; it lives in the hearts and minds of believers.
Please pray for these kids. And while you’re at it, maybe think about getting another Bible to have on hand for someone who may need it some day.
ARE YOU A MISERABLE CHRISTIAN? HERE’S THE SOLUTION
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 16, 2023 – At the root of every miserable Christian with weak faith and a messed-up life is unforgiveness, is a bitter heart, is finger-pointing and a refusal to let go of grievances.
John, in one of his letters, says that you can’t love God and at the same time hold a grievance against someone. Holding a grievance cancels out your love for God. What’s worse is that holding a grievance while saying you love God makes you a hypocrite, because you can’t hate and love at the same time. If you hate someone (which is what you’re doing if you hold a grievance against them), it’s impossible to love God.
And you know what Jesus says about hypocrites.
You definitely do not want to be on Jesus’ hypocrite list.
Did you know that you cannot get into Heaven with bitterness in your heart? If you die with a bitter heart you go to Hell first, and then to the lake of fire for all eternity. That’s the reward for having a bitter heart from refusing to let go of a grievance.
Having faith in God and Jesus necessarily means that you love them and trust them, but you can’t love them and trust them and at the same time hold a grievance against someone. It’s impossible to do that, and if you say you’re doing it, you’re lying to yourself.
Do you have any bitterness in your heart? Is there someone you’re still blaming, someone you talk about when they’re not around, rehashing what they did to you? Maybe you still throw it in their face when you talk to them. Maybe you don’t do it directly; maybe you just mention the grievance in passing. Or maybe your grievance is against the government or against a system you see as stacked against you. Maybe you’re blaming society in general or even the devil. Whatever it is, if it involves finger-pointing, you show that you’re still blaming, still hanging onto your grievance.
If you’ve forgiven someone – genuinely forgiven them – you don’t talk about the grievance anymore, not to your friends, not to your relatives, not to your lawyer, not to law enforcement, not to your therapist, not to your priest or minister, not to the person you’ve forgiven, not even to yourself OR TO GOD. If the grievance comes to mind, you simply say within your heart “I’ve chosen to forgive”. Anything else means you haven’t.
It’s important to note that you need to make the choice to forgive as many times as the grievance comes to mind. If it comes to mind 70 times 7 times a day (or more), you make the choice to forgive 70 times 7 times a day (or more). It’s that simple.
Did you know that a heart bitter with unforgiveness will separate you from God? If you’re separated from God, you’re separated from Jesus, and if you’re separated from God and Jesus, there’s no way you’re going to make it Home, never mind the miserable messed-up life you’re going have for the rest of your time on Earth.
At the root of every messed-up, weak-in-the-faith, unhappy Christian is a bitter heart that is harbouring unforgiveness. The only way to overcome it is to make the choice to forgive (as many times as you have to), and then God can forgive (heal) you.
BEAUTIFUL THING
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 16, 2023 – To love God is to serve him, is to have faith in him and to worship him, and all these things have the same wellspring, which is full submission to God. Loving God, serving him, having faith in him, and worshiping him are all expressions of submission. You cannot love God without submitting to him, any more than you can serve him or have faith in him or worship him without submitting to him.
Without full submission to God – as Jesus showed us and taught us – you cannot know God.
But what does it mean to submit to God?
Your one and only possession on Earth is your will. God gave it to you freely and intended for you to use it freely, which is why it’s called free will. Your free will is what enables you to make decisions, to choose, to accept or to reject. Your free will is centered in your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
When you submit to God, you choose God, which is to say you choose his Way and his choices, like Jesus did. The first Commandment, which Jesus taught us is the greatest of all Commandments, is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. In other words, the first Commandment is to submit to God everything we are and everything we can call our own. Our free will is all we can really call our own, and it gains expression through our choices that are driven by our heart, soul, mind, and strength. So when we submit to God, we give back to him our sole prized possession – our free will. We give it back to him as he gave it to us – freely, and with no strings attached.
It’s a beautiful thing to submit to God, to freely and lovingly give back to him what he so freely and lovingly gave to us. This is submission to God. When you do it, when you free-willingly submit to God, your will and God’s become one. God can then work through you for your good and for the good of all those around you.
Like I said, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful thing to give to God the one thing that’s truly yours, and to say to him “Please take it”, and “Thank you”.
