The Refiners Fire

The miracle that was extended from my employer and received by me to take a new and stable job, truly career-worthy, has taken a toll on me. The learning curve, ceaseless work, and no real feedback has left me in such a state of exhaustion that for two weeks I slept 12 hours a night and lost nearly five pounds. And while the thought once or twice of course crossed my mind to quit, the gratitude never left. I know the way this opportunity came about, along with the grace given to me as I phased out of my previous job, which I was more than ready to leave, was unique and special and as much as I have as late spoken against prosperity preachers, I truly did reap what I did not sow.

Changes in relationships, inability to pursue my spiritual studies other than brief morning and evening prayers asking for specific graces, and random contact with God throughout the day in the hope and faith that He would equipt me with was was needed was in truth insufficient to prevent a depression that naturally perturbed my spirit deeply.

However in distress we might grow. As one of my favourite seed analogies teaches, to the outside world, the birth of a tree looks like utter annihilation, as the seed breaks open and its shell disintegrates, so too has been a growth in my interpretation of the world about me. A mature interpretation, a more real recognition and respect.

My exhaustion and uncertainty made me so melancholic that there were moments I believed this world was hell. However that thought being scripturally inconsistent lessened that extreme to the level of purgatory instead. I began to wonder what the point of my conversion in July was. I felt like a fraud. How was the message of the cross any better than the message of the New Age when I still fell into such as state of despair - why walk the narrow path when I can move around and have more flexibility?

Now that I am recovering from the shock of my new lifestyle, which I can see has been the result of simply working just a little too hard and was akin to a physical illness when naturally the mind is attacked just as the body is, I am feeling a bit more confident and ready to return from the confines of my bed, which is a huge relief. I have no message of anything other than, I am well. Thank you to all who have reached out and received me with open arms as I reemerge from my lonely world.

"I’ll deliver the surviving third to the refinery fires.
I’ll refine them as silver is refined,
test them for purity as gold is tested.
Then they’ll pray to me by name
and I’ll answer them personally.
I’ll say, 'That’s my people.'
They’ll say, 'God—my God!'" - Zechariah 13.9

Staying the course

"You’re blessed when you stay on course,
walking steadily on the road revealed by God.
You’re blessed when you follow his directions,
doing your best to find him.
That’s right—you don’t go off on your own;
you walk straight along the road he set." Psalm 119.1-3

There can be so much negativity around the foundation of Christianity. There are no jokes, no light stories, and most certainly of all, no grade-A students. To be a Christian is invariably to be a failure according to worldly standards. (1 Corinthians 3.18-23)

But I would rather fail than take the path of least resistance, I would rather go down with the ship than live on in another structure. No there is nothing funny about Christianity (prosperity preachers), no quixotic stories (New Age feel-good stories of grandeur and metaphysical healing), and certainly, the most discouraging of all, no grade-A students ("That which I do not want to do, I do" - Romans 7:15-20).

There is nothing whimsical about Christianity. It is a faith built on the blood of saints. It is brutality, it is constant attack, and it is the working for a heaven beyond comprehension. Does that mean we give up? It shouldn't; rather the opposite. It's simply a problem that needs to be solved, like everything else in life. Just because it doesn't sound good, just because it is not pleasing to the senses, does not mean that we throw in the towel. It means we work harder.

What good is the feel good fuzzy way in moments of confusion when confronted with the crisis of spiritual attack? (for anything opposite of certainty is demonic, 1 Corinthians 14:33) I don't want a universalist way of life that is unsustainable when preservation matters most. Anyone who searches their heart will see there is no genuine sturdiness in not rocking the boat. Go down with the ship, die to self. (Galatians 2:20)

Does this mean we reject people? Of course not. We still love, for God is love and we serve God. (1 John 4.7-8) Are we ignorant? By no means! (2 Corinthians 2:11) Rather, being streamlined means we love MORE. We reject worldly ways, we despise popularity. We serve those who need us to most (James 1.27), not those who live for themselves. (Romans 14.8)

The true Christian will not sabotage scripture, will not hurt a soul, and will fully live and let live (Proverbs 15.27). A Christian will never give up, they will take their lumps, sin and sin again and get up time and again and be stronger for it. When discouraged we study (2 Timothy 3.16-17) when rejected we walk with even more confidence (John 15.18). There are always people who want to help, simply seek them. "Seek and ye shall find". Seek right, and victory is yours, no matter what battle was lost today.

Be of good cheer

I have been reflecting on the "ideals" of character-building. Principles which we strive for that are opposite of our go-to passionate instincts (if you will, sins).

