There WILL be comments! By Matthew S Butler

Tag: From New Age to Jesus

  • The LGBTQ–Islamist Alliance: A Dangerous Contradiction

    • The Unholy Alliance: LGBTQ Activism and Islam
    • Strange Bedfellows: LGBTQ Activists and Islamic
    • The LGBTQ Paradox: Supporting Those Who Would Persecute and KILL You
    • When Tolerance Becomes Self-Destruction
    • The Enemy of My Enemy Is Not Always My Friend
    • The Deadly Irony of the LGBTQ–Islamist Alliance
    • LGBTQ Rights and Islamic Enforcement: A Collision of Ideologies

    Ethics seem hard, but they aren’t. But when agendas that seem opposed start preaching the same hate, things can get confusing. How can LGBTQ people be for something that will destroy them, given the opportunity?

    Alan Turing is a great example of where Christian-based Western ethics went wrong. He was a closet gay man and brilliant mathematician who helped break the Nazi Enigma code and allowed the Allied Forces to intercept and decipher German military communications during WWII. It made a HUGE difference in the Allied victory.

    Strange how nobody from sub-Saharan Africa took that one on during the war, but let’s not get into that rabbit hole in this post. Post coming…

    Being a closet gay man was the issue. At the time, homosexual acts were actually illegal in England. After making a major scientific contribution to winning the war, Turing was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 and chose a year of probation and chemical castration rather than 2 years in prison. He died at the age of 41 from cyanide poisoning, in what was ruled a suicide.

    A man who should have been acknowledged as a national hero was shunned by the very society he helped preserve. That is an on-point example of when Western culture has failed the LGBTQ movement. What happened to Turing was wrong and brutal.

    Take that to America today and our modern cultural struggle with the LGBTQ world. I personally want nothing to do with living inside queerworld. But I’m not for punishing homosexuality. I’m not for chemically castrating kids or surgically mutilating them, which, ironically enough, the LGBTQ world is for. That is a die-on-a-hill issue for me personally.

    Homosexuality in the Bible is SIN, as clear as day and night. No matter how much trickery is involved in bending theology to its will, anyone who is literate and willing to listen to God’s conviction knows it is a SIN.

    But then again, looking at a woman with lust is a SIN. Cussing is a SIN. Being DRUNK is a SIN. Gathering wood on the Sabbath, under the Mosaic Law, punishable by stoning, was a SIN. A lot of things are SIN. We are all sinners.

    LGBTQ people are not special in that sense. SIN can be a personal struggle and its most important job is to show us that we are unable to fulfill God’s law to be in the presense of his rightiousness. But Jesus gave us a way, a free gift, of being in His presense and the devil HATES that. So he twists the minds of sinners to believe that God is a punisher, when in reality, He is actually Rightious and the Free Gift of His LOVE is what allows humans to be in his presense. But, like the Nehustan of Moses, you must believe. If you believe, you natually become very concerned with being pleasing to Jesus, mostly because you become intimately aware of what you have been saved from. Hell…

    But let’s talk about the fundamental difference between Christian ethics and Islamic ethics. Both trace their lineage to Abraham. Muslims are not God’s chosen people. They are the brother who hated the other brother who was chosen. Islamic ethics are HORRIBLE and twisted. Fundamentally, they involve submission or death adn killing in the hear and now as being faithful.

    If you are gay in the Muslim world, you will be killed for it, plain and simple. Alan Turing might never have had a chance to solve the Enigma problem if he had lived in an Islamically controlled society. He could have been killed at a young age or been so intimidated and afraid of being killed that he would have repressed those feelings out of fear rather than asking God to transform him through repentance. What England forgot about is Grace, the ultimate solution to every sinners plight.

    I spend a lot of my online time pointing out that Islam is something any Westerner should want NOTHING to do with. It is a barbaric structure that uses intimidation, submission, and fear as its Gestapo-like tactics to motivate hatred and compliance. Hatred of the West and Israel (the chosen brother) are its fundamental battle cries, and I personally do not trust any of them, even the ones who say they’ve found Jesus. Maybe they have; maybe they are blowing smoke up our collective skirts to play the long game. Only time will tell.