When you do that, when you give to God the one and only thing you truly own, you become like Abraham and like Moses and like Joshua and like Caleb, and like Samuel and like David and like John the Baptist, and like Jesus. You become like all those who, since the sacrifice of Jesus, have submitted to God in Jesus’ name.
In free-willingly giving your free will back to God – in free-willingly and fully submitting to God – you join the powerful and growing cloud of witnesses that Paul spoke of. You become part of God’s family and are afforded all the privileges of being in God’s family, as his child.
Other than to be God himself, there is no greater position on Earth or in Heaven than to be a child of God.
It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.
THE DEALMAKERS
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 14, 2023 – I thank God when I hear that unbelievers who were my friends before I was born again are barely scraping by. I celebrate their poverty, because I know it means they haven’t made any deals with the devil and so are still spiritually salvageable while there’s still time. Some of these people came into sizeable wealth through inheritance or lottery wins, but then quickly dissipated it and have since been living modestly. This is a good sign. Poverty and living modestly usually indicate a soul uncompromised.
On the other hand, I have some relatives and acquaintances who took the devil’s bait and became “rich” and “successful”. They zoomed to the top of their respective fields and have remained there, regardless of their ability or performance. Recessions have no effect on their jobs or their earnings. Even run-ins with law enforcement can’t keep them down, as the charges are dismissed and then expunged from the record.
When you make a deal with the devil, you not only get the promised wealth and whatever else you bargained for (fame, power, etc.), but you’re above the law. You’re untouchable. If you mess up, you get warned by your mentor or other ‘brethren’ and are then disciplined back into compliance. But the devil’s protection continues even throughout your disciplining, such that if you’re hastily removed from one position, another will quickly and quietly be offered you.
There is no reason to celebrate the alleged success of these people. I have profound pity for them, but most are beyond our prayers. Most have definitively sealed the deal, and there’s no going back. These are the children of the devil that Jesus spoke about. They were in positions of authority during the time of his ministry, and they’re in positions of authority today. They’ve always been in positions of authority, ever since the devil got the go-ahead from God thousands of years ago to start offering his deals. The higher up the position in an organization, the greater the likelihood that the person occupying that position has made the deal.
However, I also know people who made it to the top of their profession solely through hard work and dedication. Not everyone who succeeds in their chosen field has made a deal with the devil. But you’ll know who these people are, the authentic successes, because they’re often unceremoniously dumped from their hard-earned position to make way for a dealmaker. I have seen this time and time again. But God still looks after these people and gives them their earned reward, one way or another.
When a dealmaker goes so far off-script or runs so far afoul of the law that the charges cannot simply be dismissed or reduced to a minimum, they are often “disappeared” or “suicided”. I know of such a man who went off-script and ran afoul of the law one too many times. His passing was recently announced in the local papers with only a vague reason given for his death. And although he was at the top of his field when he died, no commemorative ceremony was arranged, no fawning obituaries were penned, as they had been for his much lesser colleagues. Building wings and scholarships that had been named after him were hastily and quietly renamed. His publications were removed from the teaching syllabus. The dealmaking brethren left behind dare not utter his name, lest they, too, suffer the same fate.
It’s brutal, what happens to disgraced dealmakers and their families. The threatened brutality is what keeps the dealmakers in line.
But here comes the whole point of this article. I’ve tucked it way down here in the middle as a reward for those who’ve soldiered through this far. Of the dealmakers who naively entered the deal for fame, fortune, power, etc., and not for worship of the devil – these dealmakers can still turn back to God. These dealmakers are not beyond redemption. They are, as it were, foster children of the devil rather than his very flesh and blood. They can still break their bonds and turn back to God.
Dealmakers are all around us. They may be our teacher, our lawyer, our accountant, our minister (yes, you read that right, our minister), or our local politician. Anyone we know in a position of authority could be a dealmaker. They’ve been trained, these people, to be kind and generous to the unwashed masses. But their kindness and generosity is arm’s length and superficial, like a smile that just stops short of reaching the eyes. That’s one way you’ll know them, by their superficial kindness that comes from a directive from their superiors, not from the heart.
