Posted: March 11th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: personal |
5 Comments »
I’m trying to find a groove. Something that won’t wear me down.
It’s 3 a.m. and I’m still on fall back time.
Sometimes I feel over-exposed and I pull away for a bit. I enjoy being alone in my head and if I’m writing, I’m writing for you. You’re in my head. Many of you have connected with me on the level I’m trying to reach people and you’re with me every time I write. I may never hear from you, but I know you’re there. I can relax with you. I’m talking to ‘soul mates’ in kindred sense. We’re related by pain.
But, even with that, I need to pull away. The fight gets rough sometimes and I have to recede to rest. I’ve never cared if I have a bunch of blog hits. I take this message seriously. It will reach who it needs to reach.
Some of your processes were a lot longer than mine. Some of you have been going through the hell for years. Most of you still are.
I write about places I no longer live. I’m not still in that place, but I know that nobody writes about it, so I want to. I want people who use computer search terms like “God, please help me!” to find this blog. A parallel measure of my faith brings God here. Some of you bring God here. You’re making a difference, too.
I know I’m not always right. I want to know when I’m wrong. I’m just happy to make people think. I don’t try to make people mad, but I seem to sometimes. It comes with the territory and I like this location.
When people write me to tell me to ‘move on’ or to start picking apart my mentality or redemption, then I get frustrated. They’re missing the point. Writing is art. An artist creates his best work when he hurts the most. Even the artist fifty-years past his darkest days will still produce art with the darkness in it. That’s what makes him a great artist. The dark is only understood by the light.
I have just discovered that if I started being silent about what I know, and started living more pastel, I would look more ‘healed.’ I had no idea there was a certain look to healed. Healed isn’t being happy all the time. Healed is finding the truth. The truth propels you further than your emotions and capacity for pain. Truth is your escape. It’s a break from the chaos. It’s sustenance for the journey.
I want my message to be one where people can find truth. I want them to give the scriptures another chance. God has so much to say and I can just point it out. Go to Him. Don’t dwell on me. It wears me out because I just want you to open up to Him. I’m a turnoff to a lot of people. But they’re people who need their box broken and burned. God doesn’t fit in a box. He can regularly blow your mind until you can’t take anymore. I often wonder if some people haven’t felt that in a long time.
I’m a little bit harder to reach now and I’m not always the best at returning emails. I read them all, though.
I’m quiet and usually socially awkward. I watch and listen. I love talking to people about God and grace, but I don’t small talk. I’m private about everything but Him. That ends up requiring me to tell the story of my scars, so it gets intense. Small talk doesn’t fit.
I’m thinking about the ‘Sifted As Wheat’ conference. I broke the website, but I’ll figure it out. I keep trying to picture the conference and, more than anything, I just want it to be comfortable. I want people who know what it is to be hated to feel loved. Come if you can love people. Come if you need to be loved. Can you imagine the healing?
Can you feel the calling?
Well, there’s my head.
Posted: March 10th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: think |
11 Comments »
What do you think this means?
Posted: March 9th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: peace |
5 Comments »
She sits and closes her eyes to music. That’s what she does when she’s sad. Incense burning and lights are low. She lets the quiet close in on her and soften her breath. The stoic is praying.
The one who believes in sovereign and everything it means, is asking for a little more light. A little more music.
The key, says the philosopher, is not to try to change it, but to try to understand it.
Her spirit is quiet. Only the soft sounds of her whispered prayers. “Have it your way.”
“Tell me where I am. Tell me what to do. Tell me to sit down. Tell me to stand taller. Tell me something so I know how to pray.”
She’s on a need-to-know basis and she needs to know nothing.
When she’s quiet, she hears Him. The answer to the stoic’s prayers.
“Wait.”
“Wait.” says Peace’s Prince.
Posted: March 8th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: aftermath, faith, grace, hope, sin |
4 Comments »
“And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren’t perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin?” -Galatians 2:17 MSG
Being justified by faith takes a great deal of faith. You are fully aware that you are not yet perfect and that your story of God’s grace presents issue with people who are weak in the faith. “How can you say that you are not living in sin when your life has been completely changed by sin?” Their doubt in God’s grace poses a challenge to what you know God brought you through, has forgiven you of, and no longer holds over your head. It’s a spiritual attack from the mouths of spiritual babes.