    We don’t want that way of life anywhere near us, and believe me, it’s an all-or-nothing game. The West does NOT want our cultures polluted by something hell-bent on destroying us. In easier days, people would understand that clearly. Tolerance, in this case, is stupidity, because no amount of tolerance will change the mind of someone who wants to kill you. It just makes it easier for them to kill you.

    So the LGBTQ world should LOVE America, Western culture, and Republicans because, although horrible things have happened in the past and will happen in the future, the right to exist is not in question. There is also the opportunity to receive God’s grace through understanding God’s righteousness, which defines what sin is, and God’s grace, demonstrated through the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

    Through His death and resurrection, He gives us the FREEDOM to be. We who know Jesus are all 100% rescued SINNERS without exception. The difference is, we know it and accept it and for the truly faithful, we aren’t negociating sin with Jesus moment by moment, we are asking to be sanctified. But he allows those who negociate sin, even if for their entire lives. But, he does send away people who have done things in his name that he does not know.

    It’s mind-numbing to see that the LGBTQ world has aligned itself with the Islamic world. My experience is that most gay people are usually pretty smart and motivated, but burdened with guilt that is shifted onto societal judgment rather than recognized as conviction from God.

    Whatever the case may be, an LGBTQ person’s right to exist in Western culture has mostly been worked out. Chemical castration and child mutilation are a hard stop for conservatives, but ironically enough, accepted within LGBTQ ideology as a horrible example of where LGBTQ has become that which once punished it, in the name of its own freedom. Now that is some maniacle twisted stuff.

    But for almost all, what you do behind closed doors, I don’t really care about. I am more worried about your eternity than I am about your now. You have to be LOST to be FOUND. So get lost!

    I believe John 3:16–17. His grace is sufficient for everyone, even the theif on the cross.

    16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

    Take that in: Jesus did not come here to judge us. We are already judged. That part was in place when Eve ate the forbidden fruit. What is amazing is that God, by fulfilling His own mysterious roadmap of creation, came into the world so that we could know Him, and through Him, He would SET US FREE and SAVE US!

    If you are part of the LGBTQ world, I don’t want to be in your world, but I stand for your right to exist because you don’t have a stated purpose of killing me. But if you are Muslim, I don’t want to be in your world, and I will stand against you at every turn because your book says to kill and/or enslave me, and I’m not letting that in my front door.

    In my view, there are two types of Muslims: the so-called radicals, who have read the Quran, and the cultural, who have not. The cultural, once they read and understand what the Quran says, will either become apostates or become radicalized. The apostates are marked for being killed, even by their own family, the radicalized are turned into terrorist looking to dominate the world through the barbaric ways of Islam. No good choices… Saudi Arabia is the crown jewel of Islamic government. Believe me, no American wants to live in Saudi Arabia and especially not a LGBTQ person.

    So this is my question to every LGBTQ-loving person in the world:

    Why would you support a totalitarian dictatorship masquerading as a religion that plainly says it hates you and demonstrates that by publicly killing people like you in countries where its form of government runs the show?

    Please wake up to the reality of what you have aligned yourself with, because even though I don’t want anything to do with your lifestyle or culture, as long as you don’t want to kill me, I’m okay with coexistence. I’m sad for you and I do judge you if you hurt people along the way. But if you have a stated purpose of killing me, which all Muslims do, I’m an over-my-dead-body stand against that ideology and its a hill I will die on.

    How a cultural movement can align itself with something that says it will kill you, given the chance, really, truly has me questioning the mind of any LGBTQ person.

    What in the world are you thinking?

  • Desires of our Hearts – Mind Blown!

    This verse always seemed off to me. Last night at Bible study, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to what I believe is the truth of it.