There are other ways, too, to identify them, such as by distinctive rings or handshakes or words they addend to their messages. I know of some of these identifiers, but frankly it’s all too tiresome to list them here. Having been an atheist and a former dabbler in the occult myself, I find the whole capitulation to Satan thing tiresome and cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would do it. Is money really that important? Fame? Power? Social standing? Legacy? As Jesus reminds us, what can you give in exchange for your soul, once you’ve given it away? The combined wealth of the entire world is still not enough to give in exchange for even one soul.
Let me repeat that in bold in case you missed it – the combined wealth of the entire world is still not enough to give in exchange for even one soul. That’s how valuable a soul is, and yet here are all these people, millions upon millions of them throughout the ages, signing away their soul for trinkets and baubles and a front-row seat to the tragic farce that their life becomes after they sign on with Satan.
It’s no wonder most of them become alcoholics and drug abusers and addicted to all manner of porn. They grasp at anything to escape the knowledge of what they’ve done, even as more and more demonic spirits pour into them and goad them on to increasingly extreme levels of excess and abuse. For most of these dealmakers, there’s no escape. They knew what they were doing going into the deal and accepted it. These people are beyond our prayers.
But for the ones who signed on not really knowing what they were getting themselves into – these people are salvageable. These people we can still reach with our prayers. They can still turn back to God, though it would mean giving up everything Satan has given them. It would also likely mean their immediate death upon repentance.
This might be a bit of a hard sell, getting them to give everything up and then die to boot, but even so, it would be good if someone had a ministry specifically for these people.
I think such a ministry would be extraordinarily blessed by God.
“There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents, than over 99 righteous people who don’t need repentance.”
Luke 15-7
FLEEING THE CITIES: SPENDING TIME ALONE WITH GOD
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 14, 2023 – When Jesus wanted to spend some alone-time with God, he’d go into the wilderness or up a mountain. He wouldn’t go into a city. Cities tend to attract the worst of the worst and be openly hostile to God-fearing people. That is less a judgement than a statement of fact. Before I was born-again, I wanted only to live in big cities, the bigger the better. The dark frenetic energy in me was drawn to the dark frenetic energy in them. But after I was born-again, I felt alienated and out of place in cities, even in those where I’d previously lived for years. That’s when I made my shift first to the suburbs (slightly better than cities, but not by much) and then to rural areas and small towns and villages.
Today, cities repulse me, and I have no intention to live in one again.
Everywhere we go as born-again believers, God and Jesus are with us through God’s Holy Spirit, but cities are so full of evil now, they’re best avoided. It’s almost as if you’re tempting God if you live in a city, he has to erect such a massive bulwark around you to keep you spiritually and physically safe. That’s not to say you don’t also need God’s protection in small towns and rural areas, but not as much, not in most small places.
I spent the winter in relative isolation in a house in the woods in northern New Brunswick. God and Jesus had me all to themselves for three whole months. It was the best winter I ever had! When I left, I visited Niagara Falls for a week, which was to me like a spiritual culture shock. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. The evil was palpable and all around me all the time. God was adamant that I not stay there, so he whisked me away to a little village out in the boonies.
Cities have always been a magnet for tormented souls and their attendant demons, but the sheer volume of dark souls and entities crowding into cities these days is rapidly changing the urban spiritual landscape dramatically for the worse. Even urban churches are so heavily compromised now as to be Christian in name only. When I was forcibly removed from a chapel last fall in Toronto, God revealed to me that these former holy sites are no longer consecrated and therefore no longer his jurisdiction. Sure, he owns and controls everything in creation, but he’s given the administration of the world into the hands of Satan and to whomever Satan seduces into serving him. Which means that Satan, not God, is now in charge of most churches.
Making things even worse, the recent influx of newcomers to former Christian lands is introducing new fallen entities into the mix. Many of these demons have not been in these places before, or at least not in sufficient numbers to be a force to contend with. They’re wasting no time expanding their spiritual turf by winning over new converts to Satanism.
When you’re physically isolated from unbelievers, you’re physically isolated from the demons that attend on them. God’s Holy Spirit is with you regardless of whether you’re in a crowd or all alone, but it’s better to be as far away from people’s attendant demons as possible.
I’m not saying to avoid people who aren’t God-fearing; Jesus didn’t teach us to do that. All I’m saying is that cities have become (as scripture warns us they would) “the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit.” These places aren’t meant for born-again believers to live in.