This is something that can either make you lash out in pride or worse, you can doubt your own salvation. The key to being able to withstand the doubts and attacks from those who don’t think your life looks like it should is to understand that they feel they have to earn and maintain their salvation on their own. They have a relationship with the law and are not under the new covenant of Christ. They do not understand grace, they doubt it for themselves, and therefore doubt it for you. You have to be patient with their doubt and be very careful not to let it contaminate your own faith. Remember, it wasn’t too long ago that you didn’t understand grace either.
Grace makes people think that it weakens Jesus. There is no apology to the doubter for the clean sweep that grace makes of a complete failure’s life.
Jesus is judged by who He loves, instead of those loves being judged by the love of God. No one wants to see their idea of Christ contaminated by a known sinner, albeit forgiven and sanctified in Christ, so they cast shadows and doubt over His loves and attack their character. They try to separate you from Christ in an attempt to keep Him holy and out of reach.
“You may say the right words and offer up your prayers for forgiveness, but you’re not fooling God,” says the doubter. And they refuse to be ‘fooled’ by your ‘act’ of redemption, too.
“The accusation is frivolous. If I was “trying to be good,” I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan.” -Galatians 2:18 MSG
It’s a spiritual battle that you get dragged in to. These are the lies of the enemy of Jesus trying to get you to believe that you must earn your right instead of accepting the free gift. They want to hide you away and keep your eye-witeness account of what Jesus can do from being heard.
They fear that if people know what God can forgive, then it will cause disorder. They don’t trust that God maintains order through grace.
This isn’t necessarily a conscious decision on their part, but it’s a deep fear of failure and pride that leads to doubt that makes them behave the way they do. They don’t see their behavior the way the recipient does. Unchecked, they can be brutal and even cause what appears to be damage to the spreading of the Gospel. This is when you can align your prayers with the one Jesus prayed on the cross, “Forgive them Father. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
They don’t know that when they stand against you and what Jesus has done for you, that they’re standing against Him and what He did for them, too. If they really knew, it would crush them. Maybe one day they, too, will know. Until then:
“Keep a cool head. Stay alert. The Devil is poised to pounce, and would like nothing better than to catch you napping. Keep your guard up. You’re not the only ones plunged into these hard times. It’s the same with Christians all over the world. So keep a firm grip on the faith. The suffering won’t last forever. It won’t be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ—eternal and glorious plans they are!—will have you put together and on your feet for good. He gets the last word; yes, he does.”-1 Peter 5:8-11 MSG
Posted: March 7th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: grace, purpose, sin |
14 Comments »
‘Should we weed out the thistles?’ -the farmhands in Jesus’ parable found in Matthew 13:28 MSG
You used to have a time bomb, ticking away inside you. Never knew it was there because you never heard the ticking.
A life built the way you were told it should look and you loved the security of knowing there was nothing to hide.
The cleaner the outside, the cleaner you felt on the inside. Good enough to relax and be a little ‘human’, within justifiable reason.
Within justifiable reason.
As long as you could justify yourself, you were fine. Never having to take a deeper look or admit to what had no evidence.
It was only when the timed bomb exploded that you realized the deep damage. Damage hidden so deep you called it ‘healed’.
‘No, if you weed the thistles, you’ll pull up the wheat, too.” -the farmer in Jesus’ parable found in Matthew 13:29 MSG
Your failure is evidence that you had to let that darkness surface so that God could take it away from you. Like waiting on war shrapnel to make its way to the surface so it can be removed. It’s like waiting on a weed to grow to make sure it’s a weed before you rip it up.
How would you know you had it in you if you never saw it? Judgment doesn’t start with action, it’s starts with intention. A person can get angry at numerous people and never consider himself a murderer. But Jesus does.
You have to understand that sin is sin before you can really understand what grace is. It’s hard to tell what things will become until they become. If you don’t acknowledge the weeds, they’ll eventually take over and your whole life will have to be ripped up and replanted.
