“…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.

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.

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.

Plato had a story about a cave that he used to illustrate his theory of existence. In his book ‘Republic’ he invites readers to imagine a “cave in which some prisoners are bound so that they can look only at the wall in front of them. Behind them is a fire whose light casts shadows of various objects on the wall in front of the prisoners. Because the prisoners cannot see the objects themselves, they regard the shadows they see as true reality. One of the prisoners eventually escapes from the cave and, in light of the sun, sees real objects for the first time, becoming aware of the big difference between them and the shadow images he had always taken for reality.”

The cave “represents the world we see and experience with our senses”, and the world of sunlight represents another realm that Plato called, the realm of Forms. The prisoners represent ordinary people, who, “in taking the sensible world to be the real world, are condemned to darkness, error ignorance, and illusion.” The escaped prisoner is the one who has seen the “light, truth, beauty, knowledge, and true reality.”

If he returns to the cave to tell the prisoners how things really are, “they will think his brain has been addled. “This difficulty is sometimes faced by those who have seen the truth and decide to tell others about it.”

I’m telling you this story because it hits close to home. There are two different realities. They have been referred to as ‘flesh and spirit’, ‘the world’s way and God’s way’, ‘worldly and spiritual’, ‘temporal and eternal’, etc…

Jesus references His Father’s ‘Kingdom’ when He’s teaching. He also remarks at His use of language that the listeners can understand instead of using ‘plain language’ that will go over their heads.

“I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father.” -Jesus in John 16:25

When He did use plain language, it got him in trouble. He tells His followers that if they talk about His Kingdom, the way it works, and the real truth, then they’ll be hated, too.

“If you lived on the world’s terms, the world would love you as one of its own. But since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer on the world’s terms, the world is going to hate you. …They are going to do all these things to you because of the way they treated me, because they don’t know the One who sent me. If I hadn’t come and told them all this in plain language, it wouldn’t be so bad. As it is, they have no excuse.” -Jesus in John 15:19, 21-22 MSG

He tells analogies (parables) and says “The Kingdom is like….” in an effort to get people to use the shadows to get a hint of the reality. (see Matthew 13, 20, and Luke 13 to study more.)

1 Corinthians 13 uses plain language in reference to what I’m talking about. Look at this:

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” -1 Corinthians 13:12

There are two separate realities that you continually have to choose between. The Bible speaks to people in both realms of awareness. There is an eternal language, for those who can hear  it, and there is a temporal language for those who are still finding their bearings. Many senseless arguments erupt between people who are more fluent in ‘eternal’ and people who are more fluent in ‘temporal’. It’s senseless because one group is talking about ‘x’ and the other is talking about ‘y’. We need mediators so that people can understand each other better and actually get somewhere. More often than not, they would realize they believe the same thing. Instead, they’re much like allies with bags over their heads. They fight the wrong people.

It would be helpful to categorize things into their appropriate realms. The spiritual realm is the greatest because it never dies. Consider what belongs there and out of those things, what is the greatest? The Bible is clear about what we should be concerning ourselves with and it says that love is the greatest. What falls in line after that?  For example, where do the personal rules you follow regarding practice fit? Where does your treatment of others fit? They’re in two different realms. One is more important than the other.

Spend your time on the things that exist in the eternal world, or as you’re used to hearing it: ‘Walk in the spirit.” You have to take inventory of your treasures and start sorting them so that you spend your time on what matters and shelf the things that don’t.

What are some things that you could categorize?…

You believe in a God of love so intense that it demands justice. You think there is no justice big enough for what you did because people still have to walk in the life sentence you gave them with your mistakes. The rain isn’t strong enough to penetrate the outside and wash you on the inside. But, still, you’re out there hoping that your skin will open up and just let you drown.

God is a God of love and it’s a love so intense that it demands justice. There is no mistake in that belief. It’s just that you have forgotten Jesus. Was that not enough? Justice fell on Him so that you could come back inside.

God is not afraid of getting wet. He leaves the windows open so that maybe you’ll wash in with the rain you’re trying to drown in.

The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture. -Romans 8:34-35 MSG

They all wonder what is going to happen to them.