With writing being my first real talent, I am in love with words (which incidentally is entirely unrelated to actually being able to pronounce them). I generally don't write a piece without my thesaurus tab being open. The Spirit has been leading me to do what I maybe should have done long ago, though that probably isn't really true. I am confident that God places in our hearts to be where He wants when He wants and all is in His due time.

After encouragement over the past couple of months, I am now diligently looking at the major obstacles in my character that prevent a full life. In checking on words to denote ideals I would like to practice, a word I came upon was "Calm". I then of course dug in a little deeper to find synonyms for calm, especially since I intuitively knew that wasn't the word that best described the noun that I would like to turn into a verb.

Lo and behold I came across the word "cheer", and immediately recalled one of Jesus' most famous and beautiful saying, "Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world." (John 16.33). I immediately visited the online interlinear Bible and saw that the original word used in Greek is "Courage". A little more digging (this one took a bit more work), I saw that a synonym for "cheer" is "encourage". I thus concluded that the ideal I am seeking is to be courageous.

I don't believe that we can ever really change for the better without identifying the point of corruption in our beings that cause systemic collapse. I knew there were factors in my life that were unacceptable and I with all earnestness addressed them but only at opportune moments. It is rather in the silence of the heart and the mundanity of living where we really transform. Now that I have an ideal which I have identified and understand, I expect a growth spurt from new seeds.

Prayer for a psychic attack

Below is a prayer for use in spiritual warfare, when losing the battle. This will turn it around really fast, and give you victory during moments of attack that come out of left-field (usually through a subconscious trigger).

Lord Jesus Christ, Defend me.
Lord Jesus Christ, Vindicate me.
Lord Jesus Christ, Sanctify me.
Lord Jesus Christ, Redeem me.
Lord Jesus, Restore me.
Lord Jesus Christ, Resurrect me.

Repeat as needed. The reason why this prayer is so effective, is because it doesn't waste precious seconds with non-effectual words. Each word carries immense power, and is carefully selected. A psychic attack is akin to a "coup de main" (surprise attack), and is a sophisticated technique of the enemy, an elite principality. Ultimately the average person is not equipt for such an onslaught without the right defense. Generally, a person can never be fully prepared for such an event, because it involves a degree of perfection few have attained. This is why it is so crucial to have the right armor.

A case for homosexuality

"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

I help run a Christian Facebook group of almost 74,000 members.  For the most part it is a debate group based on the theology of different denominations and is generally intelligent and resourceful. We keep it strict and require all claims to be supported. This weeds out a lot of the nonsense and keeps it running pretty smoothly, But every so often anti-homosexual rhetoric makes its way in and being a sin in the Bible, many if not most participants are quick to grab their pitchforks. For me anti-homosexuality is an embarrassing quality of the Christian religion and I maintain that any teachings are to be taken in context.

The passage I quoted covers various sins that I have noticed are all within the same breath. For me this indicates that there is no hierarchy of sin, and is why Jesus said that we must remove the log from our own eye (Matthew 7:5) before casting the first stone (John 8:7). The problems that I have with anti-homosexuality within Christianity, notwithstanding that I believe it has been grossly taken out of context and was only referring to specific problems within communities, is that everyone commits, or can commit, the sins that Paul warned against, but not everyone wants to be gay. We have automatically alienated an entire group of people, and in so have effectively jeopardized our witnessing of the gospel.

Sometimes I want to throw in the towel. it is humiliating to be branded a hateful or close-minded person, or to be thought of as anything but loving, just because of one or two sentences in a book that takes the average expository church five years to read and study in its entirety. When we "call out" homosexuality with our finger-pointing we are hurting the entire body of Christ. The worst part of all, which no one seems to understand and which truly demonstrates the disease within the body of the Church, is that the average person has probably committed at least one of those acts that Paul warns against within the last twenty-four hours.

Christianity is not black and white: we have been killing one another for thousands of years and hateful memes and frustrating protests are nothing in comparison to what the early Christians did to one another, and still continue to do to each other today mostly executed through excommunication. In such a threat mystics have left the church because they can't reconcile the contradictions that the Internet has fostered and thereof confused alliances. They jumped ship. But for those who dare to stay, we brand the term heretic, the greatest insult one Christian can throw at another. We withstand FOR the love of Christ and neighbour, and in so persevering in the Name of the One who surpasses ALL understanding. (Philippians 4:7)

The true definition of a saint is someone who maintains their faith to the end. Perfect doctrine is not literal doctrine and Jesus warns he will not accept recklessness. (Matthew 7:21-23) Jesus gave us a NEW commandment, which is compassion. (Matthew 22:35-40) The laws the average Christian thinks he or she is keeping is actually preventing an internal analysis of the blockage that is keeping them from truly being yoked with God in peace. Christ died on a cross so that we can stop nailing each other to them. He took our place, he took on our sins, and there is no way that we can follow in The Way, with the old ways of the law.