    Psalm 37:4 — “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

    This is probably one of the most misused and miscontextualized verses in the Bible because, at first glance, it can sound like God is promising to give me what I want. Or that I currently want to do something and it seems like a desire it must be from God.

    But what does Jesus say about what I want?

    Mark 10:18 — “And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.’”

    If what is truly good comes from God, then godly desires ultimately come from God alone.

    The way I’ve often heard Psalm 37:4 taught is basically this:

    The desires of my heart come from me, and if I delight myself in the Lord, then God will give me what I want.

    Delighting myself in the Lord is an “in-order-to” get what I want.

    Conveniently, the first half of the verse—“Delight yourself in the Lord”—often gets pushed aside.

    What people mostly say is:

    “He will give you the desires of your heart.”

    In other words: God is going to give me what I want.

    But that turns the verse into a formula for trying to manipulate God:

    How do I get what I want? I delight myself in the Lord. Fool’s errand.

    This verse is not about stuff, circumstances, justifications or outcomes. It is about the desires of the heart themselves.

    Maybe the desire to build a thriving multimillion-dollar business becomes a desire to spread the gospel in Africa. Maybe conviction sets in when the opportunity to gossip or sin arises and you don’t participate because an act of obedience is better than an act of sacrifice. Maybe becoming a street preacher that owns nothing seems like what there is to do. Lots of examples available and not trying to say anything negative about business. Its just an extreme example of how God changes what people want.

    We probably all have someone in our lives that we’ve seen something radical like this happen to. And we’ve seen people have their exact lives before, but who they are is radically different. How they live, being pleasing to God and loving their neighbor seems to be their driving force.

    This is where the rubber meets the road:

    My will versus Thy will.

    Oh, we are slippery sinners. This verse is HUGELY misused to justify all sorts of SIN and selfishness.

    What Psalm 37:4 is actually saying is:

    1. Delight yourself in the Lord.
    2. Then the desires of your heart are given by God.

    What I currently desire is not the point. The point is that if I want godly desires, I had better get to delighting myself in the Lord.

    As I delight myself in Him, God makes his desires, my desires. Big difference from a manipulation that says God conforms His will to mine and my stuff is on the way. Or because I want to do this (sin) God wants me to do it.

    It is that, as I delight in Him, my heart is increasingly conformed to His.

    I always knew the other interpretation felt off.

    Thank You, Jesus, for setting me straight.

  • Anti-Nationalism and the Shaming of Evangelicals

    It could be said that the entire spiritual war we are in is a propaganda war.

    Who are you going to believe: the Bible or the world?

    At what point does historical, intellectual knowledge and context run out, and faith must become your guide — hopefully pointed in a trajectory informed by Scripture and solid, Bible-believing community with a civil duty mindset — all while testing the spirits?

    The devil is the father of lies, and my goodness, he is good at it. Interesting how the devil is almost never framed as a woman. Like, ever. But that’s another conversation. Well, Elizabeth Hurley did play the devil in Bedazzled… but I digress.

    As someone with a super natural off then ON faith experience late in life that is as real to me as drinking coffee, I am keenly aware of the strategies, contexts, and nomenclatures that have tried to define me — and that led me down a lot of dead-end, stupid, wasteful roads in my life. I was lost. Completely lost.

    That is why Identity in Christ is so important. I am who Jesus says I am, and everything else has to run through Biblical discernment and wise council.

    Last week, while working, I was listening to an Alistair Begg sermon that stopped me in my tracks. I heard him preaching that the Church is God’s NEW nation, and the implication seemed to be that Christians should give up civic attachment to their own national identity. Wait, Alistair Begg is a Globalist… Really?! As a TV kid, all I could think was, “Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”

    Then I discovered PROM.AC, the Wizard of Oz curtain has been pulled back. Suddenly, I see the geopolitical game board in a way I never have before. My brain is still trying to process what I was exposed to this weekend, and will be for a while.

    Thank God for patriots who make it their life’s work to keep the ignorant masses informed.