What they don’t understand is it’s not about what someone will do to them. It’s about what they’ll do. It’s the moment when you see yourself at your worst, are clear about your fault, and are completely hopeless.

The question that comes next: “Do I have to sin to really see God?” But, that’s only dating the false assumption that they don’t sin.

If you think that you are without sin or have the ability to be strong enough to avoid it, then you do not know God. It is impossible to receive a gift if you think you don’t need it. Grace is not yours if you spend your life running from it.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? -Romans 6:1

If that is what you took from this, then you’re not getting it.

By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? -Romans 6:2

Grace is not yours if you spend your life running from it. That means that you can live the most pristine moral life and still not have a relationship with God. Squeaky cups and dirty guts. The best wine could be poured into your glass and come out with rehydrated bits of yesterday’s gross.

You can hear the best delivered truths and your preconceived agenda twists the meaning right out of them.

Those who have been saved by grace in the moment of complete terror and spiritual despair know that their salvation cannot be messed with. They know this because it came to them at their worst. They’re not living in fear, they’re living their new life knowing that sin can never, ever destroy them.

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? -Romans 6:15

From the moment the Gospel has been preached, the same questions come up. They still come up. Nobody is saying anything new, it’s just that the more explicit the message, the more intense the challenge to the pious. People fight the Gospel like they’re fighting for their life. It’s just that they’re fighting for a life they’re supposed to die to.

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? -Romans 6:16

You’re obeying sin when you’re living in fear of it. That’s how you become a slave to sin.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. -Romans 6:20

Sin is a micromanaging slave owner welding a whip of guilt and threats of condemnation. The overweight bully picks on you because a sense of entitlement demands that everyone else satisfies him while he gorges himself on making you feel like you’re nothing but a failure.

You know you have to be righteous, nobody lied to you regarding that, but if you actually think you have the ability to satisfy the demand, then you are a slave under a master who will never tell you that the war is over and freedom has been won.

It’s time to abandon your little slave shack of faith and run. Yeah, your oppressor will come after you, but by the time you get a chance to glance over your shoulder, you’ll be able to see him swallowed up by the Sea of Truth.

Even better? If sin believes you’re dead, then he no longer has the power to kill you and won’t come looking for you.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. -Romans 6:3-4

No amount of reasoning can take what Jesus did away from you.  Grace wins every single time.

How often have you had to hide the unfinished edges of your attempt to make something good out of your life with lies and fake smiles? Do you not know that what you hope for is actually real and it’s not your responsibility to think it up, get it started, or to maintain it?

But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. -Romans 6:21

It doesn’t matter how dressed up you can get. You can’t blur out the fact that inside your heart you know that you haven’t had a good meal in a long time and you’re starving. Maybe you shouldn’t sit at the table full of spiritual anorexics. They’ve lied to themselves for so long, solid truth makes them sick.

Sin is a master who cannot be satisfied. No matter how good you are, you know you’re not good enough and it makes you die a little inside. That’s the other side of why the ‘wages of sin is death’.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. -Romans 6:22-23

Religion is like “spraying perfume on a casket.”

But, I was a mess. Life was calling me forward and I didn’t want to go. Grace was unknown territory for me and I didn’t know the rules. I needed the rules, they made me feel safe, but I had broken them all and I was a shattered cast-out who was going to live though it.

I knew a lot about church and churchiness and what you’re supposed to do when you’re hurting. You’re supposed to praise God in the pain, for what-I didn’t know-…, but I really wanted to do something right.

My house sits up on a hill and my back deck faces the sky where all of my sins were carried out. It faces the sky that blankets all the people who I hurt. I looked at the all knowing sky, who could see everything, and I thought about God. I thought about my failure. I thought about the unknown future for all of us and I winced.

“God,” I prayed, “thank you for rebuilding me.”

I knew He was rebuilding me. I didn’t know what my new life would look like or how He was going to redeem my pathetic mess, but I still acknowledged and said it out loud.

When God talks to me, it’s a voice that seems to come from within, but I know it’s not my voice. It’s an interjected thought that is received exactly the way a spoken word would be received. God spoke up immediately…

“Serena, I removed you.”