Spiritual Babylon reigns in the cities of former Christendom. Unbelievers want to live in a world without God and his Commandments, and this is what a world without God and his Commandments looks like: crowded, expensive, violent, lawless, corrupt, mistrustful, fragmented, and dirty, not to mention slowly but surely turning locals into despised and displaced strangers in their own land. Moses warned it would be like this for those who turn their backs on God, and so it is.
There’s no happy ending on this planet for us born-again believers, just a series of temporary reprieves in quiet out-of-the-way places until it’s time to go Home. But thank God for his sanctuaries! He will continue to carve them out and place us in them as long as we choose to remain his people.
Like Jesus showed us, out in the boonies is where we should be anyway, as there we’re closest to God.
A REMINDER TO HONOR YOUR MOTHER
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 14, 2023 – Honoring their mother doesn’t come easily to some people, which is why God made it a Commandment.
Commandments are non-negotiable. If you submit to them, you’ll be blessed; if you rebel against them, you’ll suffer.
Many Christians habitually break the Commandment to honor their mother and then suffer for it, not knowing the cause of their suffering. They don’t see their unkind words about their mother as breaking the Commandment, they don’t see their continued blaming and shaming of their mother as breaking the Commandment, but anything unkind you say about your mother is breaking the Commandment. Even if you complain about your mother to your spouse or your best friend or your counsellor, you’re breaking the Commandment. No matter what your mother’s done to you in the past, there is no cause that justifies breaking the Commandment.
To honor your mother means to speak kindly of her. It doesn’t matter if she was a mass murderer who made it her life’s sole purpose to destroy you and everything and everyone you love – you still honor your mother by speaking kindly of her. And not only speaking kindly of her but thinking kindly of her. This may seem like an impossible task for some Christians, but it needs to be done. The Commandment needs to be kept, no exceptions.
If you find it difficult to speak and think kindly of your mother and need to talk to someone about it, talk to God. Talk to Jesus. Go to them in prayer and talk to them through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, which is your very great privilege if you’re a Christian. Ask them to help you to think and speak kindly of your mother because you want to keep the Commandment but you’re having a hard time doing it. Keeping the Commandment should be more important to you, as a Christian, than pointing a finger of blame at your mother, no matter what she’s done.
I constantly hear Christians, including professional preachers, say nasty things about their mother and complain that she was abusive. Other Christians, hearing these complaints, chime in with their own horror stories about their mother. This kind of behavior normalizes breaking the Commandment so that people don’t even realize they’re doing it. They put their hurt feelings and bad memory confessions ahead of submission to God.
As Christians, we can’t do this. Submission to God and his Commandments is more important than nursing grievances. If you’ve trash-talked, complained about, or otherwise dishonored your mother in the past, you need to stop. If you haven’t made the decision to choose to forgive your mother for whatever she’s done to you, you need to do it. The decision is only yours to make. Choosing to forgive and honoring your mother go hand-in-hand.
I hope that you take this reminder about honoring your mother to heart. God’s Commandments are not meant to make our lives miserable but to prevent us from having a miserable life. Honoring your mother is as important a Commandment as all the others, with just as grievous consequences if you choose not to obey it.
Note that the Commandment is not to love your mother, but to honor her. God is not asking something of you that you’re not able to do. If you need his help to honor your mother, ask for it. He’ll give it to you willingly and generously. Again, please take this reminder about honoring your mother to heart. Knowingly, willfully, and unrepentantly breaking one of God’s Commandments will keep you out of Heaven.
HOW TO GET HAPPY
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 14, 2023 – We own nothing but our free will.
Our body isn’t ours. Our soul isn’t ours. None of our material belongings are ours.
Everything belongs to God EXCEPT our free will. He’s made our will entirely ours.
It’s our one and only possession.
When the truth of that statement sinks in, when you understand that the device that you’re reading this blog on doesn’t belong to you (even if you bought it), life is simplified. Whether you have this or that thing doesn’t really matter because even if you do have this or that thing in your possession, it doesn’t belong to you. It’s on loan from God.
God owns all of creation. He made it, he owns it, and he decides who gets to use it. That seat your sitting on? God’s. That bed you slept in last night? God’s. The food you ate yesterday? God’s. All God’s. God owns everything and everyone, except for their free will.