We have ALL fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and I believe the only way to get back up is to actually help each other get back up. Is homosexuality a sin? The most difficult verse to tackle is Romans 1:22-27 when Paul wrote that same-gender sex will receive due punishment. What I would like to point out here is that the punishment was really due to idolatry as described in verse 25 and therefore it is possible that God placed in their hearts (verse 26) to not continue their bloodlines.

I don't have all the answers. I don't know the exact situation that Paul was preaching to, but I do know that the problem was actually "Worshipping the creation, not the Creator" (Verse 25). This is the big problem that we ALL must work through daily. Let's just sort out our own idolatry and self-deification, get honest, be healed, and move forward.

Blesséd Sunday

Just a casual post about my recent movements in my conversion. Since I minister to the public I feel transparency is necessary.

Today for the first time since February 16th, 2019,  I attended Catholic Mass. The last time that I went to Mass was with my new boyfriend at the time who was not a Christian. Before going into the service I explained the rules (Under NO circumstances do you take communion - walk to the priest with your arms crossed so that he knows to only give you a blessing) and yet it all went awry and I cried inconsolably for the next hour. I never went back.

After half a year of ups and downs, trying to yoke with someone similar to me in matters of the heart, but far too different in how to live out that love, I had a breaking point in mid-July. Coming back from that snap I wrote my testimony and posted it onto Facebook on the public setting. All hell broke loose. Being stubborn, and being protected by the grace of God, I did not tolerate it. And though I tried reconcilation for about three weeks, that testimony ended my relationship.

The poet Rudyard Kipling wrote "(If you can) lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss...Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!" But I'm choosing to write about my loss, or my perceived loss, because that started on a evangelical crusade that nearly took me to a second breach in my ability to function in the world. One of which was publicly disavowing the Catholic Church and blocking my Godmother from Facebook so that she wouldn't have to see it. (I clearly wasn't that brave after all). This is why I desire to write today.

I still have my mission to expose idolatry (egotism; self-worship; self-glorification), but I'll try to do it is a less abrasive manner. As with so many other decisions I have made, it is only when the time comes to commit that I need to get brutally honest and make a decision that might have come from left-field. One thing that the Catholic Church does not tolerate is idolatry, but the layperson today made a really interesting mistake that motivated my writing today. There was a passage that talked about God's healing, however she read something along the lines of "Heal themselves". This is pretty much the definition of idolatry as I have been using it. So while the institution in itself has a zero tolerance policy for interpretation, I saw first-hand how idolism still wants to weasel its way in.

My piece "Little 'g'" discusses this phenomenon of self-deification, and how I fell victim to that. I completely understand how the reader saw a word there that didn't exist - because we are in a culture where we no longer believe that God can heal us. Jesus the Great Physician has taken a back seat to our misplaced confidence and is now blurred somewhere in the abyss of our subconscious. We have fallen back into the first great sin which happened in the beginning when Eve was deceived to believe that she could be as great as God. (Genesis 3.1-6)

I feel a sense of relief and for those who love me, I am sure they do too. Because I believed that I sacrificed love for the Gospel, as Jesus said we must lose all for the truth, I truly believed that I had become an ambassador. I became a compensated writer for a Christian website (with which I will still try to contribute to since it is a fringe website and therefore very understanding.) While I found conviction of sin and intellectual sustenance in the Baptist church, as with all decisions I must make in a hurry, I knew I couldn't be myself, be in the world, and be a Reformed Christian. That equation didn't compute. In Mass the priest appeals to God in prayer, "Look not upon our sins, but on the faith of your Church." That is the compassion that I need to receive, so that I might give back that grace.

While becoming born-again I have been able to better respect my values. I know how sacred sex is now. I know how necessary my more mystical studies are now. And now I know I need the anonymity and the ritual in the Catholic Tradition. So I have reconfigured. I feel vindicated. I am so grateful for all of the amazing events that have taken place since I shared my testimony. I recognize each day is a new day to learn how to move through this world with a bit more decency and poise.

I am starting to see that the fight is over. Jesus has already accomplished on the cross what I have driven myself mad trying to recreate. I have a sense of stability, friendship, love and support and wonderful new things to learn in the spare time that I now have. And through it all, may I continue to illuminate false beatification.

Born Again

What does it mean to be "Saved" or "Born-again"? Even to Christians, this might not be well understood. Having come from a more ritualistic Christian background, I didn't even know what believers meant when they said "The gospel" (No they weren't referring directly to the four books in the New Testament).