The thought struck me as odd and foreign. His voice always quickens my heart. He uses few words and they’re profound enough to keep speaking when the words stop. I didn’t have to think about it for long because I understood it. It took me a bit to accept it, but I understood it.

Removed.

Removed from relationships. Removed from my religious community. Removed from my old life. Removed from my old comfort. Removed from my old safety…. I was removed and set down in a space of faith or die.

This stole the shame and guilt of ruining something I didn’t know how to fix. This truth gave it new meaning and purpose. My failure tangled with grace and I really didn’t know which way was up.

I once was a dried up piece of dirt until somebody planted a seed of faith. The seed took and the rains soaked me and washed me. I grew into a green sprout, drinking the sun and digging in deeper with my roots. I grew taller and stronger, even though I was surrounded by weeds. Weeds of twisted faith and oppression surrounded me and stunted my growth. Then I was ripped up and sent through a sieve. My hard covering was torn from me and I was naked and exposed. Scared to death until the Field Master’s hands scooped me up and called me a seed. The cycle of life and death continues and I morph with the will of the Field Owner.

Removed.

He removed me and replanted me and sang over me. The same voice that commanded the expanse of space to divide, and the water to fill the earth, and the land to divide the water, and the birds to fly, and the beasts to roam, and the body of Adam to live is the same voice that commanded my life to take a new form. The breath of His words filled my dead spaces and commanded me to, “Grow.”

It’s God’s grace that gives me life. It’s His choosing that gives me purpose. I am not my own and I know this because I’ve seen too much. I know better. I don’t do everything right. I stumble around with the best and worst, but I know what my purpose is. I know that my life is not my own. I was saved for a purpose and continue to try to live that out. Every breath I breathe is a gift. Every smile, every laugh, every lazy night with my family and good meal from my oven is a gift.

I was knocked down and torn to pieces by my failure. I was on the wrong track and I didn’t know it until I was blinded and disoriented. Then the voice of Jesus spoke grace into me and gave me a new purpose.

‘But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ -Acts 26:15-18

If you are like I was, lost and torn to pieces by your own failure, then consider this message. You are not abandoned or cast out. You are loved. You are being rebuilt. And maybe, you too, have been removed. Removed ‘from your people’ and from the others. You’re a traveler in a foreign land and you have a message. Give in to grace. Fall in to forgiveness. Consider the purpose. The sun will rise and dissipate this dark night that scares and torments you. I have seen the sunrise. I have felt the warmth of new life on my face and I am here to tell you that it’s real.

I say that because I don’t think my thoughts/questions/observations are anything but prayer. If prayer is a constant sort of ‘knowing that God is with you and always speaking and always listening’ then everything is prayer. Even if it’s just a silent knowing that makes your insides look up with a child-like look that says, “Am I doing this right?…Are you proud of me?”

Life is hard sometimes. It doesn’t even have to be the big things that make it hard. It’s the little things that can bully you into a corner.

As I write this, I’m at the end of a rough day. I’ve had some little things pick on me and I’ve been on my feet against them for hours now. I could pray that things get tied up or fixed, but I don’t usually do that. I think it’s because I believe that everything happens for a reason, …for a lesson. I would rather have the lesson. I would rather go through the process without tearing my fingernails on the walls.

Bad days don’t make me feel like I did something wrong, or that God has stepped away, or that Satan is winning. Bad days are just part of life and entirely based on perspective.

When Job was going through his thing, he didn’t give credit to Satan, even though Satan was the one attacking him. He gave credit to God, knowing that it was God who had the say so over his life. This is incredibly important to understand. Job’s friends blamed him and Job gave credit to God. At the end of Job’s story, when God finally joined the argument, He said that it was Job who was right.

When people reject the idea of God allowing Satan to attack you, it’s because they can’t see a ‘Good God’ doing something like that. People make bad choices under Satan’s attack, why would God allow that?

But, they’re looking at the wrong thing. They’re forgetting who God is. His sovereignty is indisputable. It’s so much to the point that you have to remind yourself that He can be trusted and that He’s good. Everything happens under His supervision. That means you’re safe with Him.