    What God has been showing me about many things — it all lines up. That video pulled the curtain back for me. Suddenly, I am extremely interested in learning more about the presidency of William McKinley, who, like Trump, attempted to change the political chessboard of the world and was shot for it.

    Trump has survived three attempts, and Trump is doing it. Why did King Charles come begging last week? It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll and Englands time at the top is coming to an end in favor of America First. It’s time for the scared little geopolitical boy (America) to get kicked out of the nest. This video explains why, and it is maniacal.

    While the ignorant masses are pointed toward irrelevant talking points by the media, Trump is realigning the world around America First. Those whose positions are being threatened have come begging. The more I learn about Trump, the more I think: holy shnikies, He is a genius.

    I am keenly aware of nomenclature. When I hear words like “fascist,” “Nazi,” or in this case, “Christian nationalist,” my ears perk up. Who is saying it, and why? All those words have been injected into Americas through the EU Globalist marketing agenda.

    Alistair Begg tipped his hand with that sermon. To me, he was clearly advocating for the globalist position and encouraging Christians to stay silent while “the adults” run the world. Very “European” of him… like VERY.

    Oh, how effective that has been.

    So I did some AI research. I asked for a list of books that are critical of Christians, deny or minimize the truth of how Christianity shaped America, and vilify Christians as “the problem” in an effort to silence them.

    It was a long list — mostly coming out of academia.

    Then I asked for a list of Christian books that refute that ideology and speak the truth of American History… Crickets.

    The propaganda war is working. And it is working by silencing Christians through shame and some duty, which I say is a lie, that Christians should not be involved in politics.

    It makes me feel like Peter denying Jesus. Jesus gave us America and it was CHRISTIAN Men who drove the effort. Now, it seems Christians are going to sit in a pity puddle in steerage with the being of Eeyore as we go down.

    The parrallels to Isreal in the old testiment are absolutly on point. If there is a Christian nation in the world that should be leading the pack, it is America and Like David, I’m amazed at how scared Christians are of the Philistines.

    Fight the good fight! Fighting is not in question… we are in a fight.

    A rooster just crowed, hmmmm….

  • How Jesus gave me the Gift of Faith

    Ephesians 2:8-9

    For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

    Prior to Jesus giving me faith in October 2020, I was ALL up in the New Age. I classified myself as a “Law of Attraction Atheist.” I was like a lot of people who grew up in a FREE Christian society: I was rebelling, even though I knew Jesus was real. Somehow the Bible was outdated, and I really did NOT like the idea of hell. How could a loving god send people to hell?

    Morality seemed like a fools errand. I grew up in the 70s, 80s and 90s. What do I want to do with my life? I want to ROCK and Fight for my right to PARTY! Don’t be the last guy at the party ever, its horrible. I speak from experience.

    IMHO, for me, this “God wants to ruin my good time” idea all came from a lack of understanding of God’s righteousness. On this side of being born again, it looks more like I was already having a horrible time and Jesus wanted to set me free. This all stems from correctly understanding Rightiousness. What is rightiousness? What does it mean for Humanity? What does it mean for me?

    If the church has failed at one thing, it’s trading teaching about God’s righteousness for a feel-good form of God’s love. Like free will, Love only exists inside a context of God’s righteousness. Don’t understand God’s righteousness? Then you have no idea what love actually is. It ain’t got much to do with making people feel good or celebrating unrightiouisness, but it sure is sold that way. Yes God cares about how we feel, but unless we are born again, he can’t do much about it. Why? Because he set it up that way… We have to choose him inside a context he sets up for us where we can or can not choose him.

    FREE Will – What is it?

    We have free will, but we do not get to create the context inside which we have the perception of choice. Our choices are ours, but they are limited. So the debate rages… free will or predestination?

    It’s difficult to take a hard, real look at the reality of what the relationship between God and man is. The reality of it is tough. We don’t have much say about it. Here is the kicker, God isn’t sending us to Hell, we were born with a one way ticket, Adam, the father of us all, sent us all to hell. Let me explain why the Gospel is necessary and why it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL and shows the TRUE Character of God.