I’m grateful to God for what he lends to me for my use during my time on Earth. It’s important that we be grateful for what God gives us rather than to complain about what we don’t have or to whine for something better. I used to complain and whine. It was almost my default. I’d look around me and be dissatisfied because I would look through the eyes of dissatisfaction rather than through the eyes of gratitude. God can’t work through dissatisfaction. God can’t work through complaints and whining. He works through gratitude. I had to learn that the hard way, but it was a lesson well worth learning, and I thank God for that.
So now I’m grateful by default. That’s how I get happy. No matter what my circumstances, I thank God. That simple gesture of thanking God brings me such profound joy that I can’t stop thanking God – I thank him for my circumstances, whether good or bad, and when he floods me with joy for my gratitude, I thank him for the joy, which then further increases my joy. The more grateful we are, the more God’s Spirit flows through us, and the more joy we feel.
Our feeling of joy is the presence of God’s Spirit.
So take a moment to look around you right now. Look at what you have and look at what other people have and realize that everything, whether yours or theirs, belongs to God. Why waste your time and energy trying to accumulate more of what ultimately belongs to God? Better to be grateful for what God’s blessed you with and be satisfied with that.
Better to spend your time and energy storing up treasures in Heaven. Because even though our one and only possession here on Earth is our free will, in Heaven we’ll have as many treasures as we want, and for all eternity.
Better to work toward that.
A MESSAGE TO MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 14, 2023 – When I was newly born-again, I thought all Christians were the same. I guess it was a hold-over belief from when I was an atheist, only instead of wanting to avoid all Christians (like I did as an atheist), I wanted to be near Christians and interact with them. I saw them all as my brothers and sisters, and I loved them all and accepted them all without question.
Then hard cold reality intervened in the form of denominational Christianity. Because I’d been baptised a Roman Catholic as an infant, I started attending mass at Roman Catholic churches shortly after my rebirth. God let me go there because it was what I needed at the time, which was a daily dose of scripture and to be around people who at least believed that he and Jesus existed. So, for three and a half years, I attended Roman Catholic churches pretty much every day, until one bright sunny winter morning, God invited me to leave. It wasn’t for me anymore.
I then found myself without a church to attend.
I tried on several Protestant denominations for size, but none of them fit. They all had carved-in-stone creeds that they’d recite and which I didn’t necessarily believe. To be honest, I’m not sure what I was looking for in a church in those days, but I was certain that when I found it, I’d know.
In my long quest to find a church where I felt at home, I’d take comfort in reminding myself that Jesus didn’t have a place to go to either and that he was even kicked out of his hometown synagogue. He kind of synagogue-surfed after that (like I church-surfed), using the local synagogue of whatever town he was passing through as a pop-up classroom to teach people about the Kingdom. But he didn’t identify as a Pharisee or a Sadducee or any of the other splinter groups that had formed over the years into quasi-denominations of Judaism, much like Christianity has splintered in denominations over the centuries. Jesus stood alone in God’s Kingdom, which is God’s Church on Earth.
God’s Church is also where I stand.
But Jesus didn’t bash denominations, and it’s important that we realize he didn’t. (I had to learn that the hard way, but at least I finally learned it lol.) He occasionally schooled believers on the fallacy of some of their creeds, like he schooled the seven churches in Revelation, but he didn’t bash them. Each group has a perspective that suits certain believers, and God lets those perspectives exist. In the same way, God allows the four gospels to exist, some of which conflict with the others. God allows conflicting details because how many demoniacs kept breaking their chains (was it one or two?) ultimately isn’t important: what is important is the core belief of believers.
Which brings me back to when I was a newly born-again believer and saw all Christians as my brothers and sisters. In those days, I made no distinction between Roman Catholic or Orthodox Catholic or Russian Orthodox or Anglican or Baptist or any of the now hundreds of denominations that identify as Christian. All I saw was my family of believers.
I know that God sees us like that, too. He looks on our heart, not on our creeds. He looks to see if we truly believe or just say we believe. God will know we believe because we’ll keep his Commandments and do as Jesus taught us to do. That’s how you can tell believers from unbelievers, not by the denominational church they attend or the things they recite while they’re there. If they do what Jesus taught them to do (love your neighbours, love your enemies, treat others as you want to be treated), then God knows they’re genuinely his children and he accepts them as such.
I guess I wasn’t far off the mark when I was newly reborn, thinking that all Christians were the same. All genuine Christians, at their core, are the same, as they all strive to follow God’s Commandments and live as Jesus taught them. Their rituals may differ, their stated beliefs may differ, but their core is the same, and that’s all that matters to God.