Only what you believe has the power to destroy you. This is true because only what you believe has the power to save you. If you are missing belief, you are destroyed no matter what you do or how good you are.

It’s more than believing He existed or even believing that He is the Son of God. It’s is believing what He did. You have to know what He did before you understand any other concept in the Christian faith.

Job didn’t give credit to Satan and because of that, he submitted his fate and every speck of hope and doubt leading up to it, to God. It was complete and total submission because Job knew who God really was. He told God, “Even if you kill me, I’ll still trust you.”

Do you know God like that?

The only time I can remember someone rebuking Satan was when Jesus said it with Peter. Jesus told Peter what was going to happen to Him during the crucifixion, Peter told Jesus that it would never happen. That’s when Jesus rebuked Satan.

He told Satan to ‘get behind’ Him. He said that Satan was an obstruction because he tries to get people to rely on their own understanding of God and not open up in submission to what is not able to be understood.

You cannot reason with the understanding of God. He’s God. He knows everything beginning to end. You cannot reason with that, you can only submit to that.

If God is in control, then your circumstances are God’s will. You can’t submit like that if you don’t know God like that.

Isn’t submission what prayer is? If you’re giving thanks, then you’re giving credit. If you’re asking for help, then you’re recognizing Who has control. Submission is prayer and if you know God, then you’re submitted. It’s impossible to not be. Therefore: It’s all prayer.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.-1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

“I have a friend to whom I go for Christian advice and lately she is going through something with her family and I don’t think she’s acting very ‘Christian’. It’s really bothering me. What should I do or say to her?”

When someone asks questions like this, my first thought is usually, “What version of ‘Christian’ are you comparing her to?”

I think that people need someone to look up to. They need someone who won’t let them down. The problem with that is that people will always let you down.

We can’t set people up that way. We put them on pedestals and are frustrated when they can’t balance that high.

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. -Romans 7:15

People do the best they can and fight within themselves when they don’t measure up to their own standards. It’s suffocating to have to measure up to the foreign standards of others, too. It’s a fight of survival that has you completely focused on pleasing people and leaves no room for relying on the grace of Jesus to give them rest at night.

If people are honest in their relationship with you, then you will see the places that are imperfect. A good friend walks through the journey with them with enough grace to soften the blow of being a human. If you’re not a good friend, but only there for what you can get out of the relationship, then you will be a constant source of graceless judgment for them. You will never find a human being that can maintain the level of need that you are searching to fill. No human can do what only God can do.

Too often people will supplement their relationship with God with a relationship with a most-of-the-time Godly person. People will cling to pastors, pastors wives, or other recognized leaders and suck the life out of them as though these people were the Well of Living Water. Your church leaders are people. They cannot sustain you in the way that you need them to. You are pulling water out of a well that runs dry, gets contaminated, or loses the ability to pour out.

If you are getting your ‘food and drink’ from God, then you won’t be so desperate when people fail to measure up to your standards.

My heart breaks for people who are under the constant critical eye of the people they are trying to serve. If they want to maintain some distance so they can walk through their own bumpy life without the perpetual approving or disapproving comments from others, then they have to put on an Oscar winning performance every time they walk out in public. They’re in a no-win situation because people can tell that they’re holding back. The constant smile, constant positive attitude… it feels like a disillusioned, one-dimensional facade because, a lot of the time, it is.

This is why it’s hard to talk about your failures or questions in your church community. You can’t have perfect people and real people at the same time. Do you want a show or do you want a safe place to be vulnerable?

The people who would rather have a show are the most vocal and sometimes have the most influence. Grace and real life create too many questions and, for a place that is supposed to be the standard and have all the answers, that doesn’t go over very well.

This is the real battle. While all the people are fighting amongst themselves, the safe places are robbed of truth and rendered useless to people who are spiritually dying. It is not people that you’re up against. The people are distractions while the real attack is against faith. Nobody is fighting for the truth when they’re all fighting each other over practice.

The only truth worth fighting for is the Gospel of Jesus before Fear gets his hands on it. It’s the only truth because it’s the only thing that is finished. Everything else is in process and doesn’t look like it should.

Take your eyes off of people, they’re a mess at their best. Cynicism makes you twice as blind.