    God’s righteousness is who HE IS. Another way to say this, is God has perfect integrity. Humans have anything BUT perfect integrity; this is what the Bible calls sin. Most simply put: you say you are going to do something, then you don’t = imperfect integrity = sin.

    Imperfect integrity cannot coexist in the same space and time as perfect integrity. Perfect integrity will literally obliterate imperfect integrity. That is humanity’s problem. Being obliterated by perfect integrity—the Bible calls this hell—and it is both in the here and now and in the next life. Think Jesus is all kumbaya? Read the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus talks about hell as a real place more than anyone else in the Bible.

    This is where LOVE arises.

    2 Peter 3:9

    The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

    He doesn’t want us to be obliterated by His perfect integrity. He wants us to be with Him. And for some mysterious reason, before He created it all, He KNEW it would go this way, and He knew ONLY He could fix it for us. Enter those mind bending ideas of omnipotence and omnipresence.

    We are descendants of Adam. When Adam got kicked out of God’s perfect-integrity space—the Garden of Eden—by definition, we are ALL born outside it too. It is our human DNA.

    The GOSPEL—the work of Jesus Christ—is what allows imperfect integrity to be in the presence of perfect integrity. It’s ONLY something perfect integrity can do. Imperfect integrity is incapable of creating itself as perfect integrity. It’s why the Bible says we must be born again.

    2 Corinthians 5:17

    Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

    That new creation is what allows us to be in the presence of God’s perfect integrity. When Jesus gives us faith and we surrender our lives to Him, He recreates us—we are BORN AGAIN. We are recreated as a new creation that can be in the presence of God’s PERFECT INTEGRITY, aka His righteousness. It is a GIFT, not something earned. It is a work Jesus does, not us.

    John 3:16-17

     “For God so loved the world, that He gave His [a]only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

    This is about God saving us from ourselves. He wants us all to be with him, but when we refuse, He lets us. There is an active opponent to Humanity. We are at war with something that wants to see us all perish, and mostly, it wins. It’s greatest weapons are misguided compassion. And it comes after a lie, which is, you don’t have imperfect integrity, you are prefect just the way you are and the kicker, God does not really mean what he says… HUGE LIES.

    There is an entire war being fought in the spiritual world about the souls of humans. One side uses Jesus and LOVE; the other uses ANYTHING to deceive humans from knowing what love actually is. The Bible calls this the devil, demons, and the war in the heavenly places.

    Ephesians 6:12

    For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

    So… how did this all play out in my life?

    Jesus had answered many of my prayers prior to me being born again. He had rescued me from some bad situations, but I was still mad at Him because I thought He wanted to control me. He was going to ruin my fun and steal my freedom. Was I ever WRONG!

    One of my favorite verses in the Bible is:

    Galatians 5:1

    It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

    My evolution/journey/process of faith was like many: cursory participation in youth group, which I actually LOVED when I was a kid. My college was paid for by an benevolant faithful Christian man, and so in college my life was a lot about being a worship leader and using my musical ability. I lived in a Christian Campus House, a ministry of the Church of Christ, although we did use instruments. My true lifelong friendships and brotherhood came through Reformed University Fellowship (RUF).

    During college, I didn’t attend church—telling. My point of view was questioning in nature. I remember saying, “I’m not sure that is what that means,” in Bible studies I participated in. I wasn’t all in. I was questioning, not learning. I was hanging out. I did what I did and associated with who I associated with, in part out of obligation to the man who paid for my college—a good Christian man who changed my life. How is that for being helped by God and still being anti in my mind?

    After college and no church attendance, I had no foundation for my faith. I didn’t understand the Gospel. I did not know Jesus. I took a common path through life that many do.

    I spent some time in Egypt working very early in my career. Jesus was going to send all these people who follow Islam to hell? That didn’t seem fair. I became a universalist. All roads lead to God. Rode that apathetic train for a good while.