I wish that we, as Christians, could look past our differences of rituals and stated beliefs and get back to seeing each other as brothers and sisters of Jesus and children of God. We sorely need to come together as a family, so that we can do what families do, which is to love and support each other. But most of all, we need to come together as a family for the sheer pleasure of just being with each other and enjoying each others’ company, which is what God wants us to do. Like a good and loving Father, God loves family get-togethers more than anything else, which is why he’s planning a big party for us for when we get Home.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if believers of every denomination would just get together and worship God as believers rather than as Roman Catholics, Baptists, Anglicans, etc.? In God’s Church, which exists in the spiritual realm, that’s how we appear – stripped of our denominations, clad uniformly in clean white linen, and united by our love for God and Jesus. There are no denominations in God’s Church. I wish there weren’t any here in the earthly realm, either, but since there are, I wish we could look past them.
So this is what I pray: that before everything goes to hell in a handbasket (which it will, according to scripture), we’ll all get together as one family of believers, leaving our denominational differences behind and embracing and loving each other as the brothers and sisters we are, as the family God made us.
How powerful our witness would then be!
A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT: SOWING SEEDS WITH GOD
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 8, 2023 – The strangest thing is, I don’t remember saying it. I mean, I must have said it, otherwise this person wouldn’t have told me how much it meant to her and how it made her look at her situation differently. I must have said it; I just don’t remember saying it.
This is how it is sometimes when you minister to people. You have no idea what will stick and what won’t, what will sprout and what won’t, what will mean something to someone and what won’t. The funny thing is that when you think you’ve said something that will resonate, you find that no-one paid any attention.
But God did. God hears everything you say and he sees everything you do. So everything you say and everything you do he can work with to your credit. He can use your unwitting labour to tend his fields, and then reward you with the fruit.
Sometimes you’re just throwing seeds to the wind, not knowing if even one of them will eventually sprout. But you have to do it; you have to sow your seeds into the cold dark silent earth, praying for rain, praying for heat and sunlight, praying that something eventually will grow. You have to do it because it’s your job description as a born-again believer. And strangely, the more you do it, the more you find you can’t not do it.
It’s a great mystery, sowing into God’s Kingdom. Jesus told us to go out into all the world and preach the Good News, so here we are, going out into all the world (mostly via the Internet) and preaching the Good News. But who knows who’ll hear us, who’ll read us, and most of all, who knows what will stick, what will sprout, and what will grow roots deep enough to endure to the end?
Sometimes I think about my labours thus far in the Kingdom – 24 years’ worth – and all I see is someone dropping seeds hither, thither, and yon. Dropping seeds and hoping and praying. But that’s our job. God only expects us to do our job, nothing more. If we do our job (dropping seeds hither, thither, and yon), God can take it from there. He can take our most bizarre and unlikely seed-sowing effort and turn it into a conversion, like a mustard seed turns into a bush as big as a tree. We just never know what will sprout. That’s the wonderful part about it – never knowing the impact our words and deeds have on others, because it’s not our efforts doing the impacting, it’s God moving through them in his mysterious way.
I’m not a fan of the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” (horrible depiction of a holy angel!), but I like the part where Jimmy Stewart’s character finds out how much he’s positively impacted people’s lives. He’d just stumbled through his days like most of us do, trying his best to do his best under whatever circumstance, never realizing (until he does) how important his humble contributions have been to the lives of his family, his friends, his colleagues, his community, and beyond.
If he hadn’t had the spiritual crisis that formed the fulcrum of the movie, he may never have found out how big his mustard bush was.
So we need to keep on keepin’ on with our ministering, whatever form it takes, knowing that as long as we do our part (sow the seeds), God will do the rest (water them, germinate them, sprout them, tend them, etc.). We need to have faith and keep going, even if we see no discernible fruit from our efforts.
Because at some point, someone’s going to come up to you and thank you for what you said to them, and you won’t have a clue what they’re talking about, even as you nod and smile. And when that happens, you’ll know that God did his mysterious ways thing again but is giving you all the credit, and that of all the seeds that you sowed over all the years, at least one sprouted.
And that has made all the difference.