There was a girl who was known for giving herself away to anyone who would have her. It was harder to find a boy who hadn’t been with her than it was to find one who had.
“Should we weed out the girl?”
It was easy to see that this girl had the potential to defile the people around her. She was an open door that made it harder for a young man to pass her by without satisfying his curiosity.
“No, if you weed out the girl, you’ll destroy the good, too.”
It’s not the girl that needs to go, it’s the sin within her that needs to be addressed. If you throw the girl out, then you’re like a farmer who planted seeds and ripped the whole garden up when you saw a weed.
Sin is a weed with blooms of lies and roots of innocence damaged.
Only God knows that her innocence was ripped from her when she couldn’t fight back. She kept it a secret because she believed that it ruined her and she didn’t want anyone to know that she was trash. The secret isolated her and isolation is the breeding ground for lies from the pit of hell to bloom un-challenged. No one knew her secret or her struggle with self-worth, so she suffered the merciless spiritual attacks alone. Every time she heard a message that told her to keep herself pure, she knew it was too late for her and it bled out the remainder of her hope.
In order to survive her damage, she convinced herself that sex didn’t mean anything. As long as it didn’t mean anything, she could not be as hopelessly damaged as she felt. She had to remind herself that it didn’t mean anything by having meaningless sex to continue the desensitization. Her way of surviving was to bleed the out the worth.
People see a promiscuous girl and call her Poison. God sees His daughter who needs to know that she’s loved. She doesn’t believe she can be loved like that and people can prove it when they refuse to see her worth and push her away because she’s dirty. People can prove the enemy’s lies she hears in her spirit by doing exactly what you do with garbage. By throwing it away.
Maybe the people who look like weeds are weeds and maybe they’re not. Farmhands don’t know enough to start ripping them out and throwing them away. They don’t have permission because they don’t know the whole story.
“Explain to us that story of the thistles in the field.” -Matthew 13:36
“The farmer who sows the pure seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the pure seeds are subjects of the kingdom, the thistles are subjects of the Devil, and the enemy who sows them is the Devil. The harvest is the end of the age, the curtain of history. The harvest hands are angels.” -Jesus, Matthew 13:37-39
Posted: March 6th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: grace, purpose |
16 Comments »
I’ve been thinking lately. I’ve been listening, too.
I’ve been preparing to speak at a University here in my town. It was a big deal for me because I live in the town where I was broken. A few years ago I was praying for a way to move somewhere else and God’s answer to me was, “You have to heal where you were broken. If you don’t heal where you were broken, then it will always be broken.”
And so I’m here…healing.
It’s been seven years and every once in a while I imagine grace washing the rest of the filth away. Once and for all.
Isn’t that what Jesus is all about?
“Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. -Hebrews 10:9-10
Getting asked to speak at this University was important to me. It increased my hope. But, maybe it was just my hope in people. My misplaced hope needed an alignment.
There are people who are not okay with me. They witnessed my worst and still live there. Like watering a weed garden or feeding a corpse, it’s still a tangible presence for some. In times like this, it’s a real presence for me, too.
A couple of people wrote the University and were heavy enough to have me uninvited. It wasn’t personal on the side of the University. They don’t know me. I can’t even take it personally from the wordsmiths. They don’t know me either. They’re lobbing grenades in the wrong direction.
I’m on the right track. It’s this that has me convinced.
Do you want to know what message is being fought against?
God loves you. It’s why He made you. You didn’t earn His love, He made what He loves. He has been telling you your entire life.
When you have messed up and done something you know you shouldn’t have done, it’s very hard to believe He’ll still love you. Your head knows the words, but your heart is breaking.
There is no place that is so far that He won’t walk through a jeering and violent crowd to get to you. He passed from life to death to live inside of you. God made you because He loved you. You were dancing in His mind before He put His hands in the clay. He saw you from pink infant to wrinkled and worn before He spoke this earth into existence. He knows every failure and every finish line. He has seen every tear and is the only one who knows what your heart sounds like when it laughs.
There is nothing that you have done or will do that would ever make Him change His mind about you. He already knows and He doesn’t change.