    At 30, I did the Landmark Forum, which blew my mind—in a good way. You mean that all of this crap in my head is the result of decisions I made about how it is, and that anything is actually possible and I can remake reality in my thoughts? I can have the life I want? Boy, that was intoxicating. But alas, a lie. Don’t get me wrong—Landmark’s stuff is brilliant, but its context is shallow and all about the “me, me, me.”

    The movie The Secret came out in 2004-ish, which I bought into hook, line, and sinker. You mean I can just intend things and they will happen? Even better, if I just focus on my own happiness, they will happen with more velocity? The “I am gOD” model is certainly attractive… see what I did there? Lol.

    During that time in the New Age, I did a LOT of work around emotional language development, emotional honesty, emotional vulnerability, and other practices that gave me the language, structure, and confidence to verbally express and process my emotions. There is something magical about being validated and being able to say—in a space of non-judgment that actually pulls for honesty and vulnerability and celebrates it—the TRUTH of our realities and experiences. Absolute FREEDOM!

    In the Bible, it is called healing. James 5:16. See my blog post on The Band Meeting about a structure inside the church to provide that space for healing. It is not supernatural, although it is. It is the best the most powerful use of the gift God gave us as His creation—language.

    As a side note, I’ll say that if you know an angry person—at least this was true for me—a lot of anger stems from lacking the language to express emotion, experience and to be validated in it. It’s BEYOND frustrating. There is something FREEING about being validated in your experience and being able to be brutally honest especially with people celebrating that you have been set FREE. Landmark is the best at this I have seen, and magic happens in those rooms because of it. People who have not experienced that—I feel sorry for them, because it is wonderful; it is healing.Unfortunately, with Landmark, it quickly becomes about the self and the magic is steered back into an endless loop of self diagnosis of the past.

    That is what James 5:16 is talking about. The church has a mandate—YES, a mandate—to provide a safe space for people to experience FREEDOM through the confession of sin in a completely safe environment that isn’t going to placate their emotions, but is going to rejoice that they have been set free from shame and guilt. The church seems pretty bad at understanding forgiveness. Like Gollum’s Precious, they get fascinated by feelings—anxiety, fear, doubt. Landmark puts them all under a single umbrella called being disempowered. Forgiveness and then healing are the paths to FREEDOM!

    In 2018, I got knee replacements. My life from Landmark until that point was not some New Age storybook. It was a train wreck of failure and isolation. My knees giving out were part of that. It became hard to walk. My last trip before those surgeries was to Alaska to go fishing. I used two walking sticks the entire time because my knees hurt so bad and for a lot of it I was checked out on ganga pain killers.

    After those surgeries, I started to feel good—like the best I had felt since my early 20s. Let’s put some of that Law of Attraction to work. “Universe” (that is what Law of Attraction folks call praying to yourself), I request a teenage summer camp romance with a girl I’ve always had a crush on. Forty-eight hours later, there she was on my doorstep. She even came to me. My Law of Attraction mojo was on FIRE!

    We had a romance, and I fell in LOVE—HARD. I had just come off being on opioids for six months. Let me tell you, having your heart broken after it’s flooded with oxytocin makes opioids look like aspirin. I was devastated. I haven’t cried, wailed, and moaned that bad EVER in my life. I took a couple of those opioids to help with the physical pain in my heart. It HURT. I’ve lived a broken heart. What was more devastating is that I had LOST in love again. Man, was I HORRIBLE at relationships. I was like Gollum with that girl, and it makes me cringe to think back on it.

    After it ended, boy did I go to work on myself. What was WRONG WITH ME? A Landmark friend was going to a weekly guided meditation near my house and invited me. I was broken and lonely, and anything that was a safe space with kind people was welcome. They were followers of some ashram in India with a specific dude who was supposed to be super enlightened. Obviously, I didn’t pay much attention to that, but I did meditate—the practice of emptying yourself or being taken on a guided tour of imagination. Pretty trippy stuff, actually.