PERSECUTION, TORTURE AND MARTYRDOM
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 7, 2023 – I’ve been reading the Bible now for nearly 24 years, since the day I was reborn. For the first three years, I read only the New Testament; after that, I read the Old Testament as well. I’ve worn through three Bibles so far, having to retire them when the pages started falling out. I guess they don’t make Bibles like they used to.
God’s gotten on my case a few times about making the Bible an idol. He tells me it’s an instruction manual and a history of my people, not something to be held aloft and worshiped. (There are no Bibles in Heaven.) Even so, I don’t eat or drink when I’m reading the Bible, like I do when I read magazines or newspapers. I take the Bible to bed with me every night. I pack it carefully into my luggage when I travel. I kiss it on occasion, like I’d kiss God if I could.
And I read it every day. I cannot not read the Bible. It feeds me and brings me new revelations. God himself reads it to me, through his Spirit, highlighting what I need to learn.
Today, he highlighted this verse in one of Paul’s letters:
“All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”
Note that Paul wrote “all that will live godly”, not “some that will live godly”. That means all of us who genuinely follow Jesus will be persecuted, no exceptions. That was Paul’s lived experience 2000 years ago, and nothing has changed since then. Born-again believers who remain true to God and Jesus can expect to be persecuted.
So I asked God if he could flesh out a bit what Paul meant by persecution.
The Christian martyrs list.
Jesus was crucified. Stephen was stoned. John the Baptist was beheaded. Paul was beheaded. Peter was crucified upside down. James (Jesus’ brother) was stoned. And that’s just the start of the list. Millions of others since then have been martyred for no other reason than they’d repented and believed the Gospel. Living godly in Christ Jesus put them on the wrong side of the worldly powers-that-be.
The persecution, torture, and martyrdom of Jesus’ followers has been ongoing for 2000 years, but by far the worst of it was in the 20th century. In the various revolutions and regime changes, such as in Armenia, Russia, Spain, Germany, and China, somewhere between 20 million to 65 million Christians were slaughtered. This is on top of the untold numbers of believers, starting with John the Baptist, who were tortured and killed, including during the 800 years of the Inquisition that mostly targeted Bible-believing Christians. The aim in torturing these poor souls was to break them so that they’d finally agree to serve the papacy. In 2022, the same office of the Vatican that has administered the Inquisition throughout the centuries was renamed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. In other words, the persecution, torture and martyrdom of Bible-believing Christians is unapologetically ongoing.
Jesus himself warned us about our sure prospect of persecution, including martyrdom, telling us that those who killed us would believe they were doing God’s will.
Which brings us to the likely prospect of our own martyrdom. When Paul wrote “persecution”, he meant a broad range of ill treatment, from taunting to beating to bankrupting to exiling, but he also meant martyrdom. He meant we’d likely be killed for our beliefs. We wouldn’t be killed for murder, mind you. Nor for rape. Nor for plotting against the powers-that-be – no, we’d be killed solely for what we believe, for what we read about and write about every day: God’s Truth. We’d be killed for believing and teaching God’s Word.
Are you ready to die like Jesus or Paul or Stephen or Peter, or like all the other believers who were tortured to death by agents of the worldly powers-that-be? If you’re not ready to be martyred, you’d better start getting ready, because your martyrdom could come any day, and who knows what form it will take. I hope this knowledge gives you pause. As born-again believers, we live and move in God’s Kingdom, but the Kingdom is smack dab in the middle of Satan’s realm, and Satan hates us and wants us dead and gone. As long as we’re here and witnessing the Good News, we’re a thorn in his eye and a spanner in his works, not to mention a living breathing reminder of everything he lost.
Scripture says that God’s people will suffer all manner of persecution, ending, for some, with martyrdom. If you count yourself among God’s people, you have to accept that you’ll be persecuted, which might also include being martyred.
The Bible, as God reminds me every now and then, is an instruction manual as well as a history of our people. We need to read it because we need to learn how to deal successfully with the rest of our time on Earth. Today, God taught me about persecution in the form of martyrdom. I’d read about martyrdom before, but I’d never really taken it to heart as applying to me. I guess it potentially does apply to me – it potentially applies to everyone who, as Paul puts it, lives godly in Christ Jesus. I’m not going to be scared away from being a born-again follower of Jesus, even if it does put me on the Christian martyrs list. I’ll just draw closer to God and Jesus, keep reading the Bible, and get ready for whatever comes.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 