He’s leaving surprises for you in your memory. You have to get some distance to see them, and when you do, you go running back to look at it all again. He’s everywhere and He’s always the same. Going back to redeem that time is sobering when you look around, but there is peace in a proper burial. He’s waiting where it hurts and He with you on the way. Always with you and always the same.
He loves you. He’s not finished with you. You’re earning your wrinkles and He’s been looking forward to them.
I bet His eyes dance when you ‘get’ it. I bet the sun shines brighter when He knows you can see Him.
Enough times like these and you start looking for Him everywhere, even now, in your present. The best is when you start to see Him in the present. You don’t know what He’s doing, but He loves it when you watch Him work.
I am someone who has seen, what I hope is, my worst. And I am someone whose faith didn’t fail. I may, at times, sit alone. But I’m here. I can tell you that there will be a day when you can thank God for what happened when you focus on what happened between you and Him. There will be times when you feel like it’s you and Him against the world until someone else shows up to offer a hand. It’s always surprising and you can’t help but start to feel yourself reintegrate to the human race, but infinitely different this time.
There are more of us out there. We, the infinitely different…. We’ll find you and you’ll recognize us because you’ll recognize Him.
“Where two or three are gathered…”
Spreading the message of grace is a slow moving process. I’m in it for the long haul.
Posted: February 6th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: faith, grace, purpose |
8 Comments »
“…He who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away…”- Galatians 1:15-17
When God took away Paul’s physical vision, his spiritual eyes opened. Like when you close your eyes to strengthen your sense of smell, or turn down your radio so you don’t miss the street sign, He removed one sense to make the other stronger. It is only when God saw fit to reveal Jesus to Paul that he understood his predestined purpose. Paul didn’t make it happen. He was literally blindsided.
Being called by grace before you were even born means that only grace can make the mistakes of your past, present, and future no match for the purpose you were created to fulfill. If you think you are unfit, you are more right than ever. You are unfit, that’s the beauty of complete reliance on the God who creates, calls, equips. It removes reliance on self and that’s a scary beautiful place to be.
Paul responded in a personal way and it’s something that I think we should take note of. God speaks to us all the time. He nudges us in directions that may be a 180 turn from the direction in which you were once confident. What people usually do is consult others in this new revelation or direction and too often, the people we are consulting with don’t get it. In order to not rock the boat, we stay quiet and ignore our call. But, Paul didn’t consult with the people around him. He didn’t even try to find the others who were already where he was called to go.
I have caught myself reading scripture and negatively wishing that ‘so and so’ would read that. Then I have a catch in my spirit that would tell me: “My Word is my message to you.”
I am the one who needs that message. When I stop reading with an agenda, I find Him waiting for me to listen.
People can read scripture, hear from God, and then reject it because it’s not something that their religious influences would agree with. They read and balance what they hear against other human beings.
His Word is a message to you. He doesn’t grow groups to grow people. He grows people and the groups are inevitable. It doesn’t matter what your friends think. You are in a relationship with God, the rest are just passing through. You have to trust God enough to lead you in ways that your spirit will understand even when your finite mind cannot.
Don’t bring the thoughts of other people in the room with you when you’re spending time with Him. He’s talking to you. It’s time to take a break from the world and listen.
God has already determined to what extent and what part you will be used to play in His plan. He has called you to do and be something that it impossible under your own strength and if you ask people around you, they may not see the potential that God does. We rarely do. Humans are competitive, they’re political, and they don’t like to put faith in the unknown. They bank on certainty and call it ‘faith’. That’s not faith. If you’re too concerned about what people will think, if they’ll approve, or if they’ll support you, then it is less likely that you will follow the call.
People are in our lives for seasons and it’s good. But, when it’s time for you to move on you will see these relationships weaken and you may not know why. People can hold you back or they can encourage you, but if you’re waiting for approval, then you’ll be waiting much longer under the strain of the call, making yourself unnecessarily stressed and fidgety. I’m telling you this because if you don’t understand what is happening, then you’ll question your relationship with God and your spiritual life to the point of sucking all the life out of it.