I had a work event last night where I was speaking with a deacon (though I didn't know he was a deacon at the time) and we were coming from the same theology (Reformed Baptist). This is highly unusual since there are so many denominations (for example another person I was speaking to is married to a Pentecostal minister). And while an elder who also founded a church, he too was saved, though decades ago. He completely understood everything that I was talking about when explaining my experiences leading up to my conversion. Experience is an important word in this context. The intelligent born-again Christian will respect any history that a newly saved believer will have had and will evangelize with compassion, as I have shared in my piece "Effective Witnessing". And conversely when he spoke I understand what he was saying as well. This is because being born-again is black and white and so the lack of ambiguity makes it basic and simple. God is not the author of confusion. (1 Corinthians 14:33)

The deacon was talking about being "saved" which until about three weeks ago was another concept foreign to me. When I was baptized into the Catholic Church in 2010, I didn't view myself as saved, I viewed myself as an official Christian who was going to live by the books and be dutiful. It wasn't until the past summer when my eyes were opened to the incredibly delicate, and though we all are affected by it, somehow controversial crisis of death. It was then I realized all of the answers to life's problems are found in the Bible. I became convicted by the Holy Spirit once and for all.

After this revelation, the mesh of Bible-only believing Christians no longer threatened or confused me. Despite their various backgrounds and points of interest, what they said made perfect sense. Their central point of salvation didn't vary and I admired their confidence. Not only did I admire it, I found myself developing that same certainty and fitting in with them. I related and could contribute. For the first time I actually felt like a real Christian because for the first time I realized that I was idolizing myself and seeking approval from people who also had false gods. I deduced that the root of human volatility and unreliability is the adoration of self.

I zealously proclaimed the gospel, not as I understood it, but as it actually is. And in so I felt vindicated by the rejection of certain people in my life. Now as I re-balance after a tumultuous month of highs and lows as described in the conclusion of my testimony, I am now in a period of reflection and reprieve while I with assurance await my next instruction.

So what does it mean to be saved? It means to see the error of self-deification. I didn't notice how far deep into idolism I was, as I wrote about in "Little g". Being saved doesn't mean we become perfect, it means we finally see our imperfection. And this is not to say that I didn't receive the Holy Spirit when I was baptized on my birthday in April 2010, it just means that my previous way of living, both worship of self through giving into sin time and again, as well as reliance on others and not on God, are no longer acceptable and must be guarded against with vigilance. (1 Peter 5:8)

It's not as painful to live in salvation as I thought it would be. The cross isn't as heavy as I thought it would be, and having thought it would be too much is essentially a tell-tale sign of a reliance on self. Jesus said he will carry all of my burdens, (Matthew 11:28-30) but I didn't believe Him. And that was why I chose superficial means of relief from the weight, instead of relying on God's strength. The release of pride to not need to be the best has been one of the greatest fruits of conversion. It is lonely to want to be ahead of everyone else, and frustrating when I see no one is actually following. Now I can just go day-by-day and see where the Lord takes me. That is grace.

Resisting Resentment

One of the many gifts of my recovery program is that I can now take accountability for my thoughts and my actions. I see people around me victimizing themselves, not at all seeing the reason WHY they feel the way they feel; not seeing THEIR actions that led to the condition they find themselves miserable in. But another gift I have received is to keep my mouth shut and not give my opinion. Instead I just remember to be grateful that I am no longer a prisoner of my mind or circumstance. If I can be of service and offer some relief through agape love, which my faith has taught me to do, even better.

The first case of the world going wrong was through the phenomenon of deceit, which played on the predisposed vulnerability of pride. The crafty serpent asked Eve, "Are you SURE?.....Surely you were lied to for if you DO follow the instructions given to you, you will be great, and God doesn't want you to be great." (Genesis 3.1-5)

So much of the pain that we create for ourselves is in our pursuit of being great, awesome, magnificent, respected. We want recognition simply by walking into a room, promotion before due time, gold without refining lead. But it will only be the pure of heart who will reap what they did not in fact sow. (John 4.38) (Matthew 5.5)

When we humble ourselves, when we resist that original pride, we have the strength to not only be happy for others, but to feel gratitude for being strong enough to be of service when feeling dismissed or looked-over, and in that do what very few people can do. (Matthew 22.14) We think our perseverance and hard work goes unnoticed, but they by no means are without appreciation, even on a subconscious level of the recipient(s). This will be demonstrated in moments of crisis, when those people whom you resent but for what you pushed though with determination and God's strength, will be there for you when you are in trouble. I think of my acts of service as putting coins in my spiritual bank account. We must give to receive. (Acts 10.35)

Work as a child of God. The Father instructs us and we listen in obedience, not because we will be punished, but because we will be given a peace that surpasses all understanding, (Philippians 4.7) and rewarded in GOD’S time.