HIS VERY NAME CAUSES your spirit to quicken upon hearing it and conjures emotion, whether you know him or not. Take a moment to capture your thoughts about Jesus because it will be very important to the work we are doing.
Do you believe in Jesus or not? Either way, capture the reasons for your choice.
If you are making me wrong for asking you where you stand, please create a space in your mind for the possibility that it can be of great value that you do not.
Let me say, too, that I am not in the business of converting you to Christianity, and, if anything, I would like you to stand on the outside of any religion. If this statement conjures fear, please capture your thoughts about this as well.
If you are devout in any religion, even atheism, my work should not threaten your beliefs, but rather it should cause you to be fiercer in what you believe to be true.
What is important to me is that you be fully present in our work and not afraid that I want to force you to give up any beliefs that work well for you.
I know firsthand how precious our beliefs are and how we like to protect them like we would our best friends.
The religion of Christianity has caused an aversion to, or an avoidance of, Jesus for many people, but my relationship with Jesus has caused an aversion to, and avoidance, of Christianity for me.
I seem to be in good company for in Revelation, the last book of the Bible, Jesus had a message for seven particular churches, especially in chapters two and three, and for the most part, it was not pretty. In my opinion, his message would still ring true for the organized church today.
It was obvious that Jesus had a problem with religious groups during his time on the planet, and he was killed while trying to break them free from their faulty beliefs and counterfeit strategies related to God.
He was accused of blasphemy against God, while God himself said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him, I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5)
This conversation is important because as you find faulty beliefs and counterfeit strategies that you want to change, you will need to replace them with new beliefs and strategies.
All beliefs come from one of three places; personal experience, the witness of the personal experience of another person, or some form of media.
Above all else, you do not want to exchange one faulty belief for another faulty belief. This will only lead to another counterfeit strategy which, given enough time and stress will also fail you.
It is my opinion that you will not find the wisdom, information, words, or power you need to change your own behavior from a better person than Jesus himself.
I have come to learn that everything he says is true, even when I did not believe it true or want it to be true.
More importantly, I have never found another person or resource that proves to always be true as it relates to the way I should live my life.
In fact, most everything Jesus says is counterintuitive to the best thinking of others and my thoughts and inclinations.
If you choose to follow Jesus, the challenge you will face is to not get sucked into the religion of Christianity while doing so. If you run down to the church like I did after meeting Jesus in my home, you may enroll in a Bible study and learn about Jesus, but I want to caution you.
What you will learn will be most likely taught by people who follow the doctrines and traditions of the church building you have entered.
It is easy to get caught in that snare if most of what you hear aligns with what you think is true and reasonable, but keep in mind that organized religion is for lazy people who are more like sheep and comfortable to follow the herd. Even if it’s right back into prison.
For example, I spent twenty-three years in formal Bible study taught by people who followed John Calvin, a well-known leader of the Protestant Reformation during the 1500s. After God took me out of my beloved church, I took a journey to understand why.
I learned that I had been following the beliefs of Calvin, a man who executed “heretics” who did not believe his opinion of the truth found in scripture.
How many times do you think Jesus killed people for disagreeing with him? I can find none in the vast amount of recorded history about Jesus in or outside the Bible.
If I had been raised in the Catholic faith three hundred years after Jesus resurrected from his grave, and it became the mandatory religion of the Roman Empire, I would have been executed as a “mystic” because I can hear Jesus when he speaks to my heart.
I would also be considered a “heretic” because I don’t need a pope, priest, or bishop to interpret scripture for me.
If I had been raised in the Muslim religion, I would be executed because I have a personal relationship with God, something considered blasphemous.
And, of course, if I had been a devout Jew during Jesus’ day, I would have been as zealous as Paul of Tarsus, who wanted to snuff out thousands of people who knew and followed Jesus even after Jesus ascended into heaven.
In my opinion, religion is not only evil, but it is dangerous to the lives of human beings.
Having said that, I should also say that we all follow a “religion”; whether it includes the tenets of a formal religion or not.