When God reveals the bigger picture to you, you will not be able to rest until you act on it. The lack of rest feels like you’re doing something wrong because what is happening right now is no longer what you are supposed to be a part of. This isn’t a negative thing to beat yourself up about. It’s an amazing thing because you’re now ready for the next phase in your journey. Don’t bother counting your losses. Don’t worry about attending the funeral of what is over, just pack up and get moving.
Posted: January 30th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: purpose |
1 Comment »
My life feels calm and quiet right now. But, it’s the kind of calm that makes you bored. And “only boring people are bored.” It makes me question my purpose. Something always happens when I’m wearing thin. I always get some sort of little nudge that I’m still on the right track.
This calm is different. I feel this need to get my things in order. The quote from Abraham Lincoln has been ringing in my ears for a few weeks now. “I will prepare, and some day my chance will come.”
It has become clear to me that I tend to wait for a breakthrough because getting there is impossible. Then, as time goes by, I notice that I could have been there by now if I started working for it when I thought of it.
It’s a message of taking life one day at a time. One small goal at a time. Do a little each day. If we prepare right now, we won’t miss the opportunity when it comes. Opportunities pass us by all the time because we weren’t prepared to accept them. Get ready now.
There is a technique in psychology called Visualization. A lot of people have taken this concept to a different place, and I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about picturing the end result and taking inventory of what is around you. Who are your friends? Do you live in a different town? How do you dress? Are you in better shape? Is that linen closet organized? Think of all those details and then pick something doable in that scenario and start making that change. Then work on the next one and so on.
You’re building from scratch. Do the work. Nothing is going to just happen.
All those little successes will make you stronger.
I’m preparing during this down time. I’m getting a hold on what I have because that is where contentment lives.
Posted: January 26th, 2012 |
Filed under: God | Tags: faith, hope, purpose |
6 Comments »
God has a plan that precedes you, encompasses you and then surpasses you. You don’t even have to know Him to be part of what He’s doing. His plan trumps ours. He’s busy at work using His hands to craft different styles of pottery to use. Writing His own story with us as the characters and with Jesus as the main event.
Everything from the foundation of the world has been a set up for the crowning of Jesus. Nothing exeeds the importance of that one event and nothing can change it.
Even the unborn have been called to purpose. No matter what, you cannot undo your purpose or avoid your path. It’s not only that He knows what you’ll do, it’s that He’s designed you for a specific use and you will most definitely be used to that end. You know this is true if you really believe that it’s God moving through you and not you moving yourself. You don’t get to pick what part of you He uses. Those who know, know that God uses the parts of you that you would rather keep behind a locked and closed door marked, “Sacred”.
And the children were yet unborn and had so far done nothing either good or evil. Even so, in order further to carry out God’s purpose of selection (election, choice), which depends not on works or what men can do, but on Him Who calls [them]...-Romans 9:11 AMP
Some things between us and God are hard to explain. He meets us in places we should have never been. He recognized us when we didn’t even recognize ourselves. These times in our lives are ugly and dark, but He was there. You can’t explain it and you can’t explain it away. You keep quiet, but He keeps nudging.
People need to know that no matter how far they run, He’s always right there. He takes every step they take. He will never, ever, leave them. They need to know this so they can be saved. They need to know this so they can be righteous. Every time they are under attack, He is right there holding the leash to the one who attacks them. Every time they hit the ground, He is right there. He is the wind on the face of the one running away. He’s the leaves in the hair of the one hiding in shame. He is with you always because He is ‘I AM’.
Some of us were created to reflect God’s mercy and some of us can attest to God’s dissatisfaction. I am one who can testify to both. We are characters created to be a witness in the trial. One day we will be subpoenaed.
God lets evil plans form and emerge as they wreak havoc, only to thwart them and turn it into something that brings the beaten closer to Him. Evil exists, but ultimately answers to Him. Pain peirces, but only brings the broken closer to Him. Sin bulldozes blooming gardens only to make room for the flowers of mercy.
Everything answers to God. Everything has it’s time in the sun, it’s fifteen minutes (years?), but none of it has the last word.