    As I meditated for that year and a half, it became apparent to me that something was out there, and it was NOT a creation of my mind. It was something outside of me.

    Revelation 3:20

    Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.

    That was Jesus standing at the door and knocking. Jesus is REAL, and it’s mind-blowing to think that He is LITERALLY standing at the door and knocking on the heart of every human on earth. He is asking to come in and give you the best gift EVER.

    At the time, I didn’t know what to do. Something was out there, and it wasn’t me. Then, on a Saturday morning as I sat silently in my house, out of my mouth came the words, “God, I acknowledge You EXIST.” That was the Holy Spirit saying that, NOT me. See—even in my acknowledging God exists, Jesus was doing the work. It was like I was shot and was dying and Jesus was giving me spiritual CPR.

    Immediately, a vision of a WALL comes down. It’s about 12 inches from my face. Jesus says, “This is the WALL YOU have built between us.” Am I having an LSD flashback? But this—this is NOT my brain. This is that thing outside of me speaking to me and showing me a vision. The wall goes to infinity in every direction. I have no idea what to do. For two weeks, that vision of a wall is there 24/7, and I have no idea what to do.

    There I am, back in silence on a Saturday morning. The wall is with me. I reach into the vision, and I take a brick out of the wall. Staring back at me through that space in the wall are the eyes of Jesus. “Where have you been?” He asks. I’m overwhelmed. I say I’m sorry. I ask for forgiveness. The wall disappears. I am BORN AGAIN. All those Bible studies and study of theology from my younger life click. I understand the Gospel immediately.

    I proceed to cry for months—SO SAD about how I’ve wasted my life. So full of Joy that Jesus choose to give me faith. Tears of Joy and Pain. There were a LOT of them on both fronts.

    I see all the times Jesus intervened in my life and tried to steer me toward HIS best life for me, and I would rebel. Spoiler alert: if you think you are living YOUR best life, you are NOT living HIS best life for you. It was a LOT to let go of, and it flashed before my eyes for a LONG time.

    Revelation 12:10

    Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night.”

    The accuser will go right to work on your past. “What an IDIOT.” The scene by Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers was on LOUD for a LONG time in my head. Like a Looney Toons cartoon with the devil on my shoulder yelling at me about what an Idiot I was and am and will be again.

    I had a hard time with that. I was a new creation, but I was overwhelmed by regret. It was a pastor who finally said, “Man, you need to read Luke 9:62.”

    Luke 9:62

    But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

    Looking back in regret is NOT what Jesus wants us to do. He actually tells us that if we do it as a practice, it makes us unfit for the kingdom of heaven. He wants us to do with our past what He has done.

    Psalm 103:12

    As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.

    That past DOES NOT MATTER. LET IT GO. HE HAS!

    Galatians 5:1—It was for the sake of FREEDOM Christ came to set us FREE. Therefore, do NOT return to a yoke of slavery.

    Dwelling on the past is returning to a yoke of slavery.

    Next, I organized a video call with my RUF buddies, who are all amazing men. Those men prayed for me for decades that God would bring me home, and I’m forever thankful for their love for me. The big question: what should I do?

    1. Go to a Bible-teaching church—cool, I think there is one of those at the entrance to my neighborhood. There is. It ain’t perfect, and no church is, but the Bible is taught and the Gospel is preached.
    2. Get in a Bible study. Third week at church, I was invited to the Precepts Men’s Bible Study. The first book we studied? Numbers. Man, that needs to be made into a series of movies. Want to understand God’s RIGHTEOUSNESS? Study Numbers.
    3. Be around godly men. That got done in spades. I know so many godly men—it’s just AWESOME.

    I guarantee you that Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart RIGHT NOW, in ALL circumstances. You might have barricaded the door and done as much as you can to drown out the sound of His knocking, but if you listen closely, He is still there, and He is still knocking. Open that door. Ask Jesus to come in. He will recreate you into a new creation that can be in the presence of His perfect integrity = His righteousness = Him. My prayer is that something about my story helps your story turn into letting Jesus in.