What is of great value to our work together is that you become conscious of what I call “The Gospel According to Me”, the set of beliefs that you have accumulated over your lifetime.
If you claim a formal religion, it may align with “The Gospel According to Me”, but very often I find that it does not.
For example, I have coached many Christians who say they believe what the Bible says, but they do not believe God really loves them nor do they believe God has really forgiven them for their sins, two important tenets of Christianity.
In these examples, “The Gospel According to Me” always trumps the Bible when these Christians fail to be perfect.
This conversation is important because your best thinking makes up your accumulated set of beliefs and I want you to challenge everything you believe, especially what you believe about God.
When you are ready to amend or abandon a belief you discover to be faulty, you must replace it with another belief, and you want the new belief to be able to withstand time and stress.
This conversation is important because this may be the only time you will ever be challenged to question what you believe and more importantly, why you believe what you believe, by a person who has no agenda except to help you break free from undesirable behavior.
Standing on the outside of the church doors, I can now see that I had become entrapped by the religiosity found in “Christianity”.
Today I am grateful for the very painful journey to break free from my beloved church because my freedom has helped me to help others who are entrapped by the religiosity found in their beliefs.
Whatever defines you will confine you, and there is no greater hold on you than your beliefs.
Whatever defines you will confine you, and whatever confines you, holds the power to destroy you or give you the life you want.
This conversation is important because as I said earlier, you cannot break free from your self-designed prison without help.
You need a power greater than yourself and greater than your best thinking.
You can try the “Higher Power” found in twelve-step recovery programs, or you can try the “God of your own understanding”, but in the end, if you are like me, you want the best God you can find.
You are, after all, talking about breaking free from Death, the warden of your internal solitary confinement.
I think I must also say that I hope I do not dissuade you from Jesus simply because I said I do not trust God back when I told you the truth about myself.
I am still learning how to trust him, but I can say that he has always been trustworthy. It is a personal problem, my lack of faith, and it is solely due to the fact that I still sometimes listen to Death.
Death is quite convincing and still able to create doubt in my thinking when I get afraid of some giant or dragon in my way.
He still whispers, “Do you think God really loves you? Do you believe you really matter to him?”
In order to break free, you will need a supernatural amount of love, power, and self-control that cannot be conjured up through your own self-discipline or will.2 Timothy 1:7
It is for this reason that you cannot be the God you choose.
Nor can it be your spouse, your parents, or any other human being. It cannot be any created object for that matter.
You will need the creator of all created objects.
The God you trust must be more powerful than Death. The One who created and controls Death.
The first step to freedom; the first step to recovery; the first step to restoration; the first step to reconciliation; is to admit that you need help. It is to admit that you are powerless to overcome Death by yourself. Matthew 9:12
This is the beginning of the death of you, which is the cost of the freedom you want.
You must die to the belief that you can save yourself.
It was in trying to save yourself that landed you in isolation, and if you want to live in glorious freedom, you must allow God to kill off the faulty belief that you can save yourself.
I asked you several questions in the beginning and I need to ask you again.
Are you still ready for change?
Are you still willing to accept that change begins with you?
Are you still willing to practice change?
Are you still coachable?
If not, try to uncover what happened between your willingness and your unwillingness. Identify the fear that stands in the way and capture the words that are speaking to you.
If you are sifting through your thoughts to find the cause of the hesitation to acknowledge that you need God’s supernatural power, consider this: Jesus said he came ‘to set the captives free’.
He was talking about me when he made that statement more than two thousand years ago, but if you know you are captive, is it possible that he was also talking about you?
“Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”—Jesus (Revelation 1:17-18)
“He who is not with me is against me.”—Jesus (Matthew 12:20)
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. –Jesus (Matthew 23:25-26)
Matthew 23:1-3, Matthew 23:8-9, Matthew 23:13, Matthew 23:15, Matthew 23:23-24,John 3:16-17
As always, it is my intent and hope that my words may encourage you wherever you are in your journey.
Please share your thoughts in the comments below or go to the group tab above to share your own experience. It only takes a minute of your time and your words may help others.
If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.–Jesus(Mark 4:23)