No matter where your path has taken you, no matter what you’ve done, not matter what has been done to you, none of it gets the last word on your life. God does and He does what He says.
His biggest statement concerning you was Jesus.
Read part of this song David wrote:
From the four corners of the earth
people are coming to their senses,
are running back to God.
Long-lost families
are falling on their faces before him.
God has taken charge;
from now on he has the last word.
All the power-mongers are before him
—worshiping!
All the poor and powerless, too
—worshiping!
Along with those who never got it together
—worshiping!
Our children and their children
will get in on this
As the word is passed along
from parent to child.
Babies not yet conceived
will hear the good news—
that God does what he says. (Psalm 22:27-31 MSG)
Posted: January 25th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: sin grace, spiritual abuse |
16 Comments »
In any discussion about the problem of spiritual abuse, particularly when it concerns excessive attempts to control an individual by withholding restoration and grace after failure, someone will always come up and try to refute the discussion. They do this by asking why grace isn’t offered to the person who is bullying the other.
In most of these discussions, a person can be talking about the sin of immorality or they can be talking about the sin of disbelief. Both are referred to as ‘sin’, but only one is referred to as ‘the sin that leads to death’.
If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. -1 John 5:16-17
There are scriptures that seem to obligate believers to judge others. These scriptures are used to support spiritual abuse more than they are used in any other way. But they’re being misused and everybody knows it. They just don’t know why. It’s because people ‘judge others by their fruit’, but they don’t know what ‘fruit’ they’re looking for.
Scripture can get improperly interpreted if you don’t know some very basic facts. There are two ‘governments’ with their own ‘laws’ in the Bible. One is the called the ‘Old Covenant’ and the other is called the ‘New Covenant’. You cannot size people up under the Old Covenant if you are living under the New Covenant and you cannot size people up under the New Covenant if you live under the Old Covenant.
If the Old Covenant is prison and the New Covenant is release, then those who are in prison cannot govern those who are free. That would amount to prisoners yelling through their barred windows at the non-imprisoned pedestrians. Those who are free cannot be understood by those who are imprisoned unless you are talking about their release. Free people cannot tell imprisoned people that they can go to bed whenever they want, go outside whenever they want, or even eat when they want. The freedom does not apply to them as long as they believe they are under the law of the Old Covenant.
These are two separate worlds of existence.
You know who is under which covenant by their love. Love is the fruit to be ‘judged’ by.
A religious person who claims to live in the New Covenant but judges according to the old is a person who is so confused that scripture tells us to not even associate with them. Not until they awaken to grace. Shake the prison dust from your feet when you leave.
“…if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” -Jesus in Mark 6:11 (see also Matthew 10:14, Luke 9:5, and Luke 10:11)
So the disconnected and self-deceived response would be: “Aren’t you judging them by making a point to dust their dirt off your feet and making a point to display a statement against them?”
You have to understand the difference. Every single thing that we do wrong is sin. However, there is a sin that leads to death and scripture goes further than instructing us to have nothing to do with it. It goes as far as telling us, “There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that.” I’m thinking that it’s because only God can burn out the self-righteousness and self-reliance that causes the sin of unbelief. Not only do the prisoners refuse the gift of freedom, they claim to be the holders of the key. That is such a deep deception that maybe only God can reason with those who think they have it all figured out. They’re not going to listen to you unless God causes their eyes to open.
Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. -Acts 13:38-39
The religious leaders rejected this New Covenant truth. Some still do. People believe there is more to it. They believe that you have to prove yourself and earn it. They try to make a cocktail between the two. Remember what you call drinks that you mixed together as a kid? A ‘Suicide.’
This is what the disciples and Paul did with people who claim spiritual authority, but do not accept or offer grace… this is what they did when the religious leaders instructed their devout to shun and demean those who did not follow their rules:
And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region. But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district. But they shook off the dust from their feet against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. -Acts 13:49-52
Spiritual abuse is real and you should get away from it. Walk away and take nothing, not even the dust, with you. Let it be a statement. God knows how to teach them and they are more inclined to listen to Him than to you. You can’t influence someone who thinks they are religiously superior to you. You can’t lead someone who thinks they are leading